The Bolter (14 page)

Euan’s mother, Minnie Wallace, was a disapproving, dour, and tight-fisted woman, ironically so, given that she lived at 9 Grosvenor Street, an elegant town house barely twenty yards from the extravagances of the Bond Street shops. Since the death of her husband, Jack, Minnie had depended on her son for money. She had been widowed ten years earlier at the age of forty after a twenty-year marriage that had produced a single son: her darling Euan. She spent her days exercising her terrifying memory in the playing of bridge and labeling every item in her possession with her name and address. On one occasion a small black umbrella was returned to her after she uncharacteristically left it on one of her many economical journeys on London’s buses.

She could not have been more different from her daughter-in-law, Idina, and her eccentric family. Socialism and suffragettes, cults and cancan dancers, not to mention divorce, all sent shivers down Minnie Wallace’s spine.
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If Euan had not been twenty-one and therefore of age when he married Idina, Minnie’s consent might well have been withheld.

Euan came home for lunch. Idina, still obviously in need of rest but equally obviously determined to show her husband she was well
enough to keep him company, was up and dressed.
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After lunch Euan drove her out in search of milk. The supply of fresh milk had come to a standstill, so there was no need to ration it. It simply wasn’t there. Instead the two of them drove to the Nestlé shop. Powdered milk it was, or no milk at all. Idina went in alone and bought as many tins of milk as they would allow her. It would be mixed with water for breakfast in London and for the children, who were still down in the country. Then, as if to prove that she was not as ill as she looked, Idina set off with Euan and “walked to various shops.” They had friends to tea and went out on the town with others, dining at Claridge’s with a couple of women, one taking the name of Charles to even the numbers, before going on to the theater.

However, even this first day of keeping Euan entertained had proved too much, too soon, for the still-unwell Idina. When they awoke on Saturday morning she looked terrible and could barely move. Euan insisted that she see a doctor. Doctors, however, were thin on the ground. Anyone young enough to be sent to the Front had been. One of the household knew of a doctor just around the corner in Connaught Square. Euan sent for him.

Dr. William Beecham came that morning. A man in his sixties, he was neither a general practitioner nor a society doctor. Instead he specialized in skin diseases and gynecology

Nonetheless, he examined Idina’s chest and, as surgeons often do, diagnosed her as in need of bed rest and, Euan recorded, “a small operation next week.” Beecham also announced that Idina was so unwell that she “could not possibly come to Cambridge.”

This was devastating news for Euan and Idina. Their plans for a riotous four months together were dissolving before their eyes. If this doctor was right, Idina would be stuck in bed and Euan would be alone in Cambridge. Clearly desperate to rescue the situation, Idina refused to accept his recommendation. And when he left, she got out of bed.

That evening Idina went out with Euan. They dined at the Berkeley Hotel and went to a show called
Nothing but the Truth
, which Euan thought “most amusing.” For three more days, darting here, dining there, she kept up the pace. On Sunday morning they went to church at the chic Chapel Royal at the Savoy, and then took three friends to lunch at the Ritz. That night they dined at Claridge’s again and, the theaters being closed for Sunday, had “a small party” afterward at Connaught Place, “some people playing Poker and some singing.” And on Idina went.

Two days later Idina and Euan “motored down to Sandhill to see the children.” They left at ten-thirty and “got there before one.”

Almost as soon as the car stopped the boys came bounding up, “both looking very well and in good form.” The straight-haired David, at three and a half no longer a baby at all but very much a boy, was growing lean and stretched, old enough to chatter nineteen to the dozen. A year younger, Gerard, his head a mass of fair curls, still had legs fat enough to make him lollop from one side to another as he ran. Idina and Euan stayed for two hours: time for nursery lunch and a romp around the lawns. At three-fifteen they left in order to reach London for the evening, as a couple of friends were coming to dine.

After five hours of windswept motoring along country lanes at full tilt, Idina lasted through dinner and then, already dressed to go out, hair up, gown to the floor, white arms bare, she sank. Euan stood clutching four tickets for the theater that night. “Dina,” he wrote, “felt too tired to go, so I picked up Barbie and she filled the vacant seat.”

