Slipstream (9 page)

My piano teacher, Miss Luker, either because she thought my playing had improved or possibly because her patience was becoming exhausted, took me to play to Harold Craxton, a professor at the
Royal Academy of Music. He was a first-class musician, and one of the best teachers in the country, and for this she has my lasting gratitude for I became his pupil.

Mr Craxton taught me for half an hour a week, and during that time he gave me his unremitting and acute attention, endless patience, and the deep confidence that he really
loved what he was doing. He taught me something about how to learn; how to take the trouble and go on taking it; and above all, how to listen to what I was doing. Although I never emerged as a
serious pianist, his lessons have been useful to me in learning to write.

This was how one of his sons, John, came to join us at lessons with Miss Cobham. John was going to be, and became, a painter. He had my unspoken respect for having been to eight schools and
having been expelled from the last one for biting Matron. According to him, she had scraped his chicken-pox spots with a knife. Miss Cobham managed all of us with ease, and in spite of being
deluged with plays, drawings and all kinds of writing, she contrived to slip in some history (dates), geography (exports), arithmetic (we didn’t get beyond fractions), plus a smattering of
Latin and Greek – all this between the streams of poetry we all liked to read or learn by heart, and the flood of our own contributions.

The Craxtons’ home, Acombe Lodge, was a most exciting discovery. It was a large, semi-detached house in St John’s Wood adjacent to Lord’s cricket ground, the sort of house that
had rooms opening out from one another, often rather dark in spite of the french windows in most of the ground-floor rooms. The only part of it that seemed consistently furnished was Harold’s
studio at the
back, which had two concert grand pianos, shelves for music and busts of composers. A large jar contained something like pampas grass. There was a feeling of
professional order about it – quite unlike the rest of the house, which was entrenched in disarray.

Harold and Essie had had six children – five boys and eventually the girl they wanted. The struggle to feed and educate them must have been immense: Harold worked very long hours, and
Essie had the whole house to manage with little, if any, help. As well as their own children they frequently took in talented and impoverished students. The rooms were furnished with the barest
essentials – gaunt beds, upright pianos, weatherbeaten armchairs, and thin spiritless strips of carpet. On the landings were chamber-pots in which the innumerable socks soaked before Essie
eventually washed them. In the kitchen and the passage outside it stood trolleys on which lay unconsumed remnants of past meals: a piece of apple and blackberry pie, some junket, half a
shepherd’s pie, and snacks so debilitated by time that they were unrecognizable. Meals weren’t regular, indeed nothing except the music lessons adhered to anything so dull as a
timetable. I don’t think Essie ever knew how many people there would be for lunch or supper: she simply toiled incessantly to feed and look after anyone who came to the house.

It was a revelation to me, who had until then experienced nothing but a bourgeois state of punctuality and hygiene, and I fell at once irrevocably in love with the house and its family. They
seemed to embody all the glamour of Bohemian disorder, and I longed to live as they did. To begin with, my visits were confined to my weekly lessons, but after John joined Miss Cobham’s
class, I used to go there to see him. He had a small room on the first floor at the studio end of the house, which was usually dark and adorned with all kinds of objects he had picked up in
markets. I remember a small table covered with a piece of orange velvet as a kind of altar cloth for the most beautiful ivory Buddha, who sat on it, holy and valuable. When I asked where he had got
the Buddha from, he told
me that some people in Richmond had said he could have it if he promised to
carry
it home. It was, among much else, extremely heavy, and I was
duly impressed. John had a very sharp eye. He found a Reynolds and a Blake in junk shops. He used to take me early in the morning to the Caledonian market where we bought Elizabethan manuscripts,
Turkish knives and slippers, pieces of Chinese embroidery, incense and second-hand books with our pocket money.

One Christmas, the Craxton family put on a production of
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
. John did all the scenery, which was enchanting and remained in the dining room for weeks; the
household revolved round the play. John and I spent those weeks dressed in turbans, long silk robes, pointed slippers and elaborate beards that involved a good deal of spirit gum. We only divested
ourselves of these for concerts as both sets of parents drew the line at taking malignant, turbaned Turks to the Queen’s Hall. Whenever I turned up Essie was welcoming and behaved as though
she expected me. I was pressed to stay for meals – simply adding to her vast extended family, that included various pupils of Harold’s: Denis Matthews, Noel Mewton-Wood, Ross Pratt and
Nina Milkina.

