by Diana Cooper
To commemorate King George’s Coronation Mrs Sykes has planted a Cornish oak at Cuckold Corner.
Back to Admiralty life and a second holiday in Aix with John Julius, and to September plans for the Enchantress’s official sailings. She was a sloop with a crew of a hundred and fifty captained by Peter Frend, with her stern converted into living-quarters for the First Lord, his wife and four friends. She had two big saloons, and later another superstructure was built for Duff to work in. The officers knew this as the Duff Cot. No one was so happy, so visibly aglow with pride, as Duff when we all assembled at my sister Marjorie’s house in Anglesey, complete with yachting-caps, Royal Yacht Squadron badges and buttons, and my eight-year-old son in blue with H.M.S. Enchantress written on his hat, to see the little white-ensigned ship sail into the Menai Straits. Duff adored the sea. Euan Wallace (“the Captain”) and Tommy Thompson, Secretary to the Board of Admiralty, made up our party. The Naval Secretary, Admiral Whitworth and Secretary Peck were to join us a few days later. A needle had just been extracted from my foot, so I limped on board. The Paget family and Conrad cheered us out of the Straits into freshening seas, bound for sister Letty’s island, South Uist. I wrote to Conrad:
From Anglesey bound for South Uist
6 September 1937
It was quite awful as soon as I left you. I unpacked valiantly and John Julius pretended that he always laid himself down after lunch. Everything was battened. The dining-room had all its chairs laid low—an after-orgy scene. Then I got sardinewise onto the bed with John Julius and read Emil and the Detectives aloud until we both fell into a sea-coma. At 6 it got much calmer and we could see a very mystical Ireland with broken sunlight upon it. The Quality dressed for dinner, and I undressed the poor little sweat-drenched boy, who had remained curled up animalwise, and put him to bed in my narrow cell. Dinner was dull but all right. Bed at 10.30. I moved my sleeping child onto his pallet and getting into my own read Oblomov with great enjoyment until sleep came. Smooth night, because of passing the straits and islands and in fact all the beauty spots arranged originally to be seen by day.
At 7.30 this morning Duff came in. “Isn’t it wonderful?” I said. “Yes, but you’re going to have two very bad hours—the Minch” and, my God, it was three hours of hell! My poor child was sick four times. Captain Wallace was taken very ill too. I’m thankful to say that Duff and I both felt rotten but were not sick. I had really no chance to be, from picking John Julius up and laying him down and holding his head and his poor heaving stomach. At 11 we arrived and now it’s 12. It’s a vile day—gale, rain and no visibility. You can’t see the beauties (if beauties there are), only misty rocks and gulls and diagonal cold rain. Captain Frend said that we had the worst possible wind, and the forecast is bad.
Off Uist
The present idea is that we should not go back with Duff tomorrow to Oban, but stay here (Uist) until he picks us up Thursday a.m. I personally would rather stick to Mr Micawber, but I don’t want to subject the child to too much. Duff and Euan have gone off in the launch to the port to find out what’s what, as one can see nothing. As I write it is lifting a bit. They’ve been away an hour and I’m just warming up my anxiety. Good food, except that the puddings are over-fancy. First-class Hock. Mustn’t grumble. If only the old ship didn’t shake herself like a wet retriever in the middle or trough of her pitches!
7 September
What a life! I find even time difficult to follow. When Duff and the “Captain” left John Julius, Tommy Thompson and me on the ship to go ashore and connect up with the Bensons, they reached a dead harbour with no living man or craft in it. They stared at each other in a wild surmise and realised that it meant taking the only road (a crazy one) and walking the five miles to the Lodge. So off they started, muttering. After half a mile they came to a cottage where a bicycle (not conditioned) was found. They started to blow up the tyres, Duff no doubt vastly relieved, as he has never learnt to ride one. Just as old Euan was mounting it, a provision Ford came along and they hitchhiked the five miles. There they found the Benson family, who had been waiting at the port for one and a half hours and had just given it up.
