I couldn’t reasonably hope to develop wings of my own. I’d have settled for claws — anything to help me maintain my grip on my little world. At this point I was dangling desperately, a tree-shrew hanging on by its tail to the slender twig of what it knows. A cedilla clinging for dear life to the letter c without which it can’t exist. I didn’t feel as if I was writing the book of my life, I didn’t even think I was reading it. I felt like an insect crawling across its pages, who would be squashed flat when the volume was shut.
I felt as necessary to the world at large as dandruff. I still had dandruff, and I knew how little I’d miss it if it went.
Of course what I was feeling wasn’t unique. The heir to the throne had experienced something similar in outline three years previously, as his own graduation approached. His anguish didn’t paint the air, so why should mine? We live in a democracy, after all.
Our experiences were similar in outline, very different in colour. For Prince Charles his years at Cambridge were a freer time than any he had known, or was likely to know again. Cambridge had been a sort of respite home for him. With his degree under his belt, he was back where he started, as Muggins Windsor, heir to the throne. It’s well known that the great self-enquiry, the vichara, is particularly hard for those who have been strongly cast in a rôle by ‘life’. In that respect I had all the advantages.
I slightly regretted not having overlapped at university with the Prince, though I came across quite a few people who had met him. It would have been lovely to get him to carry me to the lavatory, or up and down stairs. I’m sure I wouldn’t have had to remind him that his motto was Ich Dien. I serve … We live in a democracy, after all.
It was a great thing, or so I told myself, to be able to study for my Finals without any impulse to panic, knowing that the results wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference to my future. There was a further lining (tin, perhaps, or pewter) to the dark clouds hanging over my future, namely: the answer to the question ‘What will I be doing for a living?’ had been answered. I would be doing nothing, supported by a State which understood that my value was not to be measured by narrow criteria. And this suggested the obvious answer to another question, ‘Where will I be living?’ I would be living in accommodation arranged for me by local government. There would be some paperwork to be managed, but there was a system in place to support me.
The local authorities didn’t quite see it that way. Which local authority, anyway? Where did I belong? Depending on which way you looked at it, I belonged either with the other Cromers or with the other graduates of my year. Having a choice of two possible home addresses turned out to be a fancy way of being of no fixed abode, of loitering without the faintest intent. I applied to Cambridge, but the choice wasn’t mine to make, apparently.
There was much correspondence on this subject. It was almost flattering. Two authorities were competing not to take responsibility for me. It certainly made me feel important.
I got hold of a copy of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act and tried to find potential leverage in that text. The most cheering thing about the whole document was that it was authorised by ‘the Lords Spiritual and Temporal’. With spiritual authorities in my corner, it seemed clear that there would be a happy outcome.
I followed some of the bureaucratic tussle as if it was a tennis match in extreme slow motion. My case was bounced back and forth. Cambridge felt that I should be housed near my family (and far from Cambridge). Well played! Surely that was an ace?
Crawling with asbestos
Then High Wycombe argued that I should stay in Cambridge because I was more likely to get started on a career there. Brilliant return! Phenomenal racket control!
It was mentioned that High Wycombe had a very limited number of ‘units’ available, all of which had been allocated to applicants with needs far greater than mine. I’d driven past such units more than once. They were flimsy and draughty-looking pre-fabs, the sort of thing that gets built as a temporary measure and never demolished, unless it turns out to be crawling with asbestos.
During all these exchanges I tried to pretend I was the umpire and to forget that I was actually the bloody ball.
The only thing the two authorities were able to agree on was that it might be best for me to go back to CRX. Back into the cage of my childhood. Oh, I say! Very poor play, gentlemen. Highly unsporting. Not tennis, and not cricket.
There was another episode of sneaky manœuvring: while the two local authorities were knocking me back and forth so happily, playing their best administrative tennis for the privilege of not housing me, High Wycombe had the bright idea of applying on my behalf to the Cheshire Home in Gerrards Cross, with a view to getting me installed as a permanent resident.
The first I heard about it was when Martha Green phoned me up from the Home to break the bad news that I hadn’t made the grade. Bad news. That was the way we played it. Dreadful pity. Sad turn of events. She read out the saddening verdict on my personality and its unsuitability for communal life: ‘I’m afraid that John is something of a disruptive presence, rather too unconventional for the peace of mind of the other residents.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I knew you’d be disheartened.’
‘It’s rather a blow.’
‘I wish there was something I could do.’ She’d already done me the immense good turn of organising the veto, making sure the rejection wasn’t scuppered by a misguided softening or any sort of plea for a second chance.
We kept up the charade of disappointment for as long as we could. Then I became aware of a dusty tinkling coming down the line. After a moment or two I realised that the bureaucrat-gypsy Martha must be wearing one of her favourite scarves, which had coins sewn into the hem, and was shaking with suppressed laughter, until a coughing fit flushed the hilarity out into the open.
It had been at the back of my mind, when I went to the Cheshire Home for my respite break, that this was a sort of trial run or probationary visit. I might be expected to live at Gerrards Cross sometime in the future. I think I can honestly say that I took no particular pains to make myself unacceptable. It was without ulterior motive that I blotted my copy-book, though the resulting disgrace certainly came in handy. My bad behaviour was disinterested and long overdue. I squeezed a lot of adolescence into a short span of days.
In terms of respite the Home gave me what I needed. If I had ended up living there I would have lost my vitality bit by bit, or else been frozen in a posture of rebellion against my surroundings, which is only another way (admittedly more seductive) of becoming institutionalised.
The pans of the scales seemed to be evenly balanced between the two authorities, so I decided I must hurl my trusty typewriter down onto the Cambridge side. I charged the ribbon of the Smith-Corona with its most irresistible ink and wrote a letter to my MP, appealing for help with my housing ‘difficulties’. To prevail over Cambridge I had to appeal to High Wycombe, since that was where I was a constituent, but I couldn’t be choosy about what tiny leverage I had. The MP for High Wycombe, Sir John Hall, wrote back in charming and eloquent terms, though I don’t know whether he actually did anything. If he did, it amounted to foisting me definitively on Cambridge. Wearily they accepted responsibility for me, and wearily I accepted their acceptance. Then all I had to do was wait to hear the details of my new home.