by Mary Soames
But for a long time I was unconscious of these nuances in our family relationships, and the stars and planets in my child’s universe rolled on their appointed courses without collision.
CHAPTER 3
Sisters and Cousins
MY CHILDHOOD’S HEROINE, AND MY GREATEST FRIEND, WAS Sarah. Both Diana and Randolph were too far distant from me in age—being thirteen and eleven years my elder—to be part of my scheme of things; while they were (mostly) very nice to me (although I was always rather alarmed by Randolph), and I was gratified if they paid attention to me, they inhabited a different world, higher up the slopes of Mount Olympus—the world of grown-ups. Although Sarah was eight years older than I, until she went to boarding school when she was twelve or so she was part of our nursery world, and under the tutelage of Nana; even after that, in the holidays for quite a time she moved easily between drawing room, dining room, and nursery—and indeed, may have found the cosiness of the nursery a welcome refuge from some of the formalities of adult life. I quite simply adored her: she was my great confidante, and the sympathetic and wise recipient of any complaints or puzzlements I had from time to time about the grown-ups in whose complex universe we both moved.
Our favourite game in the winter and spring holidays was “fox hunting.” Both of us were taught to ride at local riding schools, but hunting did not really come our way as children; however, our fertile imaginations transported us to the grandest hunting countries. The rather battered sofa in the nursery at Chartwell had wide upholstered arms, which provided Sarah and me with excellent mounts. Sarah was “Lady Helen,” superbly mounted on her thoroughbred sofa arm, beautiful and immaculate in her riding habit, with top hat and veil surmounting her perfectly coiled chignon—the cynosure of all eyes in the hunting field. Her constant companion, whom she treated with condescension and occasional irritation, was myself—“Mrs. Podgy”: egregiously named, badly turned out, her wispy bun forever escaping from under her bowler hat, Mrs. Podgy (who rode astride) was mounted on a common, coblike sofa arm, consistent with her lower social and financial status. Lady Helen and Mrs. Podgy made a somewhat ill-assorted pair, and Mrs. P. at times had difficulty in keeping up with Lady Helen, as she galloped ahead when the hounds were in full cry, sailing over fences and hedges: however, Mrs. Podgy could be extremely useful should her elegant friend happen to drop her whip, or decide not to jump a five-barred gate and prefer it to be opened for her. Happy hours were thus spent by us in the “hunting field”: Randolph, writing to his mother, waxed positively lyrical about the beauty of Chartwell one springtime, adding: “The weather is very mild—no sun but quite warm. Mary & Sarah however insist on staying in the nursery with all the windows shut.”
In term time, a great treat for me was to be deputed, with Nana, to visit Sarah at her school, North Foreland Lodge at Broadstairs on the Kentish coast, for “exeat” weekends, if our mother could not do so herself. I remember some bitterly cold winter visits: Broadstairs must be one of the coldest places in England! Nana and I would stay at a very cosy bed-and-breakfast called the Dutch Tea Rooms and visit Sarah, or take her out, according to the planned programme. As I myself was a day girl throughout my school career (apart from one term as a weekly boarder), Sarah’s boarding-school life was of great interest to me, and of course I loved meeting her special friends, several of whom would come to stay at Chartwell in the holidays.
I have a clear memory of a notable event I was allowed to share with Sarah. In 1930 Amy Johnson, the pioneer aviator, made history by becoming the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia. The entire country had followed in the press, and through radio broadcasting (then in its infancy), the various stages of her marathon—and, at that time, extremely hazardous—flight, with bated breath: she was the heroine of the hour, and a song had been written in her honour: “Amy, wonderful Amy …,” the words of which we all knew by heart and sang incessantly. A wonderful welcome was prepared for her on her arrival back in this country at Croydon Airport: I don’t know whose idea it was, but Nana took me and Sarah to join the crowds waiting for her. It was a very long wait, and we were quite a long way from where she actually descended from the aircraft which had brought her home—but we cheered ourselves hoarse, and thought it all well worth it.
