It was at the beginning of the summer holidays, after a year of life at Frensham Heights, when Mum announced she and I were going to Disneyworld in Orlando, Florida.
‘All of this Yogi stuff has been hard on you,’ she said, hair suppressed by a headscarf as she stood on a chair with a feather duster and attacked the spiders in the corner of the kitchen ceiling. ‘Nev thinks it’s all so wonderful, but it means you’ve missed out on a lot of normal family activities. He’s off to India again this summer so I thought I’d treat you. You always said you wanted to go to Disneyworld.’
I could hardly believe I was hearing this amazing news. ‘What about Tom? Doesn’t he want to go?’
‘I wouldn’t worry about him,’ she said, hopping off the chair. ‘He’s got other interests these days.’
I looked over at Tom. He was asleep on the floor of the room with the television, where he and some friends had been celebrating the end of their O-levels the night before. There was a cigarette butt glued to his forehead.
There was a caveat to the Florida trip: we would be with the Brahma Kumaris. Mum explained that Rick, the man who Nev had stayed with when he was recuperating from his near-fatal chicken poisoning, had invited us to his house/retreat in Land O’ Lakes, Florida. Although I had more or less made peace with the Brahma Kumaris and accepted the huge changes they brought to our lives, this did temper the excitement of the holiday somewhat. We would be expected to meditate every day and talk about soul consciousness. Soaring deep into Space Mountain and having our photograph taken with Goofy at The Magic Kingdom was one thing. Sitting around in silent contemplation and staring into the eyes of elderly Indian women in saris was quite another. Still, this was an amazing opportunity. Like any kid growing up in 1980s England I had always wanted to go to America. If that meant wearing white and eating a bit of toli every now and then, so be it.
So it was that Mum and I flew on Florida Airlines to Orlando. On stepping out of the airport the heat hit us like an anvil, but we were soon protected from it by a remarkable invention I had not come across before: air conditioning.
‘This is incredible!’ I said, as Mum navigated her way out onto the Bee Line Expressway in a hire car, momentarily forgot that Americans drive on the right, and mounted the central reservation just in time to prevent an oncoming platoon of honking cars from smashing into us. ‘It’s baking out there, yet it’s freezing in here.’
‘Welcome to America,’ said Mum. ‘You can go from your air-conditioned house to your air-conditioned car to the air-conditioned shopping mall, and the reality of the weather barely needs to affect you. It really is a wonderful country.’
What they said about America was true. Everything, from the cars to the buildings to the people, was bigger. Fifty-foot cypresses towered over four-lane highways. Hotels with palm tree-lined drives supported entire civilisations of people in shorts. How strange, I thought, that the Brahma Kumaris should have a place in this brash land of plenty.
We took a turning off the expressway and headed into prettier territory: sycamore trees, bumpy roads, ranch-style houses with wood-cladding and rope swings hanging from branches outside. ‘This must be the place,’ said Mum, spotting an aged wooden sign painted with the familiar Brahma Kumari egg. We went down a narrow track through marshy woods that led to a big house surrounded by a series of bungalows. A great egret flapped past. A rangy man with a ponytail drove ahead of us on a miniature tractor. There was a row of cars near the house and beyond that a wide, still lake. Mum parked the car, next to a pick-up truck with wheels that were at least as tall as Will Lee.
Mosquitoes buzzed around in the simmering heat, but there was another, more mechanical buzzing sound too. I walked onto the decking at the edge of the lake: near the other side was a speedboat pulling a person on waterskis. That looked like fun. I guessed they must have been Rick’s neighbours. But as the boat turned around and came closer to us, the waterskiing figure came into view – and she was wearing a sari.
‘Hey, you must be Liz and Will,’ shouted the boat’s driver, after he killed the engine and steered the boat up to a jetty near the big house while the woman in the sari sank into the water. ‘I’m Rick. It’s so great you’re here! Give me a moment to help Sister Waddy out and I’ll be right with you.’
Rick was a trim, bearded man in Wayfarer sunglasses and cut-off denim shorts. If it weren’t for the little Yogi brooch pinned to his tie-dye T-shirt there would be no way of identifying him as a Brahma Kumari. After tying the boat against the jetty he and the waterskiing Sister Waddy bounded over to us. ‘Om shanti,’ he said, in a broad American accent. ‘How are you guys doing?’
