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Post by Idris on Apr 11, 2009 19:22:41 GMT
The massive bulk of the prison wall loomed over the street – a dark threat hanging over anyone with criminal tendencies, and a source of dread to the innocent. Behind the wall, wings radiated from the central hub like the spokes of a giant wheel. The prison had been built thirty years before according to humane principles– a seperate cell with its own lavatory facilities for each prisoner, men and women kept in individual wings instead of all together – but that had been back in the day when reform was all the rage. Now the regime was based on Hard Labour, Hard Fare and Hard Board. The treadmill and the crank kept the prisoners occupied – back breaking and pointless labour in return for their daily bread. They were fed on a monotonous diet just sufficient to preserve their strength, wooden boards replaced hammocks and the lavatories had been ripped out to make space for more inmates.
In bright weather the cells were ill-lit by narrow windows high in the bare stone walls. On a dull afternoon in March the light was fading fast, and there were no candles or lamps given to the prisoners in the male wings for fear that they would set fire to their meagre blankets, or even themselves – as had happened on occasion. At least the labour of the day was over. Men sat or lay exhausted in their cells, some snoring, some coughing, a few weeping. The warders paraded slowly up and down the landings, swinging their long cudgels and stopping occasionally to bang on the door of a cell for their own entertainment.
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Post by sleepingdragon on Apr 13, 2009 11:51:12 GMT
Donald McGregor had thought that he had known what boredom felt like. He had spent years in the Army, after all, and most of army life consisted of monotonous physical labour, loading ships or marching or carrying stones, or just standing on guard for hours on end until your legs were in agony. Don had known men who had developed spider-leg from the long hours of standing in one place, their skin going sickly and discoloured around the ankle, their veins gone thick and bulging out almost through the skin.
But at least in the army there were usually people to speak to. Here, the very act of speaking to another prisoner was forbidden. The wardens greatly disliked it when their charges 'carried on', by which they seemed to mean any sort of communication.
The wardens took everything and anything out of the ordinary to be a sign of recidivism or worse, a plan to escape, and reacted accordingly. Or at least they could claim they did, though Don thought some simply enjoyed having a profession where they could attack people on a regular basis and not have to fear retaliation. It was wholly in keeping with the basic ethos of the wardens, however - that criminals were, by their nature, irredeemable, habitual offenders and that all there was to be done was to frighten or exhaust them into submission. Don had tried to explain to one of the wardens that this was a patently ridiculous notion, since what constituted 'crime' changed from year to year. Until quite recently, for example, debtors had been put in prison until they could repay their debts, but then the law had changed and debtors were no longer considered criminals. How, then, could crime be something habitual, and 'criminal' be something that you were, as unchangeable as being male or female? The wardens had listened to this quietly, and then proceeded to deny Don his food for the next three days. Hard Thinking, it seemed, was not one of the precepts of the penal regime.
Since then, Don had kept his head down, as Kev had suggested to him when he first arrived. The endless, pointless turning of cranks and running on treadmills didn't bother Don - he was quite strong and they helped him keep in shape.
In fact he had worked so hard at it to distract himself that the wardens had rapidly granted him many marks, which, in the system used in these prisons, allowed him extra privileges. Don thought the other convicts resented it, as he rapidly attained enough marks to have better diet and bed, first on a twice-weekly basis and then as a matter of course. Don felt slightly guilty about it, as he knew he had only managed it because his years in the Army had left him in far better shape than the other prisoners, some of whom had spent years on the lowest level of the marks system, but Don could do nothing about that. Recently the wardens had raised him to the fourth and highest stage of their system, allowing him to, if very rarely, communicate with the outside world via letters and visits. And so Don had spent his free time in the last week frantically writing and rewriting a letter to his father, attempting to explain the actions which had led him to disgrace their family's tradition and resulted in incarceration.
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Post by Idris on Apr 13, 2009 21:51:44 GMT
In Wandsworth the weekends were passed exactly as every other day. No allowance was made for the Sabbath, except that the men were marched in silence into the prison chapel for a dreary service and a sermon on the wages of sin, before being marched back to their cells. The labour expected of them was the same.
This Sunday seemed no different. The long lines of men shuffled into the gloomy chapel in silence, slid onto the long benches in silence. It was one time when they might rest their weary bodies, while trying not to fall asleep – naturally snoring in chapel earned punishment.
