Daughter of Empire

by Pamela Hicks

  Grandmama and her entourage paid my sister and me a lot of attention, and when I was very young and my parents were away for weeks at a time, my father on naval duties, my mother travelling, I craved their involvement in my games. When I learned to play clock patience, or any new card game, I would ask Grandmama over and over again to play it with me; when Hanky knitted new clothes for my dolls, I would beg The Pyecrust to come and see them; when I felt down in the dumps, I would implore Isa to tell us a story involving one of her disasters. Isa was always most willing to oblige, and in her rich voice would tell us about the time she broke a rib pulling a cracker; how she broke a second rib bending over the arm of a chair to pick up a book; or the time when the hat of the woman next to her burst into flames and she had to jump off the tram, closely followed by a man who landed on top of her, shattering her ankle. Later, at a convent in Rome, where the nuns had spent hours polishing the marble floor in honour of her impending stay, the moment she entered the hall she slipped and broke her leg. She was so good humoured about these mishaps that you didn’t feel guilty laughing along with her.

  During my early childhood we met lots of my mother’s friends, although my sister and I had no indication that some of these friendships ran a little deeper. She was incredibly discreet, and by the time I was five my parents had been practising their modus vivendi for a number of years. It was about this time that Daddy’s friend Yola Letellier started to come and stay. They had met in 1932 at a dance in Deauville, and when my father saw this young, extremely attractive, boyish-looking girl with cropped hair and a little snub nose – a French ‘gamine’ – he wanted to know who she was. ‘Ah,’ came the reply. ‘Elle est la femme de Letellier.’ My father misheard, thinking she was the hotelier’s wife, and asked her to dance. In fact Monsieur Letellier was a powerful, much older, businessman, whose family owned and ran Le Journal, a daily newspaper with the third-highest circulation in the world at that time. Sparks ignited between Yola and my father during that very first dance, and as he whirled her around in a fast Viennese waltz everyone stopped to watch and applaud. Always the showman, my father found this an irresistibly romantic beginning and fell for Yola in a big way. Their relationship was to last for many years, and some time later the renowned French writer Colette went on to immortalise Yola’s story in her novel Gigi. In real life, Yola was as free spirited and youthful as her fictionalised self, though, unlike Gigi, in choosing Henri, Yola had married the older ‘uncle’ and not the young nephew.

  My father had learned to accept my mother’s boyfriends but my mother found it impossible not to be jealous. The fact that she had been taking lovers for ten years was apparently of no account. When she realised how important Yola was to my father, she cunningly befriended her and took her off to Austria, just at the time my father had arranged precious leave from his ship for their romantic assignation. This must have been extremely galling for my father, but it transpired that my mother’s travels with Yola did have one very positive outcome. In 1933, while on some adventure or other, she met a man who changed her life and enabled my father to find some contentment with Yola.

  ‘Bunny’ Phillips, or Lieutenant Colonel Harold Phillips of the Coldstream Guards to give him his proper name, was thrillingly handsome, with perfect posture – rare in a man of six foot five – and being half South American, he rode like a dream. From the moment I first met him, it became impossible to imagine family life without him. He even chose my first pony. Walking on the beach at Bognor, Patricia pointed to a line of little ponies that were giving rides to children. ‘Isn’t that one so sweet,’ she exclaimed, and Bunny took a good look, patient and interested in what we had to say. While we stopped to have an ice cream, he slipped away to talk to the owner and, a few days later, Sunshine arrived at Adsdean.

  We loved having Bunny in our home. Quite simply, he made my mother easier to be around and he genuinely loved being with my sister and me. He had the imagination for wonderful games into which she would also be drawn. When he was away he wrote us warm, affectionate letters, addressing each of us ‘The Weewaks’, one of the many pet names he invented for us. My mother kept many photographs on her dressing table, including the one of my father in naval uniform that she had to frequently replace as he was promoted and decorated. But what never changed was the picture of my mother, Patricia and me, sitting on a bed in a hotel room in Monte Carlo, all three of us wearing little paper crowns and capes made of the gauzy fabric in which my mother’s clothes were packed, grinning dopily at Bunny. This image became the official portrait of the alter egos he invented for us: ‘Princess Plink’ and ‘Princess Plonk’, while he and Mummy were ‘King and Queen of the Moon’. Bunny made up intoxicating stories for our characters, though I always secretly wished I had been the more glamorous-sounding Princess Plink.

