Spreading My Wings

One of Britain's top women pilots tells her remarkable story from pre-war flying to breaking the sound barrier

Grub Street

Contents

Rigmarole about Early Days

I DON'T LIKE cellars! I was very nearly born in one ... As cellars go, I suppose it wasn't bad, as it was our wine-cellar at No. 39, Elsworthy Road, by Primrose Hill, Hampstead, in North London. On 15 January 1918 there was a warning about a German Zeppelin or aeroplane overhead, so my mama was sheltering in the cellar. She was terrified that a bomb might be dropped nearby and got upstairs to the spare bedroom just in time for my arrival three-and-a-half weeks early.

I don't like looking stupid in front of other people, but even in my advanced years I cannot go down alone into a cellar: I have to have someone to accompany me. I don't think I am really frightened of anything else at all!

Only once in my life did I go down one alone, and that was in my present house, where the cellar is below the level of the water table. To keep the floor dry, there is an electric pump which empties the water from a well before it slops over onto the concrete floor. The oil-fired boiler is also down there.

One night when there were floods everywhere, I found myself alone in the house and just about to go to bed, when I suddenly realized that I hadn't heard the electric pump making its usual regular emptying-water noises during the evening. The boiler was still rumbling away, and I became worried that the water level would rise above its platform if the pump had conked out.

Anxiety eventually overcame my usual fear and, gathering myself together, I opened the cellar door, only to be greeted with the sight and sound of water gently lapping over the bottom steps. I retreated, put on my gumboots, then, hitching up my old blue dressing-gown, descended to the depths. With much bravery I waded along the basement corridor, with its cobwebs, towards the boiler and pump room ... The pump had, as I'd guessed, stopped, but I could see what was wrong: the extra height of the water had made the float come off its wire. I could soon fix that!

I sloshed into the boiler room, quite forgetting that there was a step down, now under water, which makes that room 6 inches lower than the corridor. As I slipped down without warning, the water came over the top of my gumboots and, as the strikingly cold water poured in, I lost my balance and fell headlong into the 21/2 feet of water. It wasn't even clean water!

So you see, dear reader, there is still something about cellars that does not appeal to me.

* * *

On the way down into that original wine-cellar where I was so nearly born was an iron bannister, while on the wall opposite was a brass light switch. The voltage in those days was only 110 DC – dangerous, but not necessarily a killer, unlike the 240 volts AC that is used in England today. Under some circumstances the 110 volts would have been enough to prove fatal. In our case there must have been a leakage of current because of a fault. As we (my elder sister Virginia and I) grew up, one of our party games was for us to take our various friends – 'friends?' – down to the cellars.

All the children were supposed to hold on to each other, because we said the steps were steep. Virginia would hold on to the bannisters whilst I switched on the light while with my other hand keeping hold of the hand of the unsuspecting friend (victim). Immediately the 110-volt electric current would go through all the children in the line – much to our amusement. We, of course, were always ready for the shock, but our little friends would nearly fall down the stairs with terror. We thought it awfully funny, but when my mama found out about it through some misguided child's parents, we got spanked – and quite rightly so, too.

* * *

In those far-off days we were always guarded by nannies, then by governesses and companions, and finally by various chaperones. Our mama would rarely be seen except for a loving peck on the cheek as we departed for school, although she always insisted on hearing our prayers before we tumbled into bed at night. We were never left alone, even inside our house.

The first 'keeper' was Nurse Gowing. She refused to be called a nanny and was thin and starchy. She wore sharply pointed hat-pins in her scratchy bonnet ... I am amazed that those spikes didn't put our eyes out.

One day, Nurse Gowing made some treacle toffee on the nursery burner which stood behind the tall brass-edged fender which protected us from the always-plopping gas fire. She held me up to let me stir it with a wooden spoon, then, when it was cooked, she poured the still-boiling toffee into a carefully buttered old white soup plate that had a black-and-white chequered edge. Part of the coloured linen tablecloth was turned back on the large, round, wooden-topped nursery table and she then drew lines on the toffee. I thought we were about to play noughts and crosses on it.

I remember asking her if I could have some of the toffee, but instead of saying something like, 'No, it's too hot! Wait until it cools,' she replied, 'No you can't, it's all for your sister Virginia!' That was too much! Jealousy and greed were my motives as I grabbed two handfuls of the still-steaming toffee from the soup plate. Oh-dear-oh-dear! I learnt a lesson that day: don't grab; try guile!

When she heard my screams, my mama came rushing upstairs to the nursery. When my burnt hands and fingers had been seen to, Nurse Gowing got the sack. I was quite pleased.

I was nearly three years old when Nanny Brown turned up. She was gentle but wheezy with asthma. She brought very good references from Ralph Peacock, the artist, whose three sons she had lovingly nurtured. My American grandmother was horrified at the idea of an asthmatic nanny, adding that we children might also pick up her soft Suffolk accent; but Mama was adamant about engaging her. 'She's kind, and quite unlike Nurse Gowing,' I heard her say.

