When he had finished his silent scrutiny Warder Collins in a leisurely fashion gave them each a number and a cell number. Arthur’s number was 115 and his cell number 273. Then Warder Collins unlocked a heavy iron gate. He said:
“Step out now. March lively.”
They stepped out, and under the dispassionate eye of Warder Collins they marched in line into the main body of the prison.
The prison was built like a well, an enormous deep resounding well with cells all round, galleries of cells reaching in tiers to a great height. Every gallery was heavily barred so that the front of the combined galleries presented the appearance of an enormous cage. The air was cold and in spite of the smell of disinfectant had a cold earthy prison smell. The smell made Arthur shudder.
Warder Collins showed Arthur to Cell 273. It was in the third gallery. Arthur went into Cell 273. The cell was six feet by thirteen feet and extremely high. The walls were of brick painted a yellowish brown on the lower half and whitewashed on the upper. High up on one wall was a very small heavily barred window which was scarcely a window at all. Very little light came through even on bright sunny days. An armoured electric globe, operated from outside, gave a dim glow to the cell. The floor of the cell was of cement and on the cement floor stood an enamel jug and a utensil. The stench of hundreds of these utensils made the prison smell.
The bed was a board six feet long by two and a half feet broad with a blanket but no mattress. Above the bed was a ledge with an enamel mug, a plate and spoon and a tin knife. A slate and pencil were hung up above the ledge and propped up invitingly under the slate stood a small Bible.
Arthur turned from his inspection to find Warder Collins standing by the door, as if waiting for Arthur’s opinion of the cell. His lip was a little drawn back and his head thrust forward. When he saw that Arthur had nothing to say he swung round without a word and padded silently away.
As the door clanged, a heavy door with a small barred peep-hole, Arthur sat down on the edge of the board that was his bed. He was in prison. This was a prison cell and he was in the prison cell. He was not Arthur Barras now. He was number 115.
In spite of his resolution a cold dismay broke over him: it was worse, far worse than he had expected. Outside it was easy to talk glibly of prison when you had no idea what prison was like, but inside it was not so easy. Prison was a horrible place. He gazed round the small, dim shut-in cell. No, it was not going to be so easy after all.
At seven o’clock supper was served. This was an extra supper, a special supper for newcomers consisting of a bowl of watery porridge. Though it nauseated him, Arthur forced himself to eat the porridge. He ate standing and when he had finished he sat down again on the edge of his bed. He knew it was fatal to think. Yet he had nothing else to do. He could not see to read the Bible and there was nothing in particular he wished to write upon the slate.
He thought, why am I here? He was here because he refused to kill, because he refused to go out and lunge a bayonet into the body of another man in a desolate stretch of mud in France. It was not because he had committed murder that he was here but because he had refused to commit murder.
It was queer, it was quite amusing, but the more he thought of it the less amusing it became. Soon the sweating of his palms, the physical evidence of his neurosis, began. The sweat poured out of his palms until he thought it would never cease.
All at once, as he sat there, a sudden sound, a sort of howling, made him start. It came from the bottom of the prison well, the lowest gallery of all, from the solitary confinement cells, a brute noise, perfectly inhuman and uncontrolled. Arthur jumped up. His nerves quivered in sympathy, like the strings of a violin, to that horrible howling. He listened tensely. The howling rose to an unbearable crescendo. Then it stopped suddenly. It was shut off with an almost violent abruptness. The succeeding silence hummed with conjectures as to how the howling had been stopped.
Arthur began to pace up and down his cell. He paced quickly and gradually increased his pace. He kept waiting for the howling to begin again but it did not. He was almost running up and down the concrete floor of his cell when suddenly a bell clanged and the lights went out.
He stood stock still in the centre of his cell, then slowly he took off his arrow-stamped khaki in the darkness and lay down on the board bed. He could not sleep. He argued with himself that he could not expect to sleep, that he would in time get used to the hardness of his board. But meanwhile a great kaleidoscope of bitter thought whirled and flashed within his brain, like an enormous wheel whirling and swelling until it filled the cell. Faces and scenes whirled within the whirling wheel. His father, Hetty, Ramage, the Tribunal, the Neptune, the dead men in the Neptune, men stretched upon battlefields with dead protesting eyes, all mingled and whirling, faster, faster, whirling in the bitter wheel. He clung with sweating hands to the edge of his board supporting himself against this chaos, while the night passed.
At half-past five in the morning when it was still dark the prison bell rang. Arthur got up. He washed, dressed, folded his blanket and cleaned up the cell. He had barely finished when the key turned in the lock. The sound of the key turning in the lock of his cell was peculiar, a rasping squeak like two raw metals forced across each other unwillingly. It was a sound which grated into the marrow of the bones. Warder Collins threw some mail bags into the cell. He said:
“Stitch these.” The he slammed the door shut.
Arthur picked up the mail bags, coarse pieces of whitey-brown sacking. He did not know how to stitch them. He laid the bags down again. He sat staring at the shaped canvas bags until seven when the key sounded and his breakfast was handed in. The breakfast consisted of watery porridge and a chunk of brown bread.
After breakfast Warder Collins thrust his squat head round the door. He took a good look at the unsewn mail bags, then he looked at Arthur in a curious fashion. But he made no comment. He merely said, rather softly:
“Step out for exercise.”
Exercise took place in the prison yard. The yard was a square of greasy asphalt with enormous high walls and a raised platform at one end. On the platform a warder stood watching the circle of men as they shuffled round. He watched the men’s lips to see that they did not talk. From time to time he shouted: “No talking”; the old lags were such experts they could talk to one another without moving their lips.
In the middle of the yard was a lavatory, a circular band of metal supported on low pillars. As the men circled the yard they held up their hands to the warder asking permission to go to the lavatory. When they went to the lavatory their heads were seen above the metal band and their legs below. It was considered a great treat to be allowed to sit a long time in the lavatory, a privilege which the warder allowed only to his favourites.
Arthur shuffled round with the others. In the pale light of the early morning the circle of shuffling men was incomprehensible to reason, it became grotesque, like a circus of the insane. The faces of the men were debased, brooding, sullen, hopeless. Their bodies had the prison stench, their arms hung inhumanly.
Two places in front of him he made out Hicks who leered at him in recognition across his shoulder.
“D’y like a fag, sissy?” asked Hicks, making the words come back from the corner of his mouth.
“No talking,” shouted Warder Hall from his platform. “You, No. 514, no talking, there!”
Round and round, circling, circling, like the wheel in Arthur’s brain, circling round the obscene focus of the lavatory. Warder Hall was the ring master, his voice cracked like a whip.