Travelling to Infinity (38 page)

This was not a barrier that Don had anticipated when he came down to breakfast in the early days, armed with Bible and edifying tracts. I said nothing, leaving him to address his invisible
congregation as best he could. Shielded by the
Times
, Stephen would not be distracted from his perusal of current affairs, essential for a Fellow who prided himself on having the last word
in high-table discussions – whether about Britain’s precarious financial position shorn up by loans from the United States, or about the test runs of the Space Shuttle. I usually
managed little more than a quick glance at the headlines, whereas Stephen read slowly, mentally photographing and digesting every snippet of information, every fact and figure, for regurgitation on
some later occasion, probably at High Table.

As Don was finding his task heavy-going, it occurred to me that a distraction was needed, so I invited him to help himself to cornflakes, muesli, boiled eggs and toast, and asked if he had ever
tried Marmite. He picked up the round, brown jar with its yellow lid. “No, no, we don’t have this in the US; I guess it’s some kinda chocolate,” he replied, avidly ladling
thick spoonfuls of the dark, treacly substance onto his slice of toast. “Try it and see,” I said, whereupon he took a large bite. His open, childlike expression creased into wrinkles of
repulsion at the pungent, salty assault on his taste buds. Even Stephen looked up from the newspaper, his broad grin revealing those alluring dimples in his cheeks. Good-humouredly, after a
moment’s puzzlement, Don was able to take the joke in good part, and never again did he bring his proselytizing zeal to the breakfast table.

The great advantage of having an American from Caltech in residence was that whenever Stephen wanted to go to Los Angeles – or anywhere else in the United States for that matter – in
the interests of science, the American would want to go too. So although the following summer Stephen pressed me to accompany him to America for three weeks, Don was all too ready to go instead.
This unexpectedly easy solution to a previously intractable problem cleared the way for me to fulfil a longing which had lain dormant for many years. It was in fact thirteen years since I had set
foot on the Spanish mainland, and I longed to renew my contact with that country and its civilization, which had played such a significant role in my education before all my modest pretensions and
aspirations were swallowed up. Pleasantries exchanged on dining nights with the Spanish butler of Caius had scarcely sufficed to maintain my once fluent command of the spoken language, and over the
years that skill had dwindled pitifully to a handful of insubstantial polite formulae. The thesis was suffering from a serious lack of inspiration and motivation, partly on account of its length
which had become unwieldy, partly because of the huge quantities of scrappy notes which remained to be incorporated into some sort of order, and partly because the topics were so remote that I was
losing touch with them.

As always, my parents jumped at any suggestion of a holiday with their grandchildren, and together Dad and I planned an extensive tour through northern Spain and Portugal, coinciding here and
there with the
camino francés
, the old pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela. The mere exercise of planning brought back memories of those wonderful European holidays of old
– especially because my father, with his historian’s nose, had lost none of his talent for scenting out singular historical treasures which the ordinary tourist would have passed
by.

Once all the summer activities were out of the way – dinner parties for a mini-conference, barbecues, lunch parties, children’s tea parties, school sports days, college functions,
mundane but necessary considerations such as servicing the car and cleaning out the rented house for reletting, and, ultimately, a vicious attack of measles which put Lucy to bed just before the
end of term – Stephen left for California and we finally set sail for Bilbao. Although that grimy, industrial city on Spain’s northern coast gave us a damp, cloudy reception, my heart
leapt when I set foot on Spanish soil again. It continued to leap throughout that holiday, not only at the rediscovery of Spain, a liberated country where fascism was dead and democracy was
tentatively establishing itself, but also at perceptible glimpses of my former self, the once hopeful, adventurous teenager, long buried under a heap of exacting burdens and more urgent priorities.
By degrees I regained my grasp of the Spanish language, its grammar, syntax and vocabulary, for that too was part of my rediscovery. With its vitality the language reawakened my linguistic voice,
so long reduced to a timid silence by the oppressive weight of intellectual prejudice in Cambridge, where one soon learnt to keep quiet rather than make a fool of oneself.

