Your affec. father,
RM
Just had the rates: £658. Scandalous. No wonder I have to lead the life of a genteel pauper.
Fortunately neither my father nor I can be accused of being over-ambitious and I guess surviving without being on the dole is something of an achievement in itself.
Budds Farm
26 May
My Dear Lupin,
I’m sorry to hear you are unwell. You have not looked particularly robust lately and I think you ought to have a check-up. After all, your health is the most important asset you possess. I think you ought to consider discarding the dusky witch-doctor you patronise and go to someone more rational. Our new doctor here seems quite adequate. Please get in touch with Mr Parkinson (95-700-257) who would like you to flog his car for him on a commission basis.
Yours ever,
RM
The new doctor alluded to is the bluntest I have ever met yet. Without a hint of irony he calls his house ‘Bedside Manor’.
Budds Farm
6 October
My Dear Lupin,
I hope your health is holding out and that you are reasonably content at your new job. I have no idea what you do or where you do it. No doubt you will be appearing here in an expensive new motor before long. Your mother was hoping to have her first day’s cubbing last Friday but it was cancelled as the head groom at the Old Berks stables had peppered a female employee with a humane killer and then blown his own head off. He had worked there for twenty-five years and the girl, whom Nidnod knew well, is thirty years younger than he was! It’s odd the way demon sex keeps on obtruding into fox-hunting! Tim and Caroline Holland-Martin sold their yearlings well at Newmarket. They got 450,000 guineas for one and 20,000 guineas for another. Nice work if you can get it! Mrs Hislop is barmier than ever. Following a series of complaints, she was sent for by the stewards of the Jockey Club and told she would lose her badge (as wife of a Jockey Club member) if she did not behave herself in future. It was thought that the warning would cool her ardour but the next day she wrote a letter deman ding a private dining room for women in the Jockey Club Rooms as the men were all so boring! The Gaselee stable had three winners on Saturday, 20/1, 16/1 and 3/1. The next day Mrs G. pranged her car which was a total write-off. Luckily she and her son were not badly hurt. King Chaos reigns supreme here as twenty-four people – mostly dull and elderly – come to lunch on Sunday. Harry Roper-Caldbeck left £1,250,000.
I believe Charlie Blackwell has returned to his wife. They have been on holiday in Miami. Jane complains of being hard up: I have been told a great many times that Paul is a tycoon so she ought not to be wholly devoid of treacle. I shudder at the approach of Christmas. The alleged ‘Festive Season’ costs me about £350. I really wish I was a Non-Skid and spent 25 Dec at a kosher hotel in Margate. Nidnod met the Dingwalls at a funeral in Yateley last week. I have been sent the latest Dick Francis book; it is all about computers and I can’t understand it. The Bomers are off to Brittany: not much fun at this time of the year, I imagine. A Burghclere woman has died of tetanus after scraping her arm on a bean pole. The new man at the Post Office is an improvement on the last one. There is a new Dr at Woolton Hill who looks like a retired jockey (may be one for all I know).
Your affec. father,
RM
How is that girl with the nice legs?
I am constantly amazed at how much entertaining news can be packed into a relatively short letter. My new job is with a property investment firm in London.
Budds Farm
10 November
Dear Lupin,
I hope all goes well with you. I have not seen your firm’s name mentioned in any of the many criminal cases involving scrap-metal merchants. Not much news from here. We went to a rather ghastly dinner party, the guests being for the most part deaf old men and alcoholic old women. In addition there was an Old Etonian who had done quite a long term in prison, and a very fat lady who thinks Mr Parkinson murdered his third wife. On Sunday we lunched with Mrs Pope; among those present was Anthony Philippi whom I believe was concerned with your brief military career. Nidnod’s horse has been unsound which has made her (Nidnod) a bit jumpy. I suppose I ought to go up to London and do some Christmas shop ping but I simply cannot face it. I think I will make do with the Co-operative stores at Whitchurch. Smiths have opened a new premises in Newbury: you can buy almost anything there bar a book. My bedside lamp has disintegrated and I have been reluctantly compelled to replace it. I hear my cousin Mary paid £100,000 to her husband to go away. He has never been happier and is very rarely sober. A man came and cut all the hedges yesterday for £10: I would willingly have paid him twice that amount. On Saturday we go to old Geoff Barling’s wedding: he is eighty. His previous wife went off her onion. The last time we saw her she clasped Nidnod to her bosom and started to sing ‘Oh, You Beautiful Doll, You Great Big Beautiful Doll’. Nidnod tells me I was unkind to laugh.
