We might be forgiven for assuming that Terry Waite would have had enough of prisons to last him several lifetimes. Not so, it seems. Last week he was here, in HM Prison in Middle England, to present a Butler Trust award to a "deserving member of staff." Watching him bouncing around made me feel humble. We're always carping about the minor inconveniences of serving a British prison sentence. Compared to Terry Waite, we've never had it so good.
Waite is a great bear of a man, hirsute and untidy, whose presence seems to command respect. He had honoured us with that presence, after a private lunch in the boardroom, to meet one of our number, a very old and valued friend of mine. Summa cum laude graduate of the penal system. Ross Gordon, MA in Education, BA Hons, Adv Dip Ed (Open), CBA, is as good an advert for the ailing prison education departments as you are likely to find. Ross came to prison at the age of 17 without a CSE to his name. That was 23 years ago. These days, possibly the most academically qualified prisoner in Britain, he spends his time dedicatedly teaching the cohorts of illiterate and innumerate inmates for ?8.50 a week. Ross is a shy, gentle, self-effacing creature who never pushes himself on anybody. Yet he has blazed his trail up the academic ladder, and he has become something of a hero to the dangerous, backward lads he teaches.
Having heard that later in the afternoon the 40-year-old lifer was to have conferred on him the MA degree in question, in a special congregation of the Open University in the prison chapel, Waite waived his carefully controlled itinerary aside and invited himself to the ceremony.
A classroom had been set aside, wherein Ross sat in his best starched blue striped shirt, going over the notes he'd scribbled in his spidery hand, trying to memorise his acceptance speech, overwhelmed at the prospect of facing a prison chapel full of worthies, even more alarmed when they told him that Terry wanted a private word. The official party had to stand outside in the corridor with the lowly cons. Inside, through the glass partition, I could see the two in earnest conversation.
"What did he say?" I asked Ross as he came out on his way up to the chapel.
"He said he wrote his first book while they had him as a hostage. Trouble was, they wouldn't give him a pen or paper. Says he memorised the whole of the book in his head." I imagined trying to memorise the whole of my book, April Fools-all 180,000 words of it. It was time to take our seats in the chapel.
The church here is an austere enclosure of space with a corrugated clevestory almost as high as the nave in Winchester cathedral. I sat half way down the aisle on the right. Two rows behind me, my arch enemy, the deputy governor, plonked herself down. She was dressed in nothing so much as tartan sackcloth. I sensed that she had her eagle eyes on my open notebook and ready pencil from the moment she arrived.
I began to take notes anyway. This was a positive story which needed telling, and I wasn't going to let a disapproving glance stop me from my mission. By now there was a fair assemblage of gowns and hoods ready to convene: purple silk and crimson satin, snow-white ermine and good brocade. Ross's Master's gown was cornflower blue. He looked like a singer in a gospel choir. It was very impressive, but somehow rather sad.
Somewhere along the line Ross had slipped up. At the beginning of the 1990s, equipped already with his bachelor's degree in mathematics, he had been transferred to the pre-release hostel at Wormwood Scrubs, allowed out every day to work at the Deptford centre where he planned and set up literacy and numeracy sessions for London's homeless youngsters.
Yet at the same time, he began drinking. He evidently arrived back at the hostel more than once with one too many inside him. He also admits to being smitten by heroin during this period, in the restless search for sensation that follows release from long-term incarceration. Eventually they decided to revoke his licence, and sent him back to closed conditions. He lost his job, and his freedom, and he's been stuck in a cell ever since. It was during this second period of protracted imprisonment that he gave up heroin and began to work towards his MA.
Ross spoke hesitatingly, when he rose to address us, of "an unbelievable feeling of guilt that I've achieved something." It was a poignant speech which rang out as rain battered down on the plastic corrugation above our heads. Ross's literacy group began to wriggle in their seats like impatient schoolchildren. The registrar declared the congregation formally closed.
Afterwards, in the library, the lads made a dive for the cakes: the best thing about these quasi-social occasions. Wolfing down the confectionery right under the governors' noses. I watched from the sidelines as the outside guests had awkward conversations with the inside guests. One woman kept a very firm grip on her faux-crocodile handbag. Ross circulated self-consciously in his academic robes. I wondered how long it would be before the parole board decided that Ross ought to be given another chance out there. He's done his penance.
Terry Waite had to leave early. And the peripatetic degree-givers had to rush off to another prison for another show. The following day, all was quiet and peaceful again. As I mused over my morning bowl of porridge, I wondered whether it hadn't all been an elaborate Firbankian dream.