Cities with sonorous names – Burgos, Salamanca, Santiago, León, Coimbra and Oporto – and extravagant cathedrals, medieval monasteries, Mozarabic chapels, pilgrimage
processions, sun-baked plains and gnarled olive groves blazed a trail of dazzling light and torrid heat into the chill drabness of our northern lives. In the rocky inlets, streams, pine trees and
mountains, I discovered the landscape and the living traditions of the
cantigas de amigo
. The sensation that the ponderous weight of scholarship that I was trying to mould into a thesis
had some basis in reality, that medieval studies were after all a more relevant, productive activity than collecting pebbles on the beach, gave me a tremendous boost. I promised myself that I would
finish the thesis, come what may, even though it might not lead anywhere, even though it might simply be an end in itself. I felt impatient to record all that I had seen and relate it to the texts,
but not so much so that I wanted to rush back to Cambridge before we had all squeezed every ounce of benefit from those weeks in Spain and Portugal. The children after all needed some compensation,
in the form of a few days by the sea, for all the hours they had spent uncomplainingly in the back of the car. Lucy, whose imagination was so fertile that she could keep herself and everyone else
amused no matter how long the journeys or how searing the heat, was fascinated by the cockle-shell motif of the pilgrim route to the tomb of St James at Santiago. She kept her eyes open for the
shell on buildings, statues and signs, letting out a yell of triumph whenever she spied one. Perhaps not surprisingly after so many religious monuments, she and Robert became pretty confused in
their grasp of the lives of the saints, with the result that, when we came down to the sea at Ofir in Portugal, they devised a crazy game in which Lucy played the part of John the Baptist,
drenching her brother with sea water – while he, wrapped in a towel, played the part of a stoical pilgrim en route to the tomb of St James. Any religious connotations to this game were,
needless to say, entirely spurious. While the children were engaged in this heretical and obstreperous pursuit, the one near-disaster of the holiday occurred when Dad found himself unwittingly shut
in his room by a faulty door lock. There was no telephone in the room and the only possible exit was via the balcony: the only way to get off his balcony was to leap across a seventy foot drop onto
ours and escape through our room. He joined us on the beach, bursting with pride at this daredevil achievement – which we all had to agree, with astonished amusement, was no mean feat for a
sixty-three-year-old.

In that autumn of 1977, with my mind once more fired with the glowing impressions of the Iberian Peninsula, I was determined to attack the thesis with fresh insight and vigour,
although the organization of the material remained daunting and time was still a crucial factor. Stephen returned from California to promotion – to a personal chair in gravitational physics.
His elevation to a professorship had implications beyond that of a modest salary increase, since the title and position assured him of enhanced respect and recognition wherever he went – with
a few exceptions, one of them within his own Department. His promotion coincided with the redecoration and refurbishment of the Department, and for some time he waited for the carpet – to
which as a professor he was entitled – to be laid in his office. After some months of waiting in vain, he decided to broach the matter with the Head of the Department, who tut-tutted
peevishly at his request. “Only professors are entitled to carpets,” he said. “But I am a professor!” Stephen remonstrated. Eventually, in somewhat belated confirmation of
his status, his professorial carpet arrived.

Carpets notwithstanding, Stephen was afraid that the appointment might put a distance between him and his students, but he took comfort in the fact that the physical help he required of them
disarmed any diffidence created by his lofty reputation. Although an undisputed intellectual potentate, he shuddered at the thought of conforming to the image of an establishment professor, aloof
from students and colleagues. He preferred the image of the eternal youth with the boyish grin, poking fun at the very authority of which he himself was now a part.

