*
On January 22 we go to London for an outing with the Jacksons. Arrive at Poppet’s at teatime to find the future husband installed. Never see Poppet alone for a second except when I catch her sitting on the bidet. There is now a permanent booze tray in Percy Street and one is offered a drink at all times. Get to Claridge’s and on entering Derek’s suite find Sonia installed in a large wing armchair looking very much at home, clutching a whisky and soda with a black-gloved hand. Cyril and I are so disappointed to find Janetta replaced by Sonia that we exchange agonised glances. But, as always, as soon as one is confronted by Sonia with her polite feet, neatly crossed in black Lillywhite shoes with bows, all the appalling things one has thought about her vanish. We have an excellent dinner at the White Tower with Sonia taking the credit. She is always having to show off by over-amiability with people like builders or restaurateurs. No snobbery about me, you see; it seems to mean at the same time her whole manner is one of extreme condescension.
February 11 The Morning Routine
Sleep late each morning now and wake up feeling exhausted; we compare anxiety dreams; in my nightmare I am always in a train about to arrive at a station and unable to find the compartment where I put my luggage. I discover one suitcase which with great difficulty, unaided, I tug onto the platform when the train begins to move, so I leap onto it again frantically searching for the rest and get taken on to the next station, all the time fretting about the suitcase left on the platform.
Last night I dreamt of a dead male nude torso of wax-like hue which followed me round a garden. The head was firmly attached but the legs were folded up behind, so that it moved from the trunk only. Then I became aware of being tripped up by obstacles rolling about my feet and realised the torso was rotting and shedding ears and fingers. The final horror was a decapitated cock.
Whenever Cyril has a nightmare, it is usually the same one of me entering White’s Club dressed as a man. ‘Dressed as a man?’ I repeat. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘How am I dressed?’ ‘In Eton clothes. With an Eton jacket. Come to humiliate me.’ ‘How can you tell I’m a man?’ ‘Your bottom sticks out.’ ‘You can’t convince me that I have a large behind.’ ‘Last night, it was you and Diana,’† he said, ‘who both stormed White’s seeking me out on the top floor. I must identify you as the naggers in my life. And, when I begged you to leave, you said, “But this is only a low-class brothel anyway.” And, sure enough, when I got downstairs, there were a lot of louche couples sitting about half-dressed.’
Once out of bed, I put on a dirty blue dressing-gown covered in stains and head for the kitchen, the first chore being to stoke the stove, which is either burnt out or shows a faint red glow but too blocked with clinker to draw; having raked it out I put on the kettle. Then I visit Kupy Kupy. She greets me with gentle nips on the wrist. The tea made, I shout up to Pop ‘breakfast’s ready’. He takes a long time getting up, so several times over I have to scream ‘BREAKFAST’s ready’ accentuating the ‘FAST’.
Our day never begins before the post has arrived; sometimes the postman calls before we are up, which is an incentive to get out of bed. If Cyril gets up for the letters, I think, ‘That’s fine, he’s out,’ or ‘Maybe now he’ll make the tea,’ but he invariably goes straight back to bed taking the letters with him. Often the postman has to knock as the package is too bulky to get through the letter box, and then we shout down, ‘Leave it in the porch.’ This morning we remain in the dining room reading a long time, awaiting the post, but when Cyril telephones the bank to warn them of some post-dated cheques which will not be met, we discover it to be 12.30. Then I check the hot tank. There is no wind today, only a steady fine snow drizzle, but the flakes dissolve before touching the ground. We throw out bread ends for the birds and watch the blue tits, robins, thrushes and an occasional magpie pecking them up; all the robins are big swollen well-stuffed birds, greedy bullies with watchful beady eyes; the blue tits chirrup away as they peck.
Cyril’s morning chore is to empty the chamber pot for the clinker and fill up the coal bucket; this he does very dutifully in his dressing-gown and slippers, leaving the back door open as he goes out, so that Kupy Kupy darts into the kitchen without our noticing her and then creates havoc; today she bolted into the bathroom and scrabbled away at the soap leaving it covered in claw marks, put her snout into my cold cream and left black claw marks. Still no ST cheque.
