Ever, Dirk: The Bogarde Letters

by Unknown

  Anyway everything was splendidly looked after here, the house full of young, plus six month baby which Bendo ADORED, and offered his ball to at the drop of a wail … Lady (Mmme Martinez) had skiddled off again to Spain where her mother this time is not dying, but having a leg cut off. Very boring indeed.

  So I suppose we’ve lost her until the end of the summer, because she is bound to run her Holiday into the scheme of amputation.

  I much prefer my Young anyway: cleaner, jolly, and prettier … Christine1 said, this morning, that she was ‘sorry’ to have to tell me that she had washed all the casseroles, marmites, and the shelves on which the plates are stacked … she had also washed out all the preserve cupboards … the hint was that the Spanish were’nt really ‘propre’. Anyway those who live in caves in Grenada, drive a BMW, and have mothers who have to loose a leg now and again. It really is too tiresome.

  Forwood is rapidly regaining the ground he was in great danger of loosing. After six months of dire depression and weakness, and a miserably ageing kind of malady, wrongly diagnosed and treated, you can only imagine how deeply grateful I am to you. But enough of that. It was done, and done in time; and Forwood is now back in ‘his skin’ again … and that is how it should have been ages ago; but I really feared that he had either HAD a mild stroke or was building up to advanced senility … far too young.

  You can see from my unusually bad typing (even for me) that the shock has not yet worn off! Contained anxiety exhausts: as you know.

  It was simply lovely working with you in your new Office. I like it MUCH better than the last one2 [ … ] WE have no place in the scheme of things now, in William IV Street … This is a greater, deeper, grief for you than it could possibly be for me, but I am certain that you must go your way now. You built the Firm .. with [Ian] Parsons [ … ] but that particular Firm has gone, or is going; as surely as the tide erodes a sandcastle left on the evening beach … no good trying to go back and mediate, no good going back without trust. And that you can no longer have.

  I have’nt. And I’m Baby Bumbling in this affair … so God knows where you think that you might find a shred of honour there now.

  Writing to you like this is, I am aware, gross impertanance … but I have always spoken out: very often got myself into trouble for so doing .. but this time I simply insist that you are no longer humiliated.

  And remember that you will not be supported in anything, by anyone there, because everyone is too frightened of loosing their jobs and they all feel that they must brush themselves down and try to please Teacher.

  At their peril if they fail … for Teacher has a lot of Favourites all waiting in the wings: you wait and see.

  And there is a lot of steam in you yet, Mrs S. It is a pity to waste a scrap of it .. you are sorely needed by many; so attend to us!

  […] I want to sharpen my writing .. reading John Mortimers autobio.1 has been a good lesson. He does do it well: even though I find his drinking and wenching boring, and his plain-ness off putting. He has a splendid wit, even though he is a little over aware of it and often writes irritatingly. But it is useful to read. […]

  In the village this morning the lady in the paper shop handed me a copy of NICE MATIN wordlessly, looking at me searchingly through her glittery spectacles.

  A colour photograph of dead horses and wrecked cars … a giant headline about Terror In London. We looked at each other silently. She shook her head, and pressed my hand, which I thought exceptionally moving … and went to serve another customer.

  We heard, on the BBC, yesterday evening about the appalling business2.. but what can one do? What can one do? The cruelty, the mindless evil of it, produces only helpless oaths. I think that I hate the Irish now more than I ever did before. I understand [a friend] who said that she cant even bear to listen to her husbands chauffeur, who has been in their employ for twenty years, talking. The very cadence of his voice makes her rage. I felt like that with poor Patrick Campbell3… and would not, discreetly, have him here after one ghastly business … and tried not to speak to him in the village, unless forced. Idiotic. But I hated the cadence too.

  This is a very disjointed letter. I keep pausing for air! And there is none even up here in the olive store … blinding is the word for the sun, and white for the sky; and where John [Charlton] is going to have his holiday the temperature has been over 100 for a month, they are slaughtering cattle all over Italy, and the river Po is so shallow that you can walk across it … as he sits permanently in the shade under a hat he might not suffer: but he will know what ‘blinding’ means when it is applied to light.

