All in One Basket Read online

  Uncle Harold’s good manners were often tested when he stayed with us. I am not good at place à table, and one night I saw he was sitting at dinner between my son and his friend, both in their first year at Eton. There was the usual political crisis on and the PM was preoccupied with his own thoughts, while the boys anxiously cast round for a suitable subject of conversation. After a long silence I heard Sto say, ‘Uncle Harold, Old Moore’s Almanack says you’ll fall in October.’ To his eternal credit, after a suitable pause, he answered, ‘Yes, I should think that’s about right.’

  It is strange to see your family enacted on television from an old book about them, written half a century ago. I suppose the royal family and politicians such as Bush and Mandy,3 whose ancestors played a part in public life, do so continually. But for ordinary folk it is indeed an odd experience. It was also odd to read the reviews. Mr Paul Hoggart in The Times made me sad. I don’t know what wing he favours politically, but his dismal summing-up of what was meant to be high comedy reminded me for all the world of my sister Decca’s Communist friends of years gone by. They were incapable of enjoying themselves, had never really laughed at or about anything in their lives, and to be in their company for long was a lowering experience. Decca saw jokes better than anyone – it was her far Left friends’ determination to see the downside of everything that was reminiscent of Mr Hoggart’s summing up of the first episode of Love in a Cold Climate. He disapproves in a governessy way of the idea of my father hunting my sisters with his bloodhounds for fun. What else would he have done it for? (Alas, I was considered too young to be hunted and, by the time I was of huntable age, the bloodhounds had gone.) I know that some misguided people, for reasons best known to themselves, are against hunting foxes, but surely children are fair game? He complains, too, about a mother’s reaction to the hideous appearance of her newborn baby. I wonder if, in his sheltered life, the reviewer has ever seen a newborn baby. Referring to Nancy, he goes on to say that ‘she presents her cast as freaks’. Another reviewer states we were the ‘lunatic fringe’. Oh dear, freaks and lunatics. Well, never mind. My sister Nancy’s letters have been published,4 or some of them I should say, as we have got thousands here. They are kept in cardboard boxes with holes for them to breathe through. Whenever I pass by a pile of these boxes, containing papers of every description accumulated since the 1950s, I always hope they are a consignment of day-old chicks, which used to travel by train in the guard’s van in just such boxes. They provide what Americans call Optimum Archival Conditions. I don’t know about their conditions, but Nancy’s are certainly of Optimum Archival Amusement. She had neat handwriting and the talent of filling the last page exactly, so ‘love from’ is always at the bottom: difficult to achieve if the letter is to make sense – and hers do. I am not the only one to think she was the supreme entertainer, both in real life (she and my father together were better than any turn on the stage) and on paper. Her letters are just as funny as her books. What would psychiatrists make of her teases? She called me Nine because she said that was my mental age. About right, I expect, but disconcerting when she introduced me to her smart French friends as ‘my little sister aged nine’ long after I was married.

  The correspondence between Nancy and Evelyn Waugh has been ably read on the wireless by Timothy West and Prunella Scales, and listening, I was reminded of Evelyn’s generosity when he was in Paris just after the liberation. (Why was he there? Perhaps he was a liberator; I can’t remember.) He bought me a hat which he tried on himself in the shop to make sure. He didn’t tell me what the vendeuse thought about that, but French people are keen when it comes to business and a sale is a sale whatever for or why, so no doubt she was delighted and probably thought all English soldiers wore women’s hats when off duty. It was made of white felt with a blue straw brim on which perched two small white stuffed birds. Luckily the Animal Rights people were still in utero or Evelyn would have been lynched for buying it and I for wearing it. Sadly it has gone the way of old hats. Fifty years on it might be revered as a bit of heritage or a historic document, like a Dinky toy or a 1945 bus ticket. Who knows, it could even have found a home in the V & A with the rest of their jumble.

