The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother, and Me

by Sofka Zinovieff

  Once everyone was seated, Robert would direct the ladies to serve themselves from a range of dishes on the sideboard, starting with the most important guest and then letting the men get going. There might be a light salmon coulibiac, already sliced, with a frothy hollandaise sauce; the system was perfect if, like me, you wanted to discreetly avoid the pheasant or rack of lamb. It was like a highly orchestrated ceremony, with Robert as the master who was allowed to break all his own rules and Rosa as his handmaiden.

  Returning to Faringdon, I got to know some of the regulars. Coote was among Robert’s closest friends, having moved first into a cottage in a nearby village and then into a somewhat dour modern house in Faringdon. I didn’t know that both had been bought by Robert, nor that Coote was paying a mortgage to him. Coote seemed almost part of the furniture at Faringdon – a calm, modest foil to Robert’s mercurial ways. Sometimes her sister Maimie was there too. You could tell that Maimie had been a beauty, though age and drink had extracted their toll since the 1930s when she and Robert had rolled almost naked on the sand at Ostia. She still had the air of a coquette and carried about a badly behaved, incontinent Pekingese that recalled the one-eyed predecessor that Evelyn Waugh had described half a century before: ‘the malignant Cyclopean-eye of Grainger winking across the Ritz lounge’.469 Neither sister had been back to their beloved Madresfield for decades as they detested their older brother’s wife, Else.

  Other neighbours who frequently appeared were Susanna and Nicholas Johnston. Nicky had been the architect for what was probably Robert’s greatest addition to the gardens – the ‘stairs to nowhere’ by the orangery, and the pool at the top of them. The great flight of stone steps surrounded by yew hedges was the first idea, built up a bank opposite the orangery and ending mid-air. This surreal tease was such a success that Robert decided to go one further and build a swimming pool up there. Nicky devised a way of incorporating a tank, and – after being rung in the middle of the night by Robert shouting, ‘I want to go High Gothic’ – then designed a castellated pepper-pot changing room with a floor of old pennies. Robert located a pair of very expensive seventeenth-century stone wyverns (winged, serpent-like dragons), which he bought with money won through gambling, and they were incorporated into the structure. The result was a triumph – Robert’s own Folly, created forty years after Gerald made his tower.

  After we had helped ourselves to the raspberry Pavlova or redcurrants frosted in icing sugar and served with buttery, bean-shaped shortbread, we would move back to the drawing room and drink coffee from gilt cups sculpted with scenes and figures like something Benvenuto Cellini might have made, encasing a tiny porcelain interior. Then we would often meander over to the pool. The size precluded laps but made it ideal for wallowing; like the interior of the house, it was heated to an indulgent degree. Robert would sit on an antique marble throne by the edge, but some of us would dive off the ledge by the wyverns or float in a dreamy haze.

  Occasionally, I would play the piano at the green end of the drawing room. I would leaf through the piles of music I assumed had belonged to Lord Berners and find some Bach or Chopin that I knew. I hadn’t heard the story about my father’s disgrace and I never suspected that Robert might be eyeing me suspiciously as the progeny of the dreadful mad Russian; quite the reverse, as I could tell he liked me and I was pleased. When Jeremy and I made a jokey present for Robert, assembling a collection of false moustaches and framing them like a butterfly display, he hung it in the drawing room alongside formidable works of art by Corot and Gerald. It felt like an outrageous honour. I didn’t know then that long before, Robert and Gerald had decorated Berners ancestral portraits with moustaches, or that there is a Lord Berners piece called ‘L’Uomo dai baffi’ (‘The Man with the Moustache’). But moustaches were evidently in the ether. There were still plenty of other jokes: Gerald’s mechanical toys remained arrayed on a grand marble-topped table, added to over the years; fake pink pearls spilled from delicate porcelain shells; and small, snooty busts of a jowly Queen Victoria were reflected in sumptuous rococo mirrors.

