Dear Lupin... (3 page)

I suppose the process of growing up is difficult, confusing and sometimes painful for you; it brings sometimes grief and worry to parents, too. I feel very sad when I think of the fun we used to have in the old days. Perhaps something can be salvaged from the wreck before the gulf between us gets impossibly wide.

I wonder if you realise how lucky you have been in the last year in having a House Tutor and a Modern Tutor who both like you, have always been at pains to emphasise to me your best points and always speak up for you. When you are older, you may realise you owe them a considerable debt.

Best love,

D

Largely oblivious to the distress and disappointment of my folks I simply cannot wait to leave. The term after I depart, a boy in my house is caught smoking. When the house master punishes him he objects: ‘That's not fair, sir. You allowed Mortimer to smoke.' ‘Now,' says my old House Tutor with suitable gravitas, ‘there was a boy who really needed to smoke.'

I enclose for your attention my telephone bill (Jumbo size). Please note calls to Hurt at 8/0, 11/4 and 18/. I think no further comment is needed but please be temperate in this matter. I don't think I overcharged you!!

D

29 May

Thank you for your card, you cheeky monkey! I hope you are settling in and that the crammer is not too hopeless!

The Gaselees are staying here tonight and a man of eighty-four with a beard comes to lunch tomorrow. I am off to the Derby Dinner tonight + visit General Fisher en route. Nidnod is in a flap and keeps losing £5 notes; I think she is under the impression that I pinch them. I have paid for your shares – Woodfall Trust – keep an eye on them. I'll get you the receipt, don't lose it, it is very important as regards tax. Some men are putting down carpet in the W.C.

We had a disgusting dinner in Newbury last night.

Be reasonably good,

D

I am now lodging in Brighton with Joyce Walker, a friend of my parents. She has a wonderful voice crafted over the years from generous quantities of untipped Virginia cigarettes and Gordon's gin. I attend a crammer daily in the vain hope of finally reaching the heady heights of knowledge required to bag a humble Maths O level
.

 

The Sunday Times

4 June

My Dear Lupin,

I am glad to hear you are happy at Brighton and that all goes reasonably well. I don't suppose you will want to come home at the end of the month! There were two communications for you today from the Ministry of Defence and I opened them just in case they were urgent and knowing they would not be personal. One says you have been accepted for the Regiment (as a candidate); the other is about your five days at Tidworth starting on 13 July. I want you to be at the Old Coldstreamers party here on 13 July and you can drive to Tidworth (only thirty miles) in my car or Nidnod's afterwards. Incidentally it was Fred who drew the ticket (Belbury) in the Sweep.

Yesterday I had to go to a memorial service for Brigadier Cazenove, who commanded the 1st Bn in Belgium in 1940. Quite a nice service and I am always very moved when the band plays old Coldstream marches at the end of the service. It was pouring with rain when I came by but luckily I got a lift with Major Pope.

In the afternoon I went to ‘Oh What a Lovely War'. Of course I enjoyed the songs, but it not a film for me as firstly I remember the first war quite well; secondly I was a soldier for seventeen years; and thirdly I have studied military history.

I have seen many of the people portrayed in the film and of course the actors bore as much resemblance in appearance and character as Mick Jagger does to Alice in Wonderland. In the entire film there was not one single person who looked like a soldier; they looked like actors – some of them not very good ones – in clothes hired from a seedy provincial theatrical costumier. History was twisted to give a certain point of view, and it was so far from the truth that I was seldom moved at all. I thought a ghastly tragedy was too often turned into rather tawdry farce. I cannot read the official history of the Battle of the Somme without tears coming into my eyes at the thought of the flower of English manhood being slaughtered – most of them not conscripts or regular soldiers but young and idealistic volunteers. I was tremendously moved by World War I in that BBC serial because it showed the terrible truth and did not distort facts to produce rather naive and bogus propaganda. If our leaders had been all such dolts, how in God's name did we win against the might of the greatest military power the world has ever known, backed by the superb planning and organisation of the German General Staff? At the start of that war we could put about seven divisions (12,000 men in each) into the field; the Germans about 130. Haig was admittedly stubborn, unimaginative and insensitive, but he won in 1918 some of the greatest victories ever achieved by British arms. The film, with cheap and puerile inaccuracy, seems to try and make out that all officers were nits and took no part in the fighting; in fact casualties among officers were proportionately far higher than among other ranks as they had to lead and take more risks. Look at the names on the 1914–18 war memorial at Eton. In most regiments, relationships between officers and other ranks in war-time are very close, based on shared risks and interdependence for survival.

In the evening I went to Whitehall to hear the massed bands of the Guards Division, with the mounted bands of the Household Cavalry, beat retreat. I think you would have enjoyed some of it, particularly the introduction to ‘Lohengrin' and one or two slow marches; possibly, too, ‘Chitty Bang Bang' and the ‘Posthorn Gallop'!

Some more pictures come up for sale at Christie's on 20 June. I saw the solicitor about your inheritance yesterday. It will be invested at compound interest till you are twenty-one when you can do as you please. Jane will get hers right away.

