Daughter of Empire (11 page)

The first winter of my school attendance included the coldest February since 1914; the water on our bedside tables froze as we slept and there was a mass outbreak of chilblains. Combined with
the rationing of food, heating and bathwater – we were allowed a bath only three times a week and the water level could not come above the five-inch mark that was clearly painted inside the
tub – it was a pretty miserable few months. As Miss Faunce said, however, ‘If it’s good enough for the King . . .’ and we were certainly not alone, suffering with everyone
else in the country. Even my mother, usually insulated by her wealth, ran out of fuel and had to live without heating or hot water. We also knew – being well-informed Fauncites – that
our discomfort was nothing compared to that being suffered by our troops. Once again, I was enthusiastically ‘knitting for the Navy’, and this time the recipient of my scarf, one
Engineer Slater, took the trouble to write and thank me. I was thrilled to bits.

The horror of war did not intrude too much. We learned what to do in the event of a bombing raid – throw ourselves to the ground, lie flat on the floor and leave our mouths slightly agape
until the teachers had checked with their fingers to see whether they were open wide enough. Our gas masks were tested from time to time down on the village green by a man with a strange sort of
van, and if the sirens sounded near by, the teachers would summon us by calling out ‘Chocolate and biscuits in the cellars, darlings!’ If it was night-time we would grab the
dressing-gown belt of the girl in front and walk quietly downstairs. In the daytime the cook would serve up lunch or supper and as soon as the food appeared our favourite occupation was to pull the
stringy fat off our meat and poke it into the cavities of the cellar walls behind us. All this was tedious rather than exciting, and even rumours that a mother had supplied Miss Faunce with a gun
in case of an invasion did little to stir us. We were young girls, on the cusp of adolescence, more excited by the rare appearance of a man than by wartime logistics.

Actually, men were so rare that when the dance teacher brought her uniformed fiancé to the school, excitement bubbled contagiously along the corridors. When John Ashley Cooper, the
Shaftesburys’ youngest son, returned home on leave, excitement levels reached such heights that we all hung out of the windows trying to catch a glimpse of him – even Mary Anna, and he
was her uncle. After he had been back for a week or so, a few of us were summoned to Miss Faunce’s office. She accused one of us – and she was going to wait until the culprit owned up
– of sneaking down to the lake to watch John Ashley Cooper fishing. As none of us had actually committed this terrible sin (I stood there thinking: why didn’t I think of that?) we stood
in painful silence as Miss Faunce turned to Anne Maude: ‘Your father is a lawyer. You must say what you think has happened.’ I was glad my father was in the Navy.

As we travelled home for Easter, I was met off the train by my father’s good-looking flag lieutenant, which left my travelling companions somewhat speechless. And things only got better.
My father had arranged for me to attend filming of Noël Coward’s
In Which We Serve
, which was based upon my father’s adventures in HMS
Kelly
, on the day when the King
and Queen and the two princesses were also due to visit the studio. I went in the car with the girls, and as we drove through the small crowd that had gathered near the studio, Princess Elizabeth
kept reminding her sister that she ‘really must
wave
at the people’. Noël was in his element that day – he adored being centre stage, even if he did have to share it
with the King – and we were allowed to stand on the ‘deck’ as the storm scene was being prepared. The deck had been constructed so that it could pitch and roll in the
‘swell’, and after a few minutes the princesses and I felt so sick we asked whether we could climb down. Although at first the Admiralty and the Ministry of Defence had been dead
against a film showing a British ship being sunk, the film went ahead, and in fact turned out to be a huge and lasting success.

My parents had some entertaining friends, none more so than Douglas Fairbanks Jr, who had been assigned from the US Navy to my father’s Commando staff. He was as dazzling as a film star
should be and a joy to be around, full of laughter and good stories. I loved the one about the sergeant and the wall, especially the lively way that he told it: ‘You see, Pammy, when I was
training over here we had to do this hellish exercise. You know, running around over and over, under and under, over and under, that kind of thing. And at the end there was this enormous wall.
Impassable, as far as I was concerned. So I just stood there, catching my breath, working out how to get over the damn thing, and my sergeant comes up and yells, “Come on, Fairbanks . . .
Over you go . . . Like in the films, you’ve done it before.”’

