Pilcrow Page 28

  Soon we were out of breath after all our squealing play. Mary lay on her back to float for a minute. I looked at her with love, but also with mischief. I couldn’t resist the impulse to push her under. There was no danger – we had been told often enough how wonderful those life-jackets were, as long as your body made some sort of effort to be normal. Mary’s face went below the surface of the water and stayed there. The yellow life-jacket seemed to be entirely ornamental. Her eyes were open and she was making little waving movements with her arms. Now it was terrible that I was only moving in slow motion as I tried to reach her. Finally I managed to get an arm against her and to give a lop-sided sort of push, and after that her face broke through the water and she was spluttering and crying and I was begging for her to forgive me. I felt I’d come close to doing something that God would hate me for.

  Mary forgave me the moment she got her breath back. She wasn’t capable of holding a grudge. We agreed that we wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened. The life-jacket was a dud, but I couldn’t tell Miss Withers or anyone else about it without admitting how I’d found out, by pushing Mary under.

  Mum was very attuned to me in those days, and she persuaded me to tell her what the matter was. She was sworn to secrecy, but with Mum you could never quite be sure. Or there may have been other incidents in the pool that we weren’t told about. One way or another, supervision in the pool area became much more continuous. Then one day our benefactor turned up on the television defending the reputation of his invention, saying that it was only a matter of a single batch being faulty at most. It happened to be at a weekend, and Mum and Dad were glued to the screen for once. Mum said I should look at the man’s face very carefully, because that was what people looked like when they were lying. I imagine the product sank without trace, and possibly the company that made it as well. It was back to rubber rings for everyone all over again, not just me.

  Even before I could go home most weekends, Saturday was always a super-special day as far as I was concerned. I would wake up and sing at the top of my voice, ‘It’s Saturday today!’ I bounced out of bed, or at least did what I could in that line, vibrating with joy till the nurses got round to me. I told everyone that if I ruled the world, every day would be a Saturday.

  Chromatically coded

  For me Saturday was a bright red colour, just as the other days of the week were chromatically coded. Sunday was a vibrant sunny yellow, Monday green, Tuesday a dull red, Wednesday a mustardy yellow, Thursday a blue so dark it was virtually black, Friday a bright blue.

  This wasn’t the true synæsthesia which is such a fascinating mystical hint, a loose thread in the fabric of perception left a-dangle, an unravelling which suggests that we could dissolve all our unreal categories. It was more a case of my emotions being split into different wave-lengths as they entered a prism, viz. the hospital week.

  Saturday was a bright and joyful red because it was a day that held neither physiotherapy nor lessons. Sunday was yellow because, although it too was a day without pain or drudgery, it turned traitor at last by delivering me while I slept into the torments of Monday. There was a green streak at the bottom of yellow Sunday, if you looked closely enough. The colours of Monday, Wednesday and Friday were determined by those being physio days.

  Reddish Tuesday was only a short-term reprieve, and Wednesday was the low point of the week, what with physiotherapy and lessons and so long to wait for the weekend. Thursday was almost worse, a day without physio but spent remembering the pain of the day before and anticipating the pain of the next – no more than the filling of a pain sandwich. Friday contained pain, but was shot through with the foreknowledge of the weekend. After Friday physio was the ordeal of fish and chips for lunch, a favourite with other kids but not with me. Once I bit into a piece of CRX batter, and a greasy globule burst in my mouth, some sort of abscess of oil. It ran down the back of my throat, making me retch. After that I just picked at the food, avoiding the fish altogether. So Friday contained hunger as well as pain, but at least it could be trusted to give me the weekend.

  Most of the food at CRX was eatable. One dumpy little nurse would say, ‘Wannit it all mashed up together?’ and I’d say, ‘Oh yes!’ I watched with fascination as she went to work. Even the crispest pie would be reduced to mortar under her hand. The taste was oddly improved by the steamrollering to mush (though I wouldn’t let her try with fish and chips). I suppose this was an underclass version of Mum’s genteel microcosmal forkfuls.

