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.
Hoff was above such fetishes (and extravagances) as Christmas presents, but others were more sentimental. I was clearly making an impact on Downing, to judge by the fact of receiving as presents not one but two copies of Christy Brown’s Down All The Days, an autobiographical novel by an Irish spastic whose condition (doubly athetoid) was particularly severe. I suppose one could have been for Christmas, the other for the birthday which trailed along behind Jesus’s.
I don’t think they were telling me to count my blessings, exactly, though Brown’s disability certainly put mine in the shade – this was cerebral palsy beyond anything I saw at Vulcan.
I tried to like the book, at least I think I did. I didn’t care for the style, though, which was all rather clottedly poetic, as if the poor man was afflicted by an inflamed blarney duct on top of his other troubles. My reservations about the book must have made me seem churlish and hard to please. It was as if I’d been served the vegetarian option in a restaurant, and had sent it back just to be difficult. Bad John, wicked John. So ungrateful, after all the trouble people have gone to. A wicked part of me speculated that if they’d met Christy Brown in person, rather than through a book, they wouldn’t have been able to understand a word he tried to say. And perhaps that was the way they preferred it.
I didn’t need to wait till spring to get started on another Voodoo Lily. Providentially the bulbs were available at the seed merchants. The bulbs were as eager as I was. They were even attractively priced, perhaps because they were so ready for planting they were jumping the gun. The protuberance on one had already started to seek the light. I bought that one in preference to any other, knowing there wouldn’t be so long to wait. Next time Whiffy Barry wouldn’t miss his inflorescent cousin. He promised to come at a moment’s notice.
When the day of the second Voodoo Lily’s flowering arrived I sent Whiffy Barry a message to come at once. Mrs Beddoes took a keen interest in what was going on, and was very willing to run the errand for me. Like any victim of a practical joke, she couldn’t wait to see it played on someone else, not realising that Barry as a botanist was well prepared for what had caused her so much dismay.
She returned to tell me that Mr Barry would be along soon. ‘Today of all days,’ she said, ‘he’s taking a bath.’ She hoovered
the room, then settled down in the Parker-Knoll with a cup of tea. She was enjoying herself. It wasn’t every day she could eavesdrop on a miniature botanical congress, convened to inspect the plant which had played such a mean trick on her.
I took another look at the star of the show. Sauromatum’s purple-and-brown-spotted hood reared up like a cobra behind the glistening spadix. The smell was entirely disgusting, but there was a deep spiritual message latent here. If I had described the smell to Bhagavan as disgusting, he would certainly have replied, ‘Disgusting for whom?’ Then I would have had to enter the deepest sanctum of awareness, embarking on the vichara (Self-Enquiry). The answer was that it was disgusting for me. And who am I?
His date with Voodoo Lily
It wasn’t disgusting if you were a fly, that was for certain. I pretended to be a fly and tried to tell myself that the smell was beautiful, but still I felt sick. I asked Mrs Beddoes to open the windows to their widest, which she did rather unwillingly – there had been no such concession when she was the one being tested – but the smell was still overpowering. It took a lot of determination to stay in the room.
Then there was a knock at the door and Barry came in. Mrs Beddoes was so much at home by now that she gave a happy little yawn and a wave of the hand. Barry had done more than just take a bath. He had smartened himself up considerably for his date with Voodoo Lily. He was wearing tight (and crisply ironed) black flannel trousers and a white shirt. He had the instruments of dissection in one hand and a clipboard in the other.
He grinned and shifted his legs a bit, making the rough shape of his genitals materialise and then disappear in a way which would have been irresistible if I had found him the slightest bit attractive. I may live my life at what is cock level for most people but still I have my standards.
He put his things on my cluttered table, while I made my way over to the window-sill. From there I invited him to join me. Not only was he clean, but he was wearing some sort of perfume or cologne which I found tantalising. The high notes were flirty and fleeting, but the bass notes were deep shadows, like a grotto cool with ferns on a hot summer’s day. If I closed my eyes and let my nose stand in for all the other senses, I might even begin to be aroused by the information it passed on. Perhaps I had been too hasty in dismissing this lonely botanist as ‘Whiffy Barry’.
Suddenly there was a connection between us. I was susceptible to him in ways I hadn’t expected, yes, but I also had the sense that he was susceptible to me, as if he was in a mild hypnotic trance. An astral umbilical seemed to link us on this malodorous morning, threading through our navels and groins, weaving a cat’s-cradle of chakras.
Patrly this had to do with the psychology of touch. Young English men of the period were so unaccustomed to touch, ordinary nonsensual human contact, that when it happened – and with me it had to happen – they were oddly disoriented, lightly bewitched. It was as if I had flown under their radar and disarmed them. I could give a young man’s hand and arm a tug in a certain direction, and it would follow my lead. It had nothing to do with a dormant attraction to other men – in fact I suspect it worked best with those who, like Barry, had never had such thoughts. If this was voodoo then it was quite ordinary everyday voodoo. It functioned perfectly well without the help of the lily whose foulness we were gathered to analyse.
I did realise, though, that however many times I went to Sanders Seed Merchants in Regent Street Cambridge, and however many Sauromata guttata I paid for and set a-growing, I would never happen on anything as promising as this delightful situation again.
What had started out as a simple project of botanical research had forked deliciously. Now I had two experiments on the go simultaneously. I was confident I had enough mental power to be able to divide my attention cleanly in two. Yes, I would examine the anatomy of this araceous species, but I would also do what I could to satisfy my curiosity about the lie of the land in Barry’s trousers.
