Bruce’s conjectures about walking and wandering had a less romantic side: they were also an excuse for unlimited sexual cruising. During the course of his many casual encounters he was infected with the HIV virus, which developed into AIDS. After a lingering illness, he died in Nice in January 1989, aged just forty-eight. His ashes were interred under an olive tree close to a ruined Byzantine chapel dedicated to St Nicholas, two miles above Kardamyli. Libations of retsina were poured over the grave and a prayer said in Greek. Then Paddy, Joan and Elizabeth had a picnic, which they thought he would have enjoyed.
Two years later, in August 1991, Xan died in Paris, where he was being treated for cancer. Joan wrote to Janetta:
Magouche arrived last night & is being wonderful, much calmer than she sounded on the telephone, & we talked about Xan & his life a lot at dinner in an easy way. It’s a horrid, cloudy, hot, damp day for the first time in the morning for ages, just when we wanted it to be perfect for bathing but M at least swam before breakfast & is now reading with a very energetic kitten trying to pull the buttons off her shirt.22
The following year, Magouche had Aeolus Displayed published privately.
16
Endings
While staying in Kardamyli in late 1987, Graham began to become very confused. Billa Harrod, who was also there at the time, helped escort him to hospital in London. She wrote to Alan Pryce-Jones to say how worrying the future was for him. It was ‘a bad outlook’. Graham was eighty-two. It was the beginning of the dementia with which Graham would live for the rest of his life. Alan’s reply to Billa from Newport, Rhode Island, was typically Alan, rather more aesthetic than practical.
I am sorry to get your letter. I simply don’t believe how old we are. Graham: but surely he has just left Eton and we are going to meet in Paris next month . . .
Here all is well. Nothing is lovelier than a New England autumn: cold, even snowy, but with brilliant sunlight. If I had a family house to return to I should hurry home, but I haven’t. Moreover, I should wish the house to be not less than 150 miles from London in a good estate with ancient servants surviving and a financial background like that of Alec Home’s, who used to send to the Estate Office for a stack of bank notes when he needed money, but otherwise let things ride. Yes, and I should like to be a marquis: an Earl like Home is not enough to make life easy in England. No wonder Stephen Tennant* stayed in bed, a mere Hon.1
Graham was frail but not sick. He could be looked after at home, but the housekeeper at Graham’s London home in Eaton Terrace was an alcoholic. After she was found collapsed on the floor, it fell to Joan to take responsibility for her brother. Jochen Voigt, someone Graham already knew, moved in to look after him, provide companionship and cook for him. After a couple of years it was decided to return Graham to Dumbleton, where, as his health declined, he had round-the-clock care provided by a staff of four, paid for by the family trust.
As ever, Paddy and Joan came over regularly from Greece. Paddy found life at Mill House too depressing and went off to make visits of his own.
I went down to the Mill House for the weekend. No change with Graham but he seems perfectly happy, poor chap. Joan looked v. exhausted after 10 days. The worrying thing is that topics last such a short time – one gets about 50 killed in an hour, like steeds in battle, as none of them are ever taken up or developed. I felt rather guilty, sneaking off to the delights of Crichel – endless croquet in midsummer weather, glass-in-hand, with pigeons and rooks overheads, and a pretty well non-stop cuckoo (thanks to its being May) seldom out of earshot. We went to Cranbrook which was ravishing – slightly clumsy, moss-grown English renaissance, v. rare: it would do splendidly for Theseus and Hippolyta’s palace in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the inhabitants were exceptionally nice.2
Graham Eyres Monsell, second and last Viscount Monsell, died in January 1993 and was buried in Dumbleton churchyard after a funeral at St Peter’s Church. Having no male heirs, the title died with him. After she had returned to Kardamyli, Joan wrote thanking Janetta for staying with her at Mill House and coming with her to the service: ‘That kind of funeral seems to me totally pointless, much better, if one has to have one, here [in Greece] everyone is wailing & screaming & tearing their hair out, a real catharsis of emotions instead of having to bottle everything up still more. My only dangerous moment was Paddy reading those beautiful verses, the rest of the service I didn’t connect with Graham at all & never felt he was in that hideous coffin.’3
Joan now inherited a substantial part of the estate, including the Mill House, from her brother. The Mill House was an old farmhouse surrounded by fields of sheep and its own orchard while the deserted mill with its huge rusty wheel standing in a busy mill stream was about thirty yards away. Inside, the house was a mixture of shabby elegance and bohemia. A warren of narrow corridors and stairs led to bedrooms and bathrooms of various vintage, some with far-reaching views of the Worcestershire countryside. On the walls hung ancestral portraits, nineteenth-century seascapes by Bonnington, and twentieth-century artists like Robin Ironside, John Craxton, John Banting and Isabel Rawsthorne – Joan’s friends. The dining room was dark red and hung with various Eyres and Monsell pictures. In the morning room, where friends were greeted, there hung a large full-length portrait of Graham – as if to say that nothing much had changed since the house had been handed over, which was how Joan and Paddy wanted it. And when the curtains turned to shreds and the paint began to peel, they were mended and repainted in identical shades so that no one would notice.
