by Jane Hawking
As always, my parents jumped at any suggestion of a holiday with their grandchildren, and together Dad and I planned an extensive tour through northern Spain and Portugal, coinciding here and there with the camino francés, the old pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela. The mere exercise of planning brought back memories of those wonderful European holidays of old – especially because my father, with his historian’s nose, had lost none of his talent for scenting out singular historical treasures which the ordinary tourist would have passed by.
Once all the summer activities were out of the way – dinner parties for a mini-conference, barbecues, lunch parties, children’s tea parties, school sports days, college functions, mundane but necessary considerations such as servicing the car and cleaning out the rented house for reletting, and, ultimately, a vicious attack of measles which put Lucy to bed just before the end of term – Stephen left for California and we finally set sail for Bilbao. Although that grimy, industrial city on Spain’s northern coast gave us a damp, cloudy reception, my heart leapt when I set foot on Spanish soil again. It continued to leap throughout that holiday, not only at the rediscovery of Spain, a liberated country where fascism was dead and democracy was tentatively establishing itself, but also at perceptible glimpses of my former self, the once hopeful, adventurous teenager, long buried under a heap of exacting burdens and more urgent priorities. By degrees I regained my grasp of the Spanish language, its grammar, syntax and vocabulary, for that too was part of my rediscovery. With its vitality the language reawakened my linguistic voice, so long reduced to a timid silence by the oppressive weight of intellectual prejudice in Cambridge, where one soon learnt to keep quiet rather than make a fool of oneself.
Cities with sonorous names – Burgos, Salamanca, Santiago, León, Coimbra and Oporto – and extravagant cathedrals, medieval monasteries, Mozarabic chapels, pilgrimage processions, sun-baked plains and gnarled olive groves blazed a trail of dazzling light and torrid heat into the chill drabness of our northern lives. In the rocky inlets, streams, pine trees and mountains, I discovered the landscape and the living traditions of the cantigas de amigo. The sensation that the ponderous weight of scholarship that I was trying to mould into a thesis had some basis in reality, that medieval studies were after all a more relevant, productive activity than collecting pebbles on the beach, gave me a tremendous boost. I promised myself that I would finish the thesis, come what may, even though it might not lead anywhere, even though it might simply be an end in itself. I felt impatient to record all that I had seen and relate it to the texts, but not so much so that I wanted to rush back to Cambridge before we had all squeezed every ounce of benefit from those weeks in Spain and Portugal. The children after all needed some compensation, in the form of a few days by the sea, for all the hours they had spent uncomplainingly in the back of the car. Lucy, whose imagination was so fertile that she could keep herself and everyone else amused no matter how long the journeys or how searing the heat, was fascinated by the cockle-shell motif of the pilgrim route to the tomb of St James at Santiago. She kept her eyes open for the shell on buildings, statues and signs, letting out a yell of triumph whenever she spied one. Perhaps not surprisingly after so many religious monuments, she and Robert became pretty confused in their grasp of the lives of the saints, with the result that, when we came down to the sea at Ofir in Portugal, they devised a crazy game in which Lucy played the part of John the Baptist, drenching her brother with sea water – while he, wrapped in a towel, played the part of a stoical pilgrim en route to the tomb of St James. Any religious connotations to this game were, needless to say, entirely spurious. While the children were engaged in this heretical and obstreperous pursuit, the one near-disaster of the holiday occurred when Dad found himself unwittingly shut in his room by a faulty door lock. There was no telephone in the room and the only possible exit was via the balcony: the only way to get off his balcony was to leap across a seventy foot drop onto ours and escape through our room. He joined us on the beach, bursting with pride at this daredevil achievement – which we all had to agree, with astonished amusement, was no mean feat for a sixty-three-year-old.
7
Impasse
In that autumn of 1977, with my mind once more fired with the glowing impressions of the Iberian Peninsula, I was determined to attack the thesis with fresh insight and vigour, although the organization of the material remained daunting and time was still a crucial factor. Stephen returned from California to promotion – to a personal chair in gravitational physics. His elevation to a professorship had implications beyond that of a modest salary increase, since the title and position assured him of enhanced respect and recognition wherever he went – with a few exceptions, one of them within his own Department. His promotion coincided with the redecoration and refurbishment of the Department, and for some time he waited for the carpet – to which as a professor he was entitled – to be laid in his office. After some months of waiting in vain, he decided to broach the matter with the Head of the Department, who tut-tutted peevishly at his request. “Only professors are entitled to carpets,” he said. “But I am a professor!” Stephen remonstrated. Eventually, in somewhat belated confirmation of his status, his professorial carpet arrived.
Carpets notwithstanding, Stephen was afraid that the appointment might put a distance between him and his students, but he took comfort in the fact that the physical help he required of them disarmed any diffidence created by his lofty reputation. Although an undisputed intellectual potentate, he shuddered at the thought of conforming to the image of an establishment professor, aloof from students and colleagues. He preferred the image of the eternal youth with the boyish grin, poking fun at the very authority of which he himself was now a part.
