Pilcrow

by Adam Mars-Jones

  Once, though, while I was playing ‘Plaisir d’amour’ on that piano, a choir of little matrons formed up behind me, three of them, and started crooning, ‘’cos I can’t … help … Falling in Love, with, You …’ It’s the same tune, or near enough. I think it was re-vamped (re-re-vamped, really) and given new words for an Elvis Presley film. Hearing the joy in those little matrons’ voices made me want to give it all I had, and so I played the tune again from the top, somehow managing to ignore the pounce of pain in my back.

  The Wrigley was an altogether superior item to the E&J, in terms of speed and reliability, but it had one major draw-back. You could easily swing the foot-plates of the E&J to one side, so as to have access to the piano pedals. The Wrigley was a much sturdier piece of equipment, without being highly strung. It could move at a hell of a lick, though the reflexes of the staff were disappointingly swift and I hadn’t yet scored any direct hits. They all took evasive action, as if they’d taken a special course in wheelchair avoidance. If I’d managed an impact, the effect would have been considerable, for just the same reason that the Wrigley hampered me so much at the keyboard. Its foot-plates were rigid. There was no possibility of approaching the piano’s controls. At a posher school, of course, I might have had a crack at a grand piano. Everyone knows grands have more leg-room.

  Quite apart from its effect on any listeners I might have, ‘Plaisir d’amour’ could put me into a trance. Luckily for me, the bass part didn’t play chords all at once. They were broken up in triplets, and since the tempo was slow I could strike them one by one without straining my left hand. Then my right, for all its inadequacies, could float the tune on top. When the sustaining pedal was down, everything blended into a coloured pattern you could almost see. Without Roger Stott (or some other stand-in) to hold that pedal down, it was a futile exercise. The level of beauty did a nose-dive. I might just as well have been a chicken pecking at the notes. The Wrigley brought any number of improvements to my life, but it blighted my little career as a pianist.

  I’d already noticed that Luke always seemed to turn up when I started playing ‘Plaisir d’amour’. If he was the genie of the school, then that tune was the rubbing which called him out of his magic lamp. I dare say that comparison came to me because we had done Ali Baba and the Forty Wheelchair Thieves as our school play one year.

  He had wanted to learn to play ‘Plaisir d’amour’ himself, so I reversed my wheelchair out, to let his in, but I couldn’t seem to teach him and after a while he asked me to start playing again. The Sunday after our mystical moment by the serving hatch, I was playing the piano in the Music Room and mourning the decline in my performing skills.

  Plaisir d’amour

  I started playing ‘Plaisir d’amour’ without even knowing I was doing it. Before I had finished the first verse Luke was sitting beside me. He put a gentle hand on my shoulder and said I should stop playing. He could see that I was in pain. This was a side of him I hadn’t seen before.

  I explained the draw-back of the chair, and how it was cheating us both of the sounds we wanted to hear. He thought for a moment and then said, ‘Do you think you could manœuvre yourself so you’re sitting on my lap? I know my chair doesn’t have arms, but I promise to hold you safe.’

  I was a bit doubtful, but I was also flooded with memories of sitting on laps as a little boy, and how sad I was when the doctor said I wasn’t allowed to do it any more. I looked at those wonderful legs in their black trousers with the permanent crease, and I found myself saying, ‘Well, we won’t know if it works unless we try it, will we? I must admit, it would be a relief to be able to play without getting back-ache.’ It wasn’t every day I got the chance to be the Sit-Upon Boy.

  Luke positioned his chair in front of the piano and put the brake on. I moved mine clear of the piano and locked the wheels in position. I was thrilled and frightened by the prospect of transferring onto his lap, but the fear soon left me. I didn’t have to totter more than a few inches before I felt his strong arms holding me.

  His lap was on a gradient and I realised that with luck I would be able to adjust my sitting height by which part of it I sat on. I came down carefully at about the mid-point of his thighs. It was a perfect piece of upholstery, positively the Rolls-Royce of laps, but when he moved forward I still couldn’t get my foot to wedge the sustaining pedal properly.

