Irrepressible

by Leslie Brody

  Esmond hadn’t been in England since 1939. One great pleasure after two and a half years was finding Philip Toynbee again. Philip and Esmond spent as much time as they could together, sometimes meeting up with other friends from London and their Out of Bounds newspaper days.

  Esmond missed Decca dreadfully, and whether she should join him was the dominating theme of their correspondence. It was all very confusing, but he was satisfied that she and Dink had a very good place with the Durrs, better than anything they’d find in England, where everybody seemed to be splitting up. On August 17, 1941, he sent her a telegram: “Please don’t think of coming over for present as my own plans uncertain. Go ahead with other things instead.”

  In Washington, the interventionist movement had stalled and all the interesting action that autumn seemed to be on the domestic front. The American labor movement, with its cycle of conflict and negotiations, had seized Decca’s imagination. Through friends of the Durrs’, she planned to visit the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, an institution that trained labor organizers through classes like labor history, union publicity, fundraising, and coalition building. To Decca, the school seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime kind of education, an unusually enlightened institution where her passion to become politically involved might be instantly rewarded. It also seemed like the perfect transitional thing to do before she had to enter into another tedious job hunt.

  Several days before she was to leave for Tennessee, and a few weeks into her new pregnancy, Decca miscarried. The doctor she consulted said that nothing could have been done to prevent it. In a letter to Esmond, she tried to downplay the importance of their loss and hoped that by displaying a sort of sangfroid, he’d do her the favor of playing along. She assured him that she had been taking good care of herself. “The whole thing is awfully disappointing, but now it has actually happened & the only thing to do is just forget it was ever up.”

  She set off for Tennessee and returned to a bundle of letters from Esmond full of consolation and concern. Her two weeks away had provided a helpful distraction. She had been struggling all along with the desire to be useful, and at the Highlander School, so many things had clicked. Books, art, action, conversation all fused in the service of basic rights. The labor movement was just the kind of stage upon which she could apply her talents while she waited to join Esmond. There wasn’t any money in it, but she would have more patience to wait if she had something useful to do. She wrote that she had come to regret having bombarded him with so many letters on the theme of traveling to England.

  Decca reassured him that her sadness had passed. His letters were affectionate: “I am thinking of you all the time, and simply longing to be able to see you again.” He added that he was aware that once she returned to England, her life wouldn’t be as “fascinating and interesting” and their daughter wouldn’t be as safe as she was in Washington, so he was torn and hesitated from letter to letter about whether she ought to come.

  He had started flying as a navigator in the air crews, but there were long periods of waiting around, when he’d take the hours to compose a letter to his wife and daughter. He wanted their company, but considered it selfish to take Decca away from the life she had made in America, and he warned her that once he was transferred, she would probably have to live with her ghastly relations, or his. Decca said it was sweet of him to sacrifice the time they might have together for her comfort, but unnecessary. In case he thought she’d grown soft in America, she was as tough and capable as any of the other British women managing with less. Neither wanted to complain or burden the other with expectations.

  Decca went back to the Washington Post, but even with Eugene Meyer’s patronage, she found nothing available in the newsroom or in advertising. The editor was all for hiring bright new talent, but there were the newspaper guilds to consider. He would have to get back to her. Aware that she needed some of the basics, Decca wrote to Esmond to tell him she had enrolled as a beginning student in stenography at the Strayer Business School: This is said to be the best school of that kind here, & it certainly did look rather fascinating—all bustly & studenty & vigorous & go ahead. You can’t think how wonderful it is to have decided on going there . . . I’m convinced it’s a really good investment, both for the U.S. where there is a terrific shortage of secretaries & also if I ever come to England, when it would probably mean a much more interesting type job than if one were completely unskilled.

  Esmond replied on September 22: “I will never be able to explain how tremendously I miss you.” He asked if she had made any further investigations into “safety of passage, various options available, swiftness of trip.”

