There's No Business Like It

Miss Hanff also revived an interest, a very old interest, in show business. Ethel Merman. There's no business like it.
I need to be clear however from the off that there is a theatrical background, of the backstage and front of house sort, in the family. Wardrobe, scenery, carpentry; ticket sales, programmes and ice creams, that sort of thing. Perhaps even further back some performing. It's a little vague (or I'm just hopeless at recalling it)...I'm no keeper of history, family or otherwise, and this occupation (hazard, you might call it) has now skipped a few generations. All that remains is a love of going to rather than working in, behind the scenes or in front of them.
So what did I do after Miss Hanff? I turned to Angela Carter's Wise Children. Dora and Nora Chance, the main set but only one of numerous sets of twins. Theirs is a complicated history alright. Chance by name, chance by nature. Coincidentally, it was quite by chance I came across Angela Carter's last, perhaps her best, and most comic novel; I found Dora and Nora sitting gossiping, well, Dora was doing all the talking, in a railway station waiting room, and since they were lost I took them on the train – with me to work - and then brought them home again with me at the end of the working day. And here, well, here they are; sitting pretty on a shelf next to Expletives Deleted, with every now and again a one week holiday.
Dora's reminiscences of their growing up and glory days (on and off the stage) put me in mind of my own. The Saturday ballet lessons in St Mary's church hall, though I'm not sure now I was built for it, or even if I enjoyed them. I liked the slippers. We didn't wear tutus; I can't remember what we did wear...leotards I think, shiny and stretchy material, that as you grow older and taller (my height marked every few months on a wall) shows up all manner of lumps and bumps, as if you didn't feel awkward enough already. This duck will be a swan. Leaping across the room diagonally, arms flung, rather than floated out. Grace came later, well, some, anyway. I didn't have a Grandma Chance watching on (guardians or parents were forbidden to stay), but Grandma M, in later years, was, like Grandma Chance, partial to a Fox's glacier mint. Maybe that too (I've just cottoned on) was digestion related, just as today my after-dinner extra peppermint gum neutralises acids.
The end of terms shows I will gloss over. A leotard monkey, a tea-towelled wise man. The country dances on the school field, round a maypole. And the recitals, musical recitals: I and a recorder. I and a guitar. Painful playing. The school choir. Oh Lord. I should have known better. I was not a Thespian. So why try? God knows why!
There were plenty of 'unofficial' plays (with plenty of rehearsals beforehand), too, put on in the garden, with costumes and props, from the dress-up box or magicked up from somewhere. Grandma M (the amateur Charlie Chaplin and actor-manager of the family) encouraged it, and would join in too with an impromptu performance of her own. She'd steal all the laughs, and all the rolling eyes, though she too had never been on the theatre stage (that I know of), but mostly behind or in front of it. But if you're of a large family, as Grandma M was (and orphaned young), you entertain.
So, no, again I repeat, though I felt it in my blood (and sometimes my waters too) I was not born to it. Even my toy theatre (not at all like the theatre Dora and Nora were given by their uncle/father on their seventh birthday) couldn't convince me of that, despite hours of play, of moving cardboard actors around on plastic rods. What thrilled me to the core was the theatre – the big theatre - and being in the audience. One of its anonymous members, and yet not entirely faceless because you always felt singled out. You never imagined the performers couldn't see very far; they were speaking to, looking at, you directly. Of course they were! Starstruck. By all of it, the actors, the music, the props and backdrops, the change in costume.
The anticipation, however, was the best bit: the warming up. The band taking their places in the pit and tuning up, the lights dimming, the curtain rising. After that you'd either be swept up and swept along, or would, on extremely rare occasions, beg to leave (forgo the ice-cream, the bar, and the queue for the ladies loos) rather than suffer through the second half.

Picture credit: The Orchestra Pit, Theatre Royal, circa 1935, Dorrit Black (source: WikiArt).

Written June 2020.