During the three times a year in which Joan and Paddy returned to England Joan spent every Monday morning with Jonathan Reeves, the land agent, to discuss estate matters and repairs and improvements to Mill House. He found her intelligent and interested, always concerned about the people on the estate and what was happening. At 12.30 they would stop to have a glass of gin or vodka; Paddy would appear and they would walk around the house discussing what might be done. After Reeves’s wife began to join them for lunch, Paddy used to insist on a lively game of croquet with the coffee, which he usually won. Reeves beat him one day, and Paddy said this was the first time anyone had ever beaten him – it was the last time they played together.4
Joan’s life in England had its own set pattern. The cook-housekeeper, Rita Walker, brought her tea and toast in bed at 8.30. When she had finished, she rang the bell – all the rooms had bells – and while she had her bath, the bed was made. Hair was allowed to dry naturally. Joan invariably dressed in corduroy trousers and jumpers. The latter sometimes had holes, but everything was always very clean. She then stayed in her room reading and writing until 11.45, when she came downstairs for a vodka and tonic before lunch. The food was plain. As a starter, she always had a bowl of fresh garden peas with mint, and this was followed by a cheese soufflé, potatoes and a dressed salad. For puddings, she had nursery food: apple crumble, sticky toffee pudding, treacle tart (Joan’s favourite). They also ate a lot of game and chicken. Rita once made a pie with shortcrust pastry; a guest at the meal said the pastry was ‘shorter than Ronnie Corbett’. Living abroad and having no interest in popular culture, Paddy and Joan had no idea what was meant: the only Ronnie Corbett they knew lived in Greece and was over six foot tall. Sir Michael and Lady Stewart, Maurice and Leonora Cardiff, as well as Charles Hudson and his wife Cressida Connolly from Wick Manor near Pershore, were all regular visitors.
In 1999, while government legislation for the ban on fox hunting was going through parliament, Joan wrote to the Daily Telegraph:
Sir,
As an animal lover, I would like to know what the animal welfare people intend to do about foxes if hunting stops. Will they be shot, poisoned or trapped when their population gets too large and farmers, without the protection of the hunts, are forced to start treating them as vermin? Shooting often means wounding and a long and painful death, poisoning can often take days of agony; a vixen caught in a trap will tear her leg off to get back to her cubs.
It is an up
setting fact that no wild animal has a peaceful death in old age. Before hunting started, foxes were kept down by wolves. Perhaps Nature’s way of a chase by ‘dogs’ and a quick death may be the best of a bad job.
Mrs Joan Leigh Fermor, Morea, Greece5
However much of her early life she rejected, part of Joan was always an English countrywoman at heart. This must have been the only letter Joan ever published in the newspapers: it was many years now since they had featured Joan as a story.
