by Vicky Unwin
Anyway, having eulogised my Tom for a couple of pages, you will now have gathered that he is no ordinary person. His main worry at the minute seems to be, can we live in the comparative comfort we desire on £600 a year – I shall be interested to hear what you think – (he hates dancing, by the way, and seldom drinks!) He is so worried that he mayn’t be able to give me all I desire, that he repeatedly gives me the chance of backing out if I want to. Personally, one has to draw in one’s horns on leaving the Navy, anyway, and I don’t think we should live in too much discomfort – The transition from service to civilian life is bound to be difficult, anyway.
There won’t be any grand wedding, anyway, as Tom loathes ceremony and is all for rushing off to a registry office without any warning – a probable relief to you! A most unconventional young man! (But very sweet!) We don’t think the difference in age matters as we get on so well.
No more now, must write to Tom.
Heaps of love,
Sheila,
DON’T MAKE A SONG AND DANCE OF THIS – PLEASE. You know the family.
The very thought that her mother would settle for a registry office wedding, and in London, is impossible to contemplate: I reckon Sheila was trying to get some of her own back for her unhappy childhood but, as we shall see her – and Tom’s – wishes were overruled.
❖❖❖
My father was a man who kept secrets: we know that he kept secret his Czech nationality from his employers, the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), and then got in a real pickle because he could not get his naturalisation papers through; he had even kept it secret from Sheila until after their engagement, as this letter shows:
Wells
19.8
Darling
I’ve got something on my mind – a confession, in fact. I don’t tell everyone because it only leads to millions of questions I have answered before: I am not really British, I am Czech by birth and my naturalisation is only just under way …
I had to keep all this quiet during war-time otherwise it would have been very dangerous in case I got captured. I didn’t tell you from the first as I thought you might not ‘go much on it’. Sorry if I underestimated you. Very few people at Kiel know as it is – it saves so many silly questions and is very much easier all round, but I do think you ought to know, if anyone …
It meant that he was extremely nervous about the wedding announcement lest there was mention of the name Ungar and his employers spotted it: ‘if they insist on putting daughter of … and son of … it’ll be a bit awkward in my case from the pt. of view of the aforesaid NFU problems, unless one lied a little and called it all Unwin … oh how dreadful all these formalities are – but do we care? DO we hell.’
His two much greater secrets, which he never revealed to my mother, were that he fathered a child in 1944, and that he was Jewish.
He had befriended Joyce, an attractive young woman with two small children, whose husband was away at war. Greta, who was not a particularly nice woman, lied about the baby that arrived after Tom had left for Caversham, and pretended it was the husband’s, so Tom only got to know the truth much later. According to him, not until the 1980s when he and Joyce met again, and his daughter, Bonnie, became a part of his life (and mine in 2009); according to Bonnie, Tom ‘visited my mother at her place of work in Esher, Surrey, in about 1946. He said he saw me in my cot asleep. Mother says he picked me up and referred to me as “our baby”. Mother also tells of visiting him in his London flat – without telling him she was coming – and Sheila being there!’ What they both thought of this meeting, history does not relate. Tom must have been beside himself with anxiety that this secret would come out; he only told it to me when he thought he was about to die and felt I should know about my half-sister, who is in fact older than my step-mother, who of course knew nothing about his first family either.
Suppressing his Jewish background and the terrible events of his childhood and teens was, I believe, to have lifelong repercussions on his character, and goes a long way towards explaining the tormented letters he writes to Sheila during their courtship and in the run-up to their marriage. Some forty-seven letters survive and while most of them have florid and intense descriptions of his love for Sheila, they are also mixed with serious doubts as to whether he is fit to marry her: ‘my love for you has become a deep and lasting affection – as it is not the wild passion of fiery youth – not entirely anyway. And that is why I still feel, sometimes, that I may be doing the wrong thing in marrying in these circumstances of uncertainty.’
The passion is mixed with a penny-pinching pragmatism – probably born out of his refugee status – which was also to become more prominent in later life: ‘for goodness sake don’t buy too much bric-a-brac in the form of glasses and things. Much more useful if you buy sheets and pillow cases’; he then goes on to say his mother has advised him to dye his white shirts in to more ‘useful colours’ like grey and blue. As for wedding presents, they must be ‘useful … iron; anything from carpet to lavatory brushes’.
His annual salary of £600 was equivalent to that earned by an MP but he suffered from angst throughout this correspondence about where and how they could afford to live on it. The letters are full of sketches of the various rooms he is considering and cost-of-living calculations, depending on whether they cook for themselves, take meals with their landlady, or even commute, which was an idea at some stage.
Like his father he had an ‘ambivalent attitude towards middleclass standards, of which the marriage was part. Whilst Ungar theoretically promoted sexual freedom and also made use of it as his right, he proved to be a jealous spouse.’15 Tom was desperately jealous of Sheila meeting up with both Robin and Barry in London just before they marry, but is shameless when he talks in an offhand way of other women he has slept with in the past.
