Chapter Twelve - Owen 1912-1914

The next several months, from October of 1912 to Easter of 1913, were the worst of my youth.
It was very lonely and I felt quite cut off from all my friends and not sure whom to trust at all. My mother visited briefly, to supervise the disposal and storage of family possessions and furniture – what a pitiful business! Things which look perfectly happy and decorative in inhabited rooms take on such a derelict air in a repository; it seemed such a metaphor to me for my life just at that moment! And it was terrible not to be able to talk with her about it all. In October my parents went abroad again, this time to the Italian Lakes. Another thing I realised later was with what dismay she must have gone abroad then, knowing something was wrong with me, leaving me and my two sisters to live in London earning our livings without her watchful supervision, or indeed, any supervision at all.

Visits to Bloomsbury quite stopped of course, and when I received letters or, more rarely, visits from mutual friends of George and mine, I was extremely awkward. I never knew quite what to say, what they knew, or how to go on. With Geoffrey Young things were especially difficult, for I genuinely loved him and I didn’t know how to behave around him at all now. With George himself, things were quite tenuous throughout the autumn. He wrote hesitantly, with that cheery over-friendliness and stilted endings that he had used at first. I only saw him twice in two months, and both times we went to the South Kensington Museum and he was more concerned with returning relations to a state of normality than discussing anything in detail. I was still hurting deeply, very confused, still very much in love with him, but blaming myself for all that had gone wrong. That he kept himself at arm’s length only reinforced my view that it had been all my fault.

George, as a rule, thought chiefly about art and literature or political and social problems; he did very little thinking about individual people unless they confronted him with a problem of some sort. I knew this, but in the awful moments of feeling as if I had driven him away, by wanting too much, I forgot it utterly.

At the beginning of October, we sat at tea after spending what was really a very pleasant afternoon amongst the pictures in the South Kensington, and I hoped, hoped so very much that we had turned a corner. His book on Boswell was just coming out and we joked that he would be now frightfully busy with the social responsibilities of an author. I asked him, in a light way, if he were coming to town for the Christmas dance at the Alpine club ‘if you aren’t too busy or important now to come dance with me in the Grafton.’ It was our own very special evening, and I had no doubt whatever that he would come.
‘Oh Lord!’ George said, colouring deeply after a moment. ‘Oh, dear Lord!’ He looked very embarrassed, and I was alarmed and not a little puzzled.
‘What’s the matter?’
He ran his hand through his hair, and winced, looking at me askance from under his hand.
‘I made another engagement,’ he muttered, barely audibly.
‘Excuse me?’
‘I made another engagement,’ he said, louder. His expression was somewhere between pain and embarrassment. But I felt as if I had been struck – experienced an actual physical pain in the chest – and sat back in dismay.
‘What!’ I couldn’t bring myself to ask with whom, or speak at all.
‘With Mabel Capper,’ he admitted. ‘I met her in Courmayeur in August. She was nice... and – when she asked me – a few weeks ago – I thought you wouldn’t want to go with me – have anything to do with me... so I said yes.’
I was in tears now.
‘Oh my God, I’m sorry,’ George said, reaching for my hand.
‘You agreed to go with someone else?’ I asked in a small voice. It was the only thing I could think, and kept repeating it rather idiotically, numbly, while tears ran down my face.
‘I’m so sorry,’ George said again. ‘I thought you didn’t want to see me – I—’ He stopped and really looked at me. ‘Oh God, you still love me, don’t you?’ I could only nod dumbly. My throat hurt too badly to speak. ‘Oh, what have I done?’ George worried. ‘Oh, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.’
‘You agreed to go with someone else,’ I said again, like an idiot child. People were staring at us.
‘Come,’ he said, ‘let’s go.’

Despite my squeaking protest that I was in no condition to go anywhere, he pulled me up by the hand and marched me off to a dark and little-visited corner of the museum where we sat on the floor like art students, huddled together, and I cried as quietly as I could for a long time while he promised ten thousand things – he would make some excuse to Mabel, we should have more evenings together (the Second Post-Impressionist exhibition was just opening then), dinners and the theatre, and teas on his half-days and weekend walks about Godalming – for he could certainly afford my train fare. All the delightful little loverly attentions so long wanting, and wanted by me, and I was happier when we parted – I wanted so to believe him!

But he wrote to me a few days later, saying he had not been able to get out of his engagement with Mabel and I wrote back saying it was because he really didn’t want to, which he denied stoutly and strongly, writing, ‘You must believe that I have no feelings for Miss Capper other than the comradeship of the mountains – she certainly does not have your feeling for them! – and this difficulty is only the most common of social tangles of over- or double-booking. It means nothing. Please come here this weekend, my dear. We can have a very nice Sunday just the two of us. Please say you will—’

But I did not and I would not. I am rather ashamed to say that I refused every such invitation of his, because I could, or would, not believe that his intentions and interest were genuine. His invitations were surely only to assuage a guilty conscience towards me. For if he had really meant any of it, he would have got out of his engagement with Mabel Capper – it was so far off anyway! – no matter what. But he did not. I thought of all the marriage proposals, serious and not – including one from Will Beveridge - I had spurned on his behalf, and was really angry. What better proof of love could I give but that I had eschewed becoming a Countess for his sake? But of course he knew none of this. I certainly never told him how many times men threw themselves at my feet and how even now, I received flowers from near-strangers I met in town. George had never sent me flowers. We had gathered them in Alpine meadows, he had bedecked me in them on a stolen picnic in Cwm Glas, but he had never sent me flowers, when he knew I loved them – his letters from Charterhouse or Birkenhead were always full of little notes on the progress of the flowers there. I knew, rationally, that he could not afford them, but it rankled, and now more than ever. In revenge for all his remissness, I took to not replying to his notes for several weeks, though I read, and kept, every single one of them.

I have them still, a great pile of them before me now, removed from their box in the dressing-room cupboard; faded and worn, in that angular handwriting of his. A young man’s coaxing, pleading, enticing, declarations. They have travelled the world over with me – from the Fulham Road, to Surrey, to China, to Budapest, and Moscow, to America and Canada, to Ireland, and back again to London, where I sit now in this still pre-dawn, writing. They have travelled with me, in an old toiletries box I had in Zermatt when as a young girl I first saw his face. How powerful is the effect of a person’s handwriting! Something this age of typewriters can never know. The mere sight of it brings his face to mind, in all its guises, and I am once more that young girl, that young woman he loved. I think on my muddled, stupid follies of that time with a kind of half-painful, half-amused detachment. They were the sins of vanity and of youth.

How different that imbroglio to his welcome notes from the Alps just weeks before the horror in Gordon Square:
‘No sign of warmth or comfort, and the white mist all around, and the slushy snow on the ground; finally, an insufficient supply of mostly wet clothes. How could one have been such a fool as to be there? For half-an-hour we tried to play bridge with a pack of thirty-six cards.... The other sturdy mountaineers tried to read. I don’t know how they fared – there were only four books to be had, and the most interesting appeared to be La Premiere Priere de Marguerite, in the most sentimental French style. I relieved my feeling by writing some expletives on the subject of boredom....’

