Pilcrow (56 page)

Judy Brisby was lucky in her timing. I had made up my mind to confide in Mum, no matter what, the next time I went home for the weekend. Not to tell tales but to ask what to do, and to hope that she would take it out of my hands. But by then something had happened which made it certain that I would keep my trap shut.

It turned out that I wasn’t the only Cromer to be having a bad time at his school. Peter was attending Lord Wandsworth College in Long Sutton, near Hook in Hampshire. The school was founded in 1912 with funds from the late lord, who wanted to help full or half orphans – children who had lost at least one parent. The school’s whole
purpose
was tender, by that token, and of course the years after 1912 were absolute prime years for the creation of orphans. The supply began to dry up after the Second War, though, and after that time fee-paying pupils untouched by bereavement began to be accepted.

There were still traces of the founder’s mercy in Peter’s time. Permission was granted for pupils to keep certain pets. They had to be animals (such as rabbits and guinea pigs) that didn’t need to roam free. There were even a couple of lizards. Peter didn’t have a pet
himself
, but he had a powerful connection with animals. The fact that the pets which were tortured at the school belonged to other boys didn’t actually make a difference to him. The rabbit with the lacerated ears. The guinea pig with the scorched fur. The lizard whose shed tail did not deceive its giggling predators. Their pain lodged in him. He had no ability to disown it.

His sense of justice was soothed when the bullies turned their attention on him. They would drive drawing pins into his arms and legs. Then they started on beatings which became general and promiscuous. The site they chose for this torture was an old bomb shelter in the grounds. They told him when to come there, and he came. They didn’t need to come and fetch him. He took all he could take, and then he simply walked out and went to the railway station, took a train and explained to the ticket-collector that he had to go home.

That was one advantage I enjoyed at Vulcan. Judy Brisby never expected me to go to her to be ill-treated. She came to me.

When Peter arrived home after his train journey, there was
bruising
all over his body. The boys at Lord Wandsworth had been only partially educated. They hadn’t learned the trick of the nerve punches. Their tea-bag marks were very visible. Peter was all over PG Tips.

There were bruises on his soul that took much longer to heal. It showed how deeply the bullying had gone that he hadn’t said a word to me about it. Any more, I suppose, than I had told him about what Judy Brisby got up to. We protected our tormentors while we could, and never owned up to the taint of pain while we had the choice.

Our GP in Bourne End Dr Flanagan (Flanny) said that Peter’s injuries were certainly serious enough for us to sue Lord Wandsworth College. She said she would be happy to give evidence and back him up in court. Flanny was very far from being a soft touch. She was brisk and efficient and didn’t have much time for the niceties. It’s a fact that medical school is designed to grind down idealism into heartless competence, but Flanny must have been well on her way already. She had a head start.

In the end Mum and Dad decided against legal action, perhaps because Peter would be exposed to further damage, perhaps because suing was not quite nice. They settled for having the fees waived for that last traumatic term. Peter never went back. He had plenty of experience at standing up for me, none for defending himself. He was a gentle boy, eager to belong, a magnet for bullying.

I realised right away that there was no possibility of grassing Judy Brisby up after what had happened to Peter. I might have been able to live down the taboo of telling tales, but now I would be known as a copy-cat as well as a sneak. Copy-cat tale-telling had to be the worst crime in the whole book.

I was stuck with Vulcan for the duration. I wonder how many other pupils thought of grassing Judy Brisby up, and either pulled back from the brink or weren’t believed. I certainly remember when unsinkable Trevor Burbage, the human suitcase with the riding hat, decided to ‘run away’ from the school.

The pretext was that he had been given thirty lines by the German teacher Mr Atkinson, and it’s true that Trevor could be very cheeky. He would pretend to misunderstand things, just to be provoking.
Es
gibt drei Türen
… ‘Are the doors dry, Sir? Does it mean Wet Paint or something?’ That sort of thing. He said he’d rather run away than copy out the lines. ‘I’m not staying in this dump,’ he said. There must have been something else driving him, though, mustn’t there?

We asked him, ‘What will you do for a living, once you get away from here?’ He said, ‘I’ll be a lorry driver’s mate. That’s the ticket for me! I can’t drive but I can be the driver’s mate and see the world.’ He set off in his privately bought wheelchair, which out-ranked mine – but then his grandmother had money and was always buying him out of trouble at the school with timely endowments. It was called a Wrigley, like the chewing gum to which a few boys were addicted, though they spat it out discreetly if Miss Wilding hove into view.

The Wrigley went too fast to pass Government safety tests. It had proper inflatable tyres, instead of the solid rubber ones on my E&J. Raeburn was normally the person who charged the batteries, but we made sure the ABs gave Trevor a top-up till the last possible moment. Then he was off. He’d left a note with me in an envelope but I wasn’t allowed to show it to anyone until he had made his get-away. We were blood brothers, so I couldn’t refuse it or grass him up.

