‘The top people,’ I managed to croak.
‘Precisely. In the event he fell short of his own rather modest ambitions. But perhaps you would like me to add cream to your cup in the same way? The taste is quite different, or perhaps it is the texture which is altered. For some reason a little sugar in the coffee helps the cream to float — and I speak as someone who in the normal run of life abhors sugar in coffee. If I can break my own rules so I’m sure can you. It is something which every young man, however stubborn, should try at least once.’
Somehow she had managed to get me off the hook without budging an inch. Even when she made concessions she held firm. ‘Thank you Granny,’ I was able to say, ‘that sounds delicious.’
I’m not sure it was, really. That style of drinking coffee has never caught on with me personally. Perhaps people whose hands have more control than mine can make the cream flow over a sort of miniature weir of coffee as the cup tips, liquid gliding over liquid, so that the elements remain in suspension within every sip, but I couldn’t manage that. The demitasse was light and easy to lift, but its small size made it awkward for me to make it travel the last couple of inches to my lips. I had to push my head uncomfortably far forward to bridge the gap. Still, I appreciated the gesture, if not the treat it delivered. Granny with her coffee spoon might seem to be watching over the separation of cream and coffee, but in another way she was stirring incompatibles diligently together, restoring between us some sort of social emulsion.
Passive resistance had served me well, but I can’t help thinking it’s most effective when it isn’t your only option. After all, Gandhi wasn’t strongly built, but he could certainly have given you quite a smack with his charkha — his portable spinning wheel — if he had wanted, and he would certainly have benefited from the element of surprise.
Flinging biscuits blindly at the orifice
When we had finished our coffee, Granny said, ‘Normally a two-course table d’hôte at a reputable restaurant is enough to satisfy even a teenager’s ravening belly, but perhaps you are still hungry?’ In fact my teenager’s ravening belly might be heard protesting its emptiness at some distance. ‘I believe I have some biscuits in my room, if that would allay the pangs.’
They might. Granny’s preference was always for a room on the ground floor, for reasons of her convenience rather than mine, but I reaped the benefit. She even pushed me there. There was a lip on the threshold of her room, not a true step but a rounded edge of metal which gave her some little difficulty to negotiate.
The biscuits were in the same category of presenting a little difficulty. Biscuits in general aren’t the easiest things for me to eat, but if I break them into rough quarters I can get them to my mouth without seeming to fling them blindly at the orifice.
‘Unless I’m imagining things, John,’ Granny said, ‘you had something to ask me. I am trying to find a new way of talking to you, since you are clearly no longer quite the person I have assumed. You don’t much resemble your mother, or your father either. Perhaps in fact it is me whom you resemble.’ I disputed this but gave no sign. ‘Is it about the electric wheelchair? Does it need attending to in some way? Perhaps a new battery is required.’
For someone who had helped to fund my adventures in locomotion she was rather in the dark about the details. Perhaps she thought it was in the shed, on blocks, with Dad frantically tinkering in every spare moment. Perhaps she thought I should make a point of coming to see her in the wheelchair she had paid for, just as she would expect me, if she had bought me a smart tie as a present, to wear it when invited to lunch with her. ‘The electric wheelchair is at home, Granny, and it’s in perfect working order. This is the old pushing chair which it replaced — it’s just that the Wrigley you were so kind as to help to buy doesn’t fold up very easily. It doesn’t fit in a taxi. I don’t use it at school either.’
‘Oh? And why is that?’
‘I have to be carried up and down stairs in it, and I can’t keep my balance in it. At school I use the Tan-Sad — you remember, the trolley thing. You’ve seen it.’
‘You’re still spending your days in that baby carriage? That overgrown pram? No wonder you wanted to see me, John. What is the alternative?’
‘I’m stuck with the Tan-Sad, Granny, and really I don’t mind.’ Here it was, then, the only chance I would ever have to make my case, to explain that I was hoping to do without the expensive wheelchair altogether, to trade it in for something with a roof and doors. ‘But at the moment I’m driven to school in a taxi.’
‘Really? How odd. How do your parents afford that?’
‘They don’t. The local authority pays.’
‘How perfectly extraordinary.’
‘Granny, I want to learn to drive myself.’
‘Is that possible?’
‘I think so.’
‘I rely on you to make very sure before committing me to expense. So it is lessons you want?’
‘I thought the British School of Motoring would be the right choice, Granny — they’re the top people, after all. I also need a car to take the lessons in. It will need to be modified.’
‘Well, John, I quite see why you wished to talk to me. Am I to buy you a Rolls-Royce? I believe that is still the top people’s car, though I have heard of the Aston Martin for a more headstrong style of person.’
‘Neither for me, thanks, Granny. I thought a Mini would be more practical.’
‘Quite right. It is rather a stylish little toy, designed by Signor Annigoni, I believe. People seem to be able to do everything these days.’ I didn’t think the name was quite right, though my information about cars was second-hand, a dilution of Peter’s expertise. Even if I had been surer of my ground, I would have been foolish to correct her, not just on general principles but because her mistake worked in my favour. If Signor Annigoni was good enough to paint portraits of the Queen, he might be good enough to build cars for her grandson. ‘Why not look into the matter and give me the figures later. You can take it that I am not opposed on principle.’
Then she did something surprising. She took me backstage. She let me watch as she washed her hands and face carefully with her favourite glycerine soap. I say ‘let me watch’ but I suppose I mean ‘had me watch’, since she pushed the wheelchair into the bathroom for the purpose. It was strange. She wasn’t exactly putting on a show for me. She was showing me what lay behind the show she put on.
She explained that glycerine soap was a vulnerable luxury. It was a fugitive jewel of fragrance which would melt away to nothing in minutes if dropped into a bath. So she was meticulous at the basin, following a drill to avoid exposing the precious translucent bar to running water.
I don’t enter a room without being invited or noticed, so Granny wanted me to be there, but if she had something to tell me it wasn’t in the words. She was saying, ‘You know, John, in the War I couldn’t get face cream, so I made my own! I used the top of the milk and added some salt. Everyone said it gave my complexion a glow. Perhaps I should never have gone back to shop cosmetics. Still, it’s too late to change now, and they haven’t done too badly by me. You just have to follow certain rules.’