Daughter of Empire

by Pamela Hicks

  While those fortunate people whose fathers and brothers had survived the war were now reunited, my family were still absent, dealing with the aftermath. My father took the surrender of the Japanese in Singapore. His priority was the repatriation of the British troops in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. They were living in appalling conditions, many near death, and he needed someone to assess the situation for him. The person he felt most capable of doing so was my mother, so he sent her off with an Indian officer and a First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) woman assistant. They embarked on an incredible journey that included sleeping in the jungle, searching for unmarked camps that were rumoured to be holding many prisoners. As the British had not yet reached these camps she had to be escorted by fully armed Japanese soldiers, but she managed to gain their respect and none disobeyed her. She flew back with the vital information my father needed and the Far East Prisoners of War (FEPOWs) were lastingly grateful to her – and to my family – down the years – not to mention how proud my father was of the remarkable job she had done.

  Patricia was at our father’s headquarters in Ceylon with the WRNS, and I was in Gloucestershire, far away from them all. The only small consolation of having them all out in SEAC was that I had a gunboat on the River Irrawaddy in Burma named after me. Indeed, I was very impressed to be told that HMS Pamela (and its sister vessel HMS Oona, named after General Slim’s daughter, who had just joined me at Hatherop) had even seen action in battle. Patricia’s line in a letter to our father made me laugh. ‘How young’, she wrote, ‘does a girl have to be exactly to have a boat named after them?’

  Finally and thankfully – I was hardly able to contain my relief – everyone came home for the Allied Victory Parade and the parties and thanksgiving ceremonies. The first event took place in the sumptuously grand Buckingham Palace, followed by a terrifying list of social engagements as my parents caught up with their old friends. I was very pleased to see Bunny and Gina and to meet their new baby, Sasha. On the day of the parade itself, we gathered at the palace and were driven to the specially constructed saluting base in the Mall to watch the Victory Parade. We had been told that the whole route of the procession had been lined with hoardings to hide the bomb sites, but the crowd was so thick and animated that you wouldn’t have been able to see them anyway. My mother, Patricia and I took our seats moments before Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee arrived to a tumultuous reception from the crowd. When the King and Queen and the princesses drew up in the state landau, the crowd went wild with cheering.

  The parade was magnificent and must have taken weeks to plan. It began as two separate parades: a march-past of over 21,000 fighting men and women from all the Allied countries and a display of all the types of machines that had helped them to victory. At the Houses of Parliament both parades came together to pass the saluting base as one impressive and continuous column. Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery – or Monty as he was affectionately known – was the first to pass before the King and Queen, a small solitary figure standing sideways to attention in his jeep. His vehicle was closely followed by the chiefs of staff’s procession that included my father and the other Supreme Allied Commanders. They all saluted and my father, as he passed the saluting base, looked back at us and clasped his hands together in victory. His broad smile said it all: ‘We did it!’ Later that evening, the royal family travelled down the Thames in the royal barge to the Palace of Westminster, with the crowds cheering from the riverbanks. The clever lighting of landmarks combined with a vibrant firework display made it seem as if the whole of London was aglow with pride.

  There followed a number of parties, and as I had just passed my driving test – I had taken well to driving – I took the opportunity to give my parents a lift to Hampton Court, to a party hosted by the new Labour government. My father, as always, appeared in uniform, but my mother, warming to the ‘post-war’ theme, assumed that others would be dressed to party. She chose an elegant long evening dress and a bright pink ostrich feather fan but, on arrival, she realised that this was Austerity Britain and that the other guests were dressed in lounge suits or uniform and the ladies in short dresses. She looked around in panic, shoved the feathers into my father’s hands, hissed, ‘Dickie, go and get rid of this,’ then promptly disappeared. She returned looking calm, her long dress tucked and twisted into a rather effective shorter dress. My father stood in the queue for the gents’ cloakroom, face like thunder, clutching the ostrich feather fan, wishing, for that moment at least, that his wife were a little more conventional.

  In the following weeks and months, honours for my father flooded in. Among many accolades, he received honorary degrees from Oxford and Cambridge and was made a viscount. This meant that my sister and I became ‘Honourables’, something that caused us both great embarrassment. One special honour was conferred on my father by the town of Romsey when he was granted the Freedom of the Borough – the first ever such grant in their 339-year history. We all processed through the town with great ceremony and cheering and my father presented the mayor with a Japanese gun. He had given them prior warning and the councillors planned to mount it on the wall of the town hall. Plans had to be hurriedly changed when an enormous field gun weighing several hundred pounds arrived a few days before the ceremony and proved not at all suitable for mounting on anything other than a very strong outdoor plinth.

