Dear Lupin... (12 page)

Your affec. father,

RM

It is my twenty-ninth birthday. My father's view of middle age is not altogether encouraging although, as it happens, it is pretty accurate
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Budds Farm

12 April

Dear Lupin,

I hope life in London is proving fairly agreeable. Your ingenuity in managing to exist without employment or receipt of what is vulgarly called ‘the dole' is worthy of high commendation. Life here goes on in its usual bumpy rut. I was working in the garden last week and was disturbed by an exceptionally obnoxious smell. Bugger, I thought, it's those bloody drains again. However, I then found I was standing just by the corpse of one of the biggest rats I have ever seen. I gave it a decent burial, poor old fellow. Cousin Tom stayed here for two nights and I think enjoyed himself though he did say he had no idea your mother talked so much! We played bridge one evening and your mother played worse than anyone since bridge was invented. Mrs Anderson stayed here and kindly gave me a bottle of whisky: your mother got hold of it and I suppose I shall never see it again. Today, your mother has been participating in a ‘sponsored' ride and for miles around people have been pestered to sponsor her. She swore the limit anyone would have to cough up if she completed the course would be £1. Luckily someone discovered in time that she had done her sums wrong and the sponsors would have each been stung for £175. I am doing an article for a truly ghastly magazine called ‘Owners'. I only hope it will survive sufficiently long for me to receive payment. The editor (the magazine is printed in Eton High St) sent me a copy of the last edition which contains a long and somewhat unflattering article by John Welcome (nom de plume of an Irish solicitor called Burke) on the Merry family. I will keep it for you to read. Major Surtees had all his teeth out last week and his speech is a trifle blurred in consequence. Do you know any butlers or married couples willing to work in the country? Cousin Tom has no one – he is doing the cooking himself – and General Feilden is in a similar plight. Cousin Tom is now getting a flood of bills run up by his last butler, Blore, including one for four new tyres for Blore's car. When the local policeman was informed he said to Cousin Tom, ‘I'm sorry, sir, but you'll have to take your place in the queue which is a very long one!' I believe Charles B. is making a fortune running the Arab connection for Hambros. Charles's ma-in-law is deposited at intervals in a dipsomaniac's home but always manages to escape which is very irritating for her near-and-dears. No news from Louise. Is Jane in Venice? Venice is nearly my favourite town. After the war I used to stay at the Royal Danieli for £1 a night. Marvellous food at Charley's Bar. A friend of mine married a Yugoslav refugee in Venice. Her relations smoked during the church service. No one is coming here for Easter. I look back with nostalgia to the days I used to buy you all Easter eggs at Southport when I was staying there for the Grand National. Colonel Draffen mutinied on his eightieth birthday and told his wife he was never again going to do anything he did not want to. Very sensible. Jeremy Aird backed out of his garage on Wednesday and ran over his wife's dog which has hardly augmented his domestic popularity. Augustus Barnett's shop at Wash Common has closed down which is a bore. I have just completed an article of quite unbelievable tedium about the Highclere Stud. However, I managed to include a paragraph about the way the Fifth Earl of Carnarvon used to dope his horses. I have more or less tamed a blackbird which comes and sits by me when I am gardening. It obviously thinks I am a complete bloody fool to work so hard. I saw Aunt Pam at Newbury; she is not exactly a sex kitten and makes things worse by wearing clothes purchased at Army charity bazaars and intended for the poorer families of other ranks. I hear Aunt Joan has done well on the Stock Exchange but she is a bit too crafty to admit it. She owns her flat which must be worth quite a bit.

Your affec. father,

RM

Just had the rates: £658. Scandalous. No wonder I have to lead the life of a genteel pauper.

Fortunately neither my father nor I can be accused of being over-ambitious and I guess surviving without being on the dole is something of an achievement in itself
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Budds Farm

26 May

My Dear Lupin,

I'm sorry to hear you are unwell. You have not looked particularly robust lately and I think you ought to have a check-up. After all, your health is the most important asset you possess. I think you ought to consider discarding the dusky witch-doctor you patronise and go to someone more rational. Our new doctor here seems quite adequate. Please get in touch with Mr Parkinson (95-700-257) who would like you to flog his car for him on a commission basis.

