Have been back from Spain for a week. February 6 we caught the train for Victoria. Pop slept at his club and I stayed with the Churchills. A bad night due to an excess of brandy after dinner. June picks a quarrel with Randolph over their daughter, Arabella. I am accused of taking sides. My door blown open during the night by Randolph’s snores (he is across the passage). June roams the house at six in the morning.
*
We had a private cabin on the boat, as Cyril says it’s the only way to get any service. We didn’t require any, but men kept bobbing their heads in and out of the cabin as Cyril sat like a pasha greeting each one in turn until the boat became too rocky and he had to lie down.
*
In France, the first thing one notices is the tops of the willows which have been recently pollarded and resemble nutty crunch bar chocolate. On the train, we get into conversation with a bright scruffy Bostonian who attacks England, saying the English know nothing about food or painting. How about Turner, Constable, Hogarth and Gainsborough …? He turned out to be a publisher, George Novack, and, when asked by Cyril what he thought of English critics, could only think of V S Pritchett. It was exhilarating arriving in Paris, humid, brightly lit and a steady downfall of sleet. We bought snacks on the platform.
Am up early, dressed and just belting up my overcoat when we get to the Spanish frontier. We change trains at nine in the morning. Cyril immediately begins grumbling about the armed police and the inadequacy of the bookstall. ‘A country of philistines,’ he says. The Talgo a long windowed moving caterpillar. We sit in twos in a long line, metal trays are placed over our knees. We order huevos and gaze out at the Basque countryside. Granite mountains, scrubby evergreen ilexes, large open spaces with clusters of giant boulders looking as though they had been coughed up from the bowels of the earth. Then vast stretches of umbrella pines. Piles of swedes were stacked on all the platforms, and groups of desultory travellers loafed about, or put their faces close to the Talgo with inquisitive stares. We might have come from another planet.
We reach Madrid at 6.30 after passing the Escorial which stood out in all its grandeur gleaming in the sunlight. It was strange to come upon a large city, surrounded by a vast plain, in the centre of such wild country. Madrid very much alive. Fountains, crowded streets. Bill Davis met us on the platform, very dandified in a loose, knee-length, grey gabardine overcoat. He was much thinner, full of self-confidence and jauntily swinging a silver-topped cane, directed us to a large American roadster. The flat was spacious and white, full of evergreen plants and modern paintings. Annie (Cyril’s American sister-in-law when he was married to Jeannie) had on an old gabardine skirt and blouse, with gold chain bracelet and necklace that she always wore, in case, she said, she should ever get stranded in a foreign country without her lord and master. We saw the children. Both a dead spit of Bill. The first meal, langostina with mayonnaise, steak cooked by Bill with mashed potatoes, spinach and fruit salad. The conversation Burgess and Maclean, and Bill saying all the time, ‘And what do you think of so-and-so, Cyril?’ Pop unpacks his suitcase and brings out a trousseau, a pair of orange silk pyjamas trimmed with black, hand-stitched with his initials. (Philip Mountbatten has a pair just like them, he tells me.) The next exhibit was a pair of scarlet leather slippers so stiff and ill-fitting that he can barely squeeze his pretty broad feet into them, let alone walk. Luckily, the floors are polished wood parquet, so that he is able to skate. I absolutely forbid him to wear the pyjamas while I am sharing the same room, as they make me dizzy. He says they will suit him better when he is sunburnt. He complains about his sinus, is tomato-red under the eyes (a further clash) and has scales flaking off his cheeks with patches of dandruff round the temple. The following morning he eats a two course breakfast and says he needs some sunshine.
A very delicious day. (Probably the most enjoyable of the whole trip. Everything still new and interesting.) We rise late, then set off to lunch the other side of the Guadarramas. I borrow a very splendid pair of sunglasses that I intend to keep. A dream pair, just sitting on the bridge of the nose without producing lines under the eyes. A slight mist covers the ground, but it is warm and sunny, the mountains faintly obliterated by a haze. Halfway up the Guadarramas the road is blocked by heaped snow and we are unable to continue. We retreat and lunch at Miraflores; a summer resort. Impeccable meal, ordered cautiously. Bill unaccommodating with advice as though he did not want to be held responsible. Start with hors d’oeuvres, including some excellent tinned tunny fish, followed by a tortilla filled with diced potatoes, veal cutlets, salad soaked in water and vinegar (better than it sounds), Spanish lettuces being very good and crisp, and finally a speciality of the house, rice pudding with a lemon flavour. The Castille wine, Riscal, was drunk nonstop throughout the trip. We then motor to Annie’s dream-house: a vast turreted circular castle, owned by the Marquis of Alcapulco, now inhabited by peasants, cows, sheep and goats, and the whole place smothered in animal pellets. It was in a very ruinous state, but Annie says she only intends to live in one of the ten wings, and would be content to do it up one room at a time. Cyril says that will take a lifetime, at the end of which one would have no money left and have to depend on charity.
