Snuff Fiction

14

I really miss the 1970s.

Which is to say that I really missed them.

Missed every year of them. Every single month and day. Every hour and minute.

He banged me up, the magistrate did. Sent me down. Gave me fifteen years.

Fifteen years!

I wasn’t pleased, I can tell you. I was angry. I was bitter and twisted and boiling and brooding. I was not a nice man to know.

They sent me first to Parkhurst and then to Pentonville. Later I was moved to Powys, then Penroth and finally to Poonudger. That each began with the letter P gave me no cause for amusement.

The Doveston wrote to me, of course. His early letters were full of apologies and promises that he would do everything within his powers to secure me an early release. Knowing well his love for dynamite, I slept nightly with my mattress over my head, to shield myself from the blast that would bring down my cell wall and herald the arrival of the getaway car that would whirl me off to freedom.

No blast came; no car arrived.

His letters became few and far between, but with them now came press cuttings. A note was enclosed with the first of these to the effect that, as his biographer and finding myself with time on my hands, I should dedicate my days to compiling an archive of his achievements as they were chronicled in the daily newspapers.

This, he suggested, would give me something worth while to do, with the added bonus that it would also keep me well informed as to what was going on in the world outside and just how well he was managing, even without my invaluable help.

We would get through this thing together, he wrote. But he never once came to visit.

Norman called by every month, until they moved me north. Norman brought me news of Brentford. Mostly grim, as I recall.

The growing of tobacco on the St Mary’s allotments had been banned. The plots had been split up again and it was now as if the plantation had never existed. The Mexican migrant workers had moved on. The Crad fields of Chiswick were now a council estate. In Hammersmith a woman had given birth to a child the shape of a hair-drier and there had been numerous signs and portents in the heavens.

‘Surely,’ said Norman, ‘the End Times are upon us.

Along with the reports of prodigious births, the sightings of mythical animals and the life and troubled times of a Brentford confectioner, Norman also brought some tragic news.

Chico was dead.

Gunned down in a drive-by whilst dealing on the street.

‘It was how he would have wanted to go,’ said Norman.

And who could disagree with that?

Norman was not my only visitor. Brother Michael dropped in once or twice. He offered me counselling, with the view that I should purge myself of former wrong-doing and release the monk within. He told me that he had been inspired by a dream, a vision it was, which showed me as a monk in a low-cut leather habit, receiving the stigmata in a most unusual place.

Brother Michael displayed before me the holy paraphernalia that he had brought with him to effect my initiation. The crucifix and rosary; the golden icon of St Argent with his tiny nose; the Latin texts and phial of holy water; the sash of penitence; the tube of KY jelly.

Although tempting, as some may consider it, I did not become a monk. In fact my physical response to the brother’s proposition, which manifested itself upon his person in a most vigorous and prolonged fashion, left him not only in some doubt as to the accuracy of visions, but also no longer predisposed to the riding of his bike.

It got me six months in solitary and put two more years on my sentence.

I was never the same man again.

I don’t know whether you have ever read any Hugo Rune. But amongst the many Ultimate Truths revealed by this great twentieth-century philosopher and shoulder-rubber with the famous is one that relates to the human condition. Rune states, in terms which even the layman can understand, that IT IS THE NATURE OF MAN TO BEHAVE BADLY.

According to Rune (and who is there to doubt his words?) ‘Any given person, at any given time, will be behaving as badly as he or she is able to get away with.’

According to Rune we are born behaving badly. We enter this world kicking and screaming and pooing ourselves. As children we are constantly punished for behaving badly. We are taught where the line is drawn and what will happen if we step over it. This continues throughout our lives, at school, in the workplace, in relationships and in marriage. We each behave as badly as we can get away with, stepping across a particular line at our peril.