  Getting to know Robert was unlike any other family relationship or friendship I had encountered. We rarely had a personal conversation, and both circumstances and his character discouraged intimacy. He told stories that made his guests laugh, often recycling episodes from long ago with characters interchanged at will. Was it Sachie Sitwell, or Emerald Cunard, or perhaps the arrogant Lady Stanley (who wondered whether, when she arrived at the pearly gates, she would be addressed as ‘Portia’ or ‘Lady Stanley’) who arrived at Faringdon all in a fluster? ‘The policeman stopped us in the car and was preventing us from leaving, so I had to tell him who we were.’ (Or sometimes it was: ‘The head waiter at the restaurant did not know who we were.’) To which Gerald’s reply was always: ‘And who were you?’ This stinging retort had appealed to Gerald and Robert, as they shared a hatred of pomposity and a delight in deflating anyone too puffed up. Like Gerald, Robert wanted to be amused and to amuse others, and scorned anything too earnest. For my seventy-year-old grandfather, life was still for living dangerously, in the moment and with indulgence. And yet I had also seen his tender, hands-on care of the gardens, his planting of trees he would never see mature, the detailed curating of sculptures, ornaments and vistas around the estate. Whenever I came to some conclusion about the man, another angle came into view that contradicted it.

  I never had the kind of discussion with my grandfather that gave me much insight into his life or his deeper emotions; everything had to be deduced or guessed. And later, when I came to write this book, Robert was the hardest character to get close to. The absence of written documents left a void that was not filled by the fond recollections of friends and admirers or the scathing remarks of enemies and critics. Sometimes he appeared to be a vulnerable figure, taking refuge in bad behaviour, but he could also seem to be selfish, rude and vain, without a thought for other people’s feelings. There were points where his mischievous rebelliousness was appealing and others where it was tiresome.

  During one stay at Faringdon, Robert gave me a present – a compact, square bottle of scent with a gold label. He explained that Joy was his favourite: ‘We used to sprinkle it in our gumboots.’ The smell was intoxicating, like tuberose and jasmine mixed with the mysterious fragrance of the opulent magnolia grandiflora that Rosa would place on the breakfast tray she brought me in bed, nestling next to a set of the prettiest mottled green china I had ever seen. I didn’t know it, but Joy had been created in France in 1930, just before Robert met Gerald; it was famous for being ‘the world’s most expensive perfume’. When I wore it, I felt transported into the world of Faringdon’s heyday. I didn’t know much about it then and felt I had little in common with this unusual grandfather, but I could sense the seductive indulgence and mischief. I realise now that it was largely through the senses that I got closer to Robert – by putting on Joy, by sleeping in his house, walking in his gardens and eating his food. And now this seems appropriate, as he was a man for whom the physical aspects of life often took priority.

  Sometimes, Robert’s love of controversy and tendency to shock became obvious. Several drinks in, a precariously unflicked inch of ash on the cigarette in his hand, he would make remarks that left the table speechless. The anti-Semitism that had been de rigueur in the Shropshire homes of his childhood and the London parties of his youth was like regurgitated bile. He chose to ignore that this had become an appalling faux pas in the post-Holocaust, increasingly politically correct era of the 1980s. There was never a theory or policy, just an inbuilt prejudice that was difficult to know how to tackle. ‘It wasn’t any more than many of his time and class,’ remarked several friends of his whom I questioned. But it wasn’t something I had encountered before.

  By this time, I had left school and was studying social anthropology at Cambridge; it was unbearable to be in a situation where someone joked that a lampshade had been made from Jews’ skin. I was close to my Russian grandmother, who had brought
me up on Holocaust literature, and who was later posthumously awarded a medal and recognised as Righteous Among the Nations by Israel for her bravery in helping Jews during the war. I only witnessed Robert expressing anti-Semitic sentiments once and I tried to confront him. It became immediately clear, however, that there wasn’t a discussion; he wasn’t making these remarks to open a dialogue; it wasn’t a democracy at Faringdon. It could have been a point to break off relations. For someone of my generation, this sort of racism was unacceptable. To walk away might have been morally braver, though I knew it wouldn’t make any difference to him. I had the impression, though, that maybe it was all a trick or a test and that he didn’t mean it at all. To challenge him was like aiming at a moving target that kept changing shape. After all, Robert sometimes had Jewish friends to stay and he didn’t seem to have a problem with them. Other liberal-minded people kept coming. I let the matter hang uneasily – a canker in the bloom.

