Pope John Paul II 1920-2005

Literature student, enforced stone-quarry labourer, poet, priest, bishop, cardinal, playwright, pope

There was ever a bed-room held over at Bunting for Kristmas (as my whole family used to call dear old Karol (or John Paul II, as he was known to the rest of the world), although he came close to occupying it but once. Old Boy (my Romish grandfather), had had his horoscope taken in 1921, and it had foretold of a papal visit to Bunting. Old Boy is reputed to have sobbed like a child with emotion for weeks, and spent most of the rest of his rather sad life on the Catholic side of the estate's rare double-naved church awaiting the visit. The chosen bed-room was re-decorated four times a year, and when his race was nearly run, Old Boy summoned Reason, his solicitor-at-law, and made provision in his will for a small staff in perpetuity to ensure readiness for the visit whenever it should come. Grandmother Banting (who came of one of our country's oldest Anglican families, but who adored Old Boy notwithstanding his Roman leanings) rather resented the giving away with both hands of packets and packets of money to what she saw as a folly of the largest sort. Anyway, many years passed, money dwindled, and both Old Boy and Grandmother Banting were but memories, when during the October of 1982 news came up to the big house that the current incumbent's motor-truck (known as a 'pope-mobile' I understand!) was broken down at one of the gates of the estate and caught up in drifts of snow. I assembled the staff in the still-room (then quite the warmest in the house), and ascertained which amongst them was of persuasion papist. Spatchcock was duly sent out in goloshes and a mackintosh, with a message in a bottle (should he perish en route, I didn't want melting snow to smudge the ink and obscure the message) asking Kristmas up to the house, and telling him that his room was made-up and waiting for him as were his own staff. I didn't add that the room's main feature was now a large water-bucket where the bed used to be, and that his staff consisted of Pelham, the family goat, who could play the first four bars of Onward Christian Soldiers on the piano if positioned at it with a degree of care. I also sent with him a dish of tea and a thermos jug wrapped in Pelham's blanket, in case Kristmas was in need of refreshment, and we all watched as Spatchcock disappeared into the white afternoon. I continued playing Animal Grab with Nanny O, and we counted down the hours by sending our supply of village children out of the room at intervals timed with the card games. When seven children had gone (equivalent to a touch more than three hours of Greenwich time), Spatchcock returned alone, with a message in a different bottle. When Nanny O had smashed the bottle against the fireplace, she brought over a scratch from Kristmas saying that he very much appreciated my kind offer, had enjoyed the tea Spatchcock had so ably delivered, that they had had a long discussion about employment conditions (what Spatchcock could have known about that is beyond me!), that he was sorry not to come to the house but his schedule didn't allow of it, and that he had troubled to remove himself from his motor and had kissed the ground between the gates in honour of Old Boy whose strange tale he knew all about. I read out most of his note to the assembled staff, leaving out the last part as I didn't want Bunting becoming a place of pilgrimage for the country's Catholics, a kind of north country Lourdes. I bought dear Spatchcock's silence by giving him the pope's pail, and a twice-yearly cheese from Pelham, an arrangement with which he seemed more than happy. I wasn't to expend too many cheeses in this manner; Spatchcock had a stroke less than two years later and found himself unable to spill, even had he wanted to. Whoever said the Lord moves in mysterious ways couldn't have been more right! As to dear Kristmas, this was the beginning of a years' long correspondence, despatched between Bunting and the Holy See in bottles, an operation in which the postal service of both countries seemed to take a great deal of pride. My remaining sadness is that I was never to have an audience of the pope, but few are able to claim they have exchanged bottles with one!

Richard Whiteley 1943-2005

Newspaper delivery boy, 'Varsity' editor, ITN trainee, news presenter, Countdown presenter, Mayor of Wetwang

