14

The Scottish Play

One of my trips to the library triggered a brainwave. I found a DVD of Polanski’s film of Macbeth, so I checked it out and showed it to the group. It’s far from being a masterpiece and, at first, it prompted quite a lot of lewd heckling. But, gradually, the story took hold and they fell quiet.

As the final credits spool past, I ask them for any first impressions.

Pulse laughs and shakes his head. “Man, those old bitches saw him coming. They burnt his arse good.”

Simo wades in, agreeing with Pulse. It’s a bit hard to follow his argument as it’s expressed in a machine-gun fire of fractured obscenities, but his gist seems to be that the whole tragedy was the fault of the old hags and that Macbeth had a knife so he should have just shanked them.

“But what about Macbeth?” I ask. “The blame lies with him, doesn’t it? He’s the master of his own destiny, surely?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely” nods Dougie. “It annoyed me when he started whingeing about all the blood and the ghost coming to dinner and everything. If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.”

I try to prise an observation out of Albie, but the only critique he offers is that the wife isn’t a very nice person.

“Tasty, though,” adds Pulse. “Ve-ry tasty.”

I start to explain the various theories about tragedy, probing them for what they think is Macbeth’s fatal flaw. Mohammad says Macbeth’s weakness is that he turns away from God, so God destroys him, just as he will destroy the Americans.

“Is it ambition?” I ask. “Is that the aspect of his character that destroys him?”

“Yup, definitely,” says Dougie. “I mean we’ve all been there, haven’t we? We all want to be top dog. That’s just human nature. But there’s a line, isn’t there. A line you don’t cross. Y’know, I mean, you don’t go around stabbing kings while they’re asleep, that’s just mental.”

Pulse argues that it’s sex that powers Macbeth. Clearly, him and Lady Macbeth have got some heavy sex-vibe going and she uses it to manipulate him. Simo starts shouting about evil, e-vil, the old bitches are e-vil and Macbeth should def-initely have shanked them.

“End of story. End of— no old bitches— no story.”

Pulse weighs back in and soon the three of them, Pulse, Simo and Dougie are talking animatedly over each other, until I have to step in and ask them to keep the volume down. Then I find myself waxing lyrical about Shakespeare.

“What is so fantastic is that you have all watched this story and you’ve all taken something different from it. It’s touched you in different ways. Even though it’s written in verse, in an old kind of English, it still reaches us. And it’s exciting, and dynamic and gripping, but it’s also ambiguous and complex…and dense…”

I continue to talk in this vein and, as I talk, a different part of my brain starts to monitor what I’m saying. After a few moments, I realise I’m experiencing a feeling that I had assumed was long dead. This is enthusiasm. I am being enthusiastic. How long since that happened? There’s no trace of irony, there’s energy in my voice as I try to convey the wonders and the plasticity of language that make Shakespeare a genius. It feels invigorating. And I seem to be cutting through – they all look interested and engaged, apart from Gerald, who is peeling flaky paint off a windowsill.

“Gerald, what’s your take on Macbeth?”

He gazes at the ceiling for a few moments. “My take is the only take.”

“Well I think we’ve already seen that Shakespeare’s tragedy is subtle enough to support lots of interpretations.”

Gerald sighs. “There is no tragedy. It’s all pre-ordained.”

“Yeh, by Allah” adds Mohammad.

Gerald gives him a pained smile. “Duncan is doomed from the start.”

“Once the witches trick Macbeth.” Now Pulse receives the same smile as Mohammad.

“Duncan’s doomed from before that. From before page one,” says Gerald, very matter-of-fact.

“How come?” asks Simo.

“Because Macbeth’s a killer,” Gerald replies. “Pure and simple. He’s a killer. He’s decided to kill Duncan from before the play even begins.”

Dougie takes issue with this. “Nah, nah, look at how he reacts, he’s got a conscience, there’s tons of guilt.”

“There’s tons of self-dramatisation and sentimentality,” counters Gerald, flicking some flakes of paint to the floor. “No, the witches are an irrelevance. So is the wife.”