Yours ever,

RM

The new doctor alluded to is the bluntest I have ever met yet. Without a hint of irony he calls his house ‘Bedside Manor'
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Budds Farm

6 October

My Dear Lupin,

I hope your health is holding out and that you are reasonably content at your new job. I have no idea what you do or where you do it. No doubt you will be appearing here in an expensive new motor before long. Your mother was hoping to have her first day's cubbing last Friday but it was cancelled as the head groom at the Old Berks stables had peppered a female employee with a humane killer and then blown his own head off. He had worked there for twenty-five years and the girl, whom Nidnod knew well, is thirty years younger than he was! It's odd the way demon sex keeps on obtruding into fox-hunting! Tim and Caroline Holland-Martin sold their yearlings well at Newmarket. They got 450,000 guineas for one and 20,000 guineas for another. Nice work if you can get it! Mrs Hislop is barmier than ever. Following a series of complaints, she was sent for by the stewards of the Jockey Club and told she would lose her badge (as wife of a Jockey Club member) if she did not behave herself in future. It was thought that the warning would cool her ardour but the next day she wrote a letter deman ding a private dining room for women in the Jockey Club Rooms as the men were all so boring! The Gaselee stable had three winners on Saturday, 20/1, 16/1 and 3/1. The next day Mrs G. pranged her car which was a total write-off. Luckily she and her son were not badly hurt. King Chaos reigns supreme here as twenty-four people – mostly dull and elderly – come to lunch on Sunday. Harry Roper-Caldbeck left £1,250,000.

I believe Charlie Blackwell has returned to his wife. They have been on holiday in Miami. Jane complains of being hard up: I have been told a great many times that Paul is a tycoon so she ought not to be wholly devoid of treacle. I shudder at the approach of Christmas. The alleged ‘Festive Season' costs me about £350. I really wish I was a Non-Skid and spent 25 Dec at a kosher hotel in Margate. Nidnod met the Dingwalls at a funeral in Yateley last week. I have been sent the latest Dick Francis book; it is all about computers and I can't understand it. The Bomers are off to Brittany: not much fun at this time of the year, I imagine. A Burghclere woman has died of tetanus after scraping her arm on a bean pole. The new man at the Post Office is an improvement on the last one. There is a new Dr at Woolton Hill who looks like a retired jockey (may be one for all I know).

Your affec. father,

RM

How is that girl with the nice legs?

I am constantly amazed at how much entertaining news can be packed into a relatively short letter. My new job is with a property investment firm in London
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Budds Farm

10 November

Dear Lupin,

I hope all goes well with you. I have not seen your firm's name mentioned in any of the many criminal cases involving scrap-metal merchants. Not much news from here. We went to a rather ghastly dinner party, the guests being for the most part deaf old men and alcoholic old women. In addition there was an Old Etonian who had done quite a long term in prison, and a very fat lady who thinks Mr Parkinson murdered his third wife. On Sunday we lunched with Mrs Pope; among those present was Anthony Philippi whom I believe was concerned with your brief military career. Nidnod's horse has been unsound which has made her (Nidnod) a bit jumpy. I suppose I ought to go up to London and do some Christmas shop ping but I simply cannot face it. I think I will make do with the Co-operative stores at Whitchurch. Smiths have opened a new premises in Newbury: you can buy almost anything there bar a book. My bedside lamp has disintegrated and I have been reluctantly compelled to replace it. I hear my cousin Mary paid £100,000 to her husband to go away. He has never been happier and is very rarely sober. A man came and cut all the hedges yesterday for £10: I would willingly have paid him twice that amount. On Saturday we go to old Geoff Barling's wedding: he is eighty. His previous wife went off her onion. The last time we saw her she clasped Nidnod to her bosom and started to sing ‘Oh, You Beautiful Doll, You Great Big Beautiful Doll'. Nidnod tells me I was unkind to laugh.

Yours ever,

RM

Another new job – I am currently employed by a large scrap-metal company. This is my dream job especially as sometimes I get to drive the crane
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Budds Farm

24 November

Dear Lupin,

Thank you so much for your very generous present which I greatly appreciated. I'm so glad you were able to come to lunch. I met a man who worked in a big brewery the other day; 20 per cent of the draymen get sacked every year for dishonesty of some sort. I don't think your firm is unique.

