The Inheritor, page 1
THE
INHERITOR
Paul Almond
Praise for Paul Almond’s, The Inheritor
“This memoir provides a fascinating journey of a young artist as he achieves success in early Canadian television and film. A prolific writer ... Paul’s Inheritor is a must read for all those interested in Canadian Culture.”
– Norman Jewison
“Eons ago, I had a dear friend named Paul Almond. Our careers went in different paths and I lost touch with him. The Alford Saga reminds me of the beauty and the creative energy and the turmoil that existed in Canada during the time I spent in Canada with Paul. This is a book that should be read by everybody, not just hot-blooded Canadians.”
– William Shatner
“Paul Almond is on my list of great Canadians.”
– Senator Colin Kenny
“I’ve always admired Paul’s productions, so I’m quite sure that dancers and balletomanes everywhere will enjoy reading Paul’s personal take on the early years of our National Ballet when he was married to one of our principal dancers, Angela Leigh.”
– Karen Kain, CC, past Chair of the Canada Council, Artist Director of the National Ballet
“The Alford Saga scores! If the author’s careful and captivating treatment of our military and chaplaincy history can be the measure, then his recounting of the explosion of Canadian culture is certainly sure to satisfy.”
– Brigadier General Fletcher, Chaplain General of the Canadian Military
“Paul Almond, one of the leading lights of Canadian film in the sixties and seventies, draws on his own experiences in this mesmerizing story of twists and turns, highs and lows, love and heartbreak.”
– Piers Handling, Executive Director of TIFF
“I love it when you start reading a book and you just can’t put it down... And this is just what happened to me. When I started reading The Deserter, the first book of the Alford Saga by Paul Almond, I fell under the spell: The writing, the story telling, the characters... everything is so captivating! And the best of it all? The emotions and the charm can be found in all the books of the series. Paul Almond is a words magician and I hope he’ll continue to write and entertain us for a long time.”
– Carolle Brabant, Head of Telefilm Canada
Also by Paul Almond
THE ALFORD SAGA
The Deserter: book one
The Survivor: book two
The Pioneer: book three
The Pilgram: book four
The Chaplain: book five
The Gunner: book six
The Hero: book seven
DEDICATION
How very sad, and yet tender, is the thought of so many richly enchanted people described herein who have now left this earth. I sometimes wonder why I, rather than they, have been chosen to tell their story. How I wish I could bring them all back!
I write that they may live again, if only in our imaginations.
One of the privileges accruing to us who remain is that we are able to recount such glorious times, so frequently forgotten. To these “hale dead and deathless” as Dylan Thomas said — their lives once flaming across Canada’s cultural landscape — I dedicate this book.
PREAMBLE 1952-53
“Eric dead. Please come home,” the telegram said. Eric, the father he had never known, a Gunner, a veteran from the Canadian Field Artillery, locked up for years in Ste. Anne de Bellevue Military Hospital with shell shock. So Paul Alford, having spent three years at Balliol College in the University of Oxford, a few months playing hockey in Italy, and another year in England, came back on a steamship to Montreal.
At the Old Homestead in Shigawake on the shores of Quebec’s Gaspe Coast, he was pecking away with two fingers on the battered Underwood portable typewriter his mother had given him as a child, working at a novel, The Farmer. He’d sell it (he hoped) to support his one — some said hopeless — overwhelming desire to become a poet.
Arriving back in Montreal with no money or prospects, Paul had decided to return to the Old Homestead, built by his great-grandfather one hundred and fifty years before. His Uncle Earle, the farmer, had recently passed away; only his Aunts, Wyn and Lilian, remained. Lonely? Oh yes. The life at Balliol had been ever so full: he had directed Ronald Duncan’s This Way to the Tomb, and later gone on to act in productions of the University’s two dramatic societies, the OUDS and directing, writing, becoming president of the O.U. Poetry Society, and then, miracle of miracles, being appointed editor of The Isis, the university magazine. Winters playing hockey with the combined Oxford and Cambridge team all over the Continent, summers travelling in Ireland and elsewhere with his friend Michael Ballantyne. But now, after those flurries of activity, the life of a lonely poet with two elderly aunts in Shigawake.
