Things got easier when Muv took goats to Inch Kenneth, pedigree British Saanens – quiet white creatures which produce a quantity of milk and are a delight to look after. A long-awaited kid was born. I telephoned Muv to ask whether it was a billy or a nanny. ‘Well, darling,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid it’s neither one thing nor another,’ her way of saying that it was a hermaphrodite. The goats suited Muv and the island, being smaller, friendlier and easier to deal with than cows.
In old age Muv developed Parkinson’s disease. She was stoical and saw the ridiculous side of her uncontrolled movements. When playing Scrabble, which she loved, her shaking hand made the placing of letters uncertain so with her right hand she used to seize her left, which was grasping the air and maddening her, and say, ‘Stop it,’ half laughing.
Although she was not a classical musician as Tom had been, the piano had always been important to her but now she could no longer control her fingers on the keyboard. Before the disease struck, she used to sing and play popular songs, and was amused by the liberties taken with some of the rhymes: ‘I’m bidin’ my time / That’s the kinda guy I’m’. She loved jazzed-up versions of the classics such as Mendelssohn’s ‘Spring Song Swung’ and Handel’s ‘Water Music’ (renamed ‘Mind the Handel’s Hot’). The Daily Express Community Song Book provided old songs from the Boer War, and classics from the First World War such as ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’. The Irish revolutionary song, ‘The Wearing of the Green’, was a favourite, as were the inimitable 1930s songs ‘Mean to Me’, ‘Miss Otis Regrets’, and ‘Goodnight Sweetheart’ – so well remembered from Café de Paris days. After the war Muv sometimes used to sing Irving Berlin’s sad song, ‘Say It Isn’t So’, and I often wondered if she was thinking of herself when that one came along.
Muv and I were talking one day about old age with Tony Lambton. Knowing that she would not mind, Tony asked her how old she was. ‘Nineteen,’ she said. ‘No, sorry, seventy-three.’ I loved the idea of her being forever nineteen inside her ageing body. (She always said that the body is just an old sack – it does not matter what happens to it after death, and she could never understand why people made such a fuss about where and how they were buried.) ‘So what’s it like being old?’ Tony pressed her. Muv thought for a minute and said, ‘You aren’t followed in the street any more and it’s no fun trying on a hat.’ Being followed in the street in her day was considered normal, though what outcome the poor followers hoped for I do not know. Perhaps they just appreciated beauty and wanted to see more of it.
The first months of 1963 were some of the coldest for years and frosts kept the ground iron-hard long after there should have been signs of spring. The park at Chatsworth was white with snow and the rabbits were dying of starvation. (Diddy said their corpses were like empty knitting bags.) The weather was bad, if not worse, in Scotland, but Muv travelled as usual to Inch Kenneth in early May. A few weeks beforehand, Nancy had accompanied her to the wedding of our cousin Angus Ogilvy to Princess Alexandra and said how wonderful Muv had looked, ‘Got up in black velvet, lace and diamonds . . . the most elegant person there by far.’ Coming from Nancy this was extraordinary praise.
Muv was delighted to be back on the island but soon after arriving she collapsed and her daughters were sent for. Nancy, Pam, Diana and I got there as soon as we could but the journey to the Inner Hebrides was never straightforward and the various waits and loss of connections were even more frustrating than usual because of the urgency and the uncertainty of what we would find. Decca was in California. As always in a crisis, my good Old Hen wanted to come, but the journey from San Francisco would have taken at least two days and as the doctor thought Muv might die at any moment, it was likely she would arrive too late.
The cold was bitter, even for the hardy Black Face sheep. There was not a blade of grass for them to eat and dead ewes and their newborn lambs lay beside the road from Salen to Gribun – a pitiful sight. We found Muv in bed and weak. She could talk, but eating and drinking were painfully slow because the muscles in her throat had all but given up. She was pleased to see us and knew why we had come: ‘Of course I know why you’re here,’ she said, ‘I’m dying.’
