'Tears Before Bedtime' and 'Weep No More'

by Barbara Skelton

  ‘Lizzy brings his own. All you want is another row. Just because those hideous little boxes aren’t filled with stale tobacco …’

  ‘Why can’t you buy cigarettes? You have no idea how to run a house.’

  ‘All right!’ Screams of hate. ‘I’ll go out and buy some! Now find something else to row about …’

  Situation at its nastiest. Having failed to build up a case against me for being a drug addict, cruelty (hogging the electric fire) or got me to agree to an amicable separation, he is trying to sue on grounds of infidelity, citing Cyril as Co-Respondent.

  *

  A great check-up going on. My keys have disappeared, including the one to my Regency table where my diaries are kept. Immediately telephone Mummy who takes a taxi to the cottage and removes the table. Long conversations with parents. Father kept on permanent duty his end of the line. Another hysterical scene, curtailed by me and the immediate administration of a tranquilliser, almost by force, thereby stalling a doctor. He is in constant touch with lawyers.

  Now only speaks to use threats.

  ‘You weren’t going to have it all your own way!’ Has definitely got something on C. Consults lawyer (new one) daily. Yesterday came running into my bedroom and announced dramatically, ‘Situation very tense.’

  ‘Oh, is it? I was lying in bed reading.

  ‘Terrible tension,’ he repeats, meaning me to question him. ‘Ghastly we should be under the same roof.’ (He meant while he is trying to prove something on me and Cyril.) ‘Once I get the evidence,’ he taunts, ‘just think, we won’t be able to fuck. It will be condoning.’

  ‘Just think,’ I say.

  ‘Sinner,’ he goes on, ‘how you have deceived me!’ His manner is arch, but he seems disappointed that I don’t respond by looking stark-eyed.

  Today, when I left the house, an Austin Seven was parked at the kerb. When he saw me, the driver quickly revved into gear and proceeded to tail me along Chester Square. Whereupon I hurried down a sidestreet; there was a screech of brakes and, turning, I saw the driver frantically trying to reverse, as I disappeared out of sight.

  *

  W. has now moved out of the house altogether. His mother has taken over. The fridge is stacked with kosher butter. She sleeps on a campbed in the hall and yesterday burst into the sitting room as though expecting to find me spread-eagled delicto on the couch.

  Me dazed and collapsed with fatigue. Cannot stop sleeping. I must have been under a greater strain than I realised over the last weeks.

  * In his posthumous autobiography, Ruling Passions, Driberg made it clear that one such passion, his homosexuality, coupled with his inability to have a sexual relationship with anyone in his own milieu, had condemned him to a life of utter loneliness.

  † Moura Budberg (Maria Ignatievna)

  Chapter VIII

  Divorce Proceedings

  There was no further contact with W., except through lawyers. He did ring up once, though, and sounded very upset. I only had time to say, ‘What’s the matter, George? Tell me, what’s the matter?’ before he had hung up. Brien How, an old friend from Blitz days, happened to be lunching with me in Chester Square and rather callously remarked that it was simply a ‘put on’, as he wanted to get me to comply with his wishes. But I suppose it must have seemed rather tough luck, paying a lawyer to tell you to get out of your own house. I had not seen Brien since he left for Hong Kong, where he became the Chief Magistrate in Kowloon and married a Chinese girl. He preferred Chinese women, he said, as they were far more fidèle and devoted than European women. This turned out to be our last meeting. Years later, when he had returned to Europe, he tried unsuccessfully to get in touch again but died of cancer soon after, in Spain.

  I don’t remember pining for W. any more. The intense physical obsession, comparable to some raging, unprecedented fever, had abated. I don’t think you can love someone whom you find inestimable. With an amour fou, of course, the subject does not have to inspire admiration. I appreciated W.’s drive, resourcefulness and resilience, and being such a worldly, ambitious man, his intense pursuit had had the temporary effect of making me feel an adult member of society as opposed to a worthless drifter.

  Citing Cyril could not be described as being a very laudable act. For we had become a reporter’s delight and Cyril risked being dismissed from The Sunday Times.

