Vale Jane Gardam

I am so sad to learn that Jane Gardam has died. She was a marvellous writer. She could be almost surreal - for example, in Crusoe's Daughter, a superb novel - but more usually she was simply a brilliant observer of English life and behaviour. 

If you have read nothing by Gardam, start with her short story called Blue Poppies. It describes a visit to an open garden at a large country house - and its aftermath. It displays Gardam's deep understanding of human beings and her skill and talent as a writer:

Blue Poppies by Jane Gardam

My mother died with her hand in the hand of the Duchess. We were at Clere in late summer.  It was a Monday. Clere opens on Mondays and Tuesdays only.  It is not a great house and the Duke likes silence .  It offers only itself.  "No teas, no toilets!" I once heard a woman say on one of the few coaches that ever finds its way there.  "It's not much, is it?" Clere stands blotchy and moulding and its doves looked very white against its peeling portico.  Grass in the cobbles.  If you listen hard you can still hear a stable clock thinly strike the quarters.

Mother had been staying with me for a month, sometimes knowing me, sometimes looking interestedly in my direction as if she ought to.  Paddling here, paddling there. looking out of windows, saying brightly, ' Bored?  Of course I'm not bored."  Once or twice when I took her breakfast in bed she thought I was a nurse.  Once after tea she asked if she could play in the garden and then looked frightened.

Today was showery.  She watched the rain and the clouds blowing.

"Would you like to go to Clere?’

"Now what is that?"

"You know.  You've been there before.  It's the place with the blue poppies."

"Blue poppies?"

"You saw them last time."

"Meconopsi?” she asked.  "I really ought to write letters."

My mother was 91 and she wrote letters every day.  She had done so since she was a girl.  She wrote at last to a very short list of people.  Her address book looked like a tycoon's diary.  Negotiations completed.  Whole pages crossed out.  The more recent crossings off were wavery.

We set out for the blue poppies and she wore a hat and gloves and surveyed the rainy world through the car window. every now and then she opened her handbag to look at her pills or wondered aloud where her walking stick had gone.

"Backseat."

"No," she said, "I like the front seat in a car.  It was always manners to offer the front seat.  It's the best seat, the front seat."

"But the stick is on the back seat."

"What stick is that?"

At Clere the rain had stopped, leaving the grass slippery and a silvery dampness hanging in the air.  The Duchess was on the door, taking tickets.  That is to say she was at the other side of a rickety trestle table working in a flower border.  She was digging.  On the table a black tin box stood open for small change and a few spotted postcards of the house were arranged beside some very poor specimens of plants for sale at exorbitant prices. The Duchess's corduroy behind rose beyond them. She straightened up and half turned to us, great gloved hands swinging, caked in earth.

The Duchess is no beauty.  She has a beak of ivory and deep sunken, hard blue eyes. Her hair is scant and colourless.  There are ropes in her throat.  Her face is weatherbeaten and her haunches strong, for she has created the gardens at Clere almost alone.  When she speaks, the voice of the razor bill is heard in the land.

The Duke.  Oh, the poor Duke!  We could see him under the portico seated alone at another rough table eating bread.  There was a slab of processed cheese beside the bread and a small bottle of beer.  He wore a shawl and his face was long and rueful.  His nearside shoulder was raised at a defensive angle to the Duchess, as if to ward off blows.  I saw the Duchess see me pity the neglected Duke as she said to us, 'Could you hold on?  Just a moment?' And turning back to the flower bed she began to tug at a great, leaden root.

My mother opened her bag and began to scrabble in it.  'Now, this is my treat.'

'There!' Cried the Duchess, heaving the root aloft, shaking off soil, tossing it down.  'Two, is it?'

'Choisia ternata,’ said my mother.  'One and a half.'

Pause.

'For the house, is it?  Are you going round the house as well as the garden?'

'We really came just for the poppies,' I said, 'and it's two, please.'

'Oh, I should like to see the house,' said my mother.  'I saw the poppies when I stayed with Lillian last year.'

I blinked .

' Lillian thinks I can't remember,' my mother said to the Duchess.  'This time I should like to see the house.  And I shall pay.'

'Two,' I signalled to the Duchess, smiling what I hoped would be a collaborative smile above my mother's head. I saw the Duchess think, 'a bully'.

'One and a half,' said my mother.

'Mother, I am over 50.  It is children who are half price.'

'And senior citizens,' said my mother.  'And I am one of those as I'm sure her Grace will believe.  I can prove it if I can only find my card.'

