'Tears Before Bedtime' and 'Weep No More'

by Barbara Skelton

  *

  Spent a morning at the Fench Consulate trying to get an exit visa. Then, I took a taxi to the outskirts of the town, and waited on the kerb while a French gendarme stood on my luggage and began hailing all the army lorries on their way to Haifa. Suddenly a contractor’s lorry halted a few paces away; the gendarme had boarded it in no time, piled in my luggage, hauled me over the bonnet and then jumped into the middle of the road with outstretched palms awaiting a reward. We left him gesticulating and panting after us in his booted uniform. My lorry friends were delightful. We stopped at a beer café on the road, then roared past the Syrian frontier without looking back and later shot past the French frontier leaving a cluster of waving screaming officials in our wake. When our routes differed, they solicitously put me into a fruit truck. The driver drove at a terrific speed without stopping all night until we reached the outskirts of Haifa, where he made an abrupt halt outside a mud hut, out of which roared a family of dirty dark-skinned children who clambered ail over the truck with screams of delight, ripping open the sacks and tumbling out their contents into the road. When the driver became aware of me, he rather touchingly offered me a handful of apples and took me to the YWCA.

  From then on, I was solely concerned with getting back to base and joined a convoy travelling at a speed of twenty miles an hour, so when it reached a canteen stop on the edge of the desert I got out and ate some eggs and beans. Tried to sunbathe by lying on a wall with my skirt up, but sand kept blowing in my face. Suddenly a very dilapidated bus inscribed with ‘ENSA’ drew up and out leapt two uniformed Semitic drivers chewing gum. Assuming me to be an ENSA girl, they at once felt responsible and drove me back to Cairo.

  *Lord Kinross, the celebrated gossip columnist.

  †The infamous Porfirio Rubirosa first married the daughter of the Dominican dictator, Trujillo, then the actress Danielle Darrieux, the heiress Doris Duke, and Barbara Hutton, of the Woolworth millions.

  ‡Sir Bernard Brocas Burrows, KCMG: he became HM Ambassador to Ankara in 1958.

  Chapter VIII

  Italy and Greece

  On my return, Bernard Burrows announced that once the Germans had retreated over the Greek border, the Embassy in Athens would open up, and Mary Foreman and I had been chosen as the new cipher team. Soon after, to the envy of the other cipherines, we were driven to Alexandria to board a crowded troopship bound for Italy. Also aboard was Michael Spears, son of the General. Small and tubby he bore no resemblance to his famous father, other than in disposition. Finding me in a good humour as we were stepping over the troops lining the crowded decks, Michael jeered, ‘You’re the sort of person who’d laugh on seeing someone break his neck on a banana skin.’

  Mary and I disembarked at Salerno, where we spent the night. It was raining, and sad, as practically the whole of the town had been wiped out. We were then driven to the Palace of Caserta. Built for the King of Naples in the eighteenth-century, the Palace had been transformed into a British and American army headquarters. A miniature Versailles, it was filled with marble statues and massive pillars. Lions leered down from the tops of stairways. The grounds were laid out with terraces and fountains with water cascading over marble statues of the hunting goddess, Diana, with her leaping hounds. The cobbled courtyard abounded in jeeps. Mark Culme-Seymour was stationed there. When he fell ill with tuberculosis, my off duty hours were spent visiting the hospital.

  One lunchtime I was on my way to the NAAFI to a menu of Consommé aux Nouilles, Bouef à la Vénétienne, Choux-fleurs au Bacon and custard pudding, when I was waylaid by a smiling blue-eyed American Air Force colonel in a peaked cap, and from then on had access to the American PX, a great blessing, when it was impossible to obtain stockings, hair-kirbies or shampoo. When not flying off on some secret mission to Budapest, he would take me to dine in a villa overlooking the Bay of Naples where American officers spent their leave. They were even more cosseted in a villa on the Island of Capri. The colonel flew me to Rome. He would drive on to Naples air strip and hail a bomber as though it were a taxi.

  Then, who should turn up once again but the Bastard. One bitterly cold night we drove north in a jeep in torrential rain, passing through towns reduced to ruins, where the residue of the Italian Army was to be seen camping under canvas in muddy bogs. The Rome shops gave short change, the femme de ménage in the hotel emptied out a bottle of Schiaparelli scent and refilled it with water, and overnight the hood of the jeep was ripped off.

