Travelling to Infinity (20 page)

Only once before had Robert’s health given cause for anxiety. The previous winter we had gone with the Ellises to Majorca for a week’s holiday over the New Year. We had barely
arrived when Robert fell seriously ill with a virulent strain of Spanish tummy which confined us to the hotel room for the whole duration of the stay. Unable to digest even plain water he wasted
away before our eyes like the innocent child victims of the Biafran war in Nigeria, while the local doctor debated whether to take him into hospital or send us back home in advance of the rest of
the party. As soon as the plane touched down at Gatwick, Robert began to make a miraculous recovery. By the time we reached my parents’ house in St Albans, he was ready to play his favourite
game of emptying all the tins from the cupboard and rolling them across the kitchen floor. That episode had been harrowing but this was far worse; the worst agony imaginable, the agony of watching
one’s child die.

They tied Robert down in a cot in a partitioned room on the children’s ward and beckoned me to a chair in a corner. He tossed violently under the restraints placed across the cot to
prevent him hurting himself. Mechanically I sat down, too numbed to speak or think or weep. Life drained away from my own body as our beautiful, darling child, our most precious possession, sank
into a deep coma. This child had astounded everyone with his beauty, his happy nature and his liveliness. He was the living personification of all that was good and positive in our world and our
relationship. I, and Stephen too, loved him more than anything else. We had created him out of love, I had given birth to him and we had nurtured him with passionate love and care. Now we seemed to
be losing him through a combination of circumstances – my tiredness, his energy and the inadequacy of the precautions that we had taken for his safety. If he died, I should die too. My brain
was capable of formulating only a single thought expressed in half a dozen words. They revolved round and round in my head, stuck in a single groove, to the exclusion of all else: “Please
God, don’t let him die. Please God, don’t let him die. Please God...”

Every so often a nurse would come in to check Robert’s breathing and his pulse. Pursing her lips, she would tiptoe away again while I, blankly staring into cold, empty space, stayed in my
corner clinging to my formula, repeating it over and over again. Some hours later, the Ward Sister came in. She went through the customary procedures and then, instead of tiptoeing away, pronounced
that Robert was in a relatively stable though still critical condition. His state was not hopeful, all that could be said was that it was not deteriorating further. Coming to my senses at this
slightest of changes, I was shocked to remember that I had left Stephen alone in the house, scarcely able to look after himself. Where was I most needed – here in the hospital with my
comatose infant son, or at home with my disabled husband who, without my help, might fall or hurt himself or choke? I must have mumbled a few intelligible words to the sister because she sent me
out to check up on Stephen. I ran down the road through the fine grey drizzle to look for him.

Thankfully George had come in to help him get up and had taken him to work. By this stage he was having lunch in the University Centre, desperate for news but not knowing where to find us. I sat
with him for a short while. There was nothing we could say to comfort each other, because there was no comfort to be had in our situation, except that we both shared the same sense of utter, bleak
devastation, enveloped in an unremitting pall of greyness. I watched as Stephen ate his lunch. I could not even bring myself to drink a glass of water. It seemed pointless to try. There was no
reason to stay alive. How could I live with such grief? We were crossing the threshold into that dark chasm where all hope is abandoned.

Scarcely daring to return to the hospital, I left Stephen in George’s care. I entered the ward fearful of what I might find. All was silent. A young nurse followed me as I tiptoed into
Robert’s room. He was there in the cot, still alive. He was asleep, lying quietly on his back, as beatific as a Bellini cherub. To my surprise the nurse’s face lit up with a smile as
she pointed to the sleeping child. “Look, he’s breathing normally now. He’s sleeping it off, and soon he’ll come out of the coma, he’s past the worse,” she said.
Only tears, not words, could describe my feelings, tears of gratitude and relief. “You’ll be able to take him home when he wakes up,” the nurse continued – in a matter of
fact fashion, as if this was just one more crisis in her busy routine, now thankfully resolved. I rang Stephen to tell him the good news, and at half-past three Robert began to wake up. “You
can take him home now,” they said. Within ten minutes he was discharged and we stepped out into the vivid reality of our everyday lives. Once back home, we sent word to our neighbours to come
and join us for a celebration. They all came and we watched silently as if in a trance while Robert and Inigo pushed their toy cars round the floor, unconcerned and totally unaware of the
day’s drama.

