The facility, p.7
The Facility, page 7
It is mindless. It is fighting for the sake of fighting. Arthur lurches and weaves and no one around seems any surer than he about what they are doing, or why. Even the guards. Especially the guards. They hit and shout as though hitting and shouting were all that mattered. The prisoners too: Arthur sees a cluster of women back to back, spiralling wide-eyed from the fighting, but among the men anger appears the only manifest emotion, the single factor that drives them. It is a state of mind Arthur has witnessed just once before in his lifetime, at the march against the Unified Security Act – an event, several years back, that brought him on to the streets out of curiosity mainly, out of having a Saturday with nothing to do and a flat within walking distance of the protestors’ route. With his waterproof and his rucksack and his camera, he followed a crowd larger, so they said later, than the Stop the War March of 2003. The camera ended up in pieces, the rucksack torn from his back. The waterproof became his mask, as he cowered in a doorway from the missiles and the smoke.
Something strikes him. It does not hit him hard and for a moment there is no pain but all of a sudden he cannot see. Whatever it was struck him on his forehead and it is as though the impact has triggered a cascade of tears. It is warm though: whatever blinds him. It is thicker than tears too because he cannot blink it away. He stops and crouches and wipes at his eyes with his palm. When he looks again he can see, long enough to realise that his hands are crimson, but then his vision blurs once more and pain drips from his hairline. He wipes his eyes again and staggers forwards. He collides with something, someone, who shoves him away. He spins and trips and this time he falls. He lands on his knees and one elbow. Someone cries out, right beside him, but when he turns to the voice he realises it was his own. He crawls. He bumps into something again and wipes his eyes and sees an upturned table blocking his way. He stands, or tries to, and clambers over it. A siren is sounding now, a single screeching note drowning the cacophony of voices and piercing Arthur’s skull as though it has found a route in through his wound.
‘You!’
Arthur slips again, rights himself, flounders on.
‘You! Stop!’
The voice is closer, closing.
‘On the floor! Right now!’
Arthur drags a sleeve across his eyes and the guard is only a yard or so away from him.
‘Get down! I said, get down!’
Blood curtains Arthur’s vision but he sees enough to see the baton. He wipes again and he sees the baton rising and he wipes and the baton is falling. He raises his arms above his head. He tries to scamper backwards but there is an obstruction at his heels and without meaning to he sits, on a chair it feels like, and he is sitting on a chair with his arms raised, waiting to be struck.
The baton falls. He feels it fall more than he sees it, or senses it rather, anticipates it. There is a yell, a scream of pain, and Arthur assumes it is his own voice again, that he has been struck and struck numb. He moves, though, and finds he can. He wipes his eyes. He sees the guard but it is the guard’s back. He sees the baton rising again but when it falls this time it falls away from him. The yell that follows is not his own. He knows this time it is not his own because he cannot be yelling if he is also sobbing.
Someone grabs him. A hand on his wrist, gripping tight and tugging him back to the place he was fleeing. He resists and breaks free but the hand finds him again, finds his sleeve this time, pinching at the flesh on his arm as it grasps. Still Arthur fights to pull away. Whoever has hold of him is stronger, though, and ready this time for Arthur’s resistance. There is a voice but Arthur cannot make out what it is saying. He struggles and claws at the hand on his arm but now there is another hand, under his shoulder, pulling him back, down, and he is falling.
He has fallen. On top of someone, it feels like, because there is movement beneath him. Then Arthur is moving, or being moved, and he is sitting, almost, and leaning against something.
‘Here.’
The arms around his body loosen. He feels something soft – a rag perhaps, a balled-up shirt – being pressed against his forehead.
‘Here,’ the voice repeats. It has to shout to make itself heard. ‘Take it. Hold it firm.’
Arthur takes it and uses it to wipe his eyes again.
‘Hold it against the wound,’ the voice says, almost angrily. The rag is snatched from him and forced against his head. Arthur winces. He takes hold of the rag and presses it above his eyes. He blinks. He looks.
