'Tears Before Bedtime' and 'Weep No More'

by Barbara Skelton

  The great event of the week was the Poona race meeting, when Uncle Dudley went round to groups of moustached officers, introducing his ‘beautiful niece from England’! Should I be driven down to Bombay, I stayed with a naval commander whose sister I had met on the ship. Bombay has an intolerably humid climate. At night, one lay pouring with sweat, listening to the screech of peacocks in some nearby garden. But it was very pleasant at lunchtime, when one drank chotah pegs in the Bombay yacht club, where the atmosphere was far less stuffy than the ‘Whites Only’ Poona gatherings.

  One evening, my uncle took me to a circus and after the performance we visited the animals’ stalls, where we came across a young man stroking an elephant’s trunk. We liked him so much that my uncle invited him back to lunch. But my aunt found him callow and ill-mannered, for he had a habit of reclining on the arm of a chair and talking with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth. He was clean-shaven, moreover, and consorted with Indians.

  Charles was a captain in the Royal Engineers and had enlisted on a scholarship to please his parents. He was not at all happy in the Indian Army, wrote poetry and had a passion for T S Eliot. On my birthday, Aunt Nancie gave a big party. As a birthday present, Charles parted with his copy of Eliot’s early poems, from which he liked to read aloud. In the evenings, we sometimes dined together at a dismal Poona hotel.

  Charles had two horses, a pye-dog and a broken-down old car. We would drive into the country taking a picnic, a gramophone and his pye-dog; his syce brought up the rear with the horses and we would ride back, until one day Charles fell ill with dysentery and had to go into hospital.

  Meanwhile, Uncle Dudley, who had now and then to travel through India checking on medical supplies, was due to appear at a conference in Lucknow and decided to take me with him as co-driver. He also thought it would be a good opportunity to show me something of the Indian scene. We set off in an open Citroën, a turbaned bearded Sikh servant on the back seat with the luggage, and drove for days without seeing a living creature, except cows, or an occasional red-bearded holy man. As we drove fast through the villages, we left any washing that had been spread out on the ground coated with dust; and one had the impression that old people were being literally pushed beneath our wheels. At lunchtime, we’d picnic under a banyan tree by the side of the road and, when we had a puncture, it was Uncle Dudley who changed the tyre. After lunch, my uncle moved to the back seat to snooze. Once, when I took over and the car stalled in the middle of a river, out of nowhere a band of Indians suddenly appeared and pushed the car to the farther bank. Every evening, we would arrive dust-coated at one of the Dak houses that are posted all over India. The rooms were clean and bare, with a washbasin and a jug of lukewarm water. Outside, pecking about a dusty yard, were a few scrawny hens, one of which we ate for dinner.

  The sunsets were so beautiful, with the sky a blaze of red, that I suffered the same despair and sense of loss that had reduced me to tears in the Villa d’Este; and, wherever we arrived for the night, a letter from Charles awaited me. One night, in a rainstorm driving through a jungle, a tiger, blinded by the headlights, leapt onto the bonnet.

  Back in Poona, Charles had just come out of hospital, where he had lost a lot of weight. Monsoon time was approaching; and, as my aunt insisted I should return to England, we all drove down to Bombay and a farewell dinner took place at the Taj Mahal Hotel. The next morning, my aunt and uncle and Charles escorted me to the docks; and there I said goodbye to my relations. But Charles accompanied me onto the ship and we talked of soon meeting again, as he was determined to leave the army. Then he kissed me goodbye and the Viceroy of India sailed. When we were already far out at sea, Charles suddenly walked into my cabin; and from that moment he became a stowaway. The cabin steward befriended us and brought Charles meals from the ship’s kitchen. Sometimes we sat on deck sheltered from the wind, planning our future, and how, as soon as the ship docked in Aden, we would disembark and wend our way to Suez, and thence get back to England. The third day at sea, however, the captain received a message from Poona HQ informing him that he had a deserter on board. Some pukka sahib going home on leave had seen Charles on deck and reported it. The ship’s captain was a kind man; Charles was allowed to remain in the cabin; but, when the ship docked in Aden, he was to be put under arrest.

