Dear Lupin... (7 page)

I had a very long letter from Jane but had to give up halfway through as I was unable to read her writing. Louise has taken up smoking and drinking. What next?

If you think I can do anything to help, let me know. The worst I can do is to tell you to piss off. Also let me know if you are in dire financial straits. You never know; you might have the rare good fortune to catch me in a semi-affable mood.

Your affec. father,

RM

It is my twenty-second birthday and the general prognosis on the career front is not optimistic. It's not helped by my recent arrest for attempting to eat my passport whilst drunk in the discotheque of the Hamburg to Harwich ferry
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Budds Farm

10 September

Dear Mop-Head,

You might like to take little Miss Fisheyes out for a snack so I enclose small cheque. I have just received an indecorous postcard from saucy Miss C. Toller so will look out something saucy by way of return. It is hot and sweaty here and I have just taken the dogs for a long walk.

Your affectionate father,

RM

Don't spend all the cheque on Woodbines!

Schloss Rudstein

Neuberg

Dear Lupin,

I trust you are surviving the rigours of a northern winter. Avoid frostbite if you can as the effects can be of a permanent nature. Peter Yarrow and his wife have opened a catering business near here; they are doing a dinner for us on my birthday. I finish with the S. Times tomorrow. Yesterday a keen young man, who knew P. Majendie in Paris, came and took about 119 photographs of me for publication on Sunday. As it was raining the whole time, my cap is too small for me and your mother was trying to cram the animals into the foreground, the result should be interesting. The photographer stayed till 2 p.m.; that did not worry me as I left at 12.30. Your mother held him in riveting conversation. Your mother has been very nervy and difficult but is now better and trying hard to be calmer and to make sense. You stand high in her estimation – for the moment. Louise is very low and Jane is low, too. We went to Nona Wallis's wedding reception which was fairly unexciting. Your mother insisted on asking various people to dinner afterwards – an outburst of hospitality that cost me £25. I bought four new tyres today at a cost of about £70. I think they are made by Firestone Ltd, not a firm I care much for. I have bought quite a nice bedside table for your room. It may have been a po-cupboard once. As I shall be short of money from now on, I have put my name down with Camp Hopson to assist at funerals. I have to provide my own tailcoat and a dark overcoat. The important thing is not to carry the coffin always on the same shoulder as then the coat does not get worn and shiny on one side only. Your mother and I had a pleasant night at Brighton and we took Joyce out to lunch. She asked a lot about you. Your mother has met Mr Guinness out hunting and seems to get on quite well with him. I hope you will come down here soon and tell us of your experiences which I expect are curious.

Yours ever,

RM

I head for Scotland and find work on an oil rig. I am soon promoted from roustabout to the dizzy heights of roughneck. It doesn't take long before I acquire the nickname ‘Jonah' from the rest of the crew as I always seemed to be at the heart of endless minor catastrophes . . . Dad hits sixty-five and retires from The Sunday Times
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Budds Farm

25 March

My telephone bill has reached an all-time record as far as this house is concerned of £75. I find this impermissible in these increasingly difficult times; not least because I rarely use the telephone myself. I find myself reluctantly compelled to request all who use the telephone here to record for my information all calls not purely local (Newbury and District) and the cost incurred. Failure to comply will result in the number of telephones in this house being reduced from three to one.

T. Tightwad (proprietor and candidate for insolvency)

I have been back home, albeit briefly, and manage to cause the usual stress about the phone bill
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Budds Farm

7 January

Dear Charles,

I hope you are enjoying yourself and that neither you nor the young desperado you are with has run into serious trouble. We have been trying to spring-clean your room. I reckon Hercules would not have bellyached so much about mucking out the Augean Stables if he had had to have a go at your zimmer! There seemed to be sufficient equipment to start two quite big garages and enough wastepaper and empty cigarette packets to feed a bonfire of considerable size and power. Possibly because of my middle-class and military background, and a faint hankering towards a mild degree of cleanliness and order, I was slightly shocked. However, I have bought you a nice wicker dirty clothes basket (Ali Baba model), a five-drawer metal cabinet for your letters, receipts, writs, summonses, bills, lewd photographs, etc., etc., and a small fan-type electric heater so I hope you will be slightly more comfortable and better equipped. Your mother is tidying out your clothes and costumes tomorrow.

