Pilcrow

by Adam Mars-Jones

  At lunch-time that day, though, a boy called Philip Battersby came up and asked me if I thought Mr Kirby had a nice bottom. I said I hadn’t the least idea. He said, ‘Well you were certainly getting a good look at it in the lab this morning.’ I didn’t know what to say, and Philip made the most of this rare event. What would he have said if he had realised I was sniffing rather than peering? Mr Kirby smelled of Quink and cinnamon.

  For ever in the minds of men

  Mr Kirby had a side-line in astronomy. Patrick Moore of The Sky At Night came to deliver a talk with slides, and jolly good it was too. I remember that at one point he stamped on the floor twice, and then told us how far the universe had expanded in that second between his stamps. We were a good audience. Everyone went ‘Ooohh …!’ absolutely sincerely.

  There was a little reception given for him after the talk. I’d read some of his space novels for boys and badly wanted to chat with him, but Patrick was only interested in Luke, who was laying on the charm and praising the space novels. Which I’d told him about in the first place. I didn’t get a look in, and nor did anyone else. On his way out Patrick Moore told Miss Willis that Luke had real promise as a novelist and she absolutely beamed. Little parcels arrived for Luke for some time after that, books, cards and bits of meteorite. Perhaps it was then that I began to get tired of the relentlessness of Luke’s overtures to the world at large. Luke Squires, novelist or con-man in the making.

  I wasn’t going to miss the star-gazing evening Mr Kirby had arranged, even if the only star I was interested in was Mr Kirby himself. On a star-gazing evening the lights would be turned off in the classrooms, and over much of the rest of the school, to allow our night sight to develop. It was easy to slip away even for those with compromised mobility. There was an awful lot of lurking relative to the amount of actual astronomy. The few times I tried to join in with the proper, star-gazing part of the evening I couldn’t see a darned thing.

  I had a rechargeable torch, rather a treasure when such things were very new. It may even have come from Ellisdons. They were nickel cadmium batteries, really very primitive. Their working life was not long. After a few weeks I had to keep charging it continuously, and even then it gave the dimmest possible glow.

  I went into one of the classrooms and perched by the door in the Wrigley, beckoning Mr Kirby with my dim torch. I was a little glow-worm of desire, signalling with my feeble beam, to a physics teacher who was perhaps attuned to other wave-lengths of light, or wasn’t going to risk burning the wings of his flammable career. Come-hither looks don’t work well from a wheelchair, even to those with their night sight at its clearest, their antennæ fully unfurled. All you can do is waggle your eyebrows. Mr Kirby came a bit closer, but wouldn’t commit himself. Then he faded into the further darkness.

  All the same, I was determined not to return to the dorm, no matter what happened. I wouldn’t willingly submit to curfew while my desires were in flood. I wheeled disconsolately into the new wing, ending up in the sixth-form common room. I wasn’t entitled to be there, since I wasn’t in the sixth form, though I could be invited in by someone who was, like Paul or Abadi. A certain amount of smoking went on. Now it was deserted.

  I knew that before long I would be hearing my name called in exasperated tones. I had to give myself some sort of alibi, to explain without disgrace why at a late hour I was nowhere near my allotted sleeping-place. In the common room I simply stood up and fell back into a deep chair I couldn’t get out of. That was alibi enough and to spare. No one would question the likelihood of my miscalculating in this way, though for years I had known at a glance – it was a survival skill – whether a given step, door or chair was Johnable. I closed my eyes and waited in weary disgust for the search party. Instead I heard the whispering spokes of a distinctive wheelchair as it pulled in neatly next to the upholstered dungeon into which I had flung myself.

  Luke Squires had found me, and in a position which I suppose cried out to be exploited. He lifted himself out of his chair and onto his knees. If I couldn’t get up from the chair, I could do no more than squirm while he infiltrated my Velcro. I said, ‘Go away!’ but it came out as an ineffectual mutter rather than the howl of outrage I intended. ‘Fat chance!’ he said. He gloated, very much in the manner of a villain in a penny dreadful. He gave a stage laugh and crooned, ‘Now I have you in my power!’ and stroked the bottom of his face, where the villain’s beard would be.

