Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

She seemed to be expecting me, though she could have had no notice of my visit. It may be there was a certain amount of social spontaneity in Bourne End, just not at our address. The only neighbour I remember just calling by was Joy Payne, and she was known to be unstable — she had been locked up, she told us, for being too happy as well as not being happy enough. One winter Joy tapped on the window and handed our presents through, not wanting to bother us by ringing the doorbell. Unstable or not, the purity of Joy’s impulses showed everyone else up.

Mrs Adcock was certainly very old, but not decrepit. I couldn’t imagine her young, which I could normally manage, even with Granny. She must have been born old.

At that age I assumed that anyone who was uncertain about God would be in a constant state of terror, particularly as the grave came closer, but she didn’t look frightened. She made coffee for us, Nescafé made with all milk. We made a little small talk about schools and hospitals, and then I did my best to rattle her by saying, ‘I gather you don’t believe in God. What about death?’

‘What about it?’ she said, and now I was the one who was rattled.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘you are rather …’

‘Old?’ she said.

‘Exactly,’ I said, ‘and …’

‘And you think that because I’m old I must be afraid of dying?’

‘Yes!’ I said. ‘That’s it …’

‘Well, so far I’ve asked all your questions for you. Am I expected to answer them as well? I’ve no intention of answering a single question more unless you have the courage to ask me directly. That will be a good lesson for you to learn …’

If I hadn’t cut my teeth on Granny, I would certainly have been shamed into silence. In the end I managed to articulate the question as directed. ‘Aren’t you afraid of death, Mrs Adcock?’

Mrs A looked straight at me. ‘Oh no!’ she said, breaking out into a heart-warming smile. ‘Why should I be? Life without death would be so dull!’

‘But what happens when we die?’

‘We’ll find out when the time comes. Do you really want to know in advance?’

‘Of course.’

‘There’s no “of course” about it. Are you one of those funny people who turns to the end of a book and reads the last page first?’

‘No!’ I said, rather shocked by an idea that had never occurred to me, though of course such criminals exist.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘What’s the difference? If you were reading a really good story book, would you thank me for telling you how it all worked out in the end?’ I saw what she meant. She had a point and more than a point. Uniquely among the adults I knew, she had answered more of my questions than I’d been able to answer of hers.

After that I became a regular caller. Mrs Adcock showed me her portfolios of sketches. She had been quite an artist in her day, earning a living by doing drawings for fashion magazines and clothes catalogues. Sometimes we had coffee, and though sometimes we had tea she never made it in the samovar which she showed me as something she had ‘picked up on her travels’. I wanted her to start a little fire in it.

Mrs Adcock used to set me ‘Fun Homework’. She’d dish out arithmetic sums which looked awful, but the answers would come out as 44444, or maybe your very own telephone number. Seeing something so nice and familiar was my reward for working so hard at the sum. She’d play endless word games with me, and I enjoyed trying to catch her out. If I found a word which Mrs A didn’t know — which wasn’t easy — she was genuinely delighted rather than put out. You’d get a ‘thank you’ and a ‘that’s another one to add to my list’, and even a small present. Peter was still suspicious of her, so he would deliver me and then come back for me at an agreed time. It would take more than a batty old neighbour to make him think homework was fun.

Dumplings from heaven

At one stage my vegetarianism hit something of a crisis, not a lapse of principle but an intensifying of temptation. I had weaned myself with great effort off Mum’s dumplings and gravy, a dish that she made particularly well, but there were times when I came close to backsliding. The smell made my salivary glands turn traitor, drenching my mouth with pleasure in anticipation. Mum told me that if I wanted dumplings and gravy all I had to do was take them onto my plate. There would be no vulgar crowing. Not a word would be said. ‘You know I can’t make vegeteerian dumplings for you, John,’ she said, ‘because the recipe contains suet, which naturally you can’t eat.’ Mrs Adcock urged me to hold firm against the pounce of the inner carnivore.

A few days later a knock came at the front door. Standing in the porch was a boy carrying a plate with a metal canteen cover on it. He said this was a gift from Mrs Adcock and must be eaten straight away. Mum brought it in and set in on the kitchen table in front of me. Even before she raised the lid I could smell a warm wholesome aroma. When she did I could see fluffy dumplings smothered in a thick veg soup, lounging next to something that looked like a chop, but was actually a Granose ‘steak’ out of a tin.

Mum banged a fork down alongside the food and told me that I’d better get on with it. She didn’t repeat her warnings about not eating anything cooked by Mrs A, but her silence was hardly neutral. I hesitated, and then I decided that if there was poison anywhere in this set-up it wasn’t in the food. I took a tentative nibble at a dumpling. There was nothing wrong with it. There was nothing wrong with any of it. This was manna made manifest in farinaceous form, proof of the power of prayer. Dumplings from heaven.

Mum turned her back on me while I ate, and when I had finished she snatched the plate away from me and started scrubbing fiercely at it in the sink. It was as if she wanted to scrape away any molecular trace of Mrs Adcock’s kindness. Then she sent Peter to take it back, with the canteen cover, to where it came from. It was as if she couldn’t bear to have these objects in her house a moment longer than she could help. She sent no message of thanks, though I’m sure Peter was too polite not to deliver one.

Clearly it wasn’t pleasant for her to have a neighbour send me a treat, on a number of levels. To have food delivered into her very kitchen, as if this was Meals on Wheels for a deprived (poor) person. To have an atheist (or agnostic) demonstrate Christian charity, not to mention imaginative sympathy. Mum had no reason to feel grateful for being multiply shown up. Yet on this question the enemies were on the same side. I was too thin for my own good, and something needed to be done about it. Oddly, being underweight only seemed to signify if you were a vegetarian. Mum was a case in point — theoretically an omnivore, but not much of a vore of any sort. A nullivore if anything, or a paucivore at best, depending on the day and her mood.

Isn’t Queen Mary supposed to have given Gandhi a poke in the ribs on the occasion of their meeting, saying he needed to put some meat on his bones? All right, I’m making that up, but I had always been told by those who claimed to know — including the staff at CRX, Flanny and my parents — that those who ate no meat had feeble bodies and feebler brains. Mrs Adcock was proof to the contrary.

This lady who had been a vegetarian since her teens had also worked on magazines and made her own dress designs. She had toured the world in search of textiles, getting as far as China. Her brain fizzed with energy. She loved mathematical puzzles and word games, not only solving them but setting them. She knew every card game that had ever been invented — for heaven’s sake, she was even immune to cyanide, as her wasp-killing technique proved. She had been a conscientious objector in the War, though women had to make quite a fuss about it for their objections to register, since they weren’t expected to fight in the front line anyway. Mrs Adcock was that precious thing, a pacifist who likes a good dust-up.