Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

I made experiments. I took sugar in large quantities, added lemon juice and a little water and boiled it at the correct temperature, testing attentively with a jam-maker’s sugar thermometer, until everything turned a pale golden colour. All these verbs of action — ‘made’, ‘took’, ‘added’, ‘boiled’ and so on — represent acts of delegation. I was learning that Dad could be smoothly enrolled into a practical project. He was only uncoöperative when dealing with people directly, without working towards something definite.

I warned him that the cooking process would continue for quite a while after turning off the gas, but he thought he knew best and overcooked the syrup, ending up with a great pan of molasses which he stoically ate on his cereal and drank in his coffee until it was finally all gone and he could look forward to breakfast-time again.

Finally we got it right, decanted the syrup into bottles and used it as our stock. The new semi-inverted sugar refracted light ninety degrees the other way. The first batch of wine made with it seemed miraculous. The syrup dissolved sweetly into the must, fermentation was smooth and very fragrant. The esters floated off the oranges and fruits, and we were all in joy. From that point onwards we really got going, gaining in confidence and also in ambition. We made wine from rose petals, from clover, from nettles, from lettuce, from potatoes, from rhubarb.

We were perfectionists who would never dream of using pectin to clear a cloudy wine (it bonds to the starch and sinks out in the lees). Without pectin it was virtually impossible to clear potato or rice wine, but the trick could be managed with parsnip, if you had the knack. I seemed to have the knack.

My memory of family life is of a constant thwarting, yet when I came up with such a project Mum and Dad would help me to carry it out. Perhaps I really did have some sort of hypnotic ascendancy over them in those years. I wish I’d known — I’d have worked them harder. Half of what I have done in life has come from hypnotising other people. The other half from hypnotising myself.

With Dad in particular I got on better when we had something in hand, something to generate the slow rhythms of companionship. The books had all said ‘If you can bear the wait (the hardest part of wine making!) let it mature for two or three years.’ For us that was easy. Making wine was the point, not drinking it. We had so much wine by now that we had to store the surplus flagons in the conservatory-greenhouse-sun lounge, where it roiled in slow motion with the dull excitement of fermentation.

Barbara Broier tried to keep me in the swim with school gossip and school crazes, all the things which tended to pass me by. People wouldn’t go to the trouble of filling me in. I can’t say I missed it. There’s something about leaning over a Tan-Sad (or any other disability conveyance) which is mildly shaming to both parties.

There were riddles which passed round the school like verbal measles. Barbara wanted to be sure I developed immunity like everyone else. So she would say, ‘This is a good one, John. Antony and Cleopatra were lying on the floor surrounded by broken glass and water. How did they die? Let me know if you’d like a clue.’

‘Righto, Barbara. Thanks.’

Then she couldn’t leave me alone. ‘Have you worked it out yet, John?’

‘Not yet. But I’m enjoying not being able to work it out.’

‘Shall I tell you now?’

‘Not yet, if you don’t mind.’ It became obvious that she did mind. The suspense of keeping me in suspense was more than she could bear. She was bursting with it. ‘Tell you what, Barbara. Why don’t you tell me another one? That might make you feel better.’

‘Then can I tell you the answer to the first one?’

‘I suppose so. Is there a time limit? Am I being very stupid?’

‘No, John, it’s not that. Don’t you want to know the answer?’

‘Oh yes, but at the moment I’m enjoying the wait.’

‘You’re impossible. Okay, here’s another one. A man goes into a bar and asks for a glass of water. Instead the bartender produces a gun from behind the counter and points it at him. After a few moments the man says,

“Thank you” and goes out. What’s going on? ’

‘Oh, I like that one. It’s even nicer than Antony and Cleopatra.’

‘Well, which answer do you want first?’

‘At the moment I don’t want either, thanks all the same. I’ve got a lot to think about, what with Antony and Cleopatra and the man in the bar with the glass of water and the gun. Have you noticed, by the way, that there’s water and glass in both puzzles?’

‘No, John, I haven’t noticed and it isn’t important.’ Then she stalked off, saying rather irritably over her shoulder, ‘Let me know if you change your mind.’

I’m not an innocent. I knew exactly how annoying I was being. Of course, negation is the only, rather feeble, form of power available to me, the disadvantage being that I can only use it against people who are actually trying to deal with me, and who might be felt to deserve better. Certainly Barbara Broier deserved better.

Storming the citadel of speech

But there was more to it than that. I wasn’t being insincere, though it was intoxicating to see that everyone, potentially, could be strung along. I did enjoy the puzzles as things in themselves. I was almost ready for some Zen koans.

Try to see your original face, the one you had before your parents gave you birth.

The wind is not moving. The banner is not moving. Your mind is moving.

Does your bean curd lose its flavour on the bedpost overnight?

Eventually Barbara came storming up to me and said, ‘For heaven’s sake, John! Antony and Cleopatra suffocated. They were goldfish! The man in the bar had hiccups — that’s why he wanted the glass of water, to cure them. And the shock of the bartender producing a gun cured them anyway — that’s why he said Thank You!’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I thought it must be something like that.’

‘You mean you worked it out, and you’ve been torturing me all this time?’

‘Not exactly,’ I said, doing my most maddening impersonation of serenity. ‘I just thought it must be something like that.’

The answer to a riddle, like the last chapter of a detective story, is at best a crowning disappointment. The only consolation is to pass the riddle on, so as to relive your disappointment at one remove. Or to read another detective story. In practice everyone agreed with me (once they had heard those riddles’ solutions) that they enjoyed the questions more than the answers, but they seemed to think that sooner or later another riddle would have a satisfying solution, as if there was no general rule involved. As far as I could see, though, questions and answers didn’t have much of an affinity. You could even say they were natural enemies.

Home wine-making was one thing I discovered at Barbara Broier’s house. Another was Victor Borge’s ‘phonetic punctuation’, which the two of us heard one Saturday on Radio 2, as the Light Programme was now called. This was a classic comic routine in which Mr Borge spoke the printer’s marks out loud. We loved it, and started to imitate him. We didn’t have the original to consult (or a recording), and I imagine there was a certain amount of drift between the acoustic representations we heard that one time on the radio, and our own repertoire of homage. Our full stop (I can’t vouch for his) was a popping noise made with the lips, our comma a click of the tongue, our exclamation mark a downward-whistle-and-pop.

This was a party trick well suited to my talents, the tongue being the only muscle in my body that was perfectly obedient. The underlying idea was also vastly appealing, this Peasants’ Revolt of underclass marks, the voiceless ones, socially invisible, storming the citadel of speech.