Outrageous Fortune: Growing Up at Leeds Castle (9 page)

“I’ll be off, darling,” my mother said gently. “I know you don’t want to miss
Robin Hood
on the box, do you now?” I was so startled by the fact that my mother knew about my favourite television programme being about to start that I found myself staring at her as if seeing her for the first time as another important ally deep inside the bubble. It should have been obvious.

*   *   *

By the 1960 Lent term I had three times received headmaster’s reports along the following lines: “He has far more ability than he is displaying at present.… He has not been concentrating well, not making much effort.… He seems interested in history but is very diffident about joining in oral lessons and discussions … in fact his whole approach to life seems to be lacking in self-confidence, which inevitably affects his schoolwork.… He is at his happiest and most relaxed when painting or drawing, at which he is most gifted.” These were accurate assessments, but nobody spoke to me about them or suggested straightforward guidelines for improvement. I imagine my parents read these reports and then retired them to a filing cabinet to gather dust in peace and quiet. In the meantime the castle way and I were given free rein to continue on our merry way.

*   *   *

“Russell, am I disturbing you?” my Latin teacher enquired one frigid February morning during my last term at Hill House. I was sitting, as was my custom, slumped at my desk in the back row of the classroom, staring at the blackboard with a totally blank expression. The room was wide, painted white, with a hardwood floor, and its bay windows looked out over the circle of handsome red-brick Victorian buildings of Hans Place, with a tree-lined garden in the centre. There were four rows of individual desks, worn and scratched, each with an attached bench and a top which opened to house pens, crayons, and exercise books. I had never liked this room, whose floor always smelled of polish—a school smell. I felt the other boys often sensed my habitual discomfort, which alienated me further.

“Er … no sir.”

“What a relief! For a moment I thought we’d lost you.”

“Yes sir.”

“So we did lose you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You might find it extremely helpful, Russell, if you made an effort to concentrate more.”

“Yes sir.”

“Good. I look forward to seeing you follow through on that.”

I detested being told what to do by strangers, especially gruesome, grotty schoolmasters. Only Nanny was allowed to tell me what to do. Or that was the way I saw it.

6.

O
N
V
ACATION

When I was four—one year before I went to Hill House—the castle way and family holidays conducted a joint summer experiment. For two weeks Granny B, the court, assorted aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends, my parents, David, James, Nanny, and I assembled on Venice’s fabled Lido Beach and waited to see what would happen.

My grandmother and the court booked into the five-star Excelsior, while the rest of us stayed at the family-friendly Quattro Fontane, a stone’s throw away. The Excelsior contingent then disappeared off the face of the map, leaving the children (and nannies) to bucket-and-spade their way through the long, hot, sandy days, and the parents to endure the associated hullabaloo, fortifying themselves with a steady stream of Bloody Marys every day at noon. At lunchtime children and nannies retired to the pretty garden of the Quattro Fontane for spaghetti, while the grown-ups took a well-deserved break, joining the court at the Excelsior, a local trattoria, or the villa of a friendly count.

Granny B evidently saw a bleak future in three-generational groupings at foreign hotels, because the experiment was not repeated. For her it was misery not having a full complement of personal staff to attend to her daily important needs. I spotted her twice on the beach, sitting under a parasol puffing away through a long cigarette holder, accompanied by Morg (who wore the largest swimming trunks I’d ever seen on any man, and who swam with the children whenever he could), but that concluded her holiday outreach.

The castle way was not to be trifled with. Granny B’s summers would henceforward be centred around a villa in the South of France, where she could set herself up, with her castle staff, in the comfort and style she was accustomed to, and conduct her affairs as she pleased. Should grandchildren or young cousins need to be put up for a few nights, every effort would be made to meet the request, so long as card-table pairings, dinner-table settings, visits to and from local grandees, afternoon siestas, staff rotations, and a host of other vital considerations were not in any way disrupted.

Much to my surprise (I was unaware that they’d enjoyed the experiment), my parents took David, James, Nanny, and me back to the Quattro Fontane the following year, this time accompanied by their close friends, the Hon. Robin and Mrs. Warrender. Granny B rented the fabled Château Saint-Jean in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat that summer while she searched for a nearby villa more to her taste. Enjoying the close companionship of my brothers and my two lovely cousins Sandra and Paget for a whole fortnight (the one and only time) made this second, court-free, taste of Lido glamour rather a special affair for me.

