Dear Lumpy (15 page)

Without my asking for it, I was given a free copy of ‘The Times’ with my breakfast which I took care not to have with ‘les girls’!

Best love to all,

D

Your mother’s back is giving her trouble which makes her querulous. She is judging at Windsor Park for two days. Your brother is here and seems in goodish form. He tells me you are being given a posh new motor.

After years of loyal service my bright green Renault 5 succumbs to rust problems and the engine literally falls out in the middle of the King’s Road. Lupin, rather surprisingly, finds me a great second-hand red Golf, which even more surprisingly is in very good nick.

The Miller’s House

7 June

Dearest L,

I hope you are reasonably well. Luckily it has not been very hot which presumably would not suit you. Has that black dog of yours managed to survive the London traffic? At enormous expense we have had all our carpets cleaned as they were all stained beige by dog pee. We went to the Derby and had a marvellous view from the Directors Box. We had a good picnic in the car-park first. We have had a lot of lunch parties lately, all pretty boring on the whole and some rather peculiar things to eat. We went to a funeral on Monday (Lady Fisher aged 89). A short service followed by tea and cucumber sandwiches in the garden. Tomorrow we motor to Somerset for lunch with Fitzroy Fletcher. On Wednesday there is a beano at Highclere in aid of the Animal Health Trust. I have met Steve Cauthen quite often. He is intelligent and well-mannered. He stays at Brighton with Cousin John. Your mother is no nuttier than usual and is mad on gardening. We are just off to eat smoked prawns at The Harrow at Great Bedwyn. I have just had a very vulgar post-card from Emma L-R. I am sending one to her that will make her hair stand on end (I hope). Freddy Burnaby-Atkins came to lunch and I mixed a drink that made him pour with sweat. I’m afraid this letter is hideously dull but I feel liverish and senile.

Best love,

RM

Much to my father’s bewilderment, he and my mother continued a busy social life, about which he would write to us, normally including dubious encounters and hilarious anecdotes about the other guests.

5 August

Dearest L,

Thank you so much for kindly inviting me to your country estate. I think you are making it very nice. It only needs a little flowing water. Geriatric visitors don’t really fancy peeing out of the window at 3 a.m. We had a smooth drive home except when Nidnod annoyed a lady driver who called her some fancy names.

Love to the children.

Your loving father,

D

We are struggling with no running water, a regular occurrence living on a farm but not ideal with my parents staying. Although I had put buckets of water by the loo to use when flushing, I caught my dad peeing out of the window.

The Miller’s House

8 November

Dearest L,

I hope you are well and behaving with reasonable decorum. Your mother is suffering a lot from insomnia; I can sympathise, as for two months after my accident I seldom dropped off to sleep before 3 a.m. I shall be 77 on the 22nd. I find old age fairly revolting but at any rate it does not go on forever. I feel very fragile nowadays but at least I can still see and hear. I am having trouble with my left knee and the therapist who has been working on it has not been noticeably affective. Do you watch EastEnders? The son of an old friend of mine has just married the attractive Indian girl who works in a shop. His parents are not exactly overjoyed. Joy moves house next month to Thatcham. I can’t believe she will work here much longer and she will be a sad loss to your mother. Cousin John is in hospital at Oxford for a spinal operation; he seems to be going on all right. His sister Mary has been staying here plus two Norwich terrier bitches who have caused our dogs to pee all over the place. I dread Christmas which makes me wish I was a Jew or a Hindu. One of my godsons has retired to a Trappist monastery and seems content there. I rather think his mother is becoming a Buddhist! Aunt Pam is pretty groggy and not strong enough to go and see her horse run at Windsor today. Saucy Piers asked me ‘What goes in dry, comes out wet and gives two people pleasure?’ Answer: A tea-bag.

Love to all,

D

My father manages to escape with his life after a head-on crash with a lorry on a country lane.

The Miller’s House

30 December

My Dearest L,

Thank you so much for the book you so kindly gave me and which I shall greatly enjoy. I am most grateful. Christmas went off pretty well chez Torday. Jane worked like a slave and produced some excellent food and I am very keen on her turkey porridge. Paul was extremely generous with the drink and I consumed a great deal of champagne. Piers has a lot of charm and is very easy to get on with. Nidnod fell for Giles Milburn, aged 5. He is certainly a dear little boy. All the Milburn children have exemplary manners. We had drinks with an affable man called Bates; his wife has done a bunk. We drove home in pouring rain. On the M6 the roof rack on the car in front collapsed and 6 suit cases were precipitated on to the road. We just managed to avoid them. I did not envy the unfortunate individual who had to collect his belongings in teeming rain and in face of holiday traffic. Nidnod hates this house and wants to move. I suggest she waits till I cool which won’t be all that long the way things are going. I think we shall all go broke in 1988 so keep your larder well stocked!

