An Autobiography

  Towards the beginning of the war, Graham Greene had written to me and asked if I would like to do propaganda work. I did not think I was the kind of writer who would be any good at propaganda, because I lacked the single-mindedness to see only one side of the case. Nothing could be more ineffectual than a lukewarm propagandist. You want to be able to say ‘X is black as night’ and feel it. I didn’t think I could ever be like that.

  But every day now I was getting more restless. I wanted work that had at least something to do with the war. I got an offer to be a dispenser to a doctor in Wendover; it was near where some friends of mine were living. I thought that that would be very nice for me, and I would like being in the country. Only, if Max were to come home from North Africa–and after three years, he might come–I should feel I was treating my doctor badly.

  I also had a theatrical project. It was possible that I might go with E.N.S.A. as a sort of extra producer or something on a tour of North Africa. I was thrilled by that idea. It would be wonderful if I got out to North Africa. It was fortunate that I did nothing of the kind. About a fortnight before I would have left England, I got a letter from Max saying that he quite probably would be coming back from North Africa to the Air Ministry in two to three weeks’ time. What misery, if I had arrived out in North Africa with E.N.S.A. just at the moment he came home.

  The next few weeks were agony. There I was, all keyed up, waiting. In a fortnight, in three weeks, no, perhaps longer–I told myself that these things always took longer than one expected.

  I went down for a weekend to Rosalind in Wales and came back by a late train on the Sunday night. It was one of those trains one had so often to endure in wartime, freezing cold, and of course when one got to Paddington there was no means of getting anywhere. I took some complicated train which finally landed me at a station in Hampstead not too far away from Lawn Road Flats, and from there I walked home, carrying some kippers and my suitcase. I got in, weary and cold, and started by turning on the gas, throwing off my coat and putting my suitcase down. I put the kippers in the frying pan. Then I heard the most peculiar clanking noise outside, and wondered what it could be. I went out on the balcony and I looked down the stairs. Up them came a figure burdened with everything imaginable–rather like the caricatures of Old Bill in the first war–clanking things hung all over him. Perhaps the White Knight would have been a good description of him. It seemed impossible that anyone could be hung over with so much. But there was no doubt who it was–it was my husband! Two minutes later I knew that all my fears that things might be different, that he would have changed, were baseless. This was Max! He might have left yesterday. He was back again. We were back again. A terrible smell of frying kippers came to our noses and we rushed into the flat.

  ‘What on earth are you eating?’ asked Max.

  ‘Kippers,’ I said. ‘You had better have one.’ Then we looked at each other. ‘Max!’ I said. ‘You are two stone heavier.’

  ‘Just about. And you haven’t lost any weight yourself,’ he added.

  ‘It’s because of all the potatoes,’ I said. ‘When you haven’t meat and things like that, you eat too many potatoes and too much bread.’

  So there we were. Four stone between us more than when he left. It seemed all wrong. It ought to have been the other way round.

  ‘Living in the Fezzan Desert ought to be very slimming,’ I said. Max said that deserts were not at all slimming, because one had nothing else to do but sit and eat oily meals, and drink beer.

  What a wonderful evening it was! We ate burnt kippers, and were happy.

  PART XI

  AUTUMN

  I

  I am writing this in 1965. And that was in 1945. Twenty years, but it does not seem like twenty years. The war years do not seem like real years, either. They were a nightmare in which reality stopped. For some years afterwards I was always saying, ‘Oh, so-and-so happened five years ago,’ but each time, really, I ought to have added another five. Now, when I say a few years ago, I mean quite a lot of years. Time has altered for me, as it does for the old.

  My life began again, first with the ending of the German war. Though technically the war continued with Japan, our war ended then. Then came the business of picking up the pieces, all the bits and pieces scattered everywhere–bits of one’s life.

  After having some leave, Max went back to the Air Ministry. The Admiralty decided to derequisition Greenway–as usual, at a moment’s notice–and the date they chose for it was Christmas Day. There could not have been a worse day for having to take over an abandoned house. We narrowly missed one bit of good fortune. Our electric generator engine, by which we made our own electricity, had been on its last legs when the Admiralty took over. The American Commander had told me several times he was afraid it would conk out altogether before long. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘we’ll put you in a jolly good new one when we do replace it, so you will have something to look forward to.’ Unfortunately the house was derequisitioned just three weeks before the electric generator was scheduled to be replaced.

  Greenway was beautiful when we went down there again on a sunny winter’s day–but it was wild, wild as a beautiful jungle. Paths had disappeared, the kitchen garden, where carrots and lettuces had been grown, was all a mass of weeds, and the fruit-trees had not been pruned. It was sad in many ways to see it like that, but its beauty was still there. The inside of the house was not as bad as we had feared. There was no linoleum left, which was tiresome, and we could not obtain a permit to get any more because the Admiralty had taken it over and paid us for it when they moved in. The kitchen was indescribable, with the blackness and oily soot of the walls–and there were, as I have said, fourteen lavatories along the stone passage down there.

