by Jilly Cooper
Finally we reached the lunch tent.
‘Good God, tinned potatoes,’ said an outraged dowager. ‘What is Henley coming to?’
After lunch we splashed round the stewards’ enclosure in the drizzle. It seemed illogical that a Scotsman in a kilt was allowed in, but the Mail on Sunday photographer, who was much prettier, had to go into Henley to buy a skirt before she was admitted.
‘Why does everyone look so ghastly?’ complained a beauty, who appeared to be wearing nothing but gym shoes and a cricket sweater.
‘Because they’re all so common,’ drawled her boy friend, ‘Henley’s even lower down in the social scale than Twickenham now.’
Certainly I was surprised, despite the sartorial restrictions, at how messy most of the women looked. As there’s no definite skirt length this year, hemlines were all over the place; and those veiled pillboxes topped with ostrich feathers may have been stunning on the Princess of Wales, but on anyone else look like a parrot moulting over a meat-safe. Perhaps, too, because it’s fashionable for women to crop their hair and wear men’s suits and panama hats, only the men at Henley looked chic, whereas the women in their big hats and floating dresses looked over the top.
The prettiest woman was newscaster Jan Leeming, very suntanned in a white ankle-length Gini Fratini dress and white hat trimmed with pale pink roses. She was accompanied by that great rowing, whisky-drinking institution, John Snagge.
‘It’s so lovely, for a change,’ said Miss Leeming, ‘to have everyone clamouring to talk to John and taking no notice of me.’
I next had a quick whizz round Leander, the most famous rowing club in the world. They even have a president called Mr Rowe. In the bar, ancient members in pink caps, faded pink socks and moth-eaten boating jackets were radiating misogyny and reliving past triumphs.
I was reminded of a conversation overheard by a friend in the Travellers Club some years ago.
‘Whatever happed to J.B.R.?’ mumbled an old buffer from an armchair.
‘Achieved the ultimate glory rowing for Oxford,’ replied another armchair. ‘Then spent the rest of his life in exhausted mediocrity.’
Last year, according to the club PRO, Mr Boswell, Leander had a fierce debate as to whether they should admit female members. Many debaters had seemed keen on the idea, and feelings were running high, when an old buffer struggled very slowly to his feet, and said: ‘If yer put a cat flap in the back door, yer can be damned sure yer’ll get all the neighbouring cats coming in as well,’ and sat down again. He carried the day, and women were voted out by two to one. An unkinder touch is that even though women may now row in women’s events at Henley, only male crews may compete in the Ladies Plate.
Anxious to banish any further suggestion of chauvinism, Mr Boswell changed the subject to the amatory prowess of the oarsman.
‘He’s the best lover in the world,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘With such powerful elbows he can keep going longer than anyone else.’
Not having a high opinion of rowers, I was sceptical of such claims, but as we came out of Leander, I was introduced to Christopher Baillieu, who is not only a silver medallist, but has also twice won the world championships and the Diamond Sculls. The Sebastian Coe of rowing, Mr Baillieu’s beauty Was even more gleaming than Miss Leeming’s. I decided Diamond scullers were a girl’s best friend after all.
Outside I found James and Johnnie extricating themselves from a comely but sulky-looking blond.
‘She actually said she preferred community work to going to Henley,’ said Johnnie in a shocked voice.
‘Pretty though,’ admitted James, ‘for a girl at Lancaster University.’
The drizzle had turned to downpour again, opening up the coloured umbrellas along the bank like a vast herbaceous border. A balloon floated downstream to loud cheers.
‘Well rowed, Eton,’ went up the cry, as the Eton B team hissed by, their duck-egg blue oars flashing in and out of the pitted water.
Half a minute later, the Connecticut crew they’d beaten came by in floods of tears, and were clapped even more loudly because the crowd felt so sorry for them. It’s all part of that kindness which also made the authorities fork out £425 last year for ‘taking up and removing swans’ from this stretch of the river, so they didn’t get hurt or hurt anyone during the regatta.