Sunday, we have an early alarm call, as we are setting off to lunch with Harry d’Avigdor-Goldsmid. To Cyril, having said would I wear my black suit, I said, ‘Are you crazy?’ and put on my hideous pleated brown tweed with new red pullover. We caught the train at Wye, changing at Ashford, and bought the Sunday newspapers (a great treat) and read Harold Nicolson’s review of Flaubert. Cyril annoyed because he repeatedly described Flaubert as being ‘Not a nice man’ which had no bearing on his being a genius. There was a profile on Farouk in the Observer which was not too antipathetic but didn’t like giving him the benefit of the doubt; as to being a teetotaller, it stated simply that he was not known to drink in public, implying that he probably did in private, and that he had black hair, whereas it is, in fact, mouse.
We arrive at the Goldsmid mansion an hour early but find to our delight we are the only guests. The host very charming, just having returned from the States. I noticed how unswept the floors were, though the house was swarming with butlers (Madame being away). We had been looking forward to a delicious lunch, but eggs came overcooked on slightly rancid ham followed by overcooked beef with a vinegary salad, but we drank a delicious bottle of ’23 claret. The whole meal was very rushed, as though we were at the mercy of the servants, all three butlers aching to get off, so that we were served canteen style – on with the next dish. Harry bolted each course watching our plates and as one was on the last mouthful said, ‘Have some more,’ as he pressed the bell with his foot. A stoneless cherry tart. I thought how vapid meals must be with all the cores removed and everything pared to nothing; port followed with three kinds of cheese, tumblers of brandy and then we were hustled into the sitting room which was dotted about with piles of magazines. Cyril remarked on a Gainsborough-like portrait, saying, ‘I don’t remember seeing that portrait before, Harry,’ almost adding ‘old boy’. Then, we did a round of the greenhouses, that were crammed with the dullest plants, all neatly pruned and arranged with tabs. The only exciting plant was a climbing camellia, partially in flower with glowing rosetted blooms of firm crimson petals and tight virgin buds. When we returned, there was three-course tea, buttered bread, scones and cakes. We caught the seven o’clock train back to reality.
*
Last Wednesday, we went to London taking a taxi to the station, as the car is so draughty, the main incentive being a dinner given by Joan Rayner. Caught an early train and went straight to the massage place where they greeted me by saying, ‘Have you heard the strange news? It’s about the King,’ and then, while I was under the cage, someone came and told me he was dead. A stream of cliches followed. ‘How dreadful for the Queen.’ ‘What bad luck for Elizabeth.’ It took all my sweating capacity away. All the mourning horrors were enlarged on with satisfaction, black-edged newspapers, everything shut, no trains running, stricken faces, but when I left the building everything was carrying on in a normal fashion. I rush to the Etoile late for lunch with Peter Quennell who is amiable and restrained in his questioning. Manages to hold out until the liqueur stage before getting me into the witness box, when the inevitable cross-examination started. How was my sex life? As I was in a loyal state of mind he was quite pleased to terminate the meeting. He said there was very little social life in London and now that Ann Rothermere was marrying Ian (Fleming),‡ the breed of party-givers was almost extinct. He was leading a conjugal existence with Mrs U …, a pug dog and a pair of parakeets, and when I asked if they talked, he said they made a noise like two stones being rubbed together. Cyril picked me up to go to Joan’s. We were introduced to a glaring middle-aged Greek lady wrapped up in a fox t
ippet, her husband a continental charmer, very popular with the Joan group as he was considered to be a splendid poet. He was anxious to meet Cyril and pinioned him the whole evening and, since Joan’s brother, Graham, was the other diner and rarely spoke, we were a pretty dismal gathering. Then, to my horror, when we were on the cheese course, that woman from downstairs (Mary Hutchinson) appeared, and with her arch manner and aging lewd face said, coyly, ‘Perhaps I should come later.’ When Cyril began reading lengthy passages of George Moore, I behaved badly and started barracking. Then John Russell arrived looking conspicuously clean, as usual, with his concave nails and sandy hair plastered down with ‘white lotion’. I asked him which rung of the ladder he had got onto and when he thought he would reach the top; he asked after the coati. Robin Ironside was the next to appear and also asked after the coati. Cyril’s friends are firmly convinced I am a moron and the coati my sole interest. Then John Russell and Cyril disappeared into the lavatory to talk about Delacroix. Next day, I was told that when I’d gone James Pope-Hennessy and Alan Pryce-Jones arrived. Cyril said all those people make one feel we are all part of a dead civilisation. Poppet gives a cocktail party in the evening. She and Pol are both very nervous and fear nobody will come so that any chance ringer-up is invited round. As I have travelled to London in trousers with no change of clothing, I am included with a certain misgiving. Mark Culme-Seymour is the first to arrive. Poppet is wearing one of her home-made black dresses with some chunky ornament round her neck and earrings to match. When she comes into the room, carefully guêpiered, Pol says, enraptured, ‘You look wonderful’, and Poppet beams. Mark collapses onto the settee, groaning and, covering his face with his hands, says, ‘I feel like nothing on earth.’ Then Freddie Ayer frisked in followed by Jocelyn and the Angelica-Maclaren group. The Dutch contingent came in pairs; all the men wore black ties and looked like undertakers; their wives wore black dresses and were beautifully ‘coiffed’. The Angelica-Maclaren milieu regard Cyril and me as rival camps. One of them occasionally sidles up and whispers, ‘I’m on your side, you know.’ I should have liked to stay until the end but was dragged away by Cyril to dine with Sonia and Peter Watson. All four of us sat eyeing each other with suspicion and hate, the food uneatable, and the wine had been heated to such an extent that it actually tasted of warm vinegar. We decided never to go to the White Tower again.
