Basia Briggs on Writing Memoir

Basia Briggs is a luminary of the London social scene and a distinguished fundraiser, having played a fundamental part in the installation of the Queen Mother’s Gate in 1993 and the regeneration of Hyde Park Corner. She has written for various publications including The Telegraph and the Daily Mail. Born in London, she emigrated briefly to Australia before returning to Sloane Square where she now resides. Her book MOTHER ANGUISH came out recently. 

My publisher Naim Attallah of Quartet Books understands women better than any other man on earth. Apart from his formidable intellect and eminent business brilliance, his passion and hobby appears to be the humanitarian study of womankind.

He is tall, handsome, powerful and fearless, he spreads joy wherever he goes. It is rare to find such a man who adores women and only wishes them well with lots of happiness and success in all aspects of their lives. I was spectacularly lucky to meet such a man as Naim at the most despairing and suicidal time of my life.

Some time previously I had formed a deep attachment to a man called Daniel Topolski and we were deliriously happy for thirteen years but to our horror he became sick and died on February 21st 2015. He had been ill before with Leukaemia but always rallied after treatment and I was in denial about the possibility of him not being with me forever.

When he died my grief was so harrowing I roared like an animal, as I had not been there to hold his hand. I went without food, didn’t wash and lay suffering and curled up in my room for days. It was three weeks before I left the house and that was only to go to his funeral where I stood solitary, a distance from the church and watched my beloved’s coffin being brought in and then carried out an hour later.

I have little recollection of the following weeks except that I did not think it was possible for a person to survive such a level of deranged pain and in truth, I did not want to live. The overwhelming sense of loss missing the constant daily telephone contact was beyond pain and I existed automatically and without reason or hope.

I was encouraged by friends to travel and break the cycle of my grief so
I went to Thailand but once the plane had levelled after take-off I burst into tears as I was so hoping it would crash and put me out of my misery.

Travelling served no purpose as he wouldn’t be there when I returned home, to meet me at the airport and hear an account of my adventures.

In London, I tried giving parties and distracting myself but nothing worked. It was to no purpose as he had always attended my gatherings and now he was gone.

I therefore hold an unparalleled debt to Naim for scooping me up at this time and cajoling me forcefully to pull myself together and write. Naim is not a man to be argued with, so I did as I was told and he was proved right. His kindness restored my faith in human nature.

I wrote my memoir from my earliest recollections and on analysing my life I see that even my childhood was blighted with grief. Firstly I was sent away aged five to a fearsome Catholic nunnery as my parents divorced and I was a burden for my mother so I was very sad. I cried and pined terribly being separated from my loving grandparents. My Grandfather was so kind and my Granny so dignified and calm. In old age she did not wear her hair in a short grey bubble perm like other Grannies, she kept her hair long and twisted it up into an elegant chignon with a little twirl on top and I was very proud of her.

The comedian Dave Allen referred to nuns as ‘The Gestapo in drag’ and he wasn’t far wrong. Homesick little girls of our tender age were regaled with constant savage stories containing the goriest of details about the death of poor Jesus and how he had to carry his enormous cross miles through the town, with a bleeding face due to a crown of thorns being jammed onto his head. It took three hours for him to die after being crucified on top of a high hill, having had long nails driven through his hands and feet. Finally, a Roman soldier got fed up waiting for his death as he wanted to go home and have his dinner so he stabbed Jesus in the abdomen with a long spear while Mary Magdalen stood beneath and collected drops of his blood in a bowl.

Furthermore, in class, we were taught about the gruesome martyrdom of the saints. Endless hours of fire and slaughter. I particularly remember one rainy afternoon in the winter, looking out the window and waiting for the lesson to finish while solemnly listening to how poor Saint Margaret Cliterhow was forced to lie on a sharp rock, underneath a huge heavy wooden door which was placed upon her and then countless rocks were thrown on top of it until she died slowly and everyone could see her blood and guts squelching in all directions from beneath the door.

All us little pupils were reduced to tears and the nuns liked our suffering as they believed it made us good Catholics. Not to mention poor Bishop Ridley and others who were burned alive at the stake and the dreadful smell of burning flesh and screams!

