Life Ahead

The Holywell Music Room is just big enough to hold three chamber musicians, a couple of hundred observers, mild neoclassical touches and centuries of ambience. George Friedrich Handel wandered upon a tiny stage here and did his thing. My wheelchair blocks out several seats, but so the present inevitably obliterates the past. Rachel Brown walks on with flute and continuo, and for the next hour everyone is transported. We can't beat Bach, so we join him. Caroline has pointed out the Jews in the audience. Hitler drove a generation of classical artists into the arms of the Britons. And German Jews of that generation, and their offspring, still turn up at the Holywell here in Oxford, Wigmore Hall in London, but less and less, it seems. Caroline appreciates her roots. I appreciate being here, and I notice the disabled people in the audience.

One man across from me has something neurological going on with his wrists. He is 10 or 20 years older than I, has a life, has a wife, and when the time comes, has a way of clapping with his wrists. I have my own way, slapping the back of one hand lightly with the other, which produces no sound, but makes me feel better, while signaling that I am appreciative and having a go at expression.

Speaking of expressions, but they are different here in Britain. This is not a tourist event, the 11:15 Sunday morning 'coffee concert' at the Holywell. These are the real faces and expressions of people in this country. Many are gently, warmly impassive. Some are savagely so. I am fascinated by the woman, perhaps late sixties, who sits scowling in row three, on the opposite side of the recital hall. She has a sour disdain about her face, or does she really? When flute, cello and harpsichord burst into life, I cannot avoid sneaking a look. Her expression is unchanged, her scowl constant. It remains so even during the applause. Hers may not be a scowl at all. If I muttered something to her on the way out, her features might turn sunny. The essential mystery of a foreign land.

Caroline's friend Helen guides us past other Georgian buildings along a street that must be of medieval width. We are heading for lunch. And being a summer day, Helen suggests something outside. Why not? There is an outdoor café right in the middle of a former street, now blocked off to form a pedestrian precinct, in the heart of Oxford. The place is fairly crowded, but with the scraping of a few folding chairs, a path clears for my wheelchair. Lunch is simple and modest and hearty, and I go for something hot. That's because the day is not. Charcoal gray clouds hang overhead and the day is, by California standards, a winter one. All of which I easily ignore, because Helen is so delightful. She plays music with Caroline, and the two of them chat about chamber works.

Rachel Brown took a moment to give the Holywell audience some insight into the oddities of Bach's manuscripts, how he mixed his own ink and maximized the use of paper. And music and its playing and its practice and its trivia light up the two of them, and the contagion spreads to me. Moreover, Helen is retired from a high academic post in Oxford, so specialized as to inspire awe. For decades she was one of the Ashmolean Museum's curators of classical coins -- and note that there were several. She explained that her career ladder led straight from Oxford to the one remotely similar post in the nation...in London, of course. For Helen to advance, that lone London academic had to die or retire, which apparently failed to happen. Which explains why we are now sitting at the edge of a former street, our table tipping with the camber of the asphalt. And I am thinking that Helen's knowledge is lost on me, but my friend Joe in California would have lots of questions about coins. All of which is interrupted by liquid coins, or drops the size of them, which are finally descending from the skies. The three of us are still talking. This is why I come to Britain, for conversations like this one in the rain. It's only water, after all. Everyone in the outdoor café has fled, but we are still at it. A little wetter, perhaps, but also wiser.

The party is only over when Helen has to go. I have to go to the toilet, of course. The indoor portion of the café now being jammed with rain refugees, a succession of patrons have to slide tables and chairs out of the way for the man in the enormous wheelchair to make its widebodied way toward the back. I approach this matter with delicacy. But I'm glad to be approaching it on my own. Caroline would happily do this for me, booming out the news that a wheelchair was advancing, make way, make way. But I need to do this on my own. I say very little, for the wheelchair says a lot. Now and then I mutter 'excuse me' and let the café crowd make up the rest. It's a relief to finally get to the loo, the final path to which is blocked by a highchair. By the time I reverse course and head for the front door, the café patrons have changed. We begin the chair-scraping process afresh, blazing a new wheelchair trail.