I point out how, in Shakespeare’s time, there was a genuine belief in witches being sent from Hell to entrap and destroy people.

“Then why doesn’t he ‘shank’ them, as Simo so eloquently suggested? If they’re such a danger. No, he listens because they tell him what deep down he’s already decided. Duncan is kaput. Macbeth is a killer. Shakespeare understands that. It’s just that most of his audience are too stupid to.” He gives us all a little smile. “There is no tragedy. Just banal inevitability. Sorry, folks.”

“So, let me just check I’ve got this right, Gerald.” I pause to see if he’ll stop picking at the paint. He doesn’t. “You’re saying that we are all pre-programmed. That nobody is capable of change”

“I think this place proves that.”

“…and that Shakespeare knew that, and you know it, but the rest of us are too mired in stupidity to understand it.”

Gerald gives a chuckle and flares his eyes. “Give that man a coconut,” he sniggers.

I think Gerald may be a psychopath.

“Lady Macbeth changes,” Dougie points out, “she’s a bitch without a conscience, then, hey presto, she’s a bitch who can’t sleep ’cos her conscience is sending her doollally.”

“That’s a very good point.” Dougie looks pleased with my compliment. “Lady Macbeth demonstrates that people can surprise you.”

Gerald stares at the ceiling for a few moments as he weighs up this counter-argument.

“Shakespeare probably wrote that bit just so that she got punished. Bad women always have to be punished, don’t they? First rule of our culture.”

“You’re saying Shakespeare wrote something he didn’t believe?” I ask.

“He was just delivering what society expected of him. Most people do that.”

A thin smile twitches across Gerald’s lips. Pulse starts another branch of discussion about the link between tragedy and hot women, but time is up, so I end the session and we fold the chairs away as Pulse reminisces about a stripper who led to his downfall in Montego Bay.

One morning – it might have been a week later, maybe more – I received a letter from a TV company that called itself Going Forward Productions. I know, my reaction as well. I nearly didn’t bother reading any further. They said they had heard about my drama group (how?) and that they felt it would make a fascinating documentary. They stressed that the documentary would be a serious study of how people in the darkest circumstances can still embody the human spirit. They used the word “narrative” several times. And “uplifting”. And “synergy”. I scanned the letter once more to check I had understood it and then I threw it in the bin.

Then I picked it out of the bin, tore it into tiny pieces and threw them back in the bin. I didn’t want Dougie to read that.

I showed the group a succession of DVDs of Shakespeare plays. They were riveted by Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, Hamlet, but they struggled with King Lear, who they felt was irritating and deserved everything he got.

One morning, with the stink of stewing cabbage filling the room, we are halfway through watching Othello – which Gerald claims should be called Iago – when the very skinny warden, Stewart (strange, how much better I’ve become at remembering names) slides into the room and raises his arm to get my attention.

“Yes, Stewart, can we help you?”

“The governor wants to see you.”

“OK, we’re nearly finished.”

“No, I think he wants to see you now.”

When I step into Malcolm’s office he is on the phone, sounding stressed. I sit quietly and wait for a few minutes while he argues with someone about the difference between investment and overspend. Eventually, he hangs up and gives me a tense smile.

“Welcome to my world,” he says. “I’m all out of biscuits I’m afraid.”

He stretches his arms and folds them behind his head.

“I got a phone call from Going Forward Productions. You didn’t respond to their letter.”

“Well I did respond to it, actually. I chucked it in the bin. It was bullshit.”

“Yes I know.” He sees that I’m puzzled. “I got virtually the same letter. Lots of ‘synergy’.” He flourishes the letter for a moment, with a weary sigh.

“Like I said, it’s bullshit,” I say, falling on the word “bullshit”.

“Yes it is bullshit, but it could be helpful bullshit.”

“What?”

“A programme like this could show the prison in a positive light. Good PR could help us. If we become a showcase prison, then it’s easier to ask for a showcase budget. A bigger budget means everyone’s lives – prisoners’, staff’s, everyone’s lives get a little easier.”