Nanny Brown was a great comfort after Nurse Gowing's starchiness – and so was her asthma, which caused her to sit up every night and cough. If we woke up, it was reassuring to hear that she was there, wheezing about in the gloom. We were not in the least bit worried by her breathlessness.

* * *

My mother and father parted when I was four, following my father's affair with a beautiful actress named June. I believe my parents would not have parted but for my mother's puritanical American parents, who told Mama that my father's romance could not be tolerated. A few years later my mama married again, Richard Butler Wainwright, who had been a pilot in the Great War and had won the Distinguished Flying Cross. Both my sister and I were bridesmaids. Thus my mama became Mrs Dorothy Maitland Wainwright while my father, Woolf Barnato, went on his way. To my later joy, they remained good friends. When I was a débutante, I used to see my parents sitting cosily in a corner of a ballroom at a grand dance, talking away like the old friends they had remained. Other people failed to understand it.

Much later on, my father told me that they very nearly 'got back together', but then they had their one and only real row over who was going to get the grand piano from the drawing-room if they did part. So they parted. The stupid thing about all this was that at the time, neither of them even played the piano.

It may well have been die association with stepfather Dick Wainwright that later got me interested in flying, although I was also to discover that I had an uncle, Jack Barnato, who had served in the Royal Naval Air Service in the First World War. Sadly, he died in the great influenza epidemic of 1918–19, so I never met him, but there was obviously flying somewhere in the Barnato blood.

My stepfather had been wounded in the war, having been hit in the right temple. Despite the severity of the injury and a lump of metal sticking out of his head, he had managed to fly his aeroplane – and his observer – back across the German lines, landing at his airfield before passing out. Mama kept the piece of shrapnel, which he later gave her, in her jewel box. It was all of 11/2 inches long and very jagged.

He could have had a plate put in to cover the hole in his forehead, but the operation was a bit tricky in those days, so he didn't. He had to be extremely careful not to bump his head, I remember, and one could see what I took to be his brain, pulsating in and out of the dent. Fascinating for us when we were kids!

Even later, as an old man, he was into everything new. He had the first deep-freeze company, making freezers and containers. He also had the first video that I had ever seen and knew how it worked the day he got it. When he lived by himself later, he was always immaculately turned out – no egg on his ties – and one could see one's reflection in his toe-caps. He drove his own car all over the place and was way over 90 when he died.

Although he and my mama parted after 27 years of marriage and he married someone else, they still met from time to time, and I know my mama was still in love with him. By the time he died, so had his second wife, so we scattered his ashes in the little churchyard at Nutfield in Surrey, near 'Kentwyns', where he and my mother had both lived, and beside Mama's ashes. He had kept up his flying in his later years, at Redhill, and a formation of four Tiger Moths from there flew over at the moment we scattered the ashes. He would have liked that. I gave his flying log-books to the RAF Museum at Hendon.

* * *

Our house in London was on the edge of Primrose Hill in Regent's Park. There were no tall buildings in those days so when we looked out of the windows we felt we were in the country. We could see only the trees and grass of the large park. Our garden went down to the park where there was a hole in the fence which saved us a long walk.

We kept lots of pets: Alsatian dogs, chinchilla rabbits, a canary and two pink-cheeked waxbills. These were tiny brown finches with red beaks. They sometimes flew freely and were trained to come back when called, to sit on a stick when one was held aloft. One day, in mid-winter, their cage was on the window-sill in the night nursery and Nanny was out. The maid drew the thick curtains, forgetting to move the cage into the warmth of the room. In the morning I drew open the curtains and there were two little plops as the two dead and frozen waxbills fell off their perch onto the sand underneath.

I also had a tortoise which lived in the garden all summer. It too came when called. It died because I woke it up once too often from its winter hibernation. The beautiful grey chinchilla rabbits bred far too many babies (we once had quite a game standing them in flower pots in order to photograph them), so some were made into hand-muffs for Virginia and me! Knowing of its origin, I never liked using mine and always tried to lose it.

There was also a long-coated guinea-pig I had as a pet. I used to pick him up and cuddle him, stroking his whiskers and kissing him on the nose. I don't think he minded at all. One day I failed to latch his cage properly and one of the Alsatians ate him. Our gardener came up to the nursery, plonked a bunch of flowers on the table and told me the sad news. I burst into tears and he said, 'Now, now, Miss Diana! Don't take on so. Everything dies, like these flowers will; and you and me. It's the common denominator of everything that lives.'

His speech was a bit above my head and was of little comfort to my pets, who up till now had either been eaten, woken-to-death, made into hand-warmers or been left out to freeze!

