Wait for Me!

by Deborah Devonshire

  Diana never burdened people with her sorrows or disappointments. In her late eighties the upkeep of the Temple became too much and she decided to sell the house she had loved for fifty years and move to Paris. She left without a murmur, never turning to look back, but what a terrible wrench it was. Her daughter-in-law Charlotte was her prop and stay and found her a flat. She also found Elo, the Filipino housekeeper of whom Diana became very fond, and in return Elo gave Diana her complete devotion. The flat became the centre for Diana’s friends and family; it was easier to get to than the Temple and the welcome was just the same.

  Diana seemed ageless, as beautiful as ever and generally in good health. Her flat was near the offices of Vogue magazine and she was oblivious of the fact that the girls inside pressed their faces to the windows to watch this elegant, upright great-great-granny walk by. As she grew older she had become cruelly deaf, an affliction that was doubly hard on her as there was nothing in the world she liked better than chat; she also missed music, which had always meant a great deal to her. She was plagued by hymn tunes, dredged up from her youth, which went round and round her head. We laughed about it, of course, but they went on troubling her.

  The heatwave that hit France in August 2003 was too much for Diana, now aged ninety-three. I made a dash to see her in the suffocating heat; we pulled the blinds, shut the windows and opened the inner doors in the wild hope that the air would move and bring some relief. The air may have moved but it was hot air to hot air. I have never experienced anything similar – it was like Africa. On 11 August, when a loved granddaughter was in the room with her, Diana slipped away. Never was there such a loss to me, perhaps the closest of her relations, and to everyone who was lucky enough to know her. For months afterwards I picked up a pen to write to her only to throw it down again when I remembered there was no point.

  Muv, Farve, Nancy, Pam, Unity and Diana are all buried in the churchyard at Swinbrook, lately joined by Diana’s grandson, Alexander Mosley, after his tragic death in 2009. The graves seem to be a magnet for people who have enjoyed Nancy’s and Diana’s books and every time I go there I find flowers on one or other of them; sometimes a single stalk, sometimes a bunch with a note attached. The other day I saw people gazing at the gravestones and being addressed by a lecturer. I hurried away but could not help wondering what she was saying.

  25

  The Old Vicarage

  A

  NDREW’S DECLINE IN health was long. For some years he had been nearly blind and was finding getting about increasingly difficult, but I never once heard him complain about his lot. Towards the end he did not want to go out of doors or even leave his room. He stayed in bed, eating nothing, sometimes for days on end. When he did get up to walk to the dining room, and later when he was pushed there in a wheelchair, he sat at the table shaking his head at everything that was offered him. All he wanted was to go back to bed, where he literally turned his face to the wall. No radio, no television – just silence. The only people he wished to see, other than me, were Helen Marchant and Henry Coleman. Nothing sparked his interest; politics, racing, it was all over. He had lost the will to live. Seeing him so deeply depressed and unhappy about the various indignities of his physical condition, no one could have wished him to go on living. During the last two days, Henry seldom left him and stood at the end of his bed, watching in case he wanted some little thing. When Andrew slipped into unconsciousness and quietly left this world it was almost a relief. He died late on the evening of 3 May 2004, aged eighty-four. The finality of death hits only long after the event, but everyone at Chatsworth realized immediately that the old order had gone.

  Andrew’s funeral took place seven days later at St Peter’s Church, Edensor. Because there were to be three memorial services I thought that it would be a quiet country funeral attended by the family, a few friends and the people who lived round about. In his wisdom, John Oliver, the comptroller, knew otherwise. Thousands came. It was the first beautiful day of spring and the park was at its best, the pale green of the trees half-transparent against the richer green of the grass. John Oliver led the procession from Chatsworth to the church and walked the whole mile without once raising his head. The route was lined on either side by members of staff, pensioners, friends and strangers, who stood, heads bowed, in silence. The newspaper chose to publish photographs of the waitresses from the Carriage House Restaurant, in their black dresses, white aprons and caps, and described them as our ‘parlourmaids’ – another reason for not believing everything you read in the papers. Guardsmen from the Coldstream Guards, Andrew’s old regiment, soldiers from the Royal British Legion, with which he had had long connections, and from the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters, with their ram mascot, lined the churchyard path.

