Brave Faces

by Mary Arden

  A few days later, Andrew turned up at the Derwent’s house on leave but as none of his cousins were at home, he spent a lot of time with my family instead. One afternoon I took him over to Kay’s house, and while I did some ironing, he mowed their lawn. Over tea, Andrew asked whether Kay’s husband, Jack, was in the Army. She explained that Jack had a slight heart murmur and hadn’t passed his medical, so he’d been told to join the Fire Service instead. Recently, he and his fire crew had been helping put out the fires in London.

  ‘Good Lord!’ Andrew exclaimed. ‘Surely that’s far more strenuous than going into battle.’

  ‘We try not to think about it,’ Kay said quietly. ‘At least he’s doing something to help and he manages to get home most nights. When you have a very small child it is a great relief to have a man about. It really would be far worse if I didn’t know exactly where he was.’

  On the way back from Kay’s, Andrew told me that as a Pathfinder pilot he would have to guide our bombers over Germany soon, ‘We’ll be getting our own back soon, you’ll see.’

  After Andrew had left to return to his squadron, I thought that I’d better start praying for him now, as well as for Henry.

  The following week my mother and I went up to London to stay with Aunt Beth at her flat in Queen’s Gate. My mother was particularly keen for me to go to Finishing School, so that I would then mix with other girls who would also be presented at court, but I knew that her long-term plan was that she hoped I would make friends with girls from aristocratic families, who would then invite me to the ‘right kind’ of parties and that I would eventually marry an ‘eligible young man’, preferably no lower than an Earl’s son. It wasn’t so much that my mother was a snob, but coming from a fairly aristocratic family herself, she wanted no less for her daughter.

  After breakfast we went to meet Mrs Estrada or, as I soon discovered she preferred to be called, ‘Signora’. Her interview technique was a mixture of firing questions at me one after the other, presumably to discover how well educated I was, and then talking to me in French and then German to see what my language skills were like. I must have passed her tests as she then turned to my mother and asked, ‘Who will be sponsoring Mary when she is due to be presented at Queen Charlotte’s Ball?’ When my mother said the name of my sponsor, who was a most respected aristocrat, Signora’s face was a picture to behold and I was immediately accepted as one of her fifteen pupils.

  To celebrate, my mother then went completely mad buying me all sorts of new clothes, getting fashion advice from Aunt Beth as we went from shop to shop. When I tried on a deep plum coloured evening dress, I immediately adored it although I was bit concerned by the low neckline. ‘What if I lean forward Mummy? People will see my bosoms, look!’ Seeing that I now had a woman’s bosoms rather than a young girl’s, my mother said that she had better add ‘new brassieres’ to her list.

  When we got home to Woking, my mother telephoned the baker, who to her delight was only too willing to hand over a few of his daughter’s clothing coupons in exchange for six eggs a week for the next month, which was highly illegal but everyone was doing it. The following day we went to Guildford and bought two white petticoats, four pairs of white knickers with two Kestos brassieres, and some stockings. I was now kitted out for at least a year.

  That evening Robert Derwent came to our house to ask me if I could help him do a spot of fire watching in the evenings between our two gardens, as apparently an air raid warden had been to their house to say that they were expecting fire bombs any time now, and until they had time to recruit older people, they were asking anyone available to keep watch. When I asked my father’s permission he agreed that I could patrol the two gardens with Robert between six and eight in the evening, as long as we took refuge in the air raid shelter during an actual raid.

  As it turned out it wasn’t a German bomb but English shrapnel from two Ack-Ack guns that landed in the Derwent’s orchard.

  A couple of days later, when I was in the garden helping Bullen in the vegetable patch, I looked up and saw another dog-fight going on so cheered the British pilot hoping that he would shoot down the German plane. Then suddenly the two planes collided mid air and exploded in a huge fireball.

