The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family (42 page)

Sydney decided to return to Swinbrook, reasoning that everyone in that remote area had known Unity from childhood so she was unlikely to be attacked or harmed. She rented the old ‘fishing cottage’ next door to the pub for the summer, and took on a Mrs Timms as a daily. Soon she had acquired some hens and a goat, which gave birth to twins within weeks of purchase. Unity was thrilled, and wrote to Decca about the kids in wavery childish handwriting with grammatical errors. It must have brought a lump to Decca’s throat when she compared it with Unity’s letters before the shooting. Blor came to help with the nursing and after she went home to her family Sydney looked after Unity alone. With dedicated and loving care Unity made limited progress but she remained childlike for the rest of her life. For Sydney it was an unremitting job: Unity’s incontinence meant that her bedlinen had to be washed every day, and as she recovered her mobility she wandered further from home, which, given her trusting simplicity, was often worrying. Old friends and cousins, such as Idden and Rudbin and the Baileys, visited along with Tom and all the sisters except Decca.

Decca had been very anxious. Like the Redesdales in England, she had been badgered by American reporters offering a thousand dollars and more for ‘the inside story’ on Unity. Poor as the Romillys were, and in some ways unscrupulous, and much as they loathed Fascism, Decca’s love for Unity prevented her speaking to the press. One magazine she turned down ran a story anyway: ‘I see they have an article about the “fabulous mansion at High Wycombe”,’ Decca wrote to Sydney, ‘and pointing out that Farve is one of Princess Marina’s closest friends and talking of Winston Churchill as Bobo’s uncle. One journalist wrote that I had said, “Unity was always a wild youngster,”
¹²
(I hadn’t even seen him) and next day it was in headlines in every US paper.’
¹³

From Sydney she learned that six months after the shooting the doctors expected Unity to go on making limited progress for up to eighteen months but that she would never recover completely. She was stuck at a mental age of eleven or twelve. Sydney tried to remain optimistic, treating the injury like concussion, and reminding everyone how long Tom had taken to recover from concussion caused by a car crash some years earlier. However, she admitted that Unity’s personality was changed: ‘That old insouciance has rather gone,’ she wrote, ‘and she is so much more affectionate and sweet to everyone and there is something really so pathetic about her, poor darling.’
¹⁴
At Unity’s request, Sydney arranged for her to see a Christian Science practitioner. From this point on Unity displayed the obsessional fixation on religion that can often be a characteristic of mental illness.
The Daily Express
, however, chose to link Unity’s interest in Christian Science with the Nazi movement, pointing out that ‘several of the leading Nazis’ were strong Christian Scientists. But Unity was interested in many religions and swung from one to another, depending on whom she had last spoken with.

The papers continued to run stories on Unity almost weekly and David was often bothered for ‘a statement’ and referred to in reports as a supporter of Hitler. Finally he could bear it no longer and on 9 March he wrote to
The Times
:

My only crime, if it be a crime, so far as I know, is that I am one of many thousands in this country who thought that our best interests would be served by a friendly understanding with Germany . . . though now proved to be wrong, I was, at any rate, in good company . . . I resent . . . the undoubted undercurrent of suspicion and resentment caused by publicity to which there is no right of reply . . . I am constantly described as a Fascist. I am not, never have been, and am not likely to become a Fascist.
¹⁵

To spare Unity potential hurt the newspapers were hidden away from her, even though, Sydney wrote to Decca, she could only read a few lines if she found them, for she had the limited attention span of a child, her concentration was gone and she suffered blackouts.

The old life in England seemed far away to Decca and Esmond. He wrote a series of brilliantly simple, though obviously subjective, essays on the political situation and the Cliveden set, for journals such as the
Commentator
, but though he frequently criticized England and its administration, he never wavered from his intention to join up when it became necessary. His brother Giles was already serving in the British Army and had been sent with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to France, but while everybody waited for the Phoney War to end, he and Decca were determined to enjoy what they knew was a limited period of freedom.

