'Tears Before Bedtime' and 'Weep No More'

by Barbara Skelton

  A strong wind and sunless. One goes into Dean’s Bar and there is the old white-haired Negro, more doddery than ever, doling out tepid daiquiries. Poor old Dean. Takes me under his wing.

  ‘Very smart, dear,’ he says, ‘I like you in black.’

  Just keep wondering what I’m doing here. One tries to escape from oneself only to discover one’s more embedded in the self than ever. I am cured of hashish. Easy to obtain but disgusting. M. keeps jubiliantly repeating, ‘I feel very remote, I feel more and more remote,’ then becomes ashen and passes out.

  Usual guilt about Cyril. Just burnt a hole in his cardigan from hashish ash. Mahraba Palace restaurant, boy dancer; delicious Pastella pie of pigeon, almonds, onions and fresh grapes cooked in oil and butter; marvellous Spanish prawns everywhere.

  Agadir

  February 19

  Escaping from the wind in Tangier. Immediately discard all woollies. Sit in sun, cold thickens. M. says we’re on a honeymoon. Worst meal yet at Hotel Saada. It’s now full. On demi-pension. M. inclined to wake up querulous.

  ‘Forgive me darling. It’s because I love you that I’m like this. I care about every inflection of your pretty voice, there are so many ways you can hurt, you know.’ Persistent twisting of forelock, picking of broken skin round fingernails, whistling ‘Miss Otis Regrets’ out of tune. ‘Do you have to put sand in my eye? Or be so disagreeable, my darling? I live on the verge of panic and it doesn’t take much to bring it out.’

  After continual fussing over typewriter am lent a vast machine by a garagiste. Will it be used? Monkey remains unread. Lack of reading matter acute until I buy a François Mauriac novel and a French dictionary. Been away one week. It seems simply ages. Driven into irritable humour by M. persistently twirling his hair. He thinks the Arabs look hostile. Driving is a nightmare because of potholes. On the top of a hill it’s agoraphobia and at the bottom it’s claustro. I awake with the feeling of a tight band clamped to my skull, my heart a sponge of despair; every time I catch my breath I release a jet of sadness.

  Hôtel Saada, Agadir

  Darling Cyril,

  It’s difficult to write as I am on the move. But when I get to the Mamounia perhaps you could telephone. It’s a paradise of heat here. The sands are sublime, long virgin stretches, creamy breakers, and can paddle, but have a cold. Agadir has developed as a resort. But oh, the boredom of the evenings, with no good book. The fruit and flowers are a constant pleasure. We have hired a car at great expense, and although have been forbidden by the owner (because of bad roads) tomorrow we are setting off for Tafraout and Tiznit, then Mogador and Marrakesh. How I wish you were here. Very exciting birds everywhere, pure white cranes that roost on the parapets. The Moroccan wine just passable. The only unpleasantness: the police hammering on doors checking up on passports. If you want me to, I should like to spend a lot of time with you at Bushey, but not if it upsets your life at all. I always feel you are my rock, however many changes there may be. I hope you will remain so, even if it’s only a dwindling one … I hope you are better now. This is just a hurried letter as M. is waiting in the bar. I miss you and love you very much, Barbara …

  March 3, Hôtel des Iles Mogador, Essaouira

  Up to now, this is the prettiest and cheapest place, deserving more than one star, compared with Tafraout, which gets three. It has the perfect blend of French Moroccan eighteenth-century architecture. The streets are broad, the houses are white with blue shutters and beautiful portals. The Place de Gaulle is lined with pale barked trees like magnolias but which are, in fact, a species of fig. By the sea, an Edwardian-resort feeling; carriage loads of white-clothed, red-veiled Moroccan women, jangling with jewels, taking the air along the promenade with their pretty children and twisted top-knots, to which is pinned more jewellery. The hotel looks on to the sea; from my window I can see three islands and the tower with the cannons. Hardly any tourists come here. Moroccans loathe the French still and are intensely nationalistic. Hashish is forbidden, except for the old things who have been smoking it all their lives.

  Hôtel Mamounia

  I am reading Alleys of Marrakesh stolen from Dean’s bar. Met Doan.

