She had enjoyed writing The Years Between more than she had imagined she would, but she had not enjoyed the team work involved when it was completed, reporting to Tod that sitting in on rehearsals and being required to change lines did not suit her at all, although she was always obliging. Being in Wyndham’s, her father’s old theatre, where the play opened in London, was a disturbing experience. She felt Gerald’s presence all around her and longed for him, she wrote to Tod, ‘to be playing Clive Brook’s part [the husband], and telling everyone what to do’. She knew he would have been ‘so proud of me’, and what a thing it would have been ‘for him to be in his daughter’s play’. The manner in which Clive Brook played the soldier-husband role surprised her – he made the character so sympathetic – whereas Nora Swinburne, as the wife, made her character unattractive. When Daphne finally saw her own play performed she reported to Tod that Nora ‘misses the bus every time’. Instead of admiring the wife the audience admired the husband and it seemed to her the whole balance of the play was wrecked. The reviews reflected this. Although the ‘quiet realism’ of the play was praised, the critics found the husband-wife relationship suspect and particularly felt it was inconsistent with the drift of the play that this couple would stay together. It was summarized by one critic as ‘a rather grey play about an awkward customer who is foolish enough to believe that people and things do not change in three or four years’. The best part was reckoned to be not that of the brave wife but the returning husband – ‘a strained, disenchanted man’. The only people who really liked the play were Daphne’s MRA friends. Garth Lean wrote that it was ‘so unusual these days for the lovers not to bolt . . . I was tremendously encouraged by it, most grateful for the lead you have given’.

  The play behind her, Daphne began work on The King’s General. She wanted to base it on the history of Menabilly and the Rashleigh family and was rather hurt that the Rashleighs were not as willing as Christopher Puxley had been to let her consult family papers. This worried her. She wrote to Œnone Rashleigh, daughter of the heir, to whom she had been introduced by Foy Quiller-Couch, asking her, ‘Could you tell me quite frankly how your father and the family . . . feel about a Civil War Menabilly novel? If they shrink from the names Menabilly and Rashleigh appearing on the printed page it will be quite easy to give false names for the house and the family, though in a sense that is going to spoil the history. But I should very much dislike to cause offence, so do be utterly candid and tell me.’ Œnone, who knew her father was, in fact, opposed to the idea, nevertheless helped Daphne as much as possible. She sent her copies of various family letters from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries together with a family tree, copious notes on the different family members, and a résumé of local history in so far as it affected the family. A. L. Rowse, who lived nearby, also advised her on which books to consult (he had been introduced to Daphne by the Quiller-Couches two years before and she was greatly impressed, describing him to Tod as ‘about to be the leading historian in England’). But although this helped Daphne to get the history straight, what mainly intrigued her in the Menabilly story was the tale of a skeleton being discovered in a bricked-up room by some workmen in the nineteenth century. She spent a long time, before she began the novel, trying to decide who the poor incarcerated man could have been and how he could have been forgotten. Many hours were devoted to ‘poking about the three buttresses’, she told Œnone, ‘with the wild hope of coming across the secret room’ found by the workmen and since forgotten.

  It surprised Daphne how much she relished the research involved in preparing to write her novel and she was proud of her own application. Though she had often said of herself ‘I have the mind of a butterfly’, she found she could concentrate when she cared enough, and she cared very much about getting the history of Menabilly right. It took her three months to finish going through ‘massive tomes’ and make detailed notes, chapter by chapter, on how her story would evolve, but then, poised to start writing, and excited by the challenge, she was plunged once more into domestic drama. Margaret, upon whom the whole household turned, was ill. The migraines seemed to run into one another without respite and, no matter how much she wished to be sympathetic, Daphne could not cope with a nanny-cum-housekeeper who collapsed so regularly. In fact, her whole relationship with Margaret was becoming a burden to her – as well as a burden to Margaret herself – and she was desperate to find a way out which would be fair. Margaret had been with her nearly twelve years and during that time worked hard and devotedly. Daphne had implicit trust in her but had never become in any way close – she let Margaret get on with her job, and was grateful to her, but temperamentally they were very different, and once the move to Menabilly had been undertaken the isolation made these differences more important. Margaret was under much greater stress, running such a big house with the help of three teenage girls who were willing but untrained, and also looking after three energetic children for much of the time. She also found the house itself quite frightening at night, especially when, as happened every time there was a storm, Mrs Browning chose to go out, often not coming back until the early hours of the morning, soaked but exhilarated. So Daphne found herself in the kind of situation she dreaded: she had a servant to whom she owed loyalty, whom she quite frankly wanted to get rid of, and yet, if she did so, she would not only feel brutal but would be left quite unable to manage her household.

