'Tears Before Bedtime' and 'Weep No More'

by Barbara Skelton

  *

  Since having my hair cut, Cyril now looks pointedly at other women and leaning back fixes their pelts with an admiring stare. I agree I look hideous and get sulkier as the weekend drags on. After three sleepless nights, because of snores and hens, I make a fuss and stress I have to sleep alone. The houseparty considers this request unforgivable. Am henceforth in total disgrace. Cyril gets taken his breakfast. Not me. I am accused of being lazy for not talking to people. When we are in the kitchen alone, Robin says, ‘You ought to live abroad, you know.’ ‘How can I when Cyril is tied to England?’ ‘Why don’t you run away with some Egyptian?’ I react by jokingly saying, ‘We don’t meet Egyptians at Elmstead.’ ‘Oh, well,’ says Robin, ‘you could probably find one at the Ritz.’ I retire to my room to read, with frequent interruptions as members of the house enter unannounced. Robin says peevishly, ‘What have you been doing to the curtain?’ It had fallen off a hook. Seeing a gap in the window, he snaps, ‘Shut it up, for goodness’ sake.’ ‘That’s a man’s job,’ I reply, meaning for someone taller. ‘There is no such thing as a man or a woman, only PEOPLE,’ he says sharply.

  Sunday, I invent a dentist’s appointment and say I have to leave. Cyril makes a fuss so I stay on. But I ask to be called at seven to catch an early train. Unfortunately, that night I take two strong sleeping pills, so that when called am unable to get up. At eleven am awoken by Cyril who drags me out of a happy state of oblivion saying, ‘Mary is FURIOUS.’ She had taken the trouble to wake up early and worse still I had left the fire on all night. My defence: I was convinced that Mary rose every morning at seven, as she had to feed the animals, I told her later I always rose at that hour and apologised, but Mary remains snappy. Then Cyril and I had a row over strapping up Kupy, so I left it to him and, in the fury of departure, my basket got left behind. Cyril drew my attention to its absence, as he climbed out of the taxi, which made me suspect he knew all the time, as this enabled him to depart alone with Joan. The Partridges and the Campbells then retreated to the pub. More in disgrace than ever, I returned to the house and there was the basket sitting outside the Kupy hutch!

  As they see me off, Mary says, ‘Come again when you’re not so cross.’

  Spend the rest of the day crying from one train to another. Get out at Newbury in mistake for Reading, miss the connection, take a bus, arrive in London at five o’clock. Clean up at the Ritz. No sign of any Egyptians with whom to elope and, not wishing to embark immediately on another train to Ashford, I walk to the Carlton Cinema and see Julius Caesar with Gielgud as Cassius and Brando as Mark Antony.

  January 14

  Have made a plan for the next 20,000 words of my book. I wonder if I shall manage it all right. The first twenty read quite well but seem too slight. I find it funny. But I don’t expect anything will come of it. Yesterday, as I was typing, Mrs Lea passed through the sitting room carrying a dustpan and brush. ‘I’m not disturbing you, am I?’ ‘No,’ I replied, without looking up. ‘You’ll make a lot of money,’ she said, and laughed. ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Well, you may,’ she repeated. And we both laughed.

  *

  Last night I said to Cyril that it was having to give up sex that made me so ill-humoured. ‘Well,’ he said, he had had to give up society and entertaining. ‘But, I thought you considered too much of your life had been taken up with time wasting.’ We talked about death. Cyril says there were two courses to take; one, preparing yourself for death all your life, digging your grave, so to speak; and the other was to accept it as being an endless sleep.

  *

  Three people who can make Pop cry in the following order: Mozart, Watteau and Horace. I ask why. ‘Because of their perfectionism,’ he says.

