Before he left England Randolph had been full of good intentions, telling Pam that his posting would mean they could live inexpensively, enabling them to pay off all his debts and even to save. Believing this, and hoping it was a new start for them, Pam lived as frugally as she could. There was no central heating in the chilly old rectory and it was bitterly cold that winter. She lived mostly in the kitchen, which was kept warm for the baby and his nurse, and wore a coat elsewhere in the house. She often went to bed at 6.30 to save on heating bills. She invited Diana Sandys to live with her to share costs, but there was hardly time for this to work out because a month or so after Randolph sailed Pam received a cable from him at Cape Town in which he confessed that he had lost £3000 gambling during the voyage. Unlike other debts, gambling debts to brother officers were debts of honour and must be paid as soon as possible. He instructed her to pay whatever she could at once, and to start paying off the balance at £30 a month to his various creditors from the annual £1500 salary that Lord Beaverbrook was continuing to pay him.
For twenty-year-old Pam, who suspected she might be pregnant again, it was a massive blow. For the past year she had lived with Randolph’s profligate spending on tailoring, gambling, entertaining and mess bills. ‘It simply never occurred to him to budget; if he saw or thought of something he wanted, he got it, did it, gambled on it. Pam had been brought up by my mother, who insisted that every bill must be paid immediately, and she had never had an overdraft,’ Pam’s brother Eddie recalled. ‘Randolph thought that paying debts was an awful waste of money.’5 Evelyn Waugh reported to his wife that Randolph had heard back from Pam via a letter carried out by a diplomat friend that she was ‘very vexed with him’.6 It is no exaggeration to say that Pam regarded debt as shameful. Winston had bailed Randolph out several times in the previous year because she had gone to him in tears. Now, not only did she shrink from taking this massive problem to him at a time when she knew he was under almost impossible pressures, but Randolph had ordered her not to. She was too humiliated to approach her own father. Instead, she went to Max Beaverbrook, one of little Winston’s godfathers, and tearfully explained her predicament.
Beaverbrook was as busy as Churchill, in fact; without his colossal drive and dynamic leadership at the Ministry of Supply, the Battle of Britain would never have been won. Like Churchill he was the right man in the right place at the right time, and within a few months of taking over the ministry he had increased the number of operational aircraft by 65 per cent. In 1939 there were 430 operational Spitfires and 500 Hurricanes; in 1940 under ‘the Beaver’, 1500 Spitfires and 2580 Hurricanes were available to fly.7 Before he took office there was no formal policy for aircraft repair, and when aircraft were damaged they were scrapped. Within twelve months under Beaverbrook, the RAF repaired and restored 9000 damaged aircraft and reclaimed 12,000 engines, restoring them to service.
Beaverbrook had not wanted office; he felt he had given his best to the War Cabinet during 1914–18, and although his service then had led to a peerage he felt he had been badly treated afterwards by the then government. But Churchill wheedled, begged and even bullied him to lend an active hand; and once he joined, Beaverbrook drove himself as hard as Churchill did, while nightly waiting anxiously for the phone call from his fighter-pilot son, young Max, to say he was safe. This, and his overt Christianity, contributed an unexpected human element to the dynamic Beaverbrook, who was feared by many. He commented to a friend at this time: ‘How many of our young men do you think are swimming in the sea tonight? How many of those pilots are on their rafts in the Ocean? Think of the sufferings they endure. Think of the hunger. Think of the lack of sleep and lack of hope. Crucifixion is an easier death than the death those young men have sometimes to die.’8
That Beaverbrook found time to see Churchill’s daughter-in-law on a personal matter is remarkable. Pam was absolutely frank with him, and asked if he would advance her enough of Randolph’s salary to allow her to pay off the debts. Beaverbrook knew Randolph well, possibly better than Pam did, and he offered to write her a personal cheque as an outright gift; but he could not advance her a penny of Randolph’s salary, he said. Pam knew what her mother would advise: that she could not accept such a gift from any man outside the family.* But she discussed options with Beaverbrook and came to an arrangement with him. He would find her a job in the London office of the Ministry of Supply. Baby Winston and his nurse would move into Cherkley, Beaverbrook’s chateau-style country house between Leatherhead and Dorking in Surrey. Pam would sublet the rectory at Ickleford, hopefully at a profit, and find herself somewhere cheap to live in London (many people had moved from London and were only too anxious to let their flats and houses). She hoped that by adopting this solution she would prevent Randolph’s parents, of whom she was very fond, from finding out what had really happened. Then she went home and sold all her wedding presents, including some diamond earrings that had been a gift from her friend Popsie Winn’s mother Lady Baillie, a diamond bracelet, and other jewellery given her by her mother.