Back on board it had become 1 o’clock and Tommy Thompson was talking of sending the second launch after the first one to see if she had piled herself up on the rocks, when it appeared with all the Bensons, Charterises and Wakes on board. The day was brightening and an uncertain beauty appeared of green barren hills, no tree, no shrub, only vivid velvet. We sat down to lunch about twenty strong. Smart made-up food with crests and panaches appeared miraculously. After eating, a serious conseil de marins took place as to plan-alternations. The weather being viciously inclement, it was decided that the child, Euan and I should remain at Uist while Enchantress took Duff back to Oban, and that she should return to Skipport to pick us up and rejoin Duff at Mallaig.
Off we set, first in the launch, then in two Ford vans and reached, after a wild drive through rock and water and velvet, this horrible little house. They all think it Paradise. It is within a mile of the Atlantic seaboard and the wind knocks you down and howls and whistles through the windows. The men went out shooting at once, all capped in deerstalkers and rubber attachments and cartridges Cossack-fashion, with even nets attached to spectacles over their hideous faces. Letty (who is dressed as John Brown, knees and great width of skirt), Mary Rose Charteris (born for a lizard’s life in San Domingo and essentially not for St Kilda), John Julius and Jeremy Benson (carrying a gun and not yet eleven, which made me panicky) and I went off to a far loch to catch a fish from a boat with the help of Donald Macdonald. We caught four and landed only one. It was beautiful driving there through stretches of green corn; sun on the sea’s blue; very green grass and a million spating lochs and streams. Tea and biscuits only, in a fishing lodge with (thank God!) a bit of a fire, for the sun had gone and rain was blizzarding down and a dreadful hurricane was blowing. John Julius got so cold in the boat that I had to put him in the bottom of the wet dinghy and open my coat and lie on him like Elijah and the child. No booze but whisky in the house. Duff and Tommy Thompson left at 9.30 for the ship and will sail at dawn. I went to bed but couldn’t sleep after 2 a.m. for the wind’s roar causing graver and more terrifying apprehensions.
Now it’s noon and the wind is still howling and I am cowering over a very unsatisfactory peat fire. The men have been out already to shoot wild geese and failed, and have now gone to shoot duck. Letty has gone out alone for two hours to get a fish for the table. Only the “Lizard” is left painting her nails vermilion, John Julius typing a letter to Nanny, and me cowering and scribbling. I’m not suited to the Hebrides, it’s clear. I don’t understand how they endure it, far less love it. No papers, no radio, no gramophone, few books, no charm of house or rooms or garden, no culture. I don’t like it at all, at all! Baths are not. No electric light; in this I rejoice.
This letter shall be posted from the misty island. I wish my heart was more Highland.
9 September
The last day at Grogarry was the best, because after another hideous night, again of bombarding rain at my window, apprehension and panic growing with the small hours, a magnificent rainbow was the first thing I saw, connecting a pitch-black sky with a celestially blue one. The gale was stronger than ever, but the glass was rising and the sun shining fitfully and brilliantly. This good news was bad news for the men, who sat disconsolately in the drawing-room all morning, as the weather had spoilt sport. Letty was disgruntled, poor darling, and when she came into my room and I said something about the gale, she snapped my head off with a “Don’t go on about the wind. I can’t help it blowing.” She picked cruelly on the boys for the way they held their knives, and on Mary Rose for painting and smudging her hideous nails, and for mis-addressing her telegrams and letting nail-varnish get on the cushions. Poor Mary Rose! but nothing could distress her that morning. I was Perseus to her Andromeda and was bearing her away from a rock and a dragon, and sailing her over the sea past Skye to civilisatio
n, four days before she was due to leave. Her eyes were dancing.
At 12, in the middle of Happy Families of Geography, Letty said that we took no exercise and no wonder we were liverish and devitalised. I said that I was neither and couldn’t take a great deal of exercise on account of three big stitches across the ball of my foot. So we bundled into the comfortable Ford van and drove down to the Atlantic beach. Quite a sensation! I couldn’t hear for the wind, nor see for streaming eyes, but the glaring white sand and dazzling sea and rocks and breakers on distant reefs trembled in my watery vision and seemed very beautiful.
