Dearest Jane... Read online

  The Old Dosshouse

  [1975]

  Your mother is in good form though determined to talk her full ration of complete balls; a bit more than her ration in fact. She is at present happily occupied in a row with Farmer Luckes over a hedge.

  Budds Farm

  [Mid 1970s]

  Your dear mother has been overdoing things and is showing signs, well known to all of us, of fatigue. We had a lot of people here at the weekend and your mother treated them to interminable political monologues that made your dotty Aunt Barbara seem like Socrates by comparison.

  My mother’s sister Barbara (Aunt Boo) was a political activist for wide range of causes – a determined bearer of placards. My mother took a more practical public service route, becoming a local councillor, a role in which she immersed herself with customary zeal.

  Sunday Times

  Editor in Chief’s Office

  Midnight [1972]

  King Chaos reigns here unopposed. If your dear mother was fighting a marginal parliamentary seat with the eyes of the world upon her, there would hardly be such an air of desperate tension and such long conferences planning the next steps in the campaign. Under the circumstances I have taken refuge in the hairy arms of demon alcohol and am heading with no little rapidity towards what the late Mr Gladstone called ‘the pint of no return’. I cannot forecast how the election will go but your mother is very determined. She is rather like Lord George Bentinck who ‘did nothing by halves and feared no man’. I have got to have a big elm down; the local wood-cutter sent in an estimate for the job of £125. I have told him exactly what he can do with the tree, coupled with a fervently expressed hope that he will contract Dutch elm disease himself. (I hope he is not in your mother’s constituency).

  xx D

  Insolvency Hall

  Much Crumblings

  Berks

  8 May [mid 1970s]

  Your mother is slightly out of hand as her party has swept the board and now controls the dream city of Basingstoke. She has just gone off to a celebration meeting.

  Many Cowpats

  Burghclere

  [1972]

  Your dear mother is taking her Council Duties very seriously and I am the unhappy recipient of interminable monologues on the intricacies of local government and the iniquity of all those who do not put forward views that would have seemed a trifle archaic at the time of the First Reform Bill. The onset of deafness is by no means an unmitigated misfortune.

  Budds Farm

  12 February 1973

  Your dear mother has departed for a Council Meeting carrying enough bumf to keep her busy for a very long period indeed. We are continually being rung up nowadays by people who think she is the local welfare officer and that I am her unpaid secretary. I soon dispel that particular illusion.

  Gormley Manor

  Much Shiverings

  3 February 1974

  Your mother has returned from Leicestershire and everyone seems to be annoying her very much – family, friends, neighbours, the NUM and the local council. I think you are fortunate to be 346 miles away or you would be getting it hot and strong, too!

  Budds Farm

  17 February 1974

  Your pert sister sent me a saucy Valentine and signed it ‘Mrs McQueen’. Your dear mother was convinced it had in fact come from the popular hostess of the Carnarvon Arms and I was given a fearful bollocking, with many hostile comments on my alleged drinking and amorous habits, combined with severe reminders that no member of the Denison-Pender family ever received Valentines from barmaids.

  Little Crumblings

  30 September 1975

  Your mother is in a fearful flap over the disappearance of 2 bath towels and everyone in turn is being accused of stealing them along with a silver paper knife from her desk. She is in poor form and blames everything from World War II to the political philosophy of Barbara Castle on me. However, I mutter to myself the consoling words of the old Salvation Army hymn: ‘We nightly pitch our moving camp a day’s march nearer home.’

  Best love,

  xx D

  Little Crumblings

  Burghclere

  [Late 1970s]

  Your mother is very much engaged with horses at the moment and this renders her a little bit touchy, particularly after 7.15 p.m. when she is liable to make Queen Boadicea look like the secretary of the Peace Pledge Union.

  The Merry Igloo

  Burghclere on the Ice

  [Late 1970s]

  Your mother has developed a disturbing belief that a sausage she cooked was stolen by a poltergeist. I have with difficulty restrained her from calling in the Revd Jardine, a Welshman with an Afro hairstyle and irregular teeth.

  The Reverend was duly summoned by my mother to exorcise the said poltergeist with ‘Bell, Book and Candle’. When, a few weeks later, my mother was asked how things were going poltergeist-wise, she responded, ‘Oh absolutely marvellous! The vicar came round and circumcised it!’

  Budds Farm

  2 December [early 1970s]

  Your mother came with me to Newmarket last week. In Newmarket town she put the car key in upside down, wrenched it and broke it in half! I could not get another key and as BMWs are full of safety devices, was immobilised for 2 days to my immense inconvenience.

  14b Via Dolorosa

  Burghclere

  [1970s]

  Your mother is preparing Christmas stockings, transferring things from one pile to another and making intermittent complaints that ‘you’re not really interested’.

