Forget You Had a Daughter - Doing Time in the Bangkok Hilton (27 page)

‘If you do come, Mum,’ I said, ‘don’t look at anyone else; just look at me. Don’t look at the other women, they’re a bit weird- looking.’

The following day she arrived. Most of the other women in the visiting room looked quite normal, probably a lot more normal than I did. It was me who was the freak in Holloway. There were no bars to separate my mum and me, and for the first time in years I walked across an open room and hugged her properly. We squeezed each other tightly. For years I had been picturing her. She looked beautiful but traumatised and scared.

I was kept in the medical unit for two weeks and the amount of space in my cell overwhelmed me at first.‘How many people share in here?’ I asked the guard. She just laughed and bolted the door. This wasn’t possible. I had a huge cell all to myself! Even my bed looked far too big for one.

Other women called out of the windows to their friends or screamed through the hatches for a light and I sat, stunned, listen-

ing to all the new noise.The prison was electric.Yet, for the first few weeks I felt quite lonely. My new surroundings were very stark and all the heavy doors were locked shut.There would be no strolling through the prison in Holloway like I had been used to in LardYao.

I was freezing and I missed sharing with hundreds of other women, and missed having someone to talk to. Most of the time I just wrapped myself in one of the green prison blankets.

When the wing was unlocked I quickly noticed that none of the inmates knelt down when they spoke to the officers. How should I act with them? I really couldn’t figure out the etiquette at all, so I did my best to avoid them.This continued for months and many of the guards thought I was an arrogant cow. But I was so used to the system in LardYao that it took time to adapt. For years I had spoken Thai; now I had to speak English. It was then I realised I no longer felt truly British.

10
June
1997

Dear Mum and Dad

I can’t believe how quickly mail comes through here and the number of letters we are allowed to send out. It’s great. I think I was in shock when I saw you, I found it hard to speak… the food here has had a terrible effect on my stomach and I didn’t think I would make it through the hour-long visit. It was embarrassing having to see you here. I am so sorry for all that I have put you through. I don’t want Granny and Pa-Pa to see me in here, or in any other prison. I can’t even bring myself to telephone them…

Sandra

After my two weeks on the medical wing, I was moved upstairs into the main prison.What a shock.Thankfully the authorities had given me a fortnight to settle in the relative quiet of the medical unit…

Up on ‘normal location’, I was surrounded by sheer madness

and chaos; everything appeared crazy, as if the place had been bred for mayhem. Holloway was home to the biggest bunch of nut- cases, psychos, robbers, thieves, druggies, gang members, whackos and dysfunctional lunatics I had come across.The noise was unbe- lievable. Music blared, there was continual shouting from wing to wing, women argued and fought with each other. The constant rattle of keys on chains sounded more like chainsaws humming and the bolting and slamming of iron doors never ceased.

The routine of the prisoners was alien and confusing. It was both thrilling yet awful, shocking but somehow comforting. I tried hard to fit into this new world of walls and weirdos. I wanted to understand these people and the strange lingo they all spoke. I hadn’t expected to feel such an alien when I came home, but this was not the ‘home’ I had remembered. Graffiti covered all the walls of the dormitory I now shared with three other women, and the air was grey with fag smoke. Candles made out of sanitary towels were stuck to the ceiling, leaving black burns all over. Blobs of toothpaste were shrivelled everywhere. It’s used as glue to hold pictures on the walls because it sets so hard; every white blob was a reminder of those prisoners who had come before.

This was Beirut. It was loud, harsh and aggressive. I did my best to avoid having too much to do with anyone; the shock of Holloway was overwhelming.

‘Swing a line,’ someone shouted. ‘We’re rolling tonight.’ Or, ‘There’s a kanger coming.’

Prison jargon baffled me. It took me forever to work out that ‘kanger’ was slang for an officer or guard, as in ‘the kangaroos’, the ‘screws’.At night I would just sit in my dorm watching and listen- ing to the three women alongside me, trying to figure out the language, the routine and how the prison ran.

