06 -LISA'S AMAZING CHOICE

After an early breakfast, the prison governor escorted Mr Griffiths into his office. He pointed to a low lying block near the perimeter and explained that the punishment cells were located there. Soon the door was opened and two guards came out, carrying the remains of Lisa's breakfast and her reply to the letter. As soon as the letter arrived, the Governor handed it straight to her father, without so much as a glance at it.

"According to the rules and regulations, to which we poor officials pay our humble obeisance,  I ought to read it first, but here you are, my friend!"

And John Griffiths read his daughter's astonishing letter.

"Darling Daddy

How lovely to hear from you. I am crying now for the first time since I came here! I hope I don't smudge this letter too badly with my silly tears,  which I do faithfully and truly assure you,  are of joy rather than sadness!  I assume Mummy and George are both well. I hope so and  DO be sure to send both those precious people my love!

 I hope you will NOT (underlined) repeat NOT use your influence to get any part of my punishment lifted. I have thought long and hard about this during the past months and I know I deserve it all down to the last tiniest segment of time. Don't get me wrong, Dad ! It's worse than awful to be in this little cell and I wouldn't put my worst enemy in here even for a day!  I  solemnly affirm that I am not mad and no sane person would like being here!  I don't want to spend an instant longer in this incessant horror than I have to, but I won't accept a second less than my due punishment either!

You have always spoiled me, darling old Daddy, and you shouldn't have! You really shouldn't!  If you had been as free with your belt on my posterior as you were with it on George's, I would be all the better for it.  As it is I have grown up to be a spoilt brat who thought she could always get what she wanted by fluttering her eyelashes and pouting prettily. Well, I have learned that life in the real world isn't like that and it's a lesson I'm glad to have learned, even if it has got me into this hell-hole!  I am figuratively getting my belting every day, Daddy!  And it's right and proper that I should! The more I think about it the more I know that there is nowhere else I wish to be right now than here. I MUST be here  for the time it takes me to complete my punishment successfully.

I should never have come out here alone at my age, a silly little girl still wet behind the ears. It was asking for trouble and, by Heaven, did I ever get it! But I'm not complaining, Daddy. I am angry at whoever framed me, but a hundred times angrier at my own youthful arrogance. As for my being here, that is dreadful, but the rules are the rules. Under the regulations, I deserve all my time here. And that includes the extra sixteen weeks which I so nearly got poor Sandra to serve. Before they put me in here I made a brief statement, saying I accepted my punishment as just and fair, and promising to be a model prisoner or face the consequences. I have never regretted or ceased to stand by a word of that!

Not all the women here have influential parents who can pull strings. Any of them in my position would have to do the whole stretch and have no hope of any remission. And what is good for them MUST be good for me too!

And now for a few words about me as I am now! You could see how I have kept my body in good shape. And I can assure you that my mind has not deteriorated either! I won't let it! I'll explain myself when we meet again back home in Wales. But I have put these months to good use!

So there you are, Dad! I am not the silly girl I was and I never will be again! I'll never come to you expecting you to let me have anything I want. From now on I make my own way in life, although I'll always love you desperately. And making my own way starts with this spell in solitary, which is a debt I owe and wish to pay in full.

I'll ask one last favour of my dear Daddy! Just imagine me making eyes at you as only I can! Feel my arms round your neck and the sweet wet kisses I cover your dear old face with. Imagine my soft cheek against your stubbly face as I wheedle yet another concession!

This is the favour, Daddy! Just go straight home and get on with your life. We'll be together again soon enough. I'm not letting this beat me and I'll survive! Don't try to get my time in solitary reduced. And as for clearing my name - let ME set about that after I get out - if I find it worth the trouble. Frankly I am half inclined to let the true culprit stew in her own guilt and leave it at that! Because I know I was innocent and so do all the people in my life who matter! Just go home and let me finish doing my time! I want to see dear Samantha after I get out of here AND spend some months  getting to know her better. I've never met a girl I took to so quickly and she likes me just as much. She will always be a dear friend even if I never see her again. So there's definitely got to be no hurry to get me out! End of request!

I hope they let you reply to this, just so as I know you're being a good boy and going home, leaving me to clear up my own mess, which is what I should have been made to do long, long ago!

Your ever loving and very grown up daughter

Lisa.

PS If you are able to see the CCTV monitor at nine tonight, I will look up to where I imagine the camera to be, wave, blow you a kiss and give you my sweetest smile!

L

Mr Griffiths wiped away the tears which were flowing down his face. He handed the letter to the Governor.

"You might  like to read it now. It is your job and I don't want you getting into trouble, especially after drinking your excellent malt last night!"

The governor took the letter and read it. There were tears in his eyes as he handed it back to a proud father who would treasure it for the rest of his life.

"Quite a woman, your daughter. You are a lucky man!  And you may reply. And we will be here tonight to see her wave to you! Then I take it you go home?"

"Then I go home. I hope you will keep me informed from time to time?"

"Every week, Mr Griffiths!"

********************************************

Her father's reply came at nine o'clock. She opened and read it.

"Dear Lisa

I will grant your last favour! And make sure it is the last, because I'm going to hold you to all your good resolutions!

Your ever loving and very proud

Daddy"

She looked up at the ceiling and put her hand to her lips before waving it in the general direction of the camera. She smiled a smile which had nothing forced about it and revealed in its tenderness all the love she felt for him. Then she turned away and ate her meal - only just in time!