In 1931, rising seventeen, Sarah left North Foreland Lodge and that autumn went to a fashionable finishing school in Paris, kept by three remarkable Frenchwomen, les Mesdemoiselles Ozanne. By now, of course, our days in the hunting field were long since over, and the thrills and spills of the chase had been superseded by hours of listening to the gramophone: Sarah (whose stage ambitions were just awakening) would moon round singing and improvising dances, while I wound up the gramophone, and supplied her audience and corps de ballet. We quite often got shouted at from above by Papa as we tended to have the volume turned up to maximum. Sarah’s increasingly grown-up wardrobe was a source of wonder and admiration to me, and, of course, a good deal of dressing up went on: she was wonderfully tolerant of this—as she was of my fiddling round with the clutter of makeup on her dressing table. The “Lady Helen” and “Mrs. Podgy” of our hunting days had by now been reincarnated as “Miss Michaila,” the famous dancer and actress, and her faithful (if only fairly competent) secretary, “Miss Smith.”
But although Sarah was as sweet and affectionate to me as ever, the difference in our ages, and the fact that she had now definitely joined the grown-ups, made a gulf too wide to bridge in terms of shared amusements or way of life, and quite naturally she and Diana, five years her elder, became and remained bosom friends, sharing their more mature confidences, plans, hopes, and disappointments. In the run-up to Sarah’s official debut in 1933, Chartwell visitors came to include girls and young men with whom she had made friends on weekend visits and dances, and with whom she would share the delights, vicissitudes, and longueurs of the then essential rite of passage of “coming out” (an expression which, like the adjective gay, has changed its connotation since those days).
I found these new-style visitors a fascinating development, and took a keen interest especially in Sarah’s beaux, among whom I had my especial favourites. I used to make myself popular on the tennis court by ball-boying, being especially obliging if any of my favourites was among the players. One of these was Harry Llewellyn: from Wales, he was a true countryman, an accomplished horseman and keen rider to hounds; he tried to get Sarah to enjoy hunting, but although as “Lady Helen” she had led our nursery field she never took to the real thing. Later, after the war, Harry and his wonderful show jumper Foxhunter would become world-famous. It was he who gave Sarah her beautiful chocolate-brown spaniel called Trouble—very aptly named, as it turned out.
A local friend was William Sidney, the heir to nearby Penshurst Place and the barony of De L’Isle and Dudley. He seemed very nice and mild—“Sweet William,” they all called him. Often when he arrived to see Sarah, she would not be ready (punctuality was never one of her attributes), and she would dispatch me downstairs to entertain him: many years later he would remind me that I used to play the gramophone records for him to while away the time until Sarah appeared. Bill’s mildness belied the qualities which earned him the Victoria Cross on the beaches of Anzio in 1944.
But the “star” among Sarah’s boyfriends as far as I was concerned was Dick Sheepshanks. In a letter to Streetie in November 1933 my mother described all Sarah’s principal young men, and about him she wrote:
Mr Dick Sheepshanks nephew of the Sheepshanks who was Randolph’s Tutor [Housemaster] at Eton. Small dark intelligent grubby bolshy impertinent. A marvellous dancer both ball-room & acrobatic & ‘patter’ dancing [tap dancing]. Very good at games (tennis which pleases me) especially cricket. This one Sarah’s favourite & I think he is rather dangerous. He looks unscrupulous but Sarah says he isn’t. He is employed by Reuter’s News agency.
Dick was a bit older than Sarah’s other friends, dark, rather cynical-looking, and—I thought—utterly fascinating. He was very nice to
me, and though I was only twelve I fell hopelessly in love with him. He demonstrated his left-wing tendencies by refusing to change for dinner; as Sarah recounted:
This was ignored the first time, but the insistence did not go unremarked by my father.
‘Young man,’ he said to Dick. ‘What do you do?’
‘I’m at Reuters, sir.’
The glare softened. ‘Good. What department are you in?’
‘Obituaries, sir,’ he replied, and the family contorted themselves not to laugh.
After a moment’s silence, my father said, ‘Have you got a lot on me?’
