AS A HOST, Father aspired to a combination of Trimalchio, Petronius’s resplendent Roman character, and that sultana of the eighteenth-century salonnières, Madame de Staël.
Father suspected the veracity of most aphorisms – unless he had thought of them himself – and especially disliked the Victorian proverb, ‘Enough is as good as a feast.’ ‘Balderdash,’ said Father. ‘Enough is as good as a fast.’
Alas, this enthusiasm for quantity was seldom counterpoised by an appreciation of aesthetics. A large plate, spilling over with some tasteless grey substance, or a quaking mauve-coloured mound of peas and paprika (a dish Father often asked for), pleased him as much as any airy-light invention of the finest French chef.
Mother used to complain that Father was capable of ruining the best cook in the world. In the early period of my parents’ courtship, when Father lived at Tower House in Regent’s Park, he employed a chef who lived in a fog of frustrated virtuosity. One might say that he yearned his living. Menus of divine dexterity were disregarded for such nonagenarian nonentities as cabbage soup and waterlogged chicken, which Father floated on his plate like a forlorn schooner.
After my parents married, Mother decided to appropriate to herself all aspects of entertaining. On the morning of a dinner party, Father was sent out of the house, while Mother supervised the menu. For years in the Seventies we had the good fortune to employ a truly first-rate Portuguese cook. Luisa provided all the pastries and viands that could be wanted for a feast, while Mother’s exquisite taste was displayed in the decoration of the table. The bright arrangement of flowers and embroidered cloths, under chased candelabras of silver and gold, was almost symphonic.
As far as Father was concerned, the apotheosis of each dinner was the wine. Father’s cellar was something over which he fussed and doted. Most of the wine was bought at auction; by 1974 the cellar contained four thousand bottles of champagne, claret, burgundy, chablis and Hungarian Tokaji. The decanting of the wine was an arcane mystery. It was rather like the Schleswig-Holstein question, about which Bismarck said that only three people knew the answer and two of them were dead. Father claimed to have learnt the secret from no less a person than the grandmaster of the vinous arts and the author of Notes on a Cellar Book, Michael Broadbent.
Many accoutrements were needed for these rites. No one was allowed to handle them but Father. The most precious object of all resembled a silver horn into which had been fitted a filigree sieve for catching sediment. Prior to one dinner party in 1978 all Father’s pomp and pride came to the fore. Among the guests was to be Hugh Johnson, and Father had chosen to put before this exalted connoisseur of the grape a Lafite-Rothschild of particularly fine vintage.
At a quarter to five, there was an unearthly howl from the bowels of the house. It sounded like a blackened soul being scourged by demons. Father’s silver wine decanter had gone missing. Up and down we searched for the wretched thing, but it was no use. Father sat with his head in his hands, a broken man. ‘Never mind Voodrow,’ said Mother briskly, ‘I’m sure you can use something else.’
It must have been seven o’clock when Mother, now a perfected presence, ventured down to the kitchen to make sure the preparations were running smoothly. I recall to this day the sound she made. It was like a car skidding on a bumpy surface after the driver had failed to oil the brakes. When I reached the kitchen I found her fixed to the spot, her face quite grey with horror, her arm outstretched in a reproach. Father was standing by the table, one hand clasped around the neck of the magnum, the other holding a piece of material dripping red. Attached to it was what remained of a bunch of white silk roses, now sadly clinging together for comfort.
It was Mother’s Ascot hat.
‘Oh Buttercup,’ entreated Father in a tiny, plaintive voice. ‘Don’t look at me like that. It was the only thing I could find to decant the claret through.’
That error cost Father in abundant measure. Mother requited the disfavour in spades. A few weeks later she held a ladies’ dinner while Father went to his club. Lips were curled at Mother’s ladies’ dinners. Whenever Father heard of one he made a sound like a balloon slowly releasing its air. With ill grace he offered to put out a few bottles of mediocre Chilean wine.
‘Your mother’s friends,’ he whispered to me, ‘think a wine’s bouquet is a free bunch of flowers you get with a bulk purchase.’
Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher. When Father returned home at 11.30 he found Mother and three other women still lingering over the table. In front of them, lined up like railway carriages, were empty bottles of his best claret, including a Mouton-Rothschild of unique provenance that had come from the cellar of the late Selwyn Lloyd. Force majeure prevented a nasty accident from which Father could only have been extricated by a defence lawyer. But he rarely spoke again of Mother’s ladies’ symposia and he never again used her hats to decant wine.
Usually dinner guests numbered from eight to fourteen and were chosen on no evident principle save their conversation. Thus into a stock of aristocrats and rakes of the race course – of whom, as Byron remarked of Beau Brummell, ‘you might almost say the body thought’ – were thrown statesmen, business magnificoes and the occasional prelate. During dinner the men talked to the women on either side of them. Or that was the convention. At Tower House, an occasional guest had been George Brown, the bumblingly bibulous Foreign Secretary. Brown abided by his own social rules. After speaking to his middle-aged neighbour for three minutes he made an announcement that was not intended to express commendation:
‘I don’t want to speak to you any more, you old hag. You’re boring and ugly.’
