Cedilla

by Adam Mars-Jones

  Heffers told me that the hardback was long out of print, but there was a paperback available. My heart sank at the news, though it’s no secret that bibliophilia is only fetishism of self-righteous form, and a sly perversion of the longing for knowledge. Book-collecting magnifies the differences between copies of the same work until they are overwhelming, when it’s the essential sameness of every copy which allows a book to make its impact.

  A book is a book is a book. After lecturing myself in these terms, I ordered the paperback, which was priced at 18/6. While I waited for it to arrive, I tried to convince myself that it would connect me to my guru in exactly the same way the library copy had. In fact it would have the advantage of being fresh, free of associations – a new beginning for an established devotion. Looking at it in gardening terms, my devotion would be re-potted, with room to grow.

  New improved whoopee cushion

  Then when the book finally arrived, announced by a knock on the door of A6, it was the hardback after all! Still the first edition, a full fifteen years after publication, and in theory long exhausted and out of print. I made the trip to Heffers and cross-examined the staff about this miraculous mistake, but they weren’t helpful, simply saying that there must have been a leftover copy at the warehouse. The word ‘warehouse’ indicated a place of decisions beyond the possibility of appeal, like ‘Providence’ or ‘the Government’. They hardly noticed that I was thrilled rather than bitterly complaining. My bliss knocked them off kilter.

  I was deeply moved by this godsend, this gurusend. There was no rational explanation for the appearance of the book – but nothing is impossible for the guru. It was a time when I was feeling only tenuously attached to the reality I had tried to find in India. This gesture of continued good faith from the non-dualist cosmos was all the more welcome and sustaining. If it was a miracle, it was a miracle well spent. And only twenty-five shillings.

  My new copy even had the same tender blurb on the dust-jacket that had drawn Mum’s eye in Bourne End Library, about the practice not entailing tortuous exercises or the tying of the body in knots. Words not holy in themselves but perfectly chosen as bait for the holy fishing-rod, making me fall for my guru hook, line and sinker.

  Now I had a familiar book in my room. I also had my framed picture of Maharshi, but when Mrs Beddoes tidied it away out of sight I didn’t protest. No picture of the Maharshi shows him as anything but benign, his smile a constant while his body ages, and yet sometimes I found it hard to meet his eyes.

  My vow of gardening chastity had been overridden by the generosity of the Bot, and now I was making some experiments with an old friend. I bought a bulb from Sanders Seed Merchants in Regent Street, which I placed on a saucerful of sand in my window. This was an experiment on a person as well as on a plant – a practical joke. The idea was irresistible, once it had occurred to me, and this new improved whoopee cushion (the original had fizzled frustratingly under my tutor’s bum during the bed-rest years) would not misfire.

  No doubt in their native climes such things have a modest seasonality, but under the conditions even of humble windowsill Creation (let there be light! let there be heat! let there be water!) they can’t wait to grow. Soon I could see a fine stout prong rising from the centre of the bulb. It was a naughty-looking thing which did my thin social life nothing but good. Passers-by would comment on the living phallic symbol growing on my windowsill. There were even people who knocked on the door to see the plant rather than me.

  One of them was a botanist called Barry, who begged me to let him know when it flowered. He was a rather ugly squat student, always bleating about having no girlfriend. He had worse odds to contend with than the famous ten-to-one ratio of student genders. Even if the disproportion between the sexes was corrected – even if it was reversed – he could have relied on finding himself alone. From the way he kept himself, or rather neglected himself, it was surprising that anyone talked to him at all. Bad breath and body odour were his calling cards. He lived within his noxiousness as innocently as the stinkhorn mushroom. Sooner or later a friend, while such things still existed, would have to nerve himself to break the news.

  The sinister inflorescence in my window grew and swelled by the day. I had let Barry in on the secret that the flower when it arrived would give off a really disgusting smell. Barry was more than a bit whiffy himself, of course, but if you were in the same room with Barry and S. guttatum in full inflorescence, it wouldn’t be him you noticed. Whiffy Barry wasn’t in the same class.

