Early last week, Joan Rayner telephoned and asked if we were prepared to leave for France. It turned out to be a plan she and Cyril had hatched together, that we should accompany her across the Channel, have lunch at Montreuil and see her off on the ‘rest of the summer’ tour round Europe. Cyril’s overdraft is so immense that he cannot cash any more cheques and no money is due before three weeks. But Joan has lent him twenty pounds, which will enable her to have company en route but does not help him to live within his means.
*
In preparation, we go to London. I have my legs shorn. Hair set and manicure. Very extravagant, I am sure, but perhaps I can be permitted these small indulgences to maintain a little confidence. London is empty, grey and tawdry with dirty flags and tattered streamers fluttering from the buildings. There are no taxis, the buses infrequent. The Ritz is full of people dressed up, waiting for transport. I am squeezed between two people on the bus, the man on my right presses into me, looking steadfastly out of the window at the park. I realise he is trying to get off with me; he is quite attractive, a road mender type. Laden with parcels (a new suit) I reach Charlotte Street later than instructed. Cyril glares, as he opens the door of Joan’s flat. We harangue each other all the way up the stairs. Joan glares, when I enter the sitting room. We finish a bottle of warmish champagne. Everything is packed up. The flat looks bleak, awaiting new tenants. We all pile into Joan’s new second-hand Bentley (original owner Philip Dunn). Me at the back directing the way. Once out of the built-up areas we speed up. I feel cold, but in spite of repeated entreaties for the window to be closed there is always a fraction left open. Neuralgic pain starts in my head. I undo parcel and wrap a small velvet jacket round my head. We make for the Boughton pub. All pile out, Cyril having spent most of the journey praising the good food there. After consulting the menu, C tells Joan that we have only dined there once (implying that if anything goes wrong he will not be held responsible). I have to contradict him. (Don’t see why he should get away with such a blatant lie, being one of the first people to criticise others for similar offence.) Joan looks at me very crossly. I am spoiling their fun. We eat a meal just like any other there. Bad, but Cyril is pleased because on his advice the owner has got in some good claret. It is 1934 and expensive. I drink it with smoked trout, my first course being marmite soup. A lot of port drunk afterwards. Cyril offers the owner a glass of port and tells him what was wrong with the dinner. The man betrays neither surprise or dismay; he says most of his clients don’t know what good food is, but that he is slowly teaching them. Flushed and content, Cyril pays the bill. I sometimes wonder, is he such a gourmet, after all? We press on. Cyril exaggeratedly well-mannered toward Joan in marked contrast to his attitude toward me, which is worse than that of a man to his dog. I am cross when we arrive at the cottage. While I go to put the geese to bed, I purposefully let them stumble into the house in the dark so that they both fall over a laundry basket barring the passage. When I get back, Joan says she would like a glass of water to take to bed, ‘if it is not too much trouble’ and might she have a hot water bottle ‘if it is not too much trouble’. A lot of mewing goes on between them as to what book she shall read in bed. They run through a hundred possibilities. I say sharply that the outhouse is crammed with miscellaneous reading matter and she only has to LOOK. She goes off without saying good night. Cyril and I wrangle over the lamps. He insists on putting a smoking Aladdin in her hut. I protest. There is a tug-of-war until I wrest it away. ‘You bloody bitch,’ I am told.
The following morning I am up early, after a bad night. I feed the animals. Tell Mrs Lea to make an extra breakfast. Still in my dressing-gown typing when Joan enters the bathroom. I call out that the water is not very hot and would she like a kettle? She replies, ‘No.’ I tell her I will fetch a clean towel. Confronted by me at the bathroom door, she frantically rubs her face. ‘Ton amie. Eh! Elle a beaucoup de rides, n’est-ce pas!’ I say to Cyril, and he actually laughs. I am still typing when Joan appears fully dressed. She is in a panique, says we are already late. Cyril is still in bed. He calls out for her to go up to his room. A flap. I quickly dress, wearing the new grey suit with pleated skirt, white shoes, white sweater and, without washing, run to the car that Joan has successfully manoeuvred in the right direction.
