Love, Nina (12 page)

Photo in the kitchen of MK with a feather cut in 1978. She looks much better with the feather cut (than with the bowl cut). Plus a bowl cut is hard to maintain, i.e. you need two hands to style it, which you don't have if you're holding a hair dryer, which you are when styling.

Sam's osteopath thinks swimming could help his posture. We made a plan to go to Swiss Cottage pool.

Sam: I don't want to go swimming.

Me: It'll be good for you.

Sam: Can you go swimming if you have a cut finger?

Me: No, but you haven't.

Sam: But could you?

Me: Depends how bad.

Swim day, yesterday. Guess what—Sam cut his finger.

Sam: I didn't do it on purpose.

Me: Tell that to the police.

Sam: Don't ring the police.

Me: Dialing…

On the plus side, he couldn't practice violin with the plaster on his finger. He's playing the violin quite a lot at the moment. It sounds horrible and it makes the rest of us sick to hear it. But MK won't let us say anything negative because he's having a go and that's the main thing.

Love, Nina

*  *  *

Dear Vic,

A man came to reupholster a little chair (that no one sits in) opposite the sofa. It was all worn out with gray fluff bursting out. The upholsterer was a true craftsman and held curved needles in his mouth etc.

He put a note in his windscreen (“Working at 55”) but kept going to the window to check for wardens. He asked me to watch out for wardens too. I said I would do my best but I couldn't commit 100%. The wardens are very quick and ruthless in London, especially round here.

The chair reupholsterer ate his packed lunch in his van. Two hard-boiled eggs. I saw him cracking the shells on the dashboard. No drink. Later, I told him about egg coddlers (him an egg lover). Not interested.

Chair looks nice now. Greeny-blue fabric with tiny red teardrop shapes. Still no one sits in it though. Wrong position and low. It's a small Queen Anne, the upholsterer said, “a smashing chair.” He also said the dining chairs were a mix of Hitchcocks and Sheratons.

Weekend at Mary Hope's house in the Cotswolds. It's lovely. The house is yellow stone with big windows. The garden is lovely and there's a tree (cherry?) on the lawn that has one long branch that's a perfect shade for a table. Mary has propped it up with a post. The villages around are all antique shops and tea rooms.

The journey was eventful. First we almost missed our train from Paddington because I forgot it was Paddington and thought it was St. Pancras (Paddington is further away tubewise).

Will saw a field of cows from train window.

Will: (
worried
) Oh God, a field full of dead cows.

Me: They're not dead.

Will: They look dead, their heads are down.

Me: They're just resting.

Will: I thought they only did that in barns or if they had a baby.

Then I almost left Sam's machine on the train at Didcot Parkway. No, I DID leave Sam's machine on the train and the train guard came running off with it. Luckily the train had arrived early, so wasn't rushing off again.

The train guard wanted a lot of acknowledgment for his action and when I didn't thank him enough (I thanked him twice, very enthusiastically) he said to S&W, “Make sure you help your mum,” and Will said, “She's the nanny,” and the guard said, “Well, you can tell your mum all about your adventures,” and Will said, “The nanny doesn't like us to tell our mum stuff like that.” The guard was less jolly after that. He reboarded the train and gave me a dirty look.

Mary Hope did sorrel soup again (a bit sour tasting, but you'd probably get used to it if you had it enough). Polly made South African doughnuts (nice). There's a swimming pool in the garden that no one ever seems to want to go in. And when I mentioned going for a swim they looked at me as if I was being silly.

Caught S&W watching a video called
Best Bit of Crumpet out of Denmark.

Love, Nina

*  *  *

Dear Vic,

One of the weirdos in the street keeps telling everyone she's going to sue the council for pruning her shrubs without permission. Previously a bushy screen, now a few brutal twigs (her words). Council pruners mistook the property for one of theirs due to the front garden containing a mattress, two tires and other people's dustbins. And they pruned the shrubs.