  […] I loved, as I have said, being with you in the coral office .. I think, nay! I know that it is the only way one can possibly work on a book. Arguing, persuading, giving in, grumbling, laughing, fitting things into place, building the thing together. When you were staying here in May it was ALMOST the same, but I had other pressures which would not go completely away: but I think that we managed pretty well, dont you?

  Now I must take my sticky body into the fire-heat, and start preparing luncheon: which I shall not want to eat.

  And after that, wash up.

  After that prepare Bendo’s grub. He lies dead, covered in flies, a hot dog if ever there was one. So he gets bathed .. and then I’ll come back here and start answering the Mail. It’ll cost a small fortune.…

  A stoat ran up the tree beyond the window, just now … I have never seen one so near to the house before, and an adder slid across the step of the long room door … the intense heat has brought all kinds of strange creatures close to the house where, I suppose, the need for water makes them less timid.

  I could do without the adder, though.

  And the bloody stoat is after my blackbirds … I had hoped that they had nested and reared and gone. Probably not, alas.

  I must go and give you peace.…

  and always my love –

  Dirk.

  P.S. Reading through the TS, yet again, I was uncomfortably aware that perhaps I had not, really, given you enough of a ‘part’ in my ‘play’. This was entirely due to the fact that I was constantly anxious that you should not be embarressed. Mrs D.W.G1 was as fastidious and correct as you .. hence ‘Mrs X’ and devious ways of concealing her.

  Anyway I do think that I have honoured you as best I could under the circumstances [ … ] But I could have been more personal … good manners held my hand away. Oh dear! Never explain never complain .. I know. But it did cross my mind that I might have fudged the issue by over-care and protectivness.

  Tant pis! It’s done now. Next time maybe … watch out!

  Love D.

  To Norah Smallwood Clermont

  26 July 1982

  Norah dearest –

  Spoken to Madam Attenborough about the negatives and she is taking steps to have the one you want … the walk into the sunset, so to speak, sent to you.2

  [ … ] I am going to buy a single bore gun.3 It sounds rather as if one was a White Farmer somewhere in the Bush. But that is rather what it has come to. Apparently we are swamped with a vast amount of maghrébins … I am not, as you will realise only too well, sure of the spelling.4

  These are lay-about Arabs between the ages of 13 and 20 … the translation of the word in English would be, literally, Street Arabs .. and they do boring, messy, break in’s … and a gun is wise up here on the hill (Oh! John! The House On The Hill.1 Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm!) with the nearest Police Station five long kilometers away.

  One shot, of small calibre, in the backside is quite sufficient.

  So I’m off to buy a gun.

  It’s a bore. I hate shooting anything, and could quite easily get the bastard in the head as the bum. Still: standing beside my chair or beside the bed, seems comforting to have it there.

  [ … ] Grey cloud has cooled us suddenly, there was a half moon last night, and the air is there for one to breath again. It really has been foul. The garden is a miserable sight. Brown, covered in ugly thistles
and all the lavander is dying off from lack of water. We are rationed now, so I can only water the pots and things nearest the house, and the wisteria is dying off … I am told by M. Marc (who seems to know) that it is ‘finished’.

  Perhaps he’s right. Two viscious mistrals put paid to it at the start of the season, and now the drought has finally sealed it’s fate.

  Oh well ..

  I must go and feed Bendo.

  My love, in haste ..

  Always

  Dirk.

  P.S [ … ] I rather think that your next title2 will be – ‘West Of Sunset’ – (Sunset Boulevard). It may change, but thats what I’m working to. So you’d better like it. For the moment. D

  To Norah Smallwood Clermont

  19 August 1982

  Norah – darling this is a NTBRT –

  If I were to tell you that I have just seen a snake, as thick as my forearm, attempting to devour a toad as large as a saucer, you would not, I imagine, believe me.

  But I have. The snake I think, hope, is a grass-snake, all of a meter long, white-silver with glorious navy blue diamonds on his skin.

