Dearest Jane... Page 20
One day in Menorca we set off for some secluded little cove to swim, but my father had forgotten his bathing kit. He decided to trip lightly into the balmy waters in his birthday suit. He was some way out to sea when a large coach arrived above the beach and from it, clucking like hens, emerged a stream of Spanish nuns, evidently also on a little seaside outing. Gleefully, we combed the beach for camouflage for my father. A collapsed cardboard box was scraped off the sand and born aloft to him in the sea; he slipped it over his head, emerging triumphantly with his elegant fig leaf in place.
Holidays can be both challenging and consolidating to friendships. Raoul and Sheelagh Lemprière-Robin were two great friends with whom my parents happily holidayed, given that their destinations were not always rewarding and could be rife with testing incidents and discomforts, plus at least one spat between my mother and Mrs Lemprière Robin, a lady of equally definite opinions.
In the mid 1980s my parents invited me to join them for a week in Provence. I was appointed map reader – but sacked after one hour in France, when my mother was compelled to reverse back up a motorway slip road. Our hotel restaurant was an early specialist in ‘cuisine minceur’, not quite my father’s choice of robust fare. ‘What are these fucking sheep’s balls?’ he exclaimed as a minute meatball he had failed to spear on his fork shot off the plate. But like the French holidays of my childhood, it turned out to be one of the happiest of times. ‘It is surprising what fun you can be,’ said my mother to me kindly. Such was my sadness at saying goodbye at the end of our holiday, I found myself in tears in the taxi as it sped from the airport.
By the time my father entered his seventies, his evident appreciation of my mother’s companionship and capabilities seem to echo the happiness of their earlier days. They were often accompanied by their little dogs who sometimes proved less troublesome than their children. Increasingly, his letters were to be coloured by memories of the holidays of his youth. In addition, he was intrigued by the holidays that others chose to take.
My Dearest Jane . . .
Loose Chippings
Soames Forsyte
Wilts
14 June 1970
How are you getting on with all those hirsute, noisy, argumentative Greeks? Have you made nice friends yet with any shipping magnates that would be suitable for the position of my son-in-law? Don’t lie about in the sun too much as it is bad for the skin and you will come back looking as if you were off to a fancy dress party as a prune.
My ‘sabbatical’ summer in Greece, mostly on the isle of Samos, renting a house at £4 per month!
Little Crumblings
Roper Caldbeck
Bucks
3 July 1970
I sent a long letter to you at Poste Restante, Vathy and another was addressed by your ever-loving mother. She has been confusing everyone by saying that you are at a well-known Greek hotel called Poste Restaurante! Can you beat it?
Budds Farm
[Early 1970s]
Is it true you are off to Paris? When I was just 18 I lived in France for 6 months. I was a nice, shy lad learning French before embarking on the Spartan rigours of Sandhurst. I had an aged tutor whom I mobbed up: with luck he used to lose his temper and throw me out and I spent long and happy days in Fontainebleau or at Barbizon. In those days Frenchmen had beards, bowler hats (straw hats in summer), button boots and short tailcoats. Usually pince-nez. The franc was very shaky and the exchange was about 380F to the £. My ever-loving parents kept me brutally short of treacle but occasionally I saved up £3 and went off to Paris for 36 hours where I had the time of my life and broadened my outlook. I went to France a dear little innocent boy (more or less) and was luckily seduced by the postman’s wife who was also usherette at the local cinema. I suppose she would be about 92 if still alive. Still, one had to make a start somewhere. I lived at Fontainebleau and spring in the forest there was something I still remember with pleasure. Did it never rain in those days? O mihi praeteritos referat si Jupiter annos! (If only Jupiter would restore those bygone years to me. Virgil, Aeneid.)