But this stalemate could not last forever. I was not that strong, whatever I felt about what he had done or not done. He had called me intractable in one of his letters when I would not write, and I felt the sting of truth in that, so I wrote and apologised for being stubborn and unforgiving. He sent me back a postcard – a postcard! For all the world to see – asking, ‘Do you believe how I feel for you?’ Honestly, I could only say ‘I want to.’ He sent me a copy of his Boswell book when it came out a little later, inscribed ‘To the one who made this possible, on a starry night in Wales.’ Not Zermatt, where we had been so childishly giddy, but Snowdon, for he still maintained that I had saved his neck if not his life by keeping him from walking off the cornice twice. But I caught the undercurrent of the Snowdon hut as well. No one else would. The inscription was a secret and a pledge of remembrance, and feeling, and it – and the book – thawed relations between us again.

George’s ‘Boswell the Biographer’ is a fine book, and a remarkably insightful psychological portrait for a man only twenty-five years old, not generally given to verbally psychologising his friends. It is still available at a reasonable price from secondhand booksellers in the City. His preface is worth noting, for it says so much about the tenor of his mind and wit in those days:
The responsibility for upwards of 300 pages in print is a burden which my unaccustomed conscience cannot easily bear, and by accepting it I lose forever the unassailable dignity of private criticism. In these circumstances, I approach my readers in an apologetic frame of mind. I shall not apologise for writing a dull book by explaining how it is interesting. I had thought of doing something of the sort, but at present that course presents insuperable difficulties. An explanation, if not an apology, is however necessary....

The psychological enquiry at Cambridge and at Bloomsbury had so evidently and deeply affected him. One can readily see in his book that he was, behind his mask of diffidence, studying people all the while, very curious as to the workings of their minds and acutely accurate as to their motivations and the origins of their quirks, foibles, or complexes, as Freud would have it. Some few examples will you the idea of its general tenor:

No one certainly could have been more attentive than Boswell was: he had a sense of responsibility in being in charge of the great writer, which made him anxious not only that Johnson should be welcomed in ta fitting manner, but that he himself should appear as a worthy companion. His deep sense of respect, his desire for approval and dread of reproof are constantly obvious....

It was presumably to some degree because he realised that Johnson was fond of him that Boswell was able to endure his rudeness. It must be remembered, however, that it was deliberately in most cases brought upon himself, and there was then no real cause to take offence. You cannot complain if by your own fault you have made a man angry, whatever he may say – especially if he is thirty years older than yourself....

That which determines individuality in men more than any other factor is the freedom of choice. But there is more than one way of choosing. There are some who choose to march upon the high road where tall fences on either side prevent the possibility of wandering astray; and there are others who select the by-paths deliberately. All who choose are in search of treasure. Those who have rejected the high roads hardly know what they so urgently desire; but when they come upon a rare flower in the wilderness which pleases them particularly they cull it; they are then refreshed and go forward with more certain step, and there hangs about them something of the fragrance they inhaled, do that other men when they meet them are reminded of that flower which they too have seen and smelt. The rest press forward more directly; when they have chosen the way there is no deviation; they will pause for nothing unless it be of precious metal. And when their quest is rewarded they surround themselves with a cloud of gold-dust, as it seems to them, and cannot be seen except through this strange mist. Boswell, it would seem, was among these last...

And George was of the former. The book delighted me because it was such a window not only into the mind of Boswell and his relation to Johnson, in which I had only a small interest, having spent parts of summers since I was small in the Highlands, but into George’s mind as well. In his commentaries and observations one could see clearly his opinions and the workings of his mind, thus proving the maxim that a biography is as much about the author as the subject. He told me one afternoon many years later in his study at the Holt, before his last Everest expedition, just why Boswell fascinated him, and the insight was telling. I like him, he said, because he knew how to observe all and mesh with the scene, become part of it, and not obtrude himself into his subject. ‘To become one with it’. That was George’s spiritual modus operandi, with regard to mountains or art or anything else one cared to name. If he seemed sometimes a chameleon, or as he liked to say, a chimera, it was because he got so good at blending with the surrounding scenery, or the ideas and colour of the people about him – and that one thing explained a good deal about his character, which might otherwise seem inexplicable. At least, this is how it seemed to me when I read his first book on its publication.

It got wonderful reviews by the critics, which was very heartening. He wrote to me of these, saying, ‘I never imagined that anyone would be interested in it, except “Boswell students”. I value the interest of those who are not especially, do it’s all the more pleasing to hear that you like it.’ I had written to him a sincere and glowing review of the book, to which the above was a response. Moreover, he had managed to accomplish a miracle in getting his father to read it. In fact, Herbert, who never read anything apart from a cursory perusal of the newspaper, was reading it instead of writing his Sunday sermons!

The annual Christmas meeting of the Alpine club was something of a trial. I went with Ursula Nettleship and Edith Mudd, so as not to feel a wallflower, and arrived ahead of George and Miss Capper, who was a new member this last year and whom I therefore did not know well. She was not what I expected; I was frankly expecting some little adorable creature. She was not. She was thirty-five, a rather squarishly built woman, pleasant looking, but plain. She was, George had said, very strong, a fine rock-climber, but of the ‘bagging of summits’ mindset. She was a scientist by profession, and in fact knew my sister Cora. He had agreed to come to a formal affair with this brown mouse??

I had to endure some raised eyebrows and direct questions from old friends in the Club. Percy Farrar buttonholed me at the drinks table after dinner and asked me what the matter was with my young man, having watched us at dinner sitting at nearly opposite ends of the table, engrossed in conversation with others. I managed to laugh.
‘It’s the result of a misunderstanding back in September, all quite silly. In the end it was easier to stay in the rabbit hutch than try to wrestle out.’
‘Eh?’
‘It would have hurt Miss Capper more than it was worth.’
‘Ah,’ Farrar drank his whisky and soda, none the more enlightened, by his expression. He looked up, behind me. ‘Hullo, here comes your young fellow now!’
I turned round and there was George, smiling and beautiful in evening dress.
‘May I have this dance, Miss Sanders?’ he asked, smiling still. For me, the whole crowded room was all a murmuring faceless herd now. I made a cursory apology to Farrar, who blinked in approval and we whirled off. My heart was hammering, and I was very glad now I’d begged my sister Jenny’s favourite pink gown. It was rather frothy for my taste, but in the Aesthetic style, and George liked pink.

‘You look lovely,’ he said. His dancing was much smoother; he had been practising somewhere. ‘Did you wear that for me?’
I laughed, happy for the first time in months. ‘I did.’
‘It worked,’ he said, smiling in his enigmatic way. Then, very firmly and with great style, he moved me out on the dance floor and I was in sheerest heaven. Vaguely, I remember seeing Geoffrey watching us as we went past – he was dancing as well – but none of it, none of it mattered.
‘I’ve missed you,’ George said, looking at me for one intense brief moment.
‘Oh god!’ I could barely speak, and was trembling like an idiot. He felt it and smiled warmly, his hand on my waist, and we continued without further conversation through the dance.

