Dear Lumpy (11 page)

Best love to all,

D

One of my dad’s most thumbed books, Black’s
Comprehensive Medical Dictionary
, 1879 edition, was kept in the downstairs loo. He would consult it regularly and then convince himself he had the most unpleasant diseases.

Budds Farm

22 April

Dearest L,

Thank you for your letter. These big offers are of course very tempting. I think Henry ought to consult a top class solicitor (not some moth-eaten old dodderer in Tiverton) or at any rate his bank manager provided the branch of the bank is a big London one and not some two-man affair that opens from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Tuesdays and Fridays. I myself always feel inclined to play safe in matters like this but of course there are people who take an entirely different viewpoint and quite often they are highly successful. Cousin Tom is the only member of my family competent to advise but he is convalescent after a ghastly operation for a brain tumour and is at present in no condition to advise Henry or anyone else. Have you thought of having a talk with your godfather Frank Byrne? He is quite shrewd.

I’m glad to hear you like your house in the country. Do please ask your mother and me down to see it one afternoon during the summer.

I am not surprised to hear that Rebecca is considered intelligent. Don’t be bullied by her headmistress. You are probably the best judge of what Rebecca needs. I have not been very well lately. I collapsed when clearing some undergrowth but just managed to stagger to the house where Nidnod found me unconscious on the kitchen floor. Dr Keeble said I had had a stroke, but Dr Taylor disagreed and now Dr K has come round to her point of view. I feel pretty ghastly but have no alternative but to carry on as before. If Nidnod or I stop, the place goes to pot. It is really too big for a couple of oldies and I would like to move but Nidnod is anything but keen. When I cool, which may not be very far off now, I think she will move out of this area altogether. I find old age increasingly bloody. Most of my friends are dead, undergoing major surgery or are confined in private asylums near Bognor Regis. I seem to have no purpose in life and irritate your mother considerably with the result that my emergence from the doghouse is a rarity. I hope you’ll come down here and see me before I give the bucket a resounding kick.

We are due to fly to Crete on May 9 but I am very shaky and your mother is in very poor form too so it’ll be a miracle if we both get there and both get back!

Love to you all, and my very best love to you, my dearest L.

D xx

My father was not easy an easy patient when he was ill. He would frequently resort to emotional blackmail as well as offering Beckie rich prizes in the hope that we would jump on a train to Newbury in order to nurse and entertain him, which we normally ended up doing.

Budds Farm

25 May

Dearest L,

The holiday was quite a success. V good weather after the first two days. Hotel comfortable, lovely garden. Our chalet within piddling distance of the sea. We had a fridge in our room and often had lunch and cold drinks on our balcony. We also had a sort of immersion heater for making tea, coffee. Hotel food ghastly, looked like dog turds and probably tasted similar. Some good meals though in small seaside tavernas. Local fish called Woppas. Topless German bathers with boobs like overfilled sandbags. Italian ladies who never shave under the arms. In our hotel were Peter Close and Alan Colls from Yateley. Also Rosemary Grissell whom you may have met. Nidnod enjoyed herself and was mostly in good form. Sorry to hear Jane is having to leave her house.

XX D

‘Quite a success’ is rich praise from my dad after a holiday.

Budds Farm

30 June

Dearest L,

Thank you for your card. You seem to be living it up lately. Quite right, too, at your age. I’m just crawling around an object of no interest to anyone bar undertakers. I’m off to Brighton tomorrow for a bit of sea air with Cousin John. Next week we are off to Shropshire for a couple of nights. I can’t think why I agreed to go. Your mother is in quite good form. Unfortunately she has been given some cooking books and is apt to experiment on me. Poor old Cringer is very tottery; his legs gave way this morning and he could not get going again for some time. He and I make a good pair.

Best love,

XX RM

More despondency from Chateau Glum.