I must remember to send old Mabel a birthday card. I think she is 87. I have seldom had happier times than when Mabel and I and my sister went to stay in rooms at Brighton (9 Holland Road) during World War I. No wonder I still retain affectionate memories of the West Pier and Maynard’s sweet shop. I remember as if yesterday all the slot machines on the West Pier, my favourite being the execution of the Irish Traitor Sir Roger Casement. I also remember with pleasure the busty lady who gave swimming and diving displays from the pier. Brighton then was full of wounded soldiers and I amassed a marvellous collection from the cigarette cards they gave me. If only I had kept them I would be sitting on a goldmine. I once saw an elderly lady fishing on the pier. A gust of wind removed her hat and her wig inside it. There were happy days sitting in a deck chair on the pier reading the adventures of Tiger Tim in ‘The Rainbow’ and consuming a 2p bag of raspberry drops and listening to the band of the 60th Rifles playing excerpts from Chu Chin Chow. The food was very nasty at the height of the U-boat campaign: no potatoes (only swedes), cocoa, margarine for butter, and a repellent sticky liquid in lieu of sugar. Enough of this senile and unprofitable drooling.
xx D
Mabel was the first woman Roger loved – his nanny.
The Miller’s House
[Mid 1980s]
I’m glad you had an enjoyable holiday. Le tourisme in France is more agreeable than it was when few plugs pulled and nervous old ladies always cleaned their dentures in mineral water.
Budds Farm
Thursday [mid 1970s]
Last week I paid my first visit to Brighton since I went with you and saw all those appalling commercial travellers. This time the place was inundated with Trade Union representatives who of course, being members of the new aristocracy, had all the best rooms in the hotels and the best tables in the posh restaurants. At the Old Ship your mother and I shared a bed the width of a stretcher, on the 5th floor. My head was balanced on the bedside table, your mother’s feet were on the floor. Demon Doss was conspicuous by his absence. However, we had an agreeable morning on the pier, your mother reading the ‘Daily Express’, whilst I purchased postcards of an indelicate nature. We then had two quiet and pleasant days with the Grissells. On the way home we lunched at a flash public house which sold contraceptives.
xx D
Brighton was an easily accessible and nostalgic playground for my father. Outrageously saucy seaside postcards were always sent, signed by ‘The Archbishop of Canterbury’ and ‘Dame Harold Evans’. His POW friend, Michael Grissell and his wife Rosemary lived at Brightling Park in Sussex, which today combines a family farm and racing stables. Their elder son Gardie was to ride in the Roger Mortimer Memorial race at Sandown in March 1993 – which he won.
Budds Farm
[Mid 1970s]
We are just off to Wales, land of male voice choirs, perpetual rain and appalling food. I hope we shall not be kidnapped by Welsh Language Mobile Guerrillas.
Moles Paradise
Burghclere
16 September [1970s]
Your mother showed immense pluck in plunging into the frigid waters of the Atlantic. She also showed perspicacity in choosing the most expensive items on the hotel menu. However, she looked after me and the dogs devotedly and I grudged her nothing. As usual, she was at her best when laying out a picnic. The beaches were marvellous, the bathers rather less so. If I could have 5p for every pendulous stomach, distorted breast, hernia or varicose vein that I saw, I would be under no compulsion to do another stroke of work. My experience of Welsh shopkeepers is that they are more avaricious, ill-mannered and disobliging than their counterparts in Newbury which is saying a good deal. For my real view of the Welsh, read Dr Fagan’s little oration on sports day in ‘Decline and Fall’. On the whole, though, I prefer them to the Scots: they are less self-satisfied and their congenital slyness is rather amusing.
xx D
Budds Farm
> 17 September [mid 1970s]
The Surtees had an agreeable 14 days in Salzburg, where it rained continuously, and Vienna. They wanted to go to the ‘Magic Flute’ in Vienna but no seats were available under £60! I’d have told the opera authorities just what to do with their flute, magic or otherwise.
Eventide Home for Distressed Members of the Middle Class
25 July 1979
I hope you enjoy the opera. I’m not desperately keen on it but I enjoyed ‘Aida’ in Cairo as the leading tenor was slosherino, caught his robe on a big nail and was left singing away in rather murky combinations with a trap door at the back. I made my appearance as a Roman Centurion in the Aldershot Tattoo of 1931 with the massed bands blasting out the Grand March from ‘Aida’. I got stung by a wasp one night but that’s show business.