  Bunny brought great joy to our lives and I loved him deeply. He was a core part of my rather eccentric family, and although he was our mother’s lover, they never displayed more than a friendly affection in public. He would stay with us for long periods of time and, to us children, he was just a part of our everyday life. Yola did not live with us but would visit frequently, bringing us charming gifts. For a time, I wouldn’t wear anything except the French peasant dress she gave each of us – the pink and white striped skirt, black flowered apron, waistcoat, long ribbons and little straw hat embroidered with mimosa and worn at a jaunty angle to the side of the head was just about the best thing in the world.

  For me, then, the addition of Bunny and Yola and the extension of the family in those two different directions greatly enriched my life and just meant more friendly faces in my somewhat unconventional home. It wasn’t until many years later, while riding with my father in the early-morning cool of Delhi, that I realised how his complete lack of jealousy prevented our family from fragmenting and how, as in so many areas of his life, he sought a practical solution to life’s tricky problems.

  3

  Casa Medina, our Maltese townhouse, was built of yellow stone, featured a rather elaborate porch and, much to my delight, had two front doors, each at a different level. It was in Guardamangia, outside Valletta, where the streets were achingly steep and so narrow that if a mule cart or car approached, you had to hop into a doorway to avoid being crushed.

  In 1934 my father was still serving in the Mediterranean Fleet and in the summer of that year, Nanny, Miss Vick, Grandmama, Patricia and I came to spend some time with him. My mother and Bunny joined us later, having returned from a six-month sailing trip around the Pacific. Family life was fun there, full of boat trips and picnics. Daddy was in a particularly happy mood, sharing memories of his own childhood days in Malta when my grandfather was commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean Fleet. We explored the island with him and he showed us the beautiful blue lagoons where we could swim, and he gave me a donkey to ride. My sister and I were also given a chameleon each. I named mine Casper and could watch him for ages, endlessly fascinated as to how he changed from yellow to dark green. He spent hours balanced on my hand, his long tongue darting out to catch flies, his eyes revolving in different directions.

  Peter Murphy and Noël Coward came to stay, making my parents laugh as they competed with each other to tell the funniest anecdotes. As an officer’s wife, my mother was responsible for hosting a cocktail party. This was nonnegotiable. The only day when she could possibly fulfil this duty, however, was a Sunday, which was the only day on which a party was not supposed to happen. Peter and Noël encouraged her to send out the invitations anyway. Noël was there when the replies arrived, including one that read: ‘Lieutenant Wood thanks Lady Louis Mountbatten for her invitation but would rather not accept on a Sunday’. During the party – held on a Sunday – my mother was puzzled by a long queue forming outside the gentlemen’s cloakroom. When the guests left, she darted in to see what had been keeping them in there for so long. Stuck up above the cistern, she found a piece of paper in Noël’s handwriting:

  Lieutenant Wood is never bored />
  On days devoted to the Lord

  In fact he thinks himself as one

  With God the Father, God the Son

  And, though he’d rather die than boast

  Also with God the Holy Ghost

  At the end of the summer Mummy and Bunny left for a long holiday. Patricia and I remained in Malta, collecting the stamps and postcards they sent from Bangkok, Angkor Wat, Hawaii, Bali, Java, Suva, Borneo, Sarawak, Bangkok (again), Calcutta, Jodhpur, Baghdad, Cairo and Budapest. A little later we had to return to England because our father was appointed to his first command, in charge of sailing a new destroyer to Singapore, which he was ordered to exchange for an older ship. He wrote on the return journey informing us of a rather surprising package that my mother and Bunny had left for him to collect in Hong Kong – a black Malayan honey bear named Rastus. When Patricia and I returned to Malta to see Daddy the following year, I was not at all pleased to make Rastus’s acquaintance. When he reared up on his hind legs he was as tall as my six-year-old self. To tell the truth, I was frightened of him; when we met in the garden I would run away, but that didn’t help as he delighted in chasing me. Actually everyone was slightly scared of him, with the natural exception of Grandmama. Until her arrival, Rastus had been enjoying free rein and was not very biddable, but he soon had a run-in with our grandmother. One teatime she discovered him on the table eating all the cakes. ‘Down, sir,’ she cried in outrage. ‘Get down at once!’ Rastus of course got down at once. There was no one – human or animal – who could not be put in their place by Grandmama.