  Ninday

  One morning Sister Heel announced that we would be getting an extra day. Perhaps she didn’t mention this as a government decision, but that was my first thought. The government issued us with our toilet paper (horribly scratchy) and our orange juice (delicious, nothing ever as good after it was discontinued), why not an extra day? From then on my imagination got busy, going over and over it until the original information was entirely lost in the fanciful embroidery. I thought that the extra day would be added to every week, and asked what it was to be called. Sister Heel said, with only the slightest hesitation, ‘Nin-day, John. The new day will be called Ninday.’ Pleased with her quick thinking, she trotted off to her next round of duties.

  I don’t even know what lay behind her original announcement. Perhaps it was a rather feeble April Fool. I suppose it might have been to do with Leap Year in either 1956 or 1960, though the dates don’t really marry up.

  In my ignorance of the calendar and its pitfalls I became very excited and ran through the new list of days, calling out to Mary, ‘So it’ll be Monday (yuk!), Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday (yippee!), Ninday, Sunday …’ I couldn’t realistically expect every day to be Saturday, but doubling our quota of Saturdays was a good start.

  ‘That sounds lovely, John,’ said Mary, ‘but perhaps we’d better ask Sister when the new day will be.’

  Everyone knew that calling out for staff attention was not a good idea, but in my excitement I forgot and shouted, ‘Sister! Sister!’ When she appeared she wasn’t best pleased, but without attempting to smooth her feathers in any way I asked, ‘When’s the new day going to be, Sister? I think it’s going to come between Saturday and Sunday.’

  ‘Oh no, John!’ said Sister Heel. ‘That would be a very bad idea. That would only make children lazy. The new eight-day week will help boys and girls work harder at school. The order will be Monday, Tuesday, Ninday, Wednesday, Thursday …’

  My world went black. With six weekdays to cope with I knew I would be dead very soon. From my traumatised expression Sister Heel must have understood that her gruff style of teasing was not an indispensable qualification for the job of caring for sick children. She wasn’t cruel, but sensitivity wasn’t a quality much in vogue at the time. Perhaps she really thought she was doing me (or the ward) a favour in the long run by taking me down a peg. I didn’t feel as if I was doing much more than keeping my peg above water, but perhaps I was more bumptious than I knew.

  A fault he cannot mend

  There’s a certain amount of evidence about how I was regarded to be gleaned from my autograph book. Autograph books were a major preoccupation on the ward. Mine had a diamond-patterned cover and marbled end-papers. We children signed each other’s, though that didn’t really count as getting an autograph. It didn’t count towards your score.

  Sarah Morrison signed mine:

  When Johnny was a little boy

  He had curls, curls, curls

  But now he is older

  It’s girls, girls, girls.

  With best wishes. Get better quickly. Sarah.

  Not verse directly inspired by my character, I don’t think, more a piece of ready-made doggerel. It’s odd, all the same, that a message from a girl on the same ward, with the same diagnosis, should be so concerned about my health. I don’t remember in what way I was ill.

  Staff Nurse Hawes has written, ‘I cannot dance but I can show you a few steps’ – with a drawing of a ladder on a staircase. A. R. Putnam, whoever that w
as, has written:

  I wish I was a wiggley Bear

  With Fur upon my tummy

  I’d crawl into a honey-Pot

  and make my tummy, gummy,

  with best wishes.

  There were a couple of rather embarrassing entries, which I didn’t want Mum to see. One went:

  Johnny had a little watch

  He swallowed it one day

  And now he’s taking Epsom Salts

  To pass the time away.

  I wished I could excise that from the book without damaging the whole, although I did get the giggles from another risqué contribution, written by a pre-nursing student called Janice:

  A rabbit has a shiny nose

  A fault he cannot mend

  Because his little powder puff

  Is on the other end.

