Free Travelling to Infinity by Jane Hawking Page A

ilk simply confirmed Stephen’s healthy disrespect for pompous middle-aged authority, a disrespect to which I was becoming a willing convert. We well knew that in our idealism we were
deliberately defying common sense and all that was cautious, conventional and ordinary. We were certainly not going to allow our grand schemes to be thwarted or our convictions undermined by
petty-minded officialdom. Tilting at such bureaucratic windmills quickly became our personal version of Sixties’ rebellion. By contrast, our main battle was with the forces of destiny. In
this lofty undertaking, we could afford to ridicule the minor stumbling blocks put in our way by officious college bursars.
    When one battles with destiny only the major issues – life, survival and death – are of real significance. So far the forces of destiny seemed to be either dormant or on our side,
for in spite of the obstacles our foreseeable future in the Cold War atmosphere of the mid-Sixties was beginning to look as secure as anybody else’s. For Stephen, the prospect of marriage
meant that he had to get down to work and prove his worth in physics. In my simplicity I believed that faith also had a hand in determining our way forwards. In a sense, we both shared a faith, an
existential faith, in our chosen course, but I, encouraged by my mother and by my friends, reached out to a faith in a higher influence – God perhaps – who appeared to be responding to
my need for help by strengthening my courage and determination. On the other hand, while I was well aware that the Hawkings, for all their traditional Methodist background, professed themselves to
be agnostics if not atheists, I found their tendency to sneer at religious matters unpleasant. Stephen and I spent our first Christmas together just two months after our engagement. The fact that
he came to Morning Service with my family produced raised eyebrows and snide comments on our return to 14 Hillside Road. “So do you feel holier now?” Philippa quietly enquired of
Stephen in a tone laden with sarcasm, and I sensed a tinge of inexplicable hostility towards me. He laughed in reply while his mother remarked, “He should certainly be holier than thou,
because he is now under the influence of a good woman.” It was difficult to know how to take these remarks – it was not easy to make light of them, because they smacked of conspiracy
and seemed targeted at an essential element, my faith, on which I would depend implicitly in the task before me. This cynicism was very different from the mirth in which I wholeheartedly shared
when we analysed the various forms of the marriage service. I was appalled to find that, according to the marriage service of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, I was expected to become a
“follower of godly and sober matrons”. I opted instead for the 1928 version, where that ugly phrase did not appear.
    Success has a knack of breeding success, and soon we were celebrating again. Another Saturday had been spent in Stephen’s rooms writing out another application, this time for a prize, the
Gravity Prize, endowed by an American gentleman who in his wisdom believed that the discovery of anti-gravity would cure his gout. It is unlikely that any of the essays submitted ever provided any
relief for the poor man’s suffering, but his generous prizes provided great financial relief to many a struggling young physicist. Over the years Stephen won the whole range of Gravity
Prizes, culminating in the first prize in 1971. Although, to our vexation, Stephen’s first entry missed the post that Saturday in 1965, his efforts were nevertheless to be crowned with a very
timely degree of success when some weeks later I was urgently called down from my attic in Hampstead to take a call from Stephen. He was ringing from Cambridge – as usual, for fourpence
– to tell me that he had been awarded a Commendation Prize, worth £100, in the Gravity competition. I danced round Mrs