  Then, in late autumn, Lady Leeper, the wife of the future Ambassador to Athens, Mary and I were driven to the foot of Italy, stopping on the way to picnic in a forest of cork oaks, where most of our lunch was given to a troupe of ragged barefoot children gathering acorns, then a wartime coffee substitute.

  The troops boarding the ship bound for Greece had been issued with a booklet which began with the phrase … ‘You are lucky to be going to Greece … it is a country of allies worth having …’ Then followed a list of DON’Ts … ‘Don’t admire the baby, the mother might think you have the evil eye … Don’t pull up vine stumps for firewood … Don’t rub it in about fleas … Don’t say you have won the war …’ and terminated with a security measure to beware of agents and saboteurs.

  Many Greek families were travelling back for the first time since the occupation and, long before our arrival, stood hatted and gloved, clutching suitcases, ready to disembark. Everyone seemed apprehensive, imagining untold discomfort.

  It was a beautiful autumn day with brilliant sunshine when we came within sight of the Piraeus; there was great excitement as Athens loomed closer and exclamations of delight at the soft clear light. Field glasses were produced, someone pointed out the Acropolis and the Temple of Athena, standing out like a lone tooth on the summit. We remained outside the harbour and were led in slowly next day by a minesweeper to dock some distance from the shore. The ship was immediately surrounded by fishing boats rowed by young men or pretty, flirtatious girls who ogled the troops, begging for cigarettes. But, after reading their booklets, the men seemed very much on their guard. Drachma notes were sprinkled over the sea to indicate their worthlessness.

  It took all morning for the troops to disembark in landing barges. During lunch, a considerable stir was caused by the announcement that the Greek Prime Minister, Papandreou, and Sir Rex Leeper, HM Ambassador to Athens, were coming aboard to greet their respective wives. The Ambassador, looking strained but happy, appeared out of a small turret in the rear of the motor launch; behind him was Papandreou followed by the first secretary, Michael Creswell.* Then, we all boarded the launch and made for the shore. A silent crowd stood waving and clapping on the quayside and cameras clicked. Unlike the sallow Italians, the Greeks had fresh brown complexions; there was a smell of pine everywhere, which is not the case now, alas, the pine trees having been replaced by shoddy buildings. From then on, the entire staff remained within the confines of the British Embassy off the Vasileos Konstantinou. From my room, I had a view of a tiny Byzantine church surrounded by cypresses.

  When Osbert Lancaster arrived as Press Attaché to do what’s known as ‘muzzle the press’, he had to share a camp bed with one of the Embassy guards. On seeing the fat red and blue Buddhas draped on the walls to brighten my room, he said they reminded him of his old rival, Topolski. We lived on a diet of bully beef and spam. It was forbidden to buy food, but Mary and I would go into the market, buy a cabbage and eat it surreptitiously. What the Greeks seemed to crave were very rich cakes and the town abounded in pastry shops.

  Two café society playboys arrived from Cairo and we were taken to a round of parties given by the Greek aristocracy. Michael Creswell, who considered himself to be a Greek scholar, got hold of an old car and in the evenings we would drive into the country to stop at some wayside taverna. In exchange for tins of bully beef we would be given a delicious dinner of pigeons roasted over a pinewood fire. All the family would join in the feast. Then a turbaned Turk came in with his guitar and sang flamenco.

  We we
re returning full of ouzo and retsina from one of these delightful evenings, when we saw all the young Greeks seated on their doorsteps polishing rifles. Soon after, the civil war broke out. It was a perfectly still day with sunshine streaming through the window when suddenly bullets were whistling all around, while Spitfires flew overhead gunning the area. From then on there was a continual noise as of croquet mallets or cricket bats hitting boundaries. The grenade and mortar shells fired from Hymettus seemed to skim the Embassy roof only to land a short distance away with a tremendous explosion which reverberated because of the surrounding mountains. Women were seen running along the streets crossing themselves in terror as bullets whistled past. The rooftops abounded in snipers. The police would enter a house only to come out with a rifle and a communist KKE badge.

