Adam Mars-Jones - Pilcrow

The fantasy which grew up around Ben Nevin was strong and total. Relatively few actual climaxes were involved, and they were never of the quick-lurk-in-a-corner or moment-snatched-in-the-lav sort. That would have sullied the purity of my feelings. The moments of truest arousal were in the great outdoors, Mr Nevin’s natural habitat. I had learned the lessons of CRX well, and could quite discreetly bring myself off (my orgasm still dry at this stage) under the blankets my idol had so thoughtfully supplied. He never noticed. My powers of concentration increased, and eventually I was able to take my pleasure with my hands decorously visible above the blanket. I don’t know why the phrase ‘mental masturbation’ should be such a disparaging one, when the skill is so useful and privacy hard to come by.

Mr Nevin set up a sort of garden on a low table (when I told Dad about it, fair play, he was inspired to do the same). Even so, it wasn’t ideal — there was only so much of the area I could reach. I dreamed of a much wider garden, with bays at regular intervals along it for wheelchair access, a sort of flowering arcade.

The mealtime rule at Vulcan was that elbows were never to be rested on the table. I can’t say I was bothered — my elbows don’t have that inclination. It’s like a ban on limbo-dancing as far as I’m concerned, an infringement of my liberty, obviously, but not something I can work myself into a lather about.

Ben Nevin, though, invariably rested an elbow on the table. Sometimes two elbows, when he was making a resting-place out of his interlaced fingers for his strong chin. There was a certain amount of grumbling behind his back about this, which I did my best to squelch. Why was Ben Nevin allowed the satisfactions of this bad habit when we weren’t? The answer was so terribly obvious. Because he was Ben Nevin, and we weren’t.

I imagined living with Mr Nevin in Canada after I grew up. Then I spoiled the fantasy for myself by realising that a woman would come along and ruin everything by marrying him, so I tried very hard to give up that particular dream. It was true that we could manage in Canada very nicely, but I thought it pretty unlikely that he would ever take up with anyone as small as me.

Mr Nevin was generally loved, but I discovered with a shock that Raeburn wasn’t necessarily popular with the boys. Some of them made fun of the fact that he hadn’t really been injured in the War. It was during the War, but not in the War. A tank had rolled on him while he was doing his training at Sandhurst. For some of the boys this meant he wasn’t a proper hero. I didn’t think it made a difference.

The Board of Education

Another thing on which I disagreed with some of my fellows was ‘The Board of Education’ — the same wooden paddle with a cartoon of a boy printed on it which I had seen so often while browsing in the Ellisdons catalogue. Alan kept the Board of Education on his desk, or else he tucked it into his back pocket while he did the rounds of the school. His knees knocked together and his feet were splayed out as he walked with his canes, so that the Board bobbed almost merrily in his back pocket. To me this was only proof that the co-principal of Vulcan School loved getting toys and tricks through the post as much as I did, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that the B of E was an object of fear to many of the pupils. I didn’t understand it, though, and one day I asked if he would let me take a look. Cheerfully he handed it to me to inspect.

It was light in weight but very strong, and very comfortable to hold. Looking at the grimacing manikin having his bottom whacked on the Board, I decided to whack my own spare hand with it. It didn’t hurt a bit. I just wondered if there was a secret thing on it, some wonderful button which made it spring into action. The finest and most characteristic Ellisdon products had some such gimmick. Eventually I returned it to Raeburn, still baffled by its appeal to him and its menace to everyone else. In my best junior-boffin voice I asked, ‘Exactly what does it do , Sir?’ and he simply replied, ‘I hope you never have to find out, John …’

At the school, it was Raeburn’s rôle to demonstrate to the boys that there were few obstacles that could not be overcome with the proper attitude. His watch-word was, ‘If I can do it, so can you.’ He was more than a teacher, he was a living lesson.

Miss Willis was more the educational philosopher of the pair. She felt that every boy should be encouraged, even goaded, into achieving as much physical independence as was possible in his particular case. Encouraged — or goaded. The goading idea, with its Nancy Astor overtones, ran deeper with her than with Alan. Marion felt that a boarding school was well placed to help disabled boys, because their families had a regrettable tendency to cocoon them. She didn’t know a lot about my family, in which the cocooning was very erratic. Marion’s watch-word was, ‘There’s no such word as can’t.’ I spent a lot of my time at Vulcan School muttering between clenched teeth, ‘ Can’t is a perfectly good word.’

Sometimes there were film shows put on for us. Reach for the Sky came round rather more often than was natural — the Douglas Bader story. It was a homily in celluloid, preached on the foundation text of the school. The Germans could have tortured him for days without him admitting that there was such a word as can’t. They would have had to take the pliers to Kenneth More’s tongue. We didn’t much care for that film. Julian Robinson got a big laugh by saying that if ever they made a film about the food served at the school, it should be called Retch for the Sky .

Marion Willis was the one with contacts, and the skill at exploiting them. One particular Friend of Vulcan was Bernard Miles, the actor and impresario. He arranged for boys from the school to attend performances of Treasure Island at the Mermaid, the theatre he had founded in London. He himself played Long John Silver, with one leg fairly obviously tied up behind him (which was disappointing) but with a real parrot, which was just about the most marvellous thing I’d ever seen in my life. His Long John Silver was very well done — rather frightening, a study in charm and greed. He’d sidle up to his victims and almost lean on them for support while he slid his knife in, murmuring soothing words the whole time. ‘That’s it,’ he would say. ‘Let it slip in gently, boy … All will be darkness soon .’ Could this terrifying villain really be Miss Willis’s friend?

Some of us went to see Mr Miles back-stage — the braver ones — and were disappointed that he abandoned the rough accent along with the wooden leg and the parrot, whose cage had a cloth thrown over it to promote silence. It was all ‘Marion, how lovely to see you!’and ‘Darling, it’s been an age!’ He conveyed intimacy by way of a paradoxical formality, calling her Ma-ri-on, as if he’d never heard of the name before or only seen it written down.

It wasn’t that we expected him to lean stabbingly on Miss Willis, though that would certainly have been something to talk about in the school bus on the long ride home. We got used to it. His voice was like dark sweet beer. In fact he spoke the words for the Mackeson advertisements. The voice had come to merge with the product it promoted.

Something about the production which excited me almost as much as the parrot was the way they used dry ice from canisters to reproduce sea mist. It seemed (predictably) mystical to me. I almost strained my tongue reaching out to try and taste it. I convinced myself that I could detect the other-worldly flavour on my tongue, an essence of clouds.

I asked Mr Miles, posh in his dressing room, if you had to make it or if you could buy it. He was helpful and informative, though he warned me a grown-up might have to do the actual buying. Then of course I was pestering Mum and Dad for them to get me a canister of my own. There must be shops that sell it, otherwise how would theatres buy it?