Once on the bus I yelled desperately, ‘Oh no! I’ve dropped my sixpence!’ A St Paul’s boy called Gordon, of whom I was particularly fond, went down on his hands and knees to search for it down on the dirty floor of the bus, saying sweetly, ‘Don’t worry, John, it’s not going to get away! If you dropped it we’ll find it.’ The search seemed to go on and on all the same, until at last he said, ‘John — I’ve found it! It was right here at the back!’
Which it couldn’t have been, really, since I didn’t have sixpence in the first place. That was the whole point of making such a fuss, to turn the big heart of this lovely boy into my own private mint for sixpences. Best to use it just the once, though, and not wear it out.
When the pool was finally dug, the next mighty project began: filling it, using two garden hoses. It took about a week. The water supply was a cause of friction with the village at the best of times. The water tower was only a few hundred yards away from the school, and looked pretty against a background of woods, but the pumps laboured to raise water up to the tanks in the Castle. The school learned to be a good neighbour, and not to starve surrounding areas of their water supply.
For disabled swimmers a cold pool was never going to be much good. It would be virtually useless outside high summer. Once I was near the pool and overheard a conversation between Miss Willis and a workman about how much topping-up the pool was needing. Evaporation was a problem, and the solution Marion favoured was building a huge greenhouse over the pool. Up to that point I had been more or less indifferent to the pool, though most of the other boys got excited, at least when the bulldozer arrived. But now I began to thrill to the possibilities. In a greenhouse of that size I could go to town planting African and Australian sundews, and maybe even some Nepenthes. The pitcher plant which Ben Nevin had hacked for me out of the living ice of his rugged homeland was doing well, but I knew that many carnivorous plants need pampering.
In the end Uncle Mac persuaded some friends to pay for roofing over the pool and the installation of proper heating. Even before that he was firmly ensconced in the pantheon of the school. Although radios were strictly forbidden in the dining room, an exception was made for Children’s Favourites, or any other programme on which the universal uncle appeared. I was just getting to the stage of being ashamed to admit that I still liked some of the songs he played on his programme.
I think the swimming pool was a bit of a disappointment, all the same, even when it was properly heated. The successes of Backstroke Babs from the Judy weren’t easy to reproduce. Disabled boys might experience much less difficulty with movement in the water, but they weren’t going to win any prizes in competition against the able-bodied. ‘Backstroke Babs’ turned out to be a fairy tale after all. It was a likeable variation on the Little Mermaid, in which Babs struck a reasonably shrewd bargain, moderate helplessness on land but getting to show off with the help of her tail in the pool.
The time and the place
It would have been wonderful if the communications centre in the Vulcan lift-shaft had really worked, delivering mail with a whoosh of compressed air. It would have been the perfect medium for Luke to send me a message about the consummation of our involvement. As it was, it was Roger Stott who handed me a folded slip of paper which read, over the initials L.S., Woodlarks. The time and the place. Luke’s hand-writing was well-formed but sloped backwards. If it was Miss Willis’s idea that backward-sloping script was a sure sign of someone who was afraid of life, then here was the refutation. I can’t help feeling that graphology is a terrible load of old rubbish.
Woodlarks was a special holiday camp to which Vulcan sent boys. I knew that Luke had been there before. Until I got his note, the idea had never held any attraction, but that soon changed. Then I was on fire to go, and pestered Mum and Dad to let me. They must have been puzzled by an enthusiasm that was rather out of character for me, but went along with it happily enough. I can’t remember if they had to contribute financially, or if the school bore the cost. Despite all my pleas, Mum insisted on replacing the Velcro on my trousers. Every time I had a pee I made a noise like ripping sheets, which didn’t seem a particularly favourable omen for a week away in which I was counting on losing what little virginity I had left.
Before Woodlarks, though, I had a date with destiny, or I suppose it was an attempt to head destiny off and buy myself a little time. I was fine with shaving at school. I even enjoyed it. But I had an absolute horror of shaving at home. Even the thought of it made me go red in the face. My electric razor stayed at Vulcan. No question of taking it home.
The only thing I had which gave me a tiny bit of privacy was the Chinese brick I’d been given by the great man Ben Nevin. It was only about four inches by five, and two deep, so of course the secret compartment was much smaller than that. I’d learned where to press to make the compartment open, but I’d had more sense than to show the trick to anyone else — even Peter — or to reveal that there was a trick involved. As far as anyone else was concerned, it was just a wooden brick with some decorative patterns cut on it. Purely ornamental.
Finally one day I got up the courage to go into town on the Wrigley, on my own. I was desperate. I couldn’t bring the box with me. Then I headed for the chemist’s. I think it was called Pedley’s. There were a couple of steps outside the shop, so that was as far as I could get for the time being. I had decided to nobble an old dear, and get her to run my errand for me. You never had to wait long in Bourne End for an old dear.
When an old dear came along, she didn’t make difficulties. I gave her the money and told her what I wanted. I said it was for my mother — though what sort of mother sends such a boy out on such an errand?
While the old dear was in Pedley’s I had second thoughts about her suitability. She had whiskers herself. If that still counted as bum fluff I might give bums a wide berth after all. And what if they took one look at her and gave her Extra Strength Formula?
The old dear came through with the goods, though, and I could nip back home before I met anyone I knew. Even a small tube of Immac wouldn’t quite fit into the internal compartment of the Chinese brick, but if I squashed the bottom of the tube over I could just about jam it into place. As the level of the cream in the tube went down, of course, the compartment could accommodate it more easily.
I think it worked. I think it made a difference. I was lucky that my facial hair was only on my upper lip so far, not on my chin. So that’s what I did in the holidays, while the shaver stayed at school. I used a depilatory ointment to suppress the teenage changes. It was quite a business.
I was at the limit of my mobility. I had to put Immac on my right fore-finger, and then rest my hand on my stick. Then with a combination of leaning-down and pushing-up movement it could just about be made to happen. It was very tricky.
It’s hardly surprising that I was ambivalent about growing up, about becoming a man, because neither I nor anyone round me had the slightest idea of what being a man might mean in my case. But in there with all the queasiness was a certain excitement, a certain anticipation. It wasn’t really me that had the horror of the adult male and his body. It was Mum. I dreaded the changes to come because of their consequences, not for themselves. I felt I had more mileage as Mum’s Little Boy than I ever would as Mum’s Little Man. And Immac kept me on the right side of that barrier for a few extra months.
When I did irrevocably move from one category of life to another, from boy to man, then she too would be evicted from one compartment and forced into another. It may be that terror of her own ageing was what lay underneath that whole painful passage between us. Mum always said that she wouldn’t be able to stand being fifty, though that was still comfortably a decade off.