ABSTRACT
LETTICE. [Indeed.] My mother married a Free French soldier in London called Douffet, who abandoned her within three months of the wedding. She had no pleasure thereafter in associating with Frenchmen. 'They are all fickle,' she used to say. 'Fickle and furtive.' [LOTTE: A fair description of the whole nation, I would say.] She brought me up entirely by herself. Mainly on the road. We played all over the Dordogne - in farmhouses and barns, wherever they would have us. We performed only the
history plays of Shakespeare - because history was my mother's passion. I was the stage manager, responsible for costumes, props and historical detail. She herself was famous for her Richard III. She used to wear a pillow on her back as a hump. It was brilliantly effective. No one who heard it will ever forget the climax of her performance - the cry of total despair wrung from her on the battlefield: 'Un cheval! Un cheval! Mon royaume pour un cheval!' (LOTTE stares, astounded.) All the translations were her own. [LOTTE (drily). A remarkable achievement.] [Not for her.] Language was her other passion. As I grew up I was never permitted to read anything but the grandest prose. 'Language alone frees one,' she used to say. 'And History gives one place.' She was adamant I should not lose my English Heritage, either of words or deeds . Every night she enacted for me a story from our country's past - fleshing it out with her own marvellous virtuosity! Richard's battlefield with the crown hung up in the thornbush! King Charles the First going to his execution on a freezing January morning - putting on two shirts lest when he trembled from cold his enemies should think it was from fear! Wonderful! ... On a child's mind the most tremendous events were engraved as with diamond on a window pane. And to me, my tourists - simply random holidaymakers in my care for twenty minutes of their lives - are my children in this respect. It is my duty to enlarge them. Enlarge - enlivenenlighten them.