“Auntie Wyn,” Paul asked, “why did Mummy never take me out to see my father? Every weekend she went by train.”
Auntie Wyn, a distinguished nurse and thus a harsh disciplinarian as they were in those days, had taken care of several Governors-General. Now retired, with piercing black eyes, a craggy face, wispy white hair, and a big heart, she’d come back to live at the Old Homestead with her sister Lillian. She avoided his eyes. “Eric wasn’t well, you see. We thought it best you didn’t see him in that... state.”
“But Dad and I had started to write each other, my last year in Balliol,” Paul insisted. “His letters were quite sane and sensible.”
“I don’t know, dear.” Auntie Wyn’s eyes misted over. He had been the baby of the Alford family and her favourite brother. “He was a very handsome man, your father.”
By his wood stove in the Old Homestead, Paul opened one of the letters he’d written to Harry Boyd from Ronald Duncan’s farm in Devonshire. Harry, former Captain of Toronto Varsity, had encouraged Paul to play professional hockey in the chic Dolomite resort of Cortina d’Ampezzo. They had cemented their friendship then, for Harry had been a disciple of Northrop Frye, and both hockey players loved poetry.
“Welcombe sits on the border between Devon and Cornwall, on the coast of the Bristol Channel. To the south lies Bodmin Moor, the bleakest moor in England, and to the east Dartmoor... The land, the grass, the people, are tough, weathered like the hedges. The sun almost never shines, though it has today!
“We are twenty miles from the nearest railway station; Welcombe itself is just four or five farm houses; a combe is a local term for a valley (Wel-combe). One feels the power of nature here very strongly. So we are, as you can see, gloriously cut off. Thus I spend all my time reading and writing, and I’m determined to translate La Divina Commedia for CBC to earn good money.”
Read no more, he told himself and sat back, warming his hands. Hard times in Devon, really. He’d been lucky to get a room in an old Victorian mansion run by two wispy spinsters, the Misses Oke. Having settled in, Paul had worked under Bailiff Bob, when at last the Duncan’s invitation to dinner arrived, drawing him down to their low, thatch-roofed farmhouse, dated 1629. The playwright and poet Ronald Duncan, small, with thick black hair combed straight back, had a swarthy skin that suggested his Celtic ancestry.
Stepping down into the low ceilinged room with its peat fire, Paul caught a welcome sight — Antonia, wild brown hair, big, rawboned, in a man’s loose farmer’s trousers and a rough blue shirt. A real farm girl, he supposed, but soon he realized she was a great deal more.
She gathered her things and unwound her six feet. “Ronnie, I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon with the letters typed.” Ah, so she’s his secretary? “It’s going to be such an exciting festival this summer.”
Paul pricked up his ears. “What festival?”
“The Taw and Torridge, of course. Ronnie started it last summer, with Queen Mary’s son, Lord Harewood, and Ben Britten. Surely you read about it?”
“I’m afraid I was off touring with my company,” Paul answered meekly. “I didn’t have much time to look at the papers.” The company he had formed, The Oxford and Cambridge Players, now the Elizabethan Theatre Company, was still touring England; they’d like to know of such a festival where they might play. “What’s being planned for next summer?”
“Ronnie wants Martin Brown, the great director, to do productions of Tom Eliot’s The Cocktail Party and his own play, The Death of Satan. We’re trying to involve Oscar Lowenstein —”
“The London impresario?”
Antonia nodded. “We’re founding a new company for the Royal Court Theatre, too. We’re going to call it the English Stage Company.”
She sure is taking credit for herself, thought Paul. “I’d love to be here for all that! Might I meet some of these guys when they come, Ronnie?”
Ronnie looked up and half smiled at the show of enthusiasm. Not many boisterous hockey players in North Devon, that’s for sure.
“See you tomorrow, Ronnie.” Antonia came by close, very close, as she went out, and Paul felt his heart flip flop. Was she aware of this as she passed?