* * *

Every Sunday, when we were young, Nanny used to walk us across Primrose Hill to the London Zoo. We used to get back in time for lunch which was always roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, followed by vanilla ice-cream and hot chocolate sauce. There were waffles and maple syrup for tea.

Our American grandmother Florence Maud Falk (neé Whittaker) always came to tea on Sundays when she was this side of the Atlantic. She was called 'Gra' because when I was a baby I couldn't say 'Grandma'. The name stuck and everyone always tended to call her Gra. She lived three streets away in Eton Avenue, by Swiss Cottage, but she never walked and usually arrived driven in one of her various American limousines. I should add that despite her dainty figure and tiny bones, she had a very loud voice and a temperament that was able to send out a lot of very noisy words very frequently and about all sorts of things.

One day the doorbell rang and the three Alsatians that we had then jumped up at the door and barked. They were quite frightening to people who did not know them but in reality were friendly dogs when they were not doing their watch-dogs act. I opened the door and Gra was there. She was about five feet tall and had a 'puff' of grey hair. She was wearing a beige crêpe-de-chine pleated dress with a lace jabot and tiny cream kid instep-strapped shoes. She knelt down to hug me and I noticed as she did so that she was not wearing her single-stone diamond ear-rings. I said, 'Gra – you aren't Gra without your earrings!' She turned her head and I saw she had an ear-ring on one ear only.

She was dismayed and said that somehow she must have dropped it on the way and that it was extremely unlucky that she had not come in her own car this time, but had taken a taxi. We looked down the garden path and outside her own door, but to no avail. Gra hadn't even taken a taxi from the usual taxi-rank, merely hailed one that had been passing her house. We would never find it again.

We had a sombre first course and then the front doorbell rang. Before anyone could stop me, I rushed out, saying, 'It's the ear-ring, I know it's the ear-ring!' I opened the front door to find a taxi-man standing outside. Without a word to him, I pushed by him, tore down the drive to his cab to find, on the coconut matting floor, Gra's missing diamond ear-ring.

The taxi-driver had followed me, amazed at the small hurricane of a child doing a war-dance of delight! My mama came out to collect me and I heard the man say to her, 'Excuse me, Madam, I hope you will forgive me, but the lady I dropped here nearly an hour ago gave me a penny instead of half-a-crown.' (Gra was very short-sighted.) 'When I went to get some tea just now, I found that all I had on me was that one penny. I hope the lady won't mind if I ask her for the correct money, but I haven't had any other fares since then, so I know it must be that lady.'

As you can imagine, the man got more than half-a-crown!

* * *

From the time I was six until I was ten, we went to Frognal School at the top of Fitzjohn's Avenue, which runs between Swiss Cottage and Hampstead. We walked the distance of three miles there and back again afterwards. The Avenue is a steep hill but I was never late for school. Virginia was; she was a fat child, puffed a lot, but didn't hurry.

Nanny, with her asthma, sometimes came to the last major road that we had to cross, saw us across it, then left us. When collecting us she only came to that same road, usually bringing the Alsatian, 'Dugan of Deloraine', with her. He was perfectly trained, walking to heel without needing a lead.

One day we had nearly reached the road while Nanny was still some way down Fitzjohn's Avenue. Dugan saw us and left Nanny to rush uphill to greet us. He jumped up at me to lick my face. Nanny called him, whereupon he wheeled round, circling out into the road. As he did so, a small black car with two people in it was coming down the hill. All four wheels went bump-bump-bump-bump over Dugan, who then got up and galloped back down the hill to Nanny. I thought he was alright but the couple in the car stopped and drove us home. Dugan was laid on the sofa in the front hall. About an hour later he quietly died, from internal haemorrhage I suppose. Another pet down the drain!

My mama came in just before he died. Nanny greeted her at the door with' ... something awful has happened, Madam!' My mama thought at first it was one of us who had been run over but then didn't seem to mind about Dugan, being so relieved we children were alright.

I had been very fond of Dugan ... At the time I wished it had been me ...

* * *

We usually went to stay with our father for half the holidays in his far grander home, 'Ardenrun', near Lingfield, in Surrey. Sometimes we went for long weekends as well. The chauffeur, du Heaume, collected us in one Bentley or another, my father being not only the Chairman of Bentley Motors, but a member of the crack Bentley racing team as well. On the way out of London, du Heaume always stopped at Lyons Corner House by Marble Arch and, to keep us quiet, bought us some large square lemon drops coated with rough sugar, which we sucked during the drive down. We always arrived with yellow tongues.

The housekeeper at Ardenrun had been governess to my cousins, Dudley, Stanhope and Eileen Joel. She was a small French lady who always dressed in black and wore a round diamanté and jet brooch at her throat. She had her own room on the way between the dining room, the kitchen and the servants' quarters. The room was filled with white Persian cats, who regularly moulted long white hairs all over us.