“Draft Notes for 4th book
Begun 8.20am, Tuesday, 3 May ‘97”
That was the entry in my logbook.
My third novel, The Wrong Man, a sympathetic portrayal of an IRA informer, had just been published, and I was ready to begin number four. I wanted to write a novel about a woman, from a woman’s perspective. I had already written a novel from a young gay man’s point of view but this new challenge proved an insurmountable task. Successive drafts repeatedly found their way into the wastepaper basket. I just couldn’t get into the psyche of my character – or perhaps faithfully portray a woman.
A year later I added in philosophical despair to the above entry, “Begun and abandoned many times”.
I had begun writing The Wrong Man in prison and finished it upon my release. From prison I had written to my partner every night. Prisoners were restricted to one sheet of paper per letter – which many of my comrades admitted they found difficult enough to fill – whereas I enjoyed writing, the practice of writing, and the thinking that it produced. So, daily, I had to request to see the governor, and, à la Oliver Twist, ask him if I could have more paper.
Some years into my eight-year sentence my partner and I broke up. I asked her to make sure she personally destroyed all my letters and not to entrust that to anyone else.
Fast forward. It was around about the time I was giving up on novel number four that a friend told me that my girlfriend had left two huge bags of my prison letters in her loft. It turned out that they hadn’t been burnt, after all.
Going through them I realised that as well as being love letters, I was also writing about men in prison, what they were really like beneath the bluster. I was giving a running commentary on the conflict, both inside prison and outside, and what I thought republicans needed to do to break the deadlock. I was telling my partner about the books I was reading, the music on the radio and the memories that songs and symphonies brought back.
Going through the letters I realised I was also telling her the story of my life: what school had been like, our teachers, the neighbours on our street, my first job, how I felt when I first met her, right through to how on top-of-the-world I felt after our last visit.
In Crumlin Road Jail (where we were locked up 23 hours a day) and, afterwards, in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh I read voraciously – hundreds of novels. I wrote reviews of almost every book I read (solely for my own advancement and delight) and commented on whether they “worked”, the author’s use of narrative devices, dialogue, plotting, etc.
I read many authors on the art of writing – from Angela Carter to Virginia Woolf, Somerset Maugham, Paul Scott, André Maurois. Edna O’Brien visited and wrote to me and I corresponded with several writers including Dermot Healy and Tim O’Grady. Writer Jennifer Johnston and poet Medbh McGuckian were also regular visitors and gave workshops to a group of us.
Scouring the letters, I realised that in my hands was the makings of a book. It took quite a while to transcribe them but even after omitting extraneous information, and much editing, I was still left with a huge volume of material, about 160,000 words, which was eventually honed to around 85,000.
I called the book Then The Walls Came Down, after the lyrics of the Traveling Wilburys’ song Tweeter and the Monkey Man, which brought back good memories my girlfriend and I shared, though the title also resonated appositely with the ceasefire and burgeoning peace talks.
Walls, first published in 1999, finally went out of print this year and so I decided to make it available as a Kindle download and also to reintroduce to the narrative several thousand more words from the unpublished letters.
This is what The Irish Times said at the time: “Remarkable as a human document… The flashes of humour and compassion bear comparison with those in Brendan Behan’s Borstal Boy. A must-read for anyone interested in the North.”
Looking back, it is also a picture of me as a writer on a learning curve.
Two extracts from Then The Walls Came Down
Out in the yard this morning we crunched through a dusting of snow upon frost. A stormy cold wind was ripping the air apart and the starlings kept trying to find roosting spots on the disused chimney stack but broke up in disarray and went crashing through the air. Anto told us a funny story as we were walking. Years ago, around Christmas, he and three mates (labourers and an electrician) all went to the old Hunting Lodge after work. One of them bet the others that he could steal a stag trophy off the wall without being caught. They placed their bets. The aspiring thief went to the bar and asked for a couple of carry-out bags. In two moves he had the stag’s head off the wall and under the table, and its antlers covered over with the bags. Then he put the head under his coat and they all walked out, caught a black taxi to Twinbrook and got out opposite the Hitchin Post where the two who lost the bet went to its off-licence to buy a carry-out. When the two emerged from the bar there was a small crowd gathered behind their mates. Anto’s mate had removed the bags and stuck the stag’s head on a hedge, tied an electric wire around its neck like a rope and pretended to be struggling with it!
It was dark and most of the crowd had a fair sup of drink. The guys told the people they had caught the reindeer on Black Mountain and were bringing it home as a pet for the kids. Anto said that you could see the stag’s big artificial glassy eyes and its tongue protruding and every now and again when they pulled “the rope” the crowd moved back a few feet in case it reared up at them. Then, they pulled too hard and to gasps and astonishment from the crowd the head landed on the footpath. Then it was, “Fuckin’ bastards”, “That wasn’t funny”, “I knew you couldn’t get reindeers on the mountain”. He had us doubled-up.
I think society can sleep safely in its bed at night, assured that the most dangerous men in the country are all under lock and key.
***
We have a new prisoner on the wing, a young lad from Strabane. He was arrested at the Camel’s Hump checkpoint when he was found to have a hand-drawn map of the barracks in his pocket with marks allegedly showing the best spots for mortars to land! This lad is dead naïve and thinks he’s a member of the old Irish Republican Brotherhood. If he is, he’s the only one as it has been defunct for over 70 years! Anyway, Pat Sheehan has christened him Adrian Mole, aged nineteen-and-three-quarters, because of his thick glasses and innocence. And today he has a lot of exciting entries to make in his diary. For example, one about his new friend, Jim O’Carroll.
Jim: “Okay, everyone. Saturday afternoon, our turn for the swimming pool! Are you okay, mate?’”
Adrian said that he couldn’t swim but was told not to worry, he would learn quickly, and one of the other lads had a spare set of shorts.
Jim said, “And don’t forget later to bring your mattress to the canteen for the judo classes.” Adrian might have to go through a medical but that’s no problem as we have our own republican doctor!
Davy Clinton shouts from the bottom of the wing to Jim: “Put my name down for swimming!” Jim replies: “Fuck off, you’re barred, you were caught pissing in the pool last week.” I think Adrian will grow up very quickly. He’s been told to put on his good clothes for tomorrow night’s disco (“they let a few girls in but there’s not enough to go around.”)
Yes, Adrian will be a new man by Monday!
[ Then The Walls Came Down: A Prison Journal is available on Kindle, at £6.99Opens in new window ]
