Stuart (10 page)

‘The good thing about that jail was the way the doors was designed.'

‘John Brock says prison's not too bad,' I say.

‘Yeah, but there's two levels, in't there? People like John is not what they class as a criminal. Any of the screws could have been in John's position. All John was doing was his job at Wintercomfort, so he was probably more like one of the boys. And even him–his first job on the wing–what was it? To wash the blood down in the seg [segregation] unit after the screws had fucking finished with someone in there. It's true what John says, you can do bird and not lose days if you don't buck the system, but unless you're willing to give information normally, they won't let you have a quiet time.'

‘Information about what?'

‘Who's smuggling drugs, who's doing what. If someone's been done over, who done it.'

‘And if you said “I don't know”?'

‘You'd just get stitched up, get nicked, get a governor's report. You can have an argument with a screw, and tell him to fuck off, and the riot bell will come. Half the jail screws will come, you'll get jumped on, bent up like a chicken, dragged into a cell, get your clothes literally ripped off you, and then get charged with assaulting a screw as well. If a load of men jump on you and start inflicting pain on you, you're going to start struggling, and that's classed as assaulting a screw. You get those screws who will help you out if it's genuine, but them screws are normally the first ones in if it kicks off. There is no such thing as a good screw, and normally those that are the nice ones are also the first ones to come in with their shields and their fucking silly sticks when they want to bend you up.'

It makes sense. Put two macho groups together and give the first desperation and numbers, and the second truncheons and protective clothing, and the result is like a laboratory civil war. ‘But there are times when someone deserves it,' I insist, thinking, you Stuart, my friend, you little nightmare.

‘Well, no. If it's not alright on the street if someone does something wrong to just go up to them and beat them, why should it be alright in prison for one screw to decide that something's wrong, and then get a load of his mates to go and beat somebody up? As well as wearing all the protective clothes and shields. Who are they to say that that's the punishment that person should have? All it needs is for an obnoxious screw to have a bad day and you too have a bad day. It's easy for him to get all stroppy, for you to say, “Oh, just fuck off then,” or “Shove it,” and some of them literally just turn round and hit the bell, all the screws come running. You can take a fifteen-, twenty-minute kicking in the block. And the doctor will come down, “Yep, he's alright.” Ask my mate Smudger to show you his arm. The screws broke his arm. Doctor had a look at it, said there was nothing wrong, and he still has trouble with it now. They broke his arm and then just left it to repair itself. Other countries just whip fucking prisoners, where in this country we call it Control and Restraint.'

‘Wait,' I interrupt on another occasion, during another of Stuart's descriptions of slammers past and future (he wouldn't, he says, be surprised to die in one). ‘Take me through the process of arriving.'

‘Right, you go through reception, have a shower, go to your cell–'

‘What's reception?'

‘Right, reception is where you get all the, awww, it's not…I mean, it's just…nah, horrible…not horrible, horrible, but horrible, know what I mean? Not being funny…awww, you don't want to go there.'

It's no good. Stuart can't describe it. There are prison books and diaries that detail the process, which is quite a mild rite of passage, a dull-witted but clearly necessary stripping of civility–name taken, civilian clothes removed, prison garb handed out, number given, a shower and delousing–but nothing I've read captures Stuart's shudder.

‘Then what? What's next after reception?'

‘Go to my cell…'

‘How do you get to your cell?'

‘How do you think? Clank, clank, on the wing, up the steps.'

‘What's the wing like?'

‘Phhhaawww! Smell of piss. Just smells of piss everywhere.'

This was because of the practice of slop out, still common in the mid-1990s but forbidden now. Not allowed out to use the toilet during the fourteen and a half hours they were locked in their cells each day, inmates had to store their excrement in buckets until the buckets could be ‘slopped out' in the communal latrine. The rancid odour seeped into every part of the wing.

0800 unlock, slop out, breakfast.

1115 dinner.

1330 unlock, slop out.

1600 tea.

1730–2030 slop out, serve supper.

‘So there you are, the first night in your cell,' I pursue, strangely invigorated by this vision of urine sloshing through the building. ‘What's it like? No freedom. Cooped up. Can you sleep? Who were you sharing with?'

‘Alexander, that's what I keep trying to tell you. I didn't spend the first night in my cell. Didn't like me cellmate. He was doing twenty-eight days. I'd just got five years and three months! “I'm not banging up with that cunt,” I says. “He's packing his bags to go home while I'm still thinking where to put the toothbrush. It'll do me head in. I'm not hearing him moaning about oh, he's missing his wife and family or he's going home tomorrow.” I wouldn't have it. Refused to go in. About turn. Straight to solitary, the block. I spent me first night of five years three months straight in the block–I lost seven days' remission straight off on me first night, and it was me birthday.'

What about bullies?

‘First time someone tries to tax you in jail, attack them.'

‘To tax' in prison is just as it is outside of prison: when a person nastier than you are takes away a portion of everything you own: a handful of tobacco, your phonecard, your Bob Marley cassettes.

‘Attack them? What if he's an eighteen-stone yeti-man with pointy teeth?'