With Beaverbrook’s help she started working in a department that organised temporary hostel accommodation for groups of factory workers who were moved around the country to meet the exigencies of the moment. Initially she earned £12 a week – a sum that sounds small now, but most male factory workers with families to keep were paid between £4 and £8 a week at the time. The rectory was sublet at £3 a week to a nursery school that had been bombed out of London, and Pam rented a room at the Dorchester Hotel, at roof level. This was not quite as lavish as it sounds, at the relatively low cost of £6 a week for bed and breakfast (breakfast became her main meal of the day); few people wanted to live on the top floor of any tall building, with bombs dropping every night. She ate lunch in the office canteen, and was taken out most evenings or attended parties, quite a few of which were held at the Dorchester. Once a week she dined at No. 10, and she was able to save from her wages so that all Randolph’s salary, together with occasional cheques from the Churchills and the Digbys, went to paying off his gambling debt.
Eventually, after some years, the debt was cleared, but there was a hidden cost. Years later she would tell her son that she realised very clearly during this period that if there was going to be any security for her and her baby she was going to have to provide it herself.9 And she was never to forgive Randolph; eighteen months into their marriage he had already permanently forfeited all the respect and admiration Pam previously felt for him. The marriage was as good as over.
During this crisis Pam either miscarried or perhaps there was no pregnancy; there is no evidence either way. She had told almost no one and she was certainly at Chequers most weekends at that period. Jock Colville mentions her there in his diaries but he does not comment on her looking unwell or worried. Her angry letters* to Randolph at the time have not survived – and perhaps this is not surprising since they are unlikely to have been complimentary. The extent of Pam’s distress, and her distaste for his gambling and running up debts, had probably not fully registered with Randolph, although it is true he was both annoyed with himself and remorseful that he had lost quite so much money in such a short time.
This chain of events and Pam’s mood coincided with the arrival in London of President Roosevelt’s personal representative on shipping and supply questions, Averell Harriman. The urbane and gentlemanly Harriman arrived in London on 18 March and the following day he dined at No. 10. After that he was a frequent visitor at Chequers and 10 Downing Street. Within a week of his arrival, a few days after her twenty-first birthday on 20 March, he was introduced to Pam at the weekly dinner party held by Emerald Cunard in her suite at the Dorchester. Harriman had a suite on the first floor and Pam was still living on the unpopular top floor. Pam would later recall her first impressions of him: ‘Averell was just beautiful. He was absolutely marvellous looking, with his raven black hair. Very athletic, very tan[ned], very healthy.’10 Harriman was slightly older than Pam’s father, but, as mentioned earlie
r, Pam was always drawn to older men. The pair fell in love soon after their first meeting, despite the fact that both were married.
Wartime romances were two a penny, and were usually short-lived; all the old moral ground rules were swept aside amid the ‘live now while you still can’ atmosphere and heightened emotions caused by frequent partings and uncertainty. Pam was still angry with Randolph for ruining her dreams of a cosy family home for little Winston. Averell had outgrown his wife (though in fact she was already involved with someone else, and was not concerned whether Averell strayed, provided he was circumspect about it). A surprising number of their acquaintances knew about Pam and Averell’s affair from the start, and it appears that they were not very discreet.
