Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

Then I realised that I had been given a cue, the same cue as hers, and from the same benign source. Ramana Maharshi’s influence persisted like the Cheshire Cat’s discarnate smile. This was the twinkle without the guru, the starman remotely beaming.

‘Let the children use it …’ I said gently. ‘Let the children lose it …’

I waited for her to finish the refrain. Her eyes went very wide, so that she seemed to be regressing after so much precocious growing-up. ‘Let … all the children boogie?’ she said at last, with an upward intonation, as if after all those listenings she still wasn’t sure of the words.

If Prissie had second thoughts about being the catalyst of my freedom, she didn’t admit it on the (ridiculously short) drive to her house. I asked, ‘Will Malcolm mind if I stay at your house for a night or two?’

‘Stay as long as you like,’ she said. ‘He’ll be thrilled.’ This hardly seemed possible, though she didn’t seem to be joking. With her I never quite knew. ‘He’s always saying he needs someone to talk to. Listen, John, do you love your mother very much?’

I did my best to be honest. ‘I try not to.’

A suitably plumbed bolt-hole

‘I think that’s sensible. Best to get along without her. She doesn’t really want you to have a life of your own.’ It was shocking to hear something like that, something I had come to believe, stated so calmly by someone outside the family. ‘I do feel sorry for Laura,’ Prissie went on, ‘but she doesn’t own you and she shouldn’t try. I’ve learned the hard way with the twins — your children are not your children , and all that — they are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself . Kahlil Gibran, you know. Preachy stuff and no mistake, but Malcolm adores it. So be warned. If you get him started on the glories of The Prophet I’ll phone Laura to come and pick you up. Understood?’

I thought I could abide by this condition of residence. When we got in, Prissie couldn’t wait to get unshod. She had been wearing stout walking shoes which looked particularly wrong on someone almost caricaturally free-spirited. I imagine she had chosen them as much to cope with the formality of confrontation as for the discomfort of gravel.

The twins Joss and Alex, now twelve, had been farmed out in France, spending the summer in France to improve their language skills, so there was room to spare chez Washbourne. In her own way Prissie seemed to share Dad’s idea of the importance of pushing chicks out of the nest, though she made sure that they had a parachute of money and some useful addresses.

Chez Washbourne was relatively similar to Trees, though the downstairs facilities only ran to a lavatory, not a bathroom. Granny had missed a trick by omitting to fund an extension at a neighbour’s house, so as to provide me with a suitably plumbed bolt-hole in case of family crisis.

Malcolm came home from work on his usual train to find a houseguest installed, a house-guest who was both easy and difficult. Easy in himself (let’s hope), difficult by virtue of his needs. Without the bum-snorkel the lavatory would be a bit of a challenge. I decided to go easy on the Washbournes’ food, at least until my indispensable utensil had been restored to me. I envy the hauteur of cats at stool, the way they dissociate themselves so successfully from basic acts. By that reckoning my experience is canine. With me it’s all shameful straining, wagging my tail and hoping to be forgiven for being such a dirty dog. I would also need to be helped upstairs every now and then to bathe unless I was to smell like a young goat.

Prissie hadn’t bothered to alert her husband by phone of the dramatic changes in Cromer family life. ‘Malcolm, darling,’ she said, ‘Laura and Dennis have completely lost their senses. There was nothing else I could do. They’ve always been, shall we say, remarkably uptight , but this time they were downright crazed.’ That was as close as she got to explaining herself to the man of the house. He took it completely in his stride. I thought this rather splendid, coming as I did from a household where Mum forgetting to warm the plates before a meal could cast a pall that might not lift for days, even if no word of reproach was uttered.

The rest of the conversation was equally off-hand.

Malcolm: ‘Is there a chance of their coming to their senses any time in the foreseeable future?’

Prissie: ‘Not really.’

Malcolm: ‘That’s all right, then.’

I thought that was splendid too.

My full-blooded participation in a family showdown (once I’d actually worked out that I was being held against my will) came at a certain price. My shoulder froze after all that driving out of garages and down driveways, that adrenalin-boosted three-point turn. I would have been happy to be excused driving for a few days while my shoulder loosened up, but I was determined not to cut a helpless figure in this new household. The Washbournes for their part were anxious to reassure me I wasn’t being a burden, so there were all sorts of errands cheerfully suggested and accepted that both parties could happily, I dare say, have done without.

I was in pain and I was separated from my supplies of Fortral. It would be exaggerating to say that I was in withdrawal, but I certainly missed my pharmaceutical crutch, the crutch that formed a sturdy enough tripod with my actual crutch and cane.

Prissie treated the whole situation as an adventure and a joke. She looked out some paper knickers for me, which she’d bought for a holiday in Greece to save the trouble of laundry, though Malcolm in a rare assertive moment had refused to wear them. Sniffing a pair, she claimed that they had absorbed the aroma of olives, even a distant whiff of retsina.

I couldn’t expect to go on with my dissolute Cambridge ways, doing without socks and underpants, while I was a guest in someone’s home, but my heart sank at the prospect of those disposables, with their thin thread of elastic and doubtful absorbency. Still, I had company. Prissie insisted that Malcolm wear the paper pants too — this was her revenge for his lack of coöperation on the Greek holiday. If they were good enough for me, she said, they were certainly good enough for him, and this time he didn’t put up a fight.

By now I had given an account of the row over the contents of my shoulder-bag, feeling that those who were offering me sanctuary had a right to know the crimes of which I stood accused.

Prissie said, ‘Malcolm can go up to Soho at the weekend and pick up some queer filth for you. You can wait that long, can’t you, John? But he’s not normally a very inspired shopper. Best to give him an exact title, or else give him a general subject area and sort through his haul later on. As for the cannabis, we’re very moderate users here. A few puffs every month or so. I’m sorry we’re so unadventurous. Tell us what you need and we’ll try to get it.’

I could never quite make up my mind whether she was telling the simple truth, cracking jokes or engaged on some sort of double bluff. No more was said about Malcolm’s proposed Soho pornography trawl, and nothing was smoked in my presence that would have shocked the author of Gardening for Adventure . The household’s actual level of taboo-breaking was low. Malcolm’s bookmark seemed stuck in the early pages of Last Exit To Brooklyn , a landmark work, an earthquake of the mind guaranteed to shock and horrify, but not necessarily to hold the attention.

The next morning a letter arrived for me, in the early hours, with the words BY HAND written on the envelope. It’s a phrase that has always puzzled me. Could people not have worked out by themselves that an unstamped envelope had not been delivered by the postman? And doesn’t the postman deliver by hand too?