A Year to Remember Read online

  That was in November 1930. I had not seen Betty and Theodora since.

  Meeting them at the Royal Garden Party was a reunion and it proved to be the beginning of a new deep friendship with the two, with Betty in particular. When I had met her first, I had had that quick feeling of recognition that I have nearly always had when I have met a woman who is likely to mean something to me. A very slight flicker, though. Now seeing her a year later with all the difference that a year can make in a young girl, seeing her smile under a wide floppy hat, I felt that flicker again only this time much more strongly. Something had begun.

  There were three chairs vacant in the shade. We sat on them. The talk moved easily, intimately. ‘When are you coming to tea with us again?’ asked Theodora.

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘Take out your diary and tell us when,’ she said.

  ‘Alas, I leave for Villefranche tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘What are you doing this evening?’ Betty asked.

  ‘I’m dining with A. D. Peters.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘Victor Gollancz is giving a party.’

  ‘We’re going to it.’

  ‘Then we’ll meet there.’

  Peters was at that time living in Southwick Street. It was a small dinner, a pre-party dinner. It was one of those occasions that means little at the time, but acquire significance in the light of what is to happen later. I recall this dinner party in particular because it was the last time that I was to dine with the Peters’ as a team. Their marriage broke up that autumn.

  There was nothing that evening to suggest that their life together was not a cordial one. I was very fond of his wife Helen; I had been present when they met, in March 1920, at dinner at W. L. George’s. She was not particularly pretty, though she was nice looking. She had a supple figure, but what struck me about her most was the way she gesticulated as she talked. She had fascinating wrists. It had been a foggy night and Peters had seen her home. Early the following summer, he brought her to the Hampstead Cricket Ground to watch a game in which we both were playing. A man like Peters who tended to divide up his life in water-tight compartments did not bring a woman to watch cricket unless he had designs. I was not surprised when they married in the autumn.

  I was to see as much of them as I was of any couple during the twenties; I was always cheered at a party when I saw them there. They spread conviviality. They were a team. I imagine that she must have been helpful to him professionally. He was reserved. He found it difficult to be encouraging. His phlegmatic manner was most effective when things were going badly. I would think, ‘I have a lot to get off my chest. I must have a long, long talk with Peters’. I would begin to pour out my problems. He would sit like a great Buddha, saying nothing. In face of his silence I would dry up slowly. I thought I had enough material to last half an hour. I would find I had finished within five minutes. He would stir in his chair. ‘I don’t think you’ve anything to worry about,’ he would say. ‘I guess you want a change of air. Why not take ten days in Nice? Cassell’s would advance you fifty pounds, I’m sure. If they won’t, I can.’

  He was wonderful when things were going badly, but he was not encouraging when the wheel of fortune turned. Enthusiasm was not his long suit. That was where Helen was invaluable. She would give his clients the sense of being appreciated that Peters often failed to do. I remember her saying to me in 1927 when I had returned from a trip round the world, ‘Peter was really excited by those stories you sent back from Siam. He said “This trip has made Alec a new writer.” ‘ It was so exactly what I needed to hear. I imagine that she filled the same role for others of his clients. On this particular evening, she and Peters seemed as pleased as ever with each other: one in a long succession of such evenings.

  The other special reason that I have for remembering that party is that I met A. J. Cronin. He had just published Hatter’s Castle. It was having an immense success. He was a man of thirty-five who only a year before had abandoned medicine – in which he was having a distinguished career. He was married with, at that time, two children. He had run an immense risk in giving up his practice. He must have had supreme self-confidence. I would have expected him to have an overbearing ‘after all I told you so’ manner. He could not have been more different. He was tall, handsome; he had a presence that must have given him a good bedside manner. But what struck me most about him was his modesty. It was not in any way, a diffidence. It was an unassumingness. He gave himself no airs, when it would have been very natural if he had. I hoped that I should see a good deal of him. But as it happened I only saw him once more, for a brief moment at one of Heinemann’s big parties.