After coffee the women were sent out of the room – into a sort of purgatory of the trivialities – leaving the men alone. This archaic practice infuriated some of the more feminist-minded wives. I remember one dinner to which Father had asked that conscientious Conservative politician John Biffen and his fiery, foxy wife Sarah. Father was a relentless talker, a back-seat driver of the dining table. Mrs Biffen became so enraged by the men remaining in the dining room for one hour that she could control herself no longer. She made a precipitous exit home on a bicycle. Father claimed women were incapable of abstract thought, but then showed himself lacking in this facility himself by adding, ‘They always reduce everything to the personal. At least in my experience.’
I was always surprised by the range of Father’s conviviality. It absorbed everything before it like the expanding ripples on a lake. During the late Eighties he took a sudden shine to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie. As Father was an atheist it seemed an unlikely crush, but Runcie’s piquancy of character brooked no opposition. Bertrand Russell once wrote that of the eminent men he had met the most unforgettable were not necessarily those who had made the greatest mark on history. Lord Runcie was the truth of this incarnate. His measured agreeability marred his zeal for reform but invested his personality with a wonderfully benign aura.
Father’s and my first meeting with him had more than an element of slapstick. We had gone to a cocktail party at Winfield House, the American ambassador’s sumptuous residence in Regent’s Park. Father’s bold eyes immediately appraised the scene.
‘No one much here,’ he said dolefully, thereby dismissing two cabinet ministers, a Field Marshal and a well-known film actress.
‘Oh but look,’ I protested, ‘there’s the Archbishop of Canterbury.’
Father was unimpressed. His eyes glazed.
‘Haven’t been any good since Wolsey. Well let’s see what the fellow has to say for himself.’
The Archbishop’s opening gambit was a startlingly secular one. He stared fixedly at my chest. With surety I can say he was not admiring my theology.
‘What do you do besides looking beautiful?’ he smirked.
His laughter was like a brandy glass shining in the firelight.
‘I’m doing my A-levels.’
The course included the study of a well-known seventeenth century theological sect called the Arminians. One of their followers, the Revd. William Laud, became Charles I’s Archbishop of Canterbury and was executed by the Roundheads. This seemed an ideal topic on which to engage his successor.
‘What do you think of the Arminians, Archbishop?’
Runcie did not distinguish himself by his answer. He leaned forwards, raking in another few inches of cleavage.
‘Very nice people the Armenians. I was in their country recently. Quite a pleasant place surprisingly enough.’
To be fair to the Archbishop – and may Our Father bear this in mind on the Day of Judgement – he may have been a little hard of hearing. Notwithstanding, Father and he hit it off to the extent that the Archbishop became a frequent recipient of invitations to the racecourse, though disappointingly he could never be persuaded to commit the worldly sin of gambling.
Mother’s salon did encompass the worldly. They shone there like glittering lizards in the sun – sometimes, a day or so later they were indeed in the Sun. Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother; Angus Ogilvy and Princess Alexandra; the Duke of Beaufort; Peter Ustinov, Kingsley Amis, Beryl Bainbridge; Laurence Olivier’s black-eyed son Tarquin, Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher.
During the unfolding of the years Father became the cynosure of lion-hunting foreigners who hoped through his varied and impressive circle of acquaintances to bag genuinely big beasts. At first Father was touched when someone from a foreign embassy would telephone with the news that such and such a senator, contessa or madame was arriving to London for a few weeks but knew few people there. Could Father not produce some bright stars of the social firmament?
By the Eighties however he had begun to feel himself the victim of his generosity. When the female acquaintance of an American cousin was dispatched to our home for a dinner en famille, Father was not gruntled.
A few years before he had placed a placard in the front hall, which said, in a paraphrase of Sir George Sitwell,
‘I must ask anyone entering the house never to disagree with me in any way as it disrupts the functions of my intestines and prevents me from sleeping at night.’
When the American lady arrived she found this quaint but egregious.
‘How sweet,’ she trilled like an ill-tuned flute.
Aside from a self-congratulatory air, her characteristics were a face that medical science, not nature, had rendered as smooth as cake batter, and blonde bouffant hair. Her appearance was completed by a yellow outfit from which her pungent scent was wafted abroad. She looked like an animated macaroon.
For Father it was hate at first sight. The macaroon had an exaggerated air of innocence which she seemed to be daring us to challenge. She was a moron. Or close to one. Father would fix her with a hostile look and declare at periods,
‘I like Americans – as a rule,’ or ‘Never met a Yankee I didn’t like – until very recently.’
To these taunts she remained as impervious as stone. With the macaroon all were banalities. They poured forth unchecked.
‘The Queen’s so Queenly, Sir Woodruff, don’t you think?’ (She seemed unable to get her tongue around Father’s name.) ‘More wine? What a naughty girl you must think I am!’ followed by ‘My Heaven, such adorable drapes in the little girls’ room.’
