Dear Lupin... (16 page)

Hideous weather and the dogs prefer peeing indoors. I hear you have got some spots. Our family is addicted to rashes – Nidnod came out with one the day before she was married – and I think it is because we are all highly strung. Headaches are another family weakness and in 1935 I had one after a migraine that lasted for a year before suddenly disappearing when I backed a good winner at Ascot. I had another apparently permanent headache after the war and went to see Dr Desmond Curran, the top neurologist who thought I had a brain tumour or was mad. He told me some good stories about criminals he had examined. Perhaps we are not a very healthy family: the only time I have felt really well was at school and in prison. On the other hand my father was never ill between the time he left Marlborough and his death at the age of seventy-eight. Nidnod is cooking very badly and dishes up some really terrifying mush!

My sincere good wishes for a speedy recovery,

RM

I end up in hospital with a hideous rash
.

20 February

Glad to see you looking reasonably healthy. Don't work too hard: most tycoons have their first heart attack before they are forty! More snow last night.

I have no sympathy for those rich twits who forked out money to a con man who offered to get rid of Satan. I see an ex-Eton Master (now at Radley) has been found dead in weird circumstances. Thank you very much for the lunch.

RM

Feeling better, I buy an old Mercedes, drive down to Kintbury and take the old folks out for lunch
.

30 March

Are you still ‘in property' or are you an antiquarian book-seller? If the former please note that the McCalls are flogging their Windlesham house and want to buy one in London in the good old SW area.

4 bedrooms, small garden, convenient car-parking.

Price £310,000. Can you help?

D

P.T.O.

Nidnod has smashed up my car: it will cost hundreds to repair!

I am having another rapid career change
.

The Miller's House

16 July

Dear Lupin,

It was very nice seeing you and I hope you will come down again soon, not necessarily in a bread van. I trust your partner has recovered from diarrhoea as apart from the sordid discomfort it is not an easy word to spell. Have you sold any pants yet? With those samples carried in a bag, you look a proper commercial traveller (sales representative?). Aunt Joan has been told by Cousin John that she is very well-off indeed for a single woman and he is making her spend £10,000 on flat improvements, including decent heating. I have no idea who her heir is! I wrote to Cazenoves last week asking to be told the state of my marriage settlement. I was mildly surprised when a Mr Pascoe wrote back and said the settlement did not exist, having been wound up some years ago! This shook me somewhat but I was convinced Pascoe was talking balls. I rang up Cousin John who contacted Cazenoves and found someone had bogged it. In fact, the settlement now stands at £160,000 and I don't wish it to disappear although it may be a trifling amount judged by Cazenoves' standards. I have written to Pascoe suggesting some digital extraction on his part! Sarah Bomer came to lunch in v. good form. William has passed his law exams.

Your affectionate father,

RM

P.S. I hear Jane has given up her proposed trip to France. Two people killed at Greenham last night.

A Greek friend and I start a company manufacturing boxer shorts in Asia. We call it Raffateer Boxer Shorts: ‘Are the boxer shorts in your life as exciting as the life in your boxer shorts?'

The Miller's House

18 November

My Dear Lupin,

Nidnod has just gone off to the opening meet of the Old Berks so I am having a quiet morning at my desk trying to deal with communications from my stockbroker and my accountant. No good news ever comes in a buff envelope.

J. Atkinson Grimshaw is one of my favourite artists. He is having an exhibition in Dover Street. If you have time, look in and see if there is anything I could invest in (£2,000). I might just as well have a picture as keep the money tucked away in a provincial building society.

Nidnod has a sore toe which makes her crusty. Her old boyfriend Rodney Carrott came to lunch yesterday. Tomorrow we go to the B-Atkins' beano.

Yours ever,

RM

I am in full agreement here. No good news comes in a manila envelope
.

Monday

Dear Lupin,

We lunched with the de Mauleys yesterday. I sat next to a plainish lady who works for the Evening Standard and used to share an office with Bristow. She likes him but he is a hopeless alcoholic.

