Lumley - No Room for Secrets

No Room for Secrets

JOANNA LUMLEY

MICHAEL JOSEPH

an imprint of

PENQUIN BOOKS

MICHAEL JOSEPH

Published by the Penguin Group
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First published 2004
1

Copyright Joanna Lumley, 2004

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright
reserved above, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior
written permission of both the copyright owner and
the above publisher of this book

This book is for Jamie and Tessa,
Alice and Emily

I may have been in your life for many years, as a vaguely remembered name, or as a shadow on a flickering television screen in the background; or this may be the first time weve met. In any case Ive been in your home but through an appalling oversight I have never invited you into my house until now. You cant say you really know someone until youve seen where and how they live. My house is my home, where all my life is assembled; all thoughts and memories from my earliest days up to this very moment are here, and this book will be a tour of well, to be frank, me.

Q. Can we ask questions?

A. Of course you can. I prefer to talk to people like this, one to one, heart to heart and we can go at your speed because you are a welcome visitor.

Q. In that case, where is your husband?

A. I want you to know that my husband Stephen is not in the house at the moment. He is far away in Chicago, working on an opera, so we can get this show on the road and poke about without disturbing him. Hes rather private, actually, and although I know hes very happy that youre touring my heart, my life, my home, he cannot be here. I thought wed start at the beginning of my life in the hall, and end up in the attic, which is as far as we can go without climbing on to the roof tiles. Just as rooms contain all sorts of different things, so this book will hop from memory to memory; in effect it will be in real time and because I speak rather fast, I think we can cram it all in during this one precious visit. But look! Im talking like this and you havent even got over the threshold. Please come in.

I was born under Taurus, on the evening of the 1st of May 1946, a year before the Partition of India and in one of the loveliest countries in the world: Kashmir. The nursing home in Gupkar Road, Srinagar, is still there, with its painted verandas and quiet garden shaded by tall plane trees. The old city sprawls comfortably among the Dal and Nagin lakes, criss-crossed with tree-lined canals and paddy fields; the colossal mountains of the Karakoram and Himalayan ranges roar away into the sky; kingfishers dip amongst the tethered wooden houseboats where small boats called shikaras sell their wares: vegetables, jewellery, cloth and chickens.

My parents had met and married in Kashmir; on both sides of my family India had been home for several generations. James Lumley, my father, had joined the Gurkhas almost as soon as hed left Sandhurst; his having been born in Lahore where his father, my grandfather, had been a banker meant that India had got under his skin for ever. As a very little boy he had been sent back to boarding schools in England, as were his elder sisters. He was always called Jimmy; good at games, a fine horseman and polo player, he was quite slight in build, about 5 feet 10 inches tall, with a tremendously high, broad forehead: my sister and I used to call him the Educated Egg. My mothers parents had married in Rangoon: Leslie Weir, a Scot born in Ghazipur, and Thyra Sommers, a Dane born in New Zealand

Q. Please get on with it.

A. and my mother, Beatrice, only missed being born in Persia as it was by days, as her family moved from this to that diplomatic posting. We were all used to travelling all the time. England was home even though they didnt live here: England was in fact school and later on leave. My mother was seven years younger than her sister Joan Mary, which meant she was brought up mostly as an only child, at boarding school when the family was travelling in Bhutan, Sikkim and Tibet, and then returning when she was 17 to the country she loved and felt most at home in, India. Look at this huge map: its almost the first thing you see as you come in through the front door, Kashmir and Jammu and Gilgit Region, 1940, traced with little red pencil lines where my mother had trekked, being a passionate hillwalker. The hall is covered with pictures, photographs and drawings. The floor is uncarpeted the house was built in 1847, and the Victorian fashion was for these tiny tessellated tiles set in a pretty pattern.

Q. Are they meant to clink like that when you walk on them? Some of them are loose.

A. No, of course not, and thank you for asking. They get a lot of wear and tear and Ive tried to glue them down and cement them in but its fairly hopeless. I like the idea of bare floors, and I like the slip-slap of a foot on an uncarpeted ground. Some of this comes from the enjoyment of a cool floor in a hot country, from my earliest memories. Anyway, my father met my mother in the hill station Gulmarg when he was on leave: she, rather a tomboy by nature, was doing a headstand on the grass, and when she turned the right way up with all her black hair tumbled round her face he thought, I must marry that girl. My sister, lene, was born in what is now Pakistan, in Abbottabad, two years before my story started. So I had the luckiest of all beginnings: an excellent ready-made family, a May Day birth, a Himalayan background and what I thought was a Mondays child fair of face gift. I swear my mother said I was born on a Monday but I have just now discovered it was really a Wednesday, which has absolutely shaken me. All my life I have thought of myself as a painted clown and an optimist whose duty is always to be cheerful, and suddenly I am Wednesday full of woe and it has set me back. (I have only known this for the past six months.)

We left India for ever a year after I was born when the Partition of India took place. Those days are now so remote from the way life is lived today that its very hard to believe theyre within living memory. Journeys were made by ship, taking many weeks, and it wasnt uncommon when children were sent back to school in England for them not to see their parents for several years. It didnt mean that families were any less loving or concerned it was simply the custom, rather like sons unquestioningly following their fathers into the coalmines. It was expected. But when my parents married and we were born, they decided they didnt want us to have the same fractured upbringing they had endured. We all packed up and followed the flag, or bugle, or in fact marching orders, and travelled like so many service families to wherever we were sent. As soon as we arrived, my mother would make our nursery or bedroom familiar: a Kay Nixon print of red squirrels, Beatrix Potter pictures, and books, a Chinese rug and the toy-basket. I cant remember ever feeling sad at leaving a house the future and the unknown always eclipsed any regrets. Even now, the moment youre at the departure gate, or when the train pulls out of the station, you turn your face and mind to the journey ahead while the immediate past streaks away like smoke in the wind.