  ‘When I get back to England I will send you some books,’ I say.

  ‘Send me yours,’ he says.

  ‘No, never,’ I reply.

  ‘Coquette,’ ‘you must not be so tense. Try to be more content with yourself. One must accept one’s limitations. Live alone,’ he counsels. ‘It’s good … solitude. Marriage is not for you. One has to compromise for marriage and you are not capable of it.’

  ‘I love solitude during the day, but not in the evenings.’

  ‘Well,’ he laughs, ‘if that is your reason for marrying … no wonder.’ I laugh, too.

  ‘Also, life seems so pointless alone.’

  ‘Life is pointless,’ he says, ‘perhaps you need to suffer. A romantic. Yes?’ He sighs: ‘Ah! Vous êtes trop compliqué pour moi. What astrological sign are you?’

  ‘Cancer. Both husbands were virgos. It’s the worst possible mélange.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because the stars say so.’

  ‘Do you know what sign I am?’

  ‘No.’ Doan laughs.

  ‘Virgo’ he says.

  In Marrakesh, Michael and I hardly saw each other. He went off alone on bus trips and when he got back in the hotel kept ringing up Anne.

  ‘My poor little darling wife … having to have another baby … everything ghastly here … darling … are you listening? I don’t specially want to live in England. You know what I like … working and seeing Francis …the room is pretty … if you were here we could sit out and drink white wine and eat smoked salmon. All the house part is out … ghastly squalid peeing Arabs … what there is of the country is so suburban … it’s not what you or I like, more and more money for more and more boredom. And don’t think Marrakesh is beautiful … tawdry mountains … hideous and expensive … it has a reputation for being marvellous, I know … well, like your husband, but it doesn’t live up to it. [Michael laughs] And last night I was so sort of sad that I got wildly drunk and still am … well, yes [impatiently] are you listening? I don’t specially want to live in England … all the things I destest visually … here … the worst disappointment I’ve ever had … it’s never really sunny…when it’s sunny a filthy wind and ghastly English everywhere … you were right, darling, to think I could have spent the money on a Thunderbird.’

  Chapter XI

  Flight

  When I got back to England Cyril took me to Bushey Lodge, the house not far from Lewes that he had rented on Lord Gage’s estate. His Lordship was a charmingly innocuous gentleman we termed the ‘Intelligence Gauge’. Perhaps unwisely, Cyril sought my advice on distempering. I then had a passion for violent tints. The last time the cottage had received a coat of paint, the colours were so garish that the overall effect had been reminiscent of a Neapolitan icecream. Bright orange was chosen for the dining-room walls of Bushey to meld with the pretty brick tiles. I was never to live there, though, for by then Cyril had fallen in love with Deirdre. I did go down at weekends. Once, a neighbouring couple came to dinner. The husband had some interest in the Mermaid Theatre and used his influence to get me engaged as secretary to one of the directors. As anyone who has experienced one, let alone two, divorces, in rapid succession may understand, I was still demoralised and it turned out to be a particularly depressing interlude, due to the long Tube journey and the area in which the Mermaid was situated. I never glimpsed a director and sat about most of the day with nothing to do. I was entitled to free tickets, though, and a very good production of Brecht’s Galileo was playing at the time.

  In spite of a crushing survey – ‘old timbers supporting beams in bad state … dampness in back and side walls of weather boarding in bad shape … crack down sitting-room wall … slats upon which the tiles are hung rotten … joists supporting beams riddled with worm … a complete new stack pipe and damper re
quired’ – the cottage was sold without regret for £2,000. I had had her for twenty years. When candles and Aladdin lamps had been replaced by electricity, she lost a lot of her charm. Also, during our absence, a dishonest gardener had dug up all the crocus, daffodil and narcissus bulbs that had festooned the grass and given us so much pleasure in the spring. I don’t think I could ever have lived there again. The surroundings would always have been associated with Cyril. He inherited my old double bed and various other relics, as well as ‘the little bus’, as we used to call the Sunbeam Talbot. In later years, during any subsequent sentimental visits we paid the area, we found nothing had changed. Elmstead Church remained just as desolate, the branches of the yew tree supported by ropes. There was still the same three-forked signpost indicating the way to Canterbury, Hythe and Wye, and the cottage dormer windows still looked out across an expanse of unspoilt countryside.

