Pilcrow (53 page)

Perhaps it was because the reality of the school had so many sharp edges that fantasy flourished so strongly there. Motes of fantasy sifted in through every chink in the windows (and God knows there were plenty of those) and drifted under the beds. I’m inclined to think that there was something congenial to fantasy in the air, or in the water, or in the soil of the place. The Castle had been a fantastical edifice from its foundation. Realism never really got a look in. Farley Castle was a castle in the air that had only touched down for a moment. Soon it would float away again. Raeburn and Miss Willis would never
succeed
in tethering it, unrealistic as they were in their own way.

This was a period when a new strain of fantasy was emerging,
preoccupied
with spies and gadgets. The James Bond novels had been around for quite a while, and now a film had been made of one of them. Everyone claimed to have seen
Dr No
, though I don’t know that they could have. Perhaps some had elder brothers who were able to give an account of the high points. Even I learned, when asked which was my favourite bit, to say, ‘The bit where the lady came out of the sea,’ and to look as sly as I possibly could.

The strangest places could be colonised by fantasy. One was the cramped lift, along with the shaft in which it moved. It was
featureless
, unless you count a plaque acknowledging the contribution made by The Commonwealth Fund for Crippled Children. Even Judy Brisby had the grace, when she saw me looking at it, to say, ‘It’s not the nicest word, is it?’

The lift was a sort of non-place in which we spent a lot of time over the years. It was just waiting to be transformed. A whole mythology came to encrust the lift-shaft, and I can claim to have given it its start. I seemed to be able to spin the most fantastic yarns after lights out, and there was no reason to be inhibited by daylight. Perhaps my style was a little cramped in our cowboy fantasy with its frequent pornographic excursions, our buckskin Kama Sutra passion play. It sometimes made me feel a little type-cast as a personified bosom, a
yoni
ready for any
lingam
, the girl who gets swamped with hormones while she’s cooking, and has to fit in a passionate love-making session with a hunky
cowboy
in the pantry, timing things so she can repeat her climax as many times as possible, before emerging without a hair out of place when the mistress returns in her wagon or the cakes start to burn.

By day I could mine a new vein of dreaming. There were nooks and crannies in the brick-work of the lift-shaft which gave imagination a finger-hold. My idea was that you could use the crannies to deposit and pick up letters as part of an international network of spies. You would have to roll them up very tight to poke them through the
concertina
grille of the lift itself. It became a challenge and a thrill for the more able-bodied, spiced by the prospect of losing a finger as the cage ascended or descended. I wasn’t physically able to make the drops myself, but I explained the system to people who weren’t in on it. ‘I’m not supposed to tell you this,’ I’d say, looking around with as much suavity as I could muster. ‘I’m an agent myself. It’s worked by
compressed
air. Every so often they turn the pumps on, and all the letters disappear with a great WHOOSH! I’ve seen it happen.’

It was certainly true that some letters seemed to disappear soon after they were left, while others lingered, but that was easily explained. Not everyone had cranny-posting privileges, and
unauthorised
personnel would have their messages ignored, just as if they had posted a letter without a stamp.

I had stiff competition in the secret-agent fantasy line. The
reigning
champion was Julian Robinson, the boy I’d humiliated so meanly, whose chemistry set I had crushed with the overpowering excellence of Gilbert’s Fun. Lotts for tiny tots. He was very far from being a tiny tot by now. He must have had a growth spurt, or a series of them. Of course I had my growth spurts too, but you would have needed a micrometer to measure them.

I remember one story that Julian circulated, about the Yanks proudly sending British Intelligence the smallest tube in the world, so small you could hardly see it. Our back-room boys sent it back with a thank-you note, inscribed on an even smaller tube tucked inside the original one. We absolutely believed stories of this sort, confident that spies and super-scientists jostled each other to get to the post, to find the packages marked TOP SECRET in large letters. We ourselves jockeyed for position in our wheelchairs when Miss Willis floated into the hall, holding a stack of letters in her left hand and peering down her half-moon glasses as she laid them out on the big table.

Our jingoist sense of superiority to everything American co-existed very happily with its opposite, and the night-time story-telling
continued
to have a spurious Old West setting.

When Julian and I were on our own I was supposed to call him QM. I think he had simply combined the abbreviations of the two geniuses in the supporting cast of the James Bond stories, Q the inventor and M the tactician. Putting x and y together in algebra meant you were multiplying. Julian was multiplying the powers of the boffin and the director of operations.

His powers were certainly on the rise. Every time I looked at Julian, he seemed to have out-grown his last pair of jeans and to be freshly installed in new ones. I became swept up in his make-believe of espionage, but at the start my interest was less the hidden
microfilm
than the secret between his legs.

I wanted to explore his private parts, so that I could at last
understand
what normal ones looked like. I’d seen one set of genitals, on a boy being given a shower, and very hairy and darkly dangling they were too, but he was multiply disabled and it stood to reason that his parts would be abnormal also. Julian, though, was an increasingly strapping lad apart from the effects of polio on his legs. I was sure his parts would be normal. He was also a physically affectionate boy, something I enjoyed in its own right but which also gave my
objective
a real chance of success.

