Pilcrow

by Adam Mars-Jones

  ‘John.’

  ‘Are you ready, John, to accept Jesus Christ as your personal saviour?’

  ‘He may be or he may not be.’

  ‘Don’t you know what it says in the Bible about those who do not believe?’ He had passages already marked in red. The frighteners. I forget which particular one he showed me, but it had the words ‘everlasting’ and ‘fire’ in it. And that, essentially, was the Billy Graham method for winning over the waverers. Scare them out of their wits. Doubt was not acceptable in a spiritual baby. There was to be no cradling of doubt. Doubt was simply flattened by the charismatic steam-roller.

  For some reason I didn’t find it difficult to stand my ground. ‘That’s stupid,’ I said. ‘If that’s your God you can keep him. What’s your name?’ Actually he was wearing a name badge. ‘Timothy? If you’re so sure of everything in this world and the next, why do you bite your nails?’

  He was very thrown by this, and blushed bright red. ‘I don’t,’ he said, tucking his hands behind him.

  ‘Then who does?’ I asked, very pert. After that I was returned at fair speed to the rest of the Vulcan party. I don’t think any of us had a more positive experience of the Billy Graham show than I had. If so, we didn’t talk about it, any more than I talked about my feelings when I realised why I had been taken aside away from the bright lights. I hadn’t been selected, I had been de-selected. There had been a rapid and worldly sifting. Not all people in wheelchairs are alike. Some of them may (just possibly) stand up and stagger marvelling into the light, pledging themselves to Billy Graham and God’s holy word. And some will not, whatever the voltage of the preaching. I was not going to bring glory to the crusade. The silly thing was that I wasn’t expecting a miracle myself, I didn’t even want one, but I was a bit miffed that they had ruled one out. What business was it of theirs to restrict the powers of the God they claimed to represent?

  Years later I read Sartre’s remark when someone was going into ecstasies about the piles of crutches left behind at Lourdes after miracle cures – ‘No wooden legs, though, eh?’ I paraphrase. The communist atheist was being no more cynical than Billy Graham and his acolytes. I myself came no nearer to Lourdes than Bath Spa, but what it comes down to is this: my faith was less conditional than Billy Graham’s. I put no limits on divine power.

  If God wanted me to be conventionally shaped then I would be. In non-dualistic thinking, moreover, there are no divisions to be found, no line to be drawn between the human and divine, John and God. It follows that if I wanted to be conventionally shaped then I would be. And I’m fine as I am.

  The visit to the waters at Bath dates back to the early days of my illness. Bath was very near. All I remember is being wrapped up in hot towels like a little dumpling, in great pain but loving being at the centre of attention.

  A Raff neighbour in Bathford had a son, Tim, who fell in the gym at school and sustained brain damage. His speech and coördination were impaired. They gave him a board to spell words out on. He was like a human ouija-board. His mother, Sheila, was very religious and must have been Catholic, because her church got up a collection and sent Tim to Lourdes. I heard about it and wanted to go too, though Lourdes didn’t help Tim, externally at least. And there was nothing wrong on the inside in the first place.

  Tim got tricycles from the National Health (though Mum said ‘Government’) which he kept smashing up, going too fast. We drifted away from them. I dare say Mum’s heart wasn’t in pursuing the acquaintance. Heathers don’t seek out the company of fellow unfortunates.

  And Bath Spa did my symptoms no more good than Lourdes did to Tim. But that’s not the point. The issue isn’t effectiveness, it’s commitment. When you live in Bathford, Lourdes is a pilgrimage, but Bath Spa is hardly even a day out.

  Palace of laps

  One of the major events of my time at Vulcan was that QM came to visit. The real QM, not Julian Robinson, boy agent. The Queen Mother. I say ‘major event’ not as a royalist but as a student of spiritual power. She spoke to me and softly shook my hand. She wore a lilac outfit and a hat with a little veil. Her make-up was a work of art. She made Billy Graham look like a circus clown.