We stop once for petrol. Joan buys several cans of oil, says it is much cheaper in England. We arrive in Folkestone Harbour to find the gates closed and a barrier across the road. Cyril rushes off to buy two tickets. Eric Wood, whom we have invited to join us, is already on the boat. An AA man appears; he tells us it is too late to take a car over, but that we can go as passengers. Cyril contemplates this, but Joan’s face darkens. Up to then she had been quite light-hearted. We had even exchanged a few giggles. Now the wrinkles reappeared. While I sympathise with the distraught driver, Cyril rushes off to rescue Eric Wood. A consultation takes place beside the hampering vehicle. The AA man suggests two alternatives. Calais or Le Touquet. Joan discards Calais because of the cobblestones. I see that with a lot of persuasion she will agree to Lympne. By the time the two men have claimed back their tickets, the fatal decision has been made. We split up in two cars, Eric Wood wearing a dark suit with a pink rosebud in his buttonhole and a clerical coat. To my embarrassment, Cyril has pointed out I am wearing a new suit and tells them the cost. Obligatory compliments are paid. A lot of hanging about at Lympne and several brandies drunk. Go to the cloakroom and glimpse myself in a long mirror. Picture the tailor’s wife in the new suit and decide it looks suburban. Back at the bar, I consult Eric Wood; he agrees. ‘It’s not YOU, my dear.’
At 1.30, we all settle into the plane, wedged together in a small lilac box. Joan grips the arms of the plush seat and tightly shuts her eyes as we take off. Cyril leans towards me and shouts, ‘Nice AIR.’ He has bad breath. I point a finger in my mouth and mimic him, saying, ‘NICE AIR.’ He realises what I am getting at and actually smiles. When we arrive, after showing our passports, we tumble into Joan’s car and make straight for the Grenouillère restaurant. Joan thinks she remembers the way. She was there three weeks ago. Cyril thinks he knows the way from the map. Joan suddenly swerves off the main road and gets deep into the country. Everything very luxuriant, more advanced than in Kent. Cyril tells her she has taken the wrong turning. ‘Wasn’t there an arrow?’ she asks. No one remembers seeing an arrow. She is ordered to turn back. We drive along for several miles. Joan: ‘This is wrong.’ We stop and ask a boulanger the way. He has not heard of the Grenouillère. We drive on. ‘Can’t you remember the way from before?’ Cyril says irritably. We ask some road menders. They point down the road Joan originally took. We then see a large arrow pointing to the right. The Grenouillère is empty, but there are dying embers of a fire, a nice bar, lots of mixed bottles behind it, a fat chef, wearing a chef’s cap and a pleasant Madame serving drinks. We order Cinzanos. The menu is brought. On the wall, a newspaper cutting of Farouk with Madame Kahil seated on his right. It was taken the year I joined them in La Baule. Cyril orders the wine. Joan advises me to have the truite meunière, which is their speciality. I have the trout, with roast lamb to follow, spinach and delicious new potatoes. The trout is a dream cooked in wine, cream, butter and fennel with a strong flavour of tarragon vinegar. The meal almost ruined by an acid champagne nature, chosen by the master, that we drink with gross helpings of brawn and pâté maison, chosen by Joan. The meal did not exactly go off with a swing. Eric was laborious and somehow created a false impression. The meat was juicy, slightly pink and full of taste and the Burgundy with it was excellent. It was not a stimulating lunch. I think there was some love lacking. I complain about the acid champagne. Joan glares. Cyril agrees and apologises. We have Calvados to finish.
