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Sink: down in the grey sea
slowly down. The layers
silent, of depression. Down.
Through them.
No irritation, anger left
no hint of red
all grey dull and silence welling
up past your ears.
You sink your head
Down. Breathing slow
Down. Eyes unfocussed
One tear creeps down the bent
ash dying face.
As in North Wales during the summer of 1949, the prospect of death returned to haunt Patrick. At the end of April 1951, ‘P. said after yesterday’s tennis he gets partial black-outs while playing, which connect with feeling of other-worldness – of playing at being alive: a game which might be stopped at any moment.’
On 20 October he ‘wrote his death dream’, and about that time composed this grim verse, entitled ‘You will come to it’:
Do not suppose their motions pantomime
Because the thing they dig is dark, unseen
The mattock and the shovel swing in time
A near approach will show you what they mean.
On 11 May 1951 my mother, more buoyant by nature, experienced a remarkable vision:
A Dream: I died, & arrived on a shore that struck me as being like Lundy, from across a big grey sea. I worried about P coming, & he arrived soon after.[fn6] (#litres_trial_promo) Was filled with immense feeling of relief because of two things: permanence in this existence, & continuence of free will // I am not aware of ever having felt unhappiness from the impermanence of this life, nor of regretting the loss of free will in the usual pre-conceived notion of Heaven. Have worked backwards & am now fully aware of both, though much comforted by the exceedingly vivid dream. The dream had no sequence of events, but was like a state of being. (That life there would go on for ever). (In the manner of owning a house instead of renting it).
Lundy is the island in the Bristol Channel where my mother spent many happy holidays when living as a girl in North Devon. What I am sure she did not know, is that it was regarded by the pagan Celts as a location of the Otherworld, where the souls of the dead are received.[fn7] (#litres_trial_promo)
The couple endured this extreme poverty for well over two years. It was on 2 May 1952 that their affairs suddenly altered dramatically for the better. Publication of Three Bear Witness had proved a material disappointment, both in reviews and sales. But good news was on the way.
‘I was scrubbing the black hole floor’, wrote my mother,
when P. came in almost breathless saying ‘Such news, M’. It was S.C.B.’s [Spencer Curtis Brown] letter to say Harcourt, Brace want TBW [to be called Questions & Answers over there] for 750 dollars. Quite knocked up, both of us … For the first time on such an occasion we are not wild: no rushings out & spendings, nor the desire to do so. Could eat but little lunch, anyway … We walked to P. Vendres after tea, feeling upset & disturbed with our wealth. Saw wirelesses, but spent nothing.
Six days later Curtis Brown sent news almost as exciting. The American advance was to be sent direct to France, which, with a modicum of discretion, meant they need not pay the penal British income tax! ‘We are so happy & settled in our economy that this wealth worries us,’ exclaimed my mother. Charming prospects opened up on every side. ‘We plan a 3000 mile round trip of Spain & Portugal’; ‘Take many turns around Collioure in a day, to look at cars.’ As concerns the latter, it is fortunate that they were not able to anticipate just how premonitory was to prove a sight glimpsed by my mother, given their alarming proclivity for experiencing traffic crashes: ‘On way home [from the dentist in Elne] saw vast car turned on its side in ditch, eh?’ Patrick did not as yet possess a driving licence, being content for the present for my mother to take the wheel.
Excited plans began for purchase of a car, while Patrick further contemplated buying a sailing boat which was for sale in the harbour. The latter disappointingly turned out to be in too poor condition to be worth even the modest 8,000 francs demanded, but a car they had to have. The noisy and crowded little streets of Collioure appeared ever more unbearably claustrophobic, and they longed for means of occasional escape. Friends in England offered them their Opel for £100, an offer so enticing that my mother travelled to London in July to bring it back, but from the moment she arrived, everything began to go wrong. Additional expenses mounted by the hour: garage bill, ferry fare, tax, French import duty … my poor mother was in despair: ‘I think my heart is breaking & I never want to see the Opel again, and how I love P. and am utterly lonely.’
Eventually the Bank of England prohibited the Opel’s export, and the same afternoon another car rammed the wretched car, breaking an indicator and smashing a window.