  Barry was mad keen to see the thing in flower so that he could give his considered opinion as a botanist. That was just what I wanted myself. I told Barry he would be the first to know when it flowered, and I tried to predict when the great event would finally happen, but these things are hard to get right. I was really only beginning to under stand the species.

  Mrs Beddoes had started to take a tentative motherly interest in my welfare and happiness, so I knew my little scheme was working when she relapsed into her squirrel state of being. It was almost as bad as it had been at the beginning of term. She didn’t know where to look, all over again, while I stayed put in bed. This Eichhörnchen was anything but flinkes, doleful for all her twitching.

  I waited her out, with a gleeful interior chuckle. Surely she wouldn’t be able to keep her peace much longer? She was being ridiculously patient. Then at last it came out, so very hesitantly. ‘Now, Mr Cromer,’ she said, ‘I don’t mind looking after you, hoovering your room, even making you the odd cup of tea. I hope you don’t think I’m making difficulties – but I do …’

  She clenched and unclenched her fists in desperation, steeling herself to produce words that went against her samurai code.

  ‘… I do draw the line. I have to put my foot down somewhere … Now I know it’s not your fault, but try to appreciate it from my point of view, Mr Cromer.’ Appreciate came out as appreesherate.

  Ungraduate gentlemen are full of surprises

  I let her struggle on, while I put my face through as many convincing emotional permutations as I could muster. It was all working splendidly, and I had to give her as much rope as I possibly could. Meanwhile I shuffled my legs out from under the duvet and hooked them under the wheelchair seat. With the help of the McKee pins I could pivot myself up into a sitting position on the bed and lever myself, awkwardly but unaided, into the chair.

  At this stage in the pantomime it was vital that she didn’t come to help me. I sidled discreetly over to the window side of the room. It would be exaggerating to say that I kept her talking. She couldn’t stop, knowing that sooner or later she would have to come to the point. Finally she had exhausted the family medical encyclopædia. ‘The thing is, Mr Cromer’ – one last gasp and she came out with it – ‘I do draw the line … at my gentlemen wetting the bed.’

  ‘I see, Mrs Beddoes. Your gentlemen must not wet the bed. And you think I have committed this crime against the Holy Ghost, for which there can be no forgiveness. Is that your last word?’

  ‘I’m afraid it is.’ She bristled a bit, and I loved her for that. ‘It’s no crime, and I don’t see what it has to do with the Holy Ghost, but I shouldn’t have to put up with it.’

  ‘And what is the solution to our problem? A rubber sheet? Plastic nappies?’

  ‘I don’t …’ She ran out of words altogether.

  ‘How about if I went down on my knees and begged for forgiveness?’

  ‘Don’t do that, Mr Cromer. You of all people …’

  ‘The terrible thing is, Mrs Beddoes, I honestly don’t remember wetting the bed. Do you think I’m going out of my mind?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say, Mr Crow-maire. Ungraduate gentlemen are full of surprises. Still, I wouldn’t say you’re the type.’

  I wanted to take pity on her, but the game had to be played out in full. ‘Anyway, Mrs Beddoes, you’ll be taking this further – you have no choice in the matter, I quite understand that. But perhaps you’d better inspect the bed and show me whe
re the wetness is.’

  She prodded the Dream-Cloud, gingerly at first and then more thoroughly when she found it blameless. She sniffed. Then she went down a layer, still sniffing and snuffing, to levels of bedlinen which I didn’t actually use – as if I might be caught short, yet somehow burrow down to relieve myself.

  She was baffled. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any wetness.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s dried up already.’

  ‘I suppose.’ She wasn’t convinced.

  ‘What a mystery. While we think about it, perhaps you wouldn’t mind opening the window and letting in a breath of fresh air.’

  ‘I’m with you there, Mr Crow-maire,’ she said. ‘The smell is making me feel quite sick!’ Mrs Beddoes drew back the curtains and went to open the window catch. At that point she reeled back. ‘Lord Gracious, Mr Crow-maire,’ she gasped. ‘It’s even worse over here!’

  I assumed my best Sherlock Holmes manner, and pounced. ‘Precisely!’ I announced. ‘And there you have it, Mrs Beddoes.’