  It was night time and raining when the ship reached Aden, but we remained anchored well out. A patrol boat then chugged from the shore; three men boarded the ship, entered the cabin and took Charles away. I stood on deck in the drizzle and, leaning against the handrail, watched the patrol heading back until the rear light had completely vanished. I returned to the empty cabin; and henceforth was ostracised by all the Anglo-Indian passengers. But there was always the cabin steward and the captain invited me to join the other guests at his table.

  Back in India, a court martial was held, at which Uncle Dudley was obliged to appear as main witness. Charles’s long hospitalisation might have been used in his defence and a plea that he was not entirely responsible for his behaviour. He himself no doubt hoped he would merely be dismissed. In fact, he was banished to the Northwest Frontier, where the British were at war with a religious fanatic, the Fakir of Ipi, whose followers were called The Rebels.

  When I got back to England, my father had already received a letter from Uncle Dudley. I was a disgrace to the whole family, I learned, selfish and ungrateful AFTER ALL THEY HAD DONE FOR ME. Poor Nan was so upset; it had affected her health; for details of the scandal had spread throughout India, while Uncle Dudley never wished to see or hear from me again.

  A month later, when I was staying with my parents in the country, my father as usual tuned in to the six o’clock news and we heard a voice say he had a special announcement to make – on the Northwest Frontier of India, a relief force of British troops, carrying supplies, had been ambushed while passing through a narrow gorge. The convoy of officers and men had been taken by surprise and, as they climbed out of their open trucks to take cover, all shot down and killed. There were no survivors. The names of the dead officers were read out, including that of Charles Langford-Hinde.

  Back in London, I found a letter, the last Charles had written. Enclosed were several snapshots of us taken on the ship. There was one of him on deck, leaning against the handrail, smiling and seemingly careless, wearing an open-neck shirt, his hair blown about by the breeze; and one of me sitting in a deckchair, vainly engrossed in varnishing my fingernails, in preparation for our flight to Suez. His letter, written on Taj Mahal notepaper in the form of a poem, was headed On The Way To The War.

  I have been moved

  moved to the core

  of my fantastic soul

  the visit to the Viceroy proved

  most heart searching

  there was Shilston wondering

  how I knew he had a son

  offering advice as he had done

  before

  the bandsmen barmen and hordes of pursers

  and above all your cabin steward

  we talked in your cabin for a while

  of this and that but mostly you

  I think I even raised a smile

  but it was utterly dejecting

  thank god I am rejecting

  all good advice and trying to get home

  and we will meet again

  both there and in this Indian hotel I have

  been feeling things; between which and remembering them

  there is a whole world’s difference

  as the ship came in, slowly toward the pier, I might have been

  in Aden again

  the rain falling and a tug taking me away from you forlorn

  well loved standing and …

  tonight I go north

  we were supremely happy in that dreadful ship, in other

  circumstances perhaps joy

  would be too near perfection. There is always hope.

  Charles on the way north to the war.

  Chapter IV

  The
Lost Girls

  ‘They valued their independence; for they belonged to a section of war-time society whom I called “The Lost Girls”, adventurous young women who flitted around London, alighting briefly here and there, and making the best of any random perch on which they happened to descend.’

  Peter Quennell, The Wanton Chase

  I resumed modelling, at Fortnum and Mason, Stiebel and Hartnell, where I made friends with Louise who had been a model for Epstein and Augustus John. She was beautiful, wore her long hair pulled sharply back off a heart-shaped face and was very prudish, sharing the opinion of a Frenchman who once claimed sex was an undignified function for his organe noble. Louise had other affectations and a rather refined way of talking. As though to play down her physical attributes, she grimaced a great deal and when laughing covered her densely boot-blacked eyes with a rather governessy hand. She had been christened Mary, but adopted the name Louise at a time when anything French was considered to be terribly chic, and Maurice Chevalier was singing, ‘Every little breeze seems to whisper Louise … just to be near you thrills me through and through … can it be true someone like you could love me … LOUIEEESE.’

  Our favourite meeting place was the Guinea pub in the mews behind Hartnell’s, much frequented by jockeys. Beasley was rather tall for a jockey and later became a trainer. The one time he rode an outsider at enormous odds, I was not tipped off. Aunty Vera, enamoured of anything to do with a racecourse, would drive us down to stay with him in Newmarket. Beasley was an extremely generous man; even after making an abortive attempt in spotlessly pressed pyjamas to creep into my bed, he went on giving splendid presents.

