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Sex remained very much as it had been at the beginning, except from my point of view it no longer hurt. He told me repeatedly how much he enjoyed it, and what a wonderful girl I was. I played up
to being wonderful, to being what I thought was expected of me. This was marriage, and I was now grown-up.

But in intimacy, I now see, we didn’t progress. He’d make a preemptive remark such as ‘I’m just a sentimental old thing’ or ‘I’m
just a painter with a vulgar facility’, and I’d defend him against himself. He never said, ‘Actually I have to have courage. I have to live up to my father, and sometimes
I’m afraid I won’t be able to manage it.’ I never realized what a serious and informed naturalist he was. He never realized I’d no idea about my own sexuality and that my
continuing ignorance of it might prove a danger to us both. As he was so much older, I assumed that he knew a great deal that he didn’t.

Whenever he talked about his war, I relived the terrifying thought that he might be killed. It became something I couldn’t bear to think about, and yet couldn’t ever dismiss. This
was common, of course, for thousands of people married to anyone in the front line of the war. I quickly learned that in Coastal Forces, it was the officer and the coxswain who were most liable to
be killed, just as the rear gunner in a bomber was deemed most vulnerable. This was the emotional shadow cast over those few, otherwise carefree days; the domestic shadow others lived under was
unknown to us both.

We spent the rest of Pete’s leave at Fritton, where everything was very jolly. Wayland was home from Cambridge, and we played duets and charades, and K was pleased that Pete seemed so
happy, and everybody was affectionate and kind to me. I felt one of the family.

Pete had been told that he was to command a new kind of Coastal Forces vessel – a steam gunboat, now being built at Cowes. Six were to be constructed, and Pete was to command the flotilla.
To Cowes we went and were installed in the Gloster Hotel. Except the one night before my marriage, I’d never stayed in a hotel, and I was disconcerted when Pete leaped out of bed at seven
a.m. to get to his ship by eight. ‘How do I have lunch?’ I asked.

‘Darling, just go downstairs and ask for it. May be back for dinner.’ And he was gone.

There was an enormous amount of shipping in Cowes Roads, and thousands of troops were billeted on the island. I was the only wife staying in the hotel, and when I went out I
was undone by the host of whistles, catcalls and ribald asides. I crept back to the hotel. The lounge had ancient copies of the
Field
and
Country Life
, and it didn’t take long
to read them. At precisely one o’clock every day, a single German aeroplane came over, and every ship in the area blasted off at it. Pieces of glass would drip slowly from the entrance hall
and the noise was deafening. There was lobster for lunch, however, which was cheering until I found that there was lobster every day – and in the evening as well. I felt lonely and homesick.
Pete sometimes came back for dinner, sometimes not. After dinner, when he was in, he drew me, a series of ink drawings.

After a few days, he said a boat was coming to pick him up at five p.m., and if he didn’t come back within three days, I was to go home to Sussex. This was the preparation for the Dieppe
raid, although I didn’t know it then. I can remember the icy fear when I said, ‘Three days?’ I knew that if he didn’t come back it meant he’d been killed.

He came back that evening: the raid had been postponed because of the weather.

Somehow, Pete came across a whole lot of hawk moth caterpillars. These he kept inside a muslin sleeve on poplar branches. It was part of my job to find and supply the branches. I enjoyed this;
it was something to do.

At some point, Pete’s boat was finished, and K came to Cowes to launch her, but I went down with flu and couldn’t be at the ceremony. I thought I’d have liked to launch
Pete’s boat, but felt I wasn’t grand enough, and I’d not been asked.

While his boat was doing her trials, we moved from the hotel to the home of Uffa Fox, the well-known sailor and boat designer, who’d built the 14-footers with which Pete had twice won the
Prince of Wales Cup. Uffa was a dark, hirsute, eccentric man of great friendliness. ‘You can stay as long as you like,’ he said. ‘Glad to
meet Mrs Pete.’
His house had one unusual feature: it had no roof because of the bombing so the top floor was out of commission, ‘But go anywhere else you like,’ he said.

