Dear Lumpy (17 page)

I have been asked to review a book entitled ‘Prep School’ but found it terribly dull and refused. The chapter on sex was a great disappointment and the boys interviewed were desperately unenterprising.

Your affectionate father,

RM

Lupin has started working for the infamous Hobbs brothers at their new antiques showroom in Pimlico.

The Miller’s House

Dearest L,

Many thanks for a birthday card (slightly late) and a Christmas card (somewhat early). Both appreciated, though. I had a lot of birthday cards, mostly connected with sex. Freddy B.A. sent me a group of plump, naked German girls getting up to larks. I left it in the bathroom where it was found by your mother! My sister sent me a vulgar book on sex for geriatrics and the Parkinson one on how to run a brothel coupled with some instructions which rather surprised me.

Best love,

D

The Miller’s House

18 January

My Dearest L,

I’m so sorry I was not back in time from my stroll on Bedwyn Common to say good-bye to you and Henry and the children. I had not realised you were going back to the ‘Smoke’ before tea. It was very good of you to come down here and help Nidnod and apart from that I very much enjoy seeing you, a somewhat rare pleasure I’m sorry to say. I thought Rebecca and Benjamin both behaved remarkably well; of course Rebecca is growing up fast and I expect a certain amount of decorum from her: I was not disappointed in that respect. Make the most of the children when they are still with you; you really don’t see much of them once they are at boarding school. I used to love the seaside holidays when we were all together. I think I am very lucky in my grandchildren but I expect sooner or later they’ll give you a few worries; they would be unnatural if they didn’t.

Alas, my watch stopped this morning and it was 8 a.m. when I let the dogs out. Very unpopular!

Love to you all,

D

For years we would spend our summer holiday in Brittany, always staying in the same hotel, a great favourite which was on the beach.

The Miller’s House

3 April

Dearest L,

Marvellous spring weather. I’ve just taken Otto for a stroll on the Downs. We had a lot of people in for drinks yesterday including 2 8-month old twins! Quite a jolly man with young wife who runs the Newbury Arts Festival. Someone who shall be nameless did in a bottle of vodka! Drinks before lunch with the Parkinsons; slept hoggishly afterwards. I gave Nidnod a charming card featuring a jaundiced-looking hen and an outsize egg. I watched the Boat Race on TV (can’t think why). Some of the Oxford crew are as old as me. The B-Atkins are off to Austria. Since Freddy joined a Lloyds syndicate they are up to their tonsils in treacle. I’ve just had a jumbo-sized bill for water and sewerage! We are having 2 nights in dreary old Devonshire in May, followed by 2 days in sleepy Somerset.

Love to all,

D

I always enjoyed going on walks with my father. When I was young he would make up stories about ‘Jowler the Giant’. As I grew older he started to regale me with anecdotes about his years as a POW, which he would always make amusing.

The Miller’s House

Friday

Dearest L,

I enjoyed seeing you the other day. I’m sorry Henry can’t come on the 26th but these things happen and collecting a small party is never easy. Have a good time in the West Indies and mind out for black men on dark nights! Peregrine is all the better for his trip to Devonshire and I hope it did Nidnod good too. I left my spectacles behind. I saw the specialist in the R Berks Hospital today. She was v pleased with my progress and I don’t go again for a month, which is good news.

Love,

D

My father arranged a small gathering at the Turf Club for his birthday. He took great of pleasure in introducing me to his racing friends, some of whom looked as though they had not long left for this world.

The Miller’s House

8 August

Dearest L,

Had an excellent lunch with the Popes today: really good stewed plums and cream. Emma L-R called in for a drink with her young man of whom I formed a goodish opinion. Dr Yates goes on holiday today: he is tasting wine and food in Burgundy. Lupin has left for Zambia. Piers is doing something to underprivileged boys in Dorney, just outside Eton. Nidnod bought Chinese prawns for supper last night from a caravan in Kintbury. Reckon I was lucky not to get salmonella. At the Popes I met a funny little man called James Holford whom I first met at Wixenford in 1919. His parents removed him in 1921, fearing his morals were being corrupted (by no means improbable). At Eton he coxed the eight. He went into the 15/19th Hussars: Loopy may have known him. If I can get seats in October, will you come to Show Boat with me? I saw it at Drury Lane in 1928!

