The House in France

by Gully Wells

  While my mother was writing her reviews for the Express, Freddie, in addition to his philosophical work, was also becoming something of a public intellectual and television star after he started appearing regularly on a program called The Brains Trust in 1956. I think we actually bought our first television set in order to watch him. The format was deceptively simple: Line up four brainiacs, throw in a moderator, add questions from the viewers, and see what happens next. Of course it helped that both the guests and the questions were of an unusually high caliber. Freddie was a natural performer and soon became one of the regulars on the show. Others included scientists like Jacob Bronowski and Julian Huxley, writers like his brother Aldous and Cyril Connolly, plus the odd Jesuit like Father d’Arcy, peers like Lord Longford, and Dr. Strangelove himself, Henry Kissinger. Freddie, a well-known atheist, and Father d’Arcy were, curiously, old friends, but when presented with a question like, “Do you believe in the Devil?” they were every television producer’s dream team. In his autobiography Freddie describes their encounter like this:

  “No,” I said immediately, “and not in God either,” giving my reasons as briefly as I could. Father d’Arcy replied with less than Jesuitical urbanity and a lively discussion followed. Later, we were asked whether we believed in original sin and Father d’Arcy said that he did. I was tempted but forebore to point out that this committed him to belief in the literal existence of Adam and Eve. Father d’Arcy with whom my personal relations were always good, admitted after the programme that he would have been embarrassed if I had fastened this doctrine on to him, and thanked me for not doing so.

  So Freddie not only scored points off Father d’Arcy intellectually, forcing him to lose his Jesuitical cool, but also graciously let him off the hook. The debate apparently provoked Lord Longford into making a speech in the House of Lords to the effect that since “we live in a Christian country such atheists as Julian Huxley and myself should not be permitted to appear on television.” Naturally nobody paid the slightest bit of attention to the Lord Longford, and Freddie went on to appear on the show forty-three times. He was always disarmingly honest about how much he enjoyed his growing fame, and confessed years later that “My success on the Brains Trust had given me an uncritical appetite for publicity.” There were many other television appearances, including a memorable one on Valentine’s Day with Eartha Kitt, which he later came to regret:

  We were asked a question about romantic love and I tried to talk learnedly about the troubadours. Out of mischievousness or boredom she made a show of flirting with me. Instead of bringing my speech to an end, or better still responding in kind, I floundered on and was made to look thoroughly foolish.

  Freddie knew he was better off with a Jesuit than with Eve and that tempting apple.

  LIFE WITH MY MOTHER and Freddie was never boring. They both shared the same sense of humor and the fundamental idea that although life was clearly a serious business, there was no reason why it should not also be fun. Clever and funny. Funny and clever. That was what they were, and that was what I assumed everybody must be. Like all children, I accepted my own family and circumstances as being utterly normal. And it was only as I got older that I came to realize that not everybody commuted between Europe and America, got divorced, had multiple lovers, the odd illegitimate child, and, most surprising of all, that the world was actually full of people who were neither clever nor funny. The last revelation was the real shocker and much the hardest to adjust to.

  I remember one trick they concocted together that involved, in Freddie’s words, “our appealing but incontinent dachshund, Monster,” who was inordinately fond of him. The idea was that the next time Freddie appeared on The Brains Trust he should contrive to say the dog’s name really loudly, and we three should sit at home in front of the TV set and see what happened next. So there we were on the sofa, with a special box of Maltesers—his favorite chocolates—for Monster, when Freddie appeared on the screen, gabbling away about metaphysics, possibly with poor old Father d’Arcy again, and suddenly said, “I see no empirical reason to believe in the existence of God, any more than I do in the Loch Ness MONSTER.” The experiment was a huge success. Monster lunged at the TV, barking wildly, the Maltesers scattered all over the floor, and we both fell about laughing.