“Oh come on, you know why they’re interested. They’re not interested in my drama group they just want to gawp at me.”

“Oh, so it’s your drama group, is it?”

“No, that’s not what I—”

“It’s all about you.”

“I didn’t say that I—”

“Don’t you feel that maybe you should put the offer to the group, see what they think?” I get a strong impression that Malcolm is playing me, although he is very hard to read.

“I don’t want to be…gazed at by the public any more, they’ve had enough pieces of me. I’m done with that circus. I just want to be left in peace.”

“Are you sure? I think you could come out of it very well. It could show the real you.”

“Isn’t the ‘real’ me a woman-hitter and a perjurer?”

He tosses his arms up in exasperation. “Well, what about the others? They might get something out of the experience.”

“I very much doubt it.”

“Well, I think it’s sad you’re not even giving it any considered thought, it’s— you’re starting to achieve something – a small something, possibly – but…well, you can’t just go on assuming that the whole world is trying to stitch you up.”

He is rubbing his forehead now, as if he’s trying to stir his brain into finding some magic compromise. I decide to put him out of his misery.

“Can I go now?”

It took a few weeks for me to pluck up the courage; but in the end, I decided I would just blurt out my idea and see what happened.

They are all clustered round the tea urn, laughing at a joke Dougie’s just told about a parrot that is rescued from a brothel. Even Albie is laughing. The atmosphere feels good; this seems like the right moment.

“How about we do a performance?”

The chatter stops and they are all staring at me, so I feel obliged to carry on. “A show. Not a big one, something small-scale. Something simple.” They are still staring. “I just thought it would be nice for us to have a goal. Something to work towards.”

“What kind of performance?” asks Pulse, with a challenging bob of the head.

“Well, that’s for the group to decide, obviously, we’d all have to agree.”

“With an audience,” checks Dougie.

“Yeh, but the audience can be small. Very small if you like.”

I notice that Albie is getting fidgety. Simo also seems a little agitated.

“Like— y’know, the— I mean— what…”

“What could we do?” I prompt.

“Yeh.”

“Whatever we can agree on.”

“No plays,” says Mohammad. “And no Christian shit.”

“We can keep religion out of it. We could write a piece of our own if you like.”

There is a rapid ripple of head-shaking, “that sounds like a lot of work” seems to be the consensus.

“Alright then, we can do excerpts from things.”

“Not Shakespeare,” says Dougie. “Too much to learn.”

I begin to wonder if I should have started down this road. I had forgotten how lazy criminals are. That’s how most of them end up as criminals, they can’t resist a short-cut.

Gerald, languid as ever, raises a finger.

“Small point. I think it’s futile for us to attempt anything that involves too much co-operation.”

“A show made up of solo pieces, then. Y’know, Dougie, you could do that song from My Fair Lady that you like, and maybe even a bit of a scene from it. Pulse, you could do a rap or—”

“Oh right, I’m black, so I do a rap, is that it?”

“No, I—”

“The black boy better not attempt nothing that’s not black.”

“That was just an ex—”

“Maybe I’ll do some Pinter”

“Pinter?”

“Yuh, why not? I can do pausing, there’s a lot of pausing, isn’t there, I can do that.”

“Which Pinter piece do you think you’d like to do, Pulse?”

“I dunno, I’ll have to read some first.”

I back off. Mohammad wades in.

“I could act out the story of how the Israelis faked 9/11.”

Dougie mutters something ominous.

“Historical’s good,” I say, trying not to sound patronising, “but maybe that’s a little…y’know…”

“It’s anti-Semitic,” says Gerald.

“And bollocks.” adds Dougie.

“Or schmollocks, as you Jews say.” Mohammad giggles, he’s pleased with that.

“I’m not Jewish, you little cunt.” Dougie takes a step towards Mohammad and I yell the first thing that comes into my head.

“Dance! There’s always dance! It’s a good medium…for people who can move. Simo, I’ve seen you throwing some shapes.”

He sets off around the room, kick-boxing invisible opponents.