Budds Farm
August 1979 [on pink pig paper]
I’m glad you enjoyed your culture trip to Glyndebourne. I do rather hate ‘La Bohème’. I was taught at Eton for a short time by John Christie, the founder of Glyndebourne. He frequently appeared for Early School (7.30 a.m.) in evening clothes, which of course commanded our respect.
Hypothermia House
[Mid 1970s]
I’m so glad you enjoyed your holiday in Devonshire. It is a delightful county but I could never work there as I find it impossible to keep awake. I do not believe for one moment that Drake was playing bowls when informed of the approach of the Armada: it is much more likely that he was having a couple of hours zizz on his hammock. In 1931 I was at Okehampton on a machine-gun course; it was hardly a well-chosen locality for that purpose as the ranges were always shrouded in mist so we used to go fishing instead. One day I was shown round Dartmoor Prison, a dreadful place, damp, chilly and depressing in the extreme. I was told that the food was all boiled, the objective being to impart just sufficient nourishment but render the meals as boring and unappetising as possible. I was shown a gang of blackmailers who were serving sentences of life or twenty years. They were the backbone of the prison chess team! Soon after my visit, there was a mutiny at Dartmoor and the convicts gained temporary control. The Governor had a vat of hot porridge poured over his head and was lucky to escape with his life.
Love to all,
xx RFM
Chez Nidnod
Burghclere
[Late 1970s]
I expect P and N enjoyed the seaside. Piers, I suppose, is just reaching the age when a bucket and spade holiday represents the summit of human happiness. In human existence is there anything to equal the pride and joy obtained through promotion from a wooden spade to an iron one? At that age one isn’t finicky about the weather. I enjoyed Aldeburgh in 1919 despite the jolly east winds from the Baltic. A boy called Paul Lindo instructed me (not altogether accurately) on the facts of life, in a bathing machine.
Budds Farm
31 May 1977
Pam and Ken are off to the South of France. I would like to see the General on one of those nudist beaches. Will he permit your aunt to be topless?
General Sir Kenneth and Lady Pamela Darling – my uncle and aunt.
The Old Damp Ruin
Burghclere-under-Water
3 January 1980
Your mother wants a joint holiday with the Darlings next summer. NOT my scene, not nowadays anyway. I need a younger lady and a less energetic man.
The Miller’s House
Kintbury
12 July [mid 1980s]
I hope you had an enjoyable holiday in Italy. I rather prefer the Italians to the French but that does not signify a great deal. Like most Englishmen, I love France but detest the French almost as much as they detest us. The Italians are okay as long as they stick to Art and Agriculture. It is when they strike military attitudes that they tend to become absurd. The best thing about the French is the French language which is excellent for clarity of expression.
Maison des Gagas
Kintbury
[Mid 1980s]
I am delighted to hear you may come on holiday with your aged parents. I appoint you ADC, Baggage Mistress, Resident Clown, Nidnod’s Keeper, Reserve Chauffeuse and my partner at the Hotel The Dansants. Time of departure: May 12 approx: length of stay, 8 days approx: destination, v. expensive hotel in Beaulieu, France. Finance: I will be responsible for your travel costs, room and food. I may even stand you a drink or two.
A near perfect holiday with my aged parents in Provence. At home or abroad, my mother’s vocabulary was spiced with French expressions: ‘We are absolutely d’accord!’; ‘très sympathique’; ‘au fond’; and so wistfully, ‘A partir c’est toujours à mourir un peu.’
The Miller’s House
[Mid 1980s]
I’m quite glad you weren’t with us on our holiday in Portugal as it was fairly bloody. The villa was modern, v. comfortable and well-furnished, sited on top of a hill with a wonderful view. A charming garden, an excellent pool and a female cook nearly up to NAFFI standard. But the two and a half mile track leading to the villa was hideously rough, full of pot holes, chasms and boulders. Every drive down it was an ordeal and the car stopped ominously once on the way to the airport. It rained every day bar one. The local towns were as dusty and squalid as the less fashionable parts of Slough. The Tavernas dish up filthy food grudgingly. The recommended fish restaurant was closed. Many fat Englishmen clad in very short shorts – revolting. Nidnod got flu, a temperature and was dosed by a Frog doctor. The Lemprière-Robins got bad colds and I weighed in with diarrhoea. A steep cobbled hill fucked up my knees. We had no papers, TV, radio and passed the time with bad bridge. On Thursday we left at 7 a.m. and at the airport, where it was raining hard, we found a 6-hour delay due to shortage of crew. When at last we boarded the aircraft it did not take off for 75 minutes. At ghastly Gatwick the L-Rs found they had missed all Jersey connections. I got separated from Nidnod and the situation was tense till I suddenly saw her with, thank God, our taxi-driver, who had waited 11 hours for us. We got home, knackered, at 10 p.m.
