Читать книгу Among Those Absent - Cyril Henry Coles - Страница 4

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The nine hours of silence was broken by the clanging of a large hand-bell, four hand-bells at once, in fact, one on each of the three galleries and one on the ground floor. The sound passed along the landings as the warders walked fast from end to end; behind every door a man awoke, stretched himself, and tumbled out of bed to wash and dress. The water was cold, but cold water is wholesome, they say. Beds were hastily but accurately tidied up and arranged for the day in the prescribed pattern; by the time all this was done another bell rang and cell doors were unlocked and opened. This was the moment of the day when all the prisoners were housemaids, every man his own domestic, and the prison officers were more critical than any modern housewife dares to be. The prisoners scrubbed, swept and polished as for dear life, not only from fear of caustic comment but because, if your castle is only seven-foot-six by nine, it may as well be clean.

There followed next a noisy clatter of boots on the iron staircases as all the prisoners assembled in the hall below to be sorted out into parties for exercise or Swedish drill. The elder men were usually given what was called exercise, which meant walking round and round in concentric rings and occasionally trotting for a change. The prisoner called Hawkley was set among these at first, but he found it intolerably monotonous. He applied, therefore, for permission to see the Medical Officer.

“Well, my man? What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing, sir. I only want to ask permission to have physical drill instead of ‘exercise.’ ”

“Oh. Well, we usually give that to the younger men only. It’s pretty strenuous, you know. Why do you want to change?”

“I’m doing sedentary work, sir, sewing mailbags all day, and I rather think”—the prisoner’s voice dropped a tone and he patted his front reproachfully—“I think I’m getting a tendency to middle-age spread.”

The M.O. smiled. “Getting too much to eat, are you?”

“No, sir, by no means. But the diet is rather starchy, perhaps.”

“Oh. Well, you can try it if you like. Application granted.”

The prisoner called Hawkley told his next neighbour in the workroom about this arrangement, and the prisoner Cobden scoffed.

“Dam’ silly idea,” he said. “Next week or the week after we’ll be put on outside jobs. Digging drains, or digging post-holes or—or just digging. You won’t have to worry about your figure then, it’ll just go back by itself. You’ll get more than enough without physical jerks too. You wait and see.”

“Then I’ll change back again,” said Hawkley.

“Of course,” said Cobden, “it may be that they won’t put you on outside work, at least, not so soon as they generally do.”

“Why not?”

“Well, you got away before, didn’t you? Or so they say.”

“I haven’t got a brother now,” said Hawkley.

Cobden merely nodded. The murmur of talk all over the long room had risen to a buzz and the prison officers on duty checked it. “Too much talking.” There was silence for a few minutes and then the low murmur started again. Hawkley’s fingers slipped on the coarse needle and he jabbed himself painfully in the left thumb. He muttered something under his breath and sucked the wound.

“You aren’t very expert, are you?” said Cobden.

“Needlework has never been one of my accomplishments,” said Hawkley.

Cobden said nothing and went on sewing his mailbag, he was very much quicker and neater at his work than Hawkley. He was a tall slim young man with dark hair, quite unusually good-looking and with considerable charm of manner. He had evidently been well educated, he spoke with a cultured voice and was serving a three-year sentence for working an ingenious form of confidence trick. He and Hawkley had arrived at Northern Moor prison together, travelling in the same party from Crewe where Hawkley had been added to the collection.

When Hawkley and Cobden had been for five weeks at Northern Moor they were drafted to outside work in the fields surrounding the prison. It was a fine September and there was little hardship in the weather, it was pleasant, too, to be beyond those grim stone walls and to look at green things and far horizons instead of those monotonous grey buildings with rows of barred windows exactly nine feet apart. Northern Moor is the newest prison in England and is laid out upon the most enlightened plan, but a prison is still a prison and walls and bars are its natural skeleton. You cannot fillet a jail.

When he had been at Northern Moor for nine weeks and never a whisper of an escape in prospect his spirits sank. This was the silliest idea he had ever entertained in a life distinguished for ideas which had often looked sillier than they actually were. This one was even sillier than it looked, which was saying a lot. What guarantee was there that an escape would ever be attempted from this place? None, except the Home Secretary’s opinion that there were several prisoners there of the type which might be thought to be worth rescuing. That fat slug of a man nicknamed The Bishop, for example, rolling in money and disliking the life intensely. But even he showed no signs of illicit activity.

