In theory there was no age discrimination at CHAPs meetings, in fact there were constant tirades against its evils, but the subtle fan of wrinkles round George’s eyes and the slight thinning of his hair disqualified him from full participation in the life of the group. In the same way, the group’s goal of reaching out to the town and not just the university didn’t stop him from being patronised somewhat, as if he might need subtitles during discussions.
It suited everyone to think of the two of us as an indivisible subsection of CHAPs, a sort of internal splinter group. This was disconcerting for both of us. He wasn’t used to the full blinding spotlight of invisibility, and I wasn’t used to sharing it.
We were a couple without ever having been an item. The group invented a closeness for us, though I doubt if anyone wanted to think about how we fitted together. We were a sort of Darby and Joan couple. Or I might have been the rather withdrawn fellow, yawning and grumbling, who always seemed to tag along when one of the original Siamese twins (Was it Eng or Chang? I should really look it up) wanted to play billiards. If ever I ran into a CHAPs member in town he’d be sure to ask, ‘Where’s George?’, as if I’d unaccountably mislaid the twin with whom I shared my liver.
It helped to establish this coupled image that on our second visit George said, ‘John had tea in the yellow mug last time — can he have it again?’ So someone nicely ensconced on the sofa went bright red and surrendered the mug for my use. There was nothing special about the mug, though it wasn’t too big and the handle was a good shape for me. I could have made do with most of the others, but I didn’t want to correct George when he was going to so much trouble on my behalf.
But after that the yellow mug loomed larger and larger. It was absurd. There was any amount of chafing along the lines of ‘Use any mug but the yellow one, that’s John’s, you’d better not get on his bad side.’ Once the yellow mug couldn’t be located right away, and the place was pandæmonium. I said I didn’t mind, any mug would do. Finally it was found lurking in the sink with the rest of the washing-up. The blessèd mug was given a priority cleaning, polished with a tea towel until it squeaked. Then it was filled with tea and offered to me with a triumphant smile, as if some desperate disaster had been headed off at the last possible moment. All the people in the group seemed to compress their sense of my singularity and then stuff it into the ruddy mug. As if what made me different wasn’t John needs a wheelchair to get around, but John’s very particular about his favourite yellow mug. Bit of a prima donna, you know.
I even managed to drop the yellow mug once, though I was solicitous of the Tonys’ floor and waited until the mug was empty. Unfortunately I’m not far enough off the ground to break crockery reliably. I dare say Edith Piaf had the same problem, but her flinging talents were far beyond mine.
At our second meeting we made the acquaintance of Ken, the group’s one-man intellectual vanguard and ideologue. It was obvious from the first glance that he had been typecast in the rôle by his looks. He was squat and entirely bald, which was not then a possible avenue to attractiveness, being only voluntary among the fearsome tribe of skinheads. In Ken’s case it was beyond his control, thanks to childhood alopecia after measles. Without his glasses he might have been able to lead a normal life, but baldness plus strong glasses, strong enough to make his eyes look small, could only mean one thing — ferocious intellectualism.
It didn’t matter that he wasn’t necessarily the cleverest person in the group. A style of combative extremist theory became his lifeline, the vindication of his off-putting appearance. He spoke at length about sexual evolution, about unstoppable changes in society which would lead to heterosexuality, poverty and war becoming obsolete. We were the first wave of a new creation.
There was a certain amount of mismatch between the jaunty acronym of CHAPs and its rather hard-line name, the Cambridge Homosexual Activism Project. It was no secret that the name had been hammered out to justify a desirable set of initials. If anyone had been able to come up with a better name for the group then it would generally have been accepted, as long as the acronym could stay. I thought ‘homophilic’ might do for the H and ‘assimilation’ for the A, but hesitated to make the suggestion. Only Ken liked the austere ring of the name, and would have liked to use it in full on every occasion. There were frivolous elements in the group that sometimes seemed close to sniggering at him.
I had more or less crawled on hands and knees to my first meeting, as to a place of healing or punishment, Lourdes or Golgotha. What I had found, as I gradually realised, was closer to Mum’s sewing circle in Bourne End, although no single stitch was sewn. I suppose it was more of an unpicking circle than a sewing circle. I tell a lie — a few stitches were sewn. I had a Greek tapestry shoulder-bag which I had bought in the market, like a huge external pocket marginally easier for me to rummage through than anything actually attached to my clothes, and a member of the group sewed a discreet lambda onto that.
Thread of exasperated fondness
Our leader Ken seemed to have a nickname, though people were careful not to use it in his hearing. At first I thought it was Sarge, which didn’t seem quite right since his manner, even at its most dogmatic, was more pleading than authoritative. It turned out to be Serge, still puzzling although his earnestness might have seemed a Russian quality.
Finally it was explained to me — Serge meant Blue Serge. The material used to make certain uniforms. Our doctrinal leader had a thing about policemen. This explained a number of references that had been unclear to me, murmurs of ‘Evening all’ and ‘What’s all this, then?’ when Ken turned up or launched into an aria of dialectic.
There was a certain amount of whispering behind the Tonys’ backs also, though their crime wasn’t ideology nor a taste for the constabulary but a more sinister sort of backsliding. George and I had been elected as a couple, we were a couple designed by a committee, while the Tonys were something much more threatening. They were an exclusive couple, exclusively composed of Tonys. Tony sports-jacket and Tony Jesus-sandals. Tony corduroy and Tony denim. Tony economist and Tony piano teacher (ex-organ scholar). I don’t shine at this sort of description. The truth is that I resent having to do it. Why should I sift through the various individuating traits — precise shade of eye colour, stature, mannerisms — to convey a vivid impression when all anyone needs to say to pick me out, apparently, is ‘John’ and then ‘You know, John in a wheelchair.’
The Tonys would sit on the sofa sometimes holding hands, not just one hand each, but doubly grasping, softly squeezing. Theirs was not an open relationship, which might have muted the criticism. Their relationship was air-tight, and no draught of eroticism from outside could flutter its curtains. This counted as degraded imitation of the heterosexual couple, itself degraded, and might easily have led to censure if it wasn’t that the group had nowhere half so convenient to meet.
Never mind that this level of domestic devotion didn’t actually remind us of any heterosexuals we’d ever come across. Certainly nothing I had experienced of the heterosexual tyranny corresponded to what I witnessed between the Tonys. Mum and Dad never held hands or stared into each other’s eyes. Even their neighbours in what seemed better marriages didn’t moon over each other in the slightest bit. They would give the lovey-dovey a wide berth, occupying their separate corners at the Black Lion. It would have been a canny observer who could pick out the couples, following the thread of exasperated fondness to predict who would drive home with whom.