Adam Mars-Jones - Pilcrow

Miss Withers came into the pool with me. She was a real water baby. She loved it. On dry land there was no getting round her, but in the water she would turn a blind eye to a little bit of cheekiness. She could just about maintain her strictness when she was in the pool, but you could tell it was an effort. Not that I was being cheeky on this particular day. I was on best behaviour. Her hands were beneath me in the pool, and then she gave me a little push and I went under. Nothing much happened for a while, except that I started to breathe something that wasn’t air. She hadn’t given me enough warning, and I hadn’t had time to take a breath. I thought perhaps that was the trouble. Maybe they were waiting for bubbles to break the surface before they decided it was time to rescue me. I tried to make bubbles but I didn’t know how.

Then Miss Withers was lifting me up and I was spluttering in her arms. I was sorry that I hadn’t been able to make the life-jacket work, but Miss Withers wasn’t cross with me. She hugged me in a way that was rather painful, saying ‘There, there.’ Dad was away at the time, but I could almost hear his voice saying, ‘For God’s sake don’t make such a fuss, he already thinks the whole world revolves around him.’ Someone brought warm towels to wrap me in, and I began almost to enjoy myself. I can’t have been under water long, but the air above the pool had changed, all the same, while I was away. Now it was agitated and swirling. The inventor in his dark suit was saying something about this not being a fair test. Not fair at all. My body was too abnormal for any life-jacket, past or future, to hold it up.

The hospital authorities must have been convinced by this line of argument, because the yellow life-jackets replaced the inflated rubber rings we had been using in the pool, except for me. I had failed to be saved by the life-jacket of the future, so my buoyancy would be guaranteed by an old-fashioned rubber ring. I didn’t really mind. We weren’t too closely supervised. There was always someone around, but staff might pop out for a few minutes without worrying.

One day I was playing with Mary Finch in the shallow end. In water our bodies were much more coöperative, much more responsive to commands, than they ever were on dry land. We could almost run, in a sort of slow motion. Mary ‘ran away’ and I ‘chased’ her. The difference between our speeds was nowhere near as great as it was when we were really walking.

Soon we were out of breath after all our squealing play. Mary lay on her back to float for a minute. I looked at her with love, but also with mischief. I couldn’t resist the impulse to push her under. There was no danger — we had been told often enough how wonderful those life-jackets were, as long as your body made some sort of effort to be normal. Mary’s face went below the surface of the water and stayed there. The yellow life-jacket seemed to be entirely ornamental. Her eyes were open and she was making little waving movements with her arms. Now it was terrible that I was only moving in slow motion as I tried to reach her. Finally I managed to get an arm against her and to give a lop-sided sort of push, and after that her face broke through the water and she was spluttering and crying and I was begging for her to forgive me. I felt I’d come close to doing something that God would hate me for.

Mary forgave me the moment she got her breath back. She wasn’t capable of holding a grudge. We agreed that we wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened. The life-jacket was a dud, but I couldn’t tell Miss Withers or anyone else about it without admitting how I’d found out, by pushing Mary under.

Mum was very attuned to me in those days, and she persuaded me to tell her what the matter was. She was sworn to secrecy, but with Mum you could never quite be sure. Or there may have been other incidents in the pool that we weren’t told about. One way or another, supervision in the pool area became much more continuous. Then one day our benefactor turned up on the television defending the reputation of his invention, saying that it was only a matter of a single batch being faulty at most. It happened to be at a weekend, and Mum and Dad were glued to the screen for once. Mum said I should look at the man’s face very carefully, because that was what people looked like when they were lying. I imagine the product sank without trace, and possibly the company that made it as well. It was back to rubber rings for everyone all over again, not just me.

Even before I could go home most weekends, Saturday was always a super-special day as far as I was concerned. I would wake up and sing at the top of my voice, ‘ It’s Saturday today! ’ I bounced out of bed, or at least did what I could in that line, vibrating with joy till the nurses got round to me. I told everyone that if I ruled the world, every day would be a Saturday.

Chromatically coded

For me Saturday was a bright red colour, just as the other days of the week were chromatically coded. Sunday was a vibrant sunny yellow, Monday green, Tuesday a dull red, Wednesday a mustardy yellow, Thursday a blue so dark it was virtually black, Friday a bright blue.

This wasn’t the true synæsthesia which is such a fascinating mystical hint, a loose thread in the fabric of perception left a-dangle, an unravelling which suggests that we could dissolve all our unreal categories. It was more a case of my emotions being split into different wave-lengths as they entered a prism, viz. the hospital week.

Saturday was a bright and joyful red because it was a day that held neither physiotherapy nor lessons. Sunday was yellow because, although it too was a day without pain or drudgery, it turned traitor at last by delivering me while I slept into the torments of Monday. There was a green streak at the bottom of yellow Sunday, if you looked closely enough. The colours of Monday, Wednesday and Friday were determined by those being physio days.

Reddish Tuesday was only a short-term reprieve, and Wednesday was the low point of the week, what with physiotherapy and lessons and so long to wait for the weekend. Thursday was almost worse, a day without physio but spent remembering the pain of the day before and anticipating the pain of the next — no more than the filling of a pain sandwich. Friday contained pain, but was shot through with the foreknowledge of the weekend. After Friday physio was the ordeal of fish and chips for lunch, a favourite with other kids but not with me. Once I bit into a piece of CRX batter, and a greasy globule burst in my mouth, some sort of abscess of oil. It ran down the back of my throat, making me retch. After that I just picked at the food, avoiding the fish altogether. So Friday contained hunger as well as pain, but at least it could be trusted to give me the weekend.

Most of the food at CRX was eatable. One dumpy little nurse would say, ‘Wannit it all mashed up together?’ and I’d say, ‘Oh yes!’ I watched with fascination as she went to work. Even the crispest pie would be reduced to mortar under her hand. The taste was oddly improved by the steamrollering to mush (though I wouldn’t let her try with fish and chips). I suppose this was an underclass version of Mum’s genteel microcosmal forkfuls.

Ninday

One morning Sister Heel announced that we would be getting an extra day. Perhaps she didn’t mention this as a government decision, but that was my first thought. The government issued us with our toilet paper (horribly scratchy) and our orange juice (delicious, nothing ever as good after it was discontinued), why not an extra day? From then on my imagination got busy, going over and over it until the original information was entirely lost in the fanciful embroidery. I thought that the extra day would be added to every week, and asked what it was to be called. Sister Heel said, with only the slightest hesitation, ‘Nin-day, John. The new day will be called Ninday.’ Pleased with her quick thinking, she trotted off to her next round of duties.