'Tears Before Bedtime' and 'Weep No More'

by Barbara Skelton

  January 9

  Terrible hangover. An oppressive headache. Took potion at the chemist but to no avail. Hubby has a boil on his leg and a bad stye, full of pus which he squeezes in the bath. Both go out late afternoon to buy food. I am anxious to try a new recipe for Dublin Bay prawns but can only get scallops. Hubby brings back latest Hemingway book. Now have quite an assortment of reading matter, an André Simon wine book, the Bible, two books on psychology, Socrates and several new cook books. Chuff comes round at six looking rosy, restless and clean for a change. Gillian Sutro always manages to spruce him up. Did a great deal of pawing and butting, though. I then experimented with scallops and made a rich sauce. Cyril not at all appreciative. Tell him I won’t bother to cook anything special again, he can just eat bread and cheese.

  *

  Both wake up at noon. I lunch with Poppet. She tells me she has a new beau, Lord Hambleden of Hambleden Hall, Hambleden. Says she is teaching him a thing or two. Meet Hubby at Sussex Place roaming round admiring all his possessions. Inspect Janetta’s quarters with a view to living in the lower part in order to be self-contained, but the whole house is in such a bad state of disrepair, it would take too much money to put it right. We cart away a lot of books. Meet Derek Jackson and Sonia for dinner at the Etoile. Sonia, subdued and on her guard for fear of provoking Hubby, hardly dares smoke a cigarette; a great wine ceremony as usual and vintage talk with the waiter. Sonia ironically pulls a face. She and Cyril always have a great showing off act, almost as bad as Xan Fielding and Paddy Leigh-Fermor with their Greek turn. Sonia soon gains assurance, and they both try and talk each other down. Went back to Derek’s room at the Dorchester and drank a lot of brandy. Sonia and Cyril start lashing into Peter de Polnay, saying how malicious and boring he is. Sonia and I are asked if we can imagine Christ with a penis. I say yes, but he never used it. Sonia said yes, but he did use it, and the men’s view was that he had been a bugger anyway. Then the Virgin Mary went through it. Sonia visualised her with a cunt, with lesbian tendencies. Sonia and Derek became very excited over the Russian novelists. Hubby only likes Turgenev and we decide to go home. The day before we had seen Samson and Delilah and so have become Bible conscious. I now insist on Bible sessions every night. I wonder how long that will last.

  January 16

  Spent the weekend with Mary and Robin Campbell. Nearly missed the train. A lot of loafing about and then last-minute panic. Had to collect some claret from the cellar of Sussex Place. Met at station by Mary with over-rouged dairy-maid cheeks, in a tiny four-seater box. She was squeezed into a pair of tight sailor’s breeches and looked as though she had come straight from milking. Found them delightful people to stay with. Easy, informal and no heckling in the mornings to get us out of bed. Saturday, lunched with Sylvester and Pauline Gates. A lot of Natalie talk. Drank a bottle of Fumé and Fusé white wine. Hubby complained bitterly at having to drink such young wines which were far too acid-forming. Also, thought the lunch nasty, as he had been given a bad egg with the hors d’oeuvre. Had a sleepless night in a too-narrow bed with Hubby heaving about like a giant seal.

  *A rejuvenating treatment.

  Chapter XII

  Kupy

  The first time I ever saw a coati-mundi was in the small mammal house at the zoo. On her plaque was inscribed ‘DIANE’. She was very fat and sat humped against the bars of the cage, hoping someone would come along and scratch her. She seemed to be such a charming animal that I asked Sutro, who was about to visit Uruguay, to bring me back a coati. It travelled on the rack on the plane and, apparently, created such havoc that the other passengers wanted the stewardess to get it flung overboard.

