It was Charles’s turn to choose the station, so everyone in the cell was listening to Radio Four. Brian Redhead was talking to the ex-Governor of the Bank of England, who had resigned the day before. Nobody had yet been found to take his place. Mr Redhead queried, ‘So, sir, you’re telling me that, in your capacity as Governor of the Bank of England, even you, in your exalted position, did not know the terms of this Japanese loan? I find that hard to believe.’
‘So do I,’ said the ex-Governor, bitterly. ‘Why do you think I resigned?’
‘So how will the loan be repaid?’ asked Mr Redhead.
‘It won’t,’ said the Governor, ‘the vaults are empty. In order to fund his lunatic schemes Mr Barker has successfully robbed the Bank of England.’
The cell door opened and Mr Pike held out letters, saying, ‘Fat Oswald, from your mother. Moses, one from your wife, and one from your girlfriend.’
To Lee he said, ‘Nothing, as usual.’ To Charles he said, ‘Teck, one, from a moron, judging by the writing on the envelope.’
Charles opened the envelope, inside were two letters.
Dear Dad,
I am alrite are you alrite
I now you are not on your holiday I seen Darrun Christmas an he tole me you was in the nick
Harris as wripped up all the plants in the gardin
Love Harry. 7 years.
Dear Dad,
Mum told us a lie that you was on holiday in Scottland. Are video has been stolen and also so has the candlesticks what belonged to that King George what reined years ago. Mr Christmas knows the bloke what took them. He said he is going to beat up this bloke and get are candlesticks back.
Are school is gettin a new roof soon. Jack Barker sent a letter to Misses Stricklan and she tole us in assembly yestardy.
Aunty Anne as got a horse called Gilbert. It lives in her back garden in a stabel. It is pink. The stabel not the horse. Will you send us some money from prison we have not got none.
Love from William.
P.S. Please write back soon.
Charles read the two letters with horror. It wasn’t only his sons’ abysmal use of the English language, the misspellings, the contempt shown for the rules of punctuation, the appalling handwriting. It was the contents of the letters. When he got out of prison he would kill Harris. And why hadn’t Diana mentioned the burglary?
As he was folding the letters, the cell door swung open and Mr Pike said, ‘Teck, your grandma’s dead. Governor sends his sympathy and says you’ll be let out for the funeral.’
The door closed again and Charles struggled with his feelings. His cellmates Lee, Carlton and Fat Oswald looked at him and were silent. Some minutes later Lee said, ‘If I was let out I’d do a runner.’
Charles stared out of the cell window at the top branches of the sycamore tree and longed for freedom.
Later that morning, when Fat Oswald returned from his creative writing class, he handed Charles a piece of paper, saying, ‘It’s for you, to cheer you up.’
Charles raised himself from his bunk, took the paper from Oswald’s pudgy hand and read:
Outside
Outside is cakes and tins of pop
And you can go into a shop,
To buy the chocolates that you like,
Or training shoes: the best is Nike.
Charles realized that what he was reading was a poem.
Outside is flowers and trees galore
If we could leave the prison door.
There is girls with pretty faces
We could take them to nice places.Outside is where we want to be,
Charlie, Carlton, Lee and me.
‘I say, it’s frightfully good, Oswald,’ said Charles, who certainly agreed with the sentiments the poem expressed, though he abhorred the banality of the construction.
Fat Oswald heaved himself onto his top bunk, beaming with pride. ‘Read it out loud, Charlie,’ said Lee, who, until now, had not realized that he was sharing a cell with a fellow poet.
When Charles had read the poem aloud to his fellow cellmates, Carlton said, ‘That’s a wicked poem, man.’
Lee remained silent. He was burning with creative jealousy. In his opinion, his own ‘Fluffy the Kitten’ was by far the superior poem.
Charles lay on his bunk; the last line of the poem kept repeating itself in his head:
Outside is where we want to be,
Charlie, Carlton, Lee and me.