He sees a wall. He sees his own feet and another pair and there is a man beside him, angling his head up and away from Arthur and peering over the upturned table against which they lean. Arthur takes the rag from his head, which turns out to be someone’s sleeve, and sees it is heavy with blood. He feels the wound above his eyes begin to leak and returns the rag to his forehead. He turns and sees his companion looking at him.
The man is not old but he is no longer young. He is dark-skinned, with coiled black hair and stubble that is dusted with grey. He looks at Arthur and he grins. He tips his head to the scene behind them. ‘Personally,’ he says, ‘I didn’t think the food was that bad.’
Arthur opens his mouth but does not know how to reply.
The man looks at Arthur’s clothes. ‘Just got here?’
Arthur croaks. ‘What?’ he manages to say.
‘I said, just arrived?’ The man checks again over his shoulder. He looks at Arthur. ‘Here,’ he says, gesturing around him. ‘You’ve just arrived here?’
Arthur nods. He lowers the rag and looks once more at the blood.
‘Hold it up,’ the man says. He guides Arthur’s hand towards his forehead. ‘Try to keep your head still too,’ he adds but as he speaks something hits the table on the other side and both men duck towards their knees. The man gives a wry smile. ‘As still as you can.’
The alarm shuts off. A drone fills the vacuum in Arthur’s ears. The effect, too, is that the volume behind them has been turned up: the fighting, the bawling, the clash of baton and bone feels as close, all of a sudden, as it really is.
Arthur’s companion, though, seems encouraged. He lifts his head and glances to the ceiling, like a holidaymaker sensing breaks in a heavy sky. He grins again and extends his hand. ‘I’m Roach.’
Arthur is holding the rag with his right hand. He reaches awkwardly with his left. ‘Arthur.’
‘Arthur, is it?’ Something else hits their barricade and Roach ducks again, pokes his head around to see. ‘Well, Arthur,’ he says, turning back. He spreads his palms. ‘Welcome to the facility.’
He treads and he treads on something, in something; he lifts his foot and there is rice stuck to his sole by what looks like a glue of pulped vegetables. Graves lowers his foot and drags it across the ground like a bull preparing to charge. When he moves on, the lump beneath his shoe makes it feel like he is walking with a limp. Satisfy a man’s stomach: that is what he told himself. There is a chicken breast on the ground in front of him and he nudges it away with his toes.
Burrows is behind him and from the curse Graves hears, the groan, he assumes his assistant has trodden in the same mess he did. He knows it is churlish but he is gratified. It is hardly Burrows’s fault but it is someone’s fault and for the time being Burrows, as a focus for Graves’s ire, will have to do.
The expense: that is what he keeps coming back to. It is not the most important issue but in the role to which he has been appointed he cannot help but worry. Broken chairs, broken tables. Trays, crockery – although the plastic items can perhaps be saved – uniforms for the inmates, for the guards, as well as a light fitting here, a pane of glass in the window there: all will have to be paid for. Not to mention the clean-up. He shudders to think what the cost will be for the clean-up. Something will have to give, that is for certain. The food budget perhaps. This seems appropriate.
‘It looks worse than it is,’ says Burrows.
Graves glances across his shoulder and his assistant is standing on one leg, poking at the sole of his shoe with a plastic fork. The fork breaks and Burrows wobbles, almost topples. Graves walks on.
‘It’s all this food everywhere. It’ll clean up, though. The tables are fine, look.’ Graves turns again and Burrows is setting a table the right way up. ‘There,’ he says and he pats it and the legs snap, splinter, and the table collapses and almost crushes Burrows’s toes. Burrows leaps backwards. He lands and he slips. This time he does fall, as though someone has kicked his heels away,and when he hits the ground something tears: his trousers perhaps. He has torn the seat of his trousers and he is sitting in a puddle of purée and really it should be funny. It would be funny. If this man were not his assistant – his deputy, no less; his second in command – the sight of him sprawled on his backside would, quite possibly, make Graves laugh.
He does not laugh. ‘I want updates,’ he says. ‘Twice a day. And any time in between if there’s some change.’