*
Later a visit to the Prado. A conducted tour by Bill who walks ahead in dapper dress swinging a cane. I lingered at Goya’s Shooting of La Moncloa. Cyril absorbed in the Bosch paintings.
In bed with ’flu. Have been stricken ever since leaving Madrid. As we leave the house, I complain of a sore throat and insist on stopping at a chemist. Everyone thinks I am making unnecessary fuss. Leaving Madrid, we motor across a dull plateau, a dun-coloured, endless vista of wild country fringed with foothills, very aware of the ubiquitous sky fleeced with white clouds. When we crossed over the Andalusian border Pop gears us all for the observation game, tells us to cry out when we see some sign of a southern climate. The person who pipes up first is rewarded with ten pesetas, the unobservant ones paying the forfeit. The first sign being a palm followed by an aloe, Pop is the first to spot both and cries out, unable to stifle his pleasure at his own cleverness. I just concentrate on spotting a cactus, deciding that is the best tactic. Call out when I sight a prickly pear, but everyone looks so grumpy, I decide to drop out of the game. After leaving the plain, everything becomes green; eucalyptus of giant height with rustling silver branches fan the road. We pass through the Sierra Morena, driving through several Moorish towns of great beauty.
Stay the night at Ubeda in a converted palace with a patio. Pop and I on very bad terms, me irritable and ill. Spend a sleepless night – such dim lighting it is impossible to read. Annie says dim lighting is typical of Spain. Bill agrees and gurgles with pleasure, the idea of our discomfort being a huge joke. He drives in silence, occasionally emitting a grunt. Annie chatters nonstop. I periodically turn round to release a fresh barb at Cyril, or glare.
*
Next day passed through two ravishing towns, Baeza and Mancha Real, clusters of palms, clumps of aloes, prickly pears and regiments of olive trees. Dwarf blue and white irises border the road; there was an occasional carob and a sudden burst of bright yellow as we passed a climbing jasmine. We had a glimpse of the first orangery and a touch of spring, at last – almond trees in blossom, a wonderful sight, the pink flowers contrasting with the dark negroid barks. A very good lunch at Jaen of paella, merluza (the inevitable hake) and manchego cheese. We end the meal with large glassfuls of orange juice. The people of Andalusia more sympathetic than in Castille and better-looking, maybe due to their having darker skins. Annie thoughtfully buys me a pair of white woolly gloves as I left the last pair behind in Ubeda. We visited the cathedral, a lot of elaborate wood carving, then push on south. The Sierra Nevada capped in snow. We stop the night in a fishing village and summer resort, Almuñecar. Cyril and I both with temperatures. Drink hot grogs and become muffled. We read that in England there is snow, an epidemic of ’flu and roads are cut off. Once more dim lighting in the hotel. We are the only guests, it being out of season. Pop now ill, flushed and bundled up in woollen clothes and overcoat with turned-up collar. Drink more hot grogs. Wake up to see the nets being hauled in, the bedroom looking right onto the sea. All the fishermen gather round with baskets, some leading donkeys onto the beach to cart away the fish. Pop shows us the custard apple trees at the back of the town. Many ravishingly pretty Renoir women with deep pools for eyes. Scores of beggars everywhere. After three days, when Cyril has retired to bed, Bill opens his mouth for the first time to elucidate on the things that give him pleasure: (a) farting loudly for people to hear and then turning round with a surprised leer; (b) peeing all over the lavatory seat to annoy women; (c) blowing his nose into his fingers and flinging the snot. As we left next morning, we saw two dogs copulating and Bill went on sniggering until several miles outside the town. On arrival at Torremolinos, Cyril immediately looks fluffed out and furious à cause des anglais partout.
*
We whizz through the main street deploring the newly-built villas, haunted by the possibility of running into David Tennant. Leave the bungalow world of Torremolinos and spend the night in a luxury hotel. A comfortable room at last looking onto the sea. Bright lighting and hot sea water bath. I retire to bed with Gerald Brenan’s South from Granada.