There were three highlights of the initial Venice excursion, all eye-openers for their stark newness after four years cloistered in a brace of nurseries. First, the sights and sounds of Victoria Station: its thirty-metre-high glass ceiling and iron beams; the noise and energy of the platforms with travellers and porters hustling and bustling about; the smoke of the steam engines—which bore a striking resemblance to the pictures I was so familiar with but were a lot dirtier—and the powerful whistle blasts that echoed like a chorus of ill-tempered parakeets through the station as trains prepared for departure to destinations unknown. And all this was a mere run-up to the exhilarating overnight sleeper to Venice.

Then there were the water-taxi rides up and down the canals and across the waterways of the lagoon. By day I was awed by the grace and beauty of the palazzos, churches, bridges, and gondolas. By night, as we raced past an enormous American warship, anchored so close to land that the gorgeously lit tower of the Doge’s Palace appeared to form a part of her structure, I sensed with strange delight the piquant aromas of salt water, sewage, and fine cuisine wafting up into the starry sky.

Last there was the occasion when Auntie Pops, my mother’s equally striking but less forgiving older sister (mother of Sandra and Paget), shouted at me ferociously when I walked in on her stark naked as she was changing in her beach cabana. “Get out!” she cried (subconsciously prepping me for my upcoming encounter with Princess Djordjadze in the castle hallway), startling me with her vehemence. Get out I did, closing the curtain behind me, blushing furiously but still quite taken with my first official sighting of the adult female form in all its glory and abundance. I had grown accustomed to splashing and playing with ducks in the large nursery bath at Leeds with Carolyn and Annabel, but this was a gratifying new format.

*   *   *

Granny B needed the court on hand during the winter months in Nassau and the summer in the South of France. Those who resisted making themselves available on the dates assigned to them did so in the knowledge that they would be incurring the chatelaine’s displeasure—not something to be taken lightly.

Realistically, the castle way and family holidays never had much chance of seeing eye to eye. The former required constant adherence to established guidelines from sophisticated adults, with the bare minimum of interference (if any) from the young. The latter required intermittent adherence to intangible guidelines from sophisticated adults, with the emphasis on giving (for limited spells) small amounts of pleasure to the young.

My next two summers were therefore spent away from family with Nanny, Nanny Warrender (English nannies used to take the name of the family), Carolyn, and Annabel in an idyllic little town called Bembridge on the east coast of the Isle of Wight. We stayed in the prettiest street, lined on both sides with clean, delicate-looking, almost identical Victorian houses, most of which were used during the summer months as bed-and-breakfasts for families such as ours. The Warrenders were four houses down from us because we could not find a house for us all to be together. The beach was just a few minutes’ walk from our respective B and Bs, and there was a newsagent on the corner for picking up sweets and magazines. It was calm, it was peaceful, it was bliss.

We would meet up with the Warrenders at the gate of our B and B at ten thirty or a quarter to eleven. The five of us would then set off for the beach, the girls and I leading the way once we became familiar with the route. We three had our buckets and spades to carry, and our nannies brought up the rear, laden down with towels and changes of clothing. Our morning activities were confined to splashing in the frothy water after the waves had broken, seeing who could be the boldest by venturing just that little bit further out before the inevitable warning to be careful from one barefoot nanny or the other (neither of whom was ever far behind). Periodically we chose to play in the wet sand, energetically digging, building up, and slapping into shape our constructions, the three of us nattering away like the three musketeers until it was time to go and change for lunch.

The Bembridge beach facilities clearly were never intended to resemble those of the Lido, and our changing cabin was a far cry from the Italian cabanas. Such matters, though, were far from my mind. The three of us loved being together, and indeed plans had already been laid for us to get married, with only one small detail to be worked out: Was I to marry Carolyn or Annabel? On the walks back to our respective B and Bs, marital discussions would resume exactly where they had left off.

“I’m older and therefore I should get to choose, and I think I will marry Anthony,” Carolyn told Annabel, her mellifluous voice firm, her sharp features focused.

