Cedilla

by Adam Mars-Jones

  Perhaps in church, when Mum could feel her real father not looking at her during services, he was really not-looking at Granny. Or perhaps he glared at her during the sermon. I can imagine Granny enjoying that.

  Whatever she was in church for, it was hardly the spiritual experience. I dare say she was putting in an appearance out of sheer defiance, as a way of saying, I’m as good as anyone here. I have a right.

  It’s true that in later life she went to early Communion in Tangmere whenever it was offered, but her agenda was strongly earth-bound. She wasn’t so much consuming the Body and Blood of her Redeemer as keeping an eye on the set of communion plate she had given the church, in her husband’s respectable name, after he died. She never really trusted anyone else’s cleaning. So when she knelt at the altar rail her posture was submissive, but if she saw any discoloration of chalice or paten there would be harsh words in the vestry afterwards. It’s customary for communicants to close their eyes when they consume the elements, but convention wasn’t going to make Granny turn a blind eye to tarnish.

  Mum expected me to send Granny to Coventry after her revelations, but that was hardly likely to happen. I wouldn’t have made an immediate appointment with Granny out of spite, but I wasn’t going to penalise her either, for things that were none of my business. There was no alternative to Granny as the motor of the family finances. No one else was going to help me buy a car. My hands were tied. I had to be in the driving seat.

  Bird gotta swim, fish gotta fly. John needs driving lessons to fall from the sky …

  The next time an invitation came for Peter and me to eat at the Compleat Angler, I decided I would get to work on Granny on the car angle. Peter and I had become more or less used to such hybrids of treat and ordeal. We had learned at least some of the rules, though of course Granny could always come up with new ones. She was a living workshop for the manufacture of social stumbling-blocks.

  Twinge of superannuation

  Granny had recently revised her opinion of Peter. It was Granny who had first proposed that he work as a waiter (‘the world will always need waiters, Peter’), but it wasn’t his new part-time job which had earned her respect. All he had done was have a growth spurt, but that was enough.

  Only the year before she hadn’t trusted Peter to cross the road by himself, which would have been funny if it wasn’t so embarrassing. Wasn’t it supposed to be the other way round, he asked me, young men helping frail old ladies across the street? But now she couldn’t get over how tall he’d grown, and kept on saying what a fine figure of a man he had turned out to be. She even started stooping while she was walking with him, to make him even prouder of his new stature.

  I’m not sure Peter really enjoyed the fuss, but he certainly got a kick out of being taller than Dad. Dad who claimed five foot eleven but was short of Peter’s attested five ten. I was a non-starter in this particular race, but I too enjoyed the twinge of superannuation in Dad’s shoulders.

  Perhaps it was to celebrate Peter’s spurt that Granny offered us a drink on this occasion. By this time, as the birthdays rolled by, Peter and I had sampled most things from the family’s scanty drinks cupboard. They were all pretty awful, except for liqueurs which could have proper tastes like coffee, peppermint, even chocolate. Otherwise sweet sherry was the best of a bad lot, until I discovered vodka. Vodka had hardly any character of its own, but was a sort of chameleon which could bring out other flavours. Added to BritVic Orange it provided a good imitation of the much missed Government Orange, the wonderful concentrated juice drink of my childhood.

  I knew alcohol was supposed to have a physical effect, but the single measures meted out on birthdays had no effect in my case. They were a complete waste of money. A double vodka did a little something. That was the ticket for me.

  So I asked the waiter for a double vodka, and Peter chose sherry. Granny added ‘Dry,’ before he had a chance to say ‘Sweet’. Granny wanted us to order in French, saying this would improve Peter’s skills as a waiter – it was clear she had never eaten at the Spade Oak Hotel, where he worked. I managed better than Peter and was praised. He was told he could do worse than model his accent on mine. I don’t think she was trying to open a rift between us in any specific way. She just couldn’t help herself. As if he needed any reasons to hate me! Or would have needed any, if there had been hatred in him.

  Poor Peter became more and more subdued as the meal progressed, while John, deliciously inflamed by vodka, really got into the swing of things. He chuffed out his feathers like a budgie on Granny’s finger.

  I was trying to think how to turn the conversation towards driving lessons (and all that they entailed) when Granny got her oar in first. ‘I wonder, John,’ she said, ‘if you would care to visit me again next week? We can have a private chat.’

