A Postillion Struck by Lightning Read online

  A POSTILLION STRUCK BY LIGHTNING

  Dirk Bogarde

  This book is for

  My Father and Mother, Elizabeth,

  Gareth, Tony and Lally.

  With my love.

  D. v.d. B.

  Contents

  Preface

  Part 1 Summer

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part 2 Winter

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Illustrations

  A Note on the Author

  Plate Section

  Preface

  In 1968 when I left England to live abroad, I suggested to my father that I might perhaps start to write a book about my early childhood. The severance had not been very easy, and I felt that by recalling some of the intense pleasures of the early days the break might be somewhat soothed. He agreed, but reminded me that as far as I was concerned my early family background was very hazy. He felt that I would receive little help from the Scottish side, apart from my mother, and that there was no one left on his side save for himself. Consequently, if I liked, he would start to collect as much information as he could to assist me in what, he said, would be a very lengthy task. I accepted with pleasure. It was only after his death, in 1972, that clearing up private papers in his studio I came across a packet and a cigar box labelled simply “For Dirk”. He had been as good as his word and had assembled a wide collection of diaries, letters, school reports, photographs, glass negatives, cuttings and written notes in his own hand on dates and times. It is from this carefully amassed selection from a life that this book has, in the main, been written. For the rest I have had to depend on my own memories and those of my English family and my friends.

  Where it was impossible to remember a real name, I have substituted another: and also where I have felt that this might save embarrassment. Street names and some identifiable town names have likewise been altered. Otherwise the events, as I remember them, all took place as written. Although, clearly, many of the conversations have been re-constructed, these are the words we used, the phrases we used and the way we were then. Part One is a condensation of at least two summers, but Part Two is “as it was” to the best of my recollection.

  I am indebted very much to the following people for assistance with “remembering”, and for the use of their own letters and diaries: Mrs G. Goodings; Mrs A. Holt; E. L. L. Forwood; W. A. Wightman; and G. van den Bogaerde. And to Mrs Glur Dyson Taylor who was “godmother” to the book.

  To Mrs Sally Betts, who typed it, and corrected my appalling spelling, punctuation and almost indecipherable typescript, my warmest thanks and gratitude.

  Dirk Bogarde

  Chateauneuf de Grasse

  Part 1

  Summer

  Chapter 1

  We were almost halfway down the gully when my sister screamed and called out, “I’ve found him!”

  But she hadn’t: it was just an old rusty can gleaming wet in the dew among the leaves. It wasn’t George by any stretch of the imagination: I’d know George anywhere and he wouldn’t be down the gully, of that I was pretty sure. He’d be up top, in the Great Meadow where the grass was fresh and tender, and there were hosts of dandelions which he liked.

  Not in the gully, which was deep, and dry, usually, and lined with great ash and oak, and chalky along the edges full of warrens and, down at the bottom by the road, old cans and bedsteads and stoves which people dumped among the nettles. George was the kind of tortoise who thought for himself, and he would never have thought to wander so far from the house when the Great Meadow was bung full of food and surrounded the place in which he usually lived. He wasn’t a complete fool.

  I struggled up the side of the gully and broke through the nettles and elder bushes into the field. I was soaking with dew. Down below in the valley the first chimneys were smoking and the meadow lay still in silver light, a good hundred acres of it. It was going to be a bit of a job to find George among all that grass.

  My sister was behind me, having scrambled painfully through the elder branches, whimpering from time to time. I didn’t take any notice. If you said anything the least bit kind, or helpful, or sympathetic, they started to snivel, and after that cry. And you might as well have said nothing, because then they only did a whimper or two and, seeing you didn’t care much, stopped. So I didn’t say a thing to her. She rubbed her stung knees with a dock leaf and pushed her hair from her eyes.

  “Why did we have to get up at dawn to look for him?”

  “Because.”

  “But because why?”

  “Because it’s the best time to find them. That’s why.”

  “To find tortoises!” she scoffed, rubbing away at her wretched knees. “You’d think you’d been hunting them all your life.”

  I started to hum and sing a bit.

  “And you haven’t,” she continued, “because they come from Africa and you’ve never been there.”

  I left her and started walking down the long slope to the valley, peering at molehills and under tussocks of ragwort, and generally trying to seem as if I had a pattern. Pretty soon she’d get windy left up there by the dark old gully and she’d come trolling and skittering down to join me.

  I found a large rabbit hole, and stooped to search it. Once, a month ago, he’d got out and stuck himself in a rabbit hole in the orchard.

  She wasn’t far behind me now, singing a bit, and brushing the long wet grasses with her skinny brown hands. She grabbed some sorrel leaves and chewed them.

  “If he gets stuck in a hole again, we’ll never find him, there must be five hundred million in this field. There must be.”

  I got up and dusted my hands and walked on singing my bit of humming-song. She was right, but I wasn’t going to let her know that.

  “We’ll just have to search every single one.”

  “Well I won’t!” She stopped some paces behind me, waving her arms like a windmill. I walked on, looking and kicking about the big grass clumps.

