There was an old hag in a hovel.
Who spent her days writing a novel.
When one page was writ
She looked for some shit
And scooped it all up on a shovel.
Latest development is that Cyril is cross because I have become an avid London-goer. Says he doesn’t want to leave the country this week. Has never made such a statement before, not since I’ve been married to him. Is talking of taking a holiday abroad. Last night he said,
‘I know you think I’m mean.’
‘Well, you constantly remind me of the money you spend on me.’
‘You’re always so ungrateful. Now Caroline I smothered with presents.’
‘No wonder you’re so overdrawn at the bank.’
Wake up this morning with a feeling almost of liberation. Could I really give up W.? How is it I can be in love with someone whose podgy hands and doughy pallor intrude like flaws or speckles in an otherwise perfect photograph? I have had this feeling before of being able to dispel him from my mind, usually after a visit to London, but it doesn’t last. Cyril has become angelic, never a grumpy word. Now professes to love it here, never wants to leave Oak Coffin, is disgusted and bored with London, Joan very dull to be with, nobody he wants to see, he would like to kill W. and it would break his heart if we separated. It would break mine too.
*
Winter has reared its ugly head. The beech tree has shed most of its leaves, the field opposite is sunny with shiny blades of grass rumpled by the wind. The kettle whistle has just sounded. As the char, Mrs Lea, is away I say to Cyril,
‘Is that for the washing up?’
‘Yes,’ he replies, as though to satisfy me, and adds with a giggle, referring to the tap of the typewriter, ‘We try to make an author’s life as comfortable as possible.’ He then goes into the kitchen and proceeds to wash the dishes. I have had a bad night, could not go to sleep for ages brooding in a fury. I wonder why, when I get down here, I think of W. with such resentment. All that came in the post, The Thurber Garland. We discuss the jokes. I say I don’t enjoy the wine joke much – ‘It’s a naïve domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you’ll be amused by its presumption.’ Cyril says he prefers his own description – ‘A well-fendered little wine.’
We had a day in Folkestone, a mouldy tea, scrambled eggs on margarine toast. A windy main street, potboilers already appearing on the bookstalls for Christmas. Books with large photographs of cats and small, boring prints.
*
Wake up this morning to hear a steady, gentle drizzle, little pinpricks of sound like something sizzling in the grate. A calm, darkish day, very still, an occasional cock crows, and just outside in the lane the old woman from the bungalow calls out to her goat, ‘Billie’, and, again, the forlorn cry, ‘Billie’.
*
Last night I went to sleep very early without tablets. Was awoken by Cyril groaning in the next room. ‘Poor Cyril’, over and over, just loud enough for me to hear. Or ‘Poor Baby’, several times over. When I called out, ‘For goodness’ sake, Cyril, do shut up’, he did not reply, but merely went on muttering in a lower tone.
*
I have been to let the geese out of their patch, which is completely shorn of grass.
‘One or two eggs for breakfast?’ I ask.
‘There’s no such thing as one egg, it’s like one eye,’ said Cyril.
Strained soup before we leave for London. The rain has started anew. I was in a fearful state, haunted by W. Rushing round to his house for ten minutes, I found him thinking of nothing but thermostat fires to heat his sitting room. And all he could talk about was buying a fridge, as his wife had removed the old one with the rest of the furniture.
*
Cyril and I lunched with Mark Culme-Seymour and his castanet girl, and then we went on to an afternoon drinking club, the Colony. There was Nina Hamnett looking ghastly, her hair uncombed in wisps all over her head. She had just come out of hospital and had her leg in a splint, and was beckoning and calling to everyone to come and talk to her, but although people heard, they simply turned away. The editor of the Evening Standard, Frank Owen, and his concubine, Anna Maclaren, their faces puffy with drinking, he with bags under his eyes, and she very made-up and corpulent. John Raymond, his pale podgy countenance like an oversize bum, and John Minton* very tipsy.