The Catholic Church, though it smells wonderfully of incense, is responsible for dreadfully disturbing young impressionable minds. Never during out schooling was it mentioned that one day we would grow into adulthood and marry. Cooking was not taught, we were only to revere the Catholicism and learn a lot of Latin.

Whenever we misbehaved we were punished with blows to the head or forced to go out and weed a playing field and not allowed back until we had collected a full bucket of weeds. I remember once doing this all alone in the pouring rain in winter.

Was this really what my family were paying good money for, to educate me? Having endured the war, they were gentle people. My father’s favourite film was ‘The Court Jester’ a lovely comedy starring Danny Kaye and my Grandfather adored all the Norman Wisdom films about a lovable simpleton who sang beautiful songs.

My Mother was a bit wild socially, very pretty, rather promiscuous, but always cheerful and kindly. She told me funny jokes and the rest of the time she drank champagne, but you can read all about that in my book!

I also write about her two elderly lovers. They were both so kind to me, one was called Mr Kieconski and he always referred to himself as my chauffeur as he frequently drove me back to boarding school on a Sunday night. One day during the week, he must have been in the vicinity and so he dropped a box of chocolates off for me at the front door with a little note “From your chauffeur.” The headmistress nun showed them to me with a disapproving stare and I was not allowed to eat them and share them with my friends.

I was told I could pick them up and take them home with me on Friday night, but I never saw them again. Mr Kieconski died suddenly of a heart attack and I was griefstricken and felt very lost.

The other lover was Mr Henryk. He was a widower and every Saturday he would go to his wife Dorina’s grave in Brompton Cemetery and tend the flowers. Ever since the age of six I enjoyed going with him and would run to the tap with a watering can and bring it back to him to make the grave look pretty. In his bedroom above the mantelpiece he had a huge portrait of his wife with an eternal little red candle flame underneath burning non-stop. Whenever the anniversary of his wife’s death came around he would organise a small service with a priest around his wife’s grave and afterwards everyone would be invited back to his place where dry biscuits were passed around as a sign of mourning.

The rest of the time he was a ball of fun and I adored him. He must have been lonely as he was desperate to marry my mother and be a father to me but Mr Henryk died one Christmas Eve of a heart attack and was then buried in that same grave as Dorina. More shocking grief, I was left in a distraught daze.

My Mother then married an ugly rich old man for his money with a view to him also dying as soon as possible. She taught me that widowhood is the most desired state for a woman and marriage was the most miserable state
a woman could endure. A couple of times she tried to gas him as he lay sleeping. I worried myself sick about her delinquent behaviour and it did me good to write about it in my book ‘Mother Anguish.’ No-one but no-one understood what I went through with her and thanks to Naim Attallah I have written it all out of me.

When I left school after my ‘O’ levels I had a year of living with my Mother and Stefan her husband who never spoke to me. However, I mixed with a trendy crowd, had plenty of admirers and had no doubt that I would make a splendid marriage, but not necessarily to one of those chinless wonders who spent their time shooting birds and running the country. My ambition was a great house near Sloane Square and a fashionable glamorous life dressed in Chanel and Christian Dior.

When I was seventeen and headstrong I had a holiday romance and got pregnant. It all went wrong and I ended up in a dreary suburb in Melbourne, Australia. I married a man called Graham who had nothing to recommend him except his handsome looks. He installed me in a brick veneer house that as freezing in winter and sweltering in summer. I had no phone, car, washing machine or dryer or television until an elderly couple took pity on me and gave me their old one.

They also bought me a heater as Melbourne winters are very cold. Apart from that everyone disliked and resented me as Graham’s parents had never been in an aeroplane, mistrusted foreigners and saw no reason to travel or read books. They even never bought newspapers, though they listened to the radio. Simple people leading simple lives but suspicious and hostile to outsiders like myself.

The brutal reality of being stuck 12,000 miles away from home with no money to escape struck such terror into my heart that I thought it would break. I got a dog which I loved with all my heart but it got run over and I grieved bitterly. I grieved and pined for my family and to this day I still have nightmares. Graham hated me as I wouldn’t adapt to the Australian way of life and wife-swapping parties. He drank constantly and talked uneducated rubbish and made my life as miserable as possible.