There are two things that distinguish Nanny O from Nannies A to N (and, as I am given to understand, the rest of her care-worn tribe!). The first is her attraction to the most extraordinary range of activities, and the second her limitless capacity for shaking her curls at someone. Sadly, where Richard was concerned (or Elevenses, as the dear man allowed me to call him, commemorating that glorious afternoon in Chalfont), these two elements of her troubled personality collided in such a way as I felt her forever to be walking on the edge of a knife. Whilst most of Nanny O's pastimes were innocent (including dried sea-weed macramé, rubbers of Animal Grab, the canning of music and the distance-watching of fancy balls through her faithful monoculars), it was when I began to find tie-shaped holes in various stuffs and upholstery around the house (including Grandmother Banting's hand-woven bedclothes!), that I became concerned. When, at much the same time, it became impossible to persuade Nanny O to so much as fetch me a potted-meat sandwich at a quarter-past three on any week-day afternoon, I became suspicious as a bat among birds. I sat Nanny O down, and interrogated her until her her fog-bound spirit was battered to matchwood, and she confessed that she had fallen violently in love with Elevenses, and had been hand-stitching him ties and sending them to the Granada Television Company along with billets-doux scribbled in her palsied hand in the vain hope that Elevenses would honour their love by wearing one of them live on air. She insisted that Elevenses' programme was the finest ever given on television, and I reminded her that she had listened to the wireless for many years without any ill effects, and that perhaps she just wasn't fitted for television. I then pointed out that I knew Elevenses personally, and Nanny O (rather impertinently I feel) asked who on earth Elevenses was. I told her all about Chalfont, and it became apparent to her that I was referring to Mr Whiteley. She twisted like a whiting (whether with jealousy or with excitement I was never to fathom), and I allowed her to go up to the nursery and fetch some oil of cloves to inhale. When she returned she appeared to be feeling clearer, and I dictated a letter to her, which she typed out on the old Smith Premier. I had to choose my words most carefully, as the machine was missing both the 'e' and the 'h', but eventually we had made some sort of sense, although I thought it confusing to be forced continually to refer to the neck-ties Nanny O had been making dear Elevenses as 'cravats'. A response was duly received some time after, which sent Nanny O fizzing all over the house like a bottle of Malvern water. Dear Elevenses did of course remember Chalfont, and promised in its honour to wear Nanny O's neck-tie on a particular date in the October of 1986. At the appointed hour, the whole household (which by then numbered but seven) stood behind me and my grand-son James facing the set, the volume of which had been revved up for benefit of the older staff. By hookey if, in the third word-game round (Nanny O's lucky number), the letters didn't come out in the following order: N A N N Y O R O X. James explained that 'rox' is one of the day's highest terms of endearment (equivalent, I picture, to being possessed of animal vitality), and none of us could help but believe by the glint in Elevenses' eyes, that he had fixed the whole thing!

Luther Vandross 1951-2005

Pianist, backing vocalist, marketing-jingle writer, devoted uncle

I came to know dear Lou through that loyal but irksome friend of mine Gertie Heneage who, on a whim, and with trunks enough to break a porter's back, worked her passage to the United States aboard one of Cunard's Queens to fulfil a long-standing engagement in a New York night-club. Except, breaking a confidence, she missed the boat at Southampton because she lost time while drubbing a stevedore, and was forced to work on a merchant vessel instead. With no audience for either her stage performance, or readings from 'Gertie from No.30' (her best-selling memoirs; so titled because she had been born in 30 Eaton Square, and grew up in 30 Grosvenor Square), she was forced to pay for her passage by washing dishes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and men's undergarments on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays (a task for which she was supplied with industrial strength rubberised gloves!). She was however allowed a day of rest on Sundays. Poor Gertie spent days being bearded by the seamen, but one must assume these simple men came to love her in the end, as when they docked at New York she was cheered off the ship. Later that week, when Gertie was performing excerpts from her show with the Heneage Menage, she saw a party of the seamen with whom she had travelled, and sitting amidst them, like a plum in a pudding, was dear Lou. Americans never ones to boggle when it comes to making friends, by the end of the entr'acte, Lou insisted that Gertie move out of the Waldorf, and in with him. Directly she arrived, she realised that he was obsessed with reducing. He would be thin as a scarecrow one day, and the next plump as a young thrush. Although she was still staying with him, she wanted to avoid an upper and downer so she sent him a scribble on a post-card which suggested that I could help out. So it was that around tea-time one afternoon I received a telephone call from Lou asking me what he could best do. I said I could help by letting him discuss the matter with Nanny O, from whom all my reducing tips come. I explained that before he went anywhere, Nanny O would need to glean some information from him. This she did by taking the receiver in her hands, and having asked him to stand on one leg for her, she left the room for ten minutes or so. Returning, she once again took the receiver, and asked him if he was still there. On receipt of a reply in the affirmative, Nanny O encouraged him by telling him he was doing very well, and that he should not lose heart, as she had already learnt much about him. Then she asked him to repeat the procedure, and left the poor man dangling for another ten minutes. I was only too pleased that the call was his, as using the transatlantic cable was a fearfully expensive business in those days, and Nanny O's tardiness might have bankrupted a poorer man! After ten minutes more had passed, she re-entered the room, picked up the phone, and told him in no uncertain terms to ring back at seventeen minutes past four Greenwich time the following day, as she would by then have a message for him from the spirit of his stomach. I put her to bed after the call (well, one of the under-housemaids did), even though it wasn't yet past six, and she slept the clock round. The next day, at the appointed hour, the bell of the telephone rang, and she told him that she had received the answer via her planchette: he was to try reducing with her renowned 'black' diet. This consisted of only dark chocolate Bath Oliver biscuits for breakfast and fried black pudding for dinner. At luncheon, he was to sit in front of a Royal Crown Derby plate of a specific pattern (Black Avesbury; ever a particular favourite), with instructions to sing his way through any hunger pangs. I am firmly of the belief that although the diet itself seemed not to work, that these 'plate luncheons' were what forced dear Lou into his quite successful singing career. Although future contact was limited mainly to sorting out mistakes at Fortnum's with the Bath Olivers and the black pudding, and visits to Goode's for the occasional replacement of the Black Avesbury plate (which in time Lou became quite superstitious about, and wouldn't travel without!), we were always much fond of each other, and I am devastated to have lost this dearest of men.