“What about some pieces based on personal experience? Stories from people’s childhoods, stuff like that.”

Albie is staring at the floor, looking paler than ever.

“Albie? Are you in?”

“None of us are ‘in’,” drawls Gerald, “we haven’t taken a vote on it yet, beloved leader. Or hadn’t you noticed yet?”

I sense that now is not the time to force it. “Why don’t we all take a day or two to think it over?” I propose.

“I’m not doing no rap,” mutters Pulse.

When we take the vote a few days later, the mood has swung significantly in favour of doing some kind of performance. There are a few provisos. Nobody wants an audience of more than forty prisoners and Dougie insists that it can’t include any terrorists or paedos.

The only person who makes no contribution to the discussion is Albie, who sits to one side, flicking imaginary nuisances away from his face.

“You’re very quiet, Paul.”

He just shrugs.

“Do you fancy doing a show?” I ask.

“If people want to, that’s fine. I’ll watch.”

“That seems a shame.”

“I’m…I’m not…I can’t perform…not in front of…sorry.”

“I could do something with you, maybe…if that’s any help.”

“I’m no good at acting.” He is pulling at one of his eyebrows now, as if it is annoying him.

“Can you sing?”

He leaves his eyebrow alone and looks at me. Well, nearly at me.

“…Erm…I used to.”

“Used to?”

“Before—” He stops himself “Before all this. I was in the church choir.”

“Oh…right.”

Mohammad says something about how churches will all be gone soon, but nobody bothers to listen.

“Well you could sing in the show, that’d be fine.”

“I…I don’t sing now.”

“Why not?”

“…I never feel like it.”

He is clamming shut again, so I take a gamble.

“What’s your favourite hymn?”

“…Sorry?”

“When you were in the choir, what was your favourite hymn?”

“Erm…‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’.”

Mohammad kicks off about how Allah is the one true God, until Pulse and Dougie tell him he’s about to have his jaw broken.

“Let’s sing it now…you and me.”

Albie is looking straight at me – direct eye contact.This is a first. “Come on, you and me…I’ll start if you like…see how much of it I can remember.”

With Albie watching me, transfixed, I launch into the first verse, singing firmly but not too loud, so that he’ll feel free to join in. But it doesn’t seem to be working. I am already through the first verse and he is just standing, frozen to the spot.

Then, as I begin the line, “Drop thy still dews of quietness”, Albie lifts his head and begins to sing. As we complete the next line – “Till all thy strivings cease” – I peter to a halt, because Albie has one of the most beautiful male voices I have ever heard. It’s a light, effortless liquid tenor that is slowly filling the room. And he looks like a different person. He’s no longer that sickly ghost, he’s standing tall, with his chest out, and his face illuminated by expression; he is transported.

He doesn’t seem to notice that I’m no longer singing, nor that hardened criminals are staring at him rapt in wonder. Even Gerald is impressed, nodding, with his eyebrows raised in acknowledgement of that talent, pure talent, that makes you feel enriched and inadequate at the same time. As Albie reaches the section about letting sense be dumb and flesh retire, you can feel the electricity in the room. Then he drops to pianissimo for the final couplet of “O still, small voice of calm” and it’s as if he is casting a spell.

As the last note is still shimmering through the air, Albie breaks into an awkward little smile. There is an awed silence; grown men, struck dumb.

“Fuck me, Albie,” says Dougie, “have you swallowed an angel?”

Albie laughs – genuinely laughs!

“How long since you last sang?” I ask.

“Dunno…long…long time.”

Pulse shakes his head. “That’s a terrible waste, man. Terrible, terrible waste.” Simo steps forward and tries to congratulate Albie, but the emotion scrambles his words and thoughts too much. I hold Albie by both shoulders.

“Has no one ever told you you’ve got a beautiful voice?”

He shrugs. “When I was little maybe.”

“What about at school?”

“Erm…I went to special school…they only seemed bothered about all the things I couldn’t do.”

“Well take it from me, from us, you’ve got an exceptional voice, you’ve got to do something in the show, please.”