  ‘I think if you could pull me up and back about another inch, Luke,’ I said, ‘I’ll be as snug as a bug in a rug.’ This had been one of Gillie Walker’s favourite expressions, and of course I was using childish language to camouflage an adult yearning. He put his arms round me and pulled me back onto his lap a little more. This position was higher, and this quadrant of his lap a lot softer, but still I couldn’t address the pedal properly. Now I asked if he could move the whole chair backwards and then forwards again so I could have another go. He released the brakes and slowly slid the Chair–Luke–John complex backwards before surging softly forward again. The position we reached was almost ideal. My foot had been too far from the pedal, then too near it, but it just dropped down perfectly. The sustaining pedal was on and I could feel that my bum ended where Groin Hillock began.

  ‘I need to be just a little higher,’ I said. ‘Any chance you can pull me back just another half-inch?’ Luke pulled me further onto his lap and then every part found its place. Luke’s unique heat-generating crotch exerted gentle pressure beneath me.

  ‘Now just play,’ he said in my ear. ‘I’ve been wanting to hear it like this for a long time.’

  Snakes’ tongues sampling the breeze

  And so had I. My left hand went into the rhythm of the 1-2-3, and as the little waltz started its lilt, Luke’s wonderful hand came over to my crotch and gave gentle squeezes in time to the tune. The sun shone through the windows and the notes were properly sustained for the first time.

  The tune went round again, but already it sounded different. I thanked God that I had rejected my new grey corduroys in favour of some old black flannels, even though their crease couldn’t compare with Luke’s. Their Velcro would yield at a touch, almost at a thought. Velcro is tantric. After a few more refrains, I seemed to hear lower notes in the waltz, a sort of basso profundo oom-pah-pah as I felt his cock swelling a little more into the crease of my bum. Sonorities and sensations changed places, as if the piano had turned into a vast theatre organ. I marvelled that as Luke’s member rocked in place, it kept such perfect time with the bass notes under my fingers. The tune spiralled onwards by itself. I lost all idea of being responsible for it. In fact I stopped playing – ‘I’ stopped playing – but those fingers kept on striking the correct piano notes, and the right foot maintained its engagement with the sustain pedal.

  When I say ‘he squeezed my crotch’, ‘he stroked my balls’, all that is defective description. Luke’s hand was like an Eastern musician, who would think it rather unsophisticated to play a note directly. When I struck the A above middle C on the keyboard, I produced a note approximating to 440 hertz, the imprecision due only to the tuning of the instrument. Luke’s hand was doing something altogether more artful, withholding a note till I could think of nothing else. It would be clumsy, misleading, far too bald, to say simply ‘he touched me’ in this place or that.

  First of all the palm of his hand rested lightly on my knee, then a little more heavily until my leg had grown accustomed to the weight of the hand and much of the supporting arm. Then his four fingers raised themselves, gently waving in the air, like snakes’ tongues sampling the breeze, while the thumb of the hand probed and pressed into the tense quadriceps muscle above my knee, coaxing the tension there to drain away. The thumb continued its gentle kneading, and then it seemed to extend itself out of the hand, growing in length until it burrowed almost painfully into an area of the relaxing muscle a little higher up my thigh.

  It was as though the end of his thumb had hooked itself in that part of my leg, and was sending out roots. The palm and the thumb seemed to be acting ind
ependently, thanks to the flexibility of Luke’s elbow and wrist, and yet collaborating on a single master plan. The thumb didn’t actually pull the palm further up – it merely shortened itself, and the mesmerised palm followed in a silent trance, the four serpent tongues of the fingers, meanwhile, fluttering blindly as they tracked the pheromones to their source.

  Luke’s hand eased its lazy way higher up my leg like a serpent edging along a knotty bough, and when the four tongues encountered the beginning of my balls, they fluttered in the air a little more, then gently came to rest. The thumb extended itself again, hooking itself into my groin, and the palm smoothly followed. His hand nestled there, warm and heavy. I could feel it grafting itself into my leg.