His whispered instructions about our missions had a lot in
common
with the sweet nothings of lovers. ‘I’ve taken delivery of a special gun,’ he breathed in my ear. ‘It needs to be installed somewhere no one will ever think of looking for it.’ I gave an important nod. ‘I know just the place,’ he went on. ‘Inside your walking stick.’

Of course! It wasn’t actually a walking stick, or rather I didn’t
actually
use it for walking. It was the stick I carried in the wheelchair with me for poking and prodding and nudging myself along. He was right. No one would dream of looking in there.

‘The procedure for installing is rather complicated. I’ll take your stick away and do the conversion outside, away from you-know-who.’ I had no idea who. He was gone for a long time, about fifteen
minutes
. When he brought it back I didn’t think it looked any different at first, but then Julian showed me the notch I would have to press to fire it. He made me promise not to use it indoors unless there was a real emergency.

Did I really think that Julian had installed a gun in my stick? I think I did. It somehow felt different after that, warm from his hand, heavier, more laden with consequence. He had an extraordinary
ability
to lead people into his little world, though of course everyone’s world is exactly the same size.

Next day he gave me a briefing. ‘Your assignment’, he whispered, ‘is to keep an eye on Mr Atkinson. Top security. Of course you know he’s a Russian spy? We’ve been watching him for some time now …’

Mr Atkinson! It was the last thing I expected, yet it made perfect sense. Mr Atkinson had been hired to teach us German, which he wrote and spoke very well indeed. I got on well with him, and my German improved by leaps and bounds. He always looked so dapper in his smart suit and open-necked shirt. His hair was curly and lay very close to his head, so that it looked stuck on. It was white – not just grey but entirely white – and yet his face was as smooth as a lady’s, almost as if he didn’t need to shave.

Atkinson had been sent to spy on us boys, disguised as someone who wanted to help us. Raeburn and Willis had fallen for his tricks hook, line and sinker, and so had I. That was the worst part of it. He’d been pally and friendly with me, and I’d been pally and friendly right back. I was such a chatter-box (everyone always said so) that I might have told him just about anything. My face started to burn with shame.

‘Are you sure?’ I stammered. ‘How do you know?’

‘Oh come on! As an agent I expect you to do better than that!’ said Julian. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed his upward-sloping curly
R
s? It’s a dead give-away!’

Upward-sloping curly Rs!
I’d done more than notice them – I’d raised them in class, I’d chattered about them for twelve whole
minutes
of a lesson to pass the time. I adored them, I’d adopted them as my own. I’d even been scolded by Willis for using them. Miss Willis had strong ideas about hand-writing, saying for instance that script which sloped backwards was a sure sign of someone who was afraid of life. After that, my script sloped forward so much the letters almost fell on their faces.

I only used my special
R
s when doing homework for Mr Atkinson. He also pronounced perfect German ‘r’s, though he wasn’t German. He pronounced them like a native, like Gisela. I should have realised that an Englishman cannot do that. I’d come close to hero-worship, and now I realised that I’d been played for a fool.

At the same time I was thrilled. At CRX I’d felt a twinge of
sadness
when I finished reading
Five Fall into Adventure
. It lent life and colour to the ward. I knew that adventures never really happened, but I’d dared to ask for a real adventure for myself. And now it had been granted – granted with a vengeance. My prayer had even included a pal called Julian, and God had sent that. I’d asked for him to have blond hair to remind me of Tommy Steele, and Julian’s was dark, but I couldn’t expect God to attend to every detail when he was so busy.

I thought of some of the things I must have said to Atkinson, which the situation just made seem even more frightening. Raeburn was a military man, he would know what to do – but how to contact him? He might just as well be miles away. Dad would also know what to do, but fate had separated me from my family. Even if I broke the rules and ‘told’, no one would believe us. The truth was that Atkinson was a very cunning agent indeed.

‘He has a gun of his own, of course,’ added Julian smoothly. ‘It’s a small Beretta. Point four oh two. First thing I noticed. That’s why I told HQ you had to be armed. If you do have to shoot Atkinson I’ll take full responsibility.’

I started to get frightened then, which had the advantage of
bringing
Julian closer. He hugged me awkwardly, but said, ‘Pull yourself together. British agents don’t cry.’

‘But it’s only my second day …’ I whined.

‘These people we’re up against are ruthless. They’ll use your
weakness
against you.’ This I could understand. This was just the sort of rubbish that filtered down from the fathers of our generation. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘nothing will happen that I can’t handle. That’s what I’m here for, after all …’

He had been on the blower to his boss at HQ, and there was a plan in place. Atkinson would be kidnapped the next Monday. He would be detained at HQ for three days, interrogated and then
brain-washed
. Atkinson was very dangerous, but it had to be admitted that he was an extremely good agent. It would be a shame to eliminate a man of that calibre, so HQ (after taking advice from Julian, of course) had decided that it was worth taking the risk of recruiting him to be one of ours, once he had been brain-washed.