In the evening, the Davises return from some trip to announce their car will have to be laid up, as it has a leak in the gearbox. They are fed up at the idea of being static. Cyril and I wink with pleasure, as we had been discussing earlier how we could get them to stay put for a few days. The plan is to return to Malaga, unfortunately one of the dullest towns in the south. There was nothing to see but a commonplace Gothic cathedral and a museum of nineteenth-century paintings, one Zurbaran, a few Riberas and a ravishing seventeenth-century Christ sculptured in wood.
*
My ’flu gets steadily worse. Spend three nights with dinner in bed, then we visit the Brenans for tea. It was a very cold day and we were all shivering; the garden was at its worst. It is the same shape as ours, but in place of a hawthorn hedge is surrounded by a wall. The only pleasing spectacle on such a windy day was the tall shiny ochre-coloured bamboo canes that swayed and creaked like a galleon in the wind. He had an avocado pear tree too, but the whole garden was dominated by an enormous deciduous tree with a greyish bark resembling a giant elm, that could be seen standing out against the skyline when approaching Churriana from Malaga. We all drank tea crouched round a circular table, enveloped in a blanket, under which was a large brazier full of smouldering charcoal.
Gerald Brenan did most of the talking, said we were the first guests they had had since arriving back five weeks before. He was terribly pleased to see people, just as Cyril is after being deprived of company for five days. I was at my most tactful and asked to borrow Mrs Brenan’s book, promising to return it before we left Malaga. The visit was considered a success and Cyril and I found it refreshing to see intelligent people for a change.
The car was eventually ready and we pushed on to Gibraltar. I had a fresh outbreak of fever and sat in the front seat with a suffering face. Bill dropped us at the Rock Hotel for lunch and disappeared to deal in some currency transaction. Cyril was in high spirits; he and Annie had a bibulous many-course lunch while I looked on. It was rather a nice contrast to Spain, everything clean and well-run. Strange seeing the English PC uniforms at the frontier. They looked like men in a musical comedy.
From Gibraltar we drove along the coast high up above sea level. We passed through Tarifa under a Moorish arch, looked at the crenellated Moorish towers, were stopped by the Spanish police, then motored on to Cadiz through the flat, bull-breeding country. Cadiz was a lovely city with vistas of long narrow streets and everything dazzling white, with iron-grilled windows looking onto neat squares with palms and shrubs and wooden benches where women sat nursing babies. We stayed in a small well-run parador with comfortable rooms and soft hot water. I ate dinner in bed of langostina, followed by the most divine ‘knuckly’ baby lamb cooked in garlic and butter with artichoke centres and small round baked potatoes, followed by tangerines. Very soon after, I fell into a deep sleep from which I awoke feeling completely restored.
I had a hot bath, washed my pyjamas and, with renewed spirits, was conducted round the town by ‘my old Pop and Barrel’. Bought a pair of perfectly hideous green-and red-striped sandals and visited the museum where we saw some Zurbaran saints originally intended for the monastery at Jerez. We had lunch at a summer resort. Drank sherry and mineral water sitting in the sun facing the sea, watching the donkeys being driven down to the water and loaded up with sand. In the evening, we had drinks at the tiled café mentioned in William Sansom’s book of short essays, Pleasures Strange and Simple. I felt ready for a night out but there is never anywhere to go in these Spanish cities and the old folks are never in the mood for it.
Tony Bower was mentioned at lunch and a few cats were let out of the bag in the way of ‘home truths’. It was a question of what Tony Bower had said to us about the Davises in England, followed by what Tony Bower had said about the Connollys to the Davises in Spain. Tony had stated that Bill led a secret life in Madrid and not only kept a mistress in the form of Sabena, the servant, without Annie knowing, but that, each time he disappeared out of the flat, he made a beeline for one of the brothels. That he was always drunk and beating people up. Annie was quite injured and indignant at the reference to Sabena, stressing that she had engaged her as a servant herself. They had been warned by Tony to put a time limit on our visit, as Cyril was inclined to be a squatter and would most certainly overstay his welcome. I was described as having two sole interests: (a) money, and (b) sex. And, of course, my dear, the marriage was going terribly badly.