  On October 9, Esmond transferred into a light bomber detachment in the East Yorkshire town of Linton-on-Ouse. Now that he knew where he’d be stationed for a while, he told Decca that he still felt their daughter would be safer in the United States, but “if she really frightfully wanted to and it was possible,” she ought to look into joining him. Immediately, Decca put in a call to the British air minister in Washington to inquire about passage home. She learned that she might even find a seat “on a bomber.” But, this turned out to be false information and she settled back into her life in Washington, still unsure about what Esmond wanted.

  BY AUTUMN, PHILIP Toynbee had come to think that time and trouble had changed Esmond into a more sensitive, surprisingly empathetic young man. They both thought the thing to do was look to the future. You had to believe that the worst excesses were in the past. Socialism still offered hope and promise. Consider the alternative: the misery, inequality, and injustice that accompanied capitalism. For now, Esmond told Toynbee, “his only political motive was his dismay at human unhappiness.” How did this balance with the job ahead, carrying and releasing bombs? Toynbee later remembered how Esmond felt about his military missions: He told me how once, in a raid over Holland, he had just released his bombs (he was doubtful whether he had ever yet succeeded in hitting a target) when his bomber was suddenly illuminated by a blaze of searchlights. He felt then as if reproving fingers were pointing at him, and as if he himself were a naughty boy suddenly discovered in the light of the larder. But usually he felt no guilt or dismay at dropping bombs, simply because fear entirely submerged any more noble or humane emotion. What he found hardest to bear was the shocking, incomprehensible contrast between the comfortable everyday life of the station and the succession of familiar faces suddenly withdrawn from the mess table.

  Esmond was participating in raids at the rate of several times weekly. The worst part about the flights, he told Decca, half joking, “is the take off, piling onto the lorry, dressed up like a stuffed animal, for the ride across the hangar to the plane, treading on someone’s hand and upsetting their equipment as you get in. Once ‘airborne’ the outlook becomes very much better.” This letter continues in a more lyrical vein, describing their approach to the target untilthe pilot hears the welcoming phrase—“Bombs gone.” The night’s work is over—except of course for the business of getting through searchlight belts and shells and night-fighter patrols to the coast, and on across the sea to the English coast and home—but the rest is mainly cold and worry and hard work and complicated problems of navigation and hence any sort of description would be out of place in such a highly romanticized account as this.

  That letter was more than enough for Decca, who felt it was finally time to force the issue of whether she would join him in England. Perhaps Esmond simply wanted Decca to relieve him of making the decision. For the first time in her letters, she admitted it was demoralizing to be all undecided for months as to what is going to be up. What I mean is, to feel one doesn’t know whether it’ll be in 6 months or a year or longer . . . So if you find it would be at all possible for us to be fairly near each other in England I would be all for coming as soon as possible . . . darling it is so difficult not being able to discuss it all & find out what you really think about it; I so tremendously want to be with you.

  Esmond replied: �
��I am pretty well settled now . . . and have found out that if you were able to come over, this would be nice to know.” Very soon afterward, he sent a telegram asking whether Decca had made any plans for traveling to England. She wrote by return post:I sent you a cable last night which must have crossed yours . . . I went to see this same Group Capt. Anderson, the one I asked before about the bomber trip. He was v. nice & helpful (tho slightly the befuddled old Englishman type), & said that while there was no longer any chance of going by air (the regulations have been tightened up a lot & they don’t take any women now) I could be sure of getting a sea passage sooner or later, within about 3 weeks to 3 months if I put in an application; they are ordinary passages with about the same accommodations as in peace time, only many fewer available as only a few ships take women. He called up the Cunard Line, & it all seemed v. normal.

