Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

432,000 years in the dark

‘Did they shout out “ Dead ants! ” every now and then? And then lie flat on the floor?’

‘No, that’s about the only thing they didn’t do. What would that mean?’

‘Fitzwilliam. Never mind.’ His manner had a cosy gloom to it, as if he was an undertaker from a family firm. ‘Look, I haven’t any clothes for you to change into. You’re about three times too small. Best I can do is wipe you up, then stuff some toilet paper into your trousers to keep you dry.’

‘That seems more than fair, landlord.’

‘Don’t call me that. Arthur Burgess. Call me Arthur. Is that enough toilet paper?’

‘Yes, thank you. Arthur. I think it is. By the way, I don’t want anything to do with that stopwatch’ — whose case he had wiped, whose string he had rinsed — ‘please keep it.’ What did I want with a stopwatch? As Hindus know, we’re in the depths of the Dark Age, the Kali Yuga, set to last 432,000 years. Time is going quite slowly enough.

Arthur hesitated, until I added, ‘Perhaps they’ll come back for it. Perhaps that’s how you’ll nab ’em.’

Arthur Burgess put no pressure on me for my tutor’s phone number. Unfortunately there was no one else I could call for help. The Mini was a good distance away, and I wasn’t in a strong position to ask favours from someone who had already cleaned me up.

I had made no special effort to remember the number, but after my childhood tutor Miss Collins restricted my access to books I had come to rely more and more on memory, just in case I had to manage without books again. By my Cambridge days, it required an act of will for me to forget a phone number. I was half hoping Graëme would be out, though I had no idea what I’d do if he was.

He was in. There are probably better times to be told that you need to retrieve a soiled student from a pub urinal than when you have just finished dressing for a formal college dinner, but the timing was not of my choice. It wasn’t long after 7.30, though to me it felt like midnight.

Graëme turned up wearing evening dress, though the trousers had a hint of a flare and the lapels of the jacket were broad and edged with velvet. Fashion was involved, in some tentative professorial way. I could almost hear Mrs Beamish cooing, ‘Even academics can make a bit of an effort, you know, darling!’ as she lured him (without benefit of a credit note) into The Peacock, the dandy-magnet cradled inside Cambridge’s own little department store, Josh Tosh, foreshortened Harrods of the Fens.

By mutual instinct, Arthur Burgess and I retreated from first-name terms the moment Graëme made his appearance. The situation was unsavoury enough without being overlaid by an element of collusion or practical joke. As he wheeled me out of the Zebra, I called out politely, ‘Thank you, landlord,’ as if the whole evening had gone as planned. A refreshing half-pint in my local. Arthur for his part greeted Graëme with the words, ‘A student of the old school, sir. Won’t peach on his fellow sinners,’ in the tone of voice of someone offering professional condolences.

Arthur had thoughtfully overlapped some bar-towels over my legs and lower body, to hide the damp patches. Thanks to these I had an almost festive aspect as we trundled back down King Street. They were brightly coloured, in red and green. We might have been doing something for charity — we might have been sponsored by the brewery. In November rather than April, I might have been a Guy in effigy being pushed to Parker’s Piece for burning, particularly since loose strips of toilet tissue were escaping from my waistband, touch paper waiting for a match.

From behind me, as he pushed, Graëme Beamish was saying, ‘I’m disappointed that you’re taking this attitude, John.’

My free will had still not been returned to me. I seemed to be stuck with other people’s scripts, this new one an especially dull affair of the solidarity of miscreants.

I came close to biting my tongue. ‘What attitude is that, Dr Beamish?’

‘This Bridge-on-the-River-Kwai not-telling-tales attitude. It’s rather old-fashioned, isn’t it? Rather … square. ’

I was longing to tell tales for once. What did I care if Thomas da Silva and Benedict Whoever were thrown in the river, or put in the pillory and pelted with fruit? But I was unable to retreat from the uncompromising stance that had been foisted on me. I had missed my moment, and now I was stuck with being loyal to the disloyal. My arms still ached from my brief sojourn on Thomas da Silva’s belly.

A spent blob in my mouth

In my frustration at being taken for a martyr, I started rolling my eyes and sticking my tongue out, in a way I would never have done if Beamish and I could see each other’s faces. For all I know he was doing the same thing himself, in annoyance at the disruption of his evening, which would have added an extra fillip to the entertainment value of our progress down King Street. It’s not considered polite for wheelchair-users to install wing mirrors, attached by stems to the armrests, so that they can monitor the expressions of those who push them, but really I don’t see why.

My mantra had lost all its stabilising power. It was like a piece of chewing gum so long masticated it had turned into a spent blob in my mouth. No point in thinking of that. Instead I took a symbolic revenge on Beamish for his lack of understanding by visualising the bottom of his kitchen cabinets, seen on my only visit to his lovely home in Barton. I have my own point of view, and can witness any number of flaws that are hidden from the taller world. It’s one of the little privileges of wheelchair travel, to be underlooking at the overlooked. The paintwork under those cabinets was pockled and peeling. Steam from a thousand boilings of the kettle had left it looking shabby and leprous. Shame on you, Beamish.

It’s well known that the disabled are compensated for their losses, in the currency of another sense. The blind have particularly acute hearing — though, oddly, as experiments have proved, they hear less well in the dark. As for me, I have a photographic memory for the undersides of kitchen cabinets.

When we were back at the Mini, once he had helped me in and loaded the wheelchair in the boot, Dr Beamish disappeared in his turn. His duties were over. He could get to his college dinner only a little late, with a story to tell if he cared to, ready to worship the little divinities of his academic cosmos, the sherry god and the claret god, madeira god and port god.

I felt the stigma of my incontinence very keenly, despite being a victim of circumstance. A disabled person can’t have a moment of weakness in that department without it becoming a permanent part of the picture. It’s a character flaw in waiting. If I’d been able to, I would simply have disposed of the evidence and thrown the soiled items away, but trousers were not things I owned in mad profusion.

It wasn’t so very long since I had dared to defuse Mrs Beddoes’s fears about my leaky self by turning them into a joke. The game with the Voodoo Lily didn’t seem quite so funny any more. Perhaps I had been tempting fate, giving Maya a poke in the ribs.

In fact Mrs Beddoes took my emergency laundry in her stride, returning the bar towels (those flags of my disgrace) neatly folded, along with my trousers clean and fresh.

One comfort was that my relationship with my tutor was so poor that nothing could damage it. When I had paid that visit to his home in Barton, and the secrets of his kitchen’s undersurfaces were laid bare to me, we had been on better terms. This was statutory university hospitality, and a group of us had been invited. I had been hoping for a spot of sherry myself. As holy water to the baby’s head, so sherry to the undergraduate throat. It is the sacramentally required liquid. What hope for the christening when the font is full of Lucozade?