Sev

I’m going to be totally honest here. When you came into our class none of us were particularly impressed. M, my long-time assistant came over to me. “Boss,” he said, “I think this one’s going to be a bit of trouble.” He was right. You were not a happy man; you had a vendetta with the world… and yourself.

As I always did in such situations, I looked you up. What crime had you committed; how long were you serving? It wasn’t pleasant reading. Such a young lad and such a long stretch. Hints of mental illness too. I was, of course, hardened to such things. One has to normalise them a little if one is to work for long in a Category B prison, but even so.

Nonetheless, you stuck around. The bigger characters in the class warned you about your behaviour and you had the good sense to take it down a notch or two. True, on those days when your eyes were wild, you’d sometimes create a little, but we were a forgiving lot in the ESOL class. “I feel sorry for him,” M confided with me. “He’s obviously got a lot of issues and he doesn’t seem to have anyone. On the wing, he never gets phone calls or letters. He seems a bit crazy.”

“He’d have to be to do what he’s done.”

M nodded sagely. He knew of course, they all did. I never said, but they all found out somehow.

And so, you settled into the surreal, multicultural world of the prison ESOL class. You were a quick learner and of the age where things sink in. You were quite bright actually. You started passing the tests and improving. That was good but it also presented a problem. Pass too much and the education manager would question why you were even in my class anymore. They’d try and move you to IT or Maths.

“I worry about him,” said M. “In here he’s safe. Move him to another class and he might not be. When he’s a bit crazy, we watch his back, but they’ll just nick him and send him down to the wing.”

“I agree,” I replied, and had a word with you. “Sev, you need to do well, but not that well. Just fall short. That is, if you want to stay here.”

“I don’t want to move, boss,” you said. “Here is like… family.”

Funny how words from a violent, angry young man can really touch your heart.

So, you stayed, and things went well. You relaxed and laughed and smiled. You became happier and made friends. Time though, waits for no man and, because you stayed out of trouble, neither too does the sentence planning system. You’d behaved and so they dropped you down from Cat B to C. A real achievement. We all congratulated you and you smiled.

But then, before we knew it, you were gone.

“Where’s Sev?” asked M.

I checked the wing. “They’ve moved him, to another prison ’cos he’s Cat C now.” They’d been clearing a lot of Cat Cs out to make room for more Cat Bs.

M’s face fell. “I hope he’ll be alright.”

I nodded. I hoped so too.

Then, only a couple of months later, we heard. In your new prison they’d put you in a cell with a young inmate. There’d been a row over him playing music, you’d got a knife somehow and he was now dead. A mere twenty-five years old, with a history of convictions, you were now facing a life sentence on top of what you were serving already. And with your history of mental illness, getting parole would be hard if not impossible. I tried to imagine what that must be like, how you would cope, how you were feeling at that moment, but I could not.

And neither could you. Several days later you were found hanged in your cell.

We were in shock. We put your picture up in the class and we grieved. With us you’d been safe, but away from us and the inevitable had happened. We decided to write a card and have a collection which we could send to your mum. The lads whipped round, promising pennies from their meagre earnings, and I enquired as to the address to send it to.

But there was no address. You had no family. Your mum had disowned you years ago and your dad, well, no one even knew who he was.

Alone in the class, during the lunchbreak I wept. You never stood a chance, poor Sev, you never stood a chance.

M and I talked about it. We wanted to do something. The whole class did. “Everyone deserves a mum,” M said. He was a good lad was M, compassionate and warm.

Then I had an idea. The previous year I’d been to Poland, your homeland, for the very first time. And whilst there I’d travelled to Czestochowa where there is a famous icon of Mary which has been declared the Queen of Poland. You needed a mother, and what better mother could there be? Despite being a Muslim, M agreed enthusiastically. We got the card and the individual prayer messages, collected the rosaries from the prison chapel and other mementoes that the lads wanted to give, and I put them in a package. Then I travelled to Poland and caught a train through the snowy landscape to Czestochowa where I climbed up the hill from the railway station to the great monastery of Jasna Gora, its spire lost in the winter sky.

The monk that I saw did not really know what to do. I explained the situated, that a dear friend had died and since he had no mother, we wanted to offer something to her who is a mother to all orphans. I don’t think he’d ever had a package from a group of hardened international criminals in a UK gaol before, but he took it with good grace and promised to offer all to Our Lady. Whether he did or not, I’ll never know, but it doesn’t matter.

I stood in the crowd of worshippers as the bugles sounded and the curtain was raised, revealing the precious icon to the petitioners. We all sank to our knees in prayer. I stared up at that compassionate face of Mary, the universal mother, and realised that I had come to the right place.

In the year 1430 the Hussites stormed the monastery and one of them slashed at the icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa with their sword, giving her two slashes on the left cheek. Due to how the icon was painted, the damage can never be restored and so today she stares out at us damaged and scarred.

Like you Sev, like you. Damaged and scarred by a cruel and unjust world before you ever stood a chance. Before her I wept, tears of both rage at the injustices of this world, but also of consolation. Perhaps it is an illusion, or perhaps it is real, but when I saw those scars on that perfect, innocent, young face, I knew that we’d done the right thing by committing you to her for I knew that, in her care, you’d find some peace.

Because whatever crimes you’ve committed, Sev, you really deserve a break.

In memory of

Seweryn Witold Głowiński

Died 3rd July 2013, HMP Long Lartin aged 25 years

Requiescet in pace

Spoczywaj w pokoju

Written Smallthorne, UK, 29/05/2022

Copyright © 2022, Matthew E. Pointon