Altogether my mother totted up that she had spent a precious £35 on this fruitless errand, and her despair was only alleviated when her father, with whom she stayed in Chelsea, gave her £20. Battered and exhausted, she returned to Collioure, accompanied by Patrick’s son Richard, who was now to spend his first summer holiday with them, camping in Andorra. After his eventual return to England my mother noted despairingly: ‘Street noises formid able’, and a week later she and Patrick returned by bus to Andorra in the hope of completing a house purchase they had planned during their visit to that country. In the event a pied-à-terre was sadly to prove beyond their means.
Life looked up in the latter part of the year, but even in their days of direst poverty they rarely allowed themselves to feel downcast for very long, no matter how heavily the dice appeared loaded against them. They swam, walked, sunbathed on the plage St Vincent, and when they could afford it played tennis on the baking-hot hard court in the moat of the Château Royal. The plage in particular provided an ever-present refuge from their claustrophobic little apartement, although it had its own occasional hazards – noisy tourists, rowdy children, and (for Patrick that June): ‘A disagreeable day … A gull shat all over me, the rug and Thos. Mann.’
Odette and Buddug on the plage St Vincent
Odette Boutet (then Bernardi) recalls an occasion when my mother and she swam the traversée across the harbour, from La Balette on the south side of the bay to the plage St Vincent opposite. It being the first swim of the season, and the water icy, on emerging they found they lacked strength for the return swim. Accordingly they walked back past the town and Port d’Avall in their bathing costumes. It was an unusual sight in those days, and the contrasted attractions of the two brown-limbed young women – Odette dark-haired and olive-skinned, and my mother fair-haired and blue-eyed – drew much attention from the (chiefly male, I assume) inhabitants along the way.
In the evenings they read, played chess, or engaged in an improvised form of bridge for two. Although an enthusiast for both games, Patrick was (like Stephen Maturin) but a middling achiever at such pastimes, who more often than not found himself beaten by my mother. Once, after a particularly hard-fought contest, Patrick wrote defiantly on the score-sheet: ‘Bridge, a silly game. BY ORDER P. O’BRIAN. SEPT 1951’.
Ever adventurous, from time to time they escaped the town to explore the mountains. Their close friend Odette, who was quite as audacious, frequently accompanied them. In June 1951 the three of them (five, including Buddug and Odette’s dog Rubill) travelled on foot to the forest behind the Tour Massane, where they camped beside the wood. That night boars could be heard grunting close by. Peering from their tents at the moonlit glade, they were alarmed to discover a large female boar leading her offspring, and quickly clasped the dogs’ muzzles to prevent their alerting the irascible parent. The expedition was voted a great success on their return, despite Odette’s temporarily losing her voice from exhaustion.
Next month they set off on a much more ambitious expedition, camping for nearly seven weeks in and around Andorra. As ever, they found the little Pyrenean principality entirely beautiful, and largely untouched by the modern world. After a week they were joined by Odette and Rubill. The latter was promptly attacked by four fierce dogs, from which she was barely saved by the two courageous women. So far from displaying gratitude, Rubill constantly eyed their provisions, only to be as regularly forestalled by the vigilant Buddug. Prices in Andorra were much lower than in France, farmers hospitable to the campers, and the weather benign. Their diet was supplemented by wild strawberries and trout from mountain streams. Buildings were picturesquely medieval, and transport off the few main roads was conducted by cows drawing haycarts, while on steep slopes mules dragged loads of hay on angled wooden platforms.
Fortunately the dauntless campers were hardy, and carried on their backs tents, sleeping bags, cooking utensils, and even a heavy wind-up gramophone and collection of records. Odette remembered their dancing under the moonlight to Bach and Beethoven. It was on this or another of their expeditions that she recalled their getting lost one day in a heavy mist. After hours of more and more anxious wandering, they stumbled at last on their camp, having unwittingly strayed in a wide circle. Despite their hardihood, femininity persisted. Venturing beyond the camp to relieve themselves one day, the two young women were startled by a large snake, and fled shrieking back to safety.
In the meantime my parents’ concern was aroused by distressing news from Richard. As described earlier, Patrick was delighted when his son expressed ambition to join the Royal Navy. Nothing had been heard from him for some time, when on 23 May 1952 Patrick received what he described as ‘a sickening letter from Richard’. The news was indeed bad. He had failed the examination to Dartmouth, and the longed-for career was denied him. ‘I am very disappointed as I had worked hard and got nothing for it,’ he explained sadly. He possessed considerable natural aptitude for mathematics, and was skilled with his hands, but as he freely confessed was all but hopeless at exams. Regrettably, Patrick’s response has not survived. Given his own comparably abysmal experience, together with his understanding attitude towards similar disappointments on other occasions, I feel confident his reaction would have been supportive. Moreover, he knew that Richard was additionally occupied on Saturdays by such work as he could find to supplement his mother’s meagre income.
