legends · 4 min read ·
Letters to Gwen
Letters from a prison wing count twenty-eight cells, and then a twenty-ninth.
*Letter 1 — HMP Cairnmoor, B Wing. Postmarked 4 March. Passed by censor.*
Dear Gwen,
Thank you for the card and the stamps. It means a great deal to get a letter in here. I will tell you about the wing, since you ask. It is a long landing with the cells on either side, fourteen a side, twenty-eight in all. I am in number 9, on the left. The man next door, in 10, is called Hollis. He sings in the evenings. Not well, but I don't mind.
Nobody tells you how quiet it is at night.
Yours,
Peter Ames
· · ·
*Letter 2 — Postmarked 22 March. Passed by censor.*
Dear Gwen,
The weather has turned. We get an hour in the yard, and on Thursday I saw a robin. I am learning to read. Mr. Okafor, the chaplain, brought me a book with big print. It is a tale about a sailor and a dog and I am three chapters in.
I should tell you about the count. They count us three times a day, at 8, 12 and 5, and at night, after lock-up, an officer walks the landing with a torch. He stops at each door and looks in and says the number aloud. Nine. Ten. Eleven. It is oddly soothing.
Yours,
Peter
· · ·
*Letter 3 — Postmarked 19 April. Passed by censor.*
Dear Gwen,
Something odd happened last night and I do not like to put it in a letter, but I have no-one else to tell. At the night count, the officer went past my door and said "Nine," as usual. Then he went to the end of the landing. And then he came back and said "Twenty-nine."
I thought I'd misheard. This morning I asked Hollis. He said, "There's twenty-eight cells. There's only ever been twenty-eight." But I know what I heard. Twenty-nine.
I think there is a cell at the far end that I have never seen.
Yours,
Peter
· · ·
*Letter 4 — Postmarked 3 May. Passed by censor with one line deleted.*
Dear Gwen,
I counted the cells myself this morning. When we were unlocked for the yard I walked the length of the landing very slowly, looking at the doors. Fourteen on the left, fourteen on the right. At the end, the grille, and the gate, and the wall.
But in the wall, to the left of the grille, there was a plaster patch. A rectangle, six foot by three, a different colour from the rest of the wall. About the size of a door. [Deleted by censor.]
Yours,
Peter
· · ·
*Letter 5 — Postmarked 21 May. Passed by censor.*
Dear Gwen,
I have been awake all night. At about two I heard a noise from the end of the landing. A scraping, as of a spoon on plaster. It went on for hours. Hollis heard it too. He banged on the wall and shouted for the officer, but the officer did not come. The scraping stopped at six, at first light.
When they unlocked us this morning, the plaster patch was gone. In its place, there was a door. It was open an inch. Inside I could see a bunk and a toilet and a small barred window.
Nobody is in it.
Yours,
Peter
· · ·
*Letter 6 — Postmarked 8 June. Passed by censor.*
Dear Gwen,
They have put a man in the new cell. They did not say who. They did not take him past my door. But I heard the keys last night and the door at the end clang shut and the officer say, loud and plain, "Twenty-nine."
This morning, at unlock, I looked down the landing. All the other doors were open and the men were out. But the door at the end stayed shut. The officer walked past it without a glance.
Hollis whispers that the man in 29 doesn't eat. Hollis says he passes the tray back full.
Yours,
Peter
· · ·
*Letter 7 — Postmarked 30 June. Not passed. Returned to sender. Stamped: "Addressee unknown."*
*Letter 8 — Postmarked 14 July. Not passed.*
· · ·
**Governor's note on file (HMP Cairnmoor, 1 August)**
Prisoner Ames, P. (A4471) was transferred from B Wing on 28 June to the Healthcare Unit. His cell, B-9, has been reallocated.
Following enquiries from a member of the public (Ms. G. Pryce), we can confirm that no letters have been sent from the prison in the name of Peter Ames since 28 June.
We have also confirmed that B Wing has twenty-eight cells.
*Handwritten at the foot, in an unfamiliar hand, in pencil:*
*Dear Gwen. The man at the end of the landing is writing to you. He wants you to know that the door is open. Count again.*