'I'll trust you,' said the Duchess.  Her eyes gleamed on my mother. then her icicle wax face cracked into a smile, drawing the thin skin taut over her nose.  'I'm a Lillian too,' she said and gave a little cackle that told me she thought me fortunate.

We walked about the ground floor of the house, though many corridors were barred, and small ivory labels hung on hooks on many doors.  They said 'PRIVATE' in beautifully painted copperplate. In the drawing-room, where my mother felt a little dizzy -- nothing to speak of -- there was nowhere to sit down.  All the sofas and chairs were roped off, even the ones with torn silk or stuffing sprouting out.  We were the only visitors and there seemed to be nobody in attendance to see that we didn't steal the ornaments.

‘Meissen, I'd think, dear,' said my mother, picking up a little porcelain box from the table.  'Darling, oughtn't we to get this valued?' On other tables stood photographs in silver frames. On walls hung portraits in carved and gilded frames.  Here and there across the centuries shone out the Duchess's nose.

'Such a disadvantage,' said my mother, 'poor dear.  That photograph is a Lenare.  He's made her very hazy.  That was his secret, you know.  The haze.  He could make anybody look romantic.  All the fat young lilies.  It will be her engagement portrait .'

'I'm surprised her mother let her have it done.'

'Oh, she would have had to.  It was very much the thing.  Like getting confirmed.  Well, with these people, more usual really than getting confirmed.  She looks as though she'd have no truck with it.  I agree.  I think she seems a splendid woman, don't you? '

We walked out side by side and stood on the semicircular marble floor of the porch, among the flaking columns.  The Duke had gone.  The small brown beer bottle was on its side. Robins were pecking about among the crumbs of bread. The Duchess could be seen, still toiling in the shrubs.  Mother watched her as I considered the wet and broken steps down from the portico and up again towards the garden, and my fury at my mother's pleasure in the Duchess. I wondered if we might take the steps one by one, arm in arm, with a stick and a prayer.  'Who is that person over their digging in that flower bed?' asked mother, looking towards the Duchess.  ' A gardener, I suppose.  They often get women now.  You know -- I should like to have done that.'

Down and up the steps we went and over the swell of the grass slope.  There was a flint arch into a rose garden and a long white seat under a Gloire de Dijon rose.  'I think I'll sit,' said my mother .

'The seat's wet.'

'Never mind.'

''It's sopping.'

She sat and the wind blew and the rose shook drops and petals on her.  'I'll just put up my umbrella.'

'You haven't an umbrella.'

'Don't be silly, dear, I have a beautiful umbrella.  It was Margaret's. I've had it for years .  It's in the hall stand.'

'Well, I can't go all the way home for it.'

It's not in your home, dear.  You haven't got a hall stand.  it's in my home. I'm glad to say I still have a home of my own.’

 'Well, I'm not going there.  It's 100 miles.  I'm not going 100 miles for your umbrella.’

'But of course not .  I didn't bring an umbrella to you, Lillian.  Not on holiday.  I told you when you collected me: 'there's no need for me to bring an umbrella because I can always use one of yours.' Lillian, this seat is very wet.'

'For heaven's sake -- come with me to see the blue poppies.'

The Duchess's face suddenly appeared round the flint arch and disappeared again.

'Lilian, such a very strange woman just looked into this garden. Like a hawk.'

'Mother.  I'm  going to see the poppies.  Are you coming?'

'I saw them once before.  I'm sure I did.  They're very nice, but I think I'll just sit.'

'Nice!'

'Yes, nice, dear.  Nice.  You know I can't enthuse like you can.  I'm not very imaginative.  I never have been.'

'That is true.'

'They always remind of Cadbury's chocolate, but I can never remember why.'

I thought, ' senile'.  I must have said it.

I did say it.

'Well, yes.  I daresay I am.  Who is this woman approaching with a cushion?  How very kind.  Yes, I would like a cushion .  My daughter forgot the umbrella.  How thoughtful. She's clever, you see.  She went to a university.  Very clever, and imaginative, too. She insisted on coming all this way -- such a wet day and, of course, most of your garden is over -- because of the blue of the poppies.  Children are so funny, aren't they?'

'I never quite see why everybody gets so worked up about the blue,' said the Duchess.

' 'Meconopsis Baileyii,' said my mother.

'Yes.'

' Benicifolia.’

‘Give me Campanula carpatica,’ said the duchess.

‘Ah! Or Gentiana verna angulosa,’ said my mother. 'We sound as if we're saying our prayers.'

The two of them looked at me.  My mother regarded me with kindly attention, as if I were a pleasant acquaintance she would like to think well of .  'You go off,' said the Duchess.  'I'll stay here.  Take your time.'

