Pilcrow

by Adam Mars-Jones

  ‘Kit is pretty relaxed about the “Mad Major” routine, m’dear,’ Dad broke in. ‘So he should be, with some of the things he’s done in his time. And do you know, he’s working on his life story for a book? It should make fascinating reading.’

  Mum answered only with a sigh and told him to get out from under her feet. The most consistent strand in all the stories about the Major was his unreliability, and Mum took it for granted that he would be late. She had started issuing ultimatums soon after breakfast on the great day, saying, ‘I hope you don’t expect me to wait lunch for him – we eat at one sharp.’ And then he arrived, soon after eleven o’clock. We could hear the gravel of the drive being displaced by unfamiliar wheels. Peter made to dash out, but Mum restrained him. Dad went out alone. The welcoming committee was a one-man show.

  When the Major came in, I was shocked to see how old he was. He was closer to Granny’s age than Dad’s. I wasn’t old enough myself to understand that someone who had held a pilot’s licence since 1913 couldn’t be any younger than that. I suppose he was in his late sixties. He was tubby, with a face that managed to be flabby and big-chinned at the same time. He was mainly bald. He wore thick glasses. His teeth seemed strange.

  He looked from me to Peter and back again, as if he wasn’t sure which was which. I’ve loved people for less – but the pantomime has to be done exactly right. He passed the test. Finally he fixed on me and said, ‘You must be the son and heir.’

  He turned to Peter and said, ‘And you must be the runner-up.’ There was a gleam around his teeth which was kindness, perhaps. The same gleam flickered in his eyes, behind the lenses which unkindly piggified them. ‘I even think there may be a baby somewhere near.’ This was a joke, since Audrey was just then screaming the house down. ‘I know one of you chaps loves school and the other’s not so sure. That’s you, I fancy?’ he asked, looking over at Peter. ‘I’m shoulder to shoulder with you about that, old man. Hated every minute. Couldn’t wait to get outdoors and into the open. Perhaps you feel the same way?’ Peter was tongue-tied. Mum wasn’t much better, when she came in carrying Audrey. She was at a double disadvantage, trying to quiet a baby and wearing her apron, red-faced from the heat of the kitchen.

  The Major had hardly arrived before he swept Dad off with him to a nearby pub for what he called a ‘sharpener or two’, saying brightly that they’d be back in good time for lunch. This time Peter couldn’t reasonably be restrained from dashing out to see the Major’s car. Unusually, Dad took control of the wheelchair – something normally that happened only on our nature-study expeditions with the Tan-Sad. Otherwise, though, I would have been stranded inside the house, and I enjoyed the rare paternal push.

  The Major’s car was an old-fashioned one with running-boards. He let Peter stand on one of them when he started off, driving very slowly and looking back anxiously to make sure he’d jumped off safely. Peter made a show of falling over and rolling in the dirt, but luckily he did it very unconvincingly, after a clean landing, so the Major and Dad could drive away with clear consciences.

  Nothing had actively gone wrong as yet, but Mum was too far down the path of having a bad time to retrace her steps at short notice. By the time Dad and the Major rolled happily back just before one, she was seething. Dad seemed puzzled by her antagonism, but it was too late for him to be taking Lessons In Mum, though I could have taught him a few. It would certainly have been better tactics on the men’s part to arrive shame-faced and contrite at half-past. There’s nothing a martyr likes less than being ritually installed among the kindling, not tied to the post but grasping it firmly behind her back, and then no one having the common politeness to strike a match.

  Ra Ra Rickerar

  Normally I sat at the head of the table, since that was the only position from which I could follow events without the great effort of turning my head. Mum had decided that Dad should replace me just this once. In other circumstances Dad might have enjoyed this assertion of his theoretical dominance, but even his very moderate sensitivity to atmospheres was sending him danger signals.

  I didn’t mind losing my place, but I didn’t want to miss out socially, and I had made Peter promise to install me in my wheelchair facing directly at the Major. The Major looked up in surprise as Peter trundled me in and lined me up at him like a small piece of artillery, primed ordnance which at this range could easily take his head off. Then he gave me an oddly shy smile, a wavering flag of good nature.