Exactly how badly we are able to behave depends entirely on our circumstances. The poor oft-times behave very badly, as can be witnessed in football hooliganism, holidays abroad and the wearing of sports clothes. But if you wish to see real bad behaviour, bad behaviour taken to the extreme and exhibited (privately for the most part) as an art form, you must visit either the haunts of the very rich and privileged, or a long-term institution.

It is something of a cliché to state that wealth and bad behaviour go together. We have all heard the stories of best-selling authors who demand kumquats and chardonnay from harassed sales staff at signing sessions, of the antics of rock stars and cabinet ministers, matinée idols and members of the Royal Family. We know it goes on and we tut-tut-tut, but if our roles in life were reversed, we would do the same.

IT IS THE NATURE OF MAN TO BEHAVE BADLY.

And the more that you can get away with, the more you will try to get away with.

So what of the long-term institution? Well, here we have another set of circumstances. Here we have a place almost entirely peopled by folk who have stepped over the line. They are paying the price for their so doing.

Here we have the murderer whose bad behaviour has condemned him to life imprisonment. Society has condemned him to this punishment, even though this same society is forced into turning a blind eye upon the bad behaviour of its army or police. Society has said that this form of bad behaviour cannot be tolerated. Lock the bad man up for ever, get him out of our sight.

But is the murderer always a ‘bad’ man? If it is the nature of man to behave badly, was he not simply following the dictates of his nature? Doing what was natural to him? And what of the person he murdered? Was this an innocent victim?

I only touch upon this now, for reasons that will later be revealed. But I learned, whilst in prison, that the man without hope of release is the man who has no line left to put his foot across.

And you don’t push in front of such a man when in the queue for breakfast, or you will see some very bad behaviour.

They say that you meet the most interesting people in pubs. But this is only said by people who spend a lot of time in pubs. In my personal opinion, you meet the most interesting people in prisons. They’re not all interesting, don’t get me wrong. Heinlein said, famously, that ninety-five per cent of all science fiction was rubbish, adding that ninety-five per cent of everything was rubbish. This could be taken to the next logical stage, by stating that ninety-five per cent of people are rubbish too. It is not a view that I hold myself, but I know of some who do.

Now, having just suffered the preceding paragraphs, the reader might well believe that I have taken on a somewhat morbid mind-set. In fact that I had become bitter and twisted and boiling and brooding and not a nice man to know.

Well, you try more than a decade in the nick and see if you come through grinning!

It wasn’t all misery and I did meet some interesting people.

I did, for instance, meet an old acquaintance.

In Penroth Prison for the Criminally Disturbed I re-met Mr Blot. I didn’t even know they’d banged him up and I got quite a shock when I saw his gangly frame making its loony way along the corridor of C Block. I wondered if he would recognize me, but he just gave a bit of a sniff as he passed and continued on to therapy.

I sniffed at him in return and for the first time I realized what that smell was. The smell which had surrounded him at the Grange. That odd smell.

It was the smell of prison.

I learned all about Blot’s crimes from one of the nurses who were giving me the electric-shock treatment. This, combined with the large doses of pharmaceuticals, were helping to keep my temper in check, and I hadn’t bitten anybody’s face off in more than a month.

The crimes of Blot were not without interest. He had, it seemed a penchant for corpses. Necrophilia, they call it. Apparently, as Blot had never had much success with live women, he had turned his amorous attentions upon those buried in the graveyard that backed on to the school playground. Easy access over the school wall had provided Mr Blot with a veritable harem. His QC argued that although none of the corpses offered their consent, nor could it be proved that they were unwilling participants, as none, it appeared, had put up any struggle.

Mr Blot had been visiting the graveyard for years, and would probably have continued to do so undiscovered, had he not begun taking his girlfriends home.

I got on well with Mr Blot. We talked a lot about the good old days and he took great joy in showing me his Bible. He had bound it himself and it had been one of the few items he had been allowed to bring with him to prison. ‘They always let you bring your Bible,’ he explained.