Dick replied, ‘Pages and pages, sir.’ They became firm friends.1
In 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, on which he was reporting on the Republican side, Dick was killed by flying shrapnel while travelling in an open jeep with three press colleagues. When I heard the news (I was fifteen) I wept bitterly.
After her “season,” for which she had never had much relish, Sarah embarked on a two-year course in modern dancing at the De Vos School of Dancing, from where she auditioned for and was accepted by the famous impresario C. B. Cochran to be one of his “Young Ladies” for his current show, the revue Follow the Sun, which opened in Manchester just before Christmas 1935. The male star of the show was Vic Oliver; quite soon he and Sarah were in love, and early in the new year they informed Winston and Clementine that they intended to be married. Her parents, not surprisingly, were strongly opposed to the match—Vic, born Victor von Samek, was of Austrian-Jewish extraction, eighteen years older than Sarah, and not yet divorced from his Austrian wife. Their visit to Chartwell was not a success. Sarah confided her love for Vic, and their wish to be married, to me—who, of course, thought it very romantic. I liked Vic at once: then and later he was charming to me, paid me a lot of attention, and gave me very grown-up presents.
Winston and Clementine pressed for a delay, insisting that Sarah must have time to think. Vic went back to America to pursue his theatrical engagements and Sarah, having promised her parents that she would take no sudden action, endured unhappy months of separation, during which the situation introduced an element of strain into her normally loving and easy relationship with her parents. One point Winston stressed dramatically to her was that, quite apart from his and Clementine’s dislike of Vic, he had not at that point acquired American citizenship; if he were to remain an Austrian national, Winston told her, “in three or four years you may be married to the enemy and I shall not be able to protect you.” Sarah gave him her solemn promise that she would not marry Vic until he had become an American citizen.2
At length, realizing that her parents’ opposition to the marriage was absolute, and that Vic had no prospect of coming back to England in the foreseeable future, Sarah decided to go to America and join him. He had sent her a ticket, and Sarah quickly made secret preparations. She did, however, tell me of her plans, because the ship, the Bremen, on which she had booked her voyage, sailed on 15 September—my fourteenth birthday; she trusted me completely, and was deeply concerned at the thought of my shock and dismay when I heard the news (particularly as it would be on my “special day”). I was charged by her to tell our parents that she loved them dearly, and deeply regretted that she had felt compelled to take this course of action. I felt immensely proud that Sarah should confide in me and entrust me with a task (although, it gradually dawned on me, not a very enviable one) in what I regarded as a highly romantic situation, in which I was completely on her side.
Sarah broke the news to her parents in a letter delivered by hand on the morning of the fifteenth: it so happened that Winston was away in France, so Clementine had to face this grievous shock alone. I can clearly remember the events of this day. Sarah had also sent me a letter; and, despite her hectic rush, she had remembered my birthday and sent me presents—a beautiful glass Madonna and child (I have it still) and some rare stamps for my collection. In her letter she wrote:
My darling Mary, Please forgive me for deserting you on your birthday. Please understand—I wish it were any other day. Many many happy returns—and don’t let anyone spoil your birthday. You have been sweet and kind to me—without you some days would have been unbearable … In haste, my love to Miss Smith—so capable and patient.
Sarah—Miss Michaila.
When I was summoned to my mother’s room, I went with considerable foreboding. I found her in a distraught state, with Nana at her side. The scene is vividly fixed in my memory because—although I had on occasion seen my mother very angry or indignant—I had never seen her cry: now she was sobbing uncontrollably, with the fateful letter in her hand, and it shook me to the core. She told me that Sarah had gone to America despite all her promises, and then—seeing me dumbfounded but silent (and my face showing no surprise)—she asked: “Did you know?” I have to confess I mumbled in shamefaced acquiescence—and, judging that the message Sarah had enjoined me to deliver might not be well received, I failed at this juncture to deliver it. Whatever my mother’s feelings about my evident complicity, she never rebuked me. By the afternoon an outward semblance of calm had been restored, and the grown-ups unselfishly devoted themselves to giving me the (as always) lovely birthday party they had planned.