Ronnie indicated a seat opposite him by the fire, and began to unsheathe Paul’s few poems, but Rose Marie called them to dinner. Mrs. Duncan was more vivacious than he remembered from his earlier trips to discuss This Way to the Tomb. Her shock of wild blonde hair topped a lined, lived-in face with broad features and bold, protruding blue eyes sending out a strong “come-hither.” Paul found her full of double entendres, quick wit and fun.
“I’d forgotten what he looked like,” Rose Marie remarked as her husband ushered Paul to a chair. “Thank you, Ronnie, for bringing this delicious hockey-playing Canuck to the wilds of
Ronnie hardly acknowledged her; he sat at the head of the table and began to serve the vegetables and carve the mutton Rose Marie had roasted.
“Now,” Ronnie began, “I told you about the warp and the woof of a poem.” He handed the plate of meat, mashed potatoes, carrots and turnips to Paul.
“I don’t think so, Ronnie.” Paul quickened. Just what he’d come for!
“A poem is like cloth: strands like words run in both directions, sometimes at cross purposes, but that’s how they strengthen the verse, just as the threads run perpendicular in cloth, giving it strength.”
Rose Marie leaned across and gave Paul’s hand a squeeze. “You can’t learn from a better master!” Her warm, glistening eyes fastened on him.
Ronnie paid no attention. “Sprung rhythm, that’s the key. Like Hopkins, one of my masters.”
Well, if I want to learn about writing, thought Paul, I’ve come to the right place. Farm work mornings on the windy moors, and afternoons by my little fire writing, with hope of catching that wild and wonderful Antonia.
Wonderful? All too soon, Paul found that Antonia had eyes only for Ronnie. No room for any newly-hatched Oxford graduate.
Then the inevitable moment arrived as the Misses Oke laid out his evening’s dinner at one end of their long oak table. Old portraits on the wall seemed to frown — did they know what was to come? “I’m sorry, Mr. Alford,” one Miss Oke lit his lamp, “but in June the visitors start arriving. They did book a year ago. So I’m afraid you’ll have to leave...”
Thrown out. Well, what now?
Look on the bright side... A new beginning, perhaps? But heavens, how long could a young poet keep pretending to himself?
In desperation, Paul wrote to his best friend Tom Espie in the London suburb of Croydon. Stocky, with a poor complexion, rigidly combed hair in the manner of the day, Tom had been a student playwright while studying PPE, too. So Paul set off on his motorbike, a dear old war surplus Royal Enfield (top speed 45 mph) and got to Tom’s in Croydon around midnight, waking everyone, though Mr. and Mrs. Espie seemed glad to see him.
Monday afternoon, he and Tom went up to London to find it already crowded with people settling in for the night. The next day, June 2, 1953, was the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth. Edmund Hillary had just climbed Mount Everest the week before.
They got together with their best friend from Balliol, Stanley Myers, who – unlike Paul and Tom — had achieved first class honours in Modern Greats (Philosophy Politics and Economics, or PPE.) Stanley was a pianist and composer, having written many of the Oxford musical reviews. That night they repaired to Stanley’s flat, a tiny servants’ quarters on the sixth floor of a once-elegant town house in Mayfair, so convenient for the coming events. Unfortunately, Stanley’s landlady had warned she would charge any guest five pounds for that pre-coronation night. As Paul had paid only three pounds fifteen for a full week’s board and lodging in Devon, they found this outrageous. But still, they sneaked upstairs, tiptoed past the landlady’s flat and fell asleep on the floor.
Stanley set his alarm for six and they sneaked out. The lift was noisy, so they started walking down the six flights of stairs. But they heard above them the lift gate clang shut. They raced down, round and round, and just escaped out the door and around the corner before the landlady appeared. They had made it!
At this hour, Oxford Street was already full of spectators, three deep. But Tom with amazing foresight had arranged a temp job teaching at some fly-by-night academy whose second floor premises overlooked the very route of the procession. From ten that morning, Tom, now a staff member, and his two guests sat snacking and drinking, and then went out onto the balcony with other teachers to watch the grand and colourful parade pass by.