  I was not in London when Sutro returned and he deposited the animal at the zoo. When I went to collect it, the keeper produced a nice wooden box. He said it would grow to four times its present size. At the cottage, the baby coati lived in the dining room, but could always be coaxed back into its box with grapes. It slept rolled into a ball with its snout clasped between its paws. It fancied a varied diet, one memorable meal being half a pound of black grapes, two live worms, a raw egg, some lumps of sugar and, finally, a raw chicken leg. As for drink, it was partial to milk and water in which it afterwards washed its paws. When tame, the coati became a great show-off, swinging from beam to beam with its long ringed tail erect or it would tear round the room at a tremendous pace making excited squeaking noises.

  Diary

  Monday, April 23, 1951

  The first good signs of spring. A ravishing hot day, ‘the best England can do,’ said Mrs Willett the char, on arriving, ‘not a breath of wind.’ We have the coati out of doors all day without mishaps. It has no inclination to roam away from where we are sitting and spends a lot of time snuffling around for worms, biting off twigs and wrestling with the branches, or clambering up the elder tree that Cyril despises so much. It increases in charm each week, has developed a passion for tugging at my hair, leaps onto one’s back and takes small nips at the nape of the neck … ‘Kupy kupy kupy’ is the usual cry. When hungry it runs at our heels like a kitten, and when excited lets out birdlike yelps and springs into the air on all fours. We have had one or two scares. Once it escaped into the field and we had a hard time getting it back. Eventually, I had to be quite ruthless and grab hold of its tail. Occasionally, it gets too destructive with Cyril’s new shrubs by taking sprigs in its paws and swinging on them. I don’t know what we would have done without the coati and its enchanting ways. Such a relief to the monotony and poverty of our existence at the moment, always running out of money, and Cyril just sitting brooding like a furious fallen emperor.

  *

  Monday we went into Hythe and bought a mass of new shrubs and rock plants for the new wall. The gardener comes twice a week, works very hard, has dug up a large bed in the front preparatory to planting flowers, and is getting the back dug up for vegetables and mixed fruit trees to be arranged in circular fashion at the end of the so-called lawn. Pop is obsessed with planting, is a great bud inspector and dusk waterer, slobbering water all over the kitchen floor as he carries saucepan after brimming saucepan into the garden. When he sees me he scowls and scurries in the opposite direction, as I am always finding fault – comparing him to my mother. For instance, he puts plants into the ground keeling over, being too lazy to dig deep enough so that mounds have to be piled up afterwards to cover their roots.

  Still delicious blazing hot weather. Cyril has a lunch in London, so I take him into Ashford to catch the train. As usual, the stove is blocked and not drawing sufficiently to make hot water. Have to boil kettles to add to bath. A few drops of boiling water fell onto scowl-jowl-face’s Chinese coolie legs which he had dangling over the side of the bath; fearful abuse. Both part at the station delighted to see the last of each other.

  April 28

  Icy cold, snow, frost and bleak grey sky, sunless, windy. Merry England. Whereas no sign of any leaves on anything when we left the country three days ago, we now see all the tiny buds have blossomed out. Instantly make a tour of inspection and find all the new plants doing well. Cyril tells me he has a better offer than the New Statestman, that the Sunday Times want him on their permanent staff of reviewers, doing an article every fortnight with almost double the money and less words. It looks as though we might be able to keep ourselves in lavatory paper now instead of having to resort to magazine covers. Mrs Munro came to Queen Street bringing the material she had made for the kidney dressing table. Hatted, with dripping nose, her legs bandied with age in concertinaed lisle stockings, she was carrying a battered old fish basket. ‘And how are you, Mrs Connolly?’ she asked, in her usual high-pitched squeak. ‘Not very well …’ ‘I thought not,’ she said, as though that meant that everything was all right. She then made confidential enquiries after Chuff. As she was leaving she said with a deep sigh of contentment, ‘Now that I’ve seen you, Mrs Connolly, I feel ten years younger,’ and tottered off down the stairs.

  *

  Saw Peter for a pub lunc
h. He was looking very clean and spruce. ‘No frayed edges about you these days,’ I said. He had his usual stock of malicious stories. One, passed on from Waugh. Apparently, Cyril had told him our telephone was cut off, whereupon Waugh said to Peter that it looked as though our water had been cut off too.