  When Yola arrived she brought with her a funny little short-haired dachshund puppy with slightly googly eyes. ‘Ah, ma petite Pamela,’ she called, ‘voici un petit cadeau.’ Yola spoke very little English and we were usually required to speak to her in French. ‘Do you like?’ she added, because I had gone very silent. I couldn’t find the words to express myself in any language. It was more than ‘like’ – it was love at first sight. ‘Elle s’appelle Lottie – après Lottie Minkus,’ she continued, and although I had never heard of the opera singer then, it sounded like the perfect name for such a darling companion. I picked up my puppy and cuddled her, only to be told by Nanny that I couldn’t play with her until I had written Yola a thank-you note. I spent the afternoon in a fug of despair, writing out in French ‘merci . . . beaucoup . . . pour . . . le . . . petit . . . chien’ in a painstakingly careful hand because I knew that if I made a mistake I would have to start all over again. All I wanted to do was play with my puppy, and as I pressed my pencil harder and harder into the paper, my hand hurting with the effort, I felt a bitter resentment well up inside me.

  That summer Lottie became the centre of my life and I, in return, became the object of her love. She faithfully trotted after me wherever we went and I looked after her as if my life depended on it. Everything went smoothly until one hot, heart-stopping day when we all went out in a little green motor yacht so that my father could indulge in his new obsession. Waterskiing was a comparatively new sport in the thirties but my father was already hooked. He had been driving along La Croisette in Cannes a few years earlier when he saw a man ‘with two long wooden planks attached to his feet’. He was so impressed that he sought the man out, bought the ski kit from him and soon became an excellent skier. On more than one occasion, when his ship had stopped at sea, he skied out to dinner between ships in full mess dress with trousers rolled up and shoes hanging by their laces around his neck, effortlessly dropping the ski rope when he reached the ladder of the other ship. On this day in Malta, as my mother and Yola lay chatting and sunbathing, I walked around the boat to watch my father ski, something I always found mesmerising, like flying across the water. Lottie was following me along the narrow edge of the boat when it suddenly lurched, she lost her footing and dropped into the waves. The world seemed to stop turning and I screamed at the top of my voice. My father simply skied by, scooped Lottie up and placed her back on board.

  This blissful summer of 1935 was cut short by Mussolini’s ferocious expansion of his empire as he prepared to invade Abyssinia, which shared a border with the Italian colony of Eritrea. In the climate of growing aggression, it was decided that all naval families should leave the Mediterranean. For my parents, this was a problem, as they had been expecting to stay in Malta for two or three years: Adsdean was let and Brook House was uninhabitable, in the midst of major renovations. Believing the crisis would be over within a couple of months, my parents decided that Patricia, me, Nanny, Miss Vick – and mercifully Lottie – should go to Budapest until the situation calmed down. Mummy and Bunny went on ahead in the Hispano, while the rest of us travelled by train. We broke the journey at an island in the Danube, a relief for Patricia and me, as the atmosphere in the carriage was decidedly icy. Circumstances had forced our two guardians at least to pretend to get on but the underlying frostiness between them made my sister and me uncomfortable. The hotel soon made up for it, though, as it had a swimming pool with a machine that made enormous waves every few minutes. A bell was rung beforehand to warn vulnerable swimmers to scramble out so that the waves could start. We hadn’t understood the warning and I was nearly drowned as the waves crashed over my head. There was hardly any time to catch my breath before another mountain of waves rose up in front of me, but luckily Nanny was there to pull me out of the danger zone.

  Reunited with my mother and Bunny, we continued onwards until we found a small hotel in the mountains about two hours east of Budapest. Kekes Szallo was hidden in a pine forest, and once our mother decided it would do, she settled us in, gave my sister and I a quick kiss, and got back in the Hispano with Bunny, leaving the four of us – and Lottie – while they continued on their travels.

