Rosie

by Rose Tremain

  There was a lot of frustration in this, as well as a lot of bruises. I remember reflecting, at this time, that with so many things I’d attempted in my sixteen and a half years of life – playing the piano, typing, riding, playing tennis, skiing – I always fell short of doing them really, really well. Even my art – my huge Milton mural – was in some way less perfect than it should have been.

  When it came to skiing, Ginny fared even worse than I did.

  To get to the nursery slopes from the top of Les Diablerets village, you had to grab a lift, which involved fitting your skis into two grooves in the snow and snatching down a moving plastic seat, attached to an overhead pulley, which you thrust between your legs and it would clamp onto your bottom and drag you upwards.

  The inelegant manoeuvre had to be done very fast, or the seat would fly on without you. The most important thing was to watch that your skis didn’t come out of the snow grooves, otherwise one or both skis could turn backwards as you were being dragged forwards, and you could break your leg.

  On her second day with Monsieur Borloz, Ginny’s left ski left the groove and her tibia snapped.

  Mountain medics rushed like the shadows of clouds on their skis over the deep snow, and Ginny was taken to hospital on a stretcher that resembled a flat-bottomed red boat. Carol and I kneeled over her, trying to comfort her, but barely able to believe that our new friend, the general’s daughter, had been wounded on day two of the battle. It didn’t seem remotely fair. Now, not only would she have her permed hair to feel anxious about; her leg would be put into a cast. How could a girl move forward through the winter – move forward through her life – with tight curls and tight bandages soaked in plaster of Paris?

  Sorrow for Ginny made us kind. When she came back to Chardon, hopping along on crutches, needing to rest with her leg in the air for part of every day, Carol and I became her only nurses. Pierrette oversaw our ministrations. The other teachers looked in occasionally. Mademoiselle Clara and Miss Allen wrote to Ginny’s parents. But we helped her to wash and dress herself. We brought her supper in bed. We sat by her side, trying to make up jokes and stories. We put large rollers in her hair to stretch out the permed curls. Sometimes, in the night, one of us would help her to the lavatory.

  Like her father, Ginny was (and remains) a stoic. She was in pain for a long time, far from home, in the company of strangers and a toy pig who kept indulging in insistent commentary of an existential kind, in weather that could turn so bitterly cold that our feet lost all feeling on the skating rink. She cried sometimes, but I don’t remember her ever really complaining.

  For the rest of us, out on the ski slopes, as winter moved in strange deluding ways towards spring, days of startling sunshine were frequent and our faces soon became as brown as Monsieur Borloz’s. We were fit enough from all the sporty exercise, but the food in Les Diablerets was rich and abundant, with an emphasis on cheese pies, veal cutlets and rösti potatoes – irresistible after the mince and cabbage at Crofton Grange – and we ended the year fatter than when we’d begun it.

  To compound our weight gain, we were allowed down to the patisserie in the village once a week, where our favourite delicacy was a praline and chocolate confection called a japonais – sometimes bought in multiples of four or five. I knew only too well that my mother would dislike the fact that I’d put on weight at Mon Fertile: ‘That is a disgusting sight, Rosie!’ Extra-tight girdles would no doubt be bought in Newbury. But part of me no longer really cared what Jane thought or desired. When I was sent to Switzerland, the thread that bound us as mother and daughter – always fragile – was becoming badly frayed.

  Despite never being able to ski really well or perform beguiling little leaps on the skating rink, I wasn’t exactly unhappy. I was just searching. I remember writing to my father, asking him whether the few moments of transcendent joy I’d experienced walking back from the patisserie in the dusk, through the deep snow, understanding how silence could be such a perfect accompaniment to human existence, were trying to tell me something about the beauty of the world and my future place in it. But realising that his daughter had agreed to be sent to a ridiculous, expensive finishing school, Keith’s reaction could only be mocking.

  He and Virginia, who now called herself ‘Mary’ (referred to, with some laughter, by Jane and Ivo as ‘Bloody Mary’), had recently become members of a spiritual sect led by the Indonesian guru Muhammad Subuh Sumohadiwidjojo (known as Bapak, or ‘Father’, Subud), who claimed to have had visions of a seventh or ‘highest’ heaven. Deep at the heart of this cult, which urged its followers to practise the spiritual exercise Bapak Subud called latihan, was a contempt for the material world and those who put their trust in it. Keith (now renamed Stephen, in accordance with Bapak Subud’s belief that people had to rename themselves to ascend the spiritual ladder) wrote back to me informing me that the earth was ‘the slum of the universe’, and that for me to believe that anything important could be conveyed to me by the fleeting beauty of a Swiss mountainside was utterly stupid and pointless.

