Daughter of Empire (9 page)

I wrote copious letters from Mrs Vanderbilt’s villa-style residence in Belleview Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island. I wrote to my mother and to my father, who insisted that all letters be
numbered in case some of them arrived out of sequence or were lost at sea, and also that I should write alternately to him and my mother. This made it difficult sometimes when I was in the mood to
tell my news to one before the other, only to find it wasn’t their turn. I also wrote to Grandmama and Hanky.

As the war progressed, I felt guilty being so safe when our parents were not. My mother’s job involved driving around at night after bombs had dropped, helping people in the shelters as
well as improving the facilities available to the emergency services. She wrote that we were not to worry about her as she had become quite ‘nippy’ at avoiding danger. She actually
seemed to be enjoying herself.

I couldn’t unburden my feelings of homesickness to my mother because she was so easily upset and it was always, as in our home life, more straightforward to share our worries with our
father. I drew a picture for him and posted it with letter number 14, showing ‘Pamela Carmen Louise’ stranded on a raft – ‘floating to you!’ There were three flags on
this vessel: one simply had the word ‘Help’, the second displayed the Union Jack and the third, quite obviously, was a pair of billowing bloomers labelled ‘white pants’. The
jolliness was a poor attempt to hide the slight but ever-present feeling that I missed home.

In turn we received letters from our father and Hanky and Bunny. The King of the Moon was in fine form, lacing his letters with stories and sweet sentiments. As she dashed around our mother sent
us several cables with news of her war effort. I was especially pleased to hear from Hanky, who gave us longed-for news of the dogs. I was still feeling guilty that during one of our goodbyes, I
had pulled away from her, suddenly unwilling to be kissed by the prickly, almost invisible moustache on her top lip. She had always been so warm and giving, and sometimes before I went to sleep I
imagined her back at Broadlands, upset and mystified by my rudeness. I made sure that I wrote to her with a lot of affection in my letters, telling her that I couldn’t wait to see her
again.

The best news came in the form of a cable announcing Zelle’s imminent arrival. Until now, we had been under the care of a Mrs Gertrude Pugh, a thoroughly English, unsympathetic woman who
wore long pink boudoir knickers that came down to her knees (hiding from her one afternoon, Patricia and I spotted these under her skirt from our refuge under the bed). It was such a relief when
Zelle replaced Miss Pugh, bringing with her news, letters and presents from the family. Being with Zelle did also have its downside – I was allowed to speak to her and Patricia only in French
during the day. If I hadn’t spoken any English by nightfall, I was given a cent.

When the summer came to an end, we returned to Manhattan with Mrs Vanderbilt. While, of course, we lived a privileged life at Broadlands, I wasn’t quite prepared for the relentless
grandeur and ostentation of Mrs Vanderbilt’s lifestyle, this manifestation of the excesses of New York ‘society’. There was nothing she liked more than to talk of the British
aristocracy, and I think our link to the royal family really thrilled her. One morning, when we had just started school, she pulled us both out of lessons to see the sumptuous lunch table she had
arranged for the British ambassador, Lord Halifax. An enthusiastic Mrs Vanderbilt escorted us into the large panelled dining room, allowing me to take a sugar-dusted marshmallow from one of the
ornate silver bowls, utterly convinced that seeing her table setting was an essential part of a young girl’s education. My parents were horrified at a newspaper headline about ‘royal
refugees’ going to the races with Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt, and the gossip columns ran a story about how, morning and evening, you could spot the ‘well-born evacuees’ walking down
Fifth Avenue. In fact the walk to our schools each morning was the highlight of my day for, if it wasn’t raining, Zelle would buy us a brioche and a slab of chocolate that we would eat on a
bench in Central Park, while the pastry was still warm.

