Parker The Unknown Citizen

Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-30447-9
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 172 Seiten

'Charlie Smith is only one of many similar men who are at this moment living unhappily among us, or are confined in prison now but must sooner or later be released.' The Unknown Citizen (1963) was Tony Parker's second study of a criminal recidivist. 'Mr Parker's very moving book tells what happened the day Charlie left prison and in his first year of freedom. Charlie himself contributes a pitiful attempt at a self-portrait. We have the author's conversations with the magistrate who sentenced him, with his sorely tried elder sister and with others who have come into his life in the last 18 months... The final chapter is masterly... This is literature, not just another book on crime.' D.L. Howard, Telegraph

Tony Parker was born in Stockport on June 25 1923, the son of a bookseller. His mother died when he was 4. He began to write poems and plays in his late teens. Called up to military service early in the Second World War he declared himself a conscientious objector and, in lieu, was sent to work at a coal-mine in the North East, where he observed conditions and met people who influenced him hugely. After the war he began to work as a publisher's representative and, voluntarily, as a prison visitor - the latter another important stimulus to his subsequent writings. After Parker happened to make the acquaintance of a BBC radio producer and imparted his growing interest in the lives, opinions and self-perceptions of the prisoners he had met, he was given the opportunity to record an interview with a particular convict for broadcast on the BBC. The text of the interview was printed in the Listener, and spotted by the publishers Hutchinson as promising material for a book. This duly emerged as The Courage of His Convictions (1962), for which Parker and the career criminal 'Robert Allerton' (a pseudonym) were jointly credited as authors. Over the next 30 years Parker would publish 18 discrete works, most of them 'oral histories' based on discreetly edited but essentially verbatim interview transcripts. He died in 1996 (though one further work, a study of his great American counterpart Studs Terkel, appeared posthumously.)

Autoren/Hrsg.

Parker, Tony

Leseproben

A DAY OF FREEDOM

(This happened, and it happened like this; the reconstruction is factually correct and only some of the dialogue is imagined.)

IT was five to seven.

The small door at the side of the main prison gate opened and three men came out into the dark drizzle of a Saturday morning in December. They walked together down the short entrance-drive, then stood for a few minutes at the corner of the road, taking a brief impersonal parting.

– So long, Charlie.

– So long, you two. Be seeing you.

– Let’s hope not. Not here, anyhow.

– No. Well, somewhere, maybe. Which way’s the station now?

– Down there, turn right. We’re going this way for the bus.

– Right, so long, then. Good luck.

– Yeh, good luck, Charlie.

He turned his back on the other two, and on the prison, and walked away alone down the hill.

He was 5 ft 7 in. high, weighed just over nine stone, and was forty-eight. He looked older: ten years older, at least. There was nothing striking about his appearance; he was an insignificant, unprepossessing-looking man, and he walked with small, slow steps along the pavement, keeping close to the wall. In one hand he carried a blue grip-bag, like those sometimes used by airline passengers. In it were a spare pair of socks and a shirt, a change of under clothing, soap, a razor, and a towel: like the suit, shoes, raincoat, and trilby hat he wore, these were official issue. In the other hand he held his one personal possession, an old portable radio. In his pockets were an unstamped insurance card, an introduction to the National Assistance Board and Ministry of Labour, instructions to report to the offices of the Central After-Care Association before four o’clock the following Monday afternoon, a railway warrant to London, a clean handkerchief, and £1 2s. 3½d. in cash.

Behind him … almost exactly six years of being in prison. Of getting up in the morning when the bell rang. Of going to bed at night when the cell door was locked and the lights put out. Of performing trivial meaningless work day after day, week after week, month after month, for a wage less than the average schoolboy’s pocket-money. Of being clothed, fed, housed, sheltered, by number and by rote. Of obeying the rules, keeping out of trouble, doing as he was told.

In front of him … he had nothing to do and nowhere to go. His only living relative was a married sister with a family of her own, respectable and hard-working, 223 miles away in the north of England, who had given up long ago any hope of persuading him to change his ways, and wanted no more to do with him. He had no job to go to, no prospect of one, and no desire for one. He had no friends. Nobody cared about him. Neither did he.

Along the road he saw a sign on a lamp-post which said ‘To Station’ and pointed down a side street. He crossed over. When he turned the corner he could see about a mile ahead the lights of the railway on a high embankment where it ran into the station. He passed a row of cottages, then an ancient wooden corn-mill, painted white, standing by a river. He went over the bridge. Then he could hear the rattle of a goods train in the station sidings and see the high gantries of the electrification wires over the railway, standing like a line of scaffolds against the faintly lightening sky. Soon he was at the edge of the town. The roofs of the houses glistened wetly in the yellow glow of the phosphorescent street-lamps. As he got nearer to it, the embankment towered high above him. An empty train standing on it softly whirred its generator. He went through the station yard and into the dimly-lit booking hall.

