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complaint
about his wife .. .
    'Now that would be kind,' I said.
'Is there any chance your husband would be interested in supervising
me himself?'
    'Oh no,' she said hurriedly.
'He's taking up a new post next term in his old college, so he won't
be around, you see. But there is a colleague of his, Dr Johnson,
who's showing a very positive interest
    And that was the first time I
heard dear Sam's name, but I hardly felt it as an epiphanic moment, I
was more concerned with pressing home my advantage.
    'So now you've happened to find
out about my PhD proposal, what do you reckon it shows about me?' I
asked. 'Do you really think I'm secretly harbouring thoughts of
revenge against the people I blame for putting me here?'
    'That's putting it too strongly,
perhaps,' she said. T don't see you as a strongly vengeful
personality. While it would be surprising if you didn't feel some
resentment, I see your choice of thesis subject as a sublimation of
these feelings. In other words, it's part of the healing process
rather than part of the trauma.'
    This was Reader's Digest stuff, I thought gleefully. This was the kind
of simple diet I wanted the boneheads who decided my future to be fed
on.
    'So in fact, Doctor, you think
the topic of my PhD proposal, and its acceptance at Sheffield, will
be a help in getting me transferred to Butler's Low? I mean, I
wouldn't want to be too far away from my supervisor, would I?'
    'I can see that’ she said,
nodding and making a note. 'That makes a lot of sense.'
    I took that as
a yes, and a yes is what it proved to be, though in fact I got
transferred to Butlin's before I had my PhD proposal accepted. So it
was there I met Sam for the first time. I was glad later that he
never had to come to the Syke and see me in that context, and smell
me too, probably, for one of the first things they told me when I
reached Butlin's was that I'd brought the prison stink with me. You
don't notice it yourself, but the others notice it, and I noticed it
myself later when anew transferee arrived.
    Curious, the
creative power of a smell! It took me straight back to slamming doors
and crowded cells and slopping out and constant fear - oh yes, even
when you were Polchard's chess playmate, you still lived in
fear - a sadistic screw, some nutter running amuck, dodgy smack, a
new king rat knocking Polchard off his perch - you never knew what
deadly changes the day might bring. So that smell was a potent
incentive to behave myself in Butlin's. Here we were in the Land of
Beulah. Every day we could look across the river to the Promised
Land.
    Only a fool would ever let
himself be sent back to that other place.
    I wasn't a fool then and I'm not
a fool now.
    I can see you might find it hard
to believe my prison experience has rehabilitated me, but you can
surely understand it's left me resolved never ever to risk going back
inside.
    So, no threats of revenge, nor
even any thoughts of revenge, not even under provocation - and you
must admit you have been somewhat provocative, dear Mr Pascoe.
    What I want from life I can get
by simple honest means, or at least what passes for such in the
groves of academe! I look around me - at the old oak panelling of the
room I'm writing in, its honeyed depths returning the glow of the
open fire which fends off the chill of the crisp winter day whose
pale sunlight fills the quiet quad outside my window.
    I only arrived a couple of hours
ago and, as I've told you, I'm only here for the weekend, but, I knew
the moment I set foot in the place that this or something very like
it is what I want. That's why I'm writing to you, Mr Pascoe. I'd been
thinking for some time it would be nice to clear the air between us,
but now I know it's essential, as much I admit for my own selfish
reasons as to ensure your peace of mind.
    Have I said enough? Perhaps,
perhaps not. I'll check later. But now I've got to go. It's the
opening session of the conference in five minutes. Dwight has already
left, pointing to his