In July, as was mentioned earlier, Richard returned with my mother from London to Collioure, where he spent the summer holiday from July to September. (As the court judgment had ruled that Richard was to spend half of each summer holiday with his father, his mother clearly approved the extended arrangement.) This time he brought with him a good school report, and showed keen interest in joining the Merchant Navy. My parents had made extensive preparations, requiring further dangerous inroads into their ever-strained finances, to ensure that he had the most enjoyable holiday they could provide.
Tents, lilos and other camping gear having been purchased, on 8 August the little party set off crammed into an excursion bus full of excited boy scouts. Arrived once more in the mountains of Andorra, they encamped in pine forests. Here the modern world impinged barely at all. The first person they met was a cowherd, with ‘his woolly dogs; his cows are all round, many with bells’.[fn8] (#litres_trial_promo) Richard and Patrick went fishing in a nearby lake, and returned to one of my mother’s wonderful improvised meals: ‘Fries very successful; lunch today was chops, potatoes, garlic, onion & tomato stew. Dear Budd seems happy & eats heartily.’ She was on heat, but fortunately the herd’s dogs were all bitches, save one male incapacitated by age. After a swim in a nearby river, they returned to camp, where ‘golden eagles flew right over us, being mobbed by choughs or crows’.
Next day my mother went to obtain milk from the cowherd, who ‘was asleep under a rock with his arm round his pet lamb who had its head on his shoulder’. The excitement grew briefly too much for Richard, who was sick at supper. Next morning, however, he proved right as rain, and after lunch went on a further fishing expedition with his father. In their absence my mother picked bowls of bilberries and raspberries for lunch.
The herd proved to be guardian of the sheep of the commune of Encamp. Patrick asked whether a hut could be found for them to sleep in. While the cowherd enquired with the Consul of Encamp, Patrick set off to buy food and change money in the town of Andorra. Meanwhile, as my mother wrote in her diary that evening, ‘R. & I did nothing but laze, & we played piquet.’ The journey to Encamp was pursued along very rough forest tracks, and the next day Patrick succumbed to a bad attack combining fever and diarrhoea, which proved to be dysentery. For several days he remained in acute distress, the pain eventually alleviated by the local remedy of boiled rice, together with Entero-Viaform pills obtained from an Andorran chemist.
Richard, who continued in rude health, went off fishing again, and on his return was ‘very cheerful, keeps roaring from his tent’. Before long they were installed in primitive beehive huts used by the shepherds of Encamp. ‘R’s hut: how he worked at clearing & levelling the floor. P. crept over to look at it: it looks dangerous about its roof, is exposed & draughty but very, very beautiful.’
On 19 August my mother left Patrick, who remained sick in their camp, and obtained a lift to Andorra from a pleasant Frenchman. Arrived in the sleepy capital, she enquired about buying a home in the principality, as a refuge from the turmoil of town life in Collioure. By chance it was to the Consul of Encamp that she was directed for information, having been given a paper explaining the law on foreigners owning land in Andorra, together with a letter of introduction. After one and a quarter hours’ walk, my mother arrived in Encamp. At the Consul’s house, nine of his assembled relatives read the letter in turn: ‘some aloud’. This protracted introduction concluded, the Consul himself read the paper and letter, murmuring benignly: ‘Benez, Madame’ – but could not be pressed to name a price.
A visit afterwards with Patrick to inspect a suitable site involved a hair-raising drive by an accommodating local up a mountainside. My mother, normally immune to vertigo, confessed that she had ‘never been more frightened in my life as when we swerved fast round corners that cambred away into 10000 feet of abyss, on the outside of the road’. ‘Vous n’avez pas peur, Madame?’ enquired their driver solicitously. Frustratingly, it proved necessary to postpone the elusive question of the proposed purchase until after their return home, and they returned to camp ‘depressed, to fold & carry up tents’.
The great holiday adventure was drawing to a close: ‘Felt very sad to leave Andorra.’ After erratic journeyings by bus, they picked up the delightful touristic yellow train (it still runs) offering spectacular views of the Pyrenees, until they arrived at the picturesque fortified town of Villefranche de Conflent, in the narrow defile of the Têt. Finally, late on the evening of 23 August they arrived in Collioure, by which time even Buddug was exhausted.
