Madeleine

by Helen Trinca

  In Greece Madeleine was interesting to be around and interested in everything around her. Teresa had a theology degree and Madeleine enjoyed debating the classic proofs of the existence of God with her. By the time they got back to London, the friends had exchanged numbers and soon began a semi-regular pattern of dinners and nights at the theatre.

  Madeleine was fascinated by Teresa’s experience of working in the city; she wanted to know about a typical day in an office. ‘It was almost Proustian,’ Teresa recalled:

  She was wanting to know what was a meeting like, did we stand, did we sit and who poured the tea? Sometimes she would ring me up—she might have heard an expression and she wanted to run it past me. If I came out with something like ‘step up to the plate’ she would check whether that was what we really said at PwC. She got the idiom, the vernacular, the culture and psyche.3

  Teresa heard not a trace of an Australian accent and thought Madeleine was ‘cut-glass English’. She noted how Madeleine immediately slotted everyone into a class. She was an expert on the nuances of language, dress and behaviour. But Teresa found her frightening at times, very passionate about a subject and overly intense.

  Greece had been fun, and, in the summer of 2000, Madeleine decided to travel again—this time flying to Spain to spend time with her old childhood friend Tomas Kalmar and his second wife Bridget. Madeleine and Tom had not been in touch since the sixties, but Tom, visiting the UK in 1997, had seen one of her novels in a bookshop and contacted her.

  The trip was not a success. Tom found Madeleine to be an ‘incredible snob’. One day at the Alcazar Palace, she objected when Tom chatted to a couple of American tourists. He thought Madeleine now ‘lived in a world where there were very few people that you were able to talk to, and the rest were beneath contempt’. Madeleine lectured Tom on his behaviour and was ‘quite dense about some of the social graces’. Her emphysema was becoming severe, and even walking up the street for lunch was too much for her.4

  Tom’s brother Georg, who had also known Madeleine as a child, was in Seville. He recalled his disgust at this ‘British snob’ who was contemptuous of anyone who was not British. Madeleine chided Georg for speaking to the local kids in the street. ‘She was the parody of an upper middle-class British person trying to be upper class,’ Georg said. ‘She was trying to be as Anglican as she could be; she perhaps had contempt for the Spanish because they were Catholic.’5

  Back at Colville Gardens, Madeleine struggled to get up and down the stairs to her flat. But she was plucky. Towards the end of 2000, she corresponded with Antony Minchin’s wife Eliza, who was professor of classics at the Australian National University and was spending a term at Oxford:

  I actually made a monster effort yesterday because it was Remembrance Sunday and went to church. I went to St Mary Abbots in Ken High Street and arrived by luck just in time for 1st stage of the service, outside by the Kensington War Memorial—‘O God our help in ages past’ sung en plein air acc. by military brass, lots of chaps and some chapesses in fancy dress, clergymen with a suffragan bishop cadet corps from local schools of all 3 services, some blokes in wigs and pin-stripe trousers, a bunch of people in royal blue gowns (who they?), military men in tricorn hats, brownies and masses (about 150) of Members of the Public. All traffic stopped for the entire service. All frightfully impressive and heartfelt & The Right Thing.6

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Friendships Lost and Found

  A fragile Madeleine turned sixty towards the end of 2001, knowing that her prognosis was not good. A hospital-sized oxygen bottle had been installed near her bed on the fifth floor at Colville Gardens, with a long tube snaking down the stairs and around the rest of the flat. Her emphysema was now severe and she relied increasingly on the kindness of friends and neighbours to run chores and entertain her. One day Mike and Teresa Ahern came to visit, and they all staggered downstairs, the oxygen apparatus in tow, and went for a slow walk around Notting Hill.1

  Another day, Jane Holdsworth’s partner, Bob Newman, carried a frail Madeleine down the stairs so they could visit a furniture shop nearby and buy a piece she had picked out.2 Sarah Middleton and her husband lived downstairs. They helped with similar manoeuvres and ran errands and bought groceries.3