Driving to New Orleans they made a mistake in navigation and ended up in Miami. There, by virtue of invented backgrounds, Decca found a job on a
faux
-jewellery counter in a drug store at fourteen dollars a week, and Esmond, ‘known for his inability to carry a teaspoon from one room to the next’, was employed by a restaurant based on his ‘long experience’ as a waiter at the Savoy Grill. He lasted one evening, during which he soaked his customers with wine, dripped tomato sauce on their clothes and ended up crashing spectacularly into a heavily laden fellow waiter leaving the kitchen with a tray of food. He was asked to leave but such was his personal charm that he talked the owners into letting him open a cocktail bar at a wage of five dollars a week plus meals and tips.
¹⁶

The bar was an immediate success but the Miami police called round and closed the restaurant down because, they said, the bar was being operated illegally. To reopen the owners needed a liquor licence, which would cost a thousand dollars for the season. The Italian family who owned the Roma restaurant were crushed by what seemed the end of their livelihood, but Esmond struck a deal with them: he would raise the money, he said, in exchange for a full partnership in the restaurant. They agreed, probably thinking he was mad. If he could raise that sort of money why would he work for five dollars a week? Even Decca doubted Esmond in this case, especially when he told her his plan. He would use their small savings to fly back to Washington, DC, and see Eugene Meyer and talk him into lending them the money. In Decca’s experience rich people got that way by not lending money without equity so she wrote immediately to Tom asking him to transmit to her the three hundred pounds in her account at Drummonds, proceeds of the sale of some shares David had given her. This, she thought, would pay off Mr Meyer if he agreed to the loan, but Tom could not comply with the request due to currency regulations.

Esmond’s interview with Eugene Meyer was brief. He described the venture and launched into an explanation of the exchange rate between English pounds and American dollars, which Mr Meyer cut across with the remark, ‘Yes, Esmond, I happen to know about the exchange rate.’ Then he leaned back in his chair and said, ‘A thousand dollars. Yes, I think I can lend you a thousand dollars.’ Esmond was so bemused at not having to trot out his brilliant arguments that all he could think of to say was, ‘Oh! Well, I hope it won’t leave you short.’ Collapse of stout party: Mr Meyer thought the remark hilarious and wrote out a cheque on the spot.
¹⁷

Decca resigned from her drugstore job to help Esmond run the bar. They became part of the Italian family and if Decca thought, What would
Muv
think? when she had to eject a drunken woman from the restaurant powder room, it was all part of the fun of building their business. It seemed never to have crossed their minds that ownership of a business might carry a whiff of capitalism, and they cheerfully quizzed customers about their politics while always strongly espousing the left. It was an enormously happy time for them: young, bright and successful they managed to put the war out of their minds. ‘We spend the mornings on the beach,’ she wrote to Sydney, ‘and the rest of the time eating up the delicious Italian food.’ To her great surprise she met Harry Oakes in Miami, the man who had made his millions at Swastika. She had heard of his good fortune all her life, whenever David talked about the gold mine. To meet him was, she thought, an
extraordinary
coincidence.

The Phoney War ended suddenly, in May 1940, as Hitler’s troops swept victoriously through the Low Countries and crossed into France. On 10 May Chamberlain announced his resignation and Churchill was asked to form an all-party coalition government. The BEF was forced to retreat until there was only the English Channel at their backs, and were rescued by the miracle of a massive fleet of small boats ferrying back and forth from Dunkirk.

Decca believed that Esmond changed a lot during the eighteen months they spent in the USA, that he had outgrown his automatic adolescent rebellion against any form of authority. He was steadier and more serious. There was only one aim in his life now, and that was the permanent defeat of Fascism. News from home was bad. Esmond’s father died suddenly on 6 May. His brother Giles was missing in the fighting, believed to have been taken prisoner at Dunkirk. Nellie wrote to tell him that Aunt Clemmie had come for the funeral, and that Uncle Winston rang her to say that Holland and Belgium had been invaded. ‘Esmond,’ she wrote, ‘if it is your own sincere conviction not to come home there is nothing more to say – but if Decca is holding you back from your country in her hour of anguish remember Uncle Winston’s words, “If Britain lives a thousand years . . . this will be her finest hour.”’
¹⁸
Suddenly Europe loomed over them again.