Burrows is back on his feet. He is wiping at his suit as he scampers to catch up. ‘On Lambert?’
Lambert. The guard. The man who started this by resorting so readily to his baton and will soon enough be wishing he had not.
‘On the inmate in the infirmary. Prior. You can send Lambert to see me just as soon as he can walk. No,’ says Graves, stopping. ‘I don’t want to see him. You see him. First thing. Debrief him, remind him of the Official Secrets Act, then watch as he packs his things. If he can’t walk by himself, carry him and drop him on a train. Or in front of one,’ he mutters.
‘Yes, sir. Although I don’t think . . . I mean, the inmate, Prior: I don’t think the prognosis is good.’
Graves gives his assistant a look.
‘But I’ll keep you informed. Of course I will. If there’s any improvement in his condition, I’ll make sure you’re the first to know.’
Graves is at the centre of the hall now. The space is large enough to take thirty tables, a handful more at a squeeze, and the ten or so that were set up were grouped at one end. No longer. The debris is everywhere, the scene a product of three hundred rampaging prisoners, you would think, not seventy. Graves shakes his head. He surveys the hall again, then checks his watch. ‘You put the inmates in the courtyard?’
‘The ones who were here during the riot. The sickest are still confined to their cells. Do you want me to assemble them too?’
‘No, of course not. How long have the rest of them been out there?’
Burrows looks at his own watch. ‘Twenty minutes or so.’
‘Long enough then.’ Graves turns towards the exit.
Burrows is in his way and he scuttles aside. ‘You’ll need your coat,’ he says but Graves ignores him. Graves leads and his assistant follows, across the hall and along the corridor and to the door at the far end that opens on to the courtyard.
It is colder in the night air than he thought. On his way from the cottage to the facility he barely noticed the temperature, partly, he imagines, because he was walking so quickly, partly because his mind was on matters more pressing than the likelihood of an October frost. No matter, though. The weather will help the inmates to cool off. It will remind them of their status in this facility; that they cannot expect to behave as they have and not suffer the repercussions.
Except, as Graves crosses the lighted square and sees the inmates packed on the floor beside the fountain, he recalls the distinction he drew when Jenkins visited the facility: between prisoners and those who are imprisoned. It is a distinction he has been trying to convince himself to disregard but looking at these people now – the dozen women, in particular, huddled together to the rear of the sixty or so men – he cannot help but notice how obviously different they seem from the criminals with whom he is used to dealing. The people gathered before him look more like refugees than prison inmates. In the sense that they have been both persecuted and displaced, that is exactly what they are.
Graves has a speech prepared, one he has used in similar circumstances before, but all of a sudden it feels inappropriate. Not inappropriate. It feels unjust, rather. Unjustifiable.
‘Fetch some blankets,’ Graves finds himself saying. Burrows twitches at his shoulder and Graves turns to face him. ‘Bring them some blankets,’ he says again. ‘And you.’ Graves points to the nearest guard. ‘Remove their bindings.’
The guard opens his mouth and looks to Burrows.
‘Sir,’ Burrows says. ‘I’m not sure—’
‘Do as I say.’
The guard moves to obey; Burrows too. The other guards are standing in a cordon around the prisoners and several step out of the circle to help.
Graves watches and waits. He sees the guards in turn watching him as they move from inmate to inmate, surprised no doubt at his show of compassion and suspicious of it too. The blankets arrive and the guards toss them towards the prisoners – at the prisoners, really – and Graves realises as he witnesses this exhibition of spite that it is not the prisoners, nor Burrows, but the guards with whom he is most angry. The guards, and what they represent.
But he cannot let this show. To do so would undermine not only the guards’ authority but his above all. The speech, then. He has no choice but to say what he is expected to say.
He faces the inmates. They are seated on the ground before him, cross-legged for the most part now and their shoulders covered by blankets. One or two rub at the marks the plastic ties have left on their wrists; others cradle injured arms, hands, shoulders. The new arrivals, Graves sees, have clustered together just like the women. They are first years summoned to a school-wide dressing down, anxious and uncertain about what comes next.
