Singular life
A brace of bounders
Petronella Wyatt
Like Christmas it comes round once a year. Or, as some wag said, like Halloween. I refer, of course, to my late father's diaries. Those diaries. That book. Once again Macmillan had declined to show either my mother or me a copy of the sec- ond volume which, I gather, after some brilliant detective work, is to be published sometime next month.
Once again, the Sunday Times has bought the serialisation rights. I had heard that the first extract was to appear on Sun- day 21 November. That weekend — last weekend, indeed — I was staying with friends in the country. Some of these friends were worried. The memory of last year's diaries was still seared on their minds — a few had gone out of them. You would have thought from father's pewees that everyone he knew was ugly, stupid, boring, corrupt and had piano legs (which made one wonder why he bothered to see them at all). These included various close family friends (ex).
It was with considerable fear, therefore, that I crept down to breakfast early on Sunday morning. My intention was dishon- ourable. To whit: deliberately and with Father's malice aforethought to hide the Review section of the Sunday Times. Unfortunately, my hostess had anticipated me. She had bought seven copies.
So there we sat. I gave a nervous laugh. 'I think Petronella should read it first,' said my hostess. I stared unhappily at the head- line above the first extract. It did not augur well for a gentle little canter through wine decanting. It said: The bounder is back.'
Faced with little choice I began to read. By the entry for Tuesday 24 January, I was in a state of shock. By the one for Thursday 23 February, I could read no more. It was unbelievable. It was horrifying. Nothing in fact could have prepared me for it. Father hadn't been rude about anyone.
There were no women with faces like horses. There were no buffoons who con- sidered themselves Einsteins. And where were the execrable dinners at which the food and wine were quite disgusting? Nowhere. Worse, in many instances Father had actually been nice. Mrs Tebbit was 'looking very pretty'. The elder daughter of Lord Brabourne had 'a very nice figure'. Princess Michael of Kent was 'really quite good and has a good heart'. Sir Alan Wal- ters was 'charming and modest'. The Queen had 'a lovely smile'.
What was the matter with the man? I re- read the extract. I re-read it again. Perhaps I had been mistaken. Perhaps I had read it wrong. Where I thought the extract had described Alan Walters as 'charming and modest' perhaps it had actually said he was 'barmy and oddest'. Perhaps, too, the bit about the Queen having 'a lovely smile' was a misprint. Perhaps it had meant to be 'the Queen is slovenly and vile'.
It was a scandal. There was no scandal at all. How was I going to live this down? The faces around the breakfast table were long. They were too polite to speak of their dis- appointment and sorrow but it was written on everyone's drawn countenance. What was worse, Father had been gazumped. Jef- frey Archer had knocked him off the front page. No one could dispute that Archer was the bigger bounder. Father had lost his title to a pedlar of shepherd's pie. Father was an angel by comparison. No one had an unkind word to say about him.
That evening I crept back to London in shame and mortification. The following day the accusatory telephone calls stared com- ing in. 'I am so upset,' complained one acquaintance who had been roundly tra- duced in volume one. 'What did I do wrong?'
Yes, indeed, the father of yore had been all sweetness and spite. Dorothy Parker with a large cigar. It was rather disconcert- ing then to find that he had turned inexpli- cably into Betty Kenward. Perhaps he just wanted to spring another surprise on his loved ones. Never mind, there is always my own book, Father, Dear Father. If you want you words unminced, that's the baby.
'Coma here often?'
Previous page
