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 right 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.