Telling Andrew of my reconciliation with Tom when he next rang was so great a pleasure that, after putting down the 'phone, I was a little saddened by the thought that such intense feelings of happiness could not be sustained for ever. Not wanting to detract from the good news I said nothing about the mugging. A comment he made, that the spell in prison had completely demoralised Tom, did not affect my elation at the time, but remembering it later made me aware there was still one corner of Tom's life he had kept from me. Eager still for complete disclosure of everything, I raised it the next time we were alone together. At first he tried to laugh the subject off by saying the trouble with Wormwood Scrubs was that it was full of villains, but I persisted: 'Would you simply rather not talk about it?'
'You might have something there. Prisons are places where all sorts of horrible things go on, Mark. You don't want to hear about all that.'
'Not if you find it too difficult to talk about.'
He looked at my expectant face and shook his head. 'All right, if you must know, I was banged up on this wing with hundreds of men, two to a cell, with a lot more experience of being inside than I had. There's all sorts in there, but not many you'd choose as friends. Don't know why but for some reason this screw decided to give me a job mopping a landing and staircase. If you're lucky you get rewarded with a little bit of money you can spend in the prison shop, extra underwear and socks, and a chance to take a shower when the bathroom's not crowded. Little things, like being able to use the pay 'phone and buy tobacco, are really important in there, when all you've got day after day is the same faces, the same walls, the same horrible cheap food, your limited little routines week after week. A lot of the other cons don't like it though, they think you're collaborating with the screws doing a job like that, demeaning yourself, becoming part of the system, so you get snide little remarks from them as you pass by.
You have to put up with that, but there was a lot of drug dealing going on in the jail. I kept clear of it, but there was an evil bastard called Stomper. Stomper was his nickname, he had a reputation for using his boots on anyone who crossed him. To him ordinary cons like me were there to be used. First of all he tried to pressure me into having stuff brought in by a visitor, threatened to put me in the hospital wing otherwise. I faced him out. He threatened all sorts of things, planting stuff on me and tipping off the screws, having me beaten up, having someone with AIDS stab me with a hypodermic. He was determined to get something out of me, one way or another, probably more to show his own importance than anything else.