Hawkley straightened his aching back, rubbed his stiff knees, called himself insulting names in every language he could remember, which were many, and made up his mind. He would give this place another week, if nothing happened in that time he would throw his hand in.

There was a stand-easy for ten minutes in the middle of the morning’s work, and since the prisoners were more or less loose in a large field they naturally drifted together into congenial groups. Hawkley and Cobden sat down together on the grass strip at the edge of the field, the Bishop and a long-nosed man named Brooks lay down a little further along and stared at the sky. A group of half a dozen men were squatting in a circle apparently engaged in some game with small pebbles; two moon-faced fellows of great strength and slow intelligence, who answered to the names of Mutt and Jeff, sat on the opposite sides of a wheelbarrow, back to back, and obviously were not talking. They seldom did, having nothing to say.

“Funny mixture, aren’t we?” said Cobden.

“Well, we’re a mixture anyway,” agreed Hawkley.

“I’d like to know why The Bish and that fellow Brooks are palling up like that,” went on Cobden. “Quite new. The Bish used to be just as sarcastic to him as he is to everyone else, and now look at them. Buddies, real buddies.”

“I suppose they’ve found something in common. Both got aunts at Clacton-on-Sea, or collected match-box covers or trained performing fleas. Could I care less? I shouldn’t think so.”

Cobden looked at him and laughed. “You’ve got the needle to-day, haven’t you? Novelty worn off and not yet got used to the life?”

“Novelty?” said Hawkley. “Novelty, after serving——”

“Don’t tell me fairy stories about serving thirteen months at Parkhurst, when anyone with eyes in his head could see you’d never been inside till the day you came here,” said Cobden frankly. “Why, even now you don’t know how to scrounge a cigarette and you told me you couldn’t sew, and——”

“I am, perhaps, not a very observant person,” said Hawkley mildly.

“You know, you do puzzle me. What are you doing in here?”

“Penal servitude,” said Hawkley blandly. “Aren’t you?”

“Are you serving somebody else’s sentence for twenty pounds a week?”

“I wouldn’t serve anybody else’s sentence for twenty pounds a day,” said Hawkley, with so much emphasis that Cobden believed him at once.

“There’s only one thing I am sure of about you and that is that you’re not Edwin Vincent Hawkley.”

“What gives you that idea?”

“You remember the other day when we were talking about William the Third and you said you’d never been to Brixham? Well, Hawkley was born and brought up there.”

“I am trying to forget my past,” said Hawkley, “don’t remind me. The small grey house with wistaria over the porch, my little bedroom with the sloping ceiling and the rocking-horse in the corner, the smell of paraffin lamps and fried herrings rising up the stairs, the cracked bell ringing for Sunday chapel, the black cat with white whiskers——”

“And the little girl in a pink frock who lived next door,” prompted Cobden.

“Blue. Her frock I mean. She had a doll called Angeline——”

“And you threw it down a well. Now tell me the name of that steep street which runs up from the harbour, it has a pub called the William of Orange on the corner?”

The prison officer in charge blew a whistle and Hawkley sighed with relief.

“I’ll tell you some other time,” he said, and returned to his kale plants which at least did not ask questions.

To his relief Cobden did not return to the subject of his identity when they met again in the afternoon break. He said instead that Hawkley looked a good deal more cheerful but that he himself had caught the complaint.

“Your hump,” he explained. “I’m sick to death of this place.”

“Let’s leave,” said Hawkley. “Any ideas?”

“Not at present. Look here, if I can think of any scheme, are you on?”

“Of course. That’s why I asked to be transferred to physical jerks. Nothing like keeping fit.”

“Oh, was that why? I thought you were just bats.”

Mutt and Jeff came mooning along together and it was plain that Jeff had a grievance.

“What’s the matter?” asked Hawkley.

“That—so-and-so—Mister Blooming Bishop,”—only the adjective was not flowery.

“Been annoying you again?”

“Markham said as we’d be ’oein’ turnips nex’ week and I says good, I likes ’oein’ turnips, and Bish ’e turns round and says, ‘Mind your ’ead then, don’t ’oe it by mistake,’ ’e says, ‘quite easy mistake,’ ’e says, ‘nobody’d blame you.’ ”

“One o’ these days,” said Mutt darkly, “somebody’ll ’oe ’im. An’ no loss.”