Most of the men sat with their heads bowed in silence - not so much from devotion as that it avoided attracting the warders’ attention - but at one point when the chaplain said something particularly nonsensical, Don looked up. That was when he noticed the man staring round. He sat on a bench some way off - an ill-favoured fellow with a broken nose, pockmarked cheeks and a piece missing from one ear. Probably bitten off in a fight from the look of him.
Suddenly the man looked at Don, and his eyes narrowed. Slowly he raised his hand and drew his forefinger across his throat. One of the warders was on him immediately. The man was dragged out of the bench and hustled outside, but all the way his eyes were on Don, and they were full of hate. Yet to his knowledge Don had never seen the man before.
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Post by sleepingdragon on Apr 15, 2009 22:26:59 GMT
Don desperately wished he could fall asleep. The sermon held no interest for him at all and he would have preferred to get a bit of extra rest before the afternoon's labour. The chaplain certainly wasn't saying anything he had never heard before. Don's mother was a pastor's daughter and highly religious, and he had heard his father speak about sin on many occasions. For Don's part, he no longer knew whether or not he even believed in God, though if there was one Don thought he must be very alien. Or the least, he was a funny tempered bastard.
Unfortunately sleep would get him into trouble, so he sat in silence, biting his lip and growing increasingly irritated. He felt a powerful urge to interrupt the chaplain with a shout about how man was not meant to work on the Sabbath. How did that part go? His mother would be able to quote it complete with chapter and verse, but he had not read the Bible through every year like she had and he doubted the point would be appreciated anyway, so he sat and simmered and waited.
At that point Don suddenly saw the man. He was quite taken aback by the obvious fury and hate in the man's eyes, which would have been plain even if he had not displayed it through his gesture. Don's own eyes narrowed, and the anger he had held towards the warders and the chaplain, which he had managed to smother, was immediately transferred to the other prisoner, like a boiling pot suddenly upturned.
And as water always flowed easiest downhill, Don quickly became indignant. Who was this ugly bastard, to make him feel frightened and unsure, and for nothing more than looking? Don had survived Rorke's Drift, for God's sake! If this thug wanted a piece of his skin then Don would give him the same as he'd given the Zulus! Don held the man's gaze until the warders removed him from sight.
Once the man was gone Don's heart was still beating hard, blood pumping, his mind hurling up exquisitely violent, intricately infantile scenarios of confrontation with the other prisoner. As he calmed down he instead began to examine things more rationally, and thereby began to question his own memory. Had the man been staring at him all along? Don thought he had looked first and then the man had seen him, but could he be sure? Was the man just mad and eager to lash out at any convenient target, or was there something about Don in particular he hated? Why him?
Don was so puzzled that for a few moments he failed to notice that the sermon had ended. If not for the relieved groan from the congregants as they rose from the pews and began to shuffle out of the chapel he would have remained lost in his reverie. Shaking his head, Don told himself it was no good worrying about things that he had no control over, and began to make his way back to his cell.
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Post by Idris on Apr 19, 2009 21:11:58 GMT
Despite the incident the day seemed set to carry on as normal - if any day in such a place could be so described. However when Don was working the treadwheel, something strange happened.
The machine held two prisoners at once, both strictly forbidden to communicate of course. The man next to him was about Don's age, but simple as a child. He was staring straight ahead as he stumbled along on the wheel, and muttering to himself. It took some time for Don to realise what the man was saying.
“When the sign comes, be ready.” He was repeating it over and over again like a litany.
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Post by sleepingdragon on Apr 20, 2009 20:44:09 GMT
The difficulty with not worrying about things he had no control over was that Don had virtually nothing else to do.
The Sisyphean task of pushing a treadwheel was not conducive to mental stimulation. Don had more than once had the thought that, had he only possessed supreme stamina, he could use the time to generate ideas, so that he might become an author more prolific than Dickens or Trollope, or a greater philosopher than Rousseau or Voltaire. The tiring, physical nature of the 'work', however, was such that it was almost impossible to think of anything new, so that Don's mind stuttered and retread over the same thoughts, like a stuck wheel, vainly attempting to rotate but ending up back in the same rut. In that, his mind was much like his body.
