by Stephen Fry
“In the Bible, I suppose.”
“Do you like being the seed of Abraham?”
“You don’t count as Jewish if it’s only your father, you know.”
“So I believe.”
“The trouble with Jews,” said David, settling himself on a small ledge within an open archway that looked on to the central lawn of the cloister, “is that they don’t have any sense of nature. It’s all towns and businesses.”
“Are you talking about Jews in general, or one Jew in particular?”
“Well, I think Daddy is actually more rurally minded than most, wouldn’t you say?”
He can afford to be, I thought.
Interpreting my silence as disagreement, David folded his arms and thought for a while.
“Why don’t you sit down?” he asked at length.
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes,” he said, surprised.
“The reason I don’t sit down,” I said, “is that lately I have been growing the most luscious and luxuriant crop of piles.”
“Piles?”
“You must have heard of piles. Haemorrhoids.”
“Oh, haemorrhoids. Yes. Daddy gets those. He has a cream and an applicator. I’ve seen them in his bathroom cupboard. He says I’ll get them one day because piles are a Jewish man’s affliction. Piles and mothers. What causes them?”
“They come with age and sedentary habits. The only cure is to have them lanced with a knife. A cure that is crueller than the disease.”
“I thought you said on Thursday night that nothing could be cured.”
“Touché, you young sod.”
“You aren’t Jewish, are you?” asked David after a pause.
“Sadly not. Despite the piles.”
“You are a pretty urban sort of person though, wouldn’t you say?”
“Only nor’-nor’-east,” I said. “I know a fox from a fax machine.”
“Simon thinks I’m the urban one in the family because I don’t approve of killing. He says city people have lost all idea of the importance of life, so they concentrate on the importance of death.”
“That sounds to me a little too sophisticated to have come from Simon.”
David laughed. “Well, he probably read it in the Shooting Times.”
I felt in a pocket for a Rothie. David looked scandalised.
“What’s the matter?” I said. “The Victorians used to fit ashtrays in their pews, you know. Sermons were judged by cigar length. A four-inch sermon, a five-inch sermon, a full Corona and so on.”
“Never!”
“Swear to God.”
“Try telling that to a tour guide.”
I conceded the point and went without.
David gazed up at me. “Do you know why Mummy wouldn’t let me go into the stable to tend to Lilac this morning?”
I shook my head.
David sighed and chewed his lower lip. “She doesn’t like me to use . . . she’s afraid, you see.”
“Afraid?”
“I can . . . sometimes . . . almost . . . I know you’ll laugh . . .”
“I won’t laugh,” I promised. Not audibly, at any rate.
“I can sometimes talk to animals.”
Well, I thought, I sometimes talk to the wall. But I knew that was not what he meant. He meant, of course, that the animals talked back.
My son Roman, who is not far off Davey’s age, once claimed that he could understand a mouse he kept in a cage in his bedroom.
“And what does this mouse talk about?” I had asked.
“He tells me how much he would like a friend.”
A feebly transparent plea for another pet mouse, I had thought, and duly shogged off to Horrids to buy one, on the strict understanding that they guaranteed its masculinity. It occurred to me later that perhaps it had really been a plea from Roman himself. He often grew lonely in London, once the initial excitement had worn off, on those occasions when his mother packed him off to stay with me in school holidays: too young for his sister Leonora—he had been conceived, after all, as a last-ditch attempt to create something that might hold Helen and me together—too young to accompany me to the theatre, too old to be entertained by a nanny.
It struck me now that, idyllic as Davey’s childhood might seem from the outside, he too had cause to be lonely. He does not share the agricultural or sporting interests of his brother and (presumably) his local age-mates; his manner, while not precisely forbidding, does give off an air of remoteness, of separation from the herd, of—to use Annie’s word—disconnectedness. It is natural for a child of sensitivity and intelligence to withdraw. Better to flaunt your independence than risk rejection. Animals are welcome friends because they never judge. Adolescent girls, as is well known, become so infatuated with their ponies that they have been known to wedge the morning sugar lump in their labia and lie back to have it nibbled from their drooling quims. The unconditional love an animal can offer, love without guilt, rejection, violence or demands, has great appeal for the young. They are of course too stupid to see that even the most intelligent creature does things only for food. Love, for an animal, begins and ends with din-dins.
“So you talk to animals?” I said.
“They trust me. They know I don’t want their eggs, or their milk, or their coats, or their strength, or their flesh, or their obedience.”
“A large number of them want each other’s flesh though, don’t they? Or do you only talk to vegetarian animals?”
I could have kicked myself when I saw how sarcastic that question had sounded in David’s ears. I had meant it quite seriously.
He stood up. “We are meeting Mummy at the Assembly House,” he said. “It’s a bit of a walk. We should be on our way.”
Anne and I sat munching flap-jacks in the tea-rooms of the Assembly House. David had begged to be allowed to trot across the road to the City library.
“I never thought I’d be doing this,” said Annie.
“Doing what?”
“Biting. I had quite made up my mind that I was in for all sorts of terrible injections and fillings.”
