He was taken before the Governor, an old military man who surprised him by staring at the name before him and asking politely how it was to be pronounced.

'Aydlji, sir.'

'Ay-dl-ji,' repeated the Governor. 'Not that you'll be much except a number here.'

'No, sir.'

'Church of England, it says.'

'Yes. My father is a Vicar.'

'Indeed. Your mother…' The Governor did not seem to know how to ask the question.

'My mother is Scottish.'

'Ah.'

'My father is a Parsee by birth.'

'Now I'm with you. I was in Bombay in the Eighties. Fine city. You know it well, Ay-dl-ji?'

'I'm afraid I've never left England, sir. Though I have been to Wales.'

'Wales,' said the Governor musingly. 'You're one up on me then. Solicitor, it says.'

'Yes, sir.'

'We've rather a slump in solicitors at the moment.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Solicitors – we've a slump in 'em at the moment. Normally we have one or two. One year we had more than half a dozen, I recall. But we got rid of our last solicitor a few months ago. Not that you'd have been able to talk to him much. You'll find the rules here are strict, and fully enforced, Mr Ay-dl-ji.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Still, we've got a couple of stockbrokers with us, and a banker as well. I tell people, if you want to see a true cross-section of society, you should visit Lewes Prison.' He was accustomed to saying this, and paused for the usual effect. 'Not that we have any members of the aristocracy, I hasten to add. Or,' – with a glance at George's file – 'any Church of England ministers at present. Though we have had the occasional one. Indecency, that sort of thing.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Now I'm not going to ask exactly what you did, or why you did it, or whether you did it, or whether any petition you might forward to the Home Secretary stands more chance than a mouse with a mongoose, because in my experience all that's a waste of time. You're in prison. Serve your sentence, obey the rules, and you won't get into any further trouble.'

'As a lawyer, I am used to rules.'

George meant this neutrally, but the Governor looked up as if it might have been a piece of insolence. Eventually, he settled for saying, 'Quite.'

There were indeed a large number of rules. George found the prison officers to be decent fellows, yet bound hand and foot by red tape. There was no talking to other prisoners. There was no crossing of legs or folding of arms in chapel. There was a bath once a fortnight, and a search of the prisoner's self and belongings whenever the necessity arose.

On the second day, a warder came into George's cell and asked if he had a bed-rug.

George thought this an unnecessary question. It was perfectly plain that he had a multi-coloured and reasonably heavy bed-rug, which the officer could not miss.

'Yes, I do, thank you very much.'

'What do you mean, thank you very much?' asked the warder with more than a touch of belligerance.

George remembered his police interrogations. Perhaps his tone had been too forward. 'I mean, I do,' he said.

'Then it must be destroyed.'

Now he was completely lost. This was a rule which had not been explained to him. He was careful with his reply, and especially with its tone.

'I do apologize, but I have not been here long. Why should you wish to destroy my bed-rug, which is both a comfort and, I imagine, in the harsher months, a necessity?'

The warder looked at him and slowly began to laugh. He laughed so much that a colleague ducked into the cell to see if he was all right.

'Not bed-rug, number 247, bed-bug.'

George half-smiled in return, uncertain if prisoners were allowed to do so under prison regulations. Perhaps only if granted permission. At any rate, the story passed into prison lore, and followed him down the succeeding months. That Hindoo lived such a sheltered life he didn't even know what a bed-bug was.

He discovered other discomforts instead. There were no proper conveniences, and a lack of privacy when it was most required. Soap was of a very poor quality. There was also an idiotic regulation that all shaving and barbering had to be done in the open air, which resulted in many prisoners – George included – catching colds.

He quickly became accustomed to the altered rhythm of his life. 5.45 rise. 6.15 doors unlocked, slops collected, bedclothes hung up to air. 6.30 tools served round, then work. 7.30 breakfast. 8.15 fold up bedding. 8.35 chapel. 9.05 return. 9.20 go to exercise. 10.30 return. Governor's rounds and other bureaucracy. 12 dinner. 1.30 dinner tins collected, then work. 5.30 supper, then tools collected and put outside for the next day. 8 bed.

Life was harsher and colder and more lonely than he had ever known it; but he was helped by this rigid structure to the day. He had always lived to a strict timetable; also with a heavy workload, whether as schoolboy or solicitor. There had been very few holidays in his life – that outing to Aberystwyth with Maud was a rare exception – and fewer luxuries, except those of the mind and spirit.

'The things star men miss the most,' said the Chaplain, on the first of his weekly visits, 'is the beer. Well, not just the star men. Intermediaries and ordinaries too.'

'Fortunately, I do not drink.'

'And the second thing is the cigarettes.'

'Again, I am lucky in that regard.'

'And the third is the newspapers.'

George nodded. 'That has been a severe deprivation already, I admit. I have been in the habit of reading three papers a day.'

'If there was anything I could do to help…' said the Chaplain. 'But the rules…'

'It is perhaps better to do entirely without something than hope from time to time that you might receive it.'

'I wish others had your attitude. I've seen men go crazy for a cigarette or a drink. And some of them miss their girls terribly. Some of them miss their clothes, some of them miss things they never even knew they were fond of, like the smell outside the back door on a summer's night. Everyone misses something.'

'I am not being complacent,' replied George. 'I am just able to think practically in the matter of newspapers. In other respects I am like everyone else, I am sure.'

'And what do you miss most?'

'Oh,' replied George, 'I miss my life.'

The Chaplain seemed to imagine that George, as the son of a clergyman, would draw his principal comfort and consolation from the practice of his religion. George did not disabuse him, and he attended chapel more willingly than most; but he knelt and sang and prayed in the same spirit as he put out his slops and folded his bedding and worked, as something to help get him through the day. Most of the prisoners went to work in the sheds, where they made mats and baskets; a star man doing three months' separate had to work in his own cell. George was given a board and bundles of heavy yarn. He was shown how to plait the yarn, using the board as a pattern. He produced, slowly and with great effort, oblongs of thick plaited material to a determined size. When he had finished six, they were taken away. Then he started another batch, and another.

After a couple of weeks, he asked a prison officer what the purpose of these shapes might be.

'Oh, you should know, 247, you should know.'

George tried to think where he might have come across such material before. When it was clear he was at a loss, the warder picked up two of the completed oblongs, and pressed them together. Then he held them beneath George's chin. When this gained no response, he put them beneath his own chin and started opening and closing his mouth in a wet and noisy fashion.

George was baffled by this charade. 'I am afraid not.'

'Oh, come on. You can get it.' The warder made noisier and noisier chomping sounds.

'I cannot guess.'

'Horses' nose-bags, 247, horses' nose-bags. Must be congenial, seeing as you're a man familiar with horses.'