When I ask if there are steps, I don’t necessarily mean a grand staircase leading up to the entrance. I rather hope you’d tell me about that without being prompted. I’m talking about the little changes of level that your legs take in their stride — and that your automatic pilot negotiates without your needing to switch to manual control. I suppose it all comes down to maths, to rounding up and rounding down. If there are fewer than five steps people round down and say there aren’t any. If there are more than five, that counts as a flight. That’s makes a quorum and can’t be ignored. But fewer than five doesn’t count, apparently. It’s only me that feels excluded, and I apologise for being small-minded. It’s actually this body that is small-minded, and can’t get over the fact of your steps.
I imagine the little meeting at which rooms were assigned to the incoming freshers of Downing. Someone would be sure to say, ‘Cromer, J., uses a wheelchair, poor beggar, so we’d better give him a room on the ground floor, don’t you think?’ And somebody else would say, ‘How about A6 Kenny, that’s just the ticket.’ I realise that university business in 1970 was not conducted by World War II personnel, but I can’t help that. That’s how it plays out in my mind. Then the pretty WAAF comes in with the tea, and says, ‘But aren’t there steps outside A staircase Kenny? That’ll be jolly awkward.’ Everyone looks at her as if she was mad, and someone says, ‘I say, little girl, you’d better not poke your nose in where it’s not wanted. We’re not fools, you know. We’ve put him on the ground floor, haven’t we? He’ll be rocketing about, you’ll see. There’ll be no stopping him.’ And the WAAF sniffs and says, ‘No epidermis off my proboscis, I’m sure.’
With those steps taking his side, Noel simply assumed that he was coming in with me, and then something happened that took the initiative away from me for the duration. It wasn’t anything in the least dramatic — it was just that I had a bit of trouble opening the door. It was locked (I had learned my lesson) and I could manage perfectly well, as long as I wasn’t hurried. I could refuse Noel’s help in opening the door, and I did. But I couldn’t prevent cutting a figure of bravery and pathos in the eyes of a spectator, and then the drama took on its own meaning and momentum. On an ordinary night the scene would have been one of serene difficulty unobserved, but not now. I could send Noel smartly away, but that would only emphasise my bloody bravery and the sodding pathos of it all. Better to let him come in and hope to get rid of him soon.
After that Noel pretty much had his own way. I said as nonchalantly as I could, ‘Perhaps you’d make me a coffee — and one for yourself, of course, if you’d like.’
Noel went on and on about the haunting power of Ingmar Bergman’s images. They had bored into his head. They had tapped into his darkest dreams. He wouldn’t be able to sleep, unless … Unless what? Unless he stayed the night with me. All Ingmar’s fault, of course. Noel wouldn’t be able to close his eyes for existential terror unless I was there to comfort him. I had been chosen (chosen from a list of one) to keep the Scandinavian demons at bay in A6 Kenny.
As Granny would have said, it was all very inconvenient, but I could hardly chuck him out, could I? Even if I had a phone in my room, I couldn’t quite see myself using it to call the Porter’s Lodge and asking them to repatriate a stray blond.
Once I had resigned myself to my fate, there was no further mention of Noel’s fears. He was obviously shamming, but why should he bother to tell untruths? Perhaps he really was suffering from angst — angst in his pants, that is. And he was presentable enough, but was he my type?
I wasn’t sure I could afford to have a type. There wasn’t enough traffic for me to risk putting up road blocks. That would lead me right back to celibacy without even needing to take a vow.
The best approach seemed to be this: anyone who fetched up in my bed for whatever reason, including sham fears of clocks without hands, was my type until proved otherwise. Of course there was a snag when I considered my romantic prospects. It seemed unrealistic to expect anyone to help me go to bed and then enjoy my company once I was in it. I couldn’t quite visualise that. The waiter doesn’t sit down as guest of honour — though actually it’s an awkwardness that has come to pass often enough, when I have guests to a meal and then expect them to do a certain amount of fetching and carrying.
In my daydreams things were different. One person prepared me for bed and a quite different one joined me between the sheets, which is an arrangement reserved for the wedding nights of royalty. As a commoner I couldn’t see how Noel was going to combine the rôles. Still, rules were made to be broken. I had college authority for that.
Noel seemed rather fidgety as he boiled the kettle to make coffee. He asked if I had anything to eat and I reluctantly revealed a cache of biscuits. He looked through my record collection but found nothing that matched his mood, or perhaps his taste.
He couldn’t keep his hands away from his hair, smoothing it down far more, surely, than ordinary narcissism demanded. It made me grateful for my own narrow vocabulary of body language. What a waste of nervous energy, to thrash your hands about so! Every now and then he gave a little cat’s yawn, rolling his shoulders and even sticking out his tongue, as if he was poking fun at the idea of sleep as it slyly advanced on him.
I was ensconced in the Parker-Knoll with my drawbridge raised so that I was poised and nearly horizontal. Noel couldn’t seem to settle. He sat on the edge of the built-in desk, pushing back books and papers to make room for his narrow bum. I tried to protest, and then decided that I would make sure to ask him to reinstate everything in the morning. Unless things are near the front of a desk they’re not much use to me.
‘That’s a wonderful chair you’ve got there,’ he said. ‘I didn’t even see you get into it. How do you manage?’ There is occasionally something quite refreshing about unembarrassed curiosity, and I ended up giving a repeat performance, struggling slowly to my feet and then relapsing onto the Granny-subsidised upholstery. It seemed unlikely that Noel had missed the first show, all the same, which must have taken perhaps two minutes from beginning to end. ‘Thanks — I feel privileged to see that,’ said my uninvited visitor. ‘You’ve really got your life worked out, haven’t you? Well done you!’ If I had really got my life worked out, I would have been alone in my room at this point, wouldn’t I? And spared this whole conversation.
Impotent mandrake
Yawns are catching, alertness is not. By this time I was unconsciously copying Noel’s spasms of tiredness, and agreed that it was time for bed. Then Noel wanted to see how I managed in the bathroom. You would have thought, from his reaction, that he was positively jealous of my trolley commode, as if it was something he had wanted all his life. Finally he wanted to see how I used a flannel. Not very easily, would have been the short answer. I demonstrated, inwardly protesting. I used a table knife to bring the cloth within range of my face, and the whole operation was rather approximate. By this time I was feeling that naked curiosity wasn’t so very charming after all. Perhaps it should put on some clothes like the rest of us. Noel’s desire to know everything about my adaptation to life was beginning to seem rather oppressive. Of course he was just a little academic blob trying to rustle up a personality at short notice, like every other fresher, but I had stopped enjoying my part in the process.