Pilcrow

by Adam Mars-Jones

  His whispered instructions about our missions had a lot in common with the sweet nothings of lovers. ‘I’ve taken delivery of a special gun,’ he breathed in my ear. ‘It needs to be installed somewhere no one will ever think of looking for it.’ I gave an important nod. ‘I know just the place,’ he went on. ‘Inside your walking stick.’

  Of course! It wasn’t actually a walking stick, or rather I didn’t actually use it for walking. It was the stick I carried in the wheelchair with me for poking and prodding and nudging myself along. He was right. No one would dream of looking in there.

  ‘The procedure for installing is rather complicated. I’ll take your stick away and do the conversion outside, away from you-know-who.’ I had no idea who. He was gone for a long time, about fifteen minutes. When he brought it back I didn’t think it looked any different at first, but then Julian showed me the notch I would have to press to fire it. He made me promise not to use it indoors unless there was a real emergency.

  Did I really think that Julian had installed a gun in my stick? I think I did. It somehow felt different after that, warm from his hand, heavier, more laden with consequence. He had an extraordinary ability to lead people into his little world, though of course everyone’s world is exactly the same size.

  Hook, line and sinker

  Next day he gave me a briefing. ‘Your assignment’, he whispered, ‘is to keep an eye on Mr Atkinson. Top security. Of course you know he’s a Russian spy? We’ve been watching him for some time now …’

  Mr Atkinson! It was the last thing I expected, yet it made perfect sense. Mr Atkinson had been hired to teach us German, which he wrote and spoke very well indeed. I got on well with him, and my German improved by leaps and bounds. He always looked so dapper in his smart suit and open-necked shirt. His hair was curly and lay very close to his head, so that it looked stuck on. It was white – not just grey but entirely white – and yet his face was as smooth as a lady’s, almost as if he didn’t need to shave.

  Atkinson had been sent to spy on us boys, disguised as someone who wanted to help us. Raeburn and Willis had fallen for his tricks hook, line and sinker, and so had I. That was the worst part of it. He’d been pally and friendly with me, and I’d been pally and friendly right back. I was such a chatter-box (everyone always said so) that I might have told him just about anything. My face started to burn with shame.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I stammered. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Oh come on! As an agent I expect you to do better than that!’ said Julian. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed his upward-sloping curly Rs? It’s a dead give-away!’

  Upward-sloping curly Rs! I’d done more than notice them – I’d raised them in class, I’d chattered about them for twelve whole minutes of a lesson to pass the time. I adored them, I’d adopted them as my own. I’d even been scolded by Willis for using them. Miss Willis had strong ideas about hand-writing, saying for instance that script which sloped backwards was a sure sign of someone who was afraid of life. After that, my script sloped forward so much the letters almost fell on their faces.

  I only used my special Rs when doing homework for Mr Atkinson. He also pronounced perfect German ‘r’s, though he wasn’t German. He pronounced them like a native, like Gisela. I should have realised that an Englishman cannot do that. I’d come close to hero-worship, and now I realised that I’d been played for a fool.

  At the same time I was thrilled. At CRX I’d felt a twinge of sadness when I finished reading Five Fall into Adventure. It lent life and colour to the ward. I knew that adventures never really happened, but I’d dared to ask for a real adventure for myself. And now it had been granted – granted with a vengeance. My prayer had even included a pal called Julian, and God had sent that. I’d asked for him to have blond hair to remind me of Tommy Steele, and Julian’s was dark, but I couldn’t expect God to attend to every detail when he was so busy.

  I thought of some of the things I must have said to Atkinson, which the situation just made seem even more frightening. Raeburn was a military man, he would know what to do – but how to contact him? He might just as well be miles away. Dad would also know what to do, but fate had separated me from my family. Even if I broke the rules and ‘told’, no one would believe us. The truth was that Atkinson was a very cunning agent indeed.

  ‘He has a gun of his own, of course,’ added Julian smoothly. ‘It’s a small Beretta. Point four oh two. First thing I noticed. That’s why I told HQ you had to be armed. If you do have to shoot Atkinson I’ll take full responsibility.’

  I started to get frightened then, which had the advantage of bringing Julian closer. He hugged me awkwardly, but said, ‘Pull yourself together. British agents don’t cry.’

  ‘But it’s only my second day …’ I whined.

  ‘These people we’re up against are ruthless. They’ll use your weakness against you.’ This I could understand. This was just the sort of rubbish that filtered down from the fathers of our generation. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘nothing will happen that I can’t handle. That’s what I’m here for, after all …’

  He had been on the blower to his boss at HQ, and there was a plan in place. Atkinson would be kidnapped the next Monday. He would be detained at HQ for three days, interrogated and then brain-washed. Atkinson was very dangerous, but it had to be admitted that he was an extremely good agent. It would be a shame to eliminate a man of that calibre, so HQ (after taking advice from Julian, of course) had decided that it was worth taking the risk of recruiting him to be one of ours, once he had been brain-washed.

