The Long Walk Home Read Online Free

message from his mother, or even, he pondered, deliver an ill-gotten pie.
    He was manacled and taken by handcart across the town to Kingston Street prison, which had been built near the banks of the Humber some thirty years before. It had once been considered to be amongst the best houses of correction in the country, and over the years it had been extended to accommodate the growing prison population. There were separate buildings for men and women, a holding cell where the worst prisoners would languish awaiting their sentence or transference to the County Assizes, cells for debtors, work buildings where some prisoners were put to the treadmill, and a large courtyard where others were set on the back-breaking work of crushing stones.
    Mikey was stripped of his clothes and given prison garb of scratchy cotton. It was too big for him, the trousers flapping below his ankles and the sleeves hanging lower than his fingertips. It had been made for an adult man, whereas he was still growing out of childhood into adolescence. Stitched on to the jacket was a number: 3624.
    He was marched down a flight of stone steps and past locked doors, and put into a cell where he was left alone for several hours. The bare brick cell had a fixed board to sit or lie on, a metal pail beneath it and a greasy tin bowl for washing. It was cold and very damp.
    Mikey sat down on the bench and this time he did cry. He cried for his mother, and he cried for himself and the enormity of the situation in which he found himself.
    'I'll never do owt wrong again in my life,' he vowed, sniffling. 'Never. Not even if I'm starving at death's door.'
    But although he was frightened and ashamed, he was also resentful. He and his family had not had a proper meal in weeks. His mother received a small allowance from a seamen's society which helped the families of those lost at sea, but it was barely enough to pay the rent on their room, which was in a narrow dark entry and shared a pump and one privy with several other families. What little their mother earned was spent on food, but there was never enough for all of them and there was no work for boys such as Mikey.
    'Here you are, three six two four.' The warder handed a bowl of soup through a hatch in the door. 'Get that down you.' He offered Mikey a slice of bread on a tin plate. 'There'll be nowt else till morning.'
    Mikey took the bread from the plate and took it and the bowl to the bench, where he sat down and sniffed at the soup. It was pale green and strong-smelling. 'Yuck!' he muttered. 'Yesterday's cabbage. I hate cabbage!'
    He ate it nevertheless, his hunger getting the better of his revulsion, but ten minutes after finishing it he was violently sick, vomiting his stomach's contents into the pail, which left him feeling weak and nauseous and still hungry.
    Three days he was left alone in his cell and there were times when he felt he had been forgotten; he would hear the sound of boots on the stone floor, the clang of cell doors and an echo of voices, and then silence. The tedium was broken at breakfast and midday by the arrival of a warder with bread and water, and in the evening he was brought a bowl of some kind of thin liquid which went under the name of soup.
    On the fourth morning he was told that after finishing his breakfast of gruel and a cup of lukewarm tea he should prepare himself for work. He was given a brush and shovel to sweep out his cell and told to bring out his slop pail for emptying.
    It was a relief to know that he wasn't going to spend the whole month in the cell, though he was slightly apprehensive as to what kind of work he would have to do. 'Hope they don't put me on 'treadmill,' he muttered as he swept. 'Seems senseless to me, as well as being painful.' He recalled an old man, local to the Hull streets, who was bent almost double and, rumour had it, could no longer straighten up after enduring years of working the treadmill in prison as a young man.
    'Three six two four!' The warder