Death’s Jest-Book

Now where was I? Oh yes, the new female psych. Her name, believe it or not, was Amaryllis Haseen!

Sporting with Amaryllis in the shade was, you will recall, one of the alternatives to writing poetry which Milton’s most un-Puritanical imagination suggested to him. My only acquaintance with the flower is the garishly fleshy specimens that sometimes turn up at Christmas. Well, by those standards, Ms Haseen lived up to her name and was generally regarded by most of the sex-starved cons as an early Christmas prezzie. As one of Polchard’s top lads said dreamily, ‘Tart like that you can tell all your sexual fancies to, it’s better than pulling your plonker over Women on Top.’

Everyone developed psychological problems. Ms Haseen was no fool, however. Her purpose in taking on the Chapel Syke consultancy was to garner material for a book on the psychology of incarceration, which she hoped would put more letters after her name and more money in her bank. (It came out last year, called Dark Cells, lots of nice reviews. I’m Prisoner XR pp. 193–207, by the way.) She quickly sorted out the wankers from the bankers. When Polchard’s lieutenant complained that he’d been dumped while I’d got a twice-weekly session, I smiled and said, ‘You’ve got to make ’em feel they can help you, and that doesn’t mean flashing your bone and asking her to give it the once over like you did!’ That made even Polchard smile and thereafter whenever I came back from a session I had to face a barrage of obscene questions as to the progress I was making towards getting into her underwear.

To tell the truth, I think I might have managed it, but I didn’t even try. Even if successful, what would I have got out of it?

A few top-C’s of mindless delight (no chance in the circumstances for more than a quick knee-trembler) and a coda of post-coital sadness that might stretch for years!

For I had to be a realist. Even if Amaryllis could be seduced into enjoying a bit of sport in the shade, when she walked out into the bright sunshine beyond the Syke’s main gates and thought of her promising career and her happy marriage, she was going to shudder with shame and fear and pre-empt any future accusations I might make by marking me down as a dangerous fantasist. (You think I’m being too cynical? Read on!)

So I set my mind to finding out what it was that she wanted from me professionally and making sure that she got it.

There was another danger here. You see, what she really wanted was to get a clear picture of what made me tick. And the trouble was that this subject fascinated me also.

I’ve always known I’m not quite the same as other people, but the precise nature of this otherness eludes me. Is it based on an absence or a presence? Do I have something others lack, or am I lacking in something that others possess?

Am I, in other words, a god among mortals or merely a wolf among sheep?

The temptation to let it all hang out before her and see what her professional skills made of the fascinating tangle was great. But the risks were greater. Suppose her conclusion was that I was an incurable sociopath?

So, regrettably, I felt I had to postpone the pleasures of complete analytical honesty till such time as I could pay for it out of my pocket rather than out of my freedom.

Instead I devoted my energies to letting Amaryllis find what suited us both best – that is, a slightly fractured personality which would make an interesting paragraph in her book.

It was good fun. The checkable facts about my background I was careful to leave intact. But after that, it was creativity hour as, like Dorothy after the twister, I stepped out of the black and white world of Kansas into the bright bold colours of Oz. Like most of these trick cyclists, she was fixated on my childhood and I had a great time inventing absurd stories about my dear old dad, who actually vanished from my life so early that I have no recollection of him whatsoever. You’ll find most of them in her book. I knew I had a talent for fiction long before I won that short-story competition.

Yet at the same time I was very aware that Amaryllis was no one’s fool. I had to assume she knew that my agenda was to help myself by apparently helping her. So, as with my chess games, I needed to play on many levels.

It didn’t take many sessions before I began to think I was truly in control.

Then she took me by surprise. Her opening was to ask me, ‘How do you feel about the people you hold responsible for putting you in the Syke?’

‘Apart from myself?’ I said.

This seemed like a good answer, but she just grinned at me as if to say, ‘Come off it!’

So I smiled back and said, ‘You mean the policemen who arrested me and built the case against me?’

‘If that’s who you think responsible,’ she said.

‘I don’t feel anything,’ I said. ‘In fact I’ve hardly thought about them since the trial.’

‘So revenge never enters your mind? No little fantasies to while your nights away?’

It was funny, I’d been feeding her lies and half-truths for weeks, and now when I was telling her it like it is, no prevarication whatsoever, I was getting that disbelieving grin.