Next day there was great excitement, when a massive backlog of correspondence awaiting their return at the post office was retrieved to be studied over breakfast. It included a parcel of complimentary copies of Testimonies from the USA, together with ‘Wonderful reviews from N.Y. Times & N.Y. Herald Tribune, Harper’s Bazaar wanting short stories’. Spencer Curtis Brown wrote to report that requests for foreign rights to the novel were pouring in – from Italy, Germany, Norway.
Despite his continuing ill-health and exhaustion, Patrick plunged back into his neglected writing. The holiday had been a brilliant success – if dangerously expensive. There remained but 55,000 francs (about £50) in their account. Nevertheless, he and my mother had decided that Richard, being now fourteen, should receive a quarterly allowance to spend as he chose. ‘Yesterday P. told R. about his £52 a year: R. much impressed & so pleasant about it.’ Naturally he could have had little idea of the sacrifice involved. A week later my worried mother ‘Went to P[ort]. Vendres & paid tax. So depressed.’
During the remaining fortnight of the holiday, Richard spent his days swimming, playing tennis, watching the sardana danced in the square, attending divine service at the old church by the harbour, and revelling in my mother’s rich cooking. ‘Made enormous rice – moules & sèches & all. Mme Oliva made us an ailloli. Dear R. likes everything.’ He made friends with Odette’s young son Robert, and travelled one day to Perpignan to buy a new chain for Buddug; on another he went to Port Bou on a shopping exped ition with my mother: ‘pleasant morning’. Willy Mucha invited him to stay with them whenever he liked. He made friends on every side. There was work, too, for him and my mother. At dawn on 4 September they were invited to assist René Aloujes with his vendange. They toiled from 6 a.m. until 9, paused for a hefty breakfast until 10.30, and continued until noon: ‘R. worked very well. Grapes not very good. A very steep, difficult vigne to work.’
In the evenings after supper the three stayed up playing endless games of racing demon and ‘prawns’ eyes’, in the company of Buddug, Pussit, and a new member of the family: ‘Kitten comes in to play; a very good, clean kitten.’
Eventually, the sad day arrived for Richard’s departure on 7 September. He was given a lively send-off, loaded with exciting gifts. The garrulous Willy Mucha bustled up, bearing a dried flying fish as a parting token. Finally, ‘R. got 7 pm train, so sad P & I: the house is dreary.’
A few days later they were rewarded with a letter, bubbling over with enthusiasm:
Thank you very much for a wonderful holiday; the boys will not believe my experiences, especially the golden-eagles. What a good time we all had. Thank you so much.
Andorra was about the most marvellous country that I have ever been to. What fishing it was! What fun it was in the camp …
Very [sic] thing was in tact and whole when I got home: even to scorpion and flying-fish and mostofall my porron.[fn9] (#litres_trial_promo) I have a huge collection now dominated by my banderilla. Every-body shrinks from the scorpion, believing it to be alive. My precious [Andorran] flag is now the envy of all the boys at school who are extremely jelous …
The whole form, one and all and dumbfounded when I produced the [clasp] knife.[fn10] (#litres_trial_promo) One boy produced a ‘sharp knife’, he skinned his arm but did not cut hair, all he succeeded in was cutting himself.
In addition, Patrick had concealed a sophisticated fishing reel in his luggage at departure, which further excited his friends’ admiration. As Richard explained, this was ‘a pleasant and exciting surprise’, especially as ‘Finn and Atkins, both seized with fishing mania have reels, not of my superior type … I am very much envied in that way to.’
With the reticence characteristic of schoolboys in those distant unsentimental days, Richard omitted to report a distressing aspect of his otherwise triumphant return to Cardinal Vaughan School. As before, I am indebted to his friend Bob Broeder for this revealing account:
When we returned to school for the autumn term, our English teacher set us the task of writing a composition about what we did in the summer holidays. Most of us wrote the usual mundane contents but Richard wrote a masterpiece, describing his journey to the South of France and how he and his father met and spent some time with El Cordobes a renowned Spanish bullfighter.[fn11] (#litres_trial_promo)
Having read it myself I admired his descriptive narrative, his English was marvellous, remarkable and interesting, his father had taught him well. The next time we had English, the teacher handed all the exercise books back to all the pupils except Richard. In front of the whole class the teacher made the announcement that he had asked for a factual essay, not an imaginary one – holding Richard’s up to the class. This, he declared, was the work of a fertile imagination without an ounce of reality. I stood up to protest – saying I had postcards to prove that in no way did imagination play any part in his beautiful essay but was told in no uncertain terms to shut up and to sit down, if I didn’t obey the outcome would be a trip to the Discipline master with the inevitable thrashing. It goes without saying that Richard was distraught and very angry. I clearly remember that both I and several classmates tried to console him but the anger had never left him during the rest of his time at the school. I remember his mother was also very upset.
