Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

It wasn’t Lucozade that Dr Beamish had provided for his moral tutees but something just as inappropriate. Tinned beer. That’s no poculum sacrum ! That doesn’t begin to qualify as a holy tipple.

He had chosen a strange moment to drop the mask of fuddy-duddydom. Perhaps the charade was harder to keep up on his home turf, with his baby daughter screaming heartily from upstairs.

He was a besotted father, as well as perhaps a sleepless one, which would explain why he failed to censor himself while rhapsodising about the joys of fatherhood. ‘It’s the most amazing thing,’ he said, ‘not something I expected at all. Maybe with a boy but not a girl. She plays with herself the whole time. She never stops! It’s wonderful the way she fiddles with herself, just strumming away day and night!’ His voice had all the dry wonder of Patrick Moore’s on The Sky At Night describing a new constellation.

There was silence sudden and total. The professor’s dry-as-dust mask had dropped good and proper, and all parties were immediately frantic for it to be back in place again. We wanted freeze peach, but only for our generation. Graëme faltered, but made a noble attempt at recovery by saying, ‘As a scientist I’m fascinated … there’s more to life than crystalline solids, after all!’ Then he started refilling people’s glasses. Normal service of bufferdom resumed as if nothing had happened.

It had been his one experiment in talking to a group of students as if they were adults and equals. He didn’t make that mistake again. His donnish persona had its disadvantages, but at least it saved him from enthusing in public over the fiddling habits of his little girl.

Regimental goat

After the evening of Write Off Tuesday, I never parked the Mini in that favoured spot again. I never crossed the pub’s doors, nor sounded my horn for admission in the ceremonial style that had become customary. I dropped Kerry Bashford a postcard thanking him for his many kindnesses, but I never learned whether he was working his slow and appreciative way through the whole canon, or had special reasons for choosing Howards End . I never deepened my knowledge of the effects of a Jehovah’s Witness upbringing on the resilient young, because I never saw him again. I forfeited the precious sense of welcome I had when Kerry settled me at a table and went to pour the half of Abbot Ale with the proper solemnity.

I had been a well-known figure in my way at the Cambridge Arms, pontificating about cannabinoids, hops and the Houses of Parliament, but I had been press-ganged into a lunatic troop under everyone’s nose. This was my fault. Had Write Off Tuesday even noticed that they were kidnapping me? They simply didn’t classify me as a creature that might have ideas of its own, and yes, I was responsible. I had made it happen. Yes, they had been drunk and out of control, but I had conspired with them against myself.

That was the point. Brooding on the incident afterwards, long after any taint had cleared from the wheelchair, I had to see their side of things. They hadn’t turned me into a mascot. I was a mascot already. I had volunteered. I had turned myself into a character in the Cambridge Arms public bar, pronouncing on the quality of the ale while people tried not to look at the way I ate peanuts.

The answer was in my hands. No more pretence of belonging to a place or an institution. I would have to change my ways. I must refuse the rôle of mascot. Once you’ve accepted mascot status no later refusal is possible. I must find a part to play less demeaning than the gonk on a teenaged girl’s counterpane, or the regimental goat trotted out on parade, presiding ceremonially over rituals in which it has no part.

Perversely, the incident pushed me in a direction that I had refused for a long time. It made no sense to be living in fear of attending a Gay Liberation meeting, when a quiet half-pint in a familiar pub could lead inexorably to incontinence, social disgrace and vomit in the treads of my tyres. I wasn’t safe anywhere, so I had no excuse for not living dangerously.

Since I had been unable to locate the Monarchist League, with its promise of groping without slogans, I would have to make my peace with CHAPs. The organisation’s contact details were given in many student magazines, and even the Varsity Handbook. There was a telephone number, but I couldn’t imagine explaining my history and situation down a wire to a stranger in the exposed acoustic of the Porter’s Lodge. There was an address also, in Glisson Road, where a meeting was held on alternate Tuesdays.

I made myself ready to attend my first gay group meeting like someone preparing a suicide, making sure the garage is airtight or that the beam will bear a noose. I looked up the address on the map, and made a few recces and dummy runs. I realised that there could be no question of hitch-lifting on this occasion. I could just about face an appointment with my unknown peers, but I couldn’t imagine hijacking a passer-by to help me make the transfer from car to wheelchair to front door, and then having to explain everyone to everyone else. Sexual panic was plenty without social embarrassment on top.

On this occasion I would have to make my own way from car to front door. It followed that I would be dispensing with the wheelchair and proceeding under my own power, with crutch and cane. It was just about possible that I would be swept along on a tide of arriving Uranians, frolicsome intermediates with jewels in their hair who would swirl me up the steps and into the premises without me having to say a single word, but it made sense not to bank on it.

In fact when I arrived in the car there was no one on the street. I was able to park only a few feet from the house, and made my way laboriously out of the car and on to the pavement. While I was struggling, a pedestrian appeared, a woman pulling a shopping trolley. She stopped and peered into the Mini’s interior, almost leaning over me in her desire to inspect the coachwork. I imagine she had been brought up with the idea that it was rude to stare at people, and was desperately trying to find an innocent object for her curiosity. Not finding one, she smiled uncertainly and went on her way.

It took me a little time to reach the door. There was a bell-push. Should I use it, or rap on the door with my cane? Which was it to be? Rat-a-tat-tat or Rrring rrring ? I hadn’t considered these options in advance. If I used the cane on the door perhaps the assembled inverts would panic, suspecting a police raid, and escape round the back. I decided on the bell, but couldn’t get a sound out of it with the tip of the cane. Perhaps its mechanism required greater force or a better angle. I would have to climb up. There was only a low step leading up to the front door, but that was enough to make the attempt a bit of an expedition. This felt appropriate. It seemed to fit. The hero confronts his fears and enters the lions’ den unarmed. He shouldn’t expect a butler with a ramp or a block and tackle.

I decided that my ascent of the step was best managed with my back to the wall. That felt safest — falling backwards is a frightening prospect. I would turn round again when I had reached the proper level. I approached the step from the side. By leaning away I might be able to raise my foot to the right level. My new hips were splendid pieces of equipment. They would surely power this contortion. It more or less worked. I got one foot up onto the step. It was the next move that defeated me. The angle between my legs was already at its maximum. How was I going to shuffle along until I could (somehow) hoick up the other foot?

I was standing there, unstable and stranded, when a man approached the doorway from the street. There was something ghostly about his appearance. He was wearing a white suit, and there was hardly more colour in his face than in his costume. He departed from the human norms in other ways. If he was ghostly, then he also seemed mechanical. He was like a dapper robot. This apparition looked at me entirely blankly, then turned the door-knob and walked in. He didn’t slam the door, but it closed against me with what felt like a click of ultimate exclusion. So much for the welcome of my peers.