‘Read my lips,’ I said distinctly. ‘Thoughts of revenge haven’t broken my sleep nor troubled my waking hours. Cross my heart. Kiss the Book. Swear on my father’s grave.’

I meant it, every word. Still do.

‘Then how do you explain the topic you propose for your PhD thesis?’ she asked.

This took my breath away for two reasons.

First, how the hell did she know what my proposed thesis topic was?

And second, how did I explain it?

The Revenge Theme in the English Drama.

Could it be that all the time I thought I was coolly, calmly and collectedly planning my future like a rational man, deep down inside me some bitter scheming fury was obsessed with thought of vengeance against you and Mr Dalziel?

Well, since then I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and I can put my hand on my heart and declare with complete honesty that not one thought of you or Mr Dalziel crossed my mind as I chose my thesis topic.

Like I said earlier, I was bored to tears by all the sociological crap I’d had to shovel out for my degrees. I wanted something different. I wanted something to do with real people feeling real passion and I knew I had to turn from sociology to literature for that, and to the theatre in particular. I remembered an old English teacher who used to say there are three springs of action in the drama – love, ambition and revenge – and the greatest of these is revenge. So I started reading the Elizabethans and Jacobeans and very soon realized he was right. In terms of dramatic energy, nothing was more productive than revenge. Love moved, ambition drove, but revenge exploded! I knew I had found my theme, but it was an artistic, an academic, an autotelic choice, having nothing to do with extraneous matters like my own situation.

But I could see how it must look to Amaryllis with her Freudian squint.

I opened my mouth to argue, decided this was the wrong tactic, and said instead, ‘I’d really never thought of that. Good God. And here’s me thinking … well, I never!’

Let her see me gobsmacked, I thought. Let her feel completely in charge.

And all the time my brain was racing to work out how she knew about my proposal. I’d never mentioned it to her. Indeed I’d only put it together myself last week and sent it off to the extra-mural department of the University of Sheffield who had still to reply …

That was it! Her husband. I knew from the grapevine he was a university teacher. Her presence at the Syke meant it was likely it was one of the Yorkshire universities. I’d assumed his discipline would be the same as hers, but why should it be?

If I was right … but first check it out.

I could see no easier way than the most direct.

I said, ‘This would be your husband telling you about my application, I presume? And you filling him in about me. Funny that. Don’t the usual rules of patient confidentiality and pastoral responsibility apply in the case of convicted felons then?’

A fishing expedition she might have wriggled away from, but this was a grenade lobbed into the water.

She did her best but she was floundering belly-up from the start.

‘No, really, nothing sinister,’ she said, flashing me an all-sophisticates-together smile from those tubulous lips. ‘Just one of life’s little coincidences. Jay, that’s my husband, happens to be in the English Department there, you see, and he happens to chair the committee which looks at these things, and he happened to mention that there’d been an application from someone in Chapel Syke …’

An expert interrogator like yourself would have easily spotted the symptoms of evasion, too many happenses, trying to cover the fact that when she leaves here, she heads home and chats away quite happily with her poncy husband about the funny things her banged-up clients have been telling her, fuck professional confidentiality, probably livens up the chat round the dinner table with little anecdotes plucked from our soul-baring confessions. For a moment I felt genuinely indignant till I recalled that most of what I personally had told her was crap, more arsehole-baring than soul-baring.

I said, ‘Well, that’s handy. Maybe you could give me a hint how my application’s going, seeing as they’re taking forever to respond to me direct. I was thinking of having a word with the Visitor about it. He’s always banging on about prisoners’ rights.’

That gave her something to think about. Lord Threlkeld, our Chief Visitor, must be familiar to you. I bet he’s one of old Rumbletummy’s pet hates, being a notorious bleeding heart who likes nothing better than a good case of professional misconduct either from the police or the prison service to wave at his peers in the House.

She gathered her wits and answered, ‘It’s not for me to say, of course, but I think they’re really impressed by the quality of your proposal. I know that Jay in particular is keen to see that you get approval … all things being equal, of course …’

Oh my Amaryllis, is chess one of the sports you play in the shade? I wondered, hiding a smile as I interpreted her words. Good old Jay would love to be your advocate, but that might be difficult if you’re making some silly complaint about his wife …