Adam Mars-Jones - Pilcrow

I had been deceived by Mum, deceived by the mystic enchantment of the train, and finally deceived by the God to whom I had prayed with all my heart. The concertina thing was bucking and rattling madly. My terror wasn’t entirely irrational. I had never seen a storm at sea, but I grasped instinctively that some such collision of almighty forces was involved, a war between the elements. All the mechanical tensions in the train, the parts struggling to go in different directions, or (worse) trying to be in the same place at the same time, fought themselves out in this dark and rickety area. It was tricky enough for Mum to carry me from my bedroom to the kitchen as a special treat — how could she hope to manage when the very ground under her feet was lurching and plunging?

I shut my eyes as tight as I could and prayed for everything to end all at once, even if it meant I was back in my room in Bathford, but when I opened them again, everything was still there — and Mum was folding the bedsheet back and sliding her right hand under my shoulders and her left hand under my legs. She was preparing to lift me up and take me on the worst journey of my life.

I made the worst fuss I could possibly imagine, and I had some talent in this line. I made quite a commotion. I couldn’t prevail over Mum’s superior strength, and Gandhi wouldn’t have recognised my demented squirming as passive resistance. He would have disowned me. Soon Mum realised that it just isn’t possible to carry a seriously ill child, one who is determined to wriggle and cry out, any distance along a train corridor. She put me back down on the bed and covered me up again, looking very thoughtful.

What I want to be when I grow up

When she spoke again it was in a bright cheerful tone which immediately made me suspicious.

‘JJ,’ she said. ‘Do you remember what fun we used to have reading the What I Want to Be When I Grow Up book?’

‘Ye-es …’ I said rather warily, wondering if she could really have changed her mind so completely about making me go to the train loo.

‘Well, do you remember which of the jobs you liked best?’

‘Of course I do!’ I said defiantly, still on my binge of misbehaviour. ‘Why will you never listen!’ I was close to angry tears. ‘I’ve told you I want to be either a doctor, or a priest, or a scientist! I’ve told you time and time again !’

‘Oh yes, so you have!’ said Mum calmly. ‘So why don’t we talk about which of those jobs you could probably do?’

I needed to have that tuppenny more than ever. I couldn’t make out why the subject had shifted to the career I wasn’t going to have. The pressure on my insides was fierce, and it was hard to think of anything else. It was making me wince. ‘Any of those jobs would suit me.’ I tried to think of a proper grown-up phrase. ‘Suit me down to the ground.’

‘Well let’s see,’ said Mum. ‘If you’re a doctor, you have to be able to do operations and go round and visit sick people and give them medicine to make them better, and unless you can get completely better yourself, that doesn’t sound very likely, does it?’

Looking at my fused left wrist and ankylosed elbow, it was hard to deny the force of what was being said. But I did my best. ‘If you’re ill yourself you know what it’s like. Some things make you feel better and some things don’t do any good at all. There could be junior doctors sent round to visit the sick people and then they would come to me and tell me what was wrong. I would think what was best and then say what the treatment should be. I could do it all from my bed …’ My voice trailed away as I tried and failed to visualise this scene. If I couldn’t convince myself I wasn’t going to convince anyone else.

Mum saw her moment. ‘I think it’s a bit the same with priests. Priests can’t deliver sermons from their sick-beds, they have to be in a pulpit where everyone can see them. Climbing the steps up to the pulpit is actually part of the job.’

So that just left being a scientist.

‘What was the other career, JJ?’

If she went on telling me about things I’d never be able to do, I would do a great fat tuppenny right where I was, and then Mum would be sorry that she hadn’t brought out the kidney dish the moment I’d asked her for it.

‘Scientist,’ I said sulkily.

‘Mmm. That might be a problem too. The pieces of laboratory equipment are so big and heavy, you see, and the scientists need to be able to move them around.’ Then perhaps she took pity on the desolation her words were making in my mind. ‘But by the time you grow up, JJ, I’m sure modern science will be carried out with very small pieces of equipment. Scientists will be able to conduct experiments with only a little movement of their fingers. But JJ … Remember that the real scientific work is carried out in your head. You can’t be a scientist on the outside, without being a scientist on the in side as well.’

‘But I am a scientist on the inside!’ I said. ‘That’s just what I’ve been telling you. You know how I always want to know how things work!’

‘Yes,’ said Mum, ‘I do know that. But you see, darling, it just isn’t enough to want to know how things work. First you have to learn how things work, and after that you have to think of ways of making them work better. You have to think of it all by yourself, and if you’re that type of scientist, you become what is called an inventor.’

‘But I do try to think of ways of getting things to work better! You know I do! Why are you being so horrid?’

‘Oh it’s not really being horrid,’ she said, very offhand. ‘It’s more a question of being brave and going to take a look at things that scare you, things that work well but ought to work much better.’ She made a pause, letting her words sink in. ‘Like lavatories on trains, for instance.’

I saw the trap but couldn’t help myself. ‘How can lavatories on trains work better than they already do?’

‘Well when you have a tuppenny and pull the handle afterwards, the lavatory just drops it onto the rail. It’s a very dirty system, I’m afraid, and one day somebody is going to have to come up with an idea to stop the tuppenny dropping onto the ground. But that idea can only come from a scientist, a proper inventor, who isn’t afraid of going and looking at it.’

‘But I’m not afraid!’ The words were out of my mouth before I could do anything about it. I had painted myself into a corner. I was caught good and proper. But that hardly mattered. The idea of a lavatory on a speeding train dropping a tuppenny onto the rails was a boy’s dream come true. It was fascinating and disgusting and funny. I’ve been stool-minded all my life, and Mum got me off to a good start when she talked about barium meals and scrambled eggs. How to improve the working of toilets on trains, so that the tracks don’t get covered with tuppenny? As Mum had so wisely said, you can only solve a problem if you can observe it with your own eyes.

The crusts of its fellows

I began to think I would have a good chance of solving the problem. At that moment I could think of little else. My mind didn’t go in for modulation much. One obsession simply displaced another, even one with the opposite polarity.

Mum’s problems went rapidly into reverse. Instead of being faced with a furious child refusing to go to the toilet on the train, now she had one who was mad with impatience to go. A whole trainful of kidney dishes offered to my throbbing botty wouldn’t have persuaded me to stay in the compartment to which I had clung so desperately a few moments before. I still hadn’t altogether regained my faith in Mum. To insure myself against further treachery I made her promise me something. She must solemnly swear. If I went to the loo on the train, she must promise to let me see the tuppenny dropping onto the tracks. When she swore her oath, I was ready to set off. I simply gritted my teeth against any discomfort which might follow. It was in the interests of science, after all. I could endure it. And I did just happen to have a mum who knew exactly how to carry me. Deftly she picked me up. She hung back for a moment at the edge of the concertina and then committed us to our passage across the metal waves. We picked our way safely through the groaning tunnel and from there to the lavatory.