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A
ROUND CHRISTMASTIME OF
1959, something that had been nagging at the back of my brain came into focus. I had been uneasy about my brother Chris for quite a while. With Donald away in the merchant navy, my youngest sibling was now more alone than ever. The Meuse was run-down, gloom permeating every room. Mum was absent and at the pub most lunchtimes and evenings. The “local” was her crutch, and the lovely pianist who once had such a fine technique was now merely a bar entertainer thumping at the keys, her drinking cronies encouraging her lifestyle. Pop had a succession of jobs, first selling cash registers, then working at Hotpoint and, finally, Green-shield Stamps, so he, too, was not around very much. Aunt, now divorced from Uncle Bill, continued to teach, but she eventually moved her school into the village hall and took rooms for herself down the road. The studio at the back of our house, and the little bungalow, fell into disrepair.

The toll on Chris was evident; he was now thirteen, pale, abstracted, and if not already there, heading for a major depression. I suddenly realized that unless he got away, the conditions he was living in would have a lasting effect.

I found a good boarding school, Pierrepoint House, in Frensham, Surrey, and in late March, Chris sat for the entrance exam and passed it with flying colors. His first semester would be in the fall. Mum and Pop were thrilled, and though I sensed Chris might be homesick and anxious (though there was little to be homesick about), anything was better than
staying where he was. Certainly he would be stimulated and in a better environment.

In late January 1960, I went back to New York to tape a two-hour prime-time variety special for CBS called
The Fabulous Fifties
, which chronicled the most popular theater, movies, books, and music of the decade. Even though Rex and I were no longer doing
My Fair Lady,
we filmed scenes replicating the rehearsal process. I was shown working with Alfred Dixon, the dialogue coach who helped me perfect my cockney accent, and that scene segued into my performing “Just You Wait.” Rex did a sketch about his singing with an orchestra for the first time. The special received an Emmy for outstanding variety programming.

I also appeared in a live, colorcast production of
The Bell Telephone Hour
, a classy and prestigious series. The episode was entitled “Portraits in Music,” and was hosted by the poet Carl Sandburg.

Knowing that we would be heading back to New York at the end of the summer for
Camelot
, my hope was to return to London and spend a few months just being Mrs. Tony Walton. There was also the matter of my tonsils, and now seemed the best possible time to have them taken out. But Tony and I had to miss the wedding of Princess Margaret and Tony Armstrong-Jones at Westminster Abbey, to which we had been invited.

I went into the London Clinic and had the operation, which, at age twenty-four, was complicated and quite painful. Then, as we had promised Tim White we would, we headed to the island of Alderney so that I could recuperate in the bracing sea air.

We flew across the English Channel in a small passenger plane and landed on a tiny airstrip in the middle of a cow pasture. Tim met us at the airport, such as it was, in his “country squire” wagon, and we drove to his house at Connaught Square, in the village of St. Anne’s.

The island was simply magical, a mile and a half wide by three miles long, with tall cliffs at one end; heather, gorse bushes, cobblestone streets, and gaily painted stone cottages; and a sweet harbor and lighthouse down on the flat end. From almost every vantage point, one could see the sea.

Because of its strategic location in the English Channel, it had been heavily fortified over the centuries with Roman, Georgian, Victorian, and
finally German structures—forts, gunneries, bunkers, lookouts—as well as being honeycombed with tunnels and storage vaults. Most of the latter were now being gradually reclaimed by nature, grown over with wild blackberries, nettles, grasses, and thistle.

Tim was indeed a recluse. Born Terence Hanbury White in Bombay, India, in 1906, he had moved to England with his parents at the age of five. He had been a teacher and head of the department of English at the famous boarding school, Stowe, in Buckinghamshire. After several years there, he retired and lived in a small cottage on the school estate to pursue his writing, and the falconry he loved. It was there that he wrote the first volume of his magnificent work,
The Once and Future King.
He lived in Ireland for a while, but in 1945, he moved to Alderney.

