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Back to Swinbrook
B
Y APRIL 1931, Farve’s finances had improved enough for us to return to Swinbrook. For me this meant freedom to go riding again without meeting anyone, to fish on the Windrush and follow Farve on his rounds of the woods and farms. In the schoolroom, Decca and I had Miss Hussey, another product of the PNEU system and by far the best teacher we ever had. Each term we had to learn a hymn, a psalm and a poem, and at the end of term we recited our choices to Muv – and anyone else who would listen. It was normally easy to bamboozle a new governess; we simply turned the pages of the relevant book till we came up with the pieces we had learned the previous term (the hymn book fell open readily at ‘Now the Day is Over’) and off we went. My mother never noticed the repetition but when Miss Hussey arrived there was no fooling her and, to our annoyance, she made us learn new pieces. My poem was ‘The Lament of the Irish Emigrant’ by Selina Dufferin. The first lines, ‘I’m sittin’ on the stile, Mary / Where we sat side by side / On a bright May mornin’ long ago / When first you were my bride’, made me cry, but I learnt to look on it as a game and was able to go on – just. Decca chose Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Annabel Lee’, which she spouted at a tremendous rate, running all the words into one. There were so-called exams at the end of the summer term but I often managed to have flu at the appointed time. Luckily Muv was not interested in exams. In 1932 our ordered life received a shock when after four years of marriage Diana left Bryan for Sir Oswald Mosley. Sir O had been a political figure since the age of twenty-one, first as a Conservative and then as a Labour MP. He had resigned in 1930 because of his disillusionment with Ramsay MacDonald’s failure to deal with unemployment. Supremely confident that he himself had the answers to Britain’s economic problems, he was about to launch the British Union of Fascists when he and Diana met.
Muv and Farve did not talk about Diana in front of us younger children; it was not the way then – any disagreeable subject was discussed privately. I was conscious of some pall of sorrow and anger affecting my parents, but was barely aware of the reason. Sir O was married with three young children and had no intention of leaving his wife. My parents were dismayed when Diana openly became his mistress and were shocked that Bryan was named the guilty party in her divorce. Bryan went through the motions of spending a night with a prostitute in a Brighton hotel, which in those days was how many divorces were arranged, but Muv and Farve considered it dishonest. Bryan was miserable about the separation – nothing could have been further from his wishes – but Diana was a forceful character and had decided on her future. My parents continued to see her and her two Guinness sons, Jonathan and Desmond, and she often came to Swinbrook, spending Christmas with us there in 1934. But Decca and I were not allowed to visit her at her house in Eaton Square because she was ‘living in sin’ (now so ordinary – you ‘take a partner’ as though going into business). It never occurred to us to question Muv and Farve’s wishes and it is why I did not get to know Diana until after the war.
In April 1932 Tom qualified as a barrister and was called to the Bar. He began the slow process of getting briefs and making a name for himself in the chambers of Norman Birkett KC. He had many girlfriends. The first, Penelope (Pempie) Dudley Ward, was the prettiest, most lively and charming girl imaginable. They were both too young to think of marriage but remained friends until Tom’s death. He moved on to more sophisticated women, most of whom were married and did not threaten his independence. They never came to Swinbrook, for obvious reasons, and Tom was discreet about his private life. Diana knew of his various friendships but she was not one to betray confidences.
Nancy was leading her unsettled life, staying away with willing hosts but still dependent on my parents for a home. She began writing, at first short articles for The Lady, which had been handed on by Grandfather Bowles to Uncle George. Her usual fee was £2 and sometimes £3, which caused much rejoicing. Articles for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar followed but they did not provide a regular income. Things were made more difficult by Farve’s passionate dislike of any reference to us in the papers, so Nancy had to hide these whenever she had anything published. In 1931 her first novel, Highland Fling, was well received by the reading public and brought in a little more money. Decca and I were excited to see the finished book and thought the portrait of Farve as General Murgatroyd highly comical. There was a pile of the book at W. H. Smith in High Wycombe with a big notice announcing ‘Local Authoress’, which we also thought funny.