  Meanwhile, Patricia had fallen in love. John Brabourne was my father’s ADC and, somewhat romantically, they had met in Ceylon. Soon after they returned to England she finally agreed to accept his constant proposals of marriage. When she telephoned me at school, I experienced the weirdest sensation: I felt simultaneously more excited yet more despairing than I had ever been. I couldn’t believe that I was losing my sister just when I thought my family had been reunited. But of course my elated misery didn’t last for long. John could not have been nicer or kinder and it wasn’t long before I began to adore him as the brother I never had. It certainly couldn’t have been easy, coming into our family, especially when Grandmama was in argumentative spirit or introduced the names of various relations, both alive and long dead, to assist the chronology of her stories. One day she was recounting an anecdote (as well as interjecting in several other conversations around the table) and added, ‘That was when Willie came over from Bonn.’ Poor John was baffled, so he whispered urgently to Patricia, ‘Who is Willie?’ To which she replied: ‘Why, the Kaiser, of course.’

  I got involved in the preparations for Patricia and John’s wedding, which was to take place at Broadlands, even though the house was still mostly given over to the hospital. I was to be ‘head bridesmaid’, but as the other three were princesses, the role of chief was really only titular as I felt shy telling the others what to do. My most important job was to keep a list of all the presents as they arrived and lay them out the day before the wedding for the guests to enjoy. There were gifts of jewellery so after much debate my parents decided to hire a private guard that night – without telling me. As I was madly unpacking things at midnight, he burst in, pointing a loaded revolver at me. After we had both collected ourselves it was difficult to work out who was the more shamefaced, the guard for nearly shooting his employer’s daughter or me for having been caught flapping around in my nightdress.

  Patricia and John were married on 26 October, an unusually wet day, the weather, according to superstition, apparently indicative of a long and happy union. Romsey was beside itself with excitement for the ‘big wedding’, buildings covered in bunting and people crowded along the route to the abbey. Some of the crowd had been waiting for up to ten hours in the pouring rain or had spent the night outside the abbey. Motor coaches had brought people from Shrewsbury, one hundred miles away, and Bournemouth, Salisbury, Winchester and Southampton, one coach displaying a large notice: ‘Come and see the Mountbatten wedding. 8/6 Return’.

  The princesses and I had to wade unceremoniously through the streets of Romsey, holding our skirts up above the puddles while we walked with the
King, the Queen, our mother and Cousin Philip. When we reached the door of the abbey, Princess Elizabeth turned to Philip and he casually reached behind Princess Margaret and took her coat. This small act jump-started a media frenzy as the press realised that it had glimpsed, however fleetingly, an air of ease and understanding between the pair. Newsreels confirmed the rumour, and royal gossip went into overdrive.

  The abbey was filled to overflowing, and the grey stone interior with its Norman arches looked spectacular. The columns lining the aisles were silhouetted black against the light streaming through the stained-glass windows. Patricia was radiant in a dress of gold Indian brocade, with long medieval sleeves, a figure-hugging bodice and a long fan-shaped train. She wore a beautiful combination of veils – one of tulle that my mother had worn and the other of lace belonging to the Brabourne family, through which glistened the diamonds and pearls of the tiara Grandmama had worn at the Russian court. Patricia shone amid the restrained utility clothing and uniforms of the congregation. In our dresses the colour of forget-me-nots, we bridesmaids walked behind, our long skirts falling into folds, with Alexandra, the smallest, in front, followed by Princess Margaret and then Princess Elizabeth and myself as a pair behind her. John stood waiting with his best man at the end of the narrow aisle facing the Archbishop of Canterbury. Our father’s beaming face clearly showed his pride as Patricia came up the aisle on his arm.

  Back at Broadlands, I had difficulty in recognising anyone, having removed my glasses for the day. When I bumped into the Archbishop, he told me not to worry and reassured me he had been ‘a fine rugger player’, and I was shocked on turning to see Miss Faunce bearing down on me, as it meant the person I had been speaking to earlier had not been my old headmistress at all. It seemed I wasn’t the only one who was having difficulty adjusting to Patricia’s newly married status either. With a room full of guests to attend to, including the royal family, my father was somewhat alarmed – and touched – to find our butler Frank crying on the stairs, shaking his head in disbelief and repeating: ‘How can Miss Patricia leave a lovely home like this . . .?’

  It was a wrench having to return to school, especially when I received a call telling me that Lottie had died. She had been my most faithful companion throughout my childhood, and as I put the phone down, I could vividly picture myself in Malta bursting with joy as Yola gave her to me. I had to go to my bedroom after every lesson to cry, such was my distress. I realised I couldn’t go on weeping for the rest of the term, however, so I consoled myself with the lines from Antony and Cleopatra: ‘Unarm, Eros, the long day’s task is done, / And we must sleep’, and got on with things as best as I could.

  Then came a massive decision. Returning to Broadlands for Christmas in 1946, I learned that my father had been offered a new job. A huge weight hung over my parents, a heaviness that affected all of us as we left for a much-awaited and eagerly anticipated family skiing holiday in Switzerland. For this was no ordinary job. As an admirer of my father’s achievements in SEAC, his ability to get on with people, his liberal sentiments and because he was the King-Emperor’s cousin, the prime minister, Clement Attlee, wished my father to succeed Lord Wavell as the Viceroy of India and oversee the transfer of power to an independent Indian government. The process was to begin as soon as possible and be over by June 1948. This offer had taken my father by surprise. For a start, in contrast to all the previous incumbents, my father was a naval officer, and among his many reservations he believed that if he took this role, it would mean the end of his naval career. But this was not his only worry. The command to divest England of the last jewel in the Empire, garnered under his great-grandmother, was not an easy one to accept. India was racked with political troubles and many more experienced people before him had failed to forge a path to independence. He was also concerned and distressed that – despite his protestations – the Labour government had not told Lord Wavell of their intentions.