His friends regarded me with jealousy and malice as none of them had ever been on a plane. Whenever I spoke of my life in London, they glowered.

I tried to make the best of it and make my house bearably pretty but it was funny when I hung net curtains underneath the main drapes and Graham was furiously scornful, saying he had never seen such a thing. Why couldn’t I be normal and have plastic Venetian blinds like everyone else? Which were far more practical as that is what his parents had.
They had no curtains at all, just a 12-inch strip of fabric hanging on either side ‘just for show’.

I accepted life’s sorrows and hardships with a sort of helpless fury, having been institutionalised since early childhood at the convent so I was accustomed to being punished and so I learned to be secretive and crafty with secret thoughts and silent observations, waiting for an opportunity to escape with my two babies.

And so it came to pass that one night Graham was arrested for drink driving and lost his licence. I immediately took driving lessons and took possession of his car. I got a job in a health club / gym although I had no experience whatsoever in that sphere but I lied and was believed.

Two days later a handsome and glamorous politician called Sir Billy Snedden visited the club as he was touring the district on a goodwill mission. A posse of photographers followed him and as I shyly stood with the other staff by the wall. Suddenly I was approached by one of them and asked to pose with Sir Billy on an exercise bicycle and I accepted readily much to the jealousy of my workmates.

The photo appeared in all of the next day’s papers. The photographer then came calling at the gym with some prints for me and obviously in the mood for a flirtation. We had coffee and I told him I was trying to earn some
money to escape from this awful place. He gave me a bit of confidence and suggested I try modelling. I approached an agent in the city and life changed overnight.

A few weeks later I was sent on an assignment featuring about twenty other models to do a commercial. I was still feeling timorous and uncertain with all these professional beauties and again stood leaning against the wall watching the filming from a distance.

All of a sudden, an effeminate enthusiastic chap came rushing up to me and started fluffing my hair. I was a bit startled but distinctly remember him saying ” You have been chosen, this is your big chance ” and indeed, it was.

A full face segment in a commercial on prime time television shown daily. Having a Slavic face I was thereafter much in demand. I earned a lot of money and ran away with one suitcase and a child under each arm.

God took pity on a sad girl and I firmly believe in the power of prayer and of fate.

Goodness knows what happened to all those parochial persons I left behind, I never gave them a second thought.

Life moves on apace and who knows what the future will bring. I still yearn for my dead love and am crippled with despair but he is gone from me forever. I hope the sharpness of pain will dim with time, it will never get better but I hope I shall get better at it.

And the next person who suggests that I buy myself a dog will get a punch in the face.

—

Basia Briggs is a luminary of the London social scene and a distinguished fundraiser, having played a fundamental part in the installation of the Queen Mother’s Gate in 1993 and the regeneration of Hyde Park Corner. She has written for various publications including The Telegraph and the Daily Mail. Born in London, she emigrated briefly to Australia before returning to Sloane Square where she now resides.

About MOTHER ANGUISH

A GRIPPING NO-HOLDS-BARRED ORIGIN STORY FROM ONE OF LONDON’S MOST BELOVED SOCIALITES

In this candid memoir Basia lays bare the many vicissitudes of her youth and examines her tumultuous relationship with her mother; a dazzling, riotous and truly eccentric character with an explosive dark side

Following a bucolic childhood in rural Surrey among her extensive Polish family, Basia moved to London, living with her glamorous mother Camilla and a string of surrogate fathers. Abandoned to her own devices after Camilla’s remarriage, she quickly rose to become a teenage ‘it girl’ of high society, aspiring to marry into aristocracy. However, this was not to be, as an unplanned pregnancy and fall from grace led to her shelving any dreams of self-advancement and emigrating to Australia.

Trapped in an unhappy marriage in a dismal and isolated suburb of Melbourne, her increasingly unhinged mother soon followed her and the situation deteriorated, leaving Basia surrounded by alcoholism, abuse and death while trying to protect her two young children.

Following a narrow escape and lengthy custody proceedings, Basia’s story is one of redemption, as she has reclaimed the life that misfortune dispossessed and has been one of the leading lights of London society, and no stranger to the royal household, throughout the many years since.

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing