Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

Mum’s theory of conversation seemed to be that you could say any number of disobliging things about people as long as the last thing you said was more or less positive, so I wasn’t surprised to hear her start to sign off with ‘Perhaps we should all take a leaf from his book … wouldn’t life be lovely if it all worked like that?’

Then the conversation took a new turn. Mum’s voice became if anything even sweeter, but her hand tightened on the receiver and she stuck her chin out. ‘What’s that? … Oh yes, Malcolm, of course you can … You know John, he’d love it … But promise you’ll say if you get bored? There’s no kindness in humouring him. Shall we say about three? … Perfect! … bye-eee …’

Her obliging manner was a pale shadow of itself by the time the phone was back in its cradle. ‘That was Malcolm Washbourne,’ she said sourly. ‘He says he’s dying to hear all about your experiences in India, and he’s coming over to see you at about three o’clock. How lovely for you.’

The last door-slam

She seemed enormously put off herself. ‘Now, what do you want for lunch? If you can think of a way of getting a meal to cook by itself while you sit on your bottom, please pass it on. I’d be glad to put my feet up myself.’ She went into the kitchen, slamming the door behind her, so that I ached to be back with Mrs Osborne, with her wild-fig dishes and her big dog-battering stick and the scoldings that seemed loving by comparison.

I couldn’t understand why I was being reproached for needing food, while Peter was catered for as a matter of course. He could easily have managed for himself in the kitchen, and would have left enough mess to keep Mum grumbling contentedly for days. I didn’t argue the toss. In theory I could always get the last word, but Mum would always have the last door-slam. Conversational manœuvres, however crushing, will always come second to repartee of that physical sort. The doors in that house must have been sturdy indeed, to survive the years of melodramatic slamming.

Still, I had resources of my own. Mrs Osborne had scared me half to death about the use of aluminium pans in cookery. We were destroying ourselves at every mealtime, as surely as the Roman patricians did with their lead plates and cutlery, poisoning their brains while the plebs ate off wooden plates with their hands. There was a book on the subject: Aluminium: A Menace to Health by Mark Clement.

When I got home, I got hold of a copy (it was published by Thorsons). I must have driven Mum mad by waving it under her nose, and refusing to eat anything ever again that came out of one of those sinister health-destroying pans. As if I wasn’t fussy enough about food, without becoming obsessed about its preparation and accusing her of killing us all under cover of nurture. If she had beaten me about the head with an aluminium pan, screaming, ‘How’s your brain working now? Rotting, is it? Is it?’, any decent lawyer would have got her off with probation, maybe words of praise from the judge.

Peter joined the conspiracy by looking for scratches in the pans Mum used. ‘That shows the bits which came off when she slashes the potatoes with her knife,’ he told me. ‘And we’re all eating them!’ We made her buy a stainless-steel one, though on the Granny principle of balancing the books, albeit with lopsided contributions, I gave a little something towards it — ten shillings. I’ve stuck to my guns, though, and avoided aluminium ever since. If my brain goes bad I won’t hold the kitchen cupboard responsible.

Mum hated it when we ganged up on her. Unfortunately she had a talent for uniting the opposition, and had inherited none of Granny’s flair for playing people off against each other.

After that miraculous phone call I felt a deep thrill of hope within me. I had prayed to God to send reinforcements, and now Malcolm was coming to visit. He was the only one of our neighbours who seemed to enjoy spending time with me, and Mum had never really understood that. I didn’t exactly understand it myself — we weren’t on a wave-length, exactly, we were like two notes at opposite ends of a keyboard, so that you can’t really decide whether they harmonise or clash. But Mum couldn’t believe his interest in me was real, that two such different people could agree on anything. Malcolm worked in advertising, which made his spiritual interests no more than playacting to her way of thinking.

I disagreed. The products Malcolm was called on to sell were dreams in the first place, and the slogans and campaigns he came up with were dreams about dreams. They were Maya squared, Maya rampant and in spades. Dreams were his medium and his currency, so it followed that reality must be his consolation. He must find the square root of Maya in meditation, where objects, symbols, words and ideas dissolve impartially, leaving a light that has no source and casts no shadow.

I was benefiting from the resumption of my meditation practice, now that I was no longer trying to light my little match in the up-draught of a huge conflagration.

Malcolm and I would talk for hours, on subjects literary and metaphysical. Malcolm always said we were ‘crackajolking away like a hearse on fire’, a splendid phrase he had picked up from Finnegans Wake . Like most people (not just advertising men, those great experts at making a little go a long way) he had probably read only one page, but he’d found himself a good one. I hadn’t so much as looked at the book, and when I did I was disappointed to find nothing that fell under my eyes matching up to the sample.

Malcolm enjoyed banter and teasing. In fact I think he positively enjoyed being told what a hopeless case of materialism he was. I dare say the actual cultivation of his spirituality came second, though he had read almost as many of the relevant books — or book-jackets — as I had and kept up pretty well.

It was high time for some spiritual work. The hearse might be on fire, but I had a firm grip on the appropriate extinguisher. Truly our astral tongues were hanging out for water to quench the hearse-fire of the Samsara, the action-reaction Ocean of births and deaths. Now that I was fully tanked up with Indian juice, I could provide him with the first cooling drink for months. I would lead us out of the maze of misery and set us on the road to freedom.

Mum bustled about Malcolm when he arrived, exactly as if he was her guest rather than mine, plying him with tea and cakes. Malcolm asked me about what I ate in India, a subject that made Mum roll her eyes, out of his line of sight but well within mine. Shouldn’t it have been the other way round, making him complicit with her exasperation? Mum could never quite get the hang of conspiracies.

I suggested that we go to my room (mine and Peter’s) and try to meditate. Malcolm was a dab-hand at sitting with his legs crossed, in a sort of informal lotus position, although conditions on the floor weren’t ideal (Mum had insisted on lino rather than carpet for fear of what the wheelchair would track in). I could just about manage a symbolic crossing of the ankles in the wheelchair. After a minute or so even this token position became painful, but I knew from the Maharshi’s example that a dispensation from orthodox posture was spiritually unimportant.

From the perspective of the wheelchair I could see the zone of thinning in Malcolm’s hair, where the scalp showed dimly pink. It was a joy in itself to be looking down rather than up. I felt a rush of privileged piety.

‘I really don’t think I need a mantra,’ Malcolm said. ‘After a week at work my mind goes blank of its own accord.’

The mind stops twitching

‘The mantra is nothing in itself,’ I cooed. ‘But the mind, like the tip of an elephant’s trunk, must always be grasping something. So the mahout gives the elephant a chain to hold and it loses its restlessness. Similarly when provided with a mantra the mind stops twitching.’ I didn’t actually claim to have seen elephants and their keepers in India, but I let it be understood. In fact I had seen elephants only at Whipsnade. In India I had seen nothing larger than water buffalo. Large enough, particularly from my low angle of vision. In worldly terms they were larger than the cow on the mountain. Her immensity was of a different kind.