Tim’s house was actually two stone cottages made into one, with a small rocky garden and a swimming pool in the back. He told us that because a “great star” was coming to stay with him (me!), he had put his house in order. It was freshly whitewashed, and he had completely redecorated in a sort of mini-Versailles style. There were twinkling plastic chandeliers and wall sconces, new fixtures, throw rugs, and laundry baskets. He was very proud of his decorating skills.

When we went down to the kitchen on the first morning to make a cup of tea, we found everything painted a fire-engine red, including the fixtures and fittings. The cupboards were filled with sticky spice jars in horrible condition, grubby tins, sauces, and greasy packets of this and that. Piles of old manuscripts were stored in his oven and stacked under the overhead grill, and the dilapidated fridge was bare. I immediately set about cleaning everything, and threw out as much dated food as I dared. Tim obviously never used his kitchen.

We learned that he was taken care of by a woman called Maisie Allen and her husband, Archie, who was in charge of the waterworks on the island. They lived in an old house on Victoria Street, the narrow cobbled road that ran through the village. Poor Archie had a rigid neck and had to turn his entire body left or right to look at anything. Maisie was a warm soul, sensible and honest as they come. She tolerated Tim’s occasional verbal abuse, put up with his moods, and I suspect, like all of us, was bewitched by this wonderful author. He would go down to the
Allens’ for lunch every day, so all he had to do was make a pot of burned coffee for himself in the morning.

Tim seemed very fond of me, and he was amazingly perceptive. I had a habit of boosting my own morale, albeit in a humorous way. After completing a chore, I was inclined to state, “I think I did that rather well, don’t you?” He quickly cottoned on.

“Let’s pay Julie a compliment before she pays herself one,” he’d say with a teasing smile, or “Let’s tell Julie she’s pretty today…pretty Julie!”

He had a big, floppy red setter dog named Jenny (after Guenevere) whom he adored, and she was extremely pregnant. When she finally whelped, Tim said, “We’ll leave Julie alone with Jenny because she needs to see this. She’ll be having a baby of her own one day.” I watched Jenny give birth to ten beautiful puppies. Tim found a home for every one of them.

He seemed to love having us for company. He delighted in showing us his world, driving us everywhere, stomping across fields and along the beautiful beaches. He showed us the thirteen forts and castles—one of them of Roman origin—built at strategic places on the island, some restored and privately owned, others in ruins. We explored the German gun emplacements left after the Nazi occupation during World War II. We climbed down a precipitous cliff to a rocky beach called Telegraph Bay.

Tim had huge mood swings. On a good day, he was the best companion you could ever ask for. Anything you wanted to know, Tim was the one to tell you. He knew everything about the universe: the stars, nature, fishing, sailing, geology, history. He
was
Merlin: wise, thoughtful, caring, dear.

But there were black days, when he was appallingly rude to people. And when he was drunk, it was best to leave him alone. There is a legendary story that some people knocked at his door late one stormy evening.

“We are collecting for Jehovah’s Witnesses,” they said, timidly holding out a tin cup.

“Then you’ve come to the right place!” Tim declared, grabbing the cup. “I
am
Jehovah!” And he shut the door in their faces.

One day, Tony deliberately and provocatively asked Tim why he hadn’t written anything since
The Once and Future King
.

“Of course I’ve written!” he snapped. He stomped off and sulked in his room for the rest of the day.

The following morning he came into our room, his large velour dressing gown flapping around him, and threw long, thin ledgers onto the bed.

“You think I haven’t been writing?” he sneered. “Read those!” Then he disappeared again.

Tony and I pored over the pages all day and way into the night. They were a treatment of
Tristan and Isolde
, an outline for a huge novel, which, alas, he never completed. It was riveting stuff—all his notes, the details in the margins.

Another time he was in his room far too long, sodden with depression. We kept calling, “Tim, are you coming down?” “Tim would you like something to eat or drink?” No response. Being new friends, we were not sure what to do.

Tony found some Dylan Thomas poems recorded by the author, so he put “Do not go gentle into that good night” on the old phonograph and turned the volume up very loud. After the poem was over, there was a long silence. Then Tim’s choked voice bellowed, “PUT IT ON AGAIN!” Tony played it again—and again—and eventually Tim came downstairs.

