From my poor social vantage point I could not see out over the heads of the crowd to where the speakers sat, elevated on their dais of common interest. I did not know whom to approach, could not divine who was popular and who might make a good patron. I had assumed that this division would be so obvious as to negate any need for investigation, but having cut myself off almost completely from my peers I found it impossible to get any measure of the fashions.

When our ingenuity fails us, fate sometimes steps in to take up the slack. It is events like this which, when seen from a distant vantage point, give our lives the shape of purpose, like a face appearing in an outcrop of white cloud. In my case, fate erupted into my life through the window in the early hours of Thursday morning in the third week of term, just after I had finished work, closed my copy of medieval English lyrics on my bureau and turned off my lights. My room was situated at the very top of the staircase. Beyond the window set into the eaves loomed the sandstone squares of the crenellations, the ornamental battlements that ringed the top of New Court. I had climbed up and poked my head out through this window several times whilst observing the comings and goings in the court below, and had discovered between the edge of the sill and the fanciful walls a narrow lead-plated walkway that housed the gutter for the sloping roof. It was almost like a private balcony, elevated and inaccessible, and I had already earmarked it for sunbathing in the summer.

On this particular night I had heard cries and shouting from the middle courtyard, but I had not bothered to look, as there was a strong correspondence between these disturbances and kicking-out time at Cindy’s, one of the local nightclubs. I lay in bed and pictured the scene with my eyes closed: a girl sitting in the gutter, dressed in a miniskirt and carrying her shoes, laughing or crying whilst two boys tried to lever her into an upright position. It was then that I heard what sounded like movement in the ceiling, and the branches of a tree tapping at my window. At first I thought I must be imagining the sound, since I could think of no explanation for it, but the knocking grew more insistent, and was joined by a man’s voice, a loud stage whisper ordering me to ‘Open the fucking window!’

For a few seconds I could not reconcile the presence of the voice with the position of my room: the height of the building and the lateness of the hour combined to make the intrusion so unlikely that I could not quite believe that it was happening. Suddenly another noise jolted me into action. The acoustics of the stone stairwell leading up to my room tended to amplify voices and footsteps, and I heard the slap of patent-leather shoes hitting the bottom flight, and the pant of laboured breath. There were further shouts from the courtyard, and now I could make out the odd word: ‘Quick!’ and ‘Don’t let him—’ By this time the knocking on my window had given way to the sound of someone trying to force the catch. The huff and rumble on the stairs grew louder as the intruder rose through the floors. I unhooked the catch and, as if the night had given birth through my window, a swarthy gleaming head, slightly podgy and sweating with exertion, popped through with a gust of cold air and a stream of abuse into my bedroom. A pair of meaty arms followed swiftly and gripped my shoulders, and with my help the man wrestled his cumbersome body through the narrow hatch and landed on my floor like a side of beef on the butcher’s slab. It was only when he picked himself up that I realized I recognized him.