Daughter of Empire (4 page)

Grandmama’s presence at the heart of the family meant that we often had the pleasure of another visitor, Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveen. ‘Isa’ had been lady-in-waiting to the
Russian Tsarina and had remained with the family when they were under house arrest during the Revolution. Released by the Bolsheviks, probably because they thought she was Polish and they feared an
international outcry, she and the family’s foreign tutors remained in Russia, desperately hoping to be able to help the Tsar’s family. She explained, her voice always cracking at this
point, how helpless she felt, powerless to do anything to save them. Eventually, it became clear that if she wanted to stay alive, she had to flee. I always felt so sad when she got to the bit in
her escape story that involved the Tsarevich’s little dog Joy, who had escaped into the street and been rescued by some Czech military officers. They had taken him with them to Omsk, where by
great good fortune he was reunited with Isa. Although the dog was traumatised and by now half blind, he had barked incessantly, his tail wagging with excitement, at seeing Isa, clearly expecting
the Tsarevich to appear behind her at any moment. When Isa had to leave, Joy remained by the door for a whole day, pining and crying, and he never did recover his spirits. I used to listen to this
story and then go and hug our dogs, telling them how much I loved them, promising they would never suffer the same fate.

After several months, Isa made it to Europe, having travelled across Siberia and east to America. She ultimately settled in England and Grandmama made a little money over to her for being her
secretary, although as my grandmother had very little money herself, I suspect it was really my mother who made the allowance. My mother also took care when having her dresses made to have generous
hems and large turnings left at the seams so that they could be let out for the impecunious Isa when my mother had finished with them. While Isa looked svelte in the photographs of her younger self
at the Russian court, since coming to England she had indulged her sweet tooth and become rather large.

We loved Isa’s visits because she had a wonderful sense of self-deprecation, which she needed, as she was always getting into scrapes, having accidents and generally meeting with bad luck.
Her stories were legendary and ridiculous and always had Patricia and me in stitches. My absolute favourite was the one recounting when she had been in the congregation of her Russian Orthodox
Church and, after praying, she had sat up sharply only to feel loose hair tickling the back of her neck. Quick as a flash she pushed it up into her hat and secured it tightly with a large hairpin.
A second or two later, she became aware of a voice very close to her ear whispering: ‘Madam, would you kindly release my beard.’ We girls would laugh and clap our hands even though we
had heard this story many times before. Grandmama would smile patiently, though not without amusement.

Grandmama and her entourage paid my sister and me a lot of attention, and when I was very young and my parents were away for weeks at a time, my father on naval duties, my mother travelling, I
craved their involvement in my games. When I learned to play clock patience, or any new card game, I would ask Grandmama over and over again to play it with me; when Hanky knitted new clothes for
my dolls, I would beg The Pyecrust to come and see them; when I felt down in the dumps, I would implore Isa to tell us a story involving one of her disasters. Isa was always most willing to oblige,
and in her rich voice would tell us about the time she broke a rib pulling a cracker; how she broke a second rib bending over the arm of a chair to pick up a book; or the time when the hat of the
woman next to her burst into flames and she had to jump off the tram, closely followed by a man who landed on top of her, shattering her ankle. Later, at a convent in Rome, where the nuns had spent
hours polishing the marble floor in honour of her impending stay, the moment she entered the hall she slipped and broke her leg. She was so good humoured about these mishaps that you didn’t
feel guilty laughing along with her.

During my early childhood we met lots of my mother’s friends, although my sister and I had no indication that some of these friendships ran a little deeper. She was incredibly discreet,
and by the time I was five my parents had been practising their modus vivendi for a number of years. It was about this time that Daddy’s friend Yola Letellier started to come and stay. They
had met in 1932 at a dance in Deauville, and when my father saw this young, extremely attractive, boyish-looking girl with cropped hair and a little snub nose – a French ‘gamine’
– he wanted to know who she was. ‘
Ah
,’ came the reply. ‘
Elle est la femme de Letellier
.’ My father misheard, thinking she was the hotelier’s wife,
and asked her to dance. In fact Monsieur Letellier was a powerful, much older, businessman, whose family owned and ran
Le Journal
, a daily newspaper with the third-highest circulation in the
world at that time. Sparks ignited between Yola and my father during that very first dance, and as he whirled her around in a fast Viennese waltz everyone stopped to watch and applaud. Always the
showman, my father found this an irresistibly romantic beginning and fell for Yola in a big way. Their relationship was to last for many years, and some time later the renowned French writer
Colette went on to immortalise Yola’s story in her novel
Gigi
. In real life, Yola was as free spirited and youthful as her fictionalised self, though, unlike Gigi, in choosing Henri,
Yola had married the older ‘uncle’ and not the young nephew.

My father had learned to accept my mother’s boyfriends but my mother found it impossible not to be jealous. The fact that she had been taking lovers for ten years was apparently of no
account. When she realised how important Yola was to my father, she cunningly befriended her and took her off to Austria, just at the time my father had arranged precious leave from his ship for
their romantic assignation. This must have been extremely galling for my father, but it transpired that my mother’s travels with Yola did have one very positive outcome. In 1933, while on
some adventure or other, she met a man who changed her life and enabled my father to find some contentment with Yola.