Patricia returned from America that June and came down to see me at school. She was eighteen and seemed very grown up to me. It was such a comfort to have her back – I was jittery from
having witnessed a low-flying aircraft drag a man tangled up in his parachute, who was later found dead in Poole Harbour – and I felt reassured by her presence. She immediately caught on that
I was the only girl not wearing a Sunday dress, and when I admitted that I was indeed the only girl who didn’t own a Sunday dress, she had one sent to me by the time the next Sunday came
around. I was pretty self-sufficient, having had to rely on myself for so long, but it was always a relief to know Patricia was there for me.

I wasn’t exactly sure what my parents’ work really involved. I could imagine my mother improving conditions for Londoners at the mercy of the bombings but had never seen her at work
outside of Southampton. The precise details of my father’s responsibilities were necessarily secret, and although his name came up on the news broadcasts that I watched with my classmates, I
was not aware that he was overseeing plans for the invasion of Europe. When I learned that there had been a ‘big Commando raid on Dieppe’ I could only guess at my father’s
involvement.

On her return, Patricia had joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service, qualifying soon after as a signals rating. She was positioned at the Combined Operations Base HMS
Tormentor
at
Warsash, just east of Southampton, and during my next visit home, I jumped on the bus with my bike then cycled down – as quickly as I could, she had saved me a Mars bar! – to see her. I
was almost as excited by the prospect of the chocolate bar as I was by that of seeing my beloved sister, but when the moment came, we discovered a mouse had nibbled half of it away. Later I was
pleased to report back to Hanky, who was missing Patricia deeply, that the remaining half was definitely worth the journey.

At thirteen and home for the summer holidays, I needed to play my part in the war effort too. My grandmother had given me a lovely black-and-white pony and together we managed to get hold of an
old dogcart which, with a new coat of paint and some varnish, was soon restored to its former glory. Chiquita and I were thereafter purposefully employed, running errands and proudly circumventing
the fuel shortage. We picked people up from the station and took flowers to the St John’s shop in Romsey to help raise funds. Our route often took us by the local prisoner-of-war camp, known
as ‘Ganger Camp’, which housed Italian and German POWs. The camp’s Nissen huts were well defended behind tall wire fences with gun batteries and a machine-gun post, and when the
prisoners were out working on the local farms, they were watched over by a soldier with a gun. On one occasion, I noticed a Tommy reach into his pocket for a light. Fumbling a little, he passed his
gun to a prisoner to hold for him while he lit his cigarette. He took a long, relaxed puff, then stuck out his arm and his gun was gently handed back.

After I had been making the daily journey into Romsey for a couple of weeks, a young Italian hailed me from a field. To my utter surprise he presented me with a ring made out of shiny metal. I
felt my cheeks heat up as I stammered a thank-you in my best Italian. It was the first ring I had ever been given, and when I examined it in the privacy of my room, I was amazed to see how
intricate it was, how the man had somehow carved a little pattern on it. I never saw him again but I wore the ring proudly.

Every prisoner could work if he so wished. Most helped on local farms, hedging, ditching and doing seasonal chores, and they became very much part of the landscape, as our farm workers were away
at war. That August, 1943, it was all hands to the pump as Grandmama and I worked with them to bring in the harvest. Even my mother came down to lend a hand for three days. As the workhorses drew
the harvester across the hundred-acre field, trailing long uneven lines of hay in its wake, we walked behind gathering the hay into stooks and securing them with string. Grandmama was an old lady,
yet she insisted on being involved, though she couldn’t tie the string as her fingers were stiff and swollen with chilblains. I tied hers for her. The Italian men watched us and I wondered
whether the presence of my grandmother made them think of their own families; whether my glamorous-looking mother in her corduroy slacks and scarf fixed decorously over her hair made them think of
the women they had left behind. I hoped they didn’t notice me – my prickled legs and bleeding forearms made me feel distinctly less than glamorous.

Putting my pony trap to good use and helping bring in the harvest gave me huge satisfaction, and I felt useful and productive from spending so much time outdoors. The war showed no sign of
abating and tragedy struck when my godfather, the Duke of Kent, was killed in an air accident. He had been on his way – in thick fog – to Iceland on an RAF mission, when the Sunderland
flying boat in which he was being flown crashed into a Scottish hillside in Caithness. I was very shocked by this news – he and his ADC, Michael Strutt, had stayed with us only two weeks
earlier and now both men had been killed. This was what was meant by the fragility of life, I thought, and I prayed that such a fate would not befall my father.

