‘Perhaps you have other errands for me to do, John. That would intensify the satisfactions of my job to an almost unbearable degree.’
I had come on an errand and this was an opening which could hardly be bettered, so I blundered in, not remembering that I had experienced the same sensation in a different context (with Granny) and had run into a brick wall glittering with broken glass.
There are times when the very brightness of the green light is a danger signal, but my worldly knowledge was very partial at the time. I should have cut my losses before I had any and come back another time, however foolish it would have seemed to beat a retreat just when the functionary entrusted with my welfare was advertising — however sardonically — his devotion to my cause.
Nonchalantly I laid out my case. I had decided during the negotiations about the ceiling rail that Graëme was a sensitive soul who protected himself with his stage-professorial manner. No matter — I had more than enough charm on hand to disarm him. And still the pettifogging persona adhered to the tender core. It wouldn’t be peeled away, and I was stuck with the husk of this human fruit.
Graëme turned down my eminently reasonable request with what was almost satisfaction. He wouldn’t even look at the note Roy Wisbey had written on my behalf, on the grounds that this was a college matter in which no faculty member should presume to meddle.
‘I wonder if you realise, John,’ he said, ‘that it is only recently that Fellows themselves have had telephones. The telephone is the bane of modern academic life and should not be a priority for you or any other undergraduate.
‘Your circumstances are not so exceptional, you know. Anyone would think you were living in a croft in remotest Orkney, when in fact you will never be closer to the heart of a community than you are now. A telephone would only encourage you to withdraw from full participation in the life of the college.’ He sighed. ‘I wish I could get rid of my own apparatus. I would certainly get much more work done.’
As an argument this was pitiful, so the explanation of his refusal has to be sought elsewhere, in my own manner of asking. Perhaps I was simply too breezy, too sure of a positive response. It’s true that I have been called cocky in my time. The words ‘John’ and ‘bumptious’ have been brought into alignment within a single sentence. Authority likes a supplicant to roll over and play dead, not to claim help on all-but-equal terms — a factor I had failed to consider.
I can’t always be touching my forelock, though, can I? It’s boring to do things in the same way every time, and since my life is largely made up of asking for help I amuse myself by varying the phrasing. I can’t always be saying, ‘Could you possibly be so kind as to pass the salt? Seasoning is the making of a meal, don’t you agree? Even a little nearer, if you don’t mind, so that I can actually reach it with these unsatisfactory limbs. Infinitely obliged.’ Sometimes it’ll be more like ‘Pass the salt and make it snappy.’ Perhaps with Graëme, officially on my side, I was a tiny bit brusque about the need for a telephone.
I took it for granted that he was in my corner, but after all he was in loco parentis, and he took that responsibility seriously. It’s no small part of a parent’s job to thwart the wishes of the young — certainly that was how Mum and Dad operated.
Mentally caressing my approaching phone
Perhaps unconsciously I mimicked Granny’s imperious tone, asking how long it would take to install the phone, as if my time had a value in itself, a value perhaps greater than his own … I don’t remember now. If I did, then my imitation of her methods fell sadly short of the results they consistently achieved for her. But however the responsibility should be divided between us, Graëme Beamish set his face against the idea of me being connected to the wider world by a wire. And having weakly decided, he was strongly opposed to changing his mind. Intransigent even.
Luckily I like a little intransigence now and then. It gives me something to engage with, difficulty with a human face (even if set stonily against me) rather than a hostile impersonality. I would do some research on the legal position and ride back in triumph.
In the meantime I was able to examine my feelings about the way the bill for the rail had been ‘magicked away’. At the time I had been so taken up with mentally caressing my forthcoming phone that the information hardly registered. When it finally sank in I felt not just disappointment but actual resentment. This was chicanery pure and simple. I hadn’t wanted the bill paid for us, on the basis that my father had been in the Air Force and money was tight. I wanted it rescinded on the basis that it was unfair. I wanted it absorbed by the devious authorities who had secreted it in the first place, not mopped up by a bloody Fund. Dad too would far rather have settled an oppressive debt than be classified as a defaulting pauper. And now a sum intended for a poor student had been swallowed up by a rich college.
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.