Domestic Soldiers (12 page)

CHAPTER SIX

A FEW HOURS OF HAPPINESS

At first it seemed perfectly reasonable. Hugh did a great deal of work for the government and knew a number of high-ranking officials. It was entirely possible that he could be the target of some kind of conspiracy.

At the end of July 1941, Hugh and Natalie Tanner were feverishly preparing for a theatre production of
Richelieu
in Bradford. Hugh was acting in the play and Natalie was in charge of the props. Natalie spent most of the month trying to track down the perfect period candlesticks – not an easy task in wartime Britain. She searched Leeds and eventually found some that fitted the bill. But while she was out negotiating the price of the candlesticks, Hugh was at the theatre, growing increasingly ‘nervy’. He fussed continually about his costume and worried over his lines. The night before the opening, he was convinced he couldn’t carry on. He did, and the production seems to have been a success.

Hugh’s nervousness didn’t dissipate with the end of
Richelieu
, however; it only seemed to grow worse. That week, after spending a day swimming with James, Natalie came home to find Hugh feeling ‘woozy’. She chalked it up to his falling asleep in the brutally hot
summer sun, but Hugh had different ideas. He was convinced that the beer at the local pub had been drugged. Natalie took Hugh to see a doctor when he still felt off the next day, but her husband was positive that the doctor’s assistant was a Fascist and that his prescription had also been tainted. By the end of the week, Hugh was pacing the house day and night in search of surveillance equipment.

Natalie wasn’t sure what to think. She teetered between believing it was a ‘persecution mania’ and a plausible plot. Her husband’s engineering firm delivered cutting-edge technologies needed to fight the war, and thus he had contacts at the highest levels of government. Hugh was so convincing and the circumstances – his work, his connections, the war – all made it even more so. At the very least, he believed ‘they’ would have him framed and arrested. It certainly didn’t help matters when Hugh learned that Natalie’s brother and sister-in-law had been arrested and were being held at Brixton and Holloway prisons respectively. Of course, there was cause for the government’s suspicions of Natalie’s relations, since the couple had been living in Italy when the war broke out and then maintained relationships with ‘various doubtful people’ when they later moved to Athens. Furthermore, Natalie knew that her brother had Fascist sympathies. It wasn’t surprising, to her at least, that the government seized them when the two landed in Britain after their time abroad. It only added fuel to Hugh’s increasing paranoia.

With this new turn of events, Hugh refused to let James out of his sight and told Natalie that ‘they’ were out to kidnap James. Half-believing the conspiracy theories herself, even Natalie sneaked a peek over her shoulder from time to time. But she called the doctor
again when Hugh confessed one sleepless night that he believed the entire family would end up like people ‘you read [about] in the newspaper, whole families, husband, wife and child being found with their throats cut’. This time she was truly frightened.

The next day, the doctor and Hugh’s brother escorted him to a mental hospital in York. In an effort to find out what had happened to her husband, Natalie rang up the hospital every day for the next week, but the only answer she received was, ‘Mr Tanner is still very restless.’ Finally, the primary physician agreed to see her. Hugh seemed to have slipped even further away from reality. His ‘restlessness’, she learned, consisted of smashing windows and running around naked. Though the doctor was very ‘noncommittal’ about Hugh’s prognosis, he did allow Natalie and James to visit him briefly. (Natalie had brought James along to soothe Hugh’s fears that he’d been kidnapped.) Hugh remembered them and seemed calm, but still, Natalie reported, he was ‘full of plots and counterplots’. When they went to York a week later, Hugh was once again actively ‘restless’ and the nurses refused to let Natalie see him.