I had lunch with Sylvia Hambro yesterday and that Rolls-Royce will soon be available. She is very distressed because her eldest son wants to marry a tarty American divorcée aged about thirty-six and tough as a pair of Army boots. No news from Jane. Louise has been to two dances and is liverish. Cringer has worms and your poor mother continues to worry about everything and your future in particular. We had drinks with the Hislops on Sunday; the farouche appearance of the younger Hislop boy makes you look almost normal by comparison; is he rehearsing the part of St John the Baptist in a school play, do you think? Not much news in the papers; one member of a pop group ran over his own chauffeur and killed him, while a guitarist from another group has lost a leg doing something or other. Cousin John appeared on TV in a feature on Ian Fleming.

Don't do anything rash, and keep off the more sordid forms of self-indulgence.

D

Dad adopts a more mellowed stance towards my most disreputable of companions and my shortcomings generally
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Hypothermia House

Monday

Dear Lupin,

Thank you for your letter. I do not wish to pursue the correspondence in respect of the telephone bill. De minimis non curat lex [The law will not concern itself with such trifles]. Your mother has a nasty cold and is extremely crotchety in consequence. The Roper-Caldbecks are just back from a holiday in Devonshire. Owing to persistent rain they never left their hotel, which fortunately was warm and comfortable. We have had the big Budds Farm shoot, which proved a success. Three pheasants in varying stages of mobility were slaughtered between the rubbish heap and the top of the croquet lawn: after which the guns, or to be more accurate the gun, a boy of fifteen, retired for tea and crumpets. I have just been sent a book to review by the author, whom I greatly dislike. Hardly a single name is spelled correctly and the book is wildly inaccurate in every respect. There is an unfortunate reference to Mr Cottrill who hopes to be able to sue for libel. In the Sunday Telegraph there was a lot about Mrs Christian Miller of Newtown who at the age of fifty-four has gone round America on a collapsible bicycle. Farmer Luckes has had another stroke. An alternative route for the Highclere bypass has been proposed. If accepted, lorries will pass through our stable. Mr Parkinson is being driven barmy by his mother-in-law who is usually pissed and never stops talking the most fearful balls. A lady in Newbury has strangled her ever-loving husband with a dressing-gown cord. Jeffrey Bernard is in court at Newbury today over a combination of motor accident and unpaid debts. I think his wife has done a pineapple chunk.V. cold here today and thick ice on the water butt.

Yours ever

In a moment of wild desperation I agree to try my hand at attending agricultural college with a view ultimately to becoming a farmer. Instead, without warning and at the last minute, I become manager of a multinational rock band. This does not improve my mother's mood or anxiety level: ‘What you need, my dear boy, is a raison d'être.'

Dampwalls

Burghclere

Newbury

27 June

Dear Lupin,

I think I forgot to tell you that the most immaculately dressed man I met in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot was the popular baker, James Staples. I had never seen him out of his red jersey before. It is quite peaceful here and I am watching a horde of rabbits and various birds of evil character destroy the garden. I am getting worried about the oil situation here next winter and am thinking of alternative forms of heating, including thick vests, longs pants and balaclava helmets. I had a reminder that the summer is passing when I received a request today to order regimental Christmas cards. I had dinner with the Parkinsons last night. I have rarely seen a garden with a richer crop of weeds. The Surtees garden is immaculate except where Major S. upset a can of weed-killer on the lawn. Mr Parkinson took some children (rashly, in my view) to the Air Display and had a truly horrific time. I think your mother is due home tomorrow. I have no news of any rows with Jane yet.

Your affec. father,

RM

P.S. I have been paid my fee by ‘Pacemaker'.

Only my father could worry about the onset of winter in mid-June
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Budds Farm

23 October

My Dear Lupin,

I have received the enclosed letter from a Mr Sunderland, of whom I have never heard. Perhaps an impoverished literary hack like your father. If I have given you any family relics that would help, could you dig them out when you next come here?

I'm sorry to hear you are poorly. Are you getting enough to eat?

