Now all we have is this welching appeasement — ‘Peace in our time’. There was a real chance for a better world and we blew it. I’m in such a rage, Es, I feel like running up into the hills with my gun and having a go. It’s funny, now that we’re really fighting, now that we can see the Falangists with our field glasses from the look-out on the roof, I don’t feel the least bit windy. Heroism ain’t the word for it either, it’s just a kind of placid acceptance. I’m going to see this out and bugger the consequences.
Charlie’s dead, by the way. We were caught in an ambush on the way out of Valencia. Italian CTV troops. Nothing to be done. He died holding his cricket bat, which I think would’ve made him happy. I lay underneath him and Gonzalo (the boy we’d been travelling with) for an hour, listening to the Italians picking around in our stuff, feeling Charlie’s breathing getting shallower all the time. Gonzalo died immediately. They’d mined the road and the car was flung up and off into a ditch, everything rolling and tumbling and then a volley of machine-gun fire that tore through the car and through Gonzalo, whose body, I think, protected me. Charlie only took one bullet, but it was in the eye. Straight through and out the back. He looked like he was winking, which I felt rotten about as I thought it. They dragged him and Gonzalo out from under the rolled car. I hid beneath a tartan rug. They’d found our stash of whisky in the boot and seemed more interested in that than in us, the bodies.
I waited until darkness and then crept out into the cool air, a waning moon on the water, bats flapping etc. Took me three nights, only travelling by dark, sipping the half-bottle of whisky the Italians left to keep me warm. Finally Barcelona, where the Republicans have made their new capital and everyone is doggedly optimistic, even under this bloody rain.
There are a good number of English here, enough that I’ve organised a few games of cricket in the Plaça in Charlie’s memory. Pathetic sight, me in the rain with a group of five or six scrawny, battered Englishmen crouched around the crease, and me crying so much to think of playing with Charlie in the corridors in Vienna, in the squares in Valencia. I was never much of a cricketer anyway, but I’ll keep playing for his sake, I think. We were in love, you see.
Send me some money, Es. Anything will do. I need to get boiled, stinko, lit up like a church and slopped to the gills, but haven’t a peseta to my name.
Philip.
Welsh Frankton,
Shropshire.
26th November
Darling E –
I haven’t slept a wink since I heard you were coming back for Christmas. Simply too thrilling. Daddy’s the happiest he’s been in years — I swear it. I should imagine the train ride will be splendid — take some good books and fall into some frightfully exotic affair with a White Russian countess. If it were anyone but you having this glamorous time, turning daddy into a nervous schoolgirl and generally being the top of everyone’s toast, I might feel a Small Dash of Envy. As it is, I’m just too, too thrilled for you darling.
Mick Clarke (who has taken over the nutty side of the Party since William Joyce left for Germany) is in a high frenzy over Kristallnacht. His grin is so wide he risks flipping open like a hatbox. He and Mosley are down here for a pow-wow with daddy. They’re arguing over whether the Party should cosy up to Hitler now he’s shown his true colours: daddy is anti, Clarke pro, Mosley increasingly addled and prone to letting Clarke take control. The Times got it right on Germany, for once. It seems as if all the talk of the British Union as the party of peace has been for nothing. Because we should be fighting against the Germans, shouldn’t we? Kristallnacht etc.
At least there’s Christmas. We’ll have masses to catch up on when you’re here. Mother and I went into Chester yesterday and I saw what I want to get you for your present. I won’t spoil the surprise, but it’s just perfect. Can’t wait to sing carols and roast chestnuts and go for walks in the cold and generally just bask in your company.
Excited oodles,
Anna xxx.
Villa dell’Ombrellino
Piazza di Bellosguardo
Firenze
2/12/38
Dear Harold, Frederick and Esmond,
It is with some sadness that I write to tell you that George and I have decided, when we visit Violet in Sussex this Christmas, to stay with her into the New Year. Whether it’s the position of L’Ombrellino, perched up here custodial of the city, or our own status within Anglo-Florentine society, it is impossible for us to remain. Windows broken at night, the crudest graffiti on the walls, two cooks in a row burgling us of food and plate and the police won’t do a thing about it.
We will, of course, be back eventually, whether after this ghastly looming war or before it. George is still certain we’ll be fighting the Russians. He has dusted off his uniform in anticipation and is wandering around looking fairly brutal.
We wanted, before we go, to wish you both a great deal of luck, and to thank you for all the entertainment, friendship and joy you have brought to us these past few years. We’ll be leaving many of our possessions here. I’ll send Massimo down with a key — perhaps you’d pop in and make sure the place isn’t overrun with rats or Italians in our absence.
With love and best wishes,
Alice and George Keppel.
La Palme,
Bast de l’Abbaye,
Le Colle-sur-Loup,
Alpes-Maritimes,
France.
17th December, ’38
Dear Esmond –
Tempus fugit! Know I should have written sooner to thank you for helping with the scrape I got myself into last year. Inexcusable, really, but I’ve been travelling rather a lot. In the hills above Nice now, but got here via Greece, Morocco, Malta and I don’t know where else. Pino has just joined me. His eyes are back working, but he’s grown horribly tubby. Can hardly bear to look at him. We’re working on a book of aphrodisiacal recipes together. Have you ever tried simmered crane? Lambs’ testes? Sow’s vulva? Thought not. All of them dee-lish.
A lot of blathering about the war. Nothing like an expat community to inspire a gaggle of silly women on the subject of catastrophe. Pino and I intend to stay gracefully here for a few more months before returning to Italy. It’s the only place I feel sane, you see. If there is a war, all the better. The prospect of a gruesome death gives young men a bit of spritz. Don’t go into battle yourself, though, Esmond. It’d be a crime to risk that exquisite phiz.
How’s the writing coming along? Are you keeping a diary? You’ll thank yourself when it comes to your autobiog. More than that, reading back over the early years of this century in my own tattered journals is one of the few unassailable pleasures left to me. Affreux being alive at this age, I tell you. Pity in the eyes of the sailors by the dock, with their rotten teeth and the reek of bouillabaisse. Better live in the corridors of your own memory. To do that: keep a diary.
Love to Gerald. Terribly sorry about Fiamma. Rotten luck.
Norman.
His father meets him at the train station at Gobowen. He is standing on the platform as the train pulls in, a silk scarf around his neck. He is obscured briefly by a cloud of steam and then reappears, waving his newspaper. He looks old, kind, eager. The Humber is parked in front of the station. Esmond lifts his bag into the back and climbs up beside his father. It is as if the steam from the train follows them onto the road: mist parts as they motor along the narrow lanes, through Whittington with its castle and ugly red church and up the hill to Welsh Frankton.