Idina stayed in bed on Wednesday morning. Euan, ebullient after his evening with Barbie—“awfully good play”—went out to a lunch party at Dorchester House in Park Lane, the home of Stewart’s stepfather, the multimillionaire Sir George Holford.

Euan lunched and went up to St. John’s Wood to play tennis with Barbie. The rest of the day in his diary is blank.

On Thursday Idina hauled herself out of bed again. She went with Euan to dinner at a friend’s house and then on to
Carmen
at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. In the second interval, her legs buckled. Euan, missing the climactic last act, “brought her away.”

The following day was Good Friday, a bank holiday. Idina was still unable to get up after the night before. Avie entertained Euan and that night the two of them dined quietly together at a supper table set up at one end of the drawing room “as Dina went to bed, feeling rotten again.”

By Saturday Idina had agreed to Dr. Beecham’s “small” operation. It was booked for Monday morning, requiring Idina to go into the nursing home the night before, Easter Sunday. Once this had been fixed she hauled herself out of bed and spent the morning out shopping with Euan in the Calcott. They went back home to have lunch with a couple of friends and then afterward, as Idina lay down to rest, Euan climbed back into “the little car” and headed out of London. He and Idina had been invited to a weekend Easter house party. Even if Idina could not go, he did not want to spend the holiday weekend kicking around an empty London with a sick wife. He drove off.

The operation was postponed. Idina, sitting alone in Connaught Place, called Euan’s house party just before dinner, and at noon the next day he scooped her up from Connaught Place and took her to a family lunch at 24 Park Lane. Avie was already there. She needed, she said, a fourth man for tennis that afternoon. Euan volunteered. After lunch he and Avie dropped Idina back home and headed up to St. John’s Wood. Barbie was waiting there.

Euan didn’t see Idina again until Friday. He went from the tennis courts to the Ritz to the sleeper for Glasgow without going back to see his wife.
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When he returned on Thursday evening it was straight out to the Ritz, with another man, Avie, and, of course, Barbie. The four of them went on to a show,
The Boy
, “which was excellent again.” Euan then came back to Connaught Place. But he didn’t go up to Idina. Instead he dashed up to the first floor, picked up the gramophone, carried it back out to the car, and drove to Barbie’s new house in Montagu Street, just the other side of Marble Arch.

Barbie still lived with her parents. The Lutyens family had, until a week or two previously, been living in a vast house in Bloomsbury’s Bedford Square. However, financial pressures had forced them to sell and move on—in this case to a smaller house but far closer to Park Lane and Mayfair and the fast set to which Barbie yearned to belong.

Barbie had the house in Montagu Street more or less to herself. Her mother had taken the younger children to Shropshire to escape the bombs. Her father meanwhile was spending most of his time during the week in London with Idina’s cousin, Lady Sackville,
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and every weekend at her Sackville ancestral home of Knole—a palace of seven courtyards, fifty-two staircases, and 365 rooms. This left Montagu Street empty and a perfect venue for an impromptu party.

Euan set up the gramophone and the four of them “danced till 12:30 am.”

The following day, Friday, was Euan’s last before going up to Cambridge, and one of Idina’s greatest girlfriends came to tea. Eva Belper was godmother to Idina’s elder son, David. She was just a few months older than Idina, and the two women had been “out” as debutantes at the same time. They were both from industrial dynasties (Eva’s family had discovered vast coalfields under their Glamorganshire estates) who had become Liberal politicians and then peers of the realm in the new industrial aristocracy. However, within a couple of months of Idina’s launch into Society, Eva had married. Her husband was Algernon Strutt, the eldest son of the second Lord Belper and another scion of a
Liberal political dynasty that had risen from an industrial fortune. Shortly before the war Algernon’s father had died and Algernon had succeeded him as the third Lord Belper. Algernon and Eva’s marriage was not, however, running smoothly. The two of them were heading, slowly and steadily, toward divorce.

Through all this Idina and Eva had remained close and, after Idina had wandered back upstairs, Eva stayed and “talked” to Euan “for half an hour.” That night Euan went out again with Avie, Barbie, and another man and ended up at Barbie’s house, where, with the slight thrill of being servant-free, “we made some supper & danced & played the gramophone.” The gramophone was Euan and Idina’s, which he had installed in Barbie’s home. “Stayed till nearly 2 am,” he wrote.