  I went in Andrew’s car, driven by his long-time driver Joe Oliver (of that indispensable family), accompanied by my sisters-in-law, Elizabeth and Anne. Stoker and Amanda walked behind the hearse, leading the enormous crowd of mourners. Paddy Leigh Fermor, aged nearly ninety, walked with the family – to which he almost belongs. We were too many to be seated in the church and there were tents for the overflow, but the beauty of the day meant they were not necessary. At the exact moment the coffin was lowered into the grave a group of Derbyshire Microlights, of which Andrew was patron, passed overhead making wispy, whining noises. For me, the whole event was like something being enacted, not real. However much you realize that death is inevitable, when it happens to someone you have known so well for so long, it does not seem possible.

  John Oliver and Helen Marchant arranged the wake, which was held in our last big tent to go up on the south lawn. When they saw the procession walking back to the house for tea, the regular Chatsworth visitors, who come to the park in search of freedom and beauty, joined in. Ramblers with backpacks, women with babies, men in shorts and little else mingled with bishops and members of the House of Lords. No one was turned away and it became a party after Andrew’s own heart. Again I had a dreamlike sensation as I watched the people arrive, wondering what it was all for, then suddenly remembering.

  I was astonished by the number of condolence letters I received – over three thousand. When answering the kind things people said, I learned more of Andrew’s many acts of generosity over the years. The three memorial services held later that summer at Bolton Priory in Yorkshire, the Guards Chapel in London and St Carthage’s Cathedral, Lismore, each reflected different aspects and events in his life and brought back many memories for those of us who were there.

  A year after Andrew’s death, I went with my daughter Emma to visit friends in the south of England. I probably overdid it and shortly after getting home I suffered a ‘transient ischaemic attack’, lost consciousness and was hurried off to the Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield in an ambulance with the siren ringing and lights flashing (or so they told me afterwards). I woke up a few hours later to find my bed surrounded by doctors from all corners of the earth and wondered why these busy fellows were staring at me as I felt perfectly all right. They ordered a brain scan, then went about their business. The nice black porter who pushed me in a wheelchair along the endless passages called me ‘Darling’ and that encouraged me. The scanner made a noise like a rattling London tube train, only much louder. I was shown the photos immediately afterwards: one looked like an inaccurate map of Europe, another was an exact replica of a hotel carpet. I would have preferred a landscape by Atkinson Grimshaw but the camera could not lie. The friendly porter wheeled me back to my room with its view of all Sheffield, and I soon went home (fetched by my grandson Eddie Tennant), humbled by the kindness and skill of all concerned at the Hallamshire.

  I stayed on at Chatsworth for eighteen months after Andrew died, but the passages began to seem long and the stairs steep. It was time to move, to make way for the next generation. Stoker and Amanda had made their home at Beamsley Hall, near Bolton Abbey, but in the knowledge that they would come to Chatsworth in due course. They have settled with enthusiasm into the house
– the heart of the Chatsworth ‘business’, which is what country estates now are.

  In December 2005 I moved to the Old Vicarage in Edensor, the village where Andrew and I had lived sixty years earlier. The house has no architectural merit, but its atmosphere makes it a happy place – the influence, I believe, of the devout men who occupied it for two hundred years. Parts of it had been built on and knocked down in a haphazard sort of manner, and it was in poor condition. After the builders had done their work of rewiring, plumbing and heating, of moving walls, stripping paint and putting in new windows and floors, it was ready for decorating. David Mlinaric, a friend in need if ever there was one, was an indispensable help with the placing of electric points, light switches, baths and so on; these are easy to take for granted but you rue the day if you get them wrong, and he gets them right.