  I had the coati in bed for the night. It remained curled up on my back and only got up once to shit in its box. Its snout is beginning to fill out. I do hope it won’t resemble that mangy Diane at the zoo with its short scrub of bristly fur like a worn-out bottle brush. Kupy, although the colour of verdigris, is quite silky to touch.

  *

  Today we washed the coati. It made a fearful fuss with its head well back and shark’s snout wide open emitting a continuous squeak. Apart from the initial shock of encountering water, it rather liked the warm tap trickling onto its back.

  *

  Cyril has just come back from Bath, where he spent two days with his mother. We have resumed relations with quite a resurgence of affection. I had two days of Chuff. We went to the second day of the Festival. Earlier, I ran into an old modelling friend, Marcia, in Oxford Street, as I was slouching along in the pouring rain with a bag of sawdust under my arm, bought from a fishmonger for the coati cupboard. Marcia asked me to her flat. She talked all the time of her infidelities, referring to her husband as ‘that boring old basket’. After two gin cocktails, I left her sewing pink ribbon bows onto all her underwear and so was late for Chuff. A fret rush to the Festival concert. Patrick Balfour was there in a dinner jacket, looking very cadaverous but dignified with frayed edges to his collar. The concert was disappointing with Sargent conducting, except for the choir singing the National Anthem.

  May 7

  Cyril jealous of coati because I was teasing it and making it squeak. He said, ‘You are completely obsessed with that animal. All your mothering instincts go on it instead of on me.’ He then stumped up to bed at 9.15. I went up half an hour later taking the coati as it was so silky and clean. Being a cold night, I thought it could have a treat and sleep with us. Scaly Skin had kept his filthy shirt on, a check rancher’s affair, very rough to touch. ‘Take that beastly shirt off,’ I said, but he didn’t want to get scratched, turned his back and indicated that he was generally not at all pleased at having the coati in bed; the other night in London, though, he was very cross with me because I would not allow it to spend the night in his room. I was called ‘Ajealousbitchgetout!’

  When I told Peter that Cyril had been bitten by a lemur in the zoo (a reincarnation of his first wife Jeannie, as he ironically put it) Peter expressed surprise and commented that it was usually the ‘Man of Pleasure’ who bit the hand that fed him.

  May 12 Sussex Place

  Sunny day but cold. I suggest we catch the early train. Pop in agreement but potters. Have great difficulty in getting the coati into its box, such squeals result from my persistence that I am accused of sadism and working off aggression, and Pop rushes out of the house in a fury, slamming doors and saying he is off to Camden Town in search of a cat basket. Go to Shepherd’s Market to collect month’s rations, stop in Marylebone High Street and have some coffee and an omelette at Sagné’s. Get back to find Pop in throes of trying to get coati into cat basket. I don’t admit to having eaten when asked, for fear of resulting ill humour. Catch late train. Garden disappointing. The gardener spends his time digging and hoeing the future vegetable patch, although it’s getting too late to put in any vegetables. Pop tells me we are going to spend the weekend visiting private gardens which are open to the public, there being two on view on Sunday and one on Monday. Weather bad – so cold all the fires have to be lit.