Their meeting had coincided with the heaviest bombing raids of the war, and Averell offered Pam the protection of a sofa in his suite should she, in extremis, need it. This was not unusual; those living on the top floors often retreated to camp-beds in the public rooms on the ground floor, or asked one of the lower-floor guests occupying suites to let them camp there for the night. On the night of 16 April London suffered the worst raid ever, when 450 enemy planes rained bombs down on the city. The following morning, after breakfast, Jock Colville came upon Pam and Averell wandering along examining the devastation in the glass-littered streets near Whitehall. Diplomatically he made no comment in his diary, about them being together so early in the day, but it would have been difficult to avoid hearing the gossip and he had ample opportunity to watch them together, given that Pamela was a regular visitor to No. 10 and Chequers, often at the same time as Harriman. Winston liked both of them; with Harriman he could plan and plot to bring America into the war; and Pam petted him and called him Papa and patiently played bezique with him.
That same week Winston had been ‘terribly upset’, Colville reported,11 when Diana’s husband Duncan Sandys was injured in a bad car smash, and for some days it appeared that he might have to have a foot amputated. It evoked for Winston memories of his mother’s death from an amputation.
That spring shortly before Averell and Pam met, Clarissa, the daughter of Jack and Goonie, abandoned her academic life at Oxford and moved to London. Clarissa had known Pam at boarding school when Pam was a plump, horse-mad redhead. Now, like Pam, she took advantage of the bargain rates for rooms on the top floor of the Dorchester during the worst days of the Blitz. The two young women had been debutantes together in 1938 and had run into each other frequently at parties and balls ever since, but Clarissa was not a close friend; nor was she a particular admirer of Pam. Years later she was amazed to learn from Hugh Fraser, a man she admired immensely, that he and Pam had planned to elope in 1938. ‘He was one of the more sophisticated and dashing of the young men at parties in 1938, the year I came out,’ Clarissa stated, while recalling that Pam was not regarded by ‘most of the boys’ as being particularly eligible.12 It was Hugh Fraser who had nicknamed Clarissa ‘Garbo’, and indeed her high cheekbones and wistful beauty instinctively drew photographer Cecil Beaton to her and she became a favourite subject of his. But by 1941 when they were both Dorchester dwellers, Pam too had become svelte and glamorous; ‘She combined a canny eye for chances with a genuinely warm heart. At any rate she was consistently kind and thoughtful to me, but she had no sense of humour,’ Clarissa noted.13 She recalled that the affair with Averell began in mid-April. ‘One night Pam said she was fixing up to see Averell who had a suite on the 1st floor (we had always gone down to the foyer when an air raid was on)…This was when the affair began. A few weeks later she was showing me diamond bracelets.’14
In June, Kathy Harriman, Averell’s daughter by a previous marriage, arrived in London having flown via Lisbon. Initially, Kathy stayed in her father’s suite, but she and Pamela became friends and decided to rent a small house together and share costs. Kathy wrote to her stepmother, Averell’s present wife, about Pam, praising her as ‘a wonderful girl…my age, but one of the wisest young girls I’ve ever met – knows everything about everything, political and otherwise.’15 They rented a flat in Grosvenor Square and a tiny cottage near Cherkley so that Pam could see more of baby Winston at weekends. Winston and Clementine were delighted that Pam had a friend to keep her company, and when Kathy subsequently discovered that Pam and her father were lovers she accepted it matter-of-factly.
