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

by Sofka Zinovieff

  During that first winter, my mother came to stay at Faringdon several times, attempting to convert her reservations and distaste into something more positive, banishing the ghosts of rejection and trying to embrace the new era. She was not envious of my inheritance, but it stung that Robert had not even thought to leave something personal – a painting, say – to his only child. It was also painful to her that he had not thought of my two younger brothers, and in a reversal of the common pattern of English inheritance, where the oldest male takes it all, in this case, it was a female. My brothers were extraordinarily understanding and generous-spirited about it, but there was no getting away from the fact that it was unfair.

  My mother always slept in the room that had been hers since babyhood. The green baize doors on the corridor were long gone, but there was still the painting on the wooden canopy, ‘Victoria, Her Bed’. She usually came with her partner, Simon Craven, and, in the early days, I tried to persuade them that they should try living or staying at Faringdon for a while. I would have loved to visit the place as a guest, delaying any attempt to make it mine. By the sort of erotic twist that characterised so much of Faringdon’s history, Simon was Cyril Connolly’s stepson (his mother was Deirdre, Cyril’s last wife). He and my mother had been together, on and off, for over ten years. Their alliance had started in 1976, when, aged fourteen, I gave a summer party at Clayton, Jennifer’s Sussex house. I brought a whole train carriage of teenagers from London, all of whom had signed an agreement for some worried parents that they would not take drugs. We walked across fields from the station, danced to music from speakers suspended in the beech trees, swam naked in the pool, and after a mostly sleepless night, boiled eggs in tea urns for breakfast. Jennifer had suggested that I invite Cyril’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Cressida (her father had died two years earlier), and it was her older half-brother who brought her along from Eastbourne. Simon had long golden hair, a tan and was extremely handsome. He was twenty-two, which placed him out of the young teen orbit and into that of the only other non-teen in evidence that evening, thirty-three-year-old Victoria. Shortly afterwards, he moved in with her in London and they began a relationship that, despite various partings, would last decades.

  On one of my mother’s visits to Faringdon during the winter after Robert’s death, we scattered his ashes. Alan and Coote came too. Robert had specified in his will that he wanted his ashes thrown by the sculpture ‘in the style of Barbara Hepworth’ that sat at a particularly gloomy point along the shady monkey-puzzle walk. This was odd. I had always been told that this quasi-Christian stone structure had been put there by Robert as a tactic to stop the local council compulsorily purchasing the land for the neighbouring school. His claim that this was where Lord Berners’s ashes were buried and that it was consecrated land had been entirely successful in preventing any slice being removed from this part of the estate.

  It was a dull, freezing day when Alan drove us along the carriage drive from the house, down through the park, over the ornamental bridge by the lake and up the other side, along the avenue of lime trees. We parked by Jack Fox’s lodge, where the trompe l’œil fox looked out from a window and dead birds were strung up in the vegetable garden to warn off their poaching comrades. Patchy snow lay on the ground and our faces were pinched from cold and tension. Alan carried the small wooden box provided by the crematorium and we made our way to the angular-cut stone with its cross on one side. Having decided that we would each throw some of the ashes, we then discovered that the lid was screwed down on the box and wouldn’t come off. Alan walked back to his car and returned with a screwdriver. Taking turns, we angled the plastic bag within the box and poured little dribs of what remained of the Mad Boy around the stone. We stood around awkwardly, with no priest or ritual to give structure. Neither praying nor saying much, we eventually turned back towards the car and the warmth of the house. Later, on walks, I noticed the ashes stubbornly fixed in a damp, grey circle around the base of the monument, not absorbed by the earth or blown away by the wind. Once, Ben cocked his leg and peed on his master’s remains.

  Although Victoria and Simon eventually decided against moving into Faringdon, my brother Leo and his fiancée Annabelle Eccles took up the challenge instead. They organised their spring wedding there, and in a mirror-image of the funeral that had taken place five months earlier, entered the gardens through the wooden gateway in the churchyard wall accompanied by young velvet-clad bridesmaids and pageboys. Hundreds of guests gathered in a marquee erected over the fountain and there was dancing and flowers and delicious food. Jennifer came, swathed in chiffon scarves, drinking too much and misleading us all by hinting that this was the first time she had returned to Faringdon in many decades.

  After their honeymoon, Leo and Annabelle settled into the house and I sometimes came to visit. Leo spent time with Don, learning about tree-felling and planting and incorporating Faringdon timber into his furniture-making work. Annabelle helped Des in the gardens, weeding and picking vegetables for the twice-weekly sales, when locals made their way to the potting shed for fresh produce. It had long been Robert’s way of making a little money on the side and off-setting taxes for the company, and while the first pickings went to the house, the soft fruit and bunches of frothy-leaved carrots were snapped up by townspeople.