  On our last jaunt together, Michael and I visited Corsica. We took the ferry to Ile Rousse and stayed in the Hotel Napoleon Bonaparte. This was before the island had been invaded by French Algerians known as pieds-noirs. In the Sixties, when Algeria gained her independence, many of these families took up residence in Corsica and enriched the island by building reservoirs and planting vineyards. But when we drove round, it was completely deserted. Lush meadows were covered in wild flowers and the hedgerows were a mass of honeysuckle, arbutus and dog roses; the interior of the island was desolate maquis with an occasional valley and banana grove. The villages had become tumbledown ruins inhabited by septuagenarians or folk deformed from inter-breeding, rather like the little people one might see in a Buñuel film. The young had departed to seek employment on the Continent. Restaurants, bordering the sea, served delicious langoustes and real mayonnaise, and in the evenings sparkling fireflies hovered about our drinks.

  *

  Behind Ile Rousse was the hill village of Monticelli. We drove up one evening just as the shepherd, followed by his flock, was coming down the mountain to the chime of goat bells. It was such an enchanting, pastoral scene that after seeing a notice, ‘A Vendre’, on a ruined house, with a view of the sea from the upstairs windows and a large garden dominated by a tombstone, the following day I called on the notaire of Ile Rousse, M. Fiovanti, and made an offer. He said the house was owned by a family of twelve and every member would have to sign the Acte de Vente. He would contact me as soon as he had traced them all. I left an advance of 865,000 (old) francs and returned to Lyall Street. Weeks went by without any news. The following spring I returned to Ile Rousse, seen off at Newhaven by Cyril and Stephen Spender, who kindly wrote a note to the Baron Henri de La Grange: ‘This is to introduce my friend, Barbara Skelton. Please show her the delights of Calvi.’ I telephoned and was invited over for a drink. There were no buses going to Calvi, so I had to hitch. In spite of the distance, that was no problem. Corsicans, then, at any rate, were far more forthcoming than drivers on the Continent.

  The Baron’s house stood on the corner of a charming old cobbled place. I rang the bell, and a man took me into the sitting room and offered me a drink. Then he disappeared, while from upstairs came the sound of someone playing the piano. I was left alone shyly to sip my drink and read the book that, luckily, I had taken with me, when an elegant woman put her head round the door. She too disappeared. Then, suddenly, there was a stampede on the stairs and a man called out, ‘We’re all going to dine out in a restaurant.’ And out they all trooped, leaving me to gather up my basket and hitch back in the dark to Ile Rousse.

  Later, rumours of the visit drifted back. The Baron and his friends had assumed me to be a secretary on Encounter and therefore, it seems, socially infra dig!

  Back in London, I found a letter from Doan to say he was ‘dans l’ effervescence du départ pour l’Angleterre’, having been invited to stay ‘par une délicieuse vieille dame, Lady Astor’, and that he was leaving for Casablanca and would arrive in London in about a week. He had also been invited by Mrs Diana Campbell-Gray to make a tour of ‘Ecosse: délicieuse idée!’ And when would we meet? He had received the copy of The Unquiet Grave; ‘très, très intérressant. Je regrette de ne pas posséder la langue anglaise pour apprécier le texte dans toutes ses finesses. Je pense a vous, mes meilleurs souvenirs à Cyril.’

  When we met in London, I sought Doan’s advice on the Monticelli affair: he said he knew of a Moroccan astrologist; I was to give him the date and the time of day that I had first seen the house, together with its situation, and when he got back home he would get its horoscope taken. Michael was in London and called me saying, ‘Darling girl’, he had had two amours since we had parted but ‘neither paddles in the shallow end of the pale pool of love had dimmed for one moment’ my ‘most loved aura of delight and boy’s brain’. His current lady friend had said that life was inventing a series of excuses not to die, ‘and lucky you, you have Monticelli!’ He said that he often nearly died in his night-and daydreams, when he envisaged my delicious Egyptian cat face close up and that embracing me had been like embracing a river or a ribbon and that he was going to show me his latest painting of a rainbow trout, ‘like the one we saw together in the Ajaccio market’.