School in America was an eye-opener. After fielding such questions as ‘Do you have electricity in England’; forcing myself to tolerate the endless mimicking of my accent; convincing
the girls that Patricia and I did not shorten our names to ‘Pat’ and ‘Pam’; and history being turned upside down – from the American Revolution to the War of
Independence and finding that all the goodies had become baddies – I was astonished that during ‘recess’ my fellow classmates undertook a ferocious shoplifting competition at the
local ‘drugstore’. I would rather have died than steal something, so I removed myself to the soda fountain. As at school back home, I found it stressful being with so many girls each
and every day, until during an afternoon game of tag – the sole aim of which seemed to be to push over as many people as possible – I noticed another girl, Anne de Rothschild, who
seemed to prefer to play on her own. We became firm friends and played happily and quietly together. After a couple of weeks I was taken aside and told it really might be better for me not to play
with her. I racked my brains as to why until I realised: however wealthy you were at this school, if you were Jewish you would always be seen as different. They obviously did not know that I had
Jewish ancestors and I continued to play with Anne.

Despite attending school, being with Patricia and Zelle, and receiving the kindness of the impeccably behaved New Yorkers, I couldn’t settle, especially as news of my father’s
‘adventures’ – family code for life-threatening events – reached us. Southampton had been heavily bombed, as had Brook House again (luckily no one was there at the time and
all the main furniture, pictures and even the Whistler panels in the boudoir had been put into storage at the beginning of the war). I felt bad, here in what seemed like another world, as if I
should be back at home suffering like everybody else. I wasn’t exactly unhappy to begin with – there were too many new experiences and things that made Patricia and me laugh. For
example, it was important for Mrs Vanderbilt to be seen at the opera and she decided to take Patricia with her – that is, to some of the opera. Eager to make an entrance, Mrs Vanderbilt would
never arrive until the end of the first act, whereupon she would enter her box with the diamonds of her sumptuous Cartier necklace ablaze as the lights went up for the interval. After she felt that
she had been noticed sufficiently, she would take her seat. At the end of the second act, Mrs Vanderbilt felt she had done her bit and would go home, so Patricia got to know only the second act of
the operas. But what made me chuckle even more than this was the story that Mrs Vanderbilt had once given a dinner party when the Royal Shakespeare Company were playing in New York. A young man at
her table had apologised and asked whether he might be excused from the table because he was going to see
Hamlet
. Mrs Vanderbilt had looked slightly nonplussed and so he explained,
‘Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,’ whereupon her face lit up and she exclaimed loudly, so that everyone could hear, ‘Oh, do give the dear boy my good wishes. I knew his father so
well.’

Letters from home were becoming less frequent and they often arrived in a mixed-up order. Our mother wrote to tell us that the baby wallaby had died and then we received another from her that
said he was doing very well. A week or so later a third letter arrived to tell us that it had been born. It was a very difficult time for everyone, and perhaps the fact that there seemed to be no
end in sight to the conflict prompted both Bunny and then my father to write tender words of advice to me. Bunny’s letter was particularly touching. He wrote: ‘Darling Plonk, I have
just got a new job in London – I am now more or less in charge of this WAR so it should be over very soon. I saw your Papa last night for the first time in some months. He is looking very
well, your poor Mama on the other hand has had a bad cold in di noze. I have sadly not seen any of yours or Plinks’s masterpiece letters lately but I hope to next weekend when I go to
Broadlands. Getting your letters has made all the difference to the happiness of your doting parents during these long months since your departure. Wasn’t it a tragedy that this babe died
[here, Bunny had drawn a picture of a wallaby]. You have never seen anything so sweet as it was. I do hope Babo produces another soon. Everyone misses you both so very much and longs for your
return. Remember to get all the fun that you can out of your trip, as you may never get such a carefree time again. I will try to write a little more often . . . Bless you and tons of love from H M
Rex Luna.’

On 27 May 1941, Zelle came to take Patricia and me home from school as usual. What I didn’t know was that Zelle had already broken the news to my sister that our father’s ship, HMS
Kelly
, had been bombed in Crete and half the crew were missing, presumed dead. Patricia had managed to let out her first wave of tears before I came out of school and composed herself before
meeting me. I was terribly shocked when Zelle told me, while we were travelling home on the bus, that my father was missing. I let out such a loud wail that the bus came to a stop. By the evening I
was numb with terror. In the middle of the night, Zelle came and woke us with the news that he had survived. My mother had sent a cable as soon as she heard. I got up at once and wrote her a
thank-you letter. I was so relieved that I forgot to put a number on the letter but thought my father wouldn’t mind just this once.