They sold the bar, making a small profit after settling the loan, and set off for Washington, DC, where Esmond intended to join the Canadian Royal Air Force and volunteer to serve in Europe, even though, as he told Decca, ‘I’ll probably find myself being commanded by one of your ghastly relations.’
¹⁹
He suggested that she should enrol in a stenographer’s class while he was away. They both knew it was going to be tough and lonely for her with him gone. Learning shorthand and typing would be occupation for her and enable her to earn a living, as typists were always in demand. As for accommodation, Esmond had this worked out, too. They called on the Durrs and, while Decca was engaged in heated conversation with Cliff, he slipped into the kitchen to ask Virginia if Decca could stay with them after he left. ‘I’m sure she will be so lonely. If you could just keep her for the weekend I can’t tell you how much I would appreciate it.’
²⁰
She told him she was going away that weekend to a Democratic convention but agreed that Decca should go with her, to take her mind off Esmond’s departure for an RCAF training depot at Halifax, Nova Scotia. ‘Within days,’ Virginia wrote, ‘we had become devoted to Decca.’ They referred to her jokingly as ‘our refugee’ and she fitted very well into the untidy mêlée of the extended family, pets and stray visitors that peopled the farmhouse. Decca wrote to Esmond, ‘Virginia has very kindly – entirely due to you, you clever old thing – asked me to stay as long as I want, but of course if there’s any chance of seeing you I could scram North in a second.’
²¹
In the event Decca ended up living with the Durrs for two and a half years, and Virginia always said that Esmond had had the whole thing worked out from the start.

On the journey to Washington the Romillys had stopped off at New Orleans for a two-week holiday. They had wanted to visit the city since they had taken the wrong turning that led them to Miami. Arriving after dark they found a small hotel in the French quarter, which offered rates that were half what was asked by other hotels. A few days later they discovered the reason for the low price: it was a brothel. This discovery amused rather than worried them for they were on a second honeymoon and it was a romantic interlude, emotions heightened by their imminent parting. ‘Actually while the rate-per-room was listed as per night, one was expected to get out after a couple of hours,’ Decca explained, ‘to make room for the next people. However we stuck it out for the 2 weeks, much to the annoyance of the nice Madame . . .’
²²
The only thing that spoiled the interlude for Decca was the ‘vile’ attitude of the white population to the blacks: ‘I found them extremely depressing,’ she wrote.
²³

Although Esmond was not aware of it, Decca had plans of her own. She knew that Esmond would consider it foolhardy to encumber herself with a child at such a time, but she was determined to conceive before he left her. Within a month of Esmond’s departure for Canada, Decca knew she had been successful. Her baby was due early the following year. During the summer the Romillys wrote to and telephoned each other several times a week. Their letters, preserved today in the library of Ohio State University,
²⁴
not only reveal the deep love they felt for each other (‘Darlingest Angel . . . I have missed you so much . . . it’s been like a prolonged dull kind of stomach ache,’ Esmond wrote), but also that Decca could be as funny and sparkling as Nancy. Telling Esmond how she and the Durrs had played ‘the Marking Game’, where players allot marks out of ten to the subject under discussion, she wrote: ‘Va [Virginia] fell on it as a tiger on a piece of juicy meat. I can see we’ll be playing it constantly . . . In spite of the fact that Virginia, Ann and Mrs F were marking Cliff 10 for nearly everything, and Ann was trying to sabotage you and me with low marks, you came out top for Brains, Force and Sex Appeal. We tied with a low of 18 out of a possible 40 for Sweetness.’
²⁵
She referred to Esmond’s camp as ‘Camp Boredom’ and her letters were sprinkled with Mitford-speak.