Travelling to Infinity (21 page)

At last, against all expectation, the house, which for months had looked like a bomb site, while what was left of it was held up by a solitary metal pole, was in a sufficiently habitable state
for us to return to it in mid-October. It was not yet finished and each day brought a succession of different craftsmen, plumbers, plasterers, painters, electricians, all uncomfortably aware of the
protruding deadline – or rather lifeline – to which they had to conform. Once back at home, Stephen and Robert could resume their normal routines and I could get on with scrubbing
floors, rearranging furniture, hanging curtains and preparing the new back bedroom for the baby. This bedroom and a minuscule new bathroom alongside it occupied the space of the old sloping
bathroom on the first floor. They overlooked a roof garden above the kitchen, which had been built out as planned into the yard at the side of the house. The area of the old kitchen was now the
dining area of the through-room which extended from front to back, supported in the middle by a solid girder, mysteriously referred to as an RSJ. In the rear wall, constructed of mottled pink,
black and yellow old Cambridge bricks, Mr Thrift had reinstated the John Clark’s eighteenth-century plaque.

At the top of the house on the third floor behind Robert’s attic, there was a new room which on the plans had to be labelled a storeroom, because the ceiling was a few inches below the
statutory height for a habitable room, on account of a side window in the neighbouring property. However when the building inspector made his final survey, he cast his eyes round the room and
impassively commented, “This could be quite a nice bedroom, couldn’t it?” I hastened to point out to him, in no uncertain terms, that the room was full of boxes and suitcases in
recognition of its expressed purpose. Soon afterwards, the so-called storeroom found its true function as a magnificent playroom – safe, out of sight, out of earshot and out of mind.

A fortnight later, on 31st October, when the workmen had left, we gave a party and invited forty of our friends to squeeze into our house – a happy combination of old at the front and
brand new at the back. The excitement and the effort of putting on the party produced positive results, and the next day found me languishing in a state of some discomfort on the chaise longue
which I had just finished upholstering. That night I went into hospital, having decided that I would never again put myself and a new baby at the mercy of the crabby old midwives in the nursing
home, and insisting that this birth should take place attended by our serene, ever-smiling local midwife, in the maternity hospital.

In an unprecedented display of early-morning activity, I gave birth to a daughter, Lucy, at 8 a.m. on Monday 2nd November. Our midwife gave me all proper attention and then, naturally enough
after being on duty all night, went home, leaving the baby and me in the care of the hospital nurses. But 8 a.m. on a Monday morning was an unfortunate time to be born
.
As soon as the
nurses in attendance at the birth had washed and dressed the baby, they went off duty, leaving me stranded on the delivery table while the poor little creature – in the cot beside me but just
out of my reach – screamed until her face turned bright red. I longed to comfort her, but I had been instructed not to move and, in any case, in my postnatal daze, I feared I might drop her.
I lay cold and helpless on the hard table, distressed that the tiny red-faced infant in the cot was receiving such a rude introduction to life.

After two days in hospital I was ready and longing to go home – so ready that I had put my coat on and had wrapped my pretty little pink-faced doll, now much calmer, in warm lacy shawls
– when a doctor appeared and ordered me back into bed, explaining that he was going to attach me to a drip containing iron rations to replenish my own failing supplies before letting me go
home. Regretfully I obeyed and, instead of returning home to Stephen and Robert, I sadly took refuge in my book,
Buddenbrooks
, Thomas Mann’s saga of a Prussian family at the end of
the nineteenth century. My patience in the maternity hospital was rewarded the next day when Lucy and I went home, probably in much better shape thanks to the iron supplements that had been pumped
into me. It was good to be back in the lane, where in early November the last roses, sweeter and more intense than any roses in summer, were coming into bloom in the garden. Robert arrived home
from nursery school with Inigo, soon after midday. He flapped at the letter box, peering through it in excitement, and then rushed into the house, demanding, “Where’s the baby,
where’s the baby?” As soon as he saw his tiny sister lying on a rug on the floor, he went straight over to her and gave her a kiss. Thereafter, although Lucy, once she had acquired the
power of speech, hardly allowed him to get a word in edgeways, this fraternal relationship was one area where Dr Spock’s good advice was never called for as Robert showed not the least sign
of sibling rivalry.

