Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

I tried a sidelong whisper at the member of the group who seemed marginally the most trustworthy. ‘ Benedict …? ’

‘Yes, Mr Cox.’

‘Who are you? I mean, who are you, as a group?’

‘We’re Write Off Tuesday.’

‘And Write Off Tuesday is what?’

‘All the splendid intellectual specimens you see around you. A total of eight.’

‘Aren’t you seven?’

‘Really? Then we’ve lost one. Explains why there keeps on being one pint left over. Not that Wop minds. He’ll always tidy up. He’s good that way. Tidy boy.’

‘Yes, but who are you all? What is the nature of your group?’

‘Well, we were recently described, by the Master of Peterhouse no less, as a right-wing think-tank …’ I knew just enough about politics to understand that this was quite an accolade. In any assessment of academic figures at the time the Master of Peterhouse would rank as an exemplary figure, a reactionary’s reactionary. Then Benedict seemed to reconsider, almost going cross-eyed from the effort of dredging up the memory, and corrected himself: ‘Hold on. Not a think-tank … a right-wing drink- tank.’

‘And what does it mean, to “write off” a day of the week?’

‘You skip it altogether. You make sure it leaves no trace on the memory. Don’t you agree that Tuesday is an inherently boring day?’

I thought I had found a flaw in his argument, and asked as gently as I could, ‘You do know today is Monday?’

‘Yes. Another culpably drab day.’

‘So you’re writing off Monday?’

‘No, my dear Cox, you’ve missed the point completely. Try to pay attention. It’s all to do with preparation. Preparation is the key. To write off Tuesday effectively you have to start the day before. If Monday is properly squashed Tuesday doesn’t even begin.’

‘I see.’ By this time Thomas da Silva had moved off, perhaps to visit the Gents — a place I myself needed to visit — so I was able to concentrate hypnotically on Benedict. ‘Would you mind moving that ashtray away from me? The smell makes me feel rather sick.’ It seemed to make sense to impose my will on him in small matters before brokering my separation from the group, just as a conjuror will make coins disappear before tackling doves or elephants.

‘Of course, old fellow, old boy, old man, cox of the good ship Write Off Tuesday.’ The hypnotic experiment was successful as far as it went, but it didn’t go far. Yes, Benedict moved the ashtray away from me, then the next moment he took a cigarette from his packet, lit it up and moved the ashtray smoothly back into range, without giving it a thought.

It was time to change up a gear, in terms of the hypnotic mechanism. ‘Would you be kind enough to take me for a pee? I can’t manage on my own.’

‘Can’t you? What a pisser that must be! Very bad luck. Of course I’ll lend a hand.’ I tried to hold his eyes steady by fixing them with mine, but they kept slipping sideways. I felt as if I was losing my touch. He made no move to get up. Then, just as I was getting a grip on his eyes with mine, Thomas came back from the Gents. He shouted out, ‘Cox! What time for this leg?’ I told him I had no idea and he laughed wildly, saying, ‘You’re a write-off as timekeeper, Cox, which makes you perfect for the job!’ He grabbed the handles of the wheelchair. We seemed to be off again. I hissed at Benedict, ‘Can’t you push me? Thomas isn’t exactly in charge of his faculties.’

‘Of course he’s not! That’s the whole point. Haven’t you been listening? Wop, are you going to be especially careful with our cox here?’

‘Of course I am.’

Of course he was not. As we left the pub, Thomas da Silva was shouting, ‘Those ties are as good as ours. In the bag! Hardly a challenge for drinkers of our stature.’

Benedict sounded a marginally adult, cautionary note.

‘Men, we must avoid at all costs pre-incubatory gallinumeration.’

‘Yes, Benny, we know,’ replied Thomas da Silva. ‘ Hatching cunts … I beg your pardon, Counting chickens before they’re hatched .’

‘Exactly so.’ The rogue-classicists theory was gaining ground in my mind.

As we turned towards the next pub, Thomas manœuvred the wheelchair — I assume by accident — so that one wheel was in the road while the other remained on the pavement. Then he started to push me at great speed in that precarious position, with the wheelchair straddling the kerb. If the footplates hadn’t been on, thanks to Kerry, my feet would have been receiving the savage scraping in their place. As it was, there was a tremendous noise of metal in agony, and I’m sure there was a fine display of sparks for the benefit of the people behind.

A titillating cloud

I closed my eyes and tried to recite Om Mane Padme Om in my deepest interior spaces. It seemed such a long time since I had sounded the mini’s horn in that mantric rhythm to summon Kerry Bashford. My rickety old mantra was supposed to act as a brake on my engagement with spurious reality, or at least a clutch to disconnect me from the apparent impulses of the world. Now it was acting as an accelerator if anything, intensifying my mundane feelings of anxiety and alarm. Om-Mane-Padme-Om, OM-MANE-PADME-OM … OM-MANE-OH MY GOD! … What happens if Thomas notices the way the wheelchair is tilted and tries to put things right without stopping? I’ll be pitched out of the wheelchair, that’s what, old Uncle Tom Mantra and all.

My nose registered at one point that we were passing the coffee shop (in fact The Coffee Shop) on King Street. The caffeinated aroma hung around like a titillating cloud. I concentrated on the traces of a drug which seemed entirely benign compared with alcohol, in whose stupefying distortions I was so hopelessly embroiled. Like many another student in those years, I had met coffee-lovers of both the jug and filter factions, devotees of both Java and exorbitant Blue Mountain. My own favourite was Kenya Peaberry. Even the name was satisfying. It had a leguminous twang. In those years the caffeine god made at least as many converts as the marijuana god.

Then we were past the coffee shop and the vivifying aroma disappeared. I had nothing to cling to but the shreds of my mantra. I couldn’t reach the armrests, to hold on to those. The stopwatch bumped painfully against my chest. At last I managed to grab it with one hand, to stop it knocking against my racing heart.

Exasperation is a rather junior emotion, a secondary impulse, but even so it is possible to feel it on a vast scale. That was what was happening with me at this point. I wasn’t a child. I was a grown-up. I was of drinking age. As it happened, I even wanted to be in a pub. But I wanted to be in the pub of my choice, the Cambridge Arms, not a sordid den chosen by cretinous carousers. I was a consenting adult — I could even have relations with my own sex under certain conditions. I did not consent to having my day written off by dipsomaniac louts, however steeped in the classical languages. What made these clods think they could override my wishes?

The fact that they could. The fact that they had.

There were shouts behind us, and a yelping sound nearer home, which turned out to come from my own throat. We had nearly overshot the next pub on the via dolorosa of the King Street Run. At least the rest of the party mucked in to rescue the wheelchair from its unstable footing, though so many hands pressing down on the handles made it buck like a rearing horse. I couldn’t hang on to anything. I just clenched my teeth, so hard that I thought I must be shedding flakes of enamel.

I have no memories of the next pub we visited. That’s not exactly a failure of memory, more a refusal to register anything in the first place. I closed my eyes before we entered the place, and I kept them shut. This was my shot at passive resistance to the absurd caravan that had swept me up into its pilgrimage of intoxication. I couldn’t veto the proceedings, I couldn’t even register a protest vote. All I could do was abstain. Of course I wasn’t paying a special tribute to Gandhi — all my resistance is passive. All I have is my small No. No to pilchards, No to Billy Graham. No to Write Off Tuesday.