5
WHEN LLOYD STOOD to greet him at nine o’clock on his first morning as deputy librarian, Harry realized that he’d only ever seen the man sitting down. Lloyd was taller than he’d expected, well over six feet. Despite the unhealthy prison food he had a spare frame, and was one of the few prisoners who shaved every morning. With his swept-back, jet-black hair, he resembled an ageing matinee idol, rather than a man who was serving five years for fraud. Quinn didn’t know the details of his crime, which meant that nobody other than the warden knew the full story. And the rule in jail was simple: if a prisoner didn’t volunteer what he was in for, you didn’t ask.
Lloyd took Harry through the daily routine, which the new deputy librarian had mastered by the time they went down for supper that evening. During the next few days he continued to quiz Lloyd with questions about matters like collecting overdue books, fines, and inviting prisoners to donate their own books to the library when they were released, which Lloyd hadn’t even considered. Most of Lloyd’s answers were monosyllabic, so Harry finally allowed him to return to a resting position at his desk, well hidden behind a copy of the New York Times.
Although there were nearly a thousand prisoners locked up in Lavenham, fewer than one in ten of them could read and write, and not all of those who could bothered to visit the library on a Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday.
Harry soon discovered that Max Lloyd was both lazy and devious. He didn’t seem to mind how many initiatives his new deputy came up with, as long as it didn’t involve him in any extra work.
Lloyd’s main task seemed to be to keep a pot of coffee on the go, just in case an officer dropped by. Once the warden’s copy of the previous day’s New York Times had been delivered to the library, Lloyd settled down at his desk for the rest of the morning. He first turned to the book review section, and when he finished perusing it, he turned his attention to the classified ads, followed by the news, and finally sports. After lunch he would make a start on the crossword puzzle, which Harry would complete the following morning.
By the time Harry got the newspaper, it was already two days out of date. He always began with the international news pages, as he wanted to find out how the war in Europe was progressing. That was how he learned about the fall of France, and a few months later that Neville Chamberlain had resigned as Prime Minister, and Winston Churchill had succeeded him. Not everyone’s first choice, although Harry would never forget the speech Churchill had made when he presented the prizes at Bristol Grammar School. He wasn’t in any doubt that Britain was being led by the right man. Time and again Harry cursed the fact that he was a deputy librarian in an American prison, and not an officer in the Royal Navy.
During the last hour of the day, when even Harry couldn’t find anything new to do, he brought his diary up to date.
It took Harry just over a month to reorganize all the books into their correct categories: first fiction, then non-fiction. During the second month, he broke them down into even smaller classifications, so that prisoners didn’t have to waste time searching for the only three books on woodwork that were on the shelves. He explained to Lloyd that when it came to non-fiction, the category was more important than the author’s name. Lloyd shrugged.
On Sunday mornings, Harry would push the library cart around the four blocks, retrieving overdue books from prisoners, some of which hadn’t been returned for more than a year. He had expected a few of the old-timers on D block to be resentful, even to take offence at the intrusion, but they all wanted to meet the man who’d got Hessler transferred to Pierpoint.
After his interview with the board, Hessler had been offered a senior post at Pierpoint, and he accepted the promotion as it was nearer his home town. While Harry never suggested he’d had anything to do with Hessler’s transfer, that wasn’t the story Quinn peddled from ear to ear until it became legend.
During his trips around the blocks in search of missing books, Harry often picked up anecdotes that he would record in his diary that evening.
The warden occasionally dropped into the library, not least because when Harry had appeared before the board, he’d described Mr Swanson’s attitude to the education of inmates as bold, imaginative and far-seeing. Harry couldn’t believe how much undeserved flattery the warden was quite happy to soak up.
After his first three months, loans were up by 14 per cent. When Harry asked the warden if he could instigate a reading class in the evenings, Swanson hesitated for a moment, but gave in when Harry repeated the words bold, imaginative and far-seeing.
Only three prisoners attended Harry’s first class, and one of them was Pat Quinn, who could already read and write. But by the end of the following month the class had grown to sixteen, even if several of them would have done almost anything to get out of their cells for an hour in the evening. But Harry managed to notch up one or two notable successes among the younger prisoners, and was continually reminded that just because you hadn’t gone to the ‘right’ school, or hadn’t gone to school at all, it didn’t mean you were stupid – or the other way round, Quinn reminded him.
Despite all the extra activity Harry had initiated, he found he was still left with time on his hands, so he set himself the task of reading two new books a week. Once he’d conquered the few American classics in the library, he turned his attention to crime, by far the most popular category with his fellow inmates, taking up seven of the library’s nineteen shelves.
Harry had always enjoyed Conan Doyle, and he was looking forward to turning his attention to his American rivals. He began with The Bigger They Come by Erle Stanley Gardner, before moving on to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. He felt a little guilty about enjoying them so much. What would Mr Holcombe think?
During the last hour before the library closed, Harry would continue to bring his diary up to date. He was taken by surprise one evening when Lloyd, having finished the paper, asked if he could read it. Harry knew that Lloyd had been a literary agent in New York on the outside, which was how he’d landed the job in the library. He sometimes dropped the names of authors he’d represented, most of whom Harry had never heard of. Lloyd only spoke about how he’d ended up in Lavenham on one occasion, watching the door to make sure no one overheard.
‘A bit of bad luck,’ Lloyd explained. ‘In good faith I invested some of my clients’ money on the Stock Exchange, and when things didn’t go quite according to plan, I was left carrying the bag.’
When Harry repeated the story to Quinn that night, he raised his eyes to the heavens.
‘More likely he spent the money on slow nags and fast dames.’
‘Then why go into such detail,’ asked Harry, ‘when he’s never mentioned the reason he’s in here to anyone else?’
‘You’re so na?ve sometimes,’ said Quinn. ‘With you as the messenger, Lloyd knows there’s a far better chance of the rest of us believing his story. Just be sure you never make a deal with that man, because he’s got six fingers on each hand’ – a pickpocket’s expression that Harry recorded in his diary that night. But he didn’t take much notice of Quinn’s advice, partly because he couldn’t imagine any circumstances in which he would make a deal with Max Lloyd, other than about whose turn it was to pour the coffee when the warden dropped in.
By the end of his first year at Lavenham, Harry had filled three exercise books with his observations on prison life, and could only wonder how many more pages of this daily chronicle he’d manage before he completed his sentence.
He was surprised by how enthusiastic Lloyd was, always wanting to read the next instalment. He even suggested he might be allowed to show Harry’s work to a publisher. Harry laughed.
‘I can’t imagine anyone would be interested in my ramblings.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ said Lloyd.