Slipstream (21 page)

My grandfather’s grand piano was still in the drawing room, and was much played, by Dosia, by Wayland, by Mephi, by me, and sometimes by Denis Matthews when he came on leave. He was having
a wearing time. By then, the RAF had accumulated a remarkable orchestra of musicians. The Griller String Quartet were among them but as they were all aircraftmen, they had to be conducted by an
officer, who turned out to have been a conductor for a band at the end of a pier, and knew nothing very much about classical music. ‘What do you
do
?’ we asked Denis.

‘If I am playing a concerto, they follow me, otherwise they take no notice.’ Denis, who looked like some charming nocturnal creature with ginger hair, large, myopic brown eyes and a
surprisingly delicate little mouth, was always white, but now had dark circles under his eyes. He was playing all over the country, he said, on ghastly pianos with no time to practice.

Then there was Wyndham Goodden – again introduced by Wayland. He knew the Kennet family and he also worked in the Admiralty. He’d married an intensely pretty American girl, an
heiress with the looks of Grace Kelly. They had two children, but then the marriage came unstuck. Pete did a very good drawing of Catherine, as Wyndham called her – her real name was Judy,
but this didn’t suit Wyndham’s intensely romantic disposition. He wrote poetry, sonnets mostly. I still have two that he wrote for me, and he wrote a very good poem that illustrated
François Couperin’s beautiful piece for recorder, ‘The Nightingale in Love’– we were all mad about Couperin. Among many others, he also introduced me to
Mozart’s concerto K449 on gramophone records, which became and remained my favourite Mozart concerto.

Audrey and I had become air-raid wardens. This consisted of wearing an immensely hairy dark blue trouser suit and a tin hat, counting people into their shelters when there was a raid, going to
lectures about what to do in air raids, and drinking bright brown
tea in a basement flat in Abbey Road. I do remember one lecture that took place somewhere near Oxford Street.
We must have observed, the lecturer said, that the tops of all pillar boxes had been painted a pale green. This was because a new gas might shortly be dropped by enemy aircraft on the city, and
we’d know when this happened because the paint would change colour at once – to blue, I think it was. This went on for a long time, but eventually reached the stage when the lecturer
asked if there were any questions. What were we to do, I asked, when we saw that the paint had changed colour? He looked shocked. There was nothing we could
do
about it, he replied, nothing
whatever. Our gas masks wouldn’t be a blind bit of use to us
then
.

Only once did Audrey and I have to deal with what was called an incident. It was during the time of the V1, the pilotless aircraft that buzzed away overhead, then ominously ceased to make any
noise as its engine gave out and it fell. This happened one night when Audrey and I were at home. When the buzzing noise stopped, there was a menacingly short silence and then an enormous crash. We
weren’t on duty that night, but the explosion was so near that we put on our tin hats and went out. It was soon clear that the V1 had come down in Mortimer Crescent, about a hundred yards
from our house. Wardens and firemen were already on the scene, and the shocked inhabitants of the partially wrecked house were being helped out of it. I was assigned an old lady in her nightdress
and slippers. We were in the hall and I had her by the arm, making what I hoped were comforting noises, when she suddenly eluded me and started to hare up the stairs that we’d been told
weren’t safe. ‘My son’s photo!’ she cried.

There was nothing for it but to follow her. I caught her on the first landing and almost dragged her down, cursing under my breath with fear. She was bleeding from her shoulder, and we took her
back to our house, bandaged her up and used up our sugar ration on cups of sweet tea.

The staircase collapsed and the house was boarded up for demolition at a later date.

Ever since I’d left the domestic-science school, Seer Green, I’d remained in touch with Jessie. In her letters back to me – she could just manage to write
in a cramped spidery hand – she nearly always referred to her amazing visit to the Christian hostel in Ealing. Now that I had a house, I thought, why should I not arrange for her to come to
me? She would have to sleep in the dining room and that would mean shifting whoever was sleeping there to the drawing room, but there was a basin and a loo on the ground floor. I told the others
what I wanted to do and everyone was agreeable. I rang up Miss Laidler to ask her how I could transport Jessie, who clearly couldn’t go by train. She said she would arrange that part of
it.

