Wait for Me!

by Deborah Devonshire

  That was the start. During the months of July and August my four greatest friends were killed. Mark Howard was the first to go, hit by shellfire on 2 July near a village called Marcelet, north-west of Caen. (Billy replaced him as Company commander.) Then Ned Fitzmaurice, aged just twenty-two, was killed on 11 August in a hail of machine-gun fire as he was leading his platoon. ‘He was game to the last,’ wrote a Lance Corporal in his regiment, ‘no one could ever imagine him to possess the guts he had. I only wish a good many more could have had half of his, he is the gamest little lad I have ever seen. His first time in battle and Second-in-Command of the Company that morning.’ Nine days later Ned’s elder brother, Charlie, was blown up with his tank in Italy. He had been in the Middle East and Africa and away from his family and friends for years. He was posted as ‘missing’, giving false hope to his mother. His body was never found. On 12 August Dicky Cecil, aged twenty-two, a Sergeant Pilot in the RAF, died from injuries suffered in a motorbike accident in this country. The deaths of these four, so soon to be followed by Billy, left their family and friends numb.

  Tom had gone through the North African campaign and thence to Italy, where in January 1944 he happened to meet Andrew. He found him sitting by the side of a road brewing tea with his Company. ‘Tell Debo that he was very cheerful,’ Tom wrote to Muv the next day. Tom gave Andrew some chocolate and a bottle of whisky, and they parted. Tom returned to England at the beginning of July 1944 and enrolled on a course at the Staff College in Camberley. His friendship with János and Teddy Almásy, and others in Germany, made him recoil at the idea of being part of the victorious army that would advance through Germany to finish the job. He asked to be transferred to the Devonshire Regiment, which was engaged against the Japanese in Burma. It must have been a wrench to leave his old comrades of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps but it was his decision.

  He arrived in Burma on 22 February 1945 and three weeks later was appointed Brigade Major. He knew not a soul in his new regiment, but the fact that they were face to face with the Japanese Army was good enough for him. Five weeks after his arrival he was hit by a burst of machine-gun fire from the enemy position. He was taken, still conscious, to the regimental aid post and operated on to remove a bullet that had penetrated his neck and lodged in his spine. He died six days later on 30 March and is buried near the Irrawaddy River, north-west of Mandalay.

  Muv was at Inch Kenneth when the news came and Farve broke it to her in a telegram. ‘I do not know how to tell you this,’ he began. Tom’s commanding officer sent a letter to my parents: ‘It would be difficult to imagine a better regimental soldier,’ he wrote.

  He had courage, an iron sense of duty, an immense capacity for work, perfect manners and an unfailing interest in all the details of soldiering which can be so tedious and are yet so important for the efficiency and happiness of the battalion. Tom was not the easiest of men to get on with. He held strong views which he defended with skill and wit and he did not suffer fools gladly: but those to whom he gave his confidence and affection will have to travel far before they find a better or more loyal friend.

  At the end of the war, a memorial to Tom was installed above my parents’ pew in Swinbrook Church, and I am glad it is there for all to see. It is my lasting regret that I did not know my brother better.

  After D-Day, Muv and Unity were given permission to go to Inch Kenneth, where I joined them in August 1944. It was misery. Farve, who had spent much of the war on the island, sat stony-faced at table while Margaret’s trite remarks about what she had heard on the news dampened any attempts at conversation. It was hard to believe that Farve was the same man who, whenever one of us children made a critical remark about Muv, used to get up from his dining-room chair at Swinbrook and rush round to tell her that her hair was molten gold and that she was more beautiful than the day. (It used to make us laugh – she was well past middle age and was indifferent to her appearance.) Now he seemed to hate her. Instead of joining us after supper, he washed up with Margaret. There were no more jokes. Muv’s piano was silent. It was no longer her house.

  Unity’s odd behaviour added to the strained atmosphere. She summoned Muv and me to the island’s ruined chapel one day, wound a sheet round her waist as a cassock and pretended to be a clergyman taking the service. She forgot the words to the ‘Te Deum’ and ‘Jubilate’ and stumped back to the house, angry with herself and us for witnessing these shortcomings. It was all unbearably sad and the feeling of wretchedness was intensified by the isolation of the island; there was no one to talk to and nowhere to go – no cinema for Unity, no club for Farve, no antique shops for Muv. What should have been an idyllic place for a summer holiday was a kind of hell.