That day Robert survived, but a little bit of me died. Some, though not all, of that extravagant youthful optimism which had fired me with so much enthusiasm now lay buried beneath a heavy
burden of anxiety, that dull care in its ravelled sleave, which once it infects the mind is never banished. I had come so dangerously close to the worst catastrophe that a mother can bear –
the loss of her child – that I became neurotically protective, often perhaps irritating Robert and his siblings by my concern for their safety.

Luckily the experience seemed to have left Robert unscathed. Nor did it reduce in any way his fund of energy, as our visit to a conference in Switzerland the following spring aptly demonstrated.
While Stephen spent his days plunged into the murky past of the universe in the conference centre at Gwatt on the shores of Lake Thun, Robert and I went walking. This was where Robert discovered
his passion for the mountains, the true outlet for his climbing instincts. When, later that week, we and the Ellises spent a few days in the family hotel at Hohfluh, high above the Aare valley
where I used to stay with my parents, Robert was in his element. More than once, at less than three years old, he insisted on scrambling up as far as the snowline while I, several months pregnant
again, plodded along behind.

A less dramatic crisis than Robert’s calamitous encounter with the medicines loomed over us as the 1960s drew to a close: Stephen’s Research Fellowship –
which had already been renewed for a further term of two years in 1967 – was in 1969 about to expire. There was no mechanism for renewing it yet again, but because Stephen was unable to
lecture, he could not follow the normal course of most other Research Fellows and apply for a university teaching post. Nor was there any point in expecting a full Fellowship, since College
Fellowships, as opposed to Research Fellowships, are not salaried appointments but simply offer membership of an exclusive dining club, albeit a highly intellectual one, founded – it goes
without saying – on the most estimable educational principles.

In 1968 Stephen had become a member of the newly opened Institute of Astronomy, a long single-storeyed building, luxuriously fitted out and set among trees in green fields in the grounds of the
Observatory, on the Madingley Road outside Cambridge. This accorded him an office, which he shared with Brandon, and a desk – but it did not provide him with a salary, and it was unlikely to
do so for as long as Fred Hoyle remained its director, since he had never forgiven Stephen for his notorious intervention at the Royal Society lecture some years before. Unlike in America, paid
research posts in Britain were few and far between.

Such was the excitement generated by black-hole research over the past four years, however, that Stephen did not lack powerful advocates: Dennis Sciama willingly took up the challenge, as did
Hermann Bondi, whose help my father enlisted on our behalf. It was rumoured that King’s College had a salaried Senior Research Fellowship, which the governing body were prepared to offer
Stephen. The authorities of Gonville and Caius bridled at these rumours and stepped in with a special category of Fellowship, a six-year Fellowship for Distinction in Science, before King’s
had a chance to make their offer.

With a secure job and a steady income, it was time for us to review our living arrangements. Although we drove out to the villages at weekends prospecting for suitable properties, we constantly
came up against the intractable problem of transport: if we bought a new house in a village, even the closest village, I should have to drive Stephen to work every morning and collect him every
evening, and such pressure could become irksome, especially with two small children in tow. It was impossible to better our situation in Little St Mary’s Lane. With help, Stephen could still
walk to work in the Department in the mornings, though occasionally he would get a lift out to the Institute in the afternoons for seminars and discussions with Brandon. For Robert there was a
delightfully old-fashioned playgroup close at hand in the Quaker Meeting House, just across the fen, and the University Library – as and when I managed to find the time and the energy to work
there – was within five minutes’ cycling distance. We were within a stone’s throw of the centre of the city, and the churchyard not only catered perfectly for Robert’s
outdoor needs but also fulfilled my gardening aspirations. The only drawback was that the house was so small and decrepit, despite my attempts to redecorate it.

