Slipstream: A Memoir by Elizabeth Jane Howard

Author:Elizabeth Jane Howard [Howard, Elizabeth Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, General
ISBN: 9780330527835
Google: UBw78ayBlRMC
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2011-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

1

One morning – it must have been a blurb-writing day – I noticed that Cecil seemed unusually absorbed by a proof copy he was reading. When I asked what it was, he said it was a travel book by Laurie Lee. ‘It’s his first prose work.’

‘Is it good?’

Cecil said it was a bit purple in parts but, yes, it was good. ‘He’s written some very good poetry,’ he added. Later, when Cecil had gone out to lunch, I looked at the book. It was called A Rose for Winter, and I was enthralled by it. He could write about anything – a sunrise, a city – in a manner that was both fresh and familiar. His language flowed as naturally as a spring of water whose depths are never obscured by muddy uncertainty – a revelation to me then, and an enduring pleasure now.

I can’t remember where I first met Cathy and Laurie, almost certainly at a party somewhere. They were enormously popular, I soon discovered, and it was easy to see why. Laurie, when he chose, was a natural entertainer and a natural musician. He usually brought his guitar to parties and he and Cathy sang – Spanish songs, folk songs from either England or America. This might have been awful, but with them it wasn’t. They never did it unless it was clearly wanted, and they never did too much. He was always wonderful company, funny, dry, and perceptive.Cathy, far younger, was beautiful and tall, and had thick, rich corn-coloured hair and very large cornflower-blue eyes that sparkled. There was something majestic about her, but her manner – she was a very humble person – was both frank and self-deprecating. She loved Laurie and had learned how to be his first lieutenant. I loved them both on sight.

Soon we were going to supper with each other. When she was staying with me Nicola, who at that time was very fond of dancing and wonderfully unselfconscious about it, danced sardanas with Cathy. Laurie was always very sensitive to the young. He’d ask them questions in a grave and gentle manner that always got a response. In A Rose for Winter he goes up to a Spanish child standing by the sea and asks her, ‘What would you like most in the world?’ She answers, ‘To go in a boat on the sea to find my father.’ I quote this as it illustrates so exactly how Laurie was with children. He always seemed to know precisely what to ask them, could reach their heart’s desire in seconds.

In those days Laurie was frequently ill – had chest infections, fevers and epilepsy. Sometimes we’d have supper in their bedroom, with Laurie propped up on pillows, playing his guitar quietly. When he was better he played his fiddle. Music wasn’t a random entertainment or special-occasion pleasure with him: it was an essential continuous background to his life. In spite of his delicate health, he had a profound distrust of doctors. ‘They came for me last week, but I hid,’ he said to me once, with a shrewd look of stealthy triumph.

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