My Policeman (32 page)

Razor blades. Chamber pots. Dabs of jam. Soap.

And for fantasy: fingerless gloves.

I’ve never been so aware of the dimensions of any room before this cell. Twelve foot long, nine foot wide, ten foot high. I’ve paced it out. Walls painted dull cream halfway up, then whitewashed. Floor of scrubbed bare planks. No radiator. Canvas bed with two scratchy grey blankets. And in the corner, a small table, at which I write this. The table is covered in characters carved into its poor surface. Many are statements of time: ‘Max. 9 months. 02.03.48’. Some are pathetic jibes at the screws: ‘Hillsman sucks cock’. The one I’m most interested in, and sometimes spend many minutes just rubbing my thumb over, is the word ‘JOY’. A longed-for woman’s name, I suppose. But it’s such an unlikely word to find on a table in here that occasionally it’s tempting to read it as a small message of hope.

There’s one window, high up and made of thirty-two (I’ve counted them) dirty panes of glass. Every morning I wake long before the bolts on the door are unlocked, and I stare at the dim outlines of these squares of glass, trying to convince myself that today the sun might make it through and cast a jewel of light on to the floor of the cell. But this has yet to happen. And perhaps it’s better like this.

No way to tell exactly what time it is, but soon the lights will go out. And then the shouting will begin.
My God. My God
. Every night the man shouts, over and over.
My God. My God. My GOD!
As if he believes he really can summon God to this place, if only he can shout loud enough. At first I expected another prisoner to shout back, order him to shut his mouth. That was before I understood that once lights are out, no other prisoner will ask you to deny your pain. Instead we listen in silence, or call back our own grief. It’s left to the screws to bang on his door and threaten him with solitary.

The knock at the door. A quarter past one in the morning. A loud knock. The sort of knock that won’t stop until answered. That may not stop, even then. A knock designed to let all your neighbours know that someone has come for you in the dead of night and will not leave until they have you.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

I must have slept through the downstairs buzzer, because someone was right outside the door to my flat. I knew it couldn’t be Tom. He had his own key. But I had no idea it would be another policeman.

His hand still in the air when I opened up. His face comically small and red beneath his helmet. I looked behind him for Tom, thinking – in my sleep-drugged state – perhaps this was some kind of joke. And there were three more of them. Two in uniform, like the one doing the knocking. One plain clothes, hanging back, peering down the stairs. I looked again. But Tom’s face was nowhere.

‘Patrick Francis Hazlewood?’

I nodded.

‘I have a warrant here for your arrest on suspicion of committing acts of gross indecency with Laurence Cedric Coleman.’

‘Who?’

The red-faced one sneered. ‘That’s what they all say.’

‘Is this some kind of joke?’

‘They all say that, too.’

‘How did you get up here?’

He laughed. ‘You have very obliging neighbours, Mr Hazlewood.’

As he was reciting the usual lines –
anything you say may be taken down and used as evidence, etc. etc
. – I could think nothing. I stared at the deep dimple in his chin and tried to understand what could possibly be happening. Then his hand was on my shoulder, and the feel of that policeman’s glove made the reality of what was going on begin to seep into my brain. My first thought was: it’s actually Tom. They know about me and Tom. Something – some police code – is stopping them from saying his name, but they know. Why else would they be here?

They didn’t handcuff me. I went quietly, thinking that the less fuss I made, the less awful it might be for him. The red-faced man, whose name I later learned was Slater, said something about a search warrant; I saw no such document, but as Slater led me away, the two other uniformed men swooped into my flat. No. Swooped is too dramatic. They slipped in, grinning. My journal was open, I knew, on the desk in my bedroom. It wouldn’t take them long to find it.

Slater seemed rather bored by the whole business. As we rode through town in the Black Maria, he started chatting to his plain-clothed colleague about another case in which he’d had to ‘cosh’ the criminal. His victim had cried, ‘just like my
mum
when I told her I was becoming a copper’. The two of them sniggered like schoolboys.

Once in the interview room, it became clear who Laurence Coleman was. An unflattering photograph of the boy was slapped on the table. Did I know this young man? Had I, as he’d said in his statement, ‘tapped him up for a beefer’ outside the Black Lion conveniences? Had I committed acts of gross indecency in said public conveniences with this man?

