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.