Afterward we walked out into the gallery for a short way, under the star-speckled skylight.
‘I’d like to see you later this evening, if you would,’ he said evenly.
‘What about Miss Capper?’
He tossed his hair from his face. ‘She’s going off in a cab with some of the ladies to their hotel.’
He glanced at me. ‘Did you talk with her, at the Ladies Club meeting?’
I frowned. ‘No. We were introduced, as she is new, but that was all. Why?’
He looked down the corridor and ruffled his hair. ‘She came to me after the meeting and asked me why I had not come with you.’
‘Pardon?’ I was amazed.
‘You didn’t say anything to her?’
‘No.’ It was very puzzling. ‘During the meeting I sat with Edith and Celia Newbold and minded my own business.’
‘Ah, Celia!’ George murmured. He smiled a little. ‘Well, my dear Miss Sanders, that would explain it!’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I told you I saw her and Ralph in London on my way from the Alps in the summer.’
‘Yes?’ I didn’t, being so very preoccupied in Scotland at the time.
‘When we were at tea, Celia asked me if I were in love with you.’
My heart started hammering again. ‘Why? What did you say?’
‘Presumably because they had just been married, and everyone just married thinks everyone single should be married too. As for what I said,’ he turned to me very directly, his expression intense in that breathtaking way that he had about him sometimes, for when he was fully present, that presence was simply riveting, ‘I said Yes. I had just spent weeks in the Alps and wished nothing more than you were there for it all. I was very sure then, as I wasn’t later when I got round Eddie and Duncan and Geoffrey Keynes again.’
We regarded each other for a long moment, and there was so much said and understood and forgiven in that quiet space. He took my hand. ‘So that is the last that Celia knew, and surely, by the look of you this evening, she knew it was still true for you. I expect she mentioned it to Mabel.’ They had walked from our meeting to the dinner together, I remembered then. I went ahead with Ursula. God bless Celia!

‘So,’ George said softly. ‘What do we do about this?’
My mouth went dry and I couldn’t speak. ‘I don’t know,’ I managed, rather ineffectually. He smiled.
‘Well, let’s just see where this leads, shall we? That’s why I wanted to see you this evening. Thank you for saying Yes.’
We went back into the dance then, and passed Geoffrey Young on the way to the drinks table.
‘Hello, old boy,’ Geoffrey said, beaming. ‘Hello, Cottie. Well done, Galahad!’
George clapped his arm. ‘Thank you, Geoffrey.’ There was real affection and gratitude in his tone. At the table he took a brandy and handed me sherry punch.
‘What did he mean by that?’ I asked curiously.
George smiled ruefully. ‘I was petrified you’d turn me down. Geoffrey supplied a bit of Dutch uncle advice during the meeting, if not Dutch courage.’
My God.

We walked all the way from Tottenham Court Road to the Embankment after the dance, eschewing a lift from several people, including Geoffrey and Francis Younghusband. They seemed amused that we preferred to walk. There in the quiet midnight hours, in our borrowed or dusted off finery, we swanned along like something out of a Shaw play, talking about music – Mussorgsky – the new Post-Impressionist exhibition, and love. George walked with his hands in his pockets, looking nothing so much like a matinee idol, and for once, revealed himself utterly, haltingly, painfully, with a plain but unspoken need to be understood.

‘I do love you,’ he said. He scanned the curving road towards Tower Bridge, then looked at me. ‘I think I always have done, from that first moment outside the Monte Rosa, when I looked up to find a goddess regarding me. I felt commanded. No girl or woman ever had such an effect or such a hold on me.’ He smiled a little. ‘Climbing the next day on the Stockhorn was really difficult, you know. I couldn’t concentrate at all.’
I smiled too. ‘It didn’t show.’
‘Perhaps not to you, but Geoffrey ragged me rather about it later.’
‘Did he!’
‘Mmm. But,’ he paused a step here, ‘I did nothing then, though I should have, because I was petrified. Oh there was James – and God what a relief it is to simply say that without fear! – but I was paralysed at the thought of losing my freedom. I think I fear it more than anything else. ’ I was breathless at the undercurrent of raw emotion in his tone.

‘To come and go as I please,’ he went on, ‘to do what I want and think my own thoughts, to follow whatever wild chimera I wish, without the ...shackles –’ he was stammering now ‘of domestic life. The horribly dreary daily round –’ his voice rose and broke ‘– of routine and the deadly sameness of everything. The need to acquire and organise and look after things, when it is not things that matter, but the progress of ideas and society, making life better, making it beautiful, enjoying life, being alive!’ He shook his head violently, his hair falling in his eyes, his voice dropping back to its normal resonant baritone. ‘The rest makes me feel hemmed in, claustrophobic, if you will...’ He smiled a little, ruefully. ‘So I’m a bit of a poor catch.’ He looked at me now, clearly, pleadingly. He was still afraid. So his next words took me aback. ‘Could you live with that?’

The world swayed and receded. I stopped walking, afraid to take a step. ‘In general, or with you?’ I asked as calmly as I could over my hammering heart.
‘I wouldn’t ask you if it were to do with anyone else,’ he said with irony.
‘Are you asking me to marry you?’
I was frightened too – that he would say No, that he would say Yes. Everything around us had disappeared and I felt as if I were standing in a dream landscape of half-shadows, all else unreal but this.
He considered his words carefully. ‘I am asking if you could consider the possibility of it, with me.’ He said at last. It was a very honest response, as were his next words. ‘The idea scares me to death, but I wouldn’t consider it with anyone else – and these last months without your company have shown me how much you mean to me.’
Well, it wasn’t a romantic declaration, but it was very dear nonetheless.
‘Thank you.’ I said, and meant it.

We began walking again. ‘There is the other problem, also,’ he went on after a bit, looking up towards Tower Bridge.
‘Can you cope with my romantic friendships with men?’ He looked at me askance.
The thought still made me sick. ‘I don’t know,’ I said with as much honesty as he had mustered. ‘It feels very hurtful, like a betrayal.’
‘Even if you can know for certain that I would never fall in love with them? It is a purely sensual, spiritual response, I promise you.’
‘I believe you,’ I said in some distress, ‘but imagine how it would feel, George – the one person you loved above all others in all the world being swept away by a fancy of whatever kind for someone else.’
‘That’s a very black and white view,’ he said gently.
‘Well it’s mine,’ I said, feeling rebuked and rather cross with him for spoiling a lovely moment. ‘And you asked me. Did you not want the truth?’
‘Yes I did.’ He sighed. ‘Dear Cottie, I know this is difficult, and I’m sorry for that. But I do appreciate your telling me the truth.’

He stopped and turned to me, taking my arms. ‘Now, here is another thing I wanted to ask you: would your family be scandalised if I stayed with you tonight?’ He paused and the feeling from him made me breathless. ‘It’s not for want of a room or a bed. I could hunt up half a dozen in the city. I want to make things right with us and it is the best way I know how. I haven’t pressed this since Snowdon because I didn’t want you to think that was all I wanted – and you’re not a free love advocate anyway,’ he was smiling. ‘But when I saw you in the lobby before the meetings, when I wasn’t sure you would come at all, and in that lovely frock – I knew how much I wanted you for certain, and how much of a pig’s ear I’ve made of this, when just the thing I thought would shock you would have done the trick all along.’
I hardly knew what to say. Here indeed was the thing that would have ‘done the trick’ all along. But it was not what anyone in my conventional circle would approve. After a moment, only because I believed his ultimate intentions, I said Yes.

There was no Pen-y-Pass meeting that New Year. Just before Christmas, Archer Thompson killed himself by drinking a bottle of carbolic, and Geoffrey seemed nearly destroyed by the news. The summer had seen the deaths of Harold Porter and H. O. Jones and his wife in the Alps, in unnecessary accidents, and this put poor Geoffrey over the top. George spent the Christmas hols in London, lunching with Rupert and Eddie Marsh and Duncan. He was right back into his old crowd of friends. I didn’t see much of him, working as I was. But he came by several times on his way to and from London. Yet I felt he should have done more, since we had an understanding. He wrote beautiful, affectionate letters, but they were letters, and not himself, and nothing could replace his presence. I began to feel shamed of having spent the night with him at Christmastime, that it had been the wrong thing to do, because as after Snowdon his attention became less rather than greater. Perhaps he felt that the thing was settled, I don’t know. But, very conscious of his fear of feeling shackled, I couldn’t bring myself to talk with him about how badly I felt. Was this what he meant by ‘could I live with it?’