I wrote to Jessie, who demurred, saying she would be too much trouble. Of course not, I wrote back, I should love to look after her. A date was arranged, she was to come for a fortnight. I got
very excited at the prospect, arranged the room, put flowers in it, and a comfortable chair for her visitors. I knew that all the household would spend time with her, and there were double doors
that opened from what would be her room to the drawing room, so that she could hear music and not feel cut off from us. I decided I’d make a wonderful nurse; she should have everything she
wanted. There was also, I have to admit, a certain feeling of complacency about it all – here I was, at last doing something useful and good.

She came in summer, a beautiful day. The driver picked her up out of the back seat of the car and carried her to the bed in the dining room and I brought in the rest of her luggage, which
included, among other things, a bedpan wrapped in brown paper. She will tell me what to do with it, I thought, with faint misgivings. When the driver had gone I looked at her lying awkwardly on the
narrow bed. She was just the same; the dry frizzy hair round her pale face, her lovely eyes glowing with excitement, her useless feet in rather pointed shoes with single straps turned towards each
other, her twisted hands emerging from the cuffs of her usual brown overcoat like gnarled little roots. I kissed her and said how glad I was to see her at last.

‘It’s so good of you, Jane, to have me. I do hope I shan’t be a nuisance,’ she said.

‘Of
course
you won’t,’ I replied.

I asked her whether she would like some tea, and she said she would like to get out of her coat first. That proved extremely difficult. The divan, on casters, slid away from the wall, as I
battled with the coat. ‘No, no, you must get one of my arms out first,’ she said. I know I hurt her getting that wretched coat off, and by the time I’d succeeded, the pillows had
slid from the back of the bed to the floor and she was perforce lying on her back. I got some piles of music and wedged them against the bottom of the bed, having retrieved the pillows.
‘I’ll need more of them,’ she said. We had no spare pillows. Owing to the number of people sleeping in the house, we were down to one each. I rushed upstairs and got my pillow and
Dosia’s – she often slept with me in the double bed called the Hump. When Jessie was more or less propped up I again offered tea. But when I came back with it she said she was afraid
she was cold and I remembered the hot little room in which I’d always seen her. I got the eiderdown off my bed, covered her with it, and poured out the tea. ‘It’s not hot
enough,’ she said. ‘The one thing I do like is really hot tea.’ I got some more. I thought this was fussy. I had absolutely no idea how important things like that could be for
someone as helpless as she. It was my first lesson.

Nursing her – something I’d imagined myself doing with romantic smugness – proved awful. The first time she wanted a bedpan she had to issue me with a series of querulous
instructions on how to hoist her on to it. ‘I have to take laxatives, not to get constipated,’ she said. The smell made me retch, and I realized as I removed the bedpan that I’d
have to clean her up. I hadn’t had the foresight to provide the means to do it. Another mission over the house to find a bowl in which I could put warm water, bring paper and a towel. During
this she lay with majestic dignity – she was used to it: it happened to her every day.

By then some of the others had come back from work, and I introduced her to them. This was a great success, and my spirits
rose. ‘It’s wonderful, Jane, to meet
all these people you’ve told me about.’ Everyone was very nice to her and she loved the company. But then, after supper, I had to undress her and get her into a flannel nightgown, clean
her top teeth which were false and had to be taken out and soaked in Milton for the night, and another bedpan had to be brought. Then, poor thing, because she couldn’t turn over or move in
bed, I had to settle her in what she felt would be the most comfortable position. I put one of my grandmother’s cowbells between her hands, in case she wanted me in the night, and left my
bedroom door open so I’d hear it. That first night I hardly slept for fear I should miss her ringing.

During the next week I learned a little better how to nurse her, but my revulsion increased. I like to think I concealed from her the degree of it, but I probably failed there too. She was both
intelligent and sensitive, but except for wanting the boiling tea, she’d learned a kind of saintly patience. I had become unable to eat, and I remember going out into the back garden and
pouring out to Wayland how dreadful I felt about my inadequacy and how disgustingly smug I’d been at the outset about the whole enterprise. It seemed to me, I wept, that I was peculiarly
selfish and unfeeling, did he not think so? ‘No, I think it’s just tired and sensitive,’ he said, with a look of affection that went to my heart.