Yours ever,
RM
Another new job – I am currently employed by a large scrap-metal company. This is my dream job especially as sometimes I get to drive the crane.
Budds Farm
24 November
Dear Lupin,
Thank you so much for your very generous present which I greatly appreciated. I’m so glad you were able to come to lunch. I met a man who worked in a big brewery the other day; 20 per cent of the draymen get sacked every year for dishonesty of some sort. I don’t think your firm is unique.
Yours ever,
RM
Dad’s seventy-second birthday. His view of my current employer is disparaging.
1982
Budds Farm
6 April
My Dear Lupin,
I trust you are in a moderately robust state of health and that your thirties will be happier and more successful than your past decade. I shall be relieved to hear (if ever) that you have found some little niche in the world of commerce as you have a longish wait still before the happy day arrives when you can stride boldly into the Post Office and draw your pension. Incidentally, Burghclere Post Office will soon be permitted to sell alcohol so I shall be able to purchase stamps, loo paper and claret simultaneously, a considerable convenience. Your mother is in very poor form and particularly cross because I warned her that Lord Carrington, one of her political heroes, would have to resign. She has been so boring about fox-hunting that I am considering a subscription to the local Hunt Saboteurs Association. No doubt you will be conscripted soon provided you pass the medical examination. Hot Hand Henry will probably end up in the Army Catering Corps. I am game to be RTO [Recruitment Training Officer] at Thatcham or Theale. There are lots of ‘workmen’ busy here so I foresee an avalanche of substantial bills in the not far distant future. Your mother is not indulging in entertainment to any marked extent over Easter but there is a faint possibility that the Bomers may come to lunch on Sunday. I went over to the Gaselees last night. Mrs G. plucky but weary with the house full of bolo children, fourteen of whom had sat down to breakfast that morning. Nick had influenza badly and looks very run down. The Cringer is fairly well but as deaf as a beetle. He spends most of the day asleep. I do not think he was responsible for the huge dead rat outside the stable: my own view is that Reg Rat expired from sheer old age and from that boredom with existence that inevitably overtakes the elderly. A sadly large number of shrubs and roses are dead on account of the cold weather in January and they have become very expensive to replace as well as an irksome fatigue to dig out and remove. Do you recollect the very sensible army maxim much used in the Coldstream in my day: ‘It is infinitely preferable to incur a slight reprimand than to undergo an irksome fatigue’? Less popular were the words of an ambitious Aldershot general: ‘The darker the night, the more inclement the weather, the better the exercise.’
Your affec. father,
RM
The Falkland’s War has just begun. My birthday is always a good opportunity for a fairly bleak assessment of
my general role in life to be issued.