Back to lunch. There’s no waste, so those who should normally be fishing or shooting have to sit at table and eat their haversack rations out of their grease-paper, while the stay-at-homes gorge a nice bit of goose and pancakes. Poor Euan tried to swap a marmalade scone for anything going, but no one was taking it except John Julius who had nothing to exchange and found that he couldn’t eat it. After lunch the men went out to fish and the rest of us went into cottages after home-woven tweeds. I enjoyed that.
At 7 p.m. ten of us left for Enchantress. On arrival on board I was told that Duff’s journey back to Oban had not been too bad. We had a tremendous dinner of trout and grouse and ice in boiling soufflé, and all the children got steaming drunk. The Liebfraumilch was beautifully cold and the service deft and silent. I did the honours well, I thought, and they all (except Mary Rose and Euan) packed off in the launch about 11. A lovely night of calm in harbour.
We sailed into Stornoway after a fine day. Stewart Menzies was waiting in a car at the landing-stage and whizzed us up to fantastic Lewis Castle, the most opposite to South Uist’s lodge that can be imagined. Winnie Portarlington had furnished it with objets d’art for two months’ occupation. The rooms were hung with old Chinese panels of silk, and museum clocks chimed from mantel-pieces. Modern American and anciens meubles merged harmoniously, radios hummed music and the last news soothingly. Great vases of auratum lilies intoxicated the non-drinkers. Huge salmon were shown and then given to us. The evening was short and happy, and the talk encouraging about the weather, which of course was constantly in my thoughts as we were due to sail for Cape Wrath that night.
They sent out a volley of fireworks as we left, and we answered with a few dampish ones and a fine searchlight. The wind, though strong, was said to be friendly to us, so I went to bed with a light heart. John Julius was sleeping deeply in his frail cot. At 1 o’clock I was woken by the dreaded creaking and groaning and swaying of a violent pitch. In a few minutes the child started moaning: “Cape Wrath! Is this Cape Wrath?” and said that he must be sick. It was a false alarm and I put him back to bed, where he lay uncomplainingly still, perhaps asleep. I noticed that it was getting distinctly rougher every minute, and I lay trying very hard not to start panicking, not to think of ghastly possibilities, but to keep reasoning and praying for another six hours, when we were due at Scapa Flow. By 3.30 the tide was rolling hysterically and I was bathed in sweat. It was only with difficulty that I kept myself from seeking help. Suddenly there was a super-roll followed by a series of crashes, and I leapt up and dashed into Duff’s cabin opposite. What should I find but a scene of chaos! The bed had “got away” from its mooring, the whole of the bedding, mattress, blankets, pillows on the floor in a tangle and poor Duff picking himself up, bruised and bewildered. We got some scared-looking stewards to help put it together again. I swallowed three aspirins and a good big glass of brandy and went back to my cabin, where John Julius was doing a nice orderly “cat” by himself. It didn’t take five minutes. Once over he was as merry as a grig and did me good. I thought, if my bed plays the same trick as Duff’s it will kill John Julius, so I put him in mine and prepared to take his when another appalling crash-roll-and-pitch forced me out again. There I found old Euan green in the face, having also been pursued and bruised by his own bed and bedding, and in Duff’s cabin the same chaos come again and Duff furious with the ship, the stewards and me. So I went back to my seclusion and hung on to the foot of the bed. The “Captain” (Euan) popped his head in and I begged him to go up to the bridge and find some comfort for me, or anyway news. He was nothing loath and disappeared above (coat over pyjamas). He was away about forty minutes.
Funnily enough time goes fairly fast in acute misery and crisis. It’s anxiety that makes it drag so. The roughness wasn’t moderating a bit, but I suppose that the aspirin was doing a little good. Euan came back at last with fair news. It wouldn’t be any better for two hours (it was now 4.30 a.m.) but again it was all swell and not an actual storm, no water being shipped (this proved to be a lie as there were seven inches of sea in the wardroom and the radio was broken to pieces). I took this as comfort, feeling that it would not therefore get any worse and that two hours aren’t interminable, so I got into bed with John Julius. There was no bed-rail on the outside, only on the inside, so I had to cling to that over the child, otherwise I couldn’t have stayed put for a minute. They spoke true. At 6.30 it began to subside and I must have slept, for I woke at 8 to a calm harbour and a smooth sea, the engines still, and all well. Then how the spirits soared up, and what a breakfast we all ate of kippers and eggs, honey, jam, scones, toast and more scones. Everybody was saying that it was the worst ever, and that the wind instead of being friendly had been from the direst direction, and it all seemed long ago and not so bad, even at breakfast-time. Things lost were being recovered in the most unlikely places. I can’t help thinking that the staff doesn’t know its work, nor do those who converted this sloop into luxury. Nothing is secured half firmly enough. The drawers fly open when the roll is severe, the cupboard doors flap. Sixes-and-sevens is the order. Nothing shipshape.