He went to Winchester for the football match, then once in March he came to town and only told me when he’d got back to Charterhouse. It was the last thing I could bear, even though George said it was a flying visit and there as no time. He had been to see Duncan, I heard afterward, Duncan! Who lived only blocks away from me! I was crushed. I wrote angry, pleading or pathetic letters, then couldn’t bear to send them. I wept almost continuously when alone, and spent a good deal of time alone, in my room, in the park, in the cafeteria of the Chelsea Polytechnic.

I was not able to go to Pen-y-Pass that Easter, not being able to afford it. I might have written to George and told him I could not afford the train fare or hotel rates, and he would have organised some sort of fund. I might have written to Geoffrey similarly. But I did not. The truth is I was so angry and hurt and bewildered by George’s erratic behaviour, that I wanted to do this one dramatic thing so that he would notice how unhappy I was. But he did not because I told him nothing. When I wrote to him that I wasn’t able to go he took it calmly, never offering to help, and that put me over the top. I went instead to the country house of a friend; Ethel Graham of Skipness, who was studying sociology at the Polytechnic, invited me to spend Easter at her family home in Argyll. There I met Owen O’Malley, her cousin. Overwhelmed by Owen’s persistent attentions, and wounded by all the painful wondering and aching over George, I succumbed to Owen’s obsession, which had terrible consequences for us all.

I should say something of Owen, in his defence, for despite what was to happen later, he was not all bad. He came from an old Irish family from Castlebar in the county Mayo, related to the Elizabethan female pirate Grainne or Grace O’Malley. His great-uncle was St. Clair O'Malley Esquire, of Spencer Park. They were related, through this line, to the Boyds of Kilmarnock in Scotland, a family stretching back to the time of Robert the Bruce. So on both sides, Irish and Scots, the family were very old indeed. Owen’s father was also a knight, Sir Edward O’Malley, Chief Judge of His Majesty’s Supreme Consular Court for the Ottoman Empire.

Owen St Clair O’Malley was twenty-six, a year younger than George, a middling clerk in the Foreign Office, tall and quite dashing without his spectacles. Brown-haired, with pale grey-green eyes, of a spare frame, he was voluble and rather lugubriously charming, very popular with the ladies. When Owen joined the Foreign Office in 1911 it was still necessary to choose at the outset either the Foreign Office, working in London, or the Diplomatic Service, working abroad; and it was a rule that those who chose the former would not be sent out of England. The choice was usually made on financial grounds; ‘local allowances’, which now make the diplomat, as a rule, far better off in a foreign post than in London, where not then on such a liberal scale. Owen was poor, and chose the Foreign Office, hoping to spend his career in decent obscurity in England.

Ethel told me privately the first afternoon, when she saw that he had more than a casual interest in me, that he had just gone through the rather messy break-up of an affair which would have turned into marriage if the girl had been at all suitable. I sympathised – too much! – with his broken heart when he told me himself of this debacle after dinner, in the library. He told me quite frankly that they had had an affair – he did not call it a love affair, which might imply simply a matter of the heart. Kathryn Nyland was the daughter of a fellow in the Foreign Office. He showed me a photograph, and for moment I was stunned, for she looked very like Ka Cox. His forthrightness compelled my own.

‘Ethel said she was “unsuitable”. If she was of a good Irish family and had connections in the Foreign Office, why was she unsuitable?’ I asked.
Owen winced. He was sitting very near to me, much too near, on the sofa under the shaded gas lamp, which cast a warm glow over everything. ‘Miss Sanders, it is terrible to admit,’ he said. ‘My mother caught us out – at least found incontrovertible evidence of the affair – and that was that. It was quite awful. There went the engagement and all. I had a hell of a time of it at work, I can tell you.’ What had they done wrong? Nothing but broken the Edwardians’ ‘Eleventh Commandment’: thou shalt not be found out.

‘Poor Mr. O’Malley.’ I thought of all the tangles of Bloomsbury – this young man was tangled up too, not nearly so as Duncan or George, but this is what came of such things. It could happen to me.
‘Dear Miss Sanders, you are most kind. I—’
The entertainment was called and I did not get to find out what it was he meant to say.
He sat near me in the drawing room, on the edge of the sofa beside my chair, which was an uncomfortable plush Victorian monstrosity, having walked in behind me like a wraith or a puppy.
‘Vera incessu patuit dea,’ he murmured in an undertone. I froze, tears springing to my eyes. Those were George’s words alone. Owen, ignorant and smitten, smiled brightly at what he perceived to be the riveted attention. ‘Diana,’ he murmured. I was shaking all over. How did he know? Did he intuit it? It was a frightening prospect.
‘Oh my God, please don’t,’ I whispered, wishing he would fall through the floor. All through the rendition of Paganini, which I wanted so much to enjoy, Owen whispered comments and questions until I was afraid that everyone was noticing his untoward attention. I hissed at him in an undertone, ‘Please! I will speak with you later, I promise. But not now.’ It was a foolish thing to do.

We met in the garden and he was all over me like a puppy, spilling out his tale of Kathryn and asking me ten thousand questions of a leading nature: did I ride? What was my favourite colour or flower? (Painful! George had never bothered to ask. He had observed, but never asked outright.) Did I care for opera? (That arrow struck home, I’m sorry to say, for I love opera.) Did I like sport? (I refrained from showing him childhood scars and boasting about climbing.)
Finally I stopped – I had been walking very fast, almost to avoid looking at him as anything else – and came up short. ‘Mr. O’Malley—’
‘Owen.’
‘Owen, then. I cannot with decency accept your attentions because, you must know the truth, I am in love with someone else.’

His response was rather frightening. It did not deter him: he pounced on it rather, with more enquiries, ‘Are you? With whom? Why isn’t he here? Are you engaged?’
I would not tell him with whom. Only that no, we were not engaged, but we did have an understanding, and he was not here because he was off on holiday in Wales.
‘Is he your lover?’
I really was shocked by the question. In Bloomsbury I should have expected it, but not here in Skipness!
I looked directly at him, for I was as tall as he, and lied stoutly. ‘No.’
‘Then you’ve nothing to compromise,’ Owen reasoned. It was a compelling sort of logic, in a rather unorthodox way. Not Bohemian, quite, but nearly.
‘Does love mean nothing, then?’
‘What do young women know of real love?’ he said bitterly.

I didn’t care for this tête-à-tête at all. He frightened me for a reason I could not pinpoint. ‘I must go indoors,’ I said abruptly. He would think me a prude, but I didn’t care. I was afraid to be alone with him. I turned round sharply and volte-face marched toward the dining-room door, slipping out of the cold clutch of his hand like a wraith. I was halfway before he caught me up.
‘Miss Sanders, oh Diana, wait! Please’, he said. I did not.
‘I meant no harm,’ he said in the tones of a small boy chastened unfairly for misdeeds. Something tore in me at that pathetic sound, oh how dangerous it was! I paused, and said without turning, ‘I know. I’ll see you in the morning, Mr. O’Malley.’