Which brings me back to the Kings Road. Something happened there on Saturday, my last day in London, when I went out in search of breakfast. I was not in the smart end of the Kings Road, but the true end...and at my wit's end, by the time I finally found a café. I stared stupidly at the door, wondering if the place was really open and served breakfast. A waitress opened the door and ushered me inside. This slightly confused me, for I found myself rolling in without really deciding if I wanted to eat there. What I didn't want to do was to appear out of it, a foreigner. So the door opened, I followed so as not to make waves. And then I was inside. Which table? The waitress had one idea, but her boss had another, and there I was sitting in a small round table by the door. What did I want? The waitress held a small, old-fashioned order pad with carbon paper. Menu? I had to ask for this. Of course, I was in a café, what Britons would almost call a transport café where the grub is familiar and standard and no one lingers over a menu. Still, being half transport café and half Italian restaurant, there was a menu, and now I was staring at it.

'It's hot in here, isn't it?' An older man sat hunched over a table next to mine. 'We want the door open.' He looked up and spoke loudly at the wall opposite. This was a general observation addressed to the surrounding space, an all-points request. He looked at me. Wasn't it hot? I nodded meekly and muttered 'yes'.

'There's no need to open the door. You've got your jacket on, don't you?' This from some basso-voiced man behind me.

It was true. The man next to me had on a nylon jacket. He was tucking into the all British breakfast, fried eggs, bacon, sausage, baked beans, fried slice of toast, blood sausage. The menu, which I was studying uneasily, offered variations on all these things, including the vegetable options of mushrooms and grilled tomato. Having had a lifespan-shortening dose of Wiltshire sausage at various points across the North Atlantic, I thought I would try something faintly healthier, at least more upscale. Smoked salmon with scrambled eggs. My order arrived in seconds. It was just what it said it was. Scrambled eggs in one pile, an adjacent slice of smoked salmon. All unseasoned. White toast. I looked at a man seated against the wall. He quickly stared back at me. The Saturday Guardian balanced on my lap. Almost everyone ate alone.

No one opened the door. The old man with the loud voice and nylon jacket shoveled down his baked beans and eggs, fork clicking on his plate. He said nothing more. He made no eye contact. I felt the sense of wandering into a stage play with a plot well underway, outcome uncertain, plot intriguing...without knowing my part. I wanted one. I wanted to audition. I wanted to take part in whatever was going on, and to understand, for starters, the chorus. We were the chorus. All of us.

In America, a restaurant dispute about whether or not to open the door would come down to individuals. I'm hot and want the door open. I am not, want it closed, and take off your jacket. But this discussion was different. Can't we have the door open? A statement/request addressed to those assembled. Not, you by the door, would you mind opening...or you don't mind if I open the door. But a general appeal to us. And who is us? We Britons. We sit here quietly eating our meal, each the natural guardian of his guardian of his table space...which when the place is crowded can probably shrink to almost nothing, yet remain inviolate. And yet we are Britons, cooperatively defining this as a restaurant of a certain decibel level, eye-contact level, air-circulation level and, yes, thermostat level. And the countervailing argument regarding the latter issues to the entire assembly, the plenary session, not the waitress. It is a subtle thing, a cultural thing, and I wish to be part of it.

Why I wish this is anyone's guess. Communicating my wants and needs by asserting myself in a public space is unfamiliar. It goes against the grain. It requires a certain level of confidence. A lack of guilt is helpful. To take part in such a discourse as an American and a cripple would be a stretch. I did not start the Iraq war or drive our economy off a cliff, but certain of my countrymen did, and there are bad feelings about American accents. To speak up means getting knocked around. But getting around is everything to the disabled person, at least this one. I am running out of time this morning in London. But there will be other mornings. It has become very foreign, this adopted city. But it always was. And whatever it was 40 years ago, I was untested and untried. And now I am as seasoned as an old board. Splintering and a little cracked, but solid enough. And there is the café challenge, and there is life ahead.