“Clean bill of health, then?”
“‘If I have teeth like that at your age, Lady Anne, I shall count myself a lucky man.’”
“Double-edged compliment.”
“Any compliment will do at our time of life, don’t you find?”
“It’s been such a while since I received one,” I said, “that I can’t really answer the question.”
“Oh, poor little Tedward. I’ll offer you one then. You’ve been in Norfolk only a week and you already look a thousand times better than you did when you arrived.”
“That’s a compliment to yourself and your hospitality, my love, not to me.”
“Oh poo, you’re quite right. Well, I’ll tell you how wonderful it is to have you around, then.”
“Angel.”
“No, really, Ted. It is. I do hope you’re enjoying yourself. You must say if there’s anything you need.”
I opened my hands to indicate that not princes or popes could provide me with more.
“What about you?” I said. “A happy bunny?”
“Blissful.”
“No storms on the horizon?”
“Why should you say that?” She frowned a little and became busy with the tea-pot.
“No reason, no reason. I just sometimes think it’s a strange life for you. Living in the house you grew up in, but . . .”
“But with a husband from another world? Oh Ted, really! I get the best of everything. My own lot and all the financiers and politicians and artists and writers and odd-balls that Michael attracts.”
“That’s a list that would make many in this world vomit.”
“Well, put like that, it
does sound rather dreadful, but I’m so lucky really. Let’s face it, I’m not awfully bright and Michael is such a good husband. I mean, it would be obscene if someone in my position complained. Simply obscene.”
I let her pour out another cup for me.
“I’m not saying,” she went on, “that I don’t get upset when the newspapers write awful things about him. Comparing him to that ghastly Bob Maxwell, for instance. Calling him a corporate raider or a financial pirate and an asset-stripper. If they knew, Ted! They haven’t seen him in tears when he has to sack people.”
Haig used to weep over the casualty lists, I thought to myself. Never stopped him from sending them over the top though, did it?
“He cares, Ted. He’s decent. I’m so proud of him. The boys are so proud of him.”
“That much is very clear, my love. I’m proud of him too if it comes to that.”
“I mean, Ted, it is enough for me just to be a mother and wife, isn’t it? If you can say, at the end of things, that your life’s achievement was a family, that doesn’t mean you failed. Not everybody has to create things, like Michael and you.”
So Anne was at that stage, I thought. “I may not have composed the Ring Cycle or founded ICI, but I brought up four children.” Brought up four children with the help of a quantity of maids, nannies, nurses and hirelings that would have been better employed running a medium-sized boarding school.
“My dearest of dear, dear old things,” I said, and I may even have patted her hand. “Firstly you have to confess that, in fact, you do a great deal. I don’t suppose there is a committee, a trust or a charity that doesn’t have you on its board. People may laugh at Lady Bountiful, but what you do needs to be done, is done, and couldn’t have been done without you.”
“Thank you for saying that, Ted. I must confess one does feel underappreciated sometimes. They have such awful types around on the charity committees and school boards and councils these days. So snide and picky and sneery. They just expect me to smile and nod like the Queen. So often, when I suggest things, I simply get laughed at, as if my job is only to appear on the letter-head and wear a big hat.”
I could picture those meetings all too readily. The ginger-tached, tinted-lensed, cheap-suited, signet-ringed, loafer-shod nobodies suffering from razor-burn and irritable-vowel syndrome who import Korean strimmers or run golf driving-ranges and now populate all the boards and committees and magistrates’ benches of the country, what would they see in this Lady Anne Ponsonby-Smythe-Twistleton-Lah-di? Conservative, Labour or Liberal, they would consider her a useless joke.
“Wouldn’t it be lovely,” I could imagine Annie saying brightly, “to ask the Duchess of Kent to open the borstal’s new lavatory-complex?”
Sniggering glances are exchanged and dandruff rains down on the agenda-papers as heads shake slowly in disbelief.
“With respect to the lady chairman, that would be highly inappropriate,” says some builder of executive homes, by which he means, “We’ll do the thinking, thank you, pet. You just shut your posh mouth and sign the frigging cheques.”
Poor old darling, committing the crime of doing no more than trying to be nice.
“What you do,” I said, “is valued. Good God, your family alone! Wouldn’t I rather have four fine sons ready to do something in the world, than four flabby poems mouldering in the Oxford Book of Modern Poetry.”
“But you’ve got children as well!”
“Helen’s got them. I’m a Bad Influence. I think I know my godchildren better than I know Roman or Leonora.”
“Ted, that’s a terrible thing to say. I know you must be a wonderful father, if the way you treat Davey is anything to go by. You treat him as an equal.”
“That’s conceited of me. I should be treating him as a superior.”
“Oh dear, I do know what you mean. He isn’t being a nuisance, is he?”
“Good Lord, as if! I should imagine that child’s school reports would compare favourably with those of St. Agnes.”
“Do you understand what I was talking about when I said I was worried about him? Am I just being hysterical? You see, it’s so difficult for him. Growing up under the shadow of someone like Simon. I sometimes . . . here he is!”
David hove into view, swinging a carrier-bag full of books.
“And what have you two been talking about?”
“The characteristics that distinguish the ten-year-old Macallan from the eighteen. I was telling your mother that the ten-year-old, cheaper as it may be, is the better glass.”
“I quite agree,” said David. Saucy thing.
As we walked to the car-park I asked him what he had taken out from the library.
“Oh, just books.”
As it happens, I managed to catch a glimpse of one of the titles when he slung the carrier-bag into the back of the Range Rover.
Staunton’s Equine Anatomy was the title. Hah-lah.
That completes my report, for the time being, on Lady Anne, although I would like the chance to quiz her on what she had meant by “the shadow of someone like Simon.”
5. On no account mess around with Patricia. She is very special and not to be trifled with.
This is unworthy of you in every particular. I ought, I suppose, to be flattered that you imagine Patricia would allow me to “mess around” with her. Or do you imagine that I would stoop to rape? Or in her case, stretch up on tiptoe to rape?
I have no doubt she is “special.” Who the bloody hell isn’t? It’s a short step from using the word “special” to ending conversations on the telephone with “I love you” instead of the more usual and desirable “Goodbye” or “Fuck off, then.”
Your warnings were redundant in any case, for it is she who has been messing with me.
She found me on the hammock after lunch, relaxing with the Telegraph and a glass of the particular.
“Game of croquet, Ted?”
“Well,” I replied, laying down the paper, “I can see the hoops, but where are the mallets and balls? Or are we to use flamingos and hedgehogs?”
“They’re kept in a trunk in that hut,” she said, pointing to the simulacrum of the Villa Rotunda. Hut, for goodness’ sake.
I happen to be rather good at croquet. I don’t know why this should be, there is no other game at which I am anything less than an embarrassment. I played tennis with Simon yesterday: the boy had only to stand solemnly in the centre of the court and pat the ball gently over the net to have me wheeling, slapping, panting and thrashing like a Newcomen engine. Oliver, who was watching, said the spectacle put him in mind of a windmill tilting at Don Quixote.
The gentle, spiteful art of croquet, however, is more suited to my low centre of gravity and high sense of malice. We played, as is best, with two balls each, I with my fascistic favourites black and red, Patricia taking yellow and blue. My skills took her a little by surprise, I think; she is adept at the game herself, and the first circuit of the lawn was completed in a concentrated silence, broken only by the thlunk-shimm of croqueted balls fizzing out of bounds.
As we approached the final hoops, however, Patricia gave up all attempts at winning and became inclined to coze. It seemed she had what I believe is known as an agenda.
“Ted, why did you behave like that on Thursday night?”
“Behave like what?”
“You know perfectly well.”
Thursday was the night of the big dinner party. As you will see from my chronicle of the event, I behaved in exemplary fashion throughout. As far as I can see, it was Oliver, and to some extent Davey, who crapped in the salad on that occasion, not me. I said as much to Patricia.
“Whatever it is that is going on here,” she said, “can only be ruined by your scepticism and contempt. You may think it’s all very funny, but I should have thought you had more respect for a godchild than th
at.”
Respect for you, Jane, or respect for Davey? I really was completely lost by now.
“Thoughts, Patricia,” I said, “as you may imagine, are beginning to burgeon and bubble in the primal soup of my mind, inchoate and confused, like protozoic life-forms. Some of the more likely-looking specimens might one day evolve into sentient beings, but for the moment my planet seems to be eons behind everyone else’s in the race for civilisation. When you say ‘whatever it is that is going on here,’ you mean precisely . . . ?”
“If you want to sit and snipe from the sidelines, then fine, Ted. But I’m warning you, if you blow it for the rest of us, I’ll . . . I’ll kill you.”
“Blow what?”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake . . .” Patricia threw down her mallet and glared at me. “You’re just a wart-hog, aren’t you? A great fat vicious wart-hog!”
Turning on her heel, she stamped off to the house, muttering and choking with emotion. As I watched her go, I became aware of a figure looming towards me from the corner of the lawn. Rebecca approached, a trug full of strawberries on her arm, a broad grin on her face.
“Still the same magical touch with women, Ted?”
“Some people,” I said, bending to gather the croquet-balls, “cannot take defeat.”
“Oh, come now, Ted, it was more than that surely? You tried to goose her while she bent to play the ball.”
“Certainly not,” I replied. “Nothing can have been further from my mind.”
“Then you are not Ted Wallace but an imposter and I shall go and ring the police.”
“Well, naturally any bending woman in a short skirt causes some kind of reflex on a summer’s day, but I assure you it is a reflex buried deep by years of frustration and remains fully under my control.”
“Then what was it all about? Come and sit on the steps and tell me everything.”
We sat with the roundhouse behind us.
“What is going on here, Rebecca? Just what the hell is going on?”
“Darling, you’ve been here longer than I have. You tell me.”
I’m afraid at this point, Jane, I half gave away our little conspiracy.