All the time we probed S. guttatum I would be pumping power into my personality-magnet, which had seemed so defective these last few months. I would tug him about into any position I wanted. It would be child’s play to come up with any number of creative adjustments of posture – because ‘my arms can’t reach that far’. I could do the heavy lean against his leg, mentioning that it was vital for me not to lose my balance. Of course there was no real coercion involved. Whenever he wanted to, Barry could wriggle out of any entanglement, but I had the sense that my little magnet was working again at full power, and today he would go along with anything I suggested.
After a while, as he became more deeply hypnotised, a Gulliver immobilised by the thousand tiny threads of my suggestion, we would enter into Union. Barry was already intoxicated with touch, his whole body reverberating with longing. He was only a whisker away from swimming with me in the Ocean of Desire.
I knew my magic would only work if I was alone with the hypnotic subject, and here was Mrs Beddoes sitting in my Parker-Knoll savouring the last gulps of her tea and perhaps even contemplating the making of another cup. I asked her if she hadn’t got more rooms to clean, and she said no, she’d got an early start and cleaned out the other students’ rooms while I was sleeping. She batted away every hint I could come up with that we should be left alone together to do our research.
‘I wouldn’t miss this for worlds,’ she said. I was sure she was innocent of any byplay, but it was almost as if she knew exactly what was going on, and was having a rare old time thwarting me. ‘You’ve got me so curious about this plant, Mr Cromer. I can’t wait to see what it is that makes it pong so.’
From the Parker-Knoll where Mrs Beddoes was sitting with her tea she had a direct view of Barry’s legs and everything that lived between them. If I was to make any real progress, I must come up with a way of blocking her view.
Barry was ready to make the first incision into the inflorescence, but he hesitated and deferred to me. After all it was technically my Sauromatum. He offered me the scalpel and asked if I would care to dissect the flower according to his instructions. This was good manners and the answer was actually yes – I desperately wanted to do it, to feel what a surgeon feels. But my mind was grappling with the question of what to do about Mrs Beddoes.
A very delicate and sensitive thing
I said, ‘No, that’s all right, Barry. Things like this should be left to the expert – which is clearly you in this case. But let’s think clearly here. We must ensure that conditions for the experiment are optimal. You had better stand exactly where you are. Make sure that you hold the bulb in your left hand and cut the flower with your right. We had better stay here right near the window, because we’re going to need a strong light. Don’t move, because I’m leaning against you and I shall lose my balance otherwise. Wait a minute … if I put my hand on your leg like this, the position is perfect.
‘Now then … it’s going to be vital that we take notes during this operation, so I’ll hold your clipboard in my right hand …’
From my contorted position, holding a clipboard at the required angle was nearly impossible, but somehow I managed to prop it against the window shelf.
With the crucial equipment in place (the clipboard, angled just so) both experiments could proceed as planned. I gave thanks for the human inability to see round corners. Mrs Beddoes made a half-hearted attempt to raise herself and come over for a better view, but I told her to stay exactly where she was. ‘This is a very delicate and sensitive thing we are doing here,’ I said, with an authority which surprised me. ‘You stay put. I don’t want you upsetting the experiment. Besides, didn’t you say yourself that you got up early and did all those rooms? Take some rest, enjoy your cup of tea, and leave us to work. It’s our turn!’
So that was the set-up. With the Beddoes blocked by the clipboard in my right hand, I was half leaning out of the wheelchair. The araceous flower was winking luridly up at us, cradled in Barry’s left hand, while he held the scalpel in his right. My left hand was putting significant pre
ssure on his right leg, and the black-trousered mystery between his legs was looking up at me invitingly. Just a short distance more, and both probes, the coldly metallic and the blood-hot, would be gathering data.
With my attention deliciously divided between the two explorations, I took the calculated risk of trifurcation. Mrs Beddoes used to tell me that I had a real way with people, and now was the time to put it to the test. I stretched out a mental finger to soothe her forehead and persuade her to relax. I sent a subliminal whisper across those few feet to lull her into a timely snooze.
As Barry slit the inflorescence with his scalpel I shifted myself into a better position (better in every way) by cupping my left hand over his crotch. His groin came up to meet my palm of its own accord, and fascination froze us in that position. His hand too froze as the blade went in. We might have been carved in stone, except that two hearts were pumping away inside the double statue, and Barry’s stone penis throbbed inside his taut and freshly ironed slacks, tugging the creases out of alignment.
Mrs Beddoes must have dozed off in her armchair as instructed. She was snoring softly. I hoped that at least she had put her mug down.
Barry’s vocabulary became technical as he cut into the vegetable flesh. Most of the Latin terms eluded me. Still, I could see for myself that the entrance to the flower was like the opening to a cave. The inside was black and mysterious. The only way we could get a proper look was by cutting a cross-section. Once this was done, I could see that the entrance was lined with cells which were waxy in character and pointed only in one direction.
Voodoo Lily certainly gave the illusion of being carnivorous. She reminded me very much of my old friend the pitcher plant. There was also a series of jagged spikes just inside the cave entrance. Barry explained that this was the secret of the seeming ‘bad smell’. All it took was the swapping over of a single molecule. The spiky configuration presented the greatest possible surface area so as to maximise the efficiency of the process. As the original odour passed over these keys, the molecular exchange converted its perfume into the smell of carrion or stale urine, giving Mrs Beddoes every excuse for thinking that one of her ‘gentlemen’ was a bed-wetter.
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