Pilcrow (61 page)

As he approached I noticed again how smoothly he managed that wheelchair, but this time I also noticed what made his mastery of it possible. Luke was the only boy in the school to have the large wheels at the front of his wheelchair, and not the back. Most boys had to do some delicate finessing when it came to even a little bump, but Luke just lazily glided over, the little back wheel following obediently in the slipstream of his smooth momentum. Luke didn’t wheel along, he flowed. I’d been feeling pretty good about my electric wheelchair, even if it was the most basic model, but now Luke’s grace made me feel like a bumbler all over again. Not that his chair would have done me any good, without the strong, supple, only marginally spastic arms that powered it. Of course it was his air of sexual
knowledgeability
that gave his simplest actions a tantric aura.

I wanted so very badly to learn from him. At this stage in life I wanted instruction in cabbala, with a bit of the Apocrypha mixed in, and I suppose that was near enough what I got.

His first words were purely shocking. ‘Good afternoon, John. I have a question for you. Don’t you think that Marion – sorry,
Miss
Willis
– looks exactly like an iceberg of blubber?
Whipped
blubber, to be exact. Like whipped cream, you know.’ I was shocked, but also made wary. If this was one of Marion’s pets, then he must be laying a trap for me. For once there might be an actual tape-recorder in use, tucked into Luke’s smart trousers. It was best to say nothing. ‘Mind you,’ he went on, ‘I’ll say one thing for her. Fat people usually stink, you know, but the Willis is clean as a whistle. Sometimes when I’m close to her I take a good sniff while she’s looking the other way. Nothing but freshness and soap – and my nose is
very
sensitive.’ He flared his nostrils with quiet pride.

‘By the way,’ he went on, ‘you put on quite a show last night. That was hot stuff.’ His tone of voice suggested a cool critical verdict rather than an audience’s rapturous acclaim. It took me down a peg as well as up. ‘Do you know the word for what you were describing last night?’ I blushed with proud shame, and said, ‘I suppose you mean “smut”. Smutty talk.’

‘I mean women coupling with each other.’ Since I’d invented this activity (as I thought) I could hardly know what it was called. Women had coupled with each other in my improvisation only because the dramatic possibilities, and the men, had been milked dry.

‘Why don’t you tell me?’ I was a little sullen as well as curious. Luke had started with a compliment, but had moved rapidly on to doing what the whole world did, making me feel small.

‘That was a Lesbian Orgy,’ he said. ‘And you did a good job.’

‘Lesbian Orgy,’ I repeated, copying the assurance of his tone.

‘You do know,’ said Luke, ‘that Lesbians exist, don’t you?’

‘Yes of course.’

‘In fact … Lesbians are closer than you might think.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I mean Miss Dawkins and Miss Salisbury. That’s what I mean. They’re lovers. L-O-V-E-R-S.’ He did a beautifully rendered
double-take
, to convey his surprise at my unawareness. ‘You really didn’t know, did you?’

Miss Dawkins was one of the nicest of the matrons, usually
working
nights, and Miss Salisbury was a junior physiotherapist, blonde and absent-minded. Marion favoured physios who made us work rather than moving our limbs for us – all part of the goading agenda – but Miss Salisbury was a bit of a softie who would sometimes go easy on us and manœuvre recalcitrant limbs without expecting too much effort from the patient. She wasn’t a Gisela Schmidt, though. There was no massage.

‘What makes you so sure?’ I asked.

