Gloucester Crescent

by William Miller

  I don’t know how much Dad likes going to Scotland when it’s just us, as he never really seems to enjoy family holidays. I think it’s the idea of being stuck in a house with children where there is no chance of intellectual conversation. He also doesn’t like leaving London, unless it’s to go to somewhere like America for work. One summer he came with us on the train to Scotland, and as soon as we got to the Old Manse the phone rang. Dad answered it and put on his concerned face. He turned to Mum and said he had to go back to London straight away. An hour later a taxi arrived to take him to Aberdeen airport. I remember thinking he was definitely trying not to smile as he got into the taxi. It’s very different if the Old Manse is filled with his friends, and Mum often makes sure it is, so that he’s happy. This means all sorts of people come to stay with us. When the house is full of their friends, it’s really just like being in Gloucester Crescent.

  Left to right: Keith McNally, Stephen Frears, Mary-Kay Wilmers, Tom, Alan Bennett, me, Kate, Mum, Auchindoun, Moray, 1972

  Dad did eventually find a way of enjoying himself when there are no friends staying, and it involved his love of medicine and science. He went to a shop in Euston and bought a microscope and a set of tools for dissecting animals. He then set himself up at the Old Manse kitchen table so he could give us biology lessons. It was the first time I’d seen Dad really happy to be on holiday with his children. As soon as he gets his classroom ready, he tells us we need to find a dead but fresh animal. So every time we drive back from the shops, a walk or the beach he makes us look out for anything dead on the road. As soon as we see something Mum jams on the brakes and Dad jumps out and peels it off the road. When we get home, he nails its arms and legs stretched out on a bread board and we gather around the table and he starts to dissect it. Mum once told us that when she first married Dad he brought a brain home from the hospital and dissected it for her on the kitchen table in their flat. She was learning to be a doctor, and he thought it might be useful, but it sounded a bit Dr Frankenstein to me.

  Dad is really brilliant at dissecting, and you can see how much he likes doing it. He talks us through every part of the animal as he peels the skin back, opens up the chest and takes out the organs. Then he shows us where the nerves and veins are. One year he bought each of us a biology kit and sent us to the woods to look for the stinkiest ponds we could find. When we brought the dirty water back in our test tubes, he showed us how to get it ready to look at under the microscope. I was amazed at how much tiny life there was in one dirty brown pond. There, under our microscope, were microorganisms that Dad described in the same way that he does when he’s being rude about people he doesn’t like – ‘a useless amoeba’ or ‘a dirty little invertebrate’. He also shows us how to cut thin slices of plants with a sharp blade so we can look at their cells under the microscope. I know Dad’s never going to teach us things like football or swimming, but I love learning about biology and I can really see he likes teaching, and, best of all, it makes him happy to be with us on holiday.

  Soon after we first arrived in Archiestown the people in the village seemed to take a lot of interest in what we were up to. They’re fascinated by Dad, who they refer to as ‘Television personality Jonathan Miller’, which really annoys him. I’m not sure they know he’s a theatre and film director or that he was once a doctor. A local newspaper started announcing our arrival in Scotland for our holidays. They always use a photo of Dad when he opened the Archiestown village fête the year they bought the house. Dad called it a ‘fête worse than death’.

  Dad opening the Archiestown village fête

  They write the same thing underneath the photo every time: ‘Television personality Jonathan Miller and his family have arrived in Archiestown for their summer holiday.’ Dad once showed it to Mum and said, ‘Is that all they can say? What about: “Leading theatre director Jonathan Miller is taking a break from doing Chekhov to come and waste his time in Scotland”?’ One time, coming back from a visit to an old castle, we had to stop for petrol. We sat in the car as the man filled the tank, then his whole family came out and stood there looking at us. When the man finished, he tapped on the window to get Dad to wind it down, then stuck his head right into our car and said, ‘You were super on Parky. That’ll be a fiver.’ As we drove off, Dad said to Mum, ‘Why does it always have to be the Parkinson show? That man really should see my Alice in Wonderland.’