  On November 8, Decca cabled him: “Good possibility ship transport . . . but will come only if you are 100% pro.” “Yes,” he wrote on November 11, “more than anything else in the world.” He had only wanted to spare her whatever hardships might be ahead in England, and had come to realize finally what was most important was that they should be together for as long as it was possible. Whatever hesitation he had felt was in the past; he had only wanted to be sure. But suddenly, the need was urgent. Four of his friends had died that day in a plane crash. He just returned from a mission to recover their missing aircraft. The night was damp and freezing. He had a crushing toothache. He wrote: “It isn’t only that I can see that you will be really happy over here in spite of all the factors I mentioned and irrespective of myself. It is also that I am being utterly selfish over the whole thing and want to be with you again.”

  Over the next week, Esmond went on two missions. He wrote to Decca again. The subject this time was Dinky. Perhaps they ought to leave their child in Washington? That might make it easier for Decca to participate more fully in the war effort, as he knew she had been wishing to do. From the time they were in Florida, Esmond had understood that a person needed to be completely immersed; otherwise, “the whole thing is utterly bleak and pointless.” Decca contemplated leaving her daughter with the many friends clamoring to care for her, but not for long. She had made her decision; they would be traveling together.

  Finally, there was good news in the world again. The Red Army had recaptured Rostov in the first general offensive of the war in the Ukraine. The Russians had turned the tide of the war. She sent Esmond a cable on December 1, 1941:LEAVING FRIDAY SO TERRIFICALLY EXCITED DARLING STOP DECIDED BRING DONK DO WIRE THAT YOU AGREE HOW SHALL I CONTACT YOU JOURNEY WILL BE VERY COMFORTABLE GREATEST LOVE=ROMILLY

  On December 2, Decca was home with Dinky in Alexandria. Virginia and her children had gone up to New York, where Cliff was scheduled to give a speech. Decca planned to spend two days in New York with the Durrs before boarding a ship with Dinky on December 5.

  She spent the morning packing. Downstairs the doorbell rang, and she heard some murmuring, then quiet. Mrs. Foster was crying again. Decca descended the stairs to see Virginia’s mother holding a slip of paper. A telegram had come addressed to Mrs. Romilly.

  REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT ADVICE RECEIVED FROM ROYAL CANADIAN AIR FORCE CASUALITIES OFFICER OVERSEAS YOUR HUSBAND PILOT OFFICER ESMOND MARK DAVID ROMILLY CAN J FIVE SIX SEVEN SEVEN MISSING ON ACTIVE SERVICE NOVEMBER THIRTIETH STOP LETTER FOLLOWS.

  She grabbed up Dinky and ran to the house next door. The information had to be a mistake. Someone had to check the facts, make some calls for her. Her neighbor Mary Walton Livingston telephoned Virginia at their hotel in New York, and the Durrs immediately came back to find Decca “absolutely desolate.” Decca kept insisting to Virginia that he must have been rescued by a ship or submarine—that he was somewhere a prisoner of war. The Durrs questioned everyone they could find in the Canadian Air Force and the British Embassy. They learned that Esmond’s plane had crashed into the North Sea on its return from a bombing mission over Germany. A rescue mission had determined that there were no survivors.

  On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was bombed, and the United States finally entered the war. Winston Churchill came to Washington during Christmas week to confer with Franklin Roosevelt, his cabinet, and the Pentagon. On Christmas morning, the White House telephoned to invite the young widow to attend church with Churchill (who was a distant cousin of the Mitfords as well as Esmond’s uncle), the president, and Mrs. Roosevelt. Decca accepted the invitation, but when two Secret Service men arrived to escort her to Foundry Methodist Church, no one could find her. Perhaps she just stepped out for some fresh air and a cigarette. Waiting for her return, Virginia broke the gloom and announced, “It will take more than two men, to get Decca into church, even for the Prime Minister of England and the President of the United States.” Later that morning, Decca met up with the president and company. She was sure there was more to be learned about Esmond’s accident and knew that her Cousin Winston might have access to more detailed information, which she imagined, could offer hope for Esmond’s survival. Attending the Christmas church service was the price she would pay. As it turned out, the prime minister had launched a private investigation. He invited Decca to meet with him in a week’s time.