He had rapidly realised he had been a fool to hold the man's gaze as he had been escorted out of the chapel. Had Don simply ignored him the prisoner might have been able to count himself as having won a moral victory, successfully intimidating the person he disliked for whatever reasons he did. Instead Don had all but challenged him. Don was acutely aware that his back was exposed and he could not turn around, as the wheel rotated so that he was forced to stumble along with it, and, at any rate, the guards were probably watching him. Don could not be certain, but there was no way he could be without turning his head in the first place.
Eventually Don became aware of what the other prisoner was saying. What... Don didn't dare to speak to the other man, so instead he looked over at him warily, making his interest obvious.
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Post by Idris on Apr 20, 2009 22:34:49 GMT
Wooden partitions partly obscured the prisoners on their treadwheels from each other, but Don could see the man’s face if he leaned forward slightly. As he did so, their eyes met.
The other man’s reaction was instantaneous. His eyes opened wide with shock and his hand flew to his mouth, and without a firm grip on the support bar he unbalanced and slid from the treadwheel with a great clatter.
The guard set to watch the men had been half-asleep on his bench, and sprang up with an oath, but everyone knew prisoner 87 was simple-minded and he merely pulled the unfortunate man to his feet and set him back on the treadwheel.
After a minute or two the man’s face appeared around the partition. He smiled slyly at Don, showing rotten stumps of teeth.
“Dick knows how to keep a secret. He know, he knows. Be ready, when the sign comes be ready.”
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Post by sleepingdragon on Apr 25, 2009 16:03:33 GMT
Don winced at prisoner 87's accident, having had no intention of hurting the other man. Fortunately, the guard was able to get him back on his feet and soon he was back on the treadwheel, where he in fact leaned forward and spoke to Don.
Don didn't reply. Prisoner 87 had always been given leeway by the guards due to his simple-mindedness, but Don wouldn't be so lucky and he didn't dare to speak back in case he was overheard - he suspected the guard would be in a bad enough mood as it was having been disturbed by Prisoner 87's fall, and Don would not be shown the same leniency.
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Post by Idris on Apr 26, 2009 11:52:31 GMT
Eventually their time on the treadmill was over. After his last outburst Prisoner 87 had lapsed into wordless and tuneless humming, but as the guards were about to take them back to their respective cells, he leered and pointed at Don.
“You bain’t one of them! Cold as mutton will you be, when the sign....”
Whatever he was about to say next was cut short by a vicious blow to his stomach from the guard’s truncheon. Prisoner 87 doubled up and began to cry noisily, tears streaming from his eyes and mingling with snot.
The other guard swung his leg out and swept the boy’s legs from under him so that he landed heavily on the floor, then he started to hustle Don away. His companion sat on Prisoner 87’s back and held his face down hard against the rough stone.
“Another peep and it’s the punishment cell for you!” he grated out. “Now are you going to come quietly?”
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Post by sleepingdragon on Apr 26, 2009 20:49:42 GMT
"Oh for pity's sake, is that really necessary?" Don blurted out before he had time to think. That was incredibly stupid, but the words were out and there was little to be done.
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Post by Idris on Apr 26, 2009 21:33:23 GMT
Both of the guards stared at Don as if he were some kind of freak. Then the one sitting on prisoner 87 began to laugh as if he had made the funniest joke in the world. The guard holding Don’s arm quickly followed his example.
“You’re as bloody daft as this moron here!” the first guard sneered when the laughter subsided. He had a thick North Country accent that made him sound as if he were chewing up the words and spitting them out. But he did lessen his grip very slightly on his captive’s neck.
“Are you going to come quietly?” he asked again, “with no more of thy crazy talk.”
Prisoner 87 nodded, as far as he was able, and was allowed to stand, shivering and snivelling. The guard took him arm and started to lead him away, but as they did so the prisoner turned to look at Don, and he could see the man’s mouth form the words.
Be ready.
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Post by sleepingdragon on Apr 29, 2009 20:13:45 GMT
Don had expected the guards to give him the same treatment that they'd given prisoner 87, so merely to be insulted could easily be borne. Without further comment he waited to be seen back to his cell.
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Post by Idris on Apr 29, 2009 21:09:41 GMT
Once he was sure that prisoner 87 was going to give no more trouble, Don’s guard – Warder Smith, who regularly patrolled his part of the landing - indicated that they should move off, but he still seemed apprehensive and their pace was slow.
“You mustn’t take notice of daft Dick,” Smith said suddenly. “He doesn’t mean any harm. Just repeats what he hears...”