The next two weeks were all alike; she slept most of the time but had some hours of wakefulness, sometimes in extreme discomfort when she was beset by what she called her ‘horrors’ and was unable to lie still. It was awful to watch and it brought home to me how it is often as difficult to die as it is to be born. There was little we could do to help but it was a comfort to her that we were there. We got a routine going. Pam did the cooking while Nancy, Diana and I sat with Muv. We took it in turns to be with her in the night when she wanted a hand to hold. Every now and again she made us laugh and kept saying how she would be loving it all if she were well. ‘Somewhere you’ll find my ridiculous will,’ she said, ‘do change it if you want.’ We said we would like to but feared we would go to prison if we did. ‘Oh, so you will,’ she said and relapsed into sleep. The two young and cheerful nurses from the mainland made the whole difference; not only was their presence a comfort, they could explain to us what was happening.
For the fortnight, while Muv’s life drew to an end, we had the intense pleasure of being all four sisters together for the first time since I was a child. It was an unexpected bonus of those sad days and it was never to happen again. Of course we laughed and went back to the old jokes and teases. Nancy complained that her clothes were dirty. ‘I’m going to make Woman teach me to wash,’ she said, ‘and I’ll stand and look on while she does.’ It worked like a charm. We all knew what the other was thinking and (like my old Collie dog) knew what the other was going to say before she said it. I wondered how anyone could die without at least four daughters at their bedside.
It was only a month from the summer solstice and daylight came early. After one of my turns for sitting with Muv, I went upstairs to bed to hear the crash of the dawn chorus and wondered what on earth the birds were thinking of in this freezing weather. The song of the larks was dominant and when I hear a lark now it takes me straight back to the stairs at Inch Kenneth.
We kept a coal fire going in Muv’s bedroom night and day, and finally the coal ran out. It was delivered every two years and it was months before the next load was due. (It used to arrive on a coal boat and was tipped on to the beach at high tide, shovelled into wheelbarrows as quickly as possible and pushed to the coal shed before it could be claimed by the sea.) We took it in turns to scour the beaches at low tide for driftwood. Our eyes soon grew accustomed to picking out the battered white wood from the rocks and stones, and we carried it home in triumph. Sometimes the white object turned out to be the bone of some unfortunate cow that had toppled over the cliff in search of something to eat, and we were disappointed as it was no good on the fire. Soon our food began to run out. At last Diana was able to cross to Mull and drive to Tobermory with a long list of groceries. She returned victoriously some hours later carrying a ham on her head.
No one knew how long our vigil would last. The outside world was so far away it did not exist; only frequent telegrams to and from Decca brought us down to earth. I felt for her being so far away. Over the years her attitude to Muv had changed, as her reactions in those final days of telegrams and letters showed. After Muv’s death, she wrote to Nancy that having loathed Muv when she was growing up, she then became ‘immensely fond of her, really rather adored her’. She also loved Inch Kenneth, which had been hers since 1959. (After Farve’s death, she had bought out Pam’s, Diana’s and my shares in it, and Nancy had made her a gift of hers.) Decca’s love for the island pleased Muv greatly and it was a bond between them.
Three times during those days we thought Muv had gone, but each time she rallied. On one occasion her voice strengthened and she appeared to have a vision: she spoke of bright lights and many people she had known, and said, ‘Perhaps, who knows, Tom and Unity?’ She slipped into unconsciousness and died on 25 May, aged eighty-three. It was a relief that her ‘horrors�
� were over and that the end was peaceful, but hard to believe in the finality of her death. We held a service over her coffin and took her over the water to Mull, with a piper playing and the flag of the Puffin at half mast. The funeral was held at Swinbrook. The winter had relented in the south and the beauty of the churchyard, with its rush of cow parsley and buttercups and the song of thrushes and blackbirds, took me straight back to the mayfly hatching on the Windrush and the sound of Farve’s reel in pursuit of a rising trout.
In a lucid moment a week before she died, Muv said to us, ‘Now, children, you’ll cry at my funeral and then you’ll start laughing.’ We did. Our sorrow came in waves but so did the laughter. There has to be relief after sorrow, no one can manage without it. Even the saddest, most painful moments do not last, however difficult it is to believe it at the time.
