AFTERTHOUGHT
Home in the west
JOHN WELLS
I am not ashamed to admit that there were moments during my ordeal when I felt myself edging towards the brink of insanity. After the long weary hours of isolation as the cap- tive of barbaric hooligans in far-off China. I suppose I was expecting something different. Nostalgia can play strange tricks with a man's memory. Perhaps, as a free-lance journalist living abroad. I had forgotten the spine-shrivelling horror of life inside a Lon- don Sunday newspaper office. Whatever the reason, the week I have just spent has been the most agonised and terrifying of my life. Now at last, a few numbed days after my re- lease. I am free to tell my own full, frank and uncensored story for the first time.
Despite everything that happened I have no feeling of bitterness towards them now, those scrutable white faces, those round bloodshot eyes that watched me day and night—or so it seemed - through the glass walls of my cell : only a feeling of pity. I am by nature a compassionate man, and I realise that beneath their coarse habits and foul language they were ordinary newspapermen, very little different from other newspaper- men the world over. But caught up in the mindless hysteria of the so-called Circula- tion War, crazed with alcohol, and vying viciously with one another to interpret in ever more extreme forms the warped 'thoughts' of their strange Chairman, they were not a pretty sight. It is true that apart from the rough handling I received when I was 'seized' at London Airport and driven on shrieking tyres through the rush-hour traffic to Fleet Street, I was not physically molested in any way. I emerged from the newspaper's offices early last Sunday morning without a scratch on my body.
But when it came to mental torture, in- flicted with a fiendish minimum of exertion, then these clumsy, heavy-footed Occidentals proved themselves worthy successors to the sadistic warders of the Fleet Prison in olden times, who knew a thing or two about word- twisting, fancy-tickling, and the gentle art of suggestion. Torture, here, does not wound the body. But it leaves terrible scars on the mind. 1 remember one night in particular when I was brought to the verge of screaming agony by the subtle attentions of my tormentor in the next cell. It was late, perhaps one or two o'clock in the morning, and the keys of my typewriter struck the paper with a slow, erratic clatter as the hands of the silent elec- tric clock slid past yet another 'deadline' set by my captors for the surrender of my copy.
My mind ached, and the tense sinews at the back of my neck vibrated like taut violin strings to the sounds from the adjoining cell. First a dry belch. Then the echoing slap, like sea-water in a hollow sewer, of the lips being licked. The silence that followed kept me paralysed in painful suspense over my type- writer, until the metallic rattle of the cap of the whisky bottle spinning on the glass thread forced my mouth open in a rictus of distasteful anticipation. The gurgle and the sluggish gulps that followed made me grip
the edge of the desk, my head reeling with
nausea. Then the rattle of the cap being screwed back on the bottle, the thud as it was banged down on the desk, and another, more cavernous belch. A drunken song, muttered through thick lips, the scratch of a bent nib on thick paper. Another leading article, choking with moral outrage, was being pre- pared for the press.
I shall never forget my first official meeting with my captors. Hustled out of the car, still blinking and screwing up my eyes at the harsh white neon lighting, at the posters showing half-naked women, perverts, crimi- nals against society and discredited bishops, nailed up on the walls as victims of the Cir- culation War, I found myself pushed roughly into a small room, heavy with the smell of stale nicotine, sweat and alcohol. The man facing me across the desk, a big-boned, hairy Englishman, gave me a cold smile and pushed a sheaf of papers towards me. It would be a great deal easier if I would sign them with- out any fuss. A large sum of money would be paid to me on signature, and I would be free to leave. Otherwise ... the heavy, hirsute hand drummed a tattoo on the desk, and the shaggy eyebrows lifted ominously.
I looked at the blurred typescript on the rough grey paper in front of me. I was to confess to having robbed a train, having fled to Australia with a woman called Charrnaine.
I refused. Accompanied by a fat, foul- mouthed 'sub', I was led off to a room to be photographed, and forced to read a pre- pared statement in front of a television camera, affirming my intention to 'confess all'. Then along endless corridors to a tiny room, containing only a chair, a desk, and a typewriter, which was to be my home for the next seven days and nights. My captor—I christened him 'Pervert-Face' — lounged against the desk in ill-fitting trousers, a crumpled shirt, and an Old Etonian tie, offering his 'help'. He• quoted liberally from the thoughts of the Chairman, stressing the latter's faith in 'lots and lots of tit' and in the fact that 'you can get away with any old crappola providing there's enough sex in the headline'. I threw the revolting swine out, and started work.
From then on I was allowed no communi- cation with the outside world. My attempts to telephone the BBC or to make contact with other newspapers were skilfully frustrated. On several occasions I was threatened with the 'deadline', a time by which my work must be completed if I did not wish to face un- specified retribution. Again and again I was told that others were leaving China in droves, and that unless I adhered to the Chairman's 'line', using approved words like 'torture', 'vicious' and 'sadistic', my whole 'confession' might be invalidated. And looking up at those bloated, blotchy, pig-eyed faces watching my ordeal through the glass, I knew the depths of humiliation and misery. My week of tor- ment had begun.
Norr wEEK : My copy is savagely mutilated in front of me and sadistically impaled on the 'spike'.
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