Pilcrow (55 page)

At this period I was equally thrilled by science and religion,
without
seeing a conflict. I got very excited about Billy Graham, who was on one of his gospel crusades, scorching the soul of middle England. There was a lot about him in the papers. I was just curious. The Bishop of Reading had come along the previous year and confirmed a batch of us, handing out Books of Common Prayer, and I had enjoyed that. His hands were nice and warm, but I didn’t see why I shouldn’t have a look around at the other options on offer.

The history teacher, John Wooffindin, organised an expedition to catch the show. That was how he put it, ‘to catch the show’, a clear enough indication that he wasn’t a fan. I think he was trying to
inoculate
us against charisma. He was giving us our shots.

I can’t remember now if the venue was in Reading or Slough. What I remember is thinking, when the great man made his entrance, ‘Why does he have all that stuff on his face?’ The make-up was not subtle, and very distracting. All the same I felt the desire to join in, to be swallowed up, the ancient surge of cult attraction, as well as a more cynical interest. The Reverend Billy Graham had power and I wanted to bathe in it.

Billy Graham’s voice was a shout with a croon cradled inside it. He said, ‘You’ll be a spiritchull baby. You will need to be handled with tender care. Now, you can go away or you can come forward – Are you ready? If you’re in any doubt, come forward.’ Bright lights, loud music – it was all very unlike the Church of England. That last
suggestion
was particularly alien. Translated into Anglican, it would have come out meaning just the opposite:
If you’re in any doubt, go
away and think about it. We wouldn’t want to rush you
.

Well, I was ready. I didn’t mind the rush. I wanted to be a spiritual baby. I wanted handling with tender care. In fact John Wooffindin may have been dismayed that quite a few of us volunteered for the spiritual-baby treatment. Those of us who were in wheelchairs had to catch the eye of one of Graham’s underlings – were they acolytes or marshals? Either way, it wasn’t difficult. Those boys were certainly attuned to the presence of the disabled.

I noticed, though, that despite being in the middle of the Vulcan group I was somehow filtered out and led to one side. I felt flattered, as if I had been selected for something special, away from the
flood-lights
. The acolyte-marshal who had taken charge of me was ready with his Bible. He was handsome if a little sweaty. They all looked like brothers, rather piggy brothers. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘John.’

‘Are you ready, John, to accept Jesus Christ as your personal
saviour
?’

‘He may be or he may not be.’

‘Don’t you know what it says in the Bible about those who do not believe?’ He had passages already marked in red. The frighteners. I forget which particular one he showed me, but it had the words ‘
everlasting
’ and ‘fire’ in it. And that, essentially, was the Billy Graham method for winning over the waverers. Scare them out of their wits. Doubt was not acceptable in a spiritual baby. There was to be no cradling of doubt. Doubt was simply flattened by the charismatic steam-roller.

For some reason I didn’t find it difficult to stand my ground. ‘That’s stupid,’ I said. ‘If that’s your God you can keep him. What’s your name?’ Actually he was wearing a name badge. ‘Timothy? If you’re so sure of everything in this world and the next, why do you bite your nails?’

He was very thrown by this, and blushed bright red. ‘I don’t,’ he said, tucking his hands behind him.

‘Then who does?’ I asked, very pert. After that I was returned at fair speed to the rest of the Vulcan party. I don’t think any of us had a more positive experience of the Billy Graham show than I had. If so, we didn’t talk about it, any more than I talked about my feelings when I realised why I had been taken aside away from the bright lights. I hadn’t been selected, I had been de-selected. There had been a rapid and worldly sifting. Not all people in wheelchairs are alike. Some of them may (just possibly) stand up and stagger marvelling into the light, pledging themselves to Billy Graham and God’s holy word. And some will not, whatever the voltage of the preaching. I was not going to bring glory to the crusade. The silly thing was that I wasn’t expecting a miracle myself, I didn’t even want one, but I was a bit miffed that they had ruled one out. What business was it of theirs to restrict the powers of the God they claimed to represent?

Years later I read Sartre’s remark when someone was going into ecstasies about the piles of crutches left behind at Lourdes after
miracle
cures – ‘No wooden legs, though, eh?’ I paraphrase. The
communist
atheist was being no more cynical than Billy Graham and his acolytes. I myself came no nearer to Lourdes than Bath Spa, but what it comes down to is this: my faith was less conditional than Billy Graham’s. I put no limits on divine power.

If God wanted me to be conventionally shaped then I would be. In non-dualistic thinking, moreover, there are no divisions to be found, no line to be drawn between the human and divine, John and God. It follows that if I wanted to be conventionally shaped then I would be. And I’m fine as I am.

The visit to the waters at Bath dates back to the early days of my illness. Bath was very near. All I remember is being wrapped up in hot towels like a little dumpling, in great pain but loving being at the centre of attention.

A Raff neighbour in Bathford had a son, Tim, who fell in the gym at school and sustained brain damage. His speech and coördination were impaired. They gave him a board to spell words out on. He was like a human ouija-board. His mother, Sheila, was very religious and must have been Catholic, because her church got up a collection and sent Tim to Lourdes. I heard about it and wanted to go too, though Lourdes didn’t help Tim, externally at least. And there was nothing wrong on the inside in the first place.

Tim got tricycles from the National Health (though Mum said ‘Government’) which he kept smashing up, going too fast. We drifted away from them. I dare say Mum’s heart wasn’t in pursuing the acquaintance. Heathers don’t seek out the company of fellow
unfortunates
.

And Bath Spa did my symptoms no more good than Lourdes did to Tim. But that’s not the point. The issue isn’t effectiveness, it’s
commitment
. When you live in Bathford, Lourdes is a pilgrimage, but Bath Spa is hardly even a day out.

One of the major events of my time at Vulcan was that QM came to visit. The real QM, not Julian Robinson, boy agent. The Queen Mother. I say ‘major event’ not as a royalist but as a student of
spiritual
power. She spoke to me and softly shook my hand. She wore a lilac outfit and a hat with a little veil. Her make-up was a work of art. She made Billy Graham look like a circus clown.

The graduated eye contact of royalty is a fascinating thing to
experience
. I felt her attention even before her gaze arrived. She spoke her words of greeting, which were full of meaning without having any actual content. I had planned to speak up, and to ask a question. We hadn’t been encouraged to make conversation, but she seemed quite a chatty type. ‘Marm,’ I was going to say – I knew you had to say ‘Marm’ – ‘is it true that you once met Archie Andrews?’ Putting her in her place just a bit. I was still slightly sore about the way the PDSA was out-ranked by the RSPCA, just because of a few royal patrons. Then the moment came and there was no need. There was no gap to be filled.

When the Queen Mother’s eyes moved on, I had no feeling that her gaze had left me. If her attention had had depth as well as breadth, she’d have been a considerable guru rather than a local totem, with only the powers proper to its sphere. Her serenity was strictly secular.

The strange thing was that one of the school cats followed her round for the whole of her visit. Cats have their snobbery, God knows, but it doesn’t coincide with ours. Still, this cat must have sensed something special. It was actually the least regarded of the school’s many cats, the one grudgingly given the name of Anon, only one step up from actual namelessness. The cat-naming skills of our group were rudimentary – we ran out of names after Catty, Kitty, Tabby, Whiskers and Fluffy. From a feline point of view a school full of wheelchairs must be Heaven, a palace full of laps. The school cats were lazy and spoiled. They wouldn’t budge for anybody, but Anon showed that a cat really can look at a queen, even at a dowager
ex-empress
.

After her visit the Queen Mother sent gifts to the school at regular intervals. Her generosity took the form, each time, of a big box of chocolates, which everybody loved – really big, so that everyone at the school could have more than one dip – and a rather beautiful
porcelain
vessel, blue and white, which contained slimy black dots with a fishy smell, like tadpoles gone wrong. To me those nasty little eggs seemed even more disgusting than tinned fish, which I had always hated. Very few of the pupils or staff members tried them. Some of those who did retched. The contents of the pretty jar ended up going into David Lockett’s pig-swill. This was the crowning extravagance in the topsy-turvy economy of the school: rancid butter for the boys, caviar for the pigs.

I don’t expect the QM specified the contents of the food parcel – I dare say she just said, ‘Send those lovely boys something nice.’ It was some equerry or other being too posh for his own good.

I dreaded Tuesday evening meals at Vulcan because it was always cold pilchards on toast. I hated that food with all my heart. To start with we were told to eat it up or go hungry. That was fine by me. That suited me down to the ground. I was very happy to go hungry. I was attuned to the notion of fasting – in Bathford days hadn’t I gone without stuffed marrow the day after Scrambled Egg Boats?

Then the rule changed to ‘You’ve got to eat it
or else
.’ Then we were told what ‘or else’ meant. Eat it or be force-fed. Judy Brisby was very keen to implement the stricter system. She could hardly wait to find the first resisting suffragette.

