Pilcrow Read Free Page A

could see the undigested berries shining in what I had thrown up. My vomit was more truthful than my story.
    After that I ignored Peterkin, pretending I couldn’t see or hear him. I made him cry. He didn’t like being reminded he was imaginary .
    Of course Peterkin wasn’t really my imaginary friend, he was my little brother Peter. Peter on his birth certificate, Peterkin to the family (I think the diminutive comes from Treasure Island ). I was told I should love him. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want a brother at all, I wanted a friend who could run and maybe fly. Instead there was this dull bundle who spent most of his time on the floor even after he had learned to stand. Perhaps it was my job to teach him to fly. I helped him up onto a chair in the kitchen and told him he could do it, but he had to wait until I had counted to ten before he took off. Then I went into the garden, still counting. There was no sense in being too near the scene of the spell if the magic didn’t work after all.
    When Dad came in from his work, he would turn his hand into a flat blade and use it to deliver a soft chop to his forehead. He did this to Mum, he did it to me, sometimes he even did it to Peterkin. It was called a salute, and other people’s daddies didn’t do that. My daddy flied for the King. My daddy was a Squadron Leader. Mum made a smile with her lips while I saluted back.
    We were allowed to roam pretty freely. I said to Peterkin, ‘I know exactly how to get on the runway where Daddy keeps his plane. I’ll take you there if you like.’ Then there they were, all the flying men. From the start I liked uniforms always. The men stamped together and saluted. ‘That’s all for us, you see,’ I explained. ‘This man is coming to see us. He wants to know if we liked it.’
    Of course when he came closer I saw that it was Dad, and all he wanted to know was what the hell we thought we were up to. He was jolly cross.

To feel myself being washed away
     
    It was Mum’s choice to call me John, but Dad was delegated to choose my middle name, as a consolation prize. Originally I was going to be John Draper Cromer, after one of Dad’s Air Force heroes, Kit Draper, but Mum dug her heels in. She hadn’t met him, but she certainly didn’t like what she had heard about him. Yes, he’d served in the War – yes, all right, both wars – but he wasn’t what you could call a war hero, was he? He kept wrecking planes. He was a show-off and a liability, if not worse – some said he had been lucky not to be tried as a traitor and a spy. Dad said that was all nonsense and drivel, but she insisted on his second choice instead, and so I became John Wallis Cromer. After Barnes Wallis, of the Dam Busters and the bouncing bomb.
    Somewhere in Dad’s papers I expect there’s a list of possible names for his first-born, written in small caps:
    JOHN DRAPER CROMER.
JOHN BARNES CROMER.
JOHN TRENCHARD CROMER.
JOHN BADER CROMER.
JOHN CHESHIRE CROMER.
JOHN GIBSON CROMER.
     
    As if he imagined them looking well on a war memorial, if it came to that. Of course the War still cast its shadow, over him and over everyone. There was rationing still. ‘Cheshire’ would have been for Leonard Cheshire, war hero and witness of the bombing of Nagasaki, ‘Gibson’ for Guy Gibson, who led the raid on the Ruhr when the bouncing bombs were dropped.
    The earliest pattern of sound I can remember is Mum saying ‘ Dou-asíss – Dou-asÍSS! ’ I didn’t know what it meant at first, but she always made that sound in the same set of circumstances.
    Sometimes it sounded like ‘ Móndou-asíss ’. Some sounds were fuzzy and others were clear. Some were said so quickly I missed them all together. There was almost certainly a little ‘k’ before the soothing, pleading phrase, but I have no memory of it. Dou-asíss was familiar and friendly, and sometimes Mum stretched out the final ‘s’ for onomatopœic ages. Siss was Mum’s word for doing a wee. We were