So it went. He was up early the next morning, as was his custom he said, and I found him at the table when I came down early for breakfast. Partly I wished I had stayed in my room, for I had a perfect excuse to stay in bed with tea and toast. But Ethel was there with her parents and I did want to engage my hosts, since they were kind enough to have me up. I answered their questions about my work and my family, and resisted the impulse to say I should be out climbing in Wales ordinarily this time of year. But they asked me what I did for sport, so I was stuck. I told them with genuine relish of my childhood days of pony-riding and climbing anything that could be climbed, of piste-skiing in the Alps, of fishing and shooting in Scotland.
‘You sound a well-rounded and athletic gel,’ Robert Graham said approvingly.
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Cottie’s a member of the Alpine Club, Papa,’ Ethel boasted, ‘and is friends with Sir Leslie’s children.’
‘Excellent! You are a real climber then, eh?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then you won’t mind being out in all weathers. Looks a bit damp out there today. Perhaps you’ll join us for the fishing?’
‘I’d love to!’ I exclaimed.

Owen buttonholed me as I was going out. I practically collided with him in the doorway, he jumped up and was next to me so quickly. I had specifically not wanted to be alone with him, so left when I’d rather have sat with Margaret Graham over coffee.
‘You ski.’ He said.
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’ I reeled off the list of places I had been. He was impressed. ‘We should go skiing together.’
‘I’m afraid that I have to work.’
‘So do I.’
I went into the hall and made for the stairs. If I locked myself in my room for a quarter of an hour would he forget about me? I thought not, somehow.
‘We can go in the summer,’ Owen said, behind me.
‘I’m afraid I go climbing in the summer,’ I blurted, before I could stop the words. I could have bitten off my tongue.
‘Oh yes. Climbing,’ Owen said in an odd tone. ‘Your beau is a climber. Tell me about him.’
‘No,’ I said rudely. He caught me up. ‘I’ll bet Ethel knows,’ he said, like a child. ‘I’ll ask her!’
‘No you won’t!’ Visions of Jack at some mischief sprang to my mind, and brought tears to my eyes. I missed him so very much. But Owen mistook this for reaction.
‘Oh I won’t really, Diana, I promise,’ he said in the same earnest way.
‘Please don’t call me that,’ I had reached my room.
‘Why not?’
‘My name is Cottie. Or Mary Anne.’

‘That’s a boring name,’ Owen said. He squinted at me a moment. ‘He calls you that, doesn’t he, your misanthropic lover? He calls you Diana!’ How did he know these things? It was really frightening. A very unusual reaction from me, who valued the mysterious. ‘Well, that doesn’t matter. You shall be my Diana, and mine alone. I will see to it. What kind of a man is he that he is off climbing in Wales—’ the sarcasm was venomous, ‘leaving you to fend for yourself in other people’s houses? Why didn’t he come with you? Or pay your way there? This is the extent of your “understanding”! He’s not worthy of you. Let me show you what it means to be really loved, Diana. Let me change your mind.’

It was all quite overwhelming. ‘Please let me go,’ I said, and opened the door a crack behind me. Shaking, frightened by I don’t know what, I shut the door and pushed a chair in front of it – hang the maid – for there was no key, and leaned against the wall, feeling I’d made a narrow escape.

I went fishing with Laird Graham and several of the company, relieved when Owen did not come along. He liked fishing, as he said later, but not in bad weather. We had the usual outfitting of waterproofs and woollen stockings, caps and wellingtons, as well as a generous hamper and flasks of whisky to hearten the most flagging of spirits, but when the sky turned gunmetal about teatime and the rain began pouring, rather than being simply a damp ever-present drizzle, we rowed to shore in our several boats and made our way to the house. We were met by the ghillie with toasted blankets and more whisky and were ushered into the library, which had a stone floor, to drip in front of the great hearth before a roaring fire while ‘wee drachms’ of heather cordial were dosed to all. It was a homemade version of that famous Skye liqueur, Drambuie, the recipe for which is said to have been given to the Clan MacKinnon by Bonnie Prince Charlie.

I came out of the library, blotting my hair with a towel, and there was Owen in the hall, book in hand, in a jumper and carpet slippers looking as cosy as you please.
‘Queen of Heaven, did you save them from the weather?’ he asked, pulling on a lock of my hair. ‘Ho formato questo sachetto a Endamone, E la mia vendetta per l'amore, Ch'io ti portavo, e non ero corrisposta, Una altra tu l'amavi: La bella dea Tana tu amavi, E tu non l'avrai: di passione Ti struggerai, volonta di fare, Di fare al amore tu avrai E non la potrai fare ,’ he quoted. Dear God, he spoke Italian! This was very dangerous indeed. ‘It is gold as all the wealth of Croesus.’ He murmured, if to himself, in Italian. There was something disturbing, threatening in his quiet manner. I had so nearly been taken in by the romance of being able to speak the dear language of my Friuliani cousins.
‘Cesserete!’ I returned, pulling my hair out of his fingers. ‘Non posso amarlo. Vi ho detto l'amore un altro di I!’ I reminded him of George again.
‘So you say,’ Owen returned in Italian. ‘But I am a determined man, cara mia. And I get what I want.’ He went into the drawing room then for tea. Despite all, I was tremendously impressed.

George meanwhile was making some excellent climbs in Wales with one of his students, Robert Graves, and overlapped one day’s visit with Duncan, who came with Hilt Young in the sidecar of his motorbike. Duncan didn’t think much of the outdoor pursuits at Pen-y-Pass, but had a good time with the conversation. George and Bob Graves climbed at Cwm Silyn, Llechog, and Craig Cwm Du, but the weather was execrable and so only the known routes were pursued. Nevertheless, they had an excellent time. Siegfried Herford was there, Geoffrey’s latest beautiful amour, and he and George had along the way, made a try at what became the Flake Crack on the Central Buttress on Scafell, for many years renowned as the hardest climb in the country. Siegfried had accomplished it the year before, but this time the weather was against them. Siegfried was a simply brilliant rock-climber, possibly the best of his generation, with an astonishing mind – he was an aeronautical engineering student at Oxford – and was personally beautiful. His name suited him, for he was every inch Wagner’s blond hero incarnate. Geoffrey wasn’t the only one to love him, and when he died in the War, at the age of 24 in 1916, he was deeply and sincerely mourned.

George got back from Wales in fine fettle. When he returned to Charterhouse he wrote gaily to me, ‘My life now, is one of the most pleasant I know – when the sun comes out against this green paradise I shall effervesce into a spirit! So you’d best come soon!’ I felt very guilty at this letter, having spent the holiday weekend dodging the rain in the garden at a house party with Owen O’Malley. His overwhelming attention had been a relief from George’s chimera. That moment in the hall when Owen spoke Italian to me was the first time in years I had responded with anything like interest to any man who threw himself at my head. It had felt very good at the time, a sort of childish revenge, but now swamped by guilt, I lied outright to George for the first time ever, and said I would be there as soon as possible, when I had no intention of doing so. I wanted to sort myself out, and, I admit, see what he would do if I didn’t come rushing on the Friday evening to Surrey.

He did nothing, to my crushing disappointment, apart from sending a couple of curious notes. Admittedly, he was in the middle of term and could not easily come up to London himself, but I wanted him to. I wanted all the passionate declarations and glaxo words Owen had thrown at me – from George. And when they did not come, I was devastated. Had he not said at Christmastime, ‘let’s see where this goes’ and ‘I want you to consider the possibility of marrying me’?