  Those three names crop up again. Wealthy publisher, George Weidenfeld, is seeking a judicial separation … and the man he’s citing is her ex-husband … which makes a change from the position two years ago …

  The only evidence W. had to go on was a visit Cyril and I had taken to the cottage when W. was in the States. Cyril needed to go through his possessions and remove some of his books. We were driven down in a hire car. The chauffeur, Nixon, turned out to be a most amiable fellow. His real profession, he claimed, was that of professional ballroom dancer. When he heard us discussing what to do with Cyril’s precious silver, Nixon claimed to have access to a safe and we trustingly handed it over.

  We went to the country a second time and stayed a few days. No secret was made of the fact. Whenever a telegram arrived from New York, the maid at Chester Square would telephone. My diary conveys that much as I loved Cyril and often though I thought that the breakup had been a mistake, I realised we could not have gone on living in such close proximity because of the drudgery, endless housework, aching back and wrist from constant stoking of the kitchen stove. I suppose by then I had become spoilt. Also, there were Cyril’s moods.

  I felt sorry for him, of course, but he was always gloomy about something. Then, it was the future, thinking of when W. got back from the States. In the confined cottage surroundings, one person’s bad mood was so inflicted on the other as to make life sometimes intolerable. Even the mutterings of ‘Barbara! Barbara!’ while lying on his bed made me cross and he complained about my angry ‘despatch rider’s face’, although we did get on terribly well, and I felt he understood and forgave me more than anyone else would.

  I had been back in Chester Square some time when Nixon telephoned to say he was out of a job. The Italians had gone and W. had been in touch with a Mayfair domestic agency. One illiterate applicant wrote from Wales to say, ‘I have heard that you require a General Man Servant the Post I am requiring I have been living with Lady “Tartempion” at Princes Gate for a number of years doing the cooking and cleaning with Daily Help. Lady “Tartempion” has passed away a few weeks ago and her daughter that is living in Gloucester who is giving me the references which I am sending you. Should you think me suitable …’ But we didn’t and offered Nixon the job, and he moved into the spare ground-floor room. Nixon looked presentable. He answered the doorbell, made amusing observations through the kitchen hatch as he tugged at a rope for the food trolley to mount to the dining room, where I stood to receive it. Then he waited at table and, at this stage, I often found his company less of a strain than that of a fretful husband. But whereas Nixon had liked Cyril and taken good care of his silver, he took against W. and one fine day he bolted with all W.’s shirts, leaving his room strewn with cigarette stubs and empty bottles of whisky. Daimler Hire hinted that he was no longer in their service, due to a similar offence. They had no forwarding address and that was the end of Nixon.

  For the final weeks in Chester Square, I no longer had a pusscat. She had disappeared and I missed her terribly. She used to follow me about everywhere, even when curled asleep; if I got up to leave the room she would awaken and follow me. Pedigree cat-breeders are usually very endearing ladies. I wrote to a Mrs Stewart to tell her how sad I was and asked her to reserve me a kitten from the next litter, one that most resembled Didessa, who had not been without certain flaws in her ticking, like a touch of black under the chin and on the end of her tail. A month later, Mrs Stewart wrote to say that she had just heard from the Cat Club secretary of an Aby found wandering round Chelsea; ‘And wouldn’t it be wonderful if it turns out to be your Didessa?’ I contacted the couple who had picked
up the Aby and arranged a meeting. It was Didessa. But when I saw how she was being treated, like the veritable queen that she was, lying contentedly in a cushioned basket surrounded by playthings, and how this elderly, childless couple doted on her, my life being in a turmoil, I did not have the heart to take her back.

  *

  With further divorce proceedings underway, Sutro once more came to the fore as my go-between, pursued by Marreco, acting for W., whose publishing associate he then was. They had no conclusive evidence of infidelity and wanted Sutro to persuade me not to fight the case, but give in to an amicable separation. Detectives had been sent down to the cottage to find witnesses. Our last char, Mrs Golding, had refused to talk and sent me a note saying, ‘I hope you are well I hope I can still work for you as I like working for you we have known one another so long I will always stand by you and help you in all ways as you know I wouldn’t say anything against you. Yours faithfully …’

  But the old gardener, Coombes, to whom Cyril had paid vast sums, appeared willing to go into court and give detrimental evidence. And somebody referred to as ‘the unknown man’ claimed to have seen Cyril and me standing stark-naked in the porch one afternoon, which was, of course, most incriminating.

