Appetite for Life : The Education of a Young Diarist, 1924-1927 (9781551996776)

by Ritchie, Charles

  21 November 1926.

  When I opened The Times today I saw the notice of Aunt Zaidée’s death, so I telephoned the house and talked to Elizabeth and am to go down to Cheltenham for the funeral tomorrow.

  Today I moved into my new rooms in college. They are splendid, with a view up St. Aldates to Tom Tower. I am absolutely delighted with them, so much so that I could not sleep tonight but woke up, looking out of the window at the view of the church and the tower bathed in moonlight.

  22 November 1926.

  I went up to London today en route to Cheltenham and bought a black tie and an armband to wear at Aunt Zaidée’s funeral. Then I dropped round to see Matza at a flat he has taken off Bond Street for his visits to London and found him and his cousin with two girls: one, a girl called Brima, is a Charleston dancer from a night-club. They were all in bed drinking champagne at ten in the morning. Matza began congratulating me on “my inheritance” from Aunt Zaidée and said to Brima, “You know he has just come into £15,000 a year.” (Actually, of course, I haven’t come in for a single cent so far as I know.) Brima said, “Well, I liked him before you said that. I like people for their own sake and not what I can get out of them.” The other girl laughed and said, “You are a scream, Brima,” and Brima said, “Oh, do shut up.” The train to Cheltenham took hours.

  I am staying at Pyatts Hotel where I stayed once before. It is a real survival of Dickens’ days. After a solitary dinner I went over to Aunt Zaidée’s house. Aunt Zaidée’s maid, Elizabeth, took me into the drawing-room. She had her hair in a net and was wheezing with asthma. It seemed so odd and almost scandalous for us to be sitting there in Aunt Zaidée’s absence. Elizabeth told me that in Aunt Zaidée’s dying delirium she thought she was in a ward filled with smallpox patients and lying on a bed of broken glass. She also said that Aunt Zaidée had sewed up all her good jewellery in a pincushion to avoid tax collectors, and that this was to be told to Mother as a secret, as the jewellery is left to her. Elizabeth has the pincushion in her bedroom.

  23 November 1926.

  Today the other relations gathered, not very many of them: two stepdaughters, each the wife of a son of Aunt Zaidée’s two last husbands, one a very vague lady, the other somewhat beady-eyed. The vague lady never stopped talking, mostly about the evils of the younger generation, saying how much she disapproved of girls having their hair bobbed or Eton-cropped. She said a woman’s greatest beauty is her hair: “When I was a girl, mine was so long that I could sit on it. Now you can hardly tell a girl from a man.” She certainly has plenty of hair, hers done up with tortoise-shell combs, but it always looks on the verge of falling down. Mr. Collins was there. He is a sort of cousin of ours, exceedingly rich. Mother once sold him some family silver when she was particularly hard up. He is a soft-spoken, nervous little man of about fifty with small, useless-looking hands. He seems obsessed with the danger of communism and says that he expects any day now to see the communist mob at the gates of Dunloran, which is the name of his house in Kent. He was very friendly tonight and talked a bit about Oxford and the wild times he had had there when he was a member of the Bullingdon Club. It is hard to imagine him as a wild undergraduate. He asked me to go and stay with him but I do not know whether I can bear to do so.

  Then we all went off to church. When they wheeled in the coffin I could not help wondering what had happened to the spirit of that smiling, pretty, worldly old woman. The maids, all in black, sat at the back of the church. When we came out I saw the two of them were sobbing. I think they were the only ones there who really mourned Aunt Zaidée.

  When we got back to the house Elizabeth said that there were two cases of “Peninsular War” Madeira, supposed to be a rare and wonderful wine, and that she knew Aunt Zaidée would have wished me to have them, so they will be sent to me at Oxford.

  27 November 1926.

  The day of my luncheon with Margot. I was extremely nervous about the outcome of it. I ordered lobster and hock and got some flowers for the table. The only ones they had were uninteresting carnations. The scout arranged them in a tankard of college silver. The first thing that Margot said when she had taken off her coat was, “May I, please?” and picked up the tankard to rearrange the carnations. Then she walked round the room peering at the pictures on the walls in a way which I now see is shortsighted and accounts for her puckering up her eyes when she looks at you.

