Coronet Among the Weeds

by Charlotte Bingham

  CORONET AMONG

  THE WEEDS

  ALSO BY CHARLOTTE BINGHAM

  Non-fiction

  Coronet Among the Grass

  MI5 and Me: A Coronet Among the Spooks

  Spies and Stars: MI5, Showbusiness and Me

  Novels

  Lucinda

  The Business

  In Sunshine or in Shadow

  Stardust

  Nanny

  Change of Heart

  Grand Affair

  Love Song

  The Kissing Garden

  Country Wedding

  The Blue Note

  The Love Knot

  Summertime

  Distant Music

  The Magic Hour

  Friday’s Girl

  Out of the Blue

  In Distant Fields

  The White Marriage

  Goodnight Sweetheart

  The Enchanted

  The Land of Summer

  The Daisy Club

  Love Quartet

  Belgravia

  Country Life

  At Home

  By Invitation

  Nightingale Saga

  To Hear a Nightingale

  The Nightingale Sings

  Debutantes Saga

  Debutantes

  The Season

  The Bexham Trilogy

  The Chestnut Tree

  The Wind Off the Sea

  The Moon at Midnight

  Eden Saga

  Daughters of Eden

  The House of Flowers

  Mums on the Run Series

  Mums on the Run

  A Dip Before Breakfast

  WITH TERENCE BRADY

  Victoria Series

  Victoria

  Victoria and Company

  Honestly Series

  No, Honestly

  Yes, Honestly

  Upstairs, Downstairs Series

  Rose’s Story

  CONTENTS

  Also by Charlotte Bingham

  Preface

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Acknowledgements

  A Note on the Author

  Also available by Charlotte Bingham

  PREFACE

  Dear Reader,

  If you have shelled out some of your hard earned on this slim volume from long ago then it might help to know a little about how it came into being and changed the life of its teenage author forever.

  I was the daughter of two professional writers. At the tender age of six I was left with my grandmother while my mother went off to something called ‘rehearsal’. She had written a comedy which had gone from the Royal Court Theatre to the West End where it had a very successful run. My father on the other hand wrote crime novels. Added to which my aunt was a novelist. So writing and writers were everywhere in my childhood.

  But as I discovered, wanting is one thing – breathing life into your words quite another. My first attempt at the age of ten was a crime novel entitled ‘Death’s Ticket’. My parents were impressed with what they called the ‘plot’. I am sorry to tell you I learned to hate that word. Every time one of my family saw me scribbling they would ask ‘what’s your plot?’ or they would say ‘I hope you’ve got a plot’. A famous writer told my aunt you should be able to write a novel about someone going to post a letter. I know what he meant but having attempted it at the age of somewhere around eleven I have to tell you it is no picnic.

  Actually writing about a picnic would be a ball compared to that blasted letter. By the age of twelve I was attempting to write romantic literature at which my aunt was very successful, but my pen kept faltering when it came to the hero and heroine kissing. Talk about where do the noses go – I had no idea where anything went.

  All in all, by the age of seventeen I had almost given up on the idea of ever being able to string words together and be able to write more than ‘by Charlotte Bingham’, which I did quite a lot – only trouble being there was nothing preceding it. And still the word ‘plot’ haunted me, until I started to go to the Opera and read the programme notes. Suddenly the clouds parted – here at last were plots written out clearly and precisely. This gave me hope. I started a novel which was destined to be full of people being very heavy towards the heroine, but then life intervened – not for her, for me – and I became a debutante and went to endless balls dressed in evening dresses and wearing long white gloves. Many of the balls were delightful and very romantic.

  But still the stone in my – usually a satin evening shoe – was this feeling that I hadn’t completed a book, until one evening when I moaned to my parents that after so many parties and balls I hadn’t yet met ‘a superman’.

  ‘Write about that,’ they said. ‘Stop writing dreary, write comedy.’ Well, by that time I was causing mayhem at MI5 as a secretary (see MI5 and Me) – and had only evenings to write. My social life had taken me to the downstairs bar at the London Ritz where I noted that a tomato juice was only two shillings, and the nuts and crisps were free! This was great as the lunch hour at MI5 was an hour and a half, so down I went to the lower floor with my pen and paper and scribbled my comedy, closely watched by Laurie and Edward the barmen who replenished the nuts at very regular intervals. Of course the Society balls and parties had to go by the wayside. Now there was a centre to my life – I was writing a book to make people laugh. Inevitably I suffered a wobble (here). Was it funny? My father, realising this, wrote me a note: ‘Carry on kid, you might make a hundred pounds!’ That was incentive enough, for, as you will discover in the book – the bank manager rather haunted our house.

  Finally the book was finished.

  It was April and I was on ‘safe lock up’ duty at MI5. There was a light spring pink to the sky. As I sauntered down Bond Street towards Piccadilly I conceived of a revolutionary idea. I would go to the downstairs Ritz Bar – even though it was not in my lunch hour. Laurie and Edward did their best to conceal their surprise.