  Christmas could raise my mother’s enthusiasm to a peak. As a grandmother, she once climbed on to a corner table in our dining room to photograph me as I presented the brandy-flamed Christmas pudding. As she raised her camera, the table buckled beneath her and a china bowl flew in the air and smashed on the ground – where my mother now lay. My husband led her gently away to her room to lie down. My father shook his head. ‘Extraordinary old bird, your mother.’ She bounced back an hour later, saying brightly ‘Too silly!’ – referring, of course, to the table.

  Chez Nidnod

  14 January [mid 1970s]

  All quiet, for once, on the domestic front except for routine patrol activity and occasional exchanges of fire. Your mother has given up hunting for the season as her horse is lame. Quite a relief for me as in view of her antics when mounted, I always expect her to be brought home unconscious on a hurdle.

  Whatever her hunting injuries, my mother was her own chauffeur – one evening arriving home bloodstained and battered after a heavy fall, she met with a very low-key response from her husband who was himself hunting at that moment – for the biscuit tin. A broken collar bone ultimately retired her from the joys of the chase.

  Budds Farm

  [1970s]

  Your mother tried to hire a fancy dress from Nathans in London. She claims she was picked up by a commercial traveller while eating spaghetti in a café in Shaftsbury Avenue.

  14a Barbara Castle Terrace

  Basingstoke

  [1971]

  Nidnod is in good trim, fluttering about and complaining of exhaustion while making every effort to avoid repose for a single second. We had a lunch party on Sunday, a grisly situation redeemed by a first-class lunch prepared by Nidnod and a determination on my part to shove the heads of all guests into the martini bucket and keep them there until suitable signs of animation were displayed. In the evening we went to George Parkin’s 80th birthday party and had a lot to drink. Your mother got in a right tangle over old Parkin’s various wives and dropped one or two bricks of a somewhat weighty nature, but no one cared, least of all herself. On Tuesday a Doctor Johnson came to supper (not the crusty, right-wing lexicographer) and proved most agreeable. He is a rich bachelor who has piled up a considerable fortune by giving anaesthetics to the wealthy. I doubt if he is greatly interested in the diseases of the poor, but perhaps I am doing him a grave injustice.

  Ward No. 27

  Mortimer Home for the Mentally U
nder-privileged

  Nuthampstead

  Herts

  [1971]

  I cannot keep pace with events here. On Friday your mother was convinced of her impending death and gave instructions for her funeral. Later in the day she said she intended to hunt on Saturday. Under pressure from Aunt Pam she agreed not to hunt if the local witchdoctor, Mrs Smallbone, was against it. Your poor mother then said she was not going to pay much attention to what Mrs S said (a comment not far off common sense) and that she intended to hunt. She then lectured me for 47 minutes on my own inadequacies and high moral values implanted in those who hunt with the South Berks and Garth foxhounds!

  On Saturday your poor mother, having promised to return early, arrived home at 6 p.m. She stopped at the Parkinsons and the Rumbolds to recount every detail of the day’s sport and no doubt the recipients of this saga were duly gratified. At home she announced she had been cured by Mrs Smallbone and had no intention of going to the consultant in London. Charles turned up with a very slight cold and was put under a spell by Mrs S. I am apparently under the old trout quite without my consent, for gout and various unseemly maladies. However, your mother was in a very good temper. My information is that the local fox-hunting mob consider she is liable to do herself quite a serious injury one day if she insists on jumping semi-detached bungalows on Jester.

  xx D

  My mother rode well and with considerable nerve. ‘Full of dash and go’ herself, this was one of her highest commendations of others. ‘Gallant’ and ‘pluck’ were favoured words in my parents’ lexicon. Of her pony, my mother’s pet phrase was ‘He goes like a bomb out hunting.’

  Schloss Buddstein

  Neubeurg

  10 January [early 1970s]

  I think your mother is better and in a few days time will be chivvying the local foxes with an assiduity worthy of a nobler cause.

  The Sunday Times

  16 September 1973

  Your dear mother is so mild and reasonable that I am quite worried about her. I hope she is not fading.

  Budds Farm

  30 September 1973

  Nidnod is really looking forward to seeing you and your new home. She is in better form than for years, quiet, reasonable and almost relaxed. For once she is not overreacting to the manifold disappointments, annoyances and problems of human existence.

  The Crumblings

  [1974]

  Yesterday, another day of extreme heat and lassitude, your dear mother gave a lunch party for 20 middle-aged trouts. Thanks to Sue, our temporary cook, it was a bountiful spread. I mixed two bedroom jugs with plonko blanco to which was added much Spanish cooking brandy and the unexpended portion of yesterday’s fruit salad. The trouts lapped it up and became rather skittish in a nineteen-twentyish way. Our new ‘daily’, Yvonne, kept on whispering to me ‘Which one of ’em do you fancy?’ I replied that I was totally uninterested in anything over the age of seventeen.

  Last Tuesday I attended a fearful party at Highclere Castle for local government officials and district councillors. Demon tedium was raising his hideous head almost before I was munching my first section of desiccated sausage roll. However, your mother enjoyed herself: I was merely Councillor Mortimer’s husband, very much a secondary role. A man had a fit in the electrical department of the House of Tomer last week. I think seeing his bill for repairs to a kettle brought it on.

  xx RM

  The Old Icebox

  Burghclere

  [1975]

  We enjoyed having your much respected husband with us and wished the visit had been even longer. He is the only person who has your extraordinary mother even remotely under control.

