Heaven

DAY 127 THURSDAY 22 NOVEMBER 2001

5.55 am

The problem of whether I should remain at NSC and become hospital orderly, or transfer to Spring Hill, has come to a head. Doug (VAT fraud and current hospital orderly) has been told by Mr Berlyn that if he applies for a job at Exotic Foods in Boston, who currently employ Clive (local council fraud and backgammon tutor), he would be granted the status of outside worker, which would take him out of the prison six days a week, even allowing him to use his own car to go back and forth to work.

If Doug is offered the job, then I will only do one more week as SMU orderly before passing on my responsibilities to Carl. I would then have to spend a week being trained by Doug in the hospital routines, so that I could take over the following Monday.

10.30 am

Eight new inductees today, and all seem relieved to be in an open prison, until it comes to job allocation. Once again, most prisoners end up on the farm, resulting in a lot of glum faces as they leave the building. Few of them want to spend their day with pigs, sheep and Brussels sprouts, remembering the temperature on the fens at this time of year is often below zero. One of the prisoners, a West Indian called Wesley, used to warmer climes, is so angry that he asks to be sent back to Ashwell, his old C-cat prison. He says he’d be a lot happier locked up all day with a wall to protect him from the wind. Mr Berlyn assures him that if he still feels that way in a month’s time, he’ll happily send him back.

5.00 pm

Early supper is, as I have explained, one of the orderlies’ privileges, so I was surprised to see a table occupied by six inmates I’d never seen before.

John (lifer, senior kitchen orderly) tells me that they’re all Muslims, and as Ramadan has just begun, they can only eat between the hours of sunset and sunrise, which means they cannot have breakfast or lunch with the other prisoners. That doesn’t explain why they’re having dinner on their own, because it’s pitch black by five o’clock on a November evening and…

‘Ah,’ says John, ‘good point, but you see the large tray stacked with packets of milk and cornflakes? That’s tomorrow’s breakfast, which they’ll take back tonight and have in their rooms around five tomorrow morning. If the other prisoners find out about this, when they still have to come down to the dining room whatever the weather, can you imagine how many complaints there would be?’

‘Or conversions to Allah and the Muslim faith,’ I suggest.

6.00 pm

I give my talk in the chapel on writing a best-seller. The audience of twenty-six is made up of prisoners and staff. There are five ladies in the front row I do not recognize, seventeen prisoners and four members of staff, including Mr Berlyn, Mr Gough and Ms Hampton, the librarian.

I enjoyed delivering a speech for the first time in three months, and although I’ve tackled the subject on numerous occasions in the past, it felt quite fresh after such a long layoff, and the questions were among the most searching I remember.

Two pounds was added to my canteen account.

7.00 pm

I call Mary and foolishly leave my phonecard in the slot. When I return three minutes later, it’s disappeared. Let’s face it, I am in prison.

7.30 pm

I pick up my letters from the unit office, thirty-two today, including one from Winston Churchill enclosing a book called The Duel, which covers the eighty-day struggle between his grandfather and Hitler in 1940. Among the other letters, nearly all from members of the public, is one from Jimmy.

You may recall Jimmy if you’ve read volume two of these diaries (Purgatory). He was the good-looking captain of football who had a three-year sentence for selling cannabis. He’s been out for a month, and has a job working on a building site. It’s long hours and well paid but, he admits, despite all the sport and daily gym visits while he was in prison, he had become soft after eighteen months of incarceration. He’s only just beginning to get back into the work ethic. He assures me that he will never sell drugs again, and as he did not take them in the first place, he doesn’t intend to start now. I want to believe him. He claims to have sorted out his love life. He’s living with the sexy one, and has ditched the intellectual one. As I now have an address and telephone number, I will give him a call over the weekend.

8.15 pm

After roll-call, Doug and I go through our strategy for a smooth changeover of jobs. However, if our plan is to work, he suggests we must make the officers on the labour board think that it’s their idea.