While we lived there, I used to cook Pete and Uffa breakfast – Uffa had a supply of eggs and bacon. I also got a job at the local Mission for Seamen: I was to strip and remake the bunks in
which they slept. The sheets were grey with use, and smelt of engine oil and sweat; they often contained empty beer bottles and the odd evil-smelling sock. I felt queasy, but at least I was doing
something useful.

I shopped for food to cook for Uffa and Pete, but one day in the greengrocer’s, without the slightest warning, I fainted and came to with my head half in a sack of potatoes. Somebody
kindly took me home; it was a few minutes before I remembered where I lived. When I told Pete about it, he smiled and said, ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’ I didn’t.
‘It means our son is on the way. Oh, darling, I’m so pleased. Mummy will be
delighted
.’ He rang her that night.

I didn’t faint any more, but I felt very sick in the mornings, and the breakfast fry-up was too much for me. I couldn’t face the seamen’s bunks either. Pete, who spent more and
more time at sea, suggested that perhaps I should go home to Sussex for a bit. ‘Have a nice quiet time,’ he said. ‘You need looking after.’ The homesickness I’d been
trying to ignore reasserted itself and was overwhelming. ‘Don’t cry, darling, it’ll only be for a few weeks until I know where the flotilla will be based.

‘You can take the hawk moths with you,’ he added. ‘They’re going to need more and more food before they pupate.’

And so two days later, he put me on the little train that went from Cowes to Ryde to catch the ferry. There was unforeseen trouble in the train. The caterpillars, very active now, escaped from
their muslin sleeve and were soon rollicking all over the furry upholstery, which provided them with excellent camouflage. The sleeve was in a shoebox that fortunately still had its lid wedged
underneath it, and I spent a frantic twenty minutes trying to locate and recapture the
creatures. There had been about ninety of them, and I only managed to collect about half
before the train drew into the station. The others were left to their fate. On the ferry, I spent most of the time trying to punch holes in the shoebox lid so that they could breathe, but my only
weapon for this was a kirbigrip. Pete, I thought desperately, would have collected all of them or, better still, would have noticed earlier that they’d found a tear in the sleeve.

At home, the Beacon now, everything was just the same: the shabby old sofa in the drawing room, the old satinwood piano, the ancient gramophone in its laurelwood box, and the stark cold
bathrooms whose taps frequently emitted rusty water. I remembered the dark gunroom – cold even in summer – where the telephone was kept, the noisy pump that provided electricity, and
the children’s bedrooms, bare and stark as dormitories. I was now promoted to a little room of my own at the end of a long passage. For the first time since I’d lived there, I wanted to
make this room my own, with all of my own things in it. Our London house had been shut down, more or less cleared out by my mother, and I asked her for the things I’d kept in my room.
She’d got rid of most of it, she said, and put the furniture in store. ‘My books?’ I said. ‘My Delft china candlesticks? My gymkhana cups? My treasured theatre programmes?
My dressing-up box?’ They’d all gone, except for some of the books and eventually the candlesticks. The feeling that all, or nearly all, of my childhood had been stripped away without
any consultation kindled an urgent need in me that still lasts now, to make the places that I live in wholly mine.

In other ways my mother was much mellowed towards me. She adored Peter, and took to the hawk moths with enthusiasm.

My father had given me no money when I married, and my dress allowance had also stopped. I’d no money, and hadn’t really noticed, but K sent me a hundred pounds out of the blue: she
said she thought all women should have some money of their own. She must, I think, also have talked to Pete about it, as he then suggested an allowance of fifteen pounds a month. This was far too
much,
I thought, I really wouldn’t need it, but he insisted. He was always generous. I bought material to have two smocks made by a lady in the village: clothes for
pregnant women simply didn’t exist in those days, and we must all have looked hideous. I also bought yards of white Viyella that my mother cut out and taught me to smock in white embroidery
cotton. This was for Falcon, as the baby was invariably called, after his grandfather, Captain Scott, who’d been called Con. She, like everyone, was delighted I was having a baby. I hid my
fear of and anxiety about motherhood and the guilt that I didn’t have the maternal feelings that were expected of me.