Give my love to Joyce.

D

In a moment of madness I agree to go on a trial five-day stay with the Coldstream Guards. Unfortunately in the interim I am arrested for possession of drugs and a flick knife at the Rolling Stones concert in Hyde Park, which rather puts the damper on things. This letter arrives just prior to all the drama. My mother is particularly annoyed that I appear on the front page of the Newbury Weekly News, overshadowing the mention on the back page that her Dalmation, Pongo, had taken first prize in the fancy-dress class as the Captain of HMS Pinafore
.

I have just paid a telephone bill for the enormous sum of £68. As I have hardly used the telephone at all myself, I shall be grateful for contributions.

RM

Another phone bill and Dad pleads poverty
.

Budds Farm

Sunday

Dear Charles,

I am very impulsive. Your mother is also very impulsive. That is quite enough for one family. Let us have a little planning, forethought and sensible deliberation from you. So to start with, get rid of that bloody bicycle. I did not give you £40 for that, as you well know!

Yours ever,

RM

The ‘bicycle' alluded to is actually my motorcycle, a beloved Honda Monkey Bike
.

Dear Charles,

As a bourgeois reactionary, I am inclined to think you pursue your code of being scruffy and uncouth a little too far. Last night you parked the Bubbler flush with the front door so that elderly guests arriving for dinner could hardly get in the house at all. Dinner was at 8.15 and you saw fit to appear at 8.40, well after the guests. Even allowing for the fact that you cannot yet tie a bow tie, a sweat rag coiled round your neck is a somewhat unattractive form of evening dress. Your hands looked as if you had been greasing a No. 19 bus and had given them a quick flick over with a damp sponge. When called to the telephone, you saw fit to stay away for fifteen minutes; hardly a compliment to your neighbours at the dinner table.

I don't expect you to be a second Lord Chesterfield, but I rather wish that in appearance and conduct, you were slightly less typical of a transport cafe on the Great North Road.

Don't get into trouble tonight!

D

An absolute classic. ‘The Bubbler' is my purple bubble car with faux tiger-skin seat covers
.

With regard to your trip to Greece, I wish to make the following points, which no doubt will be totally disregarded:

1. Make sure before you start that your passport is in order + that you have the required visas for yourself and documents for your car. It is important to carry full insurance.

2. Drive carefully. In Europe they are far, far tougher on motorists than they are here. If you get involved in an accident, you may easily and up in gaol. It would be quite beyond my power to extract you if, for instance, you get locked up in Yugoslavia.

3. On no account get involved in any form of political argument. The Greeks love politics and arguments and Greece is now a Police State.

4. Have nothing to do with drugs unless you are particularly keen to pass the next seven years in prison.

5. Try not to look like some filthy student who has renounced personal hygiene completely. The unwashed with long hair are looked upon with great hostility in certain European countries and it would be silly to be stopped at a frontier because you like wearing your hair like a 1923 typist.

6. If you do get into trouble, Interpol will soon find out you have a police record and that could be awkward.

7. Take plenty of money. You need not spend it all.

8. Take a small medicine box and plenty of bromo. You are one of nature's diarrhoea sufferers.

9. Make sure all your headlights are adapted to the rules of the country you are in.

10. If in trouble, contact the British Consul.

11. Some of the drink in Greece is very powerful indeed and can give you the most appalling headache.

12. Be v. careful to whom you give a lift. Stick to girls, they are safer and usually more amusing.

13. Do
not
carry a flick knife or any nonsense of that sort.

14. Take a shady hat; the temperature in Greece will be over 100°F and sunstroke is rather unpleasant and distressing.

15. Enjoy yourself + don't do anything too stupid. I trust you + P.B. together not quite as far as I could kick a thirty-ton concrete block.
RM

Time for my summer holiday. This is a final fling before rather an impetuous decision to join the Coldstream Guards as a squaddie in October. Due to a conviction for possession of marijuana I am not able to join as a potential officer. As the Colonel in Chief remarks to me in an interview, ‘If you were merely an alcoholic we wouldn't give a damn.'

7 October

My Dearest Charles,

I am very clumsy at having little talks with my own family so I will try, no doubt inadequately, to say a few things before you leave to join the Coldstream. Firstly, I wish you every possible good fortune and happiness. I was never a particularly good soldier but I was a very happy one. It would be untrue to say, though, that I was happy straightaway; I was not. I had anxious, even unhappy days before I settled in. I have no doubt that in the next few weeks moments, perhaps days, will occur when you will curse your decision to join; you will feel tired, frustrated, angry and totally fed up. I certainly went through that phase during my first term at Sandhurst and I wondered if I was ever going to make the grade; I did, but it was a near thing once or twice. You have two assets; firstly, in a stoical sort of way you have plenty of courage; secondly, you have a sense of the ridiculous, a sense without which the Army is hardly the ideal profession for civilised individuals. I think you get on with people, too. Also you are good with your hands whereas I was, and am, inconceivably inept. Your fellow recruits will probably be working-class boys from the north. Most of them will have never left home before and you will in many ways be tougher and more worldly-wise than they are. Also you are – or at least ought to be – rather better educated. So you will have certain advantages. From the start play by the rules even if you think the rules are silly; show yourself above all reliable and a trier; don't, above all, try any smart tricks or chance your arm in any way; you will come off second best. Just try your hardest even at truly ghastly things like PT which I myself hated above all. Be very clean at all times; Army doctors have a nasty little trick of making inspections and examining every inch, literally, of your anatomy and if they find anything not 100 per cent clean they send in an adverse report. Keep your money locked up; don't lend any and watch your kit. I don't think you will have any serious troubles but if you think there is anything seriously wrong – bullying or petty dishonesty by older soldiers or NCOs – let me know at once. That sort of thing is rare, very rare in the Coldstream, but it is not absolutely impossible. When you get allowed out of barracks, watch your step very carefully and don't do anything silly. If anything, be a bit of a prig to start with!

