Travelling to Infinity (44 page)

Luckily we were now able to afford the luxury of a nanny on a couple of mornings a week, so that I could see to all the administration involved in the production of the four bound copies of the
thesis demanded by officialdom. My helper, Christine Ikin, later christened Kikki by infant Tim, was also the mother of three children. She came in from the country as regularly as the
unpredictable bus service would allow, and cheerfully hoovered and cleaned and looked after the baby, while I contacted typists, proofread the results of their labours, collated hundreds of pages
and sought out bookbinders. My association with medieval Spanish poetry had run its course and was coming to a grand finale. Since the thesis did not hold out the promise of any very obvious
career, I had already reconciled myself to its being an end in itself rather than the means to greater advancement. In any case, a career was completely out of the question since ninety-nine per
cent of my attention had to remain focused on the home and the family. Somehow I had to divide that attention fairly between the children and their father while still finding time to keep my brain
alive.

Robert and Lucy were both finding it hard to adjust to new circumstances. Lucy now found herself in an uncertain situation in the middle of the family as neither the eldest nor the youngest
child, and not until Robert went away to another scout camp later in the summer did she show any interest in the baby. Then she was suddenly called upon to fetch and carry bottles, nappies, pins
and powder – chores that Robert had previously undertaken. At first she resisted defiantly, and then she burst into tears. At that moment I realized how badly she too had been affected by the
trauma we had undergone since little Tim’s arrival. Lucy had been left to fend for herself when in fact she needed as much reassurance as anyone else. I hugged her and told her that I had not
stopped loving her just because there was another person in the family to care for. She warmed to her little brother straight away, as if in all those miserable weeks she had been longing to show
her true feelings but had not known how. She fetched and carried just as willingly as Robert had done, and thereafter no one could have been more devoted to Tim or more susceptible to his winning
ways.

Robert had been very ill, and although he had made a good recovery and was back at school, he often seemed subdued and forgetful. Dyslexia was still a severe handicap in his schooling. The
school arranged a few sessions with an educational psychologist, who tried to instill into him techniques for coping with dyslexia, but she failed to identify the true extent of the problem. It was
not until many years later that I discovered that at the root of it lay an overwhelming sense of inadequacy. From a very early age he had become aware that his father was a scientific genius and
that people, in particular his teachers rather than his parents, had expectations of him that he knew he could not fulfil. His belief in himself swamped by self-doubt, his solution was not to
bother with his studies at all since he felt himself doomed to failure in the eyes of the world, however hard he tried. The saddest part of it was that from as young as seven years old, when he
first became aware that his father was a genius, he felt himself to be inferior. Robert had the doubtful advantage of a quick, scientific intelligence which destined him for a scientific career
without achieving his father’s fame. As for Lucy and Tim, they were later to suffer for not being scientific, and they were both acutely humiliated when told how disappointed their teachers
were in them. Really all three children were in a no-win situation. But although their teachers’ prejudices cast a passing shadow over their education, Lucy and Tim did not suffer as badly as
Robert, for whom the expectations of society in general cast the long shadow of his father’s reputation.

In the autumn of 1979 Stephen’s reputation was enhanced very publicly in Cambridge by his appointment to the coveted Lucasian Chair in Mathematics. The chair, endowed in 1663 with one
hundred pounds by Henry Lucas, was one of the most prestigious professorships in one of the most prestigious universities: it was Newton’s chair. Stephen was now unequivocally ranked with
Newton. He celebrated his elevation to the dizziest of academic heights by availing himself of the opportunity to give an inaugural lecture, a custom which had fallen into disuse, at least among
scientists. A student stood beside him on the stage of the Babbage lecture theatre and interpreted his speech, which had become so faint and so indistinct that only a handful of students,
colleagues and family could even begin to understand it. The rapt audience of scientists, many of them young hopefuls, strained to catch his utterances. The words were not designed to offer them
the comfortable prospect of a secure future, for Stephen gleefully predicted that the end of physics was in sight. The advent of faster and more sophisticated computers meant that by the end of the
century, in a mere twenty years’ time, all the major problems in physics would have been wound up, including the unified field theory, and there would be nothing left for physicists to do.
He, himself, would be all right, he declared jovially, as he would be retiring in the year 2009. The audience loved the joke, though I could not see that they really had much to laugh about...