  Madeleine’s most regular visitor was Susannah Godman. She often did Madeleine’s bidding, sourcing and delivering a perfect cashmere sweater or a particular book she wanted.4 By now, there was little hope that Madeleine would publish another novel, and Lutyens & Rubinstein began to look after their client’s domestic needs rather than her literary career.5

  Bruce Beresford and Kent Carroll took Madeleine out on occasion; the oxygen tank accompanied them when Madeleine and Bruce went to the Royal Albert Hall to hear pianist Mitsuko Uchida play Schumann’s piano concerto. One day, they went to the Ivy restaurant for lunch to meet young American writer and filmmaker Whit Stillman, whom Madeleine admired. On another occasion Bruce took his son Adam, an Oxford literature student, to Madeleine’s flat to talk Shakespeare with her.6 Madeleine was well enough to go to the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park to see an exhibition with Kent, but she had to decline a ticket to the Proms.7

  As her life closed in, Madeleine took to writing tiny poems in a little brown-covered book that she kept by her side. It was all she could manage some days. She was devastated by the death of Puck, the cat with odd-coloured eyes:

  Death, cheated of me

  Took my cat instead

  How can I be forgiven.

  Three days later, she wrote:

  There is no corner

  You did not make your own

  Your absence is total.

  And again:

  Puck in 17 Syllables:

  My Lillywhite boy

  My beloved boy

  My pride and my joy

  My Cat.

  Her handwriting was thin. Everything was an effort.

  The Little Brown Book, as she called it, was with her always. She wrote out prayers, and glued copies of hymns among the poems and haiku, hymns such as the fourteenth-century ‘Anima Christi’:

  Soul of my Saviour sanctify my breast,

  Body of Christ be thou my saving guest,

  Blood of my Saviour, bathe me in thy tide,

  Wash me with waters gushing from thy side.

  And ‘Salve Regina’, the Mediaeval prayer to the Madonna:

  Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope.

  To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve;

  To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.

  Madeleine had told Jane Cornwell in 1998 that ‘being religious is like being a writer: either you’ve got it or you haven’t’. She downplayed her faith saying she just loved singing ‘those old Victorian hymns’.8 But religion meant much more to Madeleine than that, and she found solace in it now. In the years after the Booker shortlisting, Madeleine was increasingly isolated. Judith McCue said: ‘She was terribly let down about the Booker. She didn’t realise [initially] that when it died down, nothing changed and everyone just went away.’9

  She was ill, and she was testy. Her favourite curate, Alex Hill, had left All Saints, but the priests from the parish still brought her communion. She had little contact now with Florence Heller, in part because Florence’s husband Frank was not particularly well, but also because Florence had felt torn between Madeleine and Val. Florence recalled later that she and Frank had taken their roles as aunt and uncle seriously over the years, but had felt constantly dragged into Madeleine ‘stormy relationships’ with Ted and Val. Madeleine had wanted Florence as an ally and advocate, and Ted and Val had wanted the same.10

  Madeleine’s long friendship with her cousin Felicity Baker came to a dramatic end. Felicity was finding Madeleine ‘more fixed, more controlling’. One day when Felicity telephoned, Madeleine insisted on hanging up and ringing back. When she did, she launched into a tirade, and Felicity decided enough was enough.11 Mad
eleine was estranged, too, from Josette, who was often in the UK with her husband Ron to visit their youngest daughter Nicole in Yorkshire. They had the impression from Colette that Madeleine did not want to see anyone from Australia and they never made contact with her.12

  Colette and Madeleine closed down contact around 2001 after a difficult phone call. Madeleine wanted Colette to find the 1954 coroner’s court report into Sylvette’s death and she wanted Colette to photograph various spots in Watsons Bay. She suggested Colette not bother calling again until she had. Colette, struggling financially and caring for her teenage son, could not face the tasks.13 Communication ceased.

