CIA BRIDE
Thornton D. Barnes
Published by Thornton D. Barnes at Smashwords
Copyright 2012 Thornton D. Barnes
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I dedicate this book to the memory of my dear friend, Velma, with whom I spent many evenings engaged in telephone conversations about the experiences I shared with her husband, the Desert Fox at Groom Lake, Nevada. She, in turn, shared with me the life experiences of Werner and her as a CIA family. I also dedicate this to Werner Weiss, the Desert Fox, whose legacy remains untold beneath the shroud of secrecy at Langley. I also dedicate this book to those with whom Velma, Werner, and I served, but cannot name, and to those who continue to serve our nation in the dark world of encrypted messages and secrecy. With you, I share the motto "And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free". I also dedicate this book to my wonderful spouse and partner for life, Doris, who followed me wherever I ventured to serve our nation in times of war and peace. Lastly, I share this bit of history with our daughters, Debbie and Tammy who shared in our pursuits, our grandchildren, our great grandchildren, and the generations to come. I prey that because of the efforts of Doris, our daughters, and me, those who follow will never have to smell the odor of burnt gunpowder on the battlefield.
Forward:
I first met Werner H. Weiss, aka The Desert Fox, at Area 51 in Nevada circa March 1968. He was wrapping up the closure of CIA Project OXCART, the predecessor to the Air Force’s SR-71 Blackbird. Weiss, a GS-15 civil servant, was the CIA’s man in charge of the Groom Lake, Nevada facility for Project OXCART and in 1967, the operation facility in Kadena, Okinawa. It was only after his death in 1997 that Werner’s widow, Velma and I became close friends.
Though this book is mostly about Velma, knowing a bit about still secret legacy of Werner provides the reader an advance peek at this phase of Velma’s life.
Werner, born in 1917, came to America when he was nine years old. He came with his parents and his two brothers, a working man's family, and settled in Brooklyn, N.Y. He did not know a word of English when enrolled in a public high school where his talent in mathematics saved him from being several grades lower than his age warranted. He learned English rapidly and left home after he finished high school with the firm intention of serving his new country. He became an American citizen through his father's naturalization. His memories of post WWI and Nazi Germany instilled in him a fervent appreciation of what it meant to live in this land of hope and freedom. This intense patriotism directed the rest of his life.
He started by going to Washington D.C. with a government job that he always swore ranked lower than a GS-1. He passed the Permanent Civil Service exams and worked while taking courses at the University of Maryland. He married and joined the Army to go off to fight in World War II. He went to England until that war was over, and he got as far as Manila en route to the Japanese war before it ended. After the war, he became an Army civilian based for a while in Utah, his wife Vivian's home state. His desire to go abroad led him to apply for and get a job with the CIA who sent him to Frankfurt, Germany, where he would have been content except for the tragic and untimely death of Vivian during their first year overseas.
Velma met Werner and Vivian during their early days with the Agency in Germany, where Velma had also worked for the CIA since her English divorce. Werner and Velma were not even very friendly until some time after his loss. Thrown together, they eventually became close, probably when he learned of her taking golf lessons. They spent a year in Berlin before returning to Washington. Eventually, they both got new assignments in Germany where the CIA introduced Werner to his later association with the CIA’s U-2 and A-12 Blackbird programs.
After a few months in Wiesbaden, Werner received an assignment to the U-2 base in Japan. He and Velma arranged to get married before he left so that she could join him when family quarters became available. They spent two happy years in Japan, although Velma missed being able to work. The CIA did not allow spouses to work for the Agency in this type of program.
From Japan, the CIA transferred Werner to Las Vegas where they arrived on News Year Day, 1 January 1960 for assignment of the CIA officer in charge of the A-12 OXCART project at Area 51. He and Velma remained in Las Vegas until 1969, while he closed down Project OXCART and took an assignment in Washington.
Werner, a GS-15, was singularly the most important individual concerning the mission of the 1129th Special Activities Squadron at Area 51 where he oversaw all support activities for the entire unit. Fondly referred to as the "Desert Fox" by his contemporaries, he was with the unit from the beginning and served as the senior Central Intelligence Agency's officer. During this period Werner continually demonstrated outstanding professional skill and initiative in managing the insurmountable tasks of maintaining base and project security, staffing, logistics, labor union relations, transportation, housing, and liaison with officials at local, state, and national levels. His attention to detail in support of the aircraft operational and maintenance requirements contributed materially to the success of the CIA’s secret mission.
Under Werner, the operation at the Area continued around the clock. Under his watch, the facility grew to include hobby shops and many support activities. The theater, rod, and gun club, swimming pool, bowling alley, and many more all provided the necessary environment for this remote location. All were under Weiss' control. Weiss did the same for the Blackshield deployment at Kadena AFB, Okinawa.
Weiss loved a challenge. As an example, before the A-12s deployment to the Far East, the agency had constructed housing meant for the unit's personnel. However, when CIA ordered the deployment, the agency found the USAF using these billets in support of Vietnam operations and at a rate four times greater than had been planned for the 1129th. CIA decided it paramount to a successful that every attempt to find another billeting area. Werner located a Quonset hut area scheduled for destruction short distance from Kadena AFB and decided to rehabilitate the Quonsets for housing of the 1129th SAS and the support elements. In a matter of a few months he restored all Quonsets to better than new condition including the addition of a complete mobile messing facility. The A-12 hangers lacked certain features that he added just days before the arrival of the first aircraft. Within a couple of days, Weiss had the necessary work underway and completed on time. Within days of the arrival of the first A-12 plane and pilot from Groom Lake, Nevada, the CIA completed its first of 26 reconnaissance missions over North Vietnam and 3 over North Korea during the USS Pueblo incident.