On the way to Montreuil, Cyril suggests staying the night. Horror! I am against it. Joan is pleased. Eric is thinking of his cat. We both vote against it. Cyril is furious. A row starts. I am attacked and accused of having no taste and no intelligence, but am simply a slave to an indomitable will. ‘Have you no spirit of adventure?’ I am asked. ‘What is there adventurous in a continuous round of multi-course meals, with dyspepsia to follow?’ I buy some espadrilles which turn out later to be too small. Eric and Cyril go off to a bank to change some money. With me still protesting we drive to the aerodrome. Approaching the runway I say, weakly, ‘Well, do whatever you want.’ So we stay. Having decided to return the grey suit, I get out of the car as we reach Le Touquet and slip off the skirt, borrowing, at the same time, Eric’s clerical coat and folding the suit neatly on my lap remain semi-dressed for the remainder of the jaunt. It was a watery day. Montreuil was provincial and grey with a pretty main square and a statue of Haig in the centre. We wandered round in the rain. Cyril then suggested that we spend the night on the outskirts of Normandy at a place called Mesnil-Val, as he had never been there and the Michelin recommended a Hostellerie de la Vieille Ferme. Determined not to suffer any more discomfort than I could help, I now placed myself in the front seat of the car. We embark on a long drive. Eric says that now that we have given in to the ‘mad Irish boy’s’ whim he had a small request – to stop at a perfectly simple roadside café and have a drink. I am all for this. The other two scowl. I am always frustrated in this request because of Cyril’s snobbery leading him to the most expensive restaurant. I stress that I must halt and buy a toothbrush. The two ‘food snobs’ not in favour of either stop.
After a fuss, Eric and I get our way. Me running half-naked across a main street with clerical coat flying, having borrowed some francs from the driver and Eric being allowed three minutes in a waterside café for a fine à l’eau, drunk in haste and despair. We press on into the night, Joan bent double over the steering wheel, squinting before her like a ‘mad learner’. ‘Tell me if anything comes towards us,’ she says to me, ‘sometimes I don’t see things.’ Darkness descends. Cyril directs the way from the back. We get lost. I have to get out and peer at signposts which have Mesnil-Val pointing in several directions at once. We arrive at a place called Criel four times, each time halting in the main part of the town to ask the way. We back. We turn. We stop on a deserted heath. We call at a house. We turn, Cyril all the time confidently directing; ‘bear left here, turn right.’ Joan groans and sighs. Eric laughs hysterically. ‘Mad Irish boy!’ Cyril haughty and cross and righteous. Me silent. ‘You must laugh at your husband sometimes,’ Eric says to me. ‘She is always too furious to laugh,’ Cyril says bitterly. At ten o’clock we arrive. La Ferme is empty, but it is sympathetic in a checkcloth way. Madame helpful and anxious to serve. Joan grumpy as hell. A great parking fuss ensues. I decide to cut myself off from everyone as much as I can. Cyril asks if we can have four rooms for the night. Eric (thinking of the extra expense) questions this. Cyril explains it away by saying that I object to his snores. Since I have not been consulted, I protest and say he prefers to sleep on his own anyway, and why must I take the blame? A large menu placed before us. The men decide to eat a five-course set meal. Joan and I not hungry. I sigh. Cyril turns on me and says something unpleasant. ‘I don’t see why I should eat five courses just to please you,’ I say. We all order moules marinière. The small moules and the best. Eric objects. He likes the giant Dutch type. Cyril says we must have some white wine for the fish and red for the meat. Eric scorns this by saying that it is only the English who live up to being such wine snobs and that you don’t find the French fussing about the wine all the time. Cyril glares as only a wine snob can glare at someone he considers a complete philistine. The meat is high. There is an argument on the subject of homosexuals. Joan gets whiney. Eric calls them ‘fairies’ – after all he is one himself. Fairies have spoilt things for themselves by becoming so blatant and there was a time when they were included in the most select gatherings by the best hostesses and no one was any the wiser, they constituted a magic circle, but now they were asked because it was known that they were fairies and people thought them interesting. In time, he said, he thought society would turn on them. A homosexual is just the same as anyone else was Joan’s contention, neither more interesting, nor less, and she could not see what all the fuss was about.
