Cedilla (101 page)

I could hardly expect there to be no repercussions from the rupture with Mum and Dad, but I hoped not to have to deal with them until after the vacation. No such luck. One day the phone rang and Prissie told me it was for me. Her voice was rather hushed. ‘Who is it?’ I mouthed, and she answered in a whisper, ‘Perhaps a bishop?’

It was Graëme Beamish, my tutor.

‘John,’ he said, ‘please find it in your heart to forgive me for disturbing you in the well-earned rest of your vacation. Then I will try to find it in mine to forgive your mother for disturbing the peace of mine.

‘I would have left her letter unanswered were it not for the fact that I am taking next term as a sabbatical. It didn’t seem fair to pass on to my replacement the obligation of dealing with as tricky a customer as I have come across in my experience as a tutor.’

I could hear regular metallic impacts in the background, from
which I deduced that Dr Beamish was finding amusement in setting Newton’s Balls a-clack.

‘I’m not referring to you, John, though you yourself do not offer the authorities the easiest of rides. I mean your mother.

‘As you may not know, your mother has written to me roughly every two weeks of university term since you first came up.

‘John? Are you there?’

‘Yes, Dr Beamish.’ I was very shocked to learn that Mum had been so hideously active on what she imagined to be my behalf. Knowing that my tutor had been screening me from her interference for the last two years felt almost as bad as being pushed down King Street by him with a stranger’s sick caking my wheels.

‘Shall I continue? I hope I’m not interrupting any important activity. The file on
Cromer, Mrs L
is even larger than the one on
Cromer, J
. For some time her idea was that I should forbid you from changing your course of study. Now it seems that your family has exploded in some way. I have to say I have no interest in how you all get on with each other. I propose simply to read you my reply to your mother’s latest letter so that you know where you stand. Is that agreed?’

‘Agreed.’

‘“
Dear Mrs Cromer, I am sorry to learn that John has fallen victim to
sexual deviance and drug addiction. These scourges do unfortunately claim
a small proportion of undergraduates, and not always the unpromising ones,
during their years of study. The evidences of wrongdoing which you mention,
however, came to light during the vacation and on private property: as such
they cannot be said directly to involve the College or indeed the University. If
John is found in possession of further caches of smut or illegal narcotics I will,
of course, inform you at once. I myself had always imagined that his tempta
tions were the more traditional ones of strong drink and bad company.
”’

I could hear a self-satisfied smile in his voice, and could imagine him looking at me over the tops of imaginary half-moon glasses, while he congratulated himself on the neatness of this oblique reference to my kidnap at the hands of Write Off Tuesday.

He was certainly getting his pennyworth of revenge for an evening when he was made to feel uncomfortable in the Senior Common Room, sniffing the air from time to time and checking his smart shoes for traces of undergraduate vomit.

‘“
As for your suggestion that he should receive medical treatment, although
it is true that the University has access to the ‘top men’ in many fields, most
of them indeed the products of our system of education, it is my impression that
John knows almost as much as any of the health professionals with whom his
difficult history has brought him into contact. Some say that he eats doctors
for breakfast, others that he merely chews them and spits them out, without
going to the trouble of swallowing.
”’ It is perhaps true that I was impatient with the general practitioner assigned by the university to preside over my health. Dr Beamish paused, as if trying to detect down the telephone wire whether his bufferish persiflage was succeeding in making me squirm.

‘“
There seems no pressing need to add to the list of casualties, unless of course
John’s academic progress begins to suffer. If and when that happens, we will
certainly seek medical help.
”

‘Does this reply seem satisfactory to you, John?’

‘Perfectly satisfactory, Dr Beamish. Thank you.’

‘Not at all, John. I shall see you in the new year, after my sabbatical term. But please go easy on my replacement. Not everyone has my inner strength.’

All in all it was a fine show of donnish humour, in a style which I imagine has changed little over the decades, even the centuries. I had to be grateful to Beamish for fobbing off Mum and Dad with his elegant mockery, even if it did sting me a little in the process. To judge from his sardonic references to drink and so on he regarded me as having good character more or less by default. Mechanically unable to sin rather than either virtuous or vicious on the level of morals.

