Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys (25 page)

Then there was the warped Cracknell. He was another stereotype – the compulsive scrawler. Once Cracknell got going, he couldn't rein it in. He'd been the first to arrive at the Education Room, dragging up the stairs with him – he walked with a particularly convoluted fake limp, the substance of ongoing and unsuccessful petitioning to the European Court of Human Rights – two heavy shopping bags full of hideous manuscript. ‘My novels,’ he'd puffed as he came in the door. ‘I mean, I say novels, but really they're all part of the same big thing . . . like a . . . like a –’

‘Saga?’ groaned Mahoney, who had seen the like of this many times before. Cracknell positively beamed.

‘Yeah,
saga,
that'd be the word, although it's not like there are a lot of Vikings and trolls and what have you in my novels; these are more sagas of the distant future – Oh! I like that, that's good, “Sagas of the Distant Future”, that could be on the spines of all of them, with the individual titles on the covers, or perhaps the other way rou –’

‘And what would you like me to
do
with these sagas, Mister Cracknell?’ Mahoney had his hands on his hips and was observing Cracknell unpack his literary load, with such a baleful expression that his brows were not so much knitted as knotted.

‘I'd be much obliged, Mister Mahoney – given that you're a ,published writer and that – if you'd give me your opinion.

Mahoney flipped open the cover of the first of the eighty-five narrow feint exercise books Cracknell had piled up. Inside there was a furious density of manuscript: thirty words to the line, forty lines to the page. The handwriting was viciously regular, backward-sloping, and utterly indecipherable. Doing a quick calculation, Mahoney reckoned there had to be five million words in the exercise books – at least.

‘You see,’ Cracknell continued, ‘these books here – one through twenty-seven – deal with the first three thousand years of the Arkonic Empire; and books twenty-seven through to forty cover the thousand-year rise to power of its arch rival, the Trimmian Empire. What I'd like is some gui –’

‘Do you like writing, Mister Cracknell?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Is it the writing itself you enjoy, Mister Cracknell; or is it merely a way for you to fill your time?’

‘Well, it certainly does fill my time. The bloke I share my cell with, he gets a little irritated now and then, because after lock-up it's out with the latest exercise book, open it up, and I may end up writing all night! By torchlight! I find it restful y'see –’

‘That's as may be, Mister Cracknell, and I'm sure there is considerable merit in your sagas of the distant future, but as far as here and now is concerned, I'm not going to read them.’

Cracknell was dumbstruck, appalled. He nearly left the class forthwith, taking his literary tranche with him. He muttered about inmates’ rights, about requests to the Governor, and finally about the possible envy of a certain Irish writer who might not be quite as fluent as Cracknell himself. Mahoney was unmoved. When, following Danny's arrival, he came to address the class as a whole, Mahoney set out his curriculum in a series of bold emphatics:

‘Gentlemen, I appreciate Messrs Greenslade and Cracknell bringing me their work to read, but in my class we shall start from scratch, from the beginning, and proceed in an orderly fashion to the end. During this course you will write one short story, gentlemen, of between four and six thousand words. That's it. That's what we will focus on. Writing a story is deceptively easy – and deceptively hard. I don't want you to run before you can walk. I'm not going to be looking for fancy timescales, unusual settings, or stories that take place entirely within the mind of a stick insect.’ He paused and gave Cracknell a meaningful look. ‘And nor will I be satisfied with stories which feature unbelievable characters in unreal settings.’ The look was directed at Greenslade. ‘Your stories should be about something you
know,
they should be written in
plain
language, and they should have a
beginning,
a
middle,
and an
end.‘

These last assertions were punctuated by Mahoney turning to the clapped-out whiteboard at the front of the room, and writing the three words on it, each with an eeeking flourish of a marker pen. ‘Beginning, middle, end,’ Mahoney reiterated pointing to the words in turn, as if he half expected the three nonces to sing along. ‘When I'm at the beginning I should know where I am, and the same goes for any subsequent point in the story. A story is a
logical progression
like any other. For the next twenty minutes or so I should like you to think about a subject for your story and write me a single paragraph about it.’ As he said this Mahoney moved between the three of them depositing pieces of paper and biros. ‘A single paragraph’ – Crackell got the look again – ‘that tells me
who, where, what, why,
and
when.
That's all, no fancy stuff. Got it?’ And with this the big Irishman plonked himselfdown in a chair, put his feet up on another, pulled a small-circulation left-wing periodical out of his jacket pocket, and commenced reading.

