As a newly acknowledged normal schoolboy, I came into my birthright of laziness. Schoolboys aren’t the most hygiene-minded of creatures. Along with the commode I was the proud possessor of a National Health bum-wiper, an elegant accessory in sculptural terms, a curve of perspex which looked vaguely like a snorkel. I was shown how to use it, but it was a bit of a business and I was happy enough with things as they were.
Mum and Dad, reluctant wipers, weren’t so happy. This was an area where they were united for once in wanting me to grow up, though normally Mum fought to hold on to her privileges. Meanwhile I dragged my heels. Re-learning something is very different from learning it the first time. There’s no glamour, is there? I knew I could do it, I’d done it well enough before I was ill, so there wasn’t a lot of incentive. I’d get round to it sooner or later. In terms of potty-training I was in a state of arrested development, in no great hurry to manage things on my own. This was a time when my personality was made up of plates of artificial maturity and babyishness which were always shearing unstably past each other. This too made me a normal schoolboy.
Advertising homunculus
It was the swimming teacher at Burnham, Mr Marshall, who opened my eyes. He didn’t scold, he couldn’t have been nicer, but I got the message loud and clear. There was no actual provision for disabled swimming, no extra help assigned. Somebody was going to be neglected, either me or the rest of the class, and for once it was going to be the others. Mr Marshall devoted almost all of his time to me, giving everyone else the dregs of his attention. I’m surprised nobody decided to drown out of pique.
My swimming lesson was really hydrotherapy rather than actual instruction, gentle supported movement in water. It would have taken all the buoyancy aids on hand to counteract the heaviness of my bones (I would have looked like a little Michelin Man, the advertising homunculus composed of tyres) if Mr Marshall had withdrawn his helping hand.
He even dressed and undressed me, and that’s how they came to light, the shameful stains that go by the jaunty name of skid-marks. Skid-marks, yes, if you must — but I hadn’t been the one at the wheel. So much for Mum’s high standards. So much for once-a-nurse-always-a-nurse.
I was struck by a thunderbolt of shame, there in the changing-room. I was about to explain that I didn’t wipe myself, but I stopped myself in time. There’s only so much of an alibi you can claim when your bum is the guilty party. Admitting that someone else did the dirty work at home would make me seem even less of a grown-up than doing the job, badly, myself.
So belatedly I got to grips with the instrument provided by a grateful Government. It wasn’t a picnic — the bum-wiper was a bit of a bugger to use. There was a slit in the perspex into which I was supposed to tuck a length of toilet paper. Then in theory I would pass the snorkel back between my legs, where my arms don’t reach, and dab away hopefully at my mucky bottom. With a little paper-folding (though origami was never really my sport) it was even possible to make several wipes with a single length of bog roll. I should make clear that by ‘single length’ I don’t mean a single rectangle between perforations. I’m not a magician! I needed six — four at a pinch.
The whole system was pretty unsatisfactory and first results not impressive. How to put it? The sensitivity of my anal region was more highly developed than the agility of the hands which wielded the tool. I felt sore afterwards but even so I wasn’t sure of being clean. If you don’t know for a fact that you’re clean, then you can only suspect you’re dirty.
Gradually I acquired a competence and then an expertise. Even before my performance on the instrument improved, I began to see the virtue of the independence I had so stoutly resisted.
It was wonderful, a fundamental liberty. I had been given the title deeds to my anal zone at last. From now on I didn’t have to delegate the upkeep. I had the freehold, full ownership and full responsibility.
In illustrations of fairy stories the wandering hero, such as Dick Whittington, is always shown with his possessions wrapped up in a hanky (always spotted red and white, for some reason) tied to a stick across his shoulder, striding confidently into the future. I’ve never felt quite like that, but in my mental image the stick is my perspex bum-wiper, and of course the knotted hanky contains a supply of lavatory paper. O for a commode on the open road, and a star to steer her by!
Any fantasy of being the owner-occupier of this body, though, kept running into snags and obstacles. I was still reliant on third parties for a lot of the fetching and carrying, the basic maintenance on fixtures and fittings.
For the first year at Burnham I travelled to school by taxi. The cost was borne by the Department of Education, and the driver was always the same. My personal chauffeur, and my personal porter as well, since he lifted me in and out of the taxi. He hardly spoke, and he had the radio on in the cab all the time. I doted on him. His name was Broyan — Brian, obviously, but Broyan was what he said and how I thought of him. Anything working-class was far more interesting than the tedious world of the middle class. I was enchanted by the little I got to know about Broyan, his hobbies, his phobias, and I passed my enthusiasm on to Peter. We were quite the little cult, obsessively worshipping what we decided represented the wonder of the absolutely ordinary, the real. Broyan hated portion-control butter. ‘I like a bit of butter,’ he would say, ‘but I can’t stand those little bitty bits. It makes me go all shivery just to look at them.’ It was the idea of touching the foil that set off the horrors. He had to get his wife (his wife Joanne) to open them and keep the wrappers out of sight. The idea of Broyan going all shivery made me all shivery too.
To give a deep sheen to metal objects Broyan recommended something called ‘gunmetal blue’. I thought that sounded wonderful, and so did Peter.
Broyan and his wife sometimes went dancing at weekends. He was getting used to the new style of dancing that was being done in Bourne End, so different from what he was used to. ‘Nobody does proper steps, mind,’ he explained. ‘Everybody just shakes.’ He demonstrated in his seat, writhing crazily. ‘They just go roop-ti-toop-ti-toop.’ Roop-ti-toop-ti-toop. I couldn’t wait to pass that on.
If Broyan wasn’t really much of a talker, at least he whistled along with songs on the radio, not pushing his lips forward but producing the sound between his teeth in a way that seemed wonderfully earthy. I tried to do the same, practising around the house while Mum rolled her eyes and sighed.
Beta-adrenergic stimulation
My feeling for Broyan wasn’t really a romantic thing. I suppose he was the first person that had ever been served up to me on a plate, day after day, in conditions of neutral intimacy. My heart was involved elsewhere, heavily mortgaged. It was yoked to a double star. Paul Savage was a lovely person in his own right, a charmer and a tease. He was also a decoy. It was Patrick who was my infatuation. I was head over heels. Patrick was in italics permanently. Nothing he did or said could be neutral or unstressed. There were no roman characters anywhere in my infatuated font.
Did either of them know? I think they knew. I mean, they didn’t know. But they knew. They weren’t looking it right in the face, but they weren’t in the dark either.
And talking of looking things in the face, that was a strange thing … I noticed that I could make Patrick blush, but not Paul. Patrick’s conscious brain might not have been in on it, but his sympathetic nervous system knew all about my feelings. The facial vein supplying the small blood vessels in the face is very susceptible to beta-adrenergic stimulation. Adolescence is the heyday of blushing, and localised blood volume tells no lies. Every blush is a confession of some little shame, written in the heart’s blood.