Adam Mars-Jones - Pilcrow

The ambulance was enormous fun. After I’d been on board about ten seconds I started thinking that if Mum could happily spend the rest of her life travelling on trains, then I could just as happily spend the rest of mine travelling in ambulances. It was quite an exciting world, there was much more life in it than the room in Bathford. Every new face was a feast, and here there were two at once, the driver and his friend, who would be riding in the back with me and Mum. Every face was a feast, but the friend’s was more of a three-day banquet. He had green eyes, something which I had never seen before, and hair so pale it was almost transparent. He had freckles. I didn’t think boys could get them. I’d only ever seen freckles on girls, but then I’d hardly even scratched the surface of the world.

There was a container of water with a glass attached to the wall, so I asked for a drink of water. Mum started to get some out of her bag but I stopped her, saying, ‘I want a drink of that water.’ I wouldn’t rest until I had tried some special Ambulance Water, special water for the people who travel in a special ambulance. After that I spotted a sign saying OXYGEN and wanted some of that too. Mum said, ‘That’s only for sick people, John,’ beginning to be embarrassed, and I said, ‘I’m sick so I want some.’ I hadn’t been out of the nest for an hour yet, and I was already turning into a full-fledged pest.

Mum was starting to look a bit thin-lipped so I asked for Martin to come over. I’d picked up from their conversation that Martin was the man in the ambulance and his friend Mick was the driver. At some point Mum must have used the phrase ‘properly trained’ about the people in charge of the ambulance. I said I wanted Martin to come and sit next to me because he was properly trained.

I had to have Martin sitting right by me. Close contact with Mum wasn’t a novelty, but the sudden nearness of a man made me feel as wildly excited as if I was about to discover Africa, Venus or London. Martin was wearing a uniform, but even without it he would have been exciting because of his male aura and vibrations. But there was undoubtedly something transcendent about the properly trained vibrations of a man in uniform. I snuggled up to him as closely as I could, and I relied on looking as sweet as pie. The plan was to get to know him really well, and then ask for what I wanted. Then if he said ‘No’ it wouldn’t really matter. The snuggliness was much more than a means to an end, even if I planned to use it to get my way.

Mates

I explored this man as far as my limited reach would allow. I pressed his thigh and told him to flex his quadriceps and he laughed. I told him he could feel mine if he wanted. Then I said I had something I wanted to whisper in his ear and I asked, ‘Martin, can I have some oxygen please?’

I didn’t get any, but the snuggliness was a wonderful consolation prize. And there was one more thing about the rest of the ride that I stored away in my memory. Martin called the driver ‘Mikey’ and also ‘mate’. The lingo went so well with Martin’s manliness and fresh properly trained male scent, and the word ‘mate’ made a great impression.

I remember the ambulance pulling up at the train station, and wondering why we couldn’t just stay in the ambulance all the way from Bath to Taplow. But that was it for ambulances for the time being. Any disappointment I felt didn’t last. A new wave of excitement rose inside me as I realised I was about to make my first journey by train.

Nothing in my straitened experience prepared me for the railway station. My view of everything was skewed since I was carried on a stretcher. I could see people’s heads from below, some of them jerking down to look at me with an expression that was almost angry. There was a wonderful high ceiling, with pigeons fluttering under it. I remember thinking that this might be a good place for a church if it was only a bit quieter. Perhaps it became a church at night? There was certainly enough of an echo.

The concourse was full of activity, with people running and announcements blaring. Being inside the station was like being born all over again, the impression of light and confusion. It was a good job Mum was so enthusiastic about the train, because I wasn’t so sure as the stretcher came near to it. It looked very dirty and it made an awful lot of noise. Then I realised that the dirt was probably caused by smoke, which cheered me up. Smoke was a mystical substance as far as I was concerned, just by being so little like a substance. I sometimes thought I would like to be smoke because then I could be everywhere at once and nowhere in particular. Smoke was like mist, only it was man-made, and mist was mystical. When I learned the word mystical it seemed positively to smell of smoke and misty devotions.

From my position on the stretcher I couldn’t see anything of the rails beneath me. Probably just as well. If I’d caught a glimpse, I doubt if I’d have agreed to go on something which looked and felt so dangerous. Being carried on board was like flying, but not nice. I felt fluttery and afraid. I knew what railway carriages were, from toy trains I had played with before my illness, so I knew I was in a carriage. I was being carried though to a compartment.

I’d hoped that there would be other travellers on the train to talk to, but those hopes came to nothing. Although the train wasn’t special, Mum and I did have a compartment to ourselves. I had to lie flat across two seats, while Mum sat opposite with all our things. I suppose we were also given so much privacy as a way of protecting the public from distress, the distress of seeing this sick and unsightly child, but that didn’t occur to me at the time.

When we had got settled Mum put some of our things above our heads, where there were shelves called luggage racks. I must have looked worried, because she said, ‘It’s all quite all right up there. You don’t have to watch it. You don’t even have to think about it. It just gets carried along with everything else!’ My neck had very little play in it, but I could nod to my own satisfaction, if nobody else’s, so I nodded now and said wisely, ‘What a relief!’ It was a phrase I had picked up from Mum. She always seemed to look and feel a little better after saying it. What a relief!

I wasn’t quite as convinced as I made out, and I kept asking how she knew that the things up there would not come down when we met a rough bit of journey. Wouldn’t they come down and bash me right where it hurt? Mum said, ‘Don’t be silly! It’s all quite safe,’ and I said ‘What a relief!’ again, wondering why those words didn’t seem to work as well for me as they did for Mum. Perhaps if I kept on saying them, the effect would come on gradually. Then the whistle sounded, meaning that the doors were about to be slammed shut and I suddenly panicked.

‘Mum, are you sure you remembered my Siss-Bottle?’

‘Quite sure!’ she said, opening her bag and letting me have a peek at it.

‘And the kidney dish?’ I added, which was silly really. If the answer was ‘No’, then they would hardly have held up the entire train while Mum just popped out for a few seconds to grab a quick kidney dish for John. But if I had a whole compartment to myself, then I must be fairly important, so perhaps the train would be held after all.

Mum let me have a glimpse of the kidney dish too.

What a relief!

Watery leaf

I fell into a sort of doze after all the excitement and forgot to notice everything that there was to see as the train pulled out of the station. The train’s wheels sang a song as they rumbled and slid along the tracks. What-a-relief, What-a-relief, What-a-relief …