  I remember nothing of the luncheon-table conversation between us except that she talked away in a sort of Noel Coward lingo while the poodle lay under the table. She had insisted on bringing it with her although dogs are not allowed in college. She smuggled it under her coat.

  After luncheon I suggested a liqueur. “A tiny crème de menthe,” she said. “I am going to tea with Vi and her mother later and I mustn’t come reeling in.” We put down our liqueurs and subsided onto the sofa together. Her conversation switched off as you would switch off a light. The transition was complete. It was just the sensation of dancing with someone who by sheer instinct keeps perfectly in step as if you were listening to the same tune and our limbs moved of their own accord.

  Later when she got up from the sofa she looked at herself in the glass of her compact and said, “Oh, my hair. I look a fright.” The only change was that she did not say it in her Mayfair accent, and then she said to the poodle, “Come to mother, my little pooch. Isn’t he a good good dog?”, cuddling its nose against her cheek. The poodle was indeed a good dog. During the whole of our interlude on the sofa he remained under the table without moving but far from asleep, watching us with an alert, sophisticated gaze.

  I accompanied Margot out of the college. As we went through the porter’s lodge there were Miles and Ducker apparently studying announcements of forthcoming sporting and dramatic events. Ducker’s eyes slid sideways at us as we passed and then hastily swivelled back to concentration on the date and time of the Pembroke -versus-Magdalen soccer match. Margot had by now resumed her social manner. “Oh, it would be too ghastly for any words if I am late for tea with Vi. Poor lamb, she is absolutely counting on me to help out with her mother, who can be but difficult. She doesn’t seem to realize that Vi is a grown woman who has to lead her own life,” and then she was gone up St. Aldates on her high heels, dragging the poodle in her wake, and calling out, “Good-bye for now, my sweet. It was a divine lunch. That lobster …”

  When I got back to my room I lay down on the sofa and gave myself up to non-thinking, almost dozing, when there was a knock on the door. It was Millin, the porter. “Sorry to disturb you, sir, but I thought as your guest has left I might mention there is an American lady and gentleman in the Lodge who are most anxious to see Dr. Johnson’s teapot. They have been waiting quite some time but they won’t be discouraged.” “Millin,” I said sleepily, “these rooms are not a museum.” “You will recall, sir, that the Dean said that, in reason, guests might come and look about from time to time.” I do indeed recall the arrangement; it was the condition for my having these rooms, some of the best in college, so I said to Millin to ask them to come up, that I was just going out anyway. Before I could get down the staircase they were at the door. “I hope this is not an invasion of your privacy,” the lady said with a brilliant smile. “It must be a real inspiration for you to be in these rooms where he lived and studied.” Her husband, a tall, pale man with thick-lensed glasses, had now followed her up the stairs and was gazing about him. “That sofa is a fine piece,” he said. “Did it belong to the doctor?” “Oh Buddy,” his wife cried, “that is modern.” I pointed out the teapot which stands by itself in an alcove by the fireplace and turning to me she said, “Can’t you just see him brewing himself a pot of tea as he bent over his books. Perhaps we interrupted you just as you were going to make tea yourself out of that very teapot.” I said that as a matter of fact I had just been doing a spot of work.

  When they had gone I decided to go out. Feeling idiotically happy I walked aimlessly along the Cornmarket thinking of Margot and myself when to my amaze
ment I saw Margot herself emerging from Elliston and Caddell’s tea-room arm in arm with Jeremy. I don’t think they saw me. I headed for Christ Church Meadows and plumped myself down on a damp wooden bench and I thought, why would Margot spin that story of going to catch a bus to tea with Vi and her mother. I have no claim on her. She has a perfect right to have tea with Jeremy or do anything else she wants. Did she tell me that silly tale for the sheer pleasure of bamboozling me? In any case it doesn’t matter, but the question is there.