  Once they’ve announced it in the local newspaper, people start knocking on our door to say hello. One of the people who knocked first was Margery Swinton. She’s English and lives in the next village and is a teacher at the local primary school. This was the same summer that Mum and Dad decided to bring Jeanie’s sister Esther to Scotland. What Esther liked doing most in the evenings was sitting on the railing of the war memorial in the village square, watching the cars go by and listening to pop music on her transistor radio. It wasn’t long before she made friends with some of the older boys in the village, who sat with her listening to her radio. Before Esther, Jeanie was probably the only black person they’d ever seen in this part of Scotland, so news of another black person spread quickly. It soon reached Margery, who happened to be captain of the local women’s tug-of-war team. This team was made up of housewives from the villages of Knockando, Cardhu and Archiestown. I think it must have been when Margery saw Esther sitting on the war memorial that she came up with the idea. Esther looks nothing like her sister, who is normal height and thin, whereas Esther is a normal height but big and probably quite heavy too. What Margery wanted more than anything was to get the Highland Games Women’s Tug-of-War trophy back for Archiestown, and what the tug-of-war team needed was something called an anchor. This is the person who holds onto the end of the rope and tries not to move. When Margery saw Esther, she knew she would be perfect for the job.

  It was in the middle of supper that Margery first turned up at the Old Manse. She knocked on the front door and the next thing we knew, she was standing in front of us holding out a pair of heavy black ‘tackety’ boots (which is Scottish for hobnail). Esther was going to need these if she was to help the team win the trophy back. After that we didn’t see much of Esther for the rest of the summer as she was off most days, travelling around the Highlands in a minibus with Margery and her housewives. The good news was they were now winning wherever they went, and every night when Margery came back with Esther she looked like she’d won the pools. Esther even got to be in our local newspaper.

  Esther in Scotland, 1970

  Like most people who knocked on our door in the middle of a meal, Margery was soon invited to sit down and have supper with us. And, like many of the people who do that in London, Margery never stopped coming to supper. Some of Mum and Dad’s friends think it’s a bit odd that no one ever actually invites her, but there she is, every night. And what’s more, everyone has to wait for her to arrive before supper can start. Most people seem to like Margery, but Dad told Mum they needed a plan to deal with the waiting-for-supper problem. In the end, it was quite simple – Margery turned out to be allergic to fish! So whenever someone is staying who doesn’t like having to wait for Margery, Mum lets her know there will be fish on the menu for quite a few nights. Sure enough, without saying a thing, she doesn’t turn up.

  I wish the grown-ups didn’t feel like that about Margery as I think she’s amazing and I would be happy to see her every night. She’s another one of my grown-up friends who properly listens, and she takes me to places Mum and Dad would never go to, like skiing in the Cairngorms or helping out on farms. At one point she was added to my list of people I would like to marry when I grow up. Tom and Kate aren’t that bothered about Margery, so often she takes me on trips on my own and I get to meet her friends. She also writes to us when we get back to London and lets us know all the news. She always mixes the good news with the bad, all in one sentence. Her letters say things like ‘Cathy McPherson’s son was killed on his motorbike, Alastair’s dog Suki has had puppies’ or ‘Eddie McDonald’s house b
urned down with his son inside, we’re going to pick tatties this weekend.’

  One of the farms Margery takes me to is right on the edge of the village. The farmer’s eldest son, Alastair, runs it, and I think he quite likes Margery because he always blushes and stutters when she’s around, and he lets her drive his tractor.

  With the farm being so close to our house I often go there on my own to help out, and Alastair lets me come with him on the tractor to take food to his cows. One summer I was holding a gate open for the tractor when Alastair accidentally ran right over my foot and I had to go to hospital and have it put in a cast.

  The summer Esther came to stay and joined the tug-of-war team was also the summer Grandad died. He was in hospital in London, and Dad was with us in Scotland. One afternoon, after we all got back from a long walk, Dad’s sister, Sarah, called to say that he had to get back to London straight away. The next night Mum was reading us a story and Dad called in the middle of it to tell us Grandad had died. It was the first time anyone I knew had died, and I wasn’t sure what to do or say. We all sat there in silence, and then Esther burst into tears, which I thought was odd as she’d never met Grandad. I asked her why she was crying and she said it was because it was sad for us that someone in our family had died. Mum went over and put her arm around her, and then everyone started crying.

