His clothes were aggressively dirty, stained with food and smeared with coal dust. He took so many laxatives for fear of constipation that he would sometimes shit in his bed. His red nose dripped constantly and he kept snorting back mucus. Also, he had a hacking smoker’s cough. His cough and snorting were undoubtedly exaggerated in order to embarrass Kathleen and claim her attention.
When she tried to tidy him up, he submitted to her like a child. But he was neither childish nor mad; he was a sensitive, intelligent soul in torment.
Christopher embraced both of them when they met. He had
seldom if ever done this with Richard before––he hadn’t known in advance that he was going to do it; yet hugging Richard was beautifully “in character” for the 1947 Vedantic-American Christopher whom he had travelled six thousand miles with, to present to them.
Richard reacted with shyness, pleasure and irony. “A very warm welcome!” he exclaimed, to nobody in particular. Kathleen later wrote in her diary (which Christopher would not read until twenty-three years later) that Christopher’s face looked “so kind.”
Little old Nanny sat by the kitchen fire, bright-eyed but infirm, chuckling at Kathleen’s novice attempts at cookery. Kathleen and Richard waited on her. Nanny seemed unaware of American
Christopher; she treated Christopher exactly as she had treated him in the 1920s, as the young man fresh from college who had bossed her and accepted her service and her flattery as a matter of course.
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Nanny adored Christopher. Kathleen she perhaps hated, deep down.
Richard she rather despised. It was sad that she was now ending her life with them, in this uncomfortable house, but where else was she to go?
Christopher had written to Kathleen, shortly before this visit, saying, “You will find me quite domesticated,” and promising to give her a hand with the housework and the cooking. But
Christopher thought of housework in terms of American kitchens and labor-saving devices. The dirt of Wyberslegh appalled him. And soon he was paralyzed by the cold. The snow lay deep all over the hills; many of the lanes were blocked. The gas pressure was kept so low by the authorities during daylight hours that it was scarcely worth lighting the gas fire. The kitchen was the only warm place in the chilly old house, but Christopher couldn’t work there. He sat shivering in an overcoat in his bedroom, writing his “Letter from England” article and then rewriting his article about the trip to Mexico. (He also wrote a hard-core sex story about a sailor whose nickname was “Dynamite.” Getting horny was a way of raising his body temperature––until he lowered it again by jacking off.) It was too cold to sit still, reading. Books numbed your hands when you opened them; they were actually clammy. In his efforts not to freeze, Christopher held his arms pressed against his sides and shuffled about with hunched shoulders like an old man. He probably suffered more than any of them, with his thin Californian blood. Kathleen seemed to thrive on blizzards. And when men and women came into the
kitchen from the adjoining farm buildings, stamping their feet and rubbing their hands, as they told how England was “cut in half,” how you couldn’t get through to Scotland, how the army was using
flamethrowers to melt the drifts, Christopher was aware of their deep, almost unconscious delight––that characteristic British delight in a “National Emergency.”
Kathleen was violently opposed to the Labour government and
ready to blame it for everything from the coal shortage and the lack of cooking fat to the weather itself. Christopher, who was equally violently pro-Labour, had to be tactful about this. He had made up his mind, in advance, to keep his mouth shut when necessary, and I think he succeeded. But this visit must have been quite a strain on him, in many ways. He was at Wyberslegh from January 25 to
February 28. Between the two dates in the day-to-day diary twenty-four spaces are empty, suggesting blank claustrophobic snowbound days on which Christopher yearned for a letter from Caskey and occasionally had hysterical spasms of fear that he would get sick and die before he could escape from this prison, his birthplace. On ¾ 1947 ¾
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February 7, he made his first trip into Manchester and booked a ticket on the Queen Elizabeth for his return to New York. This was more than two months ahead of sailing, but trans-Atlantic traffic was heavy at that time and he didn’t want to take any chances.
Nevertheless, Kathleen and Christopher got along well together.
He had so much to tell her and she was as good a listener as ever. At seventy-eight, her mind was clear, her memory excellent and her hearing perfect. She was even prepared to be interested in Vedanta.
Through Christopher’s letters she had already formed her own
mental pictures of many of his friends; she “liked the sound of ”
Peggy Kiskadden and Dodie and Alec Beesley, the Swami she
regarded with respect, Gerald Heard she mistrusted. (Gerald’s
“second in command,” Felix Green, had visited Wyberslegh during the war to bring news of Christopher, and both Kathleen and
Richard had been repelled by his slick charm, glibness and re-ligiosity.)
Kathleen and Christopher went twice into Stockport together and once into Manchester, to shop1 and see the art gallery. (You could get a bus into the city from the bottom of the hill below Wyberslegh, but I remember that, on one of these outings, the bus was late or they had missed it, and that Christopher stood beside the road and thumbed a ride, California style. They got picked up almost at once.
No doubt British drivers had become accustomed to the hitchhiking gesture, when it was made by American G.I.s. And then, of course, Christopher was with an obviously respectable old lady. Anyhow, Christopher greatly enjoyed treating Kathleen to this bit of
playacting.) On February 1, Kathleen and Christopher had tea with some of the Monkhouse family. Mrs. Monkhouse still lived at the top of the Brow, in the ugly red house which had once been the home of beautiful John, her younger son, whom she called “Mr.
Honeypot” because of his thick yellow hair. In those days, John was a long-legged hockey-playing teenager with an adorable heartbreaking grin, and Christopher had a terrific crush on him. In those days, Allan Monkhouse was alive and leaning against the sitting-room fireplace; he looked like a noble old dog and had a
1 In the “Letter from England,” Christopher quotes some miscellaneous prices: Twenty cigarettes––2 shillings 4 pence. A hairbrush––38 shillings. A rubber sponge––1 shilling 9 pence. A natural sponge––22 shillings. A pair of lady’s walking shoes (very good quality)––39 shillings. A first edition of R. L.
Stevenson’s Weir of Hermiston––10 shillings 6 pence. One hundred sheets of carbon paper––20 shillings. He adds, “In other words, some things are very expensive, others are more or less normal.” Presumably, the expensive items are the hairbrush, the natural sponge and the carbon paper.
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Shakespearian quotation to fit every occasion. In those days, Rachel, the elder daughter, was mooning around, her big reproachful eyes1
stuck into a handsome but irritating red pincushion face; she had a terrific crush on Christopher.
Kathleen and Christopher’s hosts at the February 1 tea party were Mrs. Monkhouse, Patrick her elder son and Mitty her younger