Biscuits from Q's Tobacco Jar

The To the Lighthouse bubble burst and so I returned to a place I kept circling to but still wasn't sure of; that place was Q.
Question, question, question. I give you no answers.
But not this time, for this Q had a name. A Q that didn't belong to me or anybody, (not even Mr Ramsay), but only to himself. And oh, maybe to his wife, his son and daughter, and his pupils, and readers, [Hmm, my starting point is flawed already.], including one very important reader (later writer, then recognised author) Helene Hanff. [Hint: 84, Charing Cross Road and its sequel The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street. Futura published both in one volume.] She, I think, was my introduction to Q...or was it made through Daphne du Maurier? [She completed his last unfinished novel Castle Dor, the recreation of the legend of Tristan and Iseult.]
Well, however it was done, Mr Ramsay's philosophic alphabetical musings reminded me of him, and so, like any book-lover does I turned to my books, a very modest collection, to see what I could find (if anything!) of him. And Q gave me H. A set of Helene Hanff paperbacks published by Futura, and amongst them was Q's Legacy, which is essentially a thank you letter to him, this mysterious and literary Q, a Q she never met though she did get to take tea in his Common Room and sit in his armchair.
Q? Who is this Q?
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. A Cornish man (born there in 1863), a Cornish writer (of popular novels), a professor of English Literature at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he was known to his pupils (not students) as simply 'Q'.
Helene Hanff [would it be disrespectful, do you think, if from here on in I called her Helene? Perhaps Miss Hanff would be more appropriate.] restarted her education with a volume of Q's lectures: On the Art of Writing, and from Miss Hanff's perusal of that I learned I too prefer Jargon to good English prose i.e. long fancy words, and lots of them, [You may have noticed.] when the sentence could be made plainer. Miss Hanff was shocked. I was shocked. Q was disappointed.
Yet Q had reeled Miss Hanff in; with him she was going to improve her mind. She set about it studiously [Q would have been proud.], saving for books and borrowing books from libraries [a lady after my own heart.] and made slow but rewarding progress. Q arrived at the right time, and stayed, supported her from her orange-crate bookshelves while she journeyed on. [I in reading this have developed (lock-down) bookcase envy, not of orange-crates but of shelves and shelves of books, of rooms lined with books.]
But how did Miss Hanff end up in Q's [the man who it is said Kenneth Grahame attributed Ratty to] Common Room, years after Q had died? By invitation, that's how. From his biographer's widow. An invitation Miss Hanff accepted on her third [or second? It's unclear] tour of England in 1975, persuaded by that and other fan mail to take in literary sights. That she did, and I for a second time went with her.
What followed on this whistle-stop two-week tour, amongst meeting familiar and not so familiar faces, was literary sightseeing (Q, it appears, the last stop) and history lessons. I learnt a lot I hadn't known and then had forgotten, and so had to relearn it all over again. Like what? Like...Thomas and Jane Carlyle's living arrangements (Thomas' overwhelming need for quiet and Jane's determination [some might say forbearance] to achieve this. Like...Oliver Cromwell (the Lord Protector) does not reside peacefully in this grave; his decomposing corpse was publicly disembowelled on the orders of Charles II, whose father Cromwell had beheaded. Like... the private royal executions on Tower Green. Like... the relationship between George VI and Mrs Fitzherbert, a Catholic widow, and his passion for architecture. Like..the difference between a don and a fellow [Othello, get it?]
But the one q. I wanted answered Miss Hanff did not answer: she sat in Q's seat in front of a grey stone fireplace, she held Q's dark brown bowler hat (on her lap), but did she take a biscuit from (actually put her hand inside) Q's tobacco jar?

Picture credit: Photo of Arthur Quiller Couch (source: Wikipedia).

See Q's Legacy by Helene Hanff.

Written June 2020.