  Oh well, I thought, why deny him his fun? Let him get on with it. At least something was happening. There ensued an oral act. Luke said afterwards, ‘You’re always good value, John. You can’t have wanked for a fortnight. I love the way the stuff banks up. I’ve never been able to wait longer than a week, but it’s worth it when you finally do it.’

  I hadn’t actually been abstaining at all – but it was a ridiculous conversation to be having with the debaucher who’d just set my clock back to zero anyway. And that was the end of my sexual life at that special school for ordinarily delinquent boys, who couldn’t get into half as much trouble as they wanted to.

  I was erotically stale-mated, with no adult taking the slightest bit of interest in me. Jimmy Kettle would be ashamed of me – 10 himself would disown me, for my lack of daring and imagination. My feebleness in tracking down the lyric quarry. I was also disappointed in Luke Squires. I could hardly pretend that I was his lyric quarry either, if that phrase meant anything at all. I was just a sort of human lolly for use in emergencies.

  Jimmy Kettle was as full as ever of drive and determination (even if one of his strongest ambitions was still to fell himself with the savage axe blows of liquor). He told me that I was the only adult apart from him among the pupils of Vulcan, and that this could mean only one thing. I would go crazy if I stuck around. His opinion counted with me. Of all the fantasists at that address, Jimmy was far the most realistic.

  He was writing a play of his own now, though he wouldn’t let anyone look at it. His pseudonym for the purpose was James Delaney. When he was satisfied with the play he would send a copy to 10, which wasn’t intended as any kind of career move. It was pure homage.

  Jimmy was realistic about his prospects as a first-time playwright. He told me that a first play, however brilliant, might have to wait six months, or even a year, for a Broadway production. He was setting his sights on the West End, where the field was less crowded and the waiting time shorter.

  Somehow I got a glimpse of Jimmy’s play, a single line and not even a line of dialogue, just a stage direction. I don’t remember how I managed this – it seems a bit fishy, somehow. Normally it’s easy for other people to hide things from me, so perhaps Jimmy let me see that one line on purpose.

  It certainly told me a great deal about what he was doing. The stage direction read: Night. Sound of the respirator. Not much ambiguity there. Jimmy was writing about Abadi and Paul. Not only had those two found each other, and the heroic action which would transform both their lives, but now they had found their Homer too, the bard who would make their story live for ever in the minds of men.

  I remember one more school expedition, with Alan and Marion presenting a united front for the sake of the children. It was actually rather an ambitious one, to Amsterdam. We were on a tram when Raeburn said something about us being on the Queen’s Highway. Of course I piped up and said we’re not in England so there’s no queen. ‘Oh yes there is!’ he said smartly. ‘It’s Queen Juliana, and we’re on her Highway now, so we will obey and oblige Her Majesty in any way we can!’ I thought it was rotten luck that our school holiday had to be in just about the only other European country that had a ruddy Queen.

  The Sit-Upon Boy

  We went on a tour of the canals by boat. Most of the boys fitted in the seats very nicely, but not John with his all-but-fixed hips. I couldn’t see a damned thing except the sky. Then Raeburn called out from the aisle on the other side, ‘Would you like to sit on my lap?’ It was a wonderful reunion with Alan, bringing back all the emotions I had felt
for him at the beginning. I didn’t want the canal tour to end, so that I could go on being the Sit-Upon Boy. It was only afterwards I remembered that he didn’t have sensation below the waist, so it can’t have meant anything much to him being the Sat-Upon Man.

  Contact with Miss Willis was a little more traumatic. At the end of the trip she was helping me down some steps in a wheelchair single-handed. Not the Wrigley, of course. For the trip I was in a pushing chair. She would balance the back wheels on each step and then lower me down to the next one.

  It was a mad thing for someone of her size to undertake. Of course she slipped and down we all tumbled, Miss Willis, John Cromer and all. I could see nothing. I had broken Marion’s fall, or rather the wheelchair had. She had somehow moulded round me and the Wrigley, blocking out all light.