  If this was not a grass-snake then we have problems.

  There was no possibility that he could have engorged the toad, at least I dont think so, because it really was a very large creature, and putting up a fearfull struggle with it’s head in the snake’s mouth!

  Amazing how one is diverted on a hot afternoon.

  I tore off and got a camera (Country Life?) and took some astonishing snapshots which, I feel certain, you will not want to see. Pity.

  But in my ‘business’ I irritated the snake who dropped the toad and shot back into his lair: just under the stone seat beneath the lime tree. The [toad] wandered blearily, and a little bloodily, away. Rather as if it had had an encounter at William IV Street; but was later found to be sitting perfectly happily in the sump which is the overflow for the swimming-hole.

  Forwood was aghast at this encounter, and fled. Which just goes to show what cowards people are. I was rivitted: mind you, had it been an animal and not a reptile I’d have felt a great deal more distressed .. but a bloody old toad does’nt come high on my list of adorable-creatures. She’s still sitting in the sump as I write; and Forwood has fed her some worms.

  Are we all going mad?

  A week of Kathleen Tynan (and lover) and assorted agonies and a hundred-weight of baggage might account for my feebleness.

  Kathleen is adorable, brilliant, maddening, stubborn and pig-headed.

  And I am devoted to her. She also comes in a most attractive size and a very pretty colour. Blond, bronze, green eyed.

  Having been married to Tynan she is not expected to be a frump nor a dumb-blond, and is neither. But she does rattle me.

  A telephone call, JUST as I was making certain the terrace lights were out and the doors secure, from Nice station with an anguished plea for a bed. So a cold supper is discovered and laid upon the table, beds made up and lights switched back on, and the Sunday Times sadly put aside. I had made plans to read the Book Section in my bed. And eventually they arrive, in a Taxi from Nice, with too much baggage and not enough money.

  We settle down. It’s alright really. I just keep telling myself. And the conversation is’nt half bad, and spirited.

  Lover leaves for Paris in the Morning, Kathleen stays on to ‘work on her book’. (History of K. Tynan.) The days are reasonably pleasant because she is working, and so I am able to work too: but there are drinks to get, food to find, so on. Irritating, but essential. She was so incredibly kind to Forwood and I during our stay in California that we simply had no alternative but to repay the debt. Although I know she would not consider it as such. She is far too loving of one.

  But oh! The problems she throws at ones feet! How DO people survive? No money, two children, a vast flat in New York, a house in Thurlo Square, Kens debts to pay off, Publishers screaming for stuff, and advancing large sums of money against the book which is not yet written and wont be for another two years. By which time no one will remember who K. Tynan was!

  She begged, every evening, sitting out on the terrace, for assistance and advice. All of which we liberally bestowed upon her; all of which she, of course, rejected.

  I told her that she should write the story of her own life with Ken .. and leave the History until later. No way.

  So she is wading through a thousand incomprehensible diaries, journals, and stuff. Interviewing people from his past, his school-days, his not-altogether-savoury family and so on.

  It seems to me an awful amount of work to expend on a brilliant, but not amazing, Critic. Perhaps because I disliked him I am biased.

  Anyway after five days of comparative peace, off she went to Barcelona to take the children (10–14) to their first real Bullfight. VERY Ken! She took them by train, sat up all the way there and all the way back, arrived here exhausted but satisfied that she had been a good Mother, that the children had adored the corrida (more shades of Ken!) and that she could now go back to work.

  Which she did. She had left every single diary of Ken’s in your walk-in cupboard, which was massed with papers and documents of every size and colour and which Lady was busting to ‘tidy’. I was quite nervous.

  So she left this morning for London, leaving the children with some long suffering people who ‘have children’ on the coast. And she was tearful and miserable, and it was blistering hot, and she suddenly looked dreadfully small, alone and a mess. Oh dear. But thank God for American publishers who pay enormous advances. Otherwise I cannot imagine what she would do. And they’ll have to be patient publishers too.