Yours ever,

RM

Mr Sunderland was putting together the history of our ancestor Sir John Hamilton Mortimer, RA. He lived in the eighteenth century, was a very successful artist and died from serious over-indulgence before he was forty
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The Droolings

Much Muttering

Berks

11 July

My Dear Charles,

I hope your strength is holding out and that you are thus able to enjoy honest labour with well-earned relaxation. I have just been reading in The Times of fearful storms in the south-west of France. I have heard nothing of your sister and Hot Hand Henry. Can it be true that they are residing at a nudist colony on one of the remoter Greek Islands? It would surely be a weird choice for a honeymoon? Or perhaps not. Except for the first fortnight at their preparatory school a honeymoon is for most people the least happy experience of their life. Mr Parkinson woke up on the third morning of his first honeymoon and found that his ever-loving wife had done a pineapple chunk. I think Mr P. is scouting around for a fourth wife. If he does succeed in his quest, I hope I shall be best man again: it has become part of the tradition. I stayed with Cousin Tom last week. Among the guests were Sir D. Plummer, head of the Betting Levy Board, and Lady P. He is very ambitious and set on a life peerage: she is the epitome of Dorking and Reigate. Lady P. dipped her nut a bit too far into the martini bucket and became more or less unplayable. We got her up to bed fairly early and she kept on sending urgent messages down to her husband, intimating that he was to come up at once as she could not wait for him! (Why not? The mind boggles, whatever that means.) Next day Lady P. had a teeny bit of a hangover and looked like a pug recovering from distemper. We went to a very good midday party at the Herns yesterday where there was a lot to drink and your dear mother took advantage of that fact. Nor, in fact, did I stint myself. The Gaselees were there, Surtees, Walwyns and most of the Lambourn racing mob. A former jockey called Stan Clayton, who breeds budgerigars, was good enough to tell me all about his blood pressure, while a tall lady in an azure wig explained at some length why she loathed her husband so much. Perhaps I am a sympathetic listener: possibly I just lack the energy to move away. We had lunch at 3.30 chez Surtees where I dropped asleep with a glass in my hand and spilt the contents all over my new ‘special offer' trousers. Of course, ill-natured persons suggested I peed during my brief period of repose which I am happy to say was an unfounded allegation. I am fairly busy signing bills is respect of Louise's party. Hire of the racecourse cost me £40, less that I had anticipated. I am not looking forward to the Blackwell wedding as I shall see too many relations. I slightly know the bride's parents. He is a rather stupid man but I think he has at least had the sense to avoid working. Mrs G. is one of Mr P.'s many ex-girlfriends, nice and bouncy according to Mr P. Jewish. I think an infusion of Jewish blood probably does most families good. For obvious reasons I hope so.

Your affec. father,

RM

My younger sister is now married and I am taking a well-earned break in the south of France with a little part-time chauffeuring thrown in for good measure
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Budds Farm

14 July

Dear Charles,

Thank you so much for the tastefully chosen postcard you so kindly sent me. It is grey and cold here and I have been stockpiling wood for the rapidly approaching winter. I am not at my best today as I think I have given myself a slight hernia bending down to cut my toenails with my gardening scissors. Your mother is rather crotchety but luckily is off to Jersey tomorrow for a boating holiday. I shall lead a relaxed life here, having meals when I like and looking at the TV programmes I like. Nor shall I be under any obligation to pretend that I am deaf. Pongo, thank God, is in a boarding kennel and all I need for happiness is some warm weather. Tomorrow I am off to stay with the Surtees and go to a play at Newbury. I have just received the bill for the reception: £429 is not exactly cheap considering it did not include £305 for drink. I have heard no news from Plump Louise and Hot Hand Henry: nor from Miss Bossy Pants up in Northumberland. I rather doubt if I shall go and stay at Brocks Clumps or whatever the Torday Château is called. The combination of your mother, your sister and two small children might be very tiring for someone of my age and delicate health. A Mrs Collingwood from Ecchinswell came to supper: her ever-loving husband has just done a pineapple chunk with a saucy nurse. There was a paragraph in the Newbury News that will not be greeted with hearty cheers by all concerned to the effect that a gigantic wedding is taking place on Saturday between a representative of the Gilbey family which churns out gin and the heir to the Blackwell fortune which is derived from baked beans! I remember some music-hall comedian being sued for libel for saying ‘Any port in a storm – even Gilbeys!' I had a letter from Cousin John who is v. angry because Eton beat Harrow at cricket and considers this unexpected victory was achieved through blatant cheating by one of the umpires. The downstairs lavatory is leaking quite badly but otherwise the house is standing up reasonably well. Tiny Man's breath would drive a small car.