  Louise was married to a painter turned art-critic for the Evening Standard and they lived in an attic studio in Charlotte Street where I was first introduced to la vie de bohème. Her husband, Michael Sevier, rarely spoke but constantly hummed. Rather than use an ashtray, he’d walk the entire length of a room in order to flick ash behind a piece of wall furniture. In the evenings, he haunted the Café Royal and stood over people humming until invited to join their table. Another habitué of the Café Royal then was Goronwy Rees. He once joined the writer Peter Quennell and me for dinner and, while Peter was engrossed in paying, managed to slip an invitation to lunch between the pages of my book.

  On her way home from Hartnell’s Louise invariably stopped off at the bar of the White Tower, and any pub-crawlers who amused her would be taken back to the studio and given a pot luck meal. The studio was invariably full of odd people. One regular, the Austrian Eugene Ledebur, had a beautiful check Tyrolean hunting jacket with knobbly leather buttons; and he gave it to me. Daddy always discouraged us from buying him a present, saying it was a waste of money; but he so much admired this garment that I gave it him; and it became known as Daddy’s jacket, and remained on him in tatters until the end of his days.

  Louise had a lover, Olgin, who had property in Berlin and used to drive her round in a flashy little sports car. At the outbreak of war he joined up in the Pioneer Corps and Louise always referred to him as poor bloody O or PBO for short. One evening, the three of us stood at the bar of the Eight Bells and Bowling Green, where we were joined by a young man Louise immediately labelled ‘Miss’ Becher, as he had a rather mincing manner. Miss Becher had a brother in the Indian Army, so he had already heard about the Poona scandal and its sad consequences. Neither handsome nor brilliant, but a thoroughly decent fellow, Miss Becher was so good natured and ready to conform we termed him Slave.

  Becher became my first serious suitor. He liked to spend his money on going to the best restaurants and introduced me to nightclubs, the Nest in Soho and the 400 in Leicester Square. At the 400, which was unlicensed to sell alcohol after a certain hour, one joined what was termed a Bottle Party and on entering the club you bought a bottle which was labelled with your name, and when you left in the early hours the level of the alcohol was scrupulously marked on the bottle for you to claim the next time you went.

  Another follower at this time was a Dutch theatrical producer who took me to Amsterdam to meet his family. His sister was an artist and a friend of Goering. Demeester wore a pince-nez and rather flamboyant clothes in the style of the late nineties. Once, in a fit of jealousy, he leapt onto the windowsill of my Cumberland Court flat and threatened to jump into the moving traffic. The third suitor was a travelling salesman. A hearty fellow who somehow lacked esprit, he would fly off to West Africa and send postcards saying ‘travelling north tomorrow’ or ’am now travelling south’.

  Silver fox-fur stoles had become a streetwalker’s get-up; so I transformed mine into a collar and cuffs and a muff to go with a sleek black coat, the remainder becoming a fur hat to which I added a peacock’s feather. One lunchtime, while walking along Berkeley Square, the Rahvis sisters engaged me by shouting down from their showroom window. But they made me model in a wig shaped like earphones and I didn’t stay there long. A hopeless model, anyway, the one person who seemed to appreciate me was Schiaparelli as my dimensions conformed to the hourglass silhouette. Once, after sacking me for remaining in Monte Carlo water-skiing instead of returning to fit an autumn collection, she reengaged me. Schiap was the most inventive designer of that period. Unlike Hartnell, whose showroom was a blaze of chandeliers, Schiap’s surroundings were very simple – plain settees with shocking pink cushions. She lived with her daughter above the fitting rooms at 36, Upper Grosvenor Street. The boutique was on the ground floor. Then, the French reckoned to be smart you had to wear black. Schiap started the colour combination of black with café au lait. She created every detail, the belts, buttons, hats and costume jewellery. The staff were all French except for a Czech tailor. Whenever I was about to twirl, the head saleslady, Madame Madeleine, would invariably exclaim, ‘Ouf! Elle est complètement VIDE, cette fille.’

  We were allowed to borrow the clothes in the evening and buy the models cheaply, at the end of each season. One ankle-length coat I bought, already ordered and rejected by Marlene Dietrich, had an enormous beaver collar and hem, but proved so hampering whenever I ran to catch a bus that the fur was lopped off and made into a jacket which years later was still being worn in a hamseen in the Sinai desert.