I believe Tim may have been an unfulfilled homosexual, and he suffered a lot because of it. He drank a great deal—mostly Pernod, especially in the winter—but was sober all summer, and there was a reason for that. There was a young man whom he adored, and he talked to us about him endlessly. His parents allowed him to visit Tim every summer, and Tim lived for those times, teaching the boy how to fish, swim, sail, hawk, what to read. I do not think the relationship was ever consummated, but the lad’s parents became worried and he was eventually forbidden to see Tim. It broke Tim’s heart and made him very bitter.

OUR VISIT CAME
to an end and Tim drove us back to the little airport. On the road, we passed three small white semidetached cottages. A “For Sale” sign hung in one of the windows.

“There you are, Tone!” I pointed at it. “That’s what we should do. We should buy that cottage and then we can come back whenever we want.”

As we arrived at our apartment in London, the phone was ringing. It was Tim. “You know that house you saw?” he said. “Well I bought it. Do you want it?” I was stunned. “It’s all right, you don’t have to have it,” he added quickly. “I can sell it in an instant.”

“Tim…I’ll get right back to you,” I stammered. Tony and I conferred excitedly, and then I called Charlie Tucker. The price was £2500. Charlie said, “You can’t afford it.” But Tim had made this kind effort, and I couldn’t believe that we wouldn’t get a loan from the bank. Very grudgingly, Charlie allowed it. I think he thought us completely mad and irresponsible. We pooled what little savings we had, and “Patmos,” as the cottage was called, became ours.

It transpired that Tim hadn’t bought the house at all! Wily fellow that he was, he had merely told the seller that he thought he had a customer. Patmos became our tiny second home, and we adored it. It was a lucky purchase, for so many happy things came about as a result of it: holidays that the entire family and friends enjoyed; the purchase in Alderney by Ma and Pa Walton of their retirement cottage (not that Dad Walton ever truly retired); and my sister Celia met her first husband in Alderney. Tony and I had the place for many years, and eventually deeded Patmos to our daughter, Emma, on the occasion of her twenty-first birthday. Now so many of the grandchildren enjoy the island.

Earlier that year, knowing that I would be traveling a great deal, we placed Shy in our vet’s superb kennels in Kent. We decided that, to keep her occupied, we would breed her. She gave birth to five adorable puppies and we gave one of them to Svetlana and Sudi. They named him Khalu, and he became their cherished companion for many years.

THAT SUMMER, WE
spent two weeks in Juan les Pins with the Waltons. Mum and Dad W. rented an apartment on the promenade with easy access to the beach. Tony and I had a lovely, lazy time with them, swimming, sunbathing, shopping, and taking leisurely dinners in the evening at the local restaurants.

After they departed, we stayed on in the South of France, joining Svetlana and Sudi in Monaco and spending the next two weeks at the glorious Old Beach Hotel out on the peninsula. Our circular room was right above the rocks overlooking the Mediterranean, so the sound of the surf was constant and heavenly. We took breakfast in our room and made tea in glasses with one of those filaments that heats the water. One exploded in the bathroom one day, and I hurriedly cleaned up before the hotel staff got wind of it.

Svetlana went to the marketplace every day, which was quite a long walk. She knew Monaco well, because her father had been ballet master there for many years. Occasionally we all went to the market with her and watched her pick out cheeses, fruits, salamis, long baguettes, wine, and flowers. Every item was carefully selected by her, handled, smelled, tasted. We would go down on the beach and stuff ourselves with our delicious picnic lunch, and follow that with a good siesta. We were compatible friends, and there was not a moment’s discomfort between us.

Svetlana took at least two classes a week at the excellent local ballet school. I was amazed at her discipline. She said she simply
had
to do it or she suffered later.

I slept and sunbathed to my heart’s content. I lay on the beach and got a lovely tan. Stretching out on my stomach, I would undo the back of my bikini top to avoid strap marks, and one day, having fallen fast asleep, I was completely doused by a wave from the incoming tide which was chillingly cold on my warm back. I shot up with a scream, only to realize that my top was still lying on the ground.