A lot of Calvados drunk. Madame falls asleep by the fire, nursing her cat. Cyril says we ought to go to bed. We all drift up to an annex and spread out into our cubbyholes. We gather together in Joan’s, which is the largest. Eric wants to talk about ‘LOVE’. He tells us once again that he is impotent. ‘Did it happen suddenly?’ I ask. ‘Or was it gradual?’ Joan looks cross, as much as to say, ‘She is now on her favourite topic.’ Eric tells me it set in at forty. Cyril accuses me of being provocative, walking about in Eric’s clerical coat, thereby stressing my nakedness underneath. Who could I be wishing to provoke? After all, by taking off the suit (which I intend to take back), I am saving Cyril having to pay for it. I ask Joan if I might borrow her cold cream. She produces a pot of Pond’s. Eric pretends to be shocked. ‘You don’t use Pond’s! How squalid. You should always use Arden’s.’
We scattered and everyone went to bed. I slept exactly one hour throughout the night. The next day it rained. Had the grey suit wrapped into brown paper and then explored the village. It was triste. I wandered to the sea. It was rippleless and grey. There was a long stretch of sand and high cliffs, and some men installing sewage pipes. I bought some espadrilles and a bar of Toblerone. Returned to La Ferme to hear Joan and Cyril with a map discussing plans for the day. I asked irritably if we couldn’t leave soon.
Later, running into Cyril in the village, he said Joan’s comment had been, ‘If she had been as anxious to leave early yesterday, it would have been more to the point.’ Boiling with fury, I stormed back to the annex and, bursting into her room, said, ‘If you think I was responsible for missing the boat, I would just like to tell you I was up two hours before you.’ Meeting Cyril in the passage, I said for Joan to hear, ‘I suppose we won’t start for ages. She will be spending at least an hour doing her face.’ Eric, unaware of what was going on, turned up soon after fully dressed. Feeling he was responsible for the dismal dinner of the night before, Cyril made a point of being particularly amiable to everyone. In this mood we set off for Abbeville, which had a facade for a cathedral and all the sadness of a many-times bombed town. In a steady drizzle, we all got out of the car to inspect the ruin, each one shivering with cold, before collapsing into a café to drink Cognac and some muddy coffee. Here we parted from Joan and from then on I enjoyed the trip. We took a bus to Montreuil. With Cyril laying on the charm, we walked in the rain to another meal at the Grenouillère. It was even better than the day before. We visited Sterne’s Inn and admired the Ravilious-like butcher shops with their blue tiles, striped awnings and painted shutters. We walked. We joked. It rained. It didn’t matter. We took the plane. We talked. Eric went home to his cat and we were all sad to part.
A quick one-page journal as the bath is running and Joan, if you please, is arriving any minute from Lympne. September 10 (three days ago) Pop’s fiftieth birthday and seemed to call for a celebration; he had planned to give a big party for forty or so of his would-be friends at the Ritz. Luckily, this venture never materialised and the party was whittled down to six. Peter Watson was the first on the list but failed to turn up, excusing himself by ringing up the Etoile at the last moment to say he was ill, so we were left with Sonia and Janetta (on whom one had taken pity after Derek’s desertion), Robin Ironside (as being a bright spark though non-present giver) and when Peter failed to turn up, thereby casting a blight on the evening, Graham, Joan’s brother, was contacted, but he also was unable to come.
It started off a triste little party, a special meal having been ordered by the host the day before. Bayonne ham with Charentais (English hothouse) melon, followed by a kind of bouillabaisse done with mullet (which turned out to be simply delicious) with a main course of partridge with, if you please, salade Niçoise. The birds were good; no one ate their salad. The two girls (now inseparable) arrived rather tipsy and giggly, and on their best behaviour. Janetta had brought Cyril a smart suitcase (which Cyril had asked for) as a present and there were some jokes about that. ‘A suitcase that Jo Cotten would be proud of,’ Cyril demanded, ‘or that buggers would envy.’
After dinner we adjourn to Sonia’s, her flat having been improved with the addition of Cyril’s patterned Axminster carpet from Sussex Place; the marks of the kitchen stove are pointed out, it having left black weals across the middle, and everyone was amused.