  Some entries are rather lugubrious, as if there were times I wasn’t expected to live much longer, which may very well have been the case. Nurse Fleming wrote in December 1957,

  When your days on earth are ended

  And your life is home-ward trod,

  May your name in Gold be written

  In the Autograph of God.

  Of course that may just have been Nurse Fleming’s way.

  Sister Heel appears on those pages with a joke of her own. She has written:

  When in this page you look

  When on this page you frown

  Think of the nurse who spoilt it

  By writing upside down.

  Professor Bywaters did a creditable self-portrait in ink, using thick strokes of the pen to show a preoccupied man in waistcoat and bow tie, stethoscope in hand. He’s done well to capture his own alert slouch and fierce eyebrows. It was kind of him to spend time with me, considering that I was an extreme case but not a medically interesting one. I had nothing to offer an expert.

  There was a competitive edge to all our hobbies, including our autograph books. Even writing to Decca for gramophone records was done with an eye to my standing on the ward. Another favourite project was raising money for charity, though here annoyingly it was Sarah Morrison who shone, for the same reason she was such good company. She charmed people without effort, she had them eating out of her hand. It wasn’t the same pure goodness as Mary’s, but I had to admit it worked. There was a toughness to her, linked to the charm, which I admired and envied.

  It was always me saying to Sarah, when the Wendy gang became unbearable, I’m with you really, but I have to look as if I’m with them. I could be a terrible toady sometimes, faced with the dark forces of Wendy and Ivy. Sarah never had to make excuses to me. She might be ostracised by the girl gang, but she wouldn’t lower herself to be taken back into the group. I didn’t have the strength to go it alone, though I could see quite well that Sarah’s imperviousness worked in her favour. It was never long before she was accepted back, and she never grovelled or cringed. She actually raised her status by refusing to truckle, while I seemed to be a born truckler. I truckled with every breath I took, and that is not pranayama either.

  A blessing and a leg-up

  I remember one particular Friday afternoon with Mary in the hydrotherapy pool, when my interest in fund-raising had a short-lived renaissance. It was a couple of weeks before Easter, and there was a definite springy feeling in the air.

  Mary and I had started talking in the pool, and we carried on while we were being dried off. She was trying to re-ignite my love affair with raffles. And suddenly we both got caught up in the idea of holding a bigger and better raffle than anyone at CRX had dreamed of before.

  Mary and I had shown in the past that we were a good team. When a suggestion box was unveiled in the ward, Mary and I decided that what was needed to cheer everyone up was a bird table. CRX after all was a hospital in a forest. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a bird table outside, so that patients could see it by going into the day room? We filled in our own suggestion slips, talked about nothing else to everyone, and we made it happen. A bird table was installed just where we’d said, and kept well supplied with bacon fat and crumbs. It was particularly lovely to watch in winter. The cost was five pounds, paid for by the League of Friends. I felt that Mary and I should have jolly well had our names inscribed on it, seeing that it was our idea in the first place.

  If I had become disaffected about raffles it was because my previous venture in the field, judged by my own high standards, had been a failure. I had been very professional. I had bought a book of proper raffle tickets – or cloakroom tickets, at least. I had persuaded some of the nurses to give prizes, little packets of sweets and so on, and I made some of the smaller prizes out of modelling clay. I charged sixpence a ticket, three for a bob. There were bigger discounts on larger quantities. The tickets sold well. I felt I had a gift for this line of thing. You try selling a raffle ticket to a nurse who has already donated some sweets, so that she’s paying for a chance to win back something she’s already given away! I felt I should really take a commission, but Sarah explained you couldn’t. I wasn’t the first charitable administrator to feel that my work should be properly rewarded, but I managed to restrain myself and keep my hand out of the till.