The clerk had seen too many travel warrants from the prison to react: he passed out a ticket without looking up. ‘Next one for London, seven-twenty-three,’ said the collector at the barrier, clipping it.

He climbed the steps to the platform. There was a cigarette machine at the top. He put in two shillings and took ten Players, When he got up to the platform the clock hanging over it showed seven-fifteen.

There was a woman in a white overall in the refreshment room, wiping the counter and setting out cups, preparing for the first customers. He didn’t feel like going in: instead he stood back against the wall of the platform, trying to keep out the rain which began to drift in under the canopy. He opened his packet of cigarettes, realized he had no matches, and went into the refreshment room to buy a box. He lit the cigarette when he came out again, drawing at it hard. It was tasteless after the strong roll-ups in prison. He looked at some of the posters on the wall, ‘MAKE IT CROMER THIS YEAR.’ ‘YOU’RE SAFE AS HOUSES WITH THE ABBEY.’ ‘EVERY CAT NEEDS KIT-E-KAT.’ Walking slowly along the platform he saw the waiting room was empty, and went in.

Green and cream paint, horsehair-padded benches, a heavy mahogany table in the middle. On one wall an old-fashioned picture of a windmill in a marsh, with tulips growing round it, called ‘Norfolk’; on another, a horse-and-cart in front of a yellow church: ‘Suffolk’. A dim fire in the cracked tiled fireplace. He stood in front of it, bending down to warm his hands, rubbing them together. Then he heard the train coming.

The compartment he got into was empty. He sat in the corner and lit another cigarette. Outside it was beginning to get light, and from the moving train he watched the slow swathes of rain sweeping across the fields and hedges. After eight minutes the train stopped at a small station; five minutes later at another; four minutes after that at a third.

Stopping and starting it went on, entering the outskirts of London, the fields giving way to impersonal suburbs and backs of houses. He looked out of the window, dozed, smoked, alone. No one got into his compartment: it was Saturday and there was no commuters’ crush. By the time the train reached London he had smoked four of his cigarettes. It was nine minutes past eight.

He gave up his ticket at the barrier, went over to the bookstall, and bought the Daily Express. The station was one he didn’t know well. After the gents’ lavatory he went into the buffet and bought a cup of tea. It was stuffy and noisy there and the tea was weak; he drank only half of it and came out again.

He wanted to be somewhere he knew. He went down the steps to the Underground and booked to King’s Cross. There, when he got up to the concourse by the main-line platforms, he felt more at ease because he was in a familiar place. This was where trains left for the part of the north he came from. He went into the refreshment room to see if the tea was any better. It was.

He found a table in the corner, and sat drinking the tea, smoking, and looking at his paper. There was nothing very special in it. In Africa someone called Lumumba had been arrested by somebody for something. A Middlesex girl was missing from home, and it was beginning to look as though she’d been murdered. Tottenham were at full strength to play Burnley at White Hart Lane. He went and got another cup of tea. It was ten past nine.

It was a long time till opening time. He had 18s. 5d. left, and he didn’t know what to do. He supposed he’d have to start thinking about what to do. He sipped the tea and looked at the other people in the refreshment room, who all knew what they were waiting for and where they were going and what they were going to do.

It was quarter past nine and it was a long time till opening time and he had 18s. 5d. He had 18s. 5d. and it was quarter past nine and it was a long time till opening time. It was a long time till opening time and he had 18s. 5d. and it was quarter past nine. He went on sipping his tea….

That screw who’d been on the gate this morning was probably the best screw in the place; he was a nice feller, really. It was funny that time the P.O. lost his cap over the back of the truck bringing them back from the farm. What was the name of the governor at Nottingham? He went on sipping his tea.

They’d just about be getting to work now. They might be taken out to watch a football match, some of them, this afternoon. That screw on the gate said ‘Good luck, lads’ as they came out. There’d been two governors at Nottingham, one the first time and a different one the second time. There might be a film in the chapel tomorrow. A lot of them never said anything, just opened the gate and said ‘Right, you lot’, but he said ‘Good luck’; he was a nice sort of feller, you felt he didn’t really like being a screw. He went on sipping his tea.

It was after half past nine. There was something he ought to think about. It was what he was going to do.

Well, he was going to wait until opening time, that was what he was going to do. When he’d had a drink that was the time to start thinking about what to do. He’d have one or two, and then perhaps he’d think of something to do.

But it was a long time till opening time. Well, what about where he was going to sleep, he ought to think about that. No, never mind. He’d think about that later, after he’d had one or two. It was after half past nine,...