Nancy’s rocky affair with Hamish Erskine dragged on, but after four years he grew tired of what was for him a charade and he broke it off by telling Nancy he was engaged to someone else. Nancy may have half expected it, but it was nevertheless a cruel blow. Diana understood her miserable existence and gave her a room at Eaton Square. Almost at once Nancy met Peter Rodd. It was a classic case of the rebound, but she believed herself to be truly in love. I wrote in my diary on 14 July 1933 that Nancy had sent me the most extraordinary letter, and that I could hardly believe it. In it she said that she was ‘perhaps’ going to be married to ‘a very choice’ person and wanted me to be the first to know. ‘I love him a most terrific lot,’ she wrote. ‘If we can get some money we shall marry, and if we can’t we shan’t and that’s why it’s an important secret because if we don’t it’s a bore if everyone knows.’ I am afraid I told Miss Hussey and Decca, but swore them to secrecy so that when Nancy announced the news they would pretend they knew nothing.
I liked Peter. He talked to me as he would to a grown-up, which was unusual – at thirteen you were still considered very much a child. The wedding was an excitement for Decca and me, particularly after missing Diana’s. I thought carefully about what to wear and decided on a midnight-blue velvet dress. The stuff, as always, came from John Lewis, and Gladys, my mother’s retired maid who ran up our clothes, did her best. The dress was to have a fur collar made from an unknown creature with jaws that snapped on to its tail to fasten it. It had been given to me by an aunt and I thought it most glamorous. I proudly showed it to Nancy a few days before the wedding. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I see you’ve got a mouse’s skin at last.’ Down went self-esteem once more and furs were ‘mouse’s skins’ thereafter.
Nancy and Peter went to live at Rose Cottage, Strand-on-the-Green, near Chiswick. It seemed an idyllic start but it was not long before the marriage began to falter. Nancy did her best to keep up appearances but Prod, as she called Peter, was no good at marriage – he lived from hand to mouth, never held down a job and disappeared for long periods. After the outbreak of war things got worse. He started bringing drunken pick-ups back from the pub who were prone to steal any money left around. Nancy was miserable.
After leaving St Margaret’s, Unity briefly attended Queen’s College in London. She enjoyed it but, once again, was asked to leave. Years later I met one of her school friends and asked why. ‘Because she plucked her eyebrows,’ was the reply. It is more likely that Unity’s huge personality was too much for the staff. She ‘came out’ in 1932 and Decca described her in this her first year of grown-up life as ‘a rather alarming debutante’. The round of dances took place and Unity went as was expected. Legend has it that she sometimes took her rat, but legends cannot be relied upon.
Her great new friend was Mary Ormsby Gore and they used to meet under the clock at Selfridges to go to the cinema. Unity was always punctual, Mary always late. Unity said she got flat feet from waiting but that it was worth it. She adored the cinema and often went to the Empire in Leicester Square as soon as it opened in the morning, and sometimes stayed to watch the whole programme through two or three times. She invited friends to spend the weekend at Swinbrook who were called the ‘Saturday afternooners’ by my mother, because by that time Unity was bored with them and poor Muv had to entertain them as best she could for the rest of their stay. One or two remained friends, among them the writer Micky Burn, a stalwart defender of the alarming debutante.
Unity first went to German
y in 1933 with Diana, who had been invited by Hitler’s press chief, Putzi Hanfstaengl, with the promise that he would introduce her to the newly appointed Chancellor. Both Diana and Unity were enthralled by the wave of enthusiasm that was gripping Germany, but for Unity National Socialism came as a call. In adolescence her difficult character had been waiting for just such an outlet and now that she had found one, she threw herself into it with religious fervour. She saw in Hitler the saviour of a country that had been humiliated by defeat, whose economy was in ruins and whose people were demoralized. Germany took up her whole being. With her blonde hair and blue eyes, Unity even embodied the Nazi ideal of womanhood and her classic face, till now always serious in photographs, was suddenly lit from within. Having discovered that Hitler often lunched or dined at the Osteria Bavaria, a small restaurant in Munich, she went there day after day in the hopes of seeing him. (She would be arrested as a stalker today.) In February 1935, Hitler eventually noticed her and sent someone across the room to invite her to his table. It sealed her fate.
