Pilcrow

by Adam Mars-Jones

  It wasn’t just Ben Nevin and Judy Brisby. At the point when the school expanded its premises, there was a whole-sale change-over of staff, so that very few of the matrons who had been at the school when I arrived still worked there. I enjoyed these new faces rather than regretted the passing of the old. New people could be conned, by virtue of their unfamiliarity with the place, into letting me get away with little ruses that would formerly have been stopped dead in their tracks.

  I did miss Sheila Ewart, Big Matron, the original Biggie, who left the school at this time. She was replaced by Mrs Wemyss (pronounced Weems), who was never known as anything but Mrs Wemyss. When you are spelled Wemyss and pronounced Weems, nick-names are unnecessary.

  From a wheelchair, you tend to look up people’s noses. In Mrs Wemyss’s case, there was usually something to see. She had a resident bogey, more often than not, waggling as she spoke. It bobbed up and down as the breath went in and out.

  I was learning that anyone in authority has at least one hobby-horse. Mrs Wemyss had two, hot breakfasts and tonsils. On the first subject she would say, ‘How these boys can be expected to learn anything at school without a hot breakfast inside them is simply beyond me. In summer it’s one thing, but in winter? Quite absurd.’ She instituted porridge and campaigned for bacon and eggs.

  Her line on tonsils was less humane. She thought they were a mistake. Everyone would be much the better for having theirs out. She had strong ideas about the best post-operative diet: dry toast. ‘My goodness, don’t you cry when you eat your first piece! But you get better quickly. At my last place of work there was an Italian man who was crying his silly eyes out when I made him eat his toast. Next day what happens? He thanks me from the bottom of his heart, for helping him get better so much more quickly than the patients being pampered with jellies and ice cream. Such a soppy thing to give a tonsillectomy patient!’ Temperamentally she was well suited to the school’s philosophy of care that stopped well short of spoiling.

  Ponky-doodle

  I appreciated the porridge very much and enjoyed the occasional fried egg but hung stubbornly on to my tonsils. One of the minor matrons who joined the school at this time was Millicent Baxter, thin and pretty, very lively. She had a stylised way of sniffing when she was near some of the boys. Whatever else Vulcan was, it was a place where boys reached physical maturity far away from their mothers’ tender nagging. Some of us positively hummed. She would raise her chin and tilt her head to one side, to take two thoughtful sniffs. There was nothing censorious about it. She might have been trying to memorise the scent of a flower strange to her. Then she might casually say, to an Egyptian boy who was sometimes distinctly aromatic, ‘Nabil, have you had a bath today? We’re getting a little …’ She never said smelly. She never said whiffy, rank, stinky or high. She never even said pongy. What she said was ponky-doodle.

  Her other mannerism was what she said instead of swearing. Just when it seemed that the temptation to say ‘Bloody’ was too much, and she’d gone beyond the point of no return with those satisfying opening consonants, that ‘Bl–’, she would make a great effort and say ‘–ue pencil!’ instead. Blue pencil. The censor’s blue pencil crossed out the expressions she didn’t allow herself to utter.

  In theory the new buildings were perfectly tailored to our needs, but there were plenty of little flaws. Miss Willis often told us about the bell-push she had seen at a Local Authority building, for the disabled to ring for assistance, but placed far too high for anyone in a wheelchair to reach. This was one of her little sermons. Even so, on her home ground she hadn’t been able to anticipate every problem. There was a metal ridge, for instance, to the front entrance of the dormitory block, which no electric wheelchairs could cross, and only the most skilful manual wheelers could jerk themselves up and over. A temporary wooden ramp was commissioned so that the premises could be properly accessible while the repairs were pending.

  Trussed, basted, oven ready

  Judy Brisby had the nerve to visit the school to flaunt her happiness. She even came into the classroom and said she had an announcement to make. She was going to have a baby. Why, exactly, were we supposed to care?

