One Chance (11 page)

I was discharged for care at home and spent two weeks in a collar and wheelchair. Despite the discomfort, I went to Newmann Hall to watch the Bristol Catholic Players' production of
HMS Pinafore
. I sat in pride of place in the middle of the hall in my wheelchair. The funniest thing was that the hall had a toilet for the disabled, but I parked my wheelchair outside it, got out, and used the ordinary males' toilet. This got a few titters from the regulars at the club.

After the half-term, I visited my family physician, Dr. Cussens. He told me that I should really not be taking my exams in the
condition I was in, but agreed to write a letter to the examination board so they could take my condition into account. But then at ten thirty that night, the phone at home rang. It was the head of sixth form.

“Don't bother revising now,” she told me, “but you have your first A-level examination at nine tomorrow morning.”

I was shocked. I had asked several times for the dates of the exams, but no information was given to me. Worse still, I had asked about sitting all my exams in the main hall so I wouldn't have to climb the stairs to the top floor where my exams were due to take place. Despite my condition, I was told they couldn't guarantee this.

Sure enough, I arrived at the school the following morning and was told that it wasn't possible for me to take any of my exams in the main hall, as all the places were full. I shrugged my shoulders and struggled my way up eight flights of steps to the top floor. I handed in my doctor's note to the examinations teacher, and sat down. Every one of my six exams would be sat on that top floor. There were no lifts, and this meant that I sat every paper in absolute agony. I didn't tell anyone at home about the situation. Every problem I faced in life, I felt I had to solve myself.

I did my best, but I wasn't able to concentrate because of the pain. My doctor was right: I should never have sat the exams. The only successful one was my American studies GCSE, which I got a C in, but much of that was gained through the coursework I had done over the last two years. For the others, I had the ignominy of two unclassified A-levels. I later found out that the examinations teacher had decided not to send in my doctor's
note: he felt that I hadn't worked for my A-levels, so I deserved no discretion.

I almost gave up on my A-levels because of how angry I was with the school for its lack of support. Thankfully I did persevere, and successfully retook them the following January, after having interviews for university colleges in Chester, Southampton, and Plymouth. When I applied to the University College of St. Mark and St. John in Plymouth, I was accepted on the condition that I pass my A-levels. When I saw the examinations teacher, he made a point of saying, “You worked for them this time. Well done.” I didn't tell him that I had actually handed in
less
work.

I finally had the qualifications to go to university. At this point, my plans were to aim at a career in retail management. With professional singing discounted as a possibility, this seemed a safe, reliable, and very low-risk strategy. The question for me was whether, after all the trials of school, I would be allowed a completely new beginning at university. I certainly hoped so.

PART TWO

Struggles

CHAPTER SIX

Off to University

I
'M STILL NOT SURE
how we managed to get everything into the car. My parents had hired an estate, or station wagon, for the trip to take me down to university. Even so, with all the boxes of books, clothes, and other belongings, it was still a tight squeeze. With the exception of Jane and John, my whole family was squashed into the car to take me down to Plymouth, eager to see where I would be spending the next three years of my life.

We took the scenic route down from Bristol, avoiding the motorway and sticking to the smaller roads. It was a late September day, and the Devon countryside looked beautiful in the autumn sunshine. As we went round Exeter, and followed the road across the windswept beauty of Dartmoor, I stared out of the window and wondered what university life would be like.

I'd chosen to study philosophy, theology, history, film, and television as part of a BA with honours humanities degree at the College of St. Mark and St. John, known affectionately as Marjons.
Many people at church had argued against my studying philosophy, as they were worried it would cause me to question my faith. My response was that if my faith didn't survive my own questioning, then it wasn't strong enough to survive anything else.

As the hire car pulled into Plymouth, I immediately knew this was a place I would grow to love. Plymouth, like Bristol, is another vibrant southwest city, a hundred-odd miles further south down on the Devon coast. Plymouth is an important English port that has long played its part in history. It was here that Sir Francis Drake was famously told of the arrival of the Spanish Armada in 1588; legend has it that he finished his game of bowls before responding. It was here, too, in 1620, that the Pilgrim Fathers set off for the New World. Like Portsmouth, where I enjoyed so many summer holidays, Plymouth is today an important naval centre: HMNB Devonport in the west of the city is the largest naval base in Western Europe.

I was attracted by the rugged coastline and the historic Barbican area close to the seafront. Yes, it rained a lot, but it was not too far from home and at the same time far enough away for me to feel that I was having a new start. I was happier there than I had been at school. I still struggled a little in meeting people and being in crowds, but there was none of the name calling and bullying I had been subjected to at St. Mary Redcliffe. I made some good friends, the closest of which was a fellow named Phillip. He and his friend Neil would be my housemates in years two and three.

I enjoyed my studies and the challenges, particularly film and television studies and philosophy, but by the end of the first year
I had to drop a subject. We had been studying the Renaissance, and although I enjoyed studying the art and texts such as Machiavelli's
The Prince
, I decided to drop history. It was a tough decision to make as I enjoyed History, but I felt that a new subject, film and television studies, would give me a new direction.

My favourite thing about film and television was that I got to study some of the greatest movies of all time, such as
Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice
, and
Unforgiven
. I liked the film noir period of the 1930s and 1940s because it had a mood that was easy to identify; there was a darkness about the films, a sinister undertone. But my favourites were from the kitchen-sink drama era of British cinema in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I loved films like
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
and
Room at the Top
, which were both entertaining and shocking; the films dealt with controversial issues of the time such as abortion and mixed-race relationships. My favourite film of all was Tony Richardson's
Look Back in Anger
; Richard Burton was brilliant, shocking, and nasty all at once. I loved watching and learning about these films, and it rarely felt like work at all.