Unity’s life has been gone over by journalists and biographers, but they often miss the fact that she was not the only English girl to fall for National Socialism. Her uncompromising nature took her to further extremes than most but there were many other girls who, like her, were sent to Germany as part of their education and were swept up by the movement. Away from home for the first time and hungry for new experiences, they were almost without exception fascinated by what they saw and thrilled by the excitement that surrounded Hitler. At their impressionable age, the music and glamour were infectious. Among these girls was our cousin Clementine Mitford who struck up a close friendship with an SS officer (an episode in her life that was conveniently forgotten after her marriage to Alfred Beit).
Decca left home when she was sixteen to learn French in Paris with her best friend and cousin, Ann Farrer. I imagine Muv and Farve debated as to what to do with me now that I was the only one left in the schoolroom. Money was becoming a worry once again and it was less expensive for me to go as a weekly boarder to a school in Oxford than to have a governess. One of my great friends, Lilah McCalmont, was already at the school, which would have made everything easier. Unluckily she was ill at the start of the autumn term, so off I went alone. The school was in the Banbury Road where it occupied two gaunt Victorian houses – a couple of rabbit warrens with no escape. It was crowded with pupils who greeted each other like a Joyce Grenfell reunion, ignoring the new girl who had no idea of what to do or where to go. At the age of fourteen, I felt at home with animals but was nervous of people, and this building crammed with strangers was the worst kind of misery.
The house smelt strongly of lino, girls and fish. The smell flowed up the stairs and lodged under the ceiling of the attic room that I shared with Lilah’s empty bed. I was miserable – no dog, no pony, no Nanny. Supper the first night was cod, encased in a thick blanket of black skin – horrible to look at and revolting to taste. The second night it was hot blackberries. Even now, over three-quarters of a century later, I can still smell those hateful suppers. I arrived at the school on a Wednesday and went home for the weekend on Friday. By that time I had fainted in geometry, failed to understand the point of netball and been sick several times. Muv kept me at home for a few days and I begged her not to send me back to that hell-hole. We came to a compromise: I would go back for the rest of the term (it was already paid for and it was too late to make other arrangements) but as a day girl.
So it was me instead of the eggs that arrived at Shipton Station every morning for the stopping train to Oxford, and came back at teatime – both journeys in the dark. I have never ceased to be thankful to Muv for allowing it. My aunts and most of her friends said it would be the ruin of me, ‘So spoilt, that girl will be impossible.’ But Muv stuck to the plan and I survived. At the end of that awful term, she understood that another experiment at another school would end in more tears, so Miss Frost, a nice, steady governess, came to teach me. Celia Hay, the daughter of friends of Muv, joined me and we did lessons together.
In 1935 Farve’s money worries came to a head. Swinbrook House and its estate were extravagances he could not afford, and in April the house was let to Duncan and Pamela Mackinnon. Three years later it was sold to them, together with all the land. I minded more than I can say. I have seen it happen elsewhere, when children are uprooted from the place they love just when they are at their most vulnerable, when all their antennae are out and they have become almost physically attached to a house and its surroundings: the loss of all that is familiar is a kind of amputation. As one who becomes hopelessly addicted to sticks and stones, gateways with their ruts and puddles, anthills, thrushes, freshwater springs, kingcups, dog roses and may (soon to be hips and haws), wood anemones under oaks, silent woods in August, milk-white walnuts in autumn, the smell of new creosote on chicken houses, saddle soap and horse manure – having to abandon all these made leaving Swinbrook, ‘the land of lost content’, hard to bear.
The prospect of the upheaval no doubt occupied my parents for months beforehand. This time there could be no compromise: it was hard cash – or the lack of it – which decided the sale. Unhappy myself, it never occurred to me how much Farve must have minded the finality of losing the last link with his father’s Oxfordshire legacy. Unity understood and wrote to him in May 1935, ‘Poor old Forge, I AM sorry you have had to leave Swinbrook . . . I’m sorry for myself too because although I didn’t like living there, it was lovely to come back to. But I do think it’s dreadful for you.’