**********************************

Realising that Lisa would not be looking up again that night, the governor and Lisa's father repaired to the governor's house. It was arranged for Potts to come and pick Mr Griffiths up at noon next day.

In the morning as Griffiths stood with his overnight bag, the governor asked if there was anything else he could do.

"Yes. Lisa was very enthusiastic about a girl called Samantha. I would like to see her, if that is possible."

"But of course! She is a favourite of mine! A real success story from my point of view. She is Lisa's age but has been here since she was fifteen and will still be here when Lisa leaves. It is a sad story and, frankly she doesn't belong here with so many much older and much harder women. What a shame that the only two inmates of that age should have been separated! She stabbed her drunken father when he tried to rape her. In your country she would probably never even have been charged! But this is not your country I regret to say!"

"Never mind, Sir. At least you get better weather!"

The pair laughed at this witticism and Samantha was brought over to the governor's office. She stood nervously looking from  Governor Menendes to Mr Griffiths and back again.

"This is Lisa's father, Samantha. His daughter wrote about you in her one and only letter home and he would like to talk to you. I will leave you both alone for a few minutes.."

"Have you come to get her out?" asked Samantha excitedly "I so hope you have. That poor thing should never have been sent there for so long a time. We all think so! There's been talk of a  mass protest!"

"I hardly think Lisa would thank you for that! Here is a letter she was allowed to write to me. Take a look at it!"

Samantha read Lisa's letter. Then she handed it back.

"She's awfully brave, isn't she? But very silly. All that about wanting to serve her full punishment. She didn't deserve more than eight weeks - if that! I would do anything to avoid being where she is. I never react to provocation! I just keep my head down and be a good girl, but she waded right into that bullying Sandra and she'd have kept fighting until she got knocked out, which would have happened soon enough if they hadn't both been pulled apart. The same with those other two girls. She’s not scared of anything or anyone, your Lisa! Do you know about it?"

"Yes. I heard an account from Marty, one of the girls she fought and who is now in an English prison!  A very hard lady, but with some good qualities. And how is Sandra?"

Samantha explained how Sandra had tried to help Lisa and only got banged up herself. She promised to give her Mr Griffiths best wishes.

*************************************************

"So that appears to be that - unfortunately."

Mr Potts was in his boss's room. Lisa's father, sad but resigned to obeying his daughter's strange but unequivocal request, had flown home two weeks ago, straight after leaving the prison. Potts had just shown his chief a copy of Lisa's letter, which Griffiths had thought himself obliged to give him. The chief had just finished reading it.

"And we have the tapes of her hearing and her statement before walking into her cell. The girl clearly accepts that she was harshly but quite properly treated and is willing to face her punishment."

The Justice Ministry had made  the taped proceedings available to the Embassy. Both men had listened to that calm voice in total silence and remained quiet several seconds after the tape had finished.

"I take back what I said about her the day I handed the case over to you, Potts! She's no spoilt brat, and she does herself an injustice in that letter. She might have been one once but she's grown up awful fast. Even before she went into that cell she was a very mature young woman. I think she always was an exceptional girl as well as a very lovely one."

He looked at her photograph again.

"She has a backbone of steel, that one. And she's too fine a girl to be left to rot there for another. How long did you say she still has to go?"

"About fifty six weeks. It would be fifty three, but that exchange of letters with her father cost her three more"

"Three bloody weeks for the first contact with her family in over a year. She's still a child, damnit! This is abominable, Potts!  I want you to keep on this like the proverbial British bulldog. She may be willing to take this barbaric treatment and her father may be going along with it, but we have the broader picture to consider! How many other victims of injustice are there in this confounded country? Try and find out if there are any others who we should look at!  Get onto the other Western embassies and see what they come up with."

"I have already done that." said the efficient Mr Potts." There is an Australian girl called Samantha. The one Lisa befriended. Her mother married a local many years ago and they divorced. He abducted her when she was still a baby and brought her back here. Her mother was killed in a motor accident while still in the middle of proceedings to get her back and so Daddy ended up with custody. He treated Samantha, who has dual nationality, very badly. It culminated in his raping his own daughter once too often and she stabbed him with a kitchen knife. Serve the bastard right if you ask me! But she got fifteen years all the same, poor kid! With full remission she'll be coming out three months after Lisa. But I know of no others. I think the Americans had a few of their citizens locked up under dubious circumstances, but they got them out pretty quickly by leaning heavily on the President and in effect paying a bribe. They don't want to know about Lisa, though. They regard this corrupt bunch as allies in the "War on Turr" and won't rock the boat to help us, although I know a few guys at their Embassy, and they are very sympathetic and will do all they can unofficially."

Fordyce looked like thunder.

"Well - keep at it, Potts. I agree it doesn't look good, but we won't stop trying. Make it your number one priority until she gets out. If I can save her just a day's imprisonment it will be worth the time and money spent!"

Unhappily, all Potts's energy was in vain and gradually the remaining weeks were ticked off on his wallchart as one lead after another proved fruitless. It was four weeks before Lisa's release from solitary that a contact at the US embassy gave him the name of the true culprit, but this junior official was careless about passing the information on and was whisked away to Washington before Potts had a chance to collect the documentary evidence he needed. But he never gave up. He thought many times about going very public indeed about the disgraceful collusion by a so-called ally in the dreadful fate of a sweet and lovely girl, but knew it would mean dismissal for him and possible imprisonment. A Government led by a man popularly derided as a US poodle, was not going to like a scandal like this blowing up. And so Lisa waited in her cramped solitude until, according to her reckoning, only twenty one days remained for her to do.