  The situation worsened daily: Miss Richardson had gallstones and left. Then the doctor, to whom Daphne had sent Margaret, reported, so she told Grace Browning, that ‘Nanny has none of her glands working, only has one ovary, has a strepto bug in her system, a faulty left lung, and has had some sort of shock to the nerves . . .’ Clearly, problems apart, the poor woman needed a complete rest. Margaret herself wrote to Garth Lean, whom she had met in the Langley End days, saying, ‘I have been in the most miserable health . . . and get the most devastating fits of depression . . . you know I have been with Mrs Browning twelve years and it has been my life. Now I realise that the children are growing up quickly and perhaps I should have other interests as well . . .’ So Margaret, too, realized that change must come. For the time being, Daphne arranged both a holiday and treatment in London, but her mind was running on a more permanent solution: Margaret must be found some other position and Tod must come and take over.

  She promptly wrote to Tod once more suggesting the idea, and this time Tod was free to accept. But then, and just as Tod had become excited at the idea and had begun to make arrangements, Daphne decided she could do without her after all. In a twelve-page letter which was a masterpiece of tact she wrote to Tod telling her that she had met a Miss Riley, who was willing to teach the children and seemed ‘very suitable’. She could come out every day from St Austell and really ‘this would be a better solution’. The ever-obliging Tod bravely hid her disappointment, only to be told a month later that since Miss Riley had thought better of her offer, and had withdrawn it, it would now be all right for Tod to come after all. It was a measure of Tod’s complete devotion that she expressed no irritation at this blithe assumption that she would rearrange her plans yet again: she promptly did so. Arrangements were made for her to move to Menabilly in the autumn.

  But this did not help Daphne during the writing of The King’s General. Margaret staggered on after her holiday, supposedly being helped not just by the girls but by Marjorie Johnson, wife of Tommy’s batman, who was living in a flat prepared for her in the house. Daphne had not wanted more people to be around her but had seen it was her duty to offer the pregnant Mrs Johnson a billet when her husband went with Tommy, and had hoped it would work out well. It did not. Mrs Johnson had her baby while she was at Menabilly and needed looking after herself. Driven to distraction, Daphne retreated into the seventeenth century and very successfully ignored the chaos around her. She was entirely relaxed about any kind of mishap, and also about the state of the house, just so long as she could go on writing. Tessa’s two goats, Freddie and Doris, were allowed to wander wherever they liked, on condition they didn’t actually sleep on the beds, and the rabbits and bantams, though meant to be outside, were not unwelcome either. On fine days the children roamed the woods and on wet days explored the shut-off north wing which their mother worried about, because it was unsafe, though she did not make much effort to stop them. Here, all the rooms had heavy shutters, some of the ceilings were collapsed or covered with orange fungi, and ferns grew out of the walls. Tucked away in her room, where even Kits was not allowed to disturb her, Daphne wrote serenely on.

  She finished The King’s General in mid-July 1945 and sent it to Victor, apologizing for its length, and saying, ‘I hate to think you may have to turn down four other novels for my awful bloated book.’ He was planning a first print-run of 75,000 and she suggested he should print fewer copies, in order to leave enough paper for someone else’s book, but Victor was so thrilled to have the novel that he would not hear of it. The war was soon going to be over and the paper situation would rapidly improve, therefore, he said, she must not feel guilty.

  The mere mention of the war’s ending aroused very mixed feelings in Daphne. Ever since Tommy had gone to the Far East at the end of 1944, she had been trying to prepare him for the difficulties they would face when he returned for good. Tommy couldn’t understand what she meant and was merely bewildered. His wife sent him cuttings from magazine articles on the subject of the problems which would arise for married couples after the war, and he simply could not see their relevance to himself and Daphne. ‘I quite agree reinstating our routes may be difficult but we are much more together than most people and have always been happy to sit on the opposite sides of the fire reading,’ he replied to her warning and thought the subject closed. Even when she sent him her play, which he had never seen performed, he saw no message for himself, merely instructing her to insist on its being properly promoted so that there would be more money for boats – now there was a topic he did not mind discussing forever.