While Stephen’s physical condition may have been an effective equalizer in the sphere of the Department, his promotion, although welcome, created subtle problems for me in our dealings
with the world at large, not least because his growing reputation so totally exceeded our circumstances. Only our very closest friends realized that on the home scene the struggle for daily
survival continued unabated as before. Despite the pitiless onslaughts of motor-neuron disease, Stephen had become a national figure, the youngest Fellow of the Royal Society, the recipient of
umpteen awards and medals, Einstein’s successor and a professor at the University of Cambridge. The very paradox of his situation had made him the darling of the media. Not only in the
popular perception but also, I began to suspect, in the eyes of his own family, his success was proof that he had conquered motor-neuron disease and therefore the battle was won: we could not
possibly be in need of help. It was the most cruel irony that we had become the innocent victims of our own success. There was not simply a schism between the public face and the private image,
they were actually in conflict with each other. Certainly the public functions – like the memorable occasion in the summer of 1978 when Stephen received an honorary doctorate from the
University of Oxford – were enjoyable and gratifying, but that sort of limelight made not the slightest contribution to the help, both physical and emotional, which we needed more than ever
because motor-neuron disease had not been conquered; it was still advancing at a slow but relentless pace. To the immediate family circle, the effects were devastating and the demands punishing. I
could no longer keep up the pretence that it was just a background inconvenience, a fact of life. The disease dominated our lives and those of the children, in spite of all our efforts to uphold a
precious veneer of normality.

Initially bright then reserved, Robert was now becoming so withdrawn that I feared that he was suffering from depression, a condition which, according to my doctor, was not unknown in children.
For amusement he engrossed himself in computer manuals to the exclusion of other diversions. Stephen tried hard to fulfil his paternal role by buying elaborate electric train sets and complicated
lengths of track, which Robert was not skilful enough to operate. Even when his old friend Inigo brought his more advanced electrical knowledge to bear, the trains never ran smoothly and Robert
quickly lost interest. Apart from Inigo, who went to a different school, he had few friends and did not seem keen to cultivate new ones. It was obvious that Robert needed a male role model, someone
who would romp and tussle with him, someone who would ease him out of a childhood already lost into adolescence, someone who would not expect anything of him in return, least of all help with their
own physical requirements.

Lucy, effervescent and sociable, developed an early sense of independence, which enabled her to cultivate a wide circle of friends in which she found some compensations for the shortcomings of
her home life. From an early age she threw all her bubbling energies into a giddy social cycle of Brownies, swimming galas, Guide camps, sponsored runs, school plays and concerts and music and
drama at the Saturday Music for Fun Club, as well as innumerable parties. Doubtless her huge collection of soft toys, and the fantasy world which she and Lucy Grace Cadbury invented for their
Snoopy puppets, also played a part in helping her evolve subconscious methods for coping with her unusual background, though certainly she remained very sensitive to her circumstances. Both her age
and her sex enabled her to avoid the some of the pressures that were falling upon Robert’s shoulders.

My parents filled many of the gaps in the children’s lives with trips to London, tea at the Ritz and visits to the theatre. However, there was a deep hole in my own life, which I could not
even begin to broach to them. Thelma Thatcher was astute and forthright enough to identify it in one of her very last remarks to me before she died in the summer of 1976. “My dear,” she
said, leaning across her highly polished table and looking me straight in the eye, “I simply can’t imagine how you survive without a proper sex life.” I was so astounded by such
candour from an octogenarian that I could reply only with a shrug of the shoulders. I myself did not know the answer to her question, but my sense of loyalty to Stephen forbade any open discussion
of that topic, which for him was as taboo a subject as his illness. I did not allow myself to confide in Thelma Thatcher on that occasion and there was never another opportunity. Nevertheless I
badly needed a confidante in whose age and wisdom I could trust. Quite apart from the physical aspects, the marital relationship was acquiring profoundly irreconcilable undertones. Intellectually
Stephen was a towering giant who always insisted on his own infallibility and to whose genius I would always defer; bodily he was as helpless and as dependent as either of the children had been
when newborn. The functions I fulfilled for him were all those of a mother looking after a small child, responsible for every aspect of his being, including his appearance – only just short
of a nurse in that I refused to give injections or intervene in medical matters where I had no training. The problems were exacerbated by the sheer impossibility of talking about them. This was an
intrinsic part of his battle against disease, which, with better communication, we could have fought together, side by side, supporting each other and developing strategies for coping with the
difficulties. Instead it became an alienating force, bringing down a barrier of anguish between us.