E-Book, Englisch, 240 Seiten
Naughton Voices From A Journal
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-84351-436-7
Verlag: The Lilliput Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 240 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-84351-436-7
Verlag: The Lilliput Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
BILL NAUGHTON (1910-1992) was born in Ballyhaunis, Co. Mayo and moved to Bolton, Lancashire aged four, where he remained the rest of his life. He is best known for his novel Alfie which became a classic film of the 1960s and for plays such as Spring and Port Wine. He has written short stories, novels (On the Pig's Back) and children's books and three volumes of autobiography, the last entitled Neither Use nor Ornament is in Allison & Busby's Twentieth Century Classics series.
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I first met Charles Cape when I was visiting prisons getting material and a feel of prison life for a documentary film script I was writing for the Home Office; he was then the Governor of Strangeways Prison in Manchester. I recall the shock of horror I got at about three o’clock one morning when he invited me to look through the peephole into one cell. It was lit by a naked light from the ceiling – an indication of the inmate having once attempted an escape. The scene inside was one of utter devastation; everything breakable had been smashed up and was scattered all over the place. Lying supine on the floor was the unfortunate prisoner, either unconscious or asleep, the fierce light glaring down on him, blood and excrement on his face. Apparently he had gone berserk. The standard prison treatment for such an act at the time was to leave the prisoner alone, to stew in his own juice so to speak, until he was utterly exhausted and could offer no resistance; then bring him out and put him on a charge. Charles shook his head at the sight. (Some absurd film by the Crown Film Unit was eventually made, but a single shot of that scene through the peephole would have made magistrates think twice before sending a man to prison.)
On that first visit to Strangeways I attended Charles on every aspect of the Governor’s duty and many an early morning I stood by at slopping-out time, when prisoners queue up carrying buckets of their nightly defections of urine and faeces, setting up the foulest stench on each landing. ‘Most injuries are inflicted on one prisoner by another at this time,’ Charles explained, ‘than at any other. Usually by a razor blade, but no prisoner dare admit having witnessed it.’ I stood by as he heard the daily routine of prisoners’ requests or complaints. Watched them at work on making mail-bags. Tasted the food for the midday meal with him. And I was present at the mixed choir singing – Strangeways had a women’s prison – when Charles played the harmonium.
Charles, now attached to the Prison Commissioners, is a tall, lean man in his fifties; he wears a dark crumpled suit, black shoes, and an old grey trilby hat. He has a pale complexion, and a serious manner, until he hears or cracks a joke – he likes jokes – when suddenly a rich boyish smile, with the blue eyes fairly glowing, seems to transform him, making him look years younger. In contrast to my own weakness of being carried away by what I am telling, he speaks in a quiet and impressive manner; he pales even more at emotional moments. We had lunch together at the Café Torino in Old Compton Street; soup and chicken sauté. After that we walked through Soho to Lyons Charing Cross Corner House and had fruit salad and coffee, then we went for a stroll. He told me a number of stories about prison, among which was the following.
One Saturday afternoon, about two years earlier, he was on duty at Strangeways when a young woman was brought in to see him. She had been sent round by the French consulate to act as interpreter for a French woman who was in the female section of the prison. Charles didn’t actually know this French woman prisoner, but pretended to, and together he and the interpreter went across to the Women’s Prison. They had put the woman in the padded cell, as she had threatened to kill herself. The woman officer in charge took them along to the cell and opened the door. The prisoner was down on her knees, huddled up in a corner of the cell, her back to them, and she didn’t budge when they went in. Charles said that she looked more like an animal than a woman, for she was wearing the special buttonless suit designed to prevent any attempt at suicide, and was curled up in the way an animal might be. The moment the interpreter spoke in French the woman stood up and turned round in surprise. Charles said he was astonished at her attractiveness: ‘She couldn’t have been much more than nineteen, and she had a really lovely face. So young, innocent looking, with a girlish complexion.’ Then Charles took her and the woman interpreter out of the cell and into the office and there he got the story of how the girl came to be in prison.