I’d asked Jessie when a doctor had last looked at her. She couldn’t remember, so I went to my doctor, still Jock Ledingham’s wife, Una, at her practice, which was in their home
in Ladbroke Square.

Una listened to me kindly, and then asked if anyone was nursing her. ‘Only me.’ There was an awkward pause, and then I added, hardly audible, ‘And I’m afraid I’m
very bad at it.’ Lack of food and sleep made me start crying again.

‘I’m going to make you a tomato sandwich,’ she said. ‘All my family can manage a tomato sandwich whatever they are feeling like.’ She did, and I ate it, and felt
much better.

‘I’ll come and see your Jessie,’ she said, ‘and if there is anything I think can be done for her, I’ll put her in the Royal Free for a
week.’ So in the end Jessie only stayed with me for a week, and then went to the Royal Free Hospital, where I visited her every day until she went home. She seemed happy there,
and said they were very kind to her, and she thought that they’d helped her. She was affectionate and grateful and kept thanking me for arranging it. But then, and for years afterwards, I
felt that it had all been a great failure of love on my part. I had arrogant ideas well above my station in this regard; and when it came to the point, I was too selfish and frivolous to put
others’ misfortune and pain above my own squeamishness. I had grandiose ideas of myself that bore no resemblance to my actual nature. However, this insight didn’t restrain me from
wanting things for myself – to have a good time, be admired, and gain affection.

During the summer of 1943, I fell in love with Wayland. I hardly noticed it was happening, but he, who now had a job at the Admiralty, came more and more often to the house.
All the kinds of conversations I’d never been able to have with Pete, I could have with him. He fitted into the household like the most important bird in the nest, whereas when Pete came on
leave the atmosphere was always strained and awkward, Pete gallantly trying to keep up with our silly jokes and behaviour.

To begin with I wasn’t very much alone with Wayland. We would all go for a picnic on Hampstead Heath, visit friends of Dosia’s who lived in the Vale of Health, walk home through the
dusty shabby streets singing invented pieces of Handel oratoria with words we made up. We went to the Arts Theatre, and to cinemas and to cheap little restaurants. We picked up American soldiers in
the Underground and brought them home for supper. Dosia and I had a game that consisted of her collecting bishops and I collecting admirals. As she still worked for a bishop, she met others, and I
met admirals through the Kennets. There were points for how senior they were. We played a lot of silly games like that.

People were falling more seriously in love. Denis Pipe-Wolferston became engaged to a friend of Dosia’s called Penelope Gough. She was a lovely girl, but a surgeon had screwed up one side
of her face, so it was particularly good when Denis said he loved her. Audrey was going out with a mysterious man called John Rideout, a Chinese scholar who taught at London University.
‘I say, Jane, I used to think you were rather soppy about Peter, but I do now see what it’s all about.’

And, most important of all, Dosia met Barry. Barry Craig had been a friend of my uncle John at the Slade. I’d first met him when I was very young at Home Place when he was married and had
a serious little girl called Ming. His wife had left him for someone else, and he was on his own. He was a good deal older than Dosia, a good painter both of portraits and landscapes, and he had
the same kind of funniness as my uncle John. He and Dosia hit it off at once.

So, love was in the air. Gradually Wayland and I began to see each other alone. I’d bicycle down to the Admiralty at lunchtime, we’d eat sandwiches in St James’s Park, and
I’d toil back to St John’s Wood, sometimes strap-hanging on the backs of lorries in Edgware Road. He came to stay at weekends. The first time he kissed me I discovered what physical
desire meant. Our feelings for each other were – nearly always – counterbalanced by guilt. We always knew it was an impossible situation, that it could only end sadly and badly, but I
was his first love as in a sense he was mine. If the others in the house noticed any of this they remained tactfully silent. That summer, Wayland used to rent a boat on the Thames just outside
London, and we’d sometimes go for a weekend, taking Colin as unwitting chaperone. We also occasionally spent nights in my bed, the Hump, which in the end led to sex. We were both so overcome
by guilt, then and subsequently, that in my case, I have no distinct memory of it. Wayland has since told me that
he
remembers it.