  When it came to my birthday they were both ridiculously indulgent. Not necessarily with extravagant presents, but with humoring my wishes, however ludicrous. The year I turned eight I was caught up in my ballerina fantasy. I went to classes every Wednesday in a dank church hall in Notting Hill Gate, where my lack of any musical sense was overlooked by my kindly teacher, a tiny, sparrowlike woman who spoke with an impenetrable “foreign” accent of no clear provenance. But since I didn’t much care about the actual dancing, my complete absence of rhythm didn’t matter. It was the clothes I was interested in. My deepest desire was to look like the tarty, twirling figure on top of the mirrored jewelry box that I had been given for Christmas.

  Together my mother and I concocted what we thought was the perfect birthday tutu. The bodice was pink satin, the spaghetti straps were embroidered with rosebuds, and the skirt was cantilevered out from my nonexistent waist with multiple layers of tulle. White tights, ballet shoes encrusted with silver sparkles, like a Woolworth’s Christmas tree ornament, and a tasteful not-too-large rhinestone tiara, completed the ensemble. Decked out like that, my mother knew there was only one place in the whole of London we could possibly have gone. King Edward VII and Lily Langtry had gorged on tournedos Rossini and peach Melba there; Oscar Wilde had entertained the fatally attractive Lord Alfred Douglas with quail’s eggs and Veuve Clicquot there; and on top of all that, it was Freddie’s favorite restaurant. Mirrors, gilt, crystal chandeliers, pink, pleated silk lampshades, red velvet banquettes, silver candelabras: the Café Royal had it all. I was led to our table—toes carefully pointed out, ballerina style—seated between my mother and Freddie, and given a menu only slightly taller than myself. I ordered sole meunière, my mother had oysters, which made her sneeze, as she always did when she felt too much money was being spent on food, and Freddie probably had turbot, as he usually did. For dessert there was a special cake that had been ordered ahead of time, with eight candles perched precariously on top of a pillow of whipped cream. As far as I was concerned the evening was a total triumph. And I like to think they may have had quite a good time too.

  In fact my memories of them together at this point in their lives were entirely happy, but I was, of course, unaware of the continuing Siege of Freddie. By 1959 she was making serious progress and wrote to her friend Sue:

  Freddie seems to be worked up to a pitch of enthusiasm not likely to be possible again. He doesn’t shake and tremble and mutter No no no No no noooo all night anymore and he on his own steam actually went to Somerset House and got a copy of his grandpa’s will which has a trust fund thing out of which I hope to con the money for the house. He also even got a copy of his divorce papers and that I never even suggested as a thing to do. He is now off to New York to see Valerie [his daughter with Renée] get married tomorrow to a frightful sounding swotter from Rochester. He is bound to appreciate my fine sensitivity and European ways even more when he gets back, and that is why I want to find the house to pop him in quickly and slam the door.

  Nothing like a trip to Rochester in the winter to concentrate the mind. But my mother still felt she needed to bring on her one last bit of heavy artillery, and for that she turned to a somewhat surprising ally. My father was living in Bonn at this point, working as a kind of senior aide-de-camp to Ambassador Bruce, entertaining his ladies, and taking me on our regular road trips around Europe. That year we were due to visit Sue and Basil Boothby in Brussels, where they had been posted by the Foreign Office after Rangoon, for the 1958 World’s Fair:

  I think your cup runnething over as it does you are likely to have that old Al and Gully with you around the 22nd or so. And they are not only going to see the fair, they are going to the fucking flower field
s of Holland and some midget village or something near Amsterdam.

  After we toured the “fucking flower fields” and the “midget village” (quite fun, as I recall) I was put on a plane back to London, and my father returned to Germany, where he found a letter from his ex-wife waiting for him. Would he do her a huge favor, please? Could he write her a letter, saying that he was outraged and disgusted by the thought of his precious daughter living in such a sinful ménage, and what was my mother proposing to do about it? He roared with laughter, spent a happy evening composing a suitably indignant letter, and sent it off in the diplomatic pouch posthaste to London. Sadly the document hasn’t survived, and my father only told me about it, still laughing, after my mother’s death. But it may have been the piece of paper that broke Freddie’s back, because in 1959 he wrote, rather mournfully, to e. e. cummings’s wife, Marion, in New York:

  I agree that I should probably not make a good husband. We don’t in fact plan to get married, at least not straightaway, but for various reasons, including the attitude of Gully’s father, it may be difficult for us not to. And anyhow, the point is not so much being married as living with one person. My being away at Oxford during the term may or may not make it easier. We are both full of forebodings, but it seems feeble to back out now, having gone so far.