  On 1 January 1947, just a few days into our holiday, my father was recalled by the PM, so he and my mother returned home, leaving Patricia, John and me behind to finish a rather gloomy New Year holiday. There followed weeks of negotiation and stipulations – my father threw in some strong provisos, including the use of his old aircraft, a York, which he had flown in South-East Asia, and a commitment from the Admiralty that he might return to the Navy when the job was over. Most importantly, he asked that he be allowed to act on his own initiative and not have to refer every decision back to Whitehall. When it looked as though the prime minister and the cabinet might accept these stipulations, my father went to see the King. ‘Bertie,’ he said, ‘they are sending me out to do an almost impossible job. Think how badly it will reflect on the family if I fail.’ The King replied, ‘Think how well it will reflect on the family if you succeed,’ and told him he must go.

  Back at Broadlands, my father took me for a ride, and as our horses plodded along he revealed that the proposed job was more than likely to come off and so I should not go back to school but instead go with my parents to India. He explained that while he and my mother fulfilled their roles as Viceroy and Vicereine, I could be useful helping with the entertaining and getting to know the student leaders who had just been released from jail. He talked and we rode for a very long time and as we came down Telegraph Hill, my head was spinning. I knew that my going with them was inevitable, and that even though there was still much to be resolved, my life was going to take a very different turn from this moment on.

  For the next few weeks, I was in limbo and while pleased not to be going back to a girls’ boarding school I was also apprehensive of being thrown into a completely new world. I had never mixed with university students, much less in an intensely political environment, and I knew next to nothing about India. While we waited anxiously for Parliament’s decision, I spent my time with Grandmama, reading aloud to her since her eyes were becoming weak and she was distraught at having to give up reading, which was still her greatest pleasure. She might have fared better if we had had strong electric lighting but, because of the coal crisis, all the lamps glowed weakly, or were cut off altogether by the endless power cuts. To add to the collective misery, it snowed for eight weeks in a row and one night in January was the coldest on record.

  At last, in the middle of February, my father’s appointment came through. Patricia, John and I went to the House of Commons to hear the statement read. When the prime minister announced that Viscount Mountbatten was to become the Viceroy of India with almost immediate effect, the House descended into chaos. Churchill, now in Opposition, demanded to know why Wavell was being recalled. The debate was passionate and heated, but when we left Parliament, my father’s appointment had been approved, and I knew for certain that my life was never going to be the same again.

  There were only four weeks in which to prepare for our departure. My mother and I needed suitable clothing, dresses fit for a vicereine and her daughter. We fumbled around the shops, which, because of the power cuts, were often in complete darkness, save for the odd candle. When we finally uncovered some lovely material our lack of coupons – even with the small extra allocation we had been given – and the horrifying prices, made it impossible to arrange anything like a suitable number of dresses. In the end my mother managed to buy a ‘gala’ dress for the swearing-in ceremony and some fabric that her French dressmaker turned into pretty dresses. It was a treat for me to have anything new, so I was delighted by my new acquisitions.

  I did what I could to prepare myself. India was already a familiar place for my father as he had set up his South-East Asia headquarters in New Delhi when he first took up his job as Supreme Allied Commander. He gave me an elementary Urdu primer that had been published for army cadets several years before and I did my best to study it. My mother arranged for Miss Lankaster, who had worked for the All India Women’s Conference, to come and talk to me about the various student leaders I should meet. Being seventeen and pulled straight out of an English boarding school, I wondered just how
far out of my depth I would be, how on earth I was going to be of any help at all in such a profoundly diverse and divided country, a country on the brink of such massive political and social change.

  But there wasn’t much time for reflection. Patricia announced that she was pregnant and celebrating her good news proved a welcome diversion. My parents and I were summoned for tea at Marlborough House with Queen Mary, who sat so upright everyone felt compelled to do the same. Wearing a turban and enormous diamonds, she listened with great interest as my father explained what his role was to be, adding that Grandmama strongly disapproved of the politicians sending him out to do their dirty work. Queen Mary laughed delightedly at this. ‘Oh, dear Victoria,’ she said. ‘Ever the bluestocking. And never afraid to say what she thinks.’ My father smiled – we were all very proud of my grandmother’s reputation.

  The last ten days passed in a blur: updates from my father’s viceregal staff on the growing unrest and political disagreements he was going to encounter on arrival in India; a visit on behalf of the King from the Duke of Gloucester to invest my father with the Order of the Star of India and the Grand Cross of the Indian Empire (a heart-stopping moment – on arrival, he realised that the decorations had been left on the back seat of the taxi. Luckily they were retrieved); a farewell cocktail party for over seven hundred people at the RAC Club, then a goodbye dinner with Patricia, John and Cousin Philip, during which he told us that he had renounced his titles and become a naturalised British citizen, another P. Mountbatten to add to the confusion.