Nor in fact did Stephen have much to laugh about. In summarily predicting the end of physics he had well and truly made himself a hostage to fortune, and his own Nemesis, the affronted goddess
of Physics, caught up with him very quickly. Just a few weeks later, the new decade opened very inauspiciously for us all, especially for Stephen. After Christmas we all went down with bad colds,
including the baby. By the New Year, the cold had settled on Stephen’s chest, racking his body with harrowing choking fits at every sip of water or every spoonful of finely chopped food, even
at every breath. These fits would come on at the end of the day and would last well into the night. Using the techniques I had learnt in yoga, I would try to encourage him to relax his throat
muscles by quietly and monotonously repeating calming phrases. Sometimes I would succeed and would register the change from gasping panic to regular breathing, as sleep took over his sad,
persecuted frame. Sometimes the sheer boredom of repetition would send me off into an interrupted doze while he continued to cough and wheeze beside me into the early hours. We would both be
drained by the next morning, though he with true courage would never admit as much and would embark on his normal schedule undeterred by the events of the previous night. While we all feared a
repetition of the 1976 bout of pneumonia, Stephen himself predictably would not let me call the doctor, nor would he take any patent medicines, since he was still scared that the sweetener in cough
linctus – even in sugar-free linctus – would irritate the lining of his throat and the cough-suppressant ingredients would either befuddle his brain or plummet him into a comatose
state. So he coughed and choked, and choked and coughed, day and night, while the baby snuffled and wailed with a blocked nose and I panted for breath, since I was feeling none too well myself.

As ever my mother promptly came over from St Albans to run the household, while Jonathan, Don and I tried against the odds to care for its ailing occupants. Mum insisted on sending me to bed, at
least in between the various tasks that I had to attend to. Bill Loveless paid me a visit on the following Saturday afternoon. I lay on the bed prostrate from tiredness and breathlessness while
Stephen, the real patient, sat reading the newspaper in the kitchen, determined to sit out the crisis. I poured out my troubles to Bill. I still passionately wanted to care for Stephen, to give him
a happy home life, to make all things possible for him within reason. Sometimes, as at present, his demands were totally in excess of all that was reasonable and the wall of his obduracy was making
life unbearable. In consequence I was becoming more and more dependent on Jonathan to preserve my sanity, to share my burdens, and to make me feel loved. That dependency only increased my burden of
guilt.

Bill took my hand in his. “Jane,” he said, thoughtfully but firmly, “there is something I want you to know.” If I was nervously expecting a stern rebuke, I was much
mistaken. Gently he went on, “In the sight of God all souls are equal. You are just as important to God as Stephen is.” So saying, he left me to ponder this surprising revelation, and
went to talk to Stephen. Later that day Dr Swan called and recommended a short spell in the local nursing home for Stephen who, although ferociously indignant, reluctantly accepted his advice. I
knew in a sense that Stephen was right because in the nursing home he was not known. The nurses there did not understand his speech nor were they versed in the very precise techniques required for
looking after him. As soon as word spread that the Lucasian Professor had been removed to the nursing home, there was no shortage of offers of help. Once more the loyal students and colleagues,
particularly Gary Gibbons, Stephen’s former research student, established an attendance rota so that Stephen should never find himself unable to communicate his needs to the nurses.
Robert’s headmaster, Antony Melville, remembering similarly tragic circumstances in his own family, spontaneously offered to take Robert into his own home, should the need arise. John Casey,
a Fellow of Caius who concealed genuine sympathy behind a somewhat mannered façade, decided that the College should pay Stephen’s nursing-home expenses and undertook to persuade the
governing body and the Bursar. Perhaps that task was less insuperable than it sounds since, it should be noted, the Bursar, a retired Air Vice-Marshal, Reggie Bullen, was the most humane Bursar
ever to hold that office in the College.