After the procession had passed, they watched on TV as the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh came out on the Buckingham Palace balcony. Paul was delighted to be a part of this momentous celebration, having arrived in London almost by accident. On they went to Shirley Catlin’s (later Baroness Williams) flat in Whitehall Court on the embankment to enjoy the fireworks across the river, and listen to the Queen and Winston Churchill. At Oxford, Paul had been keen on Shirley and was hoping to meet her mother, the famous Vera Brittain, author of Testament of Youth, the definitive memoire on WWI, but she wasn’t home.
After Stanley left, Tom and Paul continued drinking till they caught the last train back to Croydon. But falling dead asleep, they snored four stations past Croydon.
Off they got and faced a rather sobering ten-mile walk — at three in the morning.
The next day, hanging around the Mall, they got a curbside view of the Queen and the Duke passing on their first carriage ride around the city. Golly, thought Paul, he sure is good looking and the Queen, too, she’s beautiful.
But he could not stay in Croydon indefinitely. So again, Paul had to face another move. Don’t be downhearted — buoy yourself up! He thought. And fortunately, Tom had offered their tiny family cottage in North Wales: unfurnished, but it might do as a place to write.
Off Paul went again, motoring along the Conwy River with Great Orme on his right, through Betws-y-Coed, a lovely green valley, and stopped for an evening pint to get directions to the small market town centred on Conwy Castle, whose red crumbling walls enclosed grassy courtyards. He was directed to Tom’s isolated cottage: a table, two chairs, a bed (thank heaven) and a stove that worked on gas from a tank behind. No electricity. Oh well, all a future poet needed, he told himself.
Not long afterwards, Tom Espie came up by train. Later, over a simple meal, Tom asked how it was all going.
“I keep spending what money I have on sending out stories. They need return postage, too, damn it.”
“And they’re being returned?”
Paul nodded meekly. “Every one. But off to Canada they go again: Montreal’s Weekend Magazine, Liberty, Family Herald, Macleans... I even tried the top in America — The Saturday Evening Post.” He caught Tom’s look. “Once you crack that, a real Niagara of cash will flow. I’ve written thirty-eight stories so far. Enough to keep me for ages.”
“Once they sell?”
“Yeah, once they sell. But you, Tom, are you planning another play? You were the best playwright at Oxford.”
Tom made a face. “Mum and Dad don’t like the idea. They wanted their boy to earn a good weekly wage.” He went on to confess: “Did I tell you? I got laid off in April. But Dad still insists I leave on the 8.10 every morning. I go to a library — well, where else? I do get a lot of reading done. Then back I come on the same commuter train in the evening. The neighbours never guess.”
“Oh my heavens!” Paul shook his head. “At least my mum lets me do whatever I want. And that is... to be a poet.”
Which is how Paul Alford ended up that winter at the Old Homestead on the Gaspe Coast, banging away on his trusty typewriter.
***
But now, Paul wondered, was this writing a novel in Shigawake actually getting him anywhere? Would anyone publish it? In fact, were there any Canadian publishers? All he knew was a branch office of the British Macmillans run by John Gray, the Ryerson Press, headed by Lorne Pierce, and McClelland & Stewart, now under a young Jack McClelland. That seemed to be all. So, why not put his learning into something profitable! Recitals? Yes, farmers — they loved poetry, didn’t they? Packed halls, applause, money flowing...
Before he knew it, Paul was standing nervously behind the stage curtain in nearby Port Daniel’s Community Hall. Having donned his dinner jacket, he adjusted his black tie. He had helped cousin Elton arrange the chairs beforehand and now imagined the applause when he would step out on stage. Hearing chairs scrape and the conversation drop, he realized his time had come.
He strode to the lectern in front of his audience. Oh dear, not even a dozen!
The first part seemed to go well enough. The novelty of it, perhaps? But when he began Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue, My Last Duchess:
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf’s hands