By the end of August, Hugh was finally in a state to receive visitors and Natalie had settled into a routine of regular afternoon visits and frequent overnight stays in York. In September, Hugh was still talking of fifth columnists, but he looked better. After shock treatments in October, he was able to accompany his wife on strolls around the hospital grounds. With Hugh better, the worry that had burdened Natalie since July seemed to dissipate on those walks together, and for the first time, she was able to observe the other patients – some who were much worse than Hugh and others
who were, to Natalie, shockingly young. The walks seemed to have a positive effect on Hugh as well, and soon the doctors decided that he no longer needed to be held in confinement. His upgraded status didn’t last long, however. On 15 November, York had an air-raid alert that caused him to relapse. Once again, Hugh was put under close observation.

Life that autumn and winter was an emotional roller-coaster ride. Hugh’s mental state seemed to shift daily, and as Christmas approached, it was obvious that he wouldn’t be home to enjoy it with his family. Indeed, neither Natalie nor James made the trip to York over Christmas, but instead only managed the trip on 29 December. Natalie never explained why, but it may have been that public transport was closed for Christmas and Boxing Day. Still, Hugh’s brother had a car and could have, presumably, taken the family into York for the holiday. It must have been a desperately lonely few days for Hugh. When Natalie and their son finally visited him, they found him ‘very depressed and in bed’, and they stayed only an hour. On the return trip home, the train was freezing and there was no buffet car. It was all ‘very depressing’, Natalie sighed.

After the holidays, James returned to his school near Manchester and, perhaps to share some of the emotional strain or to save time, Natalie began to stay with friends in Leeds or stay at the railway hotel. At the very least, it made the trip to York so much easier; but it also had the added benefit of restoring a little of her previous life. Staying in Leeds meant that she could spend a few hours in York and be back in Leeds or Bradford in the evening for her usual round of theatre, cinema and political talk – all without worrying
over finding a way home (which would require either a taxi or a 4-mile walk from the bus).

The routine and the companionship were also much-needed diversions. The bar in the railway hotel was lively. The conversation was easy and the drink flowed with similar ease. Old friends stopped by, and new friends were made.

When a ‘Major X’ of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) appeared in the bar one night in January, it is not surprising that Natalie was captivated. He was worldly, intellectual, fascinating and attractive. They spent the night talking and drinking beer until 2 a.m. The next day, she went to the News Theatre, but found she couldn’t focus. Afterwards, she sought him out at the hotel and once again the two fell into deep conversation. ‘The attraction’, she learned, ‘is mutual,’ but Natalie was able to break away from him in the afternoon. The snow was falling and she nearly turned back, but she had ordered a taxi several days before she met ‘X’ and it was waiting for her, so she returned home. The taxi made it just over a mile from her house before becoming stuck in the snow. Natalie trekked the rest of the way through the snow, the winter night silent and still. It was perfect for musing over ‘X’.

The next day was a Sunday, and she spent it washing, cleaning and thinking. As she watched the snow build up outside, Natalie made up her mind that she must see Hugh – and ‘X’. The major had told her that he might be deployed at any time, and with the weather looking the way it did, it was possible that she would be snowed in for a few days and might never see him again if she didn’t get to Leeds soon. The next morning, despite the freezing drizzle and a foot of snow, she walked the four bone-chilling miles into the village;
but she felt wonderful. By the time Natalie arrived, she figured it was too late to go to York and sent a telegram to Hugh not to expect her. She then went to Leeds.

Natalie spent the evening and the next morning with ‘X’ and decided once again not to go to York. In the afternoon, she went to the cinema and saw
Ships with
Wings
, an Ealing Studios film that focuses on the lives of naval officers and stars Leslie Banks and Basil Sydney. For once Tanner, who usually enlightened M-O with detailed critiques of the many movies she watched, had surprisingly little to say – she was too preoccupied with her budding affair with ‘X’. ‘It’s all very complicated,’ she explained. ‘His own personal life is snarled as well … but just as I can talk to him, so he can talk to me.’ For a woman who rarely disclosed her personal feelings beyond film casting or political and international affairs, ‘snarled as well’ is an enigmatic glimpse into her own marriage. Nonetheless, Natalie confided that, if only for a fleeting moment, the two ‘managed to get a few hours of happiness without hurting anyone but ourselves’.