To the House - Part Three

Lily, a forty-year-old Lily, was still at the house, still inside the house, with Mr and Mrs Ramsay.
The breakfast table was being cleared, Lily, older than five, younger than ten was helping. Mr Ramsay still in his towelled dressing gown was vacuum cleaning the carpet, the dining room. (around and under the table), the living room (the central part of it), and and the passage from it leading past the dining room to the kitchen, where Mrs Ramsay was filling the sink with hot water and bubbles. A young Lily having finished putting used plates, cups, forks, spoons and knives on the side was standing slightly behind Mrs Ramsay (at the sink, her pink shirted and tartan skirted figure with its back to her) with a checked tea towel in her hands. She was going to dry and put away. Mrs Ramsay left nothing to drain. All that had been used was washed; all that had been prepared on was wiped over.
Forty-year-old Lily observed a younger Lily through forty-year-old eyes. Step forwards, pick up, dry; step backwards, set down. Until all had been dried and moved to a unit on the opposite side of the kitchen; only then was it put away, in roughly the place it was supposed to be: everyday cutlery in the kitchen drawer, large plates in the cupboard underneath, side plates and cups in the unit above with sliding doors. Mrs Ramsay and young Lily were performing a dance, only Lily the younger was leading, flashing here and there; Mrs Ramsay, at the sink, was restricted to hand and arm gestures. There were sparks between these two; of humour teased out.
Was this what life was all about, the older Lily wondered.
Mr Ramsay meanwhile had put the vacuum away and could be heard, one foot after another, going up the stairs to shave and dress. The downstairs stereo had been turned off, the radio upstairs (in their bedroom) would be turned on, tuned as it always was to classical music. Music sometimes too rousing for that time in the morning. Mr Ramsay would exult with it; Mrs Ramsay would not; she would protest.
Mrs Ramsay, Lily observed (the young and the old) was feeding the birds; 'slinging out a tray' (she used to say) of bread and odds and ends (usually at this time bacon rind). [The birds (or the dog, Sam dog) were given anything that hadn't been eaten and couldn't be saved. She would do all manner of things with cold potatoes for instance.]
Next, Mrs Ramsay too would disappear upstairs to put her face on; then she (with Mr Ramsay) would be ready to confront the world. Young Lily of this morning didn't want to watch her, and neither did the old; forty-year-old Lily wanted to watch Lily, for she knew Mr and Mrs Ramsay's movements so well but was less sure of her own.
What would this young Lily do? Would she read – a Famous Five or My Friend Flicka; would she play that addictive game on the calculator with its high-pitched rolling rrr (which her tongue could never imitate); would she play marble solitaire; would she sit like Mrs Ramsay [the To the Lighthouse Mrs Ramsay] and take up the knitting needles? She sat on the sofa, that to her resembled animal fur; she knitted; continued to knit a ball of coloured wool into nothing, and waited for the next part of the day to begin: shopping, perhaps, at the small local stores, where old friends would be hailed and new introduced; washing put on, washing pegged out; lawn mowing; kind Mr Carmichael might drop in (he had bad skin) unannounced for a coffee; a salty ham sandwich on white crusty bread (which butter?); a walk to the beach (sometimes instead of that a nap; Lily would read); the (compulsory) afternoon cup of tea.
All this old Lily could see clearly in her mind's eye, as could the young. The day, and days to come, were spread out before them both.
But where were Cam, William, James, Andrew, Prue? Where were they now? Cam and William [her parents] were in Surrey; James [her uncle] had moved to London, remarried and relocated [with her aunt Minta] to Yorkshire; and Andrew and Prue [her cousins] had turned out a little wild. Mrs and Mrs Ramsay [presumably Mr Carmichael too] were dead; perished, each alone. Only forty-year-old Lily comes and goes, as a ghost, free as smoke, to the house.

Picture credit: P R Francis.

See To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.

Written in lock-down, May 2020.

To the House - Part Two

Lily was at the house again, standing on the front lawn, again with a pen and notepad in her hand; this time she decided she was going inside. The first mark on the blank page had been made but it wasn't right; it wasn't wrong either, but it wasn't whole. The problem would only be solved if she went in. She had done so before, why was she pausing? No, she must not let herself be put off. What waves could possibly hurt her? None that hadn't been felt, on and off, on and off, for years, not too many years to count, but years still.
A shrub, possibly the same shrub, as it had done in the past hid the dark brown front door with its one step. Nobody went in that way (very few left by it); its doorbell was only rung by the milkman, the postman and the newspaper boy, or as a game. Run away, run away. Friends and family went in by the high white side gate, walking up the drive and passing the kitchen window, to open its top grey latch [tricky for those small in height and for those with little fingers, though its bottom board could be stood on; if a bigger person was around, it could be opened and swung inwards with the smaller still hanging on.], and be met, two steps from it, by the painted blue kitchen door, mostly open, sometimes shut.
This, Lily, the skimpy old maid of forty, did now. She was in the inner sanctum! There was the garage, where not only was the white Mazda kept but the tins of the dog food which the Labrador fetched himself, carried in his smiling mouth; the red gummy mouth that also liked to play towel-tug. There was the garden, its long green strip and its wider bottom, with its silver-barked trees and bonfire pile. And there, of course, was the door, the wide open kitchen door.
There was movement inside. Mrs Ramsay! Mrs Ramsay! Lily cried. Expecting her to turn round. But Mrs Ramsay was preoccupied slicing bread and frying bacon and brewing tea. Fried or scrambled? she called through the serving hatch; fried, a deeper voice replied. She cracked an egg on the side of the frying pan that contained the bacon; it spat and sizzled. The bread, white and brown, was being grilled at the top of the cooker, at just the right eye-level height.
From the other side of the hatch came the sounds of spoon against bowl. Lily placed her face before it and looked though. There! There was Mr Ramsay! Same as ever, a hearty man (his wife a whippet compared to him; some might say a terrier, a small Jack Russell), with his thick white hair like a stiff brush eating cornflakes with condensed milk. His wife had had her branflakes, which she would in a moment follow with toast. Brown toast and marmalade. And tea, there was always tea, with sugar.
Mr Ramsay was reading The Telegraph; a folded Telegraph, next to the place-mat on which his bowl sat. Not at the table Pop! Mrs Ramsay reproved as she took his empty bowl and set down his breakfast plate (Mr Ramsay grumbled but said nothing). Lily had trailed in after her and squeezed in the seat against the wall, next to the sideboard. Mrs Ramsay reappeared bearing the toast, white and brown, and cut into triangles, in its holder, and took her seat opposite Mr Ramsay.
So there they were, he at the head of the table and she at the other. And Lily, as so many times had been the case, in-between. Mrs Ramsay buttering (with her butter) brown toast and then adding a blob of marmalade on the corner and biting into it, while Mr Ramsay tucked into his fuller plate, then went on to white toast with his butter. All swallowed down with tea.
Other mornings, breakfast might be Mr Ramsay's kedgeree, but mostly it was cereal, then eggs (any way), with bacon or without, and toast, and tea. Different tastes in this house, near the sea, on the mainland, were catered for.
Was nobody else joining them? There were no sounds from upstairs, and no signs of the dog. Sam dog. No signs of Lily herself. No, wait, there was classical music playing. How had she missed that? There it was in the background, the radio on. If anyone else had been there, Lily remembered, Mrs Ramsay would have ordered rather than asked, though phrased it as a question, Pop, can't we have that off? Instead, breakfast over, she had taken a section of the paper and was now leaning over it doing the crossword puzzle. 