Mother and I braced ourselves for calamity when the macaroon piped up in that grotesquely grating voice of hers,
‘Oh Sir Woodruff, you know what would be divine? Could you possibly help me out? I’m dying to give a soirée in my hotel suite for some of your English celebrities and fashionable society people. I’d just love it if you could help me out with the guest list.’
Our trepidation turned to astonishment when not only did Father smile agreeably at this request but positively burdened her with help.
‘Of course, dear. Of course I’ll help. We’ll make it a night to remember, don’t you worry.’
Glances of concern were exchanged between the female Wyatts. When the macaroon had been bade goodnight, pecked on the cheek and hustled out of the door, Mother set in motion a confrontation.
‘Voodrow, I don’t understand you at all. You are horrible to that poor woman all evening and then you promise to help with her party.’
Father responded with cunning,
‘Buttercup, she made me feel guilty.’
As he made his way to bed, he motioned me into the library. ‘Don’t tell your old mum but I’ve thought of a splendid wheeze.’ Father’s wheezes were often the opposite of splendid. I showed true British phlegm.
‘Oh, yes?’
‘That silly cow wants grand people. I intend to oblige her.’
‘But none of your friends will want to come, will they?’
‘I shan’t ask them.’
This was anything but reassuring. I recalled that Father had recently drawn my attention to a Damon Runyon short story, the plot of which involved a New York hustler rustling up some phoney bigshots for the benefit of a visiting Spanish nobleman. When the evening of the party came around, dread had me by the groin and was shaking hard.
The macaroon’s suite was at the Connaught Hotel, that London staging-post favoured by Americans. She was attired like a maharani on tour. Seldom can so much gold have covered so small a space. Equal care had been taken over the food. The tables sweated bottles of Dom Pérignon; while hors d’oeuvres had been arranged like Union Jacks with salmon roe, caviare and chopped egg white denoting the colours. A white-suited doorman waited to announce the guests.
The macaroon writhed in an ecstasy of anticipation. Goodness knows what Father had said, but had he promised her the whole of Debrett, some minor royals and a world-famous film star or two, she could not have looked more hopeful. I was astounded therefore when the first arrival turned out to be our local newsagent, Mr Singh.
‘May I present,’ Father said portentously, ‘Mr Kapor Jamaal, the grandson of the Maharajah of Nonapoor and our leading Asian man of letters. His novel won the Hovis prize last year.’
Even from Father I had never heard such a whopper. So far from being a prominent man of letters, Mr Singh had never written a book in his life.
Presently a waiter announced the French cultural attaché, Monsieur Le Vicomte Defarges. I recognised him as the manager of a North London bistro called Pepe le Moko. The next three arrivals, according to Father, were the most eligible trio of debutantes in London, the Ladies Amelia, Cordelia and Lavinia.
They turned out to be three Tote employees. One had a ring through her navel – these were the days of punk fashion – and spiked chrysanthemum hair. Even the macaroon was surprised by their appearance. If her credulity remained undented her sense of aesthetics suffered a blow.
‘Are they really considered great beauties?’ she whispered. ‘You must understand,’ said Father, ‘that upper-class standards of beauty are different from those deployed by the west coast Americans. They are considered very chic here.’ This explanation seemed to satisfy her.
I thought Father had gone too far, however, when he produced Eddie the pharmacist as ‘our well-known fashion photographer David Bailey’. Father only remarked, ‘If she doesn’t know it is Eddie the pharmacist, how will she know it isn’t David Bailey?’
It seemed to me he was positively pushing when the doorman announced ‘Ronnie Biggs’ and in walked an academic acquaintance of ours who lectured on law. The macaroon was stunned.
‘But how did he get out of Brazil?’ she asked, amazed at this piece of dexterity.
‘Oh, he got a day pass from the Home Office,’ lied Father. ‘The Home Secretary was going to come tonight but unfortunately he has to have dinner with the Queen.’
Goodness knows how Father had persuaded all these people to agree to the shocking masquerade, but that he soon ran out of individual volunteers became clear when a group of people arrived and were declared to be ‘sundry upper-class personages’.
This was dangerously vague. I prayed there would be no leakage of the truth. Half the guests had had their tongues loosened by the unaccustomed amounts of gratis champagne. Mr Singh, our leading Asian man of letters and the grandson of the Maharajah of Nonapoor, was attempting with small success to inveigle Lady Lavinia into sexual congress. Her accent had slipped as she beat the man back with cries of ‘Get orf you ruddy oik.’ Fortunately the macaroon was too engrossed with ‘the French cultural attaché’ to notice.
Astonishingly the evening drew to its conclusion without her penetrating any of the impostures. It seemed that everyone was happy. The faux celebrities because they had fed on honeydew and drunk the milk of Mayfair and Father because of the success of his little joke. Even the macaroon was content. Although she did remark to Mother, ‘As one non-English girl to another, the British really are a remarkably ugly race.’