Yours ever,

RM

Dad's seventy-second birthday. His view of my current employer is disparaging
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Budds Farm

6 April

My Dear Lupin,

I trust you are in a moderately robust state of health and that your thirties will be happier and more successful than your past decade. I shall be relieved to hear (if ever) that you have found some little niche in the world of commerce as you have a longish wait still before the happy day arrives when you can stride boldly into the Post Office and draw your pension. Incidentally, Burghclere Post Office will soon be permitted to sell alcohol so I shall be able to purchase stamps, loo paper and claret simultaneously, a considerable convenience. Your mother is in very poor form and particularly cross because I warned her that Lord Carrington, one of her political heroes, would have to resign. She has been so boring about fox-hunting that I am considering a subscription to the local Hunt Saboteurs Association. No doubt you will be conscripted soon provided you pass the medical examination. Hot Hand Henry will probably end up in the Army Catering Corps. I am game to be RTO [Recruitment Training Officer] at Thatcham or Theale. There are lots of ‘workmen' busy here so I foresee an avalanche of substantial bills in the not far distant future. Your mother is not indulging in entertainment to any marked extent over Easter but there is a faint possibility that the Bomers may come to lunch on Sunday. I went over to the Gaselees last night. Mrs G. plucky but weary with the house full of bolo children, fourteen of whom had sat down to breakfast that morning. Nick had influenza badly and looks very run down. The Cringer is fairly well but as deaf as a beetle. He spends most of the day asleep. I do not think he was responsible for the huge dead rat outside the stable: my own view is that Reg Rat expired from sheer old age and from that boredom with existence that inevitably overtakes the elderly. A sadly large number of shrubs and roses are dead on account of the cold weather in January and they have become very expensive to replace as well as an irksome fatigue to dig out and remove. Do you recollect the very sensible army maxim much used in the Coldstream in my day: ‘It is infinitely preferable to incur a slight reprimand than to undergo an irksome fatigue'? Less popular were the words of an ambitious Aldershot general: ‘The darker the night, the more inclement the weather, the better the exercise.'

Your affec. father,

RM

The Falkland's War has just begun. My birthday is always a good opportunity for a fairly bleak assessment of my general role in life to be issued
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Age Concern House

Dear Lupin,

Your sister is now in high esteem among her relations though I have heard nothing yet of your Aunt Pam's reaction, I hope she will follow it up with something equally successful. Journalism is a good deal more profitable nowadays than writing books which financially is just a waste of time. Journalists have always been disliked and despised but today their social status is slightly higher than it was in my youth when they entered a house by the back door and had to wait in the servants' hall! I hope you are enjoying your new job and you find it financially rewarding. My friend Paul Greenwood of Knight, Frank and Rutley has just been made redundant, a serious matter for a middle-aged man with children and a taste for fox-hunting. His wife can be a bit of a tartar which will hardly help his situation. On Friday we went to dinner at Chieveley with the Steels, who I like, not least because they have plenty of treacle. The dinner was revolting, the first course consisting of Lifebuoy soap. I sat next to an old bag called Lady Grimthorpe who annoyed me by feigning deafness. In my view she is an ideal candidate for the lethal chamber. Also there was Arthur Budgett who had a 33/1 winner at Ascot the following day. He certainly did not advise me to back it! At Ascot we had a very good lunch with John Abergavenny who is just retiring as H.M.'s Ascot representative. He is blessed with good looks and perfect manners and used to have a very beautiful sister who made an unhappy first marriage. His own son, the only one, died of cancer at Eton. John's successor at Ascot is Piers Bengough, a tough but agreeable South African Jew whose sister Mrs Quarry lived near the Thistlethwaytes at Eversley. I hope he will follow the example of Bernard Norfolk and John A. by letting us use the Ascot Authority stand through out the year. At the party before lunch Mrs Beaumont introduced me to a little Polish girl whom I took to be twelve years of age. However, later I saw her with her noggin in a tankard of the hard stuff and with the other hand gripping a Gauloises, and investigation disclosed that she was twenty-six! At Cheltenham I saw a rather run-down elderly man, old in fact, and eventually realised it was Reggie Paget with whom I messed at Eton and whose career there was slightly less distinguished than my own. He is now Lord Paget and was for many years Labour MP for Northampton. He was also Master of the Pytchley. His father, a Tory MP, was killed out hunting and his brother became a bullfighter. He is the only Labour MP to have ridden round Aintree. His political career would have been more successful if he could have refrained from baiting Harold Wilson whom he rated an awful crook, no doubt rightly. He is a great admirer of Lady Salisbury and shares a racehorse with her. I think he is under the impression that she actually drives the juggernaut to Poland! Au fond Reggie, who is related to your mother, is a very kind person and I like him. There is a lot to do in the garden just now and Mr Randall has just announced his departure to Devonshire for a holiday. Mark Bomer has terrible acne, poor boy. He has amassed a wonderful collection of toadstools, some of a curiously erotic shape and size. Your mother is in fairish form but worries about twenty-seven different things. The poor old Cringer is fading way and this morning he just could not jump up on to my bed. Your mother is very patient with him and keeps him going.