In the years immediately before Graham’s death, and for the rest of her life afterwards, Joan preferred to spend her Christmases at Mill House. Billa Harrod and Coote Lygon always came to stay with her, and when they arrived would squabble cheerfully with one another over which of them was to get the Green Room – the better of the two guest rooms. (Billa, the more forceful of the two friends, usually won.) Paddy preferred to spend Christmas at Chatsworth with Deborah Devonshire, where there were many more seasonal and social entertainments of the kind he enjoyed. Joan and Debo never shared the depth of affection which Paddy and Debo had for one another. When Paddy and Joan were invited for a weekend at Sandringham with the Prince of Wales, the presence of the Duchess of Devonshire – ‘as Paddy is tucking up with Debo there doesn’t seem much room’ – was one of the reasons she gave Billa for not going.6 She had also long since lost interest in the ceremony of such occasions. She wrote to Janetta:
Paddy can’t get back earlier as has got going on the book, I hope, & feel he must get on as much as possible before he has to get back for his long-fixed date, 10th, when he stays with the P of W for his Sandringham week-end. Billa fixed this as she is a great friend & I was asked too but of course have not got three evening dresses which one has to have &, as you can imagine, couldn’t possibly buy even one. Twenty people sound rather terrifying too, like a three day cocktail party, & I believe one has to go to church on Sunday. Otherwise I should like to meet him & I could do with a bit of the luxury & delicious food promised by Billa.7
‘Paddy was 77 yesterday,’ Joan wrote in February 1992. ‘He has no intimations of mortality & has planned several more books, each taking, I suppose, the usual 5–10 years.’8 All of these were books Paddy intended to write after he had finished Volume III of his walk across Europe. Six years had passed since the publication of Between the Woods and the Water. Several first versions of its intended successor stood among the coloured folders on the window shelves: two yellow files, ‘Vol III, early drafts’ and ‘Vol III fragments’; a yellow file, ‘vol III, ms notes’; two black files, ‘drafts 2 (Varna to Burgas)’ and ‘drafts 3 (Wallachian Plain to Varna)’; an orange file, ‘False starts to vol III’. Last and latest of all were the pink and blue ring folders, which held the typescripts which eventually saw the light of day as The Broken Road, a book which was to end in the middle of a sentence.
Unfortunately, Paddy kept stalling. Joan’s letters provide a commentary on his progress or lack of it. In November 1993, she wrote:
When we got back [from London] there was still the drought, no olives & lots of things dying & then a few days later came storms, hurricanes, floods, all the precious water of course pouring into the sea taking all the top soil with it. Our road was completely destroyed, a rushing river at the bottom & six crevasses in it, no question of getting the car out. Luckily two days ago it stopped raining & this morning, with layers of stones & branches we somehow bounced the car across & now have to leave it half way up the hill. Now it is pouring again, pitch dark at 12 noon & water pouring through the ceiling. The electricity is more off than on & we’ve had no hot water since we’ve been back. But extraordinarily we have been rather happy & all because, of course, Paddy is really getting on with Vol. 3.
But then Joan added, ‘Or so I believe, I haven’t seen anything.’9 In February 1995: ‘Paddy is 80 in two days’ time. He sits at his desk all day long & I think is getting on a bit. I feel so sorry for him & it’s very annoying.’10 ‘Paddy is very well, tremendously busy with everything except his book.’11 ‘Paddy is a bit down, can’t get used to old age & spends too long sorting out endless papers & losing them again. We need a secretary, a cook & a chauffeur & wonderful party for P.’12 When offered a knighthood, which would have cheered him, he turned it down: Joan thought titles absurd and would have hated being Lady Leigh Fermor, and it was always Joan’s opinions which mattered.
It is impossible to give a single reason for why Volume III was never completed. Paddy had never found writing easy, and as he aged the weight of expectation and effort required inevitably increased. He also now lacked a Rudi Fischer figure to spur him on and provide him with new ideas. The only equivalent was a retired actress called Mairi Bostanzi who, between 1988 and 2010, wrote Paddy some 500 letters. Paddy referred to her as his ‘Theatrical Friend’. Mairi was bilingual in Greek and English and worked as a translator; like Fischer, she became acquainted with Paddy through her translations of his books. She also made suggestions and provided comments on Paddy’s translations, going to the Gennadius Library in Athens to do further research for him. The work she carried out on his behalf was scholarly and highly academic. Mairi’s letters, however, were also highly singular: she was completely besotted with the man to whom she was writing. While the first paragraphs in each letter are devoted to erudite research and interpretation, the rest of the letter would be given over to a sort of star-struck fan mail: ‘You are the most handsome man in Greece, etc.’ Mairi was far from being a teenager, rather she was an elderly lady who lived alone in Athens with only her cats for company.