‘I’m surprised you haven’t noticed yourself. It’s not that hard to work out. They always arrange to have the same weekends off. That’s the give-away.’ While I was absorbing this fascinating information, Luke started to fill me in about lesbian love. ‘They make love all weekend. They forget to eat. Very slowly they take their clothes off. If it’s cold, they sit by the fire. If it’s warm, they go into the garden. They lie down and rub each other’s bosoms. Then Miss Dawkins puts her tongue in Miss Salisbury’s ear, while Miss Salisbury puts her tongue in Miss Dawkins’ ear. That’s called a Telephone Call. Lesbians have very long tongues. Then Miss Salisbury puts her face in Miss Dawkins’ lap, and Miss Dawkins puts her face in Miss Salisbury’s lap, and they stay like that for hours. That’s called 69. That’s called a Lesbian Sandwich.’ He smiled. ‘So now you know. There’s a lot goes on in Farley Castle. It pays to keep your eyes and ears open.’ The implication was that it all went on with his knowledge, perhaps even depended on his approval.

All the time he was talking he cupped his hand round his groin. His black trousers looked new. He was very smart and well scrubbed in a white shirt and black tie, but it was the trousers that held my eye, as they did on the waiters at the Compleat Angler. At first I couldn’t believe he was really making that cupping movement round his groin, so I kept having to take another peek to make sure. There was no mistake.

‘Do you like my trousers?’ he asked. ‘They have a permanent crease.’ Pretending not to be too interested I asked, ‘What’s a
permanent
crease?’

‘It means that you can wash them as much as you like and the crease will never go, even if you don’t iron them. They’re also
drip-dry
. My mother ironed them anyway, so the crease is even sharper – come closer and see. You could slice ham with those creases.’

It was at this point that I noticed that an additional reason for Luke’s unique posture was the fact that he didn’t have any side arms on his wheelchair. With side arms, he wouldn’t have been able to get his strong hands easily onto those huge front wheels, would he? He was a brilliant boy. At that moment I loved and envied him so much for his ability to flow around in all directions and all classrooms with his bulge on display.

The permanent crease was a wonderful thing, sharp as a mountain ridge. He glided in closer to me so that I had a better view. I rested my hand on his knee for a bit, and followed with my eye the two ridges as they ran up his legs till they were overshadowed by the
genital
tumulus, round barrow pulsing with secrets.

Again he squeezed his groin with his long flat hand. ‘Why do you keep doing that?’ I asked.

‘I need to dissipate the extra heat,’ he said smoothly. ‘It’s an area of the body which generates more heat than the rest. Here, hold my hands for a minute – feel how cold they get from pushing on these wheels.’ I held his hand, and it was indeed very cold, and rather
calloused
, too. He went on to say that when the school’s new block, so long in the planning, was finally built, he would have a lot of extra pushing to do to cover the extra ground. I asked him if he had seen the plans and he said, ‘Of course,’ as if the go-ahead for construction could hardly be given without his say-so.

His hands would get even colder as he made the journey in the open through the empty spaces between the Castle and the new block, so he had developed this technique for making heat flow out from the central knoll in his lap. He took my hand and pressed it there and yes, it was true that a wonderful amount of heat radiated out from that place.

I was thrilled but also dismayed. For years I had worn black
flannels
and complained about the cold, and now Mum had bought me grey corduroys to keep me snug. Now I was mortified that I hadn’t persevered with the black flannel pants which looked so good on Luke.

‘I have to go now,’ he said. ‘I’ll be missed. There are spies
everywhere
, you know,’ and he gave me a wink. ‘If there’s more you need to know, you know where to find me.’ Then he manœuvred himself
elegantly
backwards and glided off on his marvellous wheels. They made only a hushed crackle on the gravel. I waited where I was for the arrival of my endlessly patient human taxi.

Luke had spoken by daylight and outdoors about matters which had been restricted in my experience to darkness and the sanctuary of the dorm theatre. He had spoken with great authority, whereas I made things up as I went along. And after he had taken my breath away with new vistas of perverse knowledge, he had offered to answer any questions I might have in the future.

When he described the Lesbian amours going on among the staff of the school, Luke had specified the slow taking off of clothes, but when I visualised the scene later I imagined it played out with the women fully clothed. Miss Dawkins’ glasses steamed up, and Miss Salisbury was split and mended under her physio’s smock by dry orgasms like my Enid Blyton ecstasies over Julian (the original Julian) and Dick.