  What to drink? A tomato juice seemed a bit tame, so I ordered something I had never drunk before – but which I thought was the kind of drink that a mature writer should down. I was looking at it with some trepidation when a voice at my shoulder said, ‘Charlotte Bingham, what are you doing seated at the Ritz Bar with a whisky in front of you?’

  It was my father’s agent looking as good humoured and relaxed as he always did. Thereafter followed a great deal of banter centred on my having finished my first book, and – to this day I wouldn’t know why – he insisted he would like to read it. I actually tried to dissuade him, but a few days later, it being Easter, he retired to his country house and read what was then entitled ‘Search for Superman’.

  Of course I never dreamed that he would like it. I imagined he might give me a pat on the head and tell me to go on trying. Instead he rang me at MI5 and said ‘I can sell this anywhere. I’ll be in touch.’

  And he was. Another telephone call the following day and he told me he had just had an offer from Heinemann for £350. It didn’t seem possible. I stared round the room after I put the receiver down. It seemed to have changed, it was full of colour and light. I had always dreamed of becoming a writer, and now at long, long last, at the what-seemed-to-me-an-already-ancient age of eighteen, was a WRITER. From now on it would be ‘Something Something Something’ by Charlotte Bingham. I say ‘Something Something Something’ because Heinemann didn’t like the title and I was, rightly, told to change it. And so Coronet Among the Weeds came into being.

  I thought that was that, and as far as I was concerned that was q
uite enough to last me for the next eighteen years. But, probably because of my age, Coronet Among the Weeds became of immediate interest to the press. When Heinemann flew with it to the legendary Frankfurt Book Fair they gave out chapters on the plane, so that by the time they arrived at the airport all sorts of other publishers were interested, and it sold to ten other foreign publishers (I am still very big in Albania). It was bought by a Sunday newspaper for serialisation. By now my parents were less than happy. They had always thought I might sell it, but not that I would also become improbably famous – and improbably famous I had become. There were vast posters all over the country advertising the serialisation – pictures of their daughter everywhere, and photographers from all over the world besieged the house. Fed up with all the attention I was getting, they banished me to France. In those dim and distant days no one could refuse parental edicts until they were twenty-one.

  I reappeared some months later to be guest of honour at a Foyles Literary Luncheon held at the Dorchester with a glittering top table of famous people. I learned that speech so well I was saying it in my sleep, nevertheless I went so white before the hammer went down and the words ‘LORDS LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, pray silence for Miss Charlotte Bingham’ – that the press table who had noted my extreme pallor sent me a note: ‘cheer up, it will be over soon!’

  I remember the end of the speech in which I wished that we lived in a world ‘where manuscripts were never sent back and flowers would grow under our feet.’ At any rate Heinemann were terribly pleased and Christina Foyle told them she had never heard cheers like it – which I put down to deep sympathy for my extreme youth.

  After that my life became almost too incredible – with author tours and television shows and a stay at the Plaza in New York which was so extended that the staff nicknamed me ‘the second Eloise’. I was the toast of the Harvard Pudding Club, and met many famous writers who were kind beyond words.

  I still hardly believe what happened to me, but it did, and there is no denying the fact that it was a wonderful start to what turned into a life of writing. However before you read on dear reader, remember that this was written a long, long time ago, by an eighteen-year-old in an attic bedroom on a borrowed typewriter. I only hope it raises a smile.

  1

  I was thinking in bed the other night I must have been out with nearly three hundred men, and I still haven’t found a superman. I don’t know what a superman is. But I know there must be one somewhere. So does Migo. Migo’s my girlfriend, she’s a good thing. She’s not soppy, but she agrees with me that somewhere there must be a superman. Actually I think most girls believe in a superman. I mean they don’t really believe all that phoney stuff you hear them jazzing on about. You know, like girls who look you dead pan in the face drawing nervously on a cigarette and come out with that corny line about men only wanting ‘one thing’. That’s when they’re about seventeen and when you meet them a couple of years later they’re still dragging nervously at their cigarettes, but carrying on about their careers.

  Then you get the ones who go on about parties, and spend the whole time asking you if you know people or if you’re going somewhere for the weekend. It’s like parties are a sort of nervous habit with them. And the way they go on about knowing people. You can’t know everyone. They’re like that nutty saint who wanted to empty the sea into his sandpit. No, hell. I’ve got it wrong. It was this angel who was scooping up the sea and emptying it into his sandpit, and this saint told him, ‘You’ll never do it, boy.’ Someone ought to tell them. Anyway, both these types of girls anyone with half an eye can see are just waiting around for a superman; and they don’t even let themselves know, but they are.

  Actually I think what a Frenchman once said to me is true. He said all little girls were born women because they know how to cham. I think he must have had something. He was rather old but still most girls don’t get around to really thinking about a superman till they’re about thirteen.

  I started playing the ‘other woman’ role when I was thirteen. We had a Swedish maid. Honestly you wouldn’t have known she was Swedish, she was like a huge Spanish woman or something. With black hair and a huge bronzed body, and she had this boy-friend called Mess. Yes, honestly he was called Mess. He said it was short for a Persian name. He was Persian. Anyway, he spoke English with an American accent and wore denim jeans, and my grandmother set the dogs on him every time she saw him hanging round our gate. She doesn’t like foreigners. Actually she doesn’t like many people. She’s always going on about ‘all those filthy disgusting people’, and it’s no good telling her she’s one of them because she won’t believe you.

