Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

Lunch was turning out strangely. I had been steered away from the bar on specious grounds, and now Granny’s commanding finger had skimmed over the list of drinks, past the temptations of à la carte and onto the set menu. I didn’t mind the restriction of choice in terms of food — I would be plumping for the omelette as usual — but I was puzzled. What could be the matter with Granny?

I thought I understood. She was well into her seventies, not far from eighty. The mind no longer young, softening behind the steely manner — she had forgotten that I was old enough to drink. And after all, directness was the best policy with Granny. Hadn’t I preached a sermon on that text only a little while ago? I said I’d like to start with a small drink.

There were two swans on the river near the weir. They were so still they could have been cast in wax. Peter had told me about a cookery demonstration he had seen once, at which the teacher had made a swan out of molten sugar in the seconds before it hardened, an object hardly less magical than the real thing. I could see little pieces of wood being sucked toward the miniature waterfall of the weir, but the swans seemed unaffected by the current. They must have been paddling their feet like mad beneath the water in order to stay so still … which was the true swan, the serene upper gliding or the churning below?

Granny watched the frozen swans with me for a minute, then rapped on the table with her knuckle to attract my attention. The smile with which she had greeted me at the Otel was even bigger now. I had experienced some sort of warning twinge when I saw that first smile — surely Granny never normally smiled like that? Now it had grown alarmingly, and I knew it expressed something at odds with welcome.

‘I am so glad you have brought up the subject of alcoholic drink,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I’d become so engrossed in watching the swans that I hardly remembered you were here.

‘No, John. You cannot have a drink. And nor can you on our next visit.

‘You see, on your last visit you ordered a double vodka. Now, ordering a double vodka — a double anything! — is not the way it is done. One does not specify a portion. I myself do not order six ounces of lamb chop and two hundred peas. If there are supplementary questions to be asked, the waiter will address them — that is the whole idea behind their training. The waiter will ask me how I want my chop cooked and I will tell him. Another time, perhaps, you will order a vodka with tonic, and the waiter will give you your choice of measures. That is the civilised time to announce your dipsomaniac preference. Then and not a moment before.

‘Some Grannies would have chastened you at the time, so as to nip the habit in the bud. However it would not have been nice for you to feel humiliation in front of the waiter, and of course Peter was there too, and I have never been one to intimidate …’

The weight of a stolen crumb

Granny’s image faded in front of me and I felt my face going bright red. I hated sodding strong drinks, hated sodding Grannies (and Mums and Dads for knowing better), and I hated sodding Otels like the Compleat Angler. I knew that the real reason she had arranged for Peter not to be there was that he would stand up for me. I wouldn’t have put it past him to push me from the scene, even at the loss of a perfectly cooked steak. But Granny picked her fights with care, and stage-managed the bouts to the moment of knockout. Now she had me where she wanted me.

Twigs and straws went on rushing down the weir, and the swans just continued to be — ser rather than estar , in Spanish terms, inhabiting their essences. My eye drifted down to the sash window near our seat, where there was a gap which delivered a welcome breeze to my overheated cheek. A few ants were scurrying back and forth through it, having found a source of food. They had little bundles on their backs. At that moment I would have given anything to swap places with them, trembling with effort beneath the weight of a stolen crumb. The sound of Granny’s voice came back. She was saying,

‘So I hope, John, that for the remainder of your life you will never again degrade yourself by ordering a double vodka — or a double anything for that matter …’

She was a mind-reader all right. She knew I wanted something from her, even if she didn’t know exactly what it was, so there was no risk of her over-playing her hand. She couldn’t help herself, any more than a spider can ignore a trembling from the web just because it happens to be the birthday of the fly in question.

I decided my only dignified course was passive resistance. I would ignore Granny. I wouldn’t eat and I wouldn’t drink. She would find that her lunch guest today was Gandhi in person instead of her rather crushable grandson. When the waiter came and asked if we were ready to order, I went on contemplating the swans. I would live on air, I would eat less than an ant. Granny chose an omelette on my behalf, seeming quite untroubled by my silence, but the moment we were alone again she said sharply, ‘There is nothing I dislike so much as rudeness to staff. It is always unnecessary.’

When the food arrived she made the traditional little road across her plate, and I made no road of any sort. Granny apologised to the waiter when he collected our plates, saying that I wasn’t feeling well. She said, ‘I hope at least that they don’t make you eat what he has left!’, but this wasn’t one of her regular attendants, and he gave her a puzzled look.

Sitting in the Wrigley, while (on the astral plane) I spun cotton to weave a lungi in true Gandhi style, I reflected that if Granny had in fact been sensible enough to order two ounces of lamb chop and fifty peas then she wouldn’t have wasted so much food, and our waiter would have been spared some enigmatic banter.

Granny’s voice broke in on me. ‘John, I suggest you choose a dessert for yourself, otherwise you can go home immediately. I never imagined you would be so mulish. All I have done is give you a lesson in good manners, which will pay dividends if taken to heart. At the very least you can speak to me. Mostly I enjoy our conversations.’ Too bad, I thought. She who pays the piper calls the tune. When everything she hears has been put on for her benefit then perhaps she will miss the real unrehearsed thing.

A single puddle of beige

Granny ploughed on. ‘A young man should have something to say for himself, and I never thought you would be backward in that regard. You seemed positively eager to join me today, and I hope you are not so far gone that you need the lubricating effects of alcohol before you can chat with a grandmother who has been, I believe, of some use to you in the past.’

‘I’m just not hungry, Granny.’

‘Well, John, to save the appearances I suggest that you order ice cream for dessert. Then if you still don’t want to eat, it will simply melt, making it less obvious to the world at large that you are being childishly fractious. I will be spared other people’s knowledge that I have shared my luncheon with a very uncoöperative relation. I prefer to do without the sympathy of strangers, which has no value.’

Together we watched the ice cream melt. The Compleat Angler happened to be serving Neapolitan ice on that particular day, so the picture on my plate was of layered colours, pink and brown and white, losing their distinctness as their temperature rose to that of the room. I wasn’t sufficiently informed about physical law to know how long it would take, assuming that we both stayed in place to watch, for the stripes to turn into a single puddle of beige.

‘Shortly, John,’ Granny said, ‘I shall be ordering coffee for us both. If you don’t take at least a sip of coffee — and the coffee here is no disgrace to the rest of the menu, whatever your father might think — then there is really nothing left to say. I will be sorry to break off my dealings with you, but I have made hard decisions in the past and stuck by them. It would be a mistake to call my bluff. Stubbornness is bravery of a sort, John, but it is a bravery turned against yourself.’