Soon after that, Luke Squires’s reconnaissance mission in the Blue Dorm came to an end, and Roger Stott came back from exile. We waited for repercussions from Luke’s report to Miss Willis, but
nothing
seemed to happen. All the same, he became a figure of fascination for me.

The Vulcan School was an austere place, but every possible delight was put on show by prodigal Luke in his wheelchair. Without sound or fuss, gliding by on silent wheels, he seemed to be in many places at once.

It’s never much of a problem to feast your eyes on the trousered groin of a wheelchair occupant, since his bottom and legs are already on a kind of tray. If you’re at a distance of only two or three feet and at the same level yourself, there’s much less of an angle for your eye to swivel through, if it so happens that you wish to inspect the nether regions. The same intensity of ogling directed at a vertical schoolboy would be bound to draw attention.

For Luke, that tray was offered to the world in uniquely tempting style, thanks to those large front wheels which tilted the dish up a
little
higher, at the front, than the horizontal. His one-of-a-kind
wheelchair
gave as tempting a view of his legs and neatly trousered bum as anyone could wish for. On top of which his hands were always
framing
his privates, plumping them up for inspection. Once you had noticed this, it was shameless, actually. I was amazed that he got away with it the way he did.

In the James Bond books, Bond always felt very sexy when he saw or felt the
Mound of Venus
at the base of a lady’s thumb. I wondered if those books would have been written differently if Ian Fleming had had a chance to view the far more tempting hill of potential
resonating
between Luke’s legs.

My fascination with Luke didn’t affect my devotion to my two secret lovers, the adults Raeburn and Nevin, nor the subtle flow of preferential feeling involved there. In fact my two adult passions weren’t really at odds. The two sets of feelings had elements in
common
– admiration, curiosity and a sort of rage to be touched – but they were drawn on different accounts.

Then Gillie Walker was sent to sound me out on a delicate matter. We were known to have a liking for each other, to get on, and so she had been delegated. ‘John,’ she said, ever so casually, ‘it has been noticed that your hand often rests at the bottom of your tummy, by your groin area …’ The passive construction didn’t fool me for a moment, nor was it meant to. The noticer was very clearly Marion, who noticed certain things and not others. She didn’t notice the
virtually
continuous priapic display made by Luke Squires, but she’d spotted something amiss with my very ordinary posture. Gillie went on, ‘I don’t expect you to inform on another boy, but is there
something
you’d like to tell me?’ The idea seemed to be that I had become abnormally sensitised to my genital chakra – as if that was something that could only come from outside.

I hadn’t been expecting this interrogation, but in a tight corner my brain worked fast. When I opened my mouth the words flowed very smoothly. ‘Honestly, Gillie,’ I said, ‘have you taken a look at this arm? Roll up the sleeve and do a proper inspection. I want you to. My left elbow doesn’t bend – do you see? – so the hand just naturally falls where you say. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, it never happens with the other hand, because the elbow on that side actually works.’

Gillie gave me a warm smile. ‘I knew there would be a good reason, John. I had every confidence in you, of course. I never doubted you for a moment, but I was duty bound to ask. I’m sure you understand.’

Of course I understood. I understood that Luke Squires was
protected
by his very blatancy. He couldn’t keep his hands off his parts. He practically raised his cock in class when he knew the answer to something, in preference to his hand, and Marion Willis saw nothing. No one said a dicky-bird. No one came to grill him, but when I gave my unglamorous parts the occasional rearranging tug, there was
consternation
and court-martial.