*
The situation is getting more insoluble and distressing. I find it increasingly difficult to think of leaving Cyril and yet I seem to have inwardly made up my mind to do so. Whenever he talks of the future (some fresh plan to tour Kenya with the Davises) I go dead on him. And yet, when I consider being married to W., it does not seem to be what I want at all. I am simply obsessed with him sexually. I no longer remark on his hands or his toenails. And I have told him that he must grow some more black hair on his back. I have even threatened to smear him with some bone lotion to further the process.
*
The whole of the lower part of my body aches from the thighs down. It’s the humidity, in spite of two blankets and Cyril’s mother’s hydrax rug spread over the bed. Last night, we drank champagne. Tried to make blinis to use up some stale smoked salmon. Cyril whipped the egg whites and rolled the blinis round the smoked salmon at the finish. Mrs Lea comes today for the first time in a fortnight.
‘She’s arrived,’ Cyril calls, ‘the worst is over.’
The usual banging about in the kitchen and the sound of someone scraping burnt toast. ‘When was the happiest time of your life?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I say. ‘One always underestimates an experience in retrospect.’
*
Wake up thinking of W., but am otherwise very content. I should hate to have to give up living here. It is a bright, glistening morning, the sun is shining into my room, the grass tips gleam and quiver in the breeze, beyond a certain distance the field is enveloped in mist which peters out on the skyline into a blob of treetops; occasionally a branch of the beech stirs, but everything else remains still. Cyril has begun to correct his novel, which he refers to as a thriller; it’s called Shade Those Laurels.
*
Thursday night we went again to see Waiting for Godot, this time with Peter Watson. We enjoyed it even more the second time. On the way into the theatre, I remarked on Peter’s overcoat and asked Cyril why he didn’t get one like it; it was fur-lined in imitation beaver that covered the lapels and looked as though it were waterproof. Cyril said he thought it was horrible, like a Belgian taximan’s coat. Afterwards we dined at the Café Royal Grill. A delicious room, mirrors and painted stucco figures. Peter was seething with malice which came out in giggly innuendoes. I was wearing my fitch-lined coat and when Cyril suggested taking it to the cloakroom, Peter, in a high-pitched, ironical tone, said, ‘Oh! Do you think we ought?’ (As though I’d been worried about losing such a precious object.) When I explained that I didn’t like it anyway, he thought I was being affected. I still think he’s the most delightful of Cyril’s friends, although now he has become rather slouchy and shrivelled with a bitter glint in his eye. He made fun of me for liking the painter John Bratby and later, when Cyril was referring to a Tissot in the Proust exhibition which I failed to remember, Peter said, ‘I don’t expect it was realistic enough for her,’ and screeched with laughter as if he’d said the funniest thing. Seeing I was put out, as I couldn’t see why it was that funny, he thought I was piqued and, leaning forward, wiped the front of my pullover free of bread crumbs with an affectionate flick, as though to make up for his quip. He said he thought L’Oeil was a terribly good magazine and how ghastly he’d found London. I reminded them of how three years ago at the Ritz we had all said how much we hated London and yet there was Peter settling into a new flat. We spent the night at Sonia’s. It was quite cosy really, although I kept saying it was like a dreary middle-class secretary’s abode with its terrible oak, let-down leaf table, the soiled blue eiderdown, and tasteless carpets and curtains. Before getting into the bucket bed, I said to Cyril, ‘What about pulling the curtains?’ and he chanted, ‘When the how’s-about-it start, block your ears and loose a fart.’
*
Have just read corrected part of Cyril’s novel; he has another hundred pages to do. It is getting much better, but I feel the dinner party goes on too long, perhaps because I have read it before. I feel it should be much better and hoped that after his corrections I would be more stimulated. It is wonderful that he does it at all; I keep asking to read what he has done, hoping to give him encouragement. There has been talk of our going to Sardinia. Cyril bought a guide which says, ‘Sardinian cuisine is simple and pleasing like the people,’ and includes some specialities:
Succa Tundu or Fregula: a thick meat soup made with semolina.