  The fingertip tongues danced nonchalantly in the area just above my penis, and I was sure that they were sensitive to the extra heat from that area about which Luke had spoken so eloquently. I closed my eyes and waited for them to make actual contact. My hands were playing the piano without intention, only achievement. They needed no help from eyes or conscious brain.

  Nothing happened. The tactile moment never arrived. I opened my eyes again. Luke’s fingers were now more like summer swallows, perhaps, than snakes. They dived and swooped and banked in perfect formation, describing intricate overlapping parabolas in the air around my cock, but they never landed. I marvelled that they could perform such elaborate manœuvres in so limited a space. My genital chakra could sense their fluttering through the cloth of my trousers, and my mind was a hot and mystical cave resounding with the single sentence, ‘For God’s sake grab it!’

  Luke’s fingers landed at last, but some way away from my cock. They started a prodding dance on my thigh muscle, varied with a series of subtle flicks, as those tantalising digits began exploring the notional barrier of the Velcro closure.

  Luke’s chameleon fingers had undergone another transformation within the animal kingdom. Now they were so many kitten snouts trying to find their way under a sleeper’s quilt on a winter morning, burrowing for a weak point in the thermal seal, wanting to snuggle up in the warmth within.

  Luke’s ring finger made a little opening at the base of the Velcro, its sensitive tip entering lightly as though delicately tasting the damp air within. Once it had gained entry, the little finger followed. There was just enough space for the abductor muscles to team up and make the opening larger. Then the fingers boldly peeled back the material so that my cock stood free. They still hadn’t touched it.

  Within two trances, the musical one and the sensual one, I experienced a moment of doubt. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be so vulnerable in a public place. We would have only seconds of notice before someone came into the room. I wasn’t convinced I would have time to stow myself away so as to produce the appearance of normality, or at least of an unconventional duet not exceeding the bounds of the musical. Removing my hands from the keyboard would itself draw suspicious attention, but could I really rely on Luke to restore order to my trouser-front?

  Just when I was most torn between arousal and dithering, Luke resolved the matter by touching my cock at last. Then another instrument entered the symphonic poem. I felt his tongue on the back of my neck. Luke started sucking and kissing the skin, and all the while his hands cradled and stroked my parts into bliss. I was being fondled by a master of the groping arts. ‘Plaisir d’amour’ was a waltz, and Luke’s hand was a perfect dancing partner for my genital cluster. ONE-two-three, he marked the rhythm. ONE-two-three. COCK-ball-ball.

  Now was the moment, the moment as perfect as it would ever get. I felt an orgasm was the least tribute I could pay to its splendour, but Luke turned out to be a groping master in the esoteric mode, endless deferrer of release. He worked his tongue round to my right ear, and next moment he was whispering to me: ‘This isn’t the right time or the right place. Trust me. I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘What? What? When and where, then?’

  ‘Not here and not now. I’ll let you know.’

  And with that there was diminuendo. The music died under my fingers. Luke had cast his spell, and he must have known that by this stage I was willing to follow him anywhere. Tenderly he assisted me back to my own chair, then smoothed out the extra creases in his pants, creases that had been made by me. Re-adjusting his bulge to assume a more dignified position, he gave me a quick squeeze between the legs and a peck on the cheek, and then he was away, gliding out of the Music Room. I followed on some time later, wondering when the right time and place would come together to round off the tune. On my way out of the room, awkwardly punting, I came upon Millicent Baxter, who looked down at me rather oddly. It was only later that I realised there was a wet patch at the front of my trousers. Millicent’s sharp look was explained. Incontinence wasn’t an unusual event on those premises, but it had never been part of my portfolio. I hope at least it wasn’t ponky-doodle. Millicent’s nose was very sensitive.

  Scratched at by rabbits

  One facility that was lacking even in the extended school was a swimming pool. The co-principals decided that such a construction would be a great asset. Their plan was simple: an oblong of lawn was marked out, forty foot by thirty. The projected pool was supposed to have a shallow end four foot deep – not exactly my notion of shallow – and a deep end of six foot six. The idea was that it should be dug by hand, with the available resources. So the male teachers dug, the male cook dug, a party from the Army Apprentices’ School at Arborfield dug.