  He has now made his home in Switzerland, after spending several years in the U.S.A. He was there during the war; and possibly he may directly afterwards have had qualms about returning to a changed England, as did several actors who had spent the war in Hollywood. There was at that time a captious atmosphere of self-righteousness about some Britons who themselves had had no opportunity of doing anything but stay where they already were. They argued that any Briton who was not sent abroad on His Majesty’s Service, should make his contribution to the war effort, inside his own country. In Cronin’s case it was argued that as he had been a doctor, he should have put his medical skill at his country’s service. This was a foolish argument. Cronin had retired ten years earlier. He would be out of touch with the latest ideas; his eye would be out, his hand would be out. He would be unlikely to receive an important appointment; the mandarins of the medical profession had not forgiven him for The Citadel. He would almost certainly have been found employment of some kind, but it would not have been of the kind he would have received had he remained a practicising surgeon through the 30s; of course, it would have been work of national importance, and it would have been performed in uniform. But in 1950 he had thought that writing not medicine was his true bent, and he was entitled to go on thinking that in 1959.

  In World War I, it had been felt by the young that there was no alternative to front-line service. Raymond Asquith declined a staff appointment, because he felt that he could not desert his troops and sit at a desk behind the lines in comparative safety. He was honoured for his refusal. In the second war, with commando raids and saturation bombing, there was no such thing as ‘comparative safety’. Moreover it was recognised that there were such things as ‘a reserved occupation’. Schoolmastering for instance. In the first war the youth of the nation suffered through sitting under old and inefficient teachers. Not so in the second war. In 1959 authorship, too, was considered a reserved occupation. Many British writers found employment in some form or other of publicity and propaganda, and, not surprisingly in view of the small number of writers who are able to support themselves by their pens alone, welcomed the opportunity of taking a salaried post. I myself, as a lieutenant in the Regular Army Reserve of officers was recalled to my regiment in the first week of the war. I was glad to take a long breather in mid-stream. But if a writer felt himself capable of continuing his career of authorship during the war, he was entitled to do so, because writing is in itself important. Cronin at a base hospital could have done very useful service with a syringe, but the pen is a mightier weapon. No one should deny the value of morale, and Cronin’s The Keys of the Kingdom published in 1943 must have fortified the faith of many soldiers and war workers. He would not have been better employed writing hand-outs at the Ministry of Information.

  A social friend informed me that it was correct after being invited to Buckingham Palace to sign the book there. So on the following day she drove me through the guarded gate and showed me where to sign. In the afternoon I caught a train for the South of France. I was due at Nice at half-past seven the following night. It was not one of the great trains, and I should have half an hour’s wait in Marseilles. I had with me the final corrected typescript of So Lovers Dream. I would read it for the last time on the way down, then post it i
n Marseilles.

  My heart was light as I walked back to my carriage. My decks were cleared. Cassell’s had two manuscripts of mine. I did not need to bother about work while the summer lasted. How good to be master of my own time; to be able to concentrate all that time on Mary; to have nothing except her to think about; she would be waiting on the platform for me. How long would I be staying there? I did not know. I did not care. Perhaps we might take a trip together. To Corsica? Why not? Never before had the immediate future seemed more full of promise. For nearly a year I had been working at full pressure. Two complete novels and a lecture tour. Now I could reap my reward.

  It did not turn out that way. I had been away a month and during that month the summer season had begun. There was no question now of the Welcome’s kitchen being closed. The hotel was crowded, and you had to have full pension whether or not you had your meals elsewhere. The round blue tables on the terrace were requisitioned by other breakfasters. As usual I was the first there. But I could not have stayed on after I had finished my roll and coffee, even if I had had a cahier to linger over. The fact that I had not, made a vast difference. The mornings had passed quickly when I was composing my daily contribution of three thousand words. S. N. Behrman once said: ‘If you have done three hours writing the rest of the day takes care of itself.’ Had I had work to do I could have done it in my bedroom, as I had on my first visit two years before. But I had no work; there was a lack of anywhere to sit and read, except the beach. There is a limit to the amount of time you can spend in the sun, and the beach at Villefranche is uncomfortable. Pebbles instead of sand, and it was hard to find a point in the wall below the railway line from which a stone did not project.