After leaving Groom Lake, Werner spent two years in Washington, yearning to go abroad again. Werner had no children, so it delighted Velma that he and her son Tom became friends.
Later, Tom and his wife lived in England and were about to give Werner his first step grandchild. Werner and Velma hoped for an assignment to Rome but got Paris. This delighted Velma because she spoke French. The Paris transfer led to one of the most exciting assignments they could have possibly imagined. Mr. William Buckley, the well-known columnist, wrote years later, in a discussion of covert operations, that theirs was an example of how successful such an operation could be even with infinitely complicated logistics.
Werner retired following his Paris posting and according to Velma, he sadly but truthfully, never drew another happy breath. He returned to Las Vegas and tried to sell real estate, but hated it. He lived another 24 years but missed being in the service of his country. He was a simple but complicated man, who would take a centipede outside and release it, but whose coworkers gave him a bullwhip for his office wall.
Werner did not have a funeral or memorial service. His brothers were gone and their children and his friends were so scattered that Velma and he decided to have their ashes scattered over the Atlantic. The Roadrunners Internationale website that I established became for Velma the memorial Werner never had. To her it represented a wonderful work of remembrance that Velma felt added years for both of them. For me, it was the least I could do for an icon in CIA legacy classified Top Secret for almost half a century.
In 1986, Velma started writing about events occurring from the 1930s to mid-1980. She wrote for several reasons, mostly because of her having just gone through a rather scary illness and wanting to leave something for her grandchildren to read about her when they grew up. Fortunately, her grandchildren grew up hearing her stories, and there was nothing to do with the stories. She put them away for about 14 years only to retrieve them when she met me as I established the website about Werner, me, and the others who served the CIA at Groom Lake.
At the time, Velma lived in an assisted living apartment in Sun City, Arizona where she experienced health issues that limited the use of her legs. We communicated by computers, hers a laptop so she could work while in bed. As we worked together, she and I reestablished memories and dredged up stories from my days at Area 51 with Werner. She called me regularly at my home in Henderson, Nevada where we visited for hours on end. Together, we finished her story and edited it for the website where it remained posted for years.
With the passing of my friend, Velma, and realizing that Roadrunners Internationale association will soon cease to exist due to attrition, I have made her and Werner’s story available in e-book format for the historical value and enjoyment of the generations to follow. I acknowledge the support and assistance provided by her good friend, Jane Dunn who tireless edited the story for Velma and me as we prepared the story for posting on the website. Unfortunately, I have not managed to locate Tom, whom Velma told me was very ill, or any other family of Werner or Velma.
Velma used to speak of how her father was a voracious reader of paperback mysteries and westerns. He could choose four or five of them in as many minutes, while she was a browser who took forever to pick out a couple of novels. She finally asked him how he was able to select his reading matter so rapidly. “Well", he replied in his slow Texas drawl, “If no blood is spilt on the first page, I just move on to something else".
CIA Bride is not an autobiography; Werner took his life secrets to his grave and Velma was neither famous nor infamous enough, nor related to a famous person. It, however, was not fiction; everything was as factual as Velma’s memory allowed, but it was not a learned work backed up by hours of research. Their being a CIA family rather than ordinary Americans adds an unusual twist that most will enjoy. It was just a collection of anecdotes and memories culled from fifty years of her personal experience and some observations based on that experience. It encompasses more than a year of prewar England and all the years of wartime England as seen through the eyes of a young American bride of an Englishman, a sort of war bride in reverse. Her new husband, Werner, did not bring her home from a war; he brought her home to one. My big regret was that Werner died before the CIA declassified his career for me to include in this book. As late as October 2011, I attempted to get his file at CIA declassified for addition to this book, but was unsuccessful.
After spending the postwar years in England, Switzerland, France, and Franco's Spain, Velma started a new life, working for and later marrying into the Central Intelligence Agency. This led to her living in Germany, Japan, and of all places, Las Vegas, Nevada. It also led to some very interesting experiences while living in Paris.
Finally, there were the years of going back to England, with the inevitable comparisons of then and now, here and there. As she and I put together the story for the website, she spoke of hopes it would strike some nostalgic chords among her contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic and answer some of the questions asked by young people like her grandchildren about what it was like all those years ago.
I know Velma would say, “If this does not appeal to you, just follow her Daddy's example”.
THORNTON D. ‘T.D". BARNES
Area 51 Special Projects for CIA Project OXCART
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Chapter 1
An autobiography, beginning with Velma’s birth or one climbing her whole family tree is impracticable because what little she knew of her antecedents was sketchy. Her father always said that if a Texan insisted on digging into his family's history, he was sure to find a horse thief somewhere, a theory that may account for the paucity of her knowledge of her forebears.