  I was pinned under her mighty bosom. It was very soft. Her body was all forgiveness, not at all authoritarian. I became aware for the first time of her subtle perfume. I could confirm at first hand what Luke Squires had said about her freedom from pong. She smelled of soapy flannels and rubber ducks.

  I was rather shaken up, but it was worse for poor Marion Gertrude. She wept with pain and shock, retrieving a hanky from her sleeve to wipe her eyes and blow her nose. I was still buoyed up by the thrill of sitting on Raeburn’s lap, and her sufferings didn’t make as much impression as they should have.

  Almost Mum’s first words on my return were, ‘Well, I hope you’re going to sit down and write them a thank-you letter. They’ve gone to a lot of trouble for you, you know.’ All the same she was surprised when I picked up a piece of paper and put it in my typewriter straight away. She preferred her scoldings to be ineffectual, so that they could be repeated without limit.

  ‘Dear Mr Raeburn and Miss Willis,’ I wrote. ‘Thank you so much for taking me to Holland for such a wonderful holiday. I shall remember it for ever, especially the canal trip.’ I was going to return the carriage of the typewriter, and underline the last four words, but decided against it. Extreme caution was called for. My Alan fixation was Top Secret, and I had to get a message past the guards, namely Mum and Miss Willis. Mum checked over my letter – she vetted everything I wrote, there was nothing I could do to stop her – and said it was fine, sealed it and stamped it. So my love letter got past at least one of the guards …

  I was ashamed to learn when I went back to Vulcan that Miss Willis had broken three ribs in the accident with me. She wasn’t really well enough to be running the school, but as she said, if she didn’t do what had to be done, who would? Seeing Marion, dishevelled and unwell, somehow holding onto the reins made me feel guilty that I had been the cause of her misfortune. For a while I thought nothing but tender thoughts about poor Marion Gertrude.

  Eventually Marion’s injuries healed, but the psychological damage done by the rift with Alan was more intractable. She began to feel threatened when pupils showed too much initiative, a rare enough event in a disabled school and one which she might have set herself to welcome. That after all was the rationale of the school, to protect disabled boys less than their misguided families would tend to do. She didn’t repudiate her philosophy of goading into independence, but she began to show signs almost of smothering.

  Acts Two and Three

  Abadi Mukherjee got it into his head that his great friend Paul Dandridge should see India. He wanted to show him a different world. The practical difficulties were enormous, but Abadi wasn’t deterred by them, and neither was Paul.

  Marion did everything she could to discourage them. She didn’t quite have the nerve to say that there was such a word as ‘can’t’ after all, but she made it pretty clear that there was such a word as ‘shouldn’t’ and such a phrase as ‘would be mad to’.

  She told Abadi that Paul would die in his care, but this argument didn’t even begin to work on him. If it hadn’t been for Abadi Paul would be dead already, wasn’t that so? That historic reprieve made him invulnerable. Neither Abadi nor Paul responded to her threats. On their side strings were pulled, appeals made, until Air India offered them free plane tickets. Abadi’s parents were very wealthy, so I suppose the fact that free tickets were so welcome must mean they weren’t helping.

  Marion’s heart must have sunk when she discovered that the mad trip seemed to be going ahead despite her objections. Then it got worse, much worse. Abadi turned down the airline tickets and decided to go overland. He would feed, bathe and change Paul. At night he would run the respirator off the car battery.

  Abadi’s passion had always been driving, which he claimed he’d been doing in India since he was eight. We’d heard that his grandfather was an enthusiastic driver who had once run over eighteen beggars in a single day (he didn’t say if they were all in a clump, or if they had been picked off individually), so it was in his blood. He would get his licence, and then he would make it happen.

  It took him a long time to get sponsorship for the trip. In fact it took years. He managed it in the end and off the pair of them went on their mad adventure. When they reached Delhi, Mrs Gandhi came out to welcome them. I’m not sure she was Prime Minister at this point, but certainly a figure on the world stage.