Buttariga: dried eggs from mullets.
La Cauladda: cauliflower soup.
Cordula: lamb bowels on the spit.
Giogga Minudda: boiled snails.
‘Those don’t sound alarming just seem dull,’ Cyril remarked and went up to bed.
*
We have just had John Russell to stay. This morning he rang up to say that the visit had tipped him over into the New Year in capital spirits … he thanked us for putting up so nicely with his dullness. His silence, he said, had been a philosophical one in which he saw himself transported into a simple dwelling of some nineteenth-century emigrant. A disciple of Coleridge, blissfully marooned in the new found land with his dream consort. A life of study, meditation, wholesome fare and early nights with an unspoiled queen of the jungle; we were to take care not to invite him again because he would immediately accept and we would be most welcome at Palazzo Percy† that had fallen in a truly Victorian state of dilapidation.
*
Telephone rings at midnight and Cyril gets to it before I am fully awake. It was clearly W., who hung up on Cyril. The result was that Cyril had a bad night. Says he cannot work on his novel if I am going to upset him like that and muttered all night, ‘Poor Cyril’. In the morning I go into his room in search of matches and would like to give him a kiss, but think that by doing so it is giving him too much encouragement. Wrote to W., to say that telephoning was a mistake, asking him not to do it again.
*
We have just got back from London after giving Maugham, Alan Searle and Angus Wilson lunch. I arrived in the nick of time, having had a secret meeting with W., in a pub round the corner. He was looking very much less attractive this week; the week before, when I met him after seeing the jumper woman, he appeared to be much slimmer and glamorous even, wearing a new grey overcoat and, with his alert stride and bright brown eyes – compared by some evil tongues to iron jelloids – I felt terribly in love. We went to Overton’s and ate sandwiches. It was only when he broke the news that the following week he could not keep his luncheon date with me as he had to go to some boring bachelor anniversary given by Ben Nicolson that some of the charm wore off.
At lunch, Maugham said that at his age one could look back on most promising writers of his youth who might just as well never have written a word.
Cyril had ordered a special piece of beef but everyone complained about loss of appetite. Alan said he suffered from liver trouble and could not eat meat. I have noticed that every meal we’ve had with them he always has to consult Maugham before he can decide what he should eat. When I asked whom he had most enjoyed seeing this time in London, Alan said an old friend of his called Anna May Wong, one of his early romances. Alan hated Waiting for Godot; the tramp’s dirty feet worried him and he couldn’t see the point of the small boy, or angel, as we saw him. Maugham said he had enjoyed it because the second act had been up to standard and it was always the most difficult part of a play to do. Angus Wilson said he couldn’t like any play with tramps in it; he didn’t like the idea of people being wanderers who didn’t settle down in life. His play, The Mulberry Bush, on the other hand, was very good. Maugham advised him to go to rehearsals as often as he could. It was very important to get the feel of a play and it helped one to make improvements. Maugham praised the cœur de filet de bœuf, it was so delicious and tender. I always like seeing Alan Searle and Maugham. I find them restful, modest and well-mannered.
*
Not only does Cyril already have a genet (a kind of civet) costing £20 in the care of Mr Flewin at the zoo, but he has also persuaded the Sunday Times to buy him a lemur from Harrods in exchange for an article on them. The lemur has enchanting ways, purrs when stroked or petted, woofs when fretful, swings from branches, romps like a kitten, but the worst horror, it is a relentless destroyer of buds and leaves, and when trapped in the cat basket, springs up and down on its forepaws, in a caged, neurotic fashion, banging its head on the top of the basket. He has named her Wirra. She is the Sunday Times mascot, totally dependent on human beings and a source of non-stop worry.
I am having book-jacket trouble for my novel. The painter, Eleanor Bellingham-Smith, was hopeless, she did a cover of herself at the age of twelve; Mozley is vulgar; so, in the end, Cyril rang up Leonard Rosoman.