The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother, and Me (31 page)

The bride’s parents were there – Lady Fry in a marvellous hat, sitting on a sofa with a distracted look. No doubt she knew that Robert was Gerald’s ‘young man’; she certainly knew about being married to someone who liked young men. Sir Geoffrey, one of the witnesses, had a vaguely grumpy air. Gladys (Robert’s mother) was the other witness – a widow of seven months. Some of the younger guests look happier, including Lady Elizabeth Clyde (daughter of Gerry and Dottie Wellesley). There was a lot of champagne and, despite the war, Claridge’s still retained its art-deco glamour. Afterwards they all went off nightclubbing. There is no record of where the couple spent their first night, but it was probably back at the hotel.

BRIDE AND GROOM LOOKING TENSE AT THE RECEPTION AT CLARIDGE’S

Presumably Gerald was present, though the magazine article doesn’t mention him. Understandably, he was not happy. This time, the Mad Boy had taken things too far. Sexual freedom was all very well, but neither of the two bachelors were ‘the marrying sort’, as the old euphemism went. The discussions must have been fraught. Did Robert go over to Oxford to sit in Gerald’s dour parlour in St Giles’, trying to make sure Miss Alden didn’t overhear? Or were there heated arguments at Faringdon, away from American soldiers, gardeners and guests? Gerald definitely knew Jennifer – he had inscribed a copy of The Romance of a Nose to her a few months earlier and he had surely met her on her visits to Faringdon. But this development was unbelievable. And why the rush? Later, Robert would tell a friend that it had been Gerald who said, ‘You should marry Jennifer,’353 but this seems unlikely. Gerald’s view of marriage was a jaundiced one, and he satirised and mocked it in his novels. Years earlier, he had been asked the ingredients for a happy marriage and replied: ‘A long purse, infinite credulity, and no sense of humour, a combative nature and a stipulation that the man should be a man and the woman a woman – or vice versa!’354

Jack Fox was then a seventeen-year-old, helping out at Faringdon before he went off to join the Navy in 1943. Small-built with foxy-red hair, he would later become the estate’s gamekeeper as well as a builder and stonemason. According to him, nobody among the staff knew about the wedding in advance. Jack always went rabbiting on a Saturday morning with Fred Shury and had gone over to help him pick vegetables before setting off with their guns. He found Robert’s loyal groom (and now general factotum) in a state of bewilderment. Robert had gone up to London the day before and had just rung up and announced, ‘I’m getting married this morning.’ Naturally, nobody would have suggested that marriage was out of the question for the Mad Boy – he might have been Gerald’s heir, but they were not viewed as lovers by the staff. Still, the secrecy was strange. Gerald and Robert’s friends were, understandably, astounded.

Could it be that Robert and Jennifer had just decided to do something crazy? Was it a decision taken after too much champagne at the Gargoyle? Both were risk-takers in love and neither was having a ‘glorious war’. During these years, many couples had rushed to marry; men were leaving to fight and you never knew where the next bomb would land. But why such haste in this case? Jennifer appeared to have a boyfriend (what did Ian Lubbock have to say?) and Robert had a well-established partnership. Naturally, some pointed to the age-old trigger for shotgun weddings and it is possible that Jennifer knew she was in the very early stages of pregnancy. It is unknown whether or not she used contraception, but the Marie Stopes clinic did a roaring trade in Dutch caps, and there were also ‘things called Volpar Gels’.355 More significantly, abortions were available, particularly for those with money and contacts.

When, a while after the wedding, Fred Shury noticed that Jennifer was pregnant, he commented, ‘I knew there must’ve been something.’ In the meantime, everyone was puzzled.

T WAS NOT INEVITABLE that the newly-weds would live at Faringdon; Gerald’s tolerance had limits. He announced that they wouldn’t fit into Faringdon, what with the Americans, and that he had found them ‘a very nice nest’ nearby. If the farmer wanted a wife, then he could do the right thing and set himself up appropriately for all this burgeoning domesticity. But in the meantime, until all the arrangements were made, the couple moved into the main house.

