Cedilla

by Adam Mars-Jones

  Of the two theories that could explain my presence at Downing, social experiment or academic charity, the social experiment theory seemed to be losing ground. Evidence was mounting that I was a charity case, and one that needed a special subsidy if he was to keep himself clean. I seemed to balance on a knife-edge between the deserving and undeserving (the deservedly grubby) poor.

  I did a little research and then requested a second appointment with another flurry of intracollegial notes. I had prepared a little dossier, almost a legal case. I had mugged up on the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970, and was able to refer with great confidence to subsection c of section 2.1, which concerns the provision of telephones and any special equipment.

  ‘May I ask to see your paperwork?’ Graëme said firmly.

  I pushed it towards him. He read it with close attention. I should have anticipated that he would be a dab hand on committees, highly sensitised to the pulling of wool over institutional eyes. He showed a quite new sharpness of style, his dusty manner being largely for undergraduate consumption. ‘It appears that such responsibilities devolve on local authorities rather than lesser institutions like our own. Perhaps you would like me to put a call through on your behalf to Cambridge Council?’ I hesitated, wondering if I would be letting myself in for a long struggle. ‘I should warn you, though’ – and here he looked up to give me a smirk of forensic triumph – ‘that as an undergraduate you are unlikely to meet the criteria for being “ordinarily resident” in Cambridge. Three terms of eight weeks amounts to less than half the year. The local authorities are likely to regard Downing College as your holiday home. Is there a telephone at your parents’ house, which is I believe your ordinary residence?’

  I could hardly deny it.

  ‘Then the legislation seems to be having the desired effect. Is there anything else I can help you with?’ I still don’t know why he was so dead set against my having a phone, but for the time being I was stymied.

  I was exempted from rules which didn’t matter to me – such as the matriculation footwear protocol – and required to conform where it did. If there was a court of appeal above my tutor, then I didn’t know what it was. In the meantime I girded (even girt) my loins for matriculation. Mrs Beddoes offered to give my non-conformist shoes a bit of a buff to smarten me up.

  Graëme’s idea that having a phone would prevent me from engaging with the world was exactly wrong. With a phone I would have been able to get out a lot more, to be emulsified into the life of the town instead of separating from it like the oil in a failed mayonnaise. I was on a phobic cusp, poised between the fear of enclosure and fear of open spaces. I dreaded staying in my room, where no one would call on me, apparently, except those sent by a God I didn’t care for, but I needed to screw up all my courage to launch myself into the uncaring human currents of the town. It took real willpower to make expeditions from A6, to mingle socially more than was demanded by my coursework and the chore of eating.

  I induce bees

  It didn’t occur to me at the time that Dr Beamish might actually have felt he had failed me in the matter of the ceiling rail. Twinges of guilt often make people behave worse rather than better, so perhaps it consoled him to be able to dismiss me as a stubborn pest – there’s no pleasing John Cromer – one who deserved no more cosseting. I’ll give the idea some house room now.

  Time’s up, and no. That theory won’t wash. He just turned against me on the phone question, he got a bee in his bonnet about it and then wouldn’t back down, no matter what. It’s not entirely an isolated incident. I induce bees in some people’s bonnets, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  As the term progressed I realised something I should have understood earlier. I had one great asset which I could use as an inducement to do me favours. The Mini was a high-ranking trump card. An undergraduate who could offer his cronies a lift was the opposite of disabled.

  I learned to use my leverage tactically, to broker a complex exchange. I suggested to P. D. Hughes – Pete – that he accompany me to the Botanic Garden on the next Saturday, push me round and put up with me talking about plants. In return I would then drive him to the pub of his choice – how did he feel about Grantchester, for instance?