  There was dutiful applause from two or three pupils. I was one of them, toady to the last, but since all I can do in the way of clapping is to pat the back of the left hand with the front of my right I hardly swelled the accolade. Julian didn’t even go through the motions of clapping. As the applause was dying away he said, ‘Poor kid!’ not loudly – but loudly enough.

  ‘Would you mind repeating what you just said?’ snapped Judy Brisby, remembering the power of her days as a matron. ‘I think we’d all like to hear it.’ But her power was only a memory.

  ‘Certainly,’ said Julian with a smile. ‘I said: “Poor kid!”’

  She was trussed, she was basted, she was oven ready. The boy agent QM had defeated the fiend from Smersh (or did she answer to Spectre?). He was fully entitled to blow the smoke casually from his strong index and middle fingers, the double barrels of his Beretta. He had earned the double-0 prefix, his licence to kill. He was 00QM as far as I was concerned, outright head of the Secret Service, but nobody missed Judy Brisby and she was never mentioned again.

  I try to avoid passing severe judgements on my fellow beings, but I have to admit I’m pretty unforgiving when it comes to Judy Brisby. I take a rather vindictive line with her. I hope she has many future lives. There – I’ve said it. No taking back.

  Luke Squires was much on my mind, but I also kept my distance from him. He would roll past me from time to time in his nifty wheelchair and squeeze his groin as he went by. I was terrified of getting caught if I responded. At the beginning of the new term senior boys had circulated warnings that ‘any boy found indulging in homosexual practices’ was to be expelled. Then Terence Wilberforce and another boy were caught in the act by Miss Salisbury and told to report to Raeburn. Miss Salisbury had a nerve turning them in, I thought, when she spent so much of her spare time head down in Miss Dawkins’ lap. Terence and his co-accused went in prepared for the worst, hoping for pain rather than expulsion. They would prefer a beating, however savage, to the end of the only education they could hope for.

  A group of us mustered outside Raeburn’s study. If poor bed-wetting Roger Stott couldn’t sit down for days after being on the receiving end of the Board of Education, what would be the punishment for taboo practices with another boy? From the other side of the door came a silence we took to be ominous. Time went by, and someone set his ear against the solid wood of the door. He could hear murmurings from within, but not what was being said.

  The suspense was killing. It was torture being outside that door, not knowing what torture was in progress on the other side of it. If it was worse than what we were going through, then it was terrible indeed. Finally Terence hobbled out of the office – but as he had hobbled in, that didn’t signify. He was moving quite normally and smiling. Had Raeburn tried to wallop their bottoms? Had he broken the spare Board of Education in the frenzy of his walloping?

  No, Raeburn hadn’t walloped them. Not at all. He had offered them a small sherry. They were close to being adults, after all – wasn’t that what this chat should be about? Then he explained that nothing shocked or surprised him, after being in the Army. Boys of their age were naturally curious. However, Marion did get rather upset by this sort of thing, and she wasn’t alone in that. He advised them to be careful, and ended the interview by saying that if they had any questions on this particular subject, to come and see him any time at all. At the start of the day I had been thanking God Almighty that I hadn’t been one of the boys caught in the act, and I ended up almost blaming Him for depriving me of that glass of sherry and the friendly chat.

  So perhaps the risks weren’t impossible to contemplate after all. I tried to imagine the best place to explore the warming mound in Luke’s lap. There were so many new nooks and crannies to the new premises. Luke must have rubbed his hands together (against his groin, na
turally) when he saw the plans – if that ever really happened – to see so many protected new spaces. Exploitable little pockets for potential sensuality.

  After any number of delays and teething problems the new dormitory block was opened, and so was the new classroom block. Initially being a pupil of Vulcan had really been like living in a castle, but now the main building was the hub, and the new dormitory block and the new classrooms were like two arms spidering out in opposite directions from the original school.