Peter and I were more or less getting the hang of mealtimes with Granny at the Compleat Angler. One of the waiters at the Otel was her favourite, absolutely her pet, even though he was Spanish and she believed that the language of good food was French. This waiter loved to tease her while he was serving, and she loved it. After Granny had made her little road through the food, and then put her knife and fork down saying, ‘Well, I’m
defeated
,’ he waved his finger at her
charmingly
. ‘Madam,’ he would say, ‘I hope you realise that when I take this back to the kitchen they will mince it up and feed it back to me! I don’t know what I am going to do with you, Madam!’ Granny absolutely ate it up. What this Spanish waiter was saying was
outrageously
cheeky, it was no way to treat a lady and so on, but she absolutely loved it, she couldn’t get enough.

After lunch Peter and I played chess in Granny’s room. Then
something
happened that wasn’t supposed to. He started to win. A bishop and a knight killed my queen, and my king was next for the chop. I knew Mum was prone to fainting, and I thought, I’ve never fainted in my life. This would be a good time to start.

I was carried through to the bed. Peter and Granny picked their way through the scattered chess pieces. I heard Granny saying, ‘It must have been the heat.’ She bathed my face with a cold flannel for twenty minutes. Then she said, ‘Granny has decided to buy you a
special
sort of wheelchair. It’s called a Wrigley.’ Obviously she had been approached beforehand, but my funny turn may have tipped the
balance
. It did no harm for her to be reminded of my frailty. It wasn’t blackmail, exactly. I wouldn’t say it was any darker than greymail.

I was delighted by the news, though I could only let my pleasure show as a faint smile through the simulated blur of weakness. A
hundred
and sixty smackers! I dare say Granny withheld a fraction of the sum on principle, or imposed terms in some way, but I never learned the details.

Peter was delighted too. ‘We can have a lot of fun with that Wrigley,’ he whispered. ‘And don’t worry. I made a mental note of the position on the board. I know exactly where everything was. We can finish that game any time you like.’

The plans for the expansion of the school must have been given Luke’s approval, because quite dramatic building works were under way. Phase One involved erecting a couple of staff houses – before then, there was no accommodation for staff, just a group of caravans installed behind the yew hedge outside the kitchen windows. It
wasn’t
ideal, with no facilities for washing or bathing except by slipping into the Castle through a side door. In winter the caravans were cold, but electric fires being left on would scorch the carpets and fill the grounds with the lovely rustic smell of burning plastic.

Then a wing was built to one side of the Castle, containing a
dormitory
block and a dining room. Finally there was a new block of classrooms, shaped like an H. The dorms were supposed to be ready for the start of the school year, but no such luck. In the September half of them could just about be used, but there were polythene sheets flapping all over the place, and breeze-blocks and bags of cement were stacked up against every wall. Luckily the weather was mild. Raeburn and Miss Willis advertised in the parish magazine for households which could take the less severely disabled boys in. The rest of us were issued with hot-water bottles.

The new block provided much better facilities for teaching, but more importantly it also offered a much greater range of places where surreptitious meetings could take place. Julian Robinson still said there were microphones hidden everywhere, and that the new
buildings
had actively been wired for sound, with tape-recordings made of every word spoken, but his authority in such matters took a dive when it was discovered that his Sean Connery autograph contained three spelling mistakes. Whatever the risks, the new block with its nooks and crannies gave promise of fruitful encounters. The new spaces were open to being colonised by forbidden activities. The smell was freeing in itself, of new wood and fresh paint.

The transformed school no longer contained Ben Nevin, who had gone back to Canada. It was a sort of bereavement, but he gave me a wonderful present before he left. It was a Chinese box, beautifully enamelled, which he’d picked up on a visit to Hong Kong. Best of all, it had a secret compartment. Unless you pressed at exactly the right point, you’d never be able to open it. It wasn’t roomy, as secret
compartments
go, but big enough to hold a folded piece of paper on which I’d written in my best hand, which was still pretty bad,
Given
to John Cromer by Ben Nevin at Vulcan School
.
A GREAT MAN
.

