22

Maniac was still in my class. He was still switching between personalities. I understood why his classmates called him Maniac; he did have some weird ideas and they were fairly consistent. He would talk to Joe, though. I had asked him who Joe was but then Joe sometimes disappeared and Maniac could become aggressive because I had driven him away. The other class members had learned not to talk to Maniac at all when he was with Joe. I now felt it was a multiple personality syndrome but apparently the psychiatrist didn’t think so. Correction: the HMP psychiatrists didn’t think so but the guy currently treating him did. I had witnessed a couple of episodes when Joe apparently controlled him and at other times Maniac just wasn’t there in my classroom at all, but Joe was. The fascinating thing was that Joe could read better than Maniac, was co-operative and logical. He would respond to questions and participate in discussions more logically and with better thought-out arguments than Maniac. In fact, I, and the class members, liked Joe better than Maniac, but Joe would only appear about twice a week and his appearances were random. It seemed that Joe sometimes controlled Maniac. It was, or seemed, that they were both there. It was odd watching and listening to two personalities in one body arguing. Usually, Maniac would be disruptive – he would shout and argue, become angry and throw things – and Joe would turn up and a battle would ensue between them. Sometimes Joe won and Maniac would settle down and become Joe and at other times, Joe would leave and we had to cope with Maniac being unreasonable or sulking or storming out and we might not see him again that day, or he would return as the ‘normal’ Maniac. Mind you, normal Maniac wasn’t a normal, rational person. He would hear things that we couldn’t hear, or he would just lose interest or if asked a question he would argue about it or argue with another class member. He also had or seemed to have hallucinations. I imagine that all classes have a difficult person but this was way outside of difficult.

My conversation with the doctor wasn’t a lot of help. The medics had tried him on drugs since our first discussions but they’d apparently been worse than not drugging him. The HMP psychiatrist was even less help. He smiled and nodded and gave the distinct impression that I was the one with the mental problem not Maniac. I talked to a couple of the other instructors who had had Maniac in their groups and they just told me to get rid of him, but that was easier said than done as he had turned up in their classes until he decided to move on, which is how I had ended up with him.

He had now started the new treatment and I was supposed to keep a record of his behaviour. It did seem to have changed, but not a lot. It seemed he had bonded with my class, so if there was a group of them he would just join them; he didn’t seem to recognise that he wasn’t wanted. This had the effect that my class members became close, as other prisoners would leave them when Maniac turned up. Teaching was tough enough but with Maniac in the class it could sometimes be purgatory, but things were improving. I had a feeling his behaviour was improving and I was on the point of reporting the improvement when it all went pear-shaped.

It was a Wednesday. Wednesdays for me were usually the day of the week where if things were going to go wrong they usually would. I was with the usual crew at our table when Maniac came up to the servery. I just knew things were going to go wrong. I could read him. It was the way he looked, his eyes, the way he moved, nothing exaggerated, nothing specific just little indications. Pansy was serving soup. As you might guess, he was called Pansy because he was a pansy. Maniac snatched the ladle from him and hit him on the head. The duty officer went to Pansy’s aid and he was attacked. Prisoners moved back; why should they get involved with a nutter? I looked at Arty and we went to sort it. I tried talking to him.

‘Come on, Maniac, we need the ladle for the soup.’

‘Fuck off, Captain. They’ve poisoned it.’ Here we go into delusion land again.

‘Have they? Who poisoned it?’

‘That Pansy. He wants us to catch HIV and die of AIDS.’

‘Who told you that then, Maniac?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘What does Joe say?’

‘Joe ain’t here.’

‘Shouldn’t you ask him?’

Maniac stood still; he was puzzled, lost. Two prison officers moved in and he just surrendered to them. He was escorted away and so was I. I sat in a waiting room for about half an hour then Senior Officer James arrived and I was wheeled in to see the governor. The doc was also there and the two officers who had turned up and led Maniac away.

The governor asked what I had done to provoke Prisoner Arkwright. I outlined what had happened and that Maniac was under control when the prison officers arrived. I also suggested they talked to Pansy and the downed officer. This wasn’t greeted with enthusiasm. However, after a few more questions, I was dismissed. Senior Officer James came with me.

‘You can be a real dick, Jake,’ she said.

‘Why? What did I do?’

‘One: you got involved. Two: it seems you sorted the problem or at least took the sting out of Maniac. Three: you told it how it was.’

‘How’s that wrong?’

‘Jake, this is a prison. You’re a prisoner. You aren’t supposed to be capable of taking initiatives let alone successful initiatives.’

‘But Maniac could have done a lot of damage with that ladle.’

‘Yes and he has done things like this before and we’ve handled it using brute force and beaten Maniac to pulp, so you’ve made the system look stupid.’

‘But he’s mentally ill.’

‘You know that, I know that, the bloody doctor knows that, we know he shouldn’t be in here but the law doesn’t understand that, so the governor plays the game and you come waltzing in and bugger the whole thing up.’

‘You have to be joking.’

‘No. Maniac killed two women and a kid. He was tried for murder and found guilty but the docs don’t know what’s wrong with him. He was just a bit weird at his trial so he got fifteen years, as he pleaded guilty, because Joe told him to. He was regarded as responsible for his actions.’

‘Christ, there has to be a better system than this.’

‘No, he is, as far as the law is concerned, as sane as you or I, but I’m not too sure about you and I must be nuts to do this job, but the psychs said he knows right from wrong so he’s sane. Christ, you know the law, Jake; you were a policeman.’

‘Yes, you’re right.’ I did know that in criminal and mental health law sanity is a legal thing not a medical thing; therefore, a person can be acting under profound mental illness and yet be sane, and can also be ruled insane without an underlying mental illness.’

‘So what happens now?’

‘Now we forget the whole thing.’

‘And Maniac?’

‘He’ll turn up tomorrow. You’ll run your class tomorrow and hopefully, he won’t hit anybody with a ladle and if he kicks off and you’re around you’ll walk away. We’ll beat seven bells out of him, stick him in the sick bay to heal and recover and turn him loose on the rest of you again, got it?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Good.’