The Glass Cage
An extract from the great John Healy's long-awaited sequel to The Grass Arena, with an introduction from his editor, John Mitchinson
It’s not often you get to publish the sequel to a Penguin Modern Classic but in August, Boundless releases The Glass Cage, the second volume of memoir by John Healy, a full 37 years after his first. I remember the splash The Grass Arena made back in 1991 and often wondered what had happened to its author. John was an alcoholic vagrant saved by his unexpected and prodigious talent for chess – for a moment he was everywhere - an authentic working class outsider who could write mesmerising prose. And then he just disappeared.The Glass Cage explains why. Damaged physically and psychologically by his years on the street, John soon realised that talent and courage will only take you so far in the hall of mirrors that is literary London. But even as he forsook fame, he kept on writing. Now 82, he has returned, with a haunting late masterpiece that will cement his literary reputation. JM
“It was unwise to show too much concern
there were limits to the feelings you could express”
Chapter 1
The mattress was tattered and stained and a good two feet shorter than the iron slats it was supposed to cover, but it would do. It would have to.
It was not the first time I had witnessed the inside of a prison cell or lain on an institutionalised bed. I had many times been confined within these grey walls back in the day when prisons had begun tightening their wire. But, as I waited behind the iron door, this was the first time I’d ever been afraid. Compared to the past, though, my reason for being here was negligible. My crime? Non-payment of a £50 fine imposed thirteen years ago under the medieval vagrancy laws. They had found my door. I was arrested yesterday morning on a committal warrant, sentenced to a day, and would be released at dawn. Since I wouldn’t be walking the hard yard under a tangle of iron surrounded by barbed wire, perhaps I was taking the whole episode too seriously, because from one point of view it was rather ridiculous. Yet I was finding it hard to come to terms with it all. Quite apart from the shock of being arrested again after so long, and the slight disruption to my otherwise humdrum routine, there was the recurring déjà vu laced with a touch of paranoia.
It was like opening a wound I thought had healed, for even one hour is a long time in prison. Anything could happen. I could stare at the walls if I chose, but I could not be sure when I might be thrown into a situation where I would say the wrong thing to the wrong screw and find myself in trouble. I wanted to avoid this for I feared that, if I clashed with authority again, I would lose control of my emotions. I had lost some of my front teeth in a cell just like this to a chief officer’s boot over a petty infringement.
Yet that wasn’t quite it either. For those few hours, I should be able to bear any amount of verbal abuse, caustic comments, or even a few silent slaps. The last thing to worry about is offended dignity when confronted in an alley by a mugger with a blade. No, the real worry lay in this feeling: a feeling that I hadn’t moved on since my last stay there, coupled with the fear that I now perhaps never would. I was one of the children with longing eyes who had been locked out in back-yard isolation among a tyranny of brick walls, who grew up trying to avoid the swing and the whine of the belt my father wielded while keeping pain to an inward scream. But I was not very resilient and, when my madness got out of control, I made the mistake of shouting it out and went to prison for it, where I lay on my bunk listening to the screams of the punished echoing cruelly from the cells below.
Since the age of fifteen I had lived on the street as a vagrant alcoholic, termed a ‘wino’ by police and courts alike, the most contemptible among the contemptible; there weren’t any good winos, because good gets lost among the bad and by the time you notice it’s too late.
In a world where only alcohol had meaning, we measured time by the bottle instead of the clock. It was becoming harder and harder to find forgiveness and kindness we did not ask for, as we knew it would not be given. This way of life destroyed pity, smiles were seldom offered, we accepted being set apart in alleyways and parks.
But sometimes a wave of yearning rose up in me for times that were past. I was strong then, I could endure, I could resist the urge to hide in corners. But it took a long time to find my way; the various tensions were far too complex.
At night we searched for the most secret hiding places. But wherever we hid, when it was very late, they would come for you, making attempts at stealth, but the bare boards on the landing failed to deaden their footsteps. As I lay in the room that was never my own, listening to the boards creak, waiting as they negotiated the rickety stairs, I felt like a soldier engaged in a war nobody knew about.
In the breath-held silence, faint sounds drifted up from a hollow in the stairwell: my secret place had lost its privacy; security did not dwell in the rooms of the condemned. As darkness closed in, the night became full of surly shadows; while I looked into the blackness and listened, all moments of doubt were confirmed by a sinister creaking, along with the board at the bottom of the stairs that snapped too loudly underfoot. While darkness seeped deeper into every corner, shadows continued to slither around the walls as I listened for noises on the other side of the door. Fear began to grow in the solitude at the approach of others as I waited to meet my fate in the anarchy of the night. I shifted silently on the frail boards, uncertainty making the air more restless, deceptive sounds disturbing the darkness. Was it the police, or scavengers coming for the lead on the roof? The police are not the only ones who thrive during darkness. It was a toss-up between two evils, though scavengers tend to be more reckless and while dealing with them can have its own dark moments, at least they cannot arrest you.
So I waited for whatever it was that was coming for me out of the abandoned house’s shadows. I could feel them moving tentatively around before they decided what to do. The silence began to swell and brood until there was a mumbling of instructions and fragments of advice, then the footsteps began again – much firmer. They came with purpose now, the iron on their heels thumping, ringing on the broken boards that had not yet rotted. I could hear their heavy breathing while I was almost on the point of choking from the held breath shuddering in my lungs.
