4. Solitary Confinement

It took the Reverend Barney Pickle two whole days to arrive at an explanation for his unpleasant predicament. By then the days had already started merging into one, with his gross cell mate (and mate was a misnomer if ever there was one) Amos Gadding happy to torment him at every available opportunity.

“I don’t mean no harm,” he assured the vicar with a cackle, “just that I might need your boss upstairs tp notice me before I’m sentenced.”

On two occasions that thirty stone hulk was taken from the cell, either for a visit by one of his awful friends, he’d described them to Barney so it was quite clear that they were awful, or some official interview that he kept totally secret. It was during those all too brief breaks that Barney could pray loud and sadly not long, but hearing his own voice confirmed to him that he was actually saying the words and not thinking that he was.

Oh my Lord, he whimpered, pray tell me what sin I have committed to be incarcerated this way, for I have never knowingly taken your holy name in vain or made any utterance that you might find sinful. Yet I am in this dreadful place with a hideous fat man, and might at any moment by woken with a knife that I know he has hidden somewhere, sticking out of my flesh as I fade from this life to.. to what?”

And that was as far as he could go for fear if being overheard, for bis payers were private affairs, holy communication between him and his maker, and not intended for inferior eats to gloat at. And gloat, they would. He’d heard them when on his first day in Brumpton Jail he had resorted to prayer, with the consequence that he was taunted from the next door cell. He decided he had lifted his head too high and his voice had come out too loud like it would when he was conducting a service in his church. And the teasing had been remorseless until Amos had whispered an inaudible threat, which had silenced it.

“Best not come out with that twaddle,” he had growled, scowling in a most threatening way, and Barney had taken note of the warning and decided to reserve praying to when he was alone, and do it quietly, which, had he thought about it, put his Saviour behind a handful of unpleasant prisoners in the order of things.

It was while he was mulling over such matters that he decided that his offence had been that, relegating his Lord to a lowly place behind brutish thugs that he decided to make amends by chanting out loud in his favourite tenor voice so that everyone within quite a few cell doors would be obliged to hear him. It was not his wisest idea, but he was saved when his own cell door opened and his least favourite prison office, Mr Walnut stuck a grin into the space where it had been.

“Your Reverence,” he boomed, “it’s your turn to a shower. And you, Mr Gadding.”

“About time too,” grunted Amos, “he was beginning to stink.”

And the two of them were guided to a small shower room where the rest of the prisoners on their landing were already splashing their way under a short row of steaming sprays of warm water, ushered along by an officer who seemed to believe the most appropriate thing for him to do was critically appraise what he called their wedding tackle as they filed past him by.

The Reverend Barney Pickle was horrified. Not only did he have to remove his clothing, all of it, underwear included, and in return receive a greyish pair of once-white underpants, but he had to make his way in the slow moving queue of naked men until he had passed under the water, barely washing himself with the tablet of soap that was available, and not once revealing his more private parts for the scrutiny of the filthy minded louts who were moving along with him, Then he had to dry himself on a threadbare towel and struggle into the fresh (a misnomer again) underwear.

And all the time he made absolutely sure that what ought to be secret remained totally secret despite the bold way at least half a dozen youths wandered about as naked as the days when they had been born.

Even during his training at college he had believed in the sanctity of his genital organs and had kept them totally private, and it was with a sense of horror that he felt someone grabbing his concealing hand and poking at him where no man should ever poke, actually touching him where he shoudln’t. The offence was only brief in time, but he yelled out automatically and in a voice that tore through the chattering of the showerers antd echoed through the corridor that had led to the shower room, all of which earned him the contempt of all but one of his fellow prisoners. And that one was his cell mate Amos Gadding who had appointed himself as the chief guard of the reverend gentleman who was forced to share his living quarters with him.

The punch administered for the attack on Barney’s genitals went unnoticed by either of the prison officers present or it would almost have earned Amos a spell in solitary confinement, a dreaded reward in which the offender had to tolerate his own company for a fixed period.

There is a bonus for many things in life and this time it was Barney who has rewarded. His deafening yell had been detected by Sid Walnut who was in a bad enough mood to start with, and he dragged Barney off to see the Prisoner’s Governor, Mr Walter Springer, because such noises were simply not allowed. Not in his prison, especially when he was expecting a government inspection any day.

“There is never cause for you to alarm my officers like you did,” he growled, “and even though you are supposed to be in holy orders until after your trial, from which you may return here for many years, you are merely a prisoner hand have no special rights above other prisoners. Therefore, Mr Pickle, I am rewarding your offensive behaviour with a spell in solitary confinement, Take him away, officer!”

Several one-man cells separate from the rest and isolated, it seemed, from the rest of humanity, were used for solitary confinement, and it was to those (or one of them) that the Barney was sent for the rest of the week.

“You, sir, may be a man of the church, but in my nick you do not shout,” he was warned, “so three days of solitary confinement for you, and I hope that teaches how to behave inside my prison!”

And that had to be that. And for three days, Wednesday to Friday,, Barney could pray for as long and as loud as he wanted, and there was nobody, not even an officer, close enough to shut him up.

© Peter Rogerson, 30.03.24