Even one and three quarter hours getting out of the carpark didn’t dampen our high spirits. Jolly gumbooting weather.
Sad-Olescence
Part One
IN A MONTH which saw the publication of a marvellous novel about a thirteen year-old, called The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, it seems everyone is worrying about teenagers. Dr Miriam Don’t Stoppard has been accused of urging adolescents on to sex rather than love, and the attention of the Press has been on teenage suicide and despair.
But the comforting thing I found – having talked over the last month to many thirteen year-old boys and their parents – is that our silly, woolly, flower-child generation seems almost by default to have produced a race of sensible, responsible, almost too-clear-eyed children.
The problem, for most parents today, is practising what you preach.
‘We’d been to Ascot and carried on junketing,’ said one father. ‘It was rather incongruous to be woken at eight o’clock in the morning from one of the worst hangovers in recorded history to be told one’s thirteen year-old son had been suspended from boarding school for sharing half a bottle of Sauterne with two friends.’
Many boys of thirteen, it seems, are allowed a glass of wine in moderation.
Alexander, whose father is a graphic designer, took me to lunch, ordered from the menu in perfect French, and sniffed the wine with great professionalism to see if it were all right.
‘I don’t mean to boast,’ he said gravely, ‘but I know a lot about wine. I never forget a bottle. For my younger brother Edward’s birthday, we had Château Latour Bellevue 1971. I must confess I did go overboard at our Royal Wedding party. I had three very strong Pimms, and I don’t even remember Prince Charles and Lady Di coming down the aisle. But having once lapsed, I know I will be able to handle my drink in future.’
Single parents have the additional headache of trying to lay down a moral code for their children, which they intend to break themselves. Not only do thirteen-year-olds tend to dislike any display of sexuality (all the boys I talked to detested the thought of their mother in a ra-ra skirt) but also, as children of successive recessions, they are exceedingly beady about money.
One divorced woman friend said it was like having a Victorian father in the house. Having acquired a really delicious boy friend she celebrated by buying some Janet Reger underwear. Her son was outraged when he saw the bill.
‘You really goofed there, Mum. Why spend a fortune on stuff no one’s going to see?’
The cost of sex in fact seems to irritate children more than the moral aspect. Adrian Mole was incensed when his mother spent the family allowance ‘which should by right be mine’ on cigarettes and gin to drink with her boy friend. One mother I know, determined not to flaunt her new affairs, insisted on away fixtures. Her son was decidedly unamused.
‘I was getting a new bike,’ he grumbled, ‘but now we can’t afford it because my mother spends a bomb on baby-sitters every time she spends the night with her new man. Why can’t they economise and sleep here?’
Most thirteen-year-olds, too, are perceptive enough to see through the most elaborate subterfuge.
‘My father has a very nice new girl friend,’ said one boy. ‘But they are behaving in a very juvenile fashion. She pretends to be delicate and goes upstairs to lie down. My father then goes upstairs and pretends he’s seeing how she is.’
Adrian Mole was not so generous. ‘How can my father have carnal knowledge with that woman, she is as thin as a stick insect.’
At least if parents are separated, you don’t get all the tensions of the young buck challenging the old stag for control of the forest. Rows in this instance can rock the hou
se.
‘The other night,’ said one mother, ‘my husband, Simon, was slightly the worse for wear when he changed the tropical fish tank. Charlie, our son, was convinced Simon had squashed one of his eels.’ The result was a great deal of eel-feeling. ‘Charlie was upstairs leaving home, hurling dud batteries and the entrails of various disembodied radio cassettes into a case, shouting: “I’ll never speak to Daddy again unless he apologises – and what’s more you’re on his side.” Downstairs Simon was stuck into the Johnny Walker shouting that he’d never speak to Charlie again unless he apologised and what’s more that I was on Charlie’s side. I was tempted to call the international peacekeeping force.’
Richard, who’s destined for King’s School, Bruton, complained that his father had no sense of time. ‘He’s always sending me to bed early. I cannot stand answering the front door in daylight in my pyjamas.’