  28 November 1926.

  I woke up feeling like a million dollars. I have done it. I have brought it off. Nothing can take this away from me, even if I never see Margot again. Before she left I said I would telephone her. She said, “No, don’t do that, I’ll telephone you.” I wonder if she ever will. My body remembers hers all the time. I feel so immensely pleased, as if some weight of doubt had been miraculously lifted. Now, when Patterson, Sarkies, and company are describing their exploits it won’t disturb me any more, and I shall keep my mouth shut, because once it has really happened it would spoil it to talk about it.

  Jim Patterson took me for a spin in his new racing Amilcar. It is painted scarlet and looks very dashing and he is very proud of it. We went at eighty miles an hour on the road to Broadway. It was exhilarating but bloody cold as there is no windscreen on the car. We were both in high spirits. He because of the car, and I because of Margot. We had cold ham and hock for lunch at the Lygon Arms.

  On the way back the car engine began to peter out and we had to turn in to a garage and hang about there for what seemed hours while the mechanic peered under the hood and mumbled about carburetors and big-ends. Jim said, “Christ, I hope it isn’t the big-end,” and I agreed, although to tell the truth I don’t know what a big-end is. Finally they got the car so that it was going and we got back to Oxford in the late afternoon just in time for me to go to Germers’ for a haircut and a soothing massage from the overhead vibrators, one of the minor pleasures of life, but the barbers don’t like them because they say they store up hair and it blows out and makes them cough.

  I dined in Hall like a good boy and talked to the Senior Scholar, who is rather depressed as he has been gated for getting drunk and beating on a tin can outside the Dean’s window shouting “Ecclesiastical buggery!”

  29 November 1926.

  No call from Margot. Fortunately I have not got her telephone number or I should be tempted to ring her up and I am sure that would be a mistake.

  I went for a drink this evening with Leslie Mahon. He is the wittiest little creature I have met here. Sparkling with spirits and fun, but at times he falls into mawkish and querulous moods. Also he paints his face, which doesn’t go at all with his blue-black complexion, as he is one of those unfortunates who have to shave twice a day.

  He took me to the George for dinner and talked at the top of his voice, saying to me, “Darling, do have some more of this divine pâté.” I felt very conspicuous, especially as luck would have it Kenworthy and Martin, who were at prep school with me, were at the next table. They put on boot-button faces and talked in lowered tones, I suppose saying what queer company I had got into. After dinner Leslie said, “Let’s go to the Nag’s Head and have a drink.” The Nag’s Head is a pub with a reputation for being frequented by homosexuals and is where they pick up men, but I thought, “What the hell, why not, let’s see what it’s like.”

  The moment we got into the pub Leslie, who had been talking very interestingly, became a different person and began putting on coquettish airs and flaunting about the place. There were only half a dozen working men there drinking beer, but they all seemed to know Leslie and treated him tolerantly as if he were a showing-off child. He soon attached himself to one particular youth and I was left to exchange remarks about the weather with two young men at the bar. They treated me with some suspicion as though I was a kind of spy, then the door flew open and a troupe of aesthetes came willowing in waving silk handkerchiefs and cooing and gasping, and soon were entangled with the men in the pub in bantering conversations and sidelong glances.

  I went up to Leslie to ask him if he was ready to go home but saw that he was stroking the young workman’s cheek and reciting some lines of his play to him, so I bowed out and thought they were all relieved to see the last of me.

  30 November 1926.

  Margot telephoned me this morning and suggested my going round to her house tomorrow evening. So, she must have been thinking of me during these last two days in the same way that I have been thinking of her.

  She lives in the Iffley Road and I am to be there about six. I tried to work on my essay but I couldn’t settle to anything, so walked up to the Mitre with the intention of having a solitary sausage and mash in the pub part of the hotel and coming back to work, but there I ran into Jim Patterson, who was very down in the mouth. There is something seriously wrong with his beloved Amilcar and he is afraid he has been sold a pup, so we had a couple of whiskies to cheer us up and then decided it was not a good day for work and we might as well go to the movies and just sink into the plush seats at the Super Cinema and relax. There is something delightfully immoral about going to an afternoon movie at Oxford. It is such a supreme waste of time. (I remember Tony in Halifax used to say, “It is a sunny day today, almost fine enough to go to the movies!”)