Love to all,

D

Show Boat was a huge success. My father got into the spirit, tapping away to the songs. I think I even saw a little moistness around his eyes.

The Miller’s House

9 September

Dearest Lumpy,

Thank you so much for having us to stay. You are certainly making your house very comfortable and attractive. As for Rebecca and Benjamin, they are everything that grandchildren should be – or hopes they will be. Sorry the picnic aborted. Having eventually found our way from you, the joke is that Nidnod thought she was in Lynmouth the whole time she was circling ghastly Ilfracombe. We went to Lynmouth on Sat: Nidnod bought herself a bath-mat and me a jumbo ice cream and a key ring with my name on it! Good strawberries for dinner on Sat: also roast duck. We got home today in 2 hours dead. This evening we go to a golden wedding beano with hymns and speeches! I shall love that! Poor Nidnod is suffering from depression and needs a holiday.

Love to all,

D

Have a good time in Norway. Take warm undies.

I actually managed to have my parents stay in Devon without incident.

The Miller’s House

Saturday

Dearest L,

V. pleased to see you looking bronzed and well after your holiday. Benjamin is good fun and looks happy.

The day of Pam’s funeral a letter arrived to Pam from a Senior General. In it he expressed his sympathy with Pam over Ken’s death. I know Generals are apt to be thick but this takes the professed bun with almost insolent ease.

Nidnod went cubbing today but came home early as she felt awful (and looked it, too). I twisted my knee putting my trousers on today and am as lame as a geriatric camel. I can’t go to Ascot in consequence. I found a spider as big as a mole in my bath this morning. Luckily Jane did not find it or she’d have had a fit! I hope you had a jolly evening at Slough, less posh than Ascot I suppose. My horse is called ‘Owners Vision’ (why?). It is a big common brute that could pull a brewer’s dray. Do you know the difference between a war-horse and a dray horse? The former darts into the fray, the latter farts into the dray.

XX D

Having no children, my aunt and uncle were devoted to each other. Uncle Ken was Aunt Pam’s carer for a number of years and was completely devastated when my aunt passed away.

28 February

Dearest L,

How are things going with you? I hope you have not had a lot of tiles blown off! It has been very stormy here but we have had so far only one power-cut. My type-writer is kaput so now I have no car and no writing machine. Combined with my ill health and Nidnod’s tantrums, life is not exactly a bowl of cherries. The Gunns came to dinner on Saturday. Diana is a real nut-case, albeit a charming one. She has an ever-loving husband; both drink neat whisky. Diana’s mother is 96, totally gaga and it is a full-time job looking after her. Nidnod is only 69 and I suppose easy by comparison but she finds me more or less impossible and I find her looking at me as if nothing would give her greater pleasure than to hear I had been squashed flat by a no. 19 bus or perhaps a no. 22 on Sloane Street. The new Kintbury District Nurse is Portuguese and rather attractive. While I was waiting my turn in Surgery last Monday a man had a heart attack. We are lunching with the Watkins today and to Nidnod’s horror are scheduled to watch racing films afterwards. I hear Lupin’s blood is in a somewhat unsatisfactory condition. George Wiggan is very ill with hepatitis in Africa and his wife and daughter have flown out to see him. On Friday I lunch with Burnaby-Atkins. He and Jenny are just off on a Pan-Am special offer trip to Mexico which includes a free car for a week and several days free in a post hotel.

I think all the people I know in this area (including myself) who are thoroughly depressed should line up and take a running jump in the River Kennett, having first filled their pockets with large stones. I did hear something about Lady de Mauley but I’ve forgotten what. Peter Walwyn lads’ hostel was burnt down the other night but luckily no lives were lost. Mrs Grace Walker lunched here on Sunday. She is 86 lives alone and is the nicest and most intelligent woman in Kintbury. Dr Yates is off to Paris, his motto is ‘Most diseases are incurable my job is to try and make them more bearable’.

XX D

Love to all

My father is truly lost without his good old-fashioned manual typewriter. Under pressure, he bought a Japanese electric typewriter which was not a great success and soon taken back to the shop. Incapable of ever getting the upper hand in any commercial transaction, he part-exchanged his new, hardly used, electric typewriter for a second- or third-hand manual typewriter. He could not have been happier.

