The world saw Nancy as a town person: she was always elegant and, even when alone and working, never looked sloppy. But underneath all this she loved the country, the seasons and the people who worked the land. In January 1967 she left Paris for her adored Versailles where she bought a house with a garden, something she longed for. Two years later she was diagnosed with cancer. The news coincided with the announcement of Gaston’s marriage to his long-standing love, Violette de Talleyrand Périgord. None of us knew what this meant to Nancy. She made a joke, of course, of what must have been a shattering blow – her way of dealing with bad news. Gaston had always told her that his political career would be ruined if he married a divorced woman, thereby ruling Nancy out. And then he did just that.
Nancy’s last illness has been described by her biographers and, most poignantly, by Nancy herself in her letters. Suffice it to say that for four and a half years, from March 1969, when a malignant lump was removed from her liver (she said, ‘Of course, it’s my white-bearded twin brother’), to when she died at the end of June 1973, she was rarely out of pain. She had several spells in hospitals in Paris and London, including ten weeks at the Nuffield in Bryanston Square where fashionable doctors brought her flowers but did nothing to improve her condition. She saw twenty-nine doctors in all, ranging from famed surgeons to quacks. After seeing a new one she would say, ‘The doctor tells me I’ll be much better in three weeks,’ but she never was. During days free of pain she would say ‘I’m cured’, but the raging torment soon returned.
When her housekeeper Marie retired another prop went and Nancy missed her homely countenance. As the pain got worse we tried to visit her in turn. Diana never failed her and drove the fifteen miles from Orsay at all hours of the day and night. Decca made the long and expensive journey from California several times. I went to stay with her as often as I could, or I stayed at Orsay with Diana and we would spend the day with Nancy. But Pam was the sister Nancy most wanted when she was ill – just her presence was a comfort. All childhood teases were forgiven and forgotten as Pam recounted tales of her dogs, her household affairs and Derek’s eccentricities during their married life.
It was not all gloom. The garden, an imitation of a hay meadow of her youth, gave Nancy pleasure. Such plots were all the fashion in England until their owners realized that Mother Nature needs a lot of help to keep the garden looking ‘natural’, and that, without it, the meadow readily turns into a beige tussocky desert in July. Nancy wrote hilarious descriptions of the mating tortoises in the garden and her dismay at the flowering of a plastic-pink cherry tree, which she longed to cut down but never dared as Marie and her neighbours admired it so.
When Decca came over from America to see Nancy, she and Diana met for the first time since 1936. I shall never forget the look of wonderment on Decca’s face. After Unity, Diana had been Decca’s most adored sister as a child and there she was, her beauty unchanged. They embraced and the past seemed to evaporate. They even exchanged a letter. But Decca told me that it was impossible to recreate her love of Diana; it had been too important to her in childhood and it was better not to try. They never saw each other again.
I visited Nancy a few days before she died. It was very hot and she was lying on her bed, covered by a sheet that did not conceal her pitifully thin body. The years of pain had crushed even her spirit and at last she was ready to go. I sat in silence near her and after a while she stirred and opened her eyes. ‘Is there anything, anything I can do?’ I asked her. ‘No, nothing,’ she said. ‘I just wish I could have one more day’s hunting.’ She died on 30 June and was buried next to Unity in Swinbrook churchyard.
Pam came back to live in England in 1972. Woodfield – the house in Gloucestershire that she had bought when Tullamaine, her Irish house, was sold – was let and while she waited for it to become available she came to stay at Chatsworth. She moved into a flat on the third floor with grand views across the park and soon made the rooms feel like home. Friends used to make their way up to the flat (christened 1A, Chatsworth Buildings by Nancy) to sit by the fire with her. She was the inspiration behind the making of the kitchen garden at Chatsworth. She had often talked about the possibilities of a neglected plot above the stables, known as the Paddocks, and a few years later it was transformed into the kitchen garden of my dreams. I got into trouble with the estate office because I forgot to tell the budgeting people about it, and it was not cheap. Never mind, there is a kitchen garden at Chatsworth now.
