‘What did you say?’
‘I said “Don’t let him make you take him to the Ritz”–I’ll see that the flat is all ready, and the landlady alerted and plenty of stores in.’ ‘Well, that’s all right then.’
‘I hope so. But he might prefer the Ritz.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll have him all settled in before lunch.’ The day wore on. At 6.30 Archie returned. He looked exhausted.
‘It’s all right. I’ve got him settled in. It was a bit of a job getting him off the boat. He wasn’t packed up or anything–kept saying there was plenty of time–what was the hurry? Everybody else was off the ship, and he was holding things up–but he didn’t seem to care. That Shebani is a good chap–very helpful. He managed to get things moving in the end.’ He paused, and cleared his throat.
‘As a matter of fact, I didn’t take him to Powell Square. He seemed absolutely set on going to some hotel in Jermyn Street. He said it would be much less trouble to everyone.’
‘So that’s where he is.’
‘Well–yes.’ I looked at him.
‘Somehow,’ said Archie, ‘it seemed so reasonable the way he put it.’ ‘That is Monty’s strong point,’ I informed him. Monty was taken to a specialist in tropical diseases to whom he had been recommended. The specialist gave full directions to my mother. There was a chance of partial recovery: good air–continual soaking in hot baths–a quiet life. What might prove difficult was that, having considered him almost certainly a dying man, they had kept him under drugs to such an extent that he would find it difficult to break the habit now. We got Monty and Shebani into the Powell Square flat after a day or two, and they settled down quite happily–although Shebani created quite a stir by dropping into neighbouring tobacconists, seizing a packet of fifty cigarettes, saying, ‘For my master’, and leaving the shop. The Kenya system of credit was not appreciated in Bayswater. Then, after the London treatments were over, Monty and Shebani moved down to Ashfield–and the mother-and-son ‘ending his days in peace’ concept was tried out. It nearly killed my mother. Monty had his African way of life. His idea of meals was to call for them whenever he felt like eating, even if it was four in the morning. This was one of his favourite times. He would ring bells, call to the servants, and order chops and steaks.
‘I don’t understand what you mean, mother, by “considering the servants”. You pay them to cook for you, don’t you?’
‘Yes–but not in the middle of the night.’
‘It was only an hour before sunrise. I always used to get up then. It’s the proper start to the day.’ It was Shebani who really succeeded in making things work. The elderly maids adored him. They read the Bible to him, and he listened with the greatest interest. He told them stories of life in Uganda and of the prowess of his master in shooting elephants. He gently took Monty to task for his treatment of his mother.
‘She is your mother, Bwana. You must speak to her with reverence.’ After a year Shebani had to go back to Africa to his wife and family, and things became difficult. Male attendants were not a success, either with Monty or my mother. Madge and I went down alternately to try to soothe them down. Monty’s health was improving, and as a result he was much more difficult to control. He was bored, and for relaxation took to shooting out of his window with a revolver. Tradespeople and some of mother’s visitors complained. Monty was unrepentant. ‘Some silly old spinster going down the drive with her behind wobbling. Couldn’t resist it–I sent a shot or two right and left of her. My word, how she ran!’ He even sent shots all round Madge one day on the drive, and she was frankly terrified.
‘I can’t think why!’ said Monty. ‘I shouldn’t have hurt her. Does she think I can’t aim?’ Someone complained, and we had a visit from the police. Monty produced his firearm licence and talked very reasonably about his life as a hunter in Kenya, and his wish to keep his eye in. Some silly woman had got the idea he had been firing at her. Actually he had seen a rabbit. Being Monty, he got away with it. The police accepted his explanation as quite natural for a man who had led the life that Captain Miller had.
‘The truth is, kid, I can’t stand being cooped up here. This tame sort of existence. If I could only have a little cottage on Dartmoor–that’s what I’d like. Air and space–room to breathe.’
‘Is that what you’d really like?’
‘Of course it is. Poor old mother drives me mad. Fussy–all these set times for meals. Everything cut and dried. It’s not what I’ve been used to.’ I found Monty a small granite bungalow on Dartmoor. We also found, by a kind of miracle, the right housekeeper to look after him. She was a woman of sixty-five–and when we saw her first she looked wildly unsuitable. She had bright peroxided yellow hair, curls, and a lot of rouge. She was dressed in black silk. She was the widow of a doctor who had been a morphia addict. She had lived most of her life in France, and had had thirteen children. She was the answer to a prayer–she could manage Monty as no one else had been capable of doing. She rose and cooked his chops in the middle of the night if he wanted them. But, said Monty after a while, I’ve rather given up that, kid–bit hard on Mrs Taylor, you know. She’s a good sport, but she’s not young.’ Unasked and unbidden, she dug up the small garden and produced peas, new potatoes and French beans. She listened when Monty wanted to talk, and paid no attention when he was silent. It was wonderful. Mother recovered her health. Madge stopped worrying. Monty enjoyed visits from his family, and always behaved beautifully on those occasions, very proud of the delicious meals produced by Mrs Taylor.
£800 for the Dartmoor bungalow was a cheap price for Madge and me to have paid.
II
Archie and I found our cottage in the country–though it wasn’t a cottage. Sunningdale, as I had feared, was an excessively expensive place to live. It was full of luxurious modern houses built round the golf-course, there weren’t any country cottages at all. But we found a large Victorian house, Scotswood, situated in a big garden, which was being divided into four flats. Two of these were already taken–the two on the ground floor–but there were two flats upstairs in the course of being adapted, and we looked over them. Each contained three rooms on the first floor and two on the floor above, and a kitchen and bathroom, of course. One flat was more attractive than the other–having better shaped rooms and a better outlook–but the other had a small extra room and was also cheaper, so we settled on the cheaper one. Tenants had the use of the garden, and constant hot water was supplied. The rent was more than that of our Addison Road flat, but not much so. It was, I think, £120. So we signed a lease and prepared to move in.
We came down constantly to see how the decorators and painters were getting on–which was always much less than they had promised. Every time we did so we found that something had been done wrong. Wall-papers were the most foolproof. You cannot do anything too awful to a wallpaper, unless you put the wrong one on altogether–but you can put every shade of wrong paint on, and we weren’t on the spot to see what was happening. However, all was settled in time. We had a big sitting-room, with new cretonne curtains of lilac–made by me. In the small dining-room we had some rather expensive curtains, because we fell in love with them, of tulips on a white ground. Rosalind and Site’s larger room behind it had curtains with buttercups and daisies. On the floor above, Archie had a dressing-room and emergency spare-room very virulently coloured–scarlet poppies and blue cornflowers–and in our bedroom I chose curtains of bluebells, which was not really a good choice, because since this particular room faced north the sun seldom shone through. The only time they were pretty was when one lay in bed in mid-morning and saw the light shining through them, pulled back on either side of the window, or seen at night, the blue rather faded out. In fact it was like bluebells in nature. As soon as you bring them into the house they turn grey and dispirited and refuse to hold up their heads. A bluebell is a flower that refuses to be captured and is only gay when it is in the woods. I consoled myself by writing a ballad about bluebells:
BALLAD OF THE MAYTIME
The King, he went a-walking, one merry morn in May.
The King, he laid him down to rest, and fell asleep, they say.
And when he woke, ‘twas even,
(The hour of magic mood)
And Bluebell, wild Bluebell, was dancing in the wood.
The King, he gave a banquet to all the flowers (save one),
With hungry eyes he watched them, a-seeking one alone.
The Rose was there in satin,
The Lily with green hood,
But Bluebell, wild Bluebell, only dances in the wood.
The King, he frowned in anger, his hand upon his sword.
He sent his men to seize her, and bring her to their Lord.
With silken cords they bound her,
Before the King she stood,
Bluebell, wild Bluebell, who dances in the wood.
The King, he rose to greet her, the maid he’d sworn to wed.
The King, he took his golden crown and set it on her head.
And then he paled and shivered,
The courtiers gazed in fear,
At Bluebell, grey Bluebell, so pale and ghostly there.
‘O King, your crown is heavy, ’twould bow my head with care.
Your palace walls would shut me in, who live as free as air.
The wind, he is my lover,
The sun my lover too,
And Bluebell, wild Bluebell, shall ne’er be Queen to you.’
The King, he mourned a twelvemonth, and none could ease his pain.
The King, he went a-walking a-down a lovers’ lane.
He laid aside his golden crown,
Into the wood went he,
Where Bluebell, wild Bluebell, dances ever wild and free.
The Man in the Brown Suit went very well indeed. The Bodley Head pressed me again to make a splendid new contract with them. I refused. The next book I sent them was one made from a long short story that I had written a good many years before. I was rather fond of it myself: it dealt with various supernatural happenings. I elaborated it a little, brought a few more characters into it, and sent it off to them. They did not accept it. I had been sure that they would not. There was no clause in the contract which decreed that any book I offered them had to be either a detective story or a thriller. It merely said ‘the next novel’. This had been made a full novel–just–and it was up to them to take it or refuse it. They refused it, so I had only one more book to write for them. After that, freedom. Freedom, and the advice of Hughes Massie–and from then onwards I should have first-class advice as to what to do, and, even more important, what not to do.
The next book I wrote was a completely light-hearted one, rather in the style of The Secret Adversary. They were more fun and quicker to write, and my work reflected the light-heartedness that I felt at this particular period, when everything was going so well. My life at Sunningdale, the fun of Rosalind developing every day, getting more amusing and more interesting. I have never understood people who want to keep their children as babies and regret every year that they grow older. I myself sometimes felt that I could hardly wait: I wanted to see exactly what Rosalind would be like in a year’s time, a year after that, and so on. There is nothing more thrilling in this world, I think, than having a child that is yours, and yet is mysteriously a stranger. You are the gate through which it came into the world, and you will be allowed to have charge of it for a period: after that it will leave you and blossom out into its own free life–and there it is, for you to watch, living its life in freedom. It is like a strange plant which you have brought home, planted, and can hardly wait to see how it will turn out.
Rosalind took happily to Sunningdale. She had the delight of her fairy cycle, on which she bicycled with great ardour all round the garden, falling off occasionally, but never caring. Site and I had both warned her not to go outside the gate, but I don’t think that either of us had made it a definite prohibition. Anyway, go outside the gate she did, on an early morning when we were both busy in the flat. She cycled out full steam down the hill towards the main road and, rather fortunately, fell off just before she got there. The fall drove her two front teeth inward, and would probably, I feared, prejudice her next teeth when they arrived. I took her to the dentist, and Rosalind, though not complaining, sat in the dentist’s chair with her lips firmly clasped over her teeth, refusing to open her mouth for anyone. Anything that I said, Site said, or the the dentist said was received without a word, and her teeth remained firmly clenched. I had to take her away. I was furious. Rosalind received all reproaches in silence. After some lecturing with Site and some from me, two days later she announced that she would go to the dentist.
‘Do you really mean it this time, Rosalind, or will you do the same thing when you get there?’
‘No, I’ll open my mouth this time.’
‘I suppose you were frightened?’
‘Well, you can’t be sure, can you,’ said Rosalind, ‘what anyone is going to do to you?’ I acknowledged this, but assured her that everybody that she knew and that I knew in England went to dentists, opened their mouths, and had things done to their teeth which resulted in ultimate benefit. Rosalind went, and behaved beautifully this time. The dentist removed the loosened teeth, and said she might have to wear a plate later, but he thought probably not. Dentists, I could not help feeling, were not made of the same stem stuff that they used to be in my childhood. Our dentist was called Mr Hearn, a small man, exceedingly dynamic, and with a personality that overawed his patients at once. My sister was taken to him at the tender age of three. Madge, ensconced in the dentist’s chair, immediately began to cry.
‘Now then,’ said Mr Hearn, ‘I can’t allow that. I never allow my patients to cry.’
‘Don’t you?’ said Madge, so surprised that she stopped at once.
‘No,’ said Mr Hearn, ‘it is a bad thing, so I don’t allow it.’ He had no more trouble. We were all terribly pleased to get to Scotswood: It was so exciting to be in the country again: Archie was delighted, because he was now in close proximity to Sunningdale Golf Course. Site was pleased because she was saved the long treks to the park, and Rosalind because she had the garden for her fairy cycle. So everyone was happy. This in spite of the fact that when we arrived with the furniture van nothing was ready for us. Electricians were still burrowing about in the passages, and there was the greatest difficulty in moving any furniture in. Problems with baths, taps, and electric light were incessant, and the general level of inefficiency was unbelievable.
Anna the Adventuress had now appeared in The Evening News and I had bought my Morris Cowley–and a very good car it was: much more reliable and better made than cars are nowadays. The next thing I had to do was to learn to drive it. Almost immediately, however, the General Strike was upon us, and before I had had more than about three lessons with Archie he informed me that I would have to drive him to London.
‘But I can’t. I don’t know how to drive!’
‘Oh yes, you do. You’re coming along quite well.’
Archie was a good teacher, but there was no question in those days of having to pass any test. There was no such thing as an L-driver. From the moment you took the controls of the car you were responsible for what you did with it.
‘I don’t think I can really reverse at all,’ I said doubtfully. ‘The car never seems to go where I think it’s going.’
‘You won’t have to back,’ said Archie with assurance. ‘You can steer quite well–that’s all that matters. If you go at a reasonable pace you’ll be all right. You know how to put the brake on.’
‘You taught me that first of all,’ I said.
‘Yes, of course I did. I don’t see why you should have any trouble.’
‘But the traffic,’ I said falteringly.
‘Oh no, you needn’t do the traffic at all to begin with.’
He had heard that there were electric trains going from Hounslow Station, and so my task would be to motor to Hounslow wi
th Archie at the wheel; then he would turn the car round, put it in position for the return journey, and leave me to get on by my own devices while he went to the City.
The first time I did this was one of the worst ordeals I have ever known. I was shaking with fright, but I managed, nevertheless, to get on reasonably well. I stalled the engine once or twice by braking rather more violently than I need, and I was rather chary about passing things, which was probably just as well. But of course the traffic on the roads then was not anything like what it would be nowadays, and called for no special skill. As long as you could steer reasonably, and didn’t have to park, or turn, or reverse too much, all was well. The worst moment was when I had to turn into Scotswood and get myself into an extremely narrow garage, next to our neighbour’s car. These people lived in the flat below us–a young couple called the Rawncliffes. The wife reported to her husband: ‘I saw the first floor driving back this morning. I don’t think she has ever driven a car before. She drove into that garage absolutely shaking and as white as a sheet. I thought she was going to ram the wall, but she just didn’t!’
An Autobiography Page 42