Compared with the warders’ usual communication with their captive charges, which took the form of insults, curses or blows, this was positively garrulous. Smith, obviously discomfited by having said so much, hustled Don the rest of the way to his cell in silence, but paused before shutting the door and spoke quietly to him.
“You’re not a bad sort like the rest of them in here, and from what I’ve heard that officer deserved everything you gave him.” Smith tapped the side of his nose with one finger. “A word to the wise. Trouble is brewing - stay out of it.”
With that he shut and locked the door before Don could respond.
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Post by sleepingdragon on Apr 30, 2009 22:15:13 GMT
Don would not have been able to think of anything to say even had he had time. A warder speaking to him in a friendly manner - or at least not an offensive one! Don could not help but wonder if it was some kind of trick. Did Warder Smith just want to know how Don would react to the idea of there being trouble brewing? He'd said Dick was just repeating things he'd heard - things from the other prisoners? Or from the warders? Was this connected to that man glaring at him in the chapel? Perhaps his glaring at Don had been part of this trouble, somehow.
Don shook his head. Even if it was, Warder Smith was entirely right - the only sensible thing to do was to keep out of anything. Don decided to busy himself, and went to get his letter.
He had now written the letter nine times. He sat on the bed and got himself a tenth sheet of paper, reading over his latest attempt. It was painful to dwell on the events that had led to his expulsion from the Army, but he knew he could and must bear it. His father had taught him that sometimes, a man must bear a lesser pain so that others did not have to bear a greater one. And there was nothing Don McGregor wanted less in the world than to hurt his father.
No. That wasn't true, or Don would simply not write this letter at all. He didn't want to cause his father any unnecessary distress, but he wanted to lie to him even less. Don's father had raised him all his life in preparation for one thing - for service in Her Majesty's Army. This had been the tradition of the McGregor clan, back for over a century, and Don, as his father's only son, had always known he would follow. And now he had been cast out.
I know that you are disappointed and angry with me, and I know that I must attempt to explain myself to you, though I haven’t the gift for such things....
Don thought on what Warder Smith had said. That officer deserved everything you gave him... The idea made Don want to laugh, but he thought it would be a bad idea to make noise. What would he think if he'd known what had really led to Don doing what he'd done!
The first several times Don had written this letter, he'd taken Warder Smith's approach, and simply recited the immediate events that had led to his dismissal. He wrote about how Captain Riley had provoked him, and insulted the memories of his comrades who had died in Zululand. He wrote of how, scarcely even aware of his own actions, he had thrown himself at the man with greater ferocity than he had shown against any other enemy. Don was sure that if he had had any other weapon but his fist he would have killed the man.
But Don had torn up those letters and thrown them away. They were not true, or he would feel ashamed of himself, and guilty, whereas in truth, his dismissal, even though it came at the price of imprisonment, had brought him only relief.
They say the sun never sets upon the British Empire, but here, in London, scarce miles from the Houses of Parliament where Gladstone and Disraeli clash, within a day’s walk of Buckingham Palace where Queen Victoria resides in splendour, in the heart of the mightiest empire in the history of this world, there are Britons upon whom the sun never shines at all. They have been conquered as surely as any Zulu.
To take Warder Smith's tack and act as if his ejection from the Army had simply been the result of a single, uncharacteristic incident, sudden, unforeseen, unavoidable, and entirely someone else's fault, would have been a lie of the blackest sort.
Don's third sister Lindsey, a fiery, rebellious young woman, had long quarrelled with their father Robert. Lindsey was the only one who dared hold Robert's eye when he was angry or to argue back to his face, and frequently they would end up in screaming rows over the most minute and ridiculous matters - whether Lindsey had arranged her skirts properly, whether Robert was ungrateful when Lindsey performed some chore he had asked of her, and on and on. All the family knew that, in truth, the reasons for these quarrels was deeper and more fundamental, but for all the fearlessness expected of a military family, no one ever dared to speak to the true reasons for the conflicts - the basic incompatibility of Robert and Lindsey's personalities and desires in life.
And so Don had found the Army. Not because he was lazy, or cowardly, or unwilling to accept discipline. He had fought in many battles and endured gruelling pain, and could have been silent if only he had believed in their purpose.
Yet these people are not threatened by any Zulu or Indian or Hindustani, nor even by any Frenchman or Russian. The spears and guns I faced at Rorke’s Drift could never have been aimed at them. No, their conquerors are not from any foreign land. They are from these British Isles.
