Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

During the school holidays I wanted to make a trip to London, to see where he worked. Joy Payne, best of neighbours, a joy to all and a bringer of pain only to herself, volunteered to drive me. So I phoned him up to ask for directions. Normally Dad enjoyed giving this sort of help. I had once seen him with my own eyes writing page after page of directions, with his fountain pen, for the benefit of some passing stranger. How much keener would he be when he was guiding his own son! I was sure a visit from me would increase his standing in the office.

I spoke to his secretary, who was lovely. We had a good long chat, but when Dad finally came on the line he was very short with me. I had used up all my charm on the secretary, and had no reserves left for someone who sounded much more like a stranger than she did. If I had been a salesman I could have got Dad’s secretary to sign up for anything, but from the man himself I got the bum’s rush.

Dad was cheerful again by the time he got home. ‘I’ve told my secretary not to put you through again under any circumstances. She’ll get fired if she lets it happen again. She should have known better, and now she does. So don’t bother trying to repeat today’s little trick.’

I was stung. How was it a trick to phone your father? I tried to argue my way out of this unexpected disgrace. ‘What if there’s an emergency?’

‘Such as?’

I didn’t have an answer ready. ‘Well … what if Mum dropped dead?’

‘Then what on earth would be the point of phoning me about something like that? Show some sense — phone the undertaker instead. I’ll find out soon enough when I get home.’

This wasn’t a very tactful conversation to be having with Mum in the room, perhaps. Her smile was a rather blighted thing. It wasn’t Dad who introduced the subject of death — I have to put my hand up to that. He certainly capitalised on it.

Sentient luggage

I wonder if Dad did actually have the power to fire his secretary for her insubordination in putting through an unauthorised call from a civilian. There was probably a more complex procedure to be gone through, the equivalent of a court-martial — a court-bureaucratic.

At weekends, obviously, Broyan wasn’t at my disposal. If I wanted an outing I had to make my own arrangements. That was where the rail system came in. I was never quite so gone on rail travel as Mum, but I can’t deny that it served me well. There was a system, or rather there wasn’t a system — which turned out to work much better than any formal set of arrangements could have done. I would simply turn up at Bourne End station and be loaded, Wrigley and all, into the goods van. I was treated as sentient luggage. It was glorious.

I would be asked where I was going, of course, but only so that I could be retrieved and off-loaded at the proper time. No mention was ever made of tickets or fares. This can’t have been an official dispensation, I don’t think — otherwise, surely, the goods van would have been piled high with wheelchairs and their occupants. And there would have been paperwork. It was just a blind eye being turned, a perk extended, without comment, to me personally. Unless a background murmur of marvellous-how-the-little-fellow-seems-to-manage counts as comment.

The sheer novelty of a wheelchair-bound person having an appetite for unaccompanied travel worked in my favour, I’m sure. Still, British Rail and its employees have access to this mystical truth, if no other: the body is always and everywhere luggage.

On one trip, a very neatly-turned-out guard came to have a chat. He was chummy as well as smartly dressed but I felt deeply uncomfortable about my ambiguous status and blurted out, ‘Shouldn’t you be making me buy a ticket?’

The guard said, ‘I can if you like, but I’d much rather not. You’re not in a proper passenger seat, are you? Then if I charged you for your travel, which includes the right to a seat, you could make a complaint that you’d brought your own seat with you and been charged for another one. We could charge you as luggage, but then we’d have to work out what the proper price should be. We might have to weigh you on the platform before putting you on the train, and then there’d be the driver waiting and passengers fretting. All things considering, it’s best to leave well alone. Just come along when you want to go travelling and we’ll see you right. If it’s cold we can always find you a blanket, and if you want a bit of company just sing out.’

At Slough I was duly unloaded onto the platform. I was going to see The Who in concert — which was a ticket that had to be paid for in full. I could only hope to be an honorary parcel on special occasions. The last thing I heard before I notched the Wrigley into top speed and raced off in the direction of the concert hall was a final refrain of ‘Ruddy miracle, that little cripple kiddie’, well-meant but a bit lowering. Oi! Less of the cripple. Less of the kiddie. Less of the little.

When The Who started playing I nearly leapt out of the Wrigley in forgetfulness of the body. The noise ripped right through me. It turned me into one big throbbing ear, an ear on the edge of pain. Just as well, really, since I couldn’t see a thing. I took up various positions in the crowd as it heaved around me, but either there were people in front of me blocking my view or else I was in the lee of the stage and couldn’t see up.

On stage in Slough, The Who were offering a sort of masterclass in non-dualist philosophy. While they were playing, it was obvious that there was only one thing in the universe, one thing in any possible universe, and that was this noise.

Then in a break between songs there was a girl shouting something in my ear. ‘John, it’s Barbara from school.’ I hardly recognised her out of uniform. Barbara Broier in purple tights and a very short skirt. Schoolgirls in particular looked quite different at weekends, though the boys were beginning to run them close, what with bright shirts and bell-bottomed velvet trousers. I was the odd one out, looking much of a muchness throughout the week, in school or at large. ‘Can you see anything?’ she was asking.

‘Not really, but it doesn’t matter. I can hear everything.’ I could hear my ears bursting.

‘It’s just Susan and I were thinking …’ The next song drowned out what it was that they were thinking, but I soon cottoned on when they put it into practice. They were thinking that they could tip the wheelchair backwards a bit so as to give me a view of the stage.

It was a kind idea, but I’m not sure that the girls realised how heavy the Wrigley was. They had seen the twins handling the unwieldy Tan-Sad at school, but the Savages had the benefit of lots of practice, as well as being coördinated almost on the genetic level. The Wrigley had the added weight of its motor. The girls gave me some sort of wobbling view, but I didn’t exactly feel secure in their hands. I wasn’t even sure the visual side of things, when I got it, added all that much. Townshend the guitarist had a huge conk of a nose, and Daltrey the singer had a huge everything, wild eyes, madly curling hair, giant teeth. Entwistle the bass guitarist seemed to be fast asleep, and my eyes were drawn mainly to the drummer, so dapper and pretty however frantically he pounded his kit alongside the ill-favoured others. Keith Moon. They were playing ‘I Can See for Miles and Miles …’, one of my favourites, admittedly for reasons that weren’t strictly musical. Patrick played it on the guitar and had shown me how simple the strange-sounding chords actually were, with a single configuration of fingers which he slid methodically across the frets.

I wondered if Pete Townshend the guitarist wasn’t mildly disabled. He didn’t seem to have much mobility in his right elbow. Instead of strumming the strings in the normal way he would send his arm the long way round, to describe a full circle before it crashed into the strings. He certainly wasn’t letting disability hold him back, unless it was part of the show after all.