Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

I just had to keep my head down and hope that he would bring it off. Mum said, ‘I talked to Dad and he says he’ll ask nicely, but he won’t do any more than that. He says he won’t kowtow.’

Kowtow . Another trigger word, this one with a wartime origin. The Japanese weren’t content with surrender, they demanded this humiliating gesture of submission. Unfortunately Dad’s idea of kowtowing overlapped with many people’s idea of being polite.

On the day of the meeting with Mr Dalal, Mum and I were both very unsettled. Peter suggested taking me for a walk before his shift at the Spade Oak, but I couldn’t imagine leaving the house. I was much more tense than I had ever been waiting for exam results. This felt much more important, far more of a turning point.

What I really wanted to do was wait inside the front door, so I would know his news the moment Dad got home, but Mum wasn’t having that. ‘You’d better give him a moment to catch his breath, John,’ she said, ‘before you pounce.’ We placed ourselves by the kitchen window, straining to read his face as he came up the path.

Then Mum pounced in my place. The moment we heard Dad’s key in the lock she swept out to meet him. I could hear her urgently whispering, but no response from Dad. There are times, of course, when words aren’t necessary and facial expression says it all.

Mum bustled back in and shook her head at me. ‘I’m sorry, John — but you can’t say we didn’t try.’

Dad followed her in, moving as if he was exhausted. He sat down and put his hand over his face. Still he said nothing. ‘For heaven’s sake,’ said Mum, ‘put the boy out of his misery! I’m the one who’ll have to make him feel better — what’s the point of dragging it out?’

When Dad took his hands away from his face, I almost thought that he was hiding a smile. He was good at that. He reached into his pocket, saying, ‘You can’t say I didn’t try,’ and produced a little folder of card. An airline ticket. It was a First Class return, and in the space marked Payment Required it said NO CHARGE.

He had foxed me completely. He had also foxed Mum, who had been led up the garden path by his sombre expression when he came through the front door. She had thought his embassy among the beggars had failed, and she made a creditable job of suppressing the joy she must have felt. I lost sight of her for a minute or two — the lack of flexibility in my neck means I have to wait for faces to present themselves in their own good time. When I saw her expression again it was changed, changed utterly.

I’ve never seen a children’s party struck by lightning, the carbonised cake, the birthday girl twitching in her melted frock, but I think Mum’s face that afternoon was a match for that scene of celebration blasted. She had been lifted for a little moment by my good news, her joy had kept pace with mine, and then she had realised what it meant for her rather than me, and then everything was ash and sizzling hair.

I was flying away, a Peter Pan determined to grow up, leaving Wendy stranded on the ground. I was serving notice of her redundancy as a mother. The one thing that had seemed certain about her life was that I would always need her — never replace her, and certainly never manage without anyone at all.

She reached over to the Air India ticket in its little folder and looked at it, as if it was a death notice in the newspaper, perhaps her own. She frowned, as if her name had been spelled wrong, and said, ‘Dennis, this can’t be right.’ She licked her lips. Her lips were often dry. She would pour a glass of water and then forget to drink it. Sultan the cat was just as likely to wet his whistle with it as she was. ‘It says he’s going over for more than a month. For five weeks.’

‘Yes, m’dear. That’s what he wants, and quite right too. No point in travelling all that way and then having to come back next minute, is there?’

‘You can’t mean that, Dennis. Who’s going to look after him?’

‘He’ll have the time of his life. He doesn’t need us, m’dear, that’s what you don’t understand. Why should he? That’s not nature’s way. He’s good at getting himself looked after. First he’ll sit on a plane and a lot of pretty girls will make a fuss of him, and then he’ll sit under a tree shamming as a holy man, and people will be thoroughly fooled and bring him treats.’ This wasn’t at all how I saw my pilgrimage and my quest, but after his efforts on my behalf Dad was entitled to tease me a little. ‘You’ll see. He’ll have a whale of a time.’

I wanted all the gory details of the negotiation. ‘What did you say to Mr Dalal, Dad? Was he nice? Did you say devotee and pilgrimage ?’

‘He was nice enough, but I’m not sure your pi-jaw would have done the trick, John. Our Mr Dalal had both feet firmly on the ground. I did mention that you were going to Cambridge, and he said his old college was Cat’s — they invite him to a summer party with strawberries and champagne. Hoping for a donation, I expect. “Cat’s” is St Catherine’s, by the way. Perhaps he hoped I wouldn’t know. I explained that I’d been supposed to go to Cambridge myself, except that I was invited to a let’s-beat-the-Nazis party that went on till all hours and couldn’t attend. Clash of engagements. We had a bit of a chuckle over that.’ All told I felt that Dad had done me proud with Mr Dalal. He had done a little kowtowing after all, a little oiling of the wheels. ‘He said he and his lovely wife would be delighted to meet me and my lovely wife for cocktails at the Garden House Hotel. A lot of play-acting, really.’

Then his face became stern. ‘It’s not on, you know, to give a ticket away. A discount is one thing, a free gift is quite another. That chap broke IATA rule 151. He knows he did, he knows I know it, and he knows I can’t do a damn thing about it.’

From that point on, Mum and Dad, despite their different feelings in the matter, accepted that I would be going to India. I had my doubts. I wasn’t half as confident as I made out.

Flushing the ashes away

Like any competent lawyer, I had been selective in the documents I had submitted to the family court. I had exercised my discretion (exercising discretion is how lawyers lie). I had shown them the first letter from the ashram, but not what came after.

There had seemed no point in mentioning disability ahead of time, before the principle of welcome was established. After the delightful letter from Mr Ganesan had arrived, it seemed a good moment to mention such unspiritual trifles. I tried to be as casual as possible. Oh, by the way … did I happen to mention …?

The reply came quickly and was crushing. Mr V. Ganesan said that conditions in the ashram were somewhat austere, entirely unsuitable for someone with my difficulties. I wrote back, stubborn and cheeky, expressing regret that a devotee of Ramana Maharshi should pay so much attention to this irrelevant body, this old coat we wear for a little while. In any case, he could prevent me from staying in the ashram, but not from coming to Tiruvannamalai. ‘As for sleeping,’ I said rather grandly, ‘there is always the road, which refuses no one. And did not our Bhagavan describe the bliss he always felt while begging?’ Peter pushed me to the letter box and did the actual posting for me, while I prayed that my bluff wouldn’t blow up in my face.

It was a very hollow bluff. Certainly Bhagavan had talked about the bliss of begging, but his was a rather different case. He was a Brahmin who had cast off his privileges, a splendid spiritual moulting — but I couldn’t help feeling that the memory of privilege is a privilege in itself. There’s an afterglow of entitlement which can act to insulate the organism even while it fancies itself naked to the elements. I on the other hand felt as if I had been begging since I was three, in one way or another. It was hardly likely that things would be easier for me in India.