After leaving Swinbrook, we moved between London and High Wycombe. I went to the Monkey Club, a ‘finishing school’ off Sloane Street, for a few months. It was not a domestic-science kind of place: we attended lectures on politics, history, art and the other subjects thought necessary to be tucked away in our bird brains for future reference. I met Georgina (Gina) Wernher, who became a friend for life through shared interests, including a passion for hunting; and the beautiful Ayesha of Cooch Behar, who later married the Maharaja of Jaipur and pursued a political career in her own country, surviving a spell in prison in the 1970s. I planned to marry all the Maharajas in India and, failing that, the President of Turkey with the irresistible name of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
Lessons over at last, I lived for pleasure. I refused to go to Paris to learn French, horrified at the idea of missing a season’s hunting, and never did learn the language. The only time I minded this uncivilized gap was when I was invited to a grand dinner in Paris years later and sat next to Georges Pompidou. He could not (or would not) speak English. We smiled at each other and crumbled bread for what seemed an endless evening. Our host, Nancy’s friend Gaston Palewski, sat opposite and was highly amused – I think he may have done it as a joke.
I spent the winter of 1936–7 with Aunt Weenie and Uncle Percy Bailey in their tiny cottage at Maugersbury by Stow-on-the-Wold, and hunted twice a week with the Heythrop. Hooper and my horse lodged in Stow. He rode down in the morning, stopped outside my bedroom window – which was the same height as he was on the horse – and we discussed plans. It was out hunting that I first met Derek Jackson and became fascinated by this strange being who rode unruly thoroughbreds with short leathers, like the jockey he aspired to be. The older, steadier followers of the hounds were deeply suspicious of him. Derek owned some steeplechasers, trained by Bay Powell, which he often rode himself and I persuaded Pam to take me to Windsor races where I knew Derek would be riding. They fell in love and were married in December 1936. I was mortified, having decided that in a few years I would marry Derek myself.
While Pam and Derek were on honeymoon his identical twin, Vivian, was killed in a sleigh accident in St Moritz. Derek never recovered from this tragedy. Not only did the brothers look alike and talk alike, they both loved riding, had a total disregard of what others thought of them and followed the same scientific speciality – spectroscopy. I only once saw them together. ‘I agree with Derek,’ ‘I agree with Vivian,’ I heard them r
epeat, with a quack and a grunt for emphasis, in hoarse and breathless voices that seemed to emerge – all passages to the nose closed – from deeper throats than anyone else’s.
Pam’s marriage brought happiness to begin with, though being married to Derek was never an easy proposition. He was vital, generous, courageous, bisexual, unfaithful, unpredictable, rich – and therefore able to indulge every whim – and he was also rude and loved to shock. He must have been an embarrassing companion at times and Pam was witness to many scenes. They were at Paddington Station one day to catch a train to Oxford and found all the doors into the first-class carriages locked – the kind of incompetence that drove Derek into a rage. They had to walk along the platform and through a third-class carriage to find their seats. Derek waited till the train had got up steam then pulled the communication cord. The brakes went on and the express train ground to a halt. The guard entered their carriage but before he had time to speak, Derek held up his right hand, his pale suede glove blackened by the dirty chain. He told the guard that it was a disgrace to the GWR and that the glove must be taken and cleaned immediately. On another occasion he was riding in a race at Sandown Park and, not unusually for him, committed an infringement of some rule. He was had up before the stewards who fined him £20. Derek handed the chief steward a £100 note and told him to keep the change.
Derek worked at the Clarendon Laboratory in Oxford under Professor Lindemann and lectured at Oxford University. He and Pam lived at Rignell, an undistinguished twentieth-century house built of the almost orange stone that is quarried on the borders of Oxfordshire and Warwickshire. The furniture came from Heal’s and Derek’s fine collection of Impressionist paintings decorated the walls. Pam added her own touches and persuaded him to buy a hauntingly romantic picture by Corot of a pool in a wood, the shimmering green of the trees reflecting mysteriously in the water. She also reigned in the garden and on the farm. Her naturally calm nature could alter in a flash if anyone was thoughtless with the animals. In the great frost of 1940, when the farmhands had been called up, a couple of lads were left in charge of the cattle and horses. Pam found the tank that supplied water to the heifers frozen solid. ‘Oh,’ shrugged the boy looking after the cattle, ‘they’re all right, they’ll lick the ice.’ ‘How do you know?’ Pam exploded, ‘you’ve never been an in-calf heifer.’
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