  When I got over the initial shock I then realised with horror that I had just seen two young men die before my eyes. I ran back to the house sobbing hysterically. My father who was clipping a hedge at the time, looked up as I came hurtling towards him and assuming that I’d been hurt, dropped his shears and ran to meet me. When I told him what I’d just witnessed, he held me tight until I ran out of tears. ‘War is a horrible thing, darling,’ Daddy said quietly ‘I’m afraid it’ll get much worse before the end, and you’ll just have to learn to be brave.’

  ‘Well going to Finishing School isn’t exactly going to win the war,’ I said crossly.

  ‘You’re still very young, so just do what your mother wants for now; finish your education and enjoy yourself while you can, and then you can become a nurse or do whatever war work you want.’

  ‘Will the war still be going on in a year’s time?’ I asked him.

  ‘It could go on even longer than that,’ my father replied sadly. ‘The Germans have far more resources than we have and although we’ve won a temporary reprieve, we must be ready to face whatever they throw at us next.’

  That night I rang Jane to see if it would be possible for her to come and spend a few days in Woking with me before I had to go to my Finishing School at the beginning of September, but she told me that her mother wasn’t at all well, so she felt she couldn’t leave the house.

  ‘It looks as if we’ll have to wait until Christmas to see each other then,’ I said.

  ‘Well, make sure you write to me then, you silly cow, at least once a week and tell me all about your snobby friends at Finishing School,’ Jane giggled before hanging up.

  The next day my mother and I took the train to Victoria station where we had arranged to meet the school matron, who would be escorting me and some of the other girls, to Eastbourne. After my mother had said a tearful farewell, I was introduced to some of the other girls, who didn’t seem to be snobby at all, not even the very aristocratic looking girl in our group, who I was told was a Russian princess.

  I was thankful that I had persuaded my mother to allow me to use one of the old worn out suitcases rather than borrow her best new leather one, as having old things, which were often a bit shabby, was considered the ‘norm’ for the class of girl that went to a Finishing School, whereas having new things was considered very nouveau riche. I thought that most of my new schoolmates would most probably have old luggage too and I was right, one even had a ghastly old case with broken clasps tied together with cord, but I did notice that it had a coronet stamped on its leather lid.

  My Finishing School was a Queen Anne-period Manor house that Signora had rented in a small village about five miles outside Eastbourne. When we arrived, I was told that I would be sharing a room with a girl called Cherry. It didn’t take long before I discovered that she was incredibly untidy and left everything either on the floor or on my bed.

  We were supposed to be ready for breakfast by eight sharp, but Cherry never got out of bed until the last minute, and often turned up with only one stocking on, but it didn’t seem to matter to Signora, as she rarely appeared before ten herself, and as there were no prefects or bossy mistresses at this school there was a very relaxed atmosphere.

  The first lesson that Signora gave us was Italian, a subject that very few of us girls knew anything about. We all spoke a little French and German though, as it had been compulsory at all our previous schools. Our French teacher was an elderly woman who had recently retired, while an equally old Austrian refugee taught us German and also gave us piano lessons.

  ‘Next term,’ Signora warned us, ‘I will speak to you in French or Italian depending on how I feel, so you’d better hurry up and become fluent in both languages.’

  Fortunately I found Italian quite
easy to learn, as it was such a pretty language and I didn’t find the pronunciation strange, which was a big help. Signora would give us a lesson on famous Italian artists and sculptors and would thumb through a book of beautiful photographs to find pictures to illustrate what she had been talking about.

  ‘Such a shame you ‘gals’ have to be here in England and not at my home in Florence,’ Signora would sigh, ‘If you were there you could see it all for yourselves and be able to ‘breathe in’ the art.’

  Signora insisted that we make our own beds, and twice a week, dust the furniture. She also insisted that we clear the dining room table after each meal. How else, she explained, could we teach our own staff to do it properly after the war?

