Slipstream (17 page)

‘Thank you, I will try not to get bombed.’

He smiled with great sadness and underneath my writing put ‘Goodbye Goodbye’ and I stroked the words on his slate to say it back.

Walking home, it was clear how very little I knew and how little I understood of anything I’d thought I knew. Even learning to type wouldn’t help me with his feelings, which meant
that either education, as I’d thought of it, wasn’t education at all, or it was merely a preliminary, at its best, for something that was going to last for the rest of my life.

The best thing about learning to type was that Dosia was also coming to London for the same purpose. We enrolled together for Pitman’s intensive course conducted in a
gaunt house near Lancaster Gate in Bayswater Road. Dosia had found us a flat in Warrington Crescent, Maida Vale. It belonged to a musician and consisted of one large room, with a bed, a grand piano
and a table and chairs, a tiny kitchen, an equally small bathroom, and a sort of cupboard in the entrance hall, with no door, in which I slept. We called it Mon Debris and loved it. We gave dinner
parties there – frozen cod, stewed rhubarb and nothing to drink. We invented a butler called Chortle, who was always away or ill when wanted, and who made expensive demands on us, leaving
imperious little notes. We were light-hearted and full of silly jokes that we thought deeply amusing. I remember Dosia telling everyone at a party at the Admiralty that I was a famous Swedish
pianist but unfortunately had no English.

She had a huge capacity for making friends. Soon we were going to parties, having parties, going to the cinema, eating out at a small Cypriot restaurant, all with people Dosia hardly knew and I
not at all. Our parents paid our modest rent and my allowance was upped a little in acknowledgement that I was at last doing what was expected of me. Every weekday morning we toiled off to
Pitman’s where we sat for an hour typing very slowly from cards propped up on our typewriters to hide the keyboard, and military music forced us to keep a plodding time. Then we had an hour
of grammalogues – an early version of shorthand and much harder work – and every now and then an hour of double-entry bookkeeping, which I never mastered. I enlivened the time there by
getting Jay to send me telephone messages as Lord Marlinspike, which were pinned to a baize board to be read during lunch hour. There were three more hours in the afternoon before we were free to
enjoy ourselves.

Sometimes my father took us to the Gargoyle Club, off Dean Street, and we had a proper restaurant meal and danced. We went high in the building in a tiny claustrophobic lift and emerged into a
bar whose walls were covered with drawings by Matisse. The
walls of the restaurant and dance floor were lined with little squares of mirror glass, which made it much larger and
more glamorous. David Tennant, married to Hermione Baddeley – the very funny actress who used to do revue with Hermione Gingold – owned it. The club was frequented by the literati; I
remember Dylan Thomas and Philip Toynbee usually rather, or very, drunk. I can’t imagine what we wore; I do remember that we’d both bought little crêpe dresses in ‘Marina
blue’ from C&A for three pounds, and we used to draw stocking seams on our legs.

We also went often to the Players’ Club in Covent Garden, where Victorian music-hall songs were performed and Leonard Sachs was the spontaneously witty compère. Occasionally, we
slipped out for a National Gallery concert if Denis Matthews or Nina Milkina or any of our other friends were playing. In the interval we’d go down to the basement where we’d buy cheese
and sultana sandwiches, served as often as not by Joyce Grenfell. When she had qualified, Dosia was going to be secretary to the Bishop of Willesden, and I? I’d no idea what lay in store for
me, the typing pool at the Admiralty had been suggested by someone.

We had hardly been at Pitman’s for a week before we both noticed that there was one student utterly unlike the others. She was far older than any of us, very tall, with iron-grey hair that
fell carelessly across the side of her high forehead. She had the most ravishing smile, became a beauty on the instant. She had a kind of seductive liveliness, an inward amusement at anything we
said. She carried her remarkable appearance with an assurance that fascinated both of us. She was Austrian, she told us, a refugee now living in England. She was, or had been, married to a Dutch
doctor and had spent much of her married life in Malaysia. She had three children who were here too: Matthius was training to be a doctor, Brigitte was married and lived in Cambridge, and Tony was
at Gordonstoun School. She knew Kurt Hahn who’d started a similar school in Germany. She was a painter, and she wrote. Her name was Marie Paneth. She used to enjoy amazing
and shocking us with her stories, and when she’d finish we’d cry, ‘Oh,
no
, Marie! Surely not!’ and she’d laugh and say, ‘Oh,
yerse
!
That is how it was.’ We felt excited and proud to know anyone so unusual and exotic.