With the Washbournes’ permission I phoned Granny. I wasn’t sure which way she would jump, which was of course just the way she liked it. Her tone was predictably crisp from the word go. ‘Halnaker 226.’

‘Hello, Granny, this is John.’

‘Good morning, John.’

‘Have you heard from Mum lately?’

‘Indeed I have not. We are not in morbidly regular communication. Laura seeks to shield me from good and bad news alike. Luckily Peter retains some dim memory of his grandmother.’

‘Well, Granny, the thing is, we had a row and I’ve moved out.’

‘So I hear. People are always saying that blood is thicker than water but I can’t say I’ve noticed.’ Wonderful Granny, so unsuspectingly Hindu in her instincts! So right in thinking that the fluids of kinship have no metaphysical claim to viscosity. ‘Are you well placed where you are staying now?’

‘Very well placed, Granny.’

‘I am pleased to hear it. I take it your allowance has been discontinued?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘What sums were involved?’

‘Dad gave me £10 a month.’

‘I will maintain that level of stipend. Were there other expenses met by your parents?’

‘Only books.’

‘I see. I will carry that burden also, though I shall expect scrupulous accounts. Goodbye, John.’

‘Of course, Granny. Thank –’

But she had already put down the receiver at the Tangmere end. It’s true she was of a generation that didn’t necessarily perform expansively on the phone, but I think her brusqueness was more idiosyncratic. Granny just got a kick out of hanging up, without footling politesse. And for all the terseness of the conversation, that was my finances fixed, for the time being, without opposition or even haggling. It’s true that Granny liked any such arrangement to be provisional, renewed or withdrawn as she pleased.

In her financial conversations she could be oddly playful, even skittish. She might say, ‘I had a little investment, John, and nothing would it bear – not even a silver nutmeg or a golden pear, I’m afraid, though that would have been charming. But now the King of Spain’s daughter has paid me a rather nice dividend after all, and I thought I would send you some of it – not all the fruit from my little nut tree, but enough I hope to give you a pleasant taste.’ Or else: ‘I’m afraid my portfolio has caught rather a bad cold, John – it may even be ’flu – so we must both tighten our belts for the time being and hope for improvement. Portfolios are particularly susceptible to coughs and sneezes at this time of year, as perhaps you know.
Cases of pneumonia have been reported in the Square Mile. We must watch and wait.’

I returned to Cambridge for the academic year 1972–3 as an honorary orphan (at least in my own mind), and deprived of the tutor who had protected me in previous years.

It was my chance to get a telephone installed. I seized it. I got to work right away. I wasn’t confident of putting one over on his replacement – I could all too easily imagine Graëme leaving a note saying
THE ENDLESSLY PESTERING JOHN CROMER IS NOT TO HAVE A
TELEPHONE HOWEVER ELOQUENTLY HE PLEADS HIS SPECIOUS
CASE
– but it was worth a go. And then it went like a dream. I had my paperwork with me: the original note from Roy Wisbey proposing it, not to mention my photocopy of the relevant section of the Disabled Persons Act 1971. The tender-hearted substitute asked for no documentation (locums are usually pushovers). My case spoke for itself. I should have asked for a fridge and a shower in my room while the going was good.

I remember nothing about Beamish’s temporary replacement except that he was a historian. As he opened my file and then Mum’s a look of amazement spread across his face. What a teeming archive of pathology he had in his hand! Such bad luck that it wasn’t from the formative years of a Beethoven or a Churchill.

‘How is your relationship with your parents?’ he asked.

‘Non-existent.’

‘Well, you’re already getting the maximum grant, so that won’t change. Do you have resources of your own?’

‘My Granny helps out.’ These few words painted a wonderfully pathetic picture. Granny would have given an elegant snort of glee at it.

‘I see that the Bell Abbot & Barnes Fund helped out in another … emergency. Do you want me to try them again?’