Margot Smyly 1911-2005

Showgirl, wife, mother, model

Ex- as I called dear Margot (for reasons which are just about to become un-veiled) and I were both vying for the same position, and I am ashamed to admit Ex- snapped the job from under my nose. It was those dread early post-war days, and there were three of us thick as sardines in the basement, ground and first floors of our bomb-damaged house on Upper Mount Street. Those servants the war hadn't seen off were domiciled in an old Army tent in the garden that Boy had swapped for a most treasured bibelot, and restlessness was all around us. Perhaps because Boy felt the bibelot's loss so, he twitted me day and night about setting me to work. I stole a march on him by telephoning to an old friend down on her luck who was editing a magazine called Vogue. She happened to mention that they were in the market for a mannequin who could pass for being in her fifties for some new pages they were adding. I was as shocked as if I'd licked a sparking-plug, but Nanny O's kind nursery wisdom didn't fail me. She said that I was rather pretty in a hang-dog way, and that I should remember that charity grows stale as soon as it is taken for granted. I didn't really understand the last part of her speech, but resolved to pay Vogue a visit. I sat to a photographer, and some kodaks were taken of me in a series of outfits, and that was when I bumped into Margot, who was known to my aunts, the Ladies of Lymington. Margot had been at school on my beloved old Isle of Wight, and had received games instruction from Br'er (it was news to me that Br'er would supplement her income in such a way!, and I resolved to have it out with her the next time I saw her). It turned out that we had more than that in common, as Margot was there for the same job. I thought her pretty as paint, but I thought that I had this one stitched up like a kipper. In the end, it all came down to the names. I was also not prepared to work under the soubriquet 'Mrs Exeter', as it was a town I had passed through on only one occasion, and I had felt more than a touch of knock-a-bout vulgarity to it. It was also a place where 'Comrade' Tidworth (my grandmama on the spear side, a Baroness in her own right, and an ardent communist) had had an accident with a brewer's dray, and 'Ex' was not spoken of in the family. Consequently, I decided that 'Mrs Minehead' would be a better name under which to work (Comrade kept a beach house there), but the powers to be at Vogue seemed to think that Mrs Exeter was best, and I couldn't in all conscience put Comrade through that, so Margot took the post. One that she fulfilled most wonderfully I might add.