  The funny thing was that Atkinson did disappear on the Monday. Miss Willis told us that his sister had been taken ill suddenly and he needed to visit her. She hoped that things would be back to normal in a few days. She read out this announcement from a piece of paper, peering down at it through her half-moon specs.

  My admiration for the boy agent Julian went from strength to strength – it was a treat to see how even Miss Willis had fallen for the cover story. I just wished I’d been a senior enough agent to be trusted with it ahead of time. On Thursday Atkinson was back, looking just as dapper, and continuing to write his upward-sloping curly Rs in just the same way, but somehow he was milder. Something had happened to him which was the opposite of what happened to my stick when the gun was installed. He had been hollowed out. More had been taken out during interrogation than had been put back in.

  All the same, I got a reward for my part in the successful conclusion of the Atkinson affair. QM used his influence to get me a promotion. He was now my immediate superior. I was to report only to him.

  Usefulness in the field

  Julian told me I would be put on an assignment within a week. I was very excited, but I also had doubts about my usefulness in the field. ‘We’ve already thought of that,’ he said. ‘GHQ says you’re to be issued with a hidden tape-recorder. It will be planted in your body at some stage. It may be grafted on while you’re sleeping – we do a lot of our work that way – or I may install it myself. Keep it on you at all times!’ I promised I would. Of course, since it would be grafted onto my body, I wouldn’t be able to do anything else.

  I was looking forward to getting my tape-recorder, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted a secret agent to install it in my body while I was asleep. What if I woke up in the middle of installation? And if I woke in the night I would wonder if an agent had already been, to leave his equipment inside me. I much preferred the plan that Julian – QM – would install the apparatus himself. If he did, he would have to get close to me, and after all, I did have a mission of my own.

  It turned out that HQ wasn’t able to send an agent that week. Some sort of show in the Balkans. So Julian was authorised to take care of the installation himself, in an empty classroom at the end of the school day, when no one else was around. It was vital for both missions that secrecy was observed, otherwise the whole operation would turn into a fiasco. QM reminded me that the security of our country depended on vigila
nce, and I took my new job very seriously.

  Julian came over to me and leant his crutches against the wall by my desk. I put the brake on my wheelchair to give him something stable to hold on to. I tingled from having him so close. Julian always wore a nice shirt and nicer jeans. His clothes looked fresh and smart, however long he wore them. He had a nice fresh smell and kept himself very clean, although the facilities at Vulcan weren’t wonderful. I could never quite work out how he achieved this level of grooming. Perhaps it was all part of an agent’s training.

  He was holding himself up on the arm of my wheelchair, to the left of my legs. I wondered what the promised secret tape-recorder would look like. I was also gazing at those crisp new legs. I was familiar with Julian’s back view, and his snug young bottom. Now I was close to the cleft at his front, and trying my hardest to see what was there. There didn’t seem to be very much. Then by good luck I was given another means to explore the equipment.

  ‘It would be best if you close your eyes now,’ said Julian. ‘HQ’s very anxious that you don’t witness the transfer. What you don’t know can’t be tortured out of you.’ This was a less welcome thought. Julian put his left arm over my right shoulder and then leaned back slightly while I closed my eyes. He was very strong. His strength ran through me. I felt a pressure on my forehead which must have been his thumb. He pressed and twisted, almost to the point of pain, then told me to open my eyes.

  Nothing felt different, but my heart was pounding as if he had given me a stimulant injection. Julian’s warm breath was falling on my face. The tape-recorder might be inside me or it might never have existed, but there were other things in the world that cried out to be investigated.

  ‘This is a solemn moment,’ I said. ‘We should recognise its importance with some sort of pledge.’ I stumbled over the words. ‘You know, a hand-shake or a hug. Maybe even a kiss …’

  I was afraid that I had gone too far but Julian didn’t hesitate. ‘Good plan, Agent Nesbitt,’ he replied. Why he called me Agent Nesbitt I have no idea. ‘You have an inventive mind. GHQ will like that. I reckon it should be a hug and a kiss on the ear, and while I’m doing that, I’ll pass on some Top Secret Info!’

  Julian hadn’t lost his extraordinary ability to bring others into his fantasy world, but he was also responding to mine. We were like two master hypnotists putting the moves on each other, or just two schoolboys, both equally suggestible, getting carried away.

  While I waited for the Top Secret Info to be poured into me, I had my own scheme of espionage. The plan was to get Julian’s leg between mine, and when I had him close to fumble at his cleft just as fast and as furiously as I could. If any treasure was there, I would be sure to find it, even with the somewhat primitive data-gathering equipment available to me. Because of the inflexibility of my wrists, there was no possibility of me turning my palms towards Julian’s crotch. I would have to make do with the backs of my hands.

  My assignment within an assignment had its share of risk, but the strong taboo against telling tales, which left me vulnerable at other times, was strangely protective here. I said a quick prayer, hoping that God was indeed omnipresent. Then he must also be in the devil who was tempting me today.

  I was an undercover agent, true, but I was certainly a beginner. There was something I had overlooked in my eagerness to go undercover. I parted my legs and waited in rapture for Julian’s left leg to come mounding and pressing against my genitals. The leg never made it that far. As it approached my knee, I felt not pleasure but a bolt of pain.