‘I suppose so.’ Said with the right amount of swallowed pride. In fact it was resentment I was swallowing, at the way the college had used an outside agency to reward its own greed, in the matter of the ceiling rail. And indeed Bell Abbot & Barnes came up trumps, matching Granny’s £10 monthly. I was now better off than I was before the bust-up, though I had to budget very carefully if I was to get
through the vacations (and I had no idea where I would be spending them). God bless Bell, God bless Abbot and God bless Barnes. Bless their cotton-rich socks. Bless every fibre.

I was now an undergraduate of means. I was more or less flush. So when an English student called Robin Baines-Johnson I met at a Tragedy lecture asked to borrow £5, I gave it to him. He was already known to me at second-hand, since his uncle was the Governor of the Bank of England. He was a mini-celebrity of the student body. I hardly hesitated. If anyone in Cambridge – anyone in the whole world – was good for a loan, then surely it was the nephew of the Governor of the Bank of England! I entirely misunderstood the mood of the times. The
Zeitgeist
had me fooled good and proper. This was a period when all institutions were considered evil by student culture, above all those which were explicitly capitalist, and personal responsibility was felt to be a bourgeois perversion. I should have understood. The nephew of the Governor of the Bank of England was the last person in the country who would risk repaying a debt. Existentially it would be a disaster. It would strip him of his last shred of authenticity. At all events I never got my fiver back.

I didn’t really relax until my phone connection was installed. It didn’t seem impossible that Graëme would reappear from wherever he had gone, with a tan and a straw hat, a suitcase in each hand, specifically to hiss at the engineers, ‘Kindly disconnect that phone!’ In the event he stayed away, and at last I had a proper link with the world.

In one respect the timing was perfect. In previous years I would have had to tell Mum about the phone sooner or later, and then she’d have been calling me the whole time, sparing Dr Beamish and putting pressure on me direct.

I had some enjoyable little chats with the operator. In those days the telephone wire went straight into the wall, and if you put the phone off the hook you could be reported. They would put the howler on to get your attention. I used to enjoy teasing the operator, saying I had sabotaged the bell with a wire so I didn’t hear the bell if I didn’t
want to. Technically this would have been tampering, and a punishable offence. I was living dangerously.

As a third-year I had lost some of my social fear. I was beginning to be anxious about the future rather than the present, wondering what life after Cambridge would be like. I couldn’t imagine it. Clearly, though, it was a good thing that returning to the bosom of the family was no longer an option. The family bosom was off limits and out of bounds. Family and I were giving each other the cold, the frozen shoulder.

One worthwhile ‘side-effect’ was that there was no need to worry about my reputation any more. I had nothing to lose. My parents already thought I derived sexual pleasure from pictures of youngsters lolling in socks.

Still, when someone at a CHAPs meeting first disparagingly mentioned the ‘meat market’ I thought, as a long-serving vegetarian, that these gloating carnivores were referring to an actual market where carcases were displayed, all the marvellous machinery of life impaled on a hook and cut up to be sold. In fact the reference was to the Stable Bar, off Trinity Street, a narrow premises where homosexuals not enlightened enough to attend meetings might be found. It had the look of a hotel bar, with plenty of red plush and folksy bits of beaming which looked fake even if they weren’t, and plenty of horse brasses to back up the name, though there would only have been the space to accommodate a single horse.

I never heard anyone refer to the Stable Bar in anything but damning terms, yet everyone turned up there at some stage, even Ken, though he looked rather lost. I saw the Tonys there once or twice, although they hardly noticed strangers and were the only people present whose motives were blamelessly social.

Ken only visited the meat market to spread the word about the group, to tell those writhing in the coils of the patriarchy the good news that there existed an independent forum, not far away, where issues of sexual and political liberation could be freely discussed and worked through. He would nerve himself with a couple of pints then spread the word from table to table. His reception from groups was sometimes mildly abusive, so he tended to gravitate towards single strangers, less prompt to defend themselves. There was something
about him, as he advanced heavily towards people who often edged away or tried to avoid his eyes, reminiscent of Gladstone scouring Piccadilly for loose women to coax back to Downing Street for soup and Bible-reading. He had the same admirable and slightly suspect motives, even if his success rate in these mercy swoops couldn’t compete.