Youth at the Gate: A young woman’s memoir of life during the First World War

by Ursula Bloom

  Mother was now giving the brave impression that all days were ‘good’ days. She went to the Radium Institute for treatment; she looked forward to Joscelyn’s return on furlough. We did not talk naturally any more, because we couldn’t. A barricade rose between us, I had always the curious feeling that in marriage I walked on a quicksand, and she must have known it; the fact that she asked no questions should have warned me of this.

  My father never wrote at all. It seemed that he had gone right out of our lives.

  Arthur was convinced that red wine would be the right thing for me. The fact that I didn’t drink, that I had always hated the taste and the smell of it, and felt miserable if I took it, caused constant controversy. Aristocratic ladies drank, he said, I must become used to it.

  Every morning at eleven the butler brought me a glass of port on a salver, and a macaroon. Just at first I drank it, to discover that immediately afterwards I slithered into a giddy confusion which never cleared until after lunch. I reeled. It was a horror lest the butler or the genteel one should find me in this unhappy condition; so as I could not get out of taking the port, I arranged to lie down on the sofa, take it, and stay where I was until such time as escape was possible.

  Every eleven o’clock was a menace to me. Worse still, I never got any better. How long it would go on I could not imagine, and shrank from the indignity of being trained to be an aristocratic young lady who delighted in strong drink.

  ‘You’ll get used to it; the thing to do is to keep on,’ said Arthur calmly.

  I never have got used to it to this day.

  Joscelyn appeared in Frinton one December midnight, and because he had no wish to knock us up, had a doss-down with a friendly soldier. The soldier was in Arthur’s company, so the first social gaffe was committed. At seven o’clock on a remorseless east coast morning Joscelyn arrived at Thalassa, blue in the face, and with chattering teeth which sounded like tom-toms. The butler came to my room where I and the genteel one were arranging myself for the day, and he told me, ‘Madam’s brother is in the hall.’

  I did the unforgivable thing, for I forgot that I was now grand; I rushed out and went sliding down the banister with no frock on, just a princess petticoat, for the exuberance of seeing someone I loved was too much for me. The genteel one looked like the wrath of God, but my brother and I clung together in the hall, and when I came to, I sent a maid out to tell Mother, then tried to get Joscelyn warm. The butler suggested hot rum; it smelt awful, but it did seem to do the trick.

  Arthur arrived before Mother, and he seemed gauche so that I immediately sensed something was wrong. I had not realized that officers and private soldiers could not mix under the same roof, and as soon as possible Joscelyn must get into ‘civvies’. I, who knew that his suits were only the cheaper kind, and would be hideously creased from storage, hated the idea.

  When Mother arrived she sided with Arthur, and took Joscelyn back with her to change. The result was that the first time he went to the shops, he returned with three white feathers presented to him by a patriotic old lady who, although men were conscripted, still thought white feathers were the thing.

  ‘So much for ich dien,’ said Mother.

  The leave was brief. I tried to get him a commission, for that would keep him in England, training with the Inns of Court O.T.C., for some months ahead. By then surely the war would be over? He had endured a difficult journey from Egypt, for the submarines had been insistent. He told Mother of the incident when the best game of chess he had ever played had been ruined by a torpedo only missing the ship by inches. This worried her.

  ‘He won’t go back,’ I promised her. ‘I’ll get him a commission somehow. What’s the good of marrying well if you can’t get it to help you in emergencies?’

  I solicited the help of the Brigadier, though he was not as helpful as I had hoped he would be. At this period he was teaching me all the regimental march-pasts of the British Army, and every time he came down he questioned me on the tunes. He knew them, I never did. He taught me how to stand inflexibly at attention, so that to this day I stand like a statue. He then taught me how to salute, and was emphatic about the thumb down the seam of the trousers.

  ‘But my trousers don’t have a seam there,’ I explained when hopelessly floored.

  Arthur thought all this was great fun. He liked me to become militarized. As I was getting on at my lessons I thought the Brigadier would help me, but the bother was that nothing was as easy as it had been.