  Peter said, ‘I expect I can get time off again, Granny.’

  ‘You shouldn’t try,’ said Granny. ‘It’s not good to expect special treatment.’ As if she had ever expected anything else! ‘The world is work, Peter, and you’ll be working then. John, you should be able to negotiate the Angler on your own by now. There’s only the one small step.’

  I understood. Granny was a mind-reader and wanted to spare me the embarrassment of asking a favour in front of Peter. My system still throbbed with vodka in our (non-Broyan) taxi home. I decided that Granny was great fun, even adorable. One of a kind. I enjoyed the grown-up part I was playing, and felt sorry about the bad press she had from Mum and Dad. Why couldn’t people make allowances and get along?

  Peter must have had the patience of a saint. I failed to notice the cranking up of Granny’s trap. I strolled right into it, like the fool in the Waite Tarot deck who saunters to his downfall without a care in the world.

  At home I carried on in the same vein, hoping to educate the family. You didn’t need to play silly games with Granny, just be yourself unto the end and she would be with you all the way. Mum told Dad that I really did seem to have a way with Granny, some sort of knack. I smiled a little bashfully and said there was nothing to it, really. Piece of cake.

  Without Granny, after all, there would have been no Wrigley, and no extension to Trees for that matter. Yet Mum wouldn’t admit she had ever done the right thing by her. I pressed her on this point, and reluctantly she admitted that Granny knew how to make Christmas special, not just for the boys she welcomed into the house but also for the girl who had no other address.

  Small world of chocolate

  The children would write their wishes on pieces of tissue paper and then put them in the fire. Somehow Father Christmas always got the message and left exactly the right thing. One year Mum had asked for ‘a chocolate dolly in a chocolate bed’, and she had got it. Granny must have taken a lot of trouble to find such a specific item. Perhaps she even had it made, going to the top man in the small world of chocolate sculpture commissions. Disappointment was not something Granny would accept at Christmas time, or any other.

  ‘But how did Granny work the trick?’ I asked. ‘How did she work out what you had written on the tissue paper?’

  Mum went rather red and said, ‘She told us that Father Christmas could read all the languages in the world as long as they were spelled properly. So we showed her what we’d written to make sure of the spelling.’ That blush told me that she was ashamed of her own gullibility. It had been a long time after the event that she saw through the sleight and the magic. And after that perhaps Granny’s credit was cancelled, and she was severely debited for the deception, even in the good cause of a happy Christmas.

  As my lunch appointment with Granny came near, I felt sorry for Peter’s being excluded, but it made sense for Granny to arrange a private audience. We were the ones who were on a wave-length of honesty and trust. We could see beyond trivial distractions.

  Granny greeted me warmly on the day, but when with the help of my crutch and cane I made to edge towards the bar, where we had taken our drinks before, she spoke up.

  ‘I wouldn�
��t wander off too far,’ she said, ‘now that you don’t have Peter to help you. We shall go straight to our reserved table – do you see? They have given us a window seat with a direct view of the weir. How very thoughtful of the management!’ Any management which didn’t fall in with Granny’s preferences was not just thoughtless but reckless. She pushed me firmly to the table indicated.

  The menus arrived. Granny opened one and handed it directly to me. She pointed a finger firmly at one page rather than the other. ‘Tonight, John, you will order from the table d’hôte. Granny is not being ungenerous – it’s a matter of style. You may make your selection à la carte on any future occasion, on two conditions. You must be able to read your choice aloud in an accent that doesn’t shame me, and you must be able to carry on a brief conversation in French with the waiter. The waiters here are invariably charming, and it is good manners to meet them half-way. The last time you treated me to your French conversation it was clear that you need to put in more work. Ah yes, I anticipate an objection! Not all the waiters here are in point of fact French. Indeed the most accomplished is Spanish. The objection has no merit. All waiters speak French. French is the language of good food.’

  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.’

  The meal had taken a very miserable turn. When I had locked horns with Marion Wilding, sole principal of Vulcan School, I had been prepared for confrontation and I had been clear about what I wanted from her – nothing. I had even enjoyed the clash. This was different. Granny and I were on the opposite of a collision course. If neither of us bent then we would dismiss each other from our lives with a finality not to be taken back. I began to get a sense of the suddenness of schism, crisis that no one saw coming until it had already undone the seams of the world.