  As she went off so [my financial advisers] arrived [ … ] I was excercised, rather, because we have, as you probably know, a Wealth Tax being slammed on us in October by this tiresome Government. But they are confident that I’m not rich enough to worry: and that the house has no ‘signs of wealth’. Viz. No grand piano, Butler, Swimming pool, Stables, Yacht, etc etc.

  I can, they instructed me, also have a man to come and do the main bulk of the mowing and land-work generally. Forwood no longer can do very much: nor do I want him to. So that was a hell of a relief! But I have to find the man. Difficult today. They seemed quite pleased with my work as an earning-writer, and that pleased me!

  But when I consider what has to be done to Clermont, just to maintain it as it is, no more, my heart, I confess, quails. The roof will cost at least £10.000. The rising damp not far off that sum. The problem being the depth of the walls. They cant stick their machinery or whatever it is through them. The front door is falling off, and the whole place should be painted out from head to foot. Or whatever the term is. Attic to cellar.

  And that, at so much per square meter, is prohibitive. And it’s no good asking ME to do the bloody job. I hate painting rooms, cant paint a ceiling, and I have to work up here. Otherwise …

  Re-reading the first few pages of the TS of ‘AOM’ yesterday I was sad to think that all that joy and glory of discovery, of making this house a house, has to be heavily paid for! Naturally, one always pays in life. That seems to be the rule. But that first year I really thought I’d be able to make it work. Maybe I will too: and of course in those days we did’nt know about Arabs and oil and Rising Costs and all the rest of it. Why is one eternally idiotic!

  It’s almost six pm. The air is just beginning to cool. A tiny zephyr trembles among the vine which is heavy now, and thick with grapes … I must go and look at the toad in the sump.

  Tomorrow I’ll get back to work. The excitements are over .. including our luncheon yesterday for the Jarre’s.1 It’s now back to work .. and I must stop this rabbiting on.

  This, to divert you – & with my love – Dirk.

  To Susan Owens

  (Postcard) Clermont

  22 November 1982

  A week in London practically broke my bank!2 How do people afford to live in England now? Silly question. Lots do, including my family. Glad my note cleared your problems. Life is NO
T all skittles, books and land. There are human factors too: even for people as apparently removed from ‘life’ as me! You’ll find out when you get ‘AOM’ .. it’s all written down there for you to read!

  Anyway: London cleared up a few problems for me, and gave me a few more! [ … ] Thanks for your congratulations.3 It means a Horseman, but Knight is okay … the next rank is Commandeur .. and thats VERY grand! Back home to damp, falling leaves, and rotting grapes .. and a lot of work on the new book .. so I’ll clear off for a while: as long as you dont think I’m sulking .... all the best as ever ..

  DB

  To Nerine Selwood Clermont

  23 November 1982

  Nair dear –

  I have had to bash this1 off in a hurry because your ‘reminder’ letter reached me only this morning, and that does’nt give us much time! I have written a piece, which I hope will do, as a letter to you, so that you can read whatever part of it out you want.

  There is no point in bleating on for too long, so many things happened in the Hall, so many people were a part of our lives, so many things a part of them also.

  So I have, as you’ll see, just stuck to essentials … I dont think people want beating over the head at a celebratory evening!

  [ … ] warmest wishes for a splendid, moving, evening on the 4th ...

  Love as ever

  Dirk

  Nair dear –

  The first time I ever trod upon a stage was this one: up there at the back. Stage right.

  It was not a sensational beginning which your father offered me: but it WAS a beginning. I was a naked slave in ‘Alf’s Button’ and all that was required of me was to stand perfectly still, for rather a long time, in an archway wearing a fez, a curly stuck-on moustache, a weskit, and a pair of transparent, saggy, orange bloomers.

  The transparency caused a certain amount of trouble, which we managed in the end to overcome, but I never got over the cold. The stage was freezing, and I had been firmly instructed ‘Not To Move a Muscle.’ Harder to do than I thought under the circumstances. I ‘acted’ standing still with commendable effect.