We’ve reached Invergordon. It’s Christmas-cold but mirror-calm, and the worst is over.
11 September
I’ve had no time to write since we got to Invergordon until now, three days later. I imagine I left the diary at the morning after the great storm, safe in harbour. We had a whacking breakfast and an exchange of experiences, and a look at Euan’s bruise, coal-black already and the size of a kettle-holder. We made again for the open sea, waves still big but the wind friendly. The furniture was still laid down, but nothing will ever seem rough again.
In the evening we arrived at Dunrobin, dressed to kill. It was raining and I was wearing my red velvet, red hearts and your diamond trembler, when it was discovered that the tide was too low for landing except by changing into a dinghy with two oarsmen. I loved it, but it made the others cross. I felt like Mary Queen of Scots escaping from Loch Leven. It was early away because we were to sail at dawn for Invergordon and have early breakfast and stand on deck at the salute as we sailed past Rodney and Resolution and Courageous (“Curry Juice,” the aircraft carrier) and many destroyers, cruisers and submarines. The sun was shining. Rule Britannia was played by each band, the guns banged and the soldiers were drawn up in toy rows as at a review. Later in the morning the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Roger Backhouse, arrived in a swanky emerald-green barge, dressed with gloves and a clanking sword. He’s a tall man shaped for my taste exactly—a freak, lama-like, yellow and shaven-looking and uninhibited, slightly lisping, with a suppressed zeal and an innocence. He has something perhaps of Trenchard in his independence and uniqueness. Duff was taken off to his flagship Rodney while I wrote you my account of the big storm. The Commander-in-Chief said: “We never thought you’d come by sea with those forecasts.” Since then I have heard that there has been a row about it. Either the warnings were wrong or we should have waited. All this is very flattering to our courage, though really no alternative was offered us.
After lunch John Julius and I explored the town. It was incredibly dreary—nothing for any of those poor sailors to do, no cafés, no billiard-rooms, no music. One miserable cinema open only at night. A sad cripple playing a concertina was all the entertainment we could see. We had tea in a tea-shop, with midshipmen eating fish and chips and eggs and bacon in total silence.
The even
ing was crest-of-the-wave for me. I dressed as best I could in red-and-white silk with billowing sleeves and went off in the barge to Rodney, where the whole ship was dressed like me in red and white stripes, and the orchestra playing, and about forty officers to be introduced to and to sit down to dinner with, unhampered by any other woman. I loved it, but got a little rattled afterwards when I was given for five minutes to each of them in turn and they all looked identical, and I shall never know them or their names, faces or positions again. Euan is a godsend. He gets better every day and more cheery, and he’s exactly what we need as a medium and a mirth-provoker.
12 September
Yesterday was Sunday and it started off with lovely church in the Ramillies. All our crudest, most favourite hymns shouted out stoutly and two perfect Lessons, and the 1500 of the ship’s complement with two of the longest of the guns pointing at us. I did adore it and John Julius prayed with his face in his hands like an Elder of the Church.
14 September
In the morning I was sulky because John Julius and I had been invited properly by Captain and Commander-in-Chief to go with Duff to sea on the aircraft carrier, and then suddenly we were not to go. Photographers were to be on board and it seemed that it would create a flippant tone if I were photographed watching the latest Naval Air Arm exercises. We went instead on a tour of inspection in the destroyer Blanche with our stunning Captain and were given tea in the Captain’s cabin. Both captains very young and jolly and an atmosphere of “Cat’s away” about it (“Cat” being the First Cat of the Admiralty).