  In the afternoons there was tea, and then everyone retired to bathe and change, emerging like new creatures of the evening – the women in long dresses or at least something smarter, the men in suits, their hair brushed. It was at this time that the elements in the house’s own scent were at their most potent: steamy bath essence and the spritz of newly applied perfumes dominated upstairs, while the tempting hint of a buttery sauce floated out from the kitchen, and the smell of beeswax furniture polish gave a low note to the ambient aroma. Added to this was the heartening tang of woodsmoke, as fires were lit, even in the summer. In cooler seasons there was no dread of the chill so familiar to English country houses; as in Nancy Mitford’s day, ‘Faringdonheit’ was kept heated to a luxurious degree, with radiators blasting and electric fires in the bedrooms. Lighting, on the other hand, was always kept low, with small lamps glowing like candle-light. Combined with the speckled old mirrors, one’s reflection became more romantic, unblemished by the strong lighting of a modern era. The steady flow of alcohol added a further dose of mystery. Evening drinks were served, possibly with a new set of people chosen from local or Oxford friends as temporary entertainment, and then there was dinner.

  On Sunday, the whole thing started over again with the addition of Sunday papers, sometimes read sitting in the morning sun on the porch. Not long after, there’d be a giant jug of Bloody Mary with celery and lots of Worcestershire sauce, maybe taken out onto the terrace where one would find a place on the low, honeysuckle-covered wall. Someone might get out the croquet set and we’d thwack the coloured balls around on the turf. Or a child would wind up the music boxes in the hall, or pull the lead on the Victorian model pug, which would open its lower jaw to reveal a small-toothed pink mouth and let out a rasping bark. There might be an expedition to climb the Folly, take the punt out on the lake or have drinks somewhere else. Once, Robert took us to Oare and we slipped into the gardens through a side gate. I’d never seen the house where my grandmother had grown up and it had been sold when I was a young child. We wandered along to the swimming pool – a perfect turquoise rectangle surrounded by green – and looked around before leaving, unobserved, the way we had come. It came just as naturally to me as it did to Robert to sneak in the back way, to add a touch of the forbidden. Perhaps we bonded over that without needing to talk about it.

  Once, Robert asked me to come to Faringdon alone, without Jeremy, though he knew that we were living together in Cambridge. We had bought a tiny two-up two-down with no bathroom and Jeremy was now extending it into the garden to where the privy had been. For a long time, there was a tarpaulin instead of a roof and lots of dust. Robert had been given an invitation to a ball held by the new Lord Faringdon, the nephew of Gerald and Robert’s old friend who had inherited the title and Buscot House in 1977. The party was intended as a celebration for his son’s twenty-first birthday and as I was about the same age, I was invited. My grandfather wanted me to go alone. I knew nothing of Robert’s attempted manipulation of my mother’s relationship with my father, but I sensed that he wanted some control over me – strange, perhaps, because he seemed to like Jeremy. I was sent a cheque for £100 to buy a frock and I found something in a second-hand shop that was very old and made of black silk chiffon. It looked like it was from the 1930s – bias-cut and delicate as spider’s web – and cost £25. I kept the change without telling Robert, slightly guilty but pleased to subsidise student costs.

  THE AUTHOR WITH ROBERT, MID-1980S

  When the night arrived, my grandfather drove me to the ball and, after a drink with the ‘grown-ups’, left me there. People were kind – some girls took me to an upstairs bedroom where they were fixing their hair – and there was a glittering marquee, dinner and then dancing to pop hits of the day. I felt terribly out of place and, predictably, my nearly disintegrating dress was unlike any of the brightly coloured, stiffly ballooning confections that were fashionable in the early 1980s. I also knew I had to wait until a respectably late hour before I asked for my arranged ride back to Faringdon. When I did, there was a tray in the hall with milk and biscuits, laid out as I imagined had always been done after countless hunt balls, where young people had drunk too much and, in the pre-dawn hours, were starving from all the dancing and flirting. It was like something out of Brideshead Revisited, which I was watching each week on television. All that was missing was a darling old nanny up in an attic bedroom whom I could visit the next morning for advice after a night of excess or an amorous disaster.