‘It seems a pity,’ Churchill wrote innocently to Randolph in June, when he told him that Pam and Kathy were sharing a house, ‘that the house at Ickleford is not available. Still, you are getting a very good rent [for it]…I see Pamela from time to time, and she gives me very good accounts of Winston. I have not seen him as he is living in Max’s domains.’ He added that he thought the baby safer where he was and went on to the main purpose of his letter, to introduce Averell Harriman to Randolph and ask Randolph to ‘look after him’ during Harriman’s forthcoming visit to Cairo. When Evelyn Waugh returned briefly to England he reported back to Randolph that he had seen Pam in London, ‘her kitten eyes full of innocent fun. She is showing exemplary patience with the Americans who now have the place in England which the Germans had in Italy in 1939.’16
Randolph was not enjoying himself in Egypt, having been told early on in no uncertain terms by a brother officer that he was heartily disliked by them all. Waugh wrote how Randolph had cried over this, for he had assumed he was a popular member of the regiment. However, Randolph was delighted by Averell Harriman; not only was he a good companion but he brought news of his parents and Pamela to him at a time when his family seemed a long way off. When he returned to London Averell carried two letters from Randolph, one of them to Pam, which read ingenuously: ‘I found [Harriman] absolutely charming & it was lovely to be able to hear so much news of you & all my friends. He spoke delightfully about you & I fear that I have a serious rival.’ Randolph had a long-term mistress and several nightclub hostess lovers throughout his time in Cairo, so this exchange does not carry the pathos it might otherwise have done. To his father he wrote:
It was indeed kind of you to suggest that I should be attached to the Harriman Mission. I have thereby not only obtained all the latest news of you and Pamela, and all my friends in London, but have also had a wonderful opportunity of learning about things out here. I have been tremendously impressed by Harriman, and can well understand the regard you have for him. In 10 very full and active days he has definitely become my favourite American…He got down to work out here with amazing ease and sure-footedness and has won the confidence of everyone…Thank you so much for your cheque [Churchill had sent him £100] & also for the very generous help you extended to Pamela. That has been a great help.17
Later that year Randolph was promoted to the rank of major and placed in charge of the press and Army information department at GHQ in Cairo, where he lived at the famous Shepheard’s Hotel. Here his cousin (and his future biographer) Anita Leslie, who was serving with an ambulance company, saw him often. She recalled:
At one time he appeared at our camp with a flag flying from his car which only full Colonels were allowed…. One didn’t like to ask too much about his postings…it was not long before my peppery chief, a former officer of the Army of India, was bursting into my room with cries of “This damned fellow Randolph Churchill – your friend! What the devil does he think he’s doing?” He always remembered to salute senior officers but he could not cease trumpeting his opinions and older men could be seen turning purple with anger when he held forth in Shepheard’s Hotel.
Anita observed that no one wanted to upset Winston, but it was extremely difficult for anyone to find a genuinely useful role for Randolph, given that he was generally held to be ‘insufferable’.18
In August 1941 Winston paid his first wartime visit to the USA. Before he left, Goonie had died of cancer. She was much loved by everyone, and Clementine was especially hard-hit to lose her closest and most trusted confidante. This blow was followed closely by the breakdown of Sarah’s marriage to Vic Oliver, which was a shock. While they had been opposed to
the marriage at the start, both Winston and Clementine had come to respect this talented and gentlemanly son-in-law. Sarah claimed the break-up was triggered when Vic was ordered back to the USA by the American government. He was warned that non-compliance would mean losing his American citizenship, but when she refused to go with him, Vic stayed on, waiting and hoping Sarah would change her mind. In fact he remained throughout the war, and the simple truth was that Sarah had fallen out of love with him. She later claimed that the only favour she ever requested of her father was to ask him to arrange for her to join the services immediately, so that she could separate from Vic without it appearing obvious they had split up. Churchill had been ‘flabbergasted’, Clementine ‘dismayed’, and eighteen-year-old Mary (who had recently become informally engaged) wept when Sarah told them she was leaving Vic. Sarah was in the WAAF within forty-eight hours, which provided just the smokescreen she sought.
They were a high-profile couple and for today’s media would have been A-list celebrities – Sarah because of her father, and Vic because he was not only a top West End star but also had become nationally popular via his regular appearances as a comedian on some of BBC radio’s most popular shows, such as Hi Gang! He was a classically trained violinist, but on Workers’ Playtime his act involved playing the violin tunelessly over a fast comic patter delivered in his unmistakable Austrian accent (a precedent for Victor Borge’s act some time later). He also conducted a series of wartime light-classical concerts in the southern counties. But perhaps the best measure of his popularity was that he was the first guest on what would become BBC radio’s longest-running programme, Desert Island Discs,* in January 1942. He was always aware that as a well known Jew his name was on the Nazi blacklist should Britain be invaded, but his love for Sarah and the fact that several close relatives were interned in Belsen persuaded him to stay on in England, helping the war effort in the best way he knew – boosting morale.
The Churchills Page 49