  Schiap’s model girls were very mixed. There was one pig-faced American, Sally, very tall and chic; a Danish beauty, married to Adrian Conan Doyle,* who kept a cobra that they fed on live rabbits; and a Russian, Luba. But the most beautiful girl was a Norwegian called Gerda, who had been a Ziegfeld Follies showgirl. Blonde and blue-eyed like my mother, they had similar values in life. One was that you should marry for money, though neither of them was tough enough to attain her ambition.

  It was about this time that I bought a cottage in Kent for £400. There was a garden back and front with damson and apple trees. In springtime it was filled with clumps of daffodils and scented narcissi. The cottage was oak-beamed and, on Daddy’s advice, a porch was built on with seats and painted white. The upstairs rooms had dormer windows. A path led up to a white gate that opened into a lane bordered by meadowsweet. Opposite, on a slightly higher level, was a field; and, when approached from the field, Cot appeared to have a face, the dormer windows being hooded watchful eyes. From my bed, I could see the farmer tilling with a horse-drawn tractor and as the wheels turned the tractor made a clicking noise like the latch of the gate being opened, so that I would rush to the window to see whom it could be. The only visitor, in fact, might be PC Boot. His constabulary was about five miles away and he liked to drop in to keep an eye on things. Having propped his bicycle against the hedge, he would stamp up the garden path, pausing now and then with his hands on his hips to gaze quizzically down at the unruly flowerbeds. ‘Been digging, mate, I see,’ he’d say; ‘I was just passing and I brought these,’ and he’d produce a smelly bag, out of which he tilted some home-grown runner beans. He was a big man with enormous buttocks and sticking-out ears, and he walked with splayed feet like a duck. Should any friend arrive to stay Boot always addressed him as ‘Gov’.

&
nbsp; Weekends, Gerda and I and her chow dog, Bumpser, would drive down in Gerda’s open blue Fiat. We would set off along the Old Kent Road; shop on the way in Wye, then drive on to Hastinglea, the closest village to Cot that consisted of nothing but a public house and a general store, Tappendens, where you could find anything from a corkscrew to a bag of dates. From Hastinglea, one descended into a wooded valley redolent of fox and stink-fungus, rooks squawking overhead. At the bottom was a deserted cricket pitch and a stone ruin. Then one mounted a steep incline with meadows either side full of browsing cows. Round a sharp bend at the top stood a Gothic church, filled with stone effigies of the Honeywell family. The churchyard was dominated by a ninety-year-old yew tree, its branches supported by ropes. At Elmstead crossroad was a large farm and a three-forked sign-post indicating the way to Canterbury, Wye and Hythe; then, up the garden path. On either side of the open fireplace in the sitting room were built-in cupboards; there was a wall-to-wall carpet, a sofa covered in chocolate glazed chintz … bookshelves. A gramophone. A calypso group. The Inkspots …‘Do I worry when the ice-man calls … Do I worry when you stay home every night and read your magazines … Do I lose any sleep over you … You know GODDAMNED well I dooooooooooooooo.’

  One evening, I was sitting in a corner of the bar in the Berkeley Hotel, awaiting Becher, when a Rhett Butler figure swung past trailing a pair of dachshunds. With a flashing smile that later earned him the pseudonym ‘the Grinning Ape’, he came over to announce we had met at some party. As well as womanising, photography turned out to be his prime pursuit. He became a regular visitor to Cot, driving down in a girlfriend’s roadster, bringing goodies from Fortnum and Mason, and records. In those days, one walked a lot. There was a charming pub with a log fire, run by Mr Fox, that we termed the Foxhole, an ideal distance across the fields for a pre-luncheon drink. With the threat of war, the Grinning Ape joined up in the Supply Corps. He looked even more dashing in uniform. While training in the north, he wrote suggesting I put our names down in the Caxton Hall Registry. Happily, I did not take this proposal seriously. Soon after Gerda and I, on opening a newspaper, saw him grinning beside the roadster, about to drive away on his honeymoon. As soon as he got back, he came tearing round anticipating an amorous renewal; and Gerda forever after referred to him as ‘That Bastard’.