Tom seems to accept being overruled on the registry office but is adamant that there is to be no fuss: ‘I presume that it will NOT be a pukkha [sic] wedding where I would have to wear tails or something? Please darling, anything but that.’ But when he finds out that it is to be a conventional occasion, he rails against the arrangements Sheila’s parents are making for the wedding:
Now why the hell do your people want to put it in the paper? I am very much against it. There can be no practical argument for it apart that we shall have a lot of mail to answer, and its just middle class pomposity and you can tell them I said so, or I’ll tell them myself. NO I am ABSOLUTELY against it.
And in a later letter: ‘oh you wretch, so we are going to have to be terribly suburban and have cards and cake ...’ Signs of his meanness come to the fore again in relation to the cake and the guest list when he says ‘shall we just confine it to your friends?’ and reluctantly agrees that spare invitations can be sent to German friends, ‘but no cake, it would be like a mockery.’ His socialism was very much on display.
Again, like his father, he was obsessed with sex, or at least the thought of it. He talks about their ‘little problem’ and says that ‘self-denial and so forth is right but inwardly I ha’e me doots’. On 30 October he tells her he has consulted books and written to various Harley street doctors to get advice on the best way of losing her virginity painlessly, and of preventing pregnancy. He goes into all this in great detail, describing ‘sheaths’, ‘pessaries’ and the pros and cons of condom use in married life: ‘it’s essentially an unmarried sinner’s method … and is unsatisfactory as you don’t get the right “contact”.’ He makes her an appointment with a specialist and reverts to this subject again and again, exhorting her to visit the doctor before they marry. On another occasion he says how ‘wonderful it is we can talk and correspond about these things without embarrassment.’ I must say I do rather wonder how my mother felt receiving these explicit letters on sex education!
But his biggest neurosis by far was his anxiety over the state of the world. Obviously depressed after being demobbed and cast adrift, he was lucky enough to get a well-paid job with IFAP (International
Federation of Agricultural Producers, an offshoot of the NFU) which ‘square[d] with my ideas … a chance to do something to improve international relations and to provide food.’ His time in the navy, on the Russian convoys and in post-war Germany, has made him into both a pacifist and an idealist, verging on being communist. He dreams of going abroad and escaping this ‘war, war, war’ – he is haunted by Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and living in a little cottage in New Zealand, or of ‘teaching Negros in Kenya’, living a life ‘of absolute goodness and, of gentleness and non-violence and understanding others, of easy, peaceful leisure and contentment. I do so passionately desire to be a pacifist and a vegetarian … will you come?’ It is a romantic prospect on paper, and he writes very seductively.
These letters are long and rambling, and reveal a very tortured soul, who doubts until the very last as to whether he should marry or not: ‘I have been pretty lonely since I was about 15 and got launched into the big alien world and I have therefore become rather independent’, yet still he declares his passionate love for Sheila in every letter. Sadly, I think she must have been swayed by his good looks, his sense of humour and fun, and a sharing of ideals to such an extent that she overlooked the clear signs of someone who would, as he forecast, be very difficult to live with, and who never left behind the inheritance of his father’s notions of sexual freedom.
She was not to know of the terrible damage that had been done to his psyche by losing his whole family, apart from his mother and brothers, in the Holocaust. One wonders how much he even knew about what had happened, as information was hard to get and verify. I am not saying my father was a bad man; on the contrary, he was a devoted and loving father (I adored him as a small child, in fact I was known as ‘Daddy’s girl’) generous of spirit, witty and charming with a terrific, if sometimes cruel, sense of humour – that Germanic Schadenfreude – just an unsuitable one for my mother to marry. He retained a compassion for others less fortunate than himself throughout his life, working in development and with refugees for the United Nations after he left Tanzania in 1964. He passed on to me his hatred of inequality and gave me a social conscience, and for that I am forever in his debt.
❖❖❖
Sheila’s final two letters are all about the wedding, naturally enough. Given how much she came to hate her mother-in-law in the future, it is amusing to see her getting Sheila’s highest accolade, ‘a dear’. Even Tom is not always so polite about his mother, ‘… mother seems to be losing a little of her class … can that really be the woman who dined with Presidents.’ He worries about her ‘petty little swindles’ (when I was about 11, I remember her teaching me how to shoplift in Canada, where she ended up after the war), but he does approve of her domestic abilities above those of the English housewife. ‘Perhaps mummy could come up for a while and teach you how to cook and other housewifely achievements. And mummy is an excellent housewife, much better than yours probably, because English standards of housekeeping are shamefully inadequate. Polish the brasses, sweep the shit under the carpet and “Oh where’s the tin opener, dear”?’ In fact Grace was an excellent cook and housekeeper, far less slovenly than Grandmother Ungar, who had never had to lift a finger before the war. I did say tact was something he had not inherited from his father!
He obviously held out little hope for the benefits of Sheila’s course as he urges her to learn how to cook ‘meat – not stews except Irish stew, how to roast and stew as it is difficult; omelets and pancakes, custard and pastry; not vegetables the English way, awful, you will have to learn from mother’… and semolina as he ‘loved it as a kid’. This bossy tone is present in many of the letters; he was a controlling man and he even admits to it in relation to work (he was a workaholic): ‘I like to be an absolute dictator in the office.’