The next day, Natalie finally made it to York and found Hugh a little better. But she was still ‘dazed’ by ‘X’. After seeing Hugh, she settled down to answer a directive from M-O, but found she simply couldn’t do it. It was all about ‘feelings’, she complained, stating, ‘I have no feelings except about X at the moment,’ and apologized to M-O for not responding. But if she couldn’t quite bring herself to respond to the directive, she felt that M-O was a confidant and unloaded the affair in her diary. ‘I have to get rid of my feelings somehow!’ she wrote. Although Tanner had a number of friends, she felt awkward discussing the affair with them. ‘I always feel very uncomfortable when my
friends tell me of their affairs – that is when I know their husbands,’ Natalie told M-O, ‘it seems so frightfully disloyal somehow.’

Throughout February 1942, Natalie continued to see ‘X’. On her birthday, 8 February, Natalie and ‘X’ celebrated until midnight, when they ordered up more drinks and toasted Hugh’s birthday (his birthday was on the 9th). He was still in hospital.

The affair was still full of heat, and the relationship remained intense, but Natalie was finally feeling herself again. ‘For sometime’, she confessed,

The two were both well aware that the affair could not last. Hugh was getting better every day and would not be in hospital forever, and soon the expected orders to the Middle East would reach ‘X’. ‘We are civilized human beings,’ Natalie rationalized to M-O when she first met him, ‘and when the time comes we’ll be able to say “goodbye” without any distressing scenes.’

In the event, his departure had little of the tearful, cinematic flair that a romantic film buff like Natalie might conjure of a soldier going off to face certain death in battle. He was not sent to the Middle East, but rather received orders to replace the head of a nearby convalescent home who had taken ill. ‘Not as drastic as the Persian Gulf, but almost so,’ Natalie sighed. They spent the night together, walked around Leeds all morning until his train arrived, then exchanged numbers and
addresses. Later that day, she met an old friend from Cambridge for dinner. He was a Roman Catholic priest whom she hadn’t seen for four years, but within a few minutes of conversation, he had divined the truth. It wasn’t just his dog-collar that loosened her tongue – they were close friends and, like ‘X’, he understood her implicitly. Over the course of the evening, she made her confession.

Natalie tried several times to ring ‘X’ after they said goodbye, but it was difficult. He had given her a military number and she continually ran up against officials refusing to patch a civilian through. Natalie did manage to reach him once in March, but she did not record the details of their conversation. She thought about him often, writing letters to her Cambridge friend for solace and spending a few days reading T.S. Eliot poems (both she and ‘X’ shared a love of Eliot), wallowing in depression. She contemplated inviting him to meet once more in town, but if she did see him again, she never told M-O. The affair was over. After eight months in York, Hugh came home and ‘X’ made his final appearance in the diary.

Natalie Tanner’s brief but profoundly moving affair with ‘X’ underlines a particularly significant wartime problem. The upheavals in family life that war created – children evacuated miles away from their homes, families separated because of bomb damage, servicemen sent abroad, wives working – increased fears that the family as an institution was in mortal danger. Adultery, and worries over its increasing prevalence in wartime, was at the centre of the debate over the breakdown of marriage and family. These debates were largely focused on women’s infidelity, rather than men’s.

In fact, men’s affairs were generally excused as a result of the extraordinary pressures of wartime and battle. It seemed entirely reasonable that a man might resort to the comfort of another woman sometime during an extended absence. Unless he reneged on his financial duties to his family or abandoned them, women’s magazines encouraged wives to forgive husbands’ transgressions. Indeed, agony aunts often asked wives to look at themselves
first
as the source of blame for their husbands’ indiscretions. Were you always presentable and desirable when you saw your husband? Was the house clean and cheery? Were
you
cheery? Furthermore, men’s affairs seemed to carry far less offence than women’s did. Husbands’ infidelities were waved away as simple follies that had very little meaning. Women were encouraged to believe that all was not lost; just because a husband had an affair did not mean that he had fallen out of love with his wife.