Dearest Lumpy,

Thanks for your pretty card. I’m glad you enjoy working for the Conservatives. I fear you’ll be out of a job by the next election. Very damp and cold here. We go to London on Thursday: I rather dread it. Your mother has fibrositis and wants to go to Baden Baden for a cure. She is off to Jersey for a week in July if she can find a keeper for me. I’m not looking forward to Ascot, I’m too old for that sort of lark. I enjoyed seeing Rebecca the other day and liked her shy friend from Dorking with out-of-door teeth. All my dahlias have expired.

Best love, D

Much to everyone’s surprise I have got a job working for the Conservative agent for Kensington & Chelsea. As my qualifications are minimal I am happy just to stuff and stick envelopes. My father took to calling me at the Conservative office every day. He had a soft spot for Charlotte Blacker, who had given me the job, and I think he was hopeful she might answer the phone and cheer up his day.

Dearest L,

What ghastly times we live in! The Gulf, The IRA, terrorism, unemployment, ghastly weather! I don’t seem to have had much peace since that day in 1916 when I was doing French with Miss Shaw my rather pongy governess when a lot of aeroplanes flew over Cadogan Gardens. We only discovered later they were German. Years later during a dock strike I was marching guardsman down to Smithfield when an elderly striker shouted ‘You wouldn’t shoot your fellow workers would you?’ and my platoon Sergeant shouted back ‘Yes I would Grandad and in the balls!’ My mother, of all people, worked in a canteen during the general strike and was generally acknowledged the Queen washer up! She washed up – it was the job she liked above all – in two major wars and various big strikes. When I was about 10 Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson was shot by Irishmen on his doorstep quite near to where we lived. The murderers were caught and hanged. There was a particularly sordid murder about the same time in the house where Aunt Boo lives now. Uncle Tony, my mother’s brother and my godfather, was a splendid character, the larky mobbing type. He was arrested on his 21st birthday party for breaking up a Masonic dinner at the Café Royal and careering down Regent St waving the master mason’s insignia. He hated the war, got an MC, was badly wounded and was killed when his ambulance was hit by a shell. He gave me a gorgeous tiger skin when he came back from India, my mother pinched it for an evening coat but I got it back in the end. My father went off to Le Torquet for a beano and in his absence Ellis the butler drank up all the hock in the cellar, peeing in bottles after he had emptied them. At about that time we had a parlour maid called Kate Murphy who was pissed at a dinner party and passed out carrying a tureen of turtle soup. Another butler attacked Mrs Tanner the cook with a carving knife and another one, who had come from the Camerons, tried to have the footman.

XX D

In the final year of my father’s life things went downhill quite quickly. It was really hard for the whole family. Sadly this is the last letter I received from him. As is often the case he became very clear about the early years of his life but would forget what had happened that morning.

This little ditty would always make me laugh when my father recited it:

Poor old banana stood up in bed.

Along came sausage and bopped him on the head.

Poor old banana fell down dead.

Tripe and bananas brown bread.

Thanks to my brother Charlie, aka Lupin, who has been the driving force behind
Dear Lumpy . . .
as well as being a constant throughout the trials and tribulations in my life; Tim (Partington), my brother’s partner and my best friend who has provided endless emotional support; finally to Victoria Young who is the angel in my life.

Read on for a sample chapter of
Dear Lupin
, published by Constable.

The Sunday Times

3 February

Dear Charles,

I hope all goes well with you. I never seem to hear of you unless some disaster, major or minor, has taken place. Owing to lack of communication on your part, I have not the remotest idea of what is going on at Eton or how you are progressing, if at all, in your work. Jane has not come down this weekend and I have no idea what she is up to. Nor do I know where she is living: she might be on the run from the police judging from the rapidity with which she changes her domicile. I had a bad and painful attack of gout last week and now I have a throat infection and am partially deaf. Getting old is revolting and I hate it. Poor David Gundry, who stayed at Barclay House a couple of times, was killed in a car accident last week. He went off the road at 90 mph and that was that. A tragic waste of a young life. We are now off to lunch with the Hislops. Last week we went to the theatre and saw ‘The Secretary Bird, which is very light but by no means unamusing. Inspector Barlow and the man who plays his boss were sitting just behind us. I had to drive to Doncaster and back last week which was rather tiring. Louise is home and seems in good form. She is the one member of this family that gives me no trouble.