Adam Mars-Jones - Pilcrow

‘He may be or he may not be.’

‘Don’t you know what it says in the Bible about those who do not believe?’ He had passages already marked in red. The frighteners. I forget which particular one he showed me, but it had the words ‘everlasting’ and ‘fire’ in it. And that, essentially, was the Billy Graham method for winning over the waverers. Scare them out of their wits. Doubt was not acceptable in a spiritual baby. There was to be no cradling of doubt. Doubt was simply flattened by the charismatic steam-roller.

For some reason I didn’t find it difficult to stand my ground. ‘That’s stupid,’ I said. ‘If that’s your God you can keep him. What’s your name?’ Actually he was wearing a name badge. ‘Timothy? If you’re so sure of everything in this world and the next, why do you bite your nails?’

He was very thrown by this, and blushed bright red. ‘I don’t,’ he said, tucking his hands behind him.

‘Then who does?’ I asked, very pert. After that I was returned at fair speed to the rest of the Vulcan party. I don’t think any of us had a more positive experience of the Billy Graham show than I had. If so, we didn’t talk about it, any more than I talked about my feelings when I realised why I had been taken aside away from the bright lights. I hadn’t been selected, I had been de-selected. There had been a rapid and worldly sifting. Not all people in wheelchairs are alike. Some of them may (just possibly) stand up and stagger marvelling into the light, pledging themselves to Billy Graham and God’s holy word. And some will not, whatever the voltage of the preaching. I was not going to bring glory to the crusade. The silly thing was that I wasn’t expecting a miracle myself, I didn’t even want one, but I was a bit miffed that they had ruled one out. What business was it of theirs to restrict the powers of the God they claimed to represent?

Years later I read Sartre’s remark when someone was going into ecstasies about the piles of crutches left behind at Lourdes after miracle cures — ‘No wooden legs, though, eh?’ I paraphrase. The communist atheist was being no more cynical than Billy Graham and his acolytes. I myself came no nearer to Lourdes than Bath Spa, but what it comes down to is this: my faith was less conditional than Billy Graham’s. I put no limits on divine power.

If God wanted me to be conventionally shaped then I would be. In non-dualistic thinking, moreover, there are no divisions to be found, no line to be drawn between the human and divine, John and God. It follows that if I wanted to be conventionally shaped then I would be. And I’m fine as I am.

The visit to the waters at Bath dates back to the early days of my illness. Bath was very near. All I remember is being wrapped up in hot towels like a little dumpling, in great pain but loving being at the centre of attention.

A Raff neighbour in Bathford had a son, Tim, who fell in the gym at school and sustained brain damage. His speech and coördination were impaired. They gave him a board to spell words out on. He was like a human ouija-board. His mother, Sheila, was very religious and must have been Catholic, because her church got up a collection and sent Tim to Lourdes. I heard about it and wanted to go too, though Lourdes didn’t help Tim, externally at least. And there was nothing wrong on the inside in the first place.

Tim got tricycles from the National Health (though Mum said ‘Government’) which he kept smashing up, going too fast. We drifted away from them. I dare say Mum’s heart wasn’t in pursuing the acquaintance. Heathers don’t seek out the company of fellow unfortunates.

And Bath Spa did my symptoms no more good than Lourdes did to Tim. But that’s not the point. The issue isn’t effectiveness, it’s commitment. When you live in Bathford, Lourdes is a pilgrimage, but Bath Spa is hardly even a day out.

Palace of laps

One of the major events of my time at Vulcan was that QM came to visit. The real QM, not Julian Robinson, boy agent. The Queen Mother. I say ‘major event’ not as a royalist but as a student of spiritual power. She spoke to me and softly shook my hand. She wore a lilac outfit and a hat with a little veil. Her make-up was a work of art. She made Billy Graham look like a circus clown.

The graduated eye contact of royalty is a fascinating thing to experience. I felt her attention even before her gaze arrived. She spoke her words of greeting, which were full of meaning without having any actual content. I had planned to speak up, and to ask a question. We hadn’t been encouraged to make conversation, but she seemed quite a chatty type. ‘Marm,’ I was going to say — I knew you had to say ‘Marm’ — ‘is it true that you once met Archie Andrews?’ Putting her in her place just a bit. I was still slightly sore about the way the PDSA was out-ranked by the RSPCA, just because of a few royal patrons. Then the moment came and there was no need. There was no gap to be filled.

When the Queen Mother’s eyes moved on, I had no feeling that her gaze had left me. If her attention had had depth as well as breadth, she’d have been a considerable guru rather than a local totem, with only the powers proper to its sphere. Her serenity was strictly secular.

The strange thing was that one of the school cats followed her round for the whole of her visit. Cats have their snobbery, God knows, but it doesn’t coincide with ours. Still, this cat must have sensed something special. It was actually the least regarded of the school’s many cats, the one grudgingly given the name of Anon, only one step up from actual namelessness. The cat-naming skills of our group were rudimentary — we ran out of names after Catty, Kitty, Tabby, Whiskers and Fluffy. From a feline point of view a school full of wheelchairs must be Heaven, a palace full of laps. The school cats were lazy and spoiled. They wouldn’t budge for anybody, but Anon showed that a cat really can look at a queen, even at a dowager ex-empress.

After her visit the Queen Mother sent gifts to the school at regular intervals. Her generosity took the form, each time, of a big box of chocolates, which everybody loved — really big, so that everyone at the school could have more than one dip — and a rather beautiful porcelain vessel, blue and white, which contained slimy black dots with a fishy smell, like tadpoles gone wrong. To me those nasty little eggs seemed even more disgusting than tinned fish, which I had always hated. Very few of the pupils or staff members tried them. Some of those who did retched. The contents of the pretty jar ended up going into David Lockett’s pig-swill. This was the crowning extravagance in the topsy-turvy economy of the school: rancid butter for the boys, caviar for the pigs.

I don’t expect the QM specified the contents of the food parcel — I dare say she just said, ‘Send those lovely boys something nice.’ It was some equerry or other being too posh for his own good.

I dreaded Tuesday evening meals at Vulcan because it was always cold pilchards on toast. I hated that food with all my heart. To start with we were told to eat it up or go hungry. That was fine by me. That suited me down to the ground. I was very happy to go hungry. I was attuned to the notion of fasting — in Bathford days hadn’t I gone without stuffed marrow the day after Scrambled Egg Boats?

Then the rule changed to ‘You’ve got to eat it or else .’ Then we were told what ‘or else’ meant. Eat it or be force-fed. Judy Brisby was very keen to implement the stricter system. She could hardly wait to find the first resisting suffragette.

On the night the new rules came into force I was in despair. There was no possibility that I was going to eat that disgusting food. Soon everyone else had finished theirs. I noticed that David Driver had a boiled egg and some toast. It looked delicious. On the other hand, David had muscular dystrophy which was going to kill him soon anyway, which must have been why he was excused pilchards and likewise force-feeding. He was so weak it wouldn’t have taken much to finish him off. He didn’t have the strength to raise his arms to his face without help. There were special pivoted arm-rests on the side of his chair to help him get some leverage, but even then it was a huge effort for him. He always needed help at meal times.