  Nancy’s letters often describe clothes. When Dior invented the New Look in 1947, my mother-in-law, ‘Moucher’ Devonshire and her friend, the Duchess of Rutland, who were in Paris for a less frivolous reason, wanted to see the collection. They arrived at Avenue Montaigne in their tweed overcoats, which had done years of war service, and ditto shoes. They weren’t allowed in. Of humble nature, the two duchesses were disappointed, but not at all surprised. They sat on a bench eating their sandwiches to pass the time till they could decently return to the embassy where they were staying.

  Diana Cooper has died. I admired her beauty and her guts. I was never an intimate friend of hers but we had many mutual friends, among them Evelyn Waugh and Antony Head. Both were tickled, for some reasons best known to themselves, because I call my sister Diana ‘Honks’. As Cooper was also Diana they started calling her ‘Honks’ too. So the archivists who busy themselves with other people’s letters have slipped up several times already and think Evelyn was referring to Diana Mosley (my sister) when it was another old beauty he was on about. Not that it matters much except it would be hard to find two more different people.

  I have reached the stage in life when I wake up earlier and earlier in the mornings. The wait till breakfast time has forced me to put a kettle and toaster in my room, so I can help myself to their merciful productions whenever I like. I advise all early wakers who have fallen for this plan to buy a clock with a minute and second hand of immediately recognisable lengths, or you may have my disappointing experience of last week. Waking at 6 a.m., I made and ate my breakfast, only to discover that the clock’s similar-looking hands had played a trick on me, and it was in fact only 12.30 a.m. Too early even for me, but too late to pretend I hadn’t had breakfast.

  A beautiful new television has been installed. Well, not beautiful, but a big dark object which is dead when turned off and spends a lot of time describing death when turned on.

  But it isn’t the programmes I’m complaining about, it is the difficulty of making it work. The last one was so nice and simple, you just pushed a sort of matchbox-shaped bit to turn it on and then 1, 2, 3 according to your whim.

  It never failed to do as it was told. Now I have had to engage a tutor to coach me in Television A-levels. I have failed the exam.

  There are so many tiny rubbery squares to press on two (why two?) hand-held, nameless objects that unless you have got long pointed nails (which I have not) and are dead accurate in your aim, you end up with a picture of a rowdy midnight hail storm instead of racing at Kempton Park or Jon Snow setting about his victim.

  My tutor tells me to pay attention and explains that only four little bits of rubber need be pressed, two on each of the objects, which I clutch in both hands like castanets.

  With this vital information ringing in my ears, I go to Bakewell and buy a lot of sticking plasters to cover the unwanted buttons. By this time I’ve forgotten which the right ones are and my tutor has gone home.

  I shall never know what the other forty are for, and I wish to goodness that the manufacturer would resist putting them there in the first place. Oh, for a telly of yesteryear, just On/Off and Channels 1, 2, 3 and 4.

  I buy most of my clothes at agricultural shows, and good stout things they are. Much better than the strange-looking garments in desperate colours at £1,000 each in the Knightsbridge shops. In the unlikely event of falling for one of those, you will find that all the buttons come off the first time you wear it, which is disappointing. After agricultural shows, Marks & Spencer is the place to go shopping, and then Paris. Nothing in between seems to be much good. I have learnt to pluck up the courage to go through the doors of the grand shops in Paris. They look at you as if you were something the dog brought home, but once inside the magic of French talent with clothes takes over and happiness sets in,
until the agonising decision has to be made about what not to buy when you long for everything. At four score years plus, properly made clothes should last to the end – or that is my excuse. So forgotten French works of art come out of the back of the cupboard (mixed with Barbours and Derri Boots), still beautiful and always comfortable, which is my idea of what clothes ought to be.