A writer called Deborah Moggach lives on that side of the street. I can see her tapping away writing her novels. I took a batch of Elspeth's poems for DM to assess. To be honest, I thought the poems were very good, poetic and clever, and that DM wouldn't mind the distraction, seeing as she's there all day tapping away.

DM was very happy to look at them and said they showed talent and said that Elspeth should keep writing and that she might send a batch to a certain poetry magazine. DM thinks everyone should write (if they want to) and sometimes being noticed is more about luck than anything else. When I told Elspeth all this she seemed pleased, but not as pleased as I thought she would be. Later, she admitted she was drunk when she wrote her poems and that she
only
writes when drunk and has to be as drunk as possible.

I said it didn't make the poems less valuable (you can tell I'm studying literature). Just that being drunk put her in the mood to write poems, that's all. And that I had a feeling Thomas Hardy might be a bit that way… and look at how much people love his poems (though not me).

Then Elspeth confessed that all she did was a kind of translation thing of existing poems. Paraphrasing, line by line, using the thesaurus. So her poem “The White Cat” stems from someone else's poem, “The Brown Dog” type thing. She said it was cheating and she couldn't carry on.

I have attempted the paraphrasing thing and it's really tricky. Much harder than thinking up poems from scratch actually. Imagine finding a poem, searching through the thesaurus, while drunk, translating and scribbling it all down. She deserves the Nobel Prize for poems.

Violin, I hate your sound,

Scritchy and nervous and sad.

You remind me of a pigeon

(Dusty and old and bad.)

I only like your shape and that,

Compared with a piano,

You're simple to cart about,

And easier to throw.

See. I just wrote that straight off (1 minute).

Love, Nina

*  *  *

Dear Vic,

Rang Swiss Cottage about swim times. Told S&W and friend the options.

Me: (
to Will and friend
) Do you want a normal swim or a life-saving class?

Will: (
after some discussion
) Normal swim.

Me: Not the lifesaving class for under-13s?

Will: No, normal swim.

Me: Wouldn't you like to do lifesaving?

Will: Not at Swiss Cottage.

Me: Where, then?

Will: Well, I wouldn't mind saving someone's life in a real life scenario.

Me: You wouldn't know what to do unless you'd had the lesson.

Will: I would, I'd chuck my scarf at them.

Sam: Yeah, but what if they weren't an Arsenal supporter?

Will: I'd still do my best.

Sam: You're supposed to form a human chain.

Will: That's in a fire.

Sam: No, in a fire you bob down.

Went Swimming. Got home.

MK: How was the swim?

Sam: It was OK.

Will: Great.

Me: Great.

Sam: Except I'm never going to trust her again.

MK: Why?

Sam: She pushed me in.

MK: (
a bit shocked
) You pushed him in?

Me: I had to.

MK: Why?

Me: He didn't want to go in.

MK: Surely that's a reason
not
to push someone in?

Will: Unless it's Sam.

Sam: Anyway, I'll never trust her again.

Will: I haven't trusted her since 1981.

Sam: You didn't meet her till 1982.

Will: Well, there you are.

MK: (
to Sam
) So did you have a nice swim once she'd pushed you in?

Sam: It was OK, but my trust is lost.

Love, Nina

*  *  *

Dear Vic,

Saw some graffiti today—“Be Cool, But Care.” Pointed it out to S&W. I started to explain what the author was trying to say but S&W said they knew straightaway what the author was trying to say.

Will: We know what he's saying.

Me: It might have been a
she.

Sam: Was it you?

They looked out for more graffiti, hoping to see some sweary stuff, but only found “Elliot Gould is a sissy.”

Sam told us of some “really bad stuff” near Anna Sher. He couldn't remember how it went, only that Chris Lahr told him it included the “three worst words in the English language.” We considered driving over that way to see it, but we thought it might have been washed off since Tuesday, with it being so rude and near Anna Sher.

Will: Why do people do graffiti?

Me: To express their views.

Will: But no one knows it's your views.

Me: That's one of its benefits.

Will: Oh yeah, you can write anything.

Me: Sort of, but it is illegal.

Will: Wicked.

