by Adam Thorpe
Thurs. 26th March 1953
Heavy rain. Cheese potato.
Labelling. Missed Mrs D.’s Diary. Not that it seems to matter. Miss Walwyn round again. Soaked through, dribbled on hall parquet. It’ll come up, I said. She didn’t offer to wipe it, of course. Down on my hands and knees. I let her see and why not? Pride’s not in it. As Father wd say: the only skivvies I’ve ever donned are my vest and underpants! Tea-time I went in to living room as usual with tray, no one there, gas-fire full up, nasty fug, steam rising like nobody’s business off clothes flung (that’s the word) onto settee, identified Miss W.’s briefs and bra, pink, probably hand-knitted. Cream blouse a bit scorched. Located her by giggle: in studio with Herbert. Rapped on door. Opened. Ah, said Herbert, she’s brought the tea. Violet is my staff. So I can see, said Miss W., with a small giggle. Wrapped up in Herbert’s dressing-gown, my present to him Xmas of ’42, the purple one, not seen it for years I must say, and not even bothering to use the cord not that I mind a nipple or two, we’ve had plenty of those in the drawing classes in the old days, but it was the attitude. H.’s hair standing on end, quite comic. Enid is the perfect model, said Herbert, doesn’t move a muscle. Do you like Marie? said I. Who’s Marie? said Miss Walwyn. Biscuit, said I. Your blouse is scorched.
Fri. 27th March 1953
Clearing, nice light (Constable). Large plaice.
Collating & indexing all day. Brisk walk after tea, getting dark, big clouds shooting over me on scarp, felt giddy looking up, like about to go with them, bright & dark at same time, nice fresh breeze straight off sea all those miles away, felt Barrow could open up and contents walk out any minute. Pity he’s been taken out already. Or perhaps not. Came back with torch. Last of light showing in big puddles all silvery. Wish I could paint. Don’t think the Kodak would catch it. Lying in bed all aglow. Miss W. chattering above. MUST get on with ‘essay’ over weekend. Camomile lotion works a treat on scald.
MY LIFE UNDER HERBERT E. BRADMAN (cont.)
Part 1
The War Years
Being deep in the
Only one bomb fe one stick of bom
The first time
Mr Bradman first mooted his ‘Project’ to me in the middle of a ‘blackout’ in the late September of 1940 – Britain’s darkest and yet finest hour (see Cine Reel 14B). We would sit together (I had then a ba, I had then, and still have, a ‘basement’ flat in Orchard House – really the converted scullery and pantry) in his ‘Anderson’-type shelter at the bottom of the garden, waiting for the ‘All Clear’ to sound in a rather beastly stink comprised of Mr Bradman’s pipe and my Gold Flake. He finally broke the monotonous silence with a sneeze a cough, proceeded by a great snort which vibrated the thick moustache which then (as now) sprouted generously from his upper lip. The single electric light-bulb that illuminated us (he had ‘rigged up’ the system himself) lent a lugubrious look to his face, as it was positioned directly above his head. Once, when the stick of bombs that cracked the plaster in the church (fortuitously revealing some crude medi but charming mediaeval wall-paintings of angels, ships and suchlike, as well as blowing part of a Saxon drinking-horn through Mrs Hilda Blumlein’s front window!) dropped dow thudd shattered the quiet of the village (see red asterisks on Topography Sheet 27C) this bulb swung alarmingly and made those shadows shift in quite horr terrifying ways across his over his eyes and mouth. In fact, this reminded me of his ‘Chemical Experiments That Went Wrong’ series, which appeared briefly in ‘The Sketch’ in 193, and were perhaps the most morbid of Herbert Bradman’s creations (for these and all other works see ‘Collected Works’).
There was a further silence following the snort, broken by my enquiry as to what Mr Bradman might be snorting about? He gruffly acknowledged my observation, and then squee he then leant acr he then placed uncharacteristically put his hand upon my thi left knee, leaning across to do so.
‘Violet,’ he said, ‘I think we are all lost.’
‘Come come, Mr Bradman,’ I replied, ‘we got through the last lot.’ He sla
He patted my knee in a friendly fashion and leaned back to his spot his position under the electric light-bulb. Closing his eyes, he took a great suck on his pipe, rattling the phlegm caught inside, and blew out three rings which exactly circled the electric light before breaking up against the corrugated-iron roof. of our shelter.