Shortly after I returned home, the Dieppe raid took place. As the distant rumbling of gunfire began one fine morning and continued all day, there was no doubt that something was happening. I
knew that Peter would be in the battle whatever it was, and sat anxiously on the front lawn facing the coast – the sea was nine miles distant. I was skinning two rabbits and pegging their fur
on to two boards to make a pair of gloves for Colin and to take my mind off the danger Pete was in.

Pete went on the raid as part of the naval back-up. It was the first attempt by the Allies to land in France, and it failed with a terrible loss of life – notably among the Canadian
forces. Pete came back to Sussex for a couple of days and said the flotilla was to be based at Weymouth for further trials, and I should come to Weymouth and live in the hotel there.

The hotel was large and grand, and Pete stressed how lucky we were that he could afford to have me there; most naval officers had to do without their wives. However, he was out all day, and I
was back to hotel life, bored and lonely. I went for walks in the town, and bought books to read as my chief occupation. I felt lazy and tired, and there were hours and hours to get through until
he’d come back for dinner, and even that didn’t happen sometimes, as there were night exercises. Then one day he came back with an officer called Alan Lennox-Boyd, who was very jolly
and charming. Pete said the naval joke was that Alan had been assigned to motor
torpedo boats, called MTBs, because he’d a tendency to run into other ships and they
thought that the smaller boat he had the better. He often turned up at the hotel and was very nice to me. He was married with three little boys. Pete had told him I was pregnant, and he once asked
me how many children I wanted. I said six, because I thought it would be so nice for them. I didn’t add that I had wanted to get used to being married before I started a family. This was
something I’d tried to discuss with Pete, but he’d laughed and said I’d love the baby when it arrived. I knew also that K was very keen on having a grandson -the pressure for me
to get on with it had begun on our first visit to Fritton after our marriage. Pete told me in Cowes that K had advised him to put a pillow under my knees after intercourse to increase the
likelihood of pregnancy and this he repeatedly and tenderly did.

We stayed at Weymouth for six weeks, and then the flotilla was moved again, this time to Newhaven. I was sent home, while Pete found a small house to rent in nearby Seaford. I was accompanied to
Seaford by my cousin, Audrey Tuck, whose mother was very keen on her joining me – I suspect she hoped that Audrey would find some nice young officer to marry. It was lovely for me as it meant
I had agreeable company.

The house was small and dark and heavily over-furnished with pieces of furniture too big for the rooms. It had a large, unkempt garden. The whole place had a desolate air, but it was my first
house and I was excited at the prospect of settling down. The address was 3 West Downs Road, and one morning the road was heavily spattered with worms. I spent ages picking them up and putting them
where they would not be run over. Audrey, who thought this rather silly, stood by kindly and watched me. We cooked meals for Pete when he could come to us, and sometimes he brought a fellow
officer, but they were always married.

One evening, when we’d been there about six weeks, Pete came back and said the flotilla was being moved again – the next day, but he had to go back to his ship immediately after
dinner. I burst into
tears, which upset and, I think, annoyed him. ‘It seems too much that we can never stay anywhere,’ I sobbed.

‘Pull yourself together, darling, make the best of it.’

In the end he couldn’t even stay to dinner, as they sent a car for his immediate return. This was just as well, as it turned out. Audrey and I finished up the contents of the larder for
supper, which included some rather old ham. We were up all night being sick, and in the end my mother came and fetched us home because we were too ill to manage trains.

In September when Pete had leave, we went to Fritton for a week. K was very keen on my swimming in the lake, because she said it was good for the baby. I felt shy about it, because I’d
begun to bulge, but the cool feeling of weightlessness was wonderful, and everyone was so pleased about the bulge that I soon got used to it. She decided that after the war she would present me at
Court, and that I’d look very well in the dress she’d worn for the purpose, which turned out to be a peacock-coloured brocade, rectangular in shape. I felt I looked horrible in it
– and finally she conceded that it didn’t look right on me. ‘I made it myself,’ she said. ‘It was quite unlike any other dress there.’ I explained I’d
already refused to be presented and didn’t see the point of it, but she said it was different now. I think that this was an attempt on her part at affection, since she told me that
she’d only known two women well, Isadora Duncan and Tamara Karsavina, ‘And now there is you – my son’s wife.’ I remember feeling that it was unlikely I could live up
to the two famous dancers.