Jimmy hated television, though the medium didn’t exactly dominate life at Vulcan except on special occasions. The television set was in the old hall near the great fireplace, and viewing hours were restricted. Jimmy would remind me of 10’s bon mot that TV stood for ‘tired vaudeville’, as every single pupil except him rushed through their evening meal on a Thursday, waiting for the word of dismissal which meant we could scurry in all our various styles of locomotion towards the television and Top of the Pops. It was the only time of the week when he made me feel that I tested his patience.
Soft wheat
Jimmy treated me like a grown-up, which was a new feeling. By this time, though, I had some downy hair on my top lip. This was called ‘bum fluff’, which was a lovely idea. I liked to imagine nice curved bottoms planted all over with the same soft wheat.
Shaving seemed an attractive idea, all the same. Lots of the other boys were doing it, and it made sense for me to serve my own apprenticeship in face-scraping. I set out to acquire the proper equipment. One of the achievements of the Raeburn — Willis régime was the provision in the hall of easels on which newspapers were displayed. The papers would be slid under a string running down the centre of the easel, and after that they could be read with minimal assistance from the hands. Those who really couldn’t manage by themselves could always ask someone else to turn the pages. As Raeburn said, ‘Why should the reach of a boy’s mind be held back by the reach of his arms?’
It was on Saturdays that I paid most attention to the press. There were any number of special offers advertised on a Saturday, and I hadn’t lost my taste for retail action-at-a-distance, familiarly known as mail order. I still sent off for the Ellisdons catalogue, though it was no longer so perfectly on my wave-length. I noticed that in these degraded days Ellisdons now offered a reproduction of the Brussels Squirt Boy, whose more usual name is the Manneken Pis.
It was from the Daily Mail one Saturday that I sent off for an electric razor of my own, costing 25/-. I liked the Mail because Dad despised it, just as I treasured my Reader’s Digest annual all the more after he told me its motto should be ‘Let Us Do Your Thinking for You’. There was one article in the annual, called ‘The Eyes which Nothing Can Escape’, about the tracking powers of the Aborigines of Australia, whose title gave me a shiver I now recognise as religious.
Of course, when the electric razor arrived it needed a certain amount of modifying, so that I could actually use it. My arms were at the wrong distance and the wrong angle. The school handyman, who was called Mr Wilby, was rather capricious — sometimes he would do things right away, and sometimes he seemed able to put simple tasks off for months. This was the background to one of the school sayings — Boys will be boys, and Wilby Wilby Wilby. On this occasion he made no difficulties and came up with a satisfactory solution. In fact it was the same solution as the one he devised for my toothbrush. He lashed it on a stick with the help of a bracket, and then I could manage. Then I could reach my face with it. Soon I was shaving my top lip with the best of them.
Special toothbrush, special electric razor. In my case ‘special’ usually turned out to mean ‘on a stick’.
Mischievous time-tabling
It stands to reason that if I could spend enough time with Jimmy to be lent books and (theoretically) prostitutes, then Luke Squires could have made my acquaintance in the same above-board way. If he didn’t, it was because he didn’t want to. He positively preferred the hole-and-corner. The underhand was his element. Perhaps he thought Jimmy’s approach rather pedestrian, and Luke was anything but pedestrian. He flowed past in his unique chair, often only glimpsed from the corner of my eye before he vanished. He had told me that I knew where to find him, but then he took care to make himself a liar by disappearing the moment he was sighted.
Even a chance meeting would take a lot of planning. Everything had to take account of school time-tables, and things grew complex when the boy you wanted to bump into was in a higher class, having his own friends and his own priorities. I couldn’t just knock on a door and arrange a meeting.
Chance did its own mischievous time-tabling, most memorably one morning by the serving hatch where the morning milk or coffee was dealt out. I had needed to pass some urine fifteen minutes before the end of a lesson, and had been given permission to go to the toilet. I went along the corridor to the sliding door in the assembly hall and did what I had to do. I didn’t linger over it, but by the time I had finished there were only seven minutes left of the lesson. When I opened the sliding door of the classroom with my stick, the teacher said there was no point in my coming back in now, disrupting everybody’s concentration just to sit at my desk for those few minutes. I might as well wait in the assembly hall. That’s where I was when I heard the bell, and the rush of wheelchairs preparing to escape from classrooms. Of course the able-bodied boys were first out.
Roger Stott was there in a moment, standing at the counter. Then Luke came gliding along. I’d noticed that he always stood up out of the chair, supporting himself with his arms on the bar counter. He liked the chair to be pushed aside so he could have a chance to stand. He managed very well as long as he could lean against a wall. Roger managed things very diplomatically, ministering to weakness without advertising his strength. He never forced himself on the people he was supposed to help, but stood casually to one side when a boy wanted to emerge from his chair, in place to lend a hand if the boy lost his grip and was in danger of falling over.
So there was Luke, propping up the shelf of the milk bar while we all waited for the hatch to open. Chairs and ABs were piling up behind us. Luke was at the front of the queue, directly in front of me, while Roger, tactful chaperone of the disabled, stood to one side. I looked at Luke’s bottom from the vantage-point of my wheelchair. It looked as if it had been squashed flat by the long hours he had spent sitting. I was overwhelmed by pity for the pressures of its restricted life, and the desire to give it comfort with a good old grope.
It was quite an ambitious project, but not impossible. I knew all the boys in the queue would have their eyes fixed on the hatch, through which came the clatter of preparations and the tempting smell of powdered coffee. Staff members were served their coffee elsewhere. Luckily my wheelchair had automatic brakes, or the attempt at seduction would have had no chance at all. As it was, I could nudge smoothly forward and then lock myself in place. I wasn’t worried about Roger Stott noticing. After the letter-writing scene in the Blue Dorm I knew that he wouldn’t be shocked — he might even get a kick out of helping perverse excitement along. It’s wonderful how quickly, on the right occasion, an innocent vessel can fly the Jolly Roger and the chaperone turn procurer.
Normally a groping hand must have the palm as its main sensor, that being where the nerve-endings are concentrated. The only way I could have brought my palm into contact with Luke’s buttocks was if the Willis — Raeburn Alliance had provided a couch for the purpose in the assembly hall by the serving hatch, on which boys could be installed face down for exploration. This was unlikely, for all Raeburn’s broad-mindedness, and in any case the protruding legs of the waiting boys would block the coffee queue. Besides, where would the challenge be then, the sense of achievement against the odds? Stolen apples not only taste sweeter, they are ravishingly smoother to the touch.
I would rely as usual on the backs of my hands, cast against type as conduits of ecstasy. I didn’t even try to look around to check who might be able to see what — not that my unyielding neck would have helped very much if I had. I was relying on Roger to stand where he would screen us from the idly curious. I murmured sorrowfully, ‘How creased your trousers are, just here on the seat,’ and embarked on a full slow grope along Luke’s bottom. I tried to move the backs of my hands with a sensuous waggle.