Cedilla (107 page)

I couldn’t reasonably hope to develop wings of my own. I’d have settled for claws – anything to help me maintain my grip on my little world. At this point I was dangling desperately, a tree-shrew hanging on by its tail to the slender twig of what it knows. A cedilla clinging for dear life to the letter
c
without which it can’t exist. I didn’t feel as if I was writing the book of my life, I didn’t even think I was reading it. I felt like an insect crawling across its pages, who would be squashed flat when the volume was shut.

I felt as necessary to the world at large as dandruff. I still had dandruff, and I knew how little I’d miss it if it went.

Of course what I was feeling wasn’t unique. The heir to the throne had experienced something similar in outline three years previously, as his own graduation approached. His anguish didn’t paint the air, so why should mine? We live in a democracy, after all.

Our experiences were similar in outline, very different in colour. For Prince Charles his years at Cambridge were a freer time than any he had known, or was likely to know again. Cambridge had been a sort of respite home for him. With his degree under his belt, he was back where he started, as Muggins Windsor, heir to the throne. It’s well known that the great self-enquiry, the
vichara
, is particularly hard for those who have been strongly cast in a rôle by ‘life’. In that respect I had all the advantages.

I slightly regretted not having overlapped at university with the Prince, though I came across quite a few people who had met him. It would have been lovely to get him to carry me to the lavatory, or up and down stairs. I’m sure I wouldn’t have had to remind him that his motto was
Ich Dien
. I serve … We live in a democracy, after all.

It was a great thing, or so I told myself, to be able to study for my Finals without any impulse to panic, knowing that the results wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference to my future. There was a further lining (tin, perhaps, or pewter) to the dark clouds hanging over my future, namely: the answer to the question ‘What will I be doing for a living?’ had been answered. I would be doing nothing, supported by a State which understood that my value was not to be measured by narrow criteria. And this suggested the obvious answer to another question, ‘Where will I be living?’ I would be living in accommodation arranged for me by local government. There would be some paperwork to be managed, but there was a system in place to support me.

The local authorities didn’t quite see it that way. Which local authority, anyway? Where did I belong? Depending on which way you looked at it, I belonged either with the other Cromers or with the other graduates of my year. Having a choice of two possible home addresses turned out to be a fancy way of being of no fixed abode, of loitering without the faintest intent. I applied to Cambridge, but the choice wasn’t mine to make, apparently.

There was much correspondence on this subject. It was almost flattering. Two authorities were competing not to take responsibility for me. It certainly made me feel important.

I got hold of a copy of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act and tried to find potential leverage in that text. The most cheering thing about the whole document was that it was authorised by ‘the Lords Spiritual and Temporal’. With spiritual authorities in my corner, it seemed clear that there would be a happy outcome.

I followed some of the bureaucratic tussle as if it was a tennis match in extreme slow motion. My case was bounced back and forth. Cambridge felt that I should be housed near my family (and far from Cambridge). Well played! Surely that was an ace?

Then High Wycombe argued that I should stay in Cambridge because I was more likely to get started on a career there. Brilliant return! Phenomenal racket control!

It was mentioned that High Wycombe had a very limited number of ‘units’ available, all of which had been allocated to applicants with needs far greater than mine. I’d driven past such units more than once. They were flimsy and draughty-looking pre-fabs, the sort of thing that gets built as a temporary measure and never demolished, unless it turns out to be crawling with asbestos.

During all these exchanges I tried to pretend I was the umpire and to forget that I was actually the bloody ball.

The only thing the two authorities were able to agree on was that it might be best for me to go back to CRX. Back into the cage of my childhood. Oh, I say! Very poor play, gentlemen. Highly unsporting. Not tennis, and not cricket.

There was another episode of sneaky manœuvring: while the two local authorities were knocking me back and forth so happily, playing their best administrative tennis for the privilege of not housing me, High Wycombe had the bright idea of applying on my behalf to the Cheshire Home in Gerrards Cross, with a view to getting me installed as a permanent resident.