Ismail Merchant 1936-2005

Producer, cook, bon vivant, director

When dear old Smail (my name for Ismael; it came about because Turps, the kitchen-maid's cat, sat across an envelope obscuring the 'I' of the dear man's name!) came into my life, it was to become better acquainted with my aunts Br'er and Thom, about whose life he wished to produce a picture. He had heard (quite in error) that Br'er had been raised by a gipsy wet-nurse, and had been cured of her quinsy by the application of a tame bear cub which walked up and down her back like a guard outside the Palace (although obviously not in regimental uniform! The bear used to wear the gipsy's christening smock, an unusually luxurious creation of smocked tussore, and carried a furled umbrella from Brigg's, which it would employ for the sake of balance). Smail had it quite quite wrong: it was Thom, and not Br'er who had been raised in this style. Br'er had unusually been raised by her mother! Smail wanted to meet the Ladies of Lymington nonetheless; Br'er soon took him aback by whispering "do not let us count our chickens before we have them back in the hen coop", and Thom replied with a piercing shout of "Tohu Bohu", which I took to be an equivalent of "Balderdash", until a dear little puppy appeared from the roof of the house, and was lowered in a fisherman's net by their roof-man Tickle. It transpired that Tohu Bohu was the puppy's name, but it was unclear what Br'er's whisper had meant. It was never to be cleared up, as she didn't speak for the rest of the visit, merely sending scribbles across the table on a collection of men's handkerchiefs bearing the initial 'J' in one corner. When her large pile was exhausted, she would cease communication with us, and, according to Thom, she would not speak again until all the handkerchiefs had been laundered. As if this disablement wasn't enough, each of them suffered with a shortening of the leg, Thom's the right, and Br'er's the left, so that both wore one standard shoe, and one surgical one. Fortunately they were only half a shoe size different, so that they could order one standard pair of shoes, and then have the shoe-maker construct one surgical pair. Thom's feet were half a size larger, and thus she suffered like a goose brought up by hens, while Br'er's shoes fitted like a pickpocket's hand. Smail seemed taken with them as a subject, but wasn't sure they'd be interesting enough to the world at large. Not even the film title I provided seemed to convince him: The Ladies Who Lurch.

Billy Smart Jr 1934-2005

Circus owner, owner of Jersey Zoo and Windsor Safari Park, elephant trainer, property developer, playboy.

Dearest Bunter (Tantivy's not entirely original nickname for Billy; you have to keep to mind that her governess spoke only Welsh!) has passed to the other side then. Had anyone bruited the idea that Bunter would be a staunch friend of the family, Tantivy (my dear old mother) would have laughed till she fell out of her wheeled-chair. However, when the spring of 1960 turned, Tantivy won as a prize in a charity tombola a cheetah cub (the charity in question was a donkey sanctuary based in Frinton-on-Sea, where she had a home, and Tantivy its president - the charity, not run-down old Frinton!). Now, how a cheetah cub came to rest in Frinton lay with an old Colonel in the Welch Fusiliers whose name has slipped. He had received it in error through the post, and had not wanted to return it to sender as he felt it might die by degrees in the hands of the Royal Mail. But he had reckoned without the effect bringing up a cheetah would have on his golf, as he liked to be at the links daily at first screech of cock, and his housemaid refused to milk-feed the cub (she was later dismissed for trying to take advantage of his caddy, Frinton's lamest simpleton, but that's another story altogether!). Consequently he entered Geoffrey as a prize, and Tantivy duly won him. She soon identified the cub as a female, and renamed her Stanley, after her great friend Lady Stanley of Alderley. But the housemaids at Upper Mount Street were no keener to milk-feed Stanley than the Colonel's had been, and Stanley was given to committing indiscretions all over the house. Poor Tantivy was left with a houseful of servants threatening to down the very tools they were clearing up after Stanley with! Drastic measures were called for, and so she asked me to telephone to some circuses, and I set straight to the task, finding Nanny O, and asking her what I should do. She began talking me through the making of a telephone call, but I soon felt the need of a mood drug, and lay down with my head in an Irish linen pillow-slip, which restored me sufficiently to listen to Nanny O at work. She was simply marvellous, and I could now see that we'd won the second war with the Nanny O's of this world, and beggar the GI's! Two days later, Bunter's large motor-lorry pulled up outside the house, was sent to the mews behind the house by Moat (so as not to bring shame on the house), and we made Stanley over into Bunter's care. He was thoughtful enough to send us kodaks every so often, allowing us to follow Stanley's career without having to appear in public at dear Bunter's circus.

Lady Harrod 1911-2005

Wardrobe mistress, wife, campaigner, committee chairman, mother, secretary of The Georgian Group, president of Norfolk Churches Trust, author.