20
Midway
T
HE YEARS OF middle age passed in a misty dream. Luxury was a day with nothing written in the diary and such days were rare. All householders know the problems, big and small, but magnify them by the size of Chatsworth and its environs, and you have the picture. The major problems went straight to Andrew, the day-to-day to me. As soon as the house and garden staff had started work, some at 8 a.m. and some at 9 a.m., the telephone began to ring: something had arisen in a faraway place that required an immediate decision or at least on-the-spot consideration. I was needed by the head housemaid on the private side of the house, the housekeeper on the public side, by the sewing room, the head gardener, head house-carpenter, cook, butler’s pantry, signwriter, farm manager, head keeper, farmyard, house shops, farm shop or restaurant. When Roger Wardle became land agent I was able to refer to him on all estate matters and on the rare occasions when there was a fiery disagreement between two Chatsworth men, both certain they were right, he was able to settle the dispute to the satisfaction of both parties. I saw him in action on several occasions and came away impressed by his tact. I loved all this activity, largely because of the pleasure of working with some of the most remarkable people I have ever met. One Chatsworth special was Mr Clegg, who seemed to spend all his days scrubbing the stone passage leading from the back door to the kitchen and elsewhere. The water he scrubbed and mopped with got browner and browner but it did not seem to matter. One Christmas, Mr Clegg volunteered to do lodge duty, which involved opening and shutting the gates to the private drive. I went to visit him in the narrow room of the lodge, where whoever was on duty sat keeping an eye out for the intruders who never came. Mr Clegg was not watching but was deep in a book. I asked him what he was reading. He turned to the title page: Advanced Algebra – a lesson to me that you cannot put people into categories.
Maud Barnes, who came from several generations of Cavendish family employees – her father had been the clerk of works at Hardwick – was another of the Chatsworth ‘characters’. She did not marry, being one of the thousands of dutiful women who stay at home to look after an ailing parent, but when she was eventually free to do as she pleased, she came to Chatsworth. Her ill-defined job was to clean and tidy my rooms and wash and iron. The mezzanine above my little sitting room was where she carried out these tasks. She had a frightful fox terrier called Spot or Scott (I never discovered which) that ruled her life and made lots of washing – or sending to the cleaners, more likely – of the loose covers where he had, pour encourager les autres, lifted his leg.
Maud was neither clean nor tidy, but she was intelligent, well read, excellent company and willing to join in any fun on offer. In the early 1960s the Chatsworth WI put on an entertainment at an open meeting (where non-members are welcome). I went as the Oldest Miss World in the World, decked out in the Devonshire Parure – seven prickly and monumental pieces of jewellery, including a tiara, necklace and stomacher – which, until you look closely, might have been pulled out of the dressing-up box. Diddy, the children’s nanny, whose shape reminded me of the kind of bread you can no longer buy: a round dollop sitting atop a larger round dollop, and who always gave the best of her unselfish nature, went as the Sugar Plum Fairy in a white tulle tutu and tights. Waving a wand wrapped in tinsel, this beloved creature, then in late middle age, pirouetted, jumped, flumped and pointed her toe at the audience. Maud went as Ringo Starr under a black Beatle wig that suited her classical features; to see and hear her drumming was sublime. I do believe that she, Diddy and I were the stars that night.
During the holidays my mother-in-law stayed at Moor View (home to the Suicide Squad in our Edensor days) and I loved having her close by. She had a cross cook who shouted at her and everyone else, and talked loudly to herself in the little kitchen. There was a hole in the wall between the kitchen and dining room through which she used to push the food with a furious shove. Moucher’s guests always included her brother, David Cecil, and sister, Mima Harlech. The three of them loved each other’s company better than anyone’s and made the most of their days together, talking, talking as only Cecils can. They did not understand stacking so when they had finished eating and the dirty plates were ready to go back through the hole in the wall, they passed them round and round the table. No one thought to stop and make a pile of them – they were too interested in what they were saying. This display of their unpractical ways was one of the comic entertainments of the year for me.