  In the meantime, Sutro had found me a top-floor flat in Belgravia. No 3 Lyall Street had been bought by a company who eventually planned to install a lift and modernise the building. So it was only a temporary lease. The two top floors were quiet and sunny, and if my life had been more settled, I would have been very happy living there.

  A restorer of old paintings, Peter Tunnard, occupied the ground-floor flat and just below me Claus Bulow lived with a beautiful blonde who finally left him for the conductor, Karajan. My two top floors had been empty so long that they needed redecorating. I was still under surveillance, continually peering out of windows, convinced I was being watched. Oddly enough, it was W.’s mother who found me a painter, a handsome man in his fifties, who, one afternoon, when I went round to see how the work had progressed, actually grabbed me by the waist in a whirling embrace and invited me out to dinner. Also, about this time, when I took the train to the country, a harelipped man engaged me in conversation and, when we arrived at Ashford, he insisted on accompanying me to the cottage, only to find Mummy sitting happily chainsmoking on the porch. This man went on haunting me and one day admitted he made a habit of sleuthing.

  Sutro kept me informed of the latest developments in the case and, should I be in the country, his secretary, who never had anything to do, typed out a report like the following:

  December 6 1957

  Today Marreco telephoned me, in the first place about a magazine selling English goods in America. He then said he would like to talk to me personally; I said that whilst he could mention anything to me he liked, I was keeping completely out of this matter which was now in the lawyers’ hands. Marreco then said that the case had been set down for trial and will, presumably, come in on approximately February 1958. He said that he personally felt that the case, if fought out, would be detrimental to everybody concerned and he did not deny that it would be detrimental to W., who felt that the odds were definitely in his favour and on the advice of Counsel (Fearnley-Whittingstall) felt obliged to go ahead but would still very much prefer to avoid any contested action on which large fees would be paid to lawyers. Marreco, speaking on W.’s behalf, wished that the case should not be defended; that both sides should pay their own costs; and then W. would finally settle the existing dress bills and continue the present payments to you until the date of the decree absolute. I said that as far as I knew this had all been discussed by the lawyers already and was completely unacceptable; that I doubted very much whether I could even speak to you about this matter.

  Marreco suggested that I meet W. and have a discussion; I said that I could see no possible reason or justification for this. I also said that I did not think the solicitors on either side, certainly not on your side, would consent to any such arrangement as was now put forward. All question of the unknown man, apparently, has now been dropped and the full-scale offensive is being directed towards the question of costs which, it is suggested, would have to be borne by C., if he does not win the case.

  The position which I have maintained throughout was that nothing whatever except desertion could ever be considered and that this could be discussed between the lawyers.

  If you were to ask me, ‘What should I do?’ this is always a terribly hard thing to answer on a matter which so vitally affects your whole life. It would depend entirely on the judge alone, or the judge and jury accepting and understanding the fineness of the points which relate to the physical feelings with regard to W. and C. But undoubtedly whilst from your point of view these are straightforward and not difficult to explain in cross-examination, it will not be easy for C. He will, however, be a very good witness and will explain the reasons why he saw you and why he went to the cottage to deal with his things. The whole weight of the other side will be based on matters like the days spent in Ischia with C., the meetings afterwards in London, and they will do all they can to blur the vital distinction between affection and friendship, and the physical matter which, after all, was the cause to a considerable degree of the break-up of your marriage to C. The only way, presumably, in which the visit to the cottage can be satisfactorily explained is to say that it was not kept a particular secret.

  Having convinced himself of the righteousness of his case, W. will in every way endeavour to appear as the victim. It does not necessarily follow, even if he is very much shaken in cross-examination, that the other side’s version will be accepted and it is of course open to a judge not to give anything to either side.

  In the event of your winning the case, I presume then that in order to be free, W. himself would afford you with evidence but he would also have to contribute a third of his income.