So George was too busy or preoccupied to do anything about coming up to see me, and seemed to have forgotten the difficulties inherent in my getting out of town, or anything more intimate or permanent. I waited, and waited, and waited. I got a few notes, cheerful, curious, but not urgent. On later, more mature, reflection I realised that he hadn’t got the knack of working at relationships with women as he did with men friends. He really did think that once the attachment was secured, it remained inviolable without any attention or input from him. I think this was a genuine oversight on his part, for later he did the same thing with Ruth, leaving her alone for long periods, undeniably for good reasons, but never quite realising the harm that was done when the damage of long absence was not made up for when he returned – until it was too late, or almost too late, in their case.

As for me, I was struggling against Owen’s almost smothering omnipresence and desperately wanting to hear some word from George that was loverly. I had managed to save up my father’s allowance for a year to afford a trip to the Alps in the summer – which was why I could not go to Wales at Easter – and invited George to come along, never guessing that he would not. I didn’t hear from him immediately, which was not worrisome, but between the time that I asked him and the time he replied Owen had invited himself along, which was worrisome. I was perfectly desperate by the time George replied, and his waffling response – with every ‘good reason’ – made me frantic. He was not certain if he could or should come because Geoffrey had invited him to go climbing in Cornwall and in Ireland, and Geoffrey was in a very fragile state, due to having got the sack as a school inspector on top of Archer Thompson’s death. As much as I loved Geoffrey I felt abandoned, and went to the Alps with Edith Mudd and others, very much in a state of childish rebellion.

Between the time of receiving George’s letter – after several weeks finally saying he had got to go look after Geoffrey – and going to the Alps, I rashly and in a fit of childish spite accepted Owen O’Malley’s proposal of marriage, hoping, I recognised, that George would hear of it and come declaring I would do no such thing, But as I didn’t tell him myself, by the time he did respond it was far too late, and the thing could not be got out of.

It was good that George had not come along to the Alps that summer, for it was a disaster all round, and his presence would have been anguishing and difficult, for I never could have concealed my feelings, would have told him all that had happened, and both he and Owen would have been sullen and horrid. As it was, Owen on his own was bad enough. He hated Zermatt, the Monte Rosa, my friends, and, most especially, climbing, and was a churl about all of it. I made some really fine climbs that year, every one a welcome escape from the atmosphere round Owen into the fresh air and freedom of the mountains. But, sleeping out in Alpine huts with Edith and Ursula and guides nearby, I felt guilty nonetheless for abandoning him, even if I hadn’t invited him, and resented feeling guilty.

When I returned from one such two-day jaunt – we had been out on the Shreckhorn and the Mönch on the way back through Grindelwald – I found him sulking in the Wega. I wanted nothing more than to have a hot bath and food as I was terrifically hungry and stiff, but I sat with him nevertheless at one of the cafés drinking coffees and listening to his ill-opinions of everything. At last he wound down to his dislike of climbing and my being gone at it. ‘I want you to know that I don’t think much of it as a pursuit,’ he said. ‘It’s stupid and dangerous. By what you’ve told me only of yesterday you could have been killed in that slip on the traverse had it not been for the rope and quickness of the guide.’
I was really angry. How dare he call climbing “stupid and dangerous”? ‘In no way could I have been killed,’ I retorted. ‘It was only a little slip. Everyone slips, everyone falls, now and then, even the very best, and I am very good indeed.’
‘That doesn’t matter.’ Owen said bluntly. ‘I don’t like your staying out all night – two nights! – with strange men, either.’

‘For God’s sake, Owen, they’re guides, trained mountain men and old enough to be my father, most of them! And I’ve stayed out with men on these mountains before with no wild orgies transpiring,’ I could not resist sarcasm with the last. The Lord knows what he’d think of Bloomsbury! He leapt on this.
‘Who? Your erstwhile lover! Don’t think I can’t guess who it was! I’ve seen the way you blush every time someone mentions his name! Mallory! A schoolmaster! You might pretend indifference, but I can see it, I can see it right now. You’re mad as hell and if it weren’t true you wouldn’t care. You’re still in love with him, aren’t you!’
‘No,’ I ground out through my teeth. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of being right.
‘It’s a pretty lie, but still a lie.’ He took my wrist in the table. ‘I’ll make you forget George Mallory, Diana,’ it was a threat and not a loverly declaration, ‘I’ll make sure you do. When we’re married you won’t be up in mountain huts with him or any man – or woman either. You will give up climbing. It’s stupid and dangerous and I won’t have it.’

I was livid, shaking and angrier than I had ever been. How dare he tell me not to climb, demand it! It proved it was not love that drove him but something else, for if he loved me he would embrace the one thing I loved above all else in the world. I tore my arm from his grip and rose up from the table, not caring that we were making a scene.
‘You can go to hell, Owen. I won’t stop climbing, I won’t stop seeing George or anything I like. And I certainly won’t marry you!’ I pulled off the garnet and pearl ring that had belonged to his O’Malley grandmother and threw it at him. It bounced off and just missed going down into the nearby drain in the street. He rose also and shouted at me, but I ignored him, running back to the hotel, and locking myself in my room. I did not come down to dinner, nor afterward, instead writing an SOS letter to my mother, which I had Ursula post.

Late in the evening Owen made a scene by banging on the door and refusing to go away, even when the steward demanded that he do. I was holed up with Edith and Phyllis and Celia Furse just then, and we were all sitting about on the beds and chairs in our shared room like an evening in a girls’ dormitory, except for the shouting outside. I was very grateful for their support, very grateful for the brandy flask Celia smuggled in, and for the sheer openness and acceptance of their kind presence. They advised me to do nothing until I heard from my mother, to write to George – difficult, as at that moment he was in Ireland – and to moreover break off this engagement. Celia went so far as to say Owen was behaving like a lunatic – which with they all agreed – and therefore not good marriage material, whether I loved him or not.

‘I don’t,’ I said stubbornly.
‘Then why in heaven’s name, Cottie, did you say Yes?’ Phyllis gasped.
‘I couldn’t get away from him,’ I confessed. ‘He would show up at my office every evening, every lunch hour, follow me home, plied me with gifts and declarations, and if I made any move away he would behave just as he did today. I felt closed in. He only let up when I said Yes.’
‘Well, that’s a fine bargain with the devil,’ Celia said dryly. She lit a cigarette. ‘Look, Cottie darling, don’t be an idiot! Dreamy and inadequate as our George may be in some ways, he’s not crazy and he does love you – that’s blatantly obvious! For God’s sake, write to him and tell him what is happening with this monster. Surely he’ll understand?’

It was so painful – the possibility to have what I really wanted – almost too painful to face. But I had to get out of this trap that had sprung on me, even if I lost all, George’s esteem and affection included. I took Celia’s proffered cigarette and the brandy flask gratefully. And promised to write to George.

I did write to him, in care of Charterhouse, the most painfully honest letter I had ever written, confessing how it had all happened that I had got engaged, and why. I expected that he would be back from Ireland before I was back from the Alps. He was. But instead of going to Charterhouse he went to the Lake District for some climbing. The headmaster, thinking to be kind, forwarded the letter to his mother in Birkenhead, and either it got waylaid or Annie mislaid it, for it never surfaced. Instead, Geoffrey heard of the imbroglio from Celia and Ralph, and told George, at just the wrong time, and he wrote to me. I don’t blame Celia, for I’m sure that she thought that my letter to George had got through, that he knew. I don’t blame Geoffrey, whose alarmed intentions for his dear Galahad were of the purest motivation. Honestly, I blamed George more than a little, for not being more attentive. But mostly, I blamed myself, for being weak and vain and stupid.