The plusses began to outweigh the shock: I had newspapers to read, a radio to listen to and access to the telephone. Slowly, suspi- ciously, I came round to my new environment. In LardYao we had

been allowed very little; no board games, cards or ball games. No telephone calls, newspapers, no radios, television, personal stereos or anything electrical. No one was allowed jewellery or watches, or personal clothing. There was no smoking, no gym or educa- tional facilities. There were no chaplains, probation, personal officers, ombudsman or anyone else to make the misery of the place a little easier. Holloway, with all these amenities, began to seem fairly normal.

One afternoon a woman set herself on fire and suffered third degree burns as a result.When she was returned from hospital four months later, the prison authorities charged her with ‘damaging Her Majesty’s property’, and she lost her evening association with other prisoners for a week.

‘Shut the door, Gregory,’ said the senior officer on the landing, a Glaswegian, calling me into her office. She sat down at her desk while I stood over her. What do you do in front of an officer? Should I kneel on the floor? Should I stand where I was or sit in the empty chair? I panicked. I felt awkward standing over someone in her position, a sign of insolence in Lard Yao. I sat down.

‘Who the fuck told you to sit down?’ she screamed. ‘Who do you think you are, you arrogant fuck? Stand up in my fucking office!’

My attitude, she proceeded to tell me, was unacceptable and belligerent. Even my cell was a mess. It had taken me weeks to realise we had to make the beds each morning. My blanket was my first in more than four years.What did she expect? Christ, she was an aggressive cow. My legs trembled.

To be fair to the governors and many of the officers in Holloway, most of them treated me as fairly as the regulations allowed. Soon the chaos began to make sense. Mandatory drug tests, cell searches, the new terminology and prison protocol

became a part of my life in much the same way as Lard Yao had got into my blood.

‘It can do what?’ I said to the woman on the education block when I saw my first computer. I began to feel a part of this strange new England where inmates were encouraged to learn. Work in the library kept me busy for a while before I got a job in the gym, and I worked there seven days a week, training constantly. I was fit! It was incredible. Inside, the gym was the best job to have.

The gym staff explained the workings of the prison: the rules and, generally, how the penal system in the UK worked.The staff ’s approach and general attitude can either make or break a prisoner and, with their help, I settled down and complied with everything that was expected of me.

Long-term inmates (LTIs) were permitted a bird and cage so immediately I requested a parrot. ‘No,’ was the response so I applied for a pair of lovebirds, the second smallest species of

parrot.The prison agreed. I still had a long time to serve and the birds would be perfect company. Syd and Flo arrived on
31
August
1997
, the day that Princess Diana died.

The two yellow, somewhat wild lovebirds took over the single cell I had recently been placed in and they had the run of the place.They would fly around at all times of day and night, devour- ing all manner of things with their massive beaks, at every opportunity. Occasionally they fought and drew blood. I began to think I’d made a mistake. Couldn’t I get anything right? Still, I loved them anyway.

There was another girl on my wing with birds. Her name was Sharon Carr.

‘Every night I see the devil in my dreams, sometimes even in my mirror, but I realise it was just me,’
Sharon confided in her diary after the killing of
18
-year-old Katie Rackliffe. Sharon was aged
12
when she murdered. She was
17
when she was sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure, in
1997
. The murdered girl had been stabbed at least
29
times.

In the years after the killing, Sharon kept a diary and wrote poems and notes about the killing. In one note, she wrote:‘I am a killer. Killing is my business – and business is good.’ She was already serving a sentence for a knife attack on a
13
-year-old com- mitted two years to the day after Katie Rackliffe’s murder.

One day Sharon asked me if she could borrow Syd because she wanted to try him with her female to see if they would mate. I was still quite trusting at that time and I lent her both of the birds. I didn’t want them separated.

‘There’s blood, Sandra,’ Sharon told me when I returned that afternoon to pick them up.

Blood? For fuck’s sake.
When I got them back to my cell they were traumatized and bloody. Flo held her right leg up and neither bird would come out of the box, lined with sanitary towels, in which they both slept. Flo’s leg was broken and a guard took her to a vet. Syd didn’t leave the box for over a week.