The first I heard about it was when Martha Green phoned me up from the Home to break the bad news that I hadn’t made the grade. Bad news. That was the way we played it. Dreadful pity. Sad turn of events. She read out the saddening verdict on my personality and its unsuitability for communal life: ‘I’m afraid that John is something of a disruptive presence, rather too unconventional for the peace of mind of the other residents.’

‘Oh dear,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I knew you’d be disheartened.’

‘It’s rather a blow.’

‘I wish there was something I could do.’ She’d already done me the immense good turn of organising the veto, making sure the rejection wasn’t scuppered by a misguided softening or any sort of plea for a second chance.

We kept up the charade of disappointment for as long as we could. Then I became aware of a dusty tinkling coming down the line. After a moment or two I realised that the bureaucrat-gypsy Martha must be wearing one of her favourite scarves, which had coins sewn into the hem, and was shaking with suppressed laughter, until a coughing fit flushed the hilarity out into the open.

It had been at the back of my mind, when I went to the Cheshire Home for my respite break, that this was a sort of trial run or probationary visit. I might be expected to live at Gerrards Cross sometime in the future. I think I can honestly say that I took no particular pains to make myself unacceptable. It was without ulterior motive that I blotted my copy-book, though the resulting disgrace certainly came in handy. My bad behaviour was disinterested and long overdue. I squeezed a lot of adolescence into a short span of days.

In terms of respite the Home gave me what I needed. If I had ended up living there I would have lost my vitality bit by bit, or else been frozen in a posture of rebellion against my surroundings, which is only another way (admittedly more seductive) of becoming institutionalised.

The pans of the scales seemed to be evenly balanced between the two authorities, so I decided I must hurl my trusty typewriter down onto the Cambridge side. I charged the ribbon of the Smith-Corona with its most irresistible ink and wrote a letter to my MP, appealing for help with my housing ‘difficulties’. To prevail over Cambridge I had to appeal to High Wycombe, since that was where I was a constituent, but I couldn’t be choosy about what tiny leverage I had. The MP for High Wycombe, Sir John Hall, wrote back in charming and eloquent terms, though I don’t know whether he actually did anything. If he did, it amounted to foisting me definitively on Cambridge. Wearily they accepted responsibility for me, and wearily I accepted their acceptance. Then all I had to do was wait to hear the details of my new home.

It seemed to take a long time. Downing told me that it would be all right for me to stay on a bit after the end of term, which took the pressure off a little and made the waiting easier.

After I had taken my final exams, my Cambridge GP gave me a referral to be looked after. I was booked in for ten days at the Mary Marlborough Rehabilitation Lodge, part of the Nuffield Orthopaedic
Centre at Headington. This wasn’t really about rehabilitation, though, it was about playing for time, though I picked up some useful kitchen skills.

I had taken some Gerard Manley Hopkins with me to read. Poetry in general has the advantage of portability, but this was a poor choice. Not because it was too remote from my experience, but too close.

The same rhythmic trick, dragging then racing, Faustus’s nightmares. Not at all reassuring to my thoughts of that season.

Mary Marlborough gave me a refresher course in the forked nature of institutions, in case I had forgotten. The establishment harboured contradictory attitudes towards its own goals. Independence was the be-all and end-all of the place, and yet a Plan B was provided at all times. You were encouraged to make a meal for yourself – but when you signed up to do it you also had to order a meal from the kitchens, in case yours was a disaster. A slightly insulting precaution. We weren’t painting the Forth Bridge. This wasn’t the Normandy landings. This was a lentil bake.