Jane's elderly boyfriend has been poorly (ulcer). I hope he's not cracking up already. The Carews were here for the weekend. Benjamin was not on his best behaviour. Louise likes her German G.P.

Gordon Richards was no womanizer and after losing his virginity rather late in life he summed up the situation as follows: ‘If that's cunt, I don't much like it.' Desmond Parkinson is back in hospital with a haemorrhage after a painful nose operation.

Dad always seems to have a bottomless pit of mildly inappropriate stories concerning characters from the world of horse-racing
.

5 April

My Dear Lupin,

Congratulations on reaching the age of thirty-six. You have now got to contend with receding hairlines, deteriorating eyesight, diminishing ability to attract the opposite sex and a stomach that causes your tailor to make sarcastic comments. I have sent you a small present but it may not reach you and you have yet to favour me with your current address. We have had a quiet Easter here. Francis Reed out-talked your mother but made up for it by giving us all lunch at Great Shefford, mowing the lawn and mending the Hoover. The lunch was only slightly tarnished by having a table of overweight lesbians about eighteen inches away. One looked like a grossly inflated toad; another reminded me of a female all-in wrestler I saw battling away in a huge bowl of fish in 1928. We had a lunch party at home which went off reasonably well and a drinks party where some of the guests showed signs of wishing to camp down for the night. Drinks with the Parkinsons: Johnny, released from a Buddhist monastery, is now looking after the Dalai Lama! I do have some weird godchildren.

D

Another birthday and Dad weighs in with all the negatives he can muster. If I am asked my occupation, I simply respond that I'm a middle-aged, middle-class spiv
.

10 February

Dear Lupin,

Nidnod seems v. pleased with her sporty new car. A statement to my insurance company by a ‘neutral' party came down firmly on the other side. I always thought this would happen but did not dare say so! I wonder what Nidnod will say!

D

My dear mother tends to navigate the roads with the same gusto and competitiveness that she deploys on the hunting field
.

10 March

Dear Lupin,

I suggest you contact Cousin John and go and look at the Blackwell property, Copse Farm near Hatch End, Middlesex. If planning permission could be obtained, it would be worth £40,000,000; without it, only £500,000.

My Dear old grandfather Thomas Blackwell, an old-fashioned liberal and wholesale grocer, owned a lot of land round there. He gave away land for Grimsdyke Golf Club, Oxhey Golf Club, Stanmore Golf Club and I think Sandy Lodge Golf Club! He also gave the land for the Commercial Travellers School and gave to the school a mass of Victorian paintings now worth millions.

Yours ever,

RM

Dad proffers a bit of family history from the Branston Pickle and Baked Bean side of the family
.

20 April

Dear Lupin,

Many thanks for the card. Colonel Burnaby, a relation of Freddy's, commanded the Blues and was a remarkable character. He was a famous traveller in the Middle East, fought in various wars and was eventually speared by a fuzzy-wuzzy in the Sudan. He was immensely strong and was liable to enter a room with a pony under each arm! There was quite a good book about him by a man I knew called Alexander.

Our trip to Devon was a failure. We both had 'flu-colds and were very crotchety and got on each other's nerves. I was rude and ill-tempered, while Nidnod would discuss stag-hunting with a bucolic waitress. Nidnod tried to get into conversation with a grumpy old man in a pub. He thought she was trying to pick him up and turned his back on her and walked out!

Otto behaved badly and ensured insomnia. I had a tiresome visit to the Royal Berks: that Iraqi Dr is useless. Poor Hot Hand Henry has lost his job and of course there are tears and grief down in Devonshire.

Richard McLaren was mugged in London and got his nose broken.

Icy cold here: by and large everything very depressing. Old age is vile and if I could afford it, which I can't, I'd go into a home and await the arrival of good old Mons.

Lunch with Caroline Blackwell (now Wells) tomorrow. Cousin John rang up about a funeral but could not remember whose it was.

Your affec. father,

D

Life goes on Chez Mortimer and on holiday in Devon. Dad's health is in decline
.

The Miller's House

18 October

Dear Lupin,

Thank you so much for your help over the picture. I think the price was a fair one. When Christie's pay me, I will send you a small memento of the occasion.