Age Concern House
Dear Lupin,
Your sister is now in high esteem among her relations though I have heard nothing yet of your Aunt Pam’s reaction, I hope she will follow it up with something equally successful. Journalism is a good deal more profitable nowadays than writing books which financially is just a waste of time. Journalists have always been disliked and despised but today their social status is slightly higher than it was in my youth when they entered a house by the back door and had to wait in the servants’ hall! I hope you are enjoying your new job and you find it financially rewarding. My friend Paul Greenwood of Knight, Frank and Rutley has just been made redundant, a serious matter for a middle-aged man with children and a taste for fox-hunting. His wife can be a bit of a tartar which will hardly help his situation. On Friday we went to dinner at Chieveley with the Steels, who I like, not least because they have plenty of treacle. The dinner was revolting, the first course consisting of Lifebuoy soap. I sat next to an old bag called Lady Grimthorpe who annoyed me by feigning deafness. In my view she is an ideal candidate for the lethal chamber. Also there was Arthur Budgett who had a 33/1 winner at Ascot the following day. He certainly did not advise me to back it! At Ascot we had a very good lunch with John Abergavenny who is just retiring as H.M.’s Ascot representative. He is blessed with good looks and perfect manners and used to have a very beautiful sister who made an unhappy first marriage. His own son, the only one, died of cancer at Eton. John’s successor at Ascot is Piers Bengough, a tough but agreeable South African Jew whose sister Mrs Quarry lived near the Thistlethwaytes at Eversley. I hope he will follow the example of Bernard Norfolk and John A. by letting us use the Ascot Authority stand through out the year. At the party before lunch Mrs Beaumont introduced me to a little Polish girl whom I took to be twelve years of age. However, later I saw her with her noggin in a tankard of the hard stuff and with the other hand gripping a Gauloises, and investigation disclosed that she was twenty-six! At Cheltenham I saw a rather run-down elderly man, old in fact, and eventually realised it was Reggie Paget with whom I messed at Eton and whose career there was slightly less distinguished than my own. He is now Lord Paget and was for many years Labour MP for Northampton. He was also Master of the Pytchley. His father, a Tory MP, was killed out hunting and his brother became a bullfighter. He is the only Labour MP to have ridden round Aintree. His political career would have been more successful if he could have refrained from baiting Harold Wilson whom he rated an awful crook, no doubt rightly. He is a great admirer of Lady Salisbury and shares a racehorse with her. I think he is under the impression that she actually drives the juggernaut to Poland! Au fond Reggie, who is related to your mother, is a very kind person and I like him. There is a lot to do in the garden just now and Mr Randall has just announced his departure to Devonshire for a holiday. Mark Bomer has terrible acne, poor boy. He has amassed a wonderful collection of toadstools, some of a curiously erotic shape and size. Your mother is in fairish form but worries about twenty-seven different things. The poor old Cringer is fading way and this morning he just could not jump up on to my bed. Your mother is very patient with him and keeps him going.
1st lady: My dog did very well. He got a first, a second and was Highly Commended.
2nd lady: Mine did all right too. He had a fight, a fuck and was highly delighted.
Mrs Surtees has made her new house very attractive. I never see Major Surtees nowadays. The Cardens’ horse won easily at Worcester on Saturday. No news of Louise or of HHH.
I loathe my new accountant, the Himmler of Reading.
Your affectionate father,
RM
I form an unlikely friendship with an elderly but delightful marchioness, Lady Salisbury, and together we embark on a Polish adventure delivering aid in a massive articulated truck which fortunately I have a licence to drive.
The Old Dank House
Dear Lupin,
I trust that your Polish trip went off well and there were no irksome misadventures. Jane rings up quite a lot: she seems well, but like most of us suffers from cashflow problems. I gather that Torday & Co are passing through an unprofitable phase. Your mother has a bad cold aggravated by riding for hours at a time in pouring rain. The garden looks like a picture of the Western Front in October 1917. I’m all for giving the people who fought in the Falklands full credit, but it is sometimes forgotten that in World War I it was not uncommon for an infantry battalion to lose twenty officers and over 400 other ranks in a single day. In the Falklands the infantry, thank God, were not asked to make frontal attacks through belts of uncut barbed wire against carefully sited and skilfully used machine guns. No news of Henry and Louise so I assume they have no worries. The Adams boys have shot several pheasants in the garden. I assume they (they pheasants) were either stationary or walking at a sedate pace. I was driving Nidnod to Newbury and she was very upset when she saw a dead pigeon in the road. She was just starting to give me a lecture on callous motorists when I pointed out that ‘the pigeon’ was in fact an extremely dirty towel. The Randalls have been down to Devonshire. They have a far jollier life than I do but they are probably better off. The Cringer is quite lively but a bit too nonchalant over where he lifts his leg. I hate my accountant more than ever: I have just caught him out telling lies, which of course has annoyed him a good deal. We have a lot of people turning up for lunch on Sunday which is rather a bore. Newbury races are ‘off’ as the course is under water. Jeffrey Barnard is staying at Kingsclere and I had a lot of expensive drinks with him at the Crown. I notice the death of J. H. L. Lambart, the last survivor of the Eton masters who had the hideous task of trying to teach me. He was John Surtees’s House Tutor. Also Jeremy Thorpe’s. Other masters called Lambart ‘The Widow’ because he was such an old woman!
