Nothing is known regarding the whereabouts of Caroline Waite after that October date in 1941. Did she run away with her lover? Return to Germany with him after the war? Flee to South America as so many officers did in the late 1940s and 1950s?
While it is easy to pose myriad questions, it is reductive to condemn her choice. The 1940s were a tremendous time of upheaval in world events, in ideology, and in the governing tides of the Zeitgeist. In many ways, it was not unlike our own time. The future felt cloudy and uncertain at best. And, as is often the case, in such uncertainty, the young break free from the confines of their predecessors and seek new ways to find assurance, stability, and a way forward. One has only to look at women’s fashion, as perhaps Caroline did when working for Elsa Schiaparelli, to see this. Post WWI, hems rose, necklines sank, and the iconic flapper emerged. Post WWII, luxurious fabrics and a focus on the hourglass New Look, as made famous by Dior, commanded society’s favor. Trace fashion through the later half of the twentieth century and you’ll continue to find changes indicative of our political and cultural ethos. We instinctively seek ways to redefine ourselves and emerge new across all spectrums of society and of life.
A lesson for today can be drawn as we look back. We need to be cognizant of the nuances, the emotions, the humanity, even the fragility of our own determination. We need to take in the collective experience and concede that we often hold our own lens with rigid determination. To condemn our predecessors for wrong choices is to condemn ourselves and the missteps, mistakes, and misunderstandings we now promulgate.
Yet the past often binds us. Words and stories have power. And what we are told, we often believe . . .
Upon receiving Dalton’s notification in 1941, Caroline’s father, Lord Eriska, rejoined the Navy. He had been serving in a consulting capacity during the early days of WWII, but within forty-eight hours of learning of his daughter’s duplicity, he submitted his name for a command. Six months later, German U-boats sank his ship in the North Sea.
Upon news of her husband’s death, Caroline’s mother sold their Derbyshire estate, held within her husband’s family for three hundred years and employed as an Army hospital at the time, and moved with her remaining daughter Margaret to the family’s London home.
The family closed ranks.
Yet three generations later, Margaret’s family thrives in the United States. Son John Randolph Payne, “Jack,” who came to the States in 1965 for boarding school and founded the Boston law firm Swartz, Payne, and Lennox, still lives and works in the Boston area.
During a discussion, Payne commented:
[INSERT COMMENTS FROM JACK.]
[REACH OUT TO CAROLINE??]
Five
REACH OUT TO CAROLINE??
I tapped my phone off. Unable to move or think, I closed my eyes and let the sun warm my face.
I hadn’t known about my great-grandparents, their connections to Churchill or to the king and queen, my great-grandfather’s service, or his awards. The Derbyshire estate. The idyllic childhood. Heck, the most I knew about London and England in the twentieth century came from Masterpiece Theater on PBS.
It was time to break that promise made long ago—a promise that was only remembered earlier this morning. I needed Jason.
Cutting through Charlesgate Park, I finally hit his townhouse on Saint Botolph Street at 7:00 a.m. A perfectly respectable time for a family with a five-month-old baby to be awake. And, if I knew my young niece, Carolina pulled her mom, if not both her parents, from bed at least two hours before.
I rang the bell in my signature style. Two short, one long. Gabriela answered immediately and pulled me into a hug. “Thank God.”
“Watch it.” I leaned back. “You’ll get all sweaty.”
“That won’t be the worst thing that gets on me today. She’s all yours to clean up. I tried peas this morning and it was a disaster.” She stepped into the house and I followed her.
“Peas? Can’t say I blame her.”
Gabriela smirked and led me down the hallway to the kitchen.
I called after her, “I’ve got news that’ll make you regret naming your daughter after me.”
“Again?” I could hear her eye roll.
I rounded the corner from the hall to the kitchen and into their small back family room. I dropped to the floor next to Carolina’s bouncy seat. “It’s not the polio thing.”
“Or the ‘can’t find the right job’ thing? The ‘dropped law school’ thing? Or the ‘I’m not worthy’ thing?”
“I never said that last one.”
“Didn’t have to,” Gabriela chirped from their pantry.
I refused to take the bait. My sister-in-law had a horrible habit of implying she knew different—and better.
Instead I looked around and absorbed what, to me, felt like the happiest home on earth. Jason and Gabriela’s townhouse danced with light and color even on the cloudiest days.
The daughter of Mexican and Colombian parents, and with more style in her pinkie than I contained in my whole being, Gabriela had transformed their white-walled home into a utopia of color, texture, and design. I used to wonder how my decoratively pallid brother could stand it. Then I realized Jason and I shared something in common—we needed people in our lives with vibrancy and color, perhaps because we had somehow and somewhere lost our own.
Maybe that was true for me, but I might have been projecting onto Jason. The moment Gabriela set eyes on him, it was like he was the keeper of all the world’s color and excitement. She glowed. Before I headed to law school, Jason had come to support me at a work fundraiser and, naturally, had to meet my boss. He was surprised to find Congressman Morris’s chief of staff only a few years older than me, and even more surprised when she agreed to go out with him.
“Baby!” I cooed as I tickled Carolina’s bare feet. “I’m a little sticky, but you don’t care, do you? You’re green and you love your aunt.” I unstrapped her and held her high above my head to blow kisses on her pea-glopped onesie.
I looked beneath the upheld baby to find Gabriela frowning at me. “Stop calling her Baby. Use her name.”
I scrunched my nose at my sister-in-law.
It had been a running debate when Carolina was born. It was Gabriela’s idea. She wanted to honor her heritage, as did Jason, but she also wanted to honor me as representative of Jason’s family. I was against it—honoring me. Honoring her heritage was a great idea.
But having never liked my name, nor believing I was worthy of any child’s emulation, I used to bring them lists of suggestions until Jason told me to shut up.
“You’re my sister and the closest thing to a sister Gabriela’s got. So suck it up and be grateful.”
I never said another word, but I still found it hard to embrace.
“Where’s Jason?”
“Asleep. He had a twenty-four-hour shift so I’m trying to keep her quiet.”
“You’re not loud, are you?” I whispered to Carolina. She had changed in the few weeks since I’d seen her. Her eyes were still coal black, her hair equally dark, but it had grown in a little more and no longer carried the curls her mother sported. It looked stock straight.