‘No, Violet my lovely,’ he said (that’s that particular term of endearment not being unu not being usual to him), ‘I think we are all doomed.’
It was then, at that late hour of the evening, that Mr Bradman outlined his ‘Project’, which needs no further comment here. Used as I was to eccentric employees in the past, I had never encountered anything mad and madcap or odd about Mr Bradman. – save for his hab except for our daily ‘combing’ session, merely a hangover from our evacuees period, though I haven’t found an infestation for several years, (remove?)
At first I was dismayed to find someone I regarded as an eminently sane person suffering from the ‘blues’, and that this had produced in him some curious ideas – rather as if the genius the bit of his genius that had created those painstaking illustrations of chaos and disa catastrophe had begun to take over him over. I likened it at first to a tumour, and would attempt to ‘operate’ at tea-time, trying to jolly him up in front of the gas fire in the main living room (Orchard House is one of those dwellings rarely without a chill). But after several sleepless nights in the ‘shelter’ during the worst days of the Blitz on London (Cine Reels 13A & B), I for one became quite enthusiastic about the whole thing. Little more was said, however, after the tide began to turn against Hitler and his henchm minions, and Herbert was preoccupied with what he called his ‘propaganda’ work for several local councils, and a series of delightful ‘pepping-up’ strips for troop magazines. I had all but forgotten our rather heated discussions in the fug of the Anderson on those warm September nights, until that fateful summer’s day almost eight years ago, when over my wireless came the news that the atomic bomb had been dropped onto Hir from a great height onto a Japanese city, with frightful results (Cine Reel 15A).
With the subsequent bursting of atomic bombs on land and underwater off Bikini Atoll (Cine Reel 15B), Herbert’s rather dusty Project once again became the our main topic of conversation. This was all at about the same time as British rationing (see ‘How We Live’, under ‘Diet’) spread, quite literally, to one’s daily bread – a real nuis a rather parlous state of affairs it seemed! Herbert had also just been given ‘the push’ by the editor of ‘Punch’: there is little room for a Herbert Bradman amongst the ‘jazzy’, scribbled, American-style humorous drawings that now appeal to the masses – interested only in ‘getting a kick’ out of things. Following this setback, Herbert would sit for hours on the bench in our in his garden at Ulv in sleepy little Ulverton, just gazing at the begonias, as if he had been switched off by some careless hand. It was on one of these occasions that I brought to him an envelope I had found while sorting through his drawers: it appeared, from its rattling sound, to have nothing more inside it than a lot of seeds, but was marked in an old-fashioned script, ‘First Chamber, December 9th, 1858’ – so I had not thrown it away directly. A light almost immediately spread across his face, his eyebrows shot up, and within moments he was standing upon the bench shouting unintelligibly at the top of his voice. Somewhat perturbed at this reaction, I got up and went for a glass of his favourite summer ‘quench’.
When I returned from the kitchen with a tall glass of chilled lemon barley water, I had no sooner stepped into the garden than I realised Mr Bradman had gone. It was a beautiful August day in 1946, and the smell of the harvest from the fields beyond the church was quite heady, particularly with the rather high odour of the tractor fumes (see ‘Men On the Land’, Chap. 19) wafting over the wall every now and then. I had taken to wearing sun glasses (see ‘Facial Wear’ section of ‘Vogues and Luxuries’) for health reasons, and had taken them off to go indoors, as the house is rather somb on
the dark side. Putting them back on, the glare of the garden was reduced, and I was able to see Mr Bradman’s form entangled in the shrubbery behind the bench. He had, it seemed, tumbled in his excitement into my newly-planted dwarf conifers, breaking not a few of the prize azaleas etc. on the way. On crossing the lawn as quickly as a full glass of lemon barley water allows one to, I was relieved to find him un not quite to discover him undeterred, muttering to himself with what I thought was a serious gash on his cheek, but turned out to be a crimson petal off my lobelia! He wouldn’t be budged, and my attempts at pulling him out ended in ignominious failure, with lemon barley water sticking down my front and my straw sun-hat rather the worse for wear beside him. and myself on my bottom, on my behind
Seeing that he had not actually harmed himself, and that my struggles were useless, I set about repairing some of the damage with secateurs (see ‘Men on the Land’, Appendix) and pea-sticks as best I could. During this operation, I could quite clearly hear Herbert discussing with himself his grandiose plans, for the envelope contained seeds extracted from a Pharaoh’s tomb, and ‘the symbolic parallel was not lost on me’ (as he later put it). Even now, when I water that shrubbery (we no longer emply a full-time gardener, of course), I think of its verdant nest as being the real birth-place of the ‘Project’ and all our subsequent effrt over the last six years.
