I took a lot of trouble over the letter I wrote. I found out that the German for ‘disabled’ was behindert. I can’t say I liked the look of the word — the associations of being hindered and behindhand were too raw, somehow, in an unfamiliar language. I persisted with it, though, and told Waltraut among many other chatty things that I was studying at a Schule für Behinderte Jungen. And of course I needn’t have worried about niceties of language. Pen-friends aren’t bothered by little things like that. The message got across perfectly, and she didn’t write back.
So I made my decision. One afternoon I took the Everest & Jennings out into the woods. I would lie down and fade away into the forest din. I left the wheelchair and managed a controlled fall, holding on to branches while I lowered myself to the ground. Then I rolled away from the chair into some leaves. That was actually hard work, even with the help of a slope. There I waited to die, or be discovered by a passing woodsman who would bring me up as his own. I wouldn’t be missed — and I certainly wouldn’t miss any of that lot.
In another part of my mind, I knew perfectly well that I would be missed. The dorm after lights-out would be hushed, if not out of respect then out of an inability to manage without me. Nobody else knew how to cook up such treats of story-telling. Nobody else had the nerve to tackle ladies’ parts, or the virtuosity to play both sides of a fight or a love scene. Did they think fingers got up botties in the heat of the moment all by themselves? They’d soon discover otherwise. There was an art to it.
After about two hours, I heard voices calling my name, gradually coming closer. When I heard a familiar voice shouting, ‘Oh my good Lord!’ I decided to live after all. I closed my eyes. It was Biggie, bustling fit to burst. The doctor was called — he gravely prescribed bed rest. Bed rest my old friend, but with a difference. There was a big pile of DC comics like Superman and Eerie that I could read while my schoolmates studied.
I enjoyed the privilege more than the content of the comics. My favourite publication was still Judy, my favourite serial (and character) ‘Backstroke Babs’. It didn’t excite adverse comment at Vulcan that a thirteen-year-old boy should read a girls’ comic, or if it did, the objection was soon neutralised by the sheer excellence of the story, when I was gracious enough to let Judy pass from my exclusive possession. It beat the boys’ comics hollow. The plot was well-constructed, the situations not too repetitious and the psychology a cut above the competition. This was a proper story. It showed real people and their sneaky nasty plans.
Even at home in Bourne End, Judy had a readership. Peter wasn’t expected to be much of a tough lad, and he was attending a Quaker school, but there would still have been social consequences if he had read Judy on the premises. Even at Trees he continued to swear allegiance to the Dandy. Yet while I was devouring a new issue of Judy (leaving ‘Backstroke Babs’ till last, naturally), and he was turning the pages of the Dandy hot off its presses, it was perfectly plain that his heart wasn’t in it. It was all he could do not to ask what was happening to Babs in the latest instalment. Finally I would let him read it for himself, while I cast a patronising eye over the antics in the Dandy.
On dry land Backstroke Babs used a wheelchair, but in the swimming pool she was in her element. She was her school’s strongest swimmer, always turning the tide in competitions and thwarting the plans of those who envied her talents and her popularity, her utter niceness. It’s a little strange that I don’t remember the exact nature of Babs’s disability, considering my unsought connoisseurship in this area of life. Was she paraplegic? She’d have had to be a bloody good swimmer all right, to churn her way past the able-bodied, disregarding the way her legs let her down in the pool. Even if it was polio the set-up was remarkably unlikely. So perhaps I realised that this was consoling fantasy — better not to examine it too closely.
I didn’t lose face in the school after my ‘accident’ in the Vulcan grounds, though I amply deserved to. No one was rude enough to point out that since the tiller had to be lifted off before I could dismount from the E&J, the tableau in the woods could hardly be anything but a planned event.
Nor was ‘suicide’ a possibility. How, exactly, was I supposed to have climbed out of the wheelchair in my self-destructive despair? I had to have help.
Julian Robinson was the obvious candidate. He was very happy to remove the tiller and help me clamber out of the machine. For once I blessed the rigidity his callipers gave. He held me up and we tottered a few feet together, until I could get a grip of the branches and make my controlled fall. We had agreed beforehand that he wouldn’t help me with rolling down the slope unless I really got stuck. Realism was important. It was a matter of pride. The last little bit of effort makes all the difference between slap-dash work and something you can be proud of.
Julian didn’t ask why I wanted to give the impression that I had come to grief in the woods. He was bound by his temperament to join any conspiracy that offered itself. He wasn’t fussy.
Madly propitious
The calliper fiasco had created a certain embarrassment between us, and I still hadn’t satisfied my curiosity about Julian’s private parts. Then only a few weeks later he was served up to me on a plate. Quite suddenly the circumstances were propitious, so madly propitious that nothing could hold me back, and it happened in the unlikely setting of the Blue Dorm. Not only that, but it was with everyone in attendance, everyone taking part in my sexual exploration of the boy whose humiliation I had once engineered in the duel of the chemistry sets.
Roger Stott was sitting on another boy’s bed, helping him stick stamps in an album. There were a couple of boys from another dorm too, paying a visit. There was an atmosphere of great ease and licence. Julian was in his bed writing a letter. His callipers had been stood down for the day. Perhaps they had been cutting into him. He was defended by nothing more daunting than the winceyette of his pyjamas. Suddenly I knew that I must get into bed with him. I called out, ‘Julian! Julian! I bet I can stop you writing that letter.’
He didn’t even raise his eyes from the paper. ‘And how do you imagine you’re going to do that, John?’
‘Well, if my bed was next to yours,’ I said, ‘I’d be in there with you in a moment and I’d find a way to break your concentration!’
‘It wouldn’t make the slightest difference,’ he said, ‘and besides, there’s no way you could get over here.’
‘Oh couldn’t I?’ I said. ‘Just you watch!’
Roger had finished his business with the stamp album, so I signalled him to come over to my bed. I whispered to him that he must carry me over to Julian’s. Without a word he picked me up and carried me over, putting me on the bed right next to Julian — who went right on writing his letter, just as if nothing had happened. I whispered to Roger that I needed to get under the covers.
He pretended to be exasperated, saying, ‘If I do that there’ll be no end to it. Next you’ll be complaining that I haven’t tucked you in properly,’ and I said, ‘Yes of course I will. You’re getting the hang of this.’ Next minute Roger was holding me up in the air again and asking one of the bystanders to pull back Julian’s sheets and blankets to let me in. Julian was doggedly writing his letter and not acknowledging my existence at all. Soon I was tucked up next to him while the other boys at least pretended to carry on with their activities.