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‘Then it will only be three pages,’ I tell him.
When I return to my cell, Jules is looking worried. He’s also heard that Chris will be featured in the News of ike World this Sunday. Chris told him that a lot of his friends and associates don’t even know he’s in jail, and he doesn’t want them to find out. He attends education classes twice a day and wants the chance to start a new life once he’s been released. I just don’t have the heart to tell him that the News of the World have absolutely no interest in his future.
10.00 pm
We watch the news. Still more August st
orms. At 10.30 Jules switches channels to Ally McBeal while I try unsuccessfully to sleep. I’m not sure which is more distracting, the TV in our cell, or the rap music emanating from the other side of the block.
DAY 29 - THURSDAY 16 AUGUST 2001
5.50 am
I wake from a dream in which I had been using the most foul language when talking to Mary. I can’t explain it. I write for a couple of hours.
8.00 am
I plug in Jules’s radio so that I can hear Mary’s interview with John Humphrys. I shave while the news is on, and become more and more nervous. It’s always the same. I am very anxious when William screens one of the documentaries he’s been working on, or James is running the 800 metres, and especially whenever Mary has to give a talk that lay people might expect to understand. She’s first on after the news and handles all of John Humphrys’ questions in that quiet academic way that could only impress an intelligent listener. But I can tell, even after her first reply, just how nervous she is. Once Mary has dealt with the Kurds and Baroness Nicholson, Humphrys moves on to the subject of how I’m getting on in jail. That was when Mary should have said, ‘My agreement with you, Mr Humphrys, was to discuss only matters arising from the Kurds.’ Once Mary failed to point this out, he moved on to the trial, the appeal and the sentence. I had warned her that he would. He has no interest in keeping to any agreement made between her and the producer. And that’s why he is such a sharp interviewer, as I know from past experience.
9.30 am
I call Mary, who feels she was dreadful and complains that John Humphrys broke the BBC’s agreement and once the piece was over she told him so. What does he care? She then tells me that the CEO of the Red Cross, Sir Nicholas Young, was interviewed later, and was uncompromising when it came to any suggestion that one penny raised for the Kurds in the UK had not been accounted for. He went on to point out that I had nothing to do with either the collecting or distribution of any monies. I suggest to Mary that perhaps the time has come to sue Baroness Nicholson. Mary tells me that the lawyer’s first priority is to have my D-cat reinstated so I can be moved to an open prison before we issue the writ. Good thinking.
‘Don’t waste any more of your units’ she says. ‘See you tomorrow.’
9.50 am
Disaster. Darren reappears with my washing. All fresh and clean, but the dryer has broken down for the first time in living memory. I take the wet clothes back to my cell and hang the T-shirts on the end of the bed, my underwear from an open cupboard door and my socks over the single chair. The sun is shining, but not many of its rays are reaching through the bars and into my cell.
10.00 am
Today is the first day of the fourth test match against Australia, and Hussain is back as captain. He said that although we’ve lost the Ashes (3-0), English pride is now at stake. I write for an hour and then turn on the television at eleven to see who won the toss. It’s been raining all morning. Of course it has; the match is at Headingley (Leeds). I switch off the television and return to my script.
11.40 am
I’ve been writing for over an hour when the cell door is unlocked. The governor would like a word. I go to the interview room and find Mr Cariton-Boyce and Mr Tinkler waiting for me.
Mr Cariton-Boyce looks embarrassed when he tries to explain why I can’t have any writing pads and pens or Alan Clark’s Diaries. I make a small protest but only so it’s on the record. He then goes on to tell me that I will not be moving to C block after all. They’ve had a re-think, and I’ll be joining the adults on the enhanced spur, but - and there is always a but in prison - as no one is being released until 29 August, I’ll have to stay put until then.
I thank him, and ask if my room-mate Jules can be moved to a single cell, as I fear it can’t be too long before the News of the World will do to him exactly what they’ve done to every other prisoner who has shared a cell with me. This shy, thoughtful man will end up being described as a drug baron, and he doesn’t have any way of fighting back.
Governor CarltonrBoyce nods. Promises are never made in prison, but he does go as far as saying,’ The next thing on my agenda is cell dispersal, because we have eight more prisoners coming in tomorrow.’ I thank him and leave, aware that’s about the biggest hint I’ll get.
12 noon
Lunch. Dale passes me two little sealed boxes, rather than the usual single portion, and winks. I was down on today’s menu for number three - vegetable stew - but when I get back to my cell, I discover the other box contains mushroom soup. So I linger over the soup followed by vegetable stew. It’s not Le Caprice - but it’s not Belmarsh either.
1.15 pm
I’m told that as part of my induction I must report to the education department and take a reading, writing and numeracy test. When I take my seat in the classroom and study the forms, it turns out to be exactly the same test as the one set at Belmarsh. Should I tell them that I took the papers only two weeks ago, or should I just get on with it? I can see the headline in the Mirror: Archer Refuses to Take Writing Test. It would be funny if it wasn’t exactly what the Mirror would do. I get on with it.
3.15 pm
Gym. It’s circuit-training day, and I manage about half of the set programme - known as the dirty dozen. The youngsters are good, but the star turns out to be a forty-five-year-old gypsy, who is covered in tattoos, and serving an eleven-year sentence for drug dealing. He’s called Minnie, and out-runs them, out-jumps them, out-lifts them, out-presses them, and isn’t even breathing heavily at the end. He puts me to shame; I can only hope that the youngsters feel equally humiliated.
4.20 pm
I’m back in time for a shower. David (whisky bootlegger) is standing by my door. He tells me that he’s written the outline for a novel and wants to know how to get in contact with a ghostwriter. This is usually a surrogate for are you available? I tell him exactly what I tell anyone else who writes to me on this subject (three or four letters a week): go to your local library, take out a copy of The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook and you’ll find a section listing agents who handle ghostwriters. I assume that will keep him quiet for a few days.