Her name was Amile; she came from a French peasant home and had met an English soldier, a corporal, after the invasion of France. In time they had become lovers, he promising to marry her. Then he had been drafted home, they had corresponded, and she had gone over to Manchester at his invitation. She discovered that he was already married, but was separated from his wife, and it was explained to her that first the divorce had to be got. She lived with him and his mother for some months, then the mother suggested it would be better all round if Amile went back to France for a time until the divorce went through. She agreed, with the understanding that she would come back to her lover very soon. After some time in France she got a letter from the mother, saying that her son had decided that he would go back to his wife, as he now learned there was a child on the way, a child that was his. Amile at once set off for Manchester to be with the man and discover the truth. She went back to the home in a working-class district, and the mother answered the door when she knocked. She wouldn’t let her in: ‘Get off back home, you French bitch,’ she told her. Amile was determined to see the son, but he didn’t live with the mother any longer, and she couldn’t find out where he did live.
She had been travelling night and day, had no place to go, and she went to rest in a park nearby. She was turned out of the park at evening by the keeper when he came to close the park gates. The keeper apparently got in touch with the police, and Amile was taken to the police station. The police then made contact with a convent and it was arranged that she would go there. The nuns took care of her, giving her a meal and finding her a room, but then she went to the toilet, and when they went for her they found her bleeding at the wrists. Doctors and the police were sent for, and later Amile had to appear on a charge of attempted suicide. She refused to say anything beyond that she would kill herself, and so she was remanded in custody for seven days, and had to go to the padded cell in Strangeways Prison.
After some discussion, Charles now asked the interpreter to tell her the following: ‘If I get word from the man himself, and not from his mother, will she accept that?’ Amile agreed she would, so Charles now got in touch with the police. They sent someone along to the man’s home, asking that he write a letter to the girl telling her one way or the other of his intentions. He wrote to her that he was now settled back with his wife and could not marry her. Meanwhile Amile had been taken out of the padded cell and placed into a proper cell in the prison. When the actual letter came and she read it she again became distracted, said she wouldn’t go back to France but swore she would kill herself on the way.
Charles now had another meeting with Amile and the interpreter in prison. ‘I said to the interpreter: “Tell her that she gave me her solemn word that she would accept the man’s decision – and I could not believe that she would not keep it.”’ Meanwhile he had been able to arrange with the Red Cross that if she was released by the magistrates, two women would accompany her to Calais, where two French women of the Red Cross would take her back home. Charles attended the court, where the interpreter, on behalf of the magistrates, who did not speak French, asked Amile would she promise to behave herself if released. She told the interpreter that she would not. The interpreter scolded her; hadn’t she, a French woman, more pride and dignity than to behave like this in an English court! Finally she extracted a rather weak promise of agreement to behave out of Amile if she was let out. The interpreter bowed to the magistrates and said the prisoner would be very glad to give her word of honour that she would behave herself.
‘The trouble now’, said Charles, ‘was to get that day over. It was noon when we came out of the court, and they were not going on the journey back until midnight.’ He telephoned his wife, who agreed to feed and entertain the party, the late prisoner, the interpreter, and the two women from the French consulate. He said the day proved to be a difficult and unpromising one. They sat out in the garden, and in the evening had supper there, but Amile was very depressed, and the prospect was not good. Charles said he sat beside her in a corner of the garden, and they talked a little. Then suddenly as twilight came she pointed to the sky, and said, ‘Le Berger’. He said he didn’t quite understand, and she explained to him that where she came from they always called the first star ‘Le Berger’, the Shepherd, because that star brings all the other stars out. ‘“Then don’t ever forget the Shepherd, Amile!” I said to her on impulse. “Every night you look up to the sky for the Shepherd.”’ He said that it seemed the girl’s mood changed at that moment, and she brightened up and so did the entire party. Then he went off with them to the station, the girl thanked him, kissed his hands, and promised him faithfully that she would be good. ‘She looked very lovely,’ he said, ‘as that train moved off.’
Sometime later he got a letter of thanks from her parents. Then a letter came to his wife from the girl herself, thanking her for all the help they had given, and for a time she kept on sending...
