Adam Mars-Jones - Pilcrow

On the edge of sleep I thought, ‘Now the train is agreeing with Mum.’

What-a-re …

LIEF WHAT-A-RE, LIEF-what-a-re ,

Lief, watta-ry

LEAF, watery, leaf watery, leaf watery leaf, watery leaf …

I should say in my own defence that I had never been on a train before, but I knew plenty of Enid Blyton’s books, and the trains in her books were always making words like that. It was life imitating art, the Great Western Railway’s trains imitating Blyton’s. Their speech pattern was different, though. Blyton never tried to render the way trains pass with a clatter over points on the track, ratcheting up the volume and the urgency of what they’re trying to say.

My eyes were absurdly heavy. I knew I should be looking out of the window, to see the sights that had been kept from me for so long. There would be rabbits nibbling at lettuces at the edge of fields. What was the beautiful word Beatrix Potter used about the effect of lettuce on the Flopsy Bunnies? Soporific . Enid Blyton never mentioned that travelling by train was so soporific.

When I woke up I was very thirsty.

Mum was nodding, but she always told me she slept With One Eye Open, so I didn’t seriously suspect her of having a little nap of her own. I called out for water. ‘Thirsty, Mum, want water …’

She sprang to life right away. It was really true. She did sleep with one eye open.

‘Well you can have water if you really want it, darling, but I thought perhaps you might care for some of this .’

With a flourish Mum produced a huge Thermos flask from the depths of her basket.

‘What’s it got in it, Mum?’ I asked. When she told me it was tea I thought Father Christmas had popped by with an extra present. By now I was allowed to drink tea occasionally, but it had never lost the romance it had had in the days of ‘the girl’ and the feeder. Today Mum said I could drink as much as I liked. She wouldn’t have been Mum if she hadn’t stepped in to damp down joy the moment she’d aroused it. ‘Before you get carried away,’ she said, ‘you’d better realise that “as much as you like” means “you can’t drink more than there is in this flask”. They don’t hold anything like as much as you think!’

It didn’t really matter, because the amount left in the flask would surely still be huge — enough to get us to Taplow station and half-way back as well, I thought. Coming back on the same train on the same day was an option I still secretly had in my mind. In case the famous Taplow hospital didn’t live up to expectations. Mum and I had managed on our own before and we could do it again.

Mum got out a cup for herself, and instead of the hateful spouted feeder, a proper cup for me too. A supply of pillows had materialised from somewhere, so I was half-sitting, and with a little more expert plumping I was half-way to perching in my mobile bed, and starting to feel very chirpy.

I told Mum I was looking forward to the tea very much, and then asked what the taste would be like, because she always put the milk into the cup first and then poured on the tea. Wasn’t it going to taste funny after being mixed in the flask with the milk for so long? Mum’s tongue did some clicking in her mouth and then she said, ‘Jay-Jayeee! You don’t think Mum would forget a thing like that, do you?’ She pulled a little bottle out of the basket.

I watched in rapture as she poured out the milk and then the tea. Mum was always saying she needed to keep her blood sugar levels up, and so she dropped two sugar lumps in each cup. It turned out there was a limit to the elaborateness of her preparations. ‘When you’re having tea on a train,’ she said, ‘bringing tongs along is just showing off,’ dusting her hands together to shake off any lingering grains.

Mum had propped me up so expertly that I needed only a little extra help to drink my tea. She also helped herself, took a ladylike sip, sat back, closed her eyes and said, ‘What a relief for this cuppa!’ Leaf for this cuppa, leaf for this cuppa , agreed the train. My whole world became more highly coloured, and my mind rushed off in a number of directions. Mum’s system was hardened to tea, but mine wasn’t really, and despite her nurse’s training she had forgotten that tea is fundamentally a stimulant. I was used to much smaller doses.

God the puzzle-picture

God featured largely in my thinking. This was inevitable, given my basic cast of mind. God was indeed the basis of all things, and I could see now that whenever I had been afraid and doubted Him, it was merely lack of vision on my part. God was like those puzzle-pictures we played with to pass the time, where you had to see secret things — spinning tops, banjos, cats and books — hidden inside a picture. I also knew that getting to know Him was going to be hard work, and a long journey, but I felt I was on my way. Once Paul Gallico’s Snowflake had begun her trembling descent from the sky, there was no turning back for her.

Soon I learned that it wasn’t just Snowflake that couldn’t turn back. After the first cup there was only enough tea left for half a cuppa for me and the same for Mum. She had been right in saying that the flask didn’t hold much. And it wasn’t long before I remembered that I didn’t hold much either. I wanted to have a siss. I was grateful that Mum had arranged me with the aisleway to my left, because I could only use the bottle if my taily was pointing that way. A lifetime of weeing to the left has fixed my taily so it points in that direction, though I seem to be the only one who has noticed.

On the way into the train I had noticed that the carriages were connected by something that looked like a concertina. It looked very worrying and I was frightened. I had been glad that when they had laid me down we hadn’t needed to pass that point. I’d thanked God that I didn’t have to pass through the sinister concertina. When the train began to move the concertina became even more terrifying, bucking and plunging, emitting squeaks and groans.

After the siss was comfortably managed I felt my bowels begin to stir, and then I couldn’t get my fears out of my mind. I told Mum that I needed a tuppenny, so could she please get out the kidney dish, but she went all strange, and said she would have to ask about it first. She made me secure in my bed and then disappeared. She was back after a few moments with a rather fixed look on her face.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘But it just isn’t allowed. Out of the question. I’m going to have to get you to the lavatory. Somehow.’

‘But you can’t!’ I wailed. ‘We’ve got the kidney dish in your bag, you showed it to me yourself!’

‘Yes I know, JJ, but we’re just not allowed to do it here. It’s against the rules. But don’t worry, I’ll carry you carefully. The way only Mum knows how.’

‘But that means I’ll have to go through that concertina thing, and I’m scared and you know if I knock any bit of my leg it’ll hurt for days and weeks. I won’t go through the horrible concertina thing.’

‘Well you’ll just have to get used to it!’

I decided then that I hated trains and I wished we’d never got on this one.

‘But you know I can’t. I’ll never get used to it!’

Now the train was siding sneakily with Mum, going against me and joining in with her scolding. Used-to-it, used-to-it, GET-USED-TO-IT …

‘But you tricked me! You lied ! You showed me the kidney dish! If you make me go to that lavatory through the concertina thing, I can never trust you or love you ever again!’

Ever-again, trust-her-again, ever-again, love-her-again … The silly train really didn’t know when to shut up.