Adam Mars-Jones - Pilcrow

The Major had hardly arrived before he swept Dad off with him to a nearby pub for what he called a ‘sharpener or two’, saying brightly that they’d be back in good time for lunch. This time Peter couldn’t reasonably be restrained from dashing out to see the Major’s car. Unusually, Dad took control of the wheelchair — something normally that happened only on our nature-study expeditions with the Tan-Sad. Otherwise, though, I would have been stranded inside the house, and I enjoyed the rare paternal push.

The Major’s car was an old-fashioned one with running-boards. He let Peter stand on one of them when he started off, driving very slowly and looking back anxiously to make sure he’d jumped off safely. Peter made a show of falling over and rolling in the dirt, but luckily he did it very unconvincingly, after a clean landing, so the Major and Dad could drive away with clear consciences.

Nothing had actively gone wrong as yet, but Mum was too far down the path of having a bad time to retrace her steps at short notice. By the time Dad and the Major rolled happily back just before one, she was seething. Dad seemed puzzled by her antagonism, but it was too late for him to be taking Lessons In Mum, though I could have taught him a few. It would certainly have been better tactics on the men’s part to arrive shame-faced and contrite at half-past. There’s nothing a martyr likes less than being ritually installed among the kindling, not tied to the post but grasping it firmly behind her back, and then no one having the common politeness to strike a match.

Ra Ra Rickerar

Normally I sat at the head of the table, since that was the only position from which I could follow events without the great effort of turning my head. Mum had decided that Dad should replace me just this once. In other circumstances Dad might have enjoyed this assertion of his theoretical dominance, but even his very moderate sensitivity to atmospheres was sending him danger signals.

I didn’t mind losing my place, but I didn’t want to miss out socially, and I had made Peter promise to install me in my wheelchair facing directly at the Major. The Major looked up in surprise as Peter trundled me in and lined me up at him like a small piece of artillery, primed ordnance which at this range could easily take his head off. Then he gave me an oddly shy smile, a wavering flag of good nature.

Mum’s bad mood was clinched by the Major offering to say grace before the meal. ‘We’re not much for grace in this house,’ she said, but the Major paid no attention. He offered to say Chinese grace on this special occasion — ‘maybe the kiddies will like that.’ He winked as he said so, a funny sort of wink. When Dad winked it was only the eyelid that moved, but when the Major winked he screwed up one whole side of his face. Of course he was right. We would love to hear Chinese grace. I adored everything to do with foreign languages, with anything I couldn’t understand, and Peter wasn’t going to be left out, now or ever.

To prepare himself for the high office of saying grace, the Major grabbed the napkin sitting on his side plate, in its smart Bishop’s Mitre fold, and popped it on top of his shining head. It perched there unsteadily, so that he had to put up a hand to keep it more or less in place. He put his hands together and closed his eyes. We did the same, not really.

Then the Major moved his wrists apart so that it was only his fingertips touching, and his hands made a strange pyramid-like shape, which Peter copied. Even I had a go. His eyelids trembled as he looked out from under them, at our even more transparent pretence of inward raptness. Then he intoned in a great whisper: ‘ RA RA RICKERAR — REE PO NEE — FATTER KITTY WHISKERS — CHITTAPON CHITTAPON — CHINESE CHOO-CHOO! ’

That was Chinese grace. We howled with joy. We made him say it again. It was even better the second time, when we knew what was coming. We made him promise to say it one more time, before pudding. Twice more, please! Please!

After Chinese grace, we were his creatures absolutely, but Mum’s face was coldly set as she busied herself with the soup ladle. Soup was partly a concession to me, since vegetarian soups didn’t call attention to themselves in a way Mum wouldn’t allow. On the other hand, I had to use a mug to drink it, which drew attention to my difficulties with spoons and liquids. I had offered to do my very best with a bowl, on this more formal occasion, but Mum must have realised that I would make an even less elegant impression methodically flicking celery soup over myself, very little of it reaching my mouth. My presence at table would always entail a certain amount of embarrassment.

Soup suited the Major perfectly. Before he started eating he removed his false teeth and put them on his side plate, discreetly draping his napkin over them. He can have had no idea what his hostess suffered, watching that square yard of crisp linen being insulted. Mum gazed accusingly at the gleaming fabric, come down in the world so quickly, passing from Bishop’s Mitre to theatrical prop to denture-cosy in a few short minutes.

After the soup the Major re-installed his teeth, catching my eye as he did so. In fact he brandished them at Peter and me, before he fitted them back inside his face. We were thrilled and delighted, though of course there was some disgust mixed in there too. It certainly made a change from Sunday lunch as it was played out week by week.

The Major had been doing without a napkin during the soup course, but now he picked it up by one corner and shook it open. He didn’t even look at it, let alone make appreciative comments on Mum’s deftness, the trouble she had taken, or the elegance of the result.

In theory she should have been able to balance her vulnerabilities. If she was outraged by the Major’s infantile behaviour then she should have cared less about the possibility of me embarrassing her with my soup-mug or other utensils. But a sense of proportion was never really her style, and she experienced no difficulty in multiplying the negative emotions.

Peter was fascinated by the Major’s dentures. ‘Did you smash up your teeth in an accident?’ he wanted to know. ‘Did you have a plane crash?’

‘Well, yes and no, young Peter. I did smash up my teeth against the control panel of a plane, yes. I didn’t crash the plane, though. It crashed all by itself.’

‘Wasn’t there anybody flying the plane?’

‘Not really, no. It’s rather a long story …’

It was one we had to hear, of course. It turned out that the Major had been suffering rather badly from ’flu on the day of an air display. He hadn’t wanted to disappoint the spectators. He didn’t want to be a wash-out — and then he had simply passed out in the middle of a stunt. It was as simple as that. So the plane had crashed, but he hadn’t crashed it. He had an alibi, being unconscious at the time.

The crash was no sort of reflection on the Major’s flying abilities, apparently. He hadn’t lost control of a plane, after all, he had only lost control of that other tricky piece of apparatus, Major Kit Draper, and his unreliable consciousness. It wasn’t so much a crash as a faint in a plane, when he had happened to be at the controls. It didn’t make him a duffer. A man could stand up and look himself in the face after a smash-up like that. Once he had healed up enough to walk about, of course.

To the civilians in his audience, this sounded rather an odd account of falling out of the sky, with so much emphasis on his unspotted record as a professional airman. Still, Dad was nodding sympathetically along, whether out of Services solidarity or because this really is the way pilots think.

Married to the skies