There, at the most fundamental, basic level, all the things that Robert had prepared him for had failed and left Don unsatisfied and grasping for answers. In Zululand, he had killed. He had aimed his gun and fired, and taken the lives of other human beings, but when he tried to think on the reasons his father had supplied to justify these actions his mind went blank, his stomach twisted to knots, and an unspeakable sense of horror and self-loathing smashed him like a hammer.
To defend the Empire, he had been told. Defence, Don had learned, was a nebulous and uncertain word. And in the East End, on leave after the horrors of Zululand, Don had met those the Army purported to protect.
As I have become aware of these things, I can no longer continue with the pretence that service to the Empire is something noble. The money and lives spent, for example, in the campaign to subjugate the Zulus might have been better spent improving the conditions of the London poor. What does the Empire mean to them, and why should it be placed above their welfare? The Empire is simply the state within which we live. It should exist to protect us, not us to protect it. To fight and bleed in its defence while shutting up my eyes and ears to the Empire’s people would be perverse, akin to men who, seeing a house catch fire, laboured to preserve its exterior while ignoring the cries of those burning within. The people I have met in the East End require no defence from anyone – or, at least, anyone who is not already in London.
Don's mind reeled as he read his words and knew with horror that his father would not understand a single thing he said. Robert believed fervently in thrift and work ethic. God helps those who help themselves, he would think, and he would begin to compose a reply speaking of the differences between the deserving and undeserving poor.
Don thought of Susan Williams, who Kev had introduced him to when he was on leave. She was a match-girl, and she spent fourteen hours a day, six days a week, making matches for the Bryant and May factory. She, and her children too, and all the other twenty-four people who lived with her, working in a room so small Don could scarcely stand up in it. His Uncle Angus owned a farm in New Glasgow, and his animals were treated with greater dignity than Susan and her children.
Work ethic? Don had attempted to help Susan in her work once, and he had soon realised that she worked harder every day than he had in all his years in the Army combined. Her children worked too, for otherwise she would never be able to make the money to keep them all fed. Their stamina and ability to endure pain and discomfort left Don in awe. And all of this to eke out a miserable existence, for meagre pay that they could never have survived on had Kev not regularly given some of his own money to them. A few days before he left to return to duty, Don had asked Susan directly if she could think of any way in which his service in the Army protected or defended her, who so obviously was in need of protection and defence.
They could think of none.
So Don had decided then and there he could not continue with his service. He still had no idea if he had struck Captain Riley out of genuine rage, or whether he had simply seized upon it as a convenient way to be thrown out. He was not sure he dared to think on the question for long. Whichever it was, he'd nonetheless in complete honesty been able to write:
For these reasons, I feel no shame in my ejection from the army, save only the shame that I was not cast out sooner.
Don sat and wondered how much pain those words would cause his father. He could think of nothing at all he could say that would pain Robert more deeply. He considered striking the words out, or rephrasing them, more softly, perhaps. But his mind could not compel his hand to lift the pen. They had to stay.
I have been part of the army of the British Empire for six and a half years, and yet now that I have left it, for the first time in that span, I once again feel that I am brave.
Love from your son,
Donald McGregor.
Don folded the note carefully and put it down, content, knowing fully that a tenth copy would not be required.
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Post by Idris on May 3, 2009 18:15:29 GMT
Despite Warder Smith’s warning and the strange behaviour of Prisoner 85, the rest of the day passed uneventfully. Yet something had changed. Separated though they were, unable to converse in words or even gestures, each man was aware of it. The atmosphere was charged as if before a great storm.
Tension was building – Don could sense it, and so could the warders. They were on the move constantly, pacing up and down. Even when standing still, Warder Smith kept tapping his foot without seeming to notice it. The other on his landing slapped his truncheon repeatedly against the palm of his other hand, as if practising breaking heads.
Nights in the prison were never peaceful – always broken by the heavy footfalls of patrolling warders, and the cries and groans of those plagued by bad dreams. Once or twice Don had heard the screaming of a man gone mad from solitude, and the thudding of his body as he threw himself at the door of his cell. This night, an anticipatory silence hung heavy over the wing, as disturbing as any sound. Yet nothing happened.
Next day Warder Smith came early to collect Don from his cell. But instead of stopping at the treadmills, they walked on, climbing the stairs to the Governor’s office.
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