NATASHA SPENDER
63
drama which increasingly absorbed him; he was clearly very fond of
them; here at last was a family to which he could become the father (or
rather the stepfather he himself had never had).
However, he was in a protracted and annoying battle over tax
liability and residential status, so although homesick for England his
enforced absence colored his attitude, and his tone became changeable
(as it often did when he was drinking more). It was critical of English
life, fickle about some English friends he had hitherto been fond of.
Though 1 wrote and he telephoned fairly often, generally about his
secretary's divorce proceedings, 1was not so assiduous a correspondent
as he. He protested about this (sometimes with justice), though there
was a continual discussion of his plans and hopes of our meeting him
and his new family after the summer holidays. After a dearth of letters
from me, in June 1 received a sad letter from La Jolla in which he
wrote: "I don 't care about your neglect of me at all-only that you
should understand if you want
to,
how I feel. I was rather stupid all
along. You were so kind and tender to me in my troubles that I believed
it was to me, not merely
to
someone in trouble. I now know that I was
wrong, that you would have done the same for anyone in deep
trouble."
After the erratic post had delivered three of my letters my silence
was forgiven, suggesting that his over-reaction
to
it had been another
of those dramatic inabilities
to
"play any part quite straight." A
gloriously funny
l~tter
arrived saying that he had been trying to think
all day of things not to forgive me for and had finally remembered an
antique grievance : "When you were going to have that last party for me
I made the overripe gesture of trying
to
contribute six bottles of
champagne; whereupon in your most stuffy voice: 'I'd much rather not.
When the Spenders entertain, they like to provide their own refresh–
ments.' And (all this from memory of course), then: 'I think I'll give
you a Talbot,' in a voice that suggested you were going
to
give me the
lower half of the Queen of Sheba. So I dutifully cancelled the order for
the champagne, feeling rather whipped ... Now I'm not scolding you
any more."
I hope and assume that I managed to persuade him that, although
one would do the same for anyone in trouble, I certainly did not lose
the affectionate concern which, although he had for some time no
longer needed us in the way he had at first, our whole family retained
for him. These friendships with despairing people start out in an
emergency, as if by chance one were the only bystander at a street
accident and gave what first aid one could. The traumatic despair of its