I loved staying with Pam at Caudle Green and often think it was her happiest home. Woodfield House stands close to the village green, and to the south it has a stupendous view over a deep valley with a stream, both sides lined with the old trees of the Miserden Woods. It had eight acres of land, pigsties, stables and a cowshed. It was the ideal house for anyone who loves the Cotswolds. Pam’s presence there felt exactly right: the house, garden, paddocks and owner all suited each other.
When you walked through the back door of Woodfield (I never saw anyone use the front door) you were met with a delicious smell of herbs – Pam’s trademark, to be found wherever she lived, and the stone passage behind the kitchen held it as a welcome. The single bedroom where I slept had a bedside table with Lark Rise to Candleford on it and this, admittedly excellent, reading matter remained there for the next twenty years. In the kitchen–dining room was a blue Rayburn stove where Pam produced the best soups, roasts and stews imaginable. (When Nancy heard of the Rayburn she pretended to think it was a room hung with portraits by the famed Scotch artist.) I often asked Pam, ‘How do you make this soup?’ ‘Oh, out of my head,’ was always the answer. She was a careful shopper and discussed his trade with her butcher. ‘Mrs Jackson selects,’ Diana’s driver, Jerry Lehane, used to say.
The kitchen garden was Pam’s heaven and the vegetables cherished far above orchids. Her guests sat down to eat to tales of where the seeds were from, how they had been planted and the rest of their life history. Gerald and Gladys Stewart were her next-door neighbours and became her dear friends. She was lucky to have the services of Gerald in the garden and I wish she had lived to see his autobiography, Pipe Lids and Hedgehogs, with its evocative descriptions of life in the Cotswolds seventy-five years ago.
In the nicest possible way, all Pam’s geese were swans. ‘Look, Stublow, my tree peony,’ she once said to me, ‘isn’t it wonderful?’ as if I were being introduced to the plant for the first time. She was not boasting, just celebrating excellence. In 1977 Caudle Green marked the Queen’s Jubilee in its own way. Pam took charge of the celebrations and wrote to Diana that the village residents were thrilled with her plan and that most had accepted the invitation when they heard that it was to be in her cowshed. Even the few dissidents bold enough to refuse had ‘caved in’ eventually. The cowshed, where she kept her chickens, was described by Pam as the room with ‘the great west window’ – in fact a rusted iron contraption with ill-fitting panes. Pam forged ahead and ordered (spelling was not her strong point): ‘Sausages from the Moncks and rolls from the Nudist Colony.’ There was also to be ‘a real Cheddar cheese in its own skin, a barrel of jolly beer’ and some Appenzeller eggs pickled in vinegar. ‘Oh Debo,’ Diana wrote, ‘why weren’t we there.’
Life for Pam at Caudle Green went steadily on, ruled by the seasons and her black Labrador, Beetle, who was an improvement on the yapping dachshunds and a popular guest wherever she went. On a spring weekend in April 1994 Pam drove to London to stay with her friend Margaret Budd. They did the shops, had dinner with another friend, Elizabeth Winn, and more shopping the next day. That evening while they were having drinks with a neighbour, Pam fell down some steep stairs and broke both bones in her right leg below the knee. I wrote to Decca:
Ambulance men perfect & very quick (‘we’ve got an English lady here’ they said – rare bird, true enough), hospital at once – wonderful in every way, new, off Fulham Road. Spent a dopy night & next A.M. was operated on to put plate in the usual way. All went well & on waking she asked what won the Grand Nati
onal. I spoke to her (asked for the nurse & got her) THAT EVENING, still a bit sleepy but quite OK. That was Sat. Sun & Mon never better, seen by E. Winn who said she looked v. pretty in bed & was in fine form & very funny. Tues A.M., Andrew & I went to London from Cork, punctual, drove to Margaret’s where we found her outside her door saying quick, they’ve just telephoned to say come at once. So we dashed. Found curtains round the bed, I said I’m her sister I must see her & the Sister said talk to the Dr. He took us to a little room which I suppose ought to have been a sign of the seriousness, he said all the technical things which had happened in her poor body & I said so what’s her future & he said she died 10 minutes ago. Hen. Please picture. After a bit we went to see her, so odd, just a bod with no one there.