The cover was unusual. It bore a pattern on the front, the like of which I have only ever seen once before — as a tattoo upon my late granny’s leg. The resemblance was quite uncanny.

So prison life wasn’t all bad.

I met a few interesting people and I did build up the Doveston Archive. As the years slowly passed for me, the volume of material increased. I was able to follow his progress and it made for a fascinating read. It was as if luck was always on his side.

When I’d heard from Norman that the plantation was no more, I’d wondered just what the Doveston would do next. The answer to that had arrived in the post: a snipping from the Brentford Mercury, taken from Old Sandell’s column.

UNHOLY SMOKE! WHATEVER NEXT?

Hard upon the heels of last year’s yo-yo frenzy, we have the mini-pipe or Playground Briar. Just like Daddy’s, says the advertising.

But once more there’s trouble. Brentford vicar, Bernard Berry, has condemned the little mini-pipe and forbidden its use amongst choirboys in the vestry. Why?

Apparently because of the logo. What looks to me to be three small tadpoles chasing each other’s tails, is, so the good vicar tells us, the Number of the Beast: 666.

Up your cassock, says Old Sandell, let the young ‘uns have a puffin peace.

The mini-pipe did not enjoy the yo-yo’s success. But whether this was down to Vicar Berry, who can say? If there was triumph in his pulpit following its removal from the shelves of Norman’s shop, that triumph was short-lived. Old Sandell had this to report in his column, a scant three weeks later.

BERRY BLOWN TO BUGGERATION

Brentford vicar Bernard Berry got the final surprise of his life this week when he lit up a stick of dynamite in mistake for a communion candle.

Poor labelling on the box, allied to the vicar having mislaid his specs, led to the tragedy.

But who ended up with the candles? Accidents will happen, says Old Sandell, we’ll have to let God sort it out.

The failure of the mini-pipe did nothing to deter the Doveston. It was a crap idea anyway and his sights were set on far higher things. I collected the clippings as they came in, filing them carefully, following how one business venture led to the next and noting how, with striking regularity, those who stood in his way fell prey to freak accidents of an explosive nature.

But accidents will happen, as Old Sandell says, and we,ll have to let God sort it out.

Accidents happen everywhere and a good many happen in prison.

In Powys I met a young fellow by the name of Derek. Derek had been convicted for murder. The murder, it turned out, of Chico. Within just three days of my meeting Derek, he was dead. He died, coincidentally, on the very day that I was leaving Powys to be moved on to Penroth. Derek died in a freak accident involving tied hands and a toilet bowl.

I expect old God knows what He’s up to.

Had I been outside in the world to enjoy the Seventies, I would have given them the full fifty pages that I gave to each of the previous decades. But I wasn’t, so I won’t.

I was not released from prison until 1984, by which time most of those who had lived through the Seventies had forgotten about them anyway.

I regret, of course, that I missed out on the fashion. When I see old episodes ofJason King and The Sweeney, I get a glimpse of an era when style was king. Those big lapels, those kipper ties, those stack-soled shoes. They’re all the fashion now, I know, but imagine what it must have been like to have worn that stuff back then and have nobody call you an utter twat!

On your very last day in prison, especially if you have served a long sentence, they make a bit of a fuss of you. Your cell-mates give you little presents: bits of string, or old lumps of soap. And if they are lifers with nothing to lose, you pay for these with whatever money you have been able to save up over the years.

It is a tradition, or an old charter, or something.

You don’t have to pay, but then I suppose that you don’t have to be able to walk.

I paid.

The governor invites you up to his office. He gives you a cup of tea, a biscuit and a pep talk. He tells you how you must behave in the outside world. And also how you must not behave. To encourage moral rectitude and discourage recalcitrance, two screws then enter the office and beat the holy bejasus out of you. You then receive a pack of five Woodbines, the price of a short-distance bus fare and a packet of cheese and onion crisps. The gift of crisps is symbolic of course, as you have to hand them back.

