He acquired a new number, D462. The letter indicated his year of conviction. The system had started with the century: 1900 was year A; George had therefore been convicted in year D, 1903. A badge bearing this number, and the prisoner's term of sentence, was worn on the jacket, and also on the cap. Names were used more frequently here than at Lewes, but still you tended to know a man by his badge. So George was D462-7.

There was the usual interview with the Governor. This one, though perfectly civil, was from his first words less encouraging in manner than his colleague at Lewes. 'You should know it is pointless trying to escape. No one has ever escaped from Portland Bill. You will merely lose remission and discover the delights of solitary confinement.'

'I think I am probably the last person in the entire gaol who might try to escape.'

'I have heard that before,' said the Governor. 'Indeed, I have heard everything before.' He looked down at George's file. 'Religion. It says Church of England.'

'Yes, my father-'

'You can't change.'

George did not understand this remark. 'I have no desire to change my religion.'

'Good. Well, you can't anyway. Don't think you can get round the Chaplain. It's a waste of time. Serve your term and obey the warders.'

'That has always been my intention.'

'Then you're either wiser or more foolish than most.' With this enigmatic remark, the Governor waved for George to be taken away.

His cell was smaller and meaner than at Lewes, though he was assured by a warder who had served in the army that it was better than a barracks. Whether this was true, or intended as unverifiable consolation, George had no means of knowing. For the first time in his prison career, his fingerprints were taken. He feared the moment when the doctor assessed his capacity for work. Everyone knew that those sent to Portland were given a pickaxe and ordered to break rocks in a quarry; leg-irons doubtless came into the reckoning as well. But his anxieties turned out to be misconceived: only a small percentage of the prisoners worked in the quarries, and star men were never sent there. Further, George's eyesight meant that he was judged fit only for light work. The doctor also deemed it unsafe for him to go up and down stairs; so he was located to No. 1 Ward on the ground floor.

He worked in his cell. He picked coir for stuffing beds, and hair for stuffing pillows. The coir had to be first combed out on a board, and then picked as fine as thread: only thus, he was told, would it be suitable to make the softest of beds. No proof of this claim was afforded; George never saw the next stage of the process, and his own mattress was definitely not filled with finely picked coir.

Halfway through his first week at Portland, the Chaplain visited him. His jovial manner implied that they were meeting in the vestry at Great Wyrley rather than a dog-kennel with a ventilation hole cut from the bottom of the door.

'Settling in?' he asked cheerily.

'The Governor seems to imagine my only thoughts are of escape.'

'Yes, yes, he says that to everyone. I think he rather enjoys the occasional escape, just between the two of us. The black flag raised, the cannon booming, the barracks turning out. And he always wins the game – he likes that too. No one ever gets off the Bill. If the soldiers don't get them, the citizenry does. There's a five-pound bounty for turning in an escaper, so there's no incentive to look the other way. Then it's a spell of chokey and a loss of remission. Just not worth it.'

'And the other thing the Governor told me was that I am not allowed to change my religion.'

'True enough.'

'But why should I want to?'

'Ah, you're a star man, of course. Don't know the ins and outs yet. You see, Portland has only Protestants and Catholics. About six to one, the ratio. But no Jews at all. If you were a Jew, you'd be sent to Parkhurst.'

'But I'm not a Jew,' said George, rather doggedly.

'No. Indeed not. But if you were an old lag – an ordinary – and you decided that Parkhurst was an easier billet than Portland, you might be released from Portland this year as an ardent member of the Church of England, but by the time the police caught you next time, you might have decided you were a Jew. Then you'd get sent to Parkhurst. But they made it a rule that you can't change your faith in the middle of a sentence. Otherwise prisoners would be coxing-and-boxing every six months, just for something to do.'

'The rabbi at Parkhurst must get some surprises.'

The Chaplain chuckled. 'Strange how a life of crime can turn a man into a Jew.'

George discovered that it was not just Jews who were sent to Parkhurst; invalids and those known to be a little bit off the top were also despatched there. You might not change religion at Portland, but if you broke down physically or mentally, you could be transferred. It was said that some prisoners deliberately put pickaxes through their feet, or pretended to be a little bit off the top – howling like dogs and tearing out their hair in clumps – in an attempt to gain a move. Most of them ended up in chokey instead, a few days' bread and water their only reward.

'Portland is in a most healthy situation,' George wrote to his parents. 'The air is very strong and bracing, and there is not much sickness.' He might as well have been writing a postcard from Aberystwyth. But it was true too, and he must find what comfort he could for them.

He soon grew used to his cramped accommodation and decided that Portland was a better place than Lewes. There was less red tape, and no idiotic regulation about being shaved and barbered in the open air. Also, the rules governing conversation between prisoners were more relaxed. The food was better too. He was able to inform his parents that there was a different dinner every day, and two kinds of soup. The bread was wholemeal – 'Better than baker's bread,' he wrote, not as an attempt to evade censorship or ingratiate himself, but as a true expression of opinion. There were also green vegetables and lettuce. The cocoa was excellent, though the tea was poor stuff. Still, if you did not want tea, you might have porridge or gruel, and it surprised George that many insisted on having inferior tea rather than something more nutritious.

He was able to tell his parents that he had plenty of warm underclothing; also jerseys, leggings and gloves. The library was even better than at Lewes, and the terms of borrowing more generous: he could take out two 'library' books, plus four of an educational nature, every week. All the leading magazines were available in volume form, though both books and journals had been purged of undesirable matter by the prison authorities. George borrowed a history of recent British art, only to discover that all the illustrations of work by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema had been neatly removed by the official razor. At the front of the volume was the warning written in every book borrowed from the library: 'No turning down of pages.' Underneath it a prison wag had written, 'And no tearing out of pages.'

Hygiene was no better, though no worse, than at Lewes. If you wanted a toothbrush you had to apply to the Governor, who seemed to answer Yes or No according to some private, whimsical system.

One morning, in need of metal polish, George asked a warder if there was any chance of obtaining some Bath-brick.

'Bath-brick, D462!' replied the officer, his eyebrows leaping towards his cap. 'Bath-brick! You'll ruin the firm – you'll be asking for Bath-buns next.'

And that was the end of that.

George picked coir and hair each day; he took exercise as instructed, though with no great zeal; he borrowed his full allowance of books from the library. At Lewes he had become accustomed to eating with only a tin knife and a wooden spoon, and to the fact that the knife was often insufficient against prison beef and mutton. He no longer missed using a fork, any more than he missed newspapers. Indeed, he saw the absence of a daily paper as an advantage: lacking this daily prod from the outside world, he adapted more easily to the passage of time. Such events as occurred in his life now occurred within the prison walls. One morning, an inmate – C183, serving eight years for robbery – managed to climb on to the roof, whence he declared to the world that he was the Son of God. The Chaplain offered to go up a ladder and discuss the theological implications, but the Governor decided it was just another attempt to gain a transfer to Parkhurst. Eventually they starved him down and packed him off to chokey. C183 admitted in the end that he was the son of a potman and not of a carpenter.