I don’t know if television played a major part in other undergraduates’ lives. On me it hardly registered. There was a set in the Junior Common Room, theoretically available (as long as your choice of channel wasn’t outvoted, presumably) but I never bothered. I can’t imagine that many students watched more than half an hour a week. If someone at Hall said to a friend, ‘I’ll see you at the usual place,’ it was likely to mean a rather shame-faced conclave convened in the JCR for Top of the Pops or Doctor Who. I hadn’t come to Cambridge to be an overgrown schoolboy, so I didn’t take part — which was a shame, since that lovely old ham Jon Pertwee was starting his run as the Doctor, and I’d have enjoyed dropping the name. There was something called Monty Python’s Flying Circus which people seemed to enjoy without embarrassment (one of the performers was apparently a Downing man), but the series had finished without my seeing any of it. I lost interest when I learned that it featured no snakes.
Since I was too insecure to concoct my own course of study, I would obviously have to go to lectures, and this involved its own set of hazards. I hated the help I needed. I needed the help I hated. It wasn’t much use finding somebody who would be at my lecture if they weren’t also in Downing. Ideally of course they should be somebody in Kenny, though this was a bit much to hope for. Since students of Modern Languages were not a strong presence in Downing, the odds were stacked against my teaming up with a fellow freshman on any sort of regular basis.
In fact there was one suitable person on my own staircase, the same nice tall Pete — P. D. Hughes — who had escorted me to the Societies Fair. He was reading Russian, which he always pronounced Rooshian like a Smersh operative in a Bond film, and had lectures at the Sidgwick Site, where mine mostly were. He was my trump card, but then again he was my only card. Trump cards wear out when played too often.
There were other stalwarts on Kenny, but their numbers dwindled. As we all in our different ways were sucked into the university’s Maya, they found they had more important things to attend to than portering around one of their fellows. When novelty wore off, only drudgery remained, and being obliging became a bit of a bore. In their place I’m sure I would have done exactly the same.
Pete was very willing — I can’t fault him for that. Sometimes I would give him a lift in the Mini in exchange for help getting in and out of it. How he fitted into that car I’ll never know. The distance between Downing and the Sidgwick Site wasn’t even very great, and Pete thought it would be fun to push me the whole way in the chair, but of course I would have to arrange to meet up with him later for the return journey, and I didn’t want to do that. It seemed vital to spread the load, to avoid a situation in which the name Cromer, J. W. irresistibly called up in Pete’s mind the association constant toting, in need of.
Helpfulness becomes a chore when it is taken for granted, and I couldn’t help at least seeming to take it for granted, by dint of having no other option. My needs were continuous and unvarying. What I needed one day I also needed the next. Inevitably Pete would find this oppressive. I found it oppressive myself.
There was no mistaking Pete’s outsized feet on the stairs, but many times when he knocked on my door I kept mum inside, forcing myself to manage without him. It was bad enough that he felt duty-bound to knock, without making him think that I was lost without him.
If I didn’t have the momentum to proceed unaided then I simply missed lectures, which weren’t after all compulsory. I find it much harder to drag myself down a step than up a step, which meant that the greatest single obstacle in my whole impeded day was the one between me and the Mini. It took quite a build-up of determination (or sometimes just frustration) to wash me over that barrier and into the swim of the academic day.
If I missed a lecture sometimes people would say the next week, ‘I didn’t see you last time — were you sick?’, and I’d say yes out of politeness, muttering, ‘Sick to the back teeth of managing without help’ under my breath.
I began to think, though, that my mild hypnotic powers were waning along with my ability to meditate (better than it had been in India, but nowhere near full strength). If I found myself in a group, at Hall or in a lecture theatre or library, I learned to recruit helpers from the edges of the group, not asking those near me. I would say to someone I hadn’t seen before, ‘I think it’s your turn to take me to the lav, don’t you?’
What’s the usual euphemism for excretion? Going to the toilet, or the lavatory, the crapper or the bog. That’s just it: going to. The journey involved. Once I’m in place, I can perform as well as anyone. It’s the journey that takes the work and the organising.
My underlying strategy in recruiting outlying helpers was a longterm one. It was actually better to recruit the mildly unwilling for toilet-portering, since they were sure to have no hidden motive darker than a wholesome need to get away. Samaritans need not apply.
I hoped that as word got round people would realise that there was no safety in hanging back. They might get off more lightly by coming up and sitting right next to me, in the eye of the storm in a teacup. In fact my victims on these occasions seemed rather to enjoy themselves. Many of them were public-school boys, fantastically estranged from their own bodies, who found they enjoyed the neutral physical contact of carrying another human being around for a bit, though it would never have occurred to them to volunteer. After their errand was accomplished they would be likely to sit near me, looking oddly dreamy and contented. Opiated by the combination of touch and civic virtue. I began to realise that the transaction was the opposite of what it appeared to be. I was actually doing them a favour. It was charitable work.
On days when I had done without Pete’s help, I would emerge from A6 in a state of mild masochistic melancholy, and totteringly trudge towards whichever exit from the building I had decided to use. The obstacles were identical — a single step in either case. The rear entrance involved the shorter journey and a manageable door, but offered a much smaller chance of my being spotted by someone who would install me in the Mini.
If I had decided to picket the front entrance, then the tableau I presented was pretty clear: the little chap and the door he couldn’t manage. The step on the other side of it a further obstacle. If I heard footsteps behind me then I would wait and see. Usually people would stop and offer help. Sometimes, it’s true, people would tiptoe out the back way. I wonder what that felt like. Not very nice, I expect.
I would listen to the strange pause before they (mostly) squared their shoulders, walked up to me and asked if I needed help. In those moments my lack of mobility almost seemed to be catching. It was as if I made them think about their walking and forget how the steps went. It was a little hiatus in the dance — the hesitation tango — before conscience cut in.
If people were coming from the other direction, so that they were crossing the courtyard when they saw me, I noticed that they would look quickly around to see if we were being observed by others. I seemed to put people on the spot, so that they would lose face both by helping me and by walking on. My situation emitted vibrations of embarrassment. It was my job to damp them down with charm and personal warmth.