  Mum’s bad mood was clinched by the Major offering to say grace before the meal. ‘We’re not much for grace in this house,’ she said, but the Major paid no attention. He offered to say Chinese grace on this special occasion – ‘maybe the kiddies will like that.’ He winked as he said so, a funny sort of wink. When Dad winked it was only the eyelid that moved, but when the Major winked he screwed up one whole side of his face. Of course he was right. We would love to hear Chinese grace. I adored everything to do with foreign languages, with anything I couldn’t understand, and Peter wasn’t going to be left out, now or ever.

  To prepare himself for the high office of saying grace, the Major grabbed the napkin sitting on his side plate, in its smart Bishop’s Mitre fold, and popped it on top of his shining head. It perched there unsteadily, so that he had to put up a hand to keep it more or less in place. He put his hands together and closed his eyes. We did the same, not really.

  Then the Major moved his wrists apart so that it was only his fingertips touching, and his hands made a strange pyramid-like shape, which Peter copied. Even I had a go. His eyelids trembled as he looked out from under them, at our even more transparent pretence of inward raptness. Then he intoned in a great whisper: ‘RA RA RICKERAR – REE PO NEE – FATTER KITTY WHISKERS – CHITTAPON CHITTAPON – CHINESE CHOO-CHOO!’

  That was Chinese grace. We howled with joy. We made him say it again. It was even better the second time, when we knew what was coming. We made him promise to say it one more time, before pudding. Twice more, please! Please!

  After Chinese grace, we were his creatures absolutely, but Mum’s face was coldly set as she busied herself with the soup ladle. Soup was partly a concession to me, since vegetarian soups didn’t call attention to themselves in a way Mum wouldn’t allow. On the other hand, I had to use a mug to drink it, which drew attention to my difficulties with spoons and liquids. I had offered to do my very best with a bowl, on this more formal occasion, but Mum must have realised that I would make an even less elegant impression methodically flicking celery soup over myself, very little of it reaching my mouth. My presence at table would always entail a certain amount of embarrassment.

  Soup suited the Major perfectly. Before he started eating he removed his false teeth and put them on his side plate, discreetly draping his napkin over them. He can have had no idea what his hostess suffered, watching that square yard of crisp linen being insulted. Mum gazed accusingly at the gleaming fabric, come down in the world so quickly, passing from Bishop’s Mitre to theatrical prop to denture-cosy in a few short minutes.

  After the soup the Major re-installed his teeth, catching my eye as he did so. In fact he brandished them at Peter and me, before he fitted them back inside his face. We were thrilled and delighted, though of course there was some disgust mixed in there too. It certainly made a change from Sunday lunch as it was played out week by week.

  The Major had been doing without a napkin during the soup course, but now he picked it up by one corner and shook it open. He didn’t even look at it, let alone make appreciative comments on Mum’s deftness, the trouble she had taken, or the elegance of the result.

  In theory she should have been able to balance her vulnerabilities. If she was outraged by the Major’s infantile behaviour then she should have cared less about the possibility of me embarrassing her with my soup-mug or other utensils. But a sense of proportion was never really her style, and she experienced no difficulty in multiplying the negative emotions.

  Peter was fascinated by the Major’s denture
s. ‘Did you smash up your teeth in an accident?’ he wanted to know. ‘Did you have a plane crash?’

  ‘Well, yes and no, young Peter. I did smash up my teeth against the control panel of a plane, yes. I didn’t crash the plane, though. It crashed all by itself.’

  ‘Wasn’t there anybody flying the plane?’

  ‘Not really, no. It’s rather a long story …’

  It was one we had to hear, of course. It turned out that the Major had been suffering rather badly from ’flu on the day of an air display. He hadn’t wanted to disappoint the spectators. He didn’t want to be a wash-out – and then he had simply passed out in the middle of a stunt. It was as simple as that. So the plane had crashed, but he hadn’t crashed it. He had an alibi, being unconscious at the time.

