The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother, and Me (33 page)

In September there was a christening at All Saints’; the arched wooden door in the wall was opened and family and guests trooped through into the churchyard. The seven-month-old baby was dressed in an elaborate, lacy christening gown at least a yard long and was given the middle name Gala, presumably after Dalí’s indomitable wife. Gerald composed some music in honour of the occasion and played it on the church organ. Photographs show the parents with the godparents and Gerald as the symbolic pater familias, bursting with pride. Even Robert is beaming in some of the pictures. Jennifer looks delighted – dressed in a clinging raw-silk suit with a perky hat. Clarissa was there, as she often was during those times, still very close to Gerald, but uninterested in the rest of the household. In the photographs she looks unamused.

CECIL BEATON’S PHOTOGRAPHS OF LORD BERNERS AND THE HEBER-PERCYS PUBLISHED IN THE SKETCH. JENNIFER AND ROBERT PUSH VICTORIA’S PRAM THROUGH THE OVERGROWN GARDEN

The godparents were chosen from both sides of the family: Prim Niven, as Jennifer’s oldest friend, who came in a sensible wartime coat, and Aunt Nora (Geoffrey Fry’s older half-sister), who couldn’t make it to the ceremony. Robert chose Michael Duff, the man who had introduced him to Gerald twelve years earlier. Michael had been an RAF intelligence officer for the Eagles – a group of American volunteers who fought with the British before the US joined the war – though according to some, he was mostly ‘arranging their parties’.364 After contracting jaundice in Tangier on a reconnaissance expedition, he was invalided out and was now managing Vaynol, which had become a hospital. He signed himself into the visitors’ book as ‘Tired airman’. The final godparent was also in the RAF, first as a rear-gunner and then as a physicist: Derek Jackson (married to Pamela Mitford) was too busy working on British air defence and improving bombers (for which he was much decorated) to attend the baptism. Both godfathers were, like Robert, men who normally favoured men but who got involved with and married women – Jackson managed six times.

VICTORIA’S CHRISTENING AT ALL SAINTS’, FARINGDON. FROM LEFT: ROBERT, JENNIFER HOLDING VICTORIA GALA, PRIMULA NIVEN, MICHAEL DUFF, GERALD AND CLARISSA CHURCHILL

Friends of the Faringdon triangle continued to be amazed by the almost surreal turn of events; it was the perfect subject for entertaining, if partially inaccurate, gossip. Frances Partridge wrote to Heywood Hill, ‘Babies are in the air all right – Isobel [Strachey] has been describing Jennifer Fry’s, which is a Bright Young Person already – exquisitely beautiful with huge dark eyes and hundreds of young titled godparents.’365

The guest lists at Faringdon and Jennifer’s sporadic letters to her mother give the impression of a life as pleasant as any could be given the continuation of the war.

My darling Mummy,

… We have been to Oxford this week to see Noël Coward’s new plays which were very enjoyable, especially one called ‘Present Laughter’ – just as good as anything he’s ever written – and one called ‘This Happy Breed’ – ten years of family life on Clapham Common and obviously sincere and straight from his heart but somehow didn’t quite come off. Though there were some excellent characters – a wonderful Christian Scientist sister-in-law – Joyce Carey.

You must try to see them when you’re in London. We went to see him afterwards and he is just as attractive as I’ve always thought – tremendous charm.

It was lovely seeing Prim and David [Niven] last weekend. They seemed so happy.

In November, Coward came to stay at Faringdon and afterwards wrote to tell Gerald how much he had enjoyed it. He had evidently liked the new feminine elements in the household, as he joked: ‘Give my love to Jennifer and Victoria. I am trying to find the latter the second movement of “Sacre du Printemps” for Christmas because she is an old-fashioned girl.’ Jennifer managed to make trips up to London, leaving Victoria with the nanny and catching up with her old friends. She often made an appearance at Cyril Connolly’s parties, held with Lys at his flat in Sussex Place. They were filled with members of the artistic and literary set, whether in uniform or not, and among the scruffier, arty girls, Jennifer struck a glamorous note with her perfect outfits and elegant hair and make-up. On one visit to London, Jennifer met her disreputable former flame, Hamish St Clair Erskine, who had just arrived back from war. Bizarrely, given his reputation for being a dandified ne’er-do-well, he had been awarded the MC for bravery. Having gained a commission with the Coldstream Guards, Hamish managed to blow up a German tank and survived serious wounds. He ended up in an Italian prisoner-of-war camp, from which he escaped by doing what he had always enjoyed – dressing up as a woman. He hid from Nazis in ditches – probably dressed as ‘the Marchesa della Piccola Mia’, suggested Nancy Mitford when she heard the tale.366 James Lees-Milne went for drinks with Hamish and found Jennifer there, and she entertained them with stories. Apparently, wrote Lees-Milne, ‘She once laughed so uncontrollably in the High Street, St Albans, that she did herself a mischief, as my Aunt Dorothy expresses it. People noticed, yet she could not help herself. It happened outside an inn. When she looked up she saw the name of the inn was The Waterspout. She was so convulsed that she started all over again.’367

