Adam Mars-Jones - Pilcrow

In the James Bond books, Bond always felt very sexy when he saw or felt the Mound of Venus at the base of a lady’s thumb. I wondered if those books would have been written differently if Ian Fleming had had a chance to view the far more tempting hill of potential resonating between Luke’s legs.

My fascination with Luke didn’t affect my devotion to my two secret lovers, the adults Raeburn and Nevin, nor the subtle flow of preferential feeling involved there. In fact my two adult passions weren’t really at odds. The two sets of feelings had elements in common — admiration, curiosity and a sort of rage to be touched — but they were drawn on different accounts.

Your groin area

Then Gillie Walker was sent to sound me out on a delicate matter. We were known to have a liking for each other, to get on, and so she had been delegated. ‘John,’ she said, ever so casually, ‘it has been noticed that your hand often rests at the bottom of your tummy, by your groin area …’ The passive construction didn’t fool me for a moment, nor was it meant to. The noticer was very clearly Marion, who noticed certain things and not others. She didn’t notice the virtually continuous priapic display made by Luke Squires, but she’d spotted something amiss with my very ordinary posture. Gillie went on, ‘I don’t expect you to inform on another boy, but is there something you’d like to tell me?’ The idea seemed to be that I had become abnormally sensitised to my genital chakra — as if that was something that could only come from outside.

I hadn’t been expecting this interrogation, but in a tight corner my brain worked fast. When I opened my mouth the words flowed very smoothly. ‘Honestly, Gillie,’ I said, ‘have you taken a look at this arm? Roll up the sleeve and do a proper inspection. I want you to. My left elbow doesn’t bend — do you see? — so the hand just naturally falls where you say. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, it never happens with the other hand, because the elbow on that side actually works.’

Gillie gave me a warm smile. ‘I knew there would be a good reason, John. I had every confidence in you, of course. I never doubted you for a moment, but I was duty bound to ask. I’m sure you understand.’

Of course I understood. I understood that Luke Squires was protected by his very blatancy. He couldn’t keep his hands off his parts. He practically raised his cock in class when he knew the answer to something, in preference to his hand, and Marion Willis saw nothing. No one said a dicky-bird. No one came to grill him, but when I gave my unglamorous parts the occasional rearranging tug, there was consternation and court-martial.

My funny turn

Peter and I were more or less getting the hang of mealtimes with Granny at the Compleat Angler. One of the waiters at the Otel was her favourite, absolutely her pet, even though he was Spanish and she believed that the language of good food was French. This waiter loved to tease her while he was serving, and she loved it. After Granny had made her little road through the food, and then put her knife and fork down saying, ‘Well, I’m defeated ,’ he waved his finger at her charmingly. ‘Madam,’ he would say, ‘I hope you realise that when I take this back to the kitchen they will mince it up and feed it back to me! I don’t know what I am going to do with you, Madam!’ Granny absolutely ate it up. What this Spanish waiter was saying was outrageously cheeky, it was no way to treat a lady and so on, but she absolutely loved it, she couldn’t get enough.

After lunch Peter and I played chess in Granny’s room. Then something happened that wasn’t supposed to. He started to win. A bishop and a knight killed my queen, and my king was next for the chop. I knew Mum was prone to fainting, and I thought, I’ve never fainted in my life. This would be a good time to start.

I was carried through to the bed. Peter and Granny picked their way through the scattered chess pieces. I heard Granny saying, ‘It must have been the heat.’ She bathed my face with a cold flannel for twenty minutes. Then she said, ‘Granny has decided to buy you a special sort of wheelchair. It’s called a Wrigley.’ Obviously she had been approached beforehand, but my funny turn may have tipped the balance. It did no harm for her to be reminded of my frailty. It wasn’t blackmail, exactly. I wouldn’t say it was any darker than greymail.

I was delighted by the news, though I could only let my pleasure show as a faint smile through the simulated blur of weakness. A hundred and sixty smackers! I dare say Granny withheld a fraction of the sum on principle, or imposed terms in some way, but I never learned the details.

Peter was delighted too. ‘We can have a lot of fun with that Wrigley,’ he whispered. ‘And don’t worry. I made a mental note of the position on the board. I know exactly where everything was. We can finish that game any time you like.’

The plans for the expansion of the school must have been given Luke’s approval, because quite dramatic building works were under way. Phase One involved erecting a couple of staff houses — before then, there was no accommodation for staff, just a group of caravans installed behind the yew hedge outside the kitchen windows. It wasn’t ideal, with no facilities for washing or bathing except by slipping into the Castle through a side door. In winter the caravans were cold, but electric fires being left on would scorch the carpets and fill the grounds with the lovely rustic smell of burning plastic.

Then a wing was built to one side of the Castle, containing a dormitory block and a dining room. Finally there was a new block of classrooms, shaped like an H. The dorms were supposed to be ready for the start of the school year, but no such luck. In the September half of them could just about be used, but there were polythene sheets flapping all over the place, and breeze-blocks and bags of cement were stacked up against every wall. Luckily the weather was mild. Raeburn and Miss Willis advertised in the parish magazine for households which could take the less severely disabled boys in. The rest of us were issued with hot-water bottles.

The new block provided much better facilities for teaching, but more importantly it also offered a much greater range of places where surreptitious meetings could take place. Julian Robinson still said there were microphones hidden everywhere, and that the new buildings had actively been wired for sound, with tape-recordings made of every word spoken, but his authority in such matters took a dive when it was discovered that his Sean Connery autograph contained three spelling mistakes. Whatever the risks, the new block with its nooks and crannies gave promise of fruitful encounters. The new spaces were open to being colonised by forbidden activities. The smell was freeing in itself, of new wood and fresh paint.

The transformed school no longer contained Ben Nevin, who had gone back to Canada. It was a sort of bereavement, but he gave me a wonderful present before he left. It was a Chinese box, beautifully enamelled, which he’d picked up on a visit to Hong Kong. Best of all, it had a secret compartment. Unless you pressed at exactly the right point, you’d never be able to open it. It wasn’t roomy, as secret compartments go, but big enough to hold a folded piece of paper on which I’d written in my best hand, which was still pretty bad, Given to John Cromer by Ben Nevin at Vulcan School. A GREAT MAN .

I would have mourned Mr Nevin more keenly if Judy Brisby hadn’t left at the same time. That was a present finer even than a Chinese box with a hidden compartment. Hearing the news gave a definite spring to the tyres of my wheelchair. It wasn’t that her leaving compensated for his, exactly, but it certainly made it harder to wish for the clock to be turned back.