  Scorchlawn

  Burghclere

  8 August 1976

  Not one drop of rain has fallen here since you left. The garden is awful and made worse by the fact that Nidnod set fire to the orchard, destroying all the grass, two hedges and three lilacs. Finally the Fire Brigade had to be called in. For once we had a few pears and apples which were literally roasted on the branch. Well there you are! Against stupidity the Gods themselves fight in vain. Can you imagine a grown woman lighting a bonfire under these conditions, particularly with a nice light breeze to help it along?

  My mother had a passion for making bonfires. She would instruct me in the art of a successful blaze – ‘Remember Jane, what you need is a hot bottom!’ Once, in her late seventies, I found her in the garden one boiling afternoon, wearing her swimming costume and heaping debris on to a bonfire’s flames.

  Hypothermia House

  [Mid 1970s]

  Nidnod has been rather seedy lately. Today she said she felt awful and was going to stay in bed. Accordingly, I unhooked my shopping bag and went to Wash Common where I spent £12 on ready-made or easily prepared food in order to reduce kitchen labour. On returning home I found that the bird had left its nest! Knowing the form I went to the nearest public house and there was the invalid, perkily perched on a bar stool, swigging extra strong ale and giving two local layabouts an ear-bashing which left them with very stunned expressions.

  Budds Farm

  28 March [late 1970s]

  Must stop now as Nidnod wants to court martial me for having muddy shoes. Easier to plead guilty and accept the punishment. She would like to restore flogging.

  Budds Farm

  18 January [late 1970s]

  On our French holiday, I enjoyed Nidnod’s picnics. At her best I think – ‘A jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou!’

  Many Cowpats

  Burghclere

  11 January [early 1980s]

  On Friday Nidnod went to the Old Berks Hunt Ball with her boyfriend Rodney Carrott. I will give you a brief description of him as he may well be your stepfather after I have been wheeled away by Camp Hobson Ltd to Swindon Crematorium (I have opted for Swindon rather than Aldershot since Swindon beat Aldershot 7–0 in the Cup). R. Carrott is in his late fifties, tall, bald as a pudding plate, and portly. He is ‘in insurance’ and v rich with houses in Chelsea, the Isle of Wight and Corfu. His wife divorced him and has remarried and been divorced since. He is generous, brought down a bottle of Calvados and stood everyone drinks at the dance. He drove Nidnod in a new and enormous German car. On their return from the dance, Nidnod found she had forgotten the house keys and tried to blame me (naturally) for her misfortune. The next day they went for a ride together, their pleasure being slightly marred by R. Carrott’s ancient horse dropping dead.

  Best love,

  xx D

  The Miller’s House

  11 October [early 1980s]

  Nidnod has gone off cubbing today. Her rapid recoveries from the sickbed make Lazarus look like a beginner when it comes to rising from the dead.

  The Old Organ Grinder’s Doss House

  Burghclere

  17 September [1980s]

  Somewhat unsettled here and I don’t mean only the weather. Things have been made worse by a crisis in old Doris Bean’s stable. One of the two girls there was caught in a compromising posture with a young gentleman in Doris’s caravan. Words ensued; the young gent departed on his motorcycle and the girl packed her bag later in the day and left too. There is now only one girl there to look after the horses and according to Nidnod the situation represents the biggest disaster since the Titanic struck that iceberg. Nidnod is in fact threatening to cancel our holiday, and if we do go I anticipate non-stop ear-bashing on stable problems.

  The Miller’s House

  25 December 1984

  Thank you so much for the Christmas present which I shall greatly enjoy. I propose to settle down to it in front of a big fire after lunch. Nidnod is a great traditionalist; she threw her customary Christmas Eve tantrum but is in good form today despite Early Service in a small local church that could easily be used as a refrigerator. I have had some very nice presents, including the claret jug from Prince Khalid Bin Abdullah Bin Abdulrahman Al Saud. My present from Nidnod has evidently been lost in the post!

  Our daily, J
oy, has given me a pot of whisky-flavoured marmalade. Any hope of getting up from breakfast pissed? Best wishes for 1985.

  Love to you all,

  xx D

  Chez Nidnod

  24 March 1982

  Your mother and Charles went to Joe Gibbs’s wedding yesterday. Your mother bashed into a man’s car in Sloane Square. He was angry and wanted to make a thing about it but Charles told him that Nidnod had just left a mental home and was liable to make a painful, even violent scene. The man drove off in a hurry. I did not attend the wedding as those ceremonies make me feel sad; the bride, perhaps having a vision of the future, nearly fainted during the service. I joined them at an excellent reception at the Royal Hospital (fine pictures, etc.) and I was privileged to observe members of Gloucestershire’s upper class in festive mood.