Hateland (22 page)

    The next day, New Year's Eve, the day before my planned departure, Colin, a few of our friends and I went to a huge street party in the centre of Johannesburg. The city was celebrating its centenary and the streets were packed with people: white people. In the evening, the city centre became a black-free zone. Black people lived under a curfew Apart from those with special work permits, all blacks had to be back in their townships by ten at the latest.

    Cheers went up as the New Year swept in. A few glass bottles fell to the ground. The police must have thought they had a potential riot on their hands. Using loudhailers, they ordered the crowd to disperse. Nobody paid attention. Everybody kept partying. The occasional bottle could still be heard crashing to the ground. I watched as a line of riot police formed up across the street. Again, the police used loudhailers to order the crowd's dispersal. Again, everyone ignored the order.

    Suddenly, the police started firing tear gas into the crowd. Then the riot police began advancing, batons in hand. I suppose it was a fitting end to a century of oppression.

    I didn't enjoy my last night in South Africa. I walked the streets alone until five in the morning. I went into a couple of bars, but felt so sick with worry that I couldn't even drink. I knew if I was caught, I'd have no legal rights. They could pretty much do with me what they wanted, for as long as they wanted. There'd be no civil rights lawyer to read the police the Riot Act on my behalf. I wouldn't just be dealing with a few bent Old Bill trying to give me a hard time. The whole fucking system was in on this one. I knew I'd done wrong. Perhaps I deserved punishment. But surely I was entitled to my rights? I found myself sneering at myself. In my head I'd started sounding like a bleating-heart liberal blubbering about bully-boy Nazis. I remembered an old joke. Q: What do you call a liberal? A: A conservative who's been arrested.

Or, in my case, a Nazi who's been arrested and imprisoned in South Africa.

    The next day, I packed my bags and went to the airport with Colin and a few other friends. Another piece of bad news was that Claire's brother had been repeatedly stabbed in an unprovoked attack by Portuguese. He remained quite seriously ill for some time. Hillbrow, where we all lived, was getting more and more violent. When he'd made a full recovery, the family moved back to Essex.

    I checked in for my flight, handed over my luggage and went for a drink in the bar in the hope of steadying my nerves. I kept looking at my emergency passport, that pathetic piece of paper. I thought any official with a spare brain cell was bound to check it out. My 'passport' seemed to grow more laughably, transparently bogus with every second that ticked by.

    My time came. Colin was flying home to England in a fortnight. I told him I'd see him either in half an hour - being led back to the cells - or in two weeks' time. We said our goodbyes and I walked off towards passport control.

    I asked myself if I was walking too fast or too slow. Being normal is easy. Trying to act normal is a nightmare. I didn't know where to look or where to put my hands. I stood in the queue, trying vainly to control my sweat glands. Then it was my turn to show my passport. The man at the gate gave it a quick glance - and waved me through. I'd done it. I'd fucking done it. I felt elated.

    Then, more doubts. I wouldn't be safe until the plane had taken off. Surely some Nazi bully-boy could still jump on and do a spot check? I sat shaking in my seat on the plane. I just wanted the 747 to move, to fly off, but it just sat there. I really began to believe they'd checked all the names on the boarding cards and had identified me as a fugitive from justice.

    The stewardesses shut the doors. Relief. The plane began to ease itself backwards away from the terminal. More relief. It taxied onto the runway and came to a halt. Then the engines began to roar. Finally, my metal bird of freedom accelerated up the runway and zoomed off into the clouds.

    I knew I was safe. I was going home. Even the thought that I might be heading for arrest and imprisonment didn't worry me.

CHAPTER 10

FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND

'Passport, please.'

    I'd just stepped off the ferry at Dover. Earlier that day, I'd arrived in Brussels. I'd hoped to have a better chance of sneaking unnoticed into England on the ferry. A vain hope.

    A very vain hope, because I couldn't have made myself more conspicuous if I'd had rabies. Unlike my fellow foot-passengers, each of whom carried at most a rucksack and a few plastic bags of duty-free, I was laden with three large suitcases and a bulky sports bag. Aid, unlike their pale skins, mine had been burnt so brown the Afrikaners could have classified me 'black' and allowed Dougie to shoot or hack me to death.