Philosophy was one of my favourite subjects for a different reason. It was genuinely challenging, yet there was never a right or a wrong answer. We were free to have open debates, and we studied things as varied as the Thatcher years and their relationship to morality, and whether her successor John Major's “classless society” was an achievable aim. I think by far the most difficult book I studied in philosophy was Søren Kierkegaard's
Either/Or
. I'm not sure I ever got my head round that one!

During this time, Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait was about to become all-out war. It was a worrying time because my
brother John was on HMS
Gloucester
. The
Gloucester
was to play a major part in the war, taking out an Exocet missile that had been aimed at the British fleet; it was also the ship that would have had to sacrifice itself if the USS
Missouri
was targeted.

As the war started, I was shocked at the jingoistic attitude amongst some of the students; to get extra money they had signed up to be reservists, and now they were scared they would be sent to war. I was concerned for my brother, whom I knew was in harm's way. I was listening to a lot of Chris de Burgh's music at the time, and on a piece of paper I wrote out part of his song “Borderline,” which talked about the futility of war, and taped it to my room door. It upset me when someone wrote underneath it that those in the armed forces were meant to lay down their lives for their country. It was a challenging time, but thankfully John returned unscathed three months later.

In the early evenings of my first few months at college, I could often be found waiting for the phone at the porter's lodge. This was before widely available mobile phones, so anyone who wanted to make a call joined the queue for one of the hall of residence's few call boxes. I'd have my phone card with me, something I seemed to be spending a small fortune on at the beginning of college. All of which was because, with my typical sense of timing, I had got into a relationship just before I went to university.

Allison was the daughter of some family friends. She was pretty, funny, fairly outgoing, and had very fair skin and red hair. I'd always had a thing for redheads, and I went out on a limb and asked Allison out on a Sunday after the communion service. I
waited by the church while Allison came back from helping her mum at Sunday school.

“Hi,” I said, somewhat awkwardly.

“Hi,” she replied.

“Fancy watching a film later in the week?”

“Sure,” she replied, to my huge relief. “What's showing?”

Allison was only the second girl I had been out with. My first relationship had been with Helen, a girl at Redcliffe school, and we were together for eighteen months. My father didn't approve, and we had a number of arguments about her. When we split up, I didn't tell him, as I didn't want to give him the satisfaction. I thought it was perhaps just because he didn't like Helen, but he had the same attitude toward Allison. We quickly became very close, and this bothered my father as he felt that our relationship might put the families' friendship in jeopardy. This left me feeling that I couldn't win. He also seemed to think that if I met someone, then I would somehow move away from our own family.

One particular date early on became memorable for all the wrong reasons: I was due to see Alli at the Golden Lion pub on Frenchay Common, and cycled into the centre of Bristol beforehand as I needed get a few odds and ends. I cycled down the main cycle route that ran on a disused railway. I got to the Lawrence Hill area, and was making good speed, when suddenly I was on the ground: I had collided head-on with a mountain bike.

The other guy's wheel was buckled but apart from that, unharmed. My bike, however, was a mangled mess, the frame completely twisted by the impact. I was rubbing off the dirt from my grazed hands when one of the people who had come over to help told me to look at my leg.

Blood was coming through my trouser leg. I pulled it up and was shocked by what I saw, because I had not felt any pain at all. In coming off the bike, I had landed on the pedals, which were made from sharp, jagged metal. I was looking at a gaping hole in my knee.

An ambulance was called and along with what remained of my bike, I was transported to Bristol Royal Infirmary. As I waited there, a doctor came in and had a look. I've never been squeamish, so the blood didn't bother me. The doctor got me to bend my knee and flex it again.

“Well, there's one consolation,” she said with a sigh.

“What's that?” I asked.

“You won't need to get into a queue for X-ray.”

Her words started to make sense when, after giving me seven injections of local anaesthetic into the area round my knee, she put her whole hand
into
my knee and started to feel around.

“No broken bones,” she concluded, “but you've cut your tendons and ligaments in half.”

It took thirty-five stitches inside my knee that would later dissolve, and twenty stitches on the outside that would need to be removed when the wound healed. I wanted to see Alli, and despite the anaesthetic wearing off, I stupidly walked the three miles to Frenchay to meet her and her friends. That night, I didn't sleep because of my exertions. My leg was in agony, and would take over a year to heal properly.

When I left to go to university, I found it difficult leaving Alli behind. She came down with me when I moved into the residence halls, and it was incredibly hard to say goodbye. We remained in the hallway for ages; I held on to Alli for as long as I could.

“Call me later,” Alli said.

“But I don't want you to go,” I said.

“I know,” said Alli, touching my cheek. “It won't be long before you're in my arms again, honest.”

Reluctantly I let her go. My room felt bare and empty.

I had a tendency to hold on too hard to someone I cared for, and to fall in love too hard, too quickly. I so desperately wanted to love and to be loved back. Being apart, therefore, brought pressure into our relationship.

I couldn't afford to go up to Bristol very often, so I spent lots of time corresponding with Alli by letter; we would regularly sign off with a quotation from a song. We also exchanged mix tapes. And whenever I could, I spoke to Alli at night, waiting my turn for the public phone to be free, phone card in hand.