He thinks for a few moments.

“Do I have to do a hymn?”

“You sing whatever you fucking like, fella,” Dougie chuckles. “Fucking opera, fucking show tunes…”

Albie stares at the floor for a few moments.

“I…I quite like the Everly Brothers.”

“I fucking love the Everly Brothers!” exclaims Dougie.

“…my dad used to sing them.”

“So did mine!”

“Then do an Everly Brothers song, Albie,” I urge him. I’m patting his shoulders now. “That’d be brilliant.”

But then he starts to shrink.

“I dunno…me in front of other people, I…” The face-flicking has started again, “Best not, I think.”

I can’t let him fade away, not now, I hunt for a solution.

“How about a duet?”

The prison psychiatrist remained keen for us to continue our sessions. I had managed to use the Drama Group as an excuse for a couple of weeks, but, in the end, I calculated that I would give less cause for concern if I just bit the bullet and went to see him. Part of me still worried, I suppose, that he might have me down as a psychopath.

The session is very like the others. He asks questions – most of them fatuous – while he plays with his hair. But, gradually, I realise that something has changed. When he runs his fingers through his locks, I am no longer experiencing any inner rage. Previously, I would be directing mental heckles at him all the time, little spits of hatred, but now he isn’t getting to me at all. I don’t feel warm towards him, but I no longer want to smash his head against the wall. I feel calm, and although his questions seem no more intelligent than before, I find that I’m not so sensitised to them.

“Do you like yourself?” he asks, out of nowhere.

“’Like’ myself?”

“Yes, would you say you like yourself?” “Erm…I…don’t ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ myself…I just…accept myself as a fact.”

He bends down and fiddles with the laces of one of his desert boots.

“As a fact?”

“Yuh.”

“Do you see yourself as a good person?”

“No…no, I’m capable of being good…sometimes I am good, or can do good, but I also know that I’m very flawed and weak and unreliable.”

“Bad?”

“Sometimes, yes.”

“Do you think you’re unfeeling?”

I pause to choose my words.

“That’s impossible for me to know, without knowing what other people feel. I’d need a comparison.”

“That’s a careful answer.”

“It’s an honest one.”

“Do you see yourself as an honest person?”

It would be ridiculous for me to answer “yes”, he is itching to mention that I’m a perjuror, I can sense it.

“Clearly not”, I reply.

“So, you lie.”

“Yes.”

“To yourself?”

“Probably, but then we all do that to a certain extent, don’t we?” For a moment, I am very tempted to point out that his lustrous shock of hair looks like him lying to himself about his age, but then I let it go. There is no point being a smartarse today.

“When was the last time you cried, Kevin?”

I puff my cheeks and try to think back. I had felt moved when Albie started singing, but I hadn’t cried tears.

“Actually cried?”

“Actually cried”, he repeats.

I had been upset during Sandra’s last visit, but I couldn’t remember weeping. When I do finally work out when it was, I let out an involuntary chuckle.

“What’s so funny?” he asks.

“Well…erm…the last time I cried actual tears was…um…lying in my bunk, thinking about someone who I barely knew and who I’d always regarded as a pain in the arse.”

“Go on.”

So, to my surprise, I tell him the whole story about Gavin, his death and how odd it felt to have been so upset.

“Do you think you were crying for someone else?” he asks.

“Probably.” I shrug. “It couldn’t have been for him, that would make no sense.”

He stares out of the window for a few moments.

“Your voice sounds different,” he tells me.

“Really?”

“Yes, not the same cut to it. Before, there was always an edge of…of latent aggression…like you wanted to smash my head in.”

“Oh, right.” I laugh, in a way that I hope sounds relaxed. He laughs as well, but only to be sociable. A glance at his watch and then he hops to his feet.

“I’ll leave the date of our next session up to you, Kevin”, he announces. “Just make an appointment if and when you feel the need.”

“Thank you,” I say. “You’ve been a lot of help.”

“Good,” he replies.

He couldn’t spot a lie if it bit him on the nose.