Doing my army National Service was something that I regarded as being in a partition by itself, when it came to discerning the formative influences upon my life and personality. And to some extent it was an oppressive influence. They had stated quite openly when I was in training at Caterham how they were concerned to suppress all individualism, so I might emerge as someone who could more readily coalesce within a fighting unit such as they desired. And the more they drummed the individualism out of me, the more I felt separated from those aspects of my identity which I cherished the most - the idea that I might develop as an artist, or author perhaps.

There had in fact been very little opportunity to paint since I left Eton. There had been one unsatisfactory painting of the statue at the end of the pond at Sturford, which I had painted during the weeks prior to going into the army, and then nothing more until the spell of leave I obtained after obtaining my commission. I set up my easel on that occasion beside the small waterfall at the head of the Half Mile lake at Longleat - only to receive Henry's criticism that I was just swanking, in wanting to get his tourists to come up and watch me paint. And I also painted a fish vase while I was down at Cowrie during that same spell of leave. And more recently I had been working on a whimsical still life - around a witch-doll that I had found up in the nursery; and upon another still life, with officer's warm coat and city umbrella - which I'd painted in my room at Combermere.

This certainly wasn't one of my more formative periods with regard to art. But Christopher told me that he had been asked by Wilfrid Blunt, my former art teacher, to supply a painting for an exhibition they were going to hold in the drawing schools at Eton, representing the work of Old Etonian artists - with names like Duncan Grant upon the list. It would have been better if Wilfrid had written me a personal note upon the subject. Or perhaps it was just a case of Christopher losing the note he was supposed to deliver. But in any case, I misunderstood the purpose of the exhibition, which was to display things painted since leaving Eton. So I put in Christopher's hands a pile of the best paintings I had done while I was still at Eton - plus the only more recent one that had yet been completed, which was of the statue at the end of Sturford pond. This was distinctly sub-standard and has since been destroyed. But in the event it was all they had for the exhibition, which might qualify for inclusion. And it received a bad notice in the Eton Chronicle - as being the worst thing on display. But I didn't hear about this until some while later, so my feelings were to that extent spared.

It was only after I had been at Combermere for several months that I finally woke up to the idea that my physical presence in the Squadron Yard - or in the officers' mess for that matter - was best kept to a minimum. So it was then that I surreptitiously took to painting that still life within the privacy of my own room. And as far as Nipper was concerned, he was prepared to turn a blind eye to whatever I might be getting up to, in that I was at least keeping out of his hair.

There was one occasion when I took the various paintings that I had been working on, to show to Wilfrid Blunt in the drawing schools at Eton, but found only Oliver Thomas to be present there at the time. He gave me some critical appraisal, but it does need to be remembered that this was an uninspiring period within my artistic development. Yet it did lead to Wilfrid inviting me to a dinner at Baldwin's End, where he lived with Giles St Aubyn, Tom Barker and Tom Lyons. This was the first occasion, when I had put in an appearance as an old boy at Eton, to mingle with my former mentors on terms nearer to equality.

I also did some writing during that spell of leave down at Cowrie, beginning a story about a woman - rather like Miss Prokinar - seeking a husband through a matrimonial agency. It was an adequate attempt at comic composition, without the will for me to see it through to its completion. Life wasn't genuinely humorous for me these days, so I didn't feel like offering a more optimistic view about it in the fiction that I wrote.

Hassled as I found myself to be these days on the question of maturing from my adolescent ways, I was inclined to slink away from the communal throng on all occasions when there wasn't something going on which was specifically of social interest to me. I was anxious that my immaturities would glare out at people, if I just sat there in their company. Far safer for me to be sitting within the retreat of my own room, biding my time for the next opportunity to scintillate within a display of extravagantly egocentric exhibitionistism. My extroversion went hand in hand with my introversion, and it would have been difficult to offer a clear description of me then, in those terms.

But the extroverted side of me demanded that I should cultivate an idea of myself as someone of independent spirit and self-expression. And after drinking a gin and tonic or two at the social events I attended, I found it a lot easier to behave in this fashion. I livened up instantly, feeling a diminished inhibition concerning the limitations of permissible behaviour - small enough though the examples of such behaviour may have been. I can remember my hostess at a dinner that was being held in the Berkeley rooms of the Hyde Park Hotel, getting the waiter to persuade me to put my dinner jacket back on, because I had been embarrassing her by dancing in my shirt sleeves, and with my colourful braces showing.

