THE STORY CONTINUES. 1 Cloak-man

By popular demand, I continue here the autobiographical story started in my recent ‘Australia 1975’ series of posts.

If you haven’t read that yet, you'll find the first instalment here.

The full list of instalments is in the sidebar to the right.

 

 Autumn 1977
 

The first time I saw him was in the bar of Cornwall House where I was sipping warm white wine with my friend and housemate Alison.
 
I’d met up with my parents in Sydney and trailed round after them through a succession of lunches and teas with posh Australians who could have been English. They looked and sounded just the same.
    Why my parents wanted me there with them, I couldn’t imagine, as I didn’t contribute anything to the proceedings, feeling as alien as I always had both in England and with those sort of people. I didn’t condemn the people. I blamed myself. My head started to ache.
    I went with my parents to the airport to see them off and as we approached the departure gate both my mother and I started to cry. My father hovered awkwardly. He was obviously upset too but he was old-fashioned. It was women’s job to cry and men’s job to look after them.
    I returned to Hampo and Charles’s house where I was staying and spent a week or so writing off for work – probably being an awful nuisance to the family, but they never made me feel that way. But my heart wasn’t in it. Something had changed. Australia had lost its magic.

    Was it that I didn't feel safe any more, that even though Australia was the far side of the world I could still be found?

    Was it duty that called, pity for my parents?

    Or did I feel deep down that my time in Australia had come to an end, and that for some reason it was time to go back?

    Whatever the reason, I didn't think too much about it. I acted on instinct and followed my parents home.

 
England seemed very small and cramped after Australia – small houses, small people, small landscapes. Having been wearing sarongs and flip-flops for six months, I couldn’t get used to wearing proper clothes and shoes. It was so formal. So stiff. My real self began to retreat again.
    I did some temporary secretarial work, bicycling from my parents' house in Kent near London every day, and then got a summer job living in and working at a pub on the Norfolk coast in the east of England.

    After egalitarian Australia, the conditions were a shock. We were treated like serfs and not fed properly. My eating returned to being erratic, I filled up on bread and chips, and I started to put back on all the weight I'd lost in Australia.

Before I went to Norfolk, I tackled the load of stuff I’d brought back from London the year before and just dumped in my bedroom at my parents’. Everything, including a tottering pile of papers, was in a terrible muddle.

    As I went through the papers I came across a letter that one of my first-year university tutors had written to me after I'd dropped out.

    ‘We’re sorry to see you go, but if you ever change your mind, do get in touch.’
    Yes! I thought. What a nice letter. That’s what I can do – finish my degree.

Except when I was in Australia, I hadn’t stopped feeling bad for leaving ‘uni’, as I now called it Aussie-style. I'd seen it as a failure, even though with distance I could see some of the reasons.

    In any case, I'd realised that I had to have a degree if I wasn’t to carry on doing menial work for the rest of my life. Not that I'd minded menial work in Australia, but it wasn't the same back in England.

    I certainly didn't want to go back to London and I couldn't stay living at home. It was boring to the extreme.

    Perhaps I was stronger now. Perhaps I could redeem that chapter.

    

The university welcomed me back. I was to repeat year one and at the same time proceed with year two.
 
I was now at the start of my final degree year at Exeter university, living in a city house with four other students - Alison and three males.

    It was a rowdy night at Cornwall House, the university’s new social centre. Sound bounced off the high brick walls and the floor-to-ceiling windows. It was hard to talk.

    Alison and I sipped our wine in silence and watched the goings-on.

    At a nearby table a group of males – rugby types – were taking off their trousers and showing their behinds. They thought it was hilarious. But nobody else did. They ignored them.

    People hurried past to and from the library or their university accommodation, banging their way into and out of the cloakrooms and launderette next to us.

    ‘Anoraks’ (male science students with few social skills) and ‘wellies’ (rich students with cars who lived outside the city in country cottages). Denim and beige. Loud voices. Hellos and goodbyes.

    All the usual.

The man swooshed into a chair at an empty table opposite Alison and me. He was wearing a red-velvet floor-length cloak with a hood. He flung the folds of the voluminous garment around him and peeped mischievously out from under the hood, as if daring people to engage with him but keeping his options open by wrapping himself up. A few straggles of long hair escaped from the hood. He was on his own.

    Exeter was a small university at the time with probably only a few thousand students. Almost everything took place on the campus so you got to know most faces. I hadn’t come across this man before.
    And I hoped not to come across him again. A nutter, I decided. Best avoided.
    And that was that.
    Or so I thought.

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