I never thought they would find this skipper. Lying in my corner each night, I had ceased to worry about it. Until now, here in the dark of a room which earlier had provided a certain sanctuary. This game of hide and seek had turned real, and as the footsteps continued to mount the stairs, stopping every so often as their suspicions drew them here and there, I realised it was indeed the police. I longed to escape, but the darkness clung, it hung like a shroud and would not let me. Huddled on the floor of the threatened room, alone in the condemned house, cowering in the position strange footsteps had left me in, fear came in an intake of breath and conveyed itself to the huge leaping shadows. Something in the trembling of a banister interspersed with frequent silences was disturbing.
The dog recognised the silence, the dog was possessed of cunning, as it listened for the sound of my breathing while I feared I might never find anywhere safe again. I had become weakened in the stiff silence, and fear had thinned me out along with the dark whisperings and the panting eagerness of the dog as it bit the darkness, conjuring images that sprang at me in open wounds. Flesh is no protection against fangs, though the night might take the final bite as the cold bit into my feet.
Shadows on the wall suggested the moon was going down and, surprisingly in the darkening purple night, there was a new softness in the air. Sounds became distant, shadows became tender, less disturbing, and began to reveal more. The footsteps had stopped and might never have begun. In the still room I listened, but there was nothing – just the cold silence of an old house. Everything had become motionless; hope was filling me up.
Since there was nothing of sufficient importance in this derelict building to warrant a sweeping search, I felt confident things would fall back into place, that peace would return in all its stillness. With innocent hopefulness, I thought the intruders would never reach the attic where I lay; even rats that had chewed through the wires in the cellar never got this far. I did not feel like bleeding for anyone tonight. The shadows had grown leaner and were eventually extinguished; the intruders must have gone. Rain beating gently against the broken windowpane gave me hope, as no one likes to hang around in the rain.
All around the silence had thickened. The thought that I’d been so quiet restored my circulation. The searchers could not have been sure anyone was here, divided between looking and leaving with their heads held to listen, they would have to be content with guesses. Though I’d heard no retreating steps. I strained to listen, but except for a falling piece of broken plaster, which caused terror for a moment, the silence held. Surely they had gone. In the silence, my thoughts of a beating and time in prison were lifted and relief began to ease through my veins. But, in spite of this, I could not quite get a vague doubt out of my head: Were they gone or only resting on the stairs? I lay frowning at the strange silence I could not trust, until shadows began reappearing on the wall, followed by faint sounds then the distinct noise of a door creaking in the silence below. Of course they hadn’t gone. My moment of hope had been illusionary, fear had encouraged me to deceive myself. In the dark room, the night was anxious once more.
Cops are inquisitive; once their attention is drawn to something, they have to investigate, although their eyes do not always see further than others. As their loud boots continued to disturb the darkness, I realised they would never leave. And even if they did, they would return through the last doorway for the last vagrant; nothing would deter them now. Article four of the Vagrancy Act does not indulge in sentiment, its evil shadow covers everything. All around, the darkness was hardening once more. The tangled shadows groping for balance were treading more carefully over the thinner brittle boards as they came on stealthily through the smell of dry rot. This was the stench of all abandoned places. I had been able to ignore it before, but now it was oppressive. The shadows could not have been more watchful. I could feel their resentment as they peered out of the darkness and resumed their normal shape. The footsteps begun once more to mount the narrow stairs, faster, as if making up for any delay. As the sound of the boots grew louder, I swallowed the lump in my throat. They were urgent, firm and formal, unrelentingly they filled the air with fear. Trapped like an animal hoping danger would pass, I waited in the intense cold. It seeped through the cracks in the walls and lingered in the room. Between whispers and silences as the boards creaked, I could sense every inch of movement down to the slightest tremor. I knew I must not tremble as I shrank from what was edging closer. Out of the darkness, voices drew nearer. They rose up, stiff and blunt from a lower floor, where even vermin stopped darting along the skirting board.
As the cold in the damp room mingled with the darkness, I wrapped my arms firmly around me to stop myself from shaking, but continued to shiver. Coughing was a comfort, though it made an awful sound. By the sound of ugly whispers spiralling from the stairwell and boots thumping louder on the empty boards, they had reached the second landing. When they reached the third, I would no longer be a person, but a bundle of rags, officially a ‘vagrant’, which would aggravate coppers. It didn’t really matter; nothing could be done about that.
If I was lucky you might escape a beating. The air was retreating from the room and the walls were threatening to close in. Silence had descended on the landing; there was no sound but the creaking of an old house. I had become familiar with the slightest movement or noise; however, I trembled a little at this new silence that did not result in the absence of sound. My shadow was frail and pale, scarcely visible among the bigger, burlier ones on the wall. I put out my hand to ward them off, but touched only darkness, for they had grown angry and taken on fresh shapes. Each shadow created a new one, snapping and snarling viciously at each other, swirling recklessly around. Everything was slipping from me as I lay against the darkness, trying to interpret each movement and sound.
John’s Healy’s The Glass Cage will be published in August 2025 and is now available to pre-order