I have said Essie toiled to feed and house this motley crew, but although this must have been true, she never gave the impression that she was either overworked or put-upon. When younger, she
must have been a staggering beauty: she had wonderful eyes – very large and round and blue – a milk-and-roses complexion, dark wavy hair and a wide, friendly mouth. She also had one of
the most open, affectionate and accepting natures I have ever known. She thought ill of nobody and treated anyone who came her way with serene equality. She’d been a promising musician when
she met Harold, but love and marriage, lack of money and, as she once told my mother, any knowledge of birth control had put paid to her career. I don’t think she minded: she adored Harold,
who in turn loved her deeply. They were
happy
and, like
pollen, some of this rubbed off on anyone who came in contact with them.

Harold was an excellent all-round musician. At one time, he had been one of the best accompanists, and had played with such distinguished musicians as Jacques Thibaud, Joseph Szigeti and Pablo
Casals; he also edited Beethoven’s piano sonatas with Donald Tovey. In appearance he bore a marked resemblance to Holbein’s drawings of Erasmus: intelligence, wit and a certain
fastidiousness were apparent at first glance. He was the first person I knew who
entertained
with a piano: one of his party turns was improvising and parodying any composer to the theme of
‘Three Blind Mice’. He also had an endless fund of musical stories.

When I first came to know the family, they had an ancient car in a Heath Robinson state of amateur repair with an ingenious method for tying the front door shut with a piece of string. Much
later, they acquired an extremely old Rolls Royce and Harold said people might infer that he had gone up in the world, but it was the Rolls that had come down.

It’s odd how selective memory constricts past experience. I have thought, for years, that this part of my childhood was fairly isolated, relationships confined to Carol,
Penelope and John – and cousins. However, I did have several meaningful relationships, with both children and adults. Christabel Russell came to dinner parties at home around this time. She
was the personification of glamour – always beautifully dressed, with a perfect figure and hair immaculately set in the little flat ram’s horn curls that were the fashion then. She
spoke with a 1930s drawl, and her face was in keeping. She wasn’t beautiful, but each feature was groomed to maximum effect: eyebrows plucked to perfect arches, dark blue mascara and eye
shadow, and scarlet lips set in a smooth powdered expanse. She looked and spoke like a Noël Coward heroine, but there was far more to her than that. She was unlike anyone I’d ever met
before. She treated me not as a child but as an equal; she wanted to know
what I thought and listened when I told her. When I noticed that she accorded animals the same charming
consideration I was even more attracted to her. On top of that, she was very funny. Her attitude to everything wasn’t quite like anyone else’s, and infinitely more interesting. Very
gladly did I join the ranks of people who would do – and were often persuaded to do – anything for her.

Shortly after I first knew her she became Lady Ampthill, and by then I’d heard her story. Her divorce had been a
cause célèbre
as her husband’s family was
challenging her son’s paternity. Her husband, who had brought the case against her, claimed that the child couldn’t be his as she’d never allowed the marriage to be consummated.
She, while accepting this, insisted that she’d never had sexual relations with another man. These salient matters of fact were unknown to me at the time – I knew nothing about sex and
was without any curiosity. I was simply told that Chris had won her case, which had gone to the House of Lords. That this had made her the most notorious woman in London didn’t impinge; she
was simply one of my parents’ most fascinating friends who became, over the years, almost a surrogate mother to me – often having me to stay when my parents were away. When I was
fourteen she told me I should not frown or wrinkle my forehead, ‘or you will have deep and completely unnecessary lines’. I looked at her glamorous, smooth face: her large grey eyes,
fringed with midnight blue mascara, that looked back at me with a penetrating intelligence that belied the drawl and makeup.