  ‘Have what, Mr Cromer?’ Perhaps she had been too hasty in dismissing the possibility of mental breakdown – that’s what I read on her face.

  ‘The answer to the entire mystery, of course!’

  Somehow I persuaded her to go over to the bed, to sniff and feel that it was both dry and clean. ‘Use your eyes and your nose, Mrs Beddoes! Examine the evidence!’ I almost said, Mrs Hudson, as if I was explaining my theories of deduction to a baffled Baker Street housekeeper. ‘I insist that you give my personal hygiene a clean bill of health!’

  She came back, frowning, to the window side of the room. ‘Well …’ was all she could manage to say.

  ‘Once you have eliminated the all-too-likely, Mrs Beddoes,’ I said, triumphantly indicating the unprepossessing flower, ‘whatever remains, however preposterous, must be the truth. May I present Sauromatum guttatum, also known as the Voodoo Lily? Voodoo Lily, Mrs Beddoes, Mrs Beddoes, Voodoo Lily. This flower is responsible for the sinister smell, the smell like a neglected jakes.’

  I could have added that the Voodoo Lily is also known as Sauromatum venosum, Typhonium venosum, and Arum cornutum, but not everyone finds Latin names easy to understand and remember, so I kept things simple.

  Mrs Beddoes’ face went entirely empty, blank as a doll’s must be before the paint is applied. She just stood there. It was very disconcerting. It was as if she had entirely forgotten who she was – a potential breakthrough during meditation, since personality must dissolve before the self can be manifested, but downright disconcerting in a college room reeking like a urinal.

  Flames of laughter and relief

  I started to lose confidence in my joke. ‘It flowers very briefly, Mrs Beddoes. It’ll be gone by tomorrow.’ It was as if she was having some sort of fit, a hidden convulsion which prevented her from taking in a word I was saying. Nervously I took my explanation down a few levels of complexity. ‘No more stink – everything sweet.’ Then the blank look she wore suddenly went away. Her face was no longer vacant premises but a full house. It was standing room only, and the whole crowd screaming with laughter.

  With the release of tension she wept hysterical tears. She had to sit down to get her breath. She made several attempts to speak, saying, ‘I never … I never …’, before she was able to go on with her sentence. ‘I never … in all my years at Downing, in all my puff … I never heard of such a thing.’ Her nervousness went up in flames of laughter and relief. The conflagration was almost alarming. She wasn’t producing tears enough to put it out.

  Finally she got her breath back. ‘But if you’re thinking of playing any more tricks like that, then you’d better be careful. My health won’t stand it. It’s a good job it’s Alf who has the heart problem and not me. If it had been me … then what the consequences might have been … well, I wouldn’t like to say, Mr Crow-maire. I might have slipped away, and you without a phone in your room to call for help.’

  ‘I would have screamed, Mrs Beddoes,’ I told her. ‘I can make quite a noise when I have to.’

  By taking liberties with her which she might easily have resented I had made her my friend. Charm could get me only so far, but now cheekiness had worked a magic of its own. I felt the release of tension too. I had dared to make a joke about something which had once been a baleful part of my history, bedwetting, and now I was free of the fear as well as the habit.

  After that everything went smoothly between me and Mrs Beddoes. Nothing was too much trouble. Now it was official. The little yellow-haired squirrel eating out of my hand.

  She started washing my hair, for one thing, though she didn’t exactly volunteer. I had to do some prompting before it occurred to her to make the offer. Day after day I left a bottle of shampoo out in a conspicuous place, so that she would have to move it to clean properly. Eventually the discrepancy between the constant presence of the shampoo and the actual greasiness of my locks became impossible to ignore, and she said, ‘Mr Cromer, I was wondering … would you mind if I had a bash at washing your hair? No offence, but it could do with a wash. Not in the bathroom, mind – I could do it here, wrap a towel round you and use a bowl …’

  And I said, ‘Well …’ rather grudgingly, as if I would try to put up with her fussing round me. Anything for a quiet life.

