Travelling to Infinity

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Travelling to Infinity Page 49

by Jane Hawking


  In a modest bid to ensure some privacy, Lucy had optimistically marked the calendar from 8th June as follows: Lucy starts A levels and becomes a complete recluse(!). The day of Stephen’s Honorary Doctorate, 15th June, she noted as, L does 2 A levels. Although she missed the accompanying festivities on account of the exams, there was little hope of fulfilling her reclusive intentions, so it was hardly surprising that on 22nd June an impassioned appeal appeared in brackets: (Give me the sympathy I deserve!). In the circumstances, it was a credit to her that she managed to do her exams at all, let alone succeed in them.

  15th June, the day of the two most intensive A-level papers was bright, hot and sunny – which was not of much help to Lucy. For Stephen’s Honorary Degree ceremony, however, the weather was ideal. Never had the discrepancy between the best interests of different members of the family been more marked. Lucy left early for school in an advanced state of nerves, while the rest of us looked forward to a day of pomp and rejoicing, a true holiday from stress and dissenting voices. We left the house at 10 a.m. and strolled down the road to the Backs. The lawns and meadows by the river could not have looked more pastoral and peaceful: every blade of emerald grass and every leaf – green, gold or bronze – rippled in the bright morning sun, while the river gleamed like a silvery mirror, reflecting the infinite brilliance of the sky in mid-stream and the shady overhanging fronds of willow at the water’s edge.

  We arrived in Caius to find a buzz of unaccustomed excitement: the whole College had assembled to applaud Stephen in Caius Court, the Renaissance court near the Senate House. It took a few minutes to robe the honorary graduand in the ante-Chapel and a little while to get him comfortable in the chair in the heavy red gown, which would have been fine for midwinter, but was unbearably hot in midsummer. He refused to wear the gold-rimmed black-velvet bonnet, so Tim wore it instead. As we emerged from the Chapel, the Fellows, all begowned, preceded us taking up positions along the path to the Gate of Honour. From another gate, the Gate of Virtue, came a brass fanfare, and then the choir struck up the anthem ‘Laudate Domino’. Another fanfare resounded round the court, chasing Stephen as he raced at full speed through the Gate of Honour, up Senate House Passage and into the Yard of the Senate House.

  Robert had enlisted the help of muscular undergraduate friends to lift the wheelchair and its occupant up the long, winding staircase to the Combination Room in the Old Schools building, where the other honorary graduands, including Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, were assembling. Stephen just had time for a sip of apple juice before Prince Philip, the Chancellor, arrived. Good-humouredly he came over to talk to us and recalled coming to West Road in 1981. He teased Tim about his hat and stayed to watch Stephen’s demonstration of the computer before being whisked away to meet the other dignitaries. We passed the royal personage as we made our way out to prepare ourselves for the procession in advance of the rest of the party. “Self-propelled, is it?” he asked. “Yes,” I replied, “watch out for your toes!”

  The procession, which had already formed by the time we joined it, began to move forthwith. The four of us – Stephen, Robert, Tim and I – walked slowly round the Senate House lawn at the tail end of the line-up, watched by the crowds outside the railings and the cameras within. The clouds of tension, friction and confusion evaporated in the fierce sunlight, and for a fleeting moment it was hard to believe that they had ever existed. In the Senate House all was cool, dark and solemn. The assembly of red-robed Masters of Colleges and Professors and the Chancellor in his gold-braided black robes took up their positions, and the audience of families and friends, dressed with the formality befitting an occasion of such pageantry, sat waiting in silent expectation. As the great oak doors closed on the midday brilliance and the thronging informal crowds of T-shirted tourists outside, the combined choirs of St John’s and King’s opened the proceedings with an anthem by Byrd, followed by a twentieth-century piece, and then the presentations began. A German theologian, the Lord Chancellor Lord Mackay, Pérez de Cuéllar and then Stephen, were all introduced by the Public Orator, and in a witty Latin delivered with such panache and such flourish that when he concluded his oration in honour of Stephen, Tim – not renowned for his Latin scholarship – burst into spontaneous applause. Pérez de Cuéllar was described as “having brought peace to the Persians and Mesopotamians” while the substance of Stephen’s encomium was adapted from the first atomic theory as described by Lucretius in De Rerum Natura.