I almost laughed with relief. This was not about Tom, but the dark-haired youth at the Argyle.

No, I replied. I had not.

Slater gave a smile. ‘It will be better for you,’ he said, ‘if you tell the truth and plead guilty.’

What I remember now is the number of tea stains on the chipped table, and the way Slater gripped the edge of his chair as he leaned forward. ‘A guilty plea,’ he said, ‘often saves a lot of trouble. Trouble for you. And trouble for your
associates
.’ The redness in his cheeks had drained and the creases around his mouth showed clear in the blast of the overhead light. ‘Family and friends are often hurt in these cases.’ He shook his head. ‘And it’s all so easily avoided. Breaks my heart.’

A cold rush of panic spread through my chest. Perhaps this was really about Tom after all, and this was Slater’s way of saving a friend and colleague.

I looked him in the eye. ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘And now I come to think of it, I did meet that young man, and we fucked right there in the lav and we both loved it.’

A short smile crossed Slater’s face. ‘That’ll make the jury’s job very easy,’ he said.

At nine this morning, a warder – Burkitt – arrived in my cell. Burkitt has a reputation for being something of a sadist, but
I’d
yet to see any evidence of this. He’s a slim, tall man with large brown eyes and a closely cropped beard, and would be handsome were it not for his non-existent chin. He said nothing for a few moments. Just stood there in front of me and slowly unwrapped a mint humbug.

Then: ‘Hazlewood. Get a move on. Visit to the trick cyclist.’

‘Trick cyclist?’ I still don’t understand all the prison language. Some of it is impressively imaginative, if gruesome. ‘Dry bath’ for strip search seems particularly appropriate to me.

Burkitt popped the humbug in his mouth, gave a little push on my shoulder and did not see fit to enlighten me. As we walked, he kept very close behind, saying, ‘You queers have it cushy in here, don’t you? Plenty of business.’ His mouth was so close to my ear that I could smell the sweet mint of his breath. So, I thought, this is where his reputation comes from: he knows how prison tobacco leaves our mouths with the taste and texture of a rough hound’s backside, and so he tortures us with his minty freshness.

We walked out of D Hall, along a long corridor, through several locked doors, out into the yard, through a locked gate and into a miraculous place: the hospital wing. I’d heard rumours of the existence of this clean, new building, and know men who’ve tried everything – including burning their own arms with slugs of hot oil in the kitchen – to win a short stay there.

As soon as we stepped inside the white walls, the smell of new plaster hit me. After the prison stench of boiled cabbage and the stale sweat of hundreds of terrified, unwashed men, this new smell brought tears to my eyes. It was a smell almost like bread. I wondered, briefly, what a recently plastered wall would taste like, if licked. Everything was brighter, too. Large
windows
ran the length of the corridor, washing the whole place with light.

Burkitt jabbed a finger between my shoulder blades. ‘Up.’

At the top of the staircase was a door with the words DR R.A. RUSSELL attached in modern silver script. Burkitt unwrapped another humbug and began to suck, staring at me all the time. Then he knocked on the door.

‘Come in.’

A fire roared in the grate. Beneath my feet was a new carpet. Although it was a thin, synthetic monstrosity – multicoloured cubes on a royal-blue background – the feel of it beneath my boots was wonderful. Standing there, I felt suddenly lifted from the floor.

A man rose from behind a desk. ‘Patrick Hazlewood?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m Dr Russell.’

He couldn’t have been more than twenty-eight. Dimples on his ample cheeks. Wearing a boxy blazer, unbuttoned. Around his cushiony middle a very new-looking belt bit into his flesh. He didn’t look at all threatening, but I still had no idea what kind of treatment I’d been sent for.

‘Thank you, Burkitt,’ he said, beaming at the scowling screw.

‘Right outside,’ said Burkitt, slamming the door.

Russell looked at me. ‘Sit down.’

It was unexpected, this order. Seduced, I suppose, by the carpet, the fire and Russell’s schoolboy cheeks, I’d almost been anticipating the word
please
.

He settled himself into his leather office chair and picked up a fountain pen. Despite the comforts of the room, my chair was the familiar wooden type. He must have seen me looking at it in disappointment, because he said, ‘I’m
working
on that. Ridiculous to expect a person to talk freely whilst perched on a school chair. No one tells teacher their secrets, eh?’