  Life’s complications were almost overwhelming, and the greatest of all seemed to be having a corporal staying in the same house as a captain. The climatic conditions were dreadful for Joscelyn coming from Gaza to Christmas on the east coast, and nothing happened about the commission.

  He came, he stayed what seemed to be only a couple of weeks, and then had to go back. I left him alone with Mother to say goodbye, and later I went to her, dreading this, for it would be most difficult. She was sitting very still by a dusty fire, and beyond the windows a fog rolled in from the sea; far away was the boom of an exploding mine. She looked at me, her face ashy. ‘I shall never see Joscelyn again,’ she said.

  I could not deny it. I knew it was the truth and it made me quite sick.

  Lloyd George was in power, and youth thought that a good thing. We had had enough of silly old codgers going drivelling on and the wretched war getting nowhere. Now we might get somewhere, after all.

  I had managed to get rid of the genteel one. She wanted a week-end leave, and as I dared not dismiss her, I wrote, told her not to return and sent her her wages. She wrote a bitter letter explaining to Arthur how poor we had been at Hertford House, and he promptly answered as only a barrister could. The letter stung me, and made me quite sorry for the genteel one, though I admit that she had asked for it.

  Food plots were being planned in Hyde Park. The war was now to be fought with renewed force, and Lloyd George was getting at it. Even if Mother disliked him because he was Welsh, I felt that he was doing the right thing.

  Russia had wobbled on the edge of defeat for some time, and suddenly we got the news that Rasputin had been murdered. I was horrified by the gruesome details as I read the news at breakfast.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t fret myself over old Rasputin,’ said Arthur airily. ‘Of course it’s butchery, but this is a butcher’s war, and the whole ruddy lot of us are at it.’

  ‘It isn’t nice,’ I commented.

  ‘Of course it isn’t nice. There are lots of other things that aren’t nice either, and one of them I want to talk to you about, it’s something that has got to be settled. Listen, my angel. I’m going to get busy.’

  He told me of the night when the C.O. had sent him to search Hertford House because of the report that Mother and I were spies. He had thought the rumour was dead; it wasn’t.

  ‘Oh, not again?’ I begged him.

  Just after his wedding a captain of the 23rds had said, ‘Didn’t you marry that girl they thought was a spy?’ He had knocked the captain down, only to find that he was senior to himself, and there had been a frightful row. He had told me nothing about it at the time because he thought it would upset me, but he would have gone to chokey or have dropped a pip or something shocking, if the Brigadier had not come into it.

  The Brigadier seemed to be the ever-ready help in trouble, and I let that one pass. At the same time I was embarrassed for Arthur now wanted to unearth the whole of a scandal which I wanted to leave buried. He had made enquiries and had found that two of his subalterns had been billeted at a certain house in Walton where the landlady had repeated the story, adding: ‘Those Blooms ought never to have been allowed to come to this place. They are responsible for a lot of our trouble.’ He now intended to force an issue.

  ‘If you get a feeble enough mouse, it squeaks,’ he told me, ‘that’s what I’m going to do, then I’m coming down with the law. Public apology everywhere, and sweep the path clean.’

  ‘Oh no, Arthur, don’t do that.’


  ‘If people throw enough mud it sticks. I’m unsticking it, and be damned to the old lady.’

  ‘But why that old lady? She was really rather nice.’

  He said: ‘You’re too good to live. I’ve had the misfortune to marry an angel, and her wings are always ruffling me up the wrong way. This is going to be settled, my dear, and for good.’

  Both the subs. were to dine with us that night, and I was apprehensive. It was an amiable enough dinner, and before we had gone very far I realized that the wine was flowing a good deal faster than the young men could take it. Arthur never turned a hair with wine, I had found that out early in our marriage, so he was entirely in command of a situation when they were already in deep water. He steered the conversation to that nice old lady where they had been billeted. They told him what she had said as something of a jolly good joke, and how he laughed! Well versed in cross-examination, he led them on and over the coffee with butler and parlourmaid gone, how they floundered into the trap! Then Arthur changed.