  When I sold the tickets in my boy’s voice I said it was for the PDSA. I began to think that adults couldn’t hear properly, because they kept saying, ‘John’s holding a raffle for the RSPCA.’ When I tried to correct them they looked at me indulgently, as if I couldn’t possibly know what I was talking about. One ‘grown-up’ even said, ‘It’s probably a branch of the RSPCA especially for children.’ I was nearly in tears as I muttered, ‘It isn’t. It isn’t! It ISN’T!! PDSA means People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals and it’s for people who are poor and have animals and can’t afford to make them better.’ Nothing I could say would change their stubborn minds. It was maddening that nothing seemed to be taken seriously unless it had something ‘Royal’ about it. That was the whole point of supporting the PDSA, because it didn’t have the Royal Family giving it a blessing and a leg-up, only Enid Blyton. The RSPCA had the Queen behind it, the PDSA only had ‘Queen Bee’, as she liked to be called.

  At Taplow we were only a hop, skip and a jump from Windsor and the Castle, and it was partly that I liked the idea of cocking a snook at the Royals by supporting the other team. I don’t know where I got this republican streak – perhaps I was fervently royalist in a previous life, now making amends. In the end I took my woes to the wise Sarah, who had a knack for talking to the daft beings called grown-ups. They took notice of Sarah. Nobody ever thought she was making things up.

  I collected a total of two pounds, which was pretty good, but that was only the beginning as far as I was concerned. The raffle was a means to an end, and I’m ashamed to say that the end wasn’t actually funding the treatment of poor people’s pets, while slyly putting the Royal Family’s nose out of joint. The end purpose of all this activity was to get my name in the Busy Bee News (Enid Blyton, editor). Queen Bee lived only a little further away from us than Queen Elizabeth, at Beaconsfield, which was maybe a hop, skip and two jumps away. She felt much nearer. She played a much larger part in our thoughts.

  A stupid zoo

  I reported my achievement to Queen Bee, and got back a form letter telling me it was a ‘splendid effort’. When the next issue of Busy Bee News came out, though, there was no mention of my raffle on the ‘Honeypot’ page. This was the page set aside for Busy Bees who were not members of Hives as such, but had performed outstanding services or shown ingenuity. Barbara Ward had raffled a bunch of rhododendrons and sent in a measly 1s 9d – she got a mention. Jacqueline Wallace charged admission to a stupid Zoo in her dad’s garage – a Zoo, if you please, consisting of a tortoise, some silkworms and a goldfish! The total take was a piffling £1, but she had her name in print for all time.

  Of course when Sarah Morrison had organised a raffle, she not only won a glowing notice in the Busy Bee News, she got a hand-written letter from Queen Bee. She was invited to pay a visit to her at home in Beaconsfield
. At this point I gave serious thought to the idea of hating Sarah Morrison. ‘Queen Bee’ wasn’t just anybody, she was the most famous person in our lives. Sarah had been invited to meet Enid Blyton in person – and she didn’t even like the Famous Five!

  It was deeply unfair. Mary and I were the true devotees. I entertained the ugly thought that Sarah had only appeared in Busy Bee News because she’d mentioned in her letter that she had a fractured back. Which was true, but sneaky to put in your letter. I wondered if it was too late for me to write to Queen Bee again, saying that I was the worst walker in the whole hospital, and that sadly my condition was incurable. Then the iron entered my soul and I accepted defeat. I decided that ‘splendid effort’ only meant ‘must try harder’, but I didn’t see how I could. It looked like the end of my charity work.

  Then on that Friday afternoon before Easter, Mary Finch got me all excited again. She said she’d help out by doing some handicrafts – some modelling, maybe? She was a good craftsman, one who didn’t blame her tools, though perhaps that was only natural as her tools were better than mine. I mean her hands. Her hands were far more dextrous, they were positively nifty. She asked, did I have any raffle tickets left? Well of course I did. She said we should make all the prizes have something to do with Easter. We could make cotton-wool bunnies. We could make bonnets. We could make daffodils from crêpe paper and glue and pipe-cleaners.