Much later I heard that Sharon had held a cockfighting session with my birds. Flo never stood on her right leg again.

Holloway never ceased to amaze me. Or scare me.Women generally do not rape each other, but it is not totally unheard of. In LardYao, rape was something that happened in the
soi
but in the UK women ‘de-crutch’ each other if they think someone is holding a package of drugs. One day a group of women heard that a girl in Holloway had a package of drugs ‘crutched’ and they wanted it.They waited until evening association and got the girl in a dormitory alone.

Two women stood by the door, making sure no one came in and the others held the girl down.They ripped the package from inside her but didn’t leave it at that; they raped her with lumps of wood and left her in such a state that the ambulance crew had to come onto the wing with a stretcher. Rape amongst women is one of the most shocking things I heard about, but was rarely an act of pleasure or torture. It’s usually more about drugs.

*

Heather was a bright, obsessive and possessive woman, and when I refused her advances she turned nasty and tried her very best to make trouble for me. She began spreading rumours about me telling a group of Jamaican girls – Yardies – that I was a grass. In prison, the last thing you want to be known as is a ‘grass’.

Patricia Hussain, the Manchester girl with me in Lard Yao, had testified against some Jamaican men she had been working for and Heather told the Yardies that it had been me that had grassed on their men.The situation got very tense and I was always watching my back.TheYardies were out to get me.

I bought a large, silver ring with a big moonstone in it from a girl, and I planned to use it if the Yardies decided to take me on. (Usually, when fights started, they took place in the changing rooms, and I wanted to be prepared.) Then I just waited. Rings with large stones are classed as weapons in prison for precisely that reason. One day, when I was called to reception for something, I can’t remember what, the guard saw the ring and pulled it off my finger. She stuck it in a bag.

‘You can send that out with the next person who comes to visit.’

Next on my visiting list was my mum, who was going off on holiday for five weeks and had come to see me before she went away, so I sent the ring out to her.

Years before my dad had bought her a big, silver ring with a moonstone and, as a child, I had marvelled at the size of it.When my mum saw the ring I was forced to send out, she slipped her own ring off and passed it over the table to me in the visiting room.‘Take it,’ she said,‘and wear it while I’m away.’

I didn’t want it. I didn’t want any part of her or my family in prison with me. I tried to explain to her but she insisted. Ever so carefully I slipped the silver ring onto my finger, hoping none of the guards were watching. It didn’t look right on my skinny fingers, far too cumbersome, but she wanted me to take it.

When I was a young girl, she told me, I always got hysterical whenever she left me. She would give me something of her own and tell me to look after it until she returned. It always calmed me and she could leave without getting upset. My mum smiled and clasped my hands tightly.‘Take it. I’ll be back soon.’

I left her ring in my cell, next to the bed, because I didn’t want to wear it on the landings and it also kept slipping from my fingers. One day I got a room spin – a cell search – and the only thing the guards found was my mum’s ring.

‘What’s this?’ said the guard, holding it between her fat fingers. My heart sank.‘Oh God, no. Please don’t take that.Take anything but that ring.’

She wanted to know where I had got it from so I told her.‘Oh,’ she said, her face twitching,‘smuggled contraband.’

The ring was duly confiscated and taken to security and when my mother got back from her holiday I told her what had hap- pened. She sounded a little upset. She wrote to Holloway asking for it to be returned and they told her she had to prove it was hers. After protracted correspondence it was returned.

For the remainder of my time in Holloway I was seated at the ‘observation table’ in the visiting room, whenever someone came to see me. The Jamaican girls quickly realised I was not the girl fromThailand who had grassed on their men and the whole situa- tion was defused.

Months passed and I became one of the prisoners who had been in Holloway the longest. My first New Year in a British prison passed, and I grew accustomed to the lifestyle. The food was stodgy and bland, I slept awkwardly, I disliked most of the other women, I couldn’t understand the workings of the system and the guards were a pain in the arse. I was now a fully paid-up member of Her Majesty’s Long-Serving, Bored-out-of-My-Mind Offenders Club.