  I think this was the last letter I ever wrote to my father.

  The pointlessness of everything seemed to break out like a rash all around me. I believe, in retrospect, that the nursing of Ginny – which was very necessary and not pointless at all, but rather laid the foundations for a lifelong friendship – kept me from falling into depression and enabled me to keep alive some kind of hope that my future would have a shape that I could endure and that would lead me onwards – lead me somewhere. Yet I couldn’t work out where that somewhere was. I knew that it resided in the past, in some composite state of being, where my heart was consoled by Nan’s love and my head by a revelation I’d once had in a meadow at Crofton Grange School on a June evening. But these things now felt very far away, receding further and further all the time.

  In the quiet of the night at Les Diablerets, in our ‘Thistle House’, Carol, Ginny and I spent many hours whispering about our futures. But what, really, was there to whisper about? Our childhoods were gone and yet there was nothing much to call us forward into our grown-up lives. A secretarial course. Dull secretarial work, enabling the ambitions of others. Men. Sex. A husband. A white gown.

  To me, it didn’t seem to be enough.

  ‘Well,’ said Carol, ‘you’ll have to wait and see, La Rose. What else can you do? Just point your tits to the valley.’

  Afterword

  So, what happened next?

  After Switzerland, I was sent by Jane to a Parisian school for foreign female students, ‘Mademoiselle Anita’s’, run by Catholic nuns, where the pupils were not allowed to go in or out of the building without wearing gloves. A lot of the students in this dreary place spoke no French at all.

  The lodgings Jane had found for me were in Passy (a staid, respectable arrondissement of Paris where I never felt comfortable), in a dark apartment belonging to two widows of military men who – prior to the Americans’ involvement in Vietnam – had fought and died in Indo-China.

  Both the school and the flat (where my breakfast was weak coffee served with pieces of antique baguette, often containing weevils) made me so miserable that I at last discovered in myself the deep anger with my mother that I should have found at Crofton Grange. And this, in the Gauloises-scented, jazz-inflected air of Paris in 1961, propelled me into all-out rebellion. I unilaterally discharged myself from Mademoiselle Anita’s school and, helped by a friend I’d met in Switzerland, Miranda Reid, enrolled myself at the Sorbonne, on the Cours de Civilisation, built around French literature, history and philosophy. Here, at last (in the days when you could eat steak and chips on the Boul’ Mich for six francs), I began to lead a liberating student life.

  Jane was, of course, furious when I came home at Christmas and told her what I’d done, but perhaps she saw that, at eighteen – in ever more Juliette Gréco mode of dress and make-up – I’d finally found the will to stand up to her wrong decisions. I’d also got myself away from Passy and into the flat where Mir
anda lodged with a kindly, bohemian woman called Madame Dennis, in the rue de Grenelle, off Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where boyfriends were allowed to visit.

  These arrangements were presented to Jane as a fait accompli, and she was forced to go along with them or keep me grounded at home, and she didn’t want that, thank you very much. Thus, the remainder of my year in the great City of Light was filled with wild endeavour. As well as studying and devouring museums and galleries, I went go-karting, gliding, dancing at jazz clubs and swimming in the Seine. And I once again began writing.

  I was still Rosie. I couldn’t rid myself of that hated name until I finally went to university (UEA, in Norwich, always referred to by Jane as ‘that ropey university’) in 1964. But in Paris, Rosie had at last become more stubborn and bold. Like Mary Ward in Sacred Country, she’d understood that the wearing of a ‘thistledown’ dress need not always suggest lightness and decorum. It can be sabotaged and mocked if the wearer dares to come vaulting onto the stage in her wellington boots.

  That stage at last began to light up for me in 1976, the year I published my first novel, Sadler’s Birthday, at the age of thirty-three. It was rejected by six publishers, but finally landed on the desk of Penelope Hoare, then at Macdonald & Jane’s, who took a risk on it. She was my editor and friend – through the publication of more than twenty books (with Hamish Hamilton, Sinclair-Stevenson and Chatto & Windus) – until her death in 2017.

