Adam Mars-Jones - Pilcrow

‘Don’t be hard on him, m’dear. He’s fallen on hard times — going through rather a bad patch. Perhaps this book of his will change his fortunes.’ This time Mum’s sniff was undisguised.

So Mum got the last word over the kitchen sink, or at least the last sniff, on the day the Major came. Really the meal could hardly have gone better, from her point of view, unless Dad had dropped one of the best plates while doing the drying-up.

Yet she didn’t really seem to relish her triumph. Of course, the Major was an impossible friend for any married man. No wife could sincerely enjoy having him as a guest, even a wife more tolerant and secure than Mum. But still he left an uneasy atmosphere behind. I suspect that the wrong thing about the Major from Mum’s point of view wasn’t his supposed treasonable sympathies. It wasn’t as a Nazi that he set the alarm bells ringing but as a bachelor. He didn’t represent the menace of Fascism but the temptation of the single life. Rolling up any time he pleased, disparaging good food, treating folded napkins as if they were no better than fancy hankies. And if the Major was Married to the Skies, then so had Dad been. Mum had tried to come between him and the clouds, and so had I, but it wasn’t at all clear that we had succeeded. We were his second family, and the Raff was still the first.

School for plastics

My new school was hard to find, as if it took its resemblance to an enchanted castle seriously. The Cromer party in the Vauxhall got completely lost. The name of the school felt unnatural on the tongue, which inhibited us from asking directions. After we had gone round in circles three times Mum asked a farm worker where Farley Castle was.

The farm worker said, ‘OO-arr! That’ll be the school for plastics will it? Your littl’un goin’ there be he? Well good luck, Sonny, that be a right rum place and no mistake!’

Some allowance has to be made, in the way this story has been embellished in the passing on, for the incrementally yokelising tendencies of Mum’s ear and class assumptions. I was too keyed-up myself to listen properly, but the man’s speech did seem pretty rough. It’s just that I think I’d remember if he’d actually been chewing straw or scratching his head with the tines of a rake.

When we finally set eyes on The Vulcan School, that first day, Mum cried out, ‘It really does look like a fairy-tale castle, doesn’t it, Dennis? Don’t you think so, John?’ Well, yes I did, but not everything that happens in fairy tales is nice.

When the Vauxhall drew up on the school gravel Mr Raeburn came out to greet us, with his co-principal Miss Willis. Raeburn had distinctive eyes, grey with just a hint of blue. I had been alerted to his disabled status, which was presented (as usual) as a wonderful treat for me, as if he had let his legs be crushed by a tank just to make me feel at home. He managed his sticks very well, making progress in a series of fluent lurches. It was actually Miss Willis, vast and motherly, who moved more awkwardly.

I would have liked to leap out of the car to shake hands, but if I had been able to do that I wouldn’t have been accepted as a pupil in the first place. I had to wait to be helped. Raeburn and Miss Willis didn’t make me feel awkward by crowding round the car, but they couldn’t avoid making me feel awkward by hanging back politely until I was helped to the upright. It was a sunny day, and I had to screw up my eyes to make out with any clarity these looming blobs of authority.

It was important to me to walk unaided at this point, asserting my marginal claim to biped status. I did my level best. I even had a crack at shaking hands. Then I had to accept the convenience of the Tan-Sad, since the gravel was wide and there was a lot of ground to cover.

When I had left CRX I was asked to return the wheelchair in which I had spent most of my time in that place, but there was no demand for the Tan-Sad, so I kept it. I was hoping my new school would provide a superior vehicle.

A young man came up to us, and was introduced to me as Roger Stott. Raeburn said that he would be showing me round and answering any questions. He seemed unnecessarily tall and handsome.

‘Are you a teacher, Sir?’ I managed to ask, and he laughed and explained, ‘No, I’m one of the ABs. Able-bodied pupils. I have asthma. That’s usually what’s wrong with the ABs. Apart from having to do most of the work of running the school.’

No one had alerted me to the fact that there would be physically normal, strapping great boys roaming all over my nice disabled school. When Roger Stott looked at me, I felt as I had at CRX when Mr Fisk first took his pictures, agonisingly naked, though he had large eyes with a lot of warmth and sparkle in them. He had celebrity looks, somehow, without actually reminding me of anyone.

Roger pushed the Tan-Sad, and then with him behind me I felt more or less clothed again. There was a lot to see. The estate wasn’t in the Cliveden class, but it had nine acres of grass and woodland. There was no other house in sight of the Castle. Pupils had no sense of being overlooked. That was very much what Raeburn and Miss Willis had been looking for when they placed their advertisement in the Sunday Times , and the then owner, Colonel Mitchell-Hedges, had responded. There were trees, Spanish chestnuts and oaks, screening the grounds from the road, and great masses of rhododendrons. There was also a yew hedge, tall and very gloomy, with the edges of a sign just visible, half over-grown. Roger told me it had YEW HEDGE — POISONOUS TO HORSES written on it, but disappointingly the few horses that passed through never seemed tempted to try it.

Are you sleeping with me?

I had decided that I had only one slim chance of escaping the fateful nick-name of Snoretta, and that was to make friends instantly — before bed-time. I had only a few hours. I was in a hurry to establish who would be sleeping within range of my snoring and the whiff of my pee, so I asked Roger Stott the question whose importance dwarfed all others. ‘Are you sleeping with me?’

I blushed and rapidly translated the question into what I thought was the universal school idiom. ‘Are you one of the chaps in my Dorm?’ ‘I don’t know where you’re going, exactly,’ said Roger. ‘If you’re Blue Dorm, then yes. But don’t worry about that — we’ll get you settled in later. Right now I’m here to show you around. You’ll soon get used to it.’ I tried. All the same it was frustrating not knowing who would be in my dormitory yet, the all-powerful peers, my judges.

Roger showed me the area at the front of the Castle where games were played. There were a couple of go-karts which were brought out on special occasions. To start with, he said, they had been fitted with governors to limit their speed. The boys had gone on strike until they were removed. There hadn’t been any serious accidents, though one boy had panicked and forgotten how to stop. Luckily he had the sense to run into the bushes, not out of the drive and onto the road. It was reassuring to hear that there was room for mishap and possible disaster at this new school. The normal dangers.

There was archery, too. Roger Stott looked at my arms rather doubtfully and said that wheelchair shinty — hockey for hooligans — might turn out to be my game. I thought this was an activity in which I would be pushed by an AB, perhaps by Roger himself, and tried to look forward to it.

He showed me the area round the side of the Castle where cars were parked. For school expeditions there was a Bedford Transit van, but it had no room for wheelchairs. I could look forward to being manhandled into the back, while the folded chairs were loaded onto a trailer knocked together by a local garage.