Back then to our cells, where we sat till dinner. This was brought round (by orderlies appointed from among ourselves) at twelve. Dinner consisted of soup and a lump of white bread. The soup was contained in the same mug as the morning tea, and was, until one became accustomed to it, a strange looking spectacle. In the midst of it floated a lump of something that varied according to one’s varying luck. If one were fortunate it was, mainly, meat; if one’s luck were only fair, it consisted of fat, with streaks of lean bravely running through it; if one’s luck were completely out, it was gristle, with bits of meat set in it like amethysts in quartz (and indeed the meat was illuminated by strange colours astonishingly like amethysts). Either the animals slain for our eating were curious beasts or my luck was badly out, for the succession of gristle that came to my turn was noteworthy. Afterwards I managed to smuggle out one of the islands that floated in my soup, and sent it entire to a member of the English Parliament, thinking the effect might be remarkable if it were thrown dramatically across the floor of the House, as Burke once threw a dagger. Two or three potatoes in their skins were served with the soup; and the whole meal had to be manipulated with one’s fingers. I became quite expert with the course of time in discovering where pieces of meat crouched in their layers of gristle and bringing them to the light of day with my forefinger. Yet often I decided that the meal was not worth the fatigue involved, and left it where it stood.
The afternoons served our scanty pleasure, for then we were taken out for exercise, which usually lasted twenty minutes to half an hour, and on some occasions longer, according to the pleasure of the sergeant in control. For the staff worked through the prisoners in batches through the day. How one looked forward to that glimpse of sky overhead, to that beat of the summer’s sun on one’s body. The yard was of great size as befitted the size of the prison, and was laid with ground clinkers, or some black earth of the nature of ashes, surrounded by a concrete path. There was no colour to be seen anywhere, save the red bricks of the gaol and the black floor of the yard. Yet the sky was blue overhead, and the sun was golden; and though these things were plaintive in what they told of a summer passing in pomp elsewhere, yet their immediate gift made that half hour of the day the moment for which we lived during the 23½ hours’ existence in a cell. Moreover, after a time I tried an experiment. I quietly stepped out of the file into the yard and began running easily within the circle that the others made about me. I saw the sergeant look at me, not quite knowing what to make of the innovation. Then another stepped out, and ran behind me; and another, and yet another, till there was a string of half a dozen of us. Nothing was said the first day; and the innovation once begun it was continued. Thus we had another event to which to look forward during the long hours.