While Stephen’s physical condition may have been an effective equalizer in the sphere of the Department, his promotion, although welcome, created subtle problems for me in our dealings with the world at large, not least because his growing reputation so totally exceeded our circumstances. Only our very closest friends realized that on the home scene the struggle for daily survival continued unabated as before. Despite the pitiless onslaughts of motor-neuron disease, Stephen had become a national figure, the youngest Fellow of the Royal Society, the recipient of umpteen awards and medals, Einstein’s successor and a professor at the University of Cambridge. The very paradox of his situation had made him the darling of the media. Not only in the popular perception but also, I began to suspect, in the eyes of his own family, his success was proof that he had conquered motor-neuron disease and therefore the battle was won: we could not possibly be in need of help. It was the most cruel irony that we had become the innocent victims of our own success. There was not simply a schism between the public face and the private image, they were actually in conflict with each other. Certainly the public functions – like the memorable occasion in the summer of 1978 when Stephen received an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford – were enjoyable and gratifying, but that sort of limelight made not the slightest contribution to the help, both physical and emotional, which we needed more than ever because motor-neuron disease had not been conquered; it was still advancing at a slow but relentless pace. To the immediate family circle, the effects were devastating and the demands punishing. I could no longer keep up the pretence that it was just a background inconvenience, a fact of life. The disease dominated our lives and those of the children, in spite of all our efforts to uphold a precious veneer of normality.
Initially bright then reserved, Robert was now becoming so withdrawn that I feared that he was suffering from depression, a condition which, according to my doctor, was not unknown in children. For amusement he engrossed himself in computer manuals to the exclusion of other diversions. Stephen tried hard to fulfil his paternal role by buying elaborate electric train sets and complicated lengths of track, which Robert was not skilful enough to operate. Even when his old friend Inigo brought his more advanced electrical knowledge to bear, the trains never r
an smoothly and Robert quickly lost interest. Apart from Inigo, who went to a different school, he had few friends and did not seem keen to cultivate new ones. It was obvious that Robert needed a male role model, someone who would romp and tussle with him, someone who would ease him out of a childhood already lost into adolescence, someone who would not expect anything of him in return, least of all help with their own physical requirements.
Lucy, effervescent and sociable, developed an early sense of independence, which enabled her to cultivate a wide circle of friends in which she found some compensations for the shortcomings of her home life. From an early age she threw all her bubbling energies into a giddy social cycle of Brownies, swimming galas, Guide camps, sponsored runs, school plays and concerts and music and drama at the Saturday Music for Fun Club, as well as innumerable parties. Doubtless her huge collection of soft toys, and the fantasy world which she and Lucy Grace Cadbury invented for their Snoopy puppets, also played a part in helping her evolve subconscious methods for coping with her unusual background, though certainly she remained very sensitive to her circumstances. Both her age and her sex enabled her to avoid the some of the pressures that were falling upon Robert’s shoulders.
My parents filled many of the gaps in the children’s lives with trips to London, tea at the Ritz and visits to the theatre. However, there was a deep hole in my own life, which I could not even begin to broach to them. Thelma Thatcher was astute and forthright enough to identify it in one of her very last remarks to me before she died in the summer of 1976. “My dear,” she said, leaning across her highly polished table and looking me straight in the eye, “I simply can’t imagine how you survive without a proper sex life.” I was so astounded by such candour from an octogenarian that I could reply only with a shrug of the shoulders. I myself did not know the answer to her question, but my sense of loyalty to Stephen forbade any open discussion of that topic, which for him was as taboo a subject as his illness. I did not allow myself to confide in Thelma Thatcher on that occasion and there was never another opportunity. Nevertheless I badly needed a confidante in whose age and wisdom I could trust. Quite apart from the physical aspects, the marital relationship was acquiring profoundly irreconcilable undertones. Intellectually Stephen was a towering giant who always insisted on his own infallibility and to whose genius I would always defer; bodily he was as helpless and as dependent as either of the children had been when newborn. The functions I fulfilled for him were all those of a mother looking after a small child, responsible for every aspect of his being, including his appearance – only just short of a nurse in that I refused to give injections or intervene in medical matters where I had no training. The problems were exacerbated by the sheer impossibility of talking about them. This was an intrinsic part of his battle against disease, which, with better communication, we could have fought together, side by side, supporting each other and developing strategies for coping with the difficulties. Instead it became an alienating force, bringing down a barrier of anguish between us.
Not for the first time, I sharpened my eyes and my ears, on the lookout for similar situations, words of advice or crumbs of comfort. My hopes were raised on a rare visit to Lucy Cavendish not long after kind Kate Bertram’s retirement, when the new President was to introduce herself at a feast, a singular event for that College, and one which, despite my reservations about my own academic failings, I was reluctant to miss. After dinner, the new President rose to her feet and recounted the events of her life and of her academic career. Tears came to my eyes as she spoke of her marriage: her husband, too, had suffered from an incurable, disabling disease. Again it seemed for a brief moment that I had met someone with whom I might be able to talk freely, someone who would intuitively understand the tiredness and the despair behind the smiling but now hesitant façade. To my confusion, I heard her inviting the audience’s sympathy for a choice that had faced her – between her academic career and her husband – when she was offered a prestigious American Fellowship. She had taken up the Fellowship.