By some miracle, my parents were able to visit us that summer. When I heard this news, it seemed too good to be true and the heartache of the last twelve months lifted. I looked out of the
window from my summer bedroom on Long Island, at the great yachts and little sailing boats bobbing on Oyster Bay, and as the lights twinkled from the buildings opposite the shore, I realised that
for the first time in a very long while, I was happy.

My parents arrived in mid-August and we drove out to upstate New York and took up temporary residence in a flat lent to us by friends. We all noticed how Patricia was now taller than our mother
but were careful not to draw attention to it. Mummy, however, seemed not in a mood to be offended. We spent six glorious days together, catching up on our news, visiting places and talking about
how we would all be together as soon as the war was over. Then my parents had to get on with their work. My mother was about to depart on a speaking tour of the US, ostensibly as a goodwill gesture
to thank the American Red Cross for all their help, but her intention was also to inform the Americans about what was really going on in Britain. Lady Louis Mountbatten was a big enough name to
pull in a crowd, and she had a lot of first-hand experience of the horrors of the Blitz. The night before she left she produced a speech that she had carefully written out by hand and was planning
to read. My father shocked us all by tearing it up. ‘No, Snooky. You’ll bore them all rigid.’ Instead he persuaded her to learn it and showed her how to make prompting notes.
‘You’ll be terrific,’ he said, kissing her. She did as he said and later we learned that the tour was an unqualified success. She always attributed her ability to speak in public
to the confidence my father placed in her, and was acknowledged as a fine speaker.

My father, meanwhile, was to travel down to Norfolk, Virginia, to inspect the aircraft carrier HMS
Illustrious
before he took command of her. Before that he paid a flying visit to Pearl
Harbor and was not impressed by the poor state of readiness and general lack of co-operation between the US Navy and the US Army. He lamented the absence of a joint HQ, and on his return he
described something that had shocked him – all the American aircraft had been lined up in rows, leaving them vulnerable to attack. When he pointed this out to those in command, his advice
fell on deaf ears. He was so agitated that at the breakfast table he couldn’t stop until he talked himself out. Once he had done so, he dispatched his fried egg in two gulps and gave me a
sort of consolation pat on the shoulders as he left the table. My father’s plans changed when he was suddenly called back to England. He gave us no indication of what he was up to and we were
terribly sad to see him go. Later, in one of his many letters to us, he explained that Churchill had ordered him to return to take over as Chief of Combined Operations. This was a complex job
– co-ordinating all the top naval, military and air experts and chiefs of the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force in planning, equipping and training for offensive operations.

My mother was able to take a break from her tour and took Patricia and me for a bus trip to the country – although at first we took the State Hospital bus by mistake. A couple of weeks
before she was to return to England, Bunny arrived. He had been sent to New York as an intelligence officer. It was lovely to have him come to visit us and we all went to the movies to see
How
Green Was My Valley
and then, when that made us all sad, to the new Walt Disney film,
Dumbo
, which of course I loved.

It was not long before Bunny saw what my parents had failed to see: that I was miserable in America, being cooped up with Zelle and her unrelenting French. He and my mother had several
conversations with my sister in which Bunny argued that it would be far better for me to face the bombs in England and be happy than to stay here and feel wretched. Patricia decided that as there
were only six months until she graduated from high school, it was important she should stay so she could leave with qualifications. She agreed that it would be best for me to return to England with
my mother.

On 26 November we arrived at La Guardia at seven in the morning. The press had also got up early that morning and their presence rather curtailed an emotional goodbye with Patricia. We ended up
smiling inanely at each other, giving the photographers some posed shots: she, a sophisticated young woman, tall and elegant, carrying a neat little handbag and white gloves, and me, a child in a
little short-sleeved dress with a white collar, wearing a black beret and with a white cardigan draped over my left arm, just as Mrs Vanderbilt had taught me. You might have thought we were relaxed
and calm, but if you looked closely you could see that I was gripping my sister’s hand, gripping it hard, as if I never wanted to let go.