  Signora insisted lunch was a silent meal, saying that fifteen girls talking at the same time while eating was not her ‘cup of tea’. To ensure our silence she played classical music on the radiogram, which at the same time was a good way of teaching us to recognise different composers. Fortunately her taste in music was very similar to mine; she’d play French and Italian music most of the time, but occasionally if the mood took her, she would play a whole symphony by an English composer, such as Vaughan Williams or Elgar.

  In the evenings after dinner we would often talk about the dreaded house parties that we would be expected to attend the following year, as part of our ‘coming out’ season. This light hearted ‘chit chat’ helped us blot out the reality of war until it was time for the nine o’clock evening news. We would then all listen to the radio and hear about the latest horrors that were going on in the war.

  One day I received a letter from my mother telling me that a bomb had fallen in the garden next to Jane’s house in St John’s Wood. Thankfully nobody had been killed, as they had all taken shelter, but the water pipes had burst, the gas mains were damaged and the electricity was cut off, so now our cousins had rented a small house in the country near Ascot until the damage could be repaired. She included their new address, so I wrote a letter to Jane straight away to tell her how relieved I was to hear that she and her family were alive and asked her to write and tell me all about the awful experience that they must have gone through. I then told her how my life was slightly less scary than hers and that I was now being taught how to make soufflés and how to curtesy without falling over, which I hoped might make her laugh.

  On one particularly rainy afternoon, I decided to teach some of the girls how to play Animal Snap, which involved making loud animal noises that made us all laugh in a most unseemly and unladylike manner. When Signora came into the room to see what could possibly be causing such a din, she asked whether we might consider spending our time doing something a bit more useful, like practising our languages, so we then played Animal Snap in French, German and Italian, which made more noise than ever!

  Seeing that we enjoyed card games so much, Signora decided to employ Mr Strong, a retired professional Bridge player, to teach us all how to play the game. For the first month we all found the game very difficult to learn but gradually we improved and soon began to enjoy it. To my surprise, I discovered I was quite good at Bridge, which I knew would delight my mother and Aunt Beth, as they were both excellent players.

  One evening Signora decided it was time to give us a pep talk on how well bred girls should and should not behave towards the opposite sex. On no account should a ‘nice girl’ ever allow a member of the opposite sex to touch her body in an intimate way before marriage. What she meant by ‘intimate’ was of course discussed in great detail by some of the girls later after lights out. Two of the older girls seemed to know a great deal about the subject, but they were not prepared to tell us younger girls quite how or where they gained this forbidden knowledge.

  I wrote to Jane the following evening and told her about what the girls had discussed the night before, ‘One of them told me that ‘a man’s willy no longer looks like a chipolata but grows into a huge German sausage!’ I didn’t believe a word of course.

  The following day we were given the opportunity to go riding at a nearby stables, which I was very excited about, as I hadn’t had a chance to ride a horse for ages. But before any of us were allowed out of the sawdust ring, the retired Captain who owned the horses and stables, made each of us girls prove that she could ride well enough to venture out into the lanes that led to the woods and fields. He really put us through our paces and in the end only five of us were good enough to continue. He told us that we could come twice a week if we wanted, which I was thrilled about as I enjoyed riding so much even though I hadn’t ridden for over a year.

  ‘Who taught you to ride Miss Arden?’ the Captain asked me, ‘You’re a natural.’

  ‘Thank you sir. My father did. He was in the Royal Horse Artillery during the last war,’ I explained.

  The following week the Captain told us that he was looking after a friend’s Arab pony and had promised that he would only allow experienced riders to ride it, so I was flattered when he said that I could take it for a gallop along the cliff top overlooking the sea. All went well until suddenly something must have upset the horse and without any warning, he bolted. The only reason that I didn’t fall off was because I had shortened the stirrup leathers a couple of notches before we had set out, which enabled me to be able to grip tighter with my knees. I also remembered the advice I had been given by my father, which was if a horse bolts let him have his head and he will then naturally slow down on his own. However, as this horse showed no signs of slowing down I wondered whether different rules applied to Arab horses.

