Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

My dud of a mantra froze in mid-repetition. It had never been a really effective transcendental tool since India — it had developed a slow puncture, but now it just went phut. Prissie Washbourne was shouting through the French windows, ‘Laura? Dennis? Is John all right? I’d like to see him, please.’ She wasn’t shouting out of rudeness, but because the music from Audrey’s room was so loud.

Mum went to the windows to block any possible view into the room, and called out sharply through the French windows, ‘He’s fine,’ adding in an undertone, ‘Though I can’t see that it’s any of your business.’ Perhaps it occurred to her that Prissie might have heard this comment, despite the lowering of her voice. She sang out more sweetly, ‘Prissie dear, why don’t you come to tea tomorrow? Or at the weekend?’ Upstairs, Audrey must have realised that something out of the ordinary was happening. She took the needle off the record at last, and the sudden silence made the adults self-conscious.

Prissie carried it off well, though. Her voice was firm as she said, ‘I’d like to see John now, Laura. I’d like to know what has happened to him. In fact I think I’ll just sit here on the lawn until I’m satisfied he’s all right.’ At this point Dad cantered to the French windows and roared, ‘Go away! You’re not wanted here!’ through the gap. Then he slammed the windows and locked them.

He and Mum bundled me out of the room, charging into my bedroom with the wheelchair, then hauling me roughly out of it and laying me on the bed. They seemed possessed. The arrival of an external threat intensified the sinister impression of teamwork. It didn’t seem right that they were working so smoothly together. It was unprecedented. The soothing deadlock of their marriage had been violently broken, and the combination of drug scandal, sexual delinquency and an interfering neighbour had turned them into pantomime villains.

They actually hissed ‘We’ll deal with you later’, before they rushed back to the sitting room. If the railway track had been any nearer I dare say they would have tied me to it. Perhaps they were saving that for later. I could hear them opening up the French windows again to shout at Prissie. Then the needle returned to its groove upstairs and David Bowie took up his invocations of the starman in the sky all over again.

As I lay on the bed I tried to grasp what was happening, working from first principles. For Prissie to intervene so forcefully she must have grounds for worry. So how long had it been since I had left the house? Prissie wasn’t the hysterical type, and she wasn’t used to seeing me every day. This pointed to a long absence from the world. Had I been indoors being harangued for days on end, while I wrapped myself in the shawl of my drug use and the tatters of my mantra, trying ineffectively to concentrate on the blooming pangs of an amaryllida-ceous plant?

Calligraphy in the sky

It was only then that it occurred to me that I might have been held hostage for quite a few days. This nuance of life in Bourne End might have escaped me, disguised by a madness that had become familiar.

While the shouting continued, ‘Starman’ maintained its monopoly of the turntable, but Audrey came downstairs to find me. If it was Audrey. It seemed not to be wholly Audrey. The girl who had geometrically modified some left-over party cake for my benefit was already somewhat different from the girl I was used to, but the one who came into my room was different again. She was determined and full of purpose. Her purpose was to help me escape. She would help me get to the garage and into the car.

I can’t explain the change in her, except in terms of the song she’d been playing so loudly upstairs. Not the song in itself but the message that rode on those frequencies, the signal below the signal. Ramana Maharshi had exerted himself once again for my benefit. The guru acts with obliquity and tact, and Bhagavan’s miracles in his lifetime were always discreet. They didn’t draw attention to themselves but shaded in with their surroundings. If there was a storm, for instance, and anxious devotees asked when it would stop, Bhagavan didn’t go out and shout down the elements in the style of certain spiritual showmen (such as Sai Baba, a holy man with a streak of ham a mile wide), he would just say, ‘I think it’s clearing up now,’ as anybody might, but those who were waiting to embark on journeys could pick up their luggage with confidence. The magic of the smallest intervention — homœopathy all over again.

The reason for this is actually expressed in the lyric of ‘Starman’: a personage from another dimension would like to meet us but he thinks he’d blow our minds . A very elegant exposition of the guru’s polite use of a screen, a filter to protect us from rays too strong. When he was communicating with me in one of my dark times at Cambridge, the guru had tenderly ventriloquised Kafka. Now, with Audrey as his instrument, he was vibrating in sympathy with the voice of David Bowie, singing from the inmost marrow of the song, the core, where neither writer nor performer had ever been.

I tried to gather my wits. I asked her how long I’d been stuck inside the house, but all she said was ‘Far too long. It’s time we got you out of here.’

Before I could ask her to be more specific (had it been three days? more?), she had picked me up and carried me to the garage. She didn’t look strong, but she managed. The last time I could remember her trying to pick me up was when she was about five. She had gone through a phase of wanting to lift me because she saw Peter doing it (very put out when she was told she was too young). Now she had her moment of heroic porterage — for a few steps, and then our mode of motion became the conjoined stagger-hobble.

It would have been easier for us to take the wheelchair, but Audrey seemed to know exactly what she was doing. It’s more common for the guru to speak through a person than physically to take over, but perhaps that’s what was happening. It’s true that Audrey was soon breathing heavily and making little grunts of effort, but the presence of the guru is also a great strain on the organism that houses it.

I prayed fervently that Mum and Dad would keep on bawling at Prissie, and that she went on answering back. If the showdown played out too quickly they would see that I was gone and intercept me double quick. I thought that Prissie’s earth-mother persistence, once roused, would see me right. Failing that, I prayed that Mum would wail, ‘I’m at my wits’ end’ and rush upstairs. The stair carpet was worn thin by the scuffing of hysterical feet.

Audrey helped me out of the kitchen by the rear door and round the side of the house. There was a side-door there leading to the garage. Of course there were stops along the way for changes of grip. She had to prop me up against the wall while she opened the back door, and again when we came to the garage. One more time when she opened the door of the car. But the moment we were in was so concentrated that everything seemed to happen in a single breath. To me that’s supporting evidence for this being actual intervention — not to minimise Audrey’s bravery and desire to help. Godhead itself is content to take the line of least resistance. Even Sai Baba didn’t make the lightning do calligraphy in the sky or dance in lazy loops. He worked in the grain of the wood.

In normal life Audrey wasn’t afraid of the garage, but she was certainly afraid of the creatures that lived there. Spiders. Never before had she been so blithely indifferent to the presence of arachnid arthropods. Proof positive, as far as I’m concerned, that she wasn’t at the controls. She was growing up fast, but it’s a slow business overcoming phobias or (more likely) becoming more skilled at hiding them, better at coming up with cover stories.