  Recently a young journalist came to interview me about what I was doing the day war broke out. During the course of the interview, I recounted the deaths of my only brother, Andrew’s only brother, a brother-in-law and my four best friends. ‘So,’ she said, ‘did the war affect you in any way?’

  10

  Childbirths and Deaths

  Y

  OU MIGHT THINK having a baby is a natural function that happens when women wish it – and sometimes when they do not. But unforeseen hazards arise and things can change quickly from good to bad. When Andrew and I were first married, the false calm of the Phoney War was over and we did not know when he would be ordered abroad or whether either of us was likely to survive. We both wanted children and there was no question of postponement. We never imagined that everything might not go according to plan. Almost immediately a baby was on the way and, like so many of our friends and contemporaries, we were happily anticipating the birth. Andrew’s battalion was stationed in Hertfordshire at the time and we were living in a rented house at Shenley. I booked into Lady Carnarvon’s nursing home, the Claridges of such places, which had been evacuated from London to Barnet, a few miles away. I went to a gynaecologist, Mr Gilliatt (later Sir William), generally accepted to be the leader in his profession, and all seemed to be going well. In November 1941, two and a half months before the baby was due, I fell ill with pain in my back and a high fever. (I was told later that e-coli was to blame.) Before the local doctor realized that something was wrong I went into labour and was hurried to the nursing home.

  The baby was born after the well-named labour, which lasted several hours – an experience as every mother knows of extreme pain replaced by euphoria when the child is finally born, a new life starts and there is joy all round. But it was not like that. I heard the baby cry – animal instinct plays a big part during and after a birth and the cry of a newborn is the reward for the immense physical effort – and although I knew it was born too early, I had a wild hope that he (for it was a boy) would survive. The famous gynaecologist arrived when it was all over. He walked into the room, gave my stomach a rough push saying that was to get rid of the afterbirth, and added as he left, ‘You don’t expect the baby to live, do you?’

  A few hours later, a nurse came to tell me that the baby had indeed died. I realized then what wonderful people nurses are; the worst jobs are always left to them, especially by grand doctors. Andrew arrived on compassionate leave and that was an immense comfort. It was a difficult time for him too as it had never occurred to him that such a thing could happen and that the outcome could be so sorrowful. The poor little baby was named Mark and buried in St Etheldreda, the parish church at Hatfield, just outside an entrance to the garden of Hatfield House where Andrew’s Salisbury grandparents lived.

  Despair slowly gives way to a sense of emptiness, grief for what might have been and feelings of self-reproach. Was it my fault? What did I do wrong? It was not easy to get back to day-to-day life. The loss of a premature baby was nothing in comparison to the sufferings caused by the war – the deprivations, the indiscriminate bombings and the daily deaths of young servicemen – but my own sense of failure, of being unable to achieve what most women can, remained. It was made worse when I heard of friends who had produced healthy babies with no difficulty.
One of these friends, thinking to be kind, made me godmother to her child, not realizing how painful it would be.

  Sixteen months later, on 26 March 1943, Emma was born, naturally and happily. Andrew’s battalion was still in England and I spent the last six weeks before the birth with the Salisburys at Hatfield, to be near the nursing home in case of a second disaster. Their kindness has never been forgotten. Alice Salisbury, Andrew’s grandmother, was a woman of irresistible charm – liberal, worldly-wise and funny. She used to stand in front of one of Hatfield’s huge log fires and hitch up the back of her skirt to warm her behind. The house had become a hospital for wounded soldiers and the resident doctors often came to dinner. The fare was meagre by that stage of the war and was served on a Lazy Susan that revolved in the middle of the table. It whizzed so fast that you had to be quick to grab a bite to eat. I loved that visit and its successful ending.

  Just over one year later, in April 1944, our son was born under rather different circumstances. Andrew had left for Italy, and I was staying at Churchdale with the Devonshires. Dr Evans arranged for 27 April to be his day off so as not to be interrupted. I was in the kitchen garden looking for something green to eat when he arrived armed with an injection to set me off. In what seemed no time at all it was over, the easiest birth of all my babies, and off went a message to Andrew, by now advancing on Rome. On 4 May Andrew wrote saying that he had received the news and what huge pleasure it gave him.