Picture credit: P R Francis.

See To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.

Written in lock-down, May 2020.

To the House - Part One

Always to one house I am drawn. It's been many years since I stepped foot in it, though I believe it's still standing; much changed, changed by time, but standing; lived in.
It wasn't a childhood home, it was a home from home; if you like, a holiday home, inhabited through all the seasons by my grandparents, just a short walk from the sea, to which I came on day trips, on overnight visits, on half-term and end of term and summer holidays.
There, Mr and Mrs Ramsay were waiting, waiting...
[the names I will give my grandparents, my mother's parents, though they were nothing like them. They had not eight children, just the two, a girl and a boy who I shall call hereafter (if I speak of them at all) Cam and James, though these aren't their names. I shall call myself Lily, though you will say (if you have read To the Lighthouse) it makes no sense to do so. It will soon.]
...waiting in this strange shaped house, of no shape I could put a name to; Mr and Mrs Ramsay, their roles perhaps reversed. Cam and James have flown the nest. James nearby and Cam further away, nearer to where they used to reside, in Wimbledon. James at some point will have a little boy; Cam already has a girl, Lily.
Years pass, in which memories are made. Years pass, memories remain.
Mr and Mrs Ramsay were separated then united. The house lived in by one, then sold; pulled apart, updated, renovated.
Mr and Mrs Ramsay wait no more, but the house still stands. Waiting; holding in its ceilings, walls and floors the echoes of all those that inhabited it before.
Cam has aged, James is ageing (and has been for some time), and Lily has grown, into a skimpy old maid of forty [four whole years younger than the other Lily's forty-four] and is at present standing on the front shared lawn (shared with the neighbours next door), by the roses and the broome bush, with a pen and notepad in her hand, sizing the house up like an estate agent. Screwing up her small blue-grey-green eyes (it depends on what light you see them in, whether she's bare-faced or behind thin-lensed spectacles) wondering how to go about making the first mark, for a first mark on the blank page must be made. She is a writer, but others, should they happen to glance out of a window at this breakfast hour, might think agent.
There's the living room. Behind that window lies the wooden stairs on which she sat, her legs swinging through the gap, colouring in, or watching, watching, watching for her parents (Cam and William) to arrive; and behind them was the passage to and from all the lower rooms; and off that the dining room, the kitchen, the downstairs bathroom. The kitchen was the window on the side, looking at the drive. The window alongside it the bathroom, where the vacuum was kept and where a white cupboard which held...which held...coats...outdoor shoes...? made a good hiding place; the window above that the upstairs bathroom and next to that Mr and Mrs Ramsay's bedroom, which had its own shower and basin.
Ah, the play room, she'd forgotten the play room, for the play room it was to her, where the dolls and their prams and books lived. Yes, there it was, she could just make out it's flat roof, stuck on the end, on the right as she faced the house, shaded by trees. At its side there stood a fig tree and at its back, beyond the two uneven steps [the doll's pram bumped bumped down them] a stumpy money tree, with leaves like that of ivy.
But what about the upper floor Lily thought, turning as she thought her gaze upwards. Behind that window there was the landing. It was passed going up the wooden stairs; once on the landing a railing could be leant on and the space that held the stairs looked down on, through. Dizzying...exhilarating...was it safe? The pot plant suspended from the ceiling, down below, spun. Behind the window on the left was a small cosy bedroom; James', then hers and Andrew's, her cousin, when they stayed at different times. Next to that a larger, a double room, where Cam and William, if they stayed, slept. Though that too also became Lily's [Lily and Prue's (another cousin) sometimes] with its tall dark wardrobe and chest of drawers with mirror. All pass and vanish; nothing stays. Lily sighed.

Picture credit: P R Francis.

See To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.

Written in lock-down, May 2020.