Jennifer must have been thankful to leave her flat in Beaumont Street; the heatwave had brought an infestation of mosquitoes to Oxford, so Faringdon, with its cool breezes gusting up from the Thames Valley, was particularly appealing. The bride was given a room on the southerly, more domestic side of the house, catching the morning sun and overlooking the lawns, where the sheep chewed the grass to a ragged thatch. Jennifer could look down on cars arriving at the front door, and across to the stone church, from whose carillon tower snippets of Bishop Heber’s hymns chimed through the day.

There are no reports of what occurred during the first evening when Gerald, Robert and Jennifer had dinner at Faringdon together. And at breakfast? Gerald would have always been painfully polite. Or was there still breakfast in bed for ladies, in spite of wartime constraints? At this time of year there were magnolia flowers, large as creamy doves, ready to pluck from the curved walls flanking the house. Maybe Mrs Law continued the pre-war tradition and placed one of the headily-scented offerings on the tray before taking it upstairs.

This was not the first time that Robert became sexually involved with a woman during his decade at Faringdon: there had been Maimie Lygon and Doris Castlerosse, to mention only two. But why get married? The dead hand of the law made it all so different. It is not known when Gerald was told about the pregnancy. He could never have imagined that he would test out Cyril Connolly’s adage ‘There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.’ Yet here he was, in his sixtieth year, confronting the prospect of Faringdon’s airy entrance hall ringing out with the unfamiliar call of an infant, with its pram parked somewhere by the Victorian music boxes. But Gerald’s anger and fears rapidly dissipated. After all the misery and depression he had suffered at the start of the war, maybe this didn’t seem so tragic in comparison.

The situation was probably helped by Jennifer, who was easy on the eye and amusing – two highly significant qualifications for success with Gerald. She was neither dominating nor demanding, but happy to fit in, almost as though she were a guest rather than a spouse. It had always suited Gerald to be surrounded by bad behaviour and he enjoyed a peripheral atmosphere of naughtiness and unconventionality, while sticking to his own serious routines. He continued to get up early, work at whatever was his current project and invite friends for meals and weekends. During the week he went back to Miss Alden’s lodgings in Oxford and left the Mad Boy and his bride to sort things out for themselves.

Among the wedding presents was an appealingly child-sized seventeenth-century book, The Dictionary of Love, In Which Is Contained the Explanation of Most of the Terms Used in that Language, by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. It was given to the bride and groom by Jennifer’s old friend Glur and her husband, Peter Quennell. Their inscription now appears to be tempting fate: ‘To Darling Jennifer
Robert
Who need no instruction in this important and perplexing subject.’

Sadly, it appeared that they did. No sooner had he married Jennifer than Robert changed. It was not that he didn’t care about her, but the realisation of what he had done threw him into a panic and he rejected his bride. Jennifer was utterly bewildered. She was aware of Robert’s complex sexuality, but had been confident that they would be able to make a success of their marriage. She assumed they would be lovers. His sudden angry coldness was shocking. She never forgot one night during what should have been their honeymoon, when she walked along the dark, blacked-out corridor from her room to his. The door was locked. She knocked, but he wouldn’t open it. Desperate and lonely, she wept and begged for him to let her in, banging the wooden panels, rattling the brass handle. His rejection seemed inexplicable. What had happened to the crazy Mad Boy, who had been so entertaining, fun-loving and sexy? The humiliation of returning alone to her room was bitterly painful.

Jennifer’s suffering made Robert withdraw even more – over-emotional women were not his territory. He didn’t have it in him to be a good husband, he later admitted. In fact he didn’t seem to have it in him to be any kind of husband. The prospect of a baby on the way only exacerbated his alarm. Until now, so much in Robert’s life had been a game, a quick dare or passed in the irresponsible haze of too many drinks. At school he didn’t give a damn, he had never committed to a regular job, army life had been undemanding and eventually shrugged off, and Gerald had let him get away with outrageously bad behaviour. Now a mad scheme had entrapped him in a situation that was only going to get much worse and was supposed to last until death.

All three members of the household were damaged in one way or another, with wounds that went back to their childhoods, but Robert was by far the least self-reflective of the trio. Gerald had already written about the miseries of his early years and had spent time on the analyst’s couch discussing them. Jennifer was well aware of the disaster of her parents’ marriage and the effect on her of her father’s rejection. She had the language to discuss these matters and would later write about them when she had psychoanalysis. Robert, on the other hand, expressed himself physically rather than through words, by losing control, making love or risking his life in daredevil stunts. As soon as people came too close, he removed himself. And though he had settled with Gerald, their unlikely relationship only lasted because of the large degree of independence they allowed each other and their fine balance of domesticity with a lack of intimacy.