  This confirmed the wisdom of taking the weekday pressure off Pete. Now I could suggest expeditions at the weekend with a clear conscience. In my childhood Saturday had been my favourite day, with its own colour. I would shout out, ‘It’s Saturday today! Saturday at last, all lovely and red.’ It radiated happiness and comfort, like a brick warm from the kiln. Sunday wasn’t quite such a favourite – a sunny yellow, turning to green in the evening as Monday loomed. For years I’d held on to the feeling that the weekend was special, but at Cambridge it changed its meaning for me. Now it was a two-day abyss, and I dreaded sliding down into the next one and being lost to view altogether. The best way to keep some sort of control seemed to be to plan a treat that would blot out some of the leaching gloom.

  My offer to Pete obviously sounded pretty good, but I’m not persuaded he stuck to his part of the bargain. My first experience of the Cambridge Botanic Garden was of something like a cross-country wheelchair slalom. Leaves and branches appeared before my juddering eyes for the merest fraction of a second before being replaced by another turbulent vista of foliage. We didn’t slow down until Pete had delivered me back to the car and it was time for our pub trip, which was much more leisurely. The pub in Grantchester was picturesque and very quiet. Perhaps it was even quiet before we came in. The giant and his familiar.

  The Botanic Garden, note, not the Botanical Gardens. Cambridge has its own terminology for things. It’s a point of pride. Why else was I, whose subjects were German and Spanish, technically studying Modern and Mediaeval Languages? The only wonder was that the university authorities had omitted the digraph in ‘mediæval’, my favourite mutated letter, Tinkerbell of the alphabet, the wayward færy whom my childhood tutor Miss Collins had refused to recognise as real. American English has long since abolished digraphs, by the brutal expedient of lopping off half their constituent letters. I’m not giving up, though. Literate children of Britain and the Commonwealth, clap your hands if you believe in digraphs! Every time you write hæmorrhage or cœlacanth, anæmic or fœtid, without remembering to blend the vowels on the page, a special symbol dies.

  I don’t think Pete was consciously depriving me of the pleasures of the Bot, as I came to call it on closer acquaintance. It’s just that he couldn’t understand what there was to see in a garden, so he treated me to a lap of honour, in and out. Gardeners and non-gardeners see different things in the same view, it’s as simple as that.

  I’d seen enough at the Botanic Garden, despite the slewing and shaking of the wheelchair, to realise how much there was to see. Another time I would insist on a tempo rather less close to the Starship Enterprise’s warp speed, so that I could contemplate the vegetable kingdom at something closer to its own pace.

  When I had first phoned the Botanic Garden to ask about parking, using the phone in the Porter’s Lodge, the lady told me it would be fine if I tucked the Mini by the potting shed. She also asked if I needed assistance. I had said no, because I’d already arranged an escort, but after that first sprint of a visit I took advantage of their helpfulness. In practice it worked very well. Once I had been helped out of the car and installed in the wheelchair I was very happy dawdling on my own. I could do without my headlong escort.

  On my first real visit, when I had time actually to see the treasures of the Bot, I also met the head gardener, Sid Glover. He was immensely welcoming, particularly when he understood that my interest in carnivorous plants wasn’t based on any supposed novelty value, but on seeing them as venerable and fascinating adaptations to life. In fact he offered me, a complete stranger, a splendid specimen of Drosera capensis to take away with me. That’s the Cape Sundew, native to South Africa. Gardeners are the most generous of people. I was tempted, but refused. I simply didn’t have the rig
ht conditions to do it justice, though as carnivorous plants go Drosera capensis isn’t too much of a challenge to grow. Instead he gave me ‘a few little things’ in a bag. A little treasure trove.

  In new surroundings, it’s normally my instinct to get something growing as soon as possible, but I had decided before I arrived at Downing not to grow anything while I was a student. One more vow of chastity! My reasoning was that I would have enough to do maintaining my own organism, without lavishing care on other beings, however undemanding. The millipede was a different case. Dad was the only one in the house who liked it, and even so I couldn’t be sure he would remember to meet its modest needs.