  Sister O’Gorman, the Irish monthly nurse who had seen me through good times and bad, was with me for the confinement. (I suppose she had a Christian name, but ‘Sister’ was what we all, with great respect, called her.) As smart as paint when on duty in Lady Carnarvon’s pink uniform, impatient when a patient was not really ill, Sister O’Gorman was a brilliant nurse and nothing could detract from that. But I was surprised when I opened a drawer after she had left to find dirty stockings mixed up with broken biscuits – an unexpected legacy from this loved woman. She was an extraordinary support during my strange experiences, genial and funny as only the Irish can be. Rather shame-faced I told her that when I was pregnant my craving had been for coal. Derby Brights were my particular favourites and I ate a good deal of them, breaking off the shiny bits and blackening my teeth in the process. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘that’s nothing. My last patient ate Vim.’

  Before Andrew left for Italy, we had decided on names. If a boy, he wanted ‘Peregrine’, to which I added ‘Andrew’ and ‘Morny’ after Mornington Cannon, a jockey I admired. Our family is famous for nicknames and, inevitably, when he was about four, the name ‘Peregrine’ became rather a mouthful and was replaced by all sorts of nicknames. The ugliest, I suppose, was ‘Stoker’, but it stuck. When Andrew came home in March 1945, his contented, easy-going son was eleven months old.

  The following autumn I was pregnant for the fourth time. That is to say, I was pregnant for a while. In December, for no apparent reason, I had a miscarriage – no illness, no shock, no accident – and I lost a lot of blood before the doctor could get to me. Being fairly early on, I was sad, but it was not advanced enough to compare with the loss of the baby in 1941. Life went on without too much disruption. A couple of months later I could not do up my skirt and felt the stirrings of another baby. Incredulous, I went to Dr Evans. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you must have miscarried a twin,’ and explained that it could sometimes happen.

  By this time, Andrew and I had moved from the Rookery to Edensor House in the small village within the park at Chatsworth. I went into labour six weeks early, for no particular reason that I know of but far enough on for the baby to be all right. Dr Evans came and so did the district nurse, an old friend. I heard them talking through the haze, the pains grew to be almost unbearable and there was the baby. ‘A lovely boy,’ they reassured me, wrapping him up and putting him in his cot. Sister O’Gorman had not yet arrived from London and they left me, saying they would be back in a few hours. Dr Evans and Nurse Parry returned when the baby was seven hours old and apparently healthy, to hear him give a great sigh and die. The shock of the loss of this baby must have gone deep with Dr Evans. As he was leaving the house he fainted dead away and poor Andrew arrived from a distant engagement to face not just the misery of the dead baby but Dr Evans lying unconscious in the hall. We named the child Victor and he was buried in the family plot at St Peter’s, Edensor.

  For this last confinement, Dr Evans had borrowed a contraption called a gas and air machine, used as an analgesic in childbirth. As the pains get more severe you clamp a mask on to your face with both hands and gulp the blessed gas as hard as you can. As you lose consciousness, your hands drop and with them the mask; then back to normal till it is repeated all over again. It is such a clever idea: you cannot overdo the gas and it helps at the worst moments. The Baslow practice did not own such a machine, which I thought I could remedy and did. Dr Evans brought the new device with him on an ordinary visit and we tried it out sitting on my bed, flopping over backwards as we each blacked out in turn. (I suppose today we would be had up for charges under all sorts of new laws.)

  There was a third unhappy ending in 1953. Again premature, she too was alive and crying before quietly fading away. We gave her the name Mary and she is buried at Edensor alongside her brother Victor. Andrew had the harrowing duty of arranging the funerals, each with its tiny coffin. I was spared this because in those days, where possible, the mother was kept in bed for two or three weeks after giving birth. No one suggested that I should go to the services and I remained completely removed from them.

  The cumulative effect of these failures made me wonder how it was that we had two perfectly healthy children, who were progressing just as children should. People sympathized at the losses and with the kindest intentions would say, ‘Look at those two. How wonderful to have them.’ It was indeed wonderful, but people who have not been through the searing experience cannot understand that you mourn the lost ones and that nothing can replace them. Nevertheless, had Emma and Stoker not survived I think the tragedies would have overwhelmed me.