‘Bunny’ Phillips, or Lieutenant Colonel Harold Phillips of the Coldstream Guards to give him his proper name, was thrillingly handsome, with perfect posture – rare in a man of
six foot five – and being half South American, he rode like a dream. From the moment I first met him, it became impossible to imagine family life without him. He even chose my first pony.
Walking on the beach at Bognor, Patricia pointed to a line of little ponies that were giving rides to children. ‘Isn’t that one so sweet,’ she exclaimed, and Bunny took a good
look, patient and interested in what we had to say. While we stopped to have an ice cream, he slipped away to talk to the owner and, a few days later, Sunshine arrived at Adsdean.

We loved having Bunny in our home. Quite simply, he made my mother easier to be around and he genuinely loved being with my sister and me. He had the imagination for wonderful games into which
she would also be drawn. When he was away he wrote us warm, affectionate letters, addressing each of us ‘The Weewaks’, one of the many pet names he invented for us. My mother kept many
photographs on her dressing table, including the one of my father in naval uniform that she had to frequently replace as he was promoted and decorated. But what never changed was the picture of my
mother, Patricia and me, sitting on a bed in a hotel room in Monte Carlo, all three of us wearing little paper crowns and capes made of the gauzy fabric in which my mother’s clothes were
packed, grinning dopily at Bunny. This image became the official portrait of the alter egos he invented for us: ‘Princess Plink’ and ‘Princess Plonk’, while he and Mummy
were ‘King and Queen of the Moon’. Bunny made up intoxicating stories for our characters, though I always secretly wished I had been the more glamorous-sounding Princess Plink.

Bunny brought great joy to our lives and I loved him deeply. He was a core part of my rather eccentric family, and although he was our mother’s lover, they never displayed more than a
friendly affection in public. He would stay with us for long periods of time and, to us children, he was just a part of our everyday life. Yola did not live with us but would visit frequently,
bringing us charming gifts. For a time, I wouldn’t wear anything except the French peasant dress she gave each of us – the pink and white striped skirt, black flowered apron, waistcoat,
long ribbons and little straw hat embroidered with mimosa and worn at a jaunty angle to the side of the head was just about the best thing in the world.

For me, then, the addition of Bunny and Yola and the extension of the family in those two different directions greatly enriched my life and just meant more friendly faces in my somewhat
unconventional home. It wasn’t until many years later, while riding with my father in the early-morning cool of Delhi, that I realised how his complete lack of jealousy prevented our family
from fragmenting and how, as in so many areas of his life, he sought a practical solution to life’s tricky problems.

3

C
asa Medina, our Maltese townhouse, was built of yellow stone, featured a rather elaborate porch and, much to my delight, had two front doors, each
at a different level. It was in Guardamangia, outside Valletta, where the streets were achingly steep and so narrow that if a mule cart or car approached, you had to hop into a doorway to avoid
being crushed.

In 1934 my father was still serving in the Mediterranean Fleet and in the summer of that year, Nanny, Miss Vick, Grandmama, Patricia and I came to spend some time with him. My mother and Bunny
joined us later, having returned from a six-month sailing trip around the Pacific. Family life was fun there, full of boat trips and picnics. Daddy was in a particularly happy mood, sharing
memories of his own childhood days in Malta when my grandfather was commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean Fleet. We explored the island with him and he showed us the beautiful blue lagoons where
we could swim, and he gave me a donkey to ride. My sister and I were also given a chameleon each. I named mine Casper and could watch him for ages, endlessly fascinated as to how he changed from
yellow to dark green. He spent hours balanced on my hand, his long tongue darting out to catch flies, his eyes revolving in different directions.

Peter Murphy and Noël Coward came to stay, making my parents laugh as they competed with each other to tell the funniest anecdotes. As an officer’s wife, my mother was responsible for
hosting a cocktail party. This was nonnegotiable. The only day when she could possibly fulfil this duty, however, was a Sunday, which was the only day on which a party was not supposed to happen.
Peter and Noël encouraged her to send out the invitations anyway. Noël was there when the replies arrived, including one that read: ‘Lieutenant Wood thanks Lady Louis Mountbatten
for her invitation but would rather not accept on a Sunday’. During the party – held on a Sunday – my mother was puzzled by a long queue forming outside the gentlemen’s
cloakroom. When the guests left, she darted in to see what had been keeping them in there for so long. Stuck up above the cistern, she found a piece of paper in Noël’s handwriting:

At the end of the summer Mummy and Bunny left for a long holiday. Patricia and I remained in Malta, collecting the stamps and postcards they sent from Bangkok, Angkor Wat,
Hawaii, Bali, Java, Suva, Borneo, Sarawak, Bangkok (again), Calcutta, Jodhpur, Baghdad, Cairo and Budapest. A little later we had to return to England because our father was appointed to his first
command, in charge of sailing a new destroyer to Singapore, which he was ordered to exchange for an older ship. He wrote on the return journey informing us of a rather surprising package that my
mother and Bunny had left for him to collect in Hong Kong – a black Malayan honey bear named Rastus. When Patricia and I returned to Malta to see Daddy the following year, I was not at all
pleased to make Rastus’s acquaintance. When he reared up on his hind legs he was as tall as my six-year-old self. To tell the truth, I was frightened of him; when we met in the garden I would
run away, but that didn’t help as he delighted in chasing me. Actually everyone was slightly scared of him, with the natural exception of Grandmama. Until her arrival, Rastus had been
enjoying free rein and was not very biddable, but he soon had a run-in with our grandmother. One teatime she discovered him on the table eating all the cakes. ‘Down, sir,’ she cried in
outrage. ‘Get down at once!’ Rastus of course got down at once. There was no one – human or animal – who could not be put in their place by Grandmama.