The following week, while Stephen was in the nursing home, I answered an invitation from Martin Rees, the Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy since 1973, to meet him out
at the Institute of Astronomy. Endearingly unconvincing in his efforts to appear a hard-nosed scientist, Martin sat me down in his office and emphatically declared, “Whatever happens, Jane,
you must not let the situation get you down.” The unintentional irony of his words baffled me, but as I was too tired and distraught to comment on them to any effect, I said nothing, simply
waiting for him to continue. He repeated what he had just said and went on to suggest that the time had come for Stephen to have nursing care at home. If I could find the nurses, he volunteered to
find the funds – from various philanthropic sources – to pay for them. I was deeply grateful for his concern and his very practical offer, so carefully and considerately proposed. My
gratitude was felt as much for the fact that he had noticed that we needed help as for the help itself.

There were three elements involved in bringing nurses into the home and certainly Martin’s benevolent offer would take care of one of them, the financial side. I had no idea how to tackle
the remaining two. Where was I to find suitable nurses and, more significantly, how was I to persuade Stephen to accept them? Whenever the baby and I went to visit him, he ground his teeth in anger
at his temporary imprisonment, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the television screen in front of him and refusing to look at us. There was little fundamental consolation that I could bring him,
rather my presence seemed to madden him; yet if I did not visit him regularly I would quickly stand accused of neglect. Panting for breath under the weight of the hefty infant, I would struggle
down the long corridor twice a day, rehearsing all the gobbits of information and titbits of gossip that I had been collecting for him. Our reception would always have a dampening effect, washing
the colour and life out of those little yarns, diluting their impact until they were about as interesting as a firework display in a rainstorm. Stephen’s parents paid him a visit one day
without bothering to call on us at West Road.

We were expecting my father to arrive in Cambridge for lunch the next weekend when there was a ring at the doorbell. Mum and I were perplexed to find an unfamiliar car in the driveway and a
middle-aged woman standing outside the door. Her husband was ushering my father towards the house. This couple had been travelling behind Dad six or seven miles outside Cambridge when they had seen
his car slither across the road on a patch of black ice and crash into the opposite bank. They had come to his rescue. Although the car was a write-off, Dad, miraculously, seemed to be unhurt,
though badly shaken. Nonetheless, we thought it best to call a doctor to check that all was indeed well. John Owens, the doctor who had delivered Robert twelve years before – and who,
coincidentally had also attended Jonathan’s wife Janet – came promptly and pronounced Dad to be in remarkably good shape considering the life-threatening ordeal he had undergone. Only a
couple of days later we had reason to call the surgery again. Lucy, who had also had a bad cold, gave us and herself a fright when a capillary in her nose popped and started to bleed. No sooner had
one copious nosebleed dried up than another began. This time the duty doctor was new to us. Rather surprisingly since he was middle-aged, he introduced himself as a trainee. Dr Chester White had
taken up medicine as a second career in middle age, and he had only recently qualified. He gave Lucy a check-up, assuring us that there was no cause for alarm.

As he was about to leave, he turned his attention to me. “What about you? Are you feeling all right?” he asked to my surprise, “you look pretty exhausted.” He sat down
while I told him about Stephen and the crisis we were in. Little explanation was needed as he knew Stephen by repute and had seen him out and about in the street. He did not know, however, that we
had battled on for years with minimal help from the National Health Service and was appalled to hear that we had the benefit of home nursing only on two mornings a week, when the district nurse
came in to get Stephen out of bed and give him a bath and an injection of hydroxocobalamin. Stephen had been obliged to let the district nurses bath him when, in a cumbersome state of pregnancy, I
found my room for manoeuvre in the bathroom severely restricted.