  I had a splendid man who battled for me with the Admiralty, and I must say the Admiralty needed some battling with. Mr Adams was a firm ally of mine. Somebody had told me that he was the only man capable of wringing blood from a stone or money from the Admiralty!

  They refused to allow sufficient to redecorate rooms on the absurd pretext that the house had been freshly painted only a year or two before they took over–therefore they’d only allow for a portion of each room. How can you decorate three quarters of a room? However, it turned out the boat house had been a good deal damaged, with stones removed, steps broken down, and various things like that, and this was costly structural damage, for which they had to pay–so when I got the money for that I was able to redecorate the kitchen.

  We had another desperate battle about the lavatories, because they said they ought to be charged against me as improvements. I said it was no improvement to have fourteen lavatories that you didn’t need along a kitchen passage. What you needed there was the larder and the wood shed and the pantry that had been there originally. They said all those lavatories would be an enormous improvement if the place was going to be turned into a girls’ school. I pointed out it was not going to be turned into a girls’ school. They could leave me one extra lavatory, I said, very graciously. However, they wouldn’t do that. Either they were going to take all the lavatories away, or I should have to pay the cost of them as installed against what was allowed for other damage. So, like the Red Queen, I said, ‘Take them all away!’

  This meant a lot of trouble and expense for the Admiralty, but they had to take them away. Then Mr Adams got their people to come back again and again to take them away properly, as they always left pipes and bits of things sticking out, and to replace the pantry and larder fittings. It was a long dreary battle.

  In due course, the removers came and redistributed the furniture all over the house. It was amazing how little anything had been damaged or spoilt, apart from the destruction by moths of carpets. They had been told to mothproof them, but had neglected to do so through false optimism: ‘It will be all over by Christmas.’ A few books had been damaged by damp–but surprisingly few. Nothing had come through the roof of the drawing-room, and all the furniture had remained in remarkably go
od condition.

  How beautiful Greenway looked in its tangled splendour; but I did wonder if we would ever clear any of the paths again, or even find where they were. The place became more of a wilderness every day, and was regarded as such in the neighbourhood. We were always turning people out of the drive. They would often walk up there in the spring, pulling off great branches of rhododendrons, and carelessly ruining the shrubs. Of course the place was empty for a time after the Admiralty moved out. We were in London, and Max was still at the Air Ministry. There was no caretaker, and everybody came in to help themselves freely to everything–not just picking flowers, but breaking off the branches anyhow.

  We were able to settle in at last, and life began again, though not as it had been before. There was the relief that peace had at last come, but no certainty in the future of peace, or indeed of anything. We went gently, thankful to be together, and tentatively trying out life, to see what we would be able to make of it. Business was worrying too. Forms to fill up, contracts to sign, tax complications–a whole welter of stuff one didn’t understand.

  It is only now that I fully realise, looking back over my wartime output, that I produced an incredible amount of stuff during those years. I suppose it was because there were no distractions of a social nature; one practically never went out in the evenings.

  Besides what I have already mentioned, I had written an extra two books during the first years of the war. This was in anticipation of my being killed in the raids, which seemed to be in the highest degree likely as I was working in London. One was for Rosalind, which I wrote first–a book with Hercule Poirot in it–and the other was for Max–with Miss Marple in it. Those two books, when written, were put in the vaults of a bank, and were made over formally by deed of gift to Rosalind and Max. They were, I gather, heavily insured against destruction.

  ‘It will cheer you up,’ I explained to them both, ‘when you come back from the funeral, or the Memorial Service, to think that you have got a couple of books, one belonging to each of you!’ They said they would rather have me, and I said: ‘I should hope so, indeed!’ And we all laughed a good deal.

  I cannot see why people are always so embarrassed by having to discuss anything to do with death. Dear Edmund Cork, my agent, always used to look most upset when I raised the question of ‘Yes, but supposing I should die?’ But really the question of death is so important nowadays, that one has to discuss it. As far as I could make out from what lawyers and tax people told me about death duties–very little of which I ever understood–my demise was going to be an unparalleled disaster for all my relations, and their only hope was to keep me alive as long as possible!

  Seeing the point to which taxation has now risen, I was pleased to think it was no longer really worth-while for me to work so hard: one book a year was ample. If I wrote two books a year I should make hardly more than by writing one, and only give myself a great deal of extra work. Certainly there was no longer the old incentive. If there was something out of the ordinary that I really wanted to do, that would be different.

  About then the B.B.C. rang me up and asked me if I would like to do a short radio play for a programme they were putting on for some function to do with Queen Mary. She had expressed the wish to have something of mine, as she liked my books. Could I manage that for them quite soon? I was attracted by the idea. I thought hard, walked up and down, then rang them back and said Yes. An idea came to me that I thought would do, and I wrote the little radio sketch called Three Blind Mice. As far as I know Queen Mary was pleased with it.