  It wasn’t easy to uproot the drive to keep something alive other than myself, an impulse which I’d say is part of a dialogue with a person’s own vitality. And now I was in the happy position of having my mind changed for me without conflict, soul-searching or loss of face. I had already noticed a shop on Regent Street which sold gardening supplies. The lovely name alone drew the eye – Cramphorn’s. There I bought a seed propagator with a big plastic dome, which lived on the windowsill in my room. The college radiator system supplied dry heat, but sphagnum moss in the sealed dome sent out puffs of humid air which condensed out as water droplets on the lid, then ran down the plastic sides of the tank like rain driving a perpetual-motion machine.

  Eaten alive by a poisonous shirt

  Meanwhile the millipede was failing to thrive. One morning Mrs Beddoes tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘That Nasty Thing – the thing in the box. Much as I don’t like it, I don’t think it’s very well. You can always tell, can’t you? You should take a look. I don’t think it’s long for this world.’

  She wasn’t wrong. My tropical millipede, also known as the Nasty Thing, was sick unto death, and lived only a few more minutes, writhing horribly. It was only afterwards that I realised that it was all my fault. The Nasty Thing’s end was like something out of Greek tragedy. Wasn’t it Hercules who was eaten alive by a poisonous shirt given to him in all innocence?

  Something broadly similar had happened in A6, Kenny Court. I had renewed my millipede’s sawdust from a bag bought from a pet-shop (I’ve never been able to keep out of pet-shops), not realising that the new batch, being intended for hamsters and other small game, had been discreetly scented. The impregnation of deodorant turned out to have a corrosive effect on millipede tissue. R.I.P. the Nasty Thing, born and died 1970, down in the depths of the Kali Yuga. May his-and-her rebirths be few.

  Yet it was Mrs Beddoes rather than me who seemed genuinely sad. I was more preöccupied with the loss of the quid I had paid for the creature. She took the body away, with less reluctance than I expected. I wasn’t happy to dispose of it without ceremony, but what choice did I have? With my low standing at Downing (both as a freshman and as someone whose tutor had taken against him) I could hardly apply for a burial plot in the Master’s Garden.

  Now that my private zoo, with its single arthropod exhibit, had closed because of a death in the family, I had to find other ways of feeling at home. I fell back on my old hobby of yoghurt-making. Busying myself with measures, timings and temperatures helped me pass the time without trauma, even at weekends. For me, yoghurt-making was an occupational therapy rather than a statement of counter-cultural allegiance.

  It was also easy, and almost legal in college terms. All I had to do was boil the milk, let it cool, add the culture, mix it in and leave it in a warm cupboard. I experimented with a technique that eliminated the cupboard stage of yoghurt-making, which was always the most awkward part for me. I used a thermos to maintain the temperature of the mixture. It worked very well, though it had one drawback. Anyone who visited me in my room would ask about the thermos, unscrew the top out of curiosity and then put it back on with so much strength that I’d never be able to open it myself. Eventually I prepared a label that said Stop and Think! Fingertight for You Is Plain ImPOSSible for Me! Leave Me Loose! And still I had to remind people.

  I love the idea of ‘fingertight’ – an unscientific but perfectly intelligible description of a degree of mechanical closure – but I live well outside the standard range (normal variation between individual grips) on which it is based.

  Once I’d started using the gas-ring I began to itch for more complex acts of cooking. Hall food even at its best was bland, so in a mood of nostalgia for the food at Mrs Osborne’s I started making curries. On Mum’s kitchen bookshelf at Trees there was a book of International Cookery which included some timid versions of Indian dishes, though she had only indulged me with them before I actually went to India. At the time she must have thought a plateful of tentatively spiced rice was the nearest I was going to get to the subcontinent.

  It happened that the nearest shop to me geographically, on Regent Street, had a fair range of spices. It was essentially Indian, despite bearing the name of Harold T. Cox. I could get all sorts of exotic treats there.

  The A-staircase kitchen was the scene of frenzied frying, making nonsense of the ban on this most alluring of cooking methods. We simply washed out our fragrant pans the moment we had finished using them, hiding them where they would never be found.

