Adam Mars-Jones - Pilcrow

What would life have been like if Wendy had been better informed about the universe and the marriage bed, if there hadn’t been a necessary limit to her tyranny? It was a question that used to haunt me, my scaled-down equivalent of the one that could still make people of my parents’ generation shiver: what if Hitler hadn’t attacked Russia?

I also wondered from time to time what life at CRX would have been like without Sarah. One day she told me that she was unfortunately unable to propose to me, since that task fell to the man. I immediately proposed, and she accepted. Sarah told Muzzie, I broke the news to Mum and everybody was delighted. I held Sarah’s hand and Muzzie and Mum, surprisingly emotional, gave each other a hug and a kiss. When I went to do the same to Sarah she said, blushing slightly, ‘We mustn’t get any closer than this until the day.’ Muzzie and Mum clapped their hands and burst out in peals of laughter. I didn’t quite know why.

Sarah and I would have our own house, made a bit smaller just for us — but not too small, so our parents and other visitors wouldn’t bump their heads. Sarah could develop her talent for charity work, and we would work away like beavers for the PDSA (not the RSPCA). We would probably form our own Hive. Then I’d have a much better chance of getting a proper mention in the Busy Bee News , though my resentment of Sarah’s greater success in such matters had evaporated long ago.

I could just see it. There we would be in our own sweet little house, and organising a Grand Fête. I would be phoning up design firms and explaining to the manager, for the sixth time that morning, exactly what a circumflex was (a recent discovery of my own).

‘Think of it as a word meaning F-E-S-T-I–I-I–I-I–V-I-T-Y,’ I explained, tired but delighted I’d learned to put a warble into the word to bring it to life. ‘It used to be “Feste”, but that’s not too easy to say so they dropped the awkward “s”. The circumflex is just a reminder that it used to be there.’

‘Well, now you put it that way, Guv,’ the design manager would say, ‘I think I shall remember the word “Fête” for the rest of my life. The way you put it, Sir, seems to make it stick in my mind somehow. Wish I’d ’ad a teacher like you when I was a kid, Sir.’

During all this Sarah would be answering the phone on the other line. I’d spotted that Heel had two phones in her office and coveted this nerve centre of modern communications. To the caller she’d say: ‘Just one moment please, I shall have to ask my husband,’ and then to me, putting her hand over the mouthpiece, ‘M’dear …’ (I would have quickly weaned her off such gooeyness as ‘Darling’), ‘It’s Mr Millthorpe from Cookham Dean. Submissions for stalls closed yesterday, of course, but he has a family of performing voles — in fact a whole vole vaudeville, or so it seems.’

I would make a delighted face and give a thumbs-up, as this was just what I had been looking for, but then I would change it to a frown and make a wavy signal with my hand instead. Sarah, experienced in our business and perfectly attuned to my little ways, would take the cue and say, ‘Well, I’m afraid your application is in late, Sir, and we are absolutely chock-a-blocko, but I’ve put in a word with my husband and he thinks he can manage to squeeze you in somehow, even if he has to stay up all night working out the details.’ I would yawn at the very thought of it, and then (yawns being so very contagious) Sarah would yawn too, apologising to the grateful caller as she signed off with, ‘We’ll see you on the day.’ I would remind her about the importance of proper supervision for the queues. Mum had once seen Ken Dodd jump the queue for the fortune teller at a CRX fête. She sometimes laughed at his jokes even after that, but lost all respect for him as a person.

Newts up-stream of their ladies

Sarah and I would soon work out that all this taily stuff really wasn’t practical or necessary. Dad had shown me books about the animal kingdom, and I had learned that there were methods of carrying on the species much more appealing to me personally than putting tailies in ladies’ holes. Newts, for instance, simply swam up-stream of their ladies and dropped off a parcel for them to collect! I wanted the physical side of marriage to be run on a similar, postal basis, otherwise I wouldn’t have any part of it.

Our beds would be close enough for us to hold hands before going to sleep. For babies we had plenty of options. By the time we were grown up, everybody would probably be doing it all by packages and parcels. Besides, Mary had become an angel by now, and she would help us. She was far above feelings of jealousy and being left out. She would probably be a senior angel by then, so we were well connected. We would be high on the waiting list.

All I had to do to link up with this marvellous future was to survive my solo sessions in the pool with Miss Krüger. I was scared, of course, though there were weeks when nothing happened — either because she was adding psychological torture to the mix, until I was almost longing for the drowning to start, so that it would be over for the week and I could think of something else, or because there were other staff around and she couldn’t get up to her tricks. I had enough sense to know that she was risking her job, German or no German, if she actually drowned someone.

Then suddenly, from one day to the next, Miss Krüger was gone, and she didn’t even drown anybody! Gone under a cloud, a pink fluffy angora cloud, disgrace raining down on her head. It wasn’t her perversion that got her dismissed, the sessions of ankylosis ballet when no one else was around, the drowning therapy in the pool. It was pilfering that was her downfall. She had stolen three balls of pink angora wool from another nurse. They were found in her locker. And she didn’t even knit! So perhaps it was simple spite. If she’d stuck with sadism and not been tempted by spite, she would have been more secure. She would have kept her position.

I suppose it’s possible that the theft was only a pretext for dismissing her, to prevent uglier things coming to light, and the real reason was some cruelty that had been witnessed or reported. If so I think even in the ’fifties we’d have been asked about her ideas of treatment. What she’d done. Unless the principle of Least Said Soonest Mended which ruled our house so fiercely held sway on the ward also. And perhaps in this case it actually was for the best. I was very happy to know that I would never see Miss Krüger again.

There were weeks now when the phantom school’s existence within the hospital was almost continuous, weeks when that shy woodland creature hiding in the buildings seemed tame enough to come and eat out of my hand. The headmaster, Mr Turpin, known of course as Turps or Old Turpentine, began to take a closer interest in me.

I loved the smell of turpentine, and a little of that tenderness rubbed off on Mr Turpin. When Sarah did oil painting by numbers, she thinned her paints with turpentine even though everyone said you shouldn’t do that.

When he first met me Mr Turpin said doubtfully, ‘I suppose he might earn a living as some sort of clerk.’ It’s true I had a little movement in the elbow of my writing arm, but it was hardly something I wanted to do for eight hours a day. He said it before he had seen my hand-writing — there were only smudgy dashes where the letters should have been. ‘It’s a shame you can’t be a doctor,’ he said, rather insensitively, ‘your hand-writing would be perfect for that.’ Turps must have seen my wounded expression, because he brought in an art teacher from Ward Three, who let me be as smudgy as I liked.

She gave me a brush and some water-colours and said to try and draw a cornfield. When I’d finished, the teacher said, ‘Your painting is very like van Gogh, John!’ which made me very happy. As Art progressed, she gently gave me a few tips. She got me to look out of the window and see if I could spot any straight lines. ‘The moment you see any straight lines in nature, John,’ she said, ‘be sure to let me know.’ That was tactful. She suggested I watched her paint a bit, just to get a few ideas, and I lapped it all up. Two weeks later, when I’d finished another painting, she put it alongside the ‘van Gogh’ and said, ‘See how much better the new one is, John!’