Richard’s indignation was fully justified, but his exceptional capacity to harbour resentment may also be noted.
Back in Collioure, Patrick and my mother had resumed their daily struggle. There were compensations to their existence, however. Much of the physical structure of the town stems from medieval times, and among the population there breathed memories of a picturesque past. While most of the inhabitants are Roman Catholics, there has long been a sizeable Protestant minority, who congregate at their Temple above the Château Royal. Relations between these two branches of the Christian religion have traditionally long been cordial. The only hint of disparagement I heard of occurred in the name of a local pastry, known as a jésuite. Gazing through the window of the pâtisserie in the Port d’Avall, Patrick explained to me that when you bite into one – it proves to be hollow!
At the time he and my mother arrived in the town, there survived numerous customs and practices redolent of beliefs older even than the conversion to Christianity. Popular theology could be a trifle speculative – as this exchange recorded by my mother on May Day 1954 attests:
When I arrived at Mimi Choux’s this morning she was in the middle of condemning someone for stating that angels are bald. ‘N’est-ce pas, Madame O’Brian, que dans toutes les reproductions les anges ont toujours les cheveux bouclés?’[fn12] (#litres_trial_promo)
A generally equable syncretism between the Church and pagan practices and beliefs survived locally well into the middle of the twentieth century. It was quite common for brides to appear in an advanced state of pregnancy at their weddings. ‘About the number of marriages with the girl pregnant’, my mother was told, it is ‘quite natural, people rigole [laugh] and joke but are not méchants with the girl; there is no onus [blame] on the man at all.’
A curious custom which might have suggested anticlericalism or simple hooliganism was evidently neither, and bore a significance now possibly lost:
Also asked Rimbaud about the bands of youths banging on curé’s door. He says it is ‘sans méchanceté’ & has always been done (he was v. active in his time) & nobody really minds. They bang on the doors of their young women. If dégâts [damage] result, complaints are made to mayor & youths pay up, but it doesn’t go to the police.
A practice of having a sprig of hawthorn blessed by the curé taken to the fields to ensure a good harvest presumably reflected the archaic folk belief that its prickles repel witches, ever prowling abroad with the malign intent of blighting the crops of honest Christians.[3] (#litres_trial_promo)
Not all magic was benign, however:
Mme Rimbaud’s tale: yesterday, she alone in the house, a woman selling lace. I don’t want any lace. And why don’t you want any lace? Because I don’t want any lace. Then the woman said if she would not buy any lace, she, who knew how to tell the cards, would put a ‘malédiction’ on her. That evening she had such a head she did not know whether it was the result of the malediction, or what.
Fortunately there existed magical cures, as well as curses. The Rimbauds ‘had an old woman in to cure [their daughter] Martine with a herb cataplasm’. An interesting ritual efficaciously removed headaches. On 10 July 1953, completion of a difficult piece of writing left Patrick with an acute migraine. Next day their landlord, M. Germa:
told us Georgette [his wife] was having the sun taken out of her head by her mother, with water in a bottle, & prayers. We demurred, & he said he believed it because Jaquie had had it done (bubbles rose in the bottle of water) & three days after his sick headache had gone.
On another occasion Mme Rimbaud similarly had the sun removed from her head by a cousin. When my mother enquired how this was done, she mentioned not only the bottle, but ‘a handkerchief folded in a certain way, “et certainement qu’elle en a dit des prières. Je ne sais pas, moi.”’ The disclaimer suggests that the ‘prières’ may not have been altogether Christian in character.