There was no special reason for us being blood brothers, except that we had dared each other to make the cuts and then couldn’t manage to back down.

The next morning Miss Willis drove off in a panic to track him down. She was back in five minutes. He’d got as far as the bottom of Farley Hill. He was tired and hungry but he had seen the world. He came back to a hero’s welcome, and I have no idea why.

I had been waiting so long for the motor and battery required to convert my Everest & Jennings to self-propulsion status that they had joined the category of things which can exist only in language, like hen’s teeth and sky-hooks, the horns of the hare and the children of a barren woman.

I had learned to get around reasonably well without a motor, in the end, graduating from pushing against the tyres by hand to using a stick to punt myself about. In fact I had mixed feelings about the new arrangement, not because Roger Stott was a handsomer engine than any substitute (I couldn’t see him while he was pushing anyway), but because he was more reliable than the mechanism which replaced him.

Grit of any sort buggered the relays on an Everest & Jennings, and it couldn’t cope with some surfaces. If you wanted an electric
wheelchair
which could be driven over gravel, for instance, you had to go private and fork out. The Everest & Jennings was almost Government issue, with all that that implied – like the hard toilet paper at CRX. If you wanted the equivalent of soft toilet paper in self-sufficient invalid transport then you would have to throw money at Messrs Wrigley (as Trevor Burbage’s grandmother and others had).

The E&J was controlled by a sort of tiller, a T-bar which came up from the top of the motor and passed between my legs. It had two speeds, plus neutral and reverse. The tiller would be fitted on after I had been installed in the chair, and I needed someone to remove it before I could be helped to dismount. There was a twist grip mounted on the right-hand bar of the T. If the grip had been on the left bar then, with the short-comings of the elbow on that side, I wouldn’t have been able to operate it.

Once all the pieces were in place I was the proud owner/driver of an electric wheelchair. Having a powered vehicle allowed me to pretend that the controls had got stuck, so that I could run over the feet of members of staff, always with a cheery cry of ‘Awfully sorry, Sir! These bloomin’ chariots take some getting used to!’ In an ideal world I would only have trespassed on the toes of teachers I actively disliked, but in this life my opportunities to make mischief have been limited. There is an obligation to make the most of them. I wasn’t about to restrict my fun by being fussy and high-minded, so if even the divine Ben Nevin came within range, his god-like toes were fair game for the crunching.

For years I had only had a postal Granny, and then suddenly she was back in the picture, flesh and blood. The first I heard of it was a passing mention from Mum. ‘The strangest thing has happened,’ she said. ‘You know that Mediterranean cruise that Caroline is going on – you know, Muzzie’s Caroline – well, your Uncle Roy’s going on it too. Pure coincidence. And we were saying, Granny and I, wouldn’t it be wonderful if they liked each other? Caroline’s a lovely girl, delightful, and at least she’s not tall.’ It was all-important in that generation that wives be shorter than their husbands.

I had met Caroline a few times when she came to visit Sarah in CRX. She was as cheerful and as buxom as her mother.

‘Roy would be a bit of a catch,’ Mum said, ‘even though he’s a bit older.’ I was so surprised by the mention of Granny that I missed the ominous overtones of the word ‘catch’. Dad had been a bit of a catch in his day, after all, a catch who didn’t much want to be caught. There was always a catch, wasn’t there?

I couldn’t remember the last time Mum had referred to her mother. ‘When did you see Granny?’

‘Oh, we spoke on the phone.’

‘Was it you who called her? Or did she call you?’

Mum frowned. ‘I don’t remember.’ Was I really supposed to believe she could have been in doubt about something so crucial? I didn’t believe her for a moment, but Mum could be stubborn when she chose to. Since she had never admitted to a breaking-off of relations, I could hardly expect details of a reconciliation.

As far as I can piece it together, Granny had been pulling a few strings ever since Audrey was born. She wasn’t going to be accused of ignoring the birth of her first, her only granddaughter, but nor was she going to melt like a sentimental old lady, forgiving offences promiscuously. Amnesty on strict conditions was more her style. So she sent along a shawl, an apostle spoon and a christening mug, and there was a cheque tucked into the accompanying card, but the card itself was blank.

That cheque was like a hand-grenade of solvency waiting to go off. Sooner or later Mum would pull the pin and money would explode into the bank account she shared with Dad. Granny would hear the echo of the blast when she next cast her eyes over her bank statement, and she would know that Laura hadn’t been able to live up to her injured pride.

The extension to the house must also have been funded by Granny, though I don’t know how it was negotiated. Extensions don’t grow on Trees, and I should have realised that the family exchequer was being topped up. Granny still kept her distance, but Mum must have hated the being beholden.

Money has a way of estranging even as it reconciles, which of course was one of the things that Granny liked about it.

The conversation about Roy and Caroline marked a further phase of warming in family relations. The Cold War was almost over. Granny and Mum were united at last by their compulsion to meddle.

