Nikolai Tolstoy - Patrick O’Brian - A Very Private Life

Excited plans began for purchase of a car, while Patrick further contemplated buying a sailing boat which was for sale in the harbour. The latter disappointingly turned out to be in too poor condition to be worth even the modest 8,000 francs demanded, but a car they had to have. The noisy and crowded little streets of Collioure appeared ever more unbearably claustrophobic, and they longed for means of occasional escape. Friends in England offered them their Opel for £100, an offer so enticing that my mother travelled to London in July to bring it back, but from the moment she arrived, everything began to go wrong. Additional expenses mounted by the hour: garage bill, ferry fare, tax, French import duty … my poor mother was in despair: ‘I think my heart is breaking & I never want to see the Opel again, and how I love P. and am utterly lonely.’

Eventually the Bank of England prohibited the Opel’s export, and the same afternoon another car rammed the wretched car, breaking an indicator and smashing a window.

Altogether my mother totted up that she had spent a precious £35 on this fruitless errand, and her despair was only alleviated when her father, with whom she stayed in Chelsea, gave her £20. Battered and exhausted, she returned to Collioure, accompanied by Patrick’s son Richard, who was now to spend his first summer holiday with them, camping in Andorra. After his eventual return to England my mother noted despairingly: ‘Street noises formid able’, and a week later she and Patrick returned by bus to Andorra in the hope of completing a house purchase they had planned during their visit to that country. In the event a pied-à-terre was sadly to prove beyond their means.

Life looked up in the latter part of the year, but even in their days of direst poverty they rarely allowed themselves to feel downcast for very long, no matter how heavily the dice appeared loaded against them. They swam, walked, sunbathed on the plage St Vincent, and when they could afford it played tennis on the baking-hot hard court in the moat of the Château Royal. The plage in particular provided an ever-present refuge from their claustrophobic little apartement , although it had its own occasional hazards – noisy tourists, rowdy children, and (for Patrick that June): ‘A disagreeable day … A gull shat all over me, the rug and Thos. Mann.’

Odette and Buddug on the plage St Vincent

Odette Boutet (then Bernardi) recalls an occasion when my mother and she swam the traversée across the harbour, from La Balette on the south side of the bay to the plage St Vincent opposite. It being the first swim of the season, and the water icy, on emerging they found they lacked strength for the return swim. Accordingly they walked back past the town and Port d’Avall in their bathing costumes. It was an unusual sight in those days, and the contrasted attractions of the two brown-limbed young women – Odette dark-haired and olive-skinned, and my mother fair-haired and blue-eyed – drew much attention from the (chiefly male, I assume) inhabitants along the way.

In the evenings they read, played chess, or engaged in an improvised form of bridge for two. Although an enthusiast for both games, Patrick was (like Stephen Maturin) but a middling achiever at such pastimes, who more often than not found himself beaten by my mother. Once, after a particularly hard-fought contest, Patrick wrote defiantly on the score-sheet: ‘Bridge, a silly game. BY ORDER P. O’BRIAN. SEPT 1951’.

Ever adventurous, from time to time they escaped the town to explore the mountains. Their close friend Odette, who was quite as audacious, frequently accompanied them. In June 1951 the three of them (five, including Buddug and Odette’s dog Rubill) travelled on foot to the forest behind the Tour Massane, where they camped beside the wood. That night boars could be heard grunting close by. Peering from their tents at the moonlit glade, they were alarmed to discover a large female boar leading her offspring, and quickly clasped the dogs’ muzzles to prevent their alerting the irascible parent. The expedition was voted a great success on their return, despite Odette’s temporarily losing her voice from exhaustion.

Next month they set off on a much more ambitious expedition, camping for nearly seven weeks in and around Andorra. As ever, they found the little Pyrenean principality entirely beautiful, and largely untouched by the modern world. After a week they were joined by Odette and Rubill. The latter was promptly attacked by four fierce dogs, from which she was barely saved by the two courageous women. So far from displaying gratitude, Rubill constantly eyed their provisions, only to be as regularly forestalled by the vigilant Buddug. Prices in Andorra were much lower than in France, farmers hospitable to the campers, and the weather benign. Their diet was supplemented by wild strawberries and trout from mountain streams. Buildings were picturesquely medieval, and transport off the few main roads was conducted by cows drawing haycarts, while on steep slopes mules dragged loads of hay on angled wooden platforms.

Fortunately the dauntless campers were hardy, and carried on their backs tents, sleeping bags, cooking utensils, and even a heavy wind-up gramophone and collection of records. Odette remembered their dancing under the moonlight to Bach and Beethoven. It was on this or another of their expeditions that she recalled their getting lost one day in a heavy mist. After hours of more and more anxious wandering, they stumbled at last on their camp, having unwittingly strayed in a wide circle. Despite their hardihood, femininity persisted. Venturing beyond the camp to relieve themselves one day, the two young women were startled by a large snake, and fled shrieking back to safety.

In the meantime my parents’ concern was aroused by distressing news from Richard. As described earlier, Patrick was delighted when his son expressed ambition to join the Royal Navy. Nothing had been heard from him for some time, when on 23 May 1952 Patrick received what he described as ‘a sickening letter from Richard’. The news was indeed bad. He had failed the examination to Dartmouth, and the longed-for career was denied him. ‘I am very disappointed as I had worked hard and got nothing for it,’ he explained sadly. He possessed considerable natural aptitude for mathematics, and was skilled with his hands, but as he freely confessed was all but hopeless at exams. Regrettably, Patrick’s response has not survived. Given his own comparably abysmal experience, together with his understanding attitude towards similar disappointments on other occasions, I feel confident his reaction would have been supportive. Moreover, he knew that Richard was additionally occupied on Saturdays by such work as he could find to supplement his mother’s meagre income.

In July, as was mentioned earlier, Richard returned with my mother from London to Collioure, where he spent the summer holiday from July to September. (As the court judgment had ruled that Richard was to spend half of each summer holiday with his father, his mother clearly approved the extended arrangement.) This time he brought with him a good school report, and showed keen interest in joining the Merchant Navy. My parents had made extensive preparations, requiring further dangerous inroads into their ever-strained finances, to ensure that he had the most enjoyable holiday they could provide.

Tents, lilos and other camping gear having been purchased, on 8 August the little party set off crammed into an excursion bus full of excited boy scouts. Arrived once more in the mountains of Andorra, they encamped in pine forests. Here the modern world impinged barely at all. The first person they met was a cowherd, with ‘his woolly dogs; his cows are all round, many with bells’. [fn8] Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом. Richard and Patrick went fishing in a nearby lake, and returned to one of my mother’s wonderful improvised meals: ‘Fries very successful; lunch today was chops, potatoes, garlic, onion & tomato stew. Dear Budd seems happy & eats heartily.’ She was on heat, but fortunately the herd’s dogs were all bitches, save one male incapacitated by age. After a swim in a nearby river, they returned to camp, where ‘golden eagles flew right over us, being mobbed by choughs or crows’.