Dearest Jane... (17 page)

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 Under-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, Joy, 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.

The wedding’s glamorous couple were Joe Gibbs, son of a field marshal, and Leonie, an artist
.

The Old Slagheap

Burghclere

17 December 1980

Your mother wants an electric sandwich-maker for Christmas. I hate sandwiches and I expect it will always be going wrong. My only Christmas present so far is a wallet made from the skin of some obscure animal and presented to me by Aunt Boo!

Budds Farm

19 February [early 1980s]

We are busy looking for a new house. I found a charming little Queen Anne house last week but it was turned down by Nidnod as inadequate for her ponies whose comfort and welfare rate rather closer attention than mine. Nidnod’s council friend Mr W is constantly calling here for meals, drinks, etc: I don’t grudge him his rations, liquid or otherwise, but he has never yet stood Nidnod even a glass of tepid Watneys during the long intervals at council meetings. As Charlie said, he makes Scrooge look like Father Christmas.

The time had come for my parents to find a warmer, more practical home, preferably in a village. Budds Farm had always been a challenge to my father’s well-being. My mother, immune to draughts, loved it and it had ‘land’ – at least enough to accommodate her ponies. Their next and final home in Kintbury, The Miller’s House, suited my father, even if the size of his fuchsia pink fibreglass bath was better suited to a seven-year-old, while my mother luxuriated in a large avocado green bath there and found The Miller’s House suburban. They were intermittently united in their pleasure of relaxed and sociable times there with friends and family
.

Chaos Castle

Burghclere

[Mid 1980s]

The move is making slow headway and your mother is getting the worried look seen on the features of Emperor Napoleon when things started to get slightly out of hand in Moscow. Oddly, she has suddenly got interested in gardening and plants out lettuces and weird herbs in improbable places.

The Miller’s House

1 June [late 1980s]

Nidnod has taken up horticulture and has plonked a sundial on the lawn. I have suggested a motto:

‘I am a sundial and I always botch

Something that’s done better by a watch.’

Nidnod is very scathing about amateurs trying to write verse. I did not tell her I cribbed those two simple lines from Hilaire Belloc!

The Miller’s House

Jan 6 mid 80s

We had the Reading Crown Court Judge staying here. He completely out-talked Nidnod at dinner and repeated the performance at breakfast. I pity his juries.