Squeezing the Orange. Henry Blofeld
Germany to Finland, and then shot across the North Sea with the Vikings before finally being grounded on the north Norfolk coast somewhere near what is today called Overstrand, then pushing a few miles inland and setting up shop in a small village called Sustead. Three or four hundred years whizzed by before they up-anchored again, moving twenty-odd miles south-east to Hoveton, which at that time was owned by some people called Doughty. Having a shrewd eye for the main chance, a Blofeld married a Miss Doughty, who was to become the sole surviving member of that distinguished family. Hoveton therefore soon became the Blofeld stronghold, and has remained so ever since.
Discipline – good manners, politeness, the pleases and thank yous of life – was all-important in my childhood. I can’t remember how young I was when I was first soundly ticked off for not leaping to my feet when my mother came into the room, but young enough. Dirty hands, undone buttons, sloppy speech or pronunciation, and the use of certain words were all jumped upon. Throwing sweet papers or any other rubbish out of the car window was also not popular. Goodness knows what my parents would have made of mobile telephones, and their frequent and disturbing use. Table manners were rigidly enforced. No one sat down before Grizel was in place, and you were not allowed to start eating until everyone had been served. If toast crumbs were left on a pat of butter, there was hell to pay, your napkin had to be neatly folded before you left the dining room, and you ate what was put in front of you and left a clean plate.
The nursery was presided over by Nanny Framingham, who was nothing less than a saint. Cheerful, enthusiastic and always smiling, she put up with all sorts of skulduggery. On one occasion I all but frightened her to death. My father’s guns and cartridges were kept in the schoolroom, which was next to his office. I always took a lively interest in the gun cupboard, although it was forbidden territory, and when no one was around I used to go and have a good look round. I loved the smell of the 3-in-One oil which was used to clean the guns. There was also something irresistible about the cartridges. I would steal one or two of them, take them back to the nursery and cut them up to see how they were made. One afternoon Nanny came into the room unexpectedly while I was engaged in this harmless pastime, and the sight of the gunpowder and loose shot lying all over the table terrified her – she saw us all going up in an enormous explosion, and was quick to run off and enlist help. Within a matter of minutes Tom burst into the nursery, looking and sounding a good deal worse than the wrath of God. My cartridge-cutting activities came to an immediate halt, and I was probably sent up to my bedroom for an indefinite period, possibly with a clip over the ear or a smack on the bottom as well. Corporal punishment was always on the menu.
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