Twenty minutes later Mahoney identified the third stereotypic wannabe in his creative-writing course: the writer who can't write. Danny had just about managed a paragraph, but the sentences composing it infrequently parsed, and the individual words were largely spelt phonetically. Mahoney, however, did find to his surprise that Danny had genuinely fulfilled the assignment. His projected story had a beginning, a middle and an end, it had recognisable characters, and it was set in a milieu Danny clearly knew well. Mahoney looked down sympathetically at his newest recruit to the fount of literature. ‘This isn't too bad, Mister O'Toole. I like the idea, although I'm not so sure how you're going to handle the triple cross over the coke deal, but you can get to that later. Are you serious about giving this a try?’

‘Well, yeah, s'pose,’ Danny muttered – Mahoney hadn't taken this trouble with the other two.

‘In that case I would be obliged if you'd stop behind for a couple of minutes.’

When the repugnant duo had shuffled off down the stairs, each secretly satisfied that
he
was the most talented writer in HMP Wandsworth, Mahoney turned to Danny with a new and more serious expression on his broad pink face. ‘You've got to get your spelling and grammar up to speed,’ he said. ‘It's no good having good ideas – and I can see you've got those – if you can't express them. I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but I've got two course books here designed to help adults with their literacy – with their reading and writing, that is. I'd like you to have at look at them. If we're going to make a writer of you, Mister O'Toole, you need to have a good command of basic grammar, hmm?’

Danny didn't take it the wrong way; he had decided a while before something quite momentous – he liked Mister Mahoney and wanted to please him. And within a matter of a fortnight Gerry Mahoney discovered something rather momentous as well – Danny O'Toole had genuine talent as a writer.

Danny chewed up the adult literacy course and digested it with ease. By the time the next class came round he was able to hand in to Mahoney all of the completed exercises. Mahoney gave him another book for a higher standard. Danny also began to read – and read at speed. He invested all of his birdhouse earnings to date in a torch and a supply of batteries. Then, after lock-up each afternoon, he proceeded to read his way through every single book available in the meagre nonce-wing library.

In the army Danny had read Sven Hassel, and on the outside he'd occasionally toyed with a thriller, but he'd never devoured print like this. He read historical romances and detective stories; he chomped his way through ancient numbers of the
Reader's Digest;
and he scarfed vast quantities of J.T. Edson westerns, with titles like
Sidewinder,
and
Five Guns at Noon.
As he read more and more Danny found himself essaying more difficult texts – the old dusty linen-bound books with the oppressively small type that were crowded on the bottom shelf of the library cart. So he came to read Dumas and Dickens, Twain and Thackeray, Galsworthy and – and an especial favourite – Elizabeth Gaskell.

Reading, for Danny, triggered an astonishing encephalisation. Not that he was stupid before – he was always sharp. But the reading burst through his mental partitions, partitions that the crack had effectively shored up, imprisoning his sentience, his rational capacity, behind psychotically patterned drapes. The alternative worlds of nineteenth-century novels enabled Danny to get a hard perspective on his own world, and to interpret his own life honestly. And there was more, much more. Danny, it transpired, also had an ear for prose. He could assay a line of English for its authenticity – the effectiveness with which the writer had psychically imprinted it – at the same time as he could parse it. As it was to crack addiction, so it was to literature – Danny was a natural.

After a month Gerry Mahoney began to bring books in for his favourite pupil, augmenting the tattered basics of the trolley with selections from his own library. Mahoney thought that Danny, being black, might prefer black literature. So he lent him James Baldwin ('Queer anna’ coon – thass a turn up! ‘); Ralph Ellison ('That brother is
angry,
man – he's feelin’ it all the time!'); Toni Morrison ('Yeah, yeah, yeah – but I did fill up a bit at the end. ‘); and Chester Himes ('Wicked! The man's a contender, funny, sharp, and he knows his shit – the fucker did time!'). Contemporary black writers appealed to Danny as well. He particularly admired the coolness of Caryl Phillips's prose and the quiet, lyrical anger of Fred D'Aguiar, but to Mahoney's enduring astonishment, the literature that Danny really liked was altogether different.