Paddy was also still working on his occasional journalism, and was always more than willing to find other tasks to distract him from the book. That he had never kept a proper diary was a great regret: it might have helped him pick up the threads he now found so attenuated.13 Every day he wrote letters, ‘not good for vol. 3 alas’, said Joan, and many of his letters were very long indeed.14 Dick Usborne, a journalist and former member of the SOE, was in charge of getting a P. G. Wodehouse story – ‘The Great Sermon Handicap’ – translated into dozens of languages, and he asked Paddy to make a translation into modern Greek for him. Paddy said no at first, but then tried it before breakfast one morning, and continued until the work was finished.15 When Paddy appeared waving his pages Joan was delighted – but it turned out that this great breakthrough was not what she had been hoping for. Some years later, when Paddy’s papers were being sorted after his death, a Greek professor examined them and was baffled by the Wodehouse. He enclosed a note with them which he hoped might be of use: ‘Mentions a horse-race. Probably of ecclesiastical or Byzantine origin.’ Paddy’s draft had queries alongside: ‘Old son? A flutter? In the soup?’ Unfortunately, Greek scholarship had found the world of Bertie Wooster, Bingo Little and Honoria Glossop incomprehensible.
Peter Levi once wrote that getting to Kardamyli was more difficult than getting to the Hindu Kush. There were new roads now and this was no longer the case, but Joan said that she sometimes wondered what she and Paddy were doing ‘in this exile’ (as she called Kardamyli), but she could not live in London or for long in the English countryside. This did not prevent her from adding in the same letter that she would ‘give anything for a Cordon Bleu cook’ and that Paddy was ‘trying to get thin as usual’.16 Good food and good books were two of life’s greatest pleasures, and Joan’s letters had always had been full of references to them both. Even when things went wrong, such things put life into proportion. As she wrote to Paddy:
A traumatic morning last week. As I was having breakfast, eating a large piece of toast dripping with new honey & reading Macaulay’s essay on Warren Hastings & feeling rather happy Lela came in to say the police were here to take off the number plates of the car as we hadn’t paid the licence. Can you imagine my horror. In the end, by telephoning to Kalamata, the police agreed if I got it done by Saturday it would be alright. Of course when I got there they were charming and it’s all arranged now.17
Bad food, on the other hand, w
as to be excoriated:
Caroline Conran, translating Michel Guérard’s Cuisine Gourmande, says that one can use lumpfish roe instead of caviar in some recipe. This seems to me to be the complete explanation of the awfulness of most English cooking.18
When guests asked what they might bring when they came to stay, Joan invariably asked for some French or English cheese, which she herself would then offer to pay for (although gifts which just came from the counter at Marks and Spencer were met by undisguised consternation). As she grew older, Joan said herself that wine, books and cheese were the only things she could buy – she had lost interest in shopping for everything else. It was at the supermarket at the other end of the village, however, that Joan met a shop assistant called Gula. Joan recognized the girl’s natural intelligence, and paid for her to further her education. Her own education, although a world away in experience, had been so totally inadequate and stultifying that when she saw talent in someone she was determined to help as their patron. In some measure, she was helping someone share the advantages she had herself enjoyed.
John Rayner, Joan’s first husband, died in August 1990. Miranda, his third wife, had predeceased him in 1981 and he had married his fourth wife, Heulyn Dunlop, after a twenty-year-long love affair. She had met JR when they worked together in the Foreign Office. Heulyn was brought up in Tangier, where her father was a doctor – Cecil Beaton once made a drawing of her rather than pay her father’s bill. She had also known Xan and Daphne when they lived in Tangier. She had already met Paddy and Joan, and as a young woman she had worked in the interior decorating shop run by Jaime Parladé, Janetta’s fourth husband. Alan Pryce-Jones, Joan’s first boyfriend, died of diabetes in 2000, aged ninety-one. He was buried in Chantilly in France beside his wife, Poppy. In his final years Alan became a close friend and travelling companion of Greta Garbo, although he never wrote about her, for which she was grateful. She kept a copy of his memoirs, The Bonus of Laughter, in her Manhattan apartment. His last boyfriend had died of an HIV-related illness shortly before Alan’s own death.
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