  Yet another consideration is whether, if you stand firm, he is likely to make some compromise and offer settlement on the question of desertion right on the eve of the case. This is a possibility but I think a very doubtful one in view of the whole position of the lawyers. I think one should take it that the matter will now go forward unless any settlement is arrived at within the next few weeks.

  As far as publicity is concerned, this is a matter which is greatly exaggerated as people forget very quickly what they read in the papers, and there is bound to be some sort of publicity now whatever occurs.

  There is one further matter, which is the question of the costs which you have incurred and will incur with Gordon Dadds. My impression is that these are payable either by C. or W. whatever happens. I do know that Tilly Losch had to pay a considerable sum to her solicitors …

  Chapter IX

  Lyall Street

  In the Fifties, I lost three friends. The closest, Natalie Newhouse, affectionately known to her friends as Natalie Nuthouse, appeared to be either very self-destructive or a perpetual victim of disaster. She had once crashed through a skylight and, as the bone did not heal, had to spend months in plaster of Paris in a hospital. After a series of hapless love affairs, she married the actor, Robert Newton. The marriage was not a success. Her death was thought to be an accident. While in hospital once again, she was unwittingly given an overdose of sleeping pills.

  An American girl, Angelica Weldon, after making several attempts at suicide, also finally succeeded by taking pills and, to make doubly sure of her fate, prepared a death chamber in her basement kitchen, turned on the gas and lay down beside the gas stove. Angelica had been having a long affair with Lady Aberconway’s son, John Maclaren, a good-looking young man. Although one had always thought of him as being totally frivolous and superficial, he too, some weeks after Angelica’s death, committed suicide by sealing himself in his garage, switching on the car engine to be asphyxiated by the fumes.

  Marjorie Davenport also had suicidal tendencies. Once, John got home to find her unconscious in the bathtub, having slashed her wrists. Marjorie would get in
touch with me when she was feeling depressed. I saw a lot of her the year before her death. Her worries seemed to be due to lack of funds and intensive household chores. When John went to Capri to visit Norman Douglas and her sons were at school, describing herself as a ‘virtuous grass widow’, Marjorie came to the country. She recounted how, the week before at a Bulgarian Legation dinner, as the ladies got up to go into the drawing room, her knickers had begun to slip. With one hand on her hip gripping them, she had had to dash up the stairs and knot them on the landing – which I mention as it was so typical of her. Later, when I was about to drive down to the south of France, John came to see me to ask if I would take Marjorie with me. He had begun to weary of her gloomy moods and added, ‘What’s more, I don’t care if she never comes back.’ I had arranged to stay on the way in the Hérault with the painter Jean Hugo’s wife, Lauretta, who replied to my telegram, ‘Delighted to see you both’. In Paris, Marjorie and I shared a room in a hotel. Then we drove on to the Mas de Fourques and, after a few days, continued on to St Tropez. At this stage of the journey, even I began to find Marjorie difficult. As often happens with unhappy people, she became bitter and aggressive. One afternoon on the sands, seeing me applying varnish to my toenails, she accused me of being narcissistic and from then on began mooching off on her own, sometimes spending the entire night on the beach. Once, I came across her in the early hours doing a sensuous solo dance for the benefit of a steel band on the port.

  When Cyril arrived from Hydra, where he had been staying with Joan Raynor and Paddy Leigh Fermor, we took her to lunch in Gassin. Then she disappeared. Back in London, Marjorie wrote describing her appalling journey in a crowded train, with no booked sleeper. She had spent most of the night in the corridor and when put in a carriage had had to sit bolt upright, afraid to lower her head and come into contact with a pair of smelly socked feet, though the Coca Cola boy in the corridor had offered to share his couchette and she rather wished she had accepted. John was not at home when she arrived, but he turned up in the early hours, a bit shaky after a roaring bachelor fortnight, very pleased to see her. The postcard she had sent giving the times of the train and boat had failed to reach him. ‘Material situation unaltered … Prospects brightish … But no bird in the hand …’ She had not yet had a bath because she could not bear to wash away all the sun and sea. ‘This is the one and the most truthful way of thanking you, not for the b and b but for much nicer things. Much love from your dippy pal …’