*
Kenneth Tynan’s visit to Oak Coffin. He arrives Friday night on the 7.15 having eaten on the train. We seemed to have been awaiting his arrival for hours. Cyril puts some champagne in the porch to get cold. I pine to drink it having stayed in bed all day without eating. At last, the sound of the taxi stopping in front of the gate. Cyril: ‘This is my discovery of the perfect drink. A very light, agreeable and unacid wine.’ (Taittinger blanc de blanc ’47.) Tynan, sounding shy: ‘How long have you had this cottage?’ An explanation follows. It is not his, but ‘my wife, Barbara, bought it before the war.’ Tynan says little after that, mainly in the affirmative. Tynan: ‘Is there anything that contains all the facts about you?’ Cyril: ‘Enemies of Promise. Who’s Who. Who else have you done besides Graham Greene?’ (Write-up for Harper’s.) Tynan: ‘I’ve done about a dozen of them.’ Then, he talks about a book he’s doing on bullfighting, comparing it to other forms of art. Cyril: ‘You know Spanish?’ ‘Only bullfight Spanish.’ They discuss Virginia Woolf’s Diaries. Cyril: ‘It was quite reasonable of her to have been against critics.’ He says she had described him as the ‘Cocktail Critic’. C compliments Tynan on his skit of the radio critics. Says how much he enjoyed it. Goes on to tell Tynan how annoyed he is when The Unquiet Grave is referred to as the ‘Perfect Bedside Book’. Talks of Eton. Says that anyone he got on badly with there he would get on badly with now. Cyril: ‘Have dramatic critics got worse since Max Beerbohm, do you think? Plays have got worse, haven’t they?’ Tynan: ‘No, but more numerous, I should say.’ Cyril talks of the complacent drama critics like Ivor Brown. Does an imitation of Pryce-Jones. ‘“I thought it MADLY agreeable. I couldn’t have enjoyed myself more.” Have you noticed how all the drama critics have adenoidal voices and how when they discuss homosexuality they always refer to it as “sexual abnormality”?’ He tells Tynan about his new anthology of short stories. Goes through the list. Forgets the name of one of the authors. I feel his embarrassment. Afterwards, he told me he was afraid he was going to forget the names of all of them. Tynan: ‘How about including Rasselas?’ Cyril: ‘Perfect but dead.’ Talks about his Coup de Vieux. Tynan: ‘What charge are you answering?’ Cyril: ‘Coming man who hasn’t come.’
I wake up early. Lie in bed. Feel guilty brooding on clothes. Wonder if I am very greedy, as six months ago I had one new suit made. I have just got a new dress from Mattli and I am now visualising a further suit for next spring. But this is after three years of no clothes and poverty. I tell Cyril it is compensation for being in this country and that since I don’t spend money on anything else it is reasonable (never buy cigarettes and don’t drink). He has just had a new brown gabardine suit made and spent an enormous amount for his red leather skating slippers, crimson pyjamas and shirts (with initials – not to mention the sums he spends in antiquaires). I go down to the kitchen before Mrs Lea arrives and make two breakfasts on separate trays, carefully finishing off the buttered toast under the grill at the end. Take Cyril’s tray into his room putting on ugly face, pretending to be Mrs Lea, grumpily laying it down on the bed and, after flinging the curtains back, stump out of the room muttering. Cyril laughs. ‘How would you like to celebrate our marriage anniversary?’ he calls, when I go up again with my own tray. ‘Good heavens!’ I exclaim, ‘what can be the matter with you?’ ‘Well, you seem to be sweet and in a good humour. If you’re going to be nice to me I’d like us to celebrate our anniversary. When is it, by the way?’ ‘I think it’s the tenth,’ I say. Later the post comes and there is a present of an eighteenth-century bowl from Lady Elizabeth Glenconner (Worcester, I think). He is pleased to have a present. I admire it and one minute later start grumbling at the mess he has made undoing the package.