  When Sophy was born on 18 March 1957 and all was well, there was much rejoicing. For the first four months of pregnancy I stayed in or near my bed, constantly fearful of what now seemed the inevitable disaster. The reward for this slight inconvenience was inestimable and went a long way in restoring a sense of achievement. Sophy was born in a London hospital, where the doctor brought his spaniels to cheer his country patients. I was so apprehensive that I did not buy any new clothes for the baby, and the washed-out woolly things and old-fashioned gowns surprised the nurses in the smart maternity wing. As soon as Sophy was born I remember shouting, ‘Is the baby all right?’ Then, louder, ‘IS THE BABY ALL RIGHT?’ I could hardly believe it when they said that she was perfect. The fourteen-year gap between Emma and Sophy sometimes caused people to ask, ‘Who was your first husband?’

  As time went on, I appreciated more and more the incredible good fortune of having Emma, Stoker and Sophy, and the sadness for the other three faded. But writing about them now made me wonder whether the three who did not survive had been christened. Bleak notices of the burials of Mark, Victor and Mary appear in the Records Offices in Hertfordshire and Derbyshire, giving their ages as five hours, seven hours and four hours respectively (their short lives contrasting pathetically with all the old people on the lists). The vicar at Hatfield kindly made some enquiries and found a note about Mark’s burial, but no record of a christening. Nor were there any records of a christening at St Peter’s, Edensor. It is only recently that I discovered from Mrs Symonds, widow of the Reverend Tom Symonds, Vicar of Edensor 1954–71 (who had been told by Francis Thompson, the long-serving librarian at Chatsworth), that my mother-in-law baptized all three children in an emergency ceremony, recognized by the Church of England (and the Roman Catholic Church). I cannot imagine a better person to do it. I am glad I know the recorded facts of these births and deaths so their sorry chapter can now be closed.

  11

  Inheritance


  I

  N OCTOBER 1944, six weeks after Billy was killed, I received a letter from Andrew telling me that he was coming home. I could hardly believe it. ‘Oh dear, I am nearly off my head,’ I wrote to Muv, ‘I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.’ Andrew wrote that he would be back about the middle of December as he had to stay at a Reinforcement Depot for about a month and would then get a boat and come home. ‘Oh can you imagine how wonderful it will be for me and for his mother and father,’ I told Muv, ‘I am nearly dying.’ Andrew eventually arrived home in March 1945. He had been withdrawn from his battalion and sent to a training camp near Naples at the request, as he later discovered, of Harold Macmillan, who at the time was Minister Resident with Cabinet status at Allied Force Headquarters in Algiers. Macmillan was married to Eddy Devonshire’s sister Dorothy, and was known as ‘Uncle Harold’ in the family. In spite of the relief Andrew knew it must have brought his mother and father, he bitterly resented being taken away from the front. He never spoke to me about it, but I know that the order to go to the training camp was the hardest to obey in his five years of army service. In his memoirs, Accidents of Fortune, he wrote that when he rejoined his comrades who had fought on during three hard months, he was unable to look them in the eye.

  With the horrors of the Italian campaign still fresh in his mind, it must have been difficult for Andrew to adjust to a calm life in the country where there was no petrol and the strictest food rationing yet. He had to decide his future. He was now heir to his father’s estates but Eddy, aged fifty, was still in charge. Andrew’s mind turned to politics, which had always been his overriding interest. He knew that he had no chance of being selected for a winnable seat so had to make a start with a safe Labour seat, which would serve as a good apprenticeship. He tried for two constituencies in the East End of London – Mile End and Shoreditch – but was turned down by both. The fact that he was the son of a duke and had been to Eton and Cambridge was enough to ensure he was not selected; his war record counted for nothing. He tried for North East Derbyshire but was again unsuccessful and was beginning to lose heart when Councillor Ernest Robinson, chairman of the few Conservatives in Chesterfield, persuaded the committee to hear Andrew put his case. To Andrew’s joy, he was adopted and it was the beginning of our long association with that town and the many men and women of all political opinions with whom we made friends.