I was confident in my own modest culinary skills and shocked by the proposed waste of food, so I wouldn’t choose from the menu. Then the staff would get quite shirty and end up ordering meals over my head, since that was the approved procedure. A very strange attitude in a place with Rehabilitation in the name. They wanted me to fend for myself and were rather put out when I did. They protected me from the possible consequences of my actions (lentil bake burned to buggery), though how this would fit me for independent living wasn’t clear. Safety-nets are fine, but no one wants to be tripping over them the whole time. Is it going too far to suggest that staff felt rejected when their help wasn’t needed, and were quite pleased by dehabilitation and back-sliding?

The people at Mary Marlborough kept me housed and fed. They offered me a selection of gadgets for use in the kitchen, mainly picker-uppers which my hands were too small and stiff to work. The only
handy tool was a little bill-hook, which I use to this day. The most valuable lesson I learned was from a Pakistani occupational therapist called Mariam, who taught me how to skin tomatoes by scalding them. So I showed a modest profit on my stay in Headington.

Mariam was fun. She was lovely. She would always say, ‘I’m just going to sneak to the fridge’ or ‘sneak to the bathroom’, making the most wholesome activities seem unauthorised, loaded with the promise of transgression.

After my stint at Mary Marlborough, though, I really did feel I was sneaking back to Downing, where everyone else was getting ready to leave and I was getting ready to overstay my welcome. There was nowhere else for me to go. It wasn’t as if I could go home to Mum and Dad, after everything that had happened. Of course I was glad that I had closed off that option. If further education was a dead end then ‘home’ was certainly another.

The examiners worked against the clock to mark our exams promptly, as if it mattered. On the day that results were posted up outside the Senate House the academic air was so tense it crackled. I stayed where I was in my room. Nothing on those lists could make a difference to me. A few times friends came to knock on my door, but I didn’t answer. Eventually someone pushed a note under the door to tell me where I stood. I was in no hurry to go over and read it. The future could wait, particularly as I didn’t have one.

At last I punted the wheelchair over and read the note where it lay. I had landed one of the coveted, and strictly limited, First Class degrees – the counter-cultural ones, technically known as Thirds. I had collected the whole set, and completed my downward progress from that First in spoken German. I had found my level. Still, going to Cambridge hadn’t been about scholastic achievement. It had been about … I couldn’t remember.

If the note had been pushed under the door face downwards, or folded over, I really don’t know when I would have bothered to read it. My hunger for abstract knowledge seemed to have been stalled for the time being. I had no burning need to know. The ceremony of
graduation, the supposed consummation of my undergraduate career, seemed so stunningly futile as to cast a favourable light backwards on the rigmarole of matriculation.

I left the note, my badge of honour, where it lay. Mrs Beddoes picked it up, glanced at it, and put it on the desk. She at least sincerely didn’t care.

We parted with real emotion, she and I, when the time came. We had been ‘John’ and ‘Jean’ for ages by then. I’d taught her to make coffee the way I liked it, and she’d even started to like it that way too. I’d say we were like an old married couple, but that seems a rather slighting comparison. I’d say she loved me like a mother, though the same objection applies.

She said she would come in to college as usual during my overstay, to make sure I was all right, but I told her not to be silly. If she hadn’t earned a holiday, who had?

She brought me a leaving present and helped me unwrap it. It was horrible, but it showed she had come a long way. It was a Harlequin Beetle in a little case,
Acrocinus longimanus
if memory serves, framed like a painting, something which she had found in the market. It was a great credit to her that she could see that this arthropod, at least, was beautiful – was a Nice Thing. It had a wonderful colour scheme – the camouflage pattern really did look consciously designed, as if someone like Braque had had a hand in it. I oohed and aahed like anything, and I think I convinced her I really liked it.

It was too much to expect, after all the imaginative effort she had expended, that she would realise these things stop being beautiful the moment they are killed, dried and fixed behind glass. I gritted my teeth and tried to persuade myself that in the natural course of things this lovely creature would have long died and been broken down into nothingness by now, and that it was permissible to appreciate it as being a storage system for Jean’s emotional impulses, a bulb lit up by her feeling for me.