‘If there ain't a weapon there to hurt them, and they're a right big cunt, just attack them,' Stuart says. ‘Because if you're a bit weak-minded and give in, you'll have others–all the time. You'll
never
get away from it. And as soon as they let you out the hospital wing after that, you'll often find the bully will come and try and take everything again but just attack them again. And you'll find that if you fucking have a go at a bully twice, even if he beats you up, they don't come back a third time. Another way is to create a situation where they see you just lose the plot totally, even if it's against the screws, chasing the screws up the ladder with a lump of wood. Alright, you get a kicking off the screws, but it's a way of keeping the bullies back. It's a safer way of doing it. Because if you get involved with cons, it might come to the stage where you got to throw boiling hot water and sugar over them, and fucking stab them as well if they're a right big cunt, because I've seen people have sugar and hot water and fucking
still
batter people.'

Hence, as Stuart points out, the clear advantage of convincing other inmates from the start that ‘you're fucking mad'. Then ‘they'll leave you alone, in general. Also, since the Strangeways riot, there's so much pressure on cons to give evidence in an outside court that if you do someone up, you'll probably get a five-stretch or an eight-stretch on top of your original sentence. Where, as long as you don't go up and punch a screw, seriously hurt one, just chase them, the chance of you getting an outside court are really rare. You'll get a really good fucking kicking. But what's a kicking when you've had so many?'

And what about education? Why don't more people in prison think to themselves, ‘Well, OK, it's not where I want to be, but there's nothing else to do, so I'll take all the training courses so I can get a good job when I get out'?

Says Stuart: ‘People say there's all these courses, but what are they? In the jails with the best courses, you have to put up with between 60 and 80 per cent nonces. You have to listen to fucking kiddy-fiddlers talking about kiddy-fiddling, fucking granny-rapists ganging up and taking straight cons out, just to do a class on how to cement two bricks together. A few have motor mechanics and woodwork and welding. The courses are only very basic, and sometimes you can get halfway through doing a course and then because of a problem on the wing, you'll get shipped out.' Most jails do an industrial cleaning course, but ‘how many ex-cons are going to want to be industrial cleaners? And, seriously, what company director's going to want a load of ex-cons with fuck-off-sized Hoovers running round his office at 5 a.m.?

‘Education facilities is always good in prisons with a large proportion of sex offenders,' complains Stuart bitterly. This is because sex offenders are generally older, better educated, less trouble, and more intelligent. ‘Ironic, in'it? They're in there with all the ones they've abused, because all their victims have been so fucked up by what's been done to them that they've become criminals, too, and the abusers are still the ones with privileges!'

This fatalistic meeting between paedophiles and victims is like Greek theatre. I press for more: moments of realisation, subtle incidents of revenge, poignant displays of despair, anything human. ‘Frank Beck what did snuff movies died, the cunt, in Whitemoor, just before I got there, playing badminton in the gym,' recollects Stuart with bland satisfaction.

‘What about murderers? Did you ever share a cell with a murderer?' I try instead.

‘Murderers? The mad thing is, as soon as you mention the word “murder” everyone gets hysterical, really fearful.
MURDERERS!
Oh, dangerous, dirty, evil people. But the majority of people who I've met in jail who've been done for murder, you could release fifty per cent of them the day after they've committed their murder. Alright, yes, they have killed somebody, but they're so damaged, a lot of them, by what they've done and shell-shocked, they'd never ever dare commit another offence again. Fifty per cent of people in for murder are your ordinary people who just for
one
moment lost it.

‘D'you know,' says Stuart after reflecting a moment, ‘I thought screws was called screws cos, with their silly caps and that, that's what they look like.'

Occasionally, Stuart's family would find out about his outbursts. Several weeks after the event a letter from HM Prisons would arrive, explaining that the authorities had found it necessary to ‘ghost' this scion of the family tree away to another establishment, two hundred miles south, or forty miles east, to Winchester or Lincoln. No details about why. At HMP She-Can-No-Longer-Remember-Which, Stuart's mother once showed up for a visit to find that her strange son was ‘not available'. He'd been taken off, cell stripped out, washed down, ‘ghosted' yet again, and another con in his place. The warders didn't tell her what had gone on even when she was standing outside the gates worrying herself sick. He was just ‘not available'. Was he refusing to acknowledge her? Was he in hospital with an infectious disease? Were the guards unhooking his corpse from a bed sheet wrapped through his window bars? Sorry, Mrs Shorter, no comment.

Stuart's sister laughs. ‘The reason I've seen most of this country is going from prison to prison to see Stuart. It seemed like every Sunday. I remember at school we'd have to write in our weekend books what we'd done at the weekend. The others would have gone to the circus or the seaside and I'd have been to prison to visit my brother.

‘We weren't never allowed to see him after he'd done things,' she adds, ‘because I think they'd beat him so bad.'

Another woman, the girlfriend of a friend of Stuart's, helped out with the occasional bit of smuggling. ‘I had to takes some puff in and Stuart had to get his friend down because Stuart couldn't put it up his bum himself. Couldn't face it. So Graham come down to the waiting room and I put it under a Coke can and slid it to him. He picked the can in one hand and with the other put the packet down the back of his trousers, up his arse.