Adam Mars-Jones - Pilcrow

This was my opportunity to realise that there was no difference between our two ways, Peter’s and mine, of not being able to play the piano. We just weren’t very musical as a tribe, we Cromers, even Dad. I think he liked the organ because all the stops and controls reminded him of a cockpit. It was a primitive flight simulator. Returning to my own case: there was no buried treasure of talent buried in my disqualified body. Underneath the disability my inability was intact.

Of course none of this was neatly thought out. It came in a rush of conviction, a brain event like the opposite of a stroke, a reverse aneurysm. My awareness of one aspect of ‘reality’ had been closed off by a sort of self-imposed mental clamp, which had now simply fallen away. I felt the free flow of blood through a fresh set of thoughts. Shortly after that, to his profound relief, Peter stopped taking lessons.

On top of its sheer folly, my demand for an appendicitis present had ruined the economy of Christmas. The Doodlemaster pretty much broke the bank. For Christmas proper, and birthday proper, I had to make do with a modest book token. I think I bought myself a bumper dose of Narnia, but however exciting the stories I read at home, I couldn’t wait to be back at Vulcan. Already I was nostalgic for those days which only really began at lights out, when the curtain went up on the latest improvised instalment of Western adventures, staged by our little after-hours sagebrush repertory theatre in deepest Berkshire. Bandit country.

At New Year Mum took me to the Theatre Royal, Windsor, as a treat. She had bought the tickets months ahead. I loved going to a show and wasn’t in the least fussy, though Dad said it was only ever drawing-room comedies at the Theatre Royal, which I’d hate. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t.

This wasn’t an expedition to the panto but an evening of music and laughter with Flanders and Swann, performing the songs from their revues At the Drop of a Hat and At the Drop of Another Hat . I knew and loved some of their songs from the radio (‘Mud Glorious Mud’ for one, ‘The Gas Man Cometh’ for another). Musical pleasure, though, wasn’t the only reason for the outing. Michael Flanders was in a wheelchair, and I’d never even known. I hadn’t seen a picture.

Mum had even got up the nerve to arrange for us to call on the artistes in their dressing room after the show. It was good to realise that although Swann was musically the driving force of the partnership, Flanders had the charisma. Donald Swann was a skinny little chap like a little bird who twittered with pleasure whenever Michael Flanders, burly and bearded in his wheelchair, said anything. Flanders rumbled sweetly, and Swann gave a little embellishing trill from his branch when the big man had finished speaking.

Soon Flanders was saying, ‘Now I think I’d like a confab with this young man. Boys’ talk.’ Donald Swann took the cue and started buttering Mum up. ‘The purpose of satire’, I could hear him saying, ‘is to strip away the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half-truth — and our job is sticking it right back again!’ With the advent of Beyond the Fringe I suppose their sort of material was beginning to seem rather tame. Mum laughed rather nervously. She didn’t enjoy clever talk.

Michael Flanders was a sort of ambassador for disability, and a very good one since he was both sweet and sharp. He said to me, ‘You may already have noticed, young man, that the world and his wife think it’s wonderful when people like you and me manage without wheelchairs, and rather a poor show if we can’t. Pay no attention. We can’t all be Douglas Bader, can we?’ he said, and then added in a whisper, as if it was a great secret, ‘And not all of us even want to!’ He told me that Bader’s doctors had written on his medical notes, ‘Refuses to use a wheelchair’, with a tick. ‘If I’d been his doctor,’ Michael Flanders told me, ‘I’d have written silly ass instead.’ He made it into a huge joke and a lovely conspiracy against the cult of Mr Tin Legs.

Michael signed a photograph for me, and even wrote a message on it so that I wouldn’t forget what he had said. What he wrote, in clear, firm, very legible hand-writing (unlike mine) was ‘REMEMBER: TWO LEGS GOOD, FOUR WHEELS BETTER!’ The only problem with the whole inspiring visit was that the dressing room hardly had room for two wheelchairs at the same time. Mum and Donald Swann more or less had to clamber round us, which took some of the fun out of Michael Flanders’ morale-boosting message.

When the spring term began, I was anxious in case I had lost ground in lessons, but much more concerned that the nightly wagon train of narrative might have moved on without me. I needn’t have worried. Those slow-moving stagecoaches could be overtaken by the most lumbering wheelchair. Even the Tan-Sad would have gained on them.

In fact there was danger of the situations becoming stale. The show-downs were repetitive, and you could see the double-crosses coming a mile off. Then one night our cowboy theatre witnessed an artistic break-through. There was something missing from the nightly adventures of our desperadoes, but no one had quite worked out what it was. Then one of the other boys said to me, ‘John, you’re very good at all the parts, but the story’s going round and round in circles. Would you mind playing a lady or a mum?’

This was my chance to take the reins. I plunged right in. I started playing Mum, who broke up fights between her boys when they got too fierce and served vast amounts of imaginary food, steaming hot and lovingly described. Then I began to experiment in the temptress vein, making kissing noises that went on and on while everyone in their separate beds listened enraptured.

I found the freedom intoxicating, now that I could take the story in any direction I wanted. It seemed incredible that we had been content with all-male stories for so long. I suppose that’s the way with a lot of primitive art forms. Greek tragedy only had one actor for quite a while. Sumo wrestling started off as a sort of dance representing the contest between a man and an invisible god (who always won) for a very long time before someone had the brave notion of adding another wrestler to bring the crowds in and put bums on mats.

After that first night of playing female roles, I was rarely back in trousers. And though I could take the story anywhere I wanted, in practice I paid the proper homage to the basic drives, sex and hunger.

Hunger was the more pressing interest. School food was fairly basic, sometimes aspiring to wholesomeness, sometimes flirting with inedibility. It turned out, for instance, that over the Christmas holidays the ’fridge had broken down. The butter had gone rancid, but it wasn’t thrown away, despite the horrible taste. We were told that expert opinion had been consulted, and no harm would come to us from eating it. They put that butter on the table for a month. We could smell it coming. Everyone switched to dry bread until the rank yellow grease was finally taken away.

To compensate for this joyless attitude to catering, we were always interrupting the narrative for someone to come in with a bowl of hot food. Never mind that the tension of the plotting slackened to nothing. This was fantasy of a different but no less necessary kind. One of the other boys improvised a bowl of hot chilli one night. ‘What’s chilli?’ I asked. ‘It’s spicy stew,’ he said. So I said crushingly that Chile was in South America, and that cowboys would eat the same food as the Indians, and Indians ate curry. I didn’t miss any chance to throw my weight around. After that the cowpokes settled down to big bowls of curry and crackers and coffee.

I suppose I got a little cocky, a little drunk on acceptance. This has been a recurring fault with me, testing the limits of acceptable naughtiness. Minor matrons would do a head count last thing at night, before closing the door. One night I managed to wriggle round so that my feet were on the pillow. I got a smack on the bum for my trouble. Quite without warning. But that was just peremptory, there wasn’t any sadism in it. I was more surprised than hurt.