I do hope that you forgive the vagaries of the rather ancient typewriter (see ‘Mechanical Inventions’) with which I am proceeding: the ribbon has a tendency to slip down which explains the red bits now and again! while the ‘o’ key has now decided to stick every so often – most trying! One is, I reflect, so dependent on mechanical devices or ‘gadgets’ these days: when one considers how complicated a typewriter is, let alone a modern passenger aircraft of some thousands of horse-power and enormous tonnage, the miracle is that we are not all deluged in wires and steel frm one day to the next. If my ‘o’ key were to stick completely – as the dusty ‘z’ appears to have done – I would have to resort to a fountain pen. This would break Mr Bradman’s cardinal rule of absolute clarity and the need for an ‘objectivity’ or ‘purity’ in presentation. This is not at all the same thing as his belief in ‘the vital’, or as he puts it or what he terms ‘the fiery essence of concentrated personal being’, which is why samples of handwriting and voices recorded on a magnetic tape recording machine have been included – as well, of course, as the ‘Collected Works’ of Mr Bradman himself. These (as you will see) include several pen-and-ink riginals from the Twenties, and a chalk drawing which was the basis for his ‘Bournville’ illustration of 1940. This rather splendid work was to be displayed on giant hoardings outside Birmingham and Coventry Central Stations, but the wood-pulp crisis (stemming from the German invasion of Norway in that year, see Cine Reel 11F) forced the Bournville Company to ‘hold back’ for the common good. The original painting was (alas!) destroyed in the bombing of Coventry on the night of the 14th November, 1940 – a blow which caused Herbert to lose his taste for large-scale, highly prestigious commissins.
Sat. 28th March 1953
Mild, fitful sun. Dumplings.
Typing a.m., then essay until 8.30! Got up to H.’s shrubbery tumble. Missed out the bicycle-saddle incident. Thought it best all round.
Sun. 29th March 1953
Mild, sunny. Chicken, semolina.
Matins. Sermon on world hunger. Rather depressing. Walked briskly after lunch. Medium-length new one: northerly direction up main road, left thru gate just after big thick pollarded oak you can see faces in, that Mrs Dart calls ‘Samson’ (rather appropriate I suppose), straight across fields above Five Elms Farm, thru beech wood behind Ulverton Hall (a few primroses, but park still an awful mess thru trees), down to river, over wobbly plank, up Ewe Drop (nice name), along scarp all way to Barrow, down Louzy Hill (not nice name) and home to great big steaming mug of Brooke Bond’s. Best walk for years. Marked it orange on Ordnance Survey. Felt cd almost take off on top. Dampened by Miss W. nattering on about Mr T. S. Eliot & I said oh yes I mean to read the Four Quintets. They both howled (that’s the word). Then H. said they had planted the Cupressocyparis leylandii (I’ve looked it up) around the Burial Site, thinking to fox me I suppose, but I said very straight I thought Cupressus lawsoniana wd have been better for the density. Get as good as you give, as Father wd say. Miss Walwyn’s big dark eyes flashed at that, all right. She’s got some Jewish in her I’m sure. Poor things.
Mon. 30th March 1953
Mild, gusty. Spam fritters.