Sometimes it is not what is recorded in a person’s diary that counts, but what is not. Idina’s operation was on 8 April, two days after Euan left for Cambridge. The operation went well and Euan scribbled at the end of the page in his diary: “Heard Dina alright after op.” But Idina did not make a rapid recovery. She remained bedridden and needing daily “treatment” by a physiotherapist called Mrs. Rigden to try to dislodge the infection from her lungs. And as she lay in that again near-empty cavern of Connaught Place, she slowly slipped out of her husband’s consciousness.

Euan came back to London from Cambridge every weekend. On a Saturday night he had an early dinner in his college, Caius, and then caught the 9:10 p.m. train to Liverpool Street, arriving just after eleven-thirty The first Saturday, Avie met him at the station and whisked him straight to Barbie’s house, “where an informal party lasted till pretty late.” Euan eventually reached Connaught Place in the early hours, long after Idina had fallen asleep, and he crept into his dressing room to sleep. He then appeared in Idina’s room for breakfast the next morning, “at 8:45.” But she was still indisputably an invalid.

After an hour Euan left. It was inconceivable that Idina might ask him to stay longer with her when he had so little time to enjoy himself. Stuck in bed, Idina was powerless to do anything but watch her husband dash out of the house to keep up with his new crowd of lively young girls.

Euan went to visit a Cavalry colleague of his, Viscount Ednam, the eldest son of the Earl of Dudley, who had been invalided home and was coming out of hospital that morning. He and Avie drove around to Eric Ednam’s family’s town house to join the party to welcome him back
and listen to his “thrilling account of the Brigade in recent fighting.” Eric had an audience of half a dozen: Euan; Avie; Barbie; Cimmie Curzon, the younger, beautiful sister of Irene, both celebrity debutantes and daughters of the former viceroy of India, Lord Curzon; and Eric’s sister, Morvyth Ward, who called herself Dickie. Dickie was a statuesque English beauty with well-defined features and a well-defined sense of have-a-go fun. That night Euan rounded up a couple of other officers on leave and took all the girls out to dinner at Claridge’s before catching the train back to Cambridge.

The next Saturday was Euan’s birthday. After “a bottle of champagne for dinner to celebrate” at Caius, he again caught the evening train to London, “came by tube from Liverpool Street to Marble Arch” and, instead of walking fifty yards west to Idina in Connaught Place, turned north to Barbie’s house, “where Avie and Barbie had a small party lasting fairly late, which was great fun.”

He had breakfast in Idina’s room the next morning, the news of what he had been up to inevitably revealing how much he was enjoying being caught up in his new gang of her younger sister’s friends. But this Sunday, at least, it was “raining like the devil,” wrote Euan. For once he stayed in. Idina started to spend a precious morning with him. But it was a short morning. By lunchtime Barbie had dropped in.

Euan then vanished. He went out to lunch with another crowd and Barbie came back at teatime with Avie, Dickie, and three or four others: “they played piano and danced and sang till after 6!” Idina meanwhile was upstairs, again being pummeled by the brutal arms of Mrs. Rigden.
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The following weekend Euan again went “to Barbie’s” for what had become “the usual Saturday evening party.” The next morning, Sunday, he awoke at ten, immediately “did some telephoning,” and was at Barbie’s house at eleven. That night, when he left the gang’s Sunday-night dinner at Claridge’s halfway through to catch the train back to Cambridge, “Barbie came to see me off.”

This weekend there was no mention of Idina.

BARBIE WAS BEAUTIFUL
, interested, yet tantalizingly unavailable. She wanted a rich husband, not a rich lover. Fooling around in bed with a man would not guarantee her position in society. Misbehaving in that way was for the girls who did not have to make a journey up the social ladder as she did. And while Idina lay in bed and Barbie kept herself
just out of reach, Euan began an “Edwardian friendship” with somebody else. According to the mores with which both Idina and Euan had been brought up, having a passing affair with a married friend was accepted behavior. However, the new wartime morality had stretched this to “friendships” with single girls. While a single girl might not risk pregnancy by having full intercourse, that still left open a wide field of sexual behavior.