So Helm's travelling no farther. I called Lady Harrod 'Helm', not because she seemed so very much to know where she was going (although I have never known anyone who hemmed and hawed less!), but because her name was Willhelmine, and I couldn't very well have addressed her as Will! We first met as fellow house-guests of the Dugdales at Sezincote. Also there that same Saturday-to-Monday was dear little John Betjeman, who would twit around the house mumbling, sotto-voce, snippets of poetry, so that it was impossible to tell whether they were his own, or the work of Spenser or Keats. He had a habit of asking of the hand in marriage to young ladies (once an under-housemaid (although this was at a fancy ball, so he can, I feel, be forgiven), and this particular week-end he was busy 'throwing an old slipper' into the back of not only my motor, but also Helm's. I don't know how Helm felt about it, but when he embraced me in the Peacock bed-room, I felt spellbound like a rabbit bewitched by a stoat. Little did either of us realise that we had joined the club known London-wide as 'Betjie's Specials'. It was only when I met Helm for tea at Gunther's that we both realised we were engaged to the same man. Betjie had said to telegraph Yes or No during the next week, and so together Helm and I wrestled the nearest telegram boy to the ground, and while I telegraphed simply 'No Doris.', Helm telegraphed 'No Billa.'. Busy wondering whether poor dear Betjie would know who 'Billa' referred to, on returning to Grosvenor Place, I asked Nanny O to telephone through a Marconigram saying just three words: 'Billa is at the Helm', which I thought didn't gild any gingerbread! Having broken off my engagement, I slept as though a devil had gone out of me. Helm and I were able to have great larks about this as the years went on, even when there was a competitive edge to our relationship. Helm had set up Friends of Norwich Churches, and I Friends of the Flintshire Pubs. Both were in grave danger of disappearing for ever, but Helm got one over on me by bagging the Prince of Wales (the present one, not his dissolute uncle, with whom I had danced as a girl in Mombasa's Muthaiga Club!) after taking Him on what she called a 'church crawl'; I had invited the dear man on a 'pub crawl', but His people assured me that PoW is tea-addicted. Perhaps I should have invited his grandmother.

Mark Boyle 1934-2005

Scots Guard officer, poet, waiter, painter

So Marc is in a better place; Marc was my own special name for Mark (I find a terminal 'c' somehow much the gentler), who I first ran across in a gallery of modern art called The Ica in 1969 (despite this rather odd name, I believe it operates still, somewhere close to Buckingham Palace (what a muddle for our poor Queen!). I had taken Gertie Heneage (who was recovering from concussions of the brain following a motor smash and who needed distracting) to throw breadcrumbs at the ducks in St James's Park, but she wandered from me, drifted across the Mall, and before we knew where we were, we were in the gallery. I remember a large wall-map of the world, which the blind-folded were poking pins or some such into, in a bid to aid Marc with his latest wheeze: visiting random places on this earth, and forming some kind of fixed impression of what he found there. I never really grapsed his intention, but Gertie seemed to enjoy donning a blind-fold greatly (in fact it afterwards became something of a fetish for her, and she was often to be found about her everyday tasks behind one!). In a coincidence you wouldn't believe outside the pages of Jane Austen, the point where she placed her marker was none other than Banting, Granny Bunting's place. Months later, Marc arrived en famille, and when they located the exact spot Gertie had marked, were disappointed to discover that it was none other than one of Old Boy's Whistlers. My grand-father was in the habit of 'hanging' his paintings on the floor (he was ever an eccentric!). He felt they kept better, and were less likely to be stolen, as any thieves would be carrying torches, and would look directly at the walls through the windows. Old Boy reasoned all thieves retarded, crippled or lame dogs in some sort, who wouldn't think to scan the floor. In the end, Banting was never burgled (although as regular readers will know, it was demolished to make way for the A5413. Sadly, at this point, the paintings being kept on the floor ceased to be such a good idea; Old Boy having taken French leave, this was overlooked, and when they went under the wrecker's ball instead of the auctioneer's hammer, the nation lost manifold great works). Anyway, Marc and family decided not to make an imprint of Whistler's Mother, as they thought she wouldn't have wanted to be hanged; I think she would have approved of Nanny O's nursery-tea though - the Boyle's seemed to!