And if, like me, you are released from Poonudger, which is right in the middle of a bloody great moor, the price of a short-distance bus fare is also symbolic. And if you have five Woodbines, but no matches to light them with, this makes the gift of cigarettes similarly so.

The screws relieved me of money and fags and hurled me onto the moor.

When the door had slammed and the laughter died away, I rose slowly to my feet and breathed in freedom. It smelled of moorland and donkey doings. It smelled very heaven.

On the previous day a limousine had arrived at Purbeck to collect the Doveston Archive. I confess to being somewhat surprised that it had not returned for me.

I set out along the single—track road, expecting any minute to see it appear on the distant horizon.

But it didn’t.

I should have been down-hearted, but I wasn’t. I was free. I marched along, my prison sandals scuffing up the dust. It was a shame that the prison laundry had mislaid my street clothes. I’d been quite looking forward to getting back into my kaftan. But, as the chap who ran the prison laundry told me, these things happen and it’s always best to make a completely fresh start. As it happened, he was wearing a kaftan just like mine when he told me this, and I must say that he looked a bit of a twat.

I would make a fresh start. I just knew it. And, of course, I knew that I would, because I had glimpsed the future. It was a great pity though that I hadn’t glimpsed all of the future. Because if I had, I would never have stepped into quite so much donkey shit.

But to Hell with it all. I was free. I was free. I was free. I marched and I grinned and I sang and I whistled and I stepped in more shit and I didn’t give a toss.

I was just so happy.

I don’t know how I came to wander off the track. But in a way it was lucky that I did. If I hadn’t wandered off the track, I would never have come across the little farmstead that nestled all but hidden in the shallow valley. And if I hadn’t found the farmstead, I would never have found the scarecrow. And if I hadn’t found the scarecrow— Well, I did find the scarecrow and he provided me with a change of clothes. I crept down to the farmhouse and had a bit of a peep through the windows. I didn’t want to bother anybody, but it did occur to me that I might ask whether I could use their telephone.

There was just one little old lady at home, no—one else, and as I was feeling in so jolly a mood, I thought I would play a harmless prank on her. I returned to the scarecrow and put on his big pumpkin head and then I went up and knocked at the door.

‘Boo!’ I said as the old lady opened it.

Well, I didn’t know that she had a heart condition. But in a way it was lucky that she did. Because if she hadn’t had the heart condition, she would never have had the heart attack.

And if she hadn’t had the heart attack, I’ll bet she would never have let me borrow her car to drive off to the nearest telephone.

The nearest telephone was in a pub, some twenty—five miles distant from the farmhouse. The landlord there gave me the warmest of welcomes. I had thought that my appearance might put people off, but no, the landlord was all smiles.

‘The last time I saw a hat, coat and trousers like that,’ said the landlord, ‘my dear old dad was wearing them. He was a farmer in these parts all his life, God rest his soul.’

I asked whether I might use the telephone and the landlord asked me why.

I explained to him that an old lady of my acquaintance had had a heart attack and I wanted to call for an ambulance.

The landlord shook his head sadly. There was no nearby hospital, he said, and no doctor who would come out at night. His dear old dad had died of a heart attack and he felt certain that his dear old mum, who lived some twenty-five miles distant, alone on a farm and suffered herself with a heart condition, would, in all probability, go the same way.

‘It’s God’s will,’ said the landlord. ‘Let Him sort it out.’

I sighed and said, ‘You’re probably right.’

‘Would you care for a pint on the house?’

I had a pint on the house and then another and when I had finished this, I told the landlord that I really should be on my way. The landlord, still chuckling about how much my coat looked like the one his father used to wear and which his mum now apparently used on her scarecrow, slipped a ten-pound note into its top pocket.

‘You look like you could use that,’ he said. ‘Be lucky.’

As I drove away into the night, I felt certain that I would be. I just knew that I would be.

And I would.