Happy New Year (I hope) and best wishes to Henry, Rebecca and Benjamin,

XX D

The affable man (aka Tommy Bates) turned out to be my sister’s ‘new male friend’. He is now her husband and is a delightful, intelligent man of whom we have all become very fond.

The Miller’s House

Sunday

Dearest L,

I hope you are keeping well and are not too tired. V cold here and a fair amount of snow. Nidnod has been poorly with a sort of virus, bad catarrh and sore eyes. Alas, I am not all that hot in the role of Nurse Dillwater. Cheltenham went off OK except that it got progressively colder. I did not see Loopy but spotted him at Sandown for the Grand Military. I think I was slightly better dressed than he was which is not saying much. The crowds at Cheltenham were gigantic. Luckily Nidnod is quite unscrupulous over parking and got us a pitch in a handy place reserved for geriatric members of the Jockey Club! We only had to walk 25 yards instead of about 2 miles. James Pope is not exactly noted for his brain but his daughter has got a scholarship to St Mary’s, Calne. We had a very good dinner with total strangers called Sidebottom. Mrs S had quite a big moustache. We had a hilarious lunch with Tony and Rosie Villiers who are both nut-cases and pay periodic visits to a funny farm. Mrs Pope has an excellent cook and the browsing and sluicing were superb. The dogs are well but lead a most irregular sex life. A very tiresome woman called yesterday; I had to tell hideous lies to get rid of her. I go to London next week for a Derby lunch given by the sponsors. I anticipate indifferent food and acute tedium. Major Surtees has a new girl friend, a bit boring but a good figure. Aunt Pam is back; there is no truth in the rumour that she had a walk out with a big, blond Life Guard who had pulled her out of the surf at Bondi Beach! No news of Lupin. I believe Jane is looking in here soon. I am cutting some boughs of holly so that I can flog the boys if they get too noisy.

Love to all,

D

My favourite story about my father-in-law, Loopy. Back in 1969, after a Rolling Stones concert in Hyde Park, Lupin and Pete Carew (his best friend and Henry’s brother), then sixteen, were arrested outside a nearby telephone box. Loopy and Lady K happened to be passing and, seeing the boys being hustled into a police car, were in a state of shock. Loopy’s immediate reaction was to follow the police car. When Loopy and Lady K caught up with them at the police station, they discovered my brother had a small amount of marijuana in his pocket. Loopy immediately put it in his pipe and tried to smoke the evidence. He was lucky not to have been arrested himself.

The Miller’s House

23 June

Dearest L,

How are you behaving? Nidnod is exhausted after an afternoon of riding with the disabled. Tough work for a woman of her age! Stuart, the boy she is in charge of, is quite a comic and gets a real kick out of it. Ascot was fun and the weather was marvellous. Nidnod backed the winner of the Hunt Cup at 20/1. Of course Ascot is no longer smart like it used to be; the aristocracy has opted out of racing which has no more social significance than dog-racing at Catford or Slough. Most of the women are dowdy and appear to have escaped from the annual garden party of a Rural Dean at Okehampton. Not many young girls to be seen. Some familiar faces among the men, including one old buffer, the stains on whose waistcoat are real turtle when he is betting successfully. Very cold and dank the last few days; we went round a marvellous garden yesterday kept by a man who plans draining systems all over the world. Wheatcroft, the great rose man, lost 65,000 roses at his nursery during the winter. I went berserk in Marlborough today and bought a lot of clothes, including some moccasins which I now find are 2 sizes too small. They might fit you! I tried to buy a red shirt but could not find the right size, perhaps fortunately. I bought a jersey for Nidnod, dark blue with white hearts on it. She likes it. I also bought some rubber mats to place under wash basins, a new design which can be trimmed to fit with nail scissors. I hope Rebecca did well in her ballet class. I shall expect her to dance ‘The Dying Swan’ next time I see her. I am having a new sort of kedgeree tonight, bright yellow and rather smelly. Baron Otto is in excellent form and hasn’t bitten many people recently. I watched the local Morris Dancers yesterday. Their first number was ‘The Old Man’s a Bag Full of Bones’. This was followed by ‘Gathering Peasticks’. I longed to join in.

Love to all,

D

Lupin comes here on Wed., the day our dining room table comes up for sale.

The dance of the dying swan from Swan Lake was one of my dad’s party pieces. His performance involved a lot of energy and rather less dignity, and would have us all in hysterical laughter.