  Chaperone and chastity belt

  I could only open my legs the merest crack. I was having a good day in terms of flexibility, and I expect I managed a few inches, but of course a few inches at floor level isn’t the same distance when you work up to the knee. A rolling pin could hardly have fitted between my upper legs, let alone the neatly trousered leg of this strong thirteen-year-old boy.

  We were in a school for the disabled, everything in the establishment catered to our difficulties and our special needs, but in the heat of secret-agent fantasy it had slipped my mind that I had Still’s Disease and that he had polio. I hadn’t forgotten, exactly, but at that moment I didn’t remember. I knew perfectly well that Julian wore callipers, but this too had disappeared from my consciousness at this point.

  The progress of his braced left leg towards a tryst with my taily and dependent scallywag was sharply arrested by my knees. Instead of warmth and love I felt the hard press of metal and leather. The flash of pain was produced by his heavy callipers scraping against my legs. I winced, he lurched backwards and the exchange of secret information was over before it could begin.

  My attempt at seduction was foiled by a double mechanical impossibility. My hips were immobile while his legs were floppy, needing to be braced mechanically for him to walk. What made me feel even more stupid after the event was that I’d so often watched polio boys having their callipers put on. Some of them needed help from the little matrons, others learned to fend for themselves. Julian pretty much put them on for himself. The contrast between strong upper bodies and wasted legs made those boys seem like mythical beasts, minotaur colts.

  I had even examined Julian’s callipers in the early days of secret-agent fascination, while he explained the various modifications HQ was going to install. I tried to hold one when it was off, but it was too heavy for me to lift for more than a moment or two. I liked the idea of being close to a boy who had switches and hinges on him, as if Professor Branestawm had had a hand in designing him.

  Each calliper consisted of two parallel metal bars which ran down each side of the leg. The bars were hinged at the knee and could be set to lock or unlock. To hold the calliper in place a series of leather straps and buckles ran crosswise and round the leg. It was vital that the hinge of the calliper coincided with the hinge of each knee, in order to avoid terrible pain when Julian wanted to bend his legs. For walking, the bars were set at lock. There was a release catch on each side of each knee, so in order to bend his knees for sitting down at meals or lessons Julian – and all the other boys with callipers – had to set four release catches, and then repeat the process in reverse for standing up.

  Julian’s jeans were able-bodied items of clothing, but I could see that they didn’t wear out in the normal way. His legs weren’t mobile enough to manage much in the way of scuffing, but the hinges of his callipers were always nipping the cloth round the knees.

  He’d told me often enough that putting the callipers on was an elaborate business. Gillie Walker and Biggie were the best ‘putter-onners’ – the love they had for their work meant their hands became sensitised to the boy’s requirements. All the straps had to be set at the right degree of tension. If the strap was set too loose the leg would wobble and shift inside the cage, making it dangerous or impossible for him to walk. If the strap was set too tight, then the circulation of blood would be impaired. An already difficult job was made even more taxing by the fact that the boys were growing fast, none faster than Julian, and the weather played its part. A boy’s leg would be smaller on a cold day and so need more strapping. It would expand in warmer weather. Additionally the leg would be much colder (and smaller) at the beginning of the day and hotter and larger at the end. So Julian and the other polio boys could often be seen fiddling with their callipers at various points in the day.

  All this had gone out of my mind while I waited for the embrace of knowledge. I hadn’t yet learned that there are points in the body where energy gathers in debased forms unless it is released by the proper procedure. Julian and I were alarmingly clogged in our adolescent chakras with thickly sedimented desire, but ankylosis was my chaperone and Julian’s polio was his chastity belt.

  Life became easier for calliper users a little later, when Velcro started to replace leather straps. Velcro had been around for some time, but its use in callipers came as a separate little break-through.

  When I’d first seen this new material which mimicked couch gras
s, I’d fallen in love with it. I’d not personally had any great problem with manipulating zips. I even fancied myself something of an expert, but it had been an easy matter to convince Mum, who was always a dab hand at needle-work, that Velcro would be easier for me. She got to work with a vengeance. When the magic closures had been installed, I spent hours opening and closing the gap at my groin. I thoroughly enjoyed the tearing sound as the male and female surfaces were torn apart. In time, as the novelty wore off, I would forget to close the flies before the trousers were washed. After only a few adventures in the maëlstrøm of the washing machine, the male component of the Velcro would be festooned with stray fibres, bonded into unorthodox unions which allowed no divorce. There was no getting rid of the fluff once it had become embedded. The initial sharp rip of the tearing when the fly was opened would soften to a dull scrape.

  Mum would scold me on the eve of my regular returns to Vulcan. ‘You must make sure that you join the Velcro zip before it gets washed – just see what fluff and what-not has got in!’ It was already too late. Gaps appeared in the fly opening as the male hooks lost interest in the arranged marriage intended by the manufacturers. They preferred to hook up with the low-life denizens which flaunted themselves in the vortex of the washing machine’s drum.