Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

The women’s colleges made an effort to discourage such overnight visitors, but it was no more than a show of discipline. One second-year in my college spent most nights in New Hall. While his girlfriend dutifully entered by way of the Porter’s Lodge he would shin up the wall (the modernist architecture of the college offering as many aids to climbing as the Gothic) and in through her window. His route was much quicker than hers — he boasted that by the time she reached her room he would be waiting for her in bed, wearing her nightie for that androgynous 1970 frisson, and with the kettle sighing its way to the boil.

There were times when it seemed as if I was the only one to whom a curfew still applied, though any number of undergraduates solemnly assured me that I could safely be transferred by a chain of hands over the railings in Trinity Lane, the wheelchair following, into Bishop’s Hostel in Trinity and out again whenever I wanted. I never dared to accept such offers. To be transported by many hands, like a crumb at a picnic being carried off by a thousand ants, was a frightening prospect. People seemed keener to convey me over the railings of colleges after hours than to help me get to lectures in the mornings, which would have made far more difference to my university life.

The ascension glide which had conveyed me up the steps of the temple in Tiruvannamalai, a hundred hands in mystical unison, didn’t seem likely to be duplicated on a secular climb in Cambridgeshire. The young men who made the offer were really only paying lip service to a favourite notion of the period, that everything was always possible for everyone without exception, with no clear idea of how it might be done.

I remember the Mistress of Girton (I think it was Muriel Bradbrook) defending the exclusion of men from the college after ten at night, though it was pointed out to her that anything men could do after ten o’clock they could also do before. ‘Oh yes,’ she replied, ‘but if they stay after ten they may do it again.’ One testy don was reported as describing this as shutting the stable door after the mare has been mounted. In circumstances like these the don being quoted was invariably from Peterhouse.

I let Noel take charge of me. My need of help was a sore point, of course, but then by this time I was mainly sore points. I do more than my fair share of sitting and my bum was sore from the pressure of the Arts Cinema’s worn-down plush upholstery. If he didn’t help to transfer me from car to room and wheelchair then I’d only have to hitch a carry from someone else.

In the car, Noel started to talk about how terrifying he had found Wild Strawberries . He didn’t see how he was going to sleep that night. I was puzzled. ‘But I thought you’d seen it before.’

He opened his eyes very wide. ‘What makes you think that?’

I said I must have got the wrong end of the stick, but I was sure he had referred to the film as one of his favourites.

Apparently it was the dream sequence at the beginning of the film which had done for him — a famous example in that line, virtually an encyclopædia of oppressive imagery. Clocks without hands, runaway hearses. The face appearing from between the boards of the shattered coffin turning out to be the dreamer’s own.

I had enjoyed the film, but I can’t say it touched any particular nerve. It wasn’t even an X-certificate, for Heaven’s sake! Still, it made sense to assume that my history had left me with off-kilter fears and immunities. Perhaps Noel’s upbringing had left him unusually vulnerable to the Gothic in some way. At the same time, I was thinking back to that part of the film. At the moment when the professor in his dream sees his own body in the coffin, I could swear that I had heard a distinctive sound from my neighbour’s mouth. I could have sworn it was the juice-muffled snap of a tablet of butterscotch being divided in two by a rooting tongue unable to defer the pleasure any longer.

No epidermis off my proboscis

Of course existential dread and greedy sweet-sucking can occupy a single individual simultaneously, but I had to wonder if Noel wasn’t putting it on. The Angst , I mean. My own tablet of butterscotch was still fat in my mouth at that stage of the film, only just beginning its dwindling to a brittle blade of sweetness.

When the porters had been sweet-talked and I had safely parked the car at the back of A staircase, Kenny Court, I was in a little quandary. I didn’t particularly want to invite this person in, but I needed a certain amount of assistance to get back into my room. Those two steps in my path had social repercussions. I couldn’t dismiss Noel after letting him install me in the wheelchair, because it would then be obvious that I was stuck on the lower level. But if I let him help me up those steps then it would be impossible not to invite him in.

Those steps had a lot to answer for, but if ever I mentioned them to someone sensible — such as Alan Linton while we savoured the excellent vegetarian fare in Hall — he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. Steps? What steps?

I’ve noticed that steps have an almost evanescent quality. Are they there or are they not? It seems to be a moot point. They evaporate and then condense once more. As stone and brick they should have got the knack of seeming substantial, but they’re hard to see and hard to hold in the memory.

I phone you up in advance of a visit, and I ask, are there any steps where you live? And you say, ‘Steps? No, no steps.’ As if it was an outlandish question. Obscurely insulting, even. Except that when I arrive, there are little steps, one, two, even three. Multiple changes of level between the street and the path, the path and the door surround, the surround and the door itself. Very real obstructions, all of them. You scratch your head, as if you have never seen them before, or as if they’ve only just appeared. Earthquakes aren’t common in these parts, and even the ones that happen at night make a bit of noise. They’re not usually so tidy either, simply extruding a building a few inches up from the ground. We stare at your puzzling steps, you and I. I’m the one who doesn’t subscribe to the doctrines of materialism, and you’re the one who thinks the external world is constant and consistent, but perhaps this is not the best time for either of us to draw attention to the fact that we’re dressed in each other’s clothes.

When I ask if there are steps, I don’t necessarily mean a grand staircase leading up to the entrance. I rather hope you’d tell me about that without being prompted. I’m talking about the little changes of level that your legs take in their stride — and that your automatic pilot negotiates without your needing to switch to manual control. I suppose it all comes down to maths, to rounding up and rounding down. If there are fewer than five steps people round down and say there aren’t any. If there are more than five, that counts as a flight. That’s makes a quorum and can’t be ignored. But fewer than five doesn’t count, apparently. It’s only me that feels excluded, and I apologise for being small-minded. It’s actually this body that is small-minded, and can’t get over the fact of your steps.

I imagine the little meeting at which rooms were assigned to the incoming freshers of Downing. Someone would be sure to say, ‘ Cromer, J. , uses a wheelchair, poor beggar, so we’d better give him a room on the ground floor, don’t you think?’ And somebody else would say, ‘How about A6 Kenny, that’s just the ticket.’ I realise that university business in 1970 was not conducted by World War II personnel, but I can’t help that. That’s how it plays out in my mind. Then the pretty WAAF comes in with the tea, and says, ‘But aren’t there steps outside A staircase Kenny? That’ll be jolly awkward.’ Everyone looks at her as if she was mad, and someone says, ‘I say, little girl, you’d better not poke your nose in where it’s not wanted. We’re not fools, you know. We’ve put him on the ground floor, haven’t we? He’ll be rocketing about, you’ll see. There’ll be no stopping him.’ And the WAAF sniffs and says, ‘No epidermis off my proboscis, I’m sure.’