Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

Then Dr Bailey saw my little manifest of pharmaceuticals and his face went long. He was troubled by what he saw. Finally he laid his pencil against one of the items on my list and said, ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing? Someone with your low body weight needs to be extra-careful about dosages.’

The 1970s was the golden age of prescribing, as far as I’m concerned. It was all downhill after that. Dr Bailey was like the man in the Australian beer advert, who blames the bottle of sweet sherry (the ladies’ choice) for the collapse of his truck’s axles, after he has loaded it to the gunwales with crates of lager. Dr Bailey was an Australian at heart. The toy truck of this body was due to be fully loaded with Mandrax, but that didn’t worry him. It was going to be supercharged with Dexedrine, which would set the engine pounding, but that too was fine. He worried that I might be overdoing it with the Vitamin C. It turned out that it was the only innocent in the line-up who had no alibi. A whole gram of Redoxon? Was that wise?

I promised I would be careful. Scout’s honour.

The summer passed in tingling and numbness. The summer passed. Peter was off on his travels, and the Washbournes were on a Greek island. I imagined them in adjacent deck-chairs, him reading about Buddhism, her engrossed in a Regency romance, highly compatible in their own syncopated way. On my own I felt shadowy and fraudulent. I seemed only to be able to meditate with an audience.

I remember at one point Audrey poking me quite hard with a ruler, just to get a reaction. I didn’t give her the satisfaction, and she went away. I was expecting her to return with something else from her pencil-case, the compasses perhaps. I thought I would probably react to them.

Insects and other small deer had made no inroads into my flesh. Not only did I chew my food without prompting, I put it in my mouth myself. It seemed foolish to imagine that I was travelling so far inwards, à la Maharshi, that my surroundings had become a matter of indifference to me. I was just Mandied up.

She must have found some other distraction, because she didn’t come back. Mum never acquired the knack of withholding a reaction, so she was probably Audrey’s next port of call. There was a sort of hysterical escalation to their confrontations, which would only end when Mum said, ‘You leave me no choice,’ picking up the phone and asking the operator to connect her with the Remand Home.

Then Audrey would go down on her knees pleading not to be sent away, and after a proper interval Mum would think better of it and put the phone down. It was always very melodramatic. Obviously Mum didn’t mean it (children don’t vanish into the disciplinary system quite so smoothly, and anyway isn’t eleven a little young?), and I don’t think that Audrey believed for one moment that she did. It was more that the charade of an ultimatum allowed her to back down without loss of face. It was only after exhaustive exploration of anguish and disgrace that she could find any sort of calm.

Distillation of goodwill

I had the same college room for all three years of my undergraduate life. I stayed put in A6 Kenny. This was a significant concession. Other students were shunted all over the place during their time at the university, while I only needed to get used to one set of arrangements. Even so, of course, the human context changed around me, and I was deprived of the little arrangements that had grown up with the people I knew. P. D. Hughes, for instance, went to Lensfield Road, which was very sad. My set of immediate connections was destroyed as decisively as if a child had swept a cobweb away with a stick, and I had to start spinning the old charm-threads from scratch.

Still, there were compensations to the process of starting all over again. I was an initiate, an adept, and could often answer freshmen’s questions. I learned to presume on my seniority when it came to asking for little bits of portering. I told myself it was the new-bugs’ privilege to oblige me. I owed them nothing for their trouble. I cultivated mild insensitivity, a much healthier thing than spending your whole time conscious of being in the world’s debt.

Belatedly I was beginning to find my feet. With my change of course I could tell myself I was a freshman all over again, only this time I could play the system a lot better. I attended the Societies Fair on my own. Second-years normally gave the whole jamboree a miss, since their social lives needed less propping up, but I threw myself confidently into the maelstrøm of the Corn Exchange. I hitch-lifted without any trouble. In fact it was intoxicatingly easy. Why wasn’t it always like this? I suppose because this was a meandering and a milling crowd, rather than a bustling one. I tried different approaches. Everything seemed to work. I felt like a gambler on a winning streak.

For a short time even the corniest lines brought me a smile and a hand on the tiller. ‘Hey, man, can you help me keep on truckin’ to the next stall but one?’ That worked more than once, on those with hippy pretentions. Drawling ‘Sister, Do You Know the Way to San José?’ produced as much of a beam on one young woman’s face (oddly reddened, a drinker’s face on someone who was little more than a girl) as if I’d stuffed a handful of fivers into the pocket of her coat, a military coat which was far too big for her. She pushed me where I wanted to go and then took my name and college address. She said she’d be in touch. The wheelchair ran perfectly without the need for a motor, chugging smoothly on a distillation of goodwill.

I made a beeline for the Zoology Club, which I was charmed to learn held ‘conversaziones’ rather than meetings as such. That was what was missing from my Cambridge life — conversaziones. Then, as I negotiated the loudly echoing spaces of the Corn Exchange, idly wondering which human ripple I would graciously allow to carry me forward, I could hear a subdued rhythmic chanting. It struck me immediately as ominous, before I could make out a word.

Eventually I could make out the slogan being broadcast: Two Four Six Eight — Gay Is Just as Good as Straight . Crazily I thought that everyone would look at me, that my blushing in that confined space would spark an explosion. It wasn’t so much a blush, more of a heart attack displaced on to my face. And so soon after I had mentally disparaged another human being for undue redness of complexion!

I experienced horripilation, yes, and lowered body temperature, but none of the other classic signs of the proximity of God. What I felt was the proximity of terrible fear. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

Every now and then the chant was replaced by another, which went Three Five Seven Nine — Lesbians Are Mighty Fine . This was much less threatening to my peace of mind. In any case, since it was uttered by male voices exclusively, the slogan gave the impression of hearsay rather than any great conviction.

I can’t explain my panic flight. I seemed to have lost a lot of confidence. As a Vulcan schoolboy I had been positively cheeky when confronted with evangelicals, taunting Billy Graham’s minions with their gnawed fingernails and penchant for hell-fire. As a freshman I had groped a botanist in the presence of my bedmaker. Now I had relapsed. I had become re-infected with depressive strains of narrow-mindedness, guilt and shame. Perhaps it’s an indication of how low my state of being actually was, during this my higher education.

With a heavy heart I realised that sooner or later I would have to come to terms with the Cambridge Wing of the Gay Liberation Front, or CHAP, as it was actually called, rather than drive round Trumpington looking for the Monarchist League. But not just yet. Perhaps my dread was based, deep down, on something quite simple. This was one group whose rejection I wouldn’t be able to shrug off. If they wouldn’t have me, who would? If these untouchables refused any contact with me then there was no further to fall.