Adam Mars-Jones - Pilcrow

After two weeks, when the coast seemed to be clear, Miss Pearce emerged from the shadows and took her place in the front room. Dad was introduced to her at last, though he wasn’t altogether taken with her. ‘It’s an ugly thing, really,’ he said, with his practised unawareness of Mum’s feelings. ‘Is this going to be out in full view the whole time, m’dear? Couldn’t you tidy it away when you’re not using it?’ He didn’t see Miss Pearce’s beauty. But Mum couldn’t bear to let Miss Pearce out of her sight.

At first I couldn’t see what the fuss was about myself. Miss Pearce was an amorphous nothing, a headless cage of wire with some prominences in front. But Mum’s state of rapture was contagious.

The newcomer was always ‘Miss Pearce’. Mum broke one of her own rules, which was that cherished possessions were known by the names of their manufacturers. Granny wasn’t exactly unmaterialistic, but it would never have occurred to her to think that her consumer choices said anything about her. They wouldn’t dare. Her things were the best simply by virtue of her having chosen them, but Mum agonised over every purchase. She was an early subscriber to Which? magazine, which came to play a huge part in her mental life. Proust had the Almanach de Gotha and Mum had Which? .

When the household acquired a sewing machine, it was always ‘The Bernina’. On hot days Mum made iced coffee in the new ‘Kenwood’. The oven was always ‘The Rayburn’, though she was anxious for it to be known that ours was the model which burned solid fuel, not the electric one.

Finding brand-name fuel to load into it was less easy. ‘Coke’ soon got the thumbs-down, and for a while she raved about the wonder fuel anthracite. Finally she said that removing the clonker (she always said ‘clonker’ rather than ‘clinker’) simply wore her out, and why on earth couldn’t ‘they’ invent a fuel which simply burnt away to nothing?

Dishes had to be washed up with Squezy, elevenses was more relaxing with a cup of ‘Nescafé‘. The pronunciation soon shifted to ‘Nescaff’, which was what Muzzie had said, Muzzie being posh enough to play the game of common. Mum would slake her thirst with ‘a Kia-Ora’, and replenish her energy with a couple of ‘Yeast-Vite’. And when she felt like a good gripe, she’d complain about our lawn mower, which was always going wrong. ‘Your Dad never listens to me’, she would say. ‘If he’d bought an AtCo right from the start, as I advised, life would have run much more smoothly. Arthur Grant over the road has had one for years, and never had any trouble at all with it.’ Only disgraced products forfeited their right to the maker’s name, but Miss Pearce was never disgraced, and Miss Pearce was always ‘Miss Pearce’.

Soon pretty ladies began to call to see Mum, and she would take them to a private place and come back with a full set of measurements. Then Miss Pearce would creak and grind as Mum winched and cranked her into the shape of the pretty lady. ‘I can wind her all the way down to the size of Miss Susan Small,’ she said, ‘and all the way up to Bessie Braddock!’ These were the Alpha and Omega of the womanly form post-war, a famous model whose waist measured eighteen inches and a portly and truculent Labour MP.

As the dress took shape she would come in with it every so often to show me the tricks of the trade. ‘See here,’ she would say, ‘I don’t have to call Alison to come in for a fitting. I’ve made this exactly to the correct measurements but see —’ and here she would drop the dress onto the form ‘— it doesn’t look quite right, does it? We have to have more of a tuck just here …’ Then she would take the dress away for adjustments. The next time the dress met Miss Pearce the fit would be perfect. It showed what a good worker Mum was that the dress draped just as flatteringly on the satisfied customer as it had on Miss Pearce. Soon another lady would be told about Laura, how clever she was and how reasonable, and it wasn’t long before Mum had a little clientèle all her own.

Miss Pearce was certainly the most precious thing in Mum’s life at this point. She was dove-grey and cream — Quaker colours. She was a Quaker missionary sent into our home to dispense her sober joy. She was a frame on which Mum could drape her dreams. In fact we all felt warmly towards her, for bringing contentment into the house, though our feelings were more casual.

There’s no doubt that if the house had burned down, it was Miss Pearce that Mum would have rescued from the flames. I’m not saying that she would have neglected her family duties. She would have got me and Audrey and the pets out of there somehow (there were cats by this time as well as Gipsy, no longer young), but then she would have gone back in for Miss Pearce. Everything else was replaceable, but not the mistaken delivery which had brought so much happiness. On the whole Mum might have preferred to stay in the house with Miss Pearce, as the curtains caught and blazed, resting her head on that unrejecting breast.

A spiritchull baby

At this period I was equally thrilled by science and religion, without seeing a conflict. I got very excited about Billy Graham, who was on one of his gospel crusades, scorching the soul of middle England. There was a lot about him in the papers. I was just curious. The Bishop of Reading had come along the previous year and confirmed a batch of us, handing out Books of Common Prayer, and I had enjoyed that. His hands were nice and warm, but I didn’t see why I shouldn’t have a look around at the other options on offer.

The history teacher, John Wooffindin, organised an expedition to catch the show. That was how he put it, ‘to catch the show’, a clear enough indication that he wasn’t a fan. I think he was trying to inoculate us against charisma. He was giving us our shots.

I can’t remember now if the venue was in Reading or Slough. What I remember is thinking, when the great man made his entrance, ‘Why does he have all that stuff on his face?’ The make-up was not subtle, and very distracting. All the same I felt the desire to join in, to be swallowed up, the ancient surge of cult attraction, as well as a more cynical interest. The Reverend Billy Graham had power and I wanted to bathe in it.

Billy Graham’s voice was a shout with a croon cradled inside it. He said, ‘You’ll be a spiritchull baby. You will need to be handled with tender care. Now, you can go away or you can come forward — Are you ready? If you’re in any doubt, come forward.’ Bright lights, loud music — it was all very unlike the Church of England. That last suggestion was particularly alien. Translated into Anglican, it would have come out meaning just the opposite: If you’re in any doubt, go away and think about it. We wouldn’t want to rush you .

Well, I was ready. I didn’t mind the rush. I wanted to be a spiritual baby. I wanted handling with tender care. In fact John Wooffindin may have been dismayed that quite a few of us volunteered for the spiritual-baby treatment. Those of us who were in wheelchairs had to catch the eye of one of Graham’s underlings — were they acolytes or marshals? Either way, it wasn’t difficult. Those boys were certainly attuned to the presence of the disabled.

I noticed, though, that despite being in the middle of the Vulcan group I was somehow filtered out and led to one side. I felt flattered, as if I had been selected for something special, away from the flood-lights. The acolyte-marshal who had taken charge of me was ready with his Bible. He was handsome if a little sweaty. They all looked like brothers, rather piggy brothers. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘John.’

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