  It was not only Villefranche that was crowded. The whole coast was. Residents like Eldred Curwen were caught up by a full tide of entertainment. There were parties every night. There always had been since the summer vogue for the South of France had started, but in early years Villefranche had seemed cut off from the main traffic of the coast. It had seemed an island, but now the invading tide had encroached upon its solitude. Edward Wasserman had taken Paul Morand’s villa, the Orangerie. He had invited Harold Acton as a house guest. A friend of his had brought his yacht into the harbour. There was a restless atmosphere along the waterfront. There was a constant coming and going. This atmosphere was quickened by the inauguration of a line of coaches that ran straight from Nice into the square. The old trolleys that stopped at the Octroi had been discontinued. These buses were a great convenience. They saved one the long pull up the hill on a hot morning, but Villefranche was no longer a place apart.

  This social animation was, of course, a great deal of fun. A number of amusing people had come south for their holidays. Lady Willert was at the Cap. I met and became friends with Edward Sackville West. Harold Acton added gaiety to every party. But it was not the same Villefranche that it had been during the early summer, not was it the same Villefranche that it had been two years earlier when Berta Ruck and her two sons had been there.

  But perhaps I should not have been so conscious of the change in Villefranche if Mary herself had been the same. A lesson I have never seemed to learn is that you cannot leave a woman for four weeks and find her unchanged on your return. Often absence makes a man’s heart grow fonder, because he is transferred to a masculine occupation, a business trip, a safari or a cricket tour; there is no woman in his life. But a woman remains in her same feminine atmosphere: doing precisely the same things that she was before, only without a man. There is a gap, that she needs to fill. She has not, as the man has, moved into a world of new interests that keep her occupied.

  That is how it was with Mary. I had been missing her, more and more. Whereas she … About a week after I had left her she had been sitting alone on a chair in front of The Welcome. One of the Villefranche boys – Benito – walked slowly past her. He was neatly dressed. He was handsome. He had black hair. He had an Italian look. When the war broke out, it was found that he really was Italian. He crossed the frontier before Italy joined the war. He never came back to Villefranche. No one knows what happened to him. He was gracious. He had charming manners. He did not work. He supported himself on the presents that he received from women, and from men.

  A minute later he returned. He was walking more slowly now. He paused in front of Mary. ‘You are alone,’ he said. ‘It is sad to be alone.’ He smiled. ‘May I sit down,’ he said. She nodded. He said he would like a coffee. ‘Why not come in with me to Nice?’ he said. They were to spend several afternoons in Nice.

  She was there to meet my train. We dined at one of the one-storied restaurants on the Quai des Etats-Unis. A musician played to us from the pavement. The air was warm. This time I was too impatient to take a fiacre back. We went straight to her room. It was a delight to be with her again. But it was different. She was different. Those afternoons in Nice had made her different.

  She was also exceedingly depressed. When I saw her first there was a large bruise on her hip. She told me that she had fallen out of a taxi in Paris. Later she told me that she had tried to commit suicide. At that period every two months she attempted to commit suicide. The mood was about to come to full cycle. She was also taking drugs. She would sit at a table without speaking. An abstracted look would be on her face. She did not seem to be listening to the conversation. She looked ethereal. ‘Was I very beautiful in those days?’ she was to ask me a few years ago. ‘Yes, you were very beautiful.’ ‘But I wasn’t happy you know. I’m much happier now, though I am fat and ugly.’

  The news from Paris heightened her despondency. Her marriage was clearly near its end. She had been excited when Binks came back from Russia. They had seemed very cordial together. But he was dissatisfied with domesticity. He disliked the responsibility of running a household. He preferred the casual atmosphere of studios. She ran a house well. In 1934 when she was divorced, I was surprised to find how tidy her New York house was and how well her children were turned out. She said pathetically but not self-pityingly, ‘I gave him a comfortable home. I thought that was what he needed. But it doesn’t seem to be.’