George wrote,
I was very surprised to get Geoffrey’s letter. I hear you’re going to be married. I hope you don’t think it impertinent of me to have preferred that you tell me yourself rather than finding out from Geoffrey, if it were so. I see the first of the banns have been published in the Times. I can’t help but to marvel at the timing of this, as I had been thinking quite a lot about marriage when I was on my holiday, especially in Ireland, which reminded me so much of you. Of course, I can only profess to believe that maidens and bachelors have the best of life: but I don’t mind admitting to you privately that I consider them only half women and men. I no longer am so very willing to live a half-life. In any case, you have the very best wishes in the world from me. Yours ever, George.

I was wild when I received this. Behind the polite words was a great deal of pain, but I was aghast that he was simply accepting it as a fait accompli. No protestations, no declarations, no pleading with me not to do it, just that quiet, painful admission ‘I had been thinking quite a lot about marriage when I was on my holiday...’ I could have died of grief and dismay. I knew nothing of course of my letter having gone astray, and was completely bewildered and panicked now. I sent him a telegram,
‘Terrible mistake. Please come up to town. RSVP!’
He cabled back that he would and he did so, to my great relief, on the Friday night.
I gave Owen some excuse not to collect me after work and met George instead. He looked pale and irritable and anxious and kept running his hands through his hair, glancing about the COS premises in wary anticipation.
‘Thank God you’re here! Thank God!’ I exclaimed, taking his hands. ‘You must help me out of this awful mess!’ He looked startled at this. ‘Did you not get my letter?’ This possibility had occurred to me by then.
‘What letter?’
‘From Courmayeur, explaining what was happening. I told you everything! I sent it to Charterhouse by special delivery! Oh, God!’ I felt myself on the verge of tears.
‘I never got it,’ He shook his head. ‘Look, we can’t stand about here. Let’s get a taxi, and you can tell me everything. Will you come to dinner?’
‘Yes. Oh George, I’d go anywhere!’
He grimaced, meaning, I think, to smile. ‘You’re overwrought, but so am I. I haven’t slept at all. Come on.’

We got a taxi and went to a favourite cheap little obscure restaurant where we could sit as long as we liked and not be bothered. I told him the whole story, from after the Alpine Club dance onward, leaving out nothing, sparing no one, least myself, and he listened so very patiently, sometimes anguished about his own thoughtlessness. But in the end he asked me only one question as we sat at the little table, knee to knee, his hands gripping mine, his beautiful eyes full of pain and sorrow:
‘Tell me, Cottie, do you love him?’
‘No!’ I swore fervidly. ‘I have only always loved you.’ To my embarrassment, I started to cry and couldn’t stop.
‘Shh shh shh,’ he murmured, miserably. ‘I know. I know. I’m so sorry. Oh Cottie, here now, look at me,’ he made me do, with those long strong fingers. ‘Dear girl, I do love you. I don’t know if it’s what anyone else would call being in love, but I do love you. And I can’t bear to see you marry this oaf.’
I could only cry harder at that – the words for I had longed for so long. ‘Then help me, George, please! Please please help me! I don’t know how to get out of it!’ I was becoming hysterical. ‘There are all sorts of financial negotiations and contracts and things I never imagined! It’s like a trade agreement! Please help me! I don’t want to do this! I’m afraid of him! I don’t want to do this! I only ever loved you! I only ever wanted to marry you!’
He was so dear and kind and put an arm about me, so at least we were not on view to the staff – for we were alone in the restaurant.
‘I know, dear. I know, darling girl, my Diana. We’ll find a way.’

As extraordinary as this may seem nowadays, George and I really did try every way we could think of to release me from this desperate bond – to no avail. It was not so easy or trivial as simply throwing Owen’s grandmother’s ring at him, and calling it off. In the intervening while, the banns had been read and my father’s solicitor and his father’s solicitor had got together to make up the financial deals that accompanied such transactions between well-to-do families.
It transpired, as we found out from Trafford, whom George and I consulted for legal advice, that we had to give ‘just cause’ at this point for putting a halt to the proceedings. As we sat after hours in the law office where he was a clerk, he explained:
‘In Britain, until far down into the 18th century the engaged lovers before the nuptials were held to be legally husband and wife. It was common for them to begin living together immediately after the betrothal ceremony. As far as old families of the gentry class, or of old Irish or Scottish descent are concerned, this legally binding view of the betrothal contract – and it is a legal contract drawn up between the O’Malleys and your father, Cottie – is still binding.’ He looked across the raft of papers and books spread out on the table before us, his blue eyes gravely serious. He sat next to me, with George on the other side, so although he spoke to me he was leaning across to catch George’s eye. I had the guilty feeling that he wildly disapproved of the tangle in which I had got his brother, though we certainly hadn’t told him anything of our intimacy!

‘What can be done?’ George asked, tossing his hair from his face. He was very pale. It would be well to note that the term ‘processual marriage’ is sometimes used to describe these arrangements, that is, where the formation of marriage was regarded as a process rather than a clearly defined rite of passage, so we perhaps had some hope of the process being reversed.
‘Being “in love with” someone else is not just cause,’ Traff told us. ‘Although a verbal promise to marry is...’ He paused.
‘Have you done that?’
George shifted in his seat. ‘Not exactly.’ I was wild when he said it and could barely sit still. In the name of God, why hadn’t he just lied? It would have solved it all. But I knew why: he was sticking to the genuine truth in this legal matter. The Bloomsberries would have lied through their teeth at this moment, I felt certain, not so George. And there was the small matter of Owen knowing the truth already. He would challenge it, a hideous dispute.
‘Well, what did you do, exactly?’ his brother asked patiently.
‘We talked about it.’
‘Not good enough.’ The bluntness of this made me gasp, and Traff blushed. ‘I’m sorry. But it’s not....’ He paused and blushed again. He was only twenty-one, very conventional, and this was his brother he was asking hard questions of. ‘There is another reason...’
‘What is it?’ This from George, flatly. I suspect he knew what was coming.
‘Conjugation.’
‘Oh my God!’ I couldn’t help myself exclaiming, it was so awful. Even I knew it meant disclosure and public censure.
‘Hush,’ George muttered irritably, running a hand through his hair. ‘How would it work out?’ he asked Traff.

‘The injured party, that is, O’Malley, would have to make a claim of force against you, or of concealment against Cottie. It would be a matter of public record. Such notices are published in the Times, unless of course the families pay large amounts to keep them out, as often happens with noble families.’ He sighed. ‘But this is all moot, isn’t it? Otherwise you’d be perjuring yourselves.’
There was a long silence in the room, wherein the clock ticked loudly.
‘I see,’ Traff said without emphasis. He picked up some papers and shuffled them. ‘Oh dear.’
George took out his case and lit a cigarette.
‘You can’t,’ I said to George. ‘It would ruin you.’
‘I know,’ he muttered shortly, and threw his lighter on the table with a sharp sigh. He ran a hand through his hair, and it was shaking.

It would be far worse than Geoffrey’s dismissal from Eton or from the school board, for the true reason for those was kept quiet. I didn’t want to ruin him! Nor did I want to ruin my family or Owen’s. It would kill my parents. I just wanted out. Into the silence Traff said,
‘You could elope.’
George laughed rather unpleasantly. ‘Where?’
‘Canada. The Jebb and Mallory cousins are there. You could make a new start.’ Their father’s brother lived there, and their mother’s much elder half-brother had been an adventurer, managing coffee plantations, gold mines, and buffalo hunts across the Americas.
‘It’s something to think about,’ George agreed, troubled.

