Prodigal Child a must read novel by E. David Moulton

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It is 1957. Twenty year old Eddie Conner is on probation for punching a police officer. The condition of his probation is that he receive psychiatric counseling. A psychiatrist persuades Eddie to go into a Psychiatric Hospital as a voluntary patient. The hospital is an annex of Arlesey Mental Hospital in Bedfordshire. Eddie does not know he is to receive ECT (Electroconvulsive Therapy.) He strongly opposes this and when he finds he can't leave until the course of treatment is completed he decides to escape with the help of his girlfriend Trisha.    

My bedside clock showed midnight; I put my head out of the window. All was quiet and dark on my side of the building. Fortunately the staff slept on the other side of the house and the rooms below mine were offices or treatment rooms. I put on my robe and slippers and squeezed my upper body through the window. I lay on the windowsill and reached out for the rain spout. Gently I eased my body out of the window, the rain spout held and I slipped easily down to the ground.

I tiptoed across the lawn and climbed over the low brick perimeter wall and on to the road. The moon was almost full and I could see clearly; I just hoped that no one would see me. I ran up the road toward the barn. My carpet slippers kept coming off and eventually I removed them and ran barefoot on the grass at the side of the road. I got to the barn and called out softly.

“Trisha, Trisha.” She stepped out of the shadows and ran to my arms.

“Oh, Eddie, I thought you were never going to get here. I was so scared.”

We hugged and kissed, then I asked, “Where’s my clothes? I’m freezing.” Trisha led me to a suitcase and we took it to the rear of the barn away from the road. I opened up the case and quickly dressed. I was about to dump my pajamas and robe but decided to take them with me. If they found the pajamas and robe they would know that I had help and a change of clothes.

“Did you find out the time of a train out of here?” I asked.

“Yes, there is a milk train to Luton at 5 a.m.”

“That’s perfect; hopefully they won’t discover I’m gone until six.”

Luton was a large industrial town north of London. General Motors and Chrysler had car plants there. It would be the ideal place to go; there would be plenty of jobs.

“Let’s get over to the station now. There will be a waiting room there and it will be warmer than waiting here.”

We walked the mile up the road to the tiny station and bought two tickets to Luton. There was a waiting room that had a potbelly coal stove inside; it was really warm, even a little too warm. We sat on the hard wooden benches and waited. We had only been there a short while when we heard voices and looked through the waiting room window to see a policeman talking to the ticket clerk. Trisha nudged me.

“What if he comes in here?” There was panic in her voice.

“Just stay calm, pretend to be asleep. Let me do the talking.”

The policeman looked in through the window and then came into the waiting room. He was an older man with an ample stomach.

“Evening, all,” he said in typical British bobby fashion. “What brings you young people to this neck of the woods?”

I had already thought of my story before he even entered the room. “We were going to Luton last night from London and we got on the wrong train and ended up here, so now we’re waiting for the five o’clock milk train.”

“Well, at least you have a warm place to wait; it’s damn cold out there tonight.”

“You can say that again, but the weather’s been beautiful the last couple of days, more like spring,” I said trying to make casual conversation. He stood with his back to the stove then turned and held his hands over the heat and rubbed them together.

“Well, I mustn’t get too warm or I won’t want to get back out there.” He turned and walked to the door. “You youngsters take care now.”

Trisha gave a big sigh of relief as he closed the door. “I don’t know how you can be so calm. I was peeing my pants.”

“You’ve got to be calm when it comes to Old Bill; they can smell the slightest hint of nervousness.”

The rest of the night was uneventful. Trisha lay on the bench with her head on my lap and slept. When it got near to five o’clock, three or four more people came in to wait for the train.

The train arrived on time; it had only two passenger cars. The rest of the train was made up of special boxcars to carry the milk churns from the local farms to the city. It seemed like forever until all the milk was loaded and we were on our way. The trip to Luton was not far but took almost two hours, as the train stopped and there was a long wait at every little station while more milk churns were picked up.

Eddie gets into more trouble while in Luton. He is arrested and is remanded to Bedford Prison to await trial. We pick up the story as he arrives at the prison escorted by a friendly old police constable named Charlie Mott.

