I pushed open the heavy gate and stepped inside. Pausing in front of the notices--some curling their plastic edges in the damp, others drooping limply off the corkboard--I knocked the snow off my boots and shook out my overcoat, popping open the fat buttons on the duffel-coat with the clumsy ends of my fingers. Through the archway the rest of the college was silent. Over in the next quad the chapel bell bonged one o'clock, and a single light winked out in the library alcove. Christmas Eve, almost Christmas proper. For some reason John Smith, the night porter, didn't seem to be in his wood and glass booth, and the empty staircases and frozen lawn took on a rather melancholy aspect in his absence. I stuck my wet gloves in my pocket and headed for my room.

Just as I was about to turn the corner I heard a sharp little tap on the glass and turned back.

"How're you, laddie?" John said, sliding back the panel and letting out a puff of silvery breath into the night air. His broad chest and stomach were stacked up on the counter, and he was smoothing over his salt-and-pepper hair with an idle hand. "I wis jist out the back lookin somethin out for yeh."

His voice had a sharp Scottish roll that I liked a great deal.

"Oh yes?" I asked. "What's that?"

He didn't answer, but dug down underneath the counter and came up with a small electric fan-heater with a fraying cord.

"Yeh said it wis a bit nippy up there, wi'out heat and all, so I thought this might come in handy." He propped it up on the ledge and reached the plug back round to a socket inside the booth. As he plugged it in the heater growled and clanked with the sound of a restless child running a spoon along a radiator, but after a couple of minutes' effort managed a reasonable stream of warm air. I pulled my sleeves back and toasted my hands in front of it.

"Smashing!"

"Aye. Nae problem."

John spent his nights, from just before twelve till eight in the morning, when the first porter dragged himself in, sitting on a high-backed stool keeping watch over the comings and goings of the college. Or that was what he was supposed to do. In reality he steamed through the daily papers and news magazines, photography journals, books on birds and architecture, "Mayfair" and long tracts of British imperial history, with his tinny little radio squawking in the background and a bank of dead security screens flipping from one deserted scene to another. Lately he'd been teaching himself Spanish from a thick pink hardback he'd propped up against the phone.

"For my retirement, yeh know," he'd say, "vino and a nice little casa and mebbe a woman, yeh nivir know."

Tonight he seemed a little subdued. Perhaps it was the season.

"What're you going to do for Christmas, John?" I asked.

"Well, I'm nae rightly sure, but I don't suppose it'll be mich different tae last time. A decent bottle and a guid book and the telly. How about you? You'll be out wi that wee cracker ye're always hanging round with, I bet, am I right?"

"No, no I won't be. She's gone, John, there's just me. I'll probably work, exams and that, you know."

"Aye well, it's overrated anyhow, I say. Still, 's a shame ye'll no be wi that woman--I've seen the way yeh look at her."

A key rattled furiously in the lock and a wet student crossed the flagstones behind us. He wove his way unsteadily across the lawn and disappeared. I didn't have anything to say.

After a minute I managed, "How's the Spanish coming?"

"Oh, great actually. 's only four years till I'm done, yeh know, then I'm off. Talked to the pension people and everythin. I can just get me pension zipped across in pesetas, and I'm away. Vino and all that, sunshine, just sitting back wi a book an a glass and that's that. I cannae wait."

"I hope you get there sooner than that!" I said, but the smile I forced felt as plastic as the Santa taped to the inside of the window. "Well, I think I'm going to head on up. Goodnight, and thanks for the fan. I'm going to need it up there."

"Oh aye, ye're welcome. See yeh tomorrow."

As I left he slid the glass back into place, and I heard the radio start up and the holiday music begin to play.

On the dark stairs I wrapped the cord around the heater so it wouldn't trip me up, and trudged up each flight feeling gloomier than ever. On the turn of the third flight a dim bulb was casting a pool of light on the handrails. I suddenly imagined John back at home in the morning, his large frame stuffed into a comfy chair, his ornately tartan-slippered feet propped on an overstuffed stool. There was a plate of meat and vegetables at his elbow and a glass in his hand. The dirty city slush slapped, miles away, against a thick window. Harry Secombe was singing carols on the telly. His book was a rich feast of words and warmth and pictures. As I reached my door I realized I was smiling.

I set down the heater on the floor near the bed, laying out my duffel-coat and gloves on the floor in front of it. I popped in a tape and uncurled my frozen toes into the carpet, reaching down to plug in the heater. I coughed out a handful of orange sparks, and the room went black.