  January 21

  Very depressed. Heard yesterday of Angelica’s suicide. Can think of nothing else. It has a morbid fascination for me. Want to talk about it and visualise it happening. Angelica wandering about her basement flat in a grubby blue dressing-gown, slightly bent forward with the stooping walk she had. Probably drunk, preparing the death chamber. Sealing the windows and the door, and then turning on the unlit cooker, opening the oven, with a drawn taut expression on her face and then climbing into the bed she had made up in the kitchenette after drugging herself with sleeping pills. It seems quite incomprehensible after lunching with her and Johnny last Thursday. She appeared so unmorbid and gay, but on the defensive, seeking cause for offence whenever by chance I mentioned anything that might be considered criticism. On finding a tape measure about the flat, for something better to do, I began taking our waist and hip measurements. ‘How strange,’ I said, ‘you are broader at the top than me and yet you haven’t so much bosom,’ and she replied rather sharply, ‘I do very well with what I’ve got.’ And then Johnny asked me whether it wouldn’t be natural for me to love someone like Angelica with her beautiful legs. I paused, at a loss, seeing the statement was intended to be taken seriously. I saw her face cloud into a frown as though I were deliberately preparing an insult when, in desperation, I said, ‘I find it difficult enough to love a man, let alone a woman,’ which somehow saved the situation because she burst out laughing, as if I had said something bien drôle. They half-heartedly tried to entice me into the bed and I left them both lying naked between the bedclothes like a scene in a play, two very white bodies, their dead-white arms entwined above the sheet, with two pallid faces and Angelica’s dead-black hair topping it all, like a black cap. I made as dignified an exit as I could and, sidling round the door as I went, thanked them for a very nice lunch and said I hoped to see them again soon. Then Johnny, two-facedly, said, ‘Give my love to Cyril.’ I telephoned Poppet this morning for further details. She sounded distant and none too pleased to hear from me, but none too upset either. Poppet said Angelica was worried about money and was £200 overdrawn. Also she had an obsession about cancer. She told me about the preparations and said a note had been left for Madeleine saying, ‘Don’t call the police, call Mr Maclaren.’ Cyril said it was like someone preparing themselves for a journey, a journey without luggage, with the note left behind.

  April 26

  Ice-cold wind penetrating all the cracks like dagger thrusts. Swaying bare branches of the beech tree and a vista of bare twigs topped by a murky grey sky. Kupy has turned self-destructive and chases round in circles, biting her tail till she draws blood, eating it like asparagus, as C describes it; have tried putting flowers of sulphur on her tail, but to no avail. It drips blood and is eaten down to the tendon. Tried to cover it over with a French letter, but no good. We have made Eric Wood an offer of £5,000 for his house, but he refused, admitting he anticipated getting £6,000. But when we lunched there Saturday he said not a soul had been to look at it. ‘You’ll get it yet,’ I comforted C. My new toy – a Roleiflex camera – affording infinite pleasure. Took my mother and the twins to tea at Fullers. Very dull little girls. My mother her usual maddening self. ‘Where is Cyril this afternoon?’ ‘He’s gone to see some friends at St Margaret’s Bay.’ ‘Oh yes, the Fletchers,’ she says, in a knowall way. Asked me what my book was in the back of the car. ‘The Iliad,’ I said. ‘Fancy reading that old-fashioned book!’ Who had we been to lunch with? ‘A painter called Eric Wood.’ ‘But he lives right here in Saltwood, quite near to me.’ She looked towards me in a fury as though she’d caught me out in a lie. ‘Not this one,’ I said. ‘Of course he does,’ said my mother, ‘an elderly man with a beard.’ ‘Not the Eric Wood we lunched with.’ ‘Then it must be his brother,’ she insisted.

  May 20

  On May 15 the beech tree and weeping lime came into flower, and we bought a baby badger from Spong Farm. We paid two pounds and the Bryce son was unable to conceal a cunning smile as he took the money. The badger died last night, four days later. It cried so at night, not when it was dying, but before. We did not coddle it nearly enough. Cyril having made me as funky as himself by expatiating at length on how its teeth interlocked when it bit you. Poor little baby badger, its teeth were hardly formed and
we only dared to peer at it through the chink of Kupy’s cold hut. I did not realise it was not eating enough. It would lick the honey from the spoon and tried to tug at a finger of my glove which was a substitute for a nipple. What cowards! What shame! Kupy had just given us each a nasty nip, which had upset one’s nerve.

  We have had a few hot days. But now it has clouded over and there is an east wind. We had Mary McCarthy and Bowden Broad water to lunch last Sunday. She is very alive, and he is restful and fastidious, combs his hair forward with a funny flattened look to cover the baldness on the top of his head. They loved England but then she has been made a great fuss of, and, when I complained that one could not find anything in the shops except in toned-down colours for the English, Broadwater said he was leaving with five new suits. They very generously brought us two delicious bottles of old whisky, Bourbon and Scotch, and insisted on doing all the washing-up after the lunch.

