Daughter of Empire (5 page)

When Yola arrived she brought with her a funny little short-haired dachshund puppy with slightly googly eyes. ‘
Ah, ma petite Pamela
,’ she called, ‘
voici un petit
cadeau
.’ Yola spoke very little English and we were usually required to speak to her in French. ‘Do you like?’ she added, because I had gone very silent. I couldn’t find
the words to express myself in any language. It was more than ‘like’ – it was love at first sight. ‘
Elle s’appelle Lottie – après Lottie
Minkus
,’ she continued, and although I had never heard of the opera singer then, it sounded like the perfect name for such a darling companion. I picked up my puppy and cuddled her, only
to be told by Nanny that I couldn’t play with her until I had written Yola a thank-you note. I spent the afternoon in a fug of despair, writing out in French ‘
merci . . . beaucoup .
. . pour . . . le . . . petit . . . chien
’ in a painstakingly careful hand because I knew that if I made a mistake I would have to start all over again. All I wanted to do was play with
my puppy, and as I pressed my pencil harder and harder into the paper, my hand hurting with the effort, I felt a bitter resentment well up inside me.

That summer Lottie became the centre of my life and I, in return, became the object of her love. She faithfully trotted after me wherever we went and I looked after her as if my life depended on
it. Everything went smoothly until one hot, heart-stopping day when we all went out in a little green motor yacht so that my father could indulge in his new obsession. Waterskiing was a
comparatively new sport in the thirties but my father was already hooked. He had been driving along La Croisette in Cannes a few years earlier when he saw a man ‘with two long wooden planks
attached to his feet’. He was so impressed that he sought the man out, bought the ski kit from him and soon became an excellent skier. On more than one occasion, when his ship had stopped at
sea, he skied out to dinner between ships in full mess dress with trousers rolled up and shoes hanging by their laces around his neck, effortlessly dropping the ski rope when he reached the ladder
of the other ship. On this day in Malta, as my mother and Yola lay chatting and sunbathing, I walked around the boat to watch my father ski, something I always found mesmerising, like flying across
the water. Lottie was following me along the narrow edge of the boat when it suddenly lurched, she lost her footing and dropped into the waves. The world seemed to stop turning and I screamed at
the top of my voice. My father simply skied by, scooped Lottie up and placed her back on board.

This blissful summer of 1935 was cut short by Mussolini’s ferocious expansion of his empire as he prepared to invade Abyssinia, which shared a border with the Italian colony of Eritrea. In
the climate of growing aggression, it was decided that all naval families should leave the Mediterranean. For my parents, this was a problem, as they had been expecting to stay in Malta for two or
three years: Adsdean was let and Brook House was uninhabitable, in the midst of major renovations. Believing the crisis would be over within a couple of months, my parents decided that Patricia,
me, Nanny, Miss Vick – and mercifully Lottie – should go to Budapest until the situation calmed down. Mummy and Bunny went on ahead in the Hispano, while the rest of us travelled by
train. We broke the journey at an island in the Danube, a relief for Patricia and me, as the atmosphere in the carriage was decidedly icy. Circumstances had forced our two guardians at least to
pretend to get on but the underlying frostiness between them made my sister and me uncomfortable. The hotel soon made up for it, though, as it had a swimming pool with a machine that made enormous
waves every few minutes. A bell was rung beforehand to warn vulnerable swimmers to scramble out so that the waves could start. We hadn’t understood the warning and I was nearly drowned as the
waves crashed over my head. There was hardly any time to catch my breath before another mountain of waves rose up in front of me, but luckily Nanny was there to pull me out of the danger zone.

Reunited with my mother and Bunny, we continued onwards until we found a small hotel in the mountains about two hours east of Budapest. Kekes Szallo was hidden in a pine forest, and once our
mother decided it would do, she settled us in, gave my sister and I a quick kiss, and got back in the Hispano with Bunny, leaving the four of us – and Lottie – while they continued on
their travels.

At first, the freedom of Kekes was exhilarating. Patricia and I had hardly ever been together for such a sustained period of time and now we were never apart. At eleven years old, she was going
through a writing phase and, rather thrillingly, created lots of scary stories for me about a stag. Something in the mountain air – or maybe because there was no alternative – seemed to
put a halt to the hostilities between Nanny and Miss Vick, and the four of us enjoyed ourselves enormously. Each day we walked bravely through the mountain forests, only a little bit scared we
would encounter the wolves we had been told lurked among the trees. My sister and I wore the same thing for every walk – little cotton dresses, white gym shoes and white ankle socks –
and carried rucksacks on our backs. As we walked, we learned to lean on the sticks that had been specially cut down for the purpose of hiking. Lottie was in heaven – running in and out of the
trees and helping collect the twigs for the wigwams we made as we picnicked at the local First World War memorial. In the evening we ate at the hotel – a lot of ham, I seem to remember.

The Abyssinian crisis went on and on and no one came to get us. We had left Malta in July with only our summer clothes, so by October, when Mussolini’s troops attacked Abyssinia, it was
cold and beginning to snow in the Hungarian mountains. In the local village Miss Vick and Nanny bought us all matching pink flannel underwear and a few winter outer clothes, so at least we could go
tobogganing. Heaven knows where they found the money to do so because our funds were running perilously short. When the manager informed Miss Vick that the hotel would be providing a limited
service during the winter, she and Nanny – united by their panic – sent frantic messages to Malta. But communication was difficult and no answers or help came. By the time the manager
insisted that we settle our bill, we had run out of money. It was a stroke of luck that Dr Toth, a guest at the same time as us, overheard the kerfuffle, assured the manager that our mother was a
famous and rich English aristocrat and guaranteed the money. Such a kind act by a complete stranger was a godsend and ensured we still had a roof over our heads.

