Barbara Pym
I adored Barbara Pym even though she was my father’s mistress
In 1941, some departments of the BBC in London were evacuated, with their families, to live in a large Edwardian house, The Coppice, by the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol.
My recently divorced mother, Honor Wyatt, wrote scripts and plays for radio – including How Things Began, a series of short plays about evolution. So she moved to Bristol with her two small children: Julian, aged six, who became an actor, and two-year-old me.
Within an hour of meeting our fellow lodgers in The Coppice, she knew these people would be friends for life. Among them were Barbara and Hilary Pym, sisters who were already living there.
Hilary arranged music for programmes including plays and stories written by, amongst others, my mother. Barbara, then 28, was trying to become a published novelist; in the meantime, her work was top secret as she was working for the censorship people.
The Coppice was a stunning, doublefronted redbrick house on three floors, with a huge garden; it was rented by the BBC from the Wills cigarette family. Barbara and Hilary (always referred to by my mother as ‘the Girls’) shared accommodation with my family on the first floor.
I remember those rooms so well: my mother’s bedsitting room; through which Julian and I walked to get to our shared bedroom. The Girls shared the other bedroom. Our little area, in which Barbara and Hilary were always a fixture, was very cosy. We all ate our supper together, sitting at a round table covered with something called American cloth.
After we had gone to bed, the adults listened to music round the fire, chatting while they repaired whatever needed repairing in those days of clothing coupons and Make Do and Mend. The Girls would discuss at great length what they would be wearing the following day.
Of the two, Hilary was by far the prettier. Because I loved Barbara so much, this never occurred to me as a small child, but it is what I observed as a grown woman. Hilary was shorter and curvaceous, whereas Barbara was tall and slim – and always very elegant. She had rather large front teeth – a bit like Joyce Grenfell.
They had nicknames for each other. Barbara was always ‘Buddye’ (with an e) to Hilary – who was always ‘Dor’ (no e) to Barbara.
During these few years, Barbara and Hilary became very important to me – not so much to Julian, as neither of the Girls really understood boys. Also he was older and spent less time with them. To me, they were the aunts we never had, as our parents were both only children.
Barbara adored me. Apparently, I was a sweetly pretty child with blonde curls and ‘a certain way with me’, meaning, I think, I was rather prim – something both the Girls found amusing.
Barbara enjoyed teasing me. Once, after a bath, my mother was drying me in front of the fire. I suddenly decided I didn’t want Barbara to see me naked and I grabbed the towel to cover myself. Barbara loved this opportunity to tease and said in her beautifully refined voice, ‘Oh, Miss Prudence Glover is SO refined – she has no bosom and no behind!’
I said to my mother, ‘That’s not a nice song, is it, Mummy’ – at which both the Girls howled with laughter.
Barbara also invented a son called Christopher, whom she would mention whenever I was being difficult. She would tell me in no uncertain terms, ‘Christopher would never behave like that!’
It was some years before I asked why we never saw this paragon. She said he was at boarding school and during the holidays spent time with his father big-game hunting.
When not working at her paid job, Barbara was busy writing her first novel,
Some Tame Gazelle, published in 1950. My father, C Gordon Glover, was also a BBC man. Whenever he came to BBC Bristol, he visited us. Julian and I adored these visits. But, unknown to us, there was another reason he visited: he was having an affair with Barbara. We knew nothing of this until many years later.
I loved my father dearly but he didn’t treat women very well. He had had several affairs over the years, which is why my mother left him. They always remained good friends. But when he dumped Barbara, my mother was furious with him for treating her dear friend so shabbily. Barbara was inconsolable; she had thought they would marry. It was his behaviour that led her to join the Wrens for the rest of the war, as a sort of escape.
When the war was over and we went back to London, Barbara and Hilary moved to Pimlico and then to Barnes. We saw a great deal of them and when, years later, I went to college, I lived with them.
I was devastated when Barbara died of breast cancer in 1980, aged 66. Although I was married with children by then, I couldn’t and wouldn’t believe she was old enough to die.
I remember her with deep affection and know she always loved me.