Although she loved her parents dearly, she described them as ordinary people. They enjoyed, thanks to the entrepreneurial talents and hard work of her father, more than a modicum of financial blessings that made her childhood years comfortable but not very exciting. Their traveling to (to her) exotic places like Florida, Cuba, and California was mostly done in the winter, leaving her at home going to school and under the supervision of her grandmother. She spent her summers in Galveston at the beach, except for one trip to New York, and a summer in Chicago when her father had his business there. Velma, though an above-average student blessed with better-than-average good looks, had no special gifts or talents. She claimed that there was nothing to foretell the unexpected and unusual turns of her life.
If asked to choose the one event that was to lead eventually to all the others, she would identify it as her father's announcement of their moving to New York City in April 1933. She was seventeen. Until then they lived in Dallas, Texas, where she planned to go to college in California in September. Because of the distance from there to New York, she, in all fairness to them, agreed to look for a college in the East. She eventually chose Wellesley College for Women, near Boston, not only for its fine reputation, but because she had a friend who was going there. She became a member of the Class of 1937.
In her third or junior year, she met a young Englishman who, having taken his degree at Oxford, was spending a year at Harvard Business School before entering his father's business in England. He totally differed from anyone she had ever met. Before long, they were “going steady”. In the spring of that year, 1936, they became officially engaged, diamond ring and all.
Her parents accepted all of this in the same manner in that they had always allowed her, within reason, to make her own decisions, but of course, with a private “wait-and-see” reservation. They were both young and she promised to finish college that meant another full year at Wellesley while Douglas returned to England. That, if nothing else, tested the strength of their commitment to each other.
Doug's parents, Mr. Thomas Swan and his wife Mary, arrived in June on a previously arranged visit. She found them to be astonishingly unlike their son. They even spoke with a different accent, and they seemed very cool toward her. However, she was so engrossed in herself and her newfound happiness that it did not occur to her to worry about such things. When Doug got his parents to second, (reluctantly, she suspected) his invitation to England at Christmas, she accepted wholeheartedly. Her parents gave their consent, still with some unspoken reservations, and saw the Swan family, including Douglas, off home to England.
Velma spent the summer, as she had spent the previous ones, being a part-time photographic model. She had applied for such work with the famous John Powers Agency the first summer she spent in New York, and while she had not reached the cover of Vogue, she got enough work to keep her occupied and in pocket-money. One of her colleagues was a girl named Jane Wyman. She never met her but learned that photographers or magazine fashion editors would often ask for one of them if the other was not available. Miss Wyman went on to an illustrious career as an actress.
It being summer and Velma being very slender, she did a lot of fur coat modeling for the autumn editions of the fashion magazines. She never forgot one memorable day in the Central Park Zoo with a photographer determined to match the coat with the animal; i.e., to take the picture of the model in the coat with the appropriate animal in the background. Not surprisingly, the animals refused to cooperate and retired to the cool comfort of their shady dens just as the photographer got set to snap each picture. It was a long and exhausting process for Velma, and it could not possibly happen today with the exploitation and killing of animals for their skins being anathema to so many. It would also cost a great deal more today. She received $25.00 for a whole day's work in fur coats in August! She returned to college in September, counting the days until she was to sail on her first trip abroad the recently launched Queen Mary.
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Chapter 2
When recalling her voyage Velma did so with a great deal of nostalgia about this magnificent floating palace that provided intercontinental travel prior to World War II. The Queen Mary and similar majestic ships of that era were like small cities or resorts, provided every degree of comfort and every imaginable amenity: shops, gyms, beauty salons, swimming pools, ballrooms, orchestras, movies, and even kennels for one's dog. They provided every conceivable game or sport possible at sea to keep the passengers entertained. There were also libraries and card rooms for the less active. Those so inclined, retired for the entire crossing to enjoy a steward feeding and coddling them. They simply “dropped out” for a few days without feeling disapproval or guilt.
There was still the Queen Elizabeth II, but few can afford her with air travel so much cheaper. There were, of course, cruise ships, including the QE II, but there was a subtle difference in atmosphere, cruises were for fun, relaxation, or just getting away. Before intercontinental air travel, the ocean liners were the only game in town, as far as getting to Europe was concerned. As a result, not just vacationers, but also all kinds of people were aboard, people from all occupations.
Velma never made a crossing without meeting interesting persons, and five or more days at sea gave one a chance to know them, at least a little bit better than one knows one's seat companion on a plane. The competition between shipping lines and individual ships resulted in a standard of service and comfort never duplicated. She was lucky enough to stay in some of the world's great hotels, but give her a pre-war transatlantic liner every time. Even in Tourist Class, where she spent most of her earlier voyages, the food was delicious, the quarters comfortable, and the service impeccable. As you will learn, not all the ships she traveled in were of the luxury class; over the years, she made at least a dozen crossings in an almost unbelievable variety of ships, and she could truthfully say that every one of them was memorable in one way or another. Her initiation on the Queen Mary seems, in retrospect, to have inaugurated a sort of pattern that she came to expect of sea travel - none of it would ever be dull. The Queen Mary, of course, set the standard against that she measured all later voyages. There was an enormous diversity among her later voyages that will be described in due course.
On this first voyage, the chief dining steward to a table assigned her for eight. She did not expect to meet very many people of her own age group at that time of the year. The Christmas break at American schools was much shorter than in England or Europe, and summer was a better time for extended travel for students.
