Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

In the matter of kneeling, though, he took unilateral action, dropping to his knees with an audible impact. This made a pious thud. He started off kneeling parallel to me in my Parker-Knoll, but from this position it hardly looked as if he was leading me in prayer. He edged round until he was facing me, but that was worse. There was no easy answer to the riddle of body language I presented. To an outsider — to anyone passing my open door — it might actually have looked as if he was worshipping me.

He stood up and placed a hand on my head instead. He must have thought this made a better picture, but still his tongue was tangled. ‘Oh Lord,’ he intoned, with a second-hand cadence, ‘Lord who knowest every secret thought, to whom every sinning heart is as clear as … clear as crystal …’ Then he took his hand off my head and prostrated himself in front of me. This was such an unusual posture that I took a mental photograph, deciding I quite liked it. I was fascinated by his hair, not blond but so pale that it seemed to avoid colour altogether. But Colin was just getting started. Now he was gazing at my ankles as soulfully as he had earlier peered into my eyes. Flat on his belly on the floor, he looked as if he was gathering himself for a holy press-up. ‘Lord, turn these feet …’ he said. ‘Turn these feet … towards Jerusalem …’

That was when my patience departed, leaving me furiously angry. I did my best to give him a kick, knowing even as my brain formed the command that my legs wouldn’t be up to it. I swung my feet at him. It couldn’t really be called a kick. He felt the breeze from my little lunge, and looked up wide-eyed. For a moment he must have thought that he was detecting the first stirring of a miracle cure.

This was not the world rolling in ecstasy at my feet, this was someone at least as isolated as I was, taking up space on my floor. It was time to sweep him off my carpet. I told him that I didn’t need converting, that I had plenty of faith of my own, even if it wasn’t the same brand as his.

He blushed fiercely as he got to his feet, but now he couldn’t look me in the eye. Instead he looked at the wall and blurted out, ‘You’ve got a lot of empty space on that wall — why don’t I brighten it up with a poster?’

I had so little practice in saying No that I found myself unable to refuse. I’d rejected his religious advances, and it seemed to make sense to give him back a bit of dignity by playing along.

My nature was not yet steeled against its own obligingness. I didn’t anticipate that the wretch would of course return immediately, carrying not only his gift but also a roll of Sellotape in his mouth. He set about putting his poster up on the wall. ‘ You can’t do that! ’ I squeaked, but he had already done it. That was even before I saw the message I would be broadcasting: that no one comes to God except through his son Jesus Christ. I’m afraid that’s just the side of the cult I can’t tolerate, that blocking off of avenues. It doesn’t take much of that sort of thing to give me spiritual claustrophobia. But quite apart from religious outrage, there was the matter of adhesive. Colin Moulton had been so busy reading the Bible he had neglected more worldly rule-books, and Downing’s strict ban on the use of Sellotape to fix things to walls.

‘You’re only supposed to use Plastitack!’ I shouted. Plastitack — Blu-tack’s anæmic kid brother.

His skin betrayed him with another blush (I was beginning to see the disadvantages of pale colouring, that octopus-transparency to emotion), but he managed to keep his voice even. ‘That’s not important, is it?’ he said. ‘Not when we’re talking about your immortal soul.’

Nothing marked him out as a fanatic so much as this attitude to fixtures and fittings. Normally you’d be safe in saying that an English believer, however fervent, would have some respect for the bye-laws. An English Luther would have Plastitacked his 95 theses to the door of Schlosskirche in Wittenberg, out of respect for the varnish and the maintenance staff, and the Reformation would have fallen at the first fence, its founding documents effortlessly binned.

On his way out Colin Moulton said two things. First that he would pray for me. Well, I couldn’t stop him from doing that. Secondly that his door was always open. That last part was rich. I decided that from then on my door had better not be. I was my own doorkeeper, and now I had better practise being my own bouncer too. The world was welcome to come and roll in ecstasy on my carpet, but from now on it would at least have to knock and identify itself, to give some sort of password.

Doors are either open or closed (don’t talk to me about that ‘ajar’ nonsense). If doors are open anyone can come in, and if they’re closed they restrict me more than anyone else. Having to choose which way to leave my door seemed to restrict my options to either defencelessness or claustrophobia. Like most people I’m an ambivert, turned both inwards and outwards, but my door couldn’t mimic that double perspective.

Clearly I was still a sad case of spiritual impatience. I had gone to India and demanded self-realisation double quick, chop chop, shine a light and make it snappy. Now I had set aside a whole weekend for the solitude and stillness which would compel the world to unmask. If the world had rolled at my feet, then the world was a freckled zealot.

I fumed when I looked at my new wall decoration. A poster of that sort on a student’s wall in 1970 was about as big an attraction as a big cross on the door in a plague year, but I wasn’t thinking of the possible repercussions on my social life. It wasn’t clear that my status could fall any lower as a God-botherer, but I didn’t want to find out. I just wanted it down sharpish.

Snails in their morning slime

Colin had cannily put the poster up on the wall beyond my reach. The only way I could get it off the wall was by slipping my stick under the edge and tearing it down in ragged stages, breathing hard with the effort and the anger, and leaving scraps of paper held by stubborn twists of sticky tape.

Mrs Beddoes tutted with disapproval and removed the remaining scraps and twists of tape on the Monday morning. I would almost have preferred to leave them there to go yellow and brittle, as a reminder of my first lesson at this new palace of learning: it was easier for people at large to get at me than for me to find my way to the company I wanted. Whatever that would turn out to be.

I’ve always woken up cheerful, without needing to have a particular reason. I’m sure this isn’t an exclusively human privilege — I dare say snails in their morning slime feel much the same thing. I was still far from waking up depressed, but there wasn’t the usual shine on my morning mood.

Monday, when it came, was better. Some sort of routine could be imposed on a Monday. There had been a brief orientation for freshmen to give us some idea of what was expected of us. There were lectures, for one thing, and it was a source of grief to me that they weren’t compulsory, since that would have organised my life at a stroke. In fact there were too many lectures for any one person (and for once I mean an able-bodied person) to attend. They were listed in a special issue of the University Register, swelling its pages until it amounted to quite a little book.

It was part of university lore that lecturers were paid whether or not anyone turned up to hear them. If they were alone in the room then in theory they were expected to give the lecture just the same. In fact few of them were natural performers, and many would have been relieved to be spared the ordeal of catering to an audience.

The only compulsory academic activity was the writing of essays for your supervisors. ‘Writing’ at the time really meant writing — making marks by hand on paper. I pecked out my essays, though, on the trusty Smith-Corona. I was making life easier for my supervisors by not submitting anything in my dismal scrawl, but there was no doubt about typing being second best, in the Cambridge way of looking at things. Typing was the province of the subliterate or American.