  On our way down the High we ran into Betty and that other prostitute who is her hanger-on and picks up the crumbs that fall from Betty’s table. On the spur of the moment we asked them to come to the movies with us. It was a risky thing to do, as if the Proctors had seen us with them we would have been in trouble – fined or gated, or both, especially as Betty is so well-known to them. But as the Proctors are not usually around in the middle of the afternoon, we chanced it.

  Betty is not at all unattractive with her broad pink country face, but they say she has the clap. Anyway, I wasn’t tempted. I am seeing Margot tomorrow.

  The movie was Chicago, a really amazing film. Phyllis Haver gave a magnificent performance as the baby-faced Chicago murderess. I wonder what was going through the girls’ heads while they were watching it. I shouldn’t think it would be at all their idea of fun, but they seemed quite pleased to be asked to the movies like ordinary girls with no strings attached, but I’m not sure, as when I asked Betty which she preferred – townees or undergraduates – she said, “Pardon me for saying so, but undergraduates are a bloody silly lot,” and she should know.

  1 December 1926.

  I went to see Margot this afternoon. It was a pouring rainy day and she lives miles out in the wastes of the Iffley Road. I had not realized that it would take so long to walk there, and to my horror when I looked at my watch it was six-thirty and still I had not got there. I was in a panic at the idea of being late when all day I had thought of nothing but being with her, and I almost ran the rest of the way.

  She lives in a small red-brick house exactly like all the other houses in the street, with a dusty-looking hydrangea outside the door. When you go in there is a coat-rack on the left, much too big for the hall, and on the right the door into the sitting-room, which also is quite small with a heavy Victorian dresser and a shiny horsehair sofa. It is a rented house and Margot said the furniture came with the house.

  When I came in she was sitting with the poodle asleep beside her and her feet curled under her close to the gas fire drinking gin. She greeted me pretty coolly. “Surprise, surprise. So you have decided to drop in after all. Now you are here pour yourself a drink and come and sit by the fire. This room is but freezing.” So I squatted down beside her and she suddenly stopped talking, just the way she did the last time, and was quite silent, as if this was a signal.

  Upstairs there is an old-fashioned huge mahogany double bed that practically fills the bedroom. Much later, when I woke from a kind of half doze, the first thing that my eyes lighted on was the picture of a man with a handlebar moustache, wearing some kind of a sola topi, hanging on the wall opposite. This absurd picture made me smile wit
h complete happiness. Margot said, “I am always meaning to take that down. It is such a hideosity.” I said, “Leave it there, it brings good luck.”

  We went downstairs and had bread and cheese and some more gin. Margot began shortening the hem of a dress, sticking pins in it to show how it should go. It was quite a domestic scene. Looking round the room I thought of the stories I had heard of “the notorious Margot Poltimer” and the orgies she was supposed to preside over. I cannot imagine an orgy in the sitting-room, certainly not on the horsehair sofa, and when I looked at Margot sitting on the other side of the gas fire sewing, I wondered how she had got such a reputation. I know she must be fairly promiscuous, otherwise why me? But so are lots of women without being so much talked about. She doesn’t do the talking. She has not mentioned another man to me except to speak of Jeremy rather vaguely as a friend. I expect it is because undergraduates are such gossips, and exaggerate everything as they do, and the men she has slept with boast about it and paint her as a great courtesan to prove that they are cordon bleu lovers. Also, she is a different person in public – puts on an act the way she did when I met her in the George bar. (That was only a week ago and I feel as though I have known her much longer.) One odd thing about her, she hates to be asked questions. When I said, “What are you doing next week?” she flashed right back, “Mind your own business, my sweet.” All the same, she said she would have dinner with me on Thursday.

  2 December 1926.

  Before I was properly awake I was picturing Margot lying beside me. I jumped out of bed saying to myself, “I’ll go mad if I go on like this,” and so I dressed in a hurry without taking time to shave and went for a walk in Christ Church Meadows. I looked across the field at Merton College half enshrouded in damp mist and had an extraordinarily intense vision of the beauty of the scene. It was almost as physical as the feeling I had had a few moments before when I was picturing Margot’s body. I walked till I was tired and hungry and went back to my room and ate an enormous breakfast of kidneys and bacon.