  We all know about old women being knocked down and having their bags snatched. It has become so ordinary that the newspapers no longer mention it unless the snatchee is famous and badly hurt, when there are a few lines at the bottom of the home news page. In London it happens in places like Cadogan Square and South Audley Street where I suppose the bag-owners are thought by the snatchers to be rich. I wonder how the victims are chosen. The older the woman, the larger and heavier the bag, but I’m not sure it is always weighed down with diamond necklaces and ruby rings. The contents seem to be stones or coal – or that’s what it feels like if you offer to hold it while the owner rearranges her sticks. The snatcher may think he’s got a decent reward for his courage in bashing the old soul to the ground, but he must feel let down when he finds only huge bottles of medicines with unpronounceable names. I pity the thief when it’s my turn. My bag is positively septic inside, so if he’s got any sense he will wear one of those things that dustmen and dentists cover their noses with when delving into unpleasantness. He will find handfuls of tiresome credit cards sliding about in their meaningless way, heaps of copper coins which don’t even buy a newspaper, unanswered letters of top priority, combs in variety, scissors, rubber bands, stamps, an Old Age Pensioner’s railway card and biros without tops, which all help to make it filthy. If he gets my basket as well, he will rue the day he decided to go in for stealing. It is loaded with iron rations in case of getting stuck on the M1, rockhard bits of toast meant for the chickens, some Bonham’s catalogues, a book I never read but is another insurance against the mysterious habits of the motorway, the Jacob Sheep Society’s (very difficult) quiz in triplicate, plus the minutes of many a tedious meeting. He will be bitterly disappointed with his haul and I will be the reason for at least one thief who decides to go straight.

  While I am on about old women and the awful things that happen to us, there is the ever-present trap of talking to yourself in a loud voice without being aware of it. You are apt to address whatever you are doing, or just speak your thoughts while mechanically getting on with something different, like knitting or making marmalade. A dog can save the day when someone comes round the corner unexpectedly because it is easy to pretend you were saying something important to Bracken or Nobby. But there are occasions when you have no props and any attempt at explanation would be pointless and would land you deeper in the mire. Last summer I was walking along a stream in a remote part of our garden. It was at the time of the evening when the people who come to see round have usually long since gone home. There is a small, but deep, concrete section of the stream about two feet square, something to do with water from the hill draining into it, I suppose, as the rest of the stream has natural banks and is very shallow. I saw a frog under the water in the concreted bit, unable to get out of the sheer sides. Thinking it would drown I plunged my hand into the cold water and picked it out. I thought I’d done a good deed and would get a lifesaving medal from the Frog Preservation Society when, in the unpredictable way of its kind, it jumped back in. ‘Oh, you fool of a frog,’ I said very loud, ‘I’ve never seen such a stupid frog as you. You don’t deserve to be saved.’ I turned round and there were two complete strangers who stared at me, obviously thinking that I should not have been let out.

  We live in a National Park, and very pleasant it is too. Planning restrictions are, rightly, fairly rigid and the planners’ deliberations over relatively simple jobs like farm buildings are slow. This is as it should be and any small irritation is far outweighed by the benefits. Debate over the age-old local industry of quarrying is on at the moment. The winning of minerals from under the ground has gone on in these parts from time immemorial, from the lead mines of yesteryear to the valuable and versatile barytes, fluorspar and stone quarries of today. The grey and green landscape of the lonely limestone High Peak uplands is netted by drystone walls making tiny enclosures of crazy shapes. Every so often there are sudden deep clefts in the rocky soil which form the Derbyshire Dales, admired and enjoyed by all who know them. The scenery is more dramatic where the man-made cliffs of the huge quarries outdo the natural one and just as beautiful in its own stark way. The rules to do with reinstating worked-out quarries are strict, and nature sees to it that they soon begin to look like their natural rocky neighbours as the native flora spreads itself to clothe the stone faces. Quarrying is now described by the familiar single-issue brigade of protesters as ‘a threat to the National Park’. Last week a television documentary hired a comedian to tell us it ought to be stopped. He wasn’t at all funny and, anyway, it is a serious subject. He said, ‘Allowing more quarrying in the Peak Park is like grinding up York Minster for motorway hardcore.’ I wonder what material he thinks York Minster is built of and where it came from. No quarry, no Minster. He went on, ‘The Peak District is a far cry from the paradise envisaged by the people who set up the parks.’ I suppose he thinks that putting people out of work makes a paradise. Now schoolchildren are being indoctrinated against the industry. A friend of mine, who is a county councillor in another part of the country, received letters from a class of ten-year-olds with an identical message obviously dictated by their teacher. They complained of birds and bees being frightened away by work in a local quarry. My friend wrote back, ‘Are you driven to school along a road? Do you live in a house? Has it occurred to you that roads and houses are made of stone and that stone comes out of quarries?’ If the television comedian and the teacher have their way we shall soon be importing aggregate for roads and stone for building in spite of sitting on millions of tons of the stuff. Can you imagine anything madder?

