Adam Mars-Jones - Pilcrow

In the end Mum and Dad decided against legal action, perhaps because Peter would be exposed to further damage, perhaps because suing was not quite nice. They settled for having the fees waived for that last traumatic term. Peter never went back. He had plenty of experience at standing up for me, none for defending himself. He was a gentle boy, eager to belong, a magnet for bullying.

I realised right away that there was no possibility of grassing Judy Brisby up after what had happened to Peter. I might have been able to live down the taboo of telling tales, but now I would be known as a copy-cat as well as a sneak. Copy-cat tale-telling had to be the worst crime in the whole book.

I was stuck with Vulcan for the duration. I wonder how many other pupils thought of grassing Judy Brisby up, and either pulled back from the brink or weren’t believed. I certainly remember when unsinkable Trevor Burbage, the human suitcase with the riding hat, decided to ‘run away’ from the school.

The pretext was that he had been given thirty lines by the German teacher Mr Atkinson, and it’s true that Trevor could be very cheeky. He would pretend to misunderstand things, just to be provoking. Es gibt drei Türen … ‘Are the doors dry, Sir? Does it mean Wet Paint or something?’ That sort of thing. He said he’d rather run away than copy out the lines. ‘I’m not staying in this dump,’ he said. There must have been something else driving him, though, mustn’t there?

We asked him, ‘What will you do for a living, once you get away from here?’ He said, ‘I’ll be a lorry driver’s mate. That’s the ticket for me! I can’t drive but I can be the driver’s mate and see the world.’ He set off in his privately bought wheelchair, which out-ranked mine — but then his grandmother had money and was always buying him out of trouble at the school with timely endowments. It was called a Wrigley, like the chewing gum to which a few boys were addicted, though they spat it out discreetly if Miss Wilding hove into view.

The Wrigley went too fast to pass Government safety tests. It had proper inflatable tyres, instead of the solid rubber ones on my E&J. Raeburn was normally the person who charged the batteries, but we made sure the ABs gave Trevor a top-up till the last possible moment. Then he was off. He’d left a note with me in an envelope but I wasn’t allowed to show it to anyone until he had made his get-away. We were blood brothers, so I couldn’t refuse it or grass him up.

There was no special reason for us being blood brothers, except that we had dared each other to make the cuts and then couldn’t manage to back down.

The next morning Miss Willis drove off in a panic to track him down. She was back in five minutes. He’d got as far as the bottom of Farley Hill. He was tired and hungry but he had seen the world. He came back to a hero’s welcome, and I have no idea why.

Grit buggered the relays

I had been waiting so long for the motor and battery required to convert my Everest & Jennings to self-propulsion status that they had joined the category of things which can exist only in language, like hen’s teeth and sky-hooks, the horns of the hare and the children of a barren woman.

I had learned to get around reasonably well without a motor, in the end, graduating from pushing against the tyres by hand to using a stick to punt myself about. In fact I had mixed feelings about the new arrangement, not because Roger Stott was a handsomer engine than any substitute (I couldn’t see him while he was pushing anyway), but because he was more reliable than the mechanism which replaced him.

Grit of any sort buggered the relays on an Everest & Jennings, and it couldn’t cope with some surfaces. If you wanted an electric wheelchair which could be driven over gravel, for instance, you had to go private and fork out. The Everest & Jennings was almost Government issue, with all that that implied — like the hard toilet paper at CRX. If you wanted the equivalent of soft toilet paper in self-sufficient invalid transport then you would have to throw money at Messrs Wrigley (as Trevor Burbage’s grandmother and others had).

The E&J was controlled by a sort of tiller, a T-bar which came up from the top of the motor and passed between my legs. It had two speeds, plus neutral and reverse. The tiller would be fitted on after I had been installed in the chair, and I needed someone to remove it before I could be helped to dismount. There was a twist grip mounted on the right-hand bar of the T. If the grip had been on the left bar then, with the short-comings of the elbow on that side, I wouldn’t have been able to operate it.

Once all the pieces were in place I was the proud owner/driver of an electric wheelchair. Having a powered vehicle allowed me to pretend that the controls had got stuck, so that I could run over the feet of members of staff, always with a cheery cry of ‘Awfully sorry, Sir! These bloomin’ chariots take some getting used to!’ In an ideal world I would only have trespassed on the toes of teachers I actively disliked, but in this life my opportunities to make mischief have been limited. There is an obligation to make the most of them. I wasn’t about to restrict my fun by being fussy and high-minded, so if even the divine Ben Nevin came within range, his god-like toes were fair game for the crunching.

Waltzing ninnies

For years I had only had a postal Granny, and then suddenly she was back in the picture, flesh and blood. The first I heard of it was a passing mention from Mum. ‘The strangest thing has happened,’ she said. ‘You know that Mediterranean cruise that Caroline is going on — you know, Muzzie’s Caroline — well, your Uncle Roy’s going on it too. Pure coincidence. And we were saying, Granny and I, wouldn’t it be wonderful if they liked each other? Caroline’s a lovely girl, delightful, and at least she’s not tall.’ It was all-important in that generation that wives be shorter than their husbands.

I had met Caroline a few times when she came to visit Sarah in CRX. She was as cheerful and as buxom as her mother.

‘Roy would be a bit of a catch,’ Mum said, ‘even though he’s a bit older.’ I was so surprised by the mention of Granny that I missed the ominous overtones of the word ‘catch’. Dad had been a bit of a catch in his day, after all, a catch who didn’t much want to be caught. There was always a catch, wasn’t there?

I couldn’t remember the last time Mum had referred to her mother. ‘When did you see Granny?’

‘Oh, we spoke on the phone.’

‘Was it you who called her? Or did she call you?’

Mum frowned. ‘I don’t remember.’ Was I really supposed to believe she could have been in doubt about something so crucial? I didn’t believe her for a moment, but Mum could be stubborn when she chose to. Since she had never admitted to a breaking-off of relations, I could hardly expect details of a reconciliation.

As far as I can piece it together, Granny had been pulling a few strings ever since Audrey was born. She wasn’t going to be accused of ignoring the birth of her first, her only granddaughter, but nor was she going to melt like a sentimental old lady, forgiving offences promiscuously. Amnesty on strict conditions was more her style. So she sent along a shawl, an apostle spoon and a christening mug, and there was a cheque tucked into the accompanying card, but the card itself was blank.

That cheque was like a hand-grenade of solvency waiting to go off. Sooner or later Mum would pull the pin and money would explode into the bank account she shared with Dad. Granny would hear the echo of the blast when she next cast her eyes over her bank statement, and she would know that Laura hadn’t been able to live up to her injured pride.