The Miller’s House

26 June

Dearest L,

V hot and sweaty here. I am just off to Salisbury with Gordon Richards to judge two year olds. Champagne lunch with Sylvia Bowditch. Nidnod is flying to Jersey for Emma’s dance. Alas, thunderstorms are forecast. Lunched yesterday with the Bomers. Mark has taken a very good degree at Cambridge. William is teaching in Martinique. Your brother is looking for a larger flat. Three Marlborough boys have been sacked for ‘vandalism’, smashing up a swimming pool and some science schools. I met a parson at Ascot who told me his nephew had been at Marlborough, taken up drugs and had been in and out of prison ever since. My father hated Marlborough which was hideously spartan in his day. Piers has taken up bell-ringing. Mr Randall was a bell-ringer in Salisbury Cathedral. He told me that a fellow-ringer was only 4ft tall and had to stand on a box. One day the rope got entangled in the little man’s foot and he was hauled upside down to the roof! The Lloyd Webbers have bought all Sydmonton from Clifford Kingsmill who is now an alcoholic. We sold the dining room table for £1,800 and have bought a smaller one. I bought 2 rather nice water-colours for my bedroom. I have sold my leg in Easdale for £425; I’m sorry for the girl who bought him for ‘eventing’. We had a picnic on the Downs last night; Nidnod forgot the soup and the corkscrew.

Love to all,

D

Despite the fact my mother forgot the corkscrew, I can guarantee that she managed to open the bottle in one way or another.

The Miller’s House

24 August

Dearest L,

Black skies and thunder, a fitting end to a fairly hideous summer. Lupin and his bird lunched here yesterday, I like her very much. Pity she has a husband. My cheerful local taxi driver was killed in the massacre; his wife has just had a baby. Luckily we were in the ‘Galloping Crayfish’ while the carnage was going on outside. I quite enjoyed Jersey; most of it resembles the suburbs of Bournemouth and so do the locals. I would not care to live there; Guernsey, I’m told, is worse. Nidnod is not too well but battles on gamely. I feel my age which is nearly 78. Old age is full of little surprises, most of them of a fairly hideous nature. Most of us are doomed to end up in the Hotel Incontinental! I hope Benjamin has got over the pox; it is a good thing to have it young. Your poor mother suffered grievously when she had it when she was over thirty. We are off to lunch with Derek Colls today. He seems to have defeated cancer of the throat; his wife died of that awful disease. Freddy Burnaby-Atkins is in the Isle of Skye with his younger brother who has Parkinson’s Disease, another victim of which is Emma’s father. Charlie Blackwell has sold 1,000 bottles of vintage port left by his father and has had his house completely done up. Lupin is staying with Cousin John at Brighton tonight.

Love to all,

D XX

Having heard the news and knowing my parents were in Hungerford on the day of the massacre, I had tried to ring them several times without luck. When my mother finally answered the phone she was extremely irritated and could not understand what the fuss was about. They had been lunching in the back room at the Galloping Crayfish and were more concerned as to how they were going to get home to feed the dogs than the threat of being shot by a madman.

The Miller’s House

Sunday

Dearest L,

Only 87 shopping days till Christmas (or something like that)! I rather dread the winter although the summer is usually pretty dreary too. Nidnod and I thought of having a party to mark our 40th wedding anniversary but we have given up the idea as we cannot think of any form of celebration that would be amusing and would not involve inviting bores. Possibly I may have a lunch party in London but that is improbable. Perhaps I shall go off and get quietly pissed on my own! I had a night down at Brighton with Cousin John last week. His flat is super-luxurious and I had a marvellous view of the marina from my bed. The Brighton shops (including the fish market) are good and the streets are full of retired actors doing their shopping accompanied by their boy-friend. Nidnod is none too well and I am rather worried about her. She gets terribly depressed and her lack of energy is very untypical of her. Jane’s godfather Peter Black has had a nasty heart attack but is recovering. He is very depressed at having to have his tiny dog, about half Otto’s size, put down. The weather here is awful, grey, chilly and never a break in the clouds. Freddy Burnaby-Atkins is just off to Turkey and I rather envy him. You ought to persuade Henry to take you there. Hungerford is recovering from the massacre; they had not had a murder there since 1870 when 2 policemen were shot by burglars. There is supposed to be a memorial to the policemen but no one seems to know where it is. I hope Piers is settling down at Eton. The day before he left he was heard discussing on the telephone with a friend which Bank he intended to patronise. I hear Rebecca is becoming very horsey. Well, if it was not ponies it would probably be boys! Joy is on holiday and so is Mr Randall. I think Mr Randall is having a spree at Weymouth. Major Surtees is just back from Turkey where he had a marvellous time, no doubt in the harems. His grandson (or one of them, at any rate) goes to Eton this term. He shows promise as a poet.