Budds Farm

21 August

Dearest L,

I hope you are behaving with reasonable decorum. All v quiet here. Uncle Ken & Aunt Pam stayed the night. Aunt Pam manages to convey the impression that she more or less disapproves of everything. I can’t say it bothers me all that much! They are off to Kenya this winter. Major Surtees stayed, too. He is rather poorly with arthritis and is getting ominously lame. Poor Mr Parkinson can’t get rid of his mother-in-law who is extremely trying from 6 p.m. onwards when drink and pills combine to make her garrulous and aggressive. Your mother is in good trim and enjoyed a day’s sailing with her rich and portly boy-friend Rodney Carrott. She stayed with the Thistlethwaytes at Bembridge and met a lot of old friends. Peregrine was extremely sick yesterday and Solomon piled up a pyramid on the dining-room carpet. I hope they won’t make a habit of this sort of thing. We have a plague of magpies here: I think they have seen off the rabbits. Nidnod got a ‘Highly Commended’ for Flower Decoration at the local Flower Show. Judy Gaselee is recovering rather slowly from a fractured skull. We had a good lunch yesterday with Bobby Kennard and his ever-loving wife. Bobby certainly seems to have landed up on the pig’s back. Their most promising horse met with a fatal accident last week. Major Barlow’s two year old filly, worth £100,000, broke a leg in a race at Newbury and had to be put down. Weaver’s Loom looks plump and healthy and is eating me into insolvency. How is Rebecca? I suppose her summer holiday is nearly over. Lupin is due here tonight. I’ve no idea what he is doing or how he gets enough money to eat. He and I have been invited to a champagne party at the next Newbury race-meeting. Next week we are going to a Cameron family lunch party at the Café Royal to meet the elder Cameron boy’s Swiss fiancée. I find most Swiss excruciatingly dull but they make excellent hotel managers. I was cut dead by Mrs Hislop at Newbury. Hooray!

Best love,

D

Weaver’s Loom was one of the race-horses in which my father had a share with his friends, the Gaselees. He had run well in some races but not well enough as he became known to us as ‘Deepest Gloom’.

Budds Farm

Thursday

Dearest L,

It really was kind of you to have both your aged parents to stay and to take such trouble to give them a good time. We are both very grateful. I like Overlands very much indeed and think it has immense possibilities. You certainly own what I feel sure must be the most extraordinary bookcase in this country! I enjoyed the picnic but would not like to walk over that particular field very often wearing plimsolls. As for your daughter, she is first-class entertainment and I have never met a child of that age with such a comprehensive vocabulary!

Our hotel was very agreeable, an excellent room, large garden, swimming pool and good food bar a repulsive pudding erroneously described as ‘trifle’. We had a smooth trip home, the only incident being when we stopped for a drink and Peregrine was confronted by a Great Dane.

I was terribly sorry to hear about your driving test and you must have been bitterly disappointed. Don’t lose heart: before your next try, get your London Dr to give you some of those pills that jockeys take before they ride in the Grand National. It might do the trick.

With singular senile folly I left some things, plus a nice pen Nidnod gave me, on the mantelpiece. Could you please send them on? I enclose £1 for postage.

Very best love,

D

My parents’ visit was a lot more successful than the last time when we had no running water. My father spent a lot of his stay chilling in a deckchair, a sitting target for my daughter’s version of the musical Cats. There was only one drama of note, which was when I took them for a picnic and we ended up in a field that had just been sprayed with liquid manure.

Budds Farm

14 September

Dearest L,

How goes it? Have you had your first autumn cold yet? I believe Rebecca’s birthday is next week. I hope I sent you a cheque on her behalf but if I haven’t let me know. I’m so forgetful nowadays. Did you enjoy Burghley? It did not look the best of fun on TV. Nidnod is suffering from depression (not uncommon with women of her age) so I am giving her lunch at The Furzebush at East Woodhay. I have been planting out polyanthi, my favourite spring flowers. When you handle them, bear in mind that some people are allergic to them and are liable to come out in cracked hands afterwards. Eight years ago I planted two plum trees. Until this summer not a single plum appeared; this year there is a bumper crop. Locals say my marigolds have attracted the right sort of bee for pollination! On the other hand no apples and pears which usually do well. Aunt Pam is back from Jersey and said the gin was running out of her ears. Some people have all the luck. A local lady of 96 has been killed in a motor accident: her chauffeur was 85. I’m not looking forward to the winter, it really isn’t much fun when you are old and living in a chilly house in genteel poverty. The Very Rev Holmes Dudden, Vice-Chancellor, Oxford University, who used to wear a fur coat and smoke chair-leg cigars, once observed, after his third glass of port: ‘As an ordained clergyman of the Church of England I am constrained to believe in a future life, but I don’t mind admitting, my dear fellow, that personally I should much prefer extinction.’ I wonder if your local library has a novel called ‘Scandal’ by F. B. Wilson? It is mildly amusing. I am sure the next war will be started by some idiot, slightly pissed, pressing the wrong button, causing the entire planet to disintegrate.