Of course, I thought. He’s the psychiatrist. I relaxed a little. I’ve never believed they could offer any type of ‘cure’, but I’ve always been curious about what it would be like to visit one.

‘So. We start by you telling me how you are at the moment.’

I said nothing. I was lost in the print of Matisse’s
La Danse
that hung above his desk: the first piece of art I’d seen for three months. Its bright colours seemed almost obscene in their beauty.

Russell followed my gaze. ‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ he asked.

I couldn’t speak for a full minute. He waited, turning his pen over and over. Then I blurted: ‘Did you get it to torture your patients into a confession?’

He flicked an imaginary piece of lint from his knee. ‘I’m not here for confessions. There’s a priest who will gladly hear them every Sunday. Do you believe?’

‘Not in any god who condemns so many.’

‘So many of – your kind?’

‘Of all kinds.’

There was silence for a while.

‘I’m interested in why you find torture in that picture.’

‘I would have thought that was rather obvious.’

Russell raised his eyebrows. Waited.

‘It’s a reminder of beauty. Of what’s outside these walls.’

He nodded. ‘You’re right. But some can find beauty wherever they are.’

‘There’s not much in this place.’

Another long pause. He tapped his pen three times on his notepad and smiled, very suddenly. ‘Do you want to be cured?’ he asked.

I almost snorted. Checked myself when I felt the intensity of Russell’s serious gaze.

It was an easy question to answer. Did I want to spend more time up here in this light, warm room, chatting with Russell by the fire? Or did I want to be sent back to my cell?

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Oh yes.’

We are to meet once a week.

I say I do everything possible to avoid thinking about Tom, but, of course, Tom is mostly what I think about. And it is hell. Not least because the more I think about him, the more I cannot remember the reasons why we could not be together. The more I think about him, the less I remember anything that was wrong, or difficult. All I remember is his sweetness. And that is the hardest thing to bear. Yet my mind keeps returning to it. Keeps returning to Venice. Most especially to the water taxi we took in the dead of night, over the lagoon to the city. We climbed into the shining wooden cabin, sat together at the back of the boat, and our captain closed the hatch to give us privacy. Then we sped across the waves, so fast we couldn’t stop laughing at the sheer daring of that little boat on the black water. Zoom, we went. Zoom. Our thighs touching. Our bodies forced back by the speed of the thing. And then the boat suddenly slowed, and the beauty of Venice unrolled itself outside the tiny windows. Tom gasped, and I smiled at his wonder. But to me the wonder was the touch of his hand on mine in that cabin which was ours alone for the time it took to reach our hotel.

Like most who experience these things, throughout the arrest and trial, and the first few days in here, I truly thought someone would appear to announce that there’d been a terrible mistake
and
ask that I accept the apologies of everyone involved. And all the doors that had slammed shut would open again and I would walk through them, out into the clean air, away from the strange piece of theatre my life had become.

But thirteen weeks in, I’ve grown as used to the routine as most of the others. And I perform it with the same dead-eyed, accepting stare. 6.30 a.m. Buzzer signals it’s time to get up. 7 a.m. Slop out, being careful to carry one’s metal chamber pot with the utmost nonchalance. Fetch cold water and shave with allocated blunt blade. I’m now, since being on association, allowed to ‘dine out’ with the other men, rather than eating all meals alone in my cell. But it’s the same dishwater tea, stale bread, smear of marge and – almost tasty – bowl of porridge. Perhaps porridge is so vile there’s not much one can do to make it worse. Then it’s to work in the library. My position there has enabled me to gain access to exercise books and pens, but as a description of the place, the word ‘library’ is something of a joke – the books are all filthy (in strictly a literal sense) and obsolete. It’s impossible for a prisoner to obtain anything he really wants to read, save for the few paperback Westerns available on each of the corridors. The library is dingy, but at least it’s slightly warmer than the rest of the prison. One of the radiators actually works. The warder in charge – O’Brien – must be nearing retirement, and spends most of the day sitting in the corner barking for silence and refusing requests. However, he is rather deaf, so the noise must reach a certain volume before he barks. This makes it possible for the men to speak to one another quite freely, so long as they keep their voices fairly low.