I have to tell Mrs Lea to please clean the base of the lavatory which is thick with dust. ‘What do you mean?’ she hisses, ‘I clean it every day.’ ‘How is it so black then?’ I ask her. Muttering, she goes in there with a pail of water. One hour later I see Cyril studying a cookery book. ‘I wish you could make crème brûlée,’ he says to me. ‘Well, read it out and tell me how.’ ‘I’ve told you several times but you’re too lazy to try anything new.’ ‘It’s not a question of laziness. I’m just sick of cooking. Besides, I have lost interest now you do the housekeeping. If you want me to care about cooking again you should be clever and give me a housekeeping allowance.’ ‘I used to give you money [two pounds at a time] but you hoarded it in your bag.’ ‘And then gave it back to you when you asked for it. The trouble is, you’re too mean.’ He jumps from his chair and rushes across the room. ‘You call me mean, when all my money goes on buying you clothes?’ and he picked up two books, Gale Warning, by Dornford Yates, and a science fiction novel, The Weapon Shops of Isher, hurled them across the room and ran upstairs muttering, ‘bloody bitch, nagging shrew’, and from then on silence. I consulted my diary, and found that today is our marriage anniversary and that I fear is how it is going to be celebrated.
Yesterday, daylight saving came to an end and we went back to normal winter time. I put on my woollen underpants. The geese, the fowl and the guinea chicks are getting mad with excitement over some mouldy apples. We went to London on October 1 and stayed at the Ritz as Ann Fleming was giving a dinner for Cyril’s fiftieth birthday. The guests Peter Quennell, Elizabeth Glenconner, the Campbells, Joan Rayner, Maurice Bowra and, as I fell out at the last moment with gastric flu, the Foreign Secretary’s wife, Clarissa Eden. The after-dinner guests were Alan Pryce-Jones, who took Cyril a book on old-fashioned gardens, Cecil Beaton, who gave him some vintage brandy, Lucian Freud, Caroline Blackwood and Francis Bacon, who each took him a pot of caviar, Stephen Spender and Elizabeth Cavendish, Ali Forbes, Freddie Ayer, Sonia and her lover who, apparently, was given the English freeze-up. Ann Fleming: ‘Who is that pink-faced man over there? I tried for five minutes to talk to him, my dear, and then just GAVE UP.’ Cyril tiptoed in very late clutching his goodies (another magnum of brandy given by Evelyn Waugh who did not actually turn up) like a typical tipsy husband after a night out.
Have been in bed ill for three days. Doctor Balfour summoned. A lady doctor of the Stephen Potter kind. My heart sank when I heard her arrive. The noisy, effusive, jocular hoots of assurance as she backed the car into the hedge. Clump! up the stairs. Cyril had scrabbled into my room in advance. I saw him looking down the stairs as though at some fabulous monster – and there she was, a large bulky woman on crutches, hopping on one leg. I felt as though I ought to get out of bed and help her in. ‘May I sit on the bed?’ as she collapsed down puffing. ‘We have brought you lots of efficacious things here,’ delving into a sham hide bag. ‘Some little footballs.’ She was very proud of that analogy because she repeated ‘little footballs’ several times. She grasped my wet wrist to feel the pulse and thrust a thermometer into my mouth as she proceeded to ask a stream of questions. She then shook the thermometer hard and exclaimed in triumph ‘Excellent! Excellent! No temperature. What a good thing!’ It would have been the one thing that would have cheered me up! When I told Cyril that I had no faith in her, he said, ‘You don’t have to, it’s modern medicine we have faith in now.’ He stood over me while I took some stomach powder. ‘What a terrible place to be ill in,’ I kept muttering. ‘It’s a terrible place to be in without being ill,’ he returned. Throughout the day, he made a sudden halt before my bed and presenting an angry stomach said, ‘What am I going to eat today?…’ ‘Would you be very kind and make me a hot-water bottle? …’ He disappeared into the kitchen. Then there was a long silence and I wondered what he was up to. ‘How do you cook liver?’ he called. ‘Do onions take the same time to cook? …’ ‘Do you think you could please bring me a bottle? …’ Half an hour later: ‘My liver is wonderful,’ he shouted up. There was a pause. ‘Like some? …’ ‘Would you be an angel and make me a few Epsom Salts? …’ In desperation, I dragged myself out of bed and crept down the stairs. I met Cyril coming out; he half backed in again when he saw me and looked as though he would have liked to prevent my advance. An empty fruit tin was perched so that a thin trickle of juice had gone over the edge; an empty bottle of claret lay on its side; small blobs of flaky cream cheese dropped all over the floor; a large hunk of goose shit brought in on a shoe; a plate with the remains of some fat; squeezed-out halves of oranges piled all over the sink; grease spots all over the cooker and breadcrumbs strewn round like confetti. ‘You’ve managed to turn the place into an Irish hovel,’ I hissed to a receding back. ‘You’re a filthy one with your filthy tongue,’ I heard from two doors away. He then telephoned a number of people using my illness as an excuse to put them off. Having done that, he rang Joan and made a lunch date for the same day. ‘You seem to have taken a turn for the better,’ he told me to appease his conscience. ‘I will bring some Muscat grapes from London.’ ‘Quand même, would you mind bringing me up a bottle? …’ ‘What is there for me to eat this evening?’ The way he fled along the path to catch the taxi!