  The crash was no sort of reflection on the Major’s flying abilities, apparently. He hadn’t lost control of a plane, after all, he had only lost control of that other tricky piece of apparatus, Major Kit Draper, and his unreliable consciousness. It wasn’t so much a crash as a faint in a plane, when he had happened to be at the controls. It didn’t make him a duffer. A man could stand up and look himself in the face after a smash-up like that. Once he had healed up enough to walk about, of course.

  To the civilians in his audience, this sounded rather an odd account of falling out of the sky, with so much emphasis on his unspotted record as a professional airman. Still, Dad was nodding sympathetically along, whether out of Services solidarity or because this really is the way pilots think.

  Married to the skies

  It’s possible that Mum had made a huge moral effort at the beginning of the day, and had decided to give the Major the benefit of the doubt. Even if she had started out with an open mind, though, it would have snapped shut as sharply as her powder compact any number of times during the meal.

  The Major did his best. When Mum brought the main course into the dining room, roast lamb, he had a compliment ready. Women at the time were known to live for compliments. Unfortunately the Major was a ‘man’s man’ without much talent in that line.

  He said, ‘That looks absolutely delicious, Mrs Cromer, Laura I should say –’ And then his face went waggish, ‘– though to judge by your waistline, you won’t be eating much of it yourself.’ There was a slightly uncomfortable silence. He had said something a little too true, when we were expecting soft soap and flannel. Mum was always forgetting to eat. There was a stark contrast between the way she plied us with food and the amount she took in herself, and she was beginning to look too thin for her own good.

  During the main course (while I ate my vegetables) Peter asked our guest if there was a Mrs Mad – ‘I mean a Mrs Major,’ he added, rather embarrassed.

  The Major said, ‘Oh, I’m married all right – have been for years. Absolutely devoted.’ Dad looked distinctly startled by this information. The English eyebrow is a peerless instrument for conveying extreme states of mind. Then the Major went on, ‘The only thing is, I’m married to the skies! As a matter of fact, this book I’m writing, that’s what it’s going to be called. Married to the Skies. It has a good ring, don’t you think?’ Mum gave a little snort, disguised as a momentary difficulty with chewing. It was clearly her feeling that the skies were welcome to the Major. Who else would have him?

  While Mum was clearing away our plates and preparing to bring in the next course, the Major was unwise enough to mention that his favourite pudding was the rum omelette to which he’d been introduced in Barbados during the Second War, which was served in flames. After that, there was no holding Peter and me. I don’t know which of us started it, but soon Peter was pounding the table with his spoon, and we were both chanting, ‘Burning pudding! Burning pudding!’ We were in an incendiary mood, and Mum’s trusty apple pie didn’t suit our mood.

  The Major didn’t stay long after lunch. He may even have had some dim sense that he had not made a good impression. It’s unlikely that he realised he had blotted his copy-book on every one of its lines. He had sided with Dad and the pub against the sherry Mum had got in for the occasion (special glasses washed and ready). He had sided with her children and hilarity against her and decorum. He had failed to notice the starched compliment of her napery. He had sided with her figure against her food.

  There was nothing he could do to reverse the trend of the meal. If he had brought someone back from the dead after pudding, Mum would have said he was just showing off.

  She was sufficiently aggrieved to vent some of her feelings before the Major left. He was just starting up his car, and Peter was already jumping up and down, hoping for the earlier treat to be repeated. She leaned over his window and said, distinctly, ‘Major Draper, do you mind not offering Peter another ride on your running-boards? We prefer him not to be given treats that John can’t share.’ The Major looked off at an odd downward angle while this chastisement registered, and his crumpled old face wore a baffled frown.

  ‘Quite right too,’ he mumbled, as he slid the car into gear. I thought for a moment he was going to say, ‘Thank you for having me,’ the way we had been taught, even (or especially) when we’d had a very bad time indeed.

  The ban on excitements I couldn’t share was a principle coined for the occasion. If it had been enforced, after all, Peter would have gone very short on treats – but Mum wasn’t above resorting to foul play when the situation called for it.

  Dad must have seen that there were bridges to be mended, or he would hardly have volunteered to help with the washing-up. On this special occasion she washed and he dried. Normally he refused, by saying, ‘M’dear, if you use water of the proper temperature everything dries by itself. Why don’t we wash up turn and turn about?’ And Mum would reply, ‘You forget, Dennis, that I’ve seen the results of your washing-up. I’d rather do it myself and have some confidence in the results.’

