by M. M. Kaye
Mother had taken me to an At Home given by Mrs Alec-Tweedie. This outdated function was a relic of Edwardian days at which tea, sandwiches and cakes were served, and friends and acquaintances of the hostess dropped in to exchange gossip and show off their latest hats and dresses. A schoolgirl was definitely persona non grata at such gatherings, and Mother had only taken me there because she had been landed with me for half-term, and after a morning spent shopping, didn’t know what else to do with me. Attired in my hideous school hat, gym tunic and regulation black cotton stockings, and feeling terribly out of place among all those society women with their high-pitched, pea-hen voices, dauntingly smart dresses and modish hats, I retreated hastily to a dark corner of one of the rooms and tried to make myself as small as possible behind a potted palm. I must have lurked there, hungry and embarrassed, for at least half an hour when I was winkled out by an enchanting elderly man, quite old enough, I thought, to be my father, who brought me a cup of tea and a plate of delicious sandwiches, plumped himself down beside me and kept me fascinated, amused and in gales of giggles for the best part of an hour — and this in spite of our hostess’s determined efforts to lure him away! He continued to brush aside all her pleas of ‘Dear Sir Gerald, may I introduce you to Lady Catherine de Burgh who is dying to meet you?’ with the greatest charm and went on telling me silly stories, and I only learned later that he was a famous actor, Sir Gerald du Maurier, son of the author and illustrator of two of my favourite books, Trilby and Peter Ibbetson. (And also, incidentally, father of the Daphne du Maurier who would one day become famous as the author of Jamaica Inn, Rebecca, and scores of other best-selling novels, but at that date would still have been in short socks!)
He obviously liked children and knew exactly how to get on with them and put them at their ease, and he was the only person in the room to realize how miserably embarrassed I was feeling — a young and gawky crow among this flock of peacocks and birds of paradise — and to come to my rescue. Meeting him had a long-lasting side-effect, because after Mother returned to India I badgered and badgered Aunt Bee to take me to see him act and eventually wore down her resistance until she actually took us to see a matinée of The Last of Mrs Cheyney, in which he played opposite lovely Gladys Cooper in the title role. Had Aunt Bee known what the play was about I am sure she would have considered it unsuitable for children. But fortunately the words ‘light comedy’ on the playbills outside the theatre misled her, and once we were firmly embedded in our seats in the dress circle she could hardly march us out in the middle of an act. Anyway, she couldn’t help enjoying it, even though by the standards of that day it was considered to be very daring; in fact terribly risqué — dear me, what an age of innocence that was!
I enjoyed every minute of the play, but there was one brief conversation, I think in Act 2, that was to be of great use to me in the future. Gerald du Maurier as the hero, Lord Something-or-other, says to one of the women guests at a weekend house-party (it was that sort of play) that he wants to ask her a strictly hypothetical question: what would she say if he asked her to marry him? To which she replies promptly: ‘I’d be ready in five minutes — no, make it three!’
I don’t know why that should have made such a deep impression on me, but it did. Then and there I made up my mind that I would never marry anyone unless I felt exactly like that about him; no doubts whatever; no ‘Shall I?’, ‘Shan’t I?’ Just ‘I’ll be ready in five minutes — no, make it three!’ It became my yardstick in the future and saved me again and again from lurching into disaster; for although it didn’t stop me from falling in love with regrettable frequency, I always applied that test when it came to a serious proposal of marriage: and the answer that came up was always: ‘No — not in three minutes — not even five!’ Until one day there was no need even to ask it, since I knew the answer was: ‘I’ll be ready in three minutes — no, make it one!’ And for being saved for that day, I shall be grateful for ever to dear Gerald du Maurier, who understood children and recognized the depth of my misery as I cringed in my corner at a fashionable London ‘At Home’. I wonder if people still have ‘At Homes’? I imagine not. They must have ended with the Second World War. Together with thé-dansants and the Charleston…
Tacklow was knighted at the first Investiture of 1925 by King George V. Sadly, neither Bill nor I, nor Bets, saw that ceremony, for we were all three back at school: Bill and I for the last time. Even Mother did not accompany Tacklow to Buckingham Palace to see him knighted, though she would have loved to do so. But then he did not know that if the recipient of an honour applied to the Palace it was possible to be given permission to take one’s nearest and dearest (up to a maximum of three!) to watch it being handed out by the monarch. That was something Mother only discovered later, and she was justifiably annoyed at missing a chance that, since Tacklow had now retired, would never come her way again. I don’t know how he managed to talk himself out of that one; but I suspect that this was probably the reason why, shortly afterwards, he took Mother to Menton on the French Riviera for a holiday that he could not really afford, but which they enjoyed enormously.