  BIG NEWS. KUPY GONE TO A ZOO IN ILFRACOMBE.

  August 19

  Had an appalling night. C installed himself in my bed. He was only allowed in after I had scrubbed the soles of his feet. He now never wears shoes about the house and picks up all manner of filth; it was so engrained that I had to flake off the black clots with a brush. And what a fuss! Dragging his foot away every second and howling with pain. Then he woke me in the early morning by putting his Chinese coolie legs across my thighs.

  *

  We catch the 9.25 train in good time, leaving the car on the return side of the platform and buy the newspapers. I order eggs and bacon in the restaurant car, as C has ordered some, and I know I will be tempted when I see his. He goes off with the usual review copies to sell at the booksellers. Collects me at the hairdresser’s. I am told I was looking far better before I went. Shows me the photographs he has collected and suggest we go to the Ritz to have a shufty: Pleased with them on the whole. The portraits of people are definitely the best. We leave the Ritz at one and disappear into the rain. Immediately start grumbling, say I usually like walking, but have not the proper shoes. C says okay and calls a taxi. Think I look tired and plain, wearing the fawn suit (that I hate since Bill said it was inferior gabardine). What a bore it is, I grumble, my being included in the luncheon at the Ivy (as I am no longer hungry). Complain I am half dead and won’t have anything to say. Aldous Huxley was there waiting in a crowded foyer. I go upstairs to try and improve my face, notice I am stared at (because of the bright canary jacket worn over the suit), run my hands through my hair, decide I look simply dreadful and there is absolutely nothing to be done, eyelashes sticking together and hair too curly and neat. AH takes us to a far corner table (a fearful draught from the window) and to my horror see it is laid for five. Before I have time to recover Mary Hutchinson walks in, very dolled up, but quite pleasantly, in gunmetal grey and a small fitting hat, the kind of hat all dowdy Englishwomen wear that I tried very hard to criticise but failed utterly. She has simply taken trouble. She hardly greets me, which always makes me discomfited, but, determined to make an effort, I smile, to show I am not going to give in to my aversion, which I am sure she knows I feel and probably reciprocates. We are placed opposite each other, AH on my left. Menus are handed round, one each. AH says he thinks it is a day for soups, but what will we have to drink? Should we order before Raymond arrives? C says definitely yes. AH and I agree on dry sherry. MH nothing and C in an exacting way says he wants some kind of cocktail; the expression on the face of the waiter as well as the host indicate they think he is going to be difficult, but it all ends with a quick decision for a Martini. Then I order a melon to start, followed by plain grilled sole, while the others pick out avocado pear, prawn cocktail and minestrone respectively, and all three agree on roast lamb, their voices united in pleasure so that I am made to think I’ve ordered unwisely.

  Raymond Mortimer arrives in a tweedy suit, greets everyone very warmly, including Mary Hutchinson, laughs in a deep, warm way and seems pleased to be there. Orders melon (am kept company, thank God). Cyril says, ‘Do you think that is a wise choice?’ Raymond says he doesn’t want to be wise. Has a kidney dish to follow. Everything mellow, middle-aged and well-mannered. The conversation mainly lofty gossip. When asked by Cyril if he found any place in North Africa worthy of permanent habitation Raymond, who was there early in the spring, replies ‘definitely not’. Agadir a horrid place but remarkable climate, Mogador ravishing town but flat, treeless. I don’t think anyway he shares C’s craving for expatriation. ‘What do you think of the Channel Isles?’ C asks. Everyone: ‘Horrid.’ Raymond: ‘Nothing but hothouses and tomatoes.’ C: ‘But a warm climate.’ Aldous (referring to bananas grown in Cornwall): ‘Plants are fearful liars. Because tropical things can be grown there it doesn’t mean the climate is warm but that there is no frost.’ ‘That’s it,’ says C, ‘they blanket the leaves for protection.’ C says if he could really choose he would live in California. Mary Hutch raises her gingery eyebrows in exaggerated surprise and, looking at me, asks, ‘Would you like to live in America?’