Her tablemates were all middle-aged and pleasant enough, but no one really grabbed her interest until the man on her left revealed that he, although British lived and worked in Paris. She did not ask him at what he worked, but was very interested to learn what life was like in the City of Light, so they had an absorbing conversation throughout dinner and went to the movies afterwards. The next morning when the steward brought her breakfast there was an envelope on her tray. It contained an engraved invitation that stated that the Honorable Mr. Seymour-Bell, Chairman of the Cunard Line, requested she join him for cocktails that evening in Suite such-and-such, First Class.
Out of her vast experience, she jumped to the conclusion that he was inviting all of the passengers, perhaps alphabetically. Her cabin-mate agreed. She skipped lunch to unpack her prettiest cocktail dress and otherwise prepare herself to mingle in a large gathering of passengers A through J. (she was a J.) When she showed her invitation at the First Class barrier, she was ushered through as if she were a person of importance, but she had already become accustomed to the flattering deference that seemed to be a hallmark of the courtesy on British ships, no matter what class one could afford.
Velma eventually arrived at the designated door, knocked, and was admitted by a man she took to be a steward, but who, as she later learned, was Mr. Seymour-Bell's valet (the first gentleman's gentleman she had ever encountered.) As he announced her name, she had time to notice that she was in the living room of a luxurious suite, very elegant, but not large enough to accommodate passengers A through J. While she was digesting this, Mr. Seymour-Bell advanced upon her cordially with outstretched hand, saying, “Good evening, I'm Seymour-Bell; do come in and meet the others". The others turned out to be a Duke and Duchess, a Lord and Lady, and two others, also titled. She was horrified. The invitation obviously mistook her for someone else. She was about to impart this information to her host and beat a hasty retreat when her table companion from Tourist Class was admitted. He arrived. He had asked the Chairman to invite her and would have explained at lunch but she was not there. It turned out that he was an upper-echelon employee of the Cunard Line who was traveling in Tourist Class to check out the food and service there. He was naturally entitled to free run of the ship, knew the Chairman well, and thought she might enjoy attending the party. She not only enjoyed the party that extended to include dinner, but she returned to her cabin with a card that gave her entrance to First Class and its amenities for the duration of the voyage. No wonder she fell in love with transatlantic travel.
Even Paradise must have some pitfalls; about mid-voyage, they ran into some very bad weather, and it soon became apparent that the Queen Mary was not handling it very well. The ship rolled from side to side until she reached an alarming list. The crew hastily placed velvet-covered ropes for passengers to hold onto, although most of them stayed in their cabins. Since she was fortunately not subject to seasickness, Velma was able to roam around the ship with her friend and to observe some of the results of their predicament. A grand piano had been wrenched from its moorings; armchairs rolled around like huge upholstered dice, and carpets not held down by furniture slid back and forth on the parquet floors, folding up like accordions. The rough sea hurled several passengers into glass doors where they sustained cuts. A number of ambulances lined up at Southampton, and the Queen Mary went into dry-dock for several weeks to have her ballast adjusted.
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Chapter 3
Upon the Queen Mary's arrival at Southampton, Douglas and two of his friends met her and, after clearing customs, they set off by car for the Swan family home in Chorleywood, a suburb northwest of London. They bypassed the great city, so she really saw nothing much but countryside, small towns, and suburbs for her first glimpse of England. As it was December, the countryside was not at its best, so she paid more attention to the occupants of the car, especially Douglas. That, she was somewhat ashamed to say, remained true for the rest of her brief visit. It being Christmas week, they spent most of their time going from one party or gathering to another so that she met many of Doug's friends, but they spent practically no time with his family. The day after Christmas, the Swan family departed for another house they owned in Essex. Several acres of shooting (birds) belonged to the property, and it was here that Mr. Swan did most of his business entertaining. Doug and she drove down for one day but were not able to follow the sport, because she was not equipped with the boots required for slogging across the muddy fields. The cold was bone chilling, and she was glad to head back to the suburban comfort of Chorleywood. Doug's sisters (Nancy, the elder, and Mary, still a teen-ager) were so busy with their own friends that she never really had much contact with them, and they ran about so much that she could not recall learning much about them during that visit.
That visit to England occurred just a few days after King Edward VIII had abdicated so that he could marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson. The English were so preoccupied with this subject and with their new Royal Family, that little else was discussed. Once or twice she overheard, or gathered that her presence stifled, some uncomplimentary comments about Mrs. Simpson, but none of them seemed intentionally meant to offend her. Everyone paid so much interest in the two little princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret that Velma carried away a lasting impression of the continuity of the monarchy. It made her realize what that institution meant to the British people. Unfortunately, and to her shame, she carried away very few other meaningful impressions. So frenetic was her brief visit and so confined to Christmas and general levity, that she could have learned as much about the real issues with that the nation was confronted by staying at home and reading the newspapers.
She returned to New York on the United States Liner Washington, remembering two things about that crossing. One was a father and son, recently bereaved of wife and mother, who remained her good friends for many years. The other was the peculiar influence of Union Rules. She could not get a steward to bring her breakfast or to help her fasten an evening gown. When she rang for the steward, she got a sort of bellhop. When she asked him why no steward, he muttered, “Union Rules”. A bit of maritime trivia she learned was that, ships pitch when sailing westwards; the Queen Mary, sailing eastwards had rolled. In fact, she had almost rolled over!