    So the official's request to see my passport came as a disappointment, but no surprise. My disappointment intensified when I saw Debra at the other side of the barrier. I'd rung her in Brussels and explained my situation. She'd agreed to pick me up in her car. We'd exchanged a few letters and phone calls since we'd last seen each other some weeks earlier. She'd been disappointed I hadn't asked her out in Johannesburg. Now she'd have to wait even longer for our first date.

    The official looked at my A4 piece of paper. He said, 'One moment, Sir.' He walked into a nearby office. A few minutes later, he came back out, accompanied by two men in suits.

    'Bernard O'Mahoney?' said one of the detectives.

    'That's me,' I said.

    'Are you aware there's a warrant out for your arrest?'

    'No, there must be some mistake.'

    'Make it easy for us, Bernard. You're not going anywhere till we've checked it all out. So do everyone a favour.'

    In a cell at Dover police station, Debra and I shared our first kiss. The police had allowed us a few minutes alone together when they discovered she'd driven down from Basildon in Essex. They'd also given her permission to take my luggage. And they'd even allowed me to phone my mother. If this decent treatment had continued, I could well have turned into one of those pub bores parroting, 'British justice? Best in the world, mate.'

    Within 12 hours, I found myself sitting in a cell beneath Stafford Crown Court agreeing to a prosecution deal that involved my pleading guilty to 'unlawful wounding' in return for their dropping the 'wounding with intent' and other charges relating to my failure to appear.

    Later in court, the judge told me a custodial sentence was unavoidable. He said, 'You cannot go around Staffordshire beating people up at your leisure, Mr O'Mahoney. You will go to prison for 12 months.'

    It could have been worse. In six months, I'd be eligible for parole.

    Over the next four weeks, they shifted me around various establishments until I ended up at HMP Ranby in Nottinghamshire. While there, Adolf came to visit me with Debra. They'd travelled up together on the train after meeting at London's Liverpool Street Station.

    Debra told me later that, at the start of the journey, Adolf had given her a package wrapped in brown paper. It was about four inches wide and twelve inches long. He said, 'It's for you. Don't open it till you're on your way home.'

    When they arrived at the station nearest the prison, Adolf put Debra in a taxi and said he'd follow later. He thought she should spend the first part of the visit alone with me. He announced he was going for a drink.

    Halfway through the visit, a commotion of raised voices indicated Adolf had arrived. He stormed into the visiting room, looking dishevelled and phlegm-spattered, then strutted urgently towards our table. He sat down without saying hello and started ranting. 'Fucking Third World northerners,' he said. 'Fucking cunts. Unwashed, redundant scum.'

    I pieced together that he'd started playing pool in a pub with some locals. A dispute about the rules had resulted in his chinning one or more of his fellow players before being bundled out the door.

    'Cunts, fucking cunts,' he said. 'I never saw one of them drink a pint. Four of them huddled over two halves of lager and a packet of peanuts. Tried telling me "their" pool rules.'

    On and on he went. He even started ranting at some of the screws. I didn't usually relish the end of a visit, but I was happy when this one reached the goodbyes.

    Debra told me afterwards she'd sat opposite Adolf on the journey down. He hadn't eased up for one moment. She wasn't given the chance to speak a word. When he left her at Liverpool Street, he told her not to forget to open her 'present'. He said, 'This town's full of mugging scum. Don't be worried about using it.' Alone on the train home, she unwrapped his gift. It was a small machete.

    I hadn't been at Ranby long when they put me in solitary confinement for allegedly trying to escape. I hadn't been trying to escape. I'd merely gone for a stroll in an out-of-bounds area. But the screws wouldn't listen. They refused to let me shatter their fantasy. They'd foiled an escape attempt. And nothing could be allowed to detract from their achievement. Not even the truth.

    It was my first experience of solitary. My new apartment suite had been fitted out to minimalist standards. A slab of concrete represented the bedroom, a plastic bucket the bathroom. My permitted possessions comprised - although not all at the same time - the prison clothes I stood in (minus shoes) and the bedding (pillow, sheet and cover). At night, I had to hand over my clothes in order to get the bedding. I had nothing to write with or read, not even the Bible, and certainly no telly or radio. You'd have provided more home comforts for a dog.

