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.
Palace of laps
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 schooclass="underline" rancid butter for the boys, caviar for the pigs.