March
Have had a very bad cold, five days of it, starting off with an oppressive headache, making reading impossible. Instead of remaining in bed I have a prolonged battle with Kupy, who has found a way of escaping out of her hut leaving no trace behind her of the means; like the tunnel burrowers of prisoners’ camps. Each time she gets out she starts rattling the front door latch, trying to get into the house, which makes me fretful, especially as I know that when she is loose now she has taken to uprooting all the rock plants. So, eventually, in a fury I shut her up in her travelling basket, strapping it down, but not before I had made several journeys in my dressing-gown into the garden to catch her, which aggravated my throat. I am accused of extreme cruelty, so in the end, out of guilt, I have her to sleep in my bed, but she coughs up the tail piece of a worm in the night. I decide I cannot support her much longer and that she must go to the zoo for a bit; also, she is moulting and one finds coarse sandy-black hairs on one’s clothes, the oven, the washing-up mop. Mrs Durnford offers to bring us a new cleaner on appro, a Mrs Lea, who she says can come every day. We are very excited and sit in wait for her to come for an interview. She turns out to be a very familiar figure who passes the gate at least twice a day followed by a pair of dogs, one that she calls Bessie. She is always dressed in Wellingtons and a green beret, and behind a pair of spectacles gleam two beady disapproving eyes. ‘She makes me feel I’m not nice to know,’ Cyril said. My heart sinks when I see her but we employ her just the same. She is brought along by Mrs Durnford next morning who shows her the ropes, and she is not as disagreeable as she looks, but she talks to herself all the time, particularly when fussed. ‘Bloody dark,’ she kept muttering as Cyril showed her round the house. The following day she comes on her own and leaves the house much dirtier than she finds it, and then we realise that, as well as being deaf, she is almost totally blind. Oh, the disillusion! Our lives are made intolerable here without a servant. Loud crashes can be heard in the kitchen every few minutes, so that when she has gone Cyril starts checking up on the plates to see which are missing and I search the bucket for chips, but all I find are Cyril’s gold cufflinks which have been emptied out with the dust. He says he is sick to death of seeing nothing but crows and sheep from his bedroom window, or gulls that fly in from the sea indicating stormy weather; they swoop down on the field opposite as though it provided them with something very delectable. The butcher delivered two trotters this morning. ‘Good morning, Mrs Lea,’ I heard the boy saying. She appears to be a well-known character round here. It makes it all cosier even if she is inefficient. Elle a soixante-six ans après tout. She lives in a caravan and says she knew this cottage before the First World War.
When she had gone, I went round the house inspecting all the dust-pockets. I am horribly neurotic about dirt. Cyril considers me insane on that point, says I need to be psychoanalysed. I notice every speck of dust not only in this house but in other people’s. ‘You always gather aged eccentrics about you,’ he tells me, referring to Mrs Lea and Mrs Munro. The old boy cross today. Furious when I laugh at the hunt going by. ‘You must realise,’ he says, ‘it is pure eighteenth-century.’ He received a fan-letter from a man in Connecticut. He says all fan-letters of more than one page are written by lunatics. This one had eight!