The funny thing was that Atkinson did disappear on the Monday. Miss Willis told us that his sister had been taken ill suddenly and he needed to visit her. She hoped that things would be back to normal in a few days. She read out this announcement from a piece of paper, peering down at it through her half-moon specs.

My admiration for the boy agent Julian went from strength to strength – it was a treat to see how even Miss Willis had fallen for the cover story. I just wished I’d been a senior enough agent to be trusted with it ahead of time. On Thursday Atkinson was back, looking just as dapper, and continuing to write his upward-sloping curly
R
s in just the same way, but somehow he was milder. Something had
happened
to him which was the opposite of what happened to my stick when the gun was installed. He had been hollowed out. More had been taken out during interrogation than had been put back in.

All the same, I got a reward for my part in the successful
conclusion
of the Atkinson affair. QM used his influence to get me a
promotion
. He was now my immediate superior. I was to report only to him.

Julian told me I would be put on an assignment within a week. I was very excited, but I also had doubts about my usefulness in the field. ‘We’ve already thought of that,’ he said. ‘GHQ says you’re to be issued with a hidden tape-recorder. It will be planted in your body at some stage. It may be grafted on while you’re sleeping – we do a lot of our work that way – or I may install it myself.
Keep it on you at all
times!
’ I promised I would. Of course, since it would be grafted onto my body, I wouldn’t be able to do anything else.

I was looking forward to getting my tape-recorder, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted a secret agent to install it in my body while I was asleep. What if I woke up in the middle of installation? And if I woke in the night I would wonder if an agent had already been, to leave his equipment inside me. I much preferred the plan that Julian – QM – would install the apparatus himself. If he did, he would have to get close to me, and after all, I did have a mission of my own.

It turned out that HQ wasn’t able to send an agent that week. Some sort of show in the Balkans. So Julian was authorised to take care of the installation himself, in an empty classroom at the end of the school day, when no one else was around. It was vital for both
missions
that secrecy was observed, otherwise the whole operation would turn into a fiasco. QM reminded me that the security of our country depended on vigilance, and I took my new job very seriously.

Julian came over to me and leant his crutches against the wall by my desk. I put the brake on my wheelchair to give him something stable to hold on to. I tingled from having him so close. Julian always wore a nice shirt and nicer jeans. His clothes looked fresh and smart, however long he wore them. He had a nice fresh smell and kept
himself
very clean, although the facilities at Vulcan weren’t wonderful. I could never quite work out how he achieved this level of grooming. Perhaps it was all part of an agent’s training.

He was holding himself up on the arm of my wheelchair, to the left of my legs. I wondered what the promised secret tape-recorder would look like. I was also gazing at those crisp new legs. I was familiar with Julian’s back view, and his snug young bottom. Now I was close to the cleft at his front, and trying my hardest to see what was there. There didn’t seem to be very much. Then by good luck I was given another means to explore the equipment.

‘It would be best if you close your eyes now,’ said Julian. ‘HQ’s very anxious that you don’t witness the transfer. What you don’t know can’t be tortured out of you.’ This was a less welcome thought. Julian put his left arm over my right shoulder and then leaned back slightly while I closed my eyes. He was very strong. His strength ran through me. I felt a pressure on my forehead which must have been his thumb. He pressed and twisted, almost to the point of pain, then told me to open my eyes.

Nothing felt different, but my heart was pounding as if he had given me a stimulant injection. Julian’s warm breath was falling on my face. The tape-recorder might be inside me or it might never have existed, but there were other things in the world that cried out to be investigated.

‘This is a solemn moment,’ I said. ‘We should recognise its
importance
with some sort of pledge.’ I stumbled over the words. ‘You know, a hand-shake or a hug. Maybe even a kiss …’

I was afraid that I had gone too far but Julian didn’t hesitate. ‘Good plan, Agent Nesbitt,’ he replied. Why he called me Agent Nesbitt I have no idea. ‘You have an inventive mind. GHQ will like that. I reckon it should be a hug and a kiss on the ear, and while I’m doing that, I’ll pass on some Top Secret Info!’

Julian hadn’t lost his extraordinary ability to bring others into his fantasy world, but he was also responding to mine. We were like two master hypnotists putting the moves on each other, or just two schoolboys, both equally suggestible, getting carried away.

While I waited for the Top Secret Info to be poured into me, I had my own scheme of espionage. The plan was to get Julian’s leg between mine, and when I had him close to fumble at his cleft just as fast and as furiously as I could. If any treasure was there, I would be sure to find it, even with the somewhat primitive data-gathering equipment available to me. Because of the inflexibility of my wrists, there was no possibility of me turning my palms towards Julian’s crotch. I would have to make do with the backs of my hands.

My assignment within an assignment had its share of risk, but the strong taboo against telling tales, which left me vulnerable at other times, was strangely protective here. I said a quick prayer, hoping that God was indeed omnipresent. Then he must also be in the devil who was tempting me today.

I was an undercover agent, true, but I was certainly a beginner. There was something I had overlooked in my eagerness to go
undercover
. I parted my legs and waited in rapture for Julian’s left leg to come mounding and pressing against my genitals. The leg never made it that far. As it approached my knee, I felt not pleasure but a bolt of pain.