2. When Did You Last See Your Mother?

Tashkent – Daddy helping Grabovsky with his new invention. He can’t bear to tell him we’ve got television in England already. Dear Boris, he’s so thrilled. D suggested a better way to do it, electronic tubes or something, so he can steal a march on the Scot. Yr affectionate M xxx

(4g8t4dgp Doha)

Dilly Downes, Dunstable’s mother - the former Dilys Bowes-Didley – had made her debut in the season of ’29. She was passionately convinced in her belief in the civilising effects of gin and tonic and tennis. She made it her business to share this knowledge with the indigenous peoples of any corner of the globe in which she found herself.

She had first met and fallen in love with Dunstable’s father, Donald, while she was accompanying her father, a career diplomat, on tour. Donald was on temporary assignment with the Indian Civil Service in Mandalay where he averted a major crisis in the officers club by manufacturing Indian tonic water in the laboratory of the government chemist after the weekly shipment of Schweppes had been washed away on the floodwaters of the Irrawaddy.

Dilly had been reeling from the disappointment of discovering that most outposts of the Empire stocked only Gordon’s export – a stronger and, to her mind, a crude beverage compared to the elegant sophistication of the green bottle of the London Special Dry. She frequently puzzled - “Can both fresh water and salt flow from the same spring?” But there it was. The vulgar clear glass always put her in mind of that painting by Hogarth.

Donald’s conjuring of nectar from raw chemicals, carbonated water and quinine seized her attention. But she soon found something irresistibly endearing and attractive about the man. Socially awkward and naive – unlike anyone she had ever met - yet so brilliant, practical and resourceful.

Donald Downes held the academic record at Manchester Grammar School; a double first in physics and applied mathematics from Cambridge; the youngest ever Fellow of the Royal Society in recognition of his work on sub-atomic particles; a first class shot, he had competed for his regiment – the 3^rd Carabiniers (Prince of Wales Dragoon Guards) - at Bisley and won gold at the ’48 Olympics. The Royal Botanic gardens at Kew had built a house dedicated to the collection of Andean orchids he had donated following his expedition of ’36. He was a Grandmaster of the Yang style of Taijiquan and a member of the Magic Circle.

Since marrying, he and Dilly had led a globally peripatetic life moving from one commission or contract to another. A life that both suited and satisfied their manifold interests and desires.

They, or rather Dilly, communicated with their son by means of a steady stream of postcards from the many exotic locations at which she was cast up as a result Donald’s work. The primary purpose of these cards was to inform Dunstable of the up and coming destinations to which must be despatched the cases of Gordon’s and tonic water, and the occasional box of Dunlop Grand Prix. In practice it was Strensham, the governess, who managed the logistics knowing instinctively from her own globetrotting experience whether to direct the goods to club, consul, hotel or poste restante. 

Dunstable never failed to be impressed by the warmth and affection his mother could convey in a few lines. There was indeed a remarkable and genuine bond, an understanding between mother and son. He had never doubted his parents love and concern for even one second during the 15 years they had been apart.

ooooo

Slipper, so called because of the many weeks he had managed to evade capture in the face of the combined skills and experience of Clackett and Toddington. But capabilities forged in the crucible of trench and jungle warfare had been honed by years of running down poachers and scallywags. So eventually he had succumbed to a device of special cunning involving trip wire, foliage, some counterweights and a chicken. Out of deference to the young master on the day of his homecoming, the two men wanted to give him a chance to interview the culprit and also to show off their trophy before handing it over to the local constabulary.

Toddington ran through the highlights of a lengthy catalogue of petty misappropriations of estate property perpetrated by the boy since his family had come to infest the lanes around Cahuenga.

Dunstable was impressed by the variety and quantity of items that he had made off with and the means by which they had been removed, where this was known. He was even more impressed where this was not known. The resourcefulness of the lad took some imagining as did the family’s industry and the fences, contacts and customers they must have in order to use or dispose of such booty. But this was nothing to his amusement when, the gag removed, the boy was allowed to speak up for himself.

In a rich Irish brogue, a voice surprisingly deep for such a slight frame, and rather hoarse as though used to shouting a lot, the boy waxed poetical about his childhood, his family and his dear mother. About the trials she had endured raising 12 children on her own since his father had been taken by the gendarmerie – a case of mistaken identity for sure the man was a saint – and deported to Africa to serve in the Foreign Legion. How little Maisie had been hovering between life and death with the croupe and the coughing so bad her glass eye had shot out like a bullet and killed the cat, which was the only comfort the poor thing had in this world. All the while his older brother Malachy, now the breadwinner, was struggling to work every day on the railway with callipers on both his legs after they’d been crushed in a freak accident involving an elephant on loan to the zoo from a Far Eastern prince and it had been spooked by a man eating tiger which luckily Slipper himself had been able to charm by playing on a reed flute an Indian geet he had learned when he was a ship’s boy on an Arab dhow in the Persian Gulf and his poor mother working her fingers to the bone sewing and cooking and cleaning for gentle folk only to supplement the monies her faithful boys brought home and pay the rent and scraping a little to save for the operation on poor Donal’s club foot and the batteries for Roisin’s hearing aid ....

It was looking like Slipper was the only able bodied member of the brood but as his story rose to a crescendo with the garrotting of his father by the Spanish Inquisition Dunstable decided to call a halt before Slipper’s imagination spiralled totally out of control and Toddington and Clackett, who were completely enthralled, were embarrassed at being rapt by their captive. They were obviously feeling guilty of being ignorant of such need and extremity right on their doorstep.

“What exactly has he been caught taking this time?” Dunstable asked.

Converted, Clackett leapt to the boys defence with evangelical zeal and a curious Irish lilt. “Sure but it’s only 2 small bags of apples from the lower orchard, windfalls and cookers, far from the best,” he said, looking coyly at 2 sacks of produce propped against the workshop wall.

Slipper launched again into a narrative of the history of cider making in the west of Ireland and the divine recipe handed down by word of mouth from St Patrick himself exclusively through the female line of his family and how there was no taste like it and the life enhancing and prolonging and general health giving effects of the brew such that regular drinkers experienced glowing fitness and strength and well being – which prompted the question in Dunstable’s mind as to why Slipper’s own family were so blighted. At which point he interjected again, cutting Slipper off in full flight.

“You can take one of the bags but I want some samples of this elixir so we can judge for ourselves the claims you make for it. Now let him go, Clackett.”

Clackett immediately obliged and gave the lad the larger of the 2 sacks. You would think Dunstable had awarded him the grail so effusive were the thanks and blessings the boy bestowed on him.

Dunstable stopped him again, “Spare me – I won’t be so indulging next time.”

He and Slipper exchanged knowing smiles as the boy slunk out of the coach house with his hard earned prize. Toddington was wiping something from his eye and Clackett cleared his throat volubly as each reflected in silence.

Thus began a relationship that was to last a lifetime. Never articulated but always understood by the 2 parties. Slipper restrained the frequency and scale of his acquisition of estate property and Dunstable turned a blind eye in return for services – sometimes information, sometimes tasks, sometime life saving – always timely and discrete. Dunstable never met Slipper’s family but going by the shadow and shape of those lurking in the lanes around Cahuenga it was certainly not as numerous and probably not as dramatically unfortunate as Slipper had made out. Dunstable never could tell whether Toddington and Clackett worked out they had been had – but they forever after treated Slipper sympathetically and Slipper himself respected their position for Dunstable’s sake.