He had hoped to be able to buy a cottage in the country where he could potter about in the garden and occupy his spare time in compiling a catalogue of Ferrari’s famous stamp collection. But the ending of the First World War was followed by inflation and a rocketing rise in the cost of living, and everything went up — except pensions, which remained more or less where they had been in the reign of Edward VII, though there were still school bills to be paid for Bets and art school ones for me, and Bill at Woolwich would need an allowance. So Tacklow went to work again, this time as a civilian. He became the editor of a weekly magazine called The Near East and India, and since the head office of that publication was in London, he arranged to rent a tiny furnished house in Kew that belonged to a cousin of his.
The house was about the size of a postage stamp, but after spending a week in it Mother went out shopping and came back with yards of coconut matting and half-a dozen packets of something called Rudell’s Salts that claimed to ‘comfort tired feet’; because the passage between the front door and the kitchen was paved with red brick and our feet had become so bruised from walking back and forth on it that we could hardly stand up. The coconut matting was a tremendous success, but the Rudell’s Salts a disaster; for though they were undoubtedly comforting to soak tired feet in, they merely softened the wretched things and turned them into cissies instead of toughening them up to take more punishment — as Bets and I had done for ours when we ran bare-foot at Okhla. Oh, darling Okhla! — would we ever see you again? It seemed highly unlikely, and there were days when, staring out through a thin curtain of drizzle at the row of small, smug and almost identical suburban houses that faced ours on the other side of the wet grey street, I felt as though I would have sold my soul for the sight of a hot, silver sandbank with a row of mud-turtles basking at the water’s edge, or the blaze of crimson and purple bougainvillaeas pouring over a whitewashed wall. ‘No more, no more, the folly and the fun: our little day was brave and gay, but now it’s done!’ Was it really all over and done with? Would I never get back, ever? I couldn’t and wouldn’t believe it.
Tacklow bought each of us a season ticket to Kew Gardens, and since the main gate was so near we spent a lot of our spare time there; mostly in the enormous glass hot-houses where the tropical plants grew, which provided a lovely bolt-hole on wet or windy days. The gardens were really charming, and armed with those season tickets we almost felt as though they belonged to us. But I was more interested in Kew Palace than the gardens, and liked to imagine Queen Caroline and her children walking along the gravel paths between the formal flowerbeds, or taking the air on the terraces while her husband, the dotty King George III, chased Fanny Burney through the ornamental shrubberies. But my chief recollection of that time is of Susan…
Susan was our cook-general, a large, fat and comfortable woman with a bright red face and a heart of the purest gold, who ca
me to the house for five or six hours every day except Sundays. She had, she told us, been ‘walkin’ out’, with someone she always referred to as ‘my intended’, for three years; but though still not officially engaged, she remained blithely optimistic that they would get married ‘one of these days’. When dressed in her Sunday best (Sunday was the day on which she ‘walked out’ with her swain) she was a truly impressive sight. She asked Mother to take a photograph of her ‘in me best’ and was so pleased with the result that she had an enlargement done for her intended. We learned a lot about him and were enthralled by her stories and her glowing description of this paragon; though we never actually met him and there were times when I wondered if he really existed or if she had made him up. I hope he was real and that he did marry her in the end. She deserved to be happy. And in addition to that heart of gold, he would have won himself a first-class cook!
