Arthur & George

I’ve seen men go crazy for a cigarette or a drink. And some of them miss their girls terribly. Some of them miss their clothes, some of them miss things they never even knew they were fond of, like the smell outside the back door on a summer’s night. Everyone misses something.’
    ‘I am not being complacent,’ replied George. ‘I am just able to think practically in the matter of newspapers. In other respects I am like everyone else, I am sure.’
    ‘And what do you miss most?’
    ‘Oh,’ replied George, ‘I miss my life.’
    The Chaplain seemed to imagine that George, as the son of a clergyman, would draw his principal comfort and consolation from the practice of his religion. George did not disabuse him, and he attended chapel more willingly than most; but he knelt and sang and prayed in the same spirit as he put out his slops and folded his bedding and worked, as something to help get him through the day. Most of the prisoners went to work in the sheds, where they made mats and baskets; a star man doing three months’ separate had to work in his own cell. George was given a board and bundles of heavy yarn. He was shown how to plait the yarn, using the board as a pattern. He produced, slowly and with great effort, oblongs of thick plaited material to a determined size. When he had finished six, they were taken away. Then he started another batch, and another.
    After a couple of weeks, he asked a prison officer what the purpose of these shapes might be.
    ‘Oh, you should know, 247, you should know.’
    George tried to think where he might have come across such material before. When it was clear he was at a loss, the warder picked up two of the completed oblongs, and pressed them together. Then he held them beneath George’s chin . When this gained no response, he put them beneath his own chin and started opening and closing his mouth in a wet and noisy fashion.
    George was baffled by this charade. ‘I am afraid not.’
    ‘Oh, come on. You can get it.’ The warder made noisier and noiser chomping sounds.
    ‘I cannot guess.’
    ‘Horses’ nose-bags, 247, horses’ nose-bags. Must be congenial, seeing as you’re a man familiar with horses.’
    George felt a sudden numbness. So he knew; they all knew; they talked and joked about it. ‘Am I the only person making these?’
    The warder grinned. ‘Don’t count yourself so special, 247. You’re doing the plaiting, you and half a dozen others. Some do the sewing together. Some make the ropes for tying round the horse’s head. Some put them all together. And some pack them up for sending off.’
    No, he wasn’t special. That was his consolation. He was just a prisoner among prisoners, working as they worked, someone whose crime was no more alarming than that of many others, someone who could choose to be well-behaved or badly behaved, but had no choice about his fundamental status. Even being a solicitor here was not unusual, as the Governor had pointed out. He decided to be as normal as it was possible to be, given the circumstances.
    When told that he would serve six months’ separate rather than just three, George did not complain, or even ask the reason. The truth was, he thought that what newspapers and books referred to as ‘the horrors of solitary confinement’ were grossly exaggerated. He would rather have too little company than too much of the wrong sort. He was still permitted to exchange words with the warders, the Chaplain, and the Governor on his rounds, even if he did have to wait for them to speak first. He could use his voice in chapel, singing the hymns and joining in the responses. And during exercise , permission was usually given to talk; though finding common ground with the fellow walking beside you was not always straightforward.
    There was, furthermore, a capital library at Lewes, and the librarian called twice a week to take away books he had finished with and replenish his shelf. He was allowed to borrow one work of an educational nature and one ‘library’ book per week. By ‘library’ book he was to understand anything from a popular novel to a volume of the classics. George set himself to read all the great works of English literature, and the histories of significant nations. He was naturally permitted a Bible in his cell; though he found increasingly that after four hours struggling with board and yarn each afternoon, it was not the cadences of Holy Writ that he yearned for, but the next chapter of Sir Walter