Mr Coombes came with his bill, pretended to do a bit of gardening but was mostly hanging round the back door. There was a whispered conference between him and Mrs Lea when the taxi went. ‘’E really ‘as gone,’ she croaked, ‘’opped it.’ Then she too scurried away as though she had wild devils after her.
The only person who has saved me from complete boredom is Thurber. Before that I was reading The Captive Mind by Milosz. I think this book is responsible for my ’flu. I became muffled in a black blanket. The future was black. And of course the past was too black to contemplate. I only have to see the book lying on the bed now still open at where I left off with its spine split in two facing up to feel black despair.
*
It is Saturday. I am almost completely recovered. Got fully dressed yesterday and spent a lovely afternoon in the garden killing worms. This morning I was up early and striding across the grass to let the fowl and her flock out. I then stood at the kitchen window watching them gobbling up the worms. What strange pleasures there are in life!
We spend Christmas Eve at the Grand Hotel in two little centrally-heated single rooms, with wash basins, like luxury maids’ rooms, a bathroom along the passage. I make a fuss about getting out of trousers, saying I have nothing suitable to wear. Eventually compromise and change into the old black and white pleated check. It was lucky I did. Everyone had changed into low-cut wear with many furry tippets. Cyril donned his dinner jacket, but came downstairs very late, after a long soak in the bath. Both of us ill-humoured after drinking some blanc de blanc in our room. Throughout the meal neither of us spoke and we even managed to sit back to back. Very quick service; extra staff employed for the occasion. Woken in the morning by a Church Army band outside the window playing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. A walk on the leas. Arrive at the Flemings in good time for lunch. A large gathering of three generations. Ann Fleming’s father and step-mother. Ann’s daughter, Fionn. And, in Ann’s words, ‘I can’t imagine a Christmas without Peter.’ Mr Quennell in person and a rather nice blokey friend of Ian’s – best, best friend apparently. Since doing the Atticus column, Ian seems to have become a very dried-up and red-veined plain family man. Has lost any semblance of glamour or good looks, a bottlenecked figure with a large bum. Very bad manners – by that I mean a heap of something is plonked on one’s plate so that it trickles over the side. Atmosphere hearty. We are offered a Bloody Mary. Cyril holds forth on our previous evening, making it sound funny, but not coming out of it in such a good light as he thinks … ‘And then I said to her, “I suppose you’d like to take a look at the ballroom,” and a look was all she took …’ We had been told about their wonderful new pair of cooks. A rancid stuffing with the turkey, bottled chipolatas and another brown sauce with bits of turkey liver floating in it. The Christmas pudding was good, but the brandy butter was made with sham cream. Then, after tea, present giving. The Awkward Age from Peter, a Henry James he gave me ten years ago, although I didn’t tell him so. From Ian some sexy black pants with black lace and a hideous beige galoshes bag. A pair of nylon stockings from Ann. And then, because Cyril had previously said to Ann ‘I wonder how Peter will find a solution between meanness and avoiding to appear so,’ he gave me an extra present of some bath essence. We gave Ian a bottle of Taittinger blanc de blanc which he had mentioned in his book, without ever having drunk any. Ann was given an eighteenth-century Wedgwood pâté dish which I would have liked to keep.