  The graduated eye contact of royalty is a fascinating thing to experience. I felt her attention even before her gaze arrived. She spoke her words of greeting, which were full of meaning without having any actual content. I had planned to speak up, and to ask a question. We hadn’t been encouraged to make conversation, but she seemed quite a chatty type. ‘Marm,’ I was going to say – I knew you had to say ‘Marm’ – ‘is it true that you once met Archie Andrews?’ Putting her in her place just a bit. I was still slightly sore about the way the PDSA was out-ranked by the RSPCA, just because of a few royal patrons. Then the moment came and there was no need. There was no gap to be filled.

  When the Queen Mother’s eyes moved on, I had no feeling that her gaze had left me. If her attention had had depth as well as breadth, she’d have been a considerable guru rather than a local totem, with only the powers proper to its sphere. Her serenity was strictly secular.

  The strange thing was that one of the school cats followed her round for the whole of her visit. Cats have their snobbery, God knows, but it doesn’t coincide with ours. Still, this cat must have sensed something special. It was actually the least regarded of the school’s many cats, the one grudgingly given the name of Anon, only one step up from actual namelessness. The cat-naming skills of our group were rudimentary – we ran out of names after Catty, Kitty, Tabby, Whiskers and Fluffy. From a feline point of view a school full of wheelchairs must be Heaven, a palace full of laps. The school cats were lazy and spoiled. They wouldn’t budge for anybody, but Anon showed that a cat really can look at a queen, even at a dowager ex-empress.

  After her visit the Queen Mother sent gifts to the school at regular intervals. Her generosity took the form, each time, of a big box of chocolates, which everybody loved – really big, so that everyone at the school could have more than one dip – and a rather beautiful porcelain vessel, blue and white, which contained slimy black dots with a fishy smell, like tadpoles gone wrong. To me those nasty little eggs seemed even more disgusting than tinned fish, which I had always hated. Very few of the pupils or staff members tried them. Some of those who did retched. The contents of the pretty jar ended up going into David Lockett’s pig-swill. This was the crowning extravagance in the topsy-turvy economy of the school: rancid butter for the boys, caviar for the pigs.

  I don’t expect the QM specified the contents of the food parcel – I dare say she just said, ‘Send those lovely boys something nice.’ It was some equerry or other being too posh for his own good.

  I dreaded Tuesday evening meals at Vulcan because it was always cold pilchards on toast. I hated that food with all my heart. To start with we were told to eat it up or go hungry. That was fine by me. That suited me down to the ground. I was very happy to go hungry. I was attuned to the notion of fasting – in Bathford days hadn’t I gone without stuffed marrow the day after Scrambled Egg Boats?

  Then the rule changed to ‘You’ve got to eat it or else.’ Then we were told what ‘or else’ meant. Eat it or be force-fed. Judy Brisby was very keen to implement the stricter system. She could hardly wait to find the first resisting suffragette.

  On the night the new rules came into force I was in despair. There was no possibility that I was going to eat that disgusting food. Soon everyone else had finished theirs. I noticed that David Driver had a boiled egg and some toast. It looked delicious. On the other hand, David had muscular dystrophy which was going to kill him soon anyway, which must have been why he was excused pilchards and likewise force-feeding. He was so weak it wouldn’t have taken much to finish him off. He didn’t have the strength to raise his arms to his face without help. There were special pivoted arm-rests on the side of his chair to help him get some leverage, but even then it was a huge effort for him. He always needed help at meal times.

  Eventually I was the only pup
il left in the dining hall. Even David had done his best by the boiled egg and had been wheeled away. Judy Brisby said to the kitchen staff, ‘Just leave him there until he eats it all.’ I waited for a very long time, sitting and staring at that awful fish. Its juices had seeped into the toast, which had swollen and turned into unspeakable mush. The kitchen staff finished their shift and left. Then Judy Brisby was back. She checked all the doors of the dining room, in case there were stragglers or someone coming back for something.

  She came close. ‘I’m warning you’, she whispered, ‘that if you don’t eat this on your own, I’ll just have to force-feed you. I’ll pinch your nose shut so you have to open your mouth. And then I’ll jam the food in with my fingers if I have to. I’m going to count to five, and then I’ll start. You can’t say you haven’t been warned.’