Extensive travel by car was impossible, given petrol rationing, but Mr Webb’s taxi was regularly used for both the inhabitants of and visitors to Faringdon – within the prescribed twelve-mile radius. When they had to go further, say to Oxford, they would be met by another hired car at Kingston Bagpuize to take them the rest of the way – something like changing horses in pre-motoring days. Mr and Mrs Webb had a daughter the same age as Victoria, and when Phyllis Webb drove Jennifer to Faringdon station or out to the shops, the two women compared notes on their babies. The Webbs’ black-and-silver Armstrong Siddeley was later replaced by several impressively large, albeit left-hand-drive, American cars, brought over by the US servicemen stationed in Faringdon; they struck a jaunty note in the quiet country lanes.

In addition to his farming activities, Robert joined the local Auxiliary Fire Service, an organisation through which part-time volunteers went on night duty every few days, supplementing the full-time professionals in the National Fire Service. There was look-out duty up on the Folly and an enormous water tank in the middle of the Market Place ready for emergencies. The Mad Boy was kitted out in a dark blue uniform with brass buttons and a cap with a badge, and, according to local sources, made the whole thing great fun, taking beer down to the headquarters and creating a party atmosphere whenever it was his night on duty.

Gerald, meanwhile, continued writing music. He was commissioned to produce the soundtrack for The Halfway House, an Ealing Studios film, and later wrote an orchestral version of the polka (that had first been played for the hospital Christmas pantomime in Oxford), as well as one of his most mischievous and popular songs for Alberto Cavalcanti’s 1944 film, Champagne Charlie. ‘Come On Algernon’ is a music-hall parody, full of double entendres, that tells of insatiable, youthful and above all female sexuality. It features Daisy, always sighing, begging and crying to Algernon:

Come on Algernon,

That’s not enough for me

Give me some more

The same as before …

N NOVEMBER 1943, after three years in prison, Oswald Mosley was released due to ill-health and he and Diana left Holloway amidst much popular protest. They were placed under house arrest and stayed at first with Diana’s sister Pamela and her husband, Derek Jackson. ‘For the first time for three and a half years, we slept in soft, fine linen in soft, warm beds’, albeit with journalists lurking outside who would write up the Jacksons’ yapping dachshunds as ‘baying hounds’.368 When the authorities realised that the notorious traitors were staying with a man who was doing secret scientific work for the Air Ministry, they were quickly instructed to leave, and moved with their two sons to an inn called the Shaven Crown in the Cotswold village of Shipton-under-Wychwood. Gerald went to visit them there and Diana managed to get permission to go house-hunting, accompanied by two policemen. It should not be surprising, given her immense charm and beauty, that she persuaded the officers to let her stop off for luncheon at Faringdon House. She described herself as ‘in the seventh heaven, to visit the charming house once more and eat Gerald’s delicious food and listen to his jokes was like being transported back in time to happy days before the war’.369

Diana was curious to meet the newest member of Faringdon’s ménage, but Jennifer was horrified by the prospect of seeing the well-known Fascist. She had long detested the racism and anti-Semitism of the Mosleys and their British followers, and was a lifelong advocate of liberal tolerance. As a small, personal protest, Jennifer locked herself in her bathroom and refused to come out, something of which Lady Mosley was presumably not aware. After lunch, Diana requested a glimpse of the infant, and Gerald took her upstairs to meet Victoria. The nanny showed off the perfect baby, whom Diana described – with icy Mitfordian irony – as being ‘like an expensive doll with huge eyes’. Tearing herself away, Diana continued on her house-hunting excursion; ‘when [Gerald] saw me off with my two uniformed policemen in front, he said frivolously: “You’re the only person now with a chauffeur and a footman on the box.”’370