  On New Year’s Day, friends Michael and Binnie Straight drove Decca and her daughter to the White House, where Mrs. Roosevelt was waiting for them, “gracious as she always was.” Churchill was just waking from an afternoon nap as Decca was escorted “to his bedroom. He embraced her there. He had nothing on, save for a loose dressing gown.”

  He said that his heart bled for her. He strode around the room, rolling off sonorous phrases about the enemy striking with brutal fiendishness at the British home and hearth. Then he remembered that Decca’s elder sister was married to Sir Oswald Mosley, the fascist leader. He explained to Decca that he had put her brother-in-law into prison and he apologized for his action. It was the best way to protect him, he said.

  “Protect him!” she snorted. “He should be hung!”

  Decca later told Virginia that “Churchill had got in touch with the commandant and the land crew that dispatched Esmond’s plane to Berlin and the one that guided the plane back, and there was no doubt that Esmond was dead.” When she left his room, Churchill sent his secretary after her with a gift of five hundred pounds. It was an enormous sum, which she needed but would not cash for some time, calling it “blood money.” Eventually, she would give part to Virginia’s daughter Ann, so that she could buy a horse.

  In the weeks that followed, Virginia would hear Decca in her room awake and weeping at night. “I would go in there and she would say, ‘Oh the water was so cold. The water was so cold.’” After a time, she began to accept the idea that Esmond was dead, but claimed that she would never return to her “filthy fascist family,” and held them all responsible.

  CHAPTER 10

  ROBERT TREUHAFT, CALLED Bob by his friends, arrived in Washington in 1939, the impeccably educated son of worldly Brooklynites. He had moved from New York City to take a job with the Securities and Exchange Commission then transferred to the Office of Price Administration, where he and Decca would meet three years later.

  Bob’s parents had emigrated from Hungary at the beginning of the twentieth century. Aranka Hajos, his mother, was a smart and stylish milliner. His father, Albin Treuhaft, dabbled in bootlegging and liked the company of fellow gamblers. Albin moved around the New York area, working as a waiter and sometime manager in various eating establishments, looking for his chance to buy into a restaurant. He was subject to a peculiar local myth that may have worked in his favor. Within the Eastern European Jewish immigrant communities of New York, Hungarians were rumored to make the finest pastry chefs and maître d’s.

  The customary route for Eastern European immigrant Jews working their way up the economy was to start out on the Lower East Side. When the family income increased sufficiently, the road diverged. There might be a walk across the bridge to the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn or a pi
oneering effort out in the Bronx. The next step up might be a decent-sized apartment in the two- or three-story brownstones of Bensonhurst. After their marriage, Bob’s parents lived in the Bronx, where he and his sister Edith were born. When he was ten or eleven, their family moved into half of a two-family, semidetached house in Bensonhurst.

  Bob’s social circle was almost exclusively Jewish, but not religious. His only Jewish education was the result of his own curiosity. He attended a Jewish summer camp, which offered instruction and a bar mitzvah ceremony and party at no cost to a boy’s family. The event also earned a camper status, which counted for something in the hothouse in which Bob submerged himself for many summers. His parents were also genuinely proud of his initiative. Afterward, he remained as secular as they were.

  Assimilation was a creaky process. Bob’s encounters with the neighboring Irish and Italian Catholic kids were occasionally antagonistic. Stories abounded of tough streets and little kids with big glasses who lost their seltzer money on the way to the candy store. The only black people he saw were the maids, whom Aranka and Albin, echoing the casual racism of their neighborhood, called “schvartzas.” Around the time Bob began New Utrecht High School, his parents’ marriage broke apart, leaving Aranka as the only reliable wage earner. Albin had become the co-owner of a New York City restaurant, but his success was short-lived. “He disgraced himself by having an affair with one of the waitresses, financing it with some money that he took out of the receipts.” Humiliated, deeply depressed, and more or less bankrupt, Albin went out west to California, where, contemplating suicide, he bought a fifty-thousand-dollar insurance policy, with his children as beneficiaries.