My brothers had left home long ago and I often had the house to myself. Maeve’s life had become an incredibly full one – dinners here, dinners there, exhibition openings, painting, the cinema, and her weekly visiting, reading to and shopping for whichever elderly person she had been assigned to next. If and when they died, she would be assigned another one, but when Kensington and Chelsea council gave her an old woman who moaned incessantly and was rude to Maeve, I was furious. Mum laughed and said that to get angry rather defeated the object. To say, ‘I just want a nice one please,’ wasn’t the point. No one apart from me knew about this other side of her life. She made nothing of it, but I expect after her experiences with Dad she knew just how valuable a regular visit from someone with a friendly face could be. So for a while we met like ships in the night.
She had a companion, of whom, over time, I became extremely fond. After my father died, and even before, she had men swarming round her like bees round a honeypot. Some I didn’t like at all, others I did. With the writer John Watney, I felt secure in his affectionate and respectful treatment of my mother, and I never wanted her to be lonely.
Maeve had discovered late in life that she rather liked the country, and with a touching enthusiasm, she and John began taking frequent little jaunts into an undiscovered Britain.
Dorset
Here are some of the ponies we saw on the way down. It’s so beautiful and remote. I ran into Jude yesterday! And Angel Clare, Clare Angel, Love Mummy.
Beckley Sussex
My Darling Clarie
We had a good journey down, and the cottage is everything one could wish for. Down a long lane, past the big house, and completely alone. It’s marvellously equipped, with washing machines and telly (if you like that sort of thing!). At the moment it’s pouring, though we are going to explore a little. The silence is wonderful. A small field mouse came to offer its hospitality last evening and this morning a herd of black and white cows made their placid, unhurried way past the cottage, stopping every now and then for no reason at all, except ‘to stand and stare’.
Argyll
My darling Clarey
I’m writing this at 7 a.m. and watching out of the windows six horses and their foals eating grass which is as green as it used to be in ‘England’s green and pleasant land’, and out of the mist appearing little islands that remind me of Sark. It is exquisitely beautiful and, darling, I can’t tell you how I sang for joy when I saw, felt and heard the rain.
The journey on the train was not quite the Orient Express but fun, and yesterday driving here was very quiet, alongside Loch Ness (whom I saw) but no one else did – not the monster, but a kind of mixture of a white horse and a tortoise. I am really enjoying it all and not thinking about anything (which you might say is not difficult for Mum).
from your loving Mum