Not that Susan’s knowledge of culinary matters did not have its limits, for I remember Mother staring in surprise at some peculiar off-white substance that lay scattered all over the rubbish heap in a corner of the garden, and on stooping down to take a closer look, realized with horror that it consisted of a pound of recently purchased and very expensive ground almonds that she had bought to make marzipan for the Christmas cake. ‘Oh no!’ wailed Mother and rushed off to the kitchen to inquire how it got there … ‘That stuff?’ said Susan comfortably, ‘oh, you don’t ‘ave to worry about that, m’lady, it’s only a lot of mouldy breadcrumbs wot I found in one of them tins o’ yours.’ It seems that she had never come across ground almonds before. She also had an endearing habit of advising Mother, whom she insisted on addressing as ‘m’lady’, on what she should and should not eat, and I well remember the day when my parents entertained a small but distinguished gathering of the Heaven-Born to luncheon, and Susan, dumping down a dish before Mother, said in an encouraging but painfully audible whisper: ‘Rhubarb, m’lady — so good for yer bowels!’ And on a similar occasion, warning her that there were spring onions in the salad, adding the loudly whispered admonition: ‘You be careful now, m’lady; they do repeat so!’ Mother did not think it was nearly as funny as we did.
One of the few things that I learned from our stay in that really horrid little house was to be very careful in the matter of interior decoration. There was only one bathroom in the house, and since the bath (an old-fashioned iron affair standing on claw feet) was badly discoloured, we tried scrubbing it with something in a packet that was supposed to make bathrooms and kitchens ‘sparkling white in next to no time’. As that didn’t work, we bought a tin of white gloss paint and a brush and gave it a couple of coats, one on each of two consecutive days, and were charmed with the result; the dingy old relic looked spanking new. Unfortunately, we hadn’t realized that we should have made the coats of paint far thinner, instead of sloshing them on with a fairly lavish hand; for as a result of this error the paint slithered unobtrusively down the sides to settle a good deal more thickly on the bottom. The surface felt perfectly dry when we ran a hand over it before putting on that second coat (which naturally obeyed the laws of gravity and did the same thing), and as we admired our handiwork, we had no idea that though the paint on the sides was paper thin there was a lake of it on the bottom; smooth and shining and, on the surface, as dry as a bone. We gave it two days in which to dry out, just to be on the safe side, and then, since we reckoned that the Master of the House had probably suffered the most from having to strip-wash at a basin, we gave Tacklow the honour of the first bath…
The water, which came from one of those terrifying gas-powered geyser things, was steaming hot, and Tacklow lowered himself gratefully into it: and stuck fast to the bottom. It took his united family to get him out again, mainly because we were all rolling about with laughter, and to this day I can’t think how he managed to escape with a whole skin. We had begun to think that we’d have to send for a doctor and a plumber to pry him loose, when the bath suddenly released its grip on him and he was free. After which we left it severely alone for a few more bathless days, and had no more trouble with it — if you don’t count the fact that it bore the clear and unmistakable imprint of Tacklow’s posterior, stamped as firmly on it as the handprint of some film-star on the concrete slabs in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Nothing short of a sand-blaster would have removed it, so we left it alone. And since that bath was the kind that was made to last, it may still be around; though I doubt it, for all the spare iron that England possessed — including the beautiful gates and railings of her public parks and gardens — was melted down to make guns during the early years of the Second World War.