  Marching papers

  The new dormitories were on ground level, which was a manifest improvement. It was never anywhere near as cold as it had been in that castle turret. The facilities were better, with one bathroom between each pair of dorms. I was being given a bath there one November day when shouting seemed to burst out from a number of places at once. All I could hear was, ‘Kenny’s dead!’ which made me very sad. I had liked Mr Kenny the maths teacher. He had beautiful hand-writing on the blackboard. His emotions were always close to the surface. In one lesson I couldn’t concentrate because my knee was so sore. He asked me why I was finding the lesson so difficult and I explained. After the lesson he stroked my knee and said some sort of prayer over it. He told me about a spiritual healer called Rebecca Beard. He had read her book Everyman’s Search and was convinced she was on to something. There were tears in his eyes.

  It wasn’t that sort of touch which had got him into trouble, though. Mr Kenny had been dismissed (wrongfully, to my way of thinking) for hitting Bernard Baines, a provoking lad who dressed as a Teddy boy and listened to Buddy Holly on his Grundig tape-recorder. In any case Bernard had hit back with far greater force and given Mr Kenny a black eye, as well as his marching papers by grassing him up. Now Mr Kenny had ended his life, and his death would lie on Bernard’s conscience with all the weight (I was sure about this) of a feather. Still, the school would remember him, and I would return the favour of the prayers he said over my hot and angry knee.

  Of course it wasn’t Kenny at all. It was Kennedy, the American president, who had died. Mr Kenny moved to Australia and wrote me nice letters.

  One strange thing about the new dorm was that our filthy radio plays stopped dead, or (putting it another way) never got started after the change of address. The new environment had an acoustic that deadened our fantasies. Perhaps the Castle itself really had been an accomplice – the Grey Lady herself needing a few cheap thrills to beguile the tedium of non-existence. Or else it was simply that I had begun to lose interest and was looking for an excuse to let it drop. Without me to cook, mother and whore my way through the narrative every night, the carnival was over.

  To make love like Ten

  These days I was more interested in Luke Squires, though I was also fascinated by a new pupil called Jimmy Kettle. He hardly seemed like a pupil at all. He was older than me, fifteen or even sixteen, and American. James Charles Kettle III. He was certainly old enough that he needed to shave – I remember that. He hardly seemed to need any education, since he was sophisticated to a terrifying degree. This isn’t normally a character profile which fills teachers with admiration, but Jimmy had no trouble in getting away with it. Teachers never resented him missing their lessons – it was rather the other way round. They were surprised and delighted if he chose to turn up, but also almost nervous. It was as if they knew they must perform at the peak of their powers to have a chance of holding his attention.

  Jimmy didn’t feel the need to stay at Vulcan for the whole term. He was free to pick and choose his school-days. His home was in Paris with his glamorous mother, who was often away on her travels. She was rich enough to treat the school more or less as an Otel for her son on those occasions, and the school was poor enough to accept such a pupil on any terms whatsoever. Jimmy was spastic, not quite athetoid but certainly on the borderline of that unhappy state. He was less able to control his involuntary movements than Luke, especially when he was tired. On the other hand, he enjoyed the advantage over Luke that his spasms didn’t affect his legs too much, so his walking was reasonably assured. He didn’t need a chair. Luke and he didn’t get on, which was virtually inevitable. They were fighting to monopolise the very small amount of spastic mystique available.

  It would be quite wrong to imagine that I played these two fascinating young men against each other. I wouldn’t have known how.

  I was used to being thought of as clever, but I cheerfully passed the brainy laurels over to Jimmy, as long as he let me talk to him, which he seemed happy to do. His accent took a little getting used to. It was some time before I realised that it was genteel Boston trying to sound Southern. Jimmy wanted to be an actor, and it didn’t seem an impossible dream, compared to many on the premises. He jigged in rhythm while he spoke. The tremors in his hands could be built into dramatic gestures. It didn’t seem out of the question that he might act a part in a play without breaking character.