  Amid much bowing, handshaking and doffing of hats, the Duke of Edinburgh conferred the degrees one by one, each presentation ending with a round of applause, which when Stephen’s turn came attained rapturous proportions. Some of the graduands, such as the diminutive and frail figure of Sue Ryder, looked as nervous as young undergraduates; others, such as the opera singer Jessye Norman and Stephen himself, were old hands at the game and received their ovations with confidence and style. The ceremony came to an end with more anthems and two verses of the National Anthem. Leaving Tim with his grandparents, Robert and I processed out with Stephen, sedately walking round the green again before heading down King’s Parade in the blazing sun. Crowds cheered, smiling and waving, and cameras clicked.

  When we reached Corpus Christi College – which by coincidence was Robert’s college and the venue for the luncheon – we found ourselves surrounded by the nation’s great and good, all wilting visibly in the heat inside the marquee, where champagne was being served, followed by lunch in another equally sweltering marquee. To add to Stephen’s discomfort, the food was not suitable for him apart from the salmon. He was well entertained by his neighbour, but I had a fairly hard time with mine, a well-known authority on French history who seemed to have nothing to say for himself until I mentioned our house in France. Then he came to life. His wife had just bought a property in Normandy, he said, but he was a city man and did not much care for the country. Whereupon there was much mirth as he shared his views with Stephen and the latter grinned in agreement.

  In the rising temperatures, the speeches were mercifully short. Starting with Stephen, “because everything begins with him”, the Duke of Edinburgh expressed his admiration of the graduands, who “reflected the best of our civilization”. Lord Mackay replied briefly, and then it was all over. The rest of the day was a disturbing mixture of frivolity and encroaching normality, as if the harsh reality of the gathering storm could not extend its reprieve for much longer.

  At home a select group of relatives and friends had assembled, and the College had laid out a tea of smoked salmon sandwiches and strawberries and cream on the lawn, all to be consumed with champagne. Robert was not at that party, as he had another engagement: early that evening he was to row in the Corpus second boat, racing in the Bumps. I managed to dash away from the lingering guests just in time to see him row. The day, however long and eventful, was not yet over. Lucy came home in dire distress, as neither of her A-level papers had gone at all well, and then later in the evening, when all the guests had left and I was clearing up, the telephone rang. It was Robert. We chatted for a bit and then he blurted out that his Finals results were out and they were not as good as he had hoped. He was understandably very upset, and I too felt his humiliation and the irony of the situation keenly.

  Robert, loyal and uncomplaining as ever, had dutifully assisted his father at the Senate House, had accompanied him in the formal procession, and had provided the team of helpers from among his friends to lift him up steps and over obstacles in Corpus Christi College. With thoughtful reticence, he had witnessed his father’s good fortune without presuming on it, though always overshadowed by it. All through the ceremony in his father’s honour, all through the excesses of media exposure, all through the compliments, the ovations and the accolades, Robert had kept to himself the galling news that his Finals results, published that very day, were disappointing. The underlying truth of the situation was that his profound sense of individuality had rebelled against the overpowerin
g shadow of his father’s genius by mutely refusing to compete with it. I could not help feeling a much deeper pain for my son in his dismay than joy for my husband in the full glory of his many-faceted success. I identified closely with Robert: I could only stand on the sidelines of Stephen’s success.

  If Robert had not achieved the academic success he had been hoping for, he made up for his disappointment on the river. Pursued by the BBC film crew, I took Stephen down to the races the next afternoon. Despite taking a wrong turning – the races take place on a stretch of the river at Fen Ditton five miles or so out of town – we arrived just in time to see the Corpus boat flailing past, hot on the stern of the Lady Margaret boat. News filtered back up the river in their wake that the Corpus boat had bumped its prey. My father, who in his day had also rowed for Corpus, was thrilled with Robert’s prowess on the river. He always regretted that, under constant pressure to aim high, he had not been able to relax and enjoy his years at Cambridge in the 1930s – which is why, in his opinion, it was important that Robert had made the most of his time as an undergraduate.