The next Do-It-Yourself interior decorating disaster cannot be blamed on anyone but myself. Given permission to do what I liked with my own bedroom, I looked out at the rain and fog of what was proving, even for England, to be an exceptionally lousy spring, and decided that a bit of sunshine was what was needed to brighten up the general greyness. I therefore painted every inch of wall-space and every scrap of woodwork, including the furniture, a cheerful shade of yellow; made myself matching cotton curtains and bedspread, and wheedled Mother into buying me a set of bright yellow china for the washstand. I can’t remember what we did about the carpet, but I bet I insisted on that being yellow too. It certainly brightened up the room and seemed to make it a lot warmer and cosier. But Mother Nature, suddenly deciding to make up for that dreary spring, gave us a really good summer and threw in a heatwave for good measure. My yellow room became a furnace and I swear that the colour sent the temperature up by at least ten degrees; I could feel that glare of yellow even at night when the lights were out and my eyes closed. I learned a lot from that room about the use and misuse of colour, and found that the knowledge came in very handy in future years.
Editing The Near East and India kept Tacklow occupied and interested; though I don’t imagine it paid very well. However, every little helped, and he must have been grateful for it. But he still hankered for green spaces and quiet, and in spite of our proximity to Kew’s famous Gardens, soon grew tired of that poky little semi-detached house with its pocket-handkerchief lawn and single flowerbed; so he advertised for an ‘unfurnished house to rent in the country, within easy commuting distance from London, required by retired Indian Army Officer and family of four’ — he put in that last because he said it would stop people with two-bedroomed cottages, or those who wanted exorbitant rents, from replying.
His advertisement drew a surprisingly large number of answers and we spent a good many weekends driving around the outskirts of London looking at dozens of houses; none of them quite what we wanted. And then one day a middle-aged couple called on us at the Kew house and explained that they had answered Tacklow’s advertisement, and had been greatly taken by the fact that he had bothered to reply. (He had thanked them for their letter and said that, though their house sounded charming, he much regretted that his Indian service pension wouldn’t run to paying the rent they were asking.) They had both decided that he was the kind of tenant they wanted, so would he please come and look at the house before deciding that he couldn’t afford it? Their car was large enough to take us all, and it would not take long to drive there and back again. Tacklow protested that they would only be wasting their time since he truly could not afford their price, but in the end, because we liked them and they insisted, we went with them: ‘but only to look at it’! And that was how we came to live in Three Trees.
We had honestly meant just to look at it and to enjoy the drive. But it turned out to be one of those houses which welcome you with open arms and in which you immediately feel at home and comfortable. The Chinese have a name for that; they call it Feng Shui, which means the spirit of a house. Or its soul, if you like. They believe that every house has one and that it is vital for one’s happiness and well-being to live in a house whose Feng Shui is right for you. No true son or daughter of the Celestial Kingdom would dream of building a house without a priest or an astrologer deciding which way
it should face in order to have the right earth currents and the right spirit. And as one who loved China and anything Chinese, Tacklow was a great believer in Feng Shui, and Three Trees possessed that intangible asset not only for him but for all of us.
The house stood on the edge of a park in the grounds of what had once been a stately home, Hillingdon Court near Uxbridge, whose owners, like the owners of many of England’s great houses, had been so badly hit by the First World War that they could no longer afford to keep it up and were forced to sell. The house itself had been bought for a nunnery, and various people had bought plots of ground on the estate on which they built houses for themselves. A good many of the plots, including the one on the left of the house, were still not built upon, while the park on its right was to remain a park for good — or that was the idea at the time. Three Trees, like most of the other houses on the estate, was a modern one and it had been built with love by the daughter and son-in-law (or perhaps the son and daughter-in-law?) of the middle-aged couple who had driven us over. The son (or son-in-law) had been in the Navy, and he and his wife had planned the house for several years; cutting out from magazines of the Homes and Gardens genre anything that appealed to them, and designing their dream house to be just that: a dream. They had found an architect who was as enthusiastic as they themselves were, and who managed to incorporate everything they wanted in the house they meant to bring up their children in and live in for the rest of their lives. And then, when it was finished down to the last lick of paint, and all they had to do was furnish it and move in, something happened…