  Thanks to Penny, and to a gift I discovered in myself for perseverance, it became possible for me to put together a writing life as I’d imagined it from early childhood onwards. But it took me seventeen years after eating my last marshmallow with Robbie to begin to realise the hopes I’d shared with her under my mural of Milton’s L’Allegro and Il Penseroso on the English room wall. This was a longer time than I had been alive as ‘Rosie’.

  Jane Thomson, Rose’s mother, age 20, 1933

  Keith Thomson, Rose’s father, age 35, 1947

  Linkenholt Manor, home of Roland and Mabel Dudley, Rose’s grandparents, c. 1950

  Rose’s first birthday picnic, 2 August 1944: baby Rose sitting, front left

  David’s Cottage, where Rose saw the birds on the wire

  Michael Dudley, Rose’s uncle, ready for war, 1940

  Nan and Jane outside 22 Sloane Avenue, 1950

  Rose and Jo in Wengen with Nan, 1950

  Rose near the Meadows canal with Piggy, Mary and Polly; 1954

  Timmy Trusted with family Pekinese in Cornwall, c. 1950

  Jane with Jo and the cousins, Jonathan (left) and Robert (right), Swanage, 1951

  School photo, Crofton Grange, 1953: Rose is second row, second from left

  Painting scenery for The Mysteries of Udolpho:

  Jane McKenzie kneeling, left, Elsa Buckley seated, centre, Rose standing, far right

  Rose’s last school report, defaced by V. M.T.

  Signed photo of Poet Laureate John Masefield in his Oxford study, 1959

  Frilsham Manor in the 1960s

  The ‘ginnery’ at Frilsham

  Rose being ‘finished’ at Les Diablerets, Switzerland, 1960

  On the balcony at Chardon: Ginny Lathbury (with perm), second left, Rose next to Carol Reunert, far right

  Fondue at the Café de la Poste, Les Diablerets:

  left to right: Rose, Jenny Lowe, Pierrette Monod, Carol Reunert

  Ski instructor Monsieur Borloz – ‘tits to the valley’

  Happy at last?: Ivo and Jane Thomson fishing in Ireland, c. 1980

  Loving Eleanor: Jane with Rose and baby Eleanor, 1972

  Trying to love Mother: Rose with Jane, 1992

  Smokers’ corner: Richard Holmes with Jane at High House, Norfolk, 1993

  Rose with Mawkie at the Lychgate, Linkenholt, 2002

  Index

  The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.

  NOTE: Works by Rose Tremain (RT) appear directly under title; works by others under author’s name

  Abbot, Mr (Linkenholt dairyman), 5

  Abbot, Douglas (son of above), 7–8, 11, 14, 27

  Abel, Sir Frederick Augustus, 18n

  Allen, June (née Thomson; Auntie June), 88

  Allen, Miss (of Mon Fertile school), 169–70, 173, 187

  Always a Clown (RT; play), 119

  American Lover, The (RT; story collection), 69n, 115n

  Amis, Martin, 122

  Anita, Mademoiselle (of Paris school), 191–2

  Ash, Bill, 138n

  Ashbee, Felicity, 109–10, 118

  Baines, Elizabeth (Crofton Grange headmistress), 101–3, 105, 117, 167

  Barker, Fred, 145

  Barker, Venetia (née Quarry), 143–5

  Barrington-Coupe, William (‘Barry’), 164–6

  Beddington, Elizabeth, 107

  Bell, Sir Eastman, 17–18, 34

  Big Heads and Tiny Bodies (RT; drawings), 87–8

  Blackadder, Elizabeth (school friend), 107

  Boody (dachshund), 132, 135

  Borloz, Monsieur (ski instructor), 184, 188

  Bostock, Jill (drama teacher at Crofton Grange), 117

  Brett, Simon (engraver), 104

  Brighton, 84

  Brisley, Joyce Lankester: Adventures of Purl and Plain, 78–9

  Buckley (now Taylor), Elsa: claims to see school ghost, 96; taught by Robbie, 107, 115; artistry, 110 & n; on visit to Masefield in Oxford, 111; RT draws, 113; and Suez crisis, 116; on diverting mind at school, 118; performs at Royal Festival Hall, 138; and RT’s painting Milton mural, 149