  Pop is in a very good humour almost all the time now – so pleased about the Sunday Times articles. We went to London on Tuesday to go to a Freddie Ayer party, very strong cocktails. Isabelle Lambert is upset as Pop, unaware of her second marriage to Constant Lambert, introduces her to someone as Mrs Sefton Delmer. Awkward silence, winks and smirks. I get stuck with a bore in a corner. Someone asks if I am going to the Pen Club meeting in Lausanne. Humphrey (Slater) agrees that the Festival is nothing but taste with no imagination, like an elaborate shop window dressing with nothing in the shop. Freddie asked us to dinner afterwards with an Australian dandy and Freddie’s pixie-looking Australian girlfriend Jocelyn Rickards and Angelica Weldon sentimentally drunk. Pauline Tennant with her theatrical chatter and thickened ‘chops’ (as Humphrey describes her jaw) aping her father, David. She repeated one funny thing David had said, when talking of Xan, who we all agreed had become impossibly self-confident these days, even to the extent of criticising Pauline’s hat. Apparently, Xan was standing up to David one night at the Gargoyle, when David turned to him and said, ‘Really, Xan, what are you but a tiny wasp attacking a rather good fruit?’ After dinner, the whole party trooped back to Sussex Place where we did our best to keep them entertained by introducing the coati. Suddenly, there was the sound of someone battering down the front door and, going into the hall, Cyril was confronted by Donald Maclean quite soberly drunk, by which I mean he had got over his aggression and just wanted a bed. I tried to work him up into a state at the sight of Freddie, but he simply disappeared into the hall and crept under a pile of coats. Later Cyril put him to bed and took him up some Alka Seltzer, which is more than he would do for me! On Wednesday, I lunched with Angelica and Johnny Maclaren, for whom I do not have a great liking. Joined Humph and Cyril and went to a book exhibition. Thursday lunched with Janetta and Derek Jackson at Claridge’s. They seem real lovebirds. Janetta looking so trim these days, camel-coated with new shoes, skirt and pullover, and Derek less excitable and absurd. Drank a delicious Château Margaux ’39. Derek made one of his typical shock remarks saying that he thought E Waugh such a likeable fellow, if only he didn’t write such dreadful books. It was only made amusing by the vehemence with which it was said.

  Robert Kee back from the South of France, courting an old deb of forty-five in a mink coat and spending nights at Claridge’s two doors away from Derek and Janetta.

  *

  There is an occasional sheep’s cough in the morning; it might be Philip’s (Toynbee) who has been in London for two nights without his wife, Sally. He makes a fearful noise now when he goes to bed, every ten minutes there being a series of dull thuds followed by door slamming.

  Had tea with Poppet who is just back from the south bubbling over with accounts of her sexual activities with the locals and a phoney Baron. They apparently took it in turns to seduce all the Midi labourers.

  Through Cyril dilly-dallying we missed the train at Charing Cross. Bad temper all round and a fifteen shilling taxi fare, which means we have less money for food. A cold bleak weekend. Visit an azalea and rhododendron garden at Hythe; on the way back, go into Saltwood cemetery to see if I can find my father’s tomb.

  *

  Arrive back at Sussex Place and find earrings missing. Search all drawers, bags and suitcases. Inform Pop who instantly informs the police. Next three days spent surmising. A pound left for the char had also disappeared. Robert is in Germany. Insurance man notified. Locks changed on outside door. Discover a party was given on the Saturday and Pop’s wine glasses used, as usual. We pump Mark (Culme-Seymour) for the names of the guests. All seem of irreproachable character. Mrs Mooney, the char, finds human excrement lying next to the bins outside the back door. Find Michael Law and girlfriend have moved into Robert’s quarters. Feel Micky Luke will be installed any minute. They go to bed around three in the morning making a fearful noise. I have become a terribly crabby killjoy and each time storm upstairs rapping on all the doors and complaining. Go to a Film Award party. Seated next to James Pope-Hennessy. Tony Steele was there, very modestly pleased to have been offered a role in a film with Bette Davis.

  May 26

  Nearly missed the train again yesterday, jumped into the guard’s van as the train was moving, porters yelling after us as we ran. Were locked in the van and had to attract attention by shrieking through the keyho
le at the passengers the other side. It was essential to get out, as the main object in catching the train was to dine in the restaurant car. The guard eventually came to our rescue. A gusty weekend and very cold. Went to Sandling and saw the Hardy garden. Were taken round by the boss himself who pointed out all the special rhodi ‘trusses’, as he called them.

  *

  Had dinner twice last week with the Maurice Richardsons. Told Robert Kee that I had had a bit of an overdose and he said I ought to live in a cupboard like the coati. More pawning had to be done to get us through the week.

  June 2