I was stuck for something to write about. Completely at a loss for words. A column on the rejection I have just received for "home tagging" would have been too downbeat-and what with the palaver the authorities have been giving me over running my "writing business" from my cell, and the fact that I have just reached the critical final chapter of my April Fools book, I have to admit I was well and truly empty.
So I rang David, my long-suffering editor, in his rooftop eyrie in elegant Bedford Square, to ask how many days I had left until my final, final deadline. Friday, he said. I looked forward pessimistically to two museless days.
"Oh, by the way," he suddenly recalled. "I came across a Tory MP the other day. A minister in the Major administration. He was most interested in you. He's taken up the idea of adoption rather than 'care' as the best deal for children without parents, after these endless litanies of abuse in our children's homes."
"Well, practically everybody I've ever known in prison has been in 'care' at one time or another," I said.
"Exactly, that's his point," David said.
"But I was never in care. In fact I was adopted, and I've ended up in prison, so I'm not the best advertisement for your MP's proposition that adoption works. It's a question of nature versus nurture, isn't it? In my case it looks like nature..."
Strangely enough, I had a friend at school who'd also been adopted. His adoptive family were so rich that they made the Sunday Times 'rich' list. We were, nevertheless, both thieves, vying with each other to see how many cigarettes we could steal from our adoptive fathers' cigarette boxes. We'd meet at the cricket pavilion each day to count out and smoke our booty. I think his family must have clocked on to his delinquency. At any rate, they packed him off to Millfield, and he runs the family business these days. At some stage, unlike me, Ross must have seen the light.
"Have you ever thought of tracing your real parents?" asked David.
"Thought about it for years. Just never had the bottle to go through with it. As likely as not, I've already met my 'real' brothers or even my natural father on my ceaseless journey through the penal system. All I know is that ever since I can remember, I've had this compunction to take that which doesn't belong to me. You've got to believe it, David. My adoptive parents gave me everything a child could ever want. They sent me to one of the best schools in the country, they bestowed gifts and love like there was no tomorrow. They used to drop me off at school in a beautiful brown Daimler; we'd take two foreign holidays a year. By the time I was 15 I'd travelled to every continent..."
"So why did you steal?"
"Not nurture. That's for sure. I don't know how many times I've been asked this question and I don't know how many times I have failed to answer it."
Jean Genet said that he stole to give away to his friends. And sure, I've never been acquisitive for the sake of acquisition. I've always given most of my ill-gotten gains to others. Genet also spoke more intriguingly of what he described as "necessary vagabondage," to which born thieves abandon themselves with "irresistible passion"; of how they "flee the pleasure they enjoy in the breast of their family. It is a need for freedom, for carefree hours, for new emotions, which is never satisfied..." (my italics). I guess that best sums up how I've always felt when that persistent, nagging urge to steal raises its head, to which I usually succumb. No one ever taught me to steal (although fathers do sometimes pass on their dubious skills to their offspring). My adoptive mother was a pillar of the church. My adoptive father was indulgent, generous, patient and, above all, as honest as the day is long.
"I don't know why I steal, David, although I do think about it a lot. But what's all this got to do with my writer's block? Does the MP want me to get in touch? Because even though I'm a failed adoptive child, look where someone like Moses ended up. I think the MP's right, adoption is a much more compassionate alternative to 'care,' and it's a scandal that it's now so difficult to adopt."
"How long is it before you get out now?" David asked, changing the subject.
"Seventy-five days, give or take the end result of a pending positive piss test for cannabis. They've even put me on closed visits pending adjudication. I've been trying to think what I can say to the governor in mitigation. That I'd never seen drugs before coming to prison 20 years ago? That I grew to rely on cannabis over the years? That I was stabbed, missed death by an eighth of an inch, and took up heroin to cope with the resultant paranoia? Surely I deserve a small reward, governor? Positive cannabis is a real achievement in my fight against class A addiction. Give me credit, not 'demotion to basic...'"
"Ten out of ten for effort, Peter. By the way, your old friend Punky rang the Prospect office. Did you get in touch with him? We gave his number to George."
Remember Punky? My Lancastrian friend who went to his mother's funeral in handcuffs? It broke my heart when I wrote that piece. I hope it honoured her memory. Well, the news from Punky is good. He's out of prison. He's found himself a loving partner and plans to open up an ice cream business on Morecambe Promenade-if he can find a sponsor. I've asked him to keep an avuncular eye on George, about whom I am extremely worried. George is back in London, out half the night, getting up to his old tricks. Next week the two of them are coming up to see me together.
It was time to say goodbye to David. "So Friday's the absolute final deadline?" I asked, trying to buy myself an extra couple of days in the hope of last-minute inspiration. "If it's on my desk first thing Monday morning, you'll just about make it." I did.
