Adam Mars-Jones - Pilcrow

From the school’s point of view I imagine even David Lockett’s pig husbandry came in handy. There were pigs to sell every now and then, and that can only have helped a bit with the money side of things.

Fund-raising was an issue that loomed large. We were strongly encouraged to attend church regularly at Swallowfield. This was a soft ultimatum. Raeburn and Miss Willis cultivated social contacts there, vital for funding. I didn’t enjoy the rough ride there and back in the Bedford Transit, with the wheelchairs bumping along behind on the trailer.

I wanted to be in the choir, like some of the other boys. That would have livened up the services for me. I enjoyed singing and I don’t think my voice would have let the side down, but I didn’t qualify. It was discrimination of the most blatant kind — shocking, actually, in an institution that was supposed to give disabled boys a full life. I could sing, but I couldn’t get into the choir stalls at Swallowfield Church, and that was a good enough reason, apparently, to keep me out of the choir.

So I day-dreamed through the services. If I didn’t already have a sense of God I wouldn’t have picked one up there. Every now and then, though, Reverend Cook the minister would preach a sermon that hit me for six. I remember him explaining the Persons of the Trinity in terms that really fired me up. ‘Think of the sun,’ he said. ‘There’s the sun itself, its light and its heat. They are three, but they can’t be separated from each other. We can’t begin to imagine the Sun without its Light and its Heat, yet the Light comes from the Sun, and the Heat from the Sun — and you could also say that its Heat comes from its Light.’ My mind was intoxicated with this way of considering the world in its invisible and visible aspects.

Then unfortunately he changed gear, and started to explain the same theological point in terms that he must have thought were more accessible to the Vulcanians in the congregation.

‘Perhaps another comparison will be more useful,’ he said. ‘Let’s say that a man sends his boy to school, as a boarder, not so much for him to have a good time — though he is glad that he should, as long as he gets it by working hard and keeping out of mischief — as because it is the best education and training for him, to fit him for something higher later on.

‘The father wishes his boy to keep straight, and to have a good influence over his friends, and in his house, and (if possible) in the whole school as well, and is pleased if he finds the boy is shaping that way. He keeps in touch with him by writing, so that the boy has no excuse for forgetting what his father wants, and how much he cares about it!

‘Another thing that helps the boy very much is that he had an elder brother at the school. The school was in a very bad state when he came there, but his work in it (particularly in the last part of the time that he was there), and the work of the friends whom he had influenced, made a great and lasting difference to it, though it is a very long way from being what it might be. The boy has the example of his elder brother to live up to, though he knows he will never even come close. The elder brother has not in any way ceased to take an interest in the school — he keeps in touch with it and comes back to it. He is just as anxious as the father that the boy should be a good influence on his house.

‘Besides this, the boy has another person to help him, whose influence is entirely in the same direction. He has a good friend whom he can always get at and consult, and who is really always giving him advice in an unobtrusive sort of way, setting him on the right lines and keeping him there. Of course the boy doesn’t always take the advice he is given — he may well put it on one side, because it is hard or unpleasant, or because the other fellows at the school will laugh at him if he follows it.

‘Even so, I’m sure you will agree that a boy who has all this help available to him has no right to turn out a failure. At the end of his time at school he ought to have a record he can be proud of, one that will make him a credit to the Father and Brother and Friend who helped him. He should be fit for higher work when he comes to leave the school at last …’

This contorted allegory left me more confused than ever. I suppose it might have worked better in the Catholic tradition — then at least there would be a place in the scheme for a Matron. The school analogy didn’t please me half as much as the solar one, partly because I no longer felt the need to personify God, as I had in the days when I thought of him as the Knitting Pattern Man. I didn’t visualise a man with a white beard — if anything I visualised a beard without a man, a Cheshire Cat kind of deity.

It didn’t appeal to me to think of Heaven as an Old Boys’ reunion in the sky, though I idly wonder how many old school ties the Trinity would be sporting — one? Three? Perhaps even two, since it was a moot point whether God the Father had actually attended.

Trevor the human suitcase

On Sundays when I did take fire from the Reverend Cook for a while, there was no one to share the feeling with, and my excitement would have died by the time we got back to the school. I liked the idea of drinking communion wine, but it made me feel sick to see old biddies slobbering into the chalice. I certainly prayed that the Holy Ghost was effective against germs.

Every Sunday after church Mr Yeo the church warden would come back with us to the school, take his jacket off, roll his sleeves up and bathe two or three of the less portable boys.

Then the school was given a Thames Valley Leyland bus, a single-decker, by the Handicapped Children’s Aid Committee. It could carry both boys and wheelchairs, so the Bedford Transit was retired from duty. Raeburn devised a derrick that enabled boys to be hoisted through the door at the front of the bus without leaving their wheelchairs. We would then be tied securely to bolts in the floor. Eventually BEA gave the school some old aircraft seats, which were installed by a coach firm in Reading. I remember watching Miss Willis bouncing on her seat on the way to church, her face at peace, her bulky handbag on her lap. I might have found the sight less reassuring if I’d known then, as I do now, that she carried a carving knife in that bag. This was in case there was a crash, and she had to save us by cutting the straps that secured us to the floor.

The only exciting moments in church were when things went wrong. There was one boy, Trevor Burbage, with polio so severe that it almost seemed he needed holding together by artificial means. He had a calliper on one leg, but that was only the beginning. He had to wear a device called a Milwaukee brace, a sort of metal corset with a rod going up to the back of his head and a frame under his chin to hold his head in the correct position. The brace even had a sort of handle at the back of the collar — like the handles you see on heavy luggage. He was practically a human suitcase.

One Sunday at church he fell over during a hymn. No one worried about him — his mother made him wear a riding hat at all times, and we were confident that it would have absorbed the impact. Trevor was merry, talkative and entirely impervious. Miss Willis passed a hymn book down to him and he went on lustily singing from underneath his riding hat. In deference to the formality of church the ABs waited till the end of the hymn before they lugged him to his feet.

Outings and expeditions were a major part of what Vulcan had to offer, though one of Raeburn’s favourite destinations seems a little odd in hindsight. He used to take parties of disabled boys to watch the passing-out parades at the Army Apprentices School at Arborfield. Perhaps there was an element of nostalgia for him in these visits, bitter-sweet memories of his own training before it was cut short with the crushing of his legs. More likely, though, he wanted us to notice what happened at least once on every occasion, more often when the weather was hot. These were literally passing-out parades. Cadets holding a motionless pose would simply keel over in a faint. Perhaps Raeburn thought it was useful for us to know that even perfect bodies could let their owners down. Or perhaps he just enjoyed seeing it happen. We certainly did.