  I had mixed feelings about the overland-to-India saga. Sometimes it seemed to me that Abadi and Paul were making things too easy for their chronicler James Delaney/Kettle, by throwing in Acts Two and Three free of charge.

  The Skull of Doom

  The infestation of fantasy which was such a distinctive feature of Vulcan School did us no harm, when it was a matter of James Bond paraphrase or even rip-roaring buckaroo porn. It was only when Miss Willis’s damaged emotional state was stirred into the mixture that mischief was done. The last manifestation of fantasy that I witnessed in my time at Vulcan was decidedly Gothic, and it did real harm to at least one vulnerable person.

  Miss Willis set the rumour mill going well ahead of time. More than one person asked me, ‘Is it really true there’s a visitor coming to give a talk who’s got a real ghost in a box?’ I had to say that I didn’t know, but it didn’t seem very likely. I was still regarded as an authority on the supernatural. One little fuse-poltergeist and you’re an expert for life!

  I was intrigued enough to ask Luke who our visitor was, but all he said was, ‘Nobody special – just some old duck,’ which made me wonder if he enjoyed Miss Willis’s confidence as much as he once had.

  On the appointed afternoon we assembled in the main hall. Marion’s voice rang out in plump authority. ‘Boys of Vulcan School! It is a great pleasure to introduce our guest – and my personal friend – Miss Anna Mitchell-Hedges. Anna was living in the Castle before most of you boys were even thought of. It was her father the Colonel who placed the advertisement in the paper which Mr Raeburn and I answered all those years ago. Of course Anna knew the Castle as it was before we made our recent modifications, but I hope she gives her approval!’ To which Anna Mitchell-Hedges returned a twisted smile. ‘Anna and her father spent their lives travelling the world, surviving many dangers and discovering many things. In her time she has given a pedicure to the Duke of Windsor, and she has also landed the heaviest hammerhead shark ever caught by a woman – weighing fifteen hundred pounds!

  ‘She has brought one of her treasures to show to you today, a treasure which is much older than even the oldest part of the Castle. Please make her welcome, boys!’

  We made her welcome, this strange, rather sunken creature with grey hair and a cold and grating voice.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Willis. It is a joy to me to see that what was once my home is giving hospitality to so many fine boys.’ It was odd to hear her speaking so coldly of joy. Her smile was like a winter night. ‘Now I must have darkness, total darkness.’ Presumably Marion had been briefed about this requirement beforehand. She went over to the windows and tugged the curtains scrupulously across. Then she went over to the door and turned the lights off.

  In the darkness we could hear a succession of thrilling, slightly sinister noises. Miss Mitchell-Hedges’ v
oice came again in the darkness: ‘And now, dear friends, some music.’ There was a heavy click, and a tape-recorder started to play some music. I recognised it. It was the frightening music from Fantasia, from the bit with the spooks. ‘Night on the Bare Mountain’. It didn’t frighten me. If there was anything that did give me a moment of goose-flesh, it was Anna Mitchell-Hedges saying the words ‘dear friends’. She didn’t sound as if she’d ever had a friend in her life.

  She made the music quieter, so that she could speak properly over it. ‘And now for some light …’ But she didn’t ask Miss Willis to turn the lights in the room back on. Instead she clicked on a powerful torch which she was holding just beneath an object on the desk in front of her. The light shone through the object. The light was red. There was a red lens on the torch. The only light in the room came from that torch, and reached us by passing through what was sitting on the desk before her, facing us with its grin. Miss Mitchell-Hedges made small passes with the torch, so that the red light wavered and cast changing shadows.

  This was the moment, after the clunks and the click and the spooky music, when I started to hear another sound. A low continuous banging, with a moan inside it.

  It was also the moment when Anna’s voice took on an oddly crooning quality. ‘What you are looking at, dear boys,’ she said, ‘and what is looking back at you, is an object full of value and danger. It is valuable because it is one of a very few in the world. The British Museum has another such object, but that has not been authenticated. And it is dangerous because of what it can do to those who under-estimate it. What it has done, indeed, to those who have shown it disrespect.