When Pete rang to say that he was coming to London for a night as he had to go to the Admiralty, we decided to give one of our dinner parties for him. Two of Dosia’s friends called Kit and
Freddie, who worked in the Admiralty, were asked and they brought a quiet girl called Philippa. We used our entire meat ration in a shepherd’s pie, and Dosia made a pudding, a kind of whip,
from Carnation Milk. We even managed to buy some drink. We had a very jolly party – played charades, rang people up at random in a competition to see how long they could be kept on the
telephone, and explained that Chortle had gone to a nursing-home as he was afraid he might be ill. When the others had gone and we’d cleared up the room enough for Dosia to go to bed, Pete
and I crammed into my small bed in the cupboard and he told me that in a month he was going to get three weeks’ leave. ‘So I thought this might be the best time for us to be
married.’ I can remember saying, ‘Do you
want
to marry me?’ and his replying, ‘Darling, I wouldn’t be asking you if I didn’t.’

I was stunned, flattered, dazzled. I’d not thought about marriage at all, except to conclude, years before, that nobody would ever want to marry me. I hadn’t thought about it much
then, and I didn’t now. ‘Unless you feel that you’re too young’ he said.

That did it. ‘I shall be nineteen in a month,’ I said. ‘Of course I’d love to marry you.’

In the morning we told Dosia. Pete rang his mother, and we both spoke to mine in Sussex. Everybody seemed pleased, and Pete left for Portsmouth, where it was arranged that he would spend an
evening with my father.

Two days later, the telephone rang, and thinking that it would be one of our jokey friends I yelled, ‘Yes?’ into the telephone, doing my best imitation of a char.

‘This is
The Times
,’ a measured voice said. ‘Is it true that you’re to marry Peter Scott, the son of the famous explorer?’

Later that morning, as I walked to the bus to go for the last time to Pitman’s – my mother insisted there was so little time that I must come home at once to prepare for the wedding
– I felt suddenly uneasy. Something inside me said, ‘Do you really want to do this?’ but I stifled it. Of course I wanted to do it. I was unbelievably lucky to be marrying a brave
and famous man. I’d be Mrs Peter Scott, safe from all the things I’d pushed so far down I need no longer acknowledge them, safe from my mother’s disapproval, and safe from joining
the Wrens. We’d have our own house, and I’d cook and give parties for Pete when he came home on leave and one day the war would be over and I’d be married to a painter and he
wouldn’t talk about guns any longer, and I’d encourage him to paint and draw people more than birds.

So it went. During the next few weeks there was hardly a moment to think about anything but the wedding, which was to take place in London at a church in Lancaster Gate – it wasn’t
practical for people to travel to Sussex. My mother concerned herself with my clothes and took me to Curzon Street, where Chris Ampthill designed and made my wedding dress of off-ration white lace,
a soft turquoise dress and short-sleeved jacket to match, and two pinafore dresses, one of blue linen and the other of a pretty flecked tweed. Underclothes had to be made of parachute silk and
curtain netting. I think people must have kindly given me clothes coupons even for this. Shortly before the wedding Pete gave me thirty pounds to buy an evening dress, which I did; it was of pale
grey satin damask with grey roses and had a tiny waist and enormous skirt – the nicest dress I have ever had.

Bill Kennet thought that it would be patriotic to have a dry wedding but my father – white to the lips at such a thought, my mother said – refused. There were to be four hundred
people at the reception, which would take place at Claridges Hotel.

At some point I went down to Fritton and Pete was there, and
everyone made much of me. Bill gave me a gold wristwatch, my first watch, and K gave Pete a turquoise and diamond
ring for him to give me to mark our engagement. I remember feeling rather sad that he’d not chosen it himself.

The only person who was appalled at my impending marriage was Jay. He wrote me bitter letters telling me I was far too young, was throwing away a promising career, and was letting him down. I
wrote saying I didn’t see why it should make any difference to our relationship, but he replied that it would, and it did. He didn’t come to the wedding, but sent a Revelation suitcase
with my new initials on it.