  Eltham College, where Miss Willis had taught before Vulcan, sent senior boys over to help on the pool for a week at a time. Any pupil of Vulcan who could control a trowel from a standing, sitting or even a lying position was put to work as well. That let me out. The net impact of all this digging was hardly noticeable to the naked eye. Even after weeks of dogged excavation the patch designated for the swimming pool looked as if it had been scratched at by rabbits rather than actually dug.

  Eventually a bulldozer had to be hired. The driver seemed to find it droll that Alan and Marion should imagine such a huge project was within their powers, but he was careful not to mock the work that had been done. So was I. I just about managed not to go round saying ‘There’s no such word as can’t, eh?’ under my breath.

  There was some sort of arrangement between Vulcan and St Paul’s School in London, not just for pool-digging but regular visits. Senior boys would come and lend a hand for a week or two. It was like having a new consignment of lovely ABs, fresh blood. They were terribly obliging.

  Once on the bus I yelled desperately, ‘Oh no! I’ve dropped my sixpence!’ A St Paul’s boy called Gordon, of whom I was particularly fond, went down on his hands and knees to search for it down on the dirty floor of the bus, saying sweetly, ‘Don’t worry, John, it’s not going to get away! If you dropped it we’ll find it.’ The search seemed to go on and on all the same, until at last he said, ‘John – I’ve found it! It was right here at the back!’

  Which it couldn’t have been, really, since I didn’t have sixpence in the first place. That was the whole point of making such a fuss, to turn the big heart of this lovely boy into my own private mint for sixpences. Best to use it just the once, though, and not wear it out.

  When the pool was finally dug, the next mighty project began: filling it, using two garden hoses. It took about a week. The water supply was a cause of friction with the village at the best of times. The water tower was only a few hundred yards away from the school, and looked pretty against a background of woods, but the pumps laboured to raise water up to the tanks in the Castle. The school learned to be a good neighbour, and not to starve surrounding areas of their water supply.

  For disabled swimmers a cold pool was never going to be much good. It would be virtually useless outside high summer. Once I was near the pool and overheard a conversation between Miss Willis and a workman about how much topping-up the pool was needing. Evaporation was a problem, and the solution Marion favoured was building a huge greenhouse over the pool. Up to that point I had been more o
r less indifferent to the pool, though most of the other boys got excited, at least when the bulldozer arrived. But now I began to thrill to the possibilities. In a greenhouse of that size I could go to town planting African and Australian sundews, and maybe even some Nepenthes. The pitcher plant which Ben Nevin had hacked for me out of the living ice of his rugged homeland was doing well, but I knew that many carnivorous plants need pampering.

  In the end Uncle Mac persuaded some friends to pay for roofing over the pool and the installation of proper heating. Even before that he was firmly ensconced in the pantheon of the school. Although radios were strictly forbidden in the dining room, an exception was made for Children’s Favourites, or any other programme on which the universal uncle appeared. I was just getting to the stage of being ashamed to admit that I still liked some of the songs he played on his programme.

  I think the swimming pool was a bit of a disappointment, all the same, even when it was properly heated. The successes of Backstroke Babs from the Judy weren’t easy to reproduce. Disabled boys might experience much less difficulty with movement in the water, but they weren’t going to win any prizes in competition against the able-bodied. ‘Backstroke Babs’ turned out to be a fairy tale after all. It was a likeable variation on the Little Mermaid, in which Babs struck a reasonably shrewd bargain, moderate helplessness on land but getting to show off with the help of her tail in the pool.

  The time and the place

  It would have been wonderful if the communications centre in the Vulcan lift-shaft had really worked, delivering mail with a whoosh of compressed air. It would have been the perfect medium for Luke to send me a message about the consummation of our involvement. As it was, it was Roger Stott who handed me a folded slip of paper which read, over the initials L.S., Woodlarks. The time and the place. Luke’s hand-writing was well-formed but sloped backwards. If it was Miss Willis’s idea that backward-sloping script was a sure sign of someone who was afraid of life, then here was the refutation. I can’t help feeling that graphology is a terrible load of old rubbish.