We arrived at Bedford Station and were met by another police car to take us on the last leg of our journey. After a short drive, we pulled up in front of the prison gate, which was more like huge double doors than a gate, solid wood reinforced with steel and big enough for a bus to pass through. Painted black and alongside on the wall was a sign also black with gold lettering, proclaiming “H. M. Prison, Bedford.” Her Majesty’s Prison. Now I could officially say I was a guest of the Queen.

We got out of the car. Charlie took my suitcase and we walked up to the gate. Cut into one side of the big gate was a small man-door just big enough for one person to pass through and in it was a peephole with a hinged flap. Charlie rang a doorbell; we waited.

“There’s nobody home, let’s go back,” I said.

Charlie chuckled. “You’re a funny lad, Eddie, but let me tell you something, you can joke around with me, but I wouldn’t advise it when you get inside. You may find they don’t have my sense of humor.”

We waited and then heard footsteps; the flap in the door opened and a face checked us out.

Inside the main gate we were in a large solid brick archway with another iron barred gate at the other end. If a vehicle drove in or out, one gate would be locked before the other opened. This I soon found out was how it was in prison. Every time I passed through a door or gate there would be another a few steps away. I had to wait while one was locked behind me before going through the next.

Charlie removed the handcuff from his own wrist and then from mine. The prison guard opened a small gate off to one side and locked me behind it. I watched through the bars as he signed Charlie’s paperwork and opened the man-door to let him out. Charlie turned to me as he stepped outside.

“Bye, Eddie, good luck to you.” My goodbye was lost in the slamming of the door.

The prison guard unlocked the gate; his orders were brief and impersonal. “Pick up your suitcase. Walk straight ahead. Stand there.”

I was taken to the reception area, which adjoined the gatehouse. My suitcase was opened and its contents logged. A guard described each item starting with, “One suitcase, brown, imitation leather.”

An older man wrote down each item. He had gray hair and a gray uniform and it didn’t occur to me immediately that he was a prisoner. My stuff was put back in the suitcase. I signed the bottom of the list and the case was labeled and taken away. I was allowed to wear my own clothes as I was not convicted yet, but took the option of wearing a prison shirt, socks, and underwear.

I was ordered to strip, take a shower, and then see a doctor for a medical exam. I stood naked in front of the doctor as he sat at a table, he said, “Cough.”

I coughed and then he said, “Okay, get dressed.” He wrote something down on a report card. This was the standard prison medical exam.

I got dressed and was told to go to a window in a wire cage where another prisoner issued me with blankets, sheets, and pillowcase, and an aluminum piss pot with a lid. I was ordered to stand to one side and wait with some other prisoners, some on remand like me, others convicted and in gray uniforms. After about half an hour my arms grew tired holding the blankets and sheets, I let them droop. The lid fell off my piss pot and rolled in a circle across the floor making a loud clatter.

“Hang on to that bloody thing!” a guard yelled out. And as I went to retrieve it, he said, “Get back in line.”

“That screw is a bastard,” said the prisoner standing next to me.

The guard approached me. “What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“You say ‘sir’ when addressing an officer.” He picked up the lid I had dropped. “What’s your name?”

“Conner.” I hesitated then quickly added, “Sir.”

This was a new experience and I did not like it one bit. The guard turned to a prisoner still getting dressed. “Come on, we haven’t got all bloody night.” The prisoner scrambled to finish dressing and rushed over to get his bedding and pot. He fell into line with his shoelaces undone, his shirt open, and his tie hung around his neck.

“Everyone right turn, keep in single file and stop when I say stop.” The guard unlocked the door and we stepped out into the prison yard. It was dark by now, a clear night, almost a full moon; the temperature was near freezing.

“All right, stop there.” The guard barked out his orders after we covered the few yards to the main cellblock. Another gate and another door to pass through and we were inside.

This was an old building at least 100, maybe 150 years old. Four floors high open in the center, forty or fifty feet to the roof, with huge windows at the ends looking not unlike the nave of a cathedral. However, there was not the peace and tranquility of a cathedral here. Voices called out from behind closed doors, not saying anything in particular but rather just to make noise, as if to give the perpetrators some small satisfaction of hearing their own voices echoing around this huge hall. It was difficult to figure exactly where the sounds were coming from. One close by, maybe on the second floor, would be answered by another way off in the distance somewhere in the far top corner. If this place wasn’t foreboding enough for a newcomer like me, there was this constant noise. Like being in the jungle not knowing if the sounds were from something harmless or dangerous.

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