The truth of the matter is that I was drinking more than was good for me on every possible social occasion. Not usually to the point of drunkenness, but often to the point when the extroverted side to me felt released. This led to me acquiring a reputation for myself for being too easily effected by drink, although such scoffing came from fellow subalterns far less capable of consuming such a quantity while still remaining on their feet. My behaviour may have been excitable, but I seldom lost my balance or slurred my words. There was even an occasion - after that evening already mentioned at the Hyde Park Hotel, when I returned to the point where I had parked the car, (incorrectly as it turned out,) to find two policemen about to take it in charge. All was amicable in this encounter. And when it was discovered that my battery had run flat - due to the headlights having been left on - they assisted to get me mobile by pushing the car down Knightsbridge until the engine fired. I say this, not from present pride at what one could get away with at that time, but in evidence that my behaviour in emergency was as sober as might be required, despite the exaggerated level of alcohol consumption.

And of course there were the odd occasions when I drank more than my stomach in any case could tolerate. The one which comes the most vividly to mind took place at Pirbright, where D Squadron had gone for rifle and machine-gun (BESA) practice. There was an evening when the officers were invited over to the tent which was serving as the NCO's mess and, of course, it was me who got challenged to play the game of Cardinal Puff which, for the uninitiated, consists of performing a ritual of increasing complexity - in terms of the number of times one has to repeat everything, like words and gestures, before drinking to the health of Cardinal Puff for the first, or even umpteenth time.

The complexity of the rules is really a pretext for them to be modified as the game proceeds, in a manner arranged so that the intended victim is the one who is perpetually penalised for breaking a rule, and therefore being required to drink an additional glass as stipulated. As any other such victim, I was soon swallowing more than I could hold down, of a potion which had originally been beer, but was soon being doctored behind my back to something far closer to neat whiskey. The moment arrived when I was pouring it down my throat, and then rushing straight outside to throw it up again on the grass. But the fact that I kept returning for more, without chucking in the sponge, impressed them. And I was thankful for that small boost to my image. But it did little to compensate for the hangover, of course.

The excessive drinking I suppose, might be put down to the suppression I felt myself to be experiencing, which inhibited me from emerging in what I might suppose to be my true colours. But this repressed colourfulness burgeoned instead upon the surface of my Land-Rover, which I painted with my own hand in convergent tones of blue, green and crimson. In terms of the prevailing culture in the early fifties, this was indeed a most daring choice of colouring for a car. The personality of Roger the Rover was in that respect an unsuppressed extension of my own identity - giving rise to some jokes in the officers' mess concerning the effect of hangovers upon their morning vision; having to determine whether it was true or false, what they were seeing in the constantly changing decor of the car, when they resurfaced after a night out.

The ownership of a car however, rendered me vulnerable to the exploitation of people borrowing it - with my permission, but without gratitude. I found it difficult to say no to such a request at this time. It was as if psychologically, I felt that I had been furnished at birth with too many of the world's blessings upon my plate. When others demanded a share in them, I felt that it would have been unpleasant of me to say no. As a result of this, I found my generosity of spirit being taken increasingly for granted. NCO's as well as officers were borrowing it, on trumped up pretexts that it was urgently required. And when they started handing it back to me, without apology for bits broken from it, I finally realised how I was virtually being treated with contempt. So I lent it out no more.

But I rapidly became attached to Roger as if it were an extension of my own identity. To `roger' was military slang for copulation, so in naming my car thus, I was to some extent presenting an image of myself - in the person of my car - as someone of copulatory zeal. And I did have the feeling that I might be going places, sexually just as much as geographically. At the same time nobody could say - except for the colouring - that Roger was particularly flash. There was far more of a rough and ready, tough, get-there-in-the-end durability about the image that I was thus imagining for myself.