  Me with my broken foot, Archiestown, 1973

  The funeral happened when we were still in Scotland, so no one other than Dad went to it. I don’t even know where Grandad is buried as Dad has never taken us to look at the grave or put flowers on it. Whenever I think about this, it all feels so sad, even though I knew Dad never got on with Grandad. He was a lot older than Dad’s mum, Betty, who died when she was only 55. Dad told me he was much closer to his mother because his father wasn’t very interested in his children and never gave them hugs or kisses. Dad likes a hug but if you try to kiss him he squirms and dodges like he’s going to fall over and you end up kissing the back of his head. Now that both of Dad’s parents are dead, I suppose it makes him an orphan, which also makes me feel sad.

  Dad’s mother, Betty Miller

  10

  GODDAMMIT

  Nick, Freddie and Dee Ayer

  Lots of Dad’s friends are philosophers, which means he likes to talk about philosophy quite a bit. I didn’t really know what a philosopher does, so one day I asked Nick Ayer’s dad, Freddie, as he’s supposed to be a really famous one, whose real name is Sir A. J. Ayer. Freddie’s answer was: ‘When a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound?’ I said I wasn’t sure, and he said, ‘Well, that’s philosophy.’ Even now I’m not sure what it means, and I can’t believe Freddie makes any money from it.

  Nick Ayer’s house is the easiest of my friends’ to get to as they live right behind us in Regent’s Park Terrace and their garden backs onto ours. All you have to do is climb a tall brick wall, get over a broken trellis and jump down into their garden. Unlike ours, which Mum tries to keep nice and tidy and which we use all the time, the Ayers only use theirs as a loo for their two dogs, Jane and Gucci. Trying not to step in the dog poo, you go up some slippery wooden steps and through an unlocked door into a bathroom. Not just any bathroom – this is Freddie’s bathroom.

  Dad says I shouldn’t go barging through Freddie’s bathroom like that, as it’s where one of Britain’s greatest minds goes to soak in a hot bath and read The Times. When Freddie isn’t in Oxford or sitting at his desk thinking about what happens to trees when they fall down, he’s in his bath, the only place he says he can get any peace and quiet from Nick, his wife, Dee, or stepdaughter, Gully. Having crashed into his bathroom, I run right across it, leaving Freddie splashing about trying to get bits of his newspaper out of the water. He shouts the same thing every time as I race up the stairs to the second floor: ‘It’s that bloody William Miller!’ For some reason Nick and Dee think this is hilarious as it’s part of what they call ‘Freddie-baiting’.

  If I go really fast I can get from our back door to the Ayers’ kitchen on the second floor in less than two minutes. As I run up each flight of stairs, I sometimes have to slow down and stand completely still as two familiar words come screaming down the stairs. Those words are usually ‘Goddammit, Nicholas’, but sometimes it’s ‘Goddammit, Freddie’ or ‘Goddammit, Gully’. I know that whenever ‘Goddammit’ is the first thing I hear from upstairs it’s a good idea to stop, count to three and then walk into the kitchen pretending nothing’s happened.

  Unlike Freddie, who is very English, Dee is very American. I think being an American is glamorous and exciting, like something out of a film. Nick is Dee and Freddie’s son, and he’s a year older than me. Dee has a grown-up daughter called Gully from someone she was married to before Freddie. Most of the time the reason I come to the Ayers’ is to see Nick, who’s friends with me and Tom. But when I was about nine, I started to realise how funny and interesting Dee can be and how much I like spending time talking to her. Strange really, as my first memory of her is definitely not a good one.

  When I was over at the Ayers’ one day playing with Nick, she called me into her study and asked if I would do her a favour. The favour was to dial a number written on a piece of paper. I did this, held the phone to my ear and waited for someone to answer. I could tell Dee was pretending to read something on her typewriter while watching me out of the corner of her eye. When someone finally answered it was a man who said in a posh voice, ‘Buckingham Palace. May I help you?’ I slammed the phone down and stood there in shock. Dee and Nick couldn’t stop laughing, especially when she shook her head and said, ‘Jesus H Christ, William, you’re in deep shit now.’ She told me the police or, worse, the Household Cavalry would be round in minutes to take me away. Nick kept running to the window and shouting, ‘I can hear them coming down the Terrace, run William run!’ There was something odd about the way Nick was so in on this and didn’t want to help me out. Either way, I wasn’t going to hang around to find out what was going to happen. I ran down the stairs, through Freddie’s bathroom and straight home.