  Had I known her better, I would have recognised that she was on the edge of a crisis. It came without warning. Fred McEvoy’s mother had rented a small house in Villefranche. Her younger son was staying with her. He was a lively, healthy young man. He often joined us at The Welcome’s bar. He had a motor cycle. One evening he collided with a car at the junction of the roads before Cap Ferrat. His arm had to be taken off. Within half an hour the news had reached The Welcome. ‘It isn’t true, tell me it isn’t true,’ said Mary.

  ‘As far as I know it is.’

  ‘I can’t bear it. I can’t. I can’t.’

  She got up from the table, leaving her drink unfinished. She did not come back to it. Next morning she was not around. In those days the rooms did not have telephones. I went to the beach without her. When I returned shortly before noon, the desk reported that she had not been seen downstairs, and that she had not rung for breakfast. I tapped on the door. There was no answer. I tried the handle. The door was locked. I wondered if she had gone out and taken her key with her. She might have done. I did not worry then but I did when there was no sign of her at dinner. I walked to the far side of the jetty. Her window was shuttered. There was no light showing through the chinks. Next morning I told the proprietor. He agreed that we should have to find out if anything was wrong. He had a pass-key which if the key was still in the lock, could push it out. I went up with him, and with his wife. Mary was lying on the counterpane, unconscious and completely naked.

  We took her to the hospital. She did not recover consciousness until after midnight. She was in a room with several beds. A nurse, a nun, was reading by candlelight. Mary had been brought up as a Catholic; she had hated her schooldays. Roused out of her barbituric daze, she imagined she was imprisoned, with a nun guarding her; back in her convent. She jumped out of bed, ran out of the room, crossed a corridor, opened the door of the roo
m opposite. It was in part a military hospital. It was into a male ward that she had broken. A couple of bearded poilus roused from their sleep were startled to see an exquisite and naked nymph climbing on to the sill. They thought that they had entered paradise. They were sick, recovering from injuries. But they had the presence of mind to rescue her. The incident caused a considerable amount of mirth in the Welcome’s bar, but it caused concern to the hotel management. It did not improve the hotel’s credit to have its guests attempting suicide. Mary was told that her room was no longer available. Her suitcases were already packed and in the porter’s charge. Should the porter carry them to another hotel? Mary shook her head. She thought she would like to try Cap Ferrat. She mentioned the name of a hotel. Perhaps the proprietor would be so kind as to ring up and ask if it had a vacant room. Standing beside her desk, I remembered that a good looking man who had joined us two nights before on The Welcome Terrace had told us that he was on holiday in that hotel.

  Mary took her expulsion with equanimity. She might just as well be in Cap Ferrat as in Villefranche, particularly in view of the young man’s presence there. But it made a very marked difference to me. The ten days since my return had not been the honeymoon I had expected, but even so without Mary I should be at a loose end in Villefranche. There was nothing that I felt a need to write. The mornings would be slow in passing. I was not tempted to cross to Cap Ferrat. Mary had not suggested that I should. I suspect that she had got a little bored with me. A new beau was beckoning. There was clearly no likelihood of a settled relationship between myself and her. Far better to leave it to chance to bring us together on some later date, as indeed it did. Moreover, I had two days earlier received some irritating news about my publishing situation in London. I will not bore the reader by explaining it in detail; confusion had arisen through my having delivered two manuscripts within three months of one another. It was not a desperate or indeed an immediate crisis, but I felt I would be more at peace if I talked it over with Peters and with Cassell’s. Why not go back to London? I should not be at ease with Mary on the other side of the harbour; at any moment I might run into her at one of the parties along the coast or in a Nice or Antibes bistro. The difficulties with Cassell’s provided me with an appropriate alibi. I should not appear to be behaving like an army in retreat, throwing away its packs and rifles. Exactly two weeks after I had been met at Nice by Mary, I caught a night train back to London.