March 5
Poppet’s marriage day. Cyril and I go to London on a day ticket. We catch the twelve o’clock train and, when we arrive, lunch at Wheelers in complete silence. Cyril hardly ever speaks now when we are alone except to correct something I have said. ‘Not LauristinA, LauristinUS.’§ ‘Madame de Pompadour, if you don’t mind.’ ‘Not SORUS but SAW … US.’ ‘Guardsman, not guardee!’ He is my father-figure in the form of a pedantic schoolmaster. I then rush off to have a manicure and a hair trim. Chuff picks me up at Charm in Curzon Street; he guides me into a Rolls. Poppet was in the doorway wearing a new green suit, hatted and graciously receiving her guests. She thanked me for the strawberry skin-foods and looked blissfully happy.
I found myself next to Vivien, (Poppet’s sister, daughter of Augustus John), and we talked at cross-purposes for a long time. I like her very much. The painter Matthew Smith arrived chuckling and heaving whispery sighs. Molly was bulging out of her blouse and skirt, and had very clipped, frizzy, towy hair framing a deep puce face. ‘Look at all the women jockeying for position,’ she said to me and, when I asked her to explain, she replied irritably, ‘You must know what I mean, MY DEAR.’ Then Philip Dunn came up and said, ‘Who is that blowsy-looking woman? …’ ‘Do you mean Pauline Gates?’ I said, as she was standing next to Molly. ‘Talking of Poppet and Pol,’ he said, ‘I expect you will be joining them soon to give him a change!’ Later Molly became very aggressive and threatened to kick Cyril in the balls, as a result of a conversation on her rumoured forthcoming marriage. ‘You, my dear Cyril,’ she said, ‘would be the last person I should tell if I were going to marry anyone!’ She then took Chuff aside and said to him, ‘I don’t know whether you can be trusted to be discreet, MY DEAR, but tell Barbara she is invited to stay any time … without him,’ pointing at Cyril. ‘I’ve quite given up drinking,’ she told me as she firmly gripped her glass of bubbly. ‘I’ve given up smoking,’ I said puffing away at a Balkan Sobranie. Henry Yorke went through his usual repertoire. He repeats everything Kitty Freud (Lucian’s first wife) says and brings her name into every conversation. Mavis was very drunk and looked immensely tall, like a giantess. She rushed up to Chuff and me, grabbed hold of both of us and breathing alcohol snarled, ‘You’re married now, aren’t you?’ Then, glaring and pushing her face up close to Chuff’s, she said, ‘Any children?’
But then she caught sight of Cyril, ‘You’re just the man I’m looking for,’ she hissed.
Goronwy Rees kept bobbing up at my side and tried to persuade me to dine with him. The only pleasant conversation I had was with Sylvester Gates. Angelica was very quiet and sober. Rodrigo Moynihan appeared in the doorway for an instant. Chuff, Cyril and I dined at Wiltons. Catch the 9.15.
March 20
Mrs Munro comes for the night. We go to Ashford early to meet her. First of all we have an exciting shopping hour at Dicksons and buy a hose, a hard broom, curtain rings, a pyrex dish, a saw and a whole spray outfit. Mrs Munro seems very ancient and decrepit. She spent nine hours here sewing and told me she had been married for twelve years to a wig-maker. ‘When he died,’ she said defiantly, ‘I looked into the fire and vowed never again,’ And talking of her dead child she said, ‘To think one had to go through all that because of a man.’ I almost had to carry her to bed after giving her some gin and a glass of bubbly. The following day we all went to London on the lunch train.
March 25
Warm and drizzle, but snow is forecast. Cyril walks about the house in his ginger overcoat, glowering; says he is frozen (it is quite mild) and indicates by a scowling face that it is all my fault. He has the usual succession of boils and styes, and his face is flushed and blotchy which he says is due to sinus. I tell him it looks more like a butter rash to me. A fresh batch of shrubs and hedging arrives from Duruz nurseries. A frantic telegram is sent to the gardener Coombes to come and plant them. He comes to our rescue immediately, looking ashen in the face and shrivelled-up like a nut, complains he never has any appetite and is suffering from nervous indigestion, and that his mate, Harry, is ill with a growth on his nostril. When Coombes is here, Cyril perks up and I hear him whistling as he potters about the wet soil in his bedroom slippers supervising the ‘placement’ of all his rarities. I only go out to nag when I see him trampling on all the daffodil buds, which are just coming through; seeing me, he looks furious and flees to another part of the garden. Kupy follows suit, doing as much damage as she can in her own small way.
'Tears Before Bedtime' and 'Weep No More' Page 15