When the British and American forces invaded French North Africa, I recorded optimistically in my diary: ‘The war news is wonderful – about Libya and Egypt. Our Forces have driven
the Germans back over the Egyptian border. We hope that the war over there is almost over.’ This hope was echoed by Winston Churchill in his dramatic speech the following day, words I turned
over and over in my mind: ‘This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’ Allied success in Egypt did mean that a week
later church bells rang all over the country for twenty minutes. Hearing them at St Giles made me realise that I had never heard the sound of bells at Broadlands, as they’d been silenced at
the beginning of the war under strict instruction that they should be rung only in the event of an invasion. That Sunday I felt optimistic, at least that the tide was turning. But waking the next
morning to learn that ‘hit-and-run’ raids had been carried out in twenty towns across southern England brought the harsh reality crashing back.

We had to get on as best we could. When, at Christmas, my mother was so preoccupied guarding a precious ham that General Marshall had given her she left all our presents on the train, I
didn’t complain. Actually, even if I had, no one would have listened: the loss of the presents paled into insignificance when my mother realised her nearly completed five-year diary was also
still on the train. Both my parents were left worrying that we would come to see its contents in print and this sparked some lively conversations around the dinner table. My mother, always
enterprising, paid a flying visit to London in a frantic search for replacement presents.

As a result of her tireless work my mother was made a CBE in the New Year Honours; Patricia was now a fully fledged Wren and my father was at the heart of Britain’s war strategy. In fact,
owing to overwork, he had recently succumbed to jaundice and pneumonia, worrying us all. He was well enough to discuss strategy with General Eisenhower but was unusually anxious that the visit
should go smoothly. So it was with alarm that we watched as the great man’s huge Cadillac veered off the drive and stopped dead in the ditch, trying to negotiate the awkward angle of the
garden gates, which had now become our front entrance.

As well as being a hospital annexe, Broadlands became a training encampment for the US troops of the Fourth Division. Even though this was the division’s ‘Laundry Unit’, many
of these soldiers became front-line troops soon enough, going to their untimely deaths in France. Then yet more Americans were billeted at the end of the drive, when Lee Park House was given over
to the Pioneer Corps. My parents invited them up to the house. Despite my time in America, I was astounded by the relaxed attitude of the soldiers to their superiors – being used to the rigid
naval forms of ‘Yes, sir’, ‘No, sir’, I found their way of addressing their commanding officer as ‘Colonel Jack’ or just ‘Jack’ shocking. They were
fun to have around, though, and were fascinated to see inside Broadlands, asking endless questions. When I was asked who had painted the eighteenth-century panels depicting classical scenes on the
ceiling of the drawing room, I answered ‘Helena Rubinstein’. The effect was electric. ‘Say, is that so?!’ exclaimed my impressed audience. ‘We had no idea she did that
sort of thing. Joe, come take a look – gee, who’d have guessed it was Helena Rubinstein!’ The moment I had said it, I realised my mistake, but I was too embarrassed to tell them
it was of course the ubiquitous Angelica Kauffmann. One time, over in Britain to entertain the American troops, Irving Berlin accompanied the soldiers to the house. Grandmama was delighted to meet
him as Grandpapa had been to a restaurant in New York when Irving Berlin was a singing waiter.

Life in the midst of all this activity could be vexing. Security at the American encampment soon became so tight that Grandmama and Isa could not come to stay with us until we had obtained a
special permit allowing them to pass through. At the time my father was away – he had been appointed Supreme Allied Commander, South-East Asia, to try to reverse the disastrous gains the
Japanese had made in Burma – and Bunny was also bound for the South-East Asia Command (SEAC), so my mother had to deal with all the red tape herself. This was also when poor Isa suffered
another disaster. Having been sent a packet of dehydrated bananas from America, she mistook them for crystallised fruit and, nibbling one, she found it so delicious she finished most of the packet.
She then needed a long drink of water. The bananas swelled up inside her and her stomach nearly exploded.