Mum already knew Waddy. She was an Irish woman who had lived in London until moving out to Florida to set up the Brahma Kumaris’ centre in Miami, and she had dropped over to Rick’s for a spot of waterskiing. ‘I must admit,’ she said, wringing out folds of white cotton,’ I was a bit nervous about being attacked by one of the alligators when I first had a go, but Rick tells me they’re quite harmless. The peaceful vibrations of this place seem to have had a positive effect on them.’
‘You’ve got alligators in that lake?’ I asked, backing away.
‘Of course. We’re in Florida, after all,’ Rick confirmed. ‘Hey, here comes one now.’
Sure enough, an alligator no more than a metre long climbed out of the water and onto some decking not far from where we were standing. It smiled up at us in an expectant manner. ‘This one’s the baby of the three,’ said Rick, hands on hips. ‘He normally comes up here when he’s hungry, but you mustn’t give him anything to eat.’
‘Like one of my legs?’
‘English sense of humour!’ said Rick, pointing at me. ‘OK, guys. Let me show you around.’
Rick introduced us to his girlfriend, a black-haired woman called Sandy. Whether they followed the Brahma Kumaris’ rule of celibacy or not, I didn’t ask. ‘Well, hey,’ said Sandy, who was blending a frothy pink concoction in the enormous kitchen of the big house. ‘Looking forward to going on some of our Florida rollercoasters? We’ve got the best in the world.’ She handed us two huge strawberry milkshakes in the kind of metal tins other BKs served mango lassis. ‘Make yourselves at home. If you need anything just ask. We are so honoured to have you here.’
‘I must say,’ Mum said to Rick, as we walked through the gardens and past friendly-looking hippy types who said ‘Om Shanti’ while giving us the peace sign, ‘you make the Yogi life look a lot more attractive than they do back home.’
‘You know what?’ said Rick, as he opened the door of our bungalow, ‘if you gotta be good, might as well be good in style.’
The bungalow was a perfect mix of American comfort and Yogi simplicity: two rooms, plain wooden walls, Native Indian rugs on the floor and neat beds covered by multi-coloured quilts. The room I was to sleep in had a television and a videocassette recorder. There was a tape of The Karate Kid, which had only just come out in cinemas in England. And I would get to watch American TV, with its rumoured fifty-six channels and never-ending advertisements! While Mum unpacked and had a shower, Rick suggested I join him for an early evening meditation session.
We walked around the corner to another bungalow. Inside were six or seven Yogis dressed in a mix of white saris, white pyjama suits, and Hawaiian shirts. I got into a cross-legged position, preparing myself to spend the next hour or so meditating. It would be wrong to offend our host by refusing, after all. I had just settled into something resembling the correct posture when Rick said:
‘Wow. I felt a deep connection with the soul, right there. Good work, guys. Well, see you tomorrow morning.’
After our meditation session of approximately forty-eight seconds, Rick asked if I would like to join him while he headed into Orlando on a couple of errands. As his enormous station wagon rolled out onto the highway he told me a little about himself. He left school at fifteen, barely able to read or write, and built up a chain of jeans stores that made him a millionaire by the time he was thirty. He also had five kids and an ex-wife. ‘I had succeeded in the eyes of the world, but I felt something was wrong. We weren’t put on this Earth just to make money,’ said Rick as we cruised along the wide road. ‘Then I met the Brahma Kumaris and everything they said and did made sense. That was ten years ago. I’m proud to say I’ve been a devout BK ever since. Hey, do you like arcade games?’
We headed over to an arcade in a shopping mall and sunk quarters into Star Wars, Defender and – a favourite of Waddy’s, according to Rick – Battlezone. Then we dropped by a store to stock up on Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups and Mr Goodbars.
Rick was the best Brahma Kumari of all time.
Each morning I swam across the lake – the alligators never bothered me – before Mum drove us off for one adventure after another. Disneyworld was surreal in its innocence. It was gentle and old-fashioned, despite its dedication to commerce. The Haunted Mansion and the Jungle Cruise gave a sense of reassuring wonderment. The Swiss Family Treehouse belonged to an America slipping from view, even in 1984. Walking along Main Street, I dropped an ice-cream wrapper. One of the Seven Dwarves darted over and grabbed it before it had a chance to reach the ground.
One day at the Yogi ranch, Rick taught me how to waterski while Mum, having been convinced by Sandy that the alligators wouldn’t be tempted to jump out of the water and take a bite out of her, sunbathed on the decking by the lake. In the evening at sunset I went out on a rowing boat with the rangy man with the ponytail. He worked as Rick’s gardener. His name was Ed.