  A month later, Doan wrote from the Derb el Hanch in Marrakesh to say that he didn’t have very good news: my horoscope was all wrong, particularly with regard to ‘places of refuge’; I would have nothing but problems. Every sentence in the letter ended in ‘changement peu favorable, ‘vous aurez des ennuis’; then finally, J’espère, chère Barbara, que vous me répondrez, car je suis très curieux de savoir la suite de cette affaire.’ I wrote to the notaire demanding a refund. Months went by and no news, so Pierre Sauvaigo, by then a respected Niçoise lawyer, interceded in the matter. Eventually, I flew over to France and claimed the money in cash from a Paris bank.

  As soon as I arrived back in Lyall Street, feeling hungry, I went to the Express Dairy and bought some eggs. Tired after the hurried journey, the suitcase unpacked, the bedroom in disorder, the residue of the Monticelli ruin resting on the mantle, I lay down on the bed in my old red dressing gown and dozed. I was awakened by a board creaking in the passage, then very furtively the bedroom door opened, held by a black-gloved hand, and a strange man’s face peered into the bedroom. I lay perfectly still without moving my head and looked at him as he looked at me. Then the bedroom door closed as slowly and furtively as it had opened, and the stranger fled. The doorbell was out of order, so he must have rung and, getting no reply, assumed the flat to be empty. The front door had been forced with a jemmy. I dialled 999. In no time, a plainclothes policeman with mediocre good looks, wearing a duffle coat, walked in carrying what looked like a toolbox. Once in the bedroom, he looked baffled and stared at me as if awaiting an explanation. He said he had come to take fingerprints.

  ‘He wore gloves,’ I said.

  ‘Oh well then, it’s not worth it. Did he steal anything?’

  ‘No, although I can’t think why he didn’t take the portable radio from the next room.’

  ‘I suppose he was looking for jewellery. Do you have any?’ I thought no more about it. A week later the policeman telephoned to ask if it would be convenient to see me right away. I took him into the sitting room and asked if he would like a drink. To my surprise, he accepted a large gin. Then he produced a portfolio of criminals, but none of the faces corresponded to the man I had seen and, in any event, I don’t believe that after such an interval anyone would have been able to identify a strange face.

  The detective-inspector became a regular visitor. He rang practically every day or came round to the flat, either in the morning or afternoon, never in the evening, when he had to get back to his steak, he said, and, I assumed, his wife, though he always denied having one. Sometimes, as soon as he entered the door, he would pick me up and twirl me round in his arms, as one might do with a doll.

  ‘I like bringing someone of your intelligence down to my level,’ he would say. Or, ‘Sex is a great leveller.’

  If I had been up at three i
n the morning making bread and milk, ‘You’re suffering from night starvation.’ Another time, ‘You’re very maternal, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I hope it doesn’t irritate you.’

  ‘Oh no’; he was most decisive. ‘I like to be babied.’

  Should I appear unfriendly, probably because he had not come round the previous day, ‘Is the novelty wearing off?’ he would ask. One afternoon, very troubled, he said, ‘It worries me taking off my trousers. I keep imagining the boss coming in.’ Happily, when he announced how much he would like to be ‘my protector in the park’ I was already planning to visit the United States.

  Diary

  January 2 1960

  I really am going to keep a diary throughout this year. Have been too despairing and lazy during the last. I think I am completely out of the wood. Have got over the shock and demoralisation resulting from Cyril’s marriage to Deirdre. Am almost content. The short spell of John Raymond served some purpose. He was clearly very devoted, without it being founded on much.

  ‘You’re really an extraordinary woman. Nothing but gaiety, chivalry, charm and wit … etc. Bless you. But I’ll go out of your life without fuss. I promise you. I’m very drunk, I know that, and very happy. I apologise for that, too. I know I’m very drunk but I was feeling rather lonely and loused up …’

  Last night he got the brush-off. A sentimental softie. A masochistic blubberer with outbursts of violent aggression towards the nearest victim. And, if one retaliates, he runs.