The boy nearest to me outside the driver’s window, the stolid redhead, was suffering from singultus. In Latin a sob, in English no more than a hiccup. He had the hiccups, and those tiny spasms translated into a strangely seductive rhythmic lurch of the whole vehicle. The involuntary movement hiccups gave his arm had a knock-on effect on his neighbour, the lad outside the passenger window. Their positions made eye contact hard to avoid, and then other factors entered in, cider and laughter. The cider caused the hiccups, it amplified and distorted the laughter, and soon the whole body of the car was faintly vibrating with the hilarity of those who carried it. The infinitesimal rocking that comes from being slightly out of step in a concerted task was subjected to an interference pattern of hiccups and laughter. Waves rippled back and forth, disrupting themselves and each other, complex functions on a graph of exhilaration.
I was whispering ‘Mush!’ to a team of very English huskies, on eight strong laughing arms, eight cider-drunk hiccupping legs, as if I would never need to deal with life on the flat, and yet I didn’t really want to linger. I enjoyed a brief swirl of people in carbonated moments, as long as the bubbles were guaranteed to burst. I liked to be held and then passed on.
I was still dictating terms to Maya, and she always agreed to them, but she does that, doesn’t she? She gets you caught in her trap by letting you design it yourself. She gives you a free hand. She plays along.
Mum and Dad were only mildly disturbed by my proposed change of subject. Of course I didn’t present it as any sort of defeat. I could tell them perfectly sincerely that Cambridge had enjoyed a glorious history in English studies for much of the twentieth century, and Downing had been near the centre of all that. It was Downing, after all, that had given F. R. Leavis a professorship. Leavis, the heretic guru of English letters, who had founded and edited a massively influential magazine. That magazine had been called Scrutiny — the Cambridge word above all others. The unscrutinised life was not worth living and the unscrutinised text had no place on a serious person’s shelves. Vast and merrily crackling was the critical bonfire of the deficient.
At that time Leavis was in retirement but could still be glimpsed occasionally. I didn’t mention that the one time I had seen Leavis he was walking briskly down Senate House Passage on a chilly day with fanatical vigour and remoteness, wearing a sports jacket and an open-necked shirt. He picked up his feet like an aggrieved heron, and I was sure he would spear me if I got in his way, wheelchair or no wheelchair. Anyone less life-enhancing would be hard to imagine, but naturally I didn’t pass that impression on to Mum and Dad. I simply said I would be in safe hands, experiencing the full flow of a great tradition. Of course, Leavis had eventually severed his links with Downing in the usual austere huff, scattering excommunications in all directions like black and baleful confetti, but again, there seemed no need to relay such a minor detail.
My proposed academic trajectory — from Modern Languages Part I to English Part II — felt disjointed, a wrong turn in a life that couldn’t afford one. It seemed absurd that I could travel single-handed across the world (though I don’t wish to slight the many strong arms and lifting hands which helped me on my way) to pay my respects to my guru in India, but not pursue my studies as I wished at an educational institution that recognised me as worthy to attend. It was absurd but there seemed to be no way round it. Trudge on, pilgrim.
The exams for Part I, when they came, felt anything but momentous. I sat the papers in a sort of academic quarantine (the same drill as for my A-levels) with an invigilator for my own exclusive use. I was segregated from my fellow examinees because of the clacking disturbance of the typewriter and also because of my privilege of extra time — bags of it. I was allowed 50 per cent more time than my fellows because of the physical inconvenience of the process, though I never used anything like that much. I’d call out ‘I’ve finished’ as soon as I properly could.
It seemed only fair that I should have a bit more time, but all the same I chafed against the extravagant allowance. It seemed so imprecisely worked out, as if the authorities were really saying, ‘Give the little chap an easy ride — he doesn’t get many of those.’ I would have preferred a more precise system, with observers making the calculations on a case-by-case basis, so that I would be allowed, say, 3 hours and 13 minutes, and not a second more. I didn’t want favours — I wanted a time-and-motion-study man to follow me around for a week, and then to stand sternly over me during the exam with a stopwatch. I mean, are we taking this seriously, or are we just amusing ourselves?
I imagine that standard invigilators survey the room with an impartial sternness. My personal invigilator would tend to give me encouraging smiles, which I didn’t enjoy. I was afraid that this goodwill might escalate into actual patronage, that he might fetch me a cup of coffee and a sticky bun to keep me going, and then slide across specimen answers to the questions or correct my grammar.
Towards the end of that summer term Alan Linton brought me a present. He kept telling me that discovering homœopathy had changed his life and given him a direction. He was in my debt. I was rather prickly about friendship at that period, not wanting people to get too close in case I ended up relying on them, and if Alan hadn’t been safely leaving Cambridge I dare say I would have bristled.
He delivered his present to A6 after Hall one evening. It was a piece of cake. ‘It’s a funny cake,’ he said, making his eyebrows shoot up and down à la Groucho Marx, twitching, ‘if you get my drift. Very funny indeed.’ Meaning that it was made with marijuana. I felt very alienated by the general drug culture of the time, but this was an irresistible offer. I turned down joints with the excuse that I only smoked Spanish cigarettes (and not just any Spanish cigarette either), feeling that Cannabis sativa was rather dragged down by its association with Nicotiana tabacum. Now I could have a transgressive nibble on the sly, and no one would be any the wiser.
‘And this is to go with it,’ Alan said, reverently producing a record from a plastic bag. It was his treasured copy of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. If albums were as good as their titles, it was already my favourite record. He made clear that the dope cake was a gift, but the record was only a loan. He must have realised that an album was a difficult object for me to manage — tape cassettes, reliable and easy to handle, would soon replace them, and I for one couldn’t wait — so he put it on my stereo, perched on top of the spindle, ready to go.
He also left me something called a Dust Bug, a perspex lath with a sort of toothbrush and a miniature plush roller mounted on it, which was supposed to sit on a little rod, held in place on the surround of my turntable with a little rubber sucker, but I decided not to bother with that.
I set up the turntable with the arm that steadies records on the spindle over to the right, so that when the side had been played the needle would return to the beginning. I knew that marijuana distorted the sense of time, and I wanted to make sure that the music would last for the whole of the experience.
It made sense to eat the cake before I sat down. I was pleased to see that it was moist. I broke it into pieces which would sit snugly on the fork. I closed my eyes while I chewed the cake, savouring the slightly dusty flavour, trying to decide where spice ended and cannabis began. I got the stereo under way and was settled in the Parker-Knoll by the time the second track started. The album was famously profound and poetic. Now I would make up my own mind.