“I am inclined to agree with you,” said Cobden.

Hawkley found it difficult to go to sleep that night. If Cobden were in touch with the escape organisation, life looked a lot more hopeful. The hopes were dashed by Cobden’s first remarks the next day.

“If I knew who it is gets these fellows out,” he said, “I’d put in a claim for assistance.”

“What fellows?”

“All these jail-breaks they’ve had the last couple of years. Somebody works it, they don’t just happen.”

“Oh, that,” said Hawkley. “No, I suppose not. Does anyone here know anything about it, do you think?”

“I don’t know, but I should think it’s more than likely.”

“How does one get in touch with these people?” asked Hawkley sleepily, for the sun was warm. “Put an advertisement in Exchange and Mart? ‘Gentleman bored with monotonous employment desires change to sparkling variety, risky if possible.’ ”

“You want The Stage for that,” said Cobden.

Two days later he told Hawkley that there was a rumour going round the prison.

“What is it?”

“That The Bishop and Brooks are going to be got out.”

Hawkley nearly said: “At last,” and just changed it in time. “Not really? When? And how?”

“I don’t know yet, but I’m going to cultivate Brooks.”

“But surely he won’t talk?”

“I think he might. I wasn’t a con man for nothing, you know. Besides, haven’t you noticed an odd thing about convicts, if they talk at all they must boast? And the conceited ones are the worst. Brooks is the real smart-Alec type and thinks himself such a clever boy. In the meantime, I think you and I had better cool off a bit. It’s a definite blast, but there you are.”

“We’ll have a thundering row in public if you like,” suggested Hawkley, who was wondering whether Cobden really meant to transfer his allegiance to the Bishop-Brooks party. One could hardly blame him if there was a chance of their getting him out.

“No, that wouldn’t do at all,” said Cobden. “How am I to tell you what’s going on if we’re not on speaking terms?”

“You’re right, of course. Go to it.”

“Watch me,” said Cobden, and laughed.

Hawkley watched with fascinated interest the undoing of Brooks. Cobden started off by being surprised into laughter at one of his jokes, and gave the impression of discovering suddenly that there was more in Brooks than he had thought. Brooks’s line of business had been to enter small branch post offices run by women and persuade them, by pointing a pistol at them, to hand over the contents of the till. He did fairly well until one evening when a constable happened to want a twopenny-half-penny stamp at the critical moment, after which it was explained to Brooks that this was called Robbery with Violence and that it was no defence to say the pistol wasn’t loaded. He served a sentence, came out, and did it again. This time he got five years, which he considered unfair. He told Cobden all about it.

“It’ll pass,” said Cobden cheerfully, “there’s nothing to stop it. If you behave yourself you’ll be out in a little more than four years.”

“Four years? Suppose I’m goin’ to stop in this ’ole for four years?”

“Yes,” said Cobden simply.

“Not me. Not—something—likely. They can’t keep me in ’ere.”

“They all talk like that,” said Cobden, yawning. “But they stay.”

“But I’m different. You ain’t seen nuffin’ yet.”

“Huh,” said Cobden.

“I tell you, as you’re a pal, I shan’t be ’ere more’n anuver fortnight. If that.”

“Says you. Being transferred to Dartmoor?”

“Transferred nuffin’. I’m goin’ out, I tell you. Me an’ The Bishop. We’re leavin’.”

“What, that fat old cow? He’d fall down dead if he ran fifty yards.”

“Not ’e. He’s tougher than you’d think. ’Sides, ’e’ll ’ave me to ’elp ’im.”

Cobden laughed scornfully.

“You laugh,” said the baited Brooks. “You wait till one of these days when the fog comes down sudden, like it does.”

“That’s when you throw down your spades and run, I suppose. Fine. You running and The Bish puffing behind till you wind up sitting up to your necks in a bog howling for somebody to come and pull you out. There are bogs on these hills, you know, one step on them and they catch your feet and suck you in.”

“Sucker yourself,” said Brooks rudely. “We ain’t goin’ on so silly. We goes straight as a die to where there’s some’un waitin’ for us.”

“You can’t run straight as a die in a fog. You run round in circles, you can’t help it. Everybody does. Besides, fancy expecting to meet somebody you can’t see in a place you can’t find——”

“Ever ’eard of direction-finding wireless receivers?”

“Not in jail,” said Cobden firmly.

