The Smell of Lavender Water

If you, dear reader, should happen to be the wrong side of 70, should perchance have lost your life partner, should occasionally in the small hours have slippery thoughts about what life might hold in store for you, if you should ever wonder, however fleetingly, ‘what next?’ or even ‘how?’ – then maybe Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (1971) by Elizabeth Taylor is not for you.

And yet. Someone who writes as brilliantly as Elizabeth Taylor should most definitely not be passed over. I do, to my chagrin, fit the above characterization but this book not only entertained, engrossed and moved me, it also several times made me laugh aloud. Despite the apparent bleakness of its subject matter, the pin-sharp quality of the writing makes it a treat to be savoured. The novel deals with a short period in the life of an elderly widow, the eponymous Mrs Palfrey. Feeling she cannot manage alone, neither wishing – nor invited – to live with her daughter, suffering from painful varicose veins, she moves into a hotel on London’s Cromwell Road which gives its long-term residents favourable rates, the back bedrooms and indifferent food. First impressions are discouraging:

For the moment her heart lurched, staggered in appalled despair, as it had done once before when she had suddenly realized, or suddenly could no longer not realize that her husband at death’s door was surely going through it.

However, Mrs Palfrey is old school, as we might say now, and ‘had always known how to behave’. As a young bride in Burma she had been rowed across floods to her new home to find a snake wound round the banisters, at which she had ‘straightened her back and given herself a good talking-to’. This she now does again and, rather like a new girl at school, she takes care to learn the codes of conduct in her new home. Her fellow residents, while not appealing, are convincingly drawn. The first to speak to her is Mrs Arbuthnot who ‘moves slowly, looking spectral, step by painful step, with the two sticks inching along before her. She was like an injured insect.’ Generally in pain, Mrs Arbuthnot is mistress of the cruel snub. Mrs Post – forever counting the stitches of her knitting – is timid, anxious and slow on the uptake, while Mrs Burton (can she be a caricature of the once more famous Elizabeth Taylor?) loves to drink whisky and be noisy, especially when her brother-in-law visits.

Mrs Burton had removed her hair-net and filled the creases of her face with powder. Her face had really gone to pieces – with pouches and dewlaps and deep ravines, as if a landslide had happened. ‘The drink has really taken its toll,’ whispered Mrs Arbuthnot.

And then there is Mr Osmond, ‘who seemed to dislike female company and seldom got any other kind’ and who lies in wait for passing waiters or the manager, to whom he likes to tell off-colour jokes. He barks complaints at the radio, writes self-important letters to the papers and occasionally forgets to do up his flies. Yet his face, when he thinks of his wife, ‘collapses’. None of these is a caricature: they are all drawn with intelligent sympathy, and we know, without being told, that each of them is lonely and afraid. Mrs Palfrey herself – a large, dignified woman who ‘would have made a distinguished-looking man and, sometimes, wearing evening dress, looked like some famous general in drag’ – is also drawn with sympathy. She is anxious to fit in with these people amongst whom she finds herself and, while flinching at Mrs Burton’s swearing, and being quite uninterested in the endless gossip about the royal family, she treats everyone with tact and consideration. Having briskly set the scene, Taylor introduces a welcome breath of youth. When Mrs Palfrey, out for a walk, slips and hurts herself, Ludo runs up from his basement flat to rescue her. He helps her down the steps, gently mops up the blood on her leg and makes her a cup of tea. She is shaken but she takes to him at once and invites him to have dinner with her at the Claremont; after some hesitation, he accepts. It transpires that Ludo is an aspiring writer, which means he is not only short of money and always hungry but also eager for new material. Having put Mrs Palfrey in a taxi he makes some not altogether flattering notes about her: ‘veins on leg the colour of grapes . . . smell of lavender water (ugh!) . . . big spots on back of shiny hands . . .’ Having let slip that she has a grandson, Desmond, who works at the British Museum, Mrs Palfrey allows her fellow residents to believe that this is the young man coming to dinner with her – and having once allowed the misapprehension to exist she feels she cannot correct it. So while the real Desmond continues not to bother to visit, Ludo – pretending to be Desmond – charms them all, enjoying his complicity. He says to her, of her fellow inmates, ‘Are they all that nice? Are they nice enough for you, I mean?’ and Mrs Palfrey’s heart is won. The book may be peppered with sour relationships, but the fact that Ludo makes Mrs Palfrey happy is the triumph at its core. While hardly a comic novel, it contains – as it gallops eventfully to its conclusion – some hilarious scenes: the drinks party the old people are invited to which no one enjoys, the consternation when ‘le vrai Desmond’ finally appears and has to be hustled out into the rain, inebriated Mrs Burton barrelling down the corridor late at night ‘glancing off the walls like a balloon’. Pathos, however, is never far away and the reflections on old age are penetrating:

I must not wish my life away, she told herself; but she knew that, as she got older, she looked at her watch more often, and that it was always earlier than she had thought . . . when she was young, it had always been later.

It is not just the aged for whom Taylor feels compassion: Ludo, who is lonely, has a terrible relationship with his mother, a selfish woman showing not the least interest in him. Trying to be a conscientious son he receives next to nothing in return; similarly, his awful girlfriend Rosie treats him with casual cruelty. At least Mrs Palfrey has, in her time, been happily married; she hears through the wall at the hotel the gentle hum of marital chat and remembers how lucky she has been. So although Ludo, after spending time with her, hurries home to write up his notes under the heading ‘Exploration of Mrs Palfrey’, we forgive him this because life is not being kind to him either. The ‘appalling inequalities’ of love can cut both ways. Taylor has a sharp ear for dialogue, using this tool to great effect when drawing a character; the Major, with whom Ludo’s mother is living, hardly appears in the book but Ludo, being a writer, treasures his sayings – for my sins, stout work, full of the joys, rugger at Twickers – and Mrs Palfrey would have used the phrase I speak as I find had she not thought it ‘servants’ parlance’. The dreadful Lady Swayne, who makes a regrettably brief appearance, prefaces her most bigoted statements with ‘I’m afraid’, as in, ‘I’m afraid I’d like to see the Prime Minister hanged, drawn and quartered. I’m afraid I think the fox revels in it. I’m afraid I don’t think that’s awfully funny.’ Taylor also paints a scene with devastating clarity:

From the window she could see – could see only – a white brick wall down which dirty rain   slithered, and a cast-iron fire-escape, which was rather graceful. She tried to see that it was graceful.

And the picture of Mr Osmond, sitting immobile with a glass of wine beside him in the sitting-room before dinner, ‘patiently still, with his hands on his knees, as if waiting for the drink to drink itself’, is surely born of real observation. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, published over fifty years ago, is perhaps showing its age; colonial relics are thin on the ground these days, as are memories of maids’ rooms and boarding-schools. Is there still a commissionaire at Harrods and, if so, does he gratefully accept tips? But these are mere cavils, and irrelevant; the beautiful writing of Elizabeth Taylor is timeless. The piercing accuracy of her characterization, which convinces you that what you are reading is the whole truth; her humane intelligence, which (and in such a short book) shows you all sides of a person and a predicament; her warmth and her wit – what more can one ask for? To read such good writing, and to wonder how she managed it, is both heartening and stimulating, however old you may be. Indeed it may, should such a thing be needed, put a spring in your step.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 83 © Posy Fallowfield 2024 Illustration by Ella Balaam