  David made another important contribution: I wanted to reinstate the fireplace in my bedroom that had been blocked up in the 1950s on the orders of the Chatsworth land agent, so David went to the building-yard with Malcolm Hulland, the clerk of works, to have a look at the old grates and other bits and pieces stored there. With his infallible eye, he spotted some small white tiles like the ones on my bedroom floor. He brought them back and, to our satisfaction, they were the ones that had been removed fifty years earlier.

  I chose the colours and arranged the furniture – as I had done many times before in houses big and small. My essential tools were an Old-Vicarage-sized tape measure (rather than the builders’ ones I had used and lost by the dozen at Chatsworth) and a picture in my mind’s eye of what I wanted. A bonus from my short stay at the Hallamshire was the plastic bracelet they put on every patient’s wrist. It was a thrilling cerulean blue and I held on to it for the colour of a guest bathroom at the Old Vic. This bathroom, which is bristling with FACILITIES (including a bed covered in towelling – muddling for guests), seems to be a success, thanks to my unexpected spell of unconsciousness.

  Amanda and Stoker were generosity itself and allowed me to take whatever pieces of furniture I liked from Chatsworth. I have never regretted my choice, and being able to bring these old friends with me made the move easier. I am especially happy to have the pair of Wellingtons (not boots) that used to be in my sitting room at Chatsworth. These tall, narrow, red leather-fronted drawers, replicas of those that the Iron Duke took with him on his campaigns, are a godsend for storing papers and add the necessary coup de rouge to my new drawing room. (Paddy Leigh Fermor says this means a glass of red wine, but to me it is the essential bit of colour that gives something extra to a room.)

  The house has several guest bedrooms, which seem to be elastic, and it is a joy to be able to have my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to stay. From the first night that I slept in my bedroom, where I now write, I felt as if I had been here for years. A new window to the east lets me see the unwilling winter dawn through the trees in my neighbour’s garden and it is a daily treat. The other window looks south. Before I moved in, a bank came right up to the front door of the house and, spoilt as I was by the views at Chatsworth, I found it too close for my liking. A bulldozer scooped out a semicircle, giving more light and a feeling of space.

  Much of the garden was a building site for the first winter (the ground takes a season to settle) but the flower beds had to be planted with lightning speed in spring, a method described by Jim Link, the retired head gardener at Chatsworth, as ‘cheque-book gardening’. Jim, Alan Shimwell and Ian Webster (the present head gardener) are walking, talking, living garden encyclopaedias. I call these three founts of knowledge ‘the apprentices’, to the amusement of Adam Harkness (a generation or two younger), who now looks after the garden at the Old Vic. My favourite part is the kitchen garden. How I wish my sister Pam were here to see my sorrel and herbs. She would be full of criticism, of course: ‘Stublow, you’re doing that all wrong.’ Nancy would think my chosen marigolds perfectly frightful, adding, perhaps, ‘For a nine-year-old the garden looks quite nice.’ Decca would not look but would head straight indoors to the fire, clasping her dress – too thin for the Derbyshire summer – tightly around her. As for Diana, if only she were still here to spend weeks with me.

  In extreme old age you suddenly find you are unable to run uphill, two buckets full of hen food are heavier than they were and the cheerful scream of hearing aids, proving that they are working, is a welcome sound. Other things go wrong. Paddy Leigh Fermor, aged ninety-four, came to stay, got into the bath, looked down at the tap end and to his dismay saw that both feet had turned black. ‘Oh God,’ he thought, ‘Teeth, ears and eyes are wonky and now my feet.’ He need not have worried. He had got into the bath with his socks on.

  Twenty years after the Bible’s allotted span of three score years and ten, faces also change and nature warns you that more than a little powder is necessary. A photographer was coming to take snaps for publicity for a book. I thought some make-up might mask the stalactites and other horrors that appear from nowhere on old faces, so I called on the services of Victoria Noakes, a trained beautician and the daughter of my old friend John Webber, hairdresser. John has driven over the moor from Chesterfield every week for forty-five years to do my hair (‘Go on, get up and shake,’ he says when he has cut it) and has never once cancelled because of bad weather. Helen Marchant telephoned him: ‘How much sand and cement does she want?’ he asked. I do not know what Helen answered, but Victoria arrived armed with ‘Industrial Strength Concealer’. All this was good for the character, and my head, swollen by fan letters about Home to Roost, shrank to normal size. Victoria made me look positively decent, the ‘Industrial Strength’ did a great job – many untoward bits were concealed – and I faced the photographer with confidence.