  MY BROTHER LEO’S WEDDING TO ANNABELLE ECCLES, MIRRORING THE JOURNEY OF ROBERT’S COFFIN IN THE OTHER DIRECTION ONLY FIVE MONTHS EARLIER

  Rosa had always been strange, but now she began to seem unhinged, admitting that she found it hard with ‘all these young people’. ‘The first time she saw me after our marriage, she called me Mrs Leo,’ remembered Annabelle, who was only twenty-four and daunted by the dominating custodian of a lost way of life. ‘Then she ignored us completely. If I passed her and said hello she would have to acknowledge me, but she basically pretended we weren’t there. She was subtly destructive, sulking in the back room . . . a menacing presence.’ Friends who had known the place for a long time commented that Rosa’s undermining, even threatening behaviour was reminiscent of her approach to Hugh Cruddas in the old days, or to Coote in more recent times. Just as this tyrannical servant had always been loyal to Robert, she was never critical of me, favouring his chosen successor. But she was like a fearsome guard dog who growled at anyone else, irrespective of what I wanted. Rosa had stopped cooking for the young couple, and although she cleaned the house, she maintained a steady stream of minor acts of sabotage. When the situation became too tense, I asked Rosa whether she might not be more comfortable in a larger flat below the main part of the house. Her new quarters were off the corridor that runs the length of the house at semi-basement level and leads to the stableyard at one end. This passageway quickly became her domain; she received visitors there and among them Alan would be spotted bringing in his muddy riding boots and hunting gear so she could clean and polish them. Well known as an astounding cook, she also began to do some part-time jobs cooking for other people.

  That summer, when Annabelle was several months pregnant, she and Leo went to London for a few days. When they returned, they found the kitchen and dining room in a chaotic state, with sugar and salt thrown about on the floor and tablecloths and various objects apparently missing. ‘We immediately knew something bad had happened, but we thought that Rosa must have done it,’ remembered Annabelle. The pair went down to see Rosa, who said that the place had been like that for two days. ‘I thought Sofka must have instructed for the silver to be taken to the bank,’ she said in a sullen voice, looking at the floor. Although Robert would sometimes send valuable paintings to be stored in the vault at Barclay’s, Faringdon, when he travelled, Rosa’s suggestion seemed absurd, and, returning to the scene, Leo and Annabelle realised that all the silver was missing: candlesticks, cutlery, teapots, coffee pots and all the salt-cellars and sugar-shakers – hence the spillage on the floor. Gone too were the gilt basket and the wonderful large gilt fish from the dining table.

  The police were called and Sergean
t Brown began the interviewing process. After speaking with Rosa, he took a different, more aggressive approach with Leo and Annabelle. ‘What did you have for breakfast that day? What time was it when you left for London?’ A silver teaspoon was located in their car – Annabelle had taken it to eat a yogurt and remembered waving spoon and plastic pot at Rosa as they departed. Based on evidence given by Rosa, Leo was arrested and taken to a police cell in Witney, where his belt and shoelaces were confiscated. The pregnant Annabelle was driven up to London by a police officer to search their flat for stolen goods. I learned about the debacle in Cambridge, where I was packing before my return to Greece the following morning. Horrified at what had befallen my brother and his wife, I rang up the police station. ‘You can’t arrest my family,’ I protested. ‘It would be like arresting me.’ ‘Don’t tell us how to do our job, Madam,’ came the response. There were no other lines of enquiry being pursued.

  By the end of the day, Leo was released from custody and Annabelle was back at Faringdon, both deeply shocked. Rumours were starting to circulate that maybe it had been Rosa who had set up ‘the young people’ and hidden the stash of silver herself. I later realised that I should have cancelled my trip and gone to Faringdon to support my maligned family, but I was so appalled by the whole episode that my instinct was to get as far away as possible. I didn’t know then about Rosa leaving the washing-up from Robert and Coote’s wedding to greet them on their return from honeymoon, but later these events came to look like a parallel way of revelling in destruction and wreaking unhappiness. The police started a fresh investigation and sent frogmen to drag the lake. Nothing was found.

  The place had been filled with poison by Rosa. Friends joked about Mrs Danvers from Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, but the prospect of Miss Proll burning down the house felt only too likely in the circumstances. In Greece, I wondered whether I would ever be able to face going back, outraged on behalf of Leo and Annabelle and full of distaste for what I had taken on. When I did return to Faringdon after a couple of months, it was with trepidation. I was clear that Rosa would have to go. She had stopped coming into the house anyway, and although no cache of stolen goods had been located, there were many who felt she had been, at the very least, negligent and spiteful. I knocked on the door of her flat, nauseous about the task ahead. It needed to happen, I told her. We would help her find somewhere in the town to live, we would pay her compensation, but she must go. ‘I will never leave this place,’ she screamed and sank to her knees on the floor. Threatening suicide, she grasped onto me, her strong, swollen fingers gripping my legs as she pulled herself closer. ‘Don’t make me go. The only way I will go from here is in a coffin.’

  Traumatised, I fled the scene. I had forgotten that only a few years earlier Rosa had left Faringdon of her own accord out of vindictiveness, abandoning Robert when he had needed her most through jealousy of Coote. Instead, I only felt guilt at what I was doing, mixed with anger and sadness at the troubles Rosa had brought to our lives. Eventually, with Alan as a go-between, Rosa did leave, moving to a house in Faringdon and continuing to work for various people in neighbouring villages, producing the extraordinary food for which she was famed. Often, she was spotted close to dawn or dusk, silently picking her way through Faringdon’s walled garden along with the diminutive Muntjac deer that favoured these quiet hours for feasting on buds and bulbs. She had previously kept a narrow, enclosed strip of vegetables and flowers and there was still rhubarb growing, along with the herbs she used so cleverly in her cooking.

