Snails in their morning slime
Colin had cannily put the poster up on the wall beyond my reach. The only way I could get it off the wall was by slipping my stick under the edge and tearing it down in ragged stages, breathing hard with the effort and the anger, and leaving scraps of paper held by stubborn twists of sticky tape.
Mrs Beddoes tutted with disapproval and removed the remaining scraps and twists of tape on the Monday morning. I would almost have preferred to leave them there to go yellow and brittle, as a reminder of my first lesson at this new palace of learning: it was easier for people at large to get at me than for me to find my way to the company I wanted. Whatever that would turn out to be.
I’ve always woken up cheerful, without needing to have a particular reason. I’m sure this isn’t an exclusively human privilege — I dare say snails in their morning slime feel much the same thing. I was still far from waking up depressed, but there wasn’t the usual shine on my morning mood.
Monday, when it came, was better. Some sort of routine could be imposed on a Monday. There had been a brief orientation for freshmen to give us some idea of what was expected of us. There were lectures, for one thing, and it was a source of grief to me that they weren’t compulsory, since that would have organised my life at a stroke. In fact there were too many lectures for any one person (and for once I mean an able-bodied person) to attend. They were listed in a special issue of the University Register, swelling its pages until it amounted to quite a little book.
It was part of university lore that lecturers were paid whether or not anyone turned up to hear them. If they were alone in the room then in theory they were expected to give the lecture just the same. In fact few of them were natural performers, and many would have been relieved to be spared the ordeal of catering to an audience.
The only compulsory academic activity was the writing of essays for your supervisors. ‘Writing’ at the time really meant writing — making marks by hand on paper. I pecked out my essays, though, on the trusty Smith-Corona. I was making life easier for my supervisors by not submitting anything in my dismal scrawl, but there was no doubt about typing being second best, in the Cambridge way of looking at things. Typing was the province of the subliterate or American.
In those days supervisors, like pharmacists, prided themselves on their ability to decipher illegible scrawls. If handwriting truly became impossible to make out, a supervisor always had the option of getting you to read your essay aloud. This was also the choice of supervisors who hadn’t found the time to give your prose even a once-over.
It wasn’t a tightly policed system. As long as you kept your supervisors (and your director of studies) happy, the question of how you worked was left up to you. This was almost an academic version of Ramana Maharshi’s teaching: many ways up the mountain, some steeper than others, all leading to the same peak.
I, on the other hand, didn’t enjoy having the freedom to construct my own course. I wanted to be roped in with a like-minded group, climbing under escort. I had only been a schoolboy in any real sense for the two years at Burnham, and I wasn’t ready to move on so soon to a more solitary version of the learning process, clambering up above the tree line where the academic air is thin.
I had wheels galore, what with the wheelchair and the Mini — nine in all, counting the spare in the boot — but mobility was still in short supply. I was snookered on a regular basis. I needed to have the wheelchair in my room, or else I would be reduced to tottering pathetically about. Without it I would have gone arse over apex before the end of the first week. The Parker-Knoll was for special occasions.
But if I left the chair in A6 Kenny and drove somewhere in the Mini, then I was helpless to go any further once I had arrived wherever the car could take me. What I lacked was regular help to load the wheelchair in and out of the car.
What would solve the problem at a stroke would be another wheelchair, one that lived in the car, so that the amount of furniture-moving could be reduced. I was too proud to spell out my needs to Granny (for instance), but I’m not sure it would have done any good even if I had nerved myself to it. No one could describe her as a soft touch, but she had stumped up the bulk of the funds for the electric wheelchair that had made life easier at Vulcan, for the car that had replaced it, and even the reclining chair now occupying pride of place in A6 Kenny. Better not to go to the well too often, or the lid would slam down and catch you a nasty biff on the way. Putting it more simply, Granny would click shut the clasp of her handbag, in a judgement against which there was no appeal.
I had already realised that the Parker-Knoll was both an amenity and an obstruction, something that clogged the wheels of daily life even as it oiled them. It was hopelessly oversized for that little room. Visitors would not rest until they had explored the mechanism, and their long legs were taking up most of the little space remaining. To prevent this I would sometimes occupy the P-K myself, but then visitors would help themselves to the wheelchair and we were only moments away from wheelchair races or attempts to use it as a sort of Jeep on the stairs. Meanwhile the little chair provided by the college, hopelessly surplus to requirements, was often placed on the bed, or outside the door, to keep it out of the way. I began to feel about the Parker-Knoll roughly what Ramana Maharshi felt about his tiger skin, and if a visitor had asked to take it away I would have been tempted to say yes.
Egos in bantam display
There was an immature side of me which was still waiting for the world to understand me, to tune in to my wave-length. Surely in this ancient university town, crammed with the best brains available, young and old, there would be somebody capable of imagining what it was like to be John, someone who would ask, ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to manage with another wheelchair?’
I had the wrong idea about universities. They were not institutions dedicated to the development of integrated personalities, light and holy tipples notwithstanding. They weren’t even places where intellectual adventurousness was encouraged. They were forcing-houses for the ego. At Cambridge the ego was fed and watered, preened and fluffed up, and then pitted against other egos in bantam display. This was apparent even at mealtimes.
I didn’t have a set place to sit in Hall. It was rather a matter of where I was plonked by whatever volunteer made himself available, though the awkwardness of the wheelchair made it easiest to put me at the head of a table. Over time I was exposed to a fair cross-section of the student population, though I listened idly more than I joined in. The simplest conversation had a competitive edge. It didn’t seem possible to like a book or a record without becoming embroiled in a whole set of arbitrary alignments, empty convulsions of status. Slaughterhouse- Five. A Rainbow in Curved Air. Hot Rats. The Glass Bead Game. Bitches Brew. The Wretched of the Earth. Any of these could polarise a group. These artefacts were timeless masterworks, or they were pitiful trash. Endless arguments could rage on such subjects, arbitrary disputes being much more congenial to brains inflamed by egotism than sweet admissions of indifference. Not to have an opinion was seen as a sign of personality disorder, when in fact the opposite is the case. Every opinion is a rut in the road.
The way Ramana Maharshi put it (in the supplement to the Forty Verses on Reality) is that for unpretentious folk there is only one family to be resisted — spouse, children, dependents. Among the learned, however, there are many other families: families of books, families of theories and opinions, all of them obstacles to understanding. ‘What is the use of letters,’ he goes on, ‘to those lettered folk who do not seek to wipe out the letters of fate by enquiring, “Whence are we born?”? They are gramophones, Oh Lord Arunachala. What else can they be? They learn and repeat words without realising their meaning.’ Cambridge was more than anything a city of human gramophones, playing the same records over and over again, mental needle in plastic groove.