Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

Audrey slipped me smoothly into the blessed Mini and whispered, ‘Good luck, Godspeed.’ Except it wasn’t going to be quite as simple as that. I had to break it to her that I didn’t have the car keys. They would be on the hall table, where Mum put them in her periodic fits of confiscation.

The car keys were one of our little battlegrounds, cause of many a tussle. I liked to leave them in the ignition of the Mini in the unlocked garage, but she was all against it. I reminded her that she was always saying that one of the reasons we had moved to the Abbotsbrook Estate was that it was safe from thieves — unlike the long-ago married quarters they had lived in when I was a baby, where her wedding-ring had been stolen from the sink where she had been doing the washing-up when she looked in on me for five seconds to make sure I was all right …

Mum said that leaving the keys in the car was asking for trouble, but how was it any riskier than Peter and me sleeping with the door open? Not that I said so, for fear that she would act against that privilege also, in the name of consistency.

So the hall table was where the keys would be, and Audrey must go back for them. She swallowed once or twice at that, but she was still game and guru-guided. For the two short minutes she was away, I tried the worn-out syllables of Om Mane Padme Om one more time, but they did nothing to slow my racing heartbeat. My mantra was like a tyre worn smooth. It had no grip. Really, I would have done just as well with ‘Starman’, or indeed ‘When You Wish upon a Star’.

Contrary to Dad’s precept in his guise as my driving instructor, I hadn’t backed the Mini in. I had been lazy and would have to take the consequences. I was facing the rear wall of the garage. I would have to back my way out. This would be a type of manœuvre that doesn’t feature in any driving test that I know of — the emergency start.

Audrey was frankly panting when she came back from the house. She’d been running. She thrust the keys into my hands. ‘Hurry up,’ she wailed. ‘They saw me. Go! Go now! They’re going mad in there …’ I had the sense that things had returned to normal. The divine whisper had said what it had to say, and we were on our own now. At any moment Audrey’s eyes might slide towards the dark corners of the garage and she would start to hug herself nervously.

That was when we heard the gravel smartly crunching, and Dad closed the garage door. I could see his sports jacket in the mirror of the Mini, the triangle of neat hanky in his breast pocket, before the daylight was cut off. Of course it hadn’t been very bright inside the garage before, but the sudden darkness made Audrey whimper. I started the engine, blessing the general reliability of Maestro Issigoni’s economical masterpiece, and switched on the headlights. Audrey wasn’t comforted by the brightness. It made her cower in a corner of the garage. The divine wind which had filled her sails had well and truly blown itself out. I shouted ‘WATCH YOURSELVES OUTSIDE!’ as loud as I could over the sound of the engine and waited five seconds, as timed by two breakneck Om-Mane-Padme-Oms, so that Mum and Dad at least had time to act on the warning. Then I found reverse and backed out of the garage.

Warmed his astral cockles

I didn’t smash the doors open, but of course ‘John nudged the garage doors open at quite a speed’ has as little prospect of finding an ecological niche in family history as ‘John nearly scorched the greenhouse.’ John smashed, John burned — that’s the official version.

I admit that the doors swung open pretty briskly. I was far more afraid of losing momentum than of doing damage to fixtures and fittings. The doors swung open as far as the hinges allowed then rebounded. As they closed again, they feebly retaliated for the initial impact by scraping the sides of the Mini. Between the first and second impacts I had a glimpse in the mirror of Mum and Dad reeling backwards. Rage was still ruling Dad’s facial muscles, but Mum’s expression held a sort of agony of worry. It was too late to build on that.

I had always coveted the ability to slam a door at the climax of an argument, and now I had my wish. It’s true I slammed the garage doors open rather than shut, but that’s a technicality. It was well worth waiting for. The noise was marvellous.

In the exhilaration of the moment, the terrible longed-for moment of breaking with my family, I did the finest three-point turn of my driving career. It was textbook. It would have cheered the shade of John Griffiths himself, patron saint of the disabled driver. Not the ghost of a graze on the garden gate or posts. It would have warmed his astral cockles.

As I turned the car I could see Audrey slinking out of the garage and back to the house. Mum and Dad kept pace with the Mini but didn’t get too close, as if they were trying to herd some unfamiliar beast back to its cage, not sure whether it would actually charge them. As I came round the side of the house I saw that Prissie was still sitting on the lawn. She stood up and brushed the grass stems off herself, smiling at me incredulously. I stopped the car by her. The passenger door wasn’t properly closed, so I was able to push it open with my stick. As I did so I barked, yes I barked a magnificent cliché out of the window. I had earned it. I for whom drawing the curtains in the morning was quite an enterprise had taken part in a scene of action. There had been shouting, threats, divine intervention and a getaway car. I had also, whether or not Dad noticed, performed a driving manœuvre that would have met his highest standards.

I barked: ‘Let’s get out of this madhouse, Prissie!’ No guru was needed to give the script any polishing at that point. Of course Prissie lived only down the road, she came on foot and could have left the same way, but she scrambled in, sitting awkwardly on my cane and gleefully shouting ‘ Fuck , what fun!’, and we were off.

I’d have had a go at spinning my wheels and giving the gravel a good scatter if I hadn’t been afraid of spoiling our exit by stalling or running the Mini into a wall.

Suddenly Prissie said, ‘Stop, John! Stop the car!’

‘I’m not going back there, Prissie,’ I said grimly.

‘Of course you’re not. Better stop now, all the same.’

Turning round to observe the Cromers frozen in their tableau of conflict, she had seen Audrey running after us, pushing the wheelchair. Clever girl! I wouldn’t have managed very well with that particular hostage left in enemy hands.

I don’t have enough experience of intensely dramatic scenes to know if anti-climax always comes along for the ride. Perhaps Mum shared my feeling, and did what she could with the modest resources at her disposal to keep the emotional temperature high. She threw one of her shoes at us. I’m not sure if it had slipped off her foot or if she had taken it off expressly. It was one of those funny summer shoes with rope soles. Mum had displaced all her griefs and furies onto the flinging of an espadrille. In my memory of that afternoon it bears the perfume of solar amber as it describes its modest arc from Mum’s infuriated hand, the Ambre Solaire sun-cream she rubbed into herself while she basked in the filtered sunshine of the conservatory.

When Audrey had caught up with us, I said to Prissie, ‘Can’t we take her with us?’

‘Not unless you want to see me in jail.’ I knew she was right, but it was important that she said it out loud. I wanted Audrey to understand that my hands were tied. I couldn’t return the favour of rescue.

Prissie got out and loaded the chair in the boot, leaving us to say our goodbyes. I might not see Audrey again until she came of age and could make her own decisions. When there’s a decade’s worth of age-gap between siblings, conversation doesn’t often run smoothly. She looked now like a tired and frightened child. I wondered how much she remembered of what had gone on in the last fifteen minutes, hoping that there would be some balm left behind by the guru when he departed. It wouldn’t be fair if she suffered after-shocks of intervention.