A particularly potent author of cures was the martyr St Blaise, who, as a consequence of his miraculous survival of strangulation or decapitation (accounts differ), specialized in healing sore throats.[4] (#litres_trial_promo) When my mother was confined to bed with a severe cold, ‘Mimi Chou kindly gave me a packet of lump sugar & pastilles blessed on St Blaise’s day.’ On another occasion she regaled her with a detailed account of the healing process. Saint Blaise being outside Collioure for a stroll one day with Our Lord, the pair bumped into Satan, who coolly informed them: ‘I’m off to strangle someone.’ ‘Nong, Nong, Nong!’ exclaimed Jesus and Blaise together, in pronounced Catalan accents: ‘You’re not doing that!’ This pious narrative acted as preface to the charm that effected the cure: a formula strongly characteristic of pagan ritual, in which Christian figures were frequently substituted for their heathen predecessors.[5] (#litres_trial_promo)
The calendar year was marked by a succession of colourful festivals. On 27 February 1952 Patrick was delighted by the Mardi Gras carnival, which he observed from their balcony winding joyously along the rue Arago, and then descended to follow it to the Place de la Mairie. There were fine floats, followed by men disguised as bears and monkeys:
I saw them pass down the boulevard and then arrive in the Place: immense crowd, charmed: Diego lost in delight. Music – a band to each float. Funny remarks on floats all written in French. Attention Ours méchants et singe vicieu [‘dangerous bears and vicious monkey’] … Remarkable dancing of 2 pairs of mariés [married couples]. Immobility of masks: singe (sacking? young Germa) probably making singe faces underneath; but quite invisible – vast addition to general effect. Mlle Margot convulsed by bears – pointing, laughing, red in the face with pleasure. M. le Curé not visible – no wonder – Ash Wednesday. Religious aspect quite lost to view … Many children dressed up – rouged, powdered – some in Catalan dress – attractive – some as F[airy]. Queens or some such – less attractive.
Each year on Ascension Day an assemblage of small children, beautifully dressed, gathered outside the church to attend their first Communion. The quatorze juillet was in contrast a comparatively modest bucolic occasion. ‘Procession has just passed up the rue,’ noted my mother, ‘small boys carrying torches or tricolors, with the garde-champêtre [local policeman], followed by local band.’ In the evening there was dancing in the Place, and a display of fireworks in and around the bay. The cheerful informality of the occasion delighted Patrick, who another year was gratified to record: ‘Fête Nationale: very scruffy procession except [Dr] Delcos in his tricolore sash.’
Patrick made notes on customs and other items of local interest, such as this recipe for ridding a child of worms: ‘Le bon vermifuge[:] frot the child’s bosom with garlic and hang a necklace of garlic round the child’s neck ça les étouffe.’ He further compiled a list of ‘Sobriquets’ of local families, some of which feature in his novel The Catalans. Thus one bore the surname ‘L’Empereur – because when he was a baby the Emperor dandled him’. Patrick told me this occurred when Napoleon III was passing through Collioure. At the other political extreme was the family Cravatrouge (Catalan En cravat rougt), one of whom had been ‘le premier radical’ of the town. Another is of mysterious provenance: Piétine dans la boue (‘Trample in the Mud’): Catalan Pitg a fangc.
The French Republic being a relative newcomer in Collioure’s ancient history,[fn13] (#litres_trial_promo) the town’s major annual celebration is the Feast of St Vincent, Collioure’s patron saint, on 16 August. Until the beginning of the last century, when it was prohibited by the atheist administration of President Émile Combes, a boat bearing the saint’s relics plied from his little chapel on the rock across the harbour, to be ceremonially received on the beach by the curé with a ritual exchange conducted in Catalan.[6] (#litres_trial_promo) A bullfight in the town’s arena by the railway station was one of many celebrations marking the festive occasion. In 1953 my mother passed ‘Picasso visible in café des Sports – merry, pink, active. He was président of this year’s corrida.’ The evening’s firework display is especially magnificent, usually surpassing that of the quatorze juillet. On one such occasion in the early 1960s, we ascended the ridge above the house to obtain a panoramic view of cascades of fire erupting high into the night sky from the beach, as also from fishing boats moored about the harbour. The highlight of the evening occurred when the French Army, then occupying the Château Royal, blew up with one mighty roar what appeared to be their entire reserve of high explosive. From an invisible vineyard above us echoed an answering primitive bellow of approval from a solitary enthusiast, which greatly pleased Patrick.
It was not just innate curiosity which led him to conduct careful observation and recording of traditional ways in Collioure. Just before he left England in September 1949, it was seen earlier that he had agreed to write a book about Southern France for submission to his publishers, Secker & Warburg. Although he kept the project in mind, over two years were to pass before he hit on the idea of utilizing the knowledge he had acquired for the alternative purpose of writing a novel. Before that, the indications are that he planned a descriptive account of the life and landscape of the Côte Vermeille, and it was to that end that he noted its more colourful aspects, and encouraged my mother to record observations in her diary. Naturally gregarious, consorting daily with shopkeepers and neighbours, and being more proficient in French and Catalan than Patrick, she was the more productive worker in this field.