  Suddenly, a white fence appeared before me, blocking the way ahead. On the other side of it was a sheer drop to the beach below the cliffs. How on earth was I going to get this horse to stop in time? The only thing that I could think of was to talk to him in a calm voice and pat his neck gently.

  ‘I think that’s quite enough for one day, don’t you?’ I said out loud and to my surprise and relief the pony immediately responded and slowed down to a canter and then a trot.

  ‘Couldn’t have ridden the bastard better myself!’ the Captain yelled, as he pulled his horse up next to mine. High praise indeed, especially from an ex-cavalry officer.

  When I got back that evening, I decided to have a bath, one of the three baths per week we were allowed because of the fuel rationing. For the rest of the time we did regular strip washes. As I soaked in the lovely hot water, I started to sing ‘Oh for the Wings of a Dove’ until one of the girls knocked on the door and told me to ‘stop warbling and get a move on’, as it was her turn to have a bath.

  Our singing teacher, Mrs Stern, had chosen a rather strange selection of music for us to learn: Ave Maria by Gounod, some Hebridean songs and a few arias from Italian operas. She was a superb pianist and sometimes I would ask her to play the piano just so that I could sit and listen to her.

  One day when I arrived for a lesson, there was a rather tall and distinguished looking gentleman with Mrs Stern. She told me that he wanted to hear me sing. He sat quietly in the corner of the room while she got me to sing for her in Italian and then in French. When I finished singing, the man said, ‘You’re a lucky girl. You have a large range from mezzo-soprano to soprano. After the war, I suggest you get your voice trained.’ I thanked him and then after he left the room, I asked my teacher who the man was, but she just tapped her nose conspiratorially and gave me a mischievous smile. When I told the other girls what had happened later that evening, one of them thought he must have been someone famous and another said that perhaps he was her secret lover. How exciting! I couldn’t wait to tell Jane all about it.

  When we broke up for the holidays, I was happy to discover that my cousins were going to spend Christmas with us, but when they arrived I was sad to see how pale and thin Aunt Edith had become. My mother told me that she was dying so we all had to make a special effort to make this Christmas as happy as possible.

  The few days that we spent together the Christmas of 1940 seemed a bit unreal; there just wasn’t the same caref
ree spirit as the previous years. No one mentioned Aunt Edith’s illness and yet everyone could hear her coughing. My mother told us that we’d better not put on our usual play this year, as it would be too noisy for Aunt Edith so we played card games as quietly as we could instead.

  It had been an awful year with Western Europe falling to the Germans, and thousands of British servicemen had been killed and wounded. Many had also been captured. The good news was that there seemed to be a break in the bombing over Christmas but we were all too aware that this respite might only last a few days.

  The lull came to an abrupt end on the evening of the 29th December when St Paul’s Cathedral got struck by a number of bombs. Luckily the one incendiary bomb that hit the dome, fell outwards rather than inwards, or the damage could have been much worse.

  When the time came for my cousins to leave, I felt desperately sad knowing that I might never see Aunt Edith again.

  CHAPTER 3

  1941

  At the end of the first week of 1941, I decided to go to London to spend some time with Aunt Beth. Unbeknown to me, she had arranged for her nephew, Marcus, to join us for supper one evening while I was there. When I opened the front door I hardly recognised my cousin, as he had grown a lot since I had last seen him three years ago and was no longer the little boy I once knew. He was obviously just as surprised to see that I was no longer a schoolgirl and was becoming a woman. Marcus was going to qualify as a doctor soon and sounded very grown up to me. Once we had caught up on everything we had been doing since we had last set eyes on each other he laughed and said, ‘You do know why Aunt Beth’s invited me round don’t you Mary? Its’ because your mother is already looking for people to escort you to the Coming-out Balls, and she thinks I would make a respectable chaperone.’