Dosia reluctantly agreed to be my bridesmaid. I didn’t know until years afterwards how much she hated being dressed in furnishing material. My uncle Hubert, one of my mother’s twin
brothers, who’d become a clergyman, was to marry us, and his daughter Frances was the other bridesmaid. Wedding presents were pretty scarce at that time. I do remember receiving a crate from
an admiral that proved to be full of glass so shattered that it was impossible to tell what it had been in its original state. ‘Thank you so much for all that lovely glass,’ I wrote as
tactfully as I could.

The wedding took place on 28 April 1942. I spent the night before in a dingy hotel near the church with my mother. There was a good deal of tension. When she asked whether I knew about the
‘difficult’ side of marriage, I said coldly that of course I did – there was no need to talk about it. She subsided with relief.

The next morning, when I was dressed, she went on to the church with Colin. My father came to fetch me. He looked very glamorous in morning dress, and brought a half-bottle of champagne with
him. ‘Good for the nerves,’ he said. He opened it, and we each had a glass. ‘Here’s to you, darling,’ he said, and gave my shoulder a little squeeze. He seemed shy
suddenly – something I’d never seen. Before we left, he picked up my hand and kissed it, ‘You look lovely, darling,’ and I knew that whatever I looked like he would have
said that: affection bloomed.

The only thing I’d arranged for the wedding was the music. My
friend Geraint Jones – a wonderful organist and later a conductor – let me choose what he was
to play. I didn’t want Wagner, but chose Bach’s organ sonata in E flat, a lovely welcoming piece. K had brought a bouquet of rather spiky white flowers from Fritton, which was very kind
of her but disappointed me. James Lees-Milne and Wayland were two of the ushers, Barbara and Phoebe – both in the Wrens – came and so did much of my family. Everything I’d read
about in novels happened. Pete put the ring on my finger, and pushed back my veil. I signed my new name for the first time, then walked down the aisle – a sea of faces on either side. It was
all as shadowy, as glassy as a dream.

Outside photographs were taken by friends and newspapers. I thought I looked like a new potato in white lace and said so when I saw
The Times
the next day.

The reception went on for a long time. I stood for ages with Pete, my parents, K and Bill, receiving congratulations from people most of whom I didn’t know. There were a great many naval
officers, and various luminaries who were part of the Kennet world – Joyce Grenfell, who had written saying that she would gladly come and dance in a pew, Malcolm Sargent, an old friend of
the family, and mysteriously Gillie Potter, a famous radio comic and music hall star, who made an impromptu speech. Eventually, speeches over, toasts drunk, I was whisked away to a bedroom with a
very grand marble bathroom to change.

We were driven down in the Kennets’ car by Comber to the Lacket, Bill’s cottage in Lockeridge near Marlborough. It had been let to T. E. Lawrence’s mother, but had been made
available for the first part of our honeymoon.

A kind village lady received us. She’d made us a dinner of roast chicken, and there was a bottle of white wine. I shivered in one of the two pretty chiffon nightdresses that my father had
given me for birthdays past. I knelt to say my prayers, Pete, studiously tactful, ignoring me, and after ‘Our Father’ and prayers for my parents and brothers, I prayed I might be a good
wife.

It’s odd how little I can remember of that week. It was a beautiful fresh green spring. We hired ponies and went for a long ride over gentle hills that had harebells and
cowslips, and Pete knew every bird. We talked about our future; Pete said his lighthouse wouldn’t be big enough for a family, and we’d have to find somewhere else. In London, I said, I
didn’t want to live in the country away from the theatre. Well, anywhere I liked, he replied.

He was full of admiration for how I looked, and for almost anything I said, and I basked in his indulgence. ‘We’re going to be so happy, you can’t imagine,’ he said
– often. He told me about keeping dozens of crayfish in the bath with mud, and how splendid his mother had always been about these ventures. I told him how, as we went home on a bus after my
mother had taken me to a film about his father, she’d pointed to Leinster Corner and said that was where Captain Scott’s widow now lived. I’d wept copiously throughout the film
and burst into tears again and asked if we couldn’t see her to tell her how sorry we were? He talked about his ship, and his ambition to have a good war, and I tried to be interested in the
differences between a Rolls-Royce and an Oelikon gun.