Your affectionate father,
RM
I arrive in Warsaw on the day the Belgrano is sunk. Eager for my companion to inform her husband that she’s OK, I suggest we use the telex at the British consulate to send the following message via my brother-in-law’s company in Newcastle: ‘Please call the Marquis of Salisbury and let him know that his wife has arrived safely.’ He promptly calls a public house of the same name and leaves the message with a bemused landlord. On my return I am introduced to Jeffrey Barnard at the ‘Lambourn Lurcher Show’. We are chatting away when a jolly, middle-aged lady bounces up and announces that she has just won first prize in the ‘rough bitches’ class.
Budds Farm
31 December
Dear Lupin,
Just a few words to thank you for your very generous Christmas present which was greatly appreciated. Your mother is in a very trying mood at present and you are fortunate not to be here! Cousin Tom is in a bad way although his mind is now clearer and he can speak a bit. A decision over the future will have to be taken soon. They may send him home with a couple of nurses and let him expire more or less quietly; or they may opt for another operation when he can stand it (not for two months) and which would cause a lot of pain and would carry no guarantee of success. It is all rather awful. Cousin John and Charles are seeing the top surgeon this weekend. The Cringer is quite well but being blind and deaf seems more stupid and obstinate than he really is. One just has to be very patient with the old boy. He can no longer jump on my bed (rather a relief for me) and he needs to be helped into a car. He and I both find old age rather ghastly! Mr Parkinson still has his mother-in-law with him. She downed an entire bottle of Scotch on Christmas afternoon. Simon is there temporarily. He says the Hong Kong Police Force, of which he is a member, is noted for corruption and homosexuality. The other day he barged into a little Chinaman carrying a suitcase which burst open tipping a lot of little packets on the pavement. Simon apologised and was helping to repack the case when the Chinese policeman he was with pointed out that the packets were probably drugs; as indeed they proved to be on investigation. Be fairly careful of Miss Cameron; she is good fun but mixed up with individuals
who are apt to end up in the dock. Best of luck in 1983 and I hope you will continue to be gainfully employed.
Yours ever.
RM
1983
Budds Farm
28 January
Dear Lupin,
What an interminable month January is! Everyone is more or less ill and to some extent unhappy. Your mother is in her worst form and never stops complaining. I just keep my mouth shut and try and keep out of the way. I have booked for us to go to Crete in May. It will bankrupt me but at least it ought to be warm there. The Cringer is very senile and it is difficult sometimes not to get cross with him. I have an idea that certain people feel very much the same about me. Your mother is off to the opera (Rosenkavalier) with the Bomers tomorrow. I hope it will cheer her up a bit. I saw the Gaselees on Tuesday and drank far too much gin: I don’t think my driving on the way home was above criticism. I have been asked to do some work for the Sunday Times colour supplement but I don’t like the subject so I think I’ll decline. At the end of the month I am going to see the shifty Bengali who does the accounts for ‘Pacemaker’ and I may have to put the frighteners on him. He owes me for five months. A girl of eighteen is coming to see me tomorrow about getting a job in the racing world. I am told she is good-looking which helps, but I don’t rate her chances very high. I hear Jane’s car was broken into and she lost a bit of kit. I broke a bottle of orange juice all over the front seat of my car this morning. A very nasty sticky mess! Aunt Pam is better but I gather Uncle Ken is feeling pretty ropey still. Your mother is in a fearful flap over the water and gets hysterical if anyone turns a tap on. I talked to Cousin Tom yesterday; he is making slow headway. He is better in the morning than after tea when he is apt to be terribly tired. I can’t think of anything else to say.
Dear Lupin... Page 10