As I went I heard my mother say, 'She's just like her father of course.  You have to understand her; she hasn't much time for old people.  And, of course, she is no gardener.'

When I came back -- and they were: they were just like Cadbury's chocolate papers crumpled up under the tall black trees in a sweep, the exact colour, lying about among their pale hairy leaves in the muddy earth, raindrops scattering them with a papery noise -- when I came back, the Duchess was holding my mother's hand and looking closely at her face.  She said, 'Quick. You must telephone. In the study. Left of the portico. Says 'Private' on a disk.  Run!'  She let go the hand, which fell loose.  Loose and finished .  The Duchess seemed to be smiling. a smile that stretched the narrow face and stretched the lines sharper round her eyes.  It was more a sneer than a smile.  I saw she was sneering with pain.  I said, 'My mother is dead.' She said, 'Quick . Run.  Be quick.'

I ran.  Ran down the small slope, over the porch, and into the study, where the telephone was old and black and lumpen and the dial flopped and rattled.  All done, I ran out again and stood at the top of the steps looking up the grassy slope.  We were clamped in time.  Round the corner of the house came the Duke in a wheelchair pushed by a woman in a dark blue dress.  She had bottle legs .  The two looked at me with suspicion.  The Duke said, 'Phyllis?' to the woman and continued to stare.  'Yes?' Asked the woman.  'Yes?  What is it?  Do you want something?' I thought, 'I want this last day again.'

I walked up the slope to the rose garden, where the Duchess sat looking over the view .  She said, 'Now she has died.'

She seemed to be grieving.  I knew though that my mother had not been dead when I ran for the telephone, and if it had been the Duchess who had run for the telephone I would have been with my mother when she died.  So then I hated the Duchess and all her works.

It was two years later that I came face-to-face with her again, at a luncheon party given in aid of the preservation of trees, and quite the other side of the country.  There were the usual people -- some eccentrics, some gushers, some hard-grained, valiant fund raisers. No village people.  The rich.  All elderly.  All, even the younger ones, belonging to what my children called 'the old world'.  They had something of the ways of my mother's generation. But none of them was my mother.

The Duchess was over in a corner, standing by herself and eating hugely, her plate up near her mouth, her fork working away, her eyes swivelling frostily about.  She saw me at once and went on staring as she ate.  I knew she meant that I should go across to her.

I had written a letter of thanks of course and she had not only replied adequately -- an old thick cream card inside a thick cream envelope and an indecipherable signature -- but she had sent flowers to the funeral.  And that had ended it.

I watched with interest as the Duchess got herself a good half pound of cheese and put it in her pocket.  Going to a side table she opened her handbag and began to sweep fruit into it.  Three apples and two bananas disappeared, and the people around her looked away.  As she reached the door she looked across at me.  She did not exactly hesitate, but there was something.

Then she left the house.

But in the car park, there she was in a filthy car, eating one of the bananas.  Still staring ahead, she wound down the window and I went towards her.

She said, 'Perhaps I ought to have told you.  Your mother said to me, 'Goodbye, Lillian dear.'

'Your name is Lillian,' I said.  She was quite capable of calling you Lillian.  She had taken a liking to you.  But she never did to me.'

'No, no.  She meant you,' said the Duchess.  'She said, 'I'm sorry, darling, not to have gone with you to the poppies.'

 

A Trip to Naples - Part One

“Public forms of symbolic expression are not to be despised” wrote Professor Mary Douglas in her 1970 book Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology. The citizens of Naples seem to agree - their streets are packed with shrines. I saw the shrines shown here on just one short stretch of a single street. 

You could devote a lifetime to photographing all the street shrines Naples contains. One person’s theory is that if you live in the shadow of a volcano you may feel you need to be able to get to a place of prayer extremely fast. 

Or maybe the colour and hope a shrine provides gives comfort in the midst of poverty.

Anniversary

 “The man who resists humiliation can quickly forget it, but the man who can long tolerate it must long remember it.”

Vaclav Havel, in a letter he wrote to the General Secretary of the Czech Communist Party, on 8 April, 1975, fifty years ago today.

The Havel Centre explains the context:

"In 1975, when the repression of the Prague Spring – called “normalization” – was more or less complete, Havel wrote an open letter to Gustav Husák, who was then the general secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, warning of the dangerous consequences of the repression of normal social life and the humiliation of human dignity.