*
Pop and I are beginning to feel Spain is a blighted country, wonderful for scenery and architecture, but full of gibbering monkeys. The pleasure one has from sightseeing is counteracted by irritation caused by the succession of beggars. Swarms of children follow us through the villages, each one anxious to act as a guide. We pick our way across cobbled streets, with unsmiling, cross faces, like Pied Pipers, while everyone ogles with curiosity.
*
The cathedral in Seville was rather disappointing. Even the Columbus tomb was installed in 1900, his body having been brought back from Cuba. There were some gilded Baroque gates of great beauty and some seventeenth-century Doric pillars in pinky-brown Alicante marble. We pressed on to the Alcazar, which had been terribly restored. But the gardens were very peaceful with fountains and orange trees and box hedging. Here we had a guide who was both bored and courteous, and very grateful when over-tipped. Bill told Cyril it shocked him to think of us seeing all the obvious things, that neither the cathedral nor Alcazar were worth visiting. The following day Bill himself conducted a tour in as bored and courteous a manner as the guide, showing us two palaces and a Roman house with perfectly preserved mosaics of fish.
We had two of the nastiest dinners there, in the main street near the hotel where we saw the bullfighter, Litri. He looked very young, barely twenty, shy with a rather big hawk nose, gawky and badly dressed. One day we lunched outside Seville at one of the roadhouses with a corral, where they keep the bulls during the season just before a fight. It was a very hot afternoon and we sat on the terrace overlooking the corral, where an old sow and mule lay stretched on a bed of moist dung. The mule, with a distended penis, kept wandering round the corral making a terrible noise.
We had another session of ‘home truths’. The Berniers were brought up. It was a question of what Peggy Bernier’s sister had revealed to Bill, what Cyril had said to the Berniers. There was a reference to Cyril doing an imitation of Bill and Annie when we were dining at the Berniers. It was all true, but we managed to convince them no malice had been intended. Later, Pop had to go back to the hotel to do his review and we went to see Italica, a Roman ruined city with some well-preserved mosaics, fifteen miles outside Seville. The guide said they were the best Roman mosaics in the world for they included fifteen different colours!
In Seville, we made enquiries about flamenco singers and were told of two possible places. The music hall and a brothel called La Terrasse. We went to the nightclub-cum-brothel but our escorts were bored so, after one bad brandy and several mediocre cabaret turns, we left. In it was one dreadful-looking man, resembling a travelling salesman, whom I fancied. Before leaving the city, we saw an eighteenth-century bullring. The walls were sandy-ochre with white portals, curved dark red tiles and brick red sand. It must be lovely to watch a bullfight there on a hot day with hot sun and lots of blood about.
*
We arrived at Cordoba around six in the evening. We dined at a small restaurant called Gomex, which had huge stuffed bulls’ heads attached to the walls. The one above where we sat was towering and black, and had lost its ear.
Towards the end of dinner, Cyril hears a guitarist playing in an adjoining room and goes in to investigate. The guitarist tells him there are two good flamenco singers in the town. The better singer is not to be found but, after a great deal of telephoning on the part of the waiters, we are informed that the second best is on his way. In a short while, a spry dwarf appears; he has carefully smarmed hair, sticking-out ears and is newly washed. He at once drew up a chair, we offered him a brandy and, beating time with his palms on the rim of his seat, he began to sing. Bill moved away from our table and slouched in a chair a few feet away, and was such a dampener that I asked him why he didn’t go to bed. His face looked flushed and pained for a moment, but he eventually departed with good grace, handing over to Annie a wad of notes. While we had been dining, two businessmen wearing black Cordoba hats had remained standing at another table drinking sherry. One was very talkative and kept putting his face very close to the other, and we gathered they were discussing prices. They were completely absorbed in their conversation but, when the singing began, we suggested they join us. Both of them removed their hats before sitting down; one of them bowed and kissed Annie’s hand and then mine. They were a great help with the ‘oles’ and Cyril was very happy conducting the concert. The singer kept his eyes tight shut as he sang but opened them wide on the last notes as they rose from his stomach in a great swell of feeling at the end of each song. There was a chef standing outside the kitchen. He had a plate and dishcloth in his hand and, whenever the warbling notes came out, he writhed about as though he were being tickled, clasping his hands across his stomach and shaking his head, as much as to say, ‘I don’t know how he does it.’ Suddenly one of the businessmen brought out a jewel box and handed round a collection of precious stones. We all inspected them politely. Then the guitarist offered to take us to a nightclub. Annie was very drunk and seemed absolutely dead set on prolonging the evening. An argument arose between the three of us until Cyril adamantly stormed back to the hotel. Assuming him to be the moneybags, the two artists were rather perplexed, but the singer insisted on taking us to a square, called the Place of Sorrows, where a ten-foot Christ was being crucified in floodlighting. To our surprise, he flung himself to the ground and, kneeling at the foot of Christ, bowed his head and muttered a prayer, and rose with tears streaming down his face. The nightclub turned out to be a brothel full of black-haired women who made every effort to be friendly. Taking the guitarist onto the dance floor, Annie kept saying, ‘Where’s the flamenco. I wanna hear flamenco …’ We could hear music coming from a private room. ‘I wanna go in there,’ Annie said, ‘why can’t we go in there? I wanna hear flamenco.’ Finally, she pushed her way in where a blind man sat, a guitar on his knee, surrounded by whores. ‘Play sommink,’ screamed Annie. Everyone laughed as they realised she was drunk. ‘It’s five o’clock,’ said one of the women. When we walked out, the singer tugged me up some narrow steps, where we were faced by an angry woman in black who started waving her arms in the air and screaming, so we quickly descended and encountered Annie coming out of the nightclub who, seeing me, carried on screaming where the other woman had left off. ‘So, you bin in a brothel,’ she shrieked, as if she hadn’t seen me for several hours. ‘If that’s the kind of person you are, I’m off.’ She swept round a bend of the street and was out of sight.
We got back to England to hear that old Queen Mary had died and her favourite operetta, Cavalcade, was being played on the radio, but we turned it off when the Titanic began to sink.
Pop sounds amiable as he calls to me through the hole in the wall to ask how I slept. Mrs Lea is less frowning and mutters less since her Easter holiday. I enjoy my breakfast, fresh dairy butter, warm toast and tea piping hot. I finish off the remains of the Oxford marmalade. Pop says he doesn’t enjoy his. The butter tastes of marrow, tea lukewarm, and toast dry and cold. That I have eaten all the marmalade, but the accusation is said without bitterness because he has awoken in a good humour.
The grey weather persists. From the window, stained, yellowy humps of grass made uneven by the worm casts. The leaf buds are constipatedly holding back. The nectarine against Kupy’s hut has already broken out in peach curl. In a fury, Cyril sends Coombes a telegram. ‘Nectarine blighted as usual. Please come as promised.’
Back in England for five weeks. We are all the time awaiting something; is it the sun that never appears? Cyril says it’s the grave. He has a fan letter from a Dutchman complimenting him on his Coleridge review, in which he has described The Ancient Mariner as a barbarous jingle. Today, we finished off the Spanish ham that Bill gave us. It was minced, mixed with cream, egg yolks and mustard. The guinea chicks eat the last rinds. Have difficulty enticing Pop out of the bath. Mrs Lea bangs about in the kitchen, hopping from one foot to the other, holding a dishcloth, every two minutes saying, ‘Is he out yet?’ When I ask her if she would like to go to the Coronation, she says decisively not. How dangerous the stands look. And what a lot of money is being spent. She is sure the Queen does not want it, either. ‘Science fiction! That’s what it is,’ says Pop, emerging from the bath carrying his book and dressing-gown, a ragged towel partially draped round his brioche, beads of water glistening on his fat back. ‘It gets me, baby,’ he says.
Waiting, waiting, waiting for the spring? The summer? Whatever it is, it does not arrive. We have been having a trying time owing to Cyril’s book of Horizon comment. Yesterday, the first review. Philip Toynbee in The Observer, full of malice and unspecified criticism. All through the day, Pop’s hurt feelings exposed in different shades of pink all over his face. He lies on his bed in his kennel, groaning. I talk about it all the time to make it easier and give him what consolation I can. Assure him the rest of the reviews will be good.
*
Weidenfeld gave a party. It was a combined party for Cyril’s Golden Horizon. Was taken by Chuff who was wearing a new suit. Host offers a lukewarm Martini or sherry. Henry Yorke approaches. ‘You two together again!’ he beams. ‘Any news of Poppet?’ ‘We don’t correspond.’ ‘Why is that?’ His face lights up; ‘I suppose you tried to get off with Pol.’ HE HE HE! I beam at Dig Yorke; we never have anything to say. No one else approaches except Cyril who grabs my arm and says, ‘Keep away from that fellow,’ indicating Chuff. ‘Everyone is asking if we are separated.’ We return to the crowd. I greet Kitty. Jack Lambert is friendly. The Davenports snooty. I mutter inanities. Baroness Budberg friendly. Tom Hopkinson friendly. His wife, ditto. Joan friendly for once. V S Pritchett friendly. Jocelyn Baines friendly, but on the defensive. June in powder-blue chiffon, very much the insipid English beauty. Chuff buffeting and blinking with bent head, a tired bull’s stance. Ann Fleming and Peter Q converse on the stairs in a reclining pose, à la debs’ dance, in a heart-to-heart. Father d’Arcy and Isaiah Berlin in the distance.