It was during the summer of 1951 that the idea of writing a novel with Collioure as its picturesque setting had germinated in Patrick’s mind. He and my mother had become concerned with, and to some extent involved in, the divorce of their good friend Odette. On 2 March 1951 my mother accompanied her and her father to lend support in a hearing at the court in Céret. Odette’s husband François Bernardi, a successful sculptor and painter, had deserted her for an older but extremely beautiful woman. Next day Patrick sketched a plot based around the affair. Although his initial plan seems to have been to produce a short story, the scheme is sufficiently detailed to suggest the possibility of fuller treatment.
His initial reaction was one of indecision:
It sounds a commonplace little romance. Perhaps I could lift it out of the rut by showing the gradual development of Odette’s character – she should be mature at the end, and at last spiritually free of the [her] family’s domination – and the parallel development of François’ to something like unselfishness and honesty. The moral being that you have got to be free of domination (by cant or by family) before you are any good.
A great difficulty would be the presentation: it could hardly be done from outside (the all-knowing observer) and I hardly know whether I could manage it from inside each character.
Patrick does not appear to have been at all troubled by the possibility that informed readers might identify the protagonists. (His friend Walter Greenway was similarly concerned lest people in Cwm Croesor discover the extent of their potentially embarrassing portrayal in Three Bear Witness.) Nor, more surprisingly, does this thought seem to have worried my mother. It seems they generally espoused the view that Patrick’s literary work stood apart from the material world: connections between them hardly mattered. Equally, they may not unreasonably have assumed that no one in Collioure was likely to read the book.
In October my parents assisted in bringing in the grape harvest. ‘Vendanged for Vincent Atxer’, noted my mother. ‘Too long, did not like the V[incent].A[txer].s. O[dette]. was there, objectionable. Told us the équipe [working party] in the plains was very grossier [coarse]. Youths rolled women in the dust, took girl’s trousers off.’[fn14] (#litres_trial_promo) Next day there was a further vendange, at which my mother was evidently annoyed by ‘O[dette]. horseplay moustissing the men.’[fn15] (#litres_trial_promo) On the third day my mother and Patrick ‘Worked from 8.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. Beastly children. Very, very fatigued.’ My mother was far from being a prude, and it is possible that she objected to Patrick’s observing their beautiful friend behaving in so wantonly provocative a manner. The sultry Odette was a lissom creature of the South, who amid the grape harvest under the burning sun appeared almost an elemental being.[fn16] (#litres_trial_promo)
Four days later, Patrick ‘sketched out vendange tale’. It seems likely that this was the basis of chapter VIII of The Catalans, with its vivid depiction of the exhausting physical labour and pain incurred in gathering the grapes, together with the erotically charged relationship between the intellectual outsider, Alain Roig, and the lovely Catalan girl Madeleine, who has been deserted by her painter husband Francisco. The episode builds up to a heated climax, with Alain’s symbolic rape of Madeleine:
With a quick pace he was up to her. He knocked her to the ground. She fell on her knees, and crouching over her he gripped her hair and ears, pressed his teeth hard against her forehead, and in the surrounding cries and laughter he crowed three times, loud like a cock.
Patrick appears at first to have remained undecided precisely what use he might make of these possibilities, until on 18 December he took my mother for a walk up to the Madeloc tower. It was a beautiful day: passing the old barracks (which at one point they envisaged as a permanent refuge from the town), with partridges flying around, they collected wild daffodil bulbs to plant in their window box. Buddug cavorted, madly hunting and catching nothing. As they walked, Patrick for the first time unfolded his idea for a novel on the theme of life among the local Catalans.
Patrick, toying with various approaches to his novel, was struck down yet again by one of his nervous attacks and retired to bed, where he received the usual medication. So bad was the bout on this occasion, that he had to force himself not to think of the book lest the pangs recur. Not until 9 January 1952 did he recover sufficiently to begin working on it. At the end of the month my mother called on Odette to collect information about the social structure of the town, a factor which was to be vividly delineated in the novel. On 6 February ‘P. showed me first chapter of novel: terribly impressed & happy.’ With my mother’s enthusiasm buoying him up, Patrick now found the book advancing with increasing satisfaction. Despite intermittent setbacks and misgivings, he worked throughout the summer, until he finally laid down his pen on 12 September. ‘Much fatigued & terribly pale, kept lying on bed feeling faint,’ as my concerned mother noted.