In London, the war had turned life drab. So many houses were bomb-damaged that most streets seemed to sport gaping gashes. Cyril Connolly wrote of London’s ‘shabbiness and expense, its dirt and vulgarity’.371 And with no end in sight, it was all made worse by getting older – Cyril had hit forty the same month that Gerald reached sixty. Gerald wrote to Clarissa, ‘And dear old Cyril. He was rather sad I thought and less effervescent than usual – like Eno’s [liver salts] that has been left to stand.’ And yet at Faringdon, in spite of the American soldiers’ presence, it was almost possible to forget the traumas taking place outside the walls. The spring bulbs made a wonderful display along the side of the drive, with tall red tulips poking up among the hyacinths and narcissi. There were beautiful young people and even a charming baby sprawled in the sunshine.

The diaries of James Lees-Milne mention two visits to Faringdon. On one, he drove there from Oxford with Billa.

A day of unexcelled loveliness, the apex of springtide, warm sun and no wind. At Faringdon House Jennifer Heber-Percy was sitting in the sun, on a swing seat, against the curved retaining wall. There were small chickens running around. This frightened Billa for she hates birds. We talked until 1.45 when we lunched off chicken (she doesn’t mind eating them) and rice. Lord Berners, wearing a green knitted skull cap and yellow bow tie, was positively cordial. He is a considerate host. Robert came in to lunch from driving a tractor on the farm. He was wearing a pair of battle-dress trousers and a yellow aertex shirt open at the neck. Very bronzed by the sun, youthful and handsome. He is the enfant terrible, all right. What a curious family they were, sitting round this large round table. But they know how to live. I thought how enviable their ménage.372

Later in the day, Billa went for a walk with Jennifer and Gerald showed Lees-Milne around the house, discussing architectural details with him and doubtless catching up on the news of their mutual London friends like the Ladies Cunard and Colefax, Harold Nicolson or Maimie Lygon. The diary continues:

The house is attractively untidy in an Irish way, with beds, but beautiful ones, scattered in the downstairs rooms. Much confusion and comfort combined. Jennifer’s baby Victoria playing on the floor like a kitten. Lord B. said that this afternoon one of the Negro soldiers – and the place is stiff with them – accosted him in the garden with the request, ‘Massa, may I pick just a little bunch of flowers for our colonel?’373

HE ‘CURIOUS’ FAMILY may have looked enviable to some onlookers, but its fundamental flaw remained. Though the setup was agreeable to the oldest and youngest members of the household, it was far from ideal for Jennifer and Robert. They were not lovers and keeping up the pretence of marriage was a strain on two people for whom freedom – and particularly erotic freedom – was fundamental. During the summer of 1944, as the huge offensive for the D-Day landings was finally set into motion, they separated. Jennifer decided to return to her parents’ home at Oare with Victoria, and Robert located a van to transport mother, baby and their belongings to Wiltshire. It must have been with sadness that Gerald bade them goodbye; he had enjoyed the pram in the hall, and the feminine presence in the house had brought a sweetness and domestic tenderness that he had never known before. When he published his second volume of memoirs, A Distant Prospect, the following year, he dedicated it to Jennifer Heber-Percy.

It was a troubled summer for many people, even by the harsh standards of the past five years. It was double summertime, so evenings remained light until well after ten, but the weather was cold and rainy. Thousands of British and US troops were slaughtered on the Normandy beaches, and to make matters worse, the Germans’ fearful new V-1 flying bombs started landing on London and southern England. Everyone quickly learned about the terrifying nature of these pilotless bombs; there was no warning and when the engine cut out, you knew that seconds later there would be dreadful damage and numerous deaths wherever it landed. You could only hope it would be somewhere else. Both Faringdon and Oare were safely out of reach of Hitler’s ‘secret’ weapon, but it was a miserable time for both households.

Many years later, when she was attending a Jungian psychoanalyst, Jennifer wrote a stream-of-consciousness account of this period of her life in a notebook. It now reads like a list of clues as to what happened, with some more obvious and others that remain opaque.

Anna Karenina – The Race – the Fall – Robert. The pain. The Bed and the far away wing – the tears. The speechlessness – the Famous, Renowned and old. The kindness of Freddy, Maurice, with slight but loving malice. And back to the four poster and letters and tears. The three in bed. The herbs over the door. The Toy, and the [illegible] – the best food and the van I was put in with my baby and half my luggage. All my underclothes and love letters left in a drawer and read and laughed at by Cecil and Clarissa.