  On stage he might be able to gain a greater mastery of his physical instrument, as long as he didn’t get too tired. He was confident of success, saying that actors didn’t need to use their own energy. That was what the audience was there for – as an energy source. It was only rehearsals that he would need to worry about, in terms of draining his batteries. Performance would replenish them.

  Somehow he made it possible to imagine him appearing in a play which required him to come down a grand staircase in evening dress, carrying a brimming glass, and not spilling a drop.

  Jimmy Kettle had one absolute obsession, deserving the solemn label of monomania. He wanted to do everything like Ten. Everything came back to that. He wanted to drink like Ten, he wanted to smoke like Ten, he wanted to make love like Ten. He mentioned Ten not ten times a day but ten times a minute. He worshipped Ten.

  Ten was Tennessee Williams. Hence the over-lay of Southern accent. Ten, rather than Tenn, because that was how highly he scored with Jimmy. In fact he wrote it down in numeral form, as 10. Ten out of ten.

  There were no obstacles in the way of his drinking and smoking like 10, since his mobility and his funds were both more or less unlimited. The grounds of Vulcan were large, and it wasn’t as if a posse was despatched every time he missed a class. He was allowed to go his own way. If anyone objected to his conscientious programme of dissolution, they would be likely to find the co-principals’ hearing, normally so sharp, blocked with earmuffs paid for by Mrs Kettle’s very welcome cheques.

  The cutest scrunched-up face

  Making love like 10 wasn’t quite so straightforward a prospect as the drinking and smoking. Jimmy’s own tastes were conventional, though hardly late-blooming. He offered to take me to Paris, and to let me have a turn with his favourite companion. ‘Her name is Minouche,’ he said, ‘and she’s got the cutest scrunched-up face. And don’t worry, you won’t have to pay. It’ll be my treat.’

  When I said I didn’t care for girls in that way he seemed delighted, saying, ‘I’ll take you where the queers go if you like. You’ve no idea what goes on in the Place Pigalle.’ In fact he regarded his own sexual conformity as the greatest obstacle in the path of what he most wanted, close friendship with 10 himself.

  Though one hundred per cent heterosexual, he would make an exception for Tennessee Williams, and wouldn’t make a fuss about it. ‘If 10 wanted to sleep with me, I’d do it like a shot. It would be the least I could do,’ Genius had its privileges, after all, and so does charm, which was just a part of what Jimmy had.

  He kept issuing invitations to Paris, saying, ‘Ma Kettle would be sure to make you welcome.’ It pleased him to refer to his glamorous mother invariably as ‘Ma Kettle’, as if she was a hillbilly chewing black-eyed peas on a porch somewhere, her quid of chewing tobacco parked during the interruption of the meal in the lap of a dress that had once been a potato sack.

  After learning that I wasn’t a potential customer for Minouche, Jimmy lent me a book of stories by 10 called Three Players of a Summer Game, which he said was far ‘fruitier’ than anything 10 could get away with
on stage in our retarded little country (no offence). The Darling Buds of May was already quite a step up for me, and I struggled with 10’s book, though I could dimly see that there was a vitality in it not altogether different from what H. E. Bates admired in his Larkins, though turned to different ends – less likely to produce a family of six. Jimmy took pity on me and would drop quotations from 10 into our conversations. He set out to shape my mind, in a way that no teacher had really bothered to do.

  Jimmy read to me from his favourite stories in the book I was so slow to read. He conducted the reading with broad hand gestures which somehow damped down the involuntary movements in his arms. I remember in particular him declaiming, ‘He is a drinker who has not yet completely fallen beneath the savage axe blows of his liquor,’ and, with an almost Shakespearean grandeur, ‘the dark and wondering stuff beneath the dome of calcium …’

  We wept together over ‘One Arm’ – Jimmy’s tears the more surprising since he knew the story so well. In another story, a man and a woman take to going to depraved bars together – although they’re both interested in men. It’s just that they’re both more likely to be successful if they work as a team. The man calls what they’re looking for ‘the lyric quarry’.