  Butler, Jim, 126, 154–6

  Butler, Mrs Jim, 133

  Byrne, Kate (née Pitt; Jo’s daughter), 53

  Carroll, Lewis: Alice in Wonderland, 79, 93

  Carter, Mr (Linkenholt gamekeeper), 7, 13, 16

  Central School of Art, London, 160

  Churchill, Sir Winston, 23

  Clara, Mademoiselle (of Mon Fertile finishing school), 169–71, 173, 187

  ‘Closing Door, The’ (RT; story), 69n

  Collins, Nanny, 87–8

  Constantine Bay, Cornwall, 58, 61

  cordite, 18n

  Corneille, Pierre, 176

  Cornwall: summer holidays in, 58–61, 80

  Crane, Lois, 69, 168

  Crofton Grange (school), Hertfordshire: RT attends, 39, 48, 89, 95–8, 148, 154; school life and routine, 99–108, 112, 117; food and diet, 101–2; extramural activities, 112–13; current events test, 115–17; Joyce Hatto teaches piano at, 136–7; RT leaves, 167

  ‘Darkness of Wallis Simpson, The’ (RT; story), 52n

  Daubeny, Mr (of Linkenholt), 24–5, 64

  David’s Cottage, Linkenholt estate, 72

  Dewar, Sir James, 18n

  Diablerets, Les (Switzerland), 170, 180–2, 186, 189–90

  Dogmersfield, Hampshire, 89

  Dudley, Jonathan (RT’s cousin): at Linkenholt, 4, 8, 20–3, 72; on grandmother, 27; at RT’s Frilsham hop, 144; admits being afraid of Jane, 162; Winston, Churchill and Me, 23n

  Dudley, Mabel (RT’s grandmother): at Linkenholt, 2–5, 7, 11, 14–15; death, 12, 28–9; unhappiness, 20; grandsons sing to, 21–2; watches family tennis, 24; stomach cancer, 26–7; RT’s view of, 27–8; relations with daughter Jane, 48–9

  Dudley, Michael (RT’s uncle): killed in World War II, 4; good humour, 14, 22; affection for sister Jane, 53; absence in war, 72

  Dudley, Robert (RT’s cousin): grandparents favour, 4, 22; helps build treehouse at Linkenholt, 8; fondness for Linkenholt, 20; character, 21, 23; sings to granny, 22; tennis-playing, 23; helps Mr Daubeny, 25; rides pony, 26; pictured as baby, 72; admits to being afraid of Jane, 162

  Dudley, Roland (RT’s grandfather): at Linkenholt, 2–5, 10–13, 15; and death of dog, 13–14; shooting, 16–18; arguments with RT’s mother, 20, 30

  Dudley, Roland (RT’s uncle), 4, 49

  Eile
en, Auntie see Trusted, Eileen

  Elgar, Miss (Crofton Grange music teacher), 137

  ‘Extra Geography’ (RT; story), 115n

  Fairfax-Lucy, Alison, 107, 149

  Fitzgerald, Penelope, 121

  Florence (Linkenholt cook), 5, 15, 51

  Fosbury Manor, Hampshire, 16

  Francis Holland School, Chelsea, 31, 39, 55, 78

  Frilsham Manor, near Newbury, Berkshire, 125–6, 132–4, 142, 144

  Gardner, Margery, 172

  Gaul, Miss (Latin teacher), 158

  Gee, Caroline, 139, 163, 164

  Gershwin, George: Rhapsody in Blue, 163–4

  Gillespie, Marilyn, 107

  Gladys (‘Glad Eyes’; Trusteds’ nanny), 59–61

  Grainger, Stewart, 28

  Gray, Heather, 107, 113–15, 118, 149, 166

  Gustav Sonata, The (RT; novel), 77n, 89n

  Halloran, Dermot, 143–5

  Halloran, Mike, 143, 145

  Hatto, Joyce: teaches at Crofton Grange, 136–7, 139, 169, 175; plays at Royal Festival Hall, 162–4; marriage to William Barrington-Coupe (‘Barry’), 165; and Barry’s recording fraud, 165–6