But some of it he’d enjoyed: the camaraderie, a recognition that he was becoming a useful and competent member of the team and its operations, earning the respect of his men. He had always been popular, even at school, but this had been less easily won; it was not enough simply to be charming and amusing. He had not only to be brave and decisive, but also seen to be those things.
There had been time on shore; that had been good. He’d caught a bit of shrapnel in his leg, been sent to Malta to recover. He hadn’t been badly injured, but it took a time to heal; hadn’t felt too bad, but some of the other chaps were in a really bad way. Seeing it as a mission to cheer them up, he’d organised polo matches in the ward with crutches and other such nonsense. They were an undoubted nuisance and the nurses got pretty browned off, but as a war effort, he felt it was pretty positive.
There was a shout from the bar: ‘Hey, Welles! What’s the matter with you? Come on over, drinks on the house . . .’
He went, smiling: he would continue to survive. Of course he would.
Johnathan, still in Italy, spent the early part of the day writing to Diana, telling her how much he was longing to come home and be with her again. He made no mention of his decision; that was something too important to trust to paper. He knew she would find it difficult, but he was sure she would make the very best of it and indeed come to love the new life and the glorious countryside of Yorkshire.
Tom and Laura returned home from the celebrations, first at Laura’s school, then at the recreation ground in Hilchester (another bonfire). They talked quite soberly about how the ending of the war, which had done so much to rid the country of its dreadful class distinction, must surely see a new dawn for socialism, for fairness, for true equality, and vowed they would do everything in their power to work towards that themselves.
Chapter 10
1945–6
It was such a totally unsuitable setting to receive the news.
She’d just been thinking she really was perfectly happy, that the war years and their long separation had ended exactly how she would have wished, sitting at a table in the River Room at the Savoy, after a marvellous dinner and a lot of very good champagne; a pianist playing Cole Porter and boats going past on the Thames below, their lights shining on the water. It was all so very lovely. He’d only been home a couple of days; gorgeous days they’d been, she’d been so very glad to see him, genuinely so, loving being with him, making him happy. They were actually spending two rather extravagant nights at the Savoy.
But then he’d taken her hand and said he had something very important to tell her. She’d sat, trying not to show her horror as she heard what it was: that he wanted to give up his London life as a stockbroker and go and work on the estate in Yorkshire. His father wasn’t well, he said, had never recovered from Piers’s death, and his mother and Timothy had been struggling to cope since the end of the war. ‘Mother’s been amazing, Tim says, but she’s not young, and Tim – well, his heart’s not in the whole estate thing. He really wants to get back to London and his life as a barrister, and he has a real talent for that, Diana, it’s wrong for him to miss out.’
She’d asked, floundering about for some sort of salvation, about Johnathan’s life as a stockbroker, and he’d said it seemed to him a rather stupid, vapid life, making rich people richer. Whereas running the estate, the farm, that really appealed to him, seemed an important thing to do. ‘I know it’s a big thing to ask, but I want to go back to Yorkshire, and make my life there. I’ll need you and your support desperately.’
‘But Johnathan . . .’
‘Darling, I can see it’s a bit of a shock, of course it is, and for that very reason you must take time to get used to the idea.’
And if she didn’t, she wondered, what then? Clearly, she’d be going anyway.
‘I suggest you go and stay with your parents for a few days. I have to go up to Yorkshire tomorrow, to see Mother and Father and talk to them both, with Timothy, put our proposal to them. And then perhaps you’ll come up and join us? You’ve never spent much time there, and it’s so beautiful, I know you’ll learn to love it . . .’
She waved him off gaily next day, and then went to meet Wendelien. She was truly horrified; horrified and afraid. How could she do it, leave everything and everyone she knew and loved and go to live hundreds of miles away, to that cold, ugly house, set in that harsh, hostile landscape? To live with a man she could see very clearly now she didn’t actually love at all. She would be exiled, alone, lost, friendless. She couldn’t do it, it was too much to ask, too much for her to give. She would never have agreed to marry Johnathan had she known of this gargantuan condition. She wept many tears, feeling she had been robbed of everything.
Wendelien’s response had been very straightforward. ‘Just don’t go, darling, say you’d be useless and miserable and he shouldn’t ask you.’ Her parents’ response had been quite different, especially her father’s. He had told her he was ashamed of her reaction, that Johnathan was a very fine chap, who loved her, and it was her duty as a wife to stand by him and do whatever he wanted. Her mother had said much the same, in a gentler way: ‘It’s true, darling, you marry the man, not the life—’
‘No, you don’t,’ Diana had said angrily. ‘The life is part of the man, and this just isn’t fair, not what I was led to expect.’
‘Diana, this is real life, not some fairy tale,’ her mother had said. ‘You were delighted to marry Johnathan, I seem to remember.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘No buts. Not now. I do think, Diana, it’s time you grew up a little and realised you don’t live in a romantic novel. Marriage isn’t all about one person, it’s about two.’
Diana had fled to her room and refused to come down for supper. Later Caroline Southcott went up to see her, relented a little, told her she did understand and she hadn’t been all that keen to leave London herself as a young bride. ‘But that was what your father wanted, and I went along with it.’
Diana didn’t even try to explain that Hampshire was very near London, that they still had a lot of very jolly friends, and for a time, a little flat in London. As for Johnathan’s mother, Vanessa Gunning was a nightmare, and she would, at first at any rate, be her most constant companion. She didn’t like Diana, it had been obvious from the very first meeting; she saw her as a most unsuitable wife for Johnathan. But she listened to her parents and realised she had no option, apart from leaving Johnathan which was clearly unthinkable and so, with the very best grace that she could muster, she told him that of course she would come up to Yorkshire and be as supportive and helpful as she could manage.