    A small, high window made of thick, frosted glass ensured I could barely distinguish night from day. The cell had obviously been designed to destroy any traits of humanity remaining in its occupant. The only human contact - and I'm probably stretching the definition here - came from twisted screws. Mercifully, this contact never lasted more than a few minutes each day. I came to understand how silence can sometimes be described as deafening. The dirty beige walls seemed to close in on me.

    Hearing the jangle of keys would make my heart jump. I'd hope the screws were coming to let me out. And they knew it. One screw used to put his keys in my door, take them out again and laugh. Another told me that long-term prisoners could apply for ownership of their cells under the Conservative government's 'Right to Buy' scheme.

    I didn't want them to think they could get to me. When I heard them coming, I'd sit cross-legged on the floor with my back to the door. I wouldn't even turn round at mealtimes, when they'd slide a tray of slop across the floor towards me.

    It really used to annoy a few of them. One used to say, 'You think you're fucking clever, don't you?' After a fortnight, they let me return to the normal prison.

    A man from Stafford called Mac left the solitary block at the same time. They put us both in a prefabricated hut which housed about ten prisoners. Our hut-mates were out at work when we arrived. We noticed a pigeon on top of one of the lockers. Mac tried shooing it outside, but it kept flying about. I told him to forget about it. He wouldn't listen. 'Pigeons are bloody vermin,' he said.

    The bird reached the seeming safety of a rafter. Mac picked up a small but heavy block of wood being used to keep the door open. He threw it and, amazingly, scored a direct hit. The pigeon dropped dead to the floor.

    Mac said, 'Fucking bingo! Did you see that? Incredible!' He threw the corpse outside.

    Around four in the afternoon, the other prisoners started returning. Several of them were miners who'd fallen foul of the law during the year-long strike that had ended the previous year. When you asked them what they were in for - usually the first question one inmate asks another - they'd say, 'Political prisoner' or 'I'm not a fucking criminal'.

    I didn't have much sympathy for them. I regarded them as red rabble who'd justifiably had their Marxist-led arses kicked by Mrs Thatcher.

    Just as I was getting acquainted with some of my new Scargillite comrades, I heard shouting outside. The door burst open. A bald-headed man wearing thick-rimmed NHS glasses stood there holding the dead pigeon. He said in a loud voice trembling with emotion, 'I want to know ... I want to know ... I want to know who did this?'

    I looked over at Mac. He rolled over as if to go to sleep. I said, 'I saw it on the ground when we came.'

    We learnt that on the outside this man kept racing pigeons. During his stay in prison, he'd adopted the recently deceased bird. It used to sit on his bedside locker, patiently awaiting its master's return. The bereaved pigeon-fancier sat down tearfully on his bed. For half an hour, he stroked the still-warm feathers of his dear departed. Then he gave it a send-off not seen since Churchill's funeral.

    Next day, without warning, Mac and I were moved 'for security reasons' to Lincoln Prison. The move left us both puzzled. We hadn't realised they took suspected pigeon murder so seriously.

    Adolf sent several neo-Nazi publications to me at Lincoln. I didn't get a chance to read them, though, because the censors seized them. I was informed that 'racist' reading material was banned in the prison. Debra then paid me a visit. After her five- hour train journey, they allowed us just 55 minutes together. I told her not to bother again. They could fuck me about, but not her. I applied to move to HMP Stafford near my home, but they turned me down. The same thing happened to Mac.

    I had an idea for getting us transferred. Prisoners had to post their letters unsealed in a special mailbox, so the censors could check their contents. Some prisoners also used this box to post notes informing on other inmates. Mac and I wrote a note informing on ourselves. We accused us of supplying 'gear' (that is, heroin) and hiring out 'a works' (that is, a syringe). Stafford is the prison system's dustbin, where the screws send violent and unruly prisoners, so we felt sure we'd end up there if the governor wanted to rid his model establishment of two suspected drug dealers.