Chapter 8 Diana’s Story
It’s a terrible thing for a child to believe she isn’t wanted.
My mother Ann almost died giving birth to me and needed two weeks in hospital to recover.
When we came home, Nurse Holden, our nanny, was given care of me.
She’d been very content looking after Andrew, who was a serene two-year-old with golden hair, blue eyes and delicate features.
In contrast I screamed non-stop till I was six weeks old.
Life at Farthington House revolved round my father, John Rutherfurd.
When he left for work in the mornings, the household relaxed a little, but his presence remained.
My mother was too meek to manage the servants properly and instead drew on his authority.
‘The master will complain if we have fish again for dinner,’ she’d tell Cook, or ‘Mr Rutherfurd likes clean linen every day so fresh towels, please.’
When he returned from the brewery at six-thirty sharp, he expected his children to be bathed and ready for bed.
We’d be led into his study to say goodnight.
The room reeked of whisky and pipe smoke, and he’d ask Nurse Holden if we’d been good.
‘Andrew recited his alphabet very nicely,’ she’d reply, or ‘He tidied the toy box,’ before shaking her head over me.
‘Diana spoiled her white pinafore by rolling on the grass.’ Never mind that Andrew had been rolling too.
My sister, Esme, had been born two days before my second birthday. That was the first thing to blame her for. The household was too busy to remember my special day that year, and from then on, I had to share my celebrations with her.
Her reception into the family was as different to mine as could be.
The stork that we were told had brought this baby must have been better at its job than the one that brought me, for my mother positively glowed with happiness when we were taken upstairs to see them after the birth.
Like my brother, the baby favoured my mother, for she was delicate and pretty, with a swirl of fair hair.
Most extraordinary of all was the way my father’s expression softened when he looked at her, besotted. And as she grew, my sister sensed how to charm him. She’d raise her arms to him with a gummy smile when brought to say goodnight. Mother took charge of her in a way she’d never done with me.
And a bitter seed of jealousy began to sprout inside me. I was confused. Like everyone else, I loved her. How could I not? She was sweet and pretty and charming. But at the same time, I hated her for taking all the attention. No one helped me understand my feelings and so I learned to hate myself.
It was Father who gave Esme her nickname, ‘Bird’. I saw his meaning. She was slender, quick, warm and vibrant with a musical little voice. She approached life with easy charm. Strangers smiled when they looked at her. Their eyes passed over me.
Soon after his seventh birthday, Andrew was sent away to school.
I missed him terribly, not least because I was left to Nurse Holden’s fuller attention.
I was five and Bird three and no day passed without me attracting Nanny’s displeasure.
Much of it was deserved. If we painted pictures, I’d purposely knock water over Bird’s efforts.
I hid bits of her jigsaw puzzle, burst her balloon, tripped her up when Nurse Holden’s back was turned so she’d get dirt on her dress.
A plain-faced governess, Miss de Vere, was employed for me soon after my sixth birthday.
She was a kindly young woman and the individual attention helped.
I responded to her interest and stopped persecuting my sister, but nothing could prevent the waves of jealousy that washed over me from time to time.
Just as I knew the sky was blue, I knew that my parents loved her more than me, maybe more than Andrew, too, but Andrew was a boy and the eldest, and his place as son and heir was secure.
When she was five, Bird joined me in lessons with Miss de Vere.
She had a quick mind, I could see that, but she would not sit still.
Miss de Vere was enchanted and exasperated by her in equal measure.
At the age of nine, I was told there would be no more lessons with my governess.
I was to attend a local girls’ school as a day pupil.
And thus began the happiest period of my life. The school was small, only thirty girls, aged nine to sixteen. We weren’t taught very much beyond the 3Rs, history, art and a smattering of French, but I loved it all.
When I was twelve, Miss de Vere left to marry an equally plain-faced vicar so Bird joined me at school.
I saw with envy how easy she was with her classmates, how the teachers indulged her, while sighing over her schoolwork.
She impressed them with her artistic skills, while I was laughed at for drawing a horse that looked more like a dog.
Bird and I rarely brought friends home. I think we were both old enough to understand that our family was unlike the families of other girls.
Our mother was a pale shadow, our father responsible for the house’s brooding atmosphere.
His moods altered wildly according to the fortunes of his business or whether a council meeting had gone his way.
It was during the spring of 1933 that the bonds tying our family together began to suffer increasing strain.
I remember the time clearly because of the news.
A populist bully named Herr Hitler had declared himself Chancellor of Germany and with the Great War still casting its shadow, people were concerned about peace in Europe.
There was worry, too, about the high numbers of unemployed.
Businesses like my father’s were struggling.
In the middle of this, my brother Andrew arrived home for the Easter holidays.
He was seventeen by this time and up to now had obediently gone along the path our father had set out for him, which was to acquire a sound education.
Predicted to gain top marks, he was expected to leave school in the summer and follow my father into the family business.
Whatever bombshell Andrew dropped in the privacy of the study, to say that my father was angry was an understatement.
Raised voices reached us in the sitting room.
A door slammed, my brother charged up to his room.
Bird and I stared at one another in fear and puzzlement.
What on earth was going on? It was our mother who eventually explained.
Andrew wanted to study history at university then to follow an academic career.
He would need my father to pay the fees.
In the end, it was my mother who sorted things out.
Her role in the house had always been peacemaker.
She would never go against my father, but she knew how to soothe him, persuade him to see points of view other than his own.
It was she who’d chosen the school Bird and I attended, knowing it would suit us; she who’d ended my father’s feud with the Town Clerk over some historic slight.
After a fortnight of miserable argument, she suggested a compromise.
Andrew went up to university in the autumn of that year, but spent his holidays working at the brewery, learning how to run the business.
For a year, family life resumed its usual rhythms, but a further storm was gathering.
This time its focus was my future. In the summer after I turned sixteen, I left the school where I’d been so happy.
I was aware of discussions between my parents of what to do with me but was not consulted.
In August I was told I’d be moving to the seaside town of Frinton to a ‘finishing school’.
Here, young women from a good background were taught the skills judged necessary to catch a husband.
Cookery, needlework, dancing, how to move gracefully and write a pretty thank you letter.
Nervous, I did not want to leave home and said so strongly but I was overruled.
I did not enjoy my year being ‘finished’.
My dancing was clumsy, my French accent terrible.
The one thing I excelled at was writing.
I could pen a very charming request for donations to a charitable cause.
My letters home were full of lies about how much I was enjoying myself.
After the summer’s arguments I had no desire to upset my parents further.
Every holiday when I came home, however, something small had changed, building into something bigger that I didn’t realize until it was too late. My little sister was increasingly taking centre stage.