  Y VISITS TO FARINGDON gave rise to a range of emotions. I appreciated its extraordinary beauty and originality and it was strange and wonderful to invite friends to stay. Don continued to teach me about the history and ways of the place, from explaining how to choose the right day to dye the doves, to helping me decide which trees to plant by the lake. He often told stories about Robert and pointed out the quirks and history of the house and grounds. I gradually got to know the people whose lives were entwined with the estate, and each one had their own complications. According to Robert’s will, Garth’s widow Betty had been left a lifelong tenancy at an annual rate of 10p, and when her house needed fixing, I was the one who had to decide what we could do. Many tenants took the opportunity of a new regime to request repairs that Robert had refused to carry out.

  After Leo, Annabelle and their young son moved out to a house they had renovated in a neighbouring village, I occasionally stayed at Faringdon alone, mooching around, flicking through first editions that had belonged to Gerald, or uncovering stashes of photographs that revealed something new about the place. Sometimes, I tried to get on with writing up my thesis there, but it was extremely difficult to retreat from what seemed like a steady flow of people who needed me to be ‘captain of the ship’, as one person put it. I found myself being offered a variety of roles and relationships that apparently came with the inheritance and that were bewildering to someone in her mid-twenties from a very different background. I was asked to become president of the local horticultural association and to ceremonially switch on the town’s Christmas lights. People I didn’t know invited me to dine at nearby large houses. Fearful of being sucked into a way of life I hadn’t chosen, I refused. I worried that the line between real friends and the curious, the snobbish or the ambitious would become blurred. I was apprehensive about what effect this hugely beautiful yet weighty appendage would have on the way my life evolved.

  I must have seemed stand-offish to some, but I also tried to do the right thing. All of Robert’s local obituaries mentioned his kindness in the community: there was a tea party each year for the Silver Threads social club, scouts came camping and charity events were allowed. I had seen the old photographs of fetes and Gerald crowning the May Queen. I tried to continue some of these activities, and when the gardens were opened twice a year under a national scheme, I often sold tickets or helped with preparations, half proud of how lovely the place looked, half awkward at being thrust into the role of chatelaine. When the town’s annual firework party was held in a field by the lake on Guy Fawkes Day – also Robert’s birthday – I agreed to give a welcome speech. There were hundreds of people and I was taken to a caravan to speak into the booming PA system. A Greek friend staying gave me brandy to quell my nerves. ‘My grandfather would have been very pleased . . .’ I heard myself say, in a voice that sounded squeaky, shaky and like a pitiful imitation of minor royalty without the elocution lessons.

  Various issues cropped up that forced me to take a position. Would I allow the local hunt to continue to ride over the estate? My initial reaction was: absolutely not. As someone who barely knew one end of a horse from the other and who believed that hunting was outdated, snobbish, brutal and unnecessary, I said I’d prefer to keep the place as a fox sanctuary. It was only after the thoughtful and charming Master of the Hounds and his deputy showed up for a drink and I heard about the alternatives – farmers shooting, trapping and wounding foxes, the problems created by what was classed as vermin – that I took in some of the complexities. Who was I to turn up and stop them having their fun? Wasn’t I an anthropologist who tried to empathise with other cultures? We made a compromise: no blocking foxholes and sending the terriers in to kill the cubs and a ‘fox reserve’ to be respected around the house. From my bedroom window, I would often see a red glint slinking across the rough field above the lake, provocative on a frosty morning.

  Harder to resolve was the situation when Alan was finally bought out. He had become a director and an investor in the Berners Estates Company after Robert had got into trouble with severe gambling debts and Alan had stepped up with the cash in return for shares. There was a selling spree to produce the money for him. Among other things, Gerald’s beloved paintings by Corot were auctioned and many more would follow in subsequent years, including the portrait of Henry VIII given by the king himself to the Lord Berners of his day. There were too many long meetings with people I described at the time as ‘be-suited, grey-faced, heavy-shoed, t
ax-scheming, middle-aged men’.

  Along with the rumours that people passed on about my own inheritance, I was given several stories about why Robert ditched Alan at the last post: some said it was because his preferred nephew had separated from a first wife whom Robert adored, though that had been years before; others that Robert didn’t like the second wife. (At least she owned a place in Gloucestershire that was much larger than Faringdon, so I had no additional guilt that Alan’s lost expectations would affect his quality of life.) An estate worker claimed that Robert had said, ‘Sofka is the only one with any bloody sense.’ An old friend of Robert’s suggested that he liked the serendipity of this unlikely choice. Just as he had been a surprise for more conventional types when he acquired everything in 1950, so he liked the idea of creating a rumpus. ‘He said it had been so amazing for him when he inherited Faringdon from Gerald – like Kind Hearts and Coronets,’482 a film where an oblique inheritance is the subject of much scheming and merriment, not to mention Ealing Comedy murder.