Yesterday, the ash came into flower. Have been reading the final volume of Koestler’s autobiography. A continuous repetition of the names of dead comrades and the circumstances in which he knew them. He hears his voice as a warning to the world.
*
Raindrops on the roseleaves like jewelled blobs. Cyril has gone to London to get some advance money from Weidenfeld. We are quite broke. The telephone cut off. Bills pouring in. We invite ourselves to the Campbells. Arrive at Ashford to find a Sunday train service and Charing Cross in the thick of the Coronation. A taxi pulls up. ‘You’re in luck,’ shouts the driver. ‘I’m the only taxi in London today.’ The procession route is barricaded off like a sacred walled city, the surrounding streets deserted, a lot of stray colonial-looking men standing in doorways sipping coffee out of thermos flasks, the streets littered with empty cartons, silver paper and squashed stubs. We cross to the Paddington Station Hotel where the Coronation service is being transmitted on television. To my surprise, it is really impressive. The Queen glittering, stately, a cleric walking calmly on each side, trainbearers and a general impression of rigid limbs and stiff necks all bearing weights … After sipping some disgusting coffee in the hotel lounge, stocked with motoring magazines, we board another train. We are met by Mary’s cowman. Two grey ducks quack at us, a litter of black ‘dak’ puppies like fat little puddings tumble out of the kitchen. I am shown the young bantams; how pretty they are. On entering the house, we are again struck by the filth. The stairs up to our rooms coated in dust. Dust seems to seep into one’s clothes. When one gets out of the bath, one is appalled by the floating filth on the surface. A long passage has to be traversed before reaching the communal eating room and Cyril remarks on the reek of chicken-shit as we go into each meal. The evening of our arrival, we are told there would not be much of a meal, as we were being taken to a fireworks display. So, we just ate oeufs Mornay, me helping to peel the eggs. It was a five-mile drive. We reached a large Queen Anne house beside the river, coloured bulbs were strung along the water front, a gramophone was playing and the music transmitted through a pick-up. As soon as we arrived it started to rain. A group of people stood about the hall, Ralph and Frances Partridge among them. We were offered nothing.
Clusters of expectant faces wait about in the rain. Everyone making conversation. The fireworks went on for over an hour. One felt frozen. ‘They’re no good. They’ve become damp,’ the hostess wailed. ‘It’s the noise that matters,’ I said. ‘They are wonderful,’ said an old man from the village. She sighed with relief. ‘Do you really think so?’ It was all she wanted to hear. Nearing midnight, we were invited into the warm, brightly-lit, log-fired drawing room and offered beer and cake! Our hosts had both been in the Abbey and showed us their coronets. Then, Mary wanted to go on to a village dance with her cowman, but Robin made a fuss. We were all tired. The fireworks were certainly very fine; it was a pity it had rained. The following day, Robin showed me his roses. He takes great care of them, pinching off each greenfly in his fingers. It was an expensive visit as Cyril had taken a large parcel of champagne and claret. But the Campbells are cosy. The last evening, we motored thirty miles to dine with the Pritchetts. Mary had described Mrs VSP as being the best cook she knew. We had plovers’ eggs, tinned turtle soup and the most delicious duck, with a rich walnut dressing. Robin never spoke. We all stood about a great deal reading Vogue and Harper’s magazines. On the last evening at the Campbells, a rat scuttled across the kitchen. Mary said, ‘Take no notice, it’s one of our pets.’ I backed ‘Ambiguity’, the winner of the Oaks, picking on the name, and it came in at eighteen to one.