Nearly fifty years later, after Sarah’s death, I would find among her papers a very long letter I had written her describing this scene:
CHARTWELL
26TH OCTOBER 1936
My darling Sarah,
There’s so much to tell you that I hardly know where to begin!
First of all, thank you so much for the lovely Madonna and the stamps, it was so sweet of you to remember my birthday in the midst of all your worries … On my birthday at about eleven, Mummie sent for me; I wondered what it could be; there was no doubt once I got inside the room; I not only smelt one rat, but fifty thousands! And as for cats, why they were slipping out of bags in all directions! Mummie was prancing round, her hair in a turban, her bath towelling dressing gown on, and her face covered with grease! I felt so sorry for her because, she didn’t in the least understand how you could want to marry Vic, or how you could run away, she was completely bewildered, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so broken down with grief. I was so happy to think that you were at last happy; it was sweet of you to say that I comforted you, I felt I couldn’t do much but it was so nice to know that I’d helped …
My present memory of that scene (reassuringly) accords with the account of it I wrote at the time—in all but one respect: now I find it painful to acknowledge the flippant and unsympathetic tone of parts of the description I gave to Sarah of my mother’s distress. Sarah’s long-drawn-out struggle with our parents over her wish to marry Vic, in which I took her part with passionate partisanship, had—I now understand—resulted in my first experience of divided loyalty, and this—combined with normal teenage bolshiness—resulted in my lack of understanding of my parents’ (and particularly of my mother’s) point of view. Looking back now with the benefit of hindsight, and of the close and loving relationship I was to develop with my mother, I realize I later came to forget these adolescent tensions.
Of course, the whole story of Sarah’s dramatic departure “leaked,” and was splashed across the newspapers both here and in America, causing Winston and Clementine further mortification. Randolph was dispatched across the Atlantic to try to remonstrate further with her, and American lawyers were enlisted to investigate Vic’s marital and nationality status. Despite my loyalty to Sarah, I was painfully impressed by this first object lesson in how children can cause intense distress—even when they love them—to their parents.
Sarah got a dancing role in the same show as Vic, and despite the rigours of touring wrote all her news to me. Replying to her on 2 November 1936, I wrote: “I’ve just received your letter—Whoopee! How sweet of you to write to me. If you go on keeping on about how lovely New York is, I shall not stay behind to replace those ‘that failed,’ but fail myself, and come out to you and the Hot Dogs!”
In a later instalment of the same long letter (4 November) I continued:
I’m so happy to think you’re at long last going to be married. I should very much like to send you something, but … it might get lost so easily, so I think I’ll wait now till you come home. When are you likely to? I think you would be received favourably round Christmas; we are all staying here [Chartwell] … and it would be so nice if you brought Vic, and if no one else would talk to him, I and my animals would receive him and help him not to feel lonely. Please come home soon! I do miss you so much … I don’t like staying behind and running messages and telling cooks please will they go to Mrs—, and playing croquet, & having my hair brushed & washed out of my head—where ‘others have failed!’ So buck up & return ‘Sweet dove(s) return’ to the bosom of your bigoted family, there to be bored! I don’t think I’ve got much else to say except that I love you & hope you’ll be happy with all my heart.
With tender love to you both.
Mary. Miss Smith
Sarah and Vic were married that Christmas Eve in City Hall, New York, their witnesses being his lawyer and a cleaning lady. Vic had by that time become an American citizen—so Sarah had kept her promise to her father. In the New Year they returned to England, where they lived in London, and both pursued their stage careers. Sarah was, of course, received with warmth and love by her parents—and both she and Vic with rapture by me. The attitude of the family as a whole was very much to make the best of it, and that bygones should be bygones. Vic was an agreeable family member, and he developed a pleasant relationship with Clementine; but Winston never got to like him.
With Sarah’s departure for America and her marriage, the “nursery” days of our relationship were over; but the love and understanding forged between us in those early years would last, despite our very different characters and the very different courses our lives would take, throughout our lifetimes.