She was a brilliant horsewoman – the Master of a hunt in her seventies. I remember her telling me that every time I pulled on the reins I was hardening my pony’s mouth. ‘Talk
to your horse, and use your knees,’ she said. Her appearance conformed to the fashion and good grooming of her time, but inside that was a formidable free spirit; she was utterly without
fear, didn’t give a damn about what anyone thought of her, remained herself in all circumstances and with everyone. She enjoyed herself and everybody enjoyed being with her – a real and
unusual life-enhancer.
I never remember her to be without suitors, admirers, but her life with them remained a mystery.

There was a Somervell cousin of my mother’s called Leonard of whom she was very fond. He married – late in life – an old friend of the family and I remember thinking sadly that
there went my last chance of ever being a bridesmaid.

From about eleven to fourteen I led a quiet, contented life: lessons in London, with Carol, Penelope and John as friends. My worst deprivation was not being allowed to keep
animals: no pony, no dog, no cat was the rule. I responded to this by digging up fifty-six earthworms, which I kept in a large orange box filled with carefully selected soil. There wasn’t
anything to be done with these creatures beyond digging them up every now and then to count them and the practice soon palled. I graduated to goldfish, and a catfish that bullied them; but these,
too, were unsatisfactory pets, taking absolutely no notice of me except when I fed them. There was a shop in Notting Hill Gate that contained a delectable display of domestic pets, and I persuaded
my mother that a tortoise would cause no trouble and bought one for a shilling. I called him Peter and got him to feed on a mixture of chopped-up dandelions and plum cake – apart from his
usual boring lettuce. He did seem to know me in a grudging sort of way, and would extend his scaly head to be scratched and eat from my hand. But he was silent except for the tiny pneumatic hiss he
gave when he withdrew his head from some startlement. Then came budgerigars – green ones (the cheapest) and my pocket money had to be saved not only for the birds but the cage in which they
were to live. For a short while I managed to keep a white mouse, but he never liked me and I couldn’t like him enough. He smelt of damp breadcrumbs and had a weary, furtive air that
didn’t promote intimacy. Carol – lucky creature – had Vernon, but try as I might, my parents wouldn’t let me have a dog.

In the country, I somehow obtained a pair of white rabbits: one
could at least stroke their sumptuous white fur and admire their ruby eyes, but most of my time with them was
spent cleaning out their hutch. The next holiday I went to Sussex to find thirteen rabbits in the hutch. There were clearly too many of them, but it was surprising how many people didn’t want
a single white rabbit. ‘It would be nice for you in your office,’ I said to my father, but he smiled uneasily and said, not really. None of the cousins seemed interested. ‘If
there was a flower show or something, people could win them.’ The gardener said that meant people would have to buy tickets and he would rather have a pig. When I returned in the Christmas
holidays there were no rabbits. ‘Your grandfather had them put down,’ someone said. I displayed a token amount of grief, but actually I was relieved.

There was a pony at the Beacon, procured by my grandfather for all of the cousins to ride. He was called Joey and was a very small bay of about twelve hands. He had the disposition of a wicked
old man: he bit, he kicked and he threw all of us, and I felt sure he delighted in the numbers of us that he could terrify or discomfort. Nobody could stay on him except the groom’s son, a
hard-bitten little boy, who at ten already looked like a jockey. Joey was sold, and Peggy took his place. She was also a bay – of Dartmoor extraction, pretty and fairly good-tempered. Her
companion in the field was an ex-police horse called Angela and they were most devoted. In London, before breakfast, I rode a horse hired from a livery stable. The Row was at its best then,
uncrowded but for the early morning regulars.

I used occasionally to ride with a distant cousin, who mostly lived in Westmorland. Ann Somervell was far older than me – eighteen or thereabouts – a tall, gaunt, pale girl whose
passion was flat racing. We talked about horses a bit, but were otherwise silent. One morning, when we’d dismounted and parted, I to catch my bus back to Holland Park and she in the opposite
direction, I had a sudden fear that something awful was going to happen to her, and began to run in the direction I thought she’d taken, but I missed
her. A week later, I
was told that she’d been killed in a race. For some time afterwards I was haunted by the idea that if I’d succeeded in finding her that morning, she wouldn’t have been killed.