  I didn’t say anything but I didn’t feel at all brave. I was telling myself she wouldn’t dare give me a nerve punch, but the woman leaning over me didn’t seem short of nerve. She even seemed excited by what was going on.

  If she counted to five she did it quickly and without moving her lips. Then she did indeed pinch my nose. She kept her promise. She pulled my head back as far as it would go, and somehow she got my mouth open. Next second she was stuffing pilchards down me and ordering me to swallow. I wouldn’t even chew it. When she told me again to swallow ‘or you’ll get “what for”’, I spat it out. I had been quite a good spitter at CRX, practising on chewed-up corners of linen sheet, but I excelled myself now. The squalid mouthful of mushy fish went everywhere. Much of it went sailing over the table and on to the floor.

  My defiance made Judy Brisby truly terrifying now. She simply picked me up from the chair and strode out of the dining room. Her rage wouldn’t contemplate the delay of the lift. She passed it by and carried me up the stairs and to the Blue Dorm. At the top of the stairs she held me upside down over the stair-well. Only her death-grip on my ankles stopped me from falling. She was beside herself. She hissed, ‘Now will you? Now will you?’ She was panting with fury and exertion. Now would I what? The pilchards were miles away by then. This was no longer about pilchards. At last she got her breathing under control, dragged me back over the banisters and took me to the dorm. When she was a yard or so from my bed, she stopped and simply threw me towards it.

  Her aim wasn’t good, or else only part of her wanted me to land safely. On my way through the air towards the bed my hip hit the side very hard. I howled in pain and couldn’t stop. Judy Brisby went out, and I went on crying.

  Then Judy Brisby came back with Biggie, the Big Matron in charge of all the others, Sheila Ewart, nothing but kindness from stem to stern. Even the nicest matrons were strict at Vulcan, though, and Biggie had her own fixed principles. In her book there was nothing worse than telling tales.

  Judy Brisby had obviously told her about what had been going on. Now she put on a show of tender concern, saying, ‘Well why didn’t you say you didn’t like the dinner? David Driver doesn’t like it either, so he had boiled egg and toast. You could have had that if you had wanted it! Lot of fuss about nothing!’ As if all I was crying about was not liking the food. Little cry-baby fuss-pot.

  I looked tearfully at her and knew she had won with her lies. There she was, lying in front of dear Biggie, and Biggie was swallowing it all down. There was nothing I could do about it. Nothing at all.

  Of course I took Biggie too literally. When she talked about not telling tales, she meant she didn’t want to hear petty accusations among the boys. Who had drawn on whose book, who had called whom a ‘thrombosis’ (which was our roundabout way of saying ‘bloody clot’). Being hurled through the air by a member of staff came into a different category. She’d have wanted to hear about that, but I didn’t know it at the time.

  I couldn’t make a phone call without the help of a member of staff, so how could I grass Judy Brisby up? Telling Mum wouldn’t do much good either. She knew the number of the NSPCC off by heart, but when it came right down to it she was better at telling her neighbours how they should behave than knowing what to do herself.

  The hip gave me pain for some time after the event, but I didn’t dare ask to see a doctor about it, in case he asked me questions whose answers would get me into more trouble.

  All over PG Tips

  Judy Brisby was lucky in her timing. I had made up my mind to confide in Mum, no matter what, the next time I went home for the weekend. Not to tell tales but to ask what to do, and to hope that she would take it out of my hands. But by then something had happened which made it certain that I would keep my trap shut.

  It turned out that I wasn’t the only Cromer to be having a bad time at his school. Peter was attending Lord Wandsworth College in Long Sutton, near Hook in Hampshire. The school was founded in 1912 with funds from the late lord, who wanted to help full or half orphans – children who had lost at least one parent. The school’s whole purpose was tender, by that token, and of course the years after 1912 were absolute prime years for the creation of orphans. The supply began to dry up after the Second War, though, and after that time fee-paying pupils untouched by bereavement began to be accepted.