As for Sheila, he is torn between the need for her to work to earn money or becoming the vision of domestic bliss, ‘once you have got a home to run you’ll be quite busy, and if you’re not you can always get a part time job.’ The next minute he is sending her job advertisement clippings and seriously toying with sacking his assistant, Miss Fagg, who is older than him and useless, and employing Sheila as his secretary. In the end, unable to make up his mind, he says he would feel like a ‘cad’ if he were to do this.
B. Oeynhausen
8.11.46
My dear Ma – Many thanks for your letter. I was beginning to think you disapproved or were checking up on my Thomas. His name is UNWIN – Thomas Michael. It used to be UNGER [sic] but he had it changed by deed poll as in time of war and with the possibility of capture. Things would have been very hard for a Czech with the Germans – his mother is still Unger, I believe, but Alec has been changed – Tom’s naturalisation is now under weigh [sic] –
Well, we have got a flat, or at least Tom has paid £5 deposit and I have to say Yay or Nay on my return. It is in Maida Vale, in a house belonging to a solicitor and his wife, S. Africans, whose daughter was a Wren Coder in Alex – It is £4 a week (quite cheap for London) furnished, and has two bedrooms, sitting room and kitchen/hall. The only snag appears to be that there is no running water, but I’m not clear what Tom means – whether no bath or lav. only (and we share theirs down below) or whether there isn’t even a sink to do the washing up – I don’t mind the former, as he says there are illimitable baths to be had down below – but I must have a sink!! Think of Tom shaving in the morning! However, I think the latter will probably be the case in which case I expect we shall take the flat as the rent is cheap – they provide crockery, but want help with sheets – what quality can you buy these days? I am keen to get coloured ones, are they obtainable? And of course is nice to have our own blankets, which I prefer coloured also. Do find out about these for me, please. I wrote to Draffens in Dundee, asking them to send my beaver lamb coat down to Durham (it will have to be remodelled at Jayson’s) and asked them to get me new details of sheets and blankets they had in stock – as they are an excellent shop, and it’s possible that Scotland may be better than Durham.
The flat has an electric cooker and the Theophilles will do our shopping for us if I’m unable to – it means preparing breakfast and dinner – I might get a part time job – Tom is keen for me to join him in the N.F.U., as his assistant (a girl) is hopeless and in time he will have to do a lot of travelling and naturally wants me to go too. I don’t know what the N.F.U. would say to a husband and wife combination – frowns I should think – and again we may get tired of seeing so much of each other (!!) But actually it’s quite a good idea as the work is most interesting.
No comment from you on the actual wedding, pretty certain it will be a registers’ office affair and no fuss – (as Tom loathes fuss), no family, friends, or relations, and no reception. OK by you? A few days honeymoon in the country and then back to London – as things stand at the minute, I plan to arrive in UK about the 21st or 22nd – go and be demobbed in London or wherever it is – see you for a day (or 2 perhaps), come up North – dump uniform – and collect things together for 5 or 6 days, return to London and then either go down to Wells to see Mrs. Unwin, or get married – I had such a nice letter from Mrs. U. by the way, (did I tell you?) She really does sound a dear, and writes letters very much like Elizabeth Vedgi – English and writing the same – I am certain we shall get on OK and not have any of the traditional mother-in-law trouble! She is very keen for us to get married, as she thinks her Tom needs someone to look after him, and she and Alec are going to Canada when the visas come through – She wants us to go too – but I don’t think we will, unless Tom’s job moves there.
I don’t think I shall have much trousseau, either – another of Tom’s unconventionalities! Not that he’d dislike me to have lots of pretty things – but it would never occur to him that lots of girls have an enormous bottom drawer and that I might do likewise! However, I have really got quite a lot of pretty undies – and my civilian clothes are in quite good condition – I only need a few new things – such as a really nice housecoat/dressing-gown
for the winter – a twin set – if I can get one, and another cardigan – I think I’ll wait till spring for another suit – which I really need, as that green tweed one I’ve had for 7 or 8 years – tho’ you wouldn’t think it. I’ve lots of stockings and R. is sending me a pair of snakeskin walking shoes from Cairo – I have also asked her to look out for camel hair rugs and carpets which are very cheap and attractive, and which she could have sewn up in sacking and bring home if she accepts a WAAF draft back at Xmas –
The cooking! Brandy snaps today, turned into flat moorish biscuits – but we didn’t have brown sugar, which may be the fault –
Please reply to Kiel on receipt of this letter – I shall be back there by the 17th –
Lots of love
Sheila
Am off to Berlin for weekend tonight! Has my box arrived?
In fact they were never to move into the flat she describes, as they opted to stay in his digs where they got the very good value of ‘breakfast and dinner (Irish of course) fish or chops, or bacon and omelet – almost as good as Kiel, no joking’ as part of the rent. It must have hurt him to lose the £5 deposit! In the following letter, it sounds as if mother is remonstrating about the wedding arrangements. Tom’s anxieties about his origins are obviously rubbing off on Sheila too, for different reasons:
B. Oeynhausen
11/11/46
My dear Ma –
Many thanks for 2 letters which arrived today – really, the mail has gone quite haywire – one of Tom’s took 8 days!