What did you do in the Great Porogue, Grandma?

A FAIRY tale of Old Balignac. ‘Grandma? What did you do in the Great Prorogue?’

My heart sank. I’d always known this day would come, and the fixed blue-eyed stare of the girl in front of me warned me she would take no evasions.

There was almost a relief in knowing that it finally had.‘Come sit beside me, pour me another glass and I’ll tell you.’ The child obeyed; no look of censure, no disapproving moue like her father.

‘What has daddy told you,’ I asked carefully, grasping the glass with hands that had grown shakier in the intervening years of coup and counter coup. I had to watch what I was saying, for this was the first time she’d been granted a pass out of London. I hoped it wouldn’t be the last, but…

After a long examination of her travel papers and the letters of recommendations written by old friends in the new Government, the French had let her through. The Irish heritage attestation helped enormously even though the blood was now too diluted for any hope of an EU passport. Any loophole had long been closed.

With no words of that mellifluous language – all foreign language teaching had been banned for a good few years now – she could only smile her thanks.

‘Daddy never really talks about it,’ she replied, equally carefully, avoiding my eyes this time.

‘He’s never forgiven you, of course, for not returning. He just said he had no problems with me meeting you but not to take everything you said as 100 per cent truth.

‘He said it would be the truth but your truth.’

Well, isn’t truth always subjective?

We gazed out at the Parc – as well tended as it always had been, to countryside as empty as it always had been. No Afghan Hound ran through it now; those days were gone. The ghosts remained however and delighted me – Portia, César – lost in memory. There was no longer – to her dismay – a swimming pool. That had given up the ghost the same month as the Great Prorogue began; disgorging its contents with little regard for the damage. A Brexit metaphor I thought at the time. I took a deep breath and began….

‘It was a day very much like today. I’d checked the computer was in order by reading all the UK papers online as I always did.’

I registered her surprise. ‘Oh yes, we could access your country then with no problem; even watch your TV programmes. Until we were blocked after the second revolution.

‘Tell me, is EastEnders still running?’

Her baffled face gave me the answer as she leaned forward eager to hear of such times that were barely covered in the revision of the revision of the revised History curriculum.

‘We could even watch a live feed from the Palace of Westminster.’

Her hand flew to her mouth at such a dangerous thought. All dealings, all decisions, were now completely secret until limited pronouncements were made via the country’s only paper, the Daily Telegraph.

‘But if people could listen and watch,’ she said, torn at the thought. ‘They might protest. They might take to the streets like, like…..’

I finished her sentence: ‘Like in the months leading up to the Great Prorogue.’

Her eyes gleamed at the thought of such wild times and I could see the spark of resistance that they hadn’t yet fully eradicated from the children trapped on that insular island.

‘I wasn’t the only one watching that afternoon and night, you know,’ I told her. ‘Many of us were, even as the hours stretched on and on.’

Johnson had been to Dublin that morning and it was plain he was unravelling even then.

‘He was like a small child fidgeting in the presence of the adults.’

Again, she stopped me. ‘Johnson? Boris Johnson? I’ve seen photographs. Was he related to Cameron and May?’

I sighed. ‘In a way, yes. He was …… infected.

‘I watched as Johnson lost vote after vote but by then he knew he had the Prorogation.

‘People shouted, people sang – the Scots were defiant to the last and he and his henchmen never returned to the Chamber after... after the shameful words of closure.’

I paused visualising that scene over and over again – seeing the defiant, contemptuous face of the Speaker who had defended Parliament’s honour to his own cost.

‘Oh, there were good men and women in his own party too,’ I reassured her. ‘But most at heart still wanted to follow the will of the people.’

‘Grandma – that’s too far now,’ she almost shouted, laying a hand on my wrinkled arm.

‘The will of the people is paramount. It’s what makes us. It’s what keeps us safe and cared for.’

I was growing tired and she could see it. Almost whispering she asked: ‘And the Scots, Grandma. Tell me about the Scots.’

‘Tomorrow,’ I wearily replied. ‘I promise. It’s too much for today.’

A flicker of pity flitted over her face. ‘OK, Grandma, but please, one last question now.

‘What did you do in the Great Porogue?’

Only the truth would do.

‘I tweeted, darling. I tweeted.’