The prospect was not especially keen for either of us, having no money and virtually no connections, for I could hardly in this instance ask for the addresses of my father’s old railroad friends. To leave all, home and friends and everything familiar for ever? We couldn’t do it. Still less could each let the other submit to the public ruin of a proper claim made by Owen or his family. At least in Owen’s affair with Miss Nyland nothing legal had been drawn up, no banns yet read; the only thing going was the ‘verbal promise’ they had made. No machinery of matrimony had been put hastily in place. Was there nothing for us then? I wondered in despair. We had the right intention, had been lovers, at least the last time, in full cognisance of that intention. In the ancient world, that would have been enough to bind us. But it was not now.

‘What are we to do?’ I asked George, three weeks before the wedding, as we walked on the evening of his half day through the deserted South Kensington Museum. He was holding my hand and his grip tightened, but he wouldn’t look at me.
‘Be friends, I suppose,’ he said hollowly. ‘We were just friends once.’
I burst into tears. ‘We were never that.’
‘Oh Lord!’ quickly, he pulled me out a door into the dark garden and there we sat, his arms about me, and he said such things to me, in a hushed kind of anguish.

‘You must not ever think this failure on my part means that I do not love you. I’m sorry, so sorry that I drove you to such rash desperation, that you felt so neglected and unloved that you couldn’t tell me of his pursuit... This is so very hard for me. I cannot stand by and watch it ¬–’ his voice broke. He was crying too, tears running down his face. I had never seen him cry before. ‘You ask me what to do, and I have no answers! I wish that I did. I have done you such a wrong, my dear, my dear girl. And I can’t make it right.’ He sniffed and made me look at him. He was so beautiful, but heartbroken. Galahad. ‘You may be sure of one thing from me: I will never fail you again. If I have failed as a lover I will not fail as a friend. You have that pledge. I won’t lose you, and you cannot lose me. No matter what happens, we will always be close, you have that promise, I swear it.’ His hands tightened around mine. ‘But you must promise me as well! You must promise me, Cottie!’ He was weeping again, but intense, forceful, the like of which I had only seen once, at Christmastime. ‘Don’t shut me out again!’ he went on. ‘I won’t give you cause. Promise me!’

I was completely wretched. If he had been this way all along! Why had we need to come to this wreck and ruin for this? But I swore the oath, for he was my own soul and I could do nothing else. ‘I promise! I swear it.’
‘Thank God.’ He put his arms around me then, and we sat for a long time in silence.

So, bought and sold, I was married to Owen, in London on 25 October, 1913. His good cheer lasted exactly three days, till he found a card in my valise from George – a botanical drawing of edelweiss: ‘Be brave, darling, as on mountains, with all love, George.’ Then the pattern of sixty years began of rage, jealousy, sulking, silence, entreaty, explosions, more entreaty, then an indifference which passed for peace. By the time we went to Wales for the Christmas gathering at Pen-y-Pass, the last before the war, I knew this cycle so well that I could predict its course and length of each phase without mistake. To be fair to Owen, he had learnt this destructive behaviour at the hands of his mother, as a child, who was just the same manipulative sort, not only withholding love and affection but resorting to wicked physical and mental cruelties the like of which gave weight to Freud’s arguments of repression.

In Wales, everything was frozen and ice-covered. Llyn Llydaw was covered with a sheet of ice so thick no one could break it with an ice-axe, and there was snow everywhere, making interesting or dangerous mere easy climbs like the Parson’s Nose or scrambles on Tryfan. George, Geoffrey and Siegfried Herford did a double of the Girdle Traverse in such weather. It was, Geoffrey said long after in Mountains With a Difference, one of the great climbing days of his life:

As some people remember music, I now recall my view either way across the Lliwedd precipices storming up the sky under ghostly downfalls of ice, forward and back to the agile figures in white sweaters, swinging, turning, belaying in a counterpoint of precision and force, as the occasional sun-gleam glinted from one or the other of the rough fair heads white-rimmed with frost from the shadows. We serpentined over the snowy buttresses, seeking out the best passages. At the end we threw in the Slanting Slab, and then turned up outside the Needle Ridge to lunch on a shelf. The white edges of the lake far below looked crisp with wind-rippled ice, and far above on the left the enormous snow-cone of Yr Wyddfa was ringed with wisps of snow-cloud in a wind we did not feel. It was all too good to leave. Why make an end? We dropped down a ridge to a promising level, then re-crossed the face once more, on a higher and even more exacting line, over bastion, wall and chasm. It was the first double Girdle. We travelled on the return even faster, and in a rhythm which I never remember attaining again on stiff rock with a rope of three.

The next day I went out myself with George, on a mere walk to see the lakes all ice-covered, and to scramble up the Parson’s Nose for the pleasure of it. We had crampons, which we needed, and there was much laughter about the escapade, the step-cutting we had to do in that absurd place, and how we slid all the way down the Pyg track, glissading for the sheer joy of it. It was better than ice-skating. I hadn’t been feeling any too well when we went out, being newly pregnant, but the fresh air, the exercise, and George’s company had me hale and red-cheeked by the time we swung into the yard at Pen-y-Pass. Out of the view of others, he gave my hand a friendly squeeze. ‘At least I didn’t forget my ice-axe this time!’ he laughed.

We went into the smoking room and stood before the fire, dripping in our frozen clothes, full of the laughter and high colour and camaraderie of our expedition. Sharing cigarettes and brandy, we disgorged our adventures to the group that was slowly gathering after their own climbs. Owen had been in the common room with the landlord – they got on quite well – and came in the middle of this to see George and me at the mantel, and sat sullenly at the table opposite, glowering all the while till dinner. At dinner he hardly spoke to anyone, certainly not to me, and through the long evening singsong and talk he was glowering and withdrawn.

Finally, when we went upstairs, he announced in his pompous way that he forbade me to climb anymore or associate with ‘those people’, especially George.
‘Don’t be stupid, Owen,’ I said, thoughtlessly. ‘I’m on the Committee for the Ladies Alpine Club. As for “those people”, they are my friends, including George,’ I said with some heat. ‘And as I told you before we married, there is nothing between George and me now, but he is my best friend and I’ll not give him up, not for you or anyone so, you’d best live with it. And if you don’t like it, you can have a divorce and ruin your family.’
‘Oh you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ he snarled, going over to the chest and yanking out a pair of pyjamas. ‘Fancy free.’
‘I wouldn’t, actually,’ I said truthfully. ‘It would be dreadful for everyone. But you can’t keep me shut up in a tower, Owen,’ I tried another tack, ‘or seeing only your friends. That would look suspicious at the very least. No breath of scandal, that was my bargain, for the sake of the families and your job. I will abide by it, if you will.’

Slowly, in this way, I managed to reason him back to some sort of civility, which if it wasn’t cordial at least it was quiet. I spent the rest of the week doing exactly as I pleased, and to his surprise, Owen had a conversation about Chinese pictures with George and actually came away with some respect for George’s intelligence. It was a start, and a much needed one, and I was grateful to them both for the effort put into it, for I stood by what I said: I would not give up George’s company or friendship; we had made a holy pledge to one another, more binding than the one I had made with Owen, and I would see it through. George and I were married in spirit in a different way: a way in which Owen could neither understand nor intervene.