*
On Friday, we were taken to Marlborough, where we caught a double-decker bus to Salisbury. At the station we ran into Eddie Sackville-West and all three of us squeezed into the restaurant car. We ate a thoroughly nasty meal. I covered everything with Heinz mayonnaise; Eddie was shocked, ‘Do you really like it?’ he asked. ‘Not at home, but always on trains,’ I told him. A taxi met us at the station in Cornwall. We had a ten-mile drive to Newton Ferrars. It was so cold that I sat, with ice-cold feet, huddled up in my sheepskin coat. Bertie Abdy came in from the garden when we arrived. We saw his beautifully-polished leather slippers carefully laid out in the hall. There were some good-hearted jokes about the size of his feet – they did seem rather long and pronglike. He was wearing a thick, stone-coloured, cowl-necked pullover, of the Simpson variety. We all sat round a well-stocked teatable. There was a delicious-looking honeycomb on the table and I expressed a wish to have some for my breakfast (but I never did). I did not like Diane Abdy’s taste in interior decorating; it was a little Eric Woodish, only on a more luxuriant scale. Cyril was ticked off for carrying one of our suitcases up the stairs instead of leaving it to the butler. We dressed for dinner, the host wore a very becoming bottle-green dinner jacket with velvet facings. After dinner, we were shown the library which was full of precious objets d’art. Next morning, the midget hostess greeted me in trousers and was levered up on high green cork-wedge shoes. The food was disappointing, although in a typical English-good-cook way the puddings were excellent, particularly the crème brûlée. Sunday was spent motoring to the far end of the Cornish ‘boot’ and back in order to hear a musical festival which consisted of a young man seated at a piano, dreamily playing Arthur Bliss sonatas, surrounded by pots of pale hydrangeas. We stopped at St Michael’s Mount on the way. How beautiful the smooth sands looked and the sea so calm and grey. We chugged across in a small motorboat as the tide was up and were greeted by a walrussy host with a rich fruity voice who, with much pride, showed everyone his mounting cliff garden; the mesembryanthemums were very knotted and tight, laid out like deep purple-and-pink prayer mats, firm juicy succulents protruding from out of the rocks. Once at the top we seemed to be at a great height. Horror! Inside the fortress it was a cross between Peniscola and the Escorial, only less impressive. The heavy oak furniture. The chunky stone walls. Seated at a long oak table refectory-fashion, we ate tea, surrounded by portrait-burdened walls, paintings done by Opie, with one portrait of the present Lady St Levan done by Moynihan. After tea, a tour; a chapel; a chart room; a map room; some eighteenth-century costumes of great beauty. Afterwards, Cyril said, ‘One more room full of compasses, and I should have flagged.’ With boredom gnawing at my vitals and the horror of having to cope with any more fresh faces that had to be ‘looked into’ and ‘talked at’, I decided to depart.
Monday was a day of tension. Cyril and I wrangling in whispers because of my going, every sound penetrating the walls. The cook and the butler rowing in the kitchen and the Abdys conversing in their quarters about the servant trouble. I caught a train to Truro and was met by Nancy.
My stay with Nancy, a cipherine friend from Cairo, was not altogether a success. I felt her uneasiness, as when she is nervous she develops an unconscious sniff, and then she kept repeating, as if to assure herself, ‘Oh, it is nice to see you!’ And I was glad to see her. Her mother was a tall, bony, purple-faced woman, continually wandering through whichever room we were talking in, carrying a large dog’s bowl. ‘Do you see how alike we are?’ Nancy asked. ‘People talk to Mummy for hours under the impression they are addressing me.’ Nancy’s Uncle Harry was there, grunting, with swollen pouches under his eyes. They all talked across me at dinner, in the typical English fashion; I suppose they are so used to meals alone together that one probably is invisible to them. I had a bad night, waking in the early hours to a stampede of rats. I sweated a lot and had a final impression of having been visited by a vampire after discovering two small red scratches on my thigh. We ate some home-grown strawberries. ‘What are these?’ I asked. ‘Climax or Sovereign?’ ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Mrs T. ‘Number Threes,’ said Harry. ‘They come in numbers now.’ Harry told us he’d tried to see the Coronation on a neighbour’s television. ‘It was hopeless,’ he said, ‘like rain falling.’
*
Go down to Hythe to see my mother. She tells me she has just missed winning the tote double. She irons my blouses. I watch horrified as she presses creases. She says she likes ironing and won’t let me do it. She tells me how much she now likes living alone and how she wondered when Daddy died if she would ever be able to.
I meet Cyril later in the Sandgate bookshop. He is laden with calf-bound first editions bulging out of his pockets. ‘You are being self-indulgent today,’ I say. We go over to the hotel opposite and are joined by Edgell Rickword* and his wife. ‘Are they all unreadable firsts or readable seconds?’ ‘A bit of each,’ Cyril says. He has some Lamb Letters to Coleridge. Coleridge is the new craze at the moment.