  “It’s not my tortoise. And I’m soaking wet. My sandals are all slimy. You’ll be sorry!” she screeched.

  Patiently I turned and looked up at her against the morning.

  “It’s half yours,” I said politely, but coldly. “Uncle Salmon gave it to us both. So it stands to reason that it’s ours. Not just mine.”

  She shrugged, but was silent. I stared at her. She suddenly bent and started to unbuckle her sandal. “Well, I don’t want my half of it. You’ve got the part with the head. That’s the best part.” She sat down in the wet shaking her old brown sandal. I could see her knickers, but I didn’t bother to tell her. She was so rotten.

  “Well, go on home and I’ll look for him alone. And when I find him I’ll have both halves and you’ll have to lump it.” I turned and ran away down the hill… in case she tried to follow. She didn’t, but she screeched again.

  “The head part is the most interesting part. You said so. I don’t like the tail part. And if I go home alone Aleford’s stallion could get me.”

  I reached the edge of the meadow and threw myself on to the grass under the ash tree and lay there looking at the sky and puffing a bit. It was quite a long run down from the top.

  It was only yesterday evening that I had carefully washed his shell, and then put a little olive oil on it so that it shone and gleamed like a great golden brown pebble on the beach at Bi
rling Gap. Only yesterday that he’d had the very innermost heart of a lettuce. The pale, yellowish-whitish bit. And only yesterday that Reg Fluke told me to put a little hole in her end of the shell and fix a bit of string to it. “Then he won’t wander,” he said.

  But I didn’t, and here we were in the dawn, searching for him, in vain it seemed.

  There was a thumping in the earth under my back, and I could hear her running. Her feet thumping along in the grass. She slithered down beside me clutching her soaking sandals and peered at me. Her long hair hung over her face, and brushed my cheek. She looked like a hideous witch-thing: she crossed her eyes at me.

  “Don’t!” I said in alarm. “You’ll stay like it.”

  “Not that you’d care. You left me up there and the stallion might be anywhere. You just don’t mind about me. I won’t help you look.” She leapt to her feet and ran barefoot through the field, jumping over molehills, waving her skirts about, and singing very loudly indeed. This was not to impress me, but to frighten away Aleford’s stallion, which we had never actually seen, but which we’d been told about in great detail by Reg Fluke and a boy from Woods, the butchers in the village.

  And the telling was bad enough. I wasn’t exactly anxious to see it myself. But I lay on, listening to her singing away in puffs and gasps as she ran furiously uphill.

  The sun had been up only a little while and beside me, close to my face, so that it was actually all blurry and looked like an eagle, was a burnet-moth on a bit of grass, feeling the sun, and waiting for the dusk to come. I rolled over on my stomach and looked up the hill. She looked quite small now, leaping over the grasses, and jumping about with her long legs and the sandals held high, as if a great dog was running beside her trying to grab them.

  A blackbird was singing in the ash tree and I was just wondering if there was a nest nearby when I heard her: it was rather frightening actually. She let out a terrible shriek, and then another and another as if someone was stabbing her.

  I jumped up and stared. She was standing quite still, staring at the ground and holding her sandals close to her heart. Shrieking.

  It must be George, and of course, he must be dead. Horribly, by the way she was yelling … I started to walk up the hill towards her.

  “What is it? What’s happened?” I called.

  “Come quickly … come quickly … it’s ghastly! Hurry! God’s honour, it’s the biggest one … it’s the biggest! Quick.”

  I ran. The wet grasses stinging my legs, and the tussocks and molehills tripping me. The yelling stopped but she was staring at me with great beseeching eyes.

  “Come quickly!”

  “This is as quick as I can. Is it a snake?” That was it, of course. An adder. And we’d both be bitten. “If it’s a snake,” I said, stopping immediately, “come away. Don’t stand there gawping, come away. It’ll kill us. Just run.”

  “It isn’t a snake … it isn’t a snake… it’s terrible!” She hadn’t moved, so I went on, rather reluctantly, but cheered that it was nothing too beastly … obviously not George mangled by a fox or something, otherwise she’d be snivelling. But now she was crouching in the grasses, staring at it like a mad rabbit.

  Then I was beside her, my shirt had come out of the top of my shorts, and my shoes were soaking too.

  “What is it? What is it then?”

  When she spoke her voice was sort of roughish and very low with wonder. “Look,” she said, and very gently parted the grasses before her. “Look, it’s the biggest mushroom in the world. Look!”

  And it was. It must have been about as round as a dinner plate, quite. And it sat in a little hollow with some others around it; but they were smaller, this was a giant.

  “Gosh!”

  “Isn’t it huge? It’s the biggest in the world.”

  “It might be a toadstool, or something.”

  “Well, let’s pick it and take it home and they’ll tell us.”

  Very gingerly I reached out and pulled the great shiny brown top … it smelt like a million mushrooms. It was golden brown in the sun and underneath it was pink and white, and damp. We smelt it carefully and she opened her skirt like an apron for it, and we walked breathlessly up to the house.