“Well, there’s one ’ere. Ah, that surprises you, don’t it?”

“I’ve seen them,” admitted Cobden, “and even used one during the War. But d’you mean to tell me the warders are going to stand round sucking their thumbs while you go and strap on your front a box a foot square——”

“Foot square! Mister, it’s no bigger than a box of a ’undred Players.”

“Now that I do not believe,” said Cobden with conviction.

“Look ’ere. Termorrer, when we goes to get the tools out, you and me ’angs back last an’ I’ll show you somefink. Seein’s believin’, ain’t it?”

“Not this time,” said Cobden. “You and your wireless cigarette-boxes!”

“You wait,” said Brooks.

The wireless receiving set was in a tin box painted black, it contained a marvellously compact apparatus with tiny valves no bigger than the first joint of one’s fingers. It was actuated by a dry battery and there was one small earphone with connecting flex.

“I was a foreman electrician in a wireless factory once,” said Brooks. “We got the set in in bits an’ I assembled it. Old Guffey in the tinsmith shop made the box for me, I told ’im I was goin’ in for collectin’ beetles. An’ ’e wore it, silly old ——!”

Guffey was serving a life sentence and had learned in ten years of it how the silliest craze will spread. When Cobden asked him to make another box for beetles like the one he’d made for Brooks he agreed at once. Cobden took it out in the field with him and showed it to Hawkley.

“I’ll weight it with earth wrapped in a bit of rag,” he said, “and hope I get the weight about right. Then I’ll swop it for theirs some night when we come in. I think they take theirs out every day now, hoping the fog will come down.”

“Suppose they open it,” said Hawkley.

“Not with Mutt and Jeff looking on. You’ve noticed that, of course. I told them carefully several times over in words of one syllable that The Bish and Brooks were going to get out. If Mutt and Jeff hung around and waited for B. and B. to start running and then clouted them good and hearty it would be Assisting the Authorities to Maintain Order and they’d probably get remission of sentence. I don’t know if they would really, but it doesn’t matter because they weren’t a bit interested in that. The clout or clouts would be, apparently, their own reward. So now they don’t so much hang around as haunt them, and in the meantime I’ll have their set.”

“Splendid,” said Hawkley, “absolutely. Besides, a good scrap will cause a diversion. Couldn’t be better. I wonder when it will come off.”

“When this fine spell breaks,” said Cobden. “It can’t last much longer at this time of year, it’s nearly November.”

Two days later the prisoners were out again, clearing a beanfield and piling the rubbish into heaps for burning. The day was cold and clammy, a heavy dew lay upon every twig and blade of grass, soaking the prisoners’ legs to the knees and their arms to the elbows. The sky was lowering and seemed almost to touch the tops of the hills round the high moors where they lived and worked; Hawkley noticed the prison officers in charge watching the weather. Two of them came together within earshot of Hawkley and one suggested taking the party in.

“Not just yet,” said the other. “There’s only half an hour to go. We’ll watch it, though.”

Cobden brought a load of rubbish to Hawkley’s pile and muttered: “Look out,” in passing.

Ten minutes later there came one of those sudden shifts of wind the high moors know so well. Hawkley happened to be looking towards the prison at the moment and it was as though a veil had slid across the tall buildings, the next moment they weren’t there. It was like magic. At once the warder in charge signalled to his assistants, blew his whistle and shouted an order for the men to cease work and fall in. Hawkley looked round for Cobden and walked towards him, he was on one knee tying up his bootlace.

“Steady now,” said Cobden, “don’t press, keep your eye on the ball.”

The fog surged up to the turf wall surrounding the field, paused like a breaking wave and poured over; instantly everything became indistinct and figures moved like ghosts in the mist. The warders were shouting orders and rounding the men up, Cobden stood up and he and Hawkley moved slowly forward.

“They’ll never get another chance like this,” muttered Cobden, “if they don’t go now they never——”

There was a series of yells from the fog ahead of them. “Hi! Stop that!” and less articulate sounds suggestive of battle. Cobden grabbed Hawkley’s arm, wheeled and made a dash for the turf dyke.

“Give me a leg up—I’ll pull you—that’s right, come on——”

They dropped down the other side and ran at top speed till their lungs were labouring, over a drystone wall they hardly saw before they touched it, and on till the shouting died in the distance while the fog wrapped them round and hid them away.