From “Dear Dr. Husak”:

“If every day someone takes order in silence from an incompetent superior, if every day he solemnly performs ritual acts which he privately finds ridiculous, if he unhesitatingly gives answers to questionnaires which are contrary to his real opinions and is prepared to deny himself in public, if he sees no difficulty in feigning sympathy or even affection where, in fact, he feels only indifference or aversion, it still does not mean that he has entirely lost the use of one of the basic human senses; the sense of dignity.

“On the contrary: even if they never speak of it, people have a very acute appreciation of the price they have paid for outward peace and quiet: the permanent humiliation of their human dignity. The less direct resistance they put up to it––comforting themselves by driving it from their mind and deceiving themselves with the thought that it is of no account, or else simply gritting their teeth––the deeper the experience etches itself into their emotional memory. The man who resists humiliation can quickly forget it, but the man who can long tolerate it must long remember it. In actual fact, then, nothing remains forgotten. All the fear one has endured, the dissimulation one has been forced into, all the painful and degrading buffoonery and, worst of all perhaps, the feeling of having displayed one’s cowardice––all this settles and accumulates somewhere n the bottom of our social consciousness, quietly fermenting.

“Clearly, this is no healthy situation. Left untreated, the abscesses suppurate; the pus cannot escape from the body and the malady spreads throughout the organism. The natural human emotion . . . is gradually deformed into a sick cramp, into a toxic substance not unlike the carbon monoxide produced from incomplete combustion.

No wonder, then, that when the crust cracks and the lava of life rolls out, there appear not only well-considered attempts to rectify old wrongs, not only searchings for truth and for reforms matching life’s needs, but also symptoms of bilious hatred, vengeful wrath, and a feverish desire for immediate compensation for all the the degradation endured.”

https://havelcenter.org/2015/05/04/letter-to-dr-husak/

Ship Ahoy

Reading English Journey by Beryl Bainbridge - panned when it came out but I like her company and revere her novella called The Birthday Boys - I came across.her account of meeting a man who worked on the first Cunard ship called Queen Elizabeth. He was invited to work on the second but, Bainbridge tells us:

"He couldn't bear the contrast between the old grandeur and the new vulgarity."

What a bolt of recognition I experienced, reading that sentence. What that man felt about the two QEs is what I too often feel about the entire tawdry modern world.

A Time to Be Silent

Making stately progress through a pile of old New Yorkers, I have reached an article about the Spice Girls from 2022. Apparently, Danish researchers concluded in 2014 that the Spice Girls’ first single, Wannabe, was, at least at that time, the catchiest song ever written.

There is so much left unexplained in that piece of data - how did the researchers define “ever”; how did they define “catchy”; above all, why did they bother?

Never mind, Wannabe is a very cheerful piece of music and a delight to hear - occasionally.

The thing though that really did amaze me in the article was the news - or information I suppose; it can’t really be news 28 years later, (although it is to me) - that in 1997 the Spice Girls went to South Africa to perform a concert for charity and, during their visit, they met Nelson Mandela and, when some journalist asked him how he felt about meeting them, Mandela replied:

“You know, these are my heroes. And I don’t want to be emotional but this is one of the greatest moments in my life.”

Of course, I wanted to know in what tone Mandela made this statement - I assumed he was being a little jokey.

I found the video, and the whole event is wonderfully good-humoured, except for one thing. It turns out that the future King of England was also present - 15 kilos ago, at least, by the look of him - and could he keep silent? No, he could not.

And as a result he spoiled things, butting in with a look-at-me intervention that serves no purpose other than to make everyone else there look confused and awkward.

What a pity the young prince didn’t have a quick read of Ecclesiastes as he was driven to the occasion.

You can see the exchange here, starting from about 2 minutes in.

Amusing

 This made me laugh:

What Just Happened?

Years ago Michael Frayn wrote Noises Off, an especially hilarious farce in which the audience views a play as if they are sitting in the wings, seeing what goes on backstage. Looking at yesterday's Oval Office meeting, I felt as if I was watching the 21st century revamped version of Noises Off, played this time as tragedy, not farce. 

As a result, while lots of people have been focussing ever since on what was said during yesterday's meeting, I've been stuck one degree back from the substance of the conversation/discussion/ disagreement/unedifying spectacle/whatever-you-want-to-call-it. The question that has obsessed me - and continues to do so - is why the meeting was held in public, under the media's gaze. 

I vaguely remember reports of Biden having a blazing row with Zelensky at some point - but the news of that was only available because it was leaked; there were no pictures or film of the occasion. Who had the bright idea of conducting delicate international negotiations under a blaze of lights, with cameras recording everything? In what possible way was that ever going to be helpful? 

I am truly baffled.