Although Stephen’s father and brother, Edward, had gone to Louisiana for the academic year in the cause of tropical medicine, his mother had stayed in England to be in Cambridge over the
immediate period of Lucy’s birth, because Stephen was beginning to need much more help with his daily needs. He could still pull himself up the stairs, but his walking was so slow and
unsteady that he had recently, with the greatest distaste, at last taken to a wheelchair. In the four days of my absence in hospital, my substitute on the home front needed to be someone with
patience, understanding and stamina, whom Stephen could trust implicitly. George was his stalwart helper in the Department, but he had his own young family to go home to in the evenings, so
naturally Stephen preferred to have his mother look after him when I was out of action. She stayed on for a few days after my return home and was kind, good-humoured and energetic, if detached. The
routine was exacting: the shopping and the washing had to be done, the house cleaned, meals prepared and Robert and Stephen looked after single-handedly. The days since that one occasion when
Stephen had picked up a tea towel to help with the washing-up were long gone. His illness made it impossible for him to help with the running of the house, because there was nothing of a practical
nature that he could do. The advantage for him of this practical inability was that it allowed him unlimited time to indulge his driving passion for physics, which I accepted, because I knew that
he would never have willingly been distracted from it by the mundane considerations of cookery, housework and nappies, whatever his circumstances.

After my return home, my own mother took over from Isobel to enable her to join her family in America, where her restraining presence was urgently needed. In his detestation of reptiles,
Stephen’s father had disobeyed all local advice and had tackled a deadly cottonmouth snake with a broom handle in a fight to the death. Stephen was to visit his family in Louisiana in
December on his way to a conference in Texas, six weeks after Lucy’s birth, but it was agreed to my immense relief that he should go with George, and I should stay at home with the two
children.

When all the grandparents had left, our routine changed again, revolving around the baby and Stephen, with a great deal of willing help from three-year-old Robert, Inigo’s nanny and Thelma
Thatcher. I felt myself very blessed in my two thriving children. Stephen, however, was worried about Lucy. She slept for long periods during the day and, at night, was positively angelic, so much
so that he was convinced that there was something wrong with her. He expected all babies to be like Robert, active and energetic at all hours of the day and the night. I did not share this anxiety.
I thoroughly revelled in the blissfully quiet period after her birth which was one of the most stable, contented periods in our lives, especially welcome after the activity of the rebuilding
work.

The house was a delight in its brightly painted cleanliness and comparative spaciousness, and the baby a source of great joy; she was so tiny that I could hold her in the palm of one hand, and
so quiet that when the health visitor came to call, she did not even notice her lying beside me on the bed. Little Lucy observed conventional bedtimes, allowing me to run a fairly well-ordered
household, care for Stephen and Robert and sleep regular hours. At night I was also able to resume reading novels while Stephen was getting ready for bed. We agreed tacitly – since all
reference to his illness was offensive to him – that it was important for him to continue to do as much for himself as he could, even if that took time. He could undress himself once I had
loosened his shoelaces and undone his buttons, and then he would struggle out of his clothes and into his pyjamas while I lay reading, a precious luxury at the end of each long day. Stephen’s
night-time routine was a slow one, not only because of the physical constraints but also because his concentration was always directed elsewhere, usually onto a relativistic problem. One evening,
he took even longer than usual to get into bed, but it was not until the next morning that I found out why. That night, while putting his pyjamas on and visualizing the geometry of black holes in
his head, he had solved one of the major problems in black-hole research. The solution stated that if two black holes collide and form one, the surface area of the two combined cannot be smaller,
and must nearly always be larger, than the sum of the two initial black holes – or more concisely, whatever happens to a black hole, its surface area can never decrease in size. This solution
was to make Stephen, at the age of twenty-eight, the dominant figure in black-hole theory. As black holes had become a topic of general conversation, it was also to make him a recognized figure of
some fascination to the population at large. In Seattle we had been orbiting the newly named phenomenon, the black hole; now we had definitely crossed its event horizon, that boundary from which
there is no escape. The theory predicted that, once sucked across the event horizon, the unlucky traveller would be stretched and elongated like a piece of spaghetti, never to have any hope of
emerging or of leaving any indications as to his fate.

