Cedilla

by Adam Mars-Jones

  Graëme turned up wearing evening dress, though the trousers had a hint of a flare and the lapels of the jacket were broad and edged with velvet. Fashion was involved, in some tentative professorial way. I could almost hear Mrs Beamish cooing, ‘Even academics can make a bit of an effort, you know, darling!’ as she lured him (without benefit of a credit note) into The Peacock, the dandy-magnet cradled inside Cambridge’s own little department store, Josh Tosh, foreshortened Harrods of the Fens.

  By mutual instinct, Arthur Burgess and I retreated from first-name terms the moment Graëme made his appearance. The situation was unsavoury enough without being overlaid by an element of collusion or practical joke. As he wheeled me out of the Zebra, I called out politely, ‘Thank you, landlord,’ as if the whole evening had gone as planned. A refreshing half-pint in my local. Arthur for his part greeted Graëme with the words, ‘A student of the old school, sir. Won’t peach on his fellow sinners,’ in the tone of voice of someone offering professional condolences.

  Arthur had thoughtfully overlapped some bar-towels over my legs and lower body, to hide the damp patches. Thanks to these I had an almost festive aspect as we trundled back down King Street. They were brightly coloured, in red and green. We might have been doing something for charity – we might have been sponsored by the brewery. In November rather than April, I might have been a Guy in effigy being pushed to Parker’s Piece for burning, particularly since loose strips of toilet tissue were escaping from my waistband, touch paper waiting for a match.

  From behind me, as he pushed, Graëme Beamish was saying, ‘I’m disappointed that you’re taking this attitude, John.’

  My free will had still not been returned to me. I seemed to be stuck with other people’s scripts, this new one an especially dull affair of the solidarity of miscreants.

  I came close to biting my tongue. ‘What attitude is that, Dr Beamish?’

  ‘This Bridge-on-the-River-Kwai not-telling-tales attitude. It’s rather old-fashioned, isn’t it? Rather … square.’

  I was longing to tell tales for once. What did I care if Thomas da Silva and Benedict Whoever were thrown in the river, or put in the pillory and pelted with fruit? But I was unable to retreat from the uncompromising stance that had been foisted on me. I had missed my moment, and now I was stuck with being loyal to the disloyal. My arms still ached from my brief sojourn on Thomas da Silva’s belly.

  A spent blob in my mouth

  In my frustration at being taken for a martyr, I started rolling my eyes and sticking my tongue out, in a way I would never have done if Beamish and I could see each other’s faces. For all I know he was doing the same thing himself, in annoyance at the disruption of his evening, which would have added an extra fillip to the entertainment value of our progress down King Street. It’s not considered polite for wheelchair-users to install wing mirrors, attached by stems to the armrests, so that they can monitor the expressions of those who push them, but really I don’t see why.

  My mantra had lost all its stabilising power. It was like a piece of chewing gum so long masticated it had turned into a spent blob in my mouth. No point in thinking of that. Instead I took a symbolic revenge on Beamish for his lack of understanding by visualising the bottom of his kitchen cabinets, seen on my only visit to his lovely home in Barton. I have my own point of view, and can witness any number of flaws that are hidden from the taller world. It’s one of the little privileges of wheelchair travel, to be underlooking at the overlooked. The paintwork under those cabinets was pockled and peeling. Steam from a thousand boilings of the kettle had left it looking shabby and leprous. Shame on you, Beamish.

  It’s well known that the disabled are compensated for their losses, in the currency of another sense. The blind have particularly acute hearing – though, oddly, as experiments have proved, they hear less well in the dark. As for me, I have a photographic memory for the undersides of kitchen cabinets.

  When we were back at the Mini, once he had helped me in and loaded the wheelchair in the boot, Dr Beamish disappeared in his turn. His duties were over. He could get to his college dinner only a little late, with a story to tell if he cared to, ready to worship the little divinities of his academic cosmos, the sherry god and the claret god, madeira god and port god.