‘Your friend,’ Graves begins, ‘is being cared for.’ He is talking too quietly and he injects some robustness into his tone. ‘He is being cared for. That he is injured is unfortunate but what’s happened has happened and that’s that.’ Graves pauses. He has an urge, all of a sudden, to shy away from the prisoners’ stares. But, ‘That’s that,’ he repeats. ‘That is the end of it. There will not be an investigation and there will not be an inquiry because the usual rules, at this facility, do not apply.’ He pauses again – for effect, he tells himself. He takes a breath. ‘I will repeat that. The usual rules, at this facility, do not apply. There is no board, no oversight committee. There is just me and the rules I set. So you will behave, please, as I instruct you to behave or you will suffer the punishment I choose.’
Please. He has never before said please.
He hurries on. ‘Tonight you will not be punished. Your rations will be curtailed and your privileges will be restricted but in comparison with what I have licence to do to you, you are not being punished at all. This,’ he says and he straightens his shoulders, ‘is a warning. This is your only warning. I will not go into what will befall you next time because as far as I am concerned there will be no next time.’ He holds up a finger, a gesture that has rarely felt so obviously part of the act. ‘Again, I repeat,’ he says, ‘there will be no next time.’ He emphasises each word in turn and the effort of doing so drains him.
He falls silent, even though he still has a verse to go. The speech varies of course but the gist is the same and the next few lines would serve to give the inmates something to aim for. Rehabilitation. Training, an education. Early release. Which does not seem appropriate at all.
He cuts it short. He says, ‘You are human beings.’ He says, ‘Do not demean yourselves by behaving like animals.’ Then he signals to Burrows, who signals to the guards, and the inmates are ushered to their feet. Graves starts to walk away. He shuts his eyes and fills his lungs but a voice stops him before he can savour the feeling of emptying them.
‘Why are we here?’
Graves halts. Immediately he realises this is a mistake but it is too late to walk on.
‘Why are we here? What are we supposed to have done?’
The man talking stands apart. He is refusing to be led away and there is a guard – one male, one female – on either side of him. The female guard – Thorne, as Graves recalls, Thorne or Thorpe – has her baton drawn. In spite of everything that has happened tonight, she has her baton drawn.
The prisoner waits. Thorne and her colleague too. The entire courtyard is still, expectant. Even Burrows is looking to see how Graves will respond.
‘You are here for your own protection,’ Graves says. It is the answer he has been authorised to give, the answer he has rehearsed, but it is feeble and he knows it.
‘I don’t feel protected.’ The prisoner seems to have anticipated Graves’s reply. ‘And the man who hit his head. The man you called our friend. I don’t know him so maybe it’s not for me to say but I don’t imagine he feels protected either. He didn’t look like he was being protected.’
Graves noticed this man when he approached the fountain, he realises. Standing, he seems thin, frail; tall but too tall, as though his body were liable to snap. There is strength, though, in the set of his features; a rigidity at odds with his physique. He is someone Graves would ordinarily single out as a man to watch; a man, if necessary, to subdue. Ordinarily, that is what he would do.
‘What is your name?’
The prisoner lifts his chin. ‘Simmons.’
Graves recalls the file. A photographer, based in Shepherd’s Bush.
‘Whether you feel protected is not my concern, Mr Simmons. As you do not know what we are protecting you from, I would suggest your judgement is flawed. You are here because it is safer for you to be here than anywhere else. It is safer for others that you are here too.’
‘What does that mean?’ Simmons steps forwards but the guards haul him back, grip his arms. ‘That means nothing. It tells us nothing!’ He shrugs to free himself. One of the guards – not Thorne this time but the other one, clearly as mindless as his colleague – seizes his wrist and wrenches it up and between his shoulder blades. Simmons struggles and the guard slides an arm around his neck. Left alone, he would no doubt take pleasure in crushing the prisoner’s windpipe. This time Graves cannot hide his irritation. He signals for Simmons to be released. The guard hesitates and then obeys. He shoves Simmons forwards and Simmons stumbles. He coughs, spits, raises a hand to his throat.