  Trying to catch my breath, I told Dad what had happened. He sat me down and explained that it was just one of Dee’s ridiculous jokes, and that no one was coming from the Palace to get me. He even showed me the number for Buckingham Palace printed right there in the London phone book and told me they get these calls all the time. I was now feeling like an idiot for getting so scared and upset. Although I could see it was a trick Dee and Nick liked doing together, I didn’t like the way Nick had enjoyed frightening me so much. After a while I found myself sneaking past his room and going straight to see Dee instead. Freddie saw me doing this, and wasn’t happy about it. Nick and Dee fought and argued a lot, and I don’t think he liked the fact that I might have got on with Dee more than Nick did. He also noticed that Tom still preferred to hang out with Nick and wasn’t interested in Dee in the way that I was. This might have been why Freddie was always nice to Tom and he ended up being the one who got invited to go on holidays with them.

  The Ayers are now quite used to me turning up uninvited. And I’ve got used to Dee’s bad language and have been known to try some of it out at home and at school, but it hasn’t gone down that well. Of course, there’s a bit of swearing at home, but only from Dad, and it’s nothing like the amount I hear at the Ayers’. Mum never swears, and I’ve heard her tell Dad off for saying things he shouldn’t. I don’t think I know any house where people swear as much as the Ayers do. As well as Dee’s ‘Goddammit’ and ‘Jesus H Christ’, there’s also ‘Goddamn son-of-a-bitch’ and a few others. She might use these if she’s cross with an object like an oven, a tin opener or her typewriter when the keys jam. But most of the time it’s aimed at a person, and that’s either Nick, Gully or Freddie, who all just ignore it as though someone has left the radio on.

  I saw something Anna Haycraft wrote in a magazine Mum was reading. It said: ‘Men love women, women love children and children love hamsters.’ I though
t about that, and then thought about Dee and how she likes children but doesn’t seem to love them, and what she really loves is dogs and other animals. I think it’s probably because they’re loyal, don’t argue with her and are helpless. I don’t know what it is about people like Dee and Anna, but for some reason what they truly love is an angry dog. Dee’s dog Jane is a terrier that looks like Nipper, the dog on all the record covers made by His Master’s Voice. Jane likes to spend most of her day standing guard on the first-floor landing, trying to stop anyone from coming past. This is one of the reasons I have to run so fast up their stairs. If you keep going and try really hard not to look her in the eyes she lets you past, but if you stop for even a second you’re going to get bitten by her. I once made the mistake of stopping to pat her, thinking she must surely know me by now and that we could be friends. Next thing I knew she was hanging off my arm and Dee was screaming down the stairs, ‘For Christ’s sake, William, how many goddamn times have I told you? Never stop and talk to that fuckin’ dog.’

  Gucci is a different kind of dog altogether – she’s a sausage dog with short, silky brown fur and got her name because Dee says she looks like a Gucci loafer. Whereas Jane likes hanging out on the stairs, Gucci prefers to lie on a soft mohair blanket on Dee’s bed. When you come into Dee’s room, she’s usually lying across the bed blowing raspberries into Gucci’s warm hairless tummy. If you blew raspberries into Jane’s tummy, she’d rip your nose off. Sad really, as Jane just sits on the stairs being angry and misses out on the chance to get a lot of the love and attention Gucci gets.

  When she’s not blowing raspberries into Gucci’s belly, Dee sits at a large desk in one corner of her bedroom. Like Dad, when she’s working she needs to smoke to do any typing, but her style is very different from his. For a start, she lights up a cigarette and then leaves it in an ashtray by the side of her typewriter. Then, without stopping, she types really fast for a few seconds. When she stops, she picks up the cigarette and takes a long, deep drag on it and leans forward to read what she’s typed. Without taking her eyes off the paper, she half opens her mouth and lets the smoke escape between her lips, sucking it up through her nostrils like an upside-down waterfall. She can make this waterfall of smoke last long enough to read what she’s written. Finally, she puts the cigarette back in the ashtray and starts the whole thing again. I guess this is how she wrote her book Jane. I was a bit confused by the title, as the book isn’t about Jane the dog: it’s about an American lady who lives in London and has lots of affairs and is called Jane. Mum and Dad said it was probably total rubbish and the sort of book you’d buy in an airport or station. So they refused to read it, but it sold millions of copies. She hasn’t written another one since, but she still does a lot of typing.