Velma returned to Wellesley and settled down to her studies, preparing for that terrifying trademark of their college, the General Exam. Without passing that, one could not graduate. So that her friends from all over the country could be present at their wedding, Doug and she were to be married the day after graduation in the college Chapel. To avoid distraction while studying for the exam, she had asked Doug to sail on a ship that would get him there just in time for the wedding, but Doug, as the saying goes, “missed the boat". Mrs. Swan had a timely heart attack and had him paged off the ship just before it sailed. There was no way he could make it to the wedding on the proposed date. Her friends dispersed to their homes. Mrs. Swan made a swift recovery, leaving her at the altar.
VELMA spent the summer in New York, licking her wounds and having long, wrangling discussions with Doug on the telephone and by letter. Their engagement was on-again, off-again more times than she could count. In the end, Doug arrived in October and installed himself at a small hotel near her parents' apartment. They resumed the wrangling, breaking up and making up, until her poor parents were about at their wits end. Finally, one night, during an interval of peace, they decided to drive the next day to Baltimore in Maryland, a state whose laws made it popular with elopers, and get married before they had time to have another fight.
Her parents received the news with relief tempered by doubts but gave them their blessing. After a short honeymoon in Canada, where her loving bridegroom turned her (on skis for the first time in her life) over to an instructor while he demonstrated his prowess on skis, they returned to New York and found a furnished apartment in suburban Pelham. Doug went to work for her father, and she started learning how to cook.
All went smoothly for nearly six months until Doug had a terrible accident at work, crushing the knuckles in his hand that then became infected. Newly developed sulfa drugs saved him from losing his arm, but he was very ill, and she had to inform his family. Because of Velma’s call, his family bid him to come home in time for his sister's June wedding. He and Velma booked passage on the German liner Europa.
The notable thing about that crossing was that the much-anticipated Louis-Schmeling return bout took place on their second night at sea. Before they could make their way to the lounge after dinner to listen to the fight on the radio, it was over. Louis had already avenged his previous defeat at the German's hands by knocking him out cold. A surly Nazi crew surrounded them for the rest of the crossing. Doug and Velma were delighted to disembark at Southampton to find the Swans' car and chauffeur waiting to drive them to the family home.
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Chapter 4
Nowadays they have a new name for homesickness. They call it culture shock. However, Velma believed that they were not synonymous because culture shock adds something to homesickness. Not only does one miss the people and the place that one has left behind, one faces new customs and ideas that were so difficult to assimilate that a period of very real and traumatic disorientation ensues. She had not married an Arab and found herself in a harem, but life in the bosom of the Swan family brought her face to face with fundamental differences in social and cultural attitudes that she had not previously given any serious consideration.
Before she could take time to examine these differences, she had to cope with simply trying to integrate herself in the day-to-day operation of the household. Corone House, situated in Chorleywood, a residential suburb northwest of London, was a modern house of about five bedrooms and a couple of servants' rooms. It sat in about three acres of garden and orchard and faced a common, an area forever closed to construction of any sort. At that time, Chorleywood consisted of a railroad station, a small hotel/pub, a church, and one or two small grocery stores. The locals conducted all their major shopping in Rickmansworth, the nearest small town; otherwise, one went to London. (Or up to town, as the British put it.) Most residents of Chorleywood were families of successful business or professional homeowners or other persons of considerable means' people to whom the British referred as gentry. In other words, poor people did not abound in Chorleywood, nor did young married such as Doug and Velma. Velma totally depended on the occupants of Corone House for any kind of companionship.
There was no movie theater, no public library, nor drugstore. The Brits called the drugstores in England, chemists, where they sold prescriptions, medical supplies, toiletries, and sundries. They did not have soda fountains or magazine stands. Some of the larger chain chemists, such as one called Boots, did have lending libraries, but there was no Boots in Chorleywood. In other words, there was nowhere for a displaced person, such as she felt herself to be. Everybody belongs somewhere, but she could not find a place to be.
The day started with the arrival of Nellie, the upstairs maid, who opened the heavy draperies and left a tray with morning tea. Breakfast was served an hour later in the dining room, and Doug and his father left immediately afterwards, taking the morning newspapers with them. Mrs. Swan and her daughters simply disappeared. Nancy, the elder sister, was to be married in a week, so it was natural that they had a lot to do and left Velma to her own devices.
The real “living room” of the house, called the music room, had a grand piano on a raised platform at one end. It was very large and comfortably furnished with a huge sofa and armchairs facing a now-empty fireplace. She decided to go there, find a book, curl up, and read. Unfortunately, it was being “turned out” by a maid. She had already gone upstairs to their bedroom, intending to make their beds, only to find a maid there making them; it was clear that this was the established routine. Adding to her discomfort was the cold from every window in the house being wide open to what the natives called a beautiful June day. To Velma, straight from a New York summer, it was a decidedly chilly day, insufficiently warmed by those bright intervals beloved of British weather commentators on the radio news.
Doug had not warned her about the English summer nor advised her to bring some warm clothes. Her entire cool-weather wardrobe was in New York, being packed, and shipped by her mother. She had with her a white cardigan that she came to wear with everything and even in bed. There was no place to shop in Chorleywood, and she was not up to bothering Mrs. Swan for help in adding some warm clothes to her wardrobe.