Mummy seeds have COME UP!! Herbert hugged me, but pipe singed my hair – awful smell. Amazing really to think those tiny green shoots, that tender & with dew on them, have been dormant for 3,000 years!! A miracle pure and simple. Makes you think. Went to Webb’s Yard to see about wood for Sample Compartment’s (cherry, they say) & mentioned miracle. Old Mr Webb said he remembers a Mr George Fergusson, used to live opp. church in Miss Walwyn’s little cottage, saying something about curse. Ah yes, I said, it was Mr Fergusson gave the mummy seeds to Mr Bradman in 1931, just before Mr Fergusson passed on. They wd walk together. Forgotten till I came across the envelope just after the war. (What’s this, Mr B.? Goodness gracious, Violet, we shall see them bloom!) No, old Mr Webb rather thought something to do with Squire digging up cunnyump. Cunnyump? Barrow, Miss Nightingale. I said probably more the Egyptological angle. Blank look from Mr Webb. Asks in funny voice have I ever seed him. Blank look from Miss Nightingale. Seeded who, pray? The Squire, Miss Nightingale. Ah, seen. I have never seen the Squire, Mr Webb. He took his own life, I believe, in 1923. Aye, with a Martini Henry under the plum-tree. That’s why they sold her off. Her? The orchard, Miss Nightingale. Your Mr Bradman’s orchard. Aye, under the plum-tree, in the mouth, no face poor bugger. That’ll be all, Mr Webb. Order to be ready by May 15th. Exit Miss Nightingale. Lying in bed. Won’t sleep. Like Wuthering Heights, near the beginning. Knuckles on the window pane. Let me in, let me in! Awful. Wonder what drove him to it? Sometimes think H. cd, when in a gloom. Mother used to say it, but not the type. Widowhood. She just soldiers on & lucky to have Gordon now she’s doolally. Funny neither of us ever did the normal. Poor Jean Lowe so proud of her ring. Lost its colour after Fred died. She saw it as sign, but only 9-carat Utility. Mind you, 22 carat under £5 now they’ve lifted controls, I noticed in town last month. Gustier than ever tonight. Flicking away at window. Knock knock, knock knock. Saw Wuthering H. with Kenneth, Shirley and lame little Ivor Gilchrist that time. Could have blown me over with a feather after. Six inches off the ground, I felt. Not cos of Olivier of course, no. Kenneth. Storm scene, music bashing out, rain pouring off their hair, load of shouting & kissing, then felt hand on my knee. Moved up sideways like a crab. Started snapping my suspenders. Thought the whole row wd hear. Snap snap. Snap snap. Those were times. Didn’t touch anything more though. He wasn’t that sort. Not that time. Wonder if Squire had one? A wife. Can’t bear to think on it. Children. That face, all over the plums I spose. Tiny bits of it still in bark, quite likely. Hope the pane holds. Oh God. I’d just die, just like that. Snap snap. Snap snap. Oh Kenneth.
Tues. 31st March 1953
Mild, windy. Sausage.
Labelling Material till lunch. Sneaked out 2.00 and lopped plum as best I could given the implement (big rusty saw from shed, got it caught in the tennis-net, took a tumble yanking it & distemper stain from old tin on skirt now, drat it. MUST clear the thing out. Felt like I was in an H. E. Bradman cartoon!) His nibs in London with Miss You-know-who. Please himself. Some of us have work to get on with. Last time Violet in London was when Gordon came down for that big model train do. ’47! Time’s more than a twin-prop, as Father wd say.
Midnight. No sight nor sound of Herbert. Terrible if anything’s happened to him. Wanted him to take train. That Hillman! Take the train, Mr B. No, said H., I’m taking my Minx. Big giggle from Miss W. I went all hot in face, I’m afraid to say. Don’t think she’s prepared to recognise Herbert’s greatness. She paints too. Little watercolour
s. Rather browny. Golly it’s quiet. Almost miss that branch knocking. Perhaps a tree has fallen onto car. Sausage repeating. Nothing real in them. Artificial. Never seen a pig, probably. Come on, Herbert. Not like you. This is what I mean. Big dark eyes flashing. I’ll have to have a word. Not going to let Project slip away at last moment. Herbert’s Second Coming, she calls it. There’s still respect. Don’t like the way she calls him Josef whenever he gets short, either. Just the same moustache, Violet! Miss Nightingale, until further notice, Miss Walwyn. Jocularly, but meant. Is it different up North, Miss Nightingale? Cheek. Anyway he’s dead now. That horrible man. We can all breathe easier. Though H. doesn’t think so. We’re all doomed, Violet. Oh thank God that’s him. Them.
1.30 a.m. Bits of plaster on me. What a racket. Stamping. Stamping. Coming down like confetti, awful. Must see to it. I do think it’s a bit much in the small hours. Really. Stamping about like that.