  That would seem to be the end of that, but shortly afterwards it was suggested I might enlarge it into a short story. The Hollow, which I had adapted for the stage, had been produced by Peter Saunders, and had been successful. I had so enjoyed it myself that I began to think about further essays in play-writing. Why not write a play instead of a book? Much more fun. One book a year would take care of finances, so I could now enjoy myself in an entirely different medium.

  The more I thought of Three Blind Mice, the more I felt that it might expand from a radio play lasting twenty minutes to a three-act thriller. It wanted a couple of extra characters, a fuller background and plot, and a slow working up to the climax. I think one of the advantages The Mousetrap, as the stage version of Three Blind Mice was called, has had over other plays is the fact that it was really written from a précis, so that it had to be the bare bones of the skeleton coated with flesh. It was all there in proportion from the first. That made for good construction.

  For its title, I must give full thanks to my son-in-law, Anthony Hicks. I have not mentioned Anthony before, but of course he is not really a memory, because he is with us. Indeed I do not know what I would do without him in my life. Not only is he one of the kindest people I know he is a most remarkable and interesting character. He has ideas. He can brighten up any dinner table by suddenly producing a ‘problem’. In next to no time, everyone is arguing furiously.

  He once studied Sanskrit and Tibetan, and can also talk knowledge-ably on butterflies, rare shrubs, the law, stamps, birds, Nantgar as china, antiques, atmosphere and climate. If he has a fault, it is that he discusses wine at too great length; but then I am prejudiced because I don’t like the stuff.

  When the original title of Three Blind Mice could not be used–there was already a play of that name–we all exhausted ourselves in thinking of titles. Anthony came up with ‘The Mousetrap’. It was adopted. He ought to have shared in the royalties, I think, but then we never dreamed that this particular play was going to make theatrical history.

  People are always asking me to what I attribute the success of The Mousetrap. Apart from replying with the obvious answer, ‘Luck!’–because it is luck, ninety per cent. luck, at least, I should say–the only reason I can give is that there is a bit of something in it for almost everybody: people of different age groups and tastes can enjoy seeing it. Young people enjoy it, elderly people enjoy it, Mathew and his Eton friends, and later Mathew and his University friends, went to it and enjoyed it, dons from Oxford enjoy it. But I think, considering it and trying to be neither conceited nor over-modest, that, of its kind–which is to say a light play with both humour and thriller appeal–it is well constructed. The thing unfolds so that you want to know what happens next, and you can’t quite see where the next few minutes will lead you. I think, too, though there is a tendency for all plays that have run a long time to be acted, sooner or later, as if the people in them were caricatures, the people in The Mousetrap could all be real people.

  There was a case once where three children were neglected and abused, after they had been placed by the Council on a farm. One child did die, and there had been a feeling that a slightly delinquent boy might grow up full of the desire for revenge. There was another murder case, too, remember, where someone had cherished a childish grudge of some kind for many years and had come back to try to avenge it. That part of the plot was not impossible.

  Then the characters themselves: a young woman, bitter against life, determined to live only for the future; the young man who refuses to face life and yearns to be mothered; and the boy who childishly wanted to get his own back on the cruel woman who hurt Jimmy–and on his young school teacher–all those seem to me real, natural, when one watches them.

  Richard Attenborough and his enchanting wife Sheila Sim played the two leads in the first production. What a beautiful performance they gave. They loved the play, and believed in it and Richard Attenborough gave a great deal of thought to playing his part. I enjoyed the rehearsals–I enjoyed all of it.

  Then finally it was produced. I must say that I had no feeling whatsoever that I had a great success on my hands, or anything remotely resembling that. I thought it went quite well, but I remember–I forget if it was at the first performance or not; I think it was the beginning of the tour at Oxford–when I went with some friends, that I thought sadly it had fallen between two stools. I had put in too many humorous situations; there was too much
laughter in it; and that must take away from the thrill. Yes, I was a little depressed about it, I remember.

  Peter Saunders, on the other hand, nodded his head gently at me, and said, ‘Don’t worry! My pronouncement is that it will run over a year–fourteen months I am going to give it.’

  ‘It won’t run that long,’ I said. ‘Eight months perhaps. Yes, I think eight months.’

  And now, as I write, it is just coming to the end of its thirteenth year, and has had innumerable casts. The Ambassadors Theatre has had to have entirely new seating–and a new curtain. I now hear it has got to have a new set–the old one is too shabby. And people are still going to it.

  I must say it seems to me incredible. Why should a pleasant, enjoyable evening’s play go on for thirteen years. No doubt about it, miracles happen.

  And to whom do the profits go? Mainly, of course, they go out in tax, like everything else, but apart from that who is the gainer? I have given many of my books and stories to other people. The serial rights in one short story, Sanctuary, were given to the Westminister Abbey Appeal Fund, and other stories have been given to one or other among my friends.

  The fact that you can sit down and write something, and that then it passes direct from you to someone else, is a much happier and more natural feeling than handing out cheques or things of that kind. You may say it is all the same in the end, but it is not the same. One of my books belongs to my husband’s nephews; though that was published many years ago they are still doing nicely out of it. I gave my share in the film rights of Witness for the Prosecution to Rosalind.