  At first, the freedom of Kekes was exhilarating. Patricia and I had hardly ever been together for such a sustained period of time and now we were never apart. At eleven years old, she was going through a writing phase and, rather thrillingly, created lots of scary stories for me about a stag. Something in the mountain air – or maybe because there was no alternative – seemed to put a halt to the hostilities between Nanny and Miss Vick, and the four of us enjoyed ourselves enormously. Each day we walked bravely through the mountain forests, only a little bit scared we would encounter the wolves we had been told lurked among the trees. My sister and I wore the same thing for every walk – little cotton dresses, white gym shoes and white ankle socks – and carried rucksacks on our backs. As we walked, we learned to lean on the sticks that had been specially cut down for the purpose of hiking. Lottie was in heaven – running in and out of the trees and helping collect the twigs for the wigwams we made as we picnicked at the local First World War memorial. In the evening we ate at the hotel – a lot of ham, I seem to remember.

  The Abyssinian crisis went on and on and no one came to get us. We had left Malta in July with only our summer clothes, so by October, when Mussolini’s troops attacked Abyssinia, it was cold and beginning to snow in the Hungarian mountains. In the local village Miss Vick and Nanny bought us all matching pink flannel underwear and a few winter outer clothes, so at least we could go tobogganing. Heaven knows where they found the money to do so because our funds were running perilously short. When the manager informed Miss Vick that the hotel would be providing a limited service during the winter, she and Nanny – united by their panic – sent frantic messages to Malta. But communication was difficult and no answers or help came. By the time the manager insisted that we settle our bill, we had run out of money. It was a stroke of luck that Dr Toth, a guest at the same time as us, overheard the kerfuffle, assured the manager that our mother was a famous and rich English aristocrat and guaranteed the money. Such a kind act by a complete stranger was a godsend and ensured we still had a roof over our heads.

  By the end of October we still hadn’t received any word from our parents, but finally, one snowy day, we awoke to find my mother and Yola in reception. Apparently, my mother had written down the name of the hotel on a piece of paper t
hen lost it. In early November she decided that she and Yola had better retrace the route she had driven earlier in the year and so it was that, at last, we were found, rescued and all bills were settled. Dr Toth had left by this time, so my mother was unable to thank him, though many years later, towards the end of the 1960s, when he was in a Siberian labour camp, he wrote and asked me for some help. He had enclosed a list of food available from the Soviet store Gom, which was the only source permitted. I immediately ordered as much as he was allowed. Sadly I never heard back from him and fear he must have died in the camp.

  We couldn’t return to England, as our houses were still unavailable, so our father arranged for us to go and stay with our great aunt and uncle, in Darmstadt, Germany. As reigning Grand Duke of Hesse and a passionate aesthete, Uncle Ernie had created an artists’ colony at Darmstadt, attracting leading architects and artists from all over the world. The city’s skyline was dominated, as it is today, by a forty-eight-metre-high, art deco ‘Wedding Tower’ that had been erected to celebrate Uncle Ernie’s second marriage, to Aunt Onor. My mother drove us down there, settled us in and then went back to Malta to pack up her things so that she could go travelling in China. It wasn’t safe for us to be in Malta, and my father, disappointed not to have us back with him, wrote long letters to compensate.

  Patricia and I were very happy in Darmstadt, even though I was sick for a while with a bad case of measles. We lived right in the centre of town in the magnificently large Neues Palais, which had been built in 1865 for Princess Alice, Queen Victoria’s daughter, when she married Uncle Ernie’s father. My Great Aunt Onor was extremely kind and patient, teaching me how to knit and, when I became frustrated at my lack of progress, encouraging me by hiding tiny wooden toys in the ball of wool that fell out as it unwound. Old Uncle Ernie drew me the same fanciful drawings of monsters that he had drawn for my father when he was a child. He called them ‘katoofs’ and I was thrilled in my turn to have them drawn for me. We also learned to speak German while we were there and Patricia’s letters greatly impressed my father – it became quite obvious that she now spoke the language better than he did. I discovered only after we left, however, that the thick Hessian accent I had picked up from the servants meant that my German was pretty useless anywhere else.