Adam Mars-Jones - Pilcrow

Bourne End was a little further away from CRX than Cookham, but it was in the same neck of the woods, and Muzzie offered to do a certain amount of ferrying. If there was any money left over it would go towards a car. Then I would be able to travel to this new home of ours at weekends without relying on lifts from other people.

When Mum and Dad had done a great deal of outdoor hacking and indoor de-greasing, the house looked very nice. The neighbour opposite, Arthur Foot, put up his easel one day, took his oil paints and painted a picture of it. He even gave them the painting, which was a lovely gesture. Arthur and Dad became good gardening friends, which is a curious sort of friendship, though in some ways better than the real thing. Mum had some sort of fraught acquaintance with his wife Dorothy. She knew her, in a phrase I found endlessly mysterious, ‘to speak to’. I think she was shy of her. She wanted to spend all her time with upper people, but sometimes she felt she couldn’t keep up with the uppers. Arthur and Dorothy Foot were always known locally as ‘the Feet’, a nick-name which Mum used nervously if at all.

Now that Trees had been made ship-shape I assumed Granny would be visiting. Mum soon squashed that notion. ‘I don’t need Granny getting under my feet,’ she said, but she sounded almost wistful. I didn’t dare ask any more questions about the family ruction which was keeping Granny away. Whatever it was, I assumed that it was my fault.

The only thing which was definitely disappointing about the new house had to do with the phone. The telephone at Bathford had a proper rotating dial, even if I wasn’t supposed to use it except on special occasions. I remember one of Mum’s friends had the number 4444, which was very tempting. I would be able to dial the whole thing without taking my finger out of the hole. It would be like dialling 999, but without having to wait for the house to burn down for an excuse. At Trees, though, there was no dial on the apparatus. You had to pick up the receiver and a little voice would say, ‘Number please?’ It was a bit of a step back.

Joyful gipsies

Still, those first weekends in the house were wonderful. We all had to camp out, like joyful gipsies. We used paraffin lamps which had a lovely stink, though the light wasn’t strong. Essentially, when it got dark, we went to bed. We had the radio, though, since it ran on a battery. I don’t think I was ever quite so happy in that house again. As the house began to come together as a workable family residence, I began to feel that I was the only one still squatting. There wasn’t enough money to do any real converting for my benefit. Perhaps I was meant to understand that a little inconvenience was a fair price for me to pay personally for the family up-rooting. The unwritten rule which operated in CRX seemed to be general: the disabled person must adapt to the world as it is.

It was a bit of a shock when I first heard Mum saying in company that the house had been bought ‘because of John’. If it was my doing, shouldn’t I perhaps have been asked whether I actually wanted them to up-root themselves? It was a bit much to make me solely responsible for something that was just announced to me from on high. Mum never stopped saying it, though, and I more or less got used to it.

Mum made friends quite quickly with a neighbour called Joy Payne, who was extraordinarily willing to put herself out to be helpful. She couldn’t do enough for all of us. Soon she was driving Mum over to CRX on a Friday in her Vauxhall Victor estate. I loved how big and roomy that car was. I didn’t know there could be anything so spacious. Of course her husband was chairman of Vauxhall Motors, or at least high up in the firm, so it wasn’t quite the status symbol that it seemed to me then.

The Paynes lived in Otters Pool. How could you fail to love people whose house was called that? But Joy’s real gift to me wasn’t her house’s name but her own. Joy Payne. How can you improve on that? What a lot of food for thought there was in those two syllables.

There was even a sweet that was popular at the time called Payne’s Poppets, which reinforced the idea that Joy was a poppet as of right. One weekend Joy brought the Tan-Sad home with me and Mum — there was always room for one more in that Vauxhall. It folded up rather half-heartedly, and even semi-collapsed it was unwieldy. The Tan-Sad stayed at Trees from then on, but it was much better suited for trips outside than for anything in the house. It was very unmanœuvrable, and it brought dirt in with it on its wheels.

Mum would sometimes take me into Bourne End in the Tan-Sad to do her shopping, hanging her purchases from the handles or tucking them next to me on the seat or down by my feet on the foot-plate. As a reward we would go into Mr Clifton’s Toy Shop afterwards. There wasn’t much in there which was up my street, but I would feel a tiny excitement before going in. You never knew, after all. Round the next corner of the shop there might lurk something which was just for me, perhaps a candle which burnt forever, or a tiny elephant which you had to feed real grass, chopped up very fine.

If I fell down during a weekend at home, if for instance I tripped on a carpet edge, Mum would help me up but Dad would take no notice. If we were alone in the room he’d pretend nothing had happened. He wouldn’t look at me.

Informed wonder

It was very hard on him. He must have felt he’d been deprived of the son he was entitled to, but even so there were times when he forgot to be bereaved. Then he’d take me on nature rambles, pushing the Tan-Sad perfectly happily and collecting specimens from streams for me to look at. Hydra and daphne and rotifer: little worlds in water that he enjoyed explaining to me. ‘That’s a cyclops, John, see? A female — she’s laden with eggs.’ I could just make these creatures out with my naked eye, though Dad’s powers of resolution were certainly superior. A new note came into his voice when he spoke about the natural world, one of informed wonder, and he became a different being. I liked him best when we were out and about away from the house. I don’t know whether I wanted him to myself, or if he was genuinely different out of Mum’s company. He seemed younger, almost a boy playing with another, the way he was before the War put the kibosh on his university career and reading biology.

One winter before Christmas, Mum said we should make a special trip to Clifton’s, because he had things displayed which he didn’t have at other times of the year. Mr Clifton had even said to her, ‘Why don’t you bring your son along to have a look when he comes home from hospital?’

I was excited, but mainly because Mum was. Deep down I knew that the toys in my dreams would never be found in a shop, but I got into the spirit of things.

The shop was chokker. There were loads of toys and games. I reckoned it would take at least an hour to have a proper look. All those extra things meant the space available for customers was smaller than usual. Mum got the Tan-Sad round as much of the shop as she could, and she went to fetch things from the parts I couldn’t get to so I could see them properly. I was careful not to admire anything so forcefully that it ended up as a Christmas or birthday present. I had said I wanted a pet snake, and I knew this wasn’t a popular request. I didn’t want to be bought off with a Meccano set I couldn’t use.

Then Mr Clifton came along and said, ‘Your son is very welcome here, Mrs Cromer, but please, not at Christmas time! Why don’t you bring him along for our January sale? We always have more space then, and there’ll be some knock-down prices too!’ He bent down to address me directly. ‘That’ll make your money go further, won’t it John?’