  The complainers complain about everything. They don’t like foxhounds, crowing cockerels or quarrying, and now they say car-boot sales must be stopped. I suppose we are to be denied the chance of buying a Constable in a muddy field and taking it to the Antiques Roadshow so Henry Wyndham5 can tell us we have bought a fortune for £2. Oh dear. Long live banned work and play.

  Most people in this country must have whirled along roads and past fields enclosed by stone walls. Few stop to think how (or when) they were built or to consider the skill of the people who built them.

  This week the annual competition held by the Derbyshire branch of the Dry Stone Walling Association was held on a windy hill high up in the Peak District.

  I took the chairman of one of the most respected antique shops in London to see how the experts do it. Not surprisingly he had never seen such a thing before.

  ‘To be a good waller,’ the Master Craftsman told us, ‘you must have eyes and hands which act together: an eye for a stone of the right size and shape for its place and hands which feel the balance instinctively as soon as you pick it up. You can only teach so much, the rest is in you. You’ve either got it or you haven’t.’

  The construction of a wall is a building lesson in miniature, from the placing of the big foundation stones to the ‘battered’ – or tapered – sides and the coping stones laid along the top. There is no mortar or other binding agent to hold them together.

  They depend on the ‘throughs’, stones long enough to reach right through the wall holding the sides together and acting as ties to prevent bulging. As the sides are built up, small stones, or fillings, are packed in the middle to prevent them from collapsing inwards. A well-built wall stands for many years, containing the farmstock and providing shelter from gales, rain and snow for outwintered ewes and lambs.

  The membership of the DSWA is made up of full-time professional wallers and an increasing number of men and women who earn their living in totally different ways, from insurance broking to dentistry. These people go walling for the satisfaction of mastering an
other difficult skill in contrast to their usual work. ‘It is a wonderful relaxation. I get completely lost in it,’ a doctor said.

  Late in the afternoon we looked at the finished lengths of what seemed impeccable work to my amateur eye, apparently identical in excellence. The expert on eighteenth-century furniture studied the twentieth-century walling and made his own judgement. ‘First, second, third,’ he said to me, pointing to his choices. When the real judge added up the points and announced the winners his placings were in the same order.

  The point of this saga is that if your eye is experienced in recognising quality in one form of art it is often able to do so in another. And surely dry stone walling is an art.

  Two foods which are prime examples of the capricious ways of Mother Nature are wild mushrooms, which taste so different from the tame kind, and grouse, which don’t have a tame kind. They are both a conjuring trick – now you see them, now you don’t. You can’t make plans for them because they make their own rules. In one season, there can be plenty of grouse on one moor and pitifully few on another a few miles away, where the conditions in winter and spring – often blamed for a poor hatching and rearing time – have been identical. It is the same with mushrooms. We are told if fertiliser is put on a grass field, or if it is ploughed and re-seeded, there will be no mushrooms. Neither is true, but a mushroom field which is good one year and receives no different treatment the next can be barren. Why? We want rain for mushrooms, they say. The rain comes but the mushrooms don’t. Then when they do appear they are so full of maggots they are inedible. But when everything goes right they are food for the gods.