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Authors: Jane Hawking
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after the wedding.
7
In Good Faith
Now that my immediate problems had been solved at a stroke, I was confident that in my final year I could finish my degree in London by commuting weekly from Cambridge,
especially since current social research suggested that married undergraduates consistently produced better results than frustrated, unmarried students. My father generously continued to pay my
allowance to help cover the rail fares, but the responsibility of finding a job and an income to support us both lay with Stephen. For his part, he was now taking his research seriously, realizing
that he would have to have a substantial piece of work documented, if not published, to enable him to apply for a Research Fellowship. To this end, he started to expand the ideas which had caused
such a stir at Hoyle’s Royal Society lecture. He also found by way of compensation for his efforts that his work was actually enjoyable.
Consequently it was with more than just the joyful expectation of a young fiancé awaiting the arrival of his beloved that he greeted me in his rooms, now for convenience in the main body
of Trinity Hall, one chilly morning in the February of 1965: he was in fact expecting that I would put my secretarial skills to good use by typing out a job application for him. The look of
horrified dismay that spread across his face as I walked into his room with my left arm bulging beneath my coat in a white plaster cast, dashed all my hopes of even the merest display of sympathy.
I was not wanting anything more than that, because the circumstances in which the fracture had occurred had been too embarrassing to confess over the telephone.
The truth was that the Westfield hops had livened up considerably with the arrival, the previous year, of male students into the College and the election of a more dynamic entertainments
committee on the Students’ Union. We now had proper bands playing Sixties’ music, the Beatles and the twist. I loved twisting, and at a midweek hop had indulged in an innocent bout of
twisting with someone else’s boyfriend. The floor was highly polished, my high heels skidded on the slippery surface and down I went, falling heavily onto my outstretched left hand. The
searing pain all too obviously indicated another broken wrist, this time from twisting rather than ice skating.
Still rather battered by this ordeal, I did not at first appreciate the reasons for the horror on Stephen’s face – not, that is, until he gestured to the borrowed typewriter and the
pile of pristine white paper neatly arranged on the table. Dolefully he explained that he had been hoping that I would type out his application for a Research Fellowship at Gonville and Caius
College, which had to be submitted by the beginning of the following week. Guilty on account of the twisting, I set to work with a will to write the application out in longhand, using my intact
right hand. The exercise took the whole weekend.
To have stayed overnight in Stephen’s rooms was unthinkable. On more than one occasion, according to Stephen, the eagle eye of Sam, the surly bedder and guardian of the College morals on Q
staircase, must have noticed a scarf or a cardigan of mine carelessly left hanging over the back of a chair in Stephen’s study. Scenting the whiff of scandal and a captive prey – for he
was no friend to young lady visitors – Sam would put his head round the door of Stephen’s bedroom in the early hours, hoping to catch me squeezed illicitly into Stephen’s narrow
single bed. But his expectations of a juicy scandal to report to the college authorities were constantly disappointed, because many of Stephen’s better-established friends regularly offered
me hospitality at weekends. Many of these friends already had houses and cars and were now in the process of producing offspring which, for our generation, was the expected progression of events.
Ours was the last generation for whom the prime goals were
7
In Good Faith
Now that my immediate problems had been solved at a stroke, I was confident that in my final year I could finish my degree in London by commuting weekly from Cambridge,
especially since current social research suggested that married undergraduates consistently produced better results than frustrated, unmarried students. My father generously continued to pay my
allowance to help cover the rail fares, but the responsibility of finding a job and an income to support us both lay with Stephen. For his part, he was now taking his research seriously, realizing
that he would have to have a substantial piece of work documented, if not published, to enable him to apply for a Research Fellowship. To this end, he started to expand the ideas which had caused
such a stir at Hoyle’s Royal Society lecture. He also found by way of compensation for his efforts that his work was actually enjoyable.
Consequently it was with more than just the joyful expectation of a young fiancé awaiting the arrival of his beloved that he greeted me in his rooms, now for convenience in the main body
of Trinity Hall, one chilly morning in the February of 1965: he was in fact expecting that I would put my secretarial skills to good use by typing out a job application for him. The look of
horrified dismay that spread across his face as I walked into his room with my left arm bulging beneath my coat in a white plaster cast, dashed all my hopes of even the merest display of sympathy.
I was not wanting anything more than that, because the circumstances in which the fracture had occurred had been too embarrassing to confess over the telephone.
The truth was that the Westfield hops had livened up considerably with the arrival, the previous year, of male students into the College and the election of a more dynamic entertainments
committee on the Students’ Union. We now had proper bands playing Sixties’ music, the Beatles and the twist. I loved twisting, and at a midweek hop had indulged in an innocent bout of
twisting with someone else’s boyfriend. The floor was highly polished, my high heels skidded on the slippery surface and down I went, falling heavily onto my outstretched left hand. The
searing pain all too obviously indicated another broken wrist, this time from twisting rather than ice skating.
Still rather battered by this ordeal, I did not at first appreciate the reasons for the horror on Stephen’s face – not, that is, until he gestured to the borrowed typewriter and the
pile of pristine white paper neatly arranged on the table. Dolefully he explained that he had been hoping that I would type out his application for a Research Fellowship at Gonville and Caius
College, which had to be submitted by the beginning of the following week. Guilty on account of the twisting, I set to work with a will to write the application out in longhand, using my intact
right hand. The exercise took the whole weekend.
To have stayed overnight in Stephen’s rooms was unthinkable. On more than one occasion, according to Stephen, the eagle eye of Sam, the surly bedder and guardian of the College morals on Q
staircase, must have noticed a scarf or a cardigan of mine carelessly left hanging over the back of a chair in Stephen’s study. Scenting the whiff of scandal and a captive prey – for he
was no friend to young lady visitors – Sam would put his head round the door of Stephen’s bedroom in the early hours, hoping to catch me squeezed illicitly into Stephen’s narrow
single bed. But his expectations of a juicy scandal to report to the college authorities were constantly disappointed, because many of Stephen’s better-established friends regularly offered
me hospitality at weekends. Many of these friends already had houses and cars and were now in the process of producing offspring which, for our generation, was the expected progression of events.
Ours was the last generation for whom the prime goals were
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