  But Daphne, too, could be obtuse. After VE Day in May 1945, she began to expect Tommy home any minute, and when he failed to appear, acted as though this failure were deliberate on his part and he did not want to return. This was unreasonable because Tommy had told her repeatedly that the chances of his being able to come home as soon as the war in Europe was officially over were slim. On 23 May 1945, he spelled this out very clearly – ‘I honestly don’t think’, he wrote to her, ‘that there is going to be much chance of a man getting back soon,’ and on 10 June he went further, writing that he was going to be stuck until the war with the Japanese was over, so she was not to ‘count on a man coming back at any predictable time’. In spite of this, Daphne persisted in telling all her correspondents that Tommy was ‘in no hurry’ to return and even, though said jokingly, that he was ‘having far too good a time out there’. This was quite untrue and she knew it. In all of Tommy’s almost daily letters throughout 1945–46 there was never the slightest suggestion of any enjoyment. On the contrary, his exhaustion and depression were patently obvious. Sometimes he thought he would crack under the pressure – ‘I’ll blow up one day . . . I am a commander not a staff officer, and one day I’ll let fly and tell everyone where to get off.’ That was if he had the energy – for his health was troubling him. He felt ‘deathly tired’, had a return of his old tummy trouble, and had pains both in his left leg, the one he had injured in his air crash, and the muscles of his shoulders. He had to force himself to be ‘up to the mark in the office’ and was ‘without interest’ in anything outside it. But, in detailing the stress he endured, he was sensitive to his wife’s own problems and wondered in one letter, rather wistfully, ‘Whether if I’d been a dud and was commanding a district in England, whether you would have really been pleased or whether you’d have been disappointed seeing all the doings going on without your man in the swim. The funny part is, that apart from the fact that one feels right to be doing the best of which one’s capable, I have no desire to do anything more than I have to.’

  On his thirteenth wedding anniversary, as was his custom, Tommy wrote a letter to Daphne in which he made his feelings very clear. He summarized the years then told her, ‘I’ve never for one single second regretted accepting your proposal of marriage, though I was a bit scared at the time and was too much of a gentleman to refuse you!!’ He went on to pay handsome tribute to what marriage to her had done for him, saying it was thanks to her he was not ‘a nervous wreck . . . probably a neurotic . . . all due to your love and care of a man’. But most poignant of all was the final part in which, with a sweet simplicity, he looked forward to their future – ‘You needn’t worry about us being able to settle down . . . after the war.’

  The week the letter was written, Christopher Puxley came to stay at Menabilly (puzzling the teenage helpers by leaving his shoes outside the door of his bedroom each night). He and Daphne and the two younger children – Tessa, thought ‘too beady’ at twelve, was safely away, staying with Grace – went off to St Ives for a holiday in the Bentley. The children quite liked him but found him very silent on this occasion, even more so than usual, and full of gloom. It was hardly surprising. Daphne, who for the last three years had been trying to get Christopher to accept that this wartime relationship must end when Tommy came home, had to tell him this might be the last time they could really be together.

  No sooner was this holiday over than there was another kind of farewell, as another era ended. A group of MRA adherents were to sail to America and Garth Lean came down to say goodbye to them, and spent the day with Daphne. He wondered afterwards if there had been ‘something you wanted to say but not quite’ because she had seemed different. That ‘something’ he sensed, but which Daphne did not articulate, was her feeling that she was no longer committed to MRA principles, no longer believed the world revolution could begin with each individual starting a revolution within himself or herself. ‘Don’t put me on a pedestal,’ she had already written to him, ‘my feet are made of clay.’ Now, though she never formally disassociated herself from MRA, and remained a friend to Garth and Bunny, she was disillusioned.

  She was also, as always after finishing a novel, tired and depressed. This was how Tod found her when she arrived to live at Menabilly in the flat vacated by Mrs Johnson in October 1945. Tod had spent holidays at Menabilly and was liked by the children, from whom she received a warm welcome. Now slightly plump, with her brown hair turning grey, she appeared to them not so much as a governess but as their mother’s oldest friend. She had a rich, cultured accent, which they enjoyed mimicking, and she always looked neat, wearing tweed suits with pastel-coloured blouses and matching cardigans. Her jewellery consisted of two favourite brooches – one moonstone, one a little gold four-leafed clover – and she wore lily of the valley scent. She had brought with her home