Danny liked the Decadents. To be more precise he adored tales of unnatural pleasures and artificial worlds. He devoured Maldoror; he cantered through
À Rebours;
and he spotted that
Dorian Gray
was sadly derivative. Within four months, with Mahoney's prodding, Danny was seriously translating
Paradis Artificiel –
and enjoying it. Not that any of this leaked into the story that Danny was writing himself; here he remained very much Mahoney's own acolyte. The story was set in Harlesden; it featured a protagonist not unlike Danny himself; it had the mandatory beginning, a middle Danny was attempting to slim down into an elegant waist, and an end that both of them agreed was an absolute stonker.

Already, even before the spectre of the prize came to haunt them, there was an exacting rivalry between the members of the writing class. Greenslade, who had once had a poem about his cat ('Oh beautiful cat/That makes me happy/Why can't you use your flappy . . . ?') published in the
Rainham Advertiser,
considered himself streets ahead of the other two when it came to the actual business of being a writer. ‘Professionalism’ was his watch word; and he would interrupt Mahoney's discourses on dialogue, or description, or development, to share his latest information on available grants, or royalty scales, or subsidiary rights. In fairness to Greenslade it has to be admitted that he
did
actually conform to most of the attributes of a British writer of his age (late fifties), without having had to go through the tedious business of actually publishing books, and then seeing them fade out of print, like dying stars.

Living stars were Cracknell's preoccupation. Mahoney had bullied him into attempting a short story, because that's what the class was all about, but Cracknell's subject matter – five thousand years in the history of the Printupian Empire – proved difficult to manage effectively in the abbreviated form. Rather than taking this personally – something he was incapable of, along with ordinary sympathy – Cracknell saw the whole thing in terms of genres. Science fiction – as its name implied – was the way forward, the way of the future. Anyone who continued to write sublunary tales was dealing in the worn coinage of mundanity. Not that Cracknell could have put it that well himself, he simply interrupted Mahoney's flow from time to time in order to observe that this or that sci-fi writer had long ago exemplified the point the teacher was making, and could they move on?

Moving on remained in the forefront of Danny's mind. His new-found absorption into literature wasn't about to sway him from his course. Danny still burned with a fervour; he wanted off the nonce wing, then he could appeal, clear himself, get free. Fat Boy, who was quite happy where he was, thought the piles of paper that trailed though their cell were quite ridiculous. ‘You wanna get a transfer, right?’ he wheedled Danny.

‘You know that, Fat Boy, you know that damn well.’

‘An’ you fink that all this reading and writing's gonna get it for you?’

‘Maybe – I dunno.’

‘One good bottler, my man, one good fucking bottler. Half an ounce of gear – a quarter even; and you'd be out of here. That old man Higson, yeah?’

‘Principal Officer Higson?’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Principal
Officer Higson, that's the one. He's an old-style PO, knows the form, right? Now, a couple of years ago it would've taken a poxy grand, but given inflation an’ that, and given that you're near the beginning of your sentence – which always makes it look a bit fishy – he says he can manage it for two.’

‘Manage what?’

‘Your fucking transfer, you moody little git, your fucking transfer!’

‘Two grand?’

‘Wake up, will you, O'Toole? I can't make it any clearer; you come up with two K for old Higson an’ he'll recommend your transfer to the Governor. You'll be in a fully integrated, cat. C nick before you can say knife. And the only fucking writing involved is one poxy letter – instead of all this bollocks.’

But Danny stuck with the bollocks and then Mahoney announced the prize. It was another Thursday afternoon in the Education Room, and the three grown men were leaning – cheeks cupped in hands, elbows jammed below – on their desks like adolescents. ‘Gentlemen,’ said Mahoney in his high, faintly mocking tones, ‘I think I mentioned to you at the outset of this course the existence of a competition for prison writing. It's called the Wolfenden Prize, it brings the winner guaranteed publication in an anthology, five hundred pounds, and considerable esteem.’ Mahoney pulled some entry forms from his briefcase and handed one to each of them, whilst continuing. ‘It's awarded for the best submitted story of between four and six thousand words. So, gentlemen! You can see that there was method in my madness; that there was a reason why I was so insistent on beginnings, middles and ends. I think all of you have the ability to be potential winners.’ Mahoney fixed all of them in turn with his gimlet gaze, and each of them thought he was referring to them alone. ‘And entering the competition will bring our course to a natural, effective end, by enabling you all to learn the absolute importance of’ – he began eeeking on the whiteboard – ‘deadlines!’