Our enterprising friends, George and Sue Ellis, had bought and renovated a house at Cottenham, a fen village outside Cambridge, and Brandon and Lucette had done the same to their dream cottage
out in the heart of the country soon after their marriage in 1969. Even in Little St Mary’s Lane, various neighbours had cleverly enlarged and renovated their previously ramshackle dwellings,
making sizeable, attractive townhouses of them, and at number 5 the author and biographer of Rose Macaulay, Constance Babington-Smith, had imaginatively adapted the limited space in her narrow
house to meet her bookish requirements. Having seen, with a tinge of envy, how versatile the houses could be, we realized that ours was no exception. However, we were caught in the proverbial
catch-22 situation. We had saved enough money for a deposit on a mortgage for a new property, and council grants were available for the renovation of old properties, but because of its age our
house did not qualify for a mortgage and, of course, the College on the advice of its land agent had dismissed the property as a bad investment.

As we were mulling over this dilemma, a change of policy on the part of our building society removed the problem altogether, and mortgages – at a higher rate of interest – became
available on older properties. An agreed mortgage from a building society had the added advantage that it would qualify us for an extra loan – at a low rate of interest – from the
university. Quite suddenly, everything started to fall into place, though Stephen was sceptical. It seemed to me, as I pored with pencil and ruler over scraps of paper, that some of the ideas used
by our neighbours along the lane could well be incorporated into our house to enlarge and renovate it. On the ground floor there could be an elegant through-room from front to back by making two
rooms into one, with a new kitchen out at one side of the yard, while the first and second floors could be remodelled to provide a new bathroom, bedrooms and a roof garden. A retired surveyor, the
aptly named Mr Thrift, who proved to be a true and also genial master of his profession, drew up detailed plans which enlarged the house seemingly beyond the bounds of probability, exploiting every
inch of space.

He and I investigated grants – both improvement grants and grants for the disabled – and as soon as we had our draft plans ready laid, we were able to apply to a building society for
a mortgage. Unlike the odious college land agent, the building society surveyor cheerfully inspected the house and, glancing at the proposed plans, nodded. “It’ll be quite charming,
won’t it?” he said, indicating that he would readily approve the property for a mortgage. We were now able to approach our landlady again with a more realistic offer for the house, and
this time she accepted. It really seemed that all things were possible. But we had scant opportunity to enjoy being householders: shortly after we had signed the completion, all the furniture had
to be stored away in the front bedrooms, and we ourselves had to move out to allow the builders to invade our property. Further loans, including a generous one from Stephen’s parents, and
improvement grants were enabling us to embark on a major rebuilding programme.

George and Sue Ellis, with Maggie and one-year-old Andy, had gone to spend six months in Chicago, the home of the highly respected Indian theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner, Professor
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and his wife, Lola. Chandrasekhar, though a Fellow of Trinity College, had been forced to seek a post in America after being humiliated by his close friend Arthur
Eddington at the Royal Astronomical Society in 1933. Chandrasekhar had anticipated black-hole research by predicting the ultimate collapse of massive stars under their own weight, only to have his
theory scathingly ridiculed by Eddington and the astronomy establishment. In Chicago, the Chandrasekhars lived in the sort of style which only a childless couple can maintain. Everything in their
quietly secluded flat was as white as snow: a thick-piled white carpet, a white sofa and chairs, white curtains – all in all, a white nightmare for a visiting mother, like Sue, with very
small children whose fingers were permanently smeared in sticky chocolate.

Meanwhile, we gratefully took over the Ellises’ eminently practical, child-oriented, converted country cottage in Cottenham for the duration of the renovations to 6 Little St Mary’s
Lane. It was only through living in the country that I fully understood the convenience of living in town. The house was delightful but the isolation was distressing, particularly because I felt
sick all day throughout the pregnancy. Stephen had to be driven into Cambridge to the department each morning and collected in the evening, except on those occasions when he was ready in time to
catch a lift with other Cottenham commuter neighbours. Robert was unsettled, missing both Inigo and his playgroup, while I sorely missed my friends in the lane, especially the Thatchers, and all
attempts to work on my thesis were quite futile. My depression was not eased by the constant pounding of the news reports from the Middle East, which suggested that another confrontation between
the Egyptians and the Israelis – and consequently between the superpowers – was imminent. Not only were the two countries regularly raiding each other’s territory, but also a new
aspect of war had reared its ugly head in the hijacking of civilian airliners. I became tense and irritable, and, I am ashamed to say, short-tempered with my nearest and dearest: with Stephen, with
Robert and, to my lasting regret, with my dearly loved, but very slow-moving grandmother, who came from Norwich to stay with us for one very hot, enervating week.