However enjoyable my job at Chatsworth, it was often like walking on eggshells, not only because I never knew exactly where my remit ended, but because Andrew was a victim of alcoholism and his reactions had become increasingly unpredictable. Had he not written so openly about it in his memoirs, I would not have mentioned my side of the story, but it may be of interest to others to read a first-hand account of what it was like.
Andrew was addicted to alcohol for much of his adult life, a weakness that ran through the Cavendish family and had also descended to some of his first cousins. Drinking had contributed to his father’s premature death at the age of fifty-five and to his uncle Charlie Cavendish’s at thirty-eight. Perhaps in Andrew’s case things were exacerbated by underlying guilt at having what his brother should have had, and by the pressures and enormous responsibilities that came with this inheritance. After Billy’s death, although he enjoyed many things in life, he was driven by a sense of guilt and duty in equal parts.
Living with someone with an addiction of any sort, be it gambling, drugs, alcohol or even compulsive spending – anything done to excess – is wearing. If you have never had the experience it is hard, almost impossible, to understand what it is like. The character of the sufferer changes, in Andrew’s case from Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde and back again with little warning, and to pretend that life is normal is to deny reality. To me in vino veritas was the very opposite of what happened: in vino brought out the nasty side; it was without the vino that Andrew was himself.
Although he was never physically violent when drunk, some of his actions – now unbelievable and best forgotten – were directed at those closest to him, which I believe is usual, and the effect on his relationship with our three children was dire. When we had people to stay I often found it difficult to concentrate on those next to me at dinner as I always had half an eye on Andrew and his neighbours at the other end of the table, knowing that a flare-up could come at any moment and that they might suddenly be the recipients of his anger. On several occasions he simply left the table and we went on as if nothing had happened.
Sixty years ago none of this would have been discussed; it would have been swept under the carpet by the addict’s family in the pretence that it was not happening. I saw my mother-in-law do this and observed her unhappiness. In an attempt to keep Eddy away from his club, where drinking too much was usual among some of the members, she tried to distract him by inviting people she thought would interest him. She did not succeed. For an alcoholic, as with other addicts, the time of euphoria gets shorter and the hangover longer; depression lifts momentarily only to return worse than ever. Today, at last, addicts are treated as ill and are openly spoken of as suc
h. It is understood that sufferers need help in order to free themselves from the bonds of whatever addiction allows them to escape, however fleetingly, from life and its troubles.
Andrew was surrounded by five loyal employees. Not knowing that it was the worst thing they could do, they made a cocoon around him of which I, unwittingly, was part. So successful were we at hiding Andrew’s problem that even a senior member of the estate staff who joined in 1981 was unaware of his trouble. Concealing it was a double-edged sword: had it been exposed, Andrew might have sought help earlier, but at the time none of us who thought we were protecting him knew any better. I have now learnt that there is only one course of action, a method developed in America that has been successful all over the world. It comes at a price – the patient has to reach rock bottom, to go so low as to cry for help, and this is painful to watch – but it is a price well worth paying, as the success of Alcoholics Anonymous testifies.
I took advice from counsellors who told me that it was essential to remove Andrew’s props and bring his problem out into the open. So I asked the heads of department at Chatsworth to come and see me; we stood in the passage by my room and I was afraid of breaking down as I told them that Andrew was ill and that the nature of his illness was alcoholism. I could see, as these old and trusted friends walked slowly away, that they understood the necessarily harsh nature of the treatment. Henry Coleman, our butler who had been with us since 1963, must have understood it better than most, having been so close to Andrew and me during those difficult times.
Time dims the unpleasant or sad events in life and dates run into each other in a muddled way. What I do know is that Andrew twice made the mighty effort to give up drinking. The first, in the 1970s, lasted for two years and then he started again. In the early 1980s, he went to some counsellors who had treated his cousins with success and this encouraged him to agree to try their method. The cure should have lasted six weeks but after two he rang his sister Anne, who lived near the clinic, and told her he could stand it no longer and would she please fetch him. ‘If I had stayed the full six weeks,’ he wrote in his memoirs, ‘it would have destroyed me.’
Wait for Me! Page 28