  ‘Now,’ said he, ‘you two will sign statements.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’ said the senior sub.

  ‘I am writing down what you heard the old lady say, and you are signing it.’

  They argued. They said she was quite a nice old auntie, rather a fool of course, but she didn’t mean a thing, and anyway this would be jolly hard on her. I was stone silent.

  ‘It’s a jolly sight harder on my wife,’ said Arthur. ‘You chaps will sign on the dotted line. It’s a command.’

  ‘I’m damned if I see why,’ said one.

  ‘If you are talking to me, kindly address me as sir,’ Arthur rapped out. ‘I presume you two were not lying about all this; if so, then I shall sue you. You may have repeated it to others. Somebody is going to suffer for this, it is you or the old lady. Which is it to be?’

  They signed.

  From my end of the table (and the person most concerned), I was cold with horror. I felt it was hardly cricket. To get them here to break bread with us, to give them a surfeit of wine which Arthur knew was intoxicating, and then when they were bewildered to make them sign, seemed like hitting a man below the belt. Maybe I was smug. Maybe I was hallmarked ‘Rectory’, but surely this was too much.

  ‘Oh, damn your eyes, shut up!’ said Arthur.

  I wasn’t used to that form of address; it had never been used to me before, and I hung back a little dazed, not sure of what was happening. Maybe I had deserved it, but I was worried.

  Next morning Mr. Stanley Nicholson the local solicitor called on Miss Brannon, who immediately denied having said anything. He showed her the paper which the unhappy subalterns had signed, and she burst into tears. She signed a statement admitting her guilt, which to her horror was published in all our papers and most of the London ones, and she had to pay for it. When I heard this I was furious.

  ‘It’s mean,’ I said. ‘Clear my name by all means, but don’t make her pay. You can’t realize what being hard-up is, and if she does have to pay let me send her the money.’

  It was the Brigadier who told me what he thought of me, in plain English. Men! I thought. Men! I shall never understand them.

  From that day to this no one has ever accused me of being a German spy.

  The whole of England was now waiting for the spring offensive, for the rationing which must come, for explanations, and most of us still felt resentful and angry about everything that had caused this wretched war.

  On January the 25th beer was cut off by half, which made Arthur laugh, for he drank only spirits, and thought that was damned funny. A ration system was already on the way, we were told, and most of us wanted it, for buying food at the moment was very difficult and never satisfactory. Yet all the time we kept dealing with the great problems and the tiny matterless ones in a confusion that was most irritating.

  Mother was rapidly growing worse, and I was concerned for her, but whenever I mentioned this Arthur turned angry. His mother was at the back of it. She wanted him to cut entirely adrift from the family, and although he did not tell me this, I knew it was what was happening. My father had never even written to me at Christmas, when I think he was disappointed with the three pairs of socks that I sent him, which must have seemed a poor return for the marriage settlement.

  But when Christmas came, I had found it impossible to get the money to buy gifts. Mrs. Denham-Cookes had warned Arthur that I should be extravagant, so he refused to give me any personal allowance, but said I had only to ask for money and it should be mine. I asked for money to buy Christmas presents and it was instantly refused. I got frightened.

  I don’t understand this man, I told myself. All the time extraordinary things were happening. Often at night he would disappear for hours at a time. He had most curious fainting attacks which made me afraid to leave him alone. He was changeable. First gay and lovable with that Irish charm of his, and then suddenly in one of his violent moods, new to me, and alarming.

  I did not dare tell Mother, for I did not want her to know that something was worrying me. Once I said to him, ‘I think you drink an awful lot,’ and he turned and laughed at me.

  ‘The old teetotal rectory!’ he said.

  We never had been teetotal; there was beer, there was whisky, there was our own sloe gin and very potent it was, but it was no use arguing, and the last thing I wanted was a row.

  ‘Where do you go at night?’ I asked him.

  He turned angry.