The loss of Pam meant more to me than I ever thought it could. She seemed so permanent, so rock-steady. One who was impressed by her outward calm was the author Brian Masters, who wrote to me after her death, ‘Your sister Pamela did not mind being laughed at. There was a rare kind of serenity, almost floating above life rather than fighting through it.’ But, as with Nancy, there were rumblings of anxiety in Pam that she never allowed the outside world to see. She would sometimes say to one of us, ‘I worry terribly about . . . ’ but not if we were in company. Margaret Budd, who had been a friend since her husband, George, and Derek were in RAF 604 Squadron together, told me that she stayed with Pam at Tullamaine soon after Derek had left. Margaret told Pam how she admired her keeping cool at such a difficult time. ‘If only you knew,’ Pam said, ‘I may seem calm but everything is churning underneath.’
After Muv’s death, Decca’s visits to England became longer and more frequent, and each time she seemed increasingly reluctant to leave. Her London friends, including the television presenter Jon Snow and human rights lawyer Helena Kennedy, saw a good deal of her when she was over. She and Bob stayed at Chatsworth but I got the feeling they were delighted when the time came to leave, taking with them a store of anecdotes so easily gathered from the Chatsworth way of life and relayed with much derisory laughter to their London friends. Decca could be spiky and took offence easily, not on her own account but when her politics were challenged. Andrew was as hospitable as he knew how, but the truth was that none of the brothers-in-law liked each other (except for Andrew and Sir O who both got on well with Derek), and it was a question of family duty when they did meet.
Decca’s courage was never in doubt. She and Bob worked tirelessly for civil rights campaigns, often in the face of danger. In the spring of 1963 she published The American Way of Death, an exposé of the powerful funeral industry. It flew immediately to the top of the best-seller list and remained there until President Kennedy was assassinated, when it disappeared. It was a wonderful book, funny and shocking, a remorseless attack on the undertakers who took advantage of the recently bereaved, played on their emotions and persuaded them to fork out for the most expensive coffins and elaborate burials. Embalming was encouraged, even when the body was being buried without delay, and the poor corpse, dressed in his or her best clothes, was made to look ready to spring from the coffin.
Decca’s descriptions of the technicalities involved were disgusting and she enjoyed keeping me informed:
Dearest Henny,
Glad you liked Practical Burial Footwear. Yes there are some other fascinators: such as New Bra-Form, Post Mortem Form Restoration, Accomplish So Much for So Little. They cost $11 for a package of 50, Hen you must say that’s cheap, shall I send you a few? There’s also The Final Touch That Means So Much, it’s mood-setting casket hardware. Hen do you prefer a gentle Tissue-Tint in yr. arterial? It helps regain the Natural Undertones. It’s made specially for those who prefer a fast Firming Action of medium-to-rigid degree.
Hen I bet you don’t even know what is the best time to start embalming, so I’ll tell you: Before life is quite extinct, according to the best text-book we’ve found on it. They have at you with a thing called a Trocar, it’s a long pointed needle with a pump attached, it goes in thru the stomach and all liquids etc. are pumped out. Thence to the Arterial. I do wish the book was finished, it seemed to be going along well for a bit but now it’s all being totally reorganized.
Decca’s first volume of memoirs, Hons and Rebels, was, and still is, a huge success. At times imagination takes over from the truth – which is more amusing, of course, but unfair on the uncles, aunts and other figures of our youth who never did us any harm but stumped up at Christmas without fail. But that was Decca. These two books set her on the road to fame: universities asked her to be visiting professor, or some such title, her pupils adored her and invitations proliferated. She and I were talking one day about her second book of memoirs. ‘What’s the title?’ I asked. ‘The Final Conflict,’ she replied. ‘A Fine Old Conflict?’ I said, having only half-listened to the answer, and that is what she called it.
Decca was the only sister who drank spirits and smoked, and in her seventies these two habits caught up with her. In 1994 she fell and broke an ankle. She realized the trouble that her drinking was causing her family and stopped that very day. She did it without any help, just steely determination. Two years later she was diagnosed with lung cancer and even she could not prevent the disease from spreading. Her daughter, Dinky, a trained nurse, was with her and the doctors gave her six to nine months to live. I was about to set off for America to see her when Dinky rang to say it was too late. She died on 23 July 1996, aged seventy-nine.