  I felt the stigma of my incontinence very keenly, despite being a victim of circumstance. A disabled person can’t have a moment of weakness in that department without it becoming a permanent part of the picture. It’s a character flaw in waiting. If I’d been able to, I would simply have disposed of the evidence and thrown the soiled items away, but trousers were not things I owned in mad profusion.

  It wasn’t so very long since I had dared to defuse Mrs Beddoes’s fears about my leaky self by turning them into a joke. The game with the Voodoo Lily didn’t seem quite so funny any more. Perhaps I had been tempting fate, giving Maya a poke in the ribs.

  In fact Mrs Beddoes took my emergency laundry in her stride, returning the bar towels (those flags of my disgrace) neatly folded, along with my trousers clean and fresh.

  One comfort was that my relationship with my tutor was so poor that nothing could damage it. When I had paid that visit to his home in Barton, and the secrets of his kitchen’s undersurfaces were laid bare to me, we had been on better terms. This was statutory university hospitality, and a group of us had been invited. I had been hoping for a spot of sherry myself. As holy water to the baby’s head, so sherry to the undergraduate throat. It is the sacramentally required liquid. What hope for the christening when the font is full of Lucozade?

  It wasn’t Lucozade that Dr Beamish had provided for his moral tutees but something just as inappropriate. Tinned beer. That’s no poculum sacrum! That doesn’t begin to qualify as a holy tipple.

  He had chosen a strange moment to drop the mask of fuddy-duddydom. Perhaps the charade was harder to keep up on his home turf, with his baby daughter screaming heartily from upstairs.

  He was a besotted father, as well as perhaps a sleepless one, which would explain why he failed to censor himself while rhapsodising about the joys of fatherhood. ‘It’s the most amazing thing,’ he said, ‘not something I expected at all. Maybe with a boy but not a girl. She plays with herself the whole time. She never stops! It’s wonderful the way she fiddles with herself, just strumming away day and night!’ His voice had all the dry wonder of Patrick Moore’s on The Sky At Night describing a new constellation.

  There was silence sudden and total. The professor’s dry-as-dust mask had dropped good and proper, and all parties were immediately frantic for it to be back in place again. We wanted freeze peach, but only for our generation. Graëme faltered, but made a noble attempt at recovery by saying, ‘As a scientist I’m fascinated … there’s more to life than crystalline solids, after all!’ Then he started refilling people’s glasses. Normal service of bufferdom resumed as if nothing had happened.

  It had been his one experiment in talking to a group of students as if they were adults and equals. He didn’t make that mistake again. His donnish persona had its disadvantages, but at least it saved him from enthusing in public over the fiddling habits of his little girl.

  Regimental goat

  After the evening of Write Off Tuesday, I never parked the Mini in that favoured spot again. I never crossed the pub’s doors, nor sounded my horn for admission in the ceremonial style that had become customary. I dropped Kerry Bashford a postcard thanking him for his many kindnesses, but I never learned whether he was working his slow and appreciative way through the whole canon, or had special reasons for choosing Howards End. I never deepened my knowledge of the effects of a Jehovah’s Witness upbringing on the resilient young, because I never saw him again. I forfeited the precious sense of welcome I had when Kerry settled me at a table and went to pour the half of Abbot Ale with the proper solemnity.

  I had been a well-known figure in my way at the Cambridge Arms, pontificating about cannabinoids, hops and the Houses of Parliament, but I had been press-ganged i
nto a lunatic troop under everyone’s nose. This was my fault. Had Write Off Tuesday even noticed that they were kidnapping me? They simply didn’t classify me as a creature that might have ideas of its own, and yes, I was responsible. I had made it happen. Yes, they had been drunk and out of control, but I had conspired with them against myself.

  That was the point. Brooding on the incident afterwards, long after any taint had cleared from the wheelchair, I had to see their side of things. They hadn’t turned me into a mascot. I was a mascot already. I had volunteered. I had turned myself into a character in the Cambridge Arms public bar, pronouncing on the quality of the ale while people tried not to look at the way I ate peanuts.

