Adam Mars-Jones - Pilcrow

Television had ridden to my rescue. God bless television. Television had taken the pressure off my bladder. Those little dorms were natural settings for story-telling and play-acting. A television series gave us our cast list, and we were off. What a relief after all my fears! We rode the range. We guarded the wagon train. We pronounced ‘coyotes’ to rhyme with ‘winter coats’. From that night on, the cue for the game was always the same. One: Rip! Two: Ned! Three: Kelly! I was completely caught up in our Western universe by the time the Grey Lady came for us with her box of coins and keys.

Her poem went like this:

I am the Ghost of Farley Castle

For fifty years wrapped up in a parcel.

The string was undone, I was let loose

And now I’m out to COOK YOUR GOOSE!

I couldn’t wait to get the dutiful screaming out of the way, and to head back to Indian Territory. The sheets were coarse after the linen at CRX but the company was kind, and the sheets stayed dry. It turned out after all my fears that I didn’t normally even need a pee in the night, but if I really got desperate I just called out for Roger Stott’s help. Nocturnal enuresis put its ugly head below the parapet, and I stopped worrying about waking up wet. I think it’s the worry that makes the wetness.

Roger’s tenderness in alerting me to the ghost hoax seems to me, looking back, like the first gentle waft of the new decade. Just because he had been severely scared on his first night in a new place (presumably) was no reason to pass the trauma on. It was 1961, but the ’sixties were a decade which was a long time getting started and a long time dying down.

In other respects Vulcan was lodged firmly in the 1950s, perhaps even earlier. There wasn’t a school uniform as such, but if a boy was able to wear a tie, he was expected to do so. If you couldn’t tie it yourself, like me, then an AB would do it for you. The knot had to be pulled good and tight. I asked if there were any exceptions, and it turned out that there were, but they didn’t cover my case. Exceptions were made for those with tracheotomies. If you were breathing through your neck rather than your nose, you were exempted from wearing a tie. So we were spared the sight of ties fluttering in the tracheal breeze or being inhaled dangerously into a makeshift orifice, where a door had been opened in a boy’s throat.

Asthmatics didn’t have to wear ties, but were expected to sport cravats instead. If they were having a particularly wheezy patch they could go to a matron, who might let them off altogether. Then they could go open-necked.

One particular boy called Paul Dandridge had been so badly affected by polio that he could only breathe by gulping down air — we called it his ‘frog breathing’ — and not at all at night without the aid of a respirator. He still had to wear a cravat, unless perhaps he was officially exempt but had decided to set a good example.

When the weather was warm we were allowed to loosen our ties (providing there were no important visitors). If we had lessons outside or went on expeditions, the more indulgent teachers would let us take them off. By ‘take them off’ I always mean ‘get someone else to take it off’, of course. And all this in a school whose whole reason for existing was to make daily life easier for disabled boys!

I had only been at Vulcan for a week or so when I woke up with a pain in my lower right side. I hadn’t really settled in at the school, and I was already feeling rather sorry for myself. Is it possible that I was missing CRX? Perhaps even Ivy and Wendy seemed reassuring figures from a peaceful past, and a place where I had known the ropes. Here I was all tangled up in them.

First a nurse came along and was sympathetic, and then an unfriendly one came and told me I must be namby-pamby to be making such a fuss about a little stomach ache. I’d been called many things at CRX, Posh and Dropper and Archie Andrews, but I’d never been called namby-pamby and I was offended. The physical pain got no better, and I couldn’t eat. The second nurse, who was called Judy Brisby, came back to see if I was still being namby-pamby, but I said I wanted to see the first one, the nurse who had been so much friendlier. Judy Brisby told me firmly that I was mistaken if I thought there were any nurses at Vulcan at all. Didn’t I understand that this was a school and not a hospital? There were matrons here, day matrons and night matrons, little matrons and one Big Matron who was in charge of all, but there were no nurses of any description.

I could muster enough bolshiness, despite the pain in my side, to point out that there were matrons at hospitals too, so it was a funny word to choose if you wanted people not to think of hospitals. I also said that if there were only matrons in the school then I wanted to see the other matron. In fact the biggest available matron.

Judy Brisby muttered that I should learn to stop answering back if I knew what was good for me, but she did eventually do as I asked. When the Big Matron came, she was very nice, but she didn’t have the incandescent authority of Matron at CRX. I couldn’t imagine her saying, ‘I am the School!’ under any circumstances. That was clearly the prerogative of the co-principals, of Raeburn and Miss Willis. Still, the Big Matron, who was called Sheila Ewart, did manage to see that I wasn’t malingering.

I hate to admit it, but Judy Brisby wasn’t altogether wrong. I had been conditioned by my long residency in a hospital. It hadn’t occurred to me that there wasn’t a medical staff at Vulcan. It really was what I had said I wanted: a school. Getting what you want always takes a bit of getting used to.

On the other hand, I was right about thinking I had a pain in my side. Sheila Ewart called out the local GP, who was Vulcan’s only medical resource. He in turn called out an ambulance to take me to hospital, since I had appendicitis.

The ambulance took me to a hospital, all right. It took me all the way back to CRX. I was back in those very familiar surroundings. No better cure exists for nostalgia than abrupt return to the idealised scene. In my case I was also helpless and in pain, which worked to restore defects of perspective. I was in a familiar hospital but a strange ward — Men’s Surgical, I think. Very soon I was nostalgic for the new school I hardly knew.

Apparently the appendix was severely inflamed and had come close to bursting during surgery. On the other hand, I’ve never met anyone who’s had appendicitis without being told the same story. Perhaps it’s a standard piece of description, medical boiler-plate which makes both doctors and patients feel they’ve been caught up in a heroic intervention.

I came round from the anæsthetic with a lot of pain. I was warned that defæcating was going to be very painful. ‘Oh, and another thing,’ the doctor said. ‘Don’t laugh whatever you do. That hurts a lot.’ I thought I would be able to avoid laughter. I could barely muster a polite smile for the doctor, and I was safe from any fiercer pangs of amusement.

I had been looking forward to getting a scar, which was one of the few consequences of illness that had eluded me to date. It was a long wait. The incision stubbornly refused to heal. I ended up being ‘off’ for the rest of term. It particularly grieved me that my first school report was such a wash-out. There had been no such things as reports at CRX, so this was my first ever, and I had wanted a glowing testimonial to my intelligence, charm and powers of application. I wanted a written record of my virtues. No one could promise me an actual career, so I set great store by distinguishing myself in the school equivalent.

I can’t blame the authorities at Vulcan — I’d only had a handful of lessons, after all. The most the co-principals could say in all conscience was that I seemed ‘an alert and cheerful boy’. They looked forward to getting to know me better.