Of course, the others in the household did not find it cold. Even if they had, they did not turn on any heat until between March and October. This would amount almost to Original Sin in the British Isles. Velma felt displaced without a place to be or a thing to do; she was miserably shivering as well.
Occasionally, as she wandered about, she would encounter Mrs. Swan or Nancy and ask piteously for something she could do, but the answer was always negative. In desperation, she returned to their bedroom where, at least, the maid had finished and departed. If she expected to find comfort there, she was to be disappointed. There was no chair, just a stool for the dressing table. One would not have dared to disturb the grandeur of gold, lace-trimmed taffeta surmounted by white mousseline de soie that comprised the bedspreads. There was a sort of bench, done in needlepoint, footstool-height, in front of the empty fireplace. Muttering “any port in a storm”, she arranged herself on it in the fetal position, hugging herself for warmth. One of the already low points of her life got even lower when the door opened and Mrs. Swan entered. She did not know eyebrows could rise so high as Mrs. Swan informed her that morning coffee (to become known as elevenses) was being served in the drawing room because the music room was still being cleaned.
Furnished in French period furniture, the drawing room had enormous breakfront containing china and figurines. With one exception, the entire room looked very unused. The exception was a massive black and gold Chinese lacquer desk in the bay window facing on the front garden. This was Thomas Swan and Company's Chorleywood office. The firm's head office was located in Consett, County Durham, in the north of England.
They seldom used the drawing room except for display of wedding gifts or rare tea parties. Morning coffee, or elevenses, consisted of last night's after-dinner coffee, boiled with milk that had formed a skin the color of water after washing grey socks and tasted about the same. By contrast, the cookies, or biscuits as they called them that accompanied the coffee were delicious. While they were having elevenses, she asked again whether there was something useful that she could do. Again, the family denied Velma the opportunity to help; the wedding plans were well in hand. She was to be a bridal attendant and to fit her gown later that afternoon when the dressmaker arrived. They suggested that she take a walk in the garden before lunch.
Figuring that she could not be any colder outside than in, (actually, it was warmer outside during the bright intervals) she wandered around the garden and tried to find the reason for her malaise, other than the obvious ones of having nothing to do, nowhere to be, and freezing. The number of servants baffled Velma. She had not learned about the English and servants. Corone House was a family sized house, but it was certainly not a mansion. It was not a great deal larger than the house that she had grown up in Dallas, and while there were two more in the Swan family than in ours, that did not seem to justify the large difference in the number of staff. They had done quite well with their Jessie (who had been with them since before her birth) and a “yard man” (yard being a term never associated with a private home in England.) The Swan household employed a cook, a kitchen maid, a parlor-maid, an upstairs maid, a visiting charwoman, and a weekly laundress. Outside, there was a chauffeur-gardener and a garden-boy.
At the time, she was unaware of how little they paid the help, so it seemed to her that the cost for such a large staff must be enormous and she simply could not see the justification for it. She came to learn that servants were an important status symbol in England and that, because they came so cheaply, it was common to employ a larger number of them than was necessary to maintain one's standing in society. This, in turn, established the existence of rigidly defined boundaries circumscribing what chores a servant would and would not do. She did not know that, especially in the Victorian era, the genteel poor indeed scrimped on food and heat to have at least a single servant to open the door to visitors.
This was hard for Velma to assimilate. Although her own family had always had a house cleaner, she knew many families equally or more affluent who chose not to have any live-in servants at all, preferring their privacy and their “own way of doing things”. Coming from such a background, it was to be expected, she suppose, that the presence of so many servants would somewhat intimidate her and contribute to her culture shock. However, being waited on hand and foot was very easy to get used to, and it was not to make her uncomfortable for long.
As the days passed, she still felt increasingly uncomfortable and uneasy. She realized that it was more than this change in lifestyle that was affecting her. For a while, she concentrated on blaming her in-laws. The problem, she decided, lay with them and their attitude toward her that made her feel something hostile in the air around her.
She, of course, did not expect Mr. and Mrs. Swan to receive her with open arms; they had been decidedly cool towards her on previous occasions. She assumed that they, like her own parents, had hoped that the romance between Doug and her would fade with separation. They had not even pretended to be pleased when Doug left for America and subsequently married her. However, when, after six months and upon learning of Doug's accident, they had summoned them to England. From this, Velma assumed that they had forgiven all and would accept her as a member of the family. She realized that it was not going to be easy; There were preconceived ideas on both sides, largely gleaned from the movies, about what each other's characteristics would be. She thought that they really thought that American girls did little but drank cocktails and do the Charleston; if indeed they ever prepared a meal for their husbands, it would come out of cans (or tins as they called them.)
She was not much more realistic, basing her ideas of Englishmen on Herbert Marshall or Leslie Howard. She could not remember ever having seen a film featuring a blunt, hard-nosed, north-country businessman like Mr. Swan. Nothing had prepared her for her mother-in-law. She was, as far as she could determine, a one-of-a kind individual. When she first met her, she had thought that she was painfully shy. Now, in her own home, she realized that she had a will of iron. She was implacable in her determination to keep her at a distance, and she succeeded in making her sense of isolation complete during the hours when the men were away from the house. When they returned, Mr. Swan was so good at making her feel foolish that she yearned for the daytime luxury of their ignoring her Perhaps from nervousness, she had an enormous appetite. When she accepted a second helping, Mr. Swan would announce that he would rather keep her a week than a fortnight.
