Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

With those steps taking his side, Noel simply assumed that he was coming in with me, and then something happened that took the initiative away from me for the duration. It wasn’t anything in the least dramatic — it was just that I had a bit of trouble opening the door. It was locked (I had learned my lesson) and I could manage perfectly well, as long as I wasn’t hurried. I could refuse Noel’s help in opening the door, and I did. But I couldn’t prevent cutting a figure of bravery and pathos in the eyes of a spectator, and then the drama took on its own meaning and momentum. On an ordinary night the scene would have been one of serene difficulty unobserved, but not now. I could send Noel smartly away, but that would only emphasise my bloody bravery and the sodding pathos of it all. Better to let him come in and hope to get rid of him soon.

After that Noel pretty much had his own way. I said as nonchalantly as I could, ‘Perhaps you’d make me a coffee — and one for yourself, of course, if you’d like.’

Noel went on and on about the haunting power of Ingmar Bergman’s images. They had bored into his head. They had tapped into his darkest dreams. He wouldn’t be able to sleep, unless … Unless what? Unless he stayed the night with me. All Ingmar’s fault, of course. Noel wouldn’t be able to close his eyes for existential terror unless I was there to comfort him. I had been chosen (chosen from a list of one) to keep the Scandinavian demons at bay in A6 Kenny.

As Granny would have said, it was all very inconvenient, but I could hardly chuck him out, could I? Even if I had a phone in my room, I couldn’t quite see myself using it to call the Porter’s Lodge and asking them to repatriate a stray blond.

Once I had resigned myself to my fate, there was no further mention of Noel’s fears. He was obviously shamming, but why should he bother to tell untruths? Perhaps he really was suffering from angst — angst in his pants, that is. And he was presentable enough, but was he my type?

I wasn’t sure I could afford to have a type. There wasn’t enough traffic for me to risk putting up road blocks. That would lead me right back to celibacy without even needing to take a vow.

The best approach seemed to be this: anyone who fetched up in my bed for whatever reason, including sham fears of clocks without hands, was my type until proved otherwise. Of course there was a snag when I considered my romantic prospects. It seemed unrealistic to expect anyone to help me go to bed and then enjoy my company once I was in it. I couldn’t quite visualise that. The waiter doesn’t sit down as guest of honour — though actually it’s an awkwardness that has come to pass often enough, when I have guests to a meal and then expect them to do a certain amount of fetching and carrying.

In my daydreams things were different. One person prepared me for bed and a quite different one joined me between the sheets, which is an arrangement reserved for the wedding nights of royalty. As a commoner I couldn’t see how Noel was going to combine the rôles. Still, rules were made to be broken. I had college authority for that.

Noel seemed rather fidgety as he boiled the kettle to make coffee. He asked if I had anything to eat and I reluctantly revealed a cache of biscuits. He looked through my record collection but found nothing that matched his mood, or perhaps his taste.

He couldn’t keep his hands away from his hair, smoothing it down far more, surely, than ordinary narcissism demanded. It made me grateful for my own narrow vocabulary of body language. What a waste of nervous energy, to thrash your hands about so! Every now and then he gave a little cat’s yawn, rolling his shoulders and even sticking out his tongue, as if he was poking fun at the idea of sleep as it slyly advanced on him.

I was ensconced in the Parker-Knoll with my drawbridge raised so that I was poised and nearly horizontal. Noel couldn’t seem to settle. He sat on the edge of the built-in desk, pushing back books and papers to make room for his narrow bum. I tried to protest, and then decided that I would make sure to ask him to reinstate everything in the morning. Unless things are near the front of a desk they’re not much use to me.

‘That’s a wonderful chair you’ve got there,’ he said. ‘I didn’t even see you get into it. How do you manage?’ There is occasionally something quite refreshing about unembarrassed curiosity, and I ended up giving a repeat performance, struggling slowly to my feet and then relapsing onto the Granny-subsidised upholstery. It seemed unlikely that Noel had missed the first show, all the same, which must have taken perhaps two minutes from beginning to end. ‘Thanks — I feel privileged to see that,’ said my uninvited visitor. ‘You’ve really got your life worked out, haven’t you? Well done you!’ If I had really got my life worked out, I would have been alone in my room at this point, wouldn’t I? And spared this whole conversation.

Impotent mandrake

Yawns are catching, alertness is not. By this time I was unconsciously copying Noel’s spasms of tiredness, and agreed that it was time for bed. Then Noel wanted to see how I managed in the bathroom. You would have thought, from his reaction, that he was positively jealous of my trolley commode, as if it was something he had wanted all his life. Finally he wanted to see how I used a flannel. Not very easily, would have been the short answer. I demonstrated, inwardly protesting. I used a table knife to bring the cloth within range of my face, and the whole operation was rather approximate. By this time I was feeling that naked curiosity wasn’t so very charming after all. Perhaps it should put on some clothes like the rest of us. Noel’s desire to know everything about my adaptation to life was beginning to seem rather oppressive. Of course he was just a little academic blob trying to rustle up a personality at short notice, like every other fresher, but I had stopped enjoying my part in the process.

‘You aren’t going to write an article about me, are you?’ I asked, realising as I spoke that this was a dreadful possibility. ‘I’m not going to be on the front page of Varsity , am I?’ To hold back from Jack de Manio and the Today programme only to end up as an item in Varsity ! Quite a coup for the ego-diminishment project.

‘Of course not, I’m just interested. But you have to admit you’re one of a kind.’

‘Aren’t we all?’

‘You know what I mean.’

By now I was uneasy about the sharing of a bed. What if Noel did want to undertake the activity decriminalised by both the lower chamber and the Lords Spiritual and Temporal? How could I refuse? It would be no earthly use squeaking ‘Stop what you’re doing at once! I won’t be of legal age till after Christmas!’, since he was clearly younger than me. If he wanted something to happen then happen it would.

Consent and refusal in my case were abstract notions. My Yes was taken as read, and my No was a silent scream that no one would hear, impotent mandrake struck dumb at the moment of its uprooting.

It was too late for second thoughts. I hadn’t made my bed, and now I would have to lie in it. Noel sat on the bed and supported me between his knees while he took my clothes off. His touch was awkward but not incompetent. This was the moment I must get through without my self-confidence shrivelling, buoyed up by nothing more than the habit of buoyancy.

Noel didn’t ask me what I wore at night. It would have been a polite enquiry to make, unless naked intimacy was on the menu. If he had asked me, I would have said ‘Nothing’, not because I had read the James Bond books and knew that a real man sleeps in the buff, but because it was enough trouble taking off one lot of clothes without having to struggle into another. Deprived of the Margaret Erskine Dream-Cloud I dare say I would have frozen to death in my undergraduate years.