“But I’ll be so unhappy, and you mustn’t make me unhappy!” Annabel responded, and I agreed that this was a very important point.

“Look,” I proposed. “Can I marry Carolyn first, then you after?”

“But how long will I have to wait?” Annabel asked. “It’s not at all fair.”

“I could marry you first,” I said undiplomatically.

“No, you won’t. You’ll marry me first. Please don’t be silly.” Carolyn put her foot down forcefully, which left me wondering if we’d ever resolve this intractable problem.

We’d been walking down the alleyway, away from the beach, a wall on one side facing a tall hedge, and were almost at the corner where the newsagent sat. We turned onto our street and in front of the shop I asked Nanny if I could go inside to have a look at the new “trash-mags,” the World War II comic adventure magazines all the boys I knew, especially my brothers, were reading, collecting, and swapping like maniacs. I had recently become a devotee myself and had brought a small selection with me to Bembridge.

The Warrender girls declined the opportunity to join me for a browse, so we said our farewells for that day, placing all wedding plans on hold until the morning. Inside the shop I quickly located the swivel stand upon which hung racks of brand new trash-mags. While I began my search I watched Nanny wander off to the other side of the store, where the grown-ups’ magazines and postcards were located. The shopkeeper, an elderly lady dressed in a worn floppy cardigan, was partially obscured from view by the stand, and as I flipped through one or two of the best-looking trash-mags, whose covers all featured pictures of fierce-looking soldiers, English and German, firing machine guns, hurling grenades, and generally appearing heroic, a hitherto unimaginable thought crept into my mind. I could easily slip one of the quite small magazines inside my shirt. Nobody would see me. Nanny, surely, would not notice the difference between the magazines I already had and a new one? With so many of them lined up six inches from my nose, I wanted a new one, wanted it badly, and it would be easy. I didn’t have any money on me, so what should I do? Ask Nanny, do nothing, or take it—steal it?

I needed to act fast because I knew Nanny would soon finish her transaction and the shopkeeper would start to wonder about me. I opened my two top buttons, slipped a trash-mag down the front of my shirt, did up the buttons, and arranged my arms, still holding my trusty bucket and spade in front of me, as the vicar would do when standing in front of the altar at St Nicholas’s Church in Leeds village.

Instantly I felt my neck grow warm and my heartbeat go into overdrive. My scalp began tingling, and my skin was turning puce, but instead of putting the magazine back I glanced once more in the direction of the shopkeeper and with as much sangfroid as I could muster, wandered out onto the street, hoping that Nanny would soon follow.

She did, enquiring kindly, “Did you have fun looking at your magazines, dear?”

“Yes, thank you,” I said, my eyes glued to the pavement as if searching for a fallen coin, desperate not to have my perfidy uncovered. I dared not look behind me as we strolled back to our B and B for fear that the old lady from the shop would suddenly appear and demand retribution for my heinous act.

It wasn’t until we were back in our room and Nanny had ventured down the corridor to the bathroom that I was able to take my illicit cargo from its hiding place and slip it into my drawer with the other trash-mags, an act that brought blessed relief from the immediate fear of being caught. Still, it did not dispel the grim possibility that Nanny would somehow recognize that I had all of a sudden acquired an addition to my reading material and ask me how that might have come to pass. She never did, but the tainted trash-mag remained out of sight until long after we had gone back home.

A new quandary presented itself. Having now firmly established my credentials as a bold and fearless thief, should I do it again? Robin Hood stole from the rich to give to the poor. But I was stealing from the poor to give to … the rich? Of course I was not rich myself; otherwise my need to sing for a half crown or patiently await an annual Christmas record or book token would not have been so acute. But the bubble in which I existed bred a mind-set that followed me everywhere. It told me I was richer (without needing any actual money) and better than the rest, and that I could have everything I wanted. I assumed that my great good fortune would remain sacrosanct and unchallenged forever, without my having to do a thing. These were perilous thoughts for a child on the cusp of being sent off to boarding school for the next ten years. They were also thoughts I kept entirely to myself, and so nobody—not my brothers, not Nanny, not my school friends, and certainly not my parents—was given the opportunity to dispel them or knock some sense into my head.