Another cause of painful embarrassment for her was the plumbing. All the toilets (called WC's - water closets) were in small separate rooms next to the bathrooms. There was also a WC in the downstairs cloakroom. The windows always remained open in all seasons. There were times, later, in winter, when she was sure she would freeze to the seat. All the toilets were flushed by pulling a chain that issued from an overhead tank. There was a knack to getting the thing to flush on the first pull, a knack reserved to persons of British birth and upbringing. When she pulled it, it made a horrible screeching noise and refused to flush. Every call of nature, required numerous loud yanks on the chain, followed by an ignominious return to the others. In a warm and welcoming atmosphere, this sort of thing they could have laughed off, teased about, and eventually made a family joke. Such was not the case; when she returned from a trip to the cloakroom WC, or even one upstairs, there was a smirk on every face except that of Doug. A good part of her time, she spent figuring out how to time her visits to the WC either’s, to when the family members were out or scattered about the house. Fortunately, she never had to use the facility during the night. She would surely have awakened the entire household.
Velma decided that only the passage of time might improve the relationship between her and the Swan family. After all, she was certainly not the first young woman to receive a cool reception from her in-laws. She determined to relax and felt confident that, when they all became better acquainted, they would be a happy family. Having made that resolution, she became increasingly aware that this would not be a happy family even if she had not intruded upon it. There was something wrong with the relationships within the family itself. It took her a while to define and understand the problem.
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Chapter 5
Looking back with the advantage of hindsight, it was hard for her to believe that a young woman of some intelligence and quite a lot of education could have been so politically, economically, and sociologically illiterate as she was when she arrived to live in England. In her own defense, she could only plead that, up to now; she had had little time to concentrate on anything of consequence except her studies. Due to her personal preferences, these had consisted chiefly of languages and certain sciences to the exclusion of any formal study of politics and/or history. Her knowledge of English history was almost entirely restricted to the American Revolution. She really had not thought much about why their founding fathers had made it so clear that “All men were created equal". She knew little or nothing about the system of class distinction that prevailed in England. She was not able to recognize that this very system divided the Swan family within itself.
Velma knew, of course, that England had a monarch and an aristocracy, but it had a parliament and a voting population; as far as she could discern, it was a democracy such as they enjoyed in her own country. What was new and relatively unknown to her was the concept of class distinction and the role that speech accent played in delineating and identifying classes.
Velma, like most Americans, felt uncomfortable about using the word “class". To her, unless it refers to a group of students or inadequate objects, “class” was a word she avoided. Although they did not mind referring to the middle class, they avoided saying lower, working, or even upper class; they groped for such substitutes as privileged/underprivileged, haves/have not’s, VIP's and John Does, to name a few. Of course, they had a kind of class distinction, as implied in the designation WASP, but they did not like to call it such. They might joke about the Cabot’s, the Lowell’s, and ancestors who arrived on the Mayflower, but they really reserved their homage for the self-made businessperson or the doctor or lawyer who worked his way through college waiting on tables. This seemed to her to be in direct contrast to the British attitude that until quite recently was one of disdain for persons “in trade". She said, “Quite recently” as acknowledgement that there have been significant changes since the end of World War II. It was not her purpose to discuss these changes here; she was interested in describing how she found such attitudes in prewar England and their affect on her.
In America, it seemed to her, once a man had worked hard and achieved success, as had her own father; he could take his place in the community without fear that the stigma of humble birth would become apparent every time that he opened his mouth. His grammar might be flawed and his conversation more colorful than educated, but this would not likely be a matter of shame to him or his children. In England, she learned, no matter what a man had achieved, he could rarely overcome the disadvantages caused by his regional accent with its implications of humble origins.
Velma was of course aware that the speech of Mr. and Mrs. Swan was different from that of their children. Somehow, she had failed to see the significance. She simply assumed that the difference in accent was the result of the family moving to the south of England when the children were quite young.
She later realized that the difference was due to the children's attending private schools. She was blissfully unaware of the social implication of accent. Some English people spoke like Herbert Marshall or David Niven, while others retained their regional accent. “My Fair Lady” or “Upstairs-Downstairs", and actors who spoke cockney were rare in Hollywood and difficult for Velma to understand. She was accustomed to regional accents in the States; indeed, she had had a marked southern one when she arrived at Wellesley. There, in their first semester, they had a required course in phonetic speech. As far as she was aware, though, there were no social implications of accent in her country. It was quite different in Britain. A child learned to speak “the King's English” either at his mother's knee or by attending the right type of school where it was spoken. What had happened to the Swan family was what she came to think of as the self-made-father syndrome. She thought it must have started to manifest itself with the industrial revolution that produced many self-made, wealthy men of humble origins. They sent their children to expensive schools, inexplicably called public schools, and then resented them for having the more socially desirable accent. She felt certain that the Swan children loved and respected their parents and were never ashamed of them. She was equally convinced that the parents were never sure of this. In the case of Mr. Swan, this situation caused a measure of resentment of his son, who not only would inherit a thriving business but who would also be more socially acceptable than his father would. Not surprisingly, this state of affairs affected the atmosphere of the entire house. Mr. Swan spoiled his daughters to humiliate and punish the son whom he resented so bitterly. This produced contempt in the girls toward their brother (and incidentally explained some of the lack of friendship she had sensed in the daughters toward herself.)
