Henry Blofeld - Squeezing the Orange

The schoolroom lived up to its name, for it was there, along with my first cousin, Simon Cator, and Jane Holden, an unofficial sister and lifelong friend who lived nearby at Neatishead, that we were given the rudiments of an education by the small, bespectacled, virtuous, austere and humourless Mrs Hales. I often wonder, looking back, what she and Mr Hales – who I’m not sure I ever met – got up to in their spare time. Not a great deal, I should think. They lived at Sea Palling, and she turned up each morning rather earlier than was strictly necessary in her elderly Austin Seven, which, in spite of often making disagreeable and unlikely noises, kept going for many years. On the occasions when we got the better of Mrs Hales and were rather noisily mobbing her up, the door from the schoolroom into my father’s office would burst open, Tom’s thunderous face would appear, and order would be instantly restored. Our lessons were fun, and we learned to read and write and do some basic arithmetic. Mrs Hales must have done a good job, because when I went away to boarding school I found I was able to hold my own.

Tom was an imposing figure. In addition to his height, he had a small moustache which was more a smattering of foliage on his upper lip than anything else. He said he grew it to avoid having to shave his upper lip, which, as he used a cut-throat razor for most of his life, may have been a tricky operation. He had a huge nose, which he blew and sneezed through with considerable venom while applying a large and colourful silk handkerchief to the enormous protuberance. His monocle hung from a thread around his neck, and dangled down in front of his tie. This was impressive, unless, as a small boy, I was summoned to his office for my school report to be discussed. I would tread apprehensively down the long corridor, past the cellar and the game larder, and through the schoolroom for this ghastly meeting. It never had a happy outcome, because away from the games field I was an out-and-out slacker. Tom, sitting behind his desk while I perched apprehensively on the leather bum-warmer around the fireplace, would read out all the hideous lies those wretched schoolmasters had written about me. Not only that, he would believe every single word of them. Both he and Grizel invariably took the side of my persecutors, something it seems parents seldom do today. Having read out the details of whichever crime it was that I was supposed to have committed, there would be a nasty tweak of the muscles around his right eye. The monocle would fall down his shirt front, indicating that it was my turn to go in to bat. I was then invariably bowled by a ball I should have left alone.

When I had reached the age when I was more or less house-trained, I was allowed to join my parents in the drawing room for an hour or so before going to bed. Nanny would open the drawing-room door in the hall to let me in, and Grizel would always greet me with the words, ‘Hello, ducky.’ I loved these visits, for Grizel usually had something fun or interesting for me to do. She taught me card games, starting with a simple two-handed game called cooncan. I graduated from that to hearts, which needed four people, and piquet, which I played with Tom. Grizel also taught me the patiences she would play while Tom was reading and I loved the one called ‘trousers’. We played Ludo and Cluedo, and occasionally Monopoly. Tom would make up the numbers for these, too, but I don’t think Monopoly was really his sort of thing. When he had bought the Old Kent Road he was never quite sure what to do with it.

When I was a touch older, Tom would read aloud to me, and I have always been eternally grateful for this. I think he started me off with Kipling’s Just So Stories – I adored ‘The Elephant’s Child’. I know I have never laughed at any story more than Mr Jorrocks’s adventures in R.S. Surtees’ Handley Cross . Tom was brilliant at all the different accents: his imitation of huntsman James Pigg’s Scottish vowels was special. Then there were John Buchan’s Richard Hannay books, The Thirty-Nine Steps and so on, and Dornford Yates’s stories about Jonathan Mansell and the others discovering treasure in castles in Austria. I was introduced to Bulldog Drummond, Sherlock Holmes and Dorothy Sayers’ detective Lord Peter Wimsey who became a great hero of mine. Tom adored P.G. Wodehouse, and wanted to read me some of the Jeeves books, but Grizel couldn’t stand them, and they stayed on the shelves. We all have awful secrets which we hope will never slip out. One of mine is that I had a mother who didn’t like Wodehouse or Gilbert and Sullivan. This still surprises me, because I would have thought Grizel would have enjoyed the fantasy world of Wodehouse. Tom’s reading would finish in time for the weather and the six o’clock news. After the news headlines, Tom would invariably tell Grizel to turn off the wireless. He dismissed the rest of the news as ‘gossip’. Then it was drinks time for them and bedtime for me.

I am sure Tom never played cricket, judging from his one performance in the fathers’ match when I was at Sunningdale. But he enjoyed the game, and each summer he and two of his friends, Reggie Cubitt (who was his cousin) and Christo Birkbeck, would go up to London for the three days of the Gentlemen v. Players match at Lord’s. They stayed at Boodle’s, and I dare say it was as close as any of them ever came to letting their hair down, which probably meant no more than having a second glass of vintage port after dinner. It is unlikely that they would have paid a visit to the Bag o’Nails after that. Reggie and Christo were a sort of social barometer for Tom and Grizel. If, in the years I still lived at home, I was intending to embark upon some rather flashy adventure, Grizel would caution me by saying, ‘What would Reggie and Christo think?’

Just before the end of the war there were some German prisoners-of-war working on the farm at Hoveton. It was said that if Germany had played cricket it might never have gone to war, so it was ironic that these PoWs were put to work turning a part of the old parkland up by the little round wood at Hill Piece into a wonderfully picturesque cricket ground. The village team, Hoveton and Wroxham, played there, and for several years later on I organised a two-day game in September between the Eton Ramblers and the Free Foresters, which was highly competitive and great fun. It was a lovely ground in a wonderful setting, but sadly it has disappeared for a part of it has now been planted over with trees.

Tom could be great value. He had a wonderful turn of phrase. He and Grizel would go to bed every night at around ten o’clock. Sitting in the drawing room at the Home Farm, or later in the hall at Hoveton House, he would shut his book, half stretch, and say, ‘Well, I think it’s time for a bit of a lie-down before breakfast.’ Another splendid offering would come when a visitor was over-keen to make a favourable impression. When asked what he thought about whoever it was when he had gone, Tom would say, ‘Awfully nice. I do just wish he wouldn’t fart above his arsehole quite so much.’

There was one incident when I was young for which I never forgave Tom. I always ate with Nanny in the nursery, but I was allowed to have lunch in the dining room with my parents on the last full day of the school holidays – I was sent to boarding school at Sunningdale when I was seven and a half. And not only that: I was allowed to choose the pudding. One year Grizel came by a stock of tinned black cherries, and whenever I tasted them I didn’t think I would ever get much closer to heaven. Goodness knows where she found them. Anyway, on this occasion I said I would like some black cherries as the pud, and to my surprise my wish was granted. We sat down to lunch at one o’clock – mealtimes were immutable, and if you were late it was considered to be a major crime. Tom carved the cold beef. They had cold roast beef six days a week, or so it seemed, and to ring the changes, hot roast beef on Sundays. A woman called Joan, who ferried these things around in the dining room, put my plate in front of me, and when everyone had been served, we tucked in. Our empty plates were collected, and then it was time for the cherries.