Will was writing about Henry the Eighth for school homework and wrote Anne Boleyn as “Amber Lynn.”

Will keen to go to judo club on Albany Street. I think he wants to go because his friend does it. Trying to put him off. Nunney thinks it'll be good (to go). MK says it's up to Will.

Love, Nina

PS Will loves it when people say “Cheerio,” not that he likes it when people leave, just that he likes the word.

*  *  *

Hi, Vic,

Parked in the Tomalins' disabled spot (very briefly). Found bossy note under the windscreen wiper (from Nunney). I thought the note might be a “Want to go to the movies?” note, so I was annoyed when it was a telling off for parking in their spot.

Next day, I put a photograph of Nunney on the toilet under Claire Tomalin's windscreen wiper. Nunney is cross about it and has refused to tell me what happened, i.e. did Claire find it? Or did he see it there and manage to remove it?

Me: What happened?

Nunney: I'm not indulging you.

Me: Did Claire find it?

Nunney: Can you just not do stuff like that?

Me: It's funny.

Nunney: It's not.

This is the problem. To me, it is funny. The bawdy nurse in
R&J
isn't funny, the Wife of Bath isn't particularly funny, but a photograph of Nunney on the toilet is. Especially when it's on the windscreen of the Volvo of the Literary Editor of the
Sunday Times.

Preparing for interview at North London Poly. Can't have a training session with Nunney because of our row over the photograph of him on the toilet. I don't feel like apologizing. So had preparation session with Mary-Kay.

Me: I'll have to pretend to admire Shakespeare and like Hardy.

MK: Just be yourself—but don't wear that green thing.

Me: I don't want to blow it by looking like a philistine.

MK: Just talk about the plays you've read—a bit.

Me: OK. I just hope they don't ask me about Queen Mab or the bawdy nurse.

MK: The rule is: prepare for it and it won't happen.

Which is what happened. I was all ready to talk about Queen Mab and the bawdy nurse etc. but the only thing the bloke asked me (about the syllabus) was: “How does Hardy make you feel?”

I was tempted to say annoyed and bored, but said INSIGNIFICANT. I think it went down very well. We'll see.

Will liked the judo. Wanted to show us some of the moves after supper. Got Sam in a headlock and sort of flipped him. Sam did a bit of wee.

Love, Nina

*  *  *

Dear Vic,

Pippa came round with a
different
dog. The previous dog (Charles the King Charles Spaniel) has gone back to Somerset. Now she's dogsitting a retired greyhound (for two weeks). He's called Ted Hughes (Ted for short) because he looks like Ted Hughes—which he does (a bit).

I'm not sure Pippa likes Ted Hughes as much as she liked Charles. Ted Hughes not having the same freedom rights as Charles and being retired.

S&W didn't take to Ted Hughes. Sam said he was “even worse than other dogs” and Will said he was weird, but admitted he was tall. Pippa was just pleased we were all talking endlessly about Ted Hughes (the dog) and kept prolonging it with more snippets about Ted's amazing life. Ted Hughes is fifty-six in dog years and apparently has a chronic dry cough from all the years of dog racing and not having enough water available to him. His throat is so chronically dry, he can't even bark.

I switched the subject and began telling S&W about Maxwell and all his achievements.

Me: Maxwell used to turn the tap on with his hoof.

Sam: You've told us that before.

Will: Shame Ted couldn't have turned the tap on with his paw.

Pippa: (
irritable
) Ted Hughes was a racing dog and didn't have time to go round turning taps on.

Later at supper AB was asking about Pippa.

AB: Who's the woman with the dog?

Me: It's this friend of mine, Pippa. She used to be a nanny until there was a falling out.

AB: She's very nice hair.

Me: She gets it done.

AB: Lovely color.

Me: It's dyed.

AB: Dare I mention the dog?

Sam: It's called Ted Heath.

AB: Oh dear.

Me: Ted
Hughes,
not Heath.

AB: Well, that's better.

Nunney reckons the Wife of Bath is a dog lover (significantly). I must've missed that.

Hope all's well.

Love, Nina