  Church bells chimed as a signal to the communist-run Greek Liberation Front to start or cease fire, but as soon as the shooting stopped in one area it started up in another. A constant stream of ambulances and tanks passed along the boulevard, and night and day there was shouting magnified by megaphones coming from various points of the city.

  On the first day, eight police stations were captured and over a thousand gendarmes killed or wounded by the left-wing Popular Liberation Army. Stray bullets pierced the Embassy windows. Two safe experts arrived. The bars of the cipher cave were filed down and replaced by bars closer together. We were supposed to be protected by guards, otherwise known as The Snoops, who remained on the roof all day taking photographs. There was a curfew at night and for days we were without water; the electricity was then cut and we worked by hurricane lamp. When a column of the Popular Liberation Army was approaching Athens, planes dropped flares all night to show it up and the mountains were lit in a hazy pink glow. When the communist headquarters was finally captured, many German and Bulgarian deserters were found there.

  Mail was brought to the Embassy in an armoured tank. My mother had written to say that Aunt Nancie had died. There had been no contact with my uncle since the Poona days, but I wrote him a letter of condolence and received the following blimpish reply …

  ‘My dear, I do thank you so much for your lovely letter. Every letter I get about my darling Nan makes me the prouder man. She was such a dear and a darling, and I do miss her so dreadfully … she was always so supremely brave, even when swarms of those damned doodles were skidding past her window … you sure are passing through an interesting time. On the BBC, you can hear the fighting from the Acropolis as plainly as if one had been sitting on a balcony of the Grande Bretagne. Aren’t they a lot of perishers? What with the Free French, the Beiges, the Serbs and now these perishing Greeks. It is hardly worth fighting for them. But how amused Tommy must be to have to stand by and watch them slaughtering each other, and for nothing except some ridiculous political ideology. I shall look forward to you coming to stay. You can have your brekker in bed and everything you like …’

  Boot had written to say that 2,400 doodlebombs had fallen over Kent alone. Increasingly alarmed and claustrophobic, I wrote to the Foreign Office asking to be recalled, and when Michael Creswell came into the cipher room and said, haughtily, ‘Farewell, CREATURES …’ before leaving for England, I asked him to use his influence, then ordered two demijohns of retsina, packed my bags and waited.

  After Harold Macmillan’s brief visit with his secretary, John Wyndham, always referred to by the Embassy staff as ‘that delightful chap’, we all left together in an armoured tank, and were driven through the Embassy gates into the Boulevard Konstantinou and all the way to the airport. The streets were lined with snipers, but the plane took off without mishap.

  The American colonel met me at Naples where I spent some Christmas leave. The plane from Naples touched down in Marseilles to refuel; the airport was embedded in snow. After the arid months in Egypt I felt stimulated by the sight of snow and took a short walk, getting back on the runway to find the plane had taken off with my suitcase and the baskets of retsina. I was wondering what to do when a Marauder landed and out got two pilots who were flying the plane back to England to undergo repairs, and they agreed to give me a lift. From the cockpit, we had a clear view of snow-ridden France and were approaching Paris when one of the engines froze. I was hoping we might have to land; instead the pilot did a series of nose dives which unfroze the engine, but left us all deaf. We continued over the Channel and landed at an airfield on the south coast, where I underwent an official interrogation, the absence of luggage being considered very suspect.

  Nothing had changed on the British railways. With their scruffy packages, the British still looked bombed out. The green carriages reeked of soot. You couldn’t tell whether the greyness resulted from the dirt on the panes or the reflection of the sky. Being a Saturday, each small brick house had a washing line suspended across a dismal plot of garden.

  I arrived at Gerda’s with nothing but a handbag. The bulk of my luggage had been left in the care of an army major, Hugh Ryder, who was attached to the Embassy as a kind of majordomo. He was a charming man and, as the months went by, we sustained a regular correspondence, his letters beginning, ‘Dear Skelters,’ and ending ‘With all my blessings, dear Barbara and the Best of Luck’ – which, in fact, I never had. He had despatched my luggage by train via Italy, so that it shared the same fate as the Schiaparelli scent. This time, for some reason, there was no compensation. All the same, the major went on being joyful. ‘Now I do have good news for you,’ he wrote, ‘your old mackintosh has just been found. I am sending it back by Bag. That way, you’re bound to get it. Apologies … for so many delays … which shows that old Ryder is tired of organising …’ Yes indeed!