‘See over there,’ he said in a low growl, pointing towards some bullrushes as the water lapped against the sides of the boat. ‘That’s the big ’gator. She’s grumpy as hell right now.’
She was a six-footer, and she sank into the water in the way alligators are meant to: furtively, with a hint of amusement, as if about to get up to no good. I asked Ed if it really was safe to swim in the lake. ‘Sure it is,’ he replied. ‘But even spiritually inclined ’gators can be nasty when they want to be. Stay away from those bullrushes and you’ll be fine.’
As the orange sun’s reflection shimmered in the water and the alligator slithered silently into the glades at the edge of the lake, Ed asked, ‘You a Yogi?’
‘Not exactly,’ I told him. ‘Are you?’
‘I’m just Ed,’ he replied, chuckling. ‘They’re good people, and I like peace as much as the next guy, but a lot of it doesn’t make sense to me. They’re vegetarian. OK, I can understand how you don’t want to harm animals. But the Brahma Kumaris’ – he pronounced it koo-mar-ees – ‘they don’t even eat eggs, and eggs is unfertilized. That little egg ain’t ever going to grow into a chicken.’
From then on, Ed treated me as the son he never had. We shot basketballs in the hoop round the back of his bungalow. We caught crabs in the mangrove swamps. He loaned me his collection of Marvel comics, which I read in a plastic wicker chair outside Ed’s bungalow one evening while he sat nearby, smoking cigarettes, drinking whisky and telling me about his troubles with women. ‘My current girlfriend is a nice lady, I guess, but she’s feisty, always complaining,’ he said, puffing plumes of smoke out into the still air as I tried to concentrate on Captain America’s tribulations with the Red Skull. ‘And once women start complaining, they never stop.’
‘Have you got any more of that Mountain Dew?’
‘It’s in the fridge. Now my old girl Cyndi …’
The following afternoon, Rick and Sandy took Mum and me to a roller disco in Orlando. There we met Rick’s son, a curly-haired teenager of sixteen. I asked him what he thought of the Brahma Kumaris. ‘OK, I guess,’ he said with a shrug, before asking me if it was true that people in England still lived in caves. To the sounds of Queen, Prince and Led Zeppelin, American youths skated around the oval rink as coloured lights flashed above them. Mum sat by the side and gave a huddle of other mums her views on the Florida lifestyle.
‘There’s a reason why you’re all so fat,’ she told them. ‘You drive everywhere and you eat junk food all the time. I’d be the same too if I lived here. Good thing I’m stuck in dreary old England, I suppose.’
‘She says it like it is!’ exclaimed one of the women, before telling Mum to join them for a Margarita. Strangely, Mum’s less than diplomatic observations went down a storm in Florida. And for all her protestations on how she hated childish things, she spent a fortune on letting me be a kid for a little while longer. Each day brought a rollercoaster, a water park, or, at the very least, a trip to the mall. There had been no attempt at including anything of educational value, unless you counted the afternoon we drove to St. Petersburg to see a man having a fight with an alligator.
Our two weeks in Florida were over too soon. I said a tearful goodbye to Ed, Sandy and Waddy, and after Rick took us to his jeans warehouse and told us to stock up on whatever we could fit in our suitcases, Mum and I returned to Orlando airport. Unfortunately, in the week we had been away, Florida Airlines had gone bust. No compensation was offered. British Airways announced those of us with return flights could buy a seat back to London for the full fare that night, but otherwise we would have to wait for two weeks in Florida before replacement flights were found.
‘We’re not doing that,’ said Mum as we stood in the overcrowded departure lounge, alongside 200 stranded British tourists in flowery shirts. ‘You’ve got school on Monday. I’ll just have to buy a couple of seats on my credit card. Spend now, worry later. That’s my new motto.’
While our British Airways aeroplane waited on the burning tarmac of an Orlando runway, I asked Mum why she had splashed out on the holiday.
‘I was thinking about all the transformations we’ve been going through,’ she said, looking out of the window as the airhostess located the emergency exits of the Boeing 747. ‘And I thought to myself: Will’s going to be fifteen in a few months. It’s now or never. Better take him while I still can, because you never know how life will change from one day to the next.’
Family life was indeed about to change once more. This time, however, it wasn’t Nev who instituted that change, but Mum.