Basilisk of the bedroom
Most of our conversations were about women’s thoughts and feelings, which might seem an unlikely interest for a womaniser. But think about it: at a conference of safe-breakers the subject of discussion wouldn’t be money, bullion and booty but rather tumblers, alarms and time-locks. In the same way Hoff was preöccupied with women’s emotions and ideas — everything he had to get past before the marvellous mechanism swung open at last, and he glimpsed the ingots of shining pleasure stacked high on the shelves.
Hoff had an elaborate typology of women (girls). There were virgins, there were half-virgins and according to him there were some girls who had never been virgins at all. There were Clean Dirty Girls and Dirty Clean Girls (his particular pets), but there were no Dirty Dirty Girls. He explained: the Dirty Dirty Girl, the girl who matched a man in appetite and even outstripped him, was no more than a legend or fabulous beast, the unicorn of sex.
Charm played no part in his technique. He stunned women with a bolt of indifference, and after that he could do what he liked with them. According to Hoff, there was nothing a girl found more reassuring in a man than absolute unreliability. But it did have to be absolute. Mere dithering wasn’t enough. She had to be able to count on his unreliability, and there Hoff had never been a disappointment. I don’t know whether all women fitted this pattern, or the ones who interested him.
There are other fabulous beasts than unicorns, of course, and I began to wonder if the Dirty Dirty Girl, if she ever actually turned up with her cornucopia of desires, might not be the sort who turns men to stone, basilisk of the bedroom. If Hoff ever met her, would he tell us about it? Would he be allowed to keep the power of speech after that encounter?
I was fascinated to be having such technical discussions with an unashamed sexual predator, of a breed that was coming to be labelled the Male Chauvinist Pig, which didn’t die out but certainly changed its spots, finding new ways of presenting bad behaviour.
I noticed how clean Hoff was, on the occasions when he carried me, still talking, to the lavatory (where he would raise his voice a little so as to be sure of reaching me in my stall). He was at least as clean as Alan Linton, but while Alan would certainly have given his armpits priority Hoff paid attention also to fingernails and (most likely) toes. Perhaps his secret was nothing more than the combination of low morals and good hygiene — hardly the secret of life or anything else, though admittedly unusual in that place and at that time. It was, additionally, a combination which might attract those fabled Addenbrookes nurses.
Hoff was a philosopher as a matter of academic fact, but economics loomed more largely in his daily life. He ate only the statutory minimum of meals in Hall, but liked company while he ate, so he would call in on me in A6. I don’t know if he was rich or poor, but he was certainly thrifty to the point of madness. His diet was carefully calculated, made up not of the cheapest foods in absolute terms but the ones which met his body’s needs most efficiently. Everything was calculated down to the last penny-calorie.
He had established to his own satisfaction that tinned cod’s roe represented the best investment in terms of protein. He called it prole caviar, and would eat it straight from the tin so as to save on washing up. The proteinous beige-pink slab in the tin, or the lump of it in his spoon, had the visual texture of soft wet brick and a faint meaty smell.
I didn’t mention that I had been to a school where actual posh caviar was delivered at intervals, thanks to the Queen Mother’s interest and bounty, and later fed to pigs. I had started to clam up about my past. Every little incident seemed to need so much explaining, and I could hardly keep trotting out the whole saga. No one at Cambridge was curious about how I had got there anyway. I might just as well have been some sort of life-form cooked up in the Cavendish Laboratory and stored in A6 Kenny to await testing.
Hoff also favoured tinned ham risotto, not necessarily a dish which Italians would recognise or claim credit for. This too he ate from the tin, unheated, gaining access with a small opener, no more than a blade with a flange, which he worked round the edge of the tin with a vigorous rocking motion. Under the jagged lid, when at last he lifted it, were yellowed grains of rice and reddish cubes of ham. Among them nestled amber pearls of fat.
All these tins, heavy with karma even when empty, went into my waste-paper basket. Mrs Beddoes would frown as she retrieved them, though she must have known without needing to ask that these were not relics of binges on my part.
Girlfriends weren’t exempt from Hoff’s mathematical calculations, though in that department of economic affairs I think the unit was the pound-orgasm rather than the penny-calorie. A girl who gave him the full penile thrill for less than fifteen shillings (though no doubt he was learning to say ‘seventy-five new pence’ like everyone else) would stay on his books.
Not necessary to celebrate Hitler’s birthday
So when Jean Beddoes expressed worry about Hoff I thought that perhaps a conquest of his had left some incriminating item in his room — panties in the bed, perhaps, at the least. Perhaps a number of pairs. Then she said, ‘I think Mr Hoffman must be a fascist. A proper fascist.’
This was a startling thing for a bedmaker to say in 1971. It wasn’t a startling thing for an undergraduate to say, of course. By this time the word was an entirely unspecific term of disapproval — it wasn’t necessary to wear jackboots in the street or celebrate Hitler’s birthday to earn the label. Jumping the meal queue in Hall was quite enough.
Mrs Beddoes, though, must mean something different. ‘What makes you think so?’ I asked. Miserably she produced something from her pinny pocket. It was an item of clothing — I’d got that right. Not panties, though, or anything else belonging to a girl. It was a bundled pair of socks. I turned them over awkwardly in my hands, completely baffled. Mrs Beddoes reached over to unroll them and exposed the shocking truth. The socks — black, nylon — were neatly labelled with blue Cash’s name-tapes, and the name they carried was BENITO MUSSOLINI.
‘It isn’t just his socks,’ she whispered. ‘That name is on everything he wears.’
Mrs Beddoes didn’t actually think that Hoff was wearing a dead dictator’s nylon socks, but she certainly thought the name-tapes represented a homage to sinister politics. I tried to talk her round.
I explained that it wasn’t any more ominous that he had the Duce’s name on all his things than that he had it in his socks. It only meant that the minimum order for Cash’s name-tapes was a hundred, and that he was a dab hand with a sewing-machine, no doubt smirking as he stitched smugly away.
I managed to persuade Mrs Beddoes that it was just the sort of silly thing Hoff would do, a stupid prank that only a clever person would dream up. I think I did her a favour by persuading her that this wasn’t a matter for the college authorities. Any investigation would show Hoff up as an idiot, nothing worse, but it would make her known as an oppressive snoop, and the word ‘fascist’ would settle on her for good.
I tackled Hoff directly about the name-tapes, the next time he sat near me in Hall. He seemed delighted to have caused so much confusion and distress, but also made out that he was making a serious philosophical point. If labels served the purpose of distinguishing one person’s property from anyone else’s, then Mussolini name-tapes would do the job just as well on A staircase as Hoffman ones.
He boasted of other footling projects. He had posed as Joseph Stalin to procure library tickets and opened a Post Office account in the name of Karl Marx. His long-term goal was to persuade a bank to set up an account for himself as Mussolini, without changing his name by Deed Poll or Statutory Declaration, which he regarded as an inadmissible short cut.