My window on a white world has suddenly widened,
to feast my eye's vision on bright colour,
a full-sighted perspective of the dizzy reels
of movement that wheels furnish to the static man.
My plans for living now encompass a new
blueprint. Mobile in readiness to roll to adventure,
and splendidly accoutred in a private armoured-car,
I charge boldly forward on chosen fields.
Wielding my good looks to their best advantage,
I can't complain if your sturdy solidity rids
my image of excessively aristocratic elegance,
spelling out a story that's different to mine.
We're bonded now, as in a kindred breed,
but I shall steer, whilst you're my trusted steed.

And despite all my highly strung excitability of disposition, I remained - as I always had been - doggedly determined in my general behaviour. I think this came into focus on the occasion when I drove up to Bowhill in Scotland, with regard to the return journey in particular. There was a sudden deterioration in the weather, the day before I was due to depart. My hosts and various guests advised me strongly to put my car on the train and ferry it back to London. And this was the point when Mark Jeffreys announced that he in any case was returning home by train. But in fairly typical fashion, I decided to continue with my previous plan - despite a warning that the passes were now closed by snow.

It was a memorable non-stop drive, from which various images come to mind. One was of the car gracefully waltzing round in slow circles as it descended a steep hill. (The tyres were overdue for replacement, having their tread worn smooth.) And when I finally got up to the particular pass that I had chosen for the crossing - involving the most direct route south - I was driving across virgin snow, with only the telegraph poles to indicate to me where the road might lie. But once I had started upon something, it was not really in my nature to give up. And the fact that I did get back home safely to Sturford, seemed to justify my foolhardiness. An additional piece of good luck in avoiding disaster was that I arrived back home at about 03.00 hrs. on the last few drops of petrol in the tank, with the engine spluttering its last gasps. I had failed to find any petrol pump that was still open after midnight during the latter stage of the journey. To have run out even a mile down the road would have necessitated that I sleep the rest of the night in the car, taking good care of my luggage. I felt as if I had been given divine protection over the course of that journey!

The Bowhill experience brought home to me another important aspect of my identity: that Scotsmen felt a pride and unity in their nationhood that couldn't really be matched by Englishmen. Or not by Englishmen in the West Country, who were perhaps out of focus from the central national organization of our society. I cannot say that I was as yet even remotely conscious of my identity as a Wessexian, but I was becoming aware how Scotsmen held some manner of advantage over me. And a West Country girl like [X], had no hesitation in regarding herself as a Scots lassie, whenever such issue really needed to be stated. To have watched her there, cavorting in her reels with clan kinsmen, left me in no doubt that I was somehow omitted from that side of her personality. So the questions were already stirring within me as to how I should compensate for this deficiency within my own sense of identity.

It was at Bowhill too that I participated for what was perhaps the very last time, in a pheasant shoot. My interest in shooting had long been on the wane, with the glimmerings of a conscience on such matters formulating within my heart. Nonetheless, I was still quite happy to participate. But this particular occasion was far from being a glorious experience for me. I remember snapping up a woodcock when it swerved overhead, as I walked with the beaters. But I made a real fool of myself in the final drive, when I was placed on the skyline where everyone could watch my miserable performance, with an eminent Polish photographer - dancing up and down into squat positions at my side, in his attempt to get a photograph of me with a bird somersaulting through the air towards me in a cloud of feathers. But with the psychological pressure thus mounting, I managed to miss pheasant after pheasant, while the other guns stood waiting with nothing for them to shoot at. There was a cool absence of comment from anyone at all, when we all finally gathered at the end of the drive.

It would be wrong for me to give the impression that the hunting instinct had yet departed from me however. I can remember two occasions at least - one of them during that week-end party at Sturford with Venetia, Sally-Anne and Tony Armstrong-Jones - when we all went shooting rabbits at night on Imber firing range, perched upon the front of Henry's (far superior) Landrover. Imber by night furnishes a weird atmosphere, and we were blazing away at anything that came within the beam of the headlights. And it was quite a slaughter, so the blood lust was far from tamed within my heart. Nonetheless, it was waning; or at least ready to wane once other interests had taken root.

