AT THE BAIL HOSTEL
Wilfred De'Ath found that the
months he spent awaiting trial were not quite what he expected
ON 7 October 1990 I was arrested without explanation in a hotel room in Southsea and taken to Portsmouth police station where I spent six hours in an unhygienic cell before being picked up and driven to Banbury in Oxfordshire by the Thames Valley Police. Here I spent two nights in police custody before being put in front of magistrates in Chipping Norton charged with obtaining services by deception at two hotels. The magistrates refused my applica- tion for bail on the grounds that I pos- sessed 'no community talents' (a phrase learned at Magistrates' training school?) and I was remanded in custody to Oxford prison for six nights. The following Monday, I appeared in front of Banbury Magistrates who remand- ed me into police custody for further ques- tioning for 48 hours; I was finally granted bail in Chipping Norton the next morning but the condition was made that I should reside at the Oxford bail hostel pending further court appearances.
I had vaguely heard the term 'bail hostel' before, but the only image it conjured up was of a brutal modern building staffed by equally brutal young men. This was not the case. Clark's House, as the Oxford bail hos- tel is known, is a 200-year-old, double- fronted mansion, within a stone's throw of the Oxford Magistrates Court. Pam, the woman who greeted me with a cup of tea, was in her mid-sixties, a chain-smoker and, as it turned out, the deputy warden of the bail hostel. They cannot have had many 53- year-old writers with Oxbridge degrees there, but she seemed to take it all in her stride.
Inside, Clark's House was of a squalor and dereliction sufficient to take the breath away. Pam finally allocated me an inde- scribably filthy room on the first floor which I was to share for the next fortnight or so with a small Bristolian named Jim, who had once killed a policeman (the charge was reduced to manslaughter for which he served four years) and was now `looking at' eight years for killing another.
To begin with, I was rather frightened of Jim but not for long because, apart from an irritating habit of keeping his telly on all night (a sure sign of 'depleted personal resources', according to Pam) he was very good company. Like many criminals I have met in recent months he was generous to a fault, sharing the hostel's food and drink not only with me but also with his pretty wife and five children, who came over every weekend and most weekdays to spend time with him. (His wife Sharon was not allowed in our room, but the couple used to make love early in the morning in the front seat of their car to the amuse- ment and derision of such inmates who were up and about).
My first night at Clark's House was dis- rupted not merely by Jim's telly but by an extremely disturbed black boy named Ezekiel who repeatedly entered our room without knocking in search of 'snout', i.e. tobacco. The ninth time this happened, I threw my liberal principles as well as my innate cowardice to the winds and told him to get his 'black arse' the hell out of our room, He did not reappear, although he was to upset my stay at the hostel for some time. He once told me that his mother was a probation officer and his father an Amer- ican lawyer — I took this for fantasy, but it turned out to be true. (I subsequently heard that Ezekiel, who was being charged with a number of violent offences, includ- ing sexual ones, was acquitted of all of them in the Oxford Crown Court, a cause for some celebration in the bail hostel, which had not had an acquittal for two years!) Around the middle of November, when I had been at Clark's House four weeks, I was summoned by Pam, the deputy war- den, and asked if I would care to go out with one other resident, Dave, who was on probation, to start a pioneer 'cluster' unit down the Abingdon Road — still part of the bail hostel but intended for 'reliable' residents who supposedly went out to work during the day and returned to cook and look after themselves at night. I accepted this offer with alacrity, although it would involve going to court again to get my bail conditions changed.
Dave was a 'gentle giant' of a man. He had been 'looking at' three or four years for, in a fit of rage, splattering his wife and a number of her family against their living- room wall. A perceptive judge had taken the word of a barrister that Dave had prob- ably been unduly provoked and let him off with probation after five weeks in custody. However, Dave was not a man to mess with. One evening, still at the bail hostel, I overheard a very silly young offender named Darren singing the lumberjack song from Monty Python to him: `Dave's a lum- berjack and he's O.K. . .' When he got near to the bit about putting on women's panties, suspenders and a bra, the room went rather quiet and Dave visibly tensed. One more verse, I thought, and the rest of us will be looking at Darren's corpse and Dave will be 'looking at' life.
On the Friday, I managed to get my bail conditions changed by the Banbury court; on the Monday we were due to move but on the day before, Sunday, there was a nasty hitch. Clark's House adjoins the Oxford University Roman Catholic Chap- laincy and on the Saturday there was a break-in at the Chaplaincy, involving a des- ecration of the altar and removal of the Blessed Sacrament. As the only Catholic among the 16 residents of Clark's House, suspicion naturally fell on me. I had to clear my name with the police and it seemed likely that the slur would hold up my transfer to the 'cluster' unit. In the end it didn't, but it seemed a close shave. Later, I was told that it was the Chaplains them- selves who had 'grassed me up', having nobody else to point the finger of suspicion at.
I had some more weeks on my own, then John, the only sex offender from the main hostel, arrived to join me. (They had been a bit nervous about sending him down before because of the number of young children on the neighbouring council estate. But John was behaving himself.) We got on quite well, although John, at close range in a small house, revealed an unex- pected mean streak which I had not observed before and which I associated with his offences in a way I found hard to define. In the end, he received 18 months probation with the condition that he attend a special course for sex offenders. (He came back from this with his eyes glazed one afternoon, swearing that he had served the equivalent of a prison sentence in a sin- gle session.) In Spring 1991 I was joined by Andy the Arsonist. Andy was the most engaging character I met while out on hail. He had a habit of setting fire to a supermarket (something I guess we have all wanted to do at times), then rushing in and raising the alarm, rescuing people and, of course, goods. A grateful Tesco's, or whoever, would reward him £1,000 a time — until they rumbled him and Andy was now 'look- ing at' ten years because arson, since it endangers human life, is regarded as a very serious offence. However, I wish I had thought of that way of earning a living. It beats staying for nothing in hotels any day.
I gained Andy the Arsonist's respect, in fact he began to regard me as a bit of a hard man, I'm proud to say, as I constantly `breached' bail towards the end of my wait- ing time. Well, the weeks were dragging on interminably. It was now six months since my arrest with still no sign of my case being heard, despite a dozen or more adjourn- ments.
Finally, on Monday 29 April, in front of Recorder Barry Chedlow, I was given an 18-month jail sentence, suspended for two years, during which I was to be kept under probation supervision. (I felt hard done by, since I did not regard a series of admitted debts to hotels as a criminal matter; howev- er, my barrister took a different view and advised me to plead guilty).
On Tuesday 30 April, the day after my Crown Court appearance, I re-offended. I entered the Duke of Cambridge, a yuppy wine-bar in Little Clarendon Street (many Spectator readers will remember it from their Oxford days) and pretended to be a police officer. I am not quite sure why I did this — the psychiatrists are still trying to find out — but I suppose it was some kind of misguided if satirical concept of revenge on a system that had kept me under wraps in the bail hostel for seven months. Now it is nine months and I am due back in the Crown Court any day and 'looking at' two years this time.
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