Doves of War: Four Women of Spain. Paul Preston

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СКАЧАТЬ the country, at the races or at Brooklands, she took every advantage of what London had to offer. A typical day would see her rise late, and after breakfast, practise fencing or do some work in relation to the small stud farm at Chirk. She would then lunch at the Ritz or the Savoy with friends. Lunch would be followed by shopping, a dress fitting, the hairdresser and then tea with some family friend. In the evening, she would attend one or more cocktail parties, a dance in the home of some society hostess or the theatre, the ballet or the opera, then dinner, perhaps at Quaglino’s or the Savoy Grill, then on to the Café de Paris or a nightclub. She attended a number of legendary operatic occasions, including Eva Turner and Giovanni Martinelli singing Puccini’s Turandot at Covent Garden. Dancing until the early hours of most mornings, she met lots of attractive men but nothing came of her flirtations with them.³⁵ When, on 24 March, she finally got a letter from Touffles requesting her photograph, she pranced down the passage ‘singing at the top of my voice’. Already thinking of going to Spain, she started Spanish lessons.³⁶

      The ceaseless round of fun was beginning to pall when her life was changed by a chance conversation with her mother – ‘so nice the way she leaves me to myself, no advice, no orders, just perfectly sweet’. On Easter Sunday, 28 March 1937, she wrote: ‘This evening after dinner we began to talk about Spain and Mama suddenly said that Gabriel Herbert was out there doing nursing and smuggling medicines etc. I said, ‘‘God I wish I was’’ so Moke (Monica FitzClarence, a friend of Margot’s) said ‘‘Why don’t you?’’ I explained I would have long ago if I had thought for a moment Mama would let me.’ To her astonishment, her mother said that she would give Pip permission if she produced proper plans mapped out and aimed to do important work out there – ‘but I must find out and arrange it myself and she can’t help me. So now I must see Mrs Herbert and Princess Bea and see what I can do to help. My chance at last I hope!’ Margot had not expected such a burst of focused energy and was horrified. She regarded Pip as ‘both frivolous and pretty. She loved hairdressers, young men and cream buns. She would go to several cinemas in one afternoon and I deplored that she would not face up to anything serious.’ The Spanish Civil War was rather too serious even for Margot. Pip herself was enthused by the idea of going to Spain and determined to overcome all obstacles. She was desperate to be of some use. ‘It is a bore to look so young and silly, it will be very difficult to make anyone think I really mean it and am capable of doing it.’ She now asked her mother to let her take first-aid classes as well as Spanish lessons. She also spoke to Mrs Herbert and her daughter Laura, who was soon to be married to Evelyn Waugh. Presumably on the basis of communication with her sister, Gabriel, Laura told Pip that ‘it was awfully difficult to get in now.³⁷

      Perhaps she was inspired by her mother’s earlier example running a hospital in Egypt. It is an extraordinary coincidence that the mother of the only other British woman to volunteer to work for Franco, Gabriel Herbert, had also worked in that Egyptian hospital. Gabriel Herbert herself was a competent and energetic young woman. In September 1936, she had gone to Burgos and returned to London with a list of medical supplies requested by the Junta. She then returned to Spain with an ambulance. With a second vehicle sent in November, it became the Equipo Anglo-Español Móvil de Servicio al Frente. Gabriel Herbert herself acted as an intermediary between the medical team in Spain and the London committee of the Catholic Bishops’ Fund for the Relief of Spanish Distress. Pip’s reference to her ‘nursing and smuggling medicines’ was a misunderstanding of Gabriel’s activities in taking supplies into Spain.³⁸

      Pip’s Spanish progressed quickly. Nevertheless, while she tried, in a desultory fashion, to find out more about going to Spain, she began to see a lot of ‘the most gorgeous tall hero called John Geddes’, a fashionable young man-about-town. They danced together, got drunk together and talked about their respective broken hearts, she about Touffles and he about a girl named Ann Hamilton Grace who had ditched him. They walked their dogs and within a couple of weeks of knowing him, she could write: ‘I dote on him and hope I will see him again soon.’³⁹ By 13 April, they were lovers. She found the experience physically painful ‘but it was fun’. ‘I still don’t feel even a twinge of conscience or remorse. And oddly I don’t like him any more or less.’ After sleeping with him a second time, she wrote: ‘He is an absolute darling although definitely rather a cad.’ She was taken entirely by surprise, at the end of April, when he asked her to marry him. She was emboldened to refuse after being told by her cousin, Charmian van Raalte, that she had had a letter from Touffles ‘who is livid because I have not written for ages’.⁴⁰ She was also distracted by Gaenor’s coming-out dance at Seaford House which was to be attended by 650 people including the Duke and Duchess of Kent. At dinner beforehand, she was delegated to look after the then seventeen-year-old King Faroukh of Egypt whom she thought ‘a dear and we got on like billyoh’. Rather alone in London, he was taken by Pip to Regent’s Park Zoo, the Tower of London, St Paul’s Cathedral and several theatres.⁴¹

      The big event was the coronation of George VI on 12 May. Pip was as bedazzled by its magnificent pageantry as the rest of the world. She attended the first court ball of the new reign which she found ‘heaven’. On returning home ‘I put on Mama’s tiara and earrings and looked too regal for words. How I wish I had one.’⁴² She had started writing to Touffles again and, on the strength of hearing that he might come to London on leave, had begun to diet. Her diary at this time began to have increasing references to her hating ‘that filthy smelly town London’ and even ‘I hate social life.’⁴³ Frantically hopeful of seeing Touffles, Pip was further reminded of the ongoing Civil War on 1 June. Two days before, the German navy had mounted a large-scale artillery bombardment of the Mediterranean city of Almería in southeastern Spain. Coming out of a newsreel with some friends, Pip ran into a Communist demonstration chanting ‘Stop Hitler’s War on Children!’ Nan Green was among the demonstrators. However, she was discouraged when, accompanying her mother to lunch at the Herberts’, she met Gabriel who ‘was very interesting but convinced me more that there is no point in my going out there as a nurse or anything else. Damn it.’⁴⁴

      Just when she was on the verge of abandoning thoughts of Spain, Touffles turned up unexpectedly in London. On Wednesday 23 June, she wrote: ‘He rang me up this morning and we lunched out together at San Marco and spent the afternoon buying records and talking. He is exactly the same as he always was and I like him as much as I always did.’ The next day he broke a date to take her to an air show. She now admitted to herself what had been obvious for some time. ‘I can’t pretend to myself any longer. I know I am just as much in love with him as I always have been for the last three years. Oh God what hell it is, all so pointless, just lack of control.’ On 29 June, he flew back to Spain from Croydon. After seeing him off, Pip was desperately miserable.⁴⁵

      However, for all her distress at seeing him go back to the war, his visit had reawakened her interest in Spain. Her notions of what was going on there derived almost entirely from Princess Bea ‘who really knows what she is talking about. I simply adore her and admire her enormously for her courage about everything.’ Her new-found determination to go to Spain roused her from her misery. Her hopes were raised on 6 July when she heard that she had passed her first aid and nursing exams with high grades. Nevertheless, bored with her social life in London and still unsure how to get to Spain, she fell into a limbo. ‘I am in a very odd sort of numb way. I don’t mind much what I do or where I go as long as it is more or less peaceful.’ She was concentrating on her Spanish lessons with some dedication. On 22 July, without much expectation of a helpful reply, she wrote a long letter to Touffles asking him how to go about getting a posting СКАЧАТЬ