  When I left at the end of a weekend, I’d sign myself into the visitors’ book, laid out on one of the wooden chests in the hall near the Dalí ink drawing of a horse and rider and the wartime Prieto portrait of Gerald holding a lobster and butterflies. Once, when I wrote my name under two of the regular guests I’d met as Deirdre and Johnny Grantley, I didn’t understand why she had written her full name and he had only put his surname; it was the first time I learned that lords make a habit of that.

  I once made the mistake of asking to stay over on Sunday night as it fitted my plans better for travelling on somewhere the following day. I heard a mild reluctance in Robert’s acceptance, but only understood afterwards why that had been. On Monday morning, the place was completely different; the show over. The drawing room was shuttered up, the cleaning equipment was out and by the time I got up, Robert was dressed in a darned sweater, clutching a mug of Nescafé laced with brandy and back from consulting with the gardeners. It was like going back-stage after a play, where the actors were taking off their make-up and the scenery was being put away by technicians. After decades of observing how it was done and with Rosa’s extraordinary capabilities, Robert was now the creative director of what was often a weekly production. But the audience needed to play by the rules. By Monday, it was back to rehearsals and repairs.

  DIDN’T KNOW IT THEN, but Jennifer went to visit Robert after one of my early trips to Faringdon. In their mid-to-late sixties by then, they had more in common than they might have admitted. Both used alcohol as a crutch and dreaded the degradations of old age. Both also retained the optimism required for sexual escapades despite the fragility of a body that betrayed. ‘Isn’t it horrible being old?’ Robert said to Jennifer around this time. Neither had a permanent partner; Hughie was long gone and the predictable if painful divorce from Alan had finally gone through. Clayton had been sold and Jennifer was now back in London. ‘I am waiting for the telephone to ring. I have a whisky, light a cigarette, put it out. Pour another drink. The room seems stifling. I open the window and look at the trees, trying to relax.’470 It was a sad time to be single, and Alan was now involved with a woman of Victoria’s age.

  When Cressida Connolly, Cyril’s daughter, was finding her feet in London after leaving school, she lived with Jennifer for a while. Cyril had died when she was only thirteen and Jennifer had become something of an honorary godmother. ‘She was very brave in many ways,’ remembered Cressida. ‘She didn’t confide her problems, even though she sometimes complained a lot. And she was witty about her moaning. One autumn evening, at dusk, when she
was shutting the curtains as usual, she said, “Darling, I can’t stand this time of day . . . or year . . . or life.”’ Or when Cressida asked what they would cook that evening for dinner, Jennifer would announce deadpan, in her tinkling, pre-war voice, ‘Petti di fucking pollo’.471

  Younger people often loved Jennifer for her humorous sparkle and for being unshockable; she never judged anyone’s behaviour. Jonathan’s friends flocked to her for advice over a drink or two. She was still attractive enough to have what she called ‘the odd adventure’, often with a much younger man, but this was done discreetly. Even at this point, she was still Pixie’s darling; she continued to shelter her beloved governess from anything that might shock her, and she had the saintly old lady (now heading for a hundred) to live in her house before she moved into a care home. At one point, Jennifer decided to do some voluntary work and, taking a lead from her ancestor Elizabeth Fry, visited prisoners’ wives. Though Jennifer didn’t have the practical or financial problems of the women she tried to help, she identified with their unhappiness; she was lonely herself. It was often the small things that made her miserable, as though the underlying problems were too great to confront. One friend remembered going on holiday with her to Italy and on the first morning she appeared at breakfast ‘totally shattered’. When asked what the matter was, she said, ‘The leaves.’ It seemed that the geraniums outside her window had been ‘clattering together all night’.472