  Anyway, this Mess, our Swede was mad about him. She used to lie around on our lawn in a broderie anglaise bikini hoping he’d get by the dogs and my grandmother. My mother used to make her take me to Brighton for the day, and Mess used to meet us off the train and we’d go and have coffee with him. I used to have an awful time keeping him from seeing my profile. I had a complex about not having a chin. It was maddening, because this Swede had one. And I used to get a stiff neck trying not to turn my head, but anyway it was quite fun. And then I read if you tied a scarf under your chin at night it helped, and honestly I think it made a difference because it’s not too bad now. Also I used to tie my hands on to the rail above my head so all the blood drained from them and they looked dead-white and aristocratic. It was quite a business getting into bed.

  Anyway Mess used to walk to the bus-stop with us, and then he and this Swede would start kissing. Honestly, you’ve never seen anything like it. I timed them once, two and a half minutes for one kiss. I don’t know if that’s a record, but it’s not bad. She must have had good lungs that girl.

  Then Mess started going to London during the week and just coming back for weekends, and sometimes our Swede couldn’t get the weekend off so she used to send me to see him with letters. I don’t think she was very intelligent. He had a room in a house down the road, and we used to play his gramophone, and he’d say I had pretty hair, but I still had hell keeping him from seeing my profile.

  The thing is, I didn’t particularly think he was attractive, but I wanted to see if I could win him from that Swede and her chin. Only for fun, to sort of see if I could do it. It wasn’t malicious or anything. So, anyhow, she used to go and see him in London sometimes during the week, and she always asked me what she should wear and how she should do her hair and everything. So one day I got a bit bored and I told her she looked wonderful with her hair all flat, and wearing this thick black dress. So she went to London like that. Honestly, I don’t think she could have been very intelligent. ’Course Mess told her she looked awful, and sent her back by the next train. Actually it wasn’t much fun after that because the Swede went back to Sweden, and the whole thing lost its point, but anyway it was quite interesting.

  After the Swede went back to Sweden, we moved back to London. No, just before we moved back to London I went to my first dance. It was hell, honestly. No one wanted to dance with me because I was thirteen and they were all fifteen, and they kept on doing these Scottish reels and everything. And my parents were there, and my father kept winking at me as if it didn’t matter, but it did, so I went into the kitchen and talked to the dogs. At least they didn’t have spots like half those damn boys. It’s a funny thing about dogs when you’re young. You feel much more for your dog than most of your relations. Except your grandfather or something. I know more girls who start crying about their dogs and their grandfathers than anything else.

  Anyway after that dance I swore I’d go back to that place when I was fifteen and make everyone mad to dance with me. Funny thing actually because I did.

  When we moved back to London we stopped having maids because the house was too small, and I spent most of the time at the movies with my cousin. I was fat and she had spots so we had plenty to talk about. Then my mother said I should go to dancing classes. They were hell too, no kidding. All these boys looking at you, and this man banging away on t
he piano and this woman pushing you in and out of eightsomes and things. Then you had to pretend to be things. Or run up and down pretending you’d got a nightie on. Honestly, try running up and down pretending you’ve got a nightie on with a whole lot of boys of fifteen sneering at you. And they had such awful faces. And they were either terribly tall or absolutely tiny. So you spent the whole time walking backwards talking to the bottom button on a jacket, or the top of a small greasy head. Honestly, it was murder.

  Then a girl at school’s mother started getting up this Charity Dance. And everyone decided to go, and my mother said she’d give a buffet supper beforehand. I didn’t know any boys, so my mother asked a friend of her’s son, and my cousin asked a boy she knew when she was four. I didn’t have a dress so we had one made at the dressmaker and my mother bought me some flowers to pin on my shoulder, and I was a bit thinner. When they all arrived the boys turned out to be rather a good thing. Even my cousin’s friend whom she hadn’t seen since she was four. Rather a lucky strike really.

  Then what the hell do you think happened? This girl’s boyfriend got measles. Least he rang up and said he had measles, and she just turned up without anybody. Honestly, it was absolutely typical. Just because she was two years older than all of us and madly swoony she knew she was okay, thank you. If anyone was going to sit out it wasn’t going to be her. She wasn’t even the sort of girl you could like much. She went round madly pretending she wasn’t swoony, but still, a terrible lot of people thought she was awfully nice. Especially men.

  Anyhow I did all right at the dance until the eightsome started up, and suddenly everyone had partners except me. And that girl was looking coy with my partner. So I had to go and sit behind a pillar on one of those ghastly gilt chairs. And when it stopped and I started to jump up and rush back to claim a partner, some fiendish voice shouted encore and it started all over again. I swear it was that girl. Honestly, there was nothing she wouldn’t stop at, really there wasn’t, she even came up and apologised afterwards. And she used to take all these girls around with her to parties and introduce them to boys and say how clever they were to these boys, and of course these boys would never look at them again; they’d just swoon round her saying they were terribly glad she wasn’t clever.