Mr Rickword has sex appeal. He was wearing a flecky-brown pullover, the kind a schoolmaster might wear, horn-rimmed specs and his eyes were blurred like a dead fish’s. He focuses on the ground, or so it seems, and talks in whispers, as though he has such a low opinion of himself that he doesn’t want anyone to hear what he has to say. He does not think The Ancient Mariner such a bad poem. Taken as a whole, it has a hypnotic effect. Cyril picks out two bad lines and says, ‘You can’t call that good.’ Mrs Rickword dashes in, carefully made-up face and black hair screwed back with a large tortoiseshell comb which should have been supporting a mantilla. She is extraordinary and seems to want to swallow us all up; she says everything with great force and looks permanently belligerent. Her small black eyes bore into one and when she speaks she seems to chew the air. ‘What has become of Honor Tracy?’ she asks. Cyril says he didn’t know her. ‘I used to know Brian Howard very well … I adore Basle,’ she says, ‘though you have to know the right parts, the special parts. I know them all.’ She snapped her jaw at us and glared like an animal at bay with nutty eyes hooded by a heavy brow. Suddenly, Cyril announced we were going to see a Joseph Cotten film in Hythe. We order a ham sandwich and rush out. ‘Rickword has sex appeal,’ I say to Cyril. ‘Not any more,’ C says, ‘he’s been sucked dry by communism.’
Yesterday, we went to lunch at St Margaret’s Bay. Lucian Freud was there, looking very clean and sunburnt. He has sly bluey-green cats’ eyes. If he is not there, he is invariably talked about and although he ran everybody down (bar Sonia) he was at his most sweet-natured. Ann Fleming and James Pope-Hennessy sat at either end of the table. Lucian next to James and myself beside the hostess, thereby placing two women and two men cheek-to-cheek. It was a poor lunch, as usual, with under-ripe melon, dried-up lobster and milky mayonnaise, a mushy insipid onion and lettuce salad, cold meat and inferior red wine. Ann immediately began reeling off her luncheon parties of the previous week. Her great pride this time was one consisting of Joan Rayner, Peter Watson, Koestler, Tom Hopkinson and his wife. ‘Why the Hopkinsons?’ we asked. She was anxious to see what Mrs H was like. ‘Oh, just idle curiosity,’ said her sister, Laura Dudley,† who was sitting on Cyril’s right. Apparently, Ann had not thought much of Mrs H. She liked Koestler. Laura Dudley said he became a fearful bore when drunk. He was not drinking, Ann said. LD said that you never notice he is drunk until he suddenly begins to lay down the law and hold the floor. Ann had wanted to take Lucian to the lunch but Ian, who had not attended, had objected. James Pope-H has bitten-down finger nails and a face the colour of mud. He described Weidenfeld as being oleaginous. They discussed Philip Toynbee’s review of Cyril’s Golden Horizon book. They thought Philip had behaved ‘monstrously’ and that he must be ‘a nasty piece of work!’ Sonia’s disappearance was discussed. C said it indicated that at last she was happy. Lucien said he was pleased for her to have found someone, but with her disposition he didn’t believe she had found much happiness. Then HAPPINESS was thrashed out. For how long was it possible to remain in a state of happiness? Ann thought it was not possible for longer than a fortnight. James P-H said he could be perfectly happy by himself and that places gave him as much pleasure as people, that he had recently spent a blissfully happy time alone in some watering place. They were all horrified. ‘James is like a candle talking to a lot of moths,’ said Cyril, and everyone laughed. ‘I thrive on tension,’ said Ann, ‘but it’s so exhausting. One needs a lot of vitality.’ ‘We all like tension,’ said Cyril, ‘and thrive on tugs-of-war so long as the rope is evenly balanced. When the tension and vitality go, there is your happiness, as with Sonia.’ They were all very exhilarated with the discussion and rose from the table flushed like radishes. Ann once stated that all she cared about was power and that she would like to be fabulously rich in order to wield as much power as possible. When she enters a roomful of people, she immediately has to squat in their midst on the floor, she likes to be the core. The other day, at Joan’s party, when Ann went into ecstasies about a painter called Devas whose paintings she described as being ‘so cosy’, Robin Ironside sharply replied, ‘I don’t know that I agree that “cosy paintings” make for cosiness.’