  The answer was in my hands. No more pretence of belonging to a place or an institution. I would have to change my ways. I must refuse the rôle of mascot. Once you’ve accepted mascot status no later refusal is possible. I must find a part to play less demeaning than the gonk on a teenaged girl’s counterpane, or the regimental goat trotted out on parade, presiding ceremonially over rituals in which it has no part.

  Perversely, the incident pushed me in a direction that I had refused for a long time. It made no sense to be living in fear of attending a Gay Liberation meeting, when a quiet half-pint in a familiar pub could lead inexorably to incontinence, social disgrace and vomit in the treads of my tyres. I wasn’t safe anywhere, so I had no excuse for not living dangerously.

  Since I had been unable to locate the Monarchist League, with its promise of groping without slogans, I would have to make my peace with CHAPs. The organisation’s contact details were given in many student magazines, and even the Varsity Handbook. There was a telephone number, but I couldn’t imagine explaining my history and situation down a wire to a stranger in the exposed acoustic of the Porter’s Lodge. There was an address also, in Glisson Road, where a meeting was held on alternate Tuesdays.

  I made myself ready to attend my first gay group meeting like someone preparing a suicide, making sure the garage is airtight or that the beam will bear a noose. I looked up the address on the map, and made a few recces and dummy runs. I realised that there could be no question of hitch-lifting on this occasion. I could just about face an appointment with my unknown peers, but I couldn’t imagine hijacking a passer-by to help me make the transfer from car to wheelchair to front door, and then having to explain everyone to everyone else. Sexual panic was plenty without social embarrassment on top.

  On this occasion I would have to make my own way from car to front door. It followed that I would be dispensing with the wheelchair and proceeding under my own power, with crutch and cane. It was just about possible that I would be swept along on a tide of arriving Uranians, frolicsome intermediates with jewels in their hair who would swirl me up the steps and into the premises without me having to say a single word, but it made sense not to bank on it.

  In fact when I arrived in the car there was no one on the street. I was able to park only a few feet from the house, and made my way laboriously out of the car and on to the pavement. While I was struggling, a pedestrian appeared, a woman pulling a shopping trolley. She stopped and peered into the Mini’s interior, almost leaning over me in her desire to inspect the coachwork. I imagine she had been brought up with the idea that it was rude to stare at people, and was desperately trying to find an innocent object for her curiosity. Not finding one, she smiled uncertainly and went on her way.

  It took me a little time to reach the door. There was a bell-push. Should I use it, or rap on the door with my cane? Which was it to be? Rat-a-tat-tat or Rrring rrring? I hadn’t considered these options in advance. If I used the cane on the door perhaps the assembled inverts would panic, suspecting a police raid, and escape round the back. I decided on the bell, but couldn’t get a sound out of it with the tip of the cane. Perhaps its mechanism required greater force or a better angle. I would have to climb up. There was only a low step leading up to the front door, but that was enough to make the attempt a bit of an expedition. This felt appropriate. It seemed to fit. The hero confronts his fears and enters the lions’ den unarmed. He shouldn’t expect a butler with a ramp or a block and tackle.

  I decided that my ascent of the step was best managed with my back to the wall. That felt safest – falling backwards is a frightening prospect. I would turn round again when I had reached the proper level. I approached the step from the side. By leaning away I might be able to raise my foot to the right level. My new hips were splendid pieces of equipment. They would surely power this contortion. It more or less worked. I got one foot up onto the step. It was the next move that defeated me. The angle between my legs was already at its maximum. How was I going to shuffle along until I could (somehow) hoick up the other foot?

  I was standing there, unstable and stranded, when a man approached the doorway from the street. There was something ghostly about his appearance. He was wearing a white suit, and there was hardly more colour in his face than in his costume. He departed from the human norms in other ways. If he was ghostly, then he also seemed mechanical. He was like a dapper robot. This apparition looked at me entirely blankly, then turned the door-knob and walked in. He didn’t slam the door, but it closed against me with what felt like a click of ultimate exclusion. So much for the welcome of my peers.