‘My father tries very hard to be fair,’ sighed one Radley boy. ‘But I’m afraid it is quite beyond him. As he is the boss at work, he behaves like a boss at home, and is always ordering me to get him drinks and things. He once said “please” and “thank you”, but his manners have deteriorated. I wish I could join a union.’
Today’s child expects the family to be a democracy. One mother rather unwisely boxed her son’s ears for taking a last chocolate biscuit. To this day he denies he did it. When she came home from work, she found her son and his younger brother had packed her two suitcases, put them outside the front door and double-locked her out, shouting through the letterbox they didn’t want her to live with them any more. No entreaty could persuade them to open the door. She had to enlist the help of a girl friend to negotiate for over an hour before they let her back in again.
Despite claims that today’s teenagers are permanently glued to the television, many I talked to were voracious and discriminating readers.
‘I don’t mean to boast again,’ said Alexander the wine taster, ‘but I am the fastest reader in the world. I’ve read the whole Bible except the Psalms, which I skipped because they lacked plot. I don’t know what Freud would have made of Adam and Eve either. I was very moved on the other hand by the New Testament. Christ is a very credible character, but not St Paul, who changes far too quickly, like the Incredible Hulk, from being a complete weed to a man of huge stature.’
As a reaction to the woolly liberalism of their parents, boys of thirteen tend to be clear-cut in their attitudes. They disapprove passionately of smoking, pollution, and the nuclear bomb. On the other hand they were all tremendously involved in the Falklands crisis, and would have like to have joined the Task Force.
‘I admire Mrs Thatcher,’ said one, ‘but I wouldn’t like her as a mother. Whereas Shirley Williams would make a nice mother but not a good Prime Minister. Michael Foot looks too old for the job, but,’ he added kindly, ‘it might help if he used Grecian 2000.’
And that perhaps is the endearing quality of today’s thirteen-year-old, his instinctive kindness.
‘I loathe short-sleeved T-shirts,’ said Timothy from Westminster, then seeing I was wearing one, added quickly: ‘On men, I mean.’
‘Please send me 50p,’ wrote my son last term, ‘but not £1, as I know you can’t afford it.’
After a row, he’ll be the first to make it up by bringing me a cup of tea, or after six o’clock a large drink. If I’m tired he’ll make my bed or Hoover the house unprompted.
A thirteen-year-old boy from a very tough American school told me how his class had painted their form-master’s chair-seat red. ‘It was only when he came in next morning with the seat of his pants still covered with red paint that we realised it was his only suit. We felt so awful, we all clubbed together, and bought him a new suit for Christmas.’
The age of chivalry is alive again.
Part Two
Thirteen, aptly named unlucky, is a horrible age for a boy. Half child, half adult, he has to cope with all the confusion and indefinable longings aroused by puberty. Forgetting their own adolesence, his parents are often hurt and bewildered when he becomes moody and withdrawn, loving and co-operative one moment, fiercely resentful the next.
From a mother’s point of view, however, there are compensations. Suddenly the scruffy boy, who had to be threatened to within an inch of his life to pick up a toothbrush, is cleaning his teeth three times a day, knocking back Listermint, having baths and washing his hair every morning. Soon envelopes, addressed to body-building equipment firms, start lying around in the hall. Dieting follows. The F-Plan must have encouraged more children to read than Enid Blyton.
A woman friend of mine also noticed a dramatic change in birthday lists. For his thirteenth birthday, she said, her son wanted computer games and remote-control aeroplanes. But for his fourteenth he’s boldly indented for a sofa, a car, a double bed (‘so I can roll over and get cool on hot nights’) and a dinner jacket.
Buying clothes for them, of course, is a nightmare. Beau Brummel was not more exacting about the cut of his coat than a thirteen-year-old about the tightness and length of his trousers. Having witnessed the rejection of every slip-on shoe in the forty shoe shops in Putney, I also know how Prince Charming’s footmen must have despaired of ever finding the glass slipper’s owner.
And there’s no getting away with handing a thirteen-year-old £25 and telling him to get on with it. He wants you there, to endorse his final choice.