  After that, she would even cut my hair, just ‘tidying it up’, which was all that I would have wanted anyway. So the Voodoo Lily was anything but an ill wind from my point of view. It blew me no end of good. Mrs Beddoes would cut my fingernails for me and even squeeze unreachable pimples on my nose or forehead. This was a service which Mum rendered with a certain amount of cooing and scolding and chafing, saying, ‘You’re probably not getting enough chlorophyll in your diet’ or ‘Have you tried rubbing in half a fresh lemon?’, but it was far too intimate to be mentioned when it was performed on an undergraduate by his bedmaker. It suited us both to pretend it wasn’t happening.

  Once in a while Mrs Beddoes would take a piece of my clothing home with her and wash it herself, but it was always clear between us that this was a personal favour and no part of the duties she performed for the college. It was between ourselves.

  The flower of Sauromatum guttatum only lasts for the one day, and Whiffy Barry missed the show. He came along the following day, and together we examined the shrivelled and entirely odourless stem, which offered no insight into how the mechanism of the terrible smell might actually operate. That was my real interest in the Lily, to get hard evidence for Mr Mole at CRX, porter and self-appointed gardening expert, being wrong all those years ago. Mr Menage and Gardening for Adventure had sided with me in classifying S. guttatum as non-carnivorous, but I wanted proof, and Barry as an expert witness.

  I had contradictory expectations of my fellow members of the student body. Colin the evangelical engineer wanted to get a firmer grip on his own soul by gathering mine in, and Noel the film-going chancer only wanted to pose and preen. Barry was the only one of the bunch who didn’t even pretend to take an interest in me personally, and he was the only one I welcomed in.

  I would invite people back to my room after lunch, bribing them with better coffee than the college provided and making sure (less defensibly) that I always had cigarettes on hand. Only my neighbour P. D. Hughes ever replaced my supply, but I didn’t mind being exploited. At this point what I seemed to need was a definite idea of what my guests got out of my hospitality. What I wanted from them was less definite, in fact I can own up and say that it’s a complete mystery to me now. The room was far too small for ambitious entertaining, but I liked it when people were wedged in anywhere they would fit and the ceiling swirled with smoke.

  Once a guest of mine brought me a present – a lava lamp. Admittedly it was defective and a cast-off, something that had been returned to Joshua Taylor and replaced. That swanky emporium had no use for the faulty product, and so it came to me. It was prematurely aged, so that it no longer quite had the effect desired, of distended yolks of wax rising and falling throu
gh excited oil. In my lava lamp the wax was tired and unresponsive, circulating in globules and clots, weary melting streamers. You’re not supposed to leave lava lamps on for extended periods, but I didn’t have a lot of choice – the power point not being accessible to me. Friends would drop round for coffee and turn it on for their amusement, and then it would stay on till the next morning, when I’d ask Mrs Beddoes to turn it off. It’s bad for lava lamps to be left on for so long, but what could I do? It was broken already, and I became accustomed to its sour ozone smell.

  Pete had started to get weekend visits from his old girlfriend, Helen. She was from his home town (Birmingham) and they had gone out together for quite a while, but then before he went up to Cambridge he told her that a clean break was best.

  Now he wasn’t so sure. He felt defeated by the sheer weight of numbers, the odds against finding a student girlfriend, and he was too shy to meet girls from the town, or the nurses of Addenbrookes who were in a special category, supposedly nymphomaniacs without exception. One night, tipsy and self-pitying, he had written a letter to the girl he had dumped back home, repenting of his callousness.

  She took him back, but sensibly kept him on a short rein. No student girlfriend could have had him so completely under her thumb. Helen, who was crisp, organised and already in work, seemed very grown-up.

  When Helen first saw me she said, ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Making yoghurt,’ I said, to which she replied with the greatest cheerfulness, ‘How revolting!’ We got on well from the start, though she had no plans to share the limited time she had with Pete. She pressed him to give up smoking (so that he could contribute to her travelling expenses, as was only right), which tended to prevent him from coming to my room after meals. Helen had no interest in plants, so it was handy that I had learned to dispense with Pete’s services as botanical escort at weekends.