  Had he really not seen me? Had he mistaken me for an architectural feature? Perhaps he thought I was some wonky and misplaced caryatid. Actually there’s a word for a male caryatid. I may as well assign myself the right gender. A wonky and misplaced atlas or telamon.

  Half a minute later, the man was back. In that short interval he had regained some human faculties, a little facial colour and freedom of movement. The robot had been oiled, the zombie had been warmed to room temperature. He asked if I needed a hand.

  I did.

  I didn’t need to be carried over the threshold, just steadied over the small step. His grip on me was uncertain, as if he had just laid down a mighty weight, so that his whole body was still twanging with the relief of tension. I can tell a lot about a person from the way he or she holds me – even if I’m always half-consciously hoping for the physical assurance of the motorcycle policeman who carried me to my seat at the Royal Tournament on an expedition from Vulcan, the one who was warm steel. This one was overstretched elastic.

  An emergency siesta

  The man in the white suit set me down reasonably gently on a sofa in a spacious room, with the kitchen and living room knocked together in the way that was beginning to be standard. He sat down next to me and whispered, ‘My name’s George.’ ‘John.’ ‘I’m sorry I walked past you earlier on, but …’ Then someone shushed him, and his explanation had to wait. There were perhaps fifteen people in the room, only two of them women.

  One man, sitting at the kitchen table, was saying: ‘What happened was this. My dad and I went to the cinema and saw The Music Lovers – you know, the one about Tchaikovsky? Ken Russell. Anyway, the film brought a lot of things to a head for me, and after we’d gone home I said to Dad, “You know the man in the film? I’m like that. He’s like me.” By which I didn’t mean that I had a big tune in my head at all times, though God knows that’s also true. I meant I didn’t love women. I loved men. Glenda Jackson would be a huge mistake.’

  Between every phrase he made eye contact with a different person round the table, drawing out a thread of sympathetic attention.

  ‘Anyway, Dad didn’t know what to say or do. So what he said and did was to yawn in an exaggerated way, and to say he was tired and was going straight to bed.’

  By now we were all nodding our endorsement of his story, making little encouraging noises at regular intervals.

  ‘He wanted to end the conversation, but he didn’t want to reject me. He didn’t throw me out of the house. He didn’t stalk out of the house himself either, slamming the door behind him. He managed to find somewhere else to go, even if it was only his bedroom, and he shut the door very gently behind him. He needed to give himself some breathing space
. The only thing was … the funny thing was that we’d been to an afternoon showing, and it was still only about five … He’d come over all Spanish all of a sudden, and taken an emergency siesta. He went to bed in the middle of the afternoon just to get a little breathing space …’

  There was a silence. I wasn’t altogether sure whether I’d been trusted with a traumatic experience or entertained with a droll anecdote. I wanted to say, ‘So what happened next? Did you talk about it the next day? Is everything all talked out now? What about your Mum?’, but as a new arrival I thought I’d better wait to see how every one else responded.

  I think my instinct was sound. There was a concealed sort of etiquette in operation. The person who seemed to be in charge of the meeting was an upright man in a houndstooth jacket, in his late twenties perhaps. He thanked the speaker and said he was delighted to see a few new faces at the meeting. He brought a tray with mugs of tea on it over to where I was sitting next to George, and introduced himself as Tony. Addressing himself to George, he asked if he’d like to say something himself. George swallowed hard and said he’d rather just listen if that was all right. ‘Of course, of course – get your bearings,’ said Tony and went back to the kitchen side of the room, where a man in a yellow T-shirt was sitting. This man reached up inside Tony’s jacket and stroked him softly on the belly. Granny was always stressing the importance for men of leaving the bottom button of their jackets undone, but I’d never seen the point till now.

  George had taken two cups of tea, one on my behalf, and was looking around for somewhere to put them. He whispered, ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you. I was so nervous coming here that I hardly even saw you out in the street. I’m so sorry. I’d decided I would go through that door if it was the last thing I ever did. Then when I got inside and found I was still alive, I realised I’d left you out there. I went out again saying I’d be back in a moment, but I think our host thought I’d lost my nerve. I wonder how long he’d have waited before sending out a rescue party?’