That is really about all, and quite enough too. Remember I am here in the background to help all I can if anything goes wrong. Don't hesitate to ring me up or write. I will always do what I can. That is what fathers are for.

Your affectionate father,

RM

10 October

Dearest Nidnod and dearest Jane,

I am writing you a joint letter about your son/brother (cross out the description that is inapplicable). If I seem a bit off beam, it is because I have a nasty go of salmon trout and am as stuffed with drugs as a sucking pig is of sage and onions – though through a different aperture. On Wednesday I tried to help Charlie get ready for Pirbright and gave him an inadequate parting gift of forty cigarettes, some nail scissors and a box of band-aid. In the evening the Bomers came to dinner and Sarah gave Charles a present and a big kiss. The dinner was daintily served by Mr Gracious Living (me) and the chicken cooked with mushrooms and the unexpended portion of yesterday's vin rouge was delicious. Charlie was in excellent form after three champagne cocktails and gave us some hilarious and slightly hair-raising stories of his experiences and misad ventures with Boris and Co. He really is a cheeky monkey! Thursday was a perfect autumn day and we set off from Pirbright at 10.30 a.m. leaving Jenny holding back the tears as if Charlie was off to Vietnam. Charlie drove the Rover and we went through Blackdown where my old father joined the Army – in 1914 at the mature age of thirty-five. At Pirbright we stopped 100 yards from the entrance and Charlie, tense, pale and utterly stoical – shades of Wellesley House – entered the guardroom, case in hand. I waved farewell and drove on to Brookwood to get some petrol. I then drove back and going through Pirbright I saw a lone figure, suitcase in hand, walking with that well-known rolling gait across a gigantic and otherwise empty barrack square. I felt it was perhaps symbolic of a gentle, indolent and rather impulsive boy entering a rather tough, demanding world of men. It reminded me of the famous final shot in one of Charlie Chaplin's long films – was it ‘The Kid'? I couldn't help thinking of so many episodes from Charlie's boyhood – the happier ones for the most part like picnics at the Robbers Cave, family holidays, opening presents at Hartletts on Christmas day and so forth. It is the greatest possible error at my time of life, when the brain is beginning to soften, to lapse into drooling sentimentality, a lapse caused in this case by the over-protectiveness felt by parents towards their children. At all events, once in the mood I could not get out of it. On my way to Ascot I dropped in at the Wallis's house and left a wedding present for Nona. Then on through Camberley where I pictured Jane and Charles at the station waiting for my father's train; on up the hideous High Street with memories of you and I doing hectic last-minute shopping for the children's stockings. I drove through the RMAS grounds where forty-two years previously, on a similar autumn day, I had arrived bewildered and far from happy. It was here you bowled to a coloured gentleman in the nets, where we took Turpin for walks, and where I marched you up a steep hill to expedite the arrival of Louise. I suddenly remembered my old instructor Captain Hancock who painted insipid watercolours. He asked me to tea at his bungalow, ‘Kashmir Lodge', and showed me his painting of the trees round the lake at Sandhurst in October. It bore the title ‘Leaf by golden leaf crumbles the gorgeous year'; poorish art and indifferent poetry, but the fact that I recollect it after forty-two years confers on Captain Hancock, dead these many years, a form of immortality. Then on through Yateley, past old dear Barclay House and up Mill Lane where we had family walks with Jane rather ‘bolo', Charles in a pushchair and scarlet hat and Turpin sniffing for unattractive objects in the ditches. I seemed to see a shade of the late Mr Townroe striding briskly along with his walking stick and nosy-parker expression. Up past the Gunns' house and then to W. H. Smiths where an owlish lady with unfortunate dentures once conducted the lending library. At this point nostalgia had turned to nausea so I entered a pub next door to where the Wellington Hotel once stood and ordered a stiff drink which broke the spell and gave me violent hiccups. Charlie starts off at £14 a week of which he can draw £5, the rest being saved on his behalf. His address is C. R. H. Mortimer, Coldstream Guards, Guards Depot, Pirbright, Surrey. I shall make no effort to see him just yet as I want him to settle down. If he can get a day off, he can take a train from Brookwood to Basingstoke and be met there. All being well, he will be home for Christmas.