We left at six and broke down on the hill – out of petrol. We both got out of the car and walked off in separate directions, me taking a short cut so that I reached the garage first. I cried all the way driving to Eric Wood. Felt everything was miserable. Eric had arranged all his Christmas cards round the fake pillars in his sitting room and when I asked him how many he had sent he said about a hundred. A bowl of white Christmas roses were set in a Dresden dish. I am glad we didn’t stay long enough to see them droop. The same man from last Christmas was there, a louche, sadistic-looking, elderly queer with a loose jutting mouth, speaking little and seemingly bored. The dinner was a definite improvement on the Flemings. To start, something en gêlée, followed by an underdone joint of beef, braised celery and broad beans in a white sauce; a delicious mousse to follow. I had left off my woollen underwear and was christening my new red, striped, velvet trousers, so felt cold in the unheated dining room. Eric Wood read aloud Oscar Wilde’s Selfish Giant and we did our best to condemn it as whimsical.
Next day Cyril spent pacing the grounds, as the new proud owner, and came back with plans for pulling down every surrounding house in the neighbourhood and making an annex for guests, a summer house on the hill and a guests’ garage on the opposite side of the road. Eric just acquiesced and went on mixing drinks. I enjoyed the latter part of the morning. ‘Have a little drinky?’ Eric said, and gave me a strong Martini while I watched him prepare the lunch, and we talked and I unwound some wool for knitting a scarf. I got a little drunk and felt benevolent, with the hope that perhaps life had something good still to offer.
After lunch, we went off to look at a house for sale near Dover. A converted oast being sold for £3,200. Cyril had already promised me that he would make up the extra £700 if I should sell the cottage for £2,500. I told him not to expect much for £3,200 but he was determined the house should be a ‘dream’. It was bang on the road opposite a bleak field of barley. It had a good nuttery of hazels and we saw grey squirrels swinging from the top branches of some poplars. They looked so pretty leaping from one branch to another. We went back to have supper with Eric Wood and were shown the phoney Greek pillars again that look so out of place. After supper Cyril wandered round the garden and came back to tell us he had heard some strange snortings in the long grass beyond the Greek temple, so we both went back to investigate and a huge hedgehog shuffled onto the path. Cyril, in the attitude of someone pouncing on a large ferocious animal, tiptoed forward and flung a sack over it and gingerly swept up the beast. ‘Wasn’t I brave?’ he said to me. Eric would not let us take it into the house as he said it was a flea and lice carrier, so we tucked it into the back of the car. When we got home, Cyril unrolled the sack and tilted it onto the grass and the hedgehog, to my intense surprise, scuttled away in the direction of the holly trees and has never been seen since. It was almost as sad as the tame sparrow being swallowed up by Kupy.
*
The geese were killed on Saturday. Cyril had strongly objected to their being killed at all, but I promised him he wouldn’t hear, as Mrs Lea had informed me they would not screech while it was going on. ‘It’s too difficult for me to do,’ she said, ‘you have to lay a stick across their necks and step on it.’ Around ten o’clock we heard a car draw up. ‘Who is that?’ Cyril demanded. ‘I hope it’s not the man for the geese.’ We heard voices in the kitchen and then silence. I went down to investigate. ‘Is that your nephew come to kill the geese? If so tell him to take them away with him.’ ‘I’m afraid he’s gone, Madame.’ ‘And the geese?’ ‘They’re dead.’ ‘Take them away.’ I wailed, covering my eyes to blot out the sight of the poor geese. So, she hid them in the outhouse. I then had to break the news gently to Cyril. ‘As long as I don’t have to see them again,’ he said. Later we were having a combined bath and he said, ‘You won’t tease me, will you? But I think I’d like to eat one of those geese, after all, and,’ he added, ‘I would like it to be the largest.’ But, in the end, Cyril expressed a preference for the smallest. He was most adamant about it; he would eat that one or nothing. When I asked him why, he said the little one was obviously the most female and there might be something erotic about it. But, the other was simply ‘a big obstreperous rival male’. I have ordered the butcher to send the other one to Marjorie and John Davenport.