  There were still traces of the founder’s mercy in Peter’s time. Permission was granted for pupils to keep certain pets. They had to be animals (such as rabbits and guinea pigs) that didn’t need to roam free. There were even a couple of lizards. Peter didn’t have a pet himself, but he had a powerful connection with animals. The fact that the pets which were tortured at the school belonged to other boys didn’t actually make a difference to him. The rabbit with the lacerated ears. The guinea pig with the scorched fur. The lizard whose shed tail did not deceive its giggling predators. Their pain lodged in him. He had no ability to disown it.

  His sense of justice was soothed when the bullies turned their attention on him. They would drive drawing pins into his arms and legs. Then they started on beatings which became general and promiscuous. The site they chose for this torture was an old bomb shelter in the grounds. They told him when to come there, and he came. They didn’t need to come and fetch him. He took all he could take, and then he simply walked out and went to the railway station, took a train and explained to the ticket-collector that he had to go home.

  That was one advantage I enjoyed at Vulcan. Judy Brisby never expected me to go to her to be ill-treated. She came to me.

  When Peter arrived home after his train journey, there was bruising all over his body. The boys at Lord Wandsworth had been only partially educated. They hadn’t learned the trick of the nerve punches. Their tea-bag marks were very visible. Peter was all over PG Tips.

  There were bruises on his soul that took much longer to heal. It showed how deeply the bullying had gone that he hadn’t said a word to me about it. Any more, I suppose, than I had told him about what Judy Brisby got up to. We protected our tormentors while we could, and never owned up to the taint of pain while we had the choice.

  Our GP in Bourne End Dr Flanagan (Flanny) said that Peter’s injuries were certainly serious enough for us to sue Lord Wandsworth College. She said she would be happy to give evidence and back him up in court. Flanny was very far from being a soft touch. She was brisk and efficient and didn’t have much time for the niceties. It’s a fact that medical school is designed to grind down idealism into heartless competence, but Flanny must have been well on her way already. She had a head start.

  In the end Mum and Dad decided against legal action, perhaps because Peter would be exposed to further damage, perhaps because suing was not quite nice. They settled for having the fees waived for that last traumatic term. Peter never went back. He had plenty of experience at standing up for me, none for defending himself. He was a gentle boy, eager to belong, a magnet for bullying.

  I realised right away that there was no possibility of grassing Judy Brisby up after what had happened to Peter. I might have been able to live down the taboo of telling tales, but now I would be known as a copy-cat as well as a sneak. Copy-cat tale-tell
ing had to be the worst crime in the whole book.

  I was stuck with Vulcan for the duration. I wonder how many other pupils thought of grassing Judy Brisby up, and either pulled back from the brink or weren’t believed. I certainly remember when unsinkable Trevor Burbage, the human suitcase with the riding hat, decided to ‘run away’ from the school.

  The pretext was that he had been given thirty lines by the German teacher Mr Atkinson, and it’s true that Trevor could be very cheeky. He would pretend to misunderstand things, just to be provoking. Es gibt drei Türen … ‘Are the doors dry, Sir? Does it mean Wet Paint or something?’ That sort of thing. He said he’d rather run away than copy out the lines. ‘I’m not staying in this dump,’ he said. There must have been something else driving him, though, mustn’t there?

  We asked him, ‘What will you do for a living, once you get away from here?’ He said, ‘I’ll be a lorry driver’s mate. That’s the ticket for me! I can’t drive but I can be the driver’s mate and see the world.’ He set off in his privately bought wheelchair, which out-ranked mine – but then his grandmother had money and was always buying him out of trouble at the school with timely endowments. It was called a Wrigley, like the chewing gum to which a few boys were addicted, though they spat it out discreetly if Miss Wilding hove into view.

  The Wrigley went too fast to pass Government safety tests. It had proper inflatable tyres, instead of the solid rubber ones on my E&J. Raeburn was normally the person who charged the batteries, but we made sure the ABs gave Trevor a top-up till the last possible moment. Then he was off. He’d left a note with me in an envelope but I wasn’t allowed to show it to anyone until he had made his get-away. We were blood brothers, so I couldn’t refuse it or grass him up.

  There was no special reason for us being blood brothers, except that we had dared each other to make the cuts and then couldn’t manage to back down.