I would have mourned Mr Nevin more keenly if Judy Brisby
hadn’t
left at the same time. That was a present finer even than a Chinese box with a hidden compartment. Hearing the news gave a definite spring to the tyres of my wheelchair. It wasn’t that her leaving
compensated
for his, exactly, but it certainly made it harder to wish for the clock to be turned back.

Judy Brisby hadn’t been found out and dismissed in disgrace, rather the opposite. She left the school without a stain on her
character
, and she had the gall to get married too. She had found someone her own size to give nerve punches to, someone to make beg for cold toast at breakfast. At first it seemed surprising that her husband was a soldier, but I suppose it meant he was used to taking orders.

No one could have measured up to Ben Nevin, so it was splendid in a way that his replacement should be such an abject duffer as a teacher – the sort whose idea of teaching is to read long passages out from a book. Mr Gilchrist was Irish. We thought he was old,
meaning
I suppose that he was in his forties. Somebody must have tipped him off about my imperfect control of my wheelchair, because I never managed to run over his feet, though Heaven knows I tried. He was annoyingly nimble, and perhaps accustomed to unpopularity.

I was shocked when I learned Mr Gilchrist’s first name was Christopher. He had Christ in his name twice over and he was still horrible. I thought perhaps the Christs had cancelled each other out, like terms on opposite sides of the equals sign in algebra. In my book he had no redeeming features.

I remember that for Geography the book was green. Once he was dictating something about winter wheat under snow, and how the snow gave the seeds a chance to breed. Of course he meant ‘breathe’, but the Irish accent made it unclear, and
breed
was what I wrote down. I had my doubts, but didn’t dare ask. He wasn’t the sort of teacher you could ask about things – I suppose that means he wasn’t worth anything as a teacher, really. If I’d been an AB, he would have clipped me round the ear, but in common with the other more or less severely disabled boys I wasn’t supposed to have my ear clipped. So he crept up behind me with a pencil rubber in each hand and rubbed them both up and down my sideboards really hard, whispering, ‘Some say that having this slower pain is worse than having your ears tweaked,’ again in that thick Irish accent, so that ‘worse’ sounded like ‘worras’. I had no reason to doubt it.

It wasn’t just Ben Nevin and Judy Brisby. At the point when the school expanded its premises, there was a whole-sale change-over of staff, so that very few of the matrons who had been at the school when I arrived still worked there. I enjoyed these new faces rather than regretted the passing of the old. New people could be conned, by virtue of their unfamiliarity with the place, into letting me get away with little ruses that would formerly have been stopped dead in their tracks.

I did miss Sheila Ewart, Big Matron, the original Biggie, who left the school at this time. She was replaced by Mrs Wemyss (pronounced Weems), who was never known as anything but Mrs Wemyss. When you are spelled Wemyss and pronounced Weems, nick-names are unnecessary.

From a wheelchair, you tend to look up people’s noses. In Mrs Wemyss’s case, there was usually something to see. She had a resident bogey, more often than not, waggling as she spoke. It bobbed up and down as the breath went in and out.

I was learning that anyone in authority has at least one
hobby-horse
. Mrs Wemyss had two, hot breakfasts and tonsils. On the first subject she would say, ‘How these boys can be expected to learn
anything
at school without a hot breakfast inside them is simply beyond me. In summer it’s one thing, but in winter? Quite absurd.’ She
instituted
porridge and campaigned for bacon and eggs.

Her line on tonsils was less humane. She thought they were a
mistake
. Everyone would be much the better for having theirs out. She had strong ideas about the best post-operative diet: dry toast. ‘My goodness, don’t you cry when you eat your first piece! But you get better quickly. At my last place of work there was an Italian man who was crying his silly eyes out when I made him eat his toast. Next day what happens? He thanks me from the bottom of his heart, for
helping
him get better so much more quickly than the patients being pampered with jellies and ice cream. Such a soppy thing to give a
tonsillectomy
patient!’ Temperamentally she was well suited to the school’s philosophy of care that stopped well short of spoiling.