Another revelation is the sexual sophistication of today’s children. In a feeble attempt at sex education I took my son and some of his friends to the Natural History Museum. In the grandiosely named Hall of Human Biology I found scores of middle-aged parents barely suppressing their excitement as they pressed buttons which illuminated the sex organs of the body. I was dying to pick up a few tips myself but my son and his friends couldn’t have been less interested.
‘We did sex in Biology last term,’ they said scathingly, and moved briskly on to the tarantulas in the next room.
Another woman friend was deeply embarrassed when her house was burgled recently. Her thirteen-year-old son didn’t give a damn that the record player, the television and his tape deck had been stolen. He was outraged, as he kept telling the police, that three sex mags had been pinched from under his mattress.
Some parents worry that their sons will be corrupted by watching X-films on video machines in darkened rooms at ten o’clock in the morning. But one must remember that in boys a desire for titillation goes hand in hand with intense romanticism. There is also a huge gap between theory and practice. Anyone can read endless technical books telling them how to ride, but it doesn’t mean that when presented for the first time with a large thoroughbred, bounding with oats, they will be able to stay on its back round the course at the Horse of the Year Show.
And despite their professed knowledge and sophistication thirteen-year-olds still get things deliciously wrong sometimes. ‘Elizabeth’, wrote one boy in his Common Entrance Scripture exam, ‘was not able to have babies because she was a Baron.’
I asked two thirteen-year-olds about to go to all-boys public schools whether they felt they’d be missing out on contact with the opposite sex.
‘Well there’s no point in having girls at prep school,’ said the first, ‘because one doesn’t really need them. But it would be nice at one’s public school, although humiliating if one went to a school that allowed in only a few girls. There wouldn’t be enough to go round.’
‘At my school,’ said the second, ‘it’s OK because you get O-level French girls. And when you’re older they take you in a van to dances at girls’ boarding schools, and you smoke and drink and go into the bushes.’
Denied girls their own age, thirteen year-olds tend to fall for much older girls.
‘During the holidays,’ said Timothy, an exceptionally beautiful boy in his second year at Westminster, ‘I wrote to one of the 6th form girls, she’s eighteen, telling her how much I admired her. She wrote me a very nice letter back, saying she looked forward to seeing me next ter
m. But back at school I felt very shy so I cut her dead. I’m sure she was hurt – I was miserable.’
Sad-olecence . . . we plot, we dream and when the moment comes we funk it. Pin-ups for thirteen-year-olds tend to be women who are beautiful, gentle and maternal: Jan Leeming, Selina Scott, Lady Diana.
Although Alexander, who went to a London boys’ school, said he wasn’t turned on by Lady Diana. ‘But you mustn’t blame her,’ he added quickly, ‘because I haven’t met anyone who turned me on yet.’
‘None of my class have girl friends, except one boy who’s got a German pen-friend. He brings her letters to school and tries to read them out. No one’s interested because they’re in German.’
By contrast the thirteen-year-old boy at a comprehensive school seems sexually light years ahead. John, who is tall and very good looking, goes to Eliot Comprehensive in Wandsworth. According to his mother, girls ring him up all the time. Unlike the public school boy he only dates girls of his own age. ‘I wouldn’t dream of going out with a fifteen-year-old,’ he said grandly. ‘I don’t need to resort to older women. But it’s equally frowned on to cradle-snatch an eleven-year-old.’
He admitted contempt for public school boys.
‘Because school fees have rocketed many parents run out of money and suddenly have to send their sons to Eliot. The sons are so wet they get ludicrously excited at the thought of girls and say: “You don’t actually talk to them, do you?” They also refuse to admit that girls are as bright as boys. They’re depressingly sexist.’
Despite timidity and sexist attitudes, however, the public school boy does have honourable intentions. One headmaster showed me a letter he had confiscated in a Latin class: ‘My darling Virginia, I hope to see you soon because I really love you a lot. You are really beautiful, in eleven years will you marry me? Please return your answer quickly. Lots of love, Mark.’
