Free Dear Lupin... by Roger Charlie; Mortimer Mortimer; Mortimer Charlie Page A

get supplies in for the ‘rapidly approaching winter’
.
    Dear Charles,
    I hope you are settling down to the routine of thermometers, enemas, bedpans, hospital meals at queer times, other people’s awful noises, tepid Horlicks and so forth. It is not much fun to start with but it is apt to grow on you insidiously. I expect the weekend will be unattractive as the hospital will be crammed with proletarian visitors, including many children of repellent appearance and anti-social behaviours. I hope there will not be a strike by the NUPE workers during your stay. They have the reputation of being extremely militant (in other words, bloody-minded) at Basingstoke and are under the leadership of a black female communist. Let me know if there is anything you need. I will come and see you tomorrow. Your mother is coming today and I know I should not be able to get a word in edgeways. I hope the doctors are adequate: I shall be surprised if you should see one that is not as black as ten feet up a factory chimney. Audrey has just fucked up my typewriter which has put me in a bad temper. She is a very agreeable woman but possesses a capacity for petty annoyance almost beyond belief. In some ways she is a sort of human Pongo whom I would willingly exterminate about ten times a day, though I would be filled with remorse afterwards if I did actually slay him. Not much local news: three people were roasted to death in a car accident at Theale. Mr Randall is back on duty, thank God.
    Yours ever
    R
    Entirely due to excessive consumption of hard drugs and alcohol I am rushed to Basingstoke Hospital with liver failure. Dad’s synopsis of hospital life proves fairly accurate. My mother (sometimes known as the Bureau of Misinformation) is desperately worried and following my liver biopsy calls a distant cousin who is a doctor for advice: ‘I’m most frightfully worried about my son Charles, they’ve just done an autopsy on him.’
    Budds Farm
    18 November
    My Dear Lupin,
    I am so glad you are out of the woods and that your complete recovery is, with luck, just a matter of time and patience. You will, though, have to go slow for some time yet and take your convalescence seriously: no larking about. Cassandra rang up and may come and see you today. In the meantime, you will have leisure to plan in general terms for the future and devise some sort of scheme. Paul is in good form. Happily he is rising in the world with a speed comparable to that at which I am descending. I think he will end up with a château on the Tyne and as the local Master of Foxhounds. Jane will probably run the Red Cross and open bazaars in aid of the Conservative Party. Paul takes a fairly disenchanted view of Philps and thinks he is very tough and pretty hot, well capable of looking after himself. He (Paul) knows the man who bought the picture and rates him in the World Class as a creep. I gather the Tordays move into the wall-to-wall carpeted Castle quite soon. No doubt there will be a ball there (white ties: decorations will be worn). The more I see of Paul the more I like him. I wish I could repeat the remark in respect of HHH who in fact is probably no worse than a fearful bore who talks the most appalling drivel. However, he is apparently good at gutting rabbits (an example of Newton’s Law of Compensation). Thursday is easily my favourite day as I draw my pension and for nearly twenty-four hours have an illusion of affluence. Cringer slept on my bed last night. His bad smells are so vile that they actually wake me up as effectively as a door being slammed. I see a Mrs Parker-Bowles married young Irwin yesterday. I wonder which Mrs P-B. that was? When I read of the goings-on in Parliament while the country sinks soggily into bankruptcy, I think that your Aunt Barbara would be entirely in place there. I am glad to say none of my family has ever demeaned themselves by becoming an MP. I believe your mother’s uncle at one time