  Now he was humble as he rolled up his shirt-sleeves and picked up the tea-towel. The intention may have been to make peace, but as they did the washing-up together they had one of their few actual rows. Normally they shared the house without being together very much. They could both be in the garden at the same time, but each in a separate kingdom, Dad doing a bit of digging while Mum gathered herbs. Dad always had the refuge of the shed and the garage.

  They could go for months without sharing a routine, but now they were locked together for the duration of the chore. Neither of them had the option of quietly moving off or pretending not to hear something. If in the course of conversation Mum chose to give him a good scrape, as if he was a plate encrusted with dirt, there wasn’t very much he could do about it.

  ‘Your friend the Major’, she said, ‘has a bit of a nerve talking about the War, I must say.’ It was true that the Major had referred to global conflict, but only as a backdrop to his activities, not really as a historical event in its own right.

  ‘What do you mean, m’dear? Kit served his country as much as anyone.’

  ‘Everyone knows he was practically a Nazi.’ She pronounced the hated word, as quite a few of her generation did, with a soft ‘z’, to rhyme with a word Dad sometimes used for the lavatory, and which she claimed to find supremely disgusting. The khazi.

  ‘You’ve got Kit all wrong – he was a double agent. He was pretending to sell aviation secrets to the Nazis but it was all above board. When they approached him he went straight to British Intelligence. It was all given the go-ahead by the head of MI5. Percy Sillitoe. The Top Man.’ That phrase still had a little residual power in our family.

  She said, ‘So why did the Nazis think he’d help them in the first place? Why did they go to him? No smoke without fire. Oh, I remember now. Wasn’t it because the Major had already given lectures saying how wonderful they all were?’

  Dad looked very uncomfortable. He rubbed away at the dish he was drying, looking intently at one spot, as if Mum might have left a speck. ‘That was in peacetime, m’dear. Honest mistake. Can’t hold that sort of thing against a fellow. He was short of cash at the time, an
d they gave him three pounds a lecture. He only did it for the money.’

  His second family

  He must have known he was serving the Major up on a plate, ready for carving. ‘All things considered, Dennis, I’d rather he spoke up for the Nazis because he believed in them. And as for money, some people will always be short of it.’

  Mum herself was thrifty, and would ration her treats or even forfeit them if need be. Dad, though, regarded his pleasures as sacred, and had never been able to limit his consumption of cigarettes. Mum would often tell him he had smoked his way through a whole house. Sometimes she would bounce the comment off me – ‘John, your father has smoked his way …’ Turning a house into smoke was a rather mystical achievement, to my way of thinking, but I had enough sense to realise that Dad wasn’t being praised.

  Now she returned to the attack. ‘I expected your friend the Major to be shabby, Dennis. I make allowances – but that man was actually rather dirty.’

  ‘Don’t be hard on him, m’dear. He’s fallen on hard times – going through rather a bad patch. Perhaps this book of his will change his fortunes.’ This time Mum’s sniff was undisguised.

  So Mum got the last word over the kitchen sink, or at least the last sniff, on the day the Major came. Really the meal could hardly have gone better, from her point of view, unless Dad had dropped one of the best plates while doing the drying-up.

  Yet she didn’t really seem to relish her triumph. Of course, the Major was an impossible friend for any married man. No wife could sincerely enjoy having him as a guest, even a wife more tolerant and secure than Mum. But still he left an uneasy atmosphere behind. I suspect that the wrong thing about the Major from Mum’s point of view wasn’t his supposed treasonable sympathies. It wasn’t as a Nazi that he set the alarm bells ringing but as a bachelor. He didn’t represent the menace of Fascism but the temptation of the single life. Rolling up any time he pleased, disparaging good food, treating folded napkins as if they were no better than fancy hankies. And if the Major was Married to the Skies, then so had Dad been. Mum had tried to come between him and the clouds, and so had I, but it wasn’t at all clear that we had succeeded. We were his second family, and the Raff was still the first.