  13

  Honourable Companionship

  Late that evening of 16th June, we sat up to watch the announcement at midnight of the Birthday Honours. Inexplicably, Elaine Mason, the nurse in attendance, was disparaging and disapproving, but my father hopped up and down with excitement at his son-in-law’s elevation to the higher echelons of the Establishment as a Companion of Honour. Like Stephen’s father he derived a vicarious enjoyment from his proximity to the sort of public success that circumstance had denied him. The next morning I awoke to the more practical consideration of how to open the day in a suitably festive manner. I had not given any thought to the start of the day and Stephen’s most important meal, his breakfast. Then I remembered that there was probably some caviar left over from a trip to Moscow and champagne from Thursday’s celebrations in the fridge. The consequence of that extravagant breakfast was that none of us achieved very much that morning, only managing to stumble across the fen to the University Centre, where I had booked a table for lunch. In the early afternoon, however, I cycled into town to check on the organization of the evening’s concert in the Senate House, and found Jonathan’s family busy arranging the seating and the general layout while he rehearsed the orchestra. I left them to it and raced back home to collect my father for a lightning trip down to the river. We arrived just in time to see the Corpus second boat rowing down bearing a willow branch, the sign that it had made yet another triumphant bump.

  That warm, cloudless June evening saw us back at the Senate House, astonished at the sight of the long line of friends and admirers who were patiently queuing to get in for the concert, aptly entitled Honoris Causa. I steered Stephen away from making a tactless beeline for the exam results, the Class lists, which were posted up outside the Senate House, and left him sitting on the same lawn around which we had processed only two days before. There he had his photo taken in company with various distinguished guests – from the firm sponsoring the concert, from his College and from the University – while I went to investigate why the queue was moving so slowly. Its length was partly explained by the fact that ten-year-old Tim was the only programme seller inside the building, though Lucy and my father were hard at work ushering the crowds to their seats. Having enlisted more help for Tim, I rejoined Stephen outside. The manager of the Senate House insisted to my embarrassment that Stephen and I should make a formal entry, and detained us outside until the rest of the audience was seated. We were greeted by a standing ovation. While Stephen beamed at the audience and pirouetted in his chair, I felt painfully shy and gauche and was glad to be able to sit down with my back to the audience.

  A couple of minutes later, the sounds of the baroque trumpet in Purcell’s sonata for that gloriously commanding instrument opened the concert, soaring above the heads of the audience to mingle with the ornate plasterwork of the eighteenth-century ceiling. Just as I hoped, the audience were so well satisfied at the end of their evening’s entertainment that they contributed generously to the retiring collection, with the result that we were able to send handsome cheques to the three charities – the Motor Neuron Disease Association, Leukaemia Research and the Leonard Cheshire Foundation – as well as covering the costs of the concert from ticket sales. Ostensibly the evening had been a tremendous success: the charities had benefited; the Cambridge Baroque Camerata had secured a new sponsorship deal and had given a spectacular performance to a full Senate House; and, most importantly, Stephen had been lavishly fêted and applauded by hundreds of well-wishers. He, however, was edgy and disgruntled. His perceptions of the event were coloured by the grudging view that Jonathan and the orchestra had obscured his share of the limelight. This was as unjust as it was unlike Stephen’s normal character. He had entered into the project with excitement and, when he had not been in America, had involved himself in its development with enthusiasm. Jonathan with his natural reserve had carefully stepped aside to allow Stephen to revel in the audience’s adulation at the end of the performance, and indeed there could have been no doubt that it was Stephen’s show. It was even less like Stephen that he should remind me that, since the honour bore no title, I had no part in it. The conclusion was as inescapable as it was unpalatable: he had fallen prey to flattery. The sycophantic sources of this flattery were not disinterested, and seemed to be feeding him ideas which were at odds with his formerly generous if stubborn nature.