By the end of October we still hadn’t received any word from our parents, but finally, one snowy day, we awoke to find my mother and Yola in reception. Apparently, my mother had written
down the name of the hotel on a piece of paper then lost it. In early November she decided that she and Yola had better retrace the route she had driven earlier in the year and so it was that, at
last, we were found, rescued and all bills were settled. Dr Toth had left by this time, so my mother was unable to thank him, though many years later, towards the end of the 1960s, when he was in a
Siberian labour camp, he wrote and asked me for some help. He had enclosed a list of food available from the Soviet store Gom, which was the only source permitted. I immediately ordered as much as
he was allowed. Sadly I never heard back from him and fear he must have died in the camp.

We couldn’t return to England, as our houses were still unavailable, so our father arranged for us to go and stay with our great aunt and uncle, in Darmstadt, Germany. As reigning Grand
Duke of Hesse and a passionate aesthete, Uncle Ernie had created an artists’ colony at Darmstadt, attracting leading architects and artists from all over the world. The city’s skyline
was dominated, as it is today, by a forty-eight-metre-high, art deco ‘Wedding Tower’ that had been erected to celebrate Uncle Ernie’s second marriage, to Aunt Onor. My mother
drove us down there, settled us in and then went back to Malta to pack up her things so that she could go travelling in China. It wasn’t safe for us to be in Malta, and my father,
disappointed not to have us back with him, wrote long letters to compensate.

Patricia and I were very happy in Darmstadt, even though I was sick for a while with a bad case of measles. We lived right in the centre of town in the magnificently large Neues Palais, which
had been built in 1865 for Princess Alice, Queen Victoria’s daughter, when she married Uncle Ernie’s father. My Great Aunt Onor was extremely kind and patient, teaching me how to knit
and, when I became frustrated at my lack of progress, encouraging me by hiding tiny wooden toys in the ball of wool that fell out as it unwound. Old Uncle Ernie drew me the same fanciful drawings
of monsters that he had drawn for my father when he was a child. He called them ‘katoofs’ and I was thrilled in my turn to have them drawn for me. We also learned to speak German while
we were there and Patricia’s letters greatly impressed my father – it became quite obvious that she now spoke the language better than he did. I discovered only after we left, however,
that the thick Hessian accent I had picked up from the servants meant that my German was pretty useless anywhere else.

It was strange to be away from our parents that Christmas but myriad cousins from all over Europe kept us busy and on our toes, and waking each morning, we never quite knew which language we
were going to need. Mummy and Bunny were still sending us postcards. They travelled through China, by the Trans-Siberian railway, through the Philippines, Celebes and Moluccas, then on to Bali,
Java, Hong Kong and Japan, where they finally turned for home via California. We collected the stamps and Nanny made an album for me to fill with our pictures from Kekes and Mummy’s
postcards. Poor Daddy spent Christmas Day alone in Malta, his meal leftovers from the staff lunch.

At New Year, 1936, we heard the grown-ups talking sadly about the death of King George V. Somehow, England seemed so far away and I was both distracted and charmed by my new surroundings. We
loved to drive out to Uncle Ernie’s charming property, Wolfsgarten, and to his hunting boxes and farms, especially as I was allowed to perch up beside the coachman as he drove Max and
Mauritz, a pair of the most magnificent carriage horses. At the farms we were given warm milk to drink straight from the cows – a sweet taste and a creamy texture so different to the horrible
goat’s milk that I was used to drinking in Malta. My sister and I enjoyed playing in a tiny white house in the grounds of Wolfsgarten, though its history made us tremendously sad. Uncle Ernie
had built it as a surprise for his much-loved and only child, Elizabeth, after she had described to him the little house of her dreams: hidden in the woods, with white walls, a steep roof, a
chimney looped to look like a needle and glass witch balls in the garden to keep her safe. A year later, on her seventh birthday, he had presented her with the house, with an inscription carved
over the door: ‘This little house was built just for me in the year 1902’. Tragically the witch balls did not keep her safe, for she died later that same year, from typhoid. The story
made me shiver, and secretly I was a bit apprehensive about playing in the house, as I was soon to turn the same age as Elizabeth was when she died.

Patricia and I came back to England in the late spring of 1936. My father had now been appointed to the Admiralty, the house in Malta had been packed up for the foreseeable future and my mother
stopped travelling and returned to Adsdean. It felt so good to be back under the same roof as my parents and Bunny; to be reunited with Hanky, our ponies and our childhood things. It had been
strangely dislocating to be away for so long, and while I had seen so many new places, lived with and become fond of kindly relatives, I was happiest in my own home.

4

P
atricia and I had been away for almost a year, so at first it was a novelty being back in Adsdean. I noticed things in a different way – the
stunning view from the Tower rooms; my father’s handwritten fire instructions lining the corridors that included a role for the Coxswain (baffling until Patricia explained he must have copied
out the drill from his ship’s emergency procedures); the colourful bunches of flowers that adorned every room; and, of course, our much-missed horses and ponies. My sister and I had become
even more horse mad, and that spring of 1936 was full of our ‘Adsdean gymkhanas’, as well as horse-themed games around the house.