  Having confided his doubts to Marion, he then turned to his old mistress, Jocelyn, the “Maori,” who was now living with the playwright John Osborne, and invited himself to lunch. In his autobiography Osborne describes what happened next:

  I found Jocelyn, her face streaked with tears, more upset than I had ever seen her. It confirmed my view that Ayer was possibly the most selfish, superficial and obtuse man I have ever met, spitting out his commonplace opinions to an audience mystified by the tricks of manipulated sleight-of-mind. He had announced that he was contemplating marriage to an American, but was undecided whether the match fulfilled his standards of wisdom and self-esteem. He offered his ex-mistress a two-card choice: he was prepared to marry the American unless Jocelyn should feel impelled to offer herself as an alternative. Anyone less kindly would have kicked this pear-shaped Don Giovanni down the stairs and his cruel presumption with him. She could find nothing to say except, “But Freddie, it’s too late.”

  And so, dear reader, the pear-shaped Don Giovanni married the American adventuress.

  My mother found a house, just off Fitzroy Square, into which she popped Freddie and then quickly bolted the door. It was a smaller version of Holland Park Avenue: a typical London town house with endless stairs and two rooms on each floor. My bedroom was right at the top, and I chose a flamboyant, and probably ill-advised, wallpaper of cauliflower size turquoise roses, a green carpet, and broderie anglaise curtains for the windows. For all her bossiness, my mother was happy to leave me to make my own decisions, however ridiculous they might be, when it came to clothes, decor, and just about everything else. Freedom was something she believed in: If I wanted meringues for dinner, and leftover spareribs for breakfast, why not have them? With her, there were never any of those pointless decrees and nitpicking that other children I knew had to endure from their more conventional parents. She lived by the ethos that rules were there to be ignored, icons were for smashing (unless you had smuggled them out of Russia, as she did on a trip to Moscow), and that if you really wanted to do something, you should just go ahead and do it. Quite naturally I later rebelled against her, and became the prissiest, most conservative girl in all of swinging London.

  The sixties blew into town and caught us both by surprise. My mother had always been a rebel and was thrilled that society had finally come around to her way of thinking. She had incredible legs, so what could be more flattering than a short leather skirt designed by her friend Mary Quant? She had dead-straight auburn hair, so who better to cut it than Vidal Sassoon? She was an anarchist, so why not let your young son run around naked and go to bed whenever he damn well pleased? She loved to shock, so what’s wrong with smoking a joint or two in front of your kids? And while I was perfectly happy to go shopping for miniskirts and have my hair cut at Sassoon, I was a cautious, careful child who craved order and routine. The cautious child became a cautious teenager who behaved like a disapproving—but secretly admiring—maiden aunt, clucking her tongue at the wild antics of her naughty mother. Even if I had wished to misbehave, which I didn’t, whom would I have done it with? As an A student at an all-girls school with a mild—but for me, totally debilitating—case of acne, I didn’t have a long list of suitors eager to tempt me off the straight and narrow. In fact I had none. But in my early teenage years this didn’t bother me at all, and I was quite happy devouring books and hanging about with my parents and their friends, wondering if I would ever have as much fun as they did when I finally grew up.