  The limelight was blindingly focused on Stephen for the rest of that summer, never more so than when we made our second visit to Buckingham Palace a few weeks later, though by comparison with the first visit, seven years earlier, this one was surprisingly intimate. We followed a similar routine – again staying at the Royal Society the night before – but with the difference that this time Tim and Amarjit Chohan, Stephen’s Indian nurse, came with us, and Lucy had remembered to pack her smart shoes to go with the dark-brown dress which set off her blond hair beautifully. Again, just as before, the traffic in the Mall was at a standstill, though this time it was on account of the Changing of the Guard. To avoid the congestion around the main entrance, we were directed to the Queen’s private entrance and were suddenly transported into a quiet, colourful country garden away from the hot stuffy turmoil of London and its traffic. An equerry, footmen and a lady-in-waiting greeted us with graciously imperturbable smiles and ushered us into the Palace, past the gleaming toy car that Prince Charles had had as a child and a couple of bikes, and up into the vast marble-pillared hall, which was lit along its entire length and furnished in red and pink damask. Huge displays of lilies stood like decorative sentinels, guarding the treasures.

  We turned a corner and doubled back along the picture gallery, quickly retracing our steps over the marble hall, with scarcely a moment to glance at the portraits of Charles I and his family, gazing in mute detachment at each other across the floor. A couple of Canalettos, a Dutch genre painting and lots of portraits of Princess Augusta caught my eye. We turned into a passage so narrow that it might have led to servants’ quarters, and were shown into a small side room full of paintings and furniture, the Empire Room. After a brisk briefing from the equerry, Stephen and I were hurried away from the family to meet the Queen, who was waiting in a room at the end of the passage. True to form, Stephen charged ahead towards the open door across the passage. There by the mantelpiece stood the Queen, wearing a royal blue dress streaked with white. She glanced in our direction with a friendly but apprehensive smile. This soon changed to a look of absolute horror when Stephen, bursting in haste into her reception room, rolled the carpet up in his wheels like a cowpusher on an American locomotive. The chair hoovered up the edge of the thick coffee-coloured carpet, tying it up in knots, bringing Stephen to an abrupt halt and blocking the way into the room. From behind the chair I could not easily see what was happening, and there was nothing I could do to release the royal pile. The Queen was the only person inside the room. She hesitated, and then for one moment
made a gesture, as if she herself were about to step forwards and lift the heavy mechanism and its occupant out of the snare. Fortunately the equerry who had announced us squeezed past the chair, lifted the front wheels and sorted out the mess.

  Naturally, Her Majesty was a little flustered – as was I – so we failed to shake hands and I forgot to curtsey as she uttered a short formal speech of welcome. After an awkward silence she must have decided that the best course of action was to go ahead with the presentation without delay, and so proceeded to announce that she was pleased to invest Stephen with the insignia of the Companion of Honour. I received the medal on Stephen’s behalf and showed it to him, reading the inscription aloud as I held it out for him to see. “In Action Faithful, in Honour Clear” it read. The Queen remarked that she thought it was a particularly lovely wording, and Stephen typed up, “Thank you ma’am.” We in turn presented her with a thumb-printed copy of A Brief History of Time, which rather nonplussed her – “Is it a popular account of his work such that a lawyer might give?” she enquired of me. It was my turn to be nonplussed, since I could not imagine anything remotely approaching a popular account of the law. I recovered my composure sufficiently to say that I thought A Brief History was more readable than that, especially the first chapters, which provided a fascinating account of the development of the study of the universe – before the physics became too complicated with elementary particles, string theory, imaginary time and that sort of thing. Thereafter the conversation continued haltingly for another ten minutes or so, ranging from a basic explanation of Stephen’s science and interests to a demonstration of the workings of the computer and its American voice. The Queen directed her questions to me with a piercing, blue gaze, as bright as the large sapphire and diamond brooch on her shoulder. Although there was warmth and consideration as well as keenness in that gaze, it transfixed me. I was too terrified even to move my eyes, much as I should have liked to glance round the pretty turquoise reception room with its paintings and mementoes, and I stood awkwardly rooted to the spot, hardly daring to turn my head to left or right.

 

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