Best love to you all from all of us, including Baron Otto,

XX D

Baron Otto, my father’s new Chihuahua, brings a little joy into his life but does not stop him imparting his views on both winter and the end of the world.

Budds Farm

25 September

Dearest L,

How are you all? I am glad to hear Rebecca’s party went off well. Emma Lemprière-Robin is staying here and cheers us up. She is hunting with the Old Berks this season and will keep Nidnod on her toes in more ways than one! Baron Otto is in good form and gives me a sharp nip every now and then if he is displeased. He and Peregrine are now good friends. We are just off to Virginia Water to meet Sandra Cameron and her Australian husband. He comes from a pretty rough part of that continent and I hope he is not an aboriginal. Nidnod and I went out to dinner with the Airds and played bridge. We both lost: Nidnod seems to think bridge is the same as poker with unfortunate results, not least for her partner! I received an enormous book yesterday compiled by Brough Scott and costing £25. It has some marvellous pictures in it. It is a pity Brough wrote a message for me in it or it would have done for the Darlings Christmas present. Your Aunt Barbara came to lunch here on Thursday; she is as barmy as ever but really doesn’t talk more balls than her sisters. Weavers Loom is as lame as Long John Silver and I fear we may have to put him down. We are having a conference on Tuesday. I won 3 bottles on the charity day at Ascot but alas, one held mineral water, the second an unpopular brand of beer and the third sweet martini which makes me feel sick. What really annoyed me was that Michael Philips won a crate of champagne. I am going up to Newmarket on Wednesday to see Cousin Tom who has been told he has cancer. Charlie Blackwell’s wife has just left him which does not surprise me. His mother was always leaving people. Aunt Joan is just off to Crete. Recently the electricity failed at the Hotel we stayed at in Crete. Two elderly guests broke legs trying to find their chalets in pitch darkness. Two English girls were raided in their chalet by intoxicated Greek waiters and a young man who came to their aid walked through a glass door and had to be removed in a plain van.

XXXX D

Love to all

My mother was a great games player, she was also very competitive and hated to lose; on occasions she was known to expand the rules in her favour, especially when playing backgammon.

Budds Farm

5 October

Dearest Lumpy,

I am glad to hear the wedding went off well even though Rebecca went a bit berserk at the reception! Your mother has gone off to Somerby to see Mrs Falkner, a long trip in one day. She’ll be very tired when she gets back. Kate kindly sent us some photographs. The one of Rebecca was excellent. The one of myself administered a painful shock. I look like a fortnight-old corpse exhumed for examination by the Home Office pathologist. Bobby Kennard sent a yearling up to the Newmarket Sales and got 78,000 guineas for it. Rather a lark in view of the fact that a few years back if overcoats for elephants had been 5p each, he could not have bought a pair of gaiters for a canary. Otto is well and very bouncy. Yesterday we had lunch at the White Hart at Hamstead Marshall with Sarah and Mark Bomer. I thought the fried squid tasted like a very old bicycle tyre. I have just received three books to review, two of them very boring. Peregrine is getting portly: not enough exercise and too much rich food. I see one of the boys tried to blow up Wellington: I imagine he will get the sack. After all, even in these days dynamiting your school is fairly serious. They have always had a lot of criminals at Wellington; when we lived at Yateley a dangerous gang of local burglars was found to be boys at Wellington. One Old Wellingtonian I knew was involved in a notorious jewel robbery at the Hyde Park Hotel. It was very nearly murder and if it had been he would have swung for sure. The Randalls are away in Scotland for a fortnight: they have only just come back from Blackpool. I have my share in Weavers Loom and now have a share in rather a common horse with the odd name of Gay Tent. The Adams boys have both passed in to Oxford, one into Christchurch, the other into Magdalen. Not bad considering that after Horris Hill they went to the state school in Newbury.