Decca had made arrangements for the simplest and cheapest possible funeral: a cremation, no ceremony and her ashes scattered at sea. Her friends in San Francisco arranged a joke funeral with six black, plumed horses drawing an antique hearse, which she had once laughingly said she had wanted, and her friends in London arranged a send-off in a theatre where they recited eulogies. I could not face it so stayed at home with my own thoughts about my remarkable dear old Hen.
Diana’s memoirs, A Life of Contrasts, were published in 1977 and she was interviewed on television by Russell Harty. The camera stayed on him for a few seconds longer than usual at the end of the interview and he wiped his brow and said ‘Phew’, so unusually impressed was he by his subject’s reactions to his questions. The trouble for him was Diana’s honesty: she told him exactly what she thought and why, in intelligible English, without guile, hesitation or exaggeration. Her beauty and serenity coupled with honesty was a bit too much for Harty. The media, even then, were unaccustomed to such truthfulness. This was Diana’s strength, but it was also what made her unpopular in many circles.
Diana loved the Temple and was completely happy there, able to go to Paris whenever she wanted in the knowledge that she had that beautiful place to return to. Her garden was the source of much satisfaction and never failed to produce flowers for the house. There was no greenhouse, so she grew annuals but was never quite sure what would come up. One year she forgot to order ahead and filled the flower beds with zinnia plants, much to the amusement of Les Amateurs de Jardin, who were regular visitors. In one corner of the garden was a long, narrow swimming pool designed for exercise and, like everything of Diana’s, it fitted its place perfectly. The walls of the pool were painted a dark colour – so much nicer to look at than the usual bright blue – and a shed provided shade in the summer.
Sir O was a persuasive talker and as a politician had been not just a speaker but an orator of the first order. On the platform his words poured out of him with passion and he took his audience with him willy-nilly. I only once saw him addressing a meeting but the memory of his delivery and his electric personality when aroused for a cause stayed with me. He liked to hold forth at meals. Sometimes our chat got too silly for him. When Diana and I were describing something we had seen and could not quite remember, we would spin it out, to hold the other’s attention, with a lot of ‘If you see what I mean . . . kind of . . . well, sort of . . . you know’, and Sir O took this up himself – very much in inverted commas. Diana’s way of talking was unique. One day when she was driving with S
ir O along the Riviera he had to turn the car round, which involved backing it dangerously close to the cliff. ‘Vaguely whoa,’ she said quietly, as he got nearer and nearer to the edge.
Sir O was always kind to me and I was fond of him, but I realized that as he got older he was a full-time job for Diana. He demanded all her attention and anything that took her away from him was not well looked on. This made life difficult and a climax was reached when Nancy was ill and needed Diana’s constant support. Diana told me that there were times when she drove over to Versailles early in the morning and rushed back to the Temple to be there when Sir O woke up. She had suffered from intermittent migraines since the 1950s and these got progressively worse, making it impossible for her to plan ahead with certainty. They became so serious at one point that she had to lie in a darkened room sometimes for a day or more at a time. The doctor prescribed Cafergot, a strong drug that alleviated the pain but did not make it disappear altogether.
Sir O died suddenly at the age of eighty-four on 3 December 1980. Diana was devastated and felt that life without him was not worthwhile, a state of mind she never really shook off. She slowly came back to what seemed normality but she was, in fact, inconsolable and, every year, the first week of December brought what she described as her ‘dark days’. In 1981 she had what was thought to be a stroke which left her semi-paralysed. The doctors in France said that nothing could be done and simply suggested suitable nursing. Diana’s son Max asked Professor Sidney Watkins, head of the Formula One on-track medical team, if he would see her. Max hired an ambulance plane to take Diana to England and on arrival at the London Hospital the Prof diagnosed a brain tumour. It was removed and mercifully proved to be benign.
I went to see Diana in intensive care; she was conscious and shivering and begging for a blanket. It was awful not being able to get her one, but the orders were to keep her temperature low. She came to Chatsworth to convalesce and I put her in the centre dressing room with a bed near the window so she could see the view across the river to the end of the park, which she found comforting. No one appreciated beauty more than Diana and I believe her time at Chatsworth helped her to recover. It was wonderful for me to have her pinned there so I could go in and out for a chat. She had been my confidante since the end of the war (our correspondence would fill a library of its own), and at difficult times I do not know what I would have done without her.
Wait for Me! Page 36