The next morning, as a favour, he was brought a newspaper, so that he might see, one final time, his life turned into headlines, his story no longer divergent but now consolidated into legal fact, his character no longer of his own authorship but delineated by others.
SEVEN YEARS PENAL SERVITUDE.
WYRLEY CATTLE-KILLER SENTENCED.
PRISONER UNMOVED
Dully, yet automatically, George looked over the rest of the page. The story of Miss Hickman the lady doctor appeared also to have reached its end, subsiding into silence and mystery. George noted that Buffalo Bill, after a London season and a provincial tour lasting 294 days, had concluded his programme at Burton-on-Trent before returning to the United States. And as important to the Gazette as the sentencing of the Wyrley 'cattle-killer' was the story right next to it:
YORKSHIRE RAILWAY SMASH
Two trains wrecked in a tunnel
One killed, 23 injured
BIRMINGHAM MAN'S THRILLING EXPERIENCE
He was held at Stafford for another twelve days, during which time his parents were allowed daily visits. He found this more painful than if he had been hustled into a van and driven to the most distant part of the kingdom. In this long farewelling each of them behaved as if George's current predicament was some bureaucratic error soon to be remedied by an appeal to the appropriate official. The Vicar had received many letters of support and was already talking enthusiastically of a public campaign. To George this zeal seemed to border on hysteria, and its origins to lie in guilt. George did not feel his situation to be temporary, and his father's plans did not bring him any comfort. They seemed more an expression of religious belief than anything else.
After twelve days George was transferred to Lewes. Here he received a new uniform of coarse biscuit-coloured linen. There were two broad vertical stripes up the front and back, and thick, clumsily printed arrows. They gave him ill-fitting knickerbockers, black stockings and boots. A prison officer explained that he was a star man, and therefore would begin his sentence with three months' separate – it might be longer, it wouldn't be shorter. Separate meant solitary confinement. That was what all star men began with. George misunderstood at first: he thought he was being called a star man because his case had attracted notoriety; perhaps the perpetrators of especially heinous crimes were deliberately kept apart from other prisoners, who might vent their anger on a horse-mutilator. But no: a star man was simply the term for a first offender. If you come back, he was told, you will be classed as an intermediary; and if your returns are frequent, as an ordinary or a professional. George said he had no intention of coming back.
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.