xx D
See you soon. Roof is leaking!
The Olde Igloo
Burghclere
17 January 1980s
Nidnod asks me ‘Why can’t we go to Australia, everyone else does?’ That’s quite an easy one to answer. I’m studying a brochure for a train trip in the utmost luxury (and at enormous cost) from Victoria Station to Venice. As Nidnod gets bored (naturally) staring at me every evening across the sitting room, would not demon tedium raise its hideous head if compelled to gaze at me for two days in a Pullman car? The Cottrills are in Barbados, the Lemprière-Robins are off to Ceylon, the Darlings to South Africa. Mrs Roper Caldbeck is off to Portugal, Major Surtees to Cologne and the Draffens to Bournemouth. No one I know can afford to go ski-ing any more. Brig Lemprière-Robin is put out because his daughter’s young man wears three earrings.
Bankruptcy Row
20 May 1981
Just back from France; weather marvellous, groceries variable. Your mother shook me by ordering a lobster dish at a small seaside restaurant that cost me £26! Nice work, Nidnod!
The Miller’s House
[Late 1980s]
I hope I enjoy our Danube trip. At all events I don’t reckon to be seasick. Whenever I see the ocean I think of poor old Ovid leaving Rome, ‘Me Miserum, quanti montes volvuntur aquarum.’
Best love,
xx D
Ovid’s ‘Ah me! What mountain waves around me flow’ was one of my father’s favourite quotes.
My parents’ many friends bob up like corks throughout my father’s letters, and brief biographical detail is usually attached to one or other of their appearances. Social life and, more essentially, friendship, are the focus next.
9
Round the Table with Friends
Friends are for life and life is for friends.
Anon
A treasured letter can sometimes vanish inexplicably into the ether. One such was when my father wrote to me in sympathy following the premature death of
a good friend. Etched in my memory from that letter is the line : ‘Of all the words in the English language, “friend” must be the nicest.’
As the letter writer he was, my father maintained and retained many friendships throughout his long life. He never, to the best of my knowledge, fell out significantly, if at all, with a single man or woman whom he embraced with that status – friend.
Desmond Parkinson and John Surtees, stemming from their years together as POWs, were two of Roger’s closest friends. Once married to their respective wives, friendship sprang up between my mother and Mesdames Surtees and Parkinson. That there was the odd exception is unsurprising given that there were to be three Mrs Surtees and four Mrs Parkinsons.
Women were very susceptible to Desmond, whose effortless sex appeal was enhanced by an enigmatic reserve which was also highly desirable in his professional life – he worked in the Secret Service. Eminently approachable, easily blending into an apparently ordinary commuter’s existence and a home-lover who mowed his lawn at weekends in Silchester, there was little in Desmond’s peaceable demeanour to indicate that his domestic life was one punctuated by regular turmoil. My mother was devoted to him.
A bon viveur and an eminent connoisseur of wine, which was his trade, John Surtees had the most delicious smile and whilst conservative in habit and outlook, exuded an aura of mild mischief. He too was very attractive to women. The friendships with the Surtees and the Parkinsons were facilitated by being relatively near neighbours, within dining distance of my parents.
Loyalty to friends rated very high with my father. Since he relished gossip – grist to the mill to any writer – discretion overall was possibly not his strongest virtue. The great circus of characters my father encountered on his social and racing rounds made unwitting contributions to his locker of anecdotes. Many lapped up my father’s wit, delighting in it, unless they found themselves speared on the sharp nib of his pen. Even then.