Adam Mars-Jones - Pilcrow

I made out to Mum and Dad that the Uncle Mac factor was the clincher, but there were other things going on in my mind. Peter with his love of planes filled me in on the school’s name. The Air Force had three V-bombers — the Vickers Valiant, the Handley Page Victor and the Avro Vulcan. The Vulcan was their longest-range bomber. It could fly 4000 miles at 50,000 feet. It was also known as the Tin Triangle (which made me think of those less inspired pieces of technology, Ansell’s tailor-made walking pods). As far as Peter was concerned, I couldn’t do better.

For a long time, too, I had prayed to God for a boy companion whom I could love and who would be my special friend. I had strong ideas about this, not all of them derived from Enid Blyton. Boys played together and chummed up. When they had a scrap they would always seem to end up rolling on the ground, two as one, their legs interlocked and their arms wrapped round each other. My special friend was going to be physically normal or almost normal. Of course at the beginning we would spend a lot of time in tender loving embraces, but when passion had ripened into something more mature, the real quest would begin. It would be daring and dangerous. He would fight the enemy on the physical plane and I would take care of the ghosts, spirits and ghouls. Vulcan School would be the ideal place to find this soul-mate, among the Intelligent Boys. The place was clearly the answer to my prayers.

My mind gave Vulcan School the thumbs-up, but my body had other ideas. It started playing a mean trick on me that I thought was ancient history. I had chewed those linen sheets and spat them out, I had frotted myself against them ecstatically, and now I was wetting them like a baby.

Rather surprisingly, bed-wetting attracted no punishment in CRX. My sheets were changed without complaint or reproach. I could even enjoy the state between waking and dream, that strange shoreline that can seem deeper than the sea. I could luxuriate in the feeling of warm wetness seeping all around, knowing the sheets would be changed before the pee got uncomfortably cold. I was very ashamed, all the same, and knew perfectly well that at Vulcan School this would never do.

I also snored incurably, a vice which I thought I could get away with in the absence of other night-time vices but hardly in combination. I was confident that boys, intelligent boys, would be more understanding and generally nicer than girls, but bed-wetting and snoring would hardly be a passport to big-boyhood. I was well enough versed in the literature to know that in boys’ schools they gave you nick-names. They would be bound to come up with something that would advertise both my vices. I badly wanted to start with a clean sheet but I was sure I was doomed to swap Wally Snorts for something worse.

Snoring and wetting the bed. No great inventiveness would be required on the part of my fellow intelligent boys. They would call me ‘Snorwetta’ but no, ‘r’s and ‘w’s didn’t really go together like that. They’d just drop the ‘w’ and I’d be known as … Snoretta.

A boy who sounded like a piggy version of Henrietta. I would never be allowed into proper boyhood, Julian-and-Dick boyhood. I’d be chained by girlhood again, as I had been at CRX, where a posh accent was considered girly. Ansell and some of the other staff had always said I sounded nice and not girly at all, but I hadn’t been living and sleeping with Ansell, unfortunately.

In my time of limbo between institutions, when I hung between a hospital set up by someone who didn’t believe in pain and a school that might have been named for my benefit by Bomber Command, there was one memorable day. The Mad Major put in a personal appearance at last — he was invited to lunch. Who by? It can only have been Dad. There was a conciliatory edge to his usual patterns of behaviour in the run-up to the event, as if he knew he had arranged something that went well beyond the call of marital duty.

Peter and I knew it was an important occasion. Each of them kept complaining about the fuss the other was making about something very ordinary. Mum said, ‘I don’t know why Dad is so keyed up about seeing this dull old friend of his,’ but it wasn’t every day she folded napkins into the tricky Bishop’s Mitre shape, following the instructions in her old copy of Mrs Beeton’s Household Management . The book was a cast-off of Granny’s — in fact it was less a book than an oppressive hint, printed and bound. It was an old edition, old enough to list the duties of the ‘tweeny’, which included cleaning the back stairs. Every time she opened up the book Mum must have reproached herself for having neither a tweeny nor back stairs to turn her loose on.

Meanwhile Dad was saying, ‘I don’t know why your mother has to make such a song and dance about a visit from an old comrade-in-arms. Still, you know what she’s like.’ Indeed we did, but we also saw the look in Dad’s eyes which meant he was wondering if he should ask her if his tie was smart enough. He might even be considering the drastic step of wearing the cuff-links she had given him for Christmas. Peter asked, ‘Is he really mad? Is he doolally loony? Will he bark?’ Mum said she wouldn’t be surprised.

‘Shall I call him Major Mad or Mad Major? Which is proper?’

That was going too far for Mum. ‘Neither is proper, neither is polite. You’ll call him …’ — suddenly she didn’t seem certain herself — ‘Major Draper.’

‘Kit is pretty relaxed about the “Mad Major” routine, m’dear,’ Dad broke in. ‘So he should be, with some of the things he’s done in his time. And do you know, he’s working on his life story for a book? It should make fascinating reading.’

Mum answered only with a sigh and told him to get out from under her feet. The most consistent strand in all the stories about the Major was his unreliability, and Mum took it for granted that he would be late. She had started issuing ultimatums soon after breakfast on the great day, saying, ‘I hope you don’t expect me to wait lunch for him — we eat at one sharp.’ And then he arrived, soon after eleven o’clock. We could hear the gravel of the drive being displaced by unfamiliar wheels. Peter made to dash out, but Mum restrained him. Dad went out alone. The welcoming committee was a one-man show.

When the Major came in, I was shocked to see how old he was. He was closer to Granny’s age than Dad’s. I wasn’t old enough myself to understand that someone who had held a pilot’s licence since 1913 couldn’t be any younger than that. I suppose he was in his late sixties. He was tubby, with a face that managed to be flabby and big-chinned at the same time. He was mainly bald. He wore thick glasses. His teeth seemed strange.

He looked from me to Peter and back again, as if he wasn’t sure which was which. I’ve loved people for less — but the pantomime has to be done exactly right. He passed the test. Finally he fixed on me and said, ‘You must be the son and heir.’

He turned to Peter and said, ‘And you must be the runner-up.’ There was a gleam around his teeth which was kindness, perhaps. The same gleam flickered in his eyes, behind the lenses which unkindly piggified them. ‘I even think there may be a baby somewhere near.’ This was a joke, since Audrey was just then screaming the house down. ‘I know one of you chaps loves school and the other’s not so sure. That’s you, I fancy?’ he asked, looking over at Peter. ‘I’m shoulder to shoulder with you about that, old man. Hated every minute. Couldn’t wait to get outdoors and into the open. Perhaps you feel the same way?’ Peter was tongue-tied. Mum wasn’t much better, when she came in carrying Audrey. She was at a double disadvantage, trying to quiet a baby and wearing her apron, red-faced from the heat of the kitchen.