06 Jun 2013 02:09:24
On the heels of its success comes Mortimer's letters to his daughter Louise. Anyone familiar with the earlier volume will know exactly what to expect. This is more of the same. Everyone has a nickname – the helpful dramatis personae at the front serves to remind the reader, for instance, that Loopy is Louise's father-in-law, Cringer is a fox terrier and Nidnod is Roger's wife, chiefly distinguished in his affectionate but slighting account for dipping her nut too deep in the Martini bucket and talking rubbish non-stop.
The first letter is from 1967, when a 12-year-old Louise was starting at boarding school: "My dearest Lumpy, I hope you are settling down well and have not been moistening your pillow with hot tears. Settle down to some steady work and kindly refrain from doing anything really foolish."
Roger was especially fond of his daughter, and (although he jokes incessantly about her weight) kind to her. He is mortified when he discovers shortly before their wedding that she and her not-entirely-approved-of fiance, "Hot Hand Henry", have already got married in secret: "I hope if possible never to refer to this distasteful matter again. I wish you every happiness in your married life which, through your own folly, has got off to a thoroughly unsatisfactory start." But she is soon forgiven, and the litany of quirky fancies, grumbles about the disgustingness of food and the boringness of company, itemisations of dogs farting, shitting and pissing in the house, loving accounts of injuries and fatalities sustained by friends and acquaintances, and cockeyed but well‑meant advice continues.
That Wavian tone of detached disaffection, of refusing to be too impressed by anything (in one letter, the presence of the Queen at a party merits less comment than the toilet habits of a particular dog), is, it should be remembered, the voice of a man who was wounded and taken prisoner – Louise Mortimer writes – after fighting a "desperate rear guard action at Dunkirk in 1940 during which almost all of his men were killed". He's of that generation – and has that generation's self-protective affectation of jauntiness.
There comes, however, even through the brisk tone, an autumnal note of self-pity. He reflects – which I don't remember being such a presence in Dear Lupin – on the world of his childhood and his adventures as a young man, and he talks of finding old age "increasingly bloody". Recovering after a stroke, he writes: "I feel pretty ghastly but I have no alternative but to carry on as before. If Nidnod or I stop, the place goes to pot [...] When I cool, which may not be very far off now, I think she will move out of this area altogether." Later: "I haven't been all that well and at times my favourite reading has been catalogues from cremation companies, including 'Special Offer' services."
He can't, eventually, but be proved right. To the last letter she received from him, in 1991, Louise appends not a solemn epitaph but a rhyme her father was fond of: "Poor old banana stood up in bed./ Along came sausage and bopped him on the head./ Poor old banana fell down dead./ Tripe and banana brown bread."