  THE DAY OF THE WEDDING my mother and I got up before dawn and headed off to Covent Garden to buy flowers for the party that night. We returned in a taxi filled to the roof with roses, delphiniums, mimosa, and enormous branches of apple blossoms, which we arranged before getting dressed for the ceremony at St. Pancras Town Hall. The lunch afterward was in the sun-filled, mirror-spangled dining room at the Ritz, overlooking St. James’s Park. Three other couples had been invited to join us: Sue and Basil Boothby, Margie and Goronwy Rees, and Sonia and Michael Pitt-Rivers. I don’t recall very much about the lunch except that I was seated beside Michael, with whom I fell instantly in love. The fact that he was old, married, and, I was later told, gay, did absolutely nothing to diminish my ardor. He was a dazzlingly handsome farmer with a large estate in Wiltshire that had been left to him by his father, a truly terrifying man who had been one of Oswald Mosley’s more rabid acolytes. The rolling, carefully manicured green hills were sprinkled with bizarre and incongruous follies, brought back by his grandfather, an eminent Edwardian anthropologist, from his travels around the world. A tree house from Sumatra loomed over a bank of rhododendron bushes; an Iraqi meetinghouse, constructed entirely of rushes, stood beside the lake, and, on an island in the middle, a bark hut from Papua New Guinea was flanked by two weeping willows. It was the perfect backdrop for elaborate parties of an exotic nature, which usually involved Michael’s dressing up as an Indian prince with lots of jewels and brocade, his flawless features enhanced by dusky Othello-toned makeup and meticulously applied kohl eyeliner. Sometimes elephants and tigers were brought into play.

  A couple of years before the wedding, Michael had been arrested, along with his friend, Lord Montagu, after they had spent the weekend at Montagu’s stately home entertaining some dashing young guardsmen they had picked up in Green Park. Homosexuality was a criminal offense in those days (Freddie was one of the leaders of the campaign to have the law repealed, which finally happened in 1967), and Michael was sent to jail. Ironically his jailer turned out to be a man called Tubb, who had served under him in the army during the war. So each morning, when he came into the cell with the prisoner’s bowl of gruel, Michael would leap up and say, in his best British commander’s voice, “Morning, Tubb,” and poor Tubb, before he could stop himself, would snap to attention and reply, “Morning, sir”—which, Michael always said, was the only fun part about being in jail.

  As soon as he was released he got married. Why, nobody could ever figure out. The lady he chose was George Orwell’s mercurial widow, Sonia, and the marriage, predictably enough, was not a great success. They soon divorced, and Michael went on to live happily ever after with a cherubic, golden-haired young painter named William, who shared his passion for dressing up and riding around on elephants.

  AFTER THE LUNCH at the Ritz there was a huge party at our new house. Probably shell-shocked, Freddie wrote in his autobiography, “I remember nothing of the party which followed our wedding.” And he wasn’t much more revealing about their honeymoon: “We went to Venice, which I found enchanting, despite the prevalence of German tourists. Then we stopped in Split, where we visited Diocletian’s palace and from there went by sea to Dubrovnik where we settled into a mod
erately luxurious hotel outside the town.”

  But things started to look up a bit when they joined their close friend, Hugh Gaitskell, the leader of the Labour Party, in the palatial villa he had rented from the Yugoslav ambassador to London. No doubt Tito had been told all about the ambassador’s distinguished guest, and various Communist-themed treats were laid on, like a trip down the Dalmatian coast on the president of Croatia’s yacht, accompanied by the head of the Yugoslavian trade unions. A fun-packed week followed, until the day Freddie took it into his head to go swimming:

  Although the sea was rough and I am not a good swimmer, I succumbed to the temptation of joining the others in a bathe. There was no difficulty in plunging into the water and for a short time I quite enjoyed being buffeted by the waves. The difficulty was in getting out again. You had somehow to ride the crest of a wave and let it deposit you on the hotel terrace.

  Riding the waves was never Freddie’s forte, and eventually he was in real trouble and had to be rescued, ending up with his lungs full of seawater. A fever followed, and “No sooner was he aware of my condition than Hugh ordered me to bed.” Since they were due to leave later that day, my mother seems to have been rather more concerned with catching the Orient Express than with Freddie’s fever, and she persuaded her new husband that he was perfectly well enough to travel. Obediently he got up and started putting his clothes on. But then, “Hugh came into the room while I was dressing and in almost no time at all he had me back in bed.”