But this wasn't really a time for augmenting my identity with new skills and activities. Or rather I did participate in a rushed course for the recent intake of officers, to teach us how to ride. (We were after all, members of the Household Cavalry.) Within a single fortnight, we were required to accomplish a variety of equestrian skills, like making our mounts change step while cantering. We were even taught to vault into the saddle of a cantering horse, and to attempt jumps with arms folded and feet out of the stirrups. Needless to say, falls were frequent. And when wearing my father's old riding boots, which were far too tight for me around the calves, there was at least one occasion that I suffered a blackout after the bump of falling. But in any case, these weren't skills that were to be of any use to me. I hadn't ridden since childhood, and I certainly wasn't going to take it up again now.

Events like the general election at this time, which might have been expected to reveal how my inner values were evolving, were not as significant to me as others might anticipate. I think I am right in saying that at nineteen, I was still ineligible to vote. But I certainly joined in with the general spirit of rejoicing in the officers' mess, in that Atlee and his Socialists were finally driven from office. Rejoicing too fervently in effect, in that a party of us climbed into my car and went zooming past the Burning Bush, at Eton, flinging thunderflashes into a group of beaks as they assembled for Chambers. I should have realised that the number of my car would get accurately noted, so that a complaint finally reached the Colonel - who made arrangements for us all to go and deliver a personal apology to Mr Birley, the Headmaster. Quite like old times!

Despite all the spirit of rejoicing, we did probably realise how Churchill might now be a bit too old for his leadership in peacetime, to be as dynamic as it had formerly been in time of war. But these were thoughts which we preferred to keep to ourselves. It was far more a question of thinking that we were all finally back on the road for re-establishing the social order such as it had been before the war. We might all be a lot poorer as a result of the war and the subsequent Labour government. But now at last this trend was getting reversed. Or so we thought!

On the other hand I didn't really believe that the upper classes deserved to get it all back again, as good as they'd had it before. I had for some time felt a political unease concerning the more unsympathetic comments which were voiced in my presence by those who had experienced the same kind of upbringing as myself. And I did feel that, as a class, we owed one hell of a lot to others in return for past blessings. And when it came to individuals, I saw that I owed even more than that - as this tale about Nanny might indicate.

Nanny had been going through a rough patch in her life of late. Her existence had been centred around our welfare, to the exclusion of all other concerns, for more than twenty years now. She'd been housed in her own cottage in retirement, just opposite to Sturford. But it worried her in that this had recently been sold, and she wasn't yet accustomed to the new cottage - just as close to Sturford and now on the same side of the road; cosier in some respects, but different. And it's true that none of us were going to visit her quite so frequently as we formerly had done. And whether or not this contributed psychosomatically to her illness, which was something to do with an intestinal blockage, I learnt that she was in hospital in Bath, and that no one from our family had been in to see her.

I was on a brief spell of leave before the Regiment crossed over to Germany. But on learning where she was, I did go to see her - finding her in a depressed state. She appeared to think that she was dreaming when I first arrived, and it took some while before she was even responding to me. But when she finally did, it was with a pitiful gratitude. It made me feel so terrible that none of us had seen fit even to enquire about her welfare.

I decided to do something about it and, in addition to the members of my own family, I wrote to a short list of people where she had worked as a nanny in the past, hinting that she might be dying, and how I knew how much she would value a visit or even a letter from them. And I was to learn much later - after her recovery - how there was a tremendous response from them, in terms of bunches of flowers and other gifts. Nan was to make it clear to me how much she appreciated that I had put the word around, to make her feel that she was still wanted and loved by those who had once been dear to her. "I know who saved me," was her own way of expressing the matter - very softly, and without exactly looking at me. Not that I was then able to think of anything to say to that. Besides, I wouldn't have been able to, in that I had such a huge lump in my throat. But it was precisely the things we couldn't say which were all so excruciatingly eloquent.

Those first attentions that we took for granted as our due
filled the blue waters of our nursery lagoon,
attuning each in confidence and self-respect
for the next phases in life's crucial strides.
Widely scattered as we find ourselves to be,
we deal you visits - as if to a memory location,
spatially impressed, and treated spicily with affection
and respect, without the bonding of constant return.
I burn with shame that your plea for unstinting
integration on the outer fringe of our grand
family - reward expected for eclipse of ego-
trips more personal - left you bereft of company.
No matter what the coin, I am afraid
our debt to you will never be repaid.

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