I had a letter yesterday from Mr Grange of Dreweatt-Neate who did (free) a valuation of this house. His estimate was £375–£400,000. This means that Nidnod will have quite a valuable little property when I kick the bucket. Keith has an appalling cold and is unable to work in the garden.

Yours ever,

D

Few things give more pleasure to my father than whipping a painting off the wall, generally without my mother's knowledge or consent, and then flogging it for a tidy sum
.

The Miller's House

20 February

Dear Lupin,

Thank you so much for driving the Miller's House wrinklies up to London. Greatly appreciated. It was a fine service and Nidnod was clearly much moved. At lunch at the Turf Club I sat next to a man called Lambton who mentally is about 13/6d in the £. I wonder if he is related to Lucinda Lambton who does those bizarre programmes on TV. I don't much like Louise's dog. I think he may prove to be fierce.

Yours ever

RM

Lunches and family celebrations at the Turf Club were a constant for as long as I can remember. Grace, the legendary hall porter, once (with a wry look of amusement) gave my mother a leg up into the tractor unit of an articulated lorry I was driving. On another occasion I found my mother outside in animated discussion with a traffic warden explaining the reason why the parking ticket he had just issued should be voided: ‘But, my dear man, I was once engaged to the Minister of Transport.'

25 October

Dear Lupin,

Thank you so much for your help over the picture. I enclose a small token of gratitude from Nidnod and myself.

David Reid-Scott and his new wife lunched here on Sunday. She is very attractive and intelligent as well.

Jane is very touchy over her sons. She did not like something I said and exploded, using language barely permissible in the Corporals' Mess and not exactly suitable in respect of her father. If she does not watch it, these boys will grow up a couple of softies churning out inferior poetry. Frankly I'd prefer them to get their House Colours.

I hope that you are enjoying Ealing. Perhaps one day you'll defend Nidnod on a speeding charge – I'm not well-versed in the law. Just after the war I was President of several Court Martials. There was mild trouble when I let a man off because his Commanding Officer was obviously a château-bottled shit.

Yours,

RFM

P.S. While on this subject, just after the war there was a corporal under my command at Wellington Barracks who undoubtedly murdered a homo artist in the Cromwell Road by bashing his head with an army boot. Proof, though, was unobtainable.

Aldershot was a great place for murders as people with bizarre tastes used to come down from London and pick up soldiers who frequently beat them up and robbed them.

There was a boy called Peel at Eton with me who went off his onion later and sawed the head off his ever-loving wife. He was very odd when the moon was full. I subsequently met him at Broadmoor where apparently he could be terrifying when he had one of his little moods. The only woman I recollect at Broadmoor was an ancient dame who years previously had distributed poisoned sweets to children at Brighton.

The nastiest man I ever met was a huge, hideous, immensely powerful Gestapo man who was confined before trial at Kensington Palace Gardens, where we supplied the guard. It gave me chills just to look at him.

Kensington P.G. was not very secure so he was removed to a compound at Kempton Park alleged to be escape-proof. He got out within twenty-four hours but was luckily recaptured – he was seen by the steward from the local golf-club and eventually hanged. He had murdered several of the RAF officers who escaped from the camp at Sagan.

Woe betide anyone who even mildly criticizes my sister's sons. To be fair, my dear mother is equally protective. As my dad would point out in exasperation when, yet again, my mother rushed to my defence in the face of the indefensible, ‘A boy's best friend is his mother.' I have returned to school aged, thirty-eight, to study law
.

Dear Lupin,

So sorry you're having a rotten time and I sympathise: I know a lot about ill-health. Your mother loathes Dr Yates which is embarrassing for me as I rather like him, although I do not hold a lofty opinion of his medical skill. Still, one does not expect much from rural GPs except something from the 1897 Edition of Blacks Medical Dictionary.

GPs like the Yateley pair are very rare indeed. Some of our London ones were pretty bizarre. Can I help you over £.s.d? To help you in Criminal Law read books about great criminal lawyers like Marshall Hall, Carson, Patrick Hastings, Norman Birkett.