  Raymond says that the Sunday Times has come to the conclusion that both of them were quite irreplaceable and their one dread was that they would be killed together in a taxi. C tells Raymond that when Trevor-Roper, who was about to write an article on ethics or morals, and was cited as a co-respondent, the Sunday Times did not consider he was suitable any longer and decided in view of Raymond’s irreproachable reputation as a discreet homosexual he was the one best qualified. R was amused. Huxley talked about his grandparents, of how his grandfather was out strolling with a friend and the friend’s hat blew off landing in a lake; whereupon there was a discussion as to whether to retrieve the hat and wear it wet, or go home without. The latter was decided upon. The next time they met, the friend said to Huxley’s grand-père, ‘Do you know after I last saw you and the loss of my hat, I developed a cold in the head?’ Whereupon Huxley’s grandfather replied, ‘If you had chosen to wear your hat home, you would now have pneumonia.’ The point being, how strange the Victorians were to think that if you went out without a hat you would inevitably catch cold. Aldous said he recalled his grandmother saying that she wished birth control had been current in her younger days. But he criticised her for having always refused to meet George Eliot. Raymond said that most of her life Eliot could only receive in her own house and only toward the end was she accepted everywhere. Huxley had been disappointed in Europe, particularly in Italy, where it was so noisy. He had liked the Lebanon very much. When Cyril asked him his plans, he said lecturing and finishing his essay on mescalin. Everyone agreed that Norman Douglas was a horrid man. Huxley: ‘When I last saw him in Italy he absolutely refused to be interested in anything but drink and sex.’ Raymond said he hadn’t liked Nancy Cunard’s book* on him, but all the other reviewers had boosted it. Isherwood’s last book had made him squirm. The trouble now is that no one writes at all well. Cyril disagreed that Bertrand Russell wrote well, but Huxley said it was rare for a philosopher to write at all. Nobody liked D H Lawrence. Aldous told the story of Lawrence visiting Aldington when he was living with two women in Provence. Lawrence was shocked and complained that the atmosphere had been so louche that even the donkeys had permanent erections. No one had a good word to say for Maugham. Cyril said, ‘The trouble with writers who reach old age is that they spend their time running down their dead contemporaries.’ He then added, ‘Longevity is the revenge of talent on genius.’ Raymond: ‘Who said that?’ C: ‘I say it now.’ Aldous: ‘Then I think we all ought to applaud.’

  Only this morning, C had complained that now I had taken up photography, only his ugliness would be perpetuated and not his epigrams. C asked Aldous about his eyes, were they any better? Much better, he said, but that when he went blind in one eye for six months, it had been a most painful experience. He had seen Arthur Waley. Raymond: ‘What an odd fish.’ C: ‘Did he talk at all?’ Aldous: ‘A lot.’ C: ‘What about?’ Aldous: ‘Oh, his work, I think.’ ‘What is he doing now? …’ ‘Still translating. They now tra
nslate into modern Japanese Waley’s English version of ancient Japanese.’ Everyone thought it odd to be an expert on a country one had never visited. No one thought much of Malraux. Talk the hind leg off a donkey. ‘You can’t live through art alone,’ Aldous said, and that most of the text of Malraux’s books was clichés and double-Dutch. He and Raymond had both enjoyed the Edward VII room at the British Museum. ‘Cults of ugliness such as Picasso’s have run through the ages.’ And he remarked on how extraordinary it was that similar things had been produced simultaneously all over the world, when there could not have been any link. Huxley said what a disappointing city Athens was; it had no antiquity apart from the Acropolis. Raymond liked it, though, and mentioned the small Turkish quarter at the foot of the Acropolis. We were almost the last in the restaurant. Raymond said to Mary Hutch, ‘You must come and see me in Islington.’ Mary H said to us, ‘You must both visit me in my new home, where I shall have a proper kitchen.’ I said we would be delighted.

  *

  This morning I received a letter from Eric Oliver with a wobbly arrow pierced with a heart. He has given me two Staffordshire figures, one called Flora and a Charles II gold coin which I was going to give him back, but Cyril says I should give it to Farouk when we get to Rome as, having been deprived of his collection of coins, which are up for sale in Egypt, all a collector wants to do is to start collecting again. For in two days we are off to Italy. Cyril has been commissioned by the Sunday Times to do an article on the recent excavations at Herculaneum.