Finally, in embarrassed desperation, I spoke to Dr Swan in the clinical atmosphere of his morning surgery. If his tone was one of concerned detachment, his words were as candid as Thelma Thatcher’s. “The problems you are facing, Jane, are much like the problems associated with old age,” he said candidly, “the irony is that you are a young woman with normal needs and expectations.” He paused. “All I can suggest,” he said, glancing up at me over his gold-rimmed spectacles, “is that you should make a life of your own.”
In an unparalleled moment of chumminess that same autumn, Philippa coolly advised me that the time had come for me to leave Stephen. “Really, no one would blame you.” she added condescendingly, as if in such facile advice lay the solution to all the problems. Whatever her motives – and certainly I had little enough cause to trust them – her advice struck me as being singularly ill judged. Certainly such a solution would have expelled me from the Hawking family circle with alacrity. She failed to understand that I could no more have left Stephen than I could have abandoned a child. I could not break up my family, the family that I myself in my optimism had created. This would effectively destroy the one achievement of my life and with it myself.
To pretend that I had never found other men attractive would be dishonest; however, I had never had an affair and my only relationship had been with Stephen. Those passing attractions had never been more than the briefest of encounters that consisted of no more than a fleeting eye contact. Indeed, I had long since lost my sense of individuality and any sense of myself as an attractive or desirable young woman. I saw myself as part of a marriage, and that marriage had grown from the original bond between two people into an extensive network, like a garden full of diverse plants and flowers, not only comprising parents and children but grandparents, loyal friends, students and colleagues. The central tree in that garden was the home, which I had created over the years, whether in Little St Mary’s Lane, Pasadena or West Road. The relationship from which it had all sprung was now but one aspect of that complex diversity and, although that relationship had changed dramatically, the marriage itself was of much wider import and transcended the personal needs of the two people who had initiated it. A brittle, empty shell, alone and vulnerable, restrained only by the thought of my children from throwing myself into the river, I prayed for help with the desperate insistency of a potential suicide. The situation was such that I doubted that even God himself, whoever he was or wherever he was, could find a solution to it, if indeed he could hear my prayer – but some solution had to be found if our family were to survive, if Stephen were to be able to carry on with his work and live at home, and if I were to remain a sane and capable mother to the children.
It was an exceptional friend, Caroline Chamberlain – Stephen’s former physiotherapist – at once sensitive and practical, who suggested that I might benefit from some diversion, such as singing in the local church choir. “Come and sing at St Mark’s,” she said, “we need extra sopranos for the carol service.” Late one afternoon in mid-December we left the children with her husband Peter, while we went to the final rehearsals. This was the first time that I had sung in a real choir, as opposed to the choral class in Pasadena, and although my voice was developing nicely, sight-reading and counting were conspicuously absent from my skills, soberly reminding me of my teenage experiences as a hopelessly incompetent secretary. The other sopranos patiently measured the beat for me, a musical dyslexic, while the young conductor, pale and thin, politely internalized his dismay at the musical ugly duckling that Caroline had introduced into his organization. With practice my efforts improved, so that, come the carol service, my contribution was not as dire as he feared, and I was invited to join the choir for carol-singing round the parish later that week.
Lucy came carol-singing with me and trotted along from street to street, from house to house, calling at many homes, where the members of the choir and their choirmaster seemed to be not only well known but well received
also. This was the area of Cambridge where Lucy went to school, yet apart from the school and the shops, I scarcely knew it at all. Here was a tightly knit community of friends and neighbours, elderly people and families, for whom the red-brick Edwardian church seemed to represent a nucleus, whether or not they attended it regularly.
In the dark winter night, as the choirmaster, Jonathan Hellyer Jones, walked beside Lucy and me, balancing on the edge of the pavement to protect us from the passing traffic, we struck up conversation. I talked as I had not in years and had the uncanny sensation that I had met a familiar friend of long acquaintance, a shadowy recollection brought sharply back into focus, given shape and form by this stranger. We talked about singing, music, mutual acquaintances – of whom there were several – and travels, particularly in Poland, where he had sung with the University Chamber Choir in the summer of 1976. He told me about St Mark’s and its extraordinarily dedicated, warm-hearted vicar, Bill Loveless, who had given him great support and strengthened his faith through a very difficult period. He did not say what that period was, but I already knew from Caroline that eighteen months previously, Janet, Jonathan’s wife of one year, had died of leukaemia.
We did not meet again for several weeks and our next encounter was quite by chance. In January 1978, while Stephen was away in America with his entourage for three weeks, I went with Nigel Wickens and a group from his singing class to an evening of Victorian entertainment given by the baritone soloist Benjamin Luxon at the Guildhall. In the crowded auditorium, I noticed Jonathan immediately, a strikingly distinctive figure, tall, bearded and curly-haired, on the other side of the hall. I was surprised when in the interval he recognized me and I introduced him to Nigel. “What a nice man!” Nigel remarked on the way back through King’s College to West Road where he had parked his car. I agreed guardedly, preferring to concentrate on the other main topic of conversation, Nigel’s forthcoming marriage to a talented American singer, Amy Klohr.