The father played his children off against one another unmercifully, usually to the disadvantage of the son. Mrs. Swan did not help matters. The normal jealousy of the mother whose son was newly married intensified with her own feelings of inferiority, and she was therefore more than willing to follow her husband's lead. She was diffident, almost to the point of subservience, to her daughters who, because of this double-barreled indulgence by both parents, inevitably became temperamental and arrogant. It was little wonder that this kind of sibling rivalry and parental favoritism eventually resulted in emotional problems and broken marriages for all three of the Swan offspring.
The only person who seemed to like her was dear old Grannie, Mrs. Swan's mother, who, widowed for many years, was now in her eighties. When Mr. Swan made a business trip by car up north, he would bring her back for a visit. This time she came for Nancy's wedding. What a joy she was! She still lived in the cottage that Lord Redesdale had provided for her husband, his gamekeeper. Mr. Swan had bought it for her. It was in a tiny village named Rochester, near the Scottish border. When she met her and saw how she suffered from the cold, she produced some green wool from somewhere and knitted her a sweater in three days. It was most welcome, although the body was at least three inches too short and the sleeves six inches too long. She adored her, and so did the rest of the family. When she came for a visit that she continued to do until her death, she brought something healing to the family table. Everyone exchanged indulgent smiles as she busily (and audibly) scraped her plate for the last bit of pudding and insisted that one helping was enough while willingly accepting another. In later years, when she had gained some maturity, she often speculated on how much her daughter might have resembled her in character had her husband not acquired the wealth that sat so uneasily on her shoulders.
Meanwhile, the wedding was upon them. Velma claimed the occasion allowed her to distinguish herself by shivering so violently with the cold in the church that the rattling of her bouquet almost drowned out the ceremony. She looked enchanting, too, with her blue and mauve dress that matched her skin and lips.
Velma did get the chance, however, to observe a large number of English men and women at one of their rituals and at play. There was a seated luncheon in a vast marquee on the lawn and an orchestra to play dance music afterwards. It was quite a large affair, what with all the children's friends and many of Mr. Swan's business acquaintances as well as quite a large contingent of old friends from the North. With the consuming of great deal of wine and liquor, by the end of the day, she had learned a few things more about the British. They could put away an incredible amount of alcohol, and they became quite uninhibited on a dance floor. The Lambeth Walk had been a very popular result of a recent stage musical, and all that she had ever heard about British reserve went out the window at the spectacle of some 200 men and women performing and singing it with abandon. In spite of their exuberance, they still liked some organization in the procedures; a large white card, placed in front of the orchestra, announced what type of dance was in progress waltz, foxtrot, one-step, two-step, and something called the Valeta.
The services of a professional toastmaster punctuated the lavish luncheon that preceded the dancing. This was the first such person she had ever met. Resplendent in brilliantly colored ceremonial attire, he proposed all the toasts, chanting, “Ladies and Gentlemen, charge your glasses” before each, introduced the speakers and generally orchestrated the event until the final toast to the sovereign. Only after that toast did they permit smoking, dancing, and mingling. Altogether, it was a very enjoyable affair, it left with her a curious feeling that somehow she transported backward in time. This was a sensation that stayed with her until some time after the beginning of the war.
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Chapter 6
Shortly after the wedding, Doug and Velma received an invitation to a dinner party given by a titled couple whose son had been at Oxford with Doug. It was a small, but very formally served and somewhat stilted dinner; the presence of their elders (the hosts) and a number of servants, uniformed and wearing white gloves, probably restrained it.
The hearty meals and her nervous appetite had begun to have an effect on her waistline. As she seated for dinner, the large snaps at the back of her wide, gold leather belt came apart with a sound like a pistol shot, and the belt landed on the table's centerpiece. At home in the States, she was sure that the resultant burst of laughter, including hers, would have helped to assuage her embarrassment. Such was not the case here. Doug's spontaneous (Americanized) laughter died as the entire company froze in silence. A maid retrieved her belt and handed it to her. She hastily shoved it into her lap as someone finally broke the silence with a remark about the weather, and conversation resumed. She wanted to die, but she came to realize that, according to their code of manners, the kindest thing to do was to ignore her mishap. Doug insisted later that they would probably have behaved quite differently if such a thing had happened to one of them without the presence of a stranger.
With the wedding over, life eased up a bit at Corone House. The family members did not turn out the rooms so often, and made a few forays into London for the theater, followed by supper in a good restaurant. Mrs. Swan relented enough to take her shopping in London, and she began to learn some of the odd quirks and habits of the British. She shall never forget her first visit to the beauty parlor or, as the English say, the hairdresser. This took place in the town of Ricksmansworth. Many of the salons in small towns were in the process of installing the reclining type of shampoo chair to that Americans were accustomed. British ladies had previously bent forward and rested their foreheads on a folded cloth on the edge of the washbasin. “Back or front, Madam?” asked the young assistant as she conducted her to the shampoo area. “Oh", she blurted, “I want my whole head washed".