Granny took to staying the odd weekend at an Otel on the riverside not far off, a rather grand one in fact, the Compleat Angler at Marlow. Rooms there could easily cost ten pounds a night. It was one of her favourite quips to say that Cockneys should be encouraged to run Otels, ‘since they can at least pronounce the word properly, unlike so many people these days’. I was keen for Granny to come and stay with us in the house, but there were limits to détente.

A summons to join Granny at the Compleat Angler would come for the whole family or, according to her mood, for Peter and me, or just one of us. These occasions were balanced on a knife-edge between treat and ordeal. A knife-edge, or a fork-point – since the use of
cutlery
turned out to be something of a mine-field.

Granny developed the habit, while staying at the Compleat Angler, of sending a taxi to pick up Peter and me for our meal at her expense. The taxi was expensive but not extravagant, since it served a double purpose. Quite apart from conveying her grandchildren the few miles required it delivered a satisfactory snub to Mum and Dad.

The first time Peter went there for a meal on his own, he ordered a prawn cocktail. He had only just conveyed the first spoonful safely into his mouth when Granny came out with her whiplash whisper: ‘
One uses a fork!
’ He came home from his evening with Granny more or less gibbering with etiquette trauma. Another time we were both there, and it was my turn to order the prawn cocktail. I did my
ankylosed
best with a fork. This time Granny seemed almost puzzled,
saying
, ‘Wouldn’t it be easier with a spoon? The rules don’t apply to you, John. You may eat it in any way you please.’ I had noticed, though, that my exemption from rules was a precarious dispensation. It was best not to rely on it.

Granny always ordered the same way, and usually the same thing. ‘I’m going to plump for the lamb and mint sauce,’ she would say. ‘What would you like, boys?’ Granny always ‘plumped’ for things. I would usually plump for an omelette. Peter plumped for steak.

In fact Granny didn’t have much of an appetite. When the main course arrived, she would say, ‘You boys carry on. All Granny does is make a little road right through the middle.’ She did exactly that, while Peter stuffed himself. I didn’t do badly either, in my weight class. After she had made her little road across the plate, Granny would put her knife and fork down and say, ‘Well, I’m
defeated
.’

Granny gave Peter a little lecture on what to look for in a good restaurant like the one at the Compleat Angler. She told him to watch the waiters, to see how their job should really be done. ‘It’s not just a matter of serving from the right and taking away from the left, though that’s part of it. It’s an attitude, an attentiveness, which holds lessons for everyone. It should never be difficult to catch a waiter’s eye.’

Granny waited until every last waiter had his back turned, dealing with other diners, and then murmured, ‘Excuse me!’ Immediately one of them appeared at her shoulder, leaning forward with a neutral
readiness
. ‘Would you be so kind as to bring me a fresh fork, please? This one has rather a mark.’ ‘Of course, Madam,’ he murmured, ‘right away.’

‘Do you see, boys?’ she said. ‘Some may say that being a waiter is a lowly career, but there’s nothing more important than seeing that
people
are properly fed. I myself ran a British Restaurant during the war, and it was no small thing to organise. Once I had my staff properly drilled – I had to make do with waitresses, of course – the whole mood of the place changed. It became a pleasure to be there, even if the food was basic at best. We created the right atmosphere, do you see?’

At the end of the meal Granny announced, ‘Peter, I think waiting would be a suitable job for you, in due course. I’ll look into it. The best waiters are of course foreign. It might be necessary for you to be trained abroad – Switzerland, perhaps, if not France itself.’

Peter managed to keep his feelings hidden until we were in the taxi on the way home. He despised waiters absolutely, hating in particular the way they walked. When we were home, he did an impression of a waiter’s walk, wiggling his bottom absurdly. How could Granny give so much as a penny to those waltzing ninnies, let alone tell him he should become one of them?

‘Don’t be too hasty, Peter,’ I said. ‘The old lady may be on to
something
.’ I was thinking of something quite different, about how nice waiters’ bottoms looked in their tight black trousers. Their short jackets could almost have been designed to draw attention to those bottoms, and I liked the fact that you were allowed to inspect them quite closely before you plumped for your omelette.

Granny never referred to the long absence of social contact. She didn’t seem actively happy to see us, but then that was never her style. Mum for her part had a sort of masochistic glow, as if a stone was back in her shoe that she had never really learned to do without.

Perhaps the attempt to make a match between Roy and Caroline was just an excuse for something that would have happened anyway, but I remember meals at the Complete Angler where strategy was discussed. Dad had no interest in the romantic plotting, and stayed away.

‘We must be very careful how we handle this, Laura,’ said Granny. ‘I rather think it will be like stalking wildlife in Africa. We should keep ourselves well and truly down-wind of Roy and, for that matter, Caroline as well.’ It simply wouldn’t do to clash batch and spinst together like a pair of cymbals.