Adam Mars-Jones - Pilcrow

I remember asking Mum if I could have more pocket money if I caught measles. It vexed me that a boy called Wayne on Ward Two, who was only five, had two shillings a week pocket money, while I at eight had ninepence. When I complained about the manifest injustice, Mum had the good sense not to say, ‘Don’t get too jealous, John. Wayne has two months to live.’ Instead she said, ‘You’ve learned a very good lesson. There’ll always be someone who’s younger than you and gets more.’ Taking a hard line. Still, when I said, ‘Honestly, Mum, it’ll take me till I’m twenty-four to save up for a tape-recorder,’ she softened a bit and said, ‘Oh all right. We’ll meet you half-way.’ There would be time enough for me to learn that Wayne had leukæmia.

Cross-bracing

Jim Shaeffer’s two presents from the long-ago Christmas of fear and giving (of course the candy had been scoffed in short order) were invaluable in this new setting. They provided vital cross-bracing to my identity. The gramophone sat on the cupboard next to my bed, though I was strict about when it could be used — the nurses tended to brush against it and make the needle jump. I used to adore playing Lonnie Donegan’s ‘Gambling Man’ but it tempted the staff to jive about. Some of them had such a heavy tread that they could make the needle skip just by galumphing nearby. ‘You’re not supposed to do that!’ I told them, but it didn’t do any good.

The Relide watch also enhanced my status. The boys and girls on the ward said it was ‘Illuminous’, but then the nurses called it that too. I tried for a while to correct them but it was much easier just to let them get on with being wrong. Radium was lovely because it glowed on its own. At any time of night. Staring at it during periods of sleeplessness was a great consolation.

I loved the fact that the watch was supposed to be serviced every thousand days — it was so precise and scientific an interval, but also like something out of a fairy tale. A princess might fall into a deep sleep for a thousand days, while a forest (or at least a herb garden) grew up around her. After the prescribed interval Dad took it to Maidenhead for servicing. When he brought it back I found that the dial had been replaced and I wanted to know why. Dad said it was nothing to worry about, but they’d had to change it because we weren’t allowed to use radium any more.

‘It’s just the same, chicken,’ he said, ‘it’s still your watch.’ But it wasn’t. He always called me chicken when he was being extra nice or when he felt in the wrong.

The numerals and hands on the new dial had to be charged by holding them close to a light, and even so the effect didn’t last long. You couldn’t see anything at all, later on in the night. The old dial had actually made its own light. The radium markings were a kind of mind that could think its pale-green thoughts to the very end of the darkness. The new dial was only a memory, and not a very good one. It was in decline from the moment it was charged, fully informed with light. It could dimly remember the brightness from earlier on, but only for a little while. So it wasn’t at all the same thing. In the darkest watches of the night my watch deserted me and went dark itself. I felt that some of Jim Shaeffer’s gift had been filched from me. As if Dad was jealous, and trying to spoil things somehow.

Breakfast elves

There were some aspects of the running of the ward that were sociable, and even inspired. For instance: when it was someone’s birthday there was jelly and ice cream for the whole ward, not just the lucky girl or boy, so we didn’t resent each other’s festivals.

Mum brought me squash for my locker. Though sweets must be shared, soft drinks could legitimately be hoarded. At breakfast there was a choice of cereals, so there was no direct repetition of the Weetabix trauma. In any case my taste had shifted by now to Rice Krispies. I particularly liked the three elves on the packet. I wanted to have elves like that, to keep as pets. Snap, Crackle and Pop would be useful little helpers for me, running errands and carrying messages, turning the pages of books. The other reason I wanted a little retinue of elves was so that I could pinch them very hard and make them cry out.

Behind the scenes Ansell must have been busy trying to solve the problem of my walking. Walking was an absolute passion and obsession of the establishment. In that respect also I’m sure it was of its time. Walking was more than encouraged, walking was absolutely insisted on. Not to walk qualified as a surrender to disability, a moral defect, but it was no good telling that to my joints.

Percussion parade

One day Ansell proudly produced something that was supposed to help me with my walking. The first I heard of them was this tremendous clattering coming down the corridor. I thought this must be some sort of music class, a free-for-all percussion parade. What I was hearing seemed to be an unholy cross between drums and cymbals.

Then Ansell came into the ward brandishing a pair of bizarre devices. They were like sticks with tripod bases for extra stability. The effect was of very narrow pyramids with handles on the top. The tripods had an aluminium cladding which was what made all the noise, acting as a sort of amplifying chamber. Slowly it dawned on me that they weren’t percussion instruments at all but intended as part of my rehabilitation. I hated them. I wouldn’t even try them. It was bad enough being assigned the triangle or tambourine in music classes, without being made to advertise my sub-standard walking all over the premises with a one-man marching — tottering — band.

If I’d been taken to a room and quietly shown the tripods, and had their advantages explained, I might have approached them with an open mind. They had been made thin and light for my benefit, and the cladding was an ingenious way of bracing flimsy metal that would have been impossibly bendy otherwise. But when Ansell tried to show me how to use them, the din went all over the ward. I couldn’t contemplate making all that noise. Imagine what it would have been like if I had ventured with those pyramids into that quarter-mile corridor! I couldn’t afford having one more negative distinction being attached to me, on top of being Wally Snorts the Posh and having beautiful sucking-up manners. I’d given Wendy and her gang enough hostages already. The clanking which preceded the tall pyramids down the corridor had ruled them out as walking aids before I’d even set eyes on them.

Ansell wasn’t best pleased to have her ingenious tailor-made John-supports rejected out of hand, and she told me I was spoilt, which was a bit of a slap in the face. I couldn’t be expected to realise that these hateful objects were the end products of a careful design process, and were dreamed up specifically to meet my needs. Someone in a Workshop somewhere was probably very proud of his resourcefulness, and Ansell was certainly glowing with job satisfaction before I refused point blank to use those deafening devices.

I never heard that Ansell went on winter sports holidays, though of course it’s possible. We on the ward were incapable of speculating about the life of the staff when they were off the premises. I wonder if Ansell wasn’t doing a boisterous mime of skiing, using the pyramids as her poles, dashing them merrily against the lino, as she came rejoicing down the corridor to have her thoughtfulness turned down flat.

Ansell felt snubbed, and she snubbed me in my turn when I said I wanted the same walking aids as the others. They used things like spider legs, but she told me rather stiffly that they were too heavy for me. She was almost sulking, unlikely though that sounds. I could just about lift one of Sarah’s spider legs, and I thought that it would give my arms good exercise to try walking with them. Anyway, she wouldn’t let me. ‘You’re not strong enough, John,’ she said with a sigh. ‘That’s the whole point. That’s why we tried to get you something different.’