  Madeleine had also lost touch with friends from her days in the antique trade. Robert McPherson recalled: ‘She became more and more difficult. The more she needed people, the more she drove them away. She was not able to get out, and if you went to her, you were attacked and assaulted and hurt.’14

  Madeleine was working on a fifth novel. But it was hard work. When Kent Carroll came to visit, she would put the manuscript on the sofa, select a section and read it out to him. It was classic Madeleine—domesticity and romance wrapped in acute, sometimes tart, language—a story about a young man called Henry and an older woman called Honoria.15 But Madeleine seemed to be writing about a generation she did not know. She had exhausted her own experiences in her four published books and was far less certain about this novel. The moral authority of the earlier works was proving elusive. Kent was encouraging, but he knew she had a long way to go.

  Susannah Godman typed Madeleine’s handwritten pages, and Kent noted how ‘heroic’ the young woman was.16 Madeleine could be cutting and cruel and often chided Susannah for her behaviour or decisions. She so intimidated Susannah that the young woman was too frightened to eat in front of her.17 Madeleine was, as always, free with her advice. ‘You must get married in church,’ she announced to Susannah only to change this to ‘You must not get married in church’, the next time she saw her. Madeleine’s firm views extended even to how to run water from a tap, but she was also warm and irresistible at times, sending thank-you notes and small gifts for errands run. And if Susannah didn’t visit for a while, Madeleine sent a ‘summons’ in the form of a postcard or note.18

  Despite still holding court, Madeleine’s life was reduced. She survived partly because she did so little. The radio was her lifeline and she jotted down in her Little Brown Book comments she heard. The condensed haiku was her métier now:

  Here is the white rose

  which I stole this morning

  on the way home from church.

  The stolen rose

  hangs her head in sorrow

  Grieving for her lost garden.

  The day has slipped

  through my fingers

  Like a stream which

  Rushes to the sea.

  On the other side of the world, Val St John was moving house and she came across letters to Ted from Madeleine. She wrote to Madeleine, saying she had not been able to find any letters at the time of her earlier request but was now sending some of them

  I have read them again and have kept for myself (mainly letters to me) a few particularly loving, appreciative ones. It was good to be reminded that you did not always consider me ‘the stepmother from hell’. The others I enclose. Madeleine dear, I did my very best and I am so sorry that was not enough. Love, Val.19

  Val had been subjected to years of vitriol and anger from Madeleine, and the HQ episode had been particularly bitter. But she continued to try to heal the breach with her stepdaughter. Madeleine was unmoved. She did not trust Val’s overtures. She did not reply immediately, but in January 2003 she wrote back. Time had healed nothing, and Madeleine gave Val chapter and verse about the HQ article:

  In reply to your letter of last August, I would be grateful if you would note with the greatest seriousness the following:

  1. I have never spoken about, much less discussed or in any other way published, family matters—history of, relationships with, feelings about, or any other aspect whatsoever—with any journalist, freelance or other, anywhere, at any time.

  2. The only persons whom I know to have done so are Edward in his SMH article & subsequently by collaborating with the author of the HQ article, and yourself.

  3. It follows from 1. that I have never described you to a member of the press (or to anyone else for that matter) as ‘the stepmother from hell’; is this quote from the HQ article? I’m afraid I haven’t the stomach to look that out even once more—it has given me enough distress already.

  4. And that none of the statements, feelings, attitudes or etc etc etc imputed to me concerning the family in that article originated with me. They are all, in other words, false, mendacious, fanciful and—in that they imply my having talked about these private matters in the press, if not for other reasons in addition—defamatory.

  On it went, with Madeleine outlining her position and then accusing Val of being still in possession of:

  i. A remarkable proportion of my letters;

  ii. My turquoise & seed pearl locket which my father nicked from me & gave to you shortly after your marriage.