  I love being back in the village of Edensor. ‘Sleepy’ it is not: it is as animated as the cross-section of people who live in it. Some are very old like me, some are still hard at work, and there is a troop of children who keep it all alive. My sister-in-law Elizabeth lives at the top of the village; we telephone each other daily and, like in Mapp and Lucia, often meet for lunch. I open the Old Vic for people to visit on ‘Edensor Day’, which is held as close as possible to 29 June, St Peter’s patronal festival. We hold a village fête in the garden with stalls, teas and races for the children, and the look round my house is popular. Every nook and cranny is on show: the bathrooms, my shoe cupboard, the kitchen with scones fresh from the oven, the downstairs lavatory lined with silver paper and portraits of Elvis, the incubator in the old laundry where chicks are hatched – the lot. One or two customers are disappointed: ‘I came to see the chandeliers and all I found was Habitat.’ What is wrong with Habitat? Anyway, the disappointing lantern was from Conran and is just what I wanted.

  Now that I am ninety, I suppose things ought to slow down but it does not seem to happen. There is life in the Old Vic yet and, far from feeling ‘a lilac relic of bygone days’ (which is how I was described recently by a journalist I have never met), there is rarely a blessed day with nothing written in the diary. I do not feel cut off from the past, the present or the future, and there are innumerable occasions that take me to London or elsewhere for a night or two. Old friends and their children come to stay, as do all my descendants. On Boxing Day 2009 a photograph was taken of me with my then seventeen great-grandchildren. They lined up beside me like so many carriages attached to an engine, in similar formation to Victor Duke and sixteen of his twenty-one grandchildren in a photograph taken in 1931. The differences are interesting: the straight partings, buttoned gaiters and shine on the shoes of the obedient, pre-war children are in contrast to the stockinged feet and tousled hair of my lot. Both Victor Duke and I are holding a baby, but the Duke has a cigarette in his mouth with the ash about to drop on his youngest grandchild.

  Great age is a question of luck not skill and yet you are congratulated or rewarded as if you had done something clever. During the last month of being eighty-nine I had the sort of treats that anyone of any age would dream of. I re
ceived a lifetime achievement award from the Derbyshire tourist board, which delighted me. Stoker and Amanda gave a dinner-dance for 910 guests: pensioners and estate employees with their spouses, from Chatsworth, Bolton Abbey and Lismore. This coincided with the Chatsworth long-service awards when my old associates Alan Shimwell and Henry Coleman and I were given enviable presents (our combined years at Chatsworth added up to nearly 170). The stable yard was tented over for the event, and the Carriage House Restaurant, Jean-Pierre’s Bar and every table in the old covered ride were full of people enjoying themselves. Andrew would have loved it.

  A birthday treat of a different kind was an invitation from the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall to see La Fille Mal Gardée at Covent Garden. I was allowed to bring four guests and took two grandchildren, a great-nephew and his girlfriend. We sat in the Royal Box with our host and hostess, drinking in the atmosphere of the place that I had first visited with Adrian Stokes, and Nanny Blor as chaperone, in 1936. I hope it was the start of a love of the ballet for my grandchildren. The next day was a book launch at Claridges with the best mix of people I have ever seen at such an event. It was given by Tatler and Dior for Penguin’s relaunch of Nancy’s novel Wigs on the Green, first (and last) published in 1935. Such parties did not take place when Nancy was writing and she would have been surprised at the outpouring of admiration for her work. As her literary executor, it gives me pleasure to see how she still makes people laugh in this strange new world we live in.