CECIL BEATON’S PHOTOGRAPH OF JENNIFER, GERALD AND ROBERT IN GERALD’S WARTIME STUDY-BEDROOM. NOBODY LOOKS HAPPY, BUT AT LEAST GERALD IS BUSY WITH HIS BOOKS

The staff at Faringdon welcomed Jennifer to her new home. It was bizarre that there was now a lady of the house, but if she was not quite Lady of the Manor, she brought a new feminine element to a place that had been created and dominated by men. Naturally, there had always been numerous female visitors, but this was something different – the start of a recognisable family. A young, beautiful couple, cocooned from the violence and horrors of the war, like Adam and Eve in a version of Eden. Jack Fox recalled first seeing Jennifer: ‘I never saw a woman with such a pretty face and a pretty figure. She was perfectly proportioned, like an hourglass. That summer, she’d lie out on a bed, sunbathing. She was brown as a berry.’356

Friends were agog to witness the highly unorthodox ménage à trois. There is no record of public arguments between the newly-weds, but it is hard to imagine that Robert hid his mood successfully. Jennifer probably managed better. Some people were close to all the members of what had become rather an un-erotic triangle. Billa Harrod, for one, was delighted at having her three friends brought together in this way. She was very close to Jennifer (a mutual friend suggested that her adoration bordered on her being in love), but she also got on extremely well with Robert and Gerald.357 Billa had not approved of Ian Lubbock, and was notoriously forthright about these things. How marvellous, then, to be able to have them all under one roof at one of the loveliest houses she knew, and where she playfully signed herself into the visitors’ book as ‘Turkish’ (in reference to John Betjeman’s affectionate nickname, ‘my Turkish Delight’). Now the mother of two young sons – Henry and Dominick – Billa encouraged Jennifer in her pregnancy; the baby would have two ready playmates. Other friends also came from Oxford, including Maurice Bowra. The growling-voiced, sharp-witted don didn’t often appreciate feminine charms and he certainly didn’t suffer fools, but he liked the Mad Boy’s bride and was kind to her.

Another local friend who was charmed by Jennifer was the roguish queen of fashion and elegant indulgence, Daisy Fellowes. She often drove over, inevitably drawn by the intrigue at Faringdon, as well as by her affection for Gerald. She was also able to catch up with Winnie de Polignac, the beloved aunt who had brought her up. But for Daisy, it was not only her aunt who beckoned, but the American soldiers. ‘Never have I seen her in such glamorous looks,’ wrote Diana Cooper to her husband, Duff, after meeting Daisy at the Dorchester. ‘The women were startled, the men looked avidly. She adores Compton Beauchamp – Oxford and Gerald within reach and an amorous American group to strengthen her morale.’358

Clarissa continued as a regular guest at Faringdon but didn’t have much time for Jennifer or Robert. She was younger than both, but they seemed immature social butterflies compared to her and her overworked colleagues at the Foreign Office. ‘I couldn’t hang around having a lovely time during the war,’ she said.359 Jennifer felt this resentment coming from Gerald’s special friend. ‘Clarissa probably thought Jennifer silly; Clarissa was so busy not being silly,’ remembered a mutual friend. Jennifer and Clarissa did have certain things in common, however. They both had a penchant for homosexual men – something that continued throughout their lives. However, Jennifer’s voluptuous femininity was in obvious contrast to Clarissa’s almost austere seriousness. While Jennifer dressed in beautifully made frocks and heels, Clarissa’s favourite outfit was a manly trouser suit.

By the end of the year, Robert was ill and Jennifer’s figure was swelling by the day. The prospective mother wrote to Alathea, who had closed up Oare House and moved with Geoffrey to Portmeirion, the Welsh resort designed by Clough Williams-Ellis. Alathea had sent another generous cheque to her daughter, who gives a good impression of the situation at Faringdon, without letting on that she and Robert are miserable.

Faringdon, Dec 30th [1942]

My darling Mummy,

How sweet of you to give me such a tremendous New Year’s present.You are an angel though I really don’t think you ought to – but thank you, my darling, a million times –