  Madeleine gave no quarter:

  Let’s just say that you and I live on 2 different planets, that we always have done & that it’s just one of those mad accidents of fate (fatal accidents of madness) that we should ever have had any connection…as for your understanding where I’m coming from—or vice versa—not a hope. What you have done may be perfectly okay on your planet: on mine, it is completely out of order. And that goes double for the allusion to my mother and the alleged nature of her death. Inexcusable.20

  Madeleine was angry beyond all reason, and she was determined to destroy any chance of a reconciliation with Val. The letter detailed old hurts. The claim that Ted had taken from her a piece of jewellery to give to Val refers to a locket that had been given to Madeleine by Ted’s sister Pam. The circumstances are unclear, but it is likely it was a St John heirloom of sorts. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the event, Madeleine could not let it go even fifty years later. Val had become the focus of all her bitterness.

  Madeleine was now confined to her flat. Susannah saw her regularly but Madeleine also had a succession of paid carers subsidised by public agencies. She found the helpers variously irritating.21 One ruined a cashmere jumper by putting it through the washing machine and Madeleine found it hard to forgive the mistake. Towards the end of 2003, Peta Worth, a young Australian woman on a working holiday in Europe, was given the job through the agency, Care UK. Peta went to Colville Gardens every Tuesday about lunchtime. She vacuumed, cleaned the bathroom and lavatory and kitchen and went down to Portobello Road to shop and pay bills.22 Peta found Madeleine eccentric, but a keen listener. She talked about her main job as the nanny to twin boys who lived not far away. ‘She lived a lot through what I was doing,’ Peta recalled. Madeleine spoke often of Paris, and Peta thought her ‘very French’—she had lovely cotton lace nighties and French provincial furniture.

  Madeleine was frustrated by her illness and talked a lot about the past. She had no regrets about leaving Australia, but she displayed some affection for the place. She survived on crackers and tomatoes and fruit, and occasionally Peta bought sardines from a Spanish shop on the Portobello Road and French bread. Peta had been in London since 1998, working for a few months at a time and then travelling in Europe. True to form, Madeleine gave her plenty of advice about where she should go and urged her to keep travelling.

  One day, at Madeleine’s request, Peta took pictures of Madeleine’s new cat, Tiger Lily. Unlike her predecessor Puck, Tiger Lily was not very fierce and she slept a great deal of the time. Madeleine was concerned at her advanced age and worried she might die. She was ‘very much her own cat’, but she did allow you to pat her, now and then, Peta recalled.23

  Towards the end of 2003, Madeleine had a long stay in hospital and friends worried that she would not recover. Once again, however, she was hypercritical of thei
r efforts to help. Sarah and Felicity sent a hamper to the hospital, but Madeleine reacted angrily at what she felt was a waste. She loathed being pitied and was very alert to any hint of this in her friends’ behaviour.24

  That spell in hospital was truly terrible. ‘So ill,’ she told Antony Minchin in a letter sometime later. ‘They give you steroids which have the most awful side effects even if they do keep you alive.’25 She was trying to live long enough to finish her book.

  Around the end of 2003, Madeleine broke off the long friendship with Sarah and also ended her contract with Lutyens & Rubinstein. Sarah found it ‘very, very painful’ and, like so many others in the past, she never really knew why Madeleine had dropped her. Sarah suspected it was something minor, like breaking an arrangement to visit or telephone. The rupture was classic Madeleine—a sudden rejection that was unexplained and irrational. Now Susannah Godman was Madeleine’s last link with the agency. Sarah and Felicity were relieved that at least they could keep an eye on their former client through Susannah’s daily visits.26

  On 5 March, Madeleine asked Peta and Susannah to witness her will. She owned no property but she had about £25,000 to distribute. Bruce Beresford was to be her literary executor and Robert and Kathy Tooley her executors. They were happy to oblige the friend they had met in Greece a few years before. The will specified that her body be made available for ‘therapeutic purposes (including corneal grafting and organ transplantation)’ but not for medical education or research. Her estate was split between the Woodland Trust, a UK-based conservation charity, and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. And she left her jewellery to her cousin Nicole Richardson.