Adam Mars-Jones - Pilcrow

Granny’s antennæ registered the shift in the family’s finances, and the new relationships it made possible. Mum and Dad would find it much harder to say ‘no’ to any offers she might care to make. They might even be made to beg. I swear she could smell an overdraft the way ogres in fairy tales smell an Englishman’s blood.

Mum and Dad were faced with the problem of what school to send Peter to now. One possibility was Sidcot School in Winscombe, North Somerset. We all went along along in the car for Peter’s interview. From the first breath I found the atmosphere of this school wonderfully comforting — it was an old Quaker foundation, though at the time I wouldn’t have understood anything by that. I was very happy for Peter if it meant he could have a new start in such welcoming surroundings, though I felt all the more isolated in my own schooling.

The headmaster of Sidcot, Mr Brayshaw, was both absent-minded and very much on the ball, a combination rather common among school-teachers. I thought he was beautiful. He gave Peter a sincere welcome. Peter was shy and I suppose traumatised, so he hung back. Mum was nervous and horribly humble, while Dad was almost truculent. You could almost hear him thinking, ‘Don’t think your authority impresses me, I’ve got some of my own if it comes to that. I’ll hear you out but that’s all. Just don’t expect me to kow-tow.’ In Dad’s book kow-towing was worse than being a sneak and a copy-cat and a bad sport all put together.

When Mr Brayshaw set eyes on me, he included me in the conversation quite naturally. He was wonderfully warm. He was like the dream uncle I’d always wanted, and more. In this lifetime I’ve suffered from a severe shortage of uncles. Roy was a dud uncle, really.

As he gave us the tour Mr Brayshaw kept saying madly positive things like, ‘Now there’s not really much of a step here,’ and, ‘This next classroom may be difficult, but I am sure we can find a way if we just put our minds to it … You know, we really only go in there in the winter. Most of the time the class just comes outside and sits under that tree over there, so that would be fine for John … I’m sure something can be arranged before winter comes …’

With much rambling and pottering he mapped out his vision of Sidcot School with John in it. The greatest problem as he saw it was the inaccessibility of the dancing class, but it was clear that if I had my heart set on learning to dance it would be made to happen somehow.

Mum was in a panic and going ‘ahem’ like mad, making the humble artificial double cough that meant she needed to be asked to speak, but Mr Brayshaw hadn’t risen to the rank of headmaster without knowing how to ignore a parent. He conducted the whole interview as if I was the only candidate to be considered, as if that had been the morning’s only task and theme.

When we wound up back in the headmaster’s study, Mr Brayshaw asked if we had any questions, just as if Mum hadn’t been trying to butt in for the last half-hour.

‘But Mr Brayshaw,’ she cried. ‘It’s John’s brother Peter who is applying to come to Sidcot, not John himself!’

‘Yes, I’m well aware of that, Mrs Cromer,’ he replied, ‘but I thought it would be rather nice for Peter if he could have his older brother with him, don’t you? It’s perfectly practical. He’s not on any dangerous medication, I take it? So it’s not a matter of medical supervision, just washing and dressing. Not a great deal of effort, I should have thought. Doesn’t seem much of an obstacle, as obstacles go.’

The twinkle in his eye made me jump up and down from my seated position, exploiting the residual flexibility of my spine. I waved my arms about and shouted out of turn, ‘Oh Mum, wouldn’t it be wonderful? Mr Brayshaw wants me to be with Peter! Please, please, oh please say yes!!’ Please let me escape from Judy Brisby and from the Board of Education. Please let me sit under a tree surrounded by love and understanding, where the harvest called learning will be brought on by steady sunshine. This was more like it. This was the old tune of No Such Word As Can’t played thickly on Sparky’s Magic Piano, not picked out with one finger. I was being offered something I would never have dared to ask for myself.

To Mr Brayshaw Dad said, ‘Well, we’ll have to think about that.’ But the moment we were in the car, he told me, ‘It’s not on. It’s a lovely dream, chicken, but it’s not on.’

‘But you said you’d think about it!’

‘I’ve thought about it. It’s just not on, and that’s that!’ How I hated those words. I was no longer a child, I wouldn’t thrash and scream and say, ‘You lied, I’ll never trust you again.’ I sat and thought about what could be learned from this unprecedented afternoon.

I looked at Mum and Dad in the car, bickering routinely over the map. For the first time in any of our lives we had encountered something genuinely unusual — disability being treated as unimportant, neither here nor there. And what was Mum and Dad’s reaction? Social embarrassment. Revelation had been greeted with fidgeting and changing of the subject. I vowed that the next time a path opened up in front of me, I would put the Everest & Jennings into the higher of its two gears and head straight for the gap. Then woe betide any toe which got in my way.

For a moment I had been grazed by happiness. Even so, I was happy that Peter had escaped his Colditz Castle and would be treated tenderly in a new school. I myself had learned something about ‘reality’. When the building-blocks of the world, those things we consider facts, seem to be most firmly chamfered and grouted one against another, then — exactly then — is when the wall will shiver and turn to liquid. I just had to be aware that when every obstacle had disappeared from view, Mum and Dad would invent new ones. With the path cleared in front of them and brilliantly lit, they would stay exactly where they were, pretending it hadn’t happened and there was nothing they could do about it, except to put the car in reverse and drive glumly home.

That I had been accepted as a pupil of a normal school to which I hadn’t even applied was a miracle. It was a full miracle, despite the fact that it hadn’t happened. Mum and Dad wouldn’t let it happen, and miracles don’t insist. That isn’t the etiquette.

The divine invitation is written on creamy card so thick no human hand can fold it — that is so. Its embossing stands so proud it casts a shadow. Also true. But nothing whatever happens unless you RSVP. Divine intervention isn’t a unilateral business. Miracles are consensual. I vowed that next time one was offered I would not cringe with the rest of my tribe. I would claim my place in the summer sun, under that tree.

Sidcot School turned out to be as good a school for Peter as it might have been for me. There was a lot of care about the place. Mum went to visit once and didn’t announce herself to Peter. She crept along the walls until she could see him talking to another boy. He had a cup of coffee in his hand and was standing very straight. The two boys were talking man to man. Then Mum showed herself and Peter turned back into an awkward little boy again.

The only trouble he got into at that school was when he was caught making wax copies of keys. He wanted the power to slip through the fabric of an institution, even one where he was happy — simply to melt away. He wanted to have the power of locking doors between himself and misery, in case misery came back to get him.

He was punished in an adult Quaker way, without anger, by the simple withdrawing of privileges. He accepted this punishment, also in an adult way, without complaint, with understanding. Dad was never prouder of him than in that manly acceptance of chastisement. I wish Dad had been a little less keen on self-suppression in his children, but then he was busy suppressing himself at the time, so at least he was being consistent.