Second opinion

IT is hardly surprising, I suppose, that in my job you cease to believe in the possi- bility of innocence, or even of common decency. So it was a pleasant change indeed to examine medical students last week — young people who have as yet been untouched by the evil of life. How young and fresh-faced they seemed; how full of misplaced optimism!

They divided quite naturally into two categories: the boffins, more at ease with test-tubes and computers than with peo- ple; and the saccharine, save-the-whale types, who exuded like slime the secular evangelism of the age. Still, the adult world of employment in this general sauve-qui-peut we call England will chas- ten them soon enough.

Decency is all very well in its way, of course, but after a few hours of it I began to suffer acutely from nostalgie de la boue. It was almost with relief that I returned to the prison; I can rely on the prisoners to tone up my nervous system and put me into a pleasant state of outrage. Recently, there has been a sudden influx of domes- tics into the prison. I do not mean by this butlers, handymen, chauffeurs etc., but men who are accused of a domestic. One of them told me he was aggressive in drink, though otherwise a lamb. The trou- ble was, he was rarely sober. While inebri- ated, he had attempted to strangle several women, and was now in prison for a drunken stabbing. His hands were shaking and sweat poured down his face.

`What do you conclude from all this?' I asked him.

`I've got a lot of stress,' he replied.

This is a lesson learnt only at the Uni- versity of Life.

In the next cell was another domestic. He had attacked his beloved with a machete, that agricultural implement of the slums. He was outraged that his girl- friend had grassed on him.

`I put it down to the hormones,' he said. `Whose? Hers or yours?'

`Six of one and half a dozen of the other.'

In the next cell was a young man with a red devil tattooed on the inner aspect of his thigh. On his right hand were tat- tooed in Indian ink the letters FTW, which stand for the succinct and pro- found message F.-- the World.

`What are you in for?' I asked.

`A f—ing telephone call.'

Instinct told me that this was a highly edited version of the events leading to his imprisonment. It turned out that by telephoning his former girlfriend, whom he had attempted to strangle and later intimidated, he had broken the condi- tions of his bail.

Last, but by no means least, I entered the cell of a man who said that he would like nothing better than to be allowed into the yard to do a little gardening.

`You like gardening?' I said. 'It's gar- dening that got me in here,' he said.

I know that the government is begin- ning to show dictatorial tendencies, but surely it hasn't yet got to the stage where a man is sentenced to life imprisonment for gardening?

`He had a dispute with his neighbour over a fence post, sir,' interposed a prison officer. 'And beat him to death with a pruning hook.'

Theodore Dalrymple