1 H i g h l i g h t s

  

Chapter 1

 Highlights 

 My first memory, aged five, was of a large white house with green shutters and a big garden.   It had long creepy passages, enormous rooms pretty bare of furniture, and I always thought it was haunted.

My father at that time was working as an actor and film producer at Pine Wood studios.  He left early every morning; a chauffeur picked him up and dropped him back in the evening.  Most of my early childhood my mother was absent. She had met a diplomat on the train from Reading to London and went off to live with him in Paris. She stayed at the George V Hotel. 

Dad’s girlfriend at the time was Margaret Lockwood a well-known film star whom I hated.  When we were out in the garden she would find a piece of long wheatgrass, wind it into my hair and then pull.  It hurt. But Dad never said anything.

We had various members of staff in this house, a butler called Welfare, and a cook called Mrs. Mason.  Mrs. Mason had two children much the same age as my sister and I but we were not allowed to play with them, my mother said when she was there.   And we had darling nanny.  Agnes Ellen Turner.  Nanny was really my mother.  I certainly think of her as such, she loved me and she was always safely there.  She wrote to me at school and sent me toffees and books by Geogette Heyer.  She was my first love.

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I remember Welfare, the butler, who  polished  things all day. He seemed to live in a cupboard and wore a green beige apron which came right down to the floor. There was always something to do, an abundance of silver ornaments for the dining room table and beautiful crystal glasses to be cleaned.   I think his day started about six o’clock in the morning and I never saw him leave the cupboard.

 I was sent to my first boarding school, Guildsborough Lodge, at the age of seven where I was very unhappy. Then I went to numerous other boarding schools including a convent in Paris.  The convent made Dothboys Hall from Jane Eyre seem luxurious.  I was in a dormitory of twenty six, a nun at each end of the row.  All these places were pretty horrific until I was sent to Heathfield School in Ascot.  This famous school was the Alma Mata of many well-known women including Princess Alexandra and Edwina Sandys, Sir Winston Churchill’s granddaughter.  She became a good friend of mine.  Most of the girls parents had titles, quite a few had titles of their own.   My Irish grandmother paid for me to go there so that I could meet  and make friends with girls from aristocratic homes.  Which I did.

In 1957 I became a debutante, and I write about that at some length later on in the story.  Suffice to say the whole procedure was  a failure, not because I had hated it, because I did,  but no one had proposed marriage to me.  I was, as it were, on the shelf.  At seventeen.

At twenty one I married a public school boy and went to live in a large manor house in the new Forest. And I lived a rich, grand and spoilt life.   I had a part-time cook and two dailies, plus a gardener.  My husband organised everything and I had little idea of how anything practical worked. I didn’t pay the bills or call any workman who might be needed. Nor did I know how the other half lived.  

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My great friend, Fiona, Lady Montagu of Beaulieu, who lived at Palace House close to Ipley Manor where I lived,  and I, often talked of how good it would be to be free, to be single again.   I went to some incredible dinner parties in Palace House where I met many celebrities of the day. For instance, Tommy Steele, who was very nice and friendly and Diana Dors, plus her two lovers often visited.  She was very lively and great fun.   The butler brought round pot after dinner and I tried it once.  For me it made everything much brighter but I wouldn’t ever try it again. I smoked cigarettes, which, at that time, was what I liked.   Subsequently, of course,  I got lung cancer.

But with all the material things anyone could want I wasn’t happy.  I had a fast car, jewellery and a mink coat, and I should have been happy but I wasn’t.  I read somewhere that Princess Diana said she had everything and nothing which I totally relate to, because without the one thing that I think brings happiness is being loved and having someone to love.  My husband was away in London most of the week and I felt lonely and unloved.   My children went to boarding school and the house felt empty when they had gone.  

When I made my getaway, in a somewhat frail state of health and mind, I faced not only the prospect of complete and unaccustomed solitude, but also, I had to learn about very basic tasks that up until then my husband had dealt with.

Living alone, though the prospect may be daunting, can be a state you learn to delight in. It needs self-discipline, imagination, a stock of resources and, if possible, help from a few friends. The process of adjustment is full of unseen hazards, mysteries, disappointments and rewards: but it is negotiable. 

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I would like to think these small tales of my own journey through the maze might give some encouragement to others who are bent on setting forth in the hope of finding the answers too.

So after much thought and agonizing I decided in 1982 that I had 

to leave and start again on my own.  There had to be more to  life 

than this.   It was a very difficult decision as I had little or no money 

but knew that we only have one life and mine had to be as good 

as I could make it.

 

And I left for Oxford.

 

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