1970, the year of Lucy’s birth, saw the passing of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons’ Act. Though it was hailed across the world as a historic breakthrough
in asserting the rights of the disabled, the government refused to implement it fully for many years, leaving already hard-pressed individuals to conduct their own campaigns for its enforcement
locally. However it did give substance to our many complaints against the various public bodies whose buildings did not allow easy access to disabled people.

Carrying a small baby in a sling on my front while pushing Stephen in his wheelchair, with three-year-old Robert trotting alongside, I was in the vanguard of protesters, campaigning on behalf of
the disabled and their carers. A high kerb or a badly placed step, let alone a flight of steps, presented the sort of obstacle which could turn an otherwise manageable family outing into a
disaster. Not robust enough – at only seven-and-a-half stones – to surmount the obstacle unaided, I would have to lie in wait, hopefully scanning the vicinity for a male passerby from
whom I could solicit help. Then I would have to hand my baby over to any kindly lady who happened to be around. Together, the accosted male, Robert and I would heave the chair and its occupant up
or over the hurdle, always wary lest the helper should lift the wrong part of the chair – the armrest or the footrest – which might come away in his hand. Finally I would shower the
helper with gushing thanks before we continued on our way. Often to my relief, the helpers would volunteer before I had to importune them. Often, as they lifted the chair with Stephen in it, they
would ask in amazement, “What do you feed him on? He weighs a ton for such a slight chap.” “It’s all in his brain,” I would reply.

Our letters of protest to the City Surveyor were met with a superior disdain, reminiscent of Stephen’s early encounters with the bursars of Gonville and Caius. The City Surveyor had never
before heard of disabled people wanting to cross the city as far as Marks & Spencer to buy their own underwear, so he failed to see the need for such an expedition – as if disabled people
and their families had no right to venture that far. Injustice spurred us into action. Why should Stephen have to suffer restraints on his lifestyle other than those inflicted by an unkind Nature?
Why should short-sighted bureaucrats be allowed to make life doubly difficult for him, when he, unlike those smug officials, the scourge of Seventies’ Britain, was using his restricted
allowance of life to abundant advantage every day?

After many battles we succeeded in persuading the Arts Theatre and the cinema to make seating areas available for wheelchairs. The University began slowly to revise its provisions for access, as
did a few of the more liberal colleges. We took our campaign further afield – to the English National Opera at the Coliseum, where our needs were immediately acknowledged, and to the Royal
Opera House at Covent Garden, where help consisted of offloading the responsibility for wheelchair access to two elderly front-of-house attendants who, poor things, while struggling with Stephen up
the stairs to the stalls, dropped him. By a curious coincidence, the attitude of the City Council towards access for the disabled mellowed rapidly as Stephen’s fame grew, but that was long
after those strenuous years during which I pushed the wheelchair with two tiny children in tow.

Most of the colleges were slower to make adjustments, pleading poverty or the impracticality of adapting historic buildings without contravening conservation laws. Often, college dining halls
would be accessible only via the kitchens, with their treacherous obstacle courses of steaming vats, sizzling grills and laden trolleys, and creaking, smelly service lifts already laden with stacks
of crockery, trays of hors d’oeuvre and cases of wine. Then our late arrival at High Table would be greeted with pompous disdain, as if such disruptions were too frightfully embarrassing and
boring. Our battle with one college, so advanced in its eagerness to admit women but distinctly tardy in its attention to the requirements of the disabled, continued late into the Eighties.