On the night the new rules came into force I was in despair. There was no possibility that I was going to eat that disgusting food. Soon everyone else had finished theirs. I noticed that David Driver had a boiled egg and some toast. It looked delicious. On the other hand, David had muscular dystrophy which was going to kill him soon anyway, which must have been why he was excused pilchards and likewise force-feeding. He was so weak it wouldn’t have taken much to finish him off. He didn’t have the strength to raise his arms to his face without help. There were special pivoted arm-rests on the side of his chair to help him get some leverage, but even then it was a huge effort for him. He always needed help at meal times.

Eventually I was the only pupil left in the dining hall. Even David had done his best by the boiled egg and had been wheeled away. Judy Brisby said to the kitchen staff, ‘Just leave him there until he eats it all.’ I waited for a very long time, sitting and staring at that awful fish. Its juices had seeped into the toast, which had swollen and turned into unspeakable mush. The kitchen staff finished their shift and left. Then Judy Brisby was back. She checked all the doors of the dining room, in case there were stragglers or someone coming back for something.

She came close. ‘I’m warning you’, she whispered, ‘that if you don’t eat this on your own, I’ll just have to force-feed you. I’ll pinch your nose shut so you have to open your mouth. And then I’ll jam the food in with my fingers if I have to. I’m going to count to five, and then I’ll start. You can’t say you haven’t been warned.’

I didn’t say anything but I didn’t feel at all brave. I was telling myself she wouldn’t dare give me a nerve punch, but the woman
leaning
over me didn’t seem short of nerve. She even seemed excited by what was going on.

If she counted to five she did it quickly and without moving her lips. Then she did indeed pinch my nose. She kept her promise. She pulled my head back as far as it would go, and somehow she got my mouth open. Next second she was stuffing pilchards down me and ordering me to swallow. I wouldn’t even chew it. When she told me again to swallow ‘or you’ll get “what for”’, I spat it out. I had been quite a good spitter at CRX, practising on chewed-up corners of linen sheet, but I excelled myself now. The squalid mouthful of mushy fish went everywhere. Much of it went sailing over the table and on to the floor.

My defiance made Judy Brisby truly terrifying now. She simply picked me up from the chair and strode out of the dining room. Her rage wouldn’t contemplate the delay of the lift. She passed it by and carried me up the stairs and to the Blue Dorm. At the top of the stairs she held me upside down over the stair-well. Only her death-grip on my ankles stopped me from falling. She was beside herself. She hissed, ‘
Now
will you?
Now
will you?’ She was panting with fury and
exertion
. Now would I what? The pilchards were miles away by then. This was no longer about pilchards. At last she got her breathing under control, dragged me back over the banisters and took me to the dorm. When she was a yard or so from my bed, she stopped and
simply
threw me towards it.

Her aim wasn’t good, or else only part of her wanted me to land safely. On my way through the air towards the bed my hip hit the side very hard. I howled in pain and couldn’t stop. Judy Brisby went out, and I went on crying.

Then Judy Brisby came back with Biggie, the Big Matron in charge of all the others, Sheila Ewart, nothing but kindness from stem to stern. Even the nicest matrons were strict at Vulcan, though, and Biggie had her own fixed principles. In her book there was nothing worse than telling tales.

Judy Brisby had obviously told her about what had been going on. Now she put on a show of tender concern, saying, ‘Well why didn’t you
say
you didn’t like the dinner? David Driver doesn’t like it either, so he had boiled egg and toast. You could have had that if you had wanted it! Lot of fuss about nothing!’ As if all I was crying about was not liking the food. Little cry-baby fuss-pot.

I looked tearfully at her and knew she had won with her lies. There she was, lying in front of dear Biggie, and Biggie was swallowing it all down. There was nothing I could do about it. Nothing at all.

Of course I took Biggie too literally. When she talked about not telling tales, she meant she didn’t want to hear petty accusations among the boys. Who had drawn on whose book, who had called whom a ‘thrombosis’ (which was our roundabout way of saying ‘bloody clot’). Being hurled through the air by a member of staff came into a different category. She’d have wanted to hear about that, but I didn’t know it at the time.

I couldn’t make a phone call without the help of a member of staff, so how could I grass Judy Brisby up? Telling Mum wouldn’t do much good either. She knew the number of the NSPCC off by heart, but when it came right down to it she was better at telling her neighbours how they should behave than knowing what to do herself.

The hip gave me pain for some time after the event, but I didn’t dare ask to see a doctor about it, in case he asked me questions whose answers would get me into more trouble.