However, the task was completed, and both were enthusiastic over the result. In May Patrick had toyed with the title Interested Motives, but eventually settled on The Catalans. My mother threw herself into typing the text, and on 2 October copies were sent to Harcourt Brace in New York, and Rupert Hart-Davis in London.
No sooner were the parcels despatched, than an anticlimactic reaction set in. On 5 November ‘Nervous tension over Catalans suddenly overwhelming. It matters so hideously.’ Might it suffer the same distressing fate as the collection of short stories, on which such high hopes had been pinned?
Three weeks passed by, during which they attempted to distract themselves with household improvements. ‘Wait, wait, wait, for post.’ Finally, on 26 November 1952, came news as good as might be hoped for. A telegram arrived from Naomi Burton at Curtis Brown in New York, announcing that Harcourt Brace had offered to take The Catalans at the same rate as Testimonies. Since the book was complete, they would shortly receive a second time within the year the princely sum of $750, tax-free!
Exultation reigned in the little apartement. ‘Very, very happy,’ rejoiced my mother. Patrick promptly wrote to Andorra concerning the building plot for which they had been negotiating. Then they jumped up, and ‘walked to P[ort]. Vendres without noticing the way’. My mother was ‘unable to resist giving P. gloves, camera (whose shutter won’t work & Patau [the photographer] is shut) & pineapple in tin. All these were for his birthday’ on 12 December. Three days later the contract arrived.
The book represents in many ways a tribute to the rugged land he had come to love, and its lively inhabitants. Among them they now had many fast friends, and were accepted as honorary Colliourenchs. It is the more fortunate, consequently, that the novel was not translated at the time into French or Catalan, since it included matter that must surely have provoked offence and dismay in some quarters.
The greatest pleasure I derive from Patrick’s novel lies in the exquisite evocation of Collioure (barely disguised as ‘Saint-Felíu’), and its stark hinterland of vineyards and mountains. Here is enshrined forever the old Collioure, before the destruction of ancient customs, language, clothing, music; the end of the fishing industry, and the building of rank upon rank of lotissements on the skirts of the town. Fortunately, enough of the old town survives in physical form for it to be possible to people it again in imagination, viewed in the light of Patrick’s loving recreation in The Catalans.
Several of his extended pen portraits are taken from the life. The account of the vendange in chapter VIII, with its vivid depiction of the toil involved, culminating in Alain’s climactic ‘rape’ of the lubricious Madeleine, drew extensively on Patrick’s own experience during those three backbreaking days in October 1951, when Odette’s provocative behaviour privately scandalized my mother.[fn17] (#litres_trial_promo) Again, the festival in the central place of the town, recounted in chapter IX, echoes the Carnival witnessed by Patrick in February 1952.
For the biographer the book contains much of interest. The figure of Dr Alain Roig, returning from long exile in the Far East to resolve a domestic crisis at home, stands (like Pugh in Three Bear Witness) in material respects for Patrick himself. A detached, reflective outsider, he is concerned to observe and dissect the psychological turmoil by which he finds himself surrounded. At one point he ascends the town rampart, where he contemplates from on high the tumbled confusion of houses below:
He passed it carefully over in review, looking for changes and for known, personal landmarks. It was exactly as he remembered it, as he thought of it when he was away, exactly the same and yet with an additional strength of life, a vibrant immediacy: his memory, however sentimental with the distance, might not have provided the shrilling of the cicadas in the oleaster that grew tortuously from a crevice in the wall below, the play of the dancing, shimmering air, the flick and dart of the lizards, and the distant sound of men hauling on a boat.
This was what Patrick himself enjoyed, observing (at times with binoculars) the world from an inaccessible vantage-point, like the peregrine falcon in his adolescent short story of that title.
Familiar, too, from Patrick’s own experience are the internecine intrigue and feuding which Alain encounters among his family. The Roig family members represent in varying degree a dysfunctional collection, an affliction largely originating in the character of Alain’s deceased uncle: ‘an evil-tempered man, powerful, dom ineering, and restless; a ferocious domestic bully. It was not that Alain blamed his Uncle Hercule then; he accepted him as a force of nature and hated him without forming any judgment.’
