The delivery of The Spectator – and therefore my brother’s weekly ‘Low life’ column – had the same effect upon our mother as the receipt of another threatening letter from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, addressed to him: she winced like a salted snail.
Jeremy never opened either of them. He operated a strict policy of denial of which any self-respecting ostrich would wholly approve.
The growing pile of letters, once it became unstable, was scraped from the low table on which it was balanced, into an adjacent cupboard.
Our mother’s large house, was open to the waifs and strays of Strete and the surrounding villages, whom polite society had avoided or downright shunned, but it was equally, at times, a place of quiet solace for the well heeled.
Our father described these visitors as, “the hawk, the lame and the blind.”
Dad had a great sense of humour, a wicked turn of phrase and invented nicknames for regulars.
‘Mike the hair,’ had trained under the Nicky Clarke of his day -Mr.Teasy-Weasy – and was mum’s hairdresser.
It must have been a great fall, we supposed, being one minute, an apprentice to the hairdresser to the stars- then the next, coiffuring blue rinses in a South Devon care home, but he never showed it.
When the residential home was up and running our father’s role was chief jester to the clients. Whenever Violet Joint went to the toilet he made a play of ringing South West Water co. to put the sewage team on standby. Her toothless head rolled back in laughter.
His secondary role was to rod the frequently blocked septic tank, located under the car park. Another great source of humorous material for his act.
A large bright conservatory, filled with heavy scented geraniums and tousled Bourgainvilia led to a West Ham (sky) blue front door and large entrance hall, complete with tiled fireplace, Art-deco grandfather clock and a sweeping staircase.
Afternoon tea, sandwiches and cake would be taken in the big lounge.
Tradesmen were admitted to the thick-walled kitchen.
Mum cringed at the thought that either the hawk, the lame or the blind, had unfettered access to her first born son’s intimate and often outrageous exploits, outlined so boldly on the printed page, and tried to gauge whether or not they had read it.
The only saving grace was that most people who didn’t know him well enough, could not be convinced that the sordid contents of his columns were anything but a writer’s fantasy or they believed that the weekly escapades were embellished with huge helpings of poetic licence;
Sexed-up, as it were, like an Iraq dossier on WMD’s.
Unlike that dossier, some WMD’s were occasionally found within its pages by close family members and our mother clicked her tongue and gave that disapproving look of hers.
If anyone from HMRC happens to read this, please don’t get your hopes up. There is little to be retrieved from my late brother’s estate apart from some unfashionable books and a third hand tweed suit, bought for a tenner from a charity shop.
Ditto, some shirts in size medium.
Jeremy’s tax returns, like the cars he used from time to time, are by definition, a complete write-off.
When I joined the Devon and Cornwall constabulary in the spring of ‘88, I was first subjected to an extremely intrusive home visit.
I had just returned from a year away, working in Amsterdam and was helping my parents to decorate the newly purchased Strete Lodge Residential Home; mums new enterprise and long-held dream.
The sergeant who came to assess my suitability took particular interest in my brother and his criminal record.
“He’s become a Christian, you know. Completely changed!” Interrupted mum as she brought in tea and cake, then flitted out again.
Having made the right noises about no one being above the law and all that, the sergeant seemed convinced that I was ready to do my duty and arrest my brother on the spot should any further infringements of the law occur within my reach.
Mercifully, my first posting was to Camborne in Cornwall- sufficient distance for plausible deniability – and I adopted the ostrich policy on my rare visits home.
I didn’t see the uninsured, untaxed car on the drive and I certainly hadn’t witnessed him driving it.
Jeremy sometimes offered to drive me and the dogs to a favourite starting point for a walk around Little Dartmouth, but I tactfully suggested that it might be better to use mine.
Mum had always considered it her Christian duty to sit and listen to the most boring and repetitive conversations, particularly about the ill health and detailed ailments of the other party. They were more a diatribe or monologue than a conversation but mum always did her best to listen intently so as not to miss her cue for a judicious “Oh dear!” or a prudent “Tut-tut, I see,” delivered at the right moment.
It has always amazed me how some people can grow to be so incredibly self-centred and oblivious to the soporific effect they have on others.
Shortly before mum’s death, unwanted visitors still attended her chair-side to continue their monologues, without noticing that she had in fact dozed off.
I think CS Lewis was right: in that we either grow towards God or away from him.
In The Great Divorce, Lewis says:
“The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man’s past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say “We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven,” and the Lost, “We were always in Hell.” And both will speak truly.”
Take the case study of two of mum’s resident ladies- Miss Molteno and Mrs Lock. Both lived to a ripe age.
Miss Molteno had been some kind of spiritualist in her younger days and her lip curled into a spiteful and puckered snarl. I always steered clear, having borne the brunt of her impatient snapping and sniping over the most trivial of matters; such as being a few minutes late with her afternoon tray. She was the epitome of mean spiritedness and even the air in her room carried a heavy malevolence.
Mrs Lock, on the other hand, was the sweetest little thing you could meet. A lifelong Christian faith had produced fruits of selfless affability and humble contentment.
Occasionally, she wandered into the kitchen to ask , “excuse me, do I live here?
“Of course you do Mrs Lock,” came the reply.
“Oh good!” she would say with great enthusiasm.
At night, if asked to take her up a milky drink, one always found this sweet, sweet lady kneeling at her bedside, saying her prayers, just as she had always done since she was a little girl.
I found this to be a great life lesson, lest I should turn into a grumbling Molteno!
Shortly before mum’s death, Mike the hair came round to give mum’s hair a final trim and blow dry. He noted how thick it was for a lady of eighty-eight.
“You could come and give me a final cut when I’m in the coffin”, mum quipped as she paid him.
At our mother’s funeral I saw a ghostly apparition so real that I was compelled to look, open mouthed, in its direction.
The apparition promptly introduced itself as Mrs Lock’s daughter, coming to pay her respects to the woman who had cared so beautifully for her late mother.
She must have been Mrs Lock’s age when I last saw her and was her spitting image. She had the same eyes; the same sweet manner and smile. It seems that one can pass on this quality of saintliness to one’s children with enough prayer.
Conversely, I imagined that the offspring of the Molteno were probably working in a gender reassignment clinic, or as speech writers for Alastair Campbell’s strategy team.