  I went on working for the Foreign Office in London, until the war came to an end and they wanted me to proceed to Lisbon. Although London remained sad and drab, for some inexplicable reason I missed the plane and wrote from Cot pleading that I had not had time to obtain a suitcase. The Foreign Office do not sack their employees, they put them on suspension, in which state I remain.

  *Sir Michael Justin Creswell, KCMG, later became Ambassador to Buenos Aires and married Baroness thoe Schwartzenberg.

  Chapter IX

  After the War

  ‘A woman who has never been hit by a man has never been loved.’

  Zsa Zsa Gabor

  Within a month, I was pushing a trolley of recordings along the corridors of the BBC, where Louis MacNeice was often seen flitting in and out of the self-service canteen.

  One evening, when dining in the Queen’s Restaurant off Sloane Square, Peter Quennell came through the revolving door escorting June Osborne,* then a teenage beauty. Only on closer acquaintance did one perceive the slightly bandy legs and wrestler’s arms of a champion horse-woman.

  Peter Quennell offered to put me up in the Park Village East house he was sharing with George Weidenfeld. The two men must have been leading very social lives; I never saw either of them until late one night Peter and I collided in the basement kitchen, when a spoonful of the chutney I was eating fell on his bedroom slipper. After the rumpus, I moved to Rossetti House in Flood Street, where John and Marjorie Davenport were living in dire distress. On sunny wartime days, John and I used to picnic in Bedford Square Gardens. Amongst the classics I could never get through that John listed to improve anyone’s mind was Huysmans’s Against Nature and de Quincey’s Confessions. During the war Marjorie had worked for Lady Wishart whose house in Hove had been transformed into a club for American officers on leave. One of Marjorie’s duties as hostess was to be whirled round a billiard-cum-ballroom on Saturday evenings, though it is doubtful if that is how she met John. Marjorie was a very likeable girl with long flowing hair. We became close friends. While John haunted the Chelsea pubs with Dylan Thomas and Tommy Earp, Marjorie and I subsisted on the experimental little dishes I took back from a Cordon Bleu cookery course in Sloane Street. When June Osborne tempted me with a sitting room in Cadogan Street, I moved in with her and remained crouched before a tiny gas fire with a slot machine throu
ghout one of England’s bitterest winters, with Tony Steele for company, when Tony was a simple rugger player, prior to becoming a filmstar and the husband of Anita Ekberg. In my opinion his most successful film role was that of a Kenya colonial dressed in khaki shorts and topi, leaping smartly in and out of jeeps, a jovial smile on his face, rather as he used to be in everyday life.

  I never really appreciated conventional good looks. Eric von Stroheim was my ideal. Also, spare me a whistler or a practical joker – someone who prepares a bath, tells you it’s ready and then stands by beaming as you step into ice-cold water. But the frustration I once suffered due to a thwarted passion for a bone surgeon with a harelip! And then, I fell head over heels for a unijambiste who was also simpleminded. The anticipation with which I would listen for the tap of his crutch striking the tiles, as he mounted the stairs of the Vieux Auberge de Cagnes, where Augustus John’s daughter Poppet and I spent three consecutive après guerre winters. Marcel’s day was spent lounging with his torso bared in a corner of the Auberge bar. At lunchtime, should Poppet and I be seen dipping into some oursins, thumping the bar, he’d cry excitedly, ‘Mais non! Mais non! Mais non!’ ‘What is it now?’ I’d ask Poppet, whose French was more advanced, and she’d reply wearily, ‘He says you’re a panther and shouldn’t be eating fish.’

  It was François Villiers who introduced me to Cagnes-sur-Mer. Ever since parting in Lagos, we had been in touch. He and his brother, Jean-Pierre Aumont, owned a villa in Cagnes that they lent me one summer. François was a redhead and such a compulsive whistler, I always imagined him riding a bicycle and named him the ‘Paperboy’. His father owned a chain of linen stores, La Maison Blanche, and after the war my first residential visits to Paris were spent in their lugubrious apartment off the Avenue Wagram.