  Even in the rebellious 1970s this struck me as an unsatisfactory solution. I didn’t want to get away with things – I wanted to be vindicated. So I ‘hid’ my frying pan where Mrs Beddoes was bound to discover it. She looked at me sorrowfully and said she would have to confiscate it. Nothing personal, Mr Crow-maire, but rules were rules.

  ‘Just so, Mrs Beddoes. So why don’t we have a cuppa together and take a look at the book of rules?’

  Of course I had given this document at least as much attention as any piece of coursework. I waited for her to find the relevant passage. ‘… Cooking activities involving frying are strictly prohibited. You see? I’m afraid I must take away that pan.’

  I let her take the first few steps with my pan towards whatever pantry Valhalla she commanded, and then said, ‘Not so fast, Mrs Beddoes. Have you ever seen me frying anything in that pan?’

  ‘No, Mr Crow-maire, but rules are rules.’

  ‘Then show me where in the rules it says frying pan. I believe this college specialises in Law in a small way. It shouldn’t be difficult to get a professional opinion on the interpretation of these rules.’

  ‘Well, what else is a frying pan for, if not frying? Tell me that!’

  ‘For boiling, for poaching, for sousing in a maize-flour sauce, for simmering, for warming through. Do you not see, Mrs Beddoes, that this pan is the only one that is perfectly suited to the unfortunate shortness and curvature of my arms?’ I laid it on thick till she was thoroughly flustered. By and large it’s easy to create a misleading impression of exactly what I can or can’t do. No one likes to question my say-so.

  Tomorrow on Wittering Sunday

  So I got my pan a reprieve, and my revenge on the rules. Revenge, despite the proverb, not best served cold but sautéed, and so hot it burns the tongue.

  In a certain sense I got my come-uppance shortly afterward. There was no carpet on the common spaces of Kenny staircase and the parquet was slick. One day I had fried up a storm and then washed up as usual. I was scooting briskly along with the incriminating pan when I must have fallen forwards. I say ‘must have’ because a blow to the head interferes with the sorting office – the mechanism which processes short-term memories into long. My brain hadn’t yet decanted that thimbleful of information into the proper tank, and so it spilled.

  It was hardly surprising that I should have fallen out of the wheelchair. If your knees have no play in them you must punt yourself forwards in a precarious position, and if your arms aren’t very good at their job then you have very little chance of breaking your fall. My little frying pan was light, but it didn’t help.

  So the college legend goes that I was found with my head in a frying pan of blood. This sounds wildly exaggerated, but then the blood vessels in the scalp can put on quite an alarming show. Scale down the horror, and it
’s still a fairly startling sight to greet an inexperienced Spanish doctor assigned to Addenbrookes Hospital. It was a short ride in the ambulance. Old Addenbrookes was just the other side of the wall from A staircase, Kenny Court, Downing. Plans were well advanced to transfer it to a new site further out, but for the time being I had a hospital more or less en-suite.

  Having seen the state of his patient, the doctor prepared a syringe of local anæsthetic. At this point I rejoin the narrative, speaking volubly. Consciousness resumed with a swirl of departing images. All I saw was a nice dark man with a hypodermic. I lunged for it to the best of my ability. He said, with the most enchanting accent, ‘You have had a fall. I am a doctor. This will make you feel better.’ I said, ‘I know all that. Hand it over.’ I hadn’t given up on grabbing the hypodermic, and made some sort of impaired dive for it.

  The doctor was inhibited as we tussled, by the knowledge of his greater strength. He was shy of pressing his advantage.

  He said, ‘Please let me do my job.’

  ‘But I know just what to do. This is Lignocaine, isn’t it? Just the right stuff to use. Well done. Are you Spanish?’

  ‘I am. Hold still, please.’

  There are as many types of concussion as there are of consciousness. Mine was bossy and high-spirited. I didn’t want this handsome foreigner to think he was dealing with a standard-issue pig-ignorant xenophobic Brit. Even a university town is not free of such folk.