Warmed his astral cockles
I didn’t smash the doors open, but of course ‘John nudged the garage doors open at quite a speed’ has as little prospect of finding an ecological niche in family history as ‘John nearly scorched the greenhouse.’ John smashed, John burned — that’s the official version.
I admit that the doors swung open pretty briskly. I was far more afraid of losing momentum than of doing damage to fixtures and fittings. The doors swung open as far as the hinges allowed then rebounded. As they closed again, they feebly retaliated for the initial impact by scraping the sides of the Mini. Between the first and second impacts I had a glimpse in the mirror of Mum and Dad reeling backwards. Rage was still ruling Dad’s facial muscles, but Mum’s expression held a sort of agony of worry. It was too late to build on that.
I had always coveted the ability to slam a door at the climax of an argument, and now I had my wish. It’s true I slammed the garage doors open rather than shut, but that’s a technicality. It was well worth waiting for. The noise was marvellous.
In the exhilaration of the moment, the terrible longed-for moment of breaking with my family, I did the finest three-point turn of my driving career. It was textbook. It would have cheered the shade of John Griffiths himself, patron saint of the disabled driver. Not the ghost of a graze on the garden gate or posts. It would have warmed his astral cockles.
As I turned the car I could see Audrey slinking out of the garage and back to the house. Mum and Dad kept pace with the Mini but didn’t get too close, as if they were trying to herd some unfamiliar beast back to its cage, not sure whether it would actually charge them. As I came round the side of the house I saw that Prissie was still sitting on the lawn. She stood up and brushed the grass stems off herself, smiling at me incredulously. I stopped the car by her. The passenger door wasn’t properly closed, so I was able to push it open with my stick. As I did so I barked, yes I barked a magnificent cliché out of the window. I had earned it. I for whom drawing the curtains in the morning was quite an enterprise had taken part in a scene of action. There had been shouting, threats, divine intervention and a getaway car. I had also, whether or not Dad noticed, performed a driving manœuvre that would have met his highest standards.
I barked: ‘Let’s get out of this madhouse, Prissie!’ No guru was needed to give the script any polishing at that point. Of course Prissie lived only down the road, she came on foot and could have left the same way, but she scrambled in, sitting awkwardly on my cane and gleefully shouting ‘Fuck, what fun!’, and we were off.
I’d have had a go at spinning my wheels and giving the gravel a good scatter if I hadn’t been afraid of spoiling our exit by stalling or running the Mini into a wall.
Suddenly Prissie said, ‘Stop, John! Stop the car!’
‘I’m not going back there, Prissie,’ I said grimly.
‘Of course you’re not. Better stop now, all the same.’
Turning round to observe the Cromers frozen in their tableau of conflict, she had seen Audrey running after us, pushing the wheelchair. Clever girl! I wouldn’t have managed very well with that particular hostage left in enemy hands.
I don’t have enough experience of intensely dramatic scenes to know if anti-climax always comes along for the ride. Perhaps Mum shared my feeling, and did what she could with the modest resources at her disposal to keep the emotional temperature high. She threw one of her shoes at us. I’m not sure if it had slipped off her foot or if she had taken it off expressly. It was one of those funny summer shoes with rope soles. Mum had displaced all her griefs and furies onto the flinging of an espadrille. In my memory of that afternoon it bears the perfume of solar amber as it describes its modest arc from Mum’s infuriated hand, the Ambre Solaire sun-cream she rubbed into herself while she basked in the filtered sunshine of the conservatory.
When Audrey had caught up with us, I said to Prissie, ‘Can’t we take her with us?’
‘Not unless you want to see me in jail.’ I knew she was right, but it was important that she said it out loud. I wanted Audrey to understand that my hands were tied. I couldn’t return the favour of rescue.
Prissie got out and loaded the chair in the boot, leaving us to say our goodbyes. I might not see Audrey again until she came of age and could make her own decisions. When there’s a decade’s worth of age-gap between siblings, conversation doesn’t often run smoothly. She looked now like a tired and frightened child. I wondered how much she remembered of what had gone on in the last fifteen minutes, hoping that there would be some balm left behind by the guru when he departed. It wouldn’t be fair if she suffered after-shocks of intervention.
Then I realised that I had been given a cue, the same cue as hers, and from the same benign source. Ramana Maharshi’s influence persisted like the Cheshire Cat’s discarnate smile. This was the twinkle without the guru, the starman remotely beaming.
‘Let the children use it …’ I said gently. ‘Let the children lose it …’
I waited for her to finish the refrain. Her eyes went very wide, so that she seemed to be regressing after so much precocious growing-up. ‘Let … all the children boogie?’ she said at last, with an upward intonation, as if after all those listenings she still wasn’t sure of the words.
If Prissie had second thoughts about being the catalyst of my freedom, she didn’t admit it on the (ridiculously short) drive to her house. I asked, ‘Will Malcolm mind if I stay at your house for a night or two?’
‘Stay as long as you like,’ she said. ‘He’ll be thrilled.’ This hardly seemed possible, though she didn’t seem to be joking. With her I never quite knew. ‘He’s always saying he needs someone to talk to. Listen, John, do you love your mother very much?’
I did my best to be honest. ‘I try not to.’
A suitably plumbed bolt-hole
‘I think that’s sensible. Best to get along without her. She doesn’t really want you to have a life of your own.’ It was shocking to hear something like that, something I had come to believe, stated so calmly by someone outside the family. ‘I do feel sorry for Laura,’ Prissie went on, ‘but she doesn’t own you and she shouldn’t try. I’ve learned the hard way with the twins — your children are not your children, and all that — they are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself. Kahlil Gibran, you know. Preachy stuff and no mistake, but Malcolm adores it. So be warned. If you get him started on the glories of The Prophet I’ll phone Laura to come and pick you up. Understood?’
I thought I could abide by this condition of residence. When we got in, Prissie couldn’t wait to get unshod. She had been wearing stout walking shoes which looked particularly wrong on someone almost caricaturally free-spirited. I imagine she had chosen them as much to cope with the formality of confrontation as for the discomfort of gravel.
The twins Joss and Alex, now twelve, had been farmed out in France, spending the summer in France to improve their language skills, so there was room to spare chez Washbourne. In her own way Prissie seemed to share Dad’s idea of the importance of pushing chicks out of the nest, though she made sure that they had a parachute of money and some useful addresses.