  “It’s like a beautiful parasol,” she said.

  In the kitchen there was a breakfast smell. The kettle was steaming away on the Primus stove and Lally, plump in a print dress and tennis shoes, was sitting at the table buttering toast.

  We stood on the brick floor looking at her, willing her to look up at us, but she went on scraping off the burnt bits and singing a song to herself. My sister deliberately dropped one sandal and then the other. Lally stopped singing and said: “Go-and-wash-your-hands-why-haven’t-you-got-your-shoes-on?” all in one breath, but still not looking up, although she must have seen us.

  My sister said in her Old Maid’s voice: “We have something rather strange to show you.”

  Lally looked briefly at her bulging skirt and said: “If it’s living throw it out and if it’s dead likewise. Kettle’s boiling.”

  “It’s alive and dead at the same time, sort of,” I said.

  “Well, we don’t want it in here, do we?” said Lally, stacking up some toast and cutting off the crusts all round. “And I’d be pleased if you hurry up before the Prince of Wales is here.”

  “It’s a mushroom,” said my sister, moving across the floor with the bundle and laying it on the table among the crusts and the butter crock. “And it’s possibly the biggest in the world … or anyway in Sussex.” And she carefully opened her skirt and showed it.

  Lally took a look and then was interested. “Jerusalem!” she said. She always did when she couldn’t think of anything else, or if you had surprised her, or if she was quite pleased but-not-going-to-show-it, or if she didn’t understand clearly. And she didn’t understand this. For a moment we all looked at it in dead silence.

  “Well, it’s big I grant you, probably wormy too. What do you want me to do with it?”

  My sister removed it very gently from the cloth of her skirt and, wiping her hands together, she said: “We could all have it for breakfast, couldn’t we?”

  “Fried,” I said.

  “With bacon sort of,” said my sister.

  “Be tough, I shouldn’t doubt, you’d better ask your mother: it might be poisonous and then where should I be? Never get another job, not having poisoned a whole family. It’s very large,” she said. “Give it a good wash and we’ll see.”

  Well, you could tell she was impressed because she forgot to remind us to wash ourselves, and taking down the big iron frying-pan she started singing her song again.

  Carefully we washed it at the big sink and smelled the fresh damp smell of it and admired the pink underneath part, and there were no worms.

  It was about the best thing I’ve ever eaten. Cut in strips, like bacon, and fried in butter with tomatoes and a bit of ham and soft toast.

  “Where did you find it then?” Lally asked.

  “We were looking for George in Great Meadow and she found it.” I indicated my sister with a flick of jealousy.

  “It was sort of in a little hollow place, right in the middle,” she said.

  “It’s a wonder Aleford’s stallion wasn’t about,” said Lally, wiping round her plate with a bit of bread: she said this was all right to do ever since she came to France the first time with us. Anything the French did was all right by her, which shows just how ignorant she was. “That stallion could kick you to death with a look: there was a boy lived up at Teddington when I was your age, got kicked in the head by one. He was loopy all his life.” She cleaned the edge of her knife against the plate and stuck it in the butter. “Any cows in the meadow?”

  “Some,” I said. “Right down at the bottom.”

  “Well, you need cows and horses in the same field for mushrooms,” said Lally. “If you don’t have it that way you can’t get mushrooms.”

  “Why?” asked my sister.

  Lally was spr
eading damson jam all over her toast. “Because when you get cow dung and horse dung in the same field you get mushrooms, that’s why,” she said and bit into the jam.

  My sister looked white but a little scornful. “Dung,” she said.

  “DUNG, dung,” said Lally. “You ask anyone, anyone you like. Ask Aleford or Beattie Fluke down the bottom, or the Prince of Wales. They’ll all say the same thing. Dung.”

  For a little time we were silent, except for the clink and scrape of knives and forks and the kettle lid plopping up and down. Sunlight streamed through the windows, across the table and the bumpy whitewashed walls.

  “Do the French eat them?” I asked.

  “Wee,” said Lally, nodding her head.

  “Well, it must be all right for us to, I mean if they do it must be,” I said.

  “They’re the best cooks in the world, aren’t they?” said my sister. “So they’d be bound to know if it was all right or not.”

  Lally eased up from the table and started stacking the plates. “Can’t all be right at the same time,” she said, going across to the sink and dumping them into some water. “Can’t be right all the time. Even the French. Remember one thing,” she said, taking the soap up from the shelf. “The French eat snails too.”

  We helped with the drying-up in a thoughtful silence.

  We lay on our backs under the ash tree by the top of the gully and watched the crows wheeling and gliding in the wind. All around my head sorrel, buttercup and long bendy plantains shimmered and nodded. I crumbled a little empty snail shell, transparent and silvery. My sister had her eyes closed, her hands folded on her chest like a dead Plantagenet. She had the same kind of nose, poky and long; her hair was scattered with pollen.

  I leant up on one elbow and sprinkled the snail shell all over her face.

  She screamed and hit me with her fist.

  I fell back into the grass and lay still, staring at the crows. She was mumbling and brushing her chin.