  I could not turn to Mother, and my father seemed already to be lost to me. Joscelyn was on the high seas returning to Gaza, and there was no one else. I felt there was more behind this, and the man who ultimately disclosed it was the butler.

  I was sitting knitting by the dining-room fire when after breakfast he came in with a tray to collect depleted decanters from the side. Amongst them was the handsome one which takes a bottle and a quarter, and which a Great Yarmouth landlady had given me as a child.

  ‘That can’t be empty! It was only filled last night,’ I said.

  Possibly I sounded dismayed, even angry, certainly insistent, for he looked at me. ‘Yes, madam,’ he said, and then as I protested, ‘I am a teetotaller, madam,’ and he went out of the room.

  I saw then those strange facts of which I had been so strangely unaware. In the rectory this condition was unknown to me. The labouring man revealed his condition by his gait and manner, but this was a sickness. It was far more serious than the ‘blind’ and the thick head; this was not the ordinary or the accepted, for Arthur was a very sick man, and he had no one to help him, save myself. I was unqualified to do much (whatever happened Mother must never know), but something would have to be done.

  At eleven he came in, walking across the frosted lawn, his spurs jangling. He looked ill, I thought, too thin, his face too flushed, the skin puffed round his eyes. I asked about the decanter, and instantly he flew into a temper; when that had quietened down, and I had stood my ground, suddenly he told me the truth.

  It had always been like this. It had begun as a child, when the shyness and the shame over his hand had worried him; when they had stayed in France and Ma had given him brandy in the water, to make it ‘safe for him to drink’. It had become worse when he grew older. He could not go to Eton because he had pneumonia, and when he went to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, that was the first time that he had gone anywhere away alone. His hand had made it difficult for him, and he had had to steel himself against comment. He had hoped I would never discover.

  ‘We’ve got to get this cured,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t mean ‒ you can’t mean that there is a chance? Och, but I’d give the world for that, I’d do anything, suffer anything; darling, help me?’

  ‘I will, of course.’

  ‘You’ll never leave me? That’s what scares me.’

  ‘How could I leave the man I married?’ I asked, the old rectory training to the fore.

  We had got to fight this together, and this was the trouble, because I knew my own inabil
ity to help. Besides, now he admitted that something was happening in the orderly room, something about which I could not be told. He had made a silly mistake, something trivial, but the Colonel was making a fuss about it.

  That evening Mother returned from deep X-ray treatment, and I went to meet her. She had had a difficult journey down, coinciding with a nasty daylight air-raid on London. She had a bad cold and went straight to bed, and I said I would go back after supper. She looked to have aged considerably, could hardly speak, and I knew felt very ill, but I did not know what to do. Over the dinner-table I suggested that we had her here in Thalassa; instantly Arthur bridled up. He had some reason for violent refusal, perhaps because he was afraid of her malady, perhaps because Ma spurred him on, perhaps no real reason at all.

  ‘We’ll go and see her together later,’ he said.

  We went, for I had something to tell her, something of which I was suddenly shy, and I was embarrassed and wanting to hold back. I was going to have a child in the autumn. Yet when I got to her I could not tell her; Arthur was the one who did it.

  Mother looked at me, then she said, ‘You go downstairs, Arthur, and let me see after her,’ then when he had gone: ‘However you feel about it now, this is going to be the best thing that has ever happened to us. You’re happy with him, aren’t you?’ Then, perhaps because she guessed something, ‘No, don’t tell me.’

  ‘I’m happy,’ I said.

  The next day she was not so well. The cold was worse and the effect of the deep X-rays so bad that the doctor arranged for her to be moved into a home where she could be nursed. He thought the journey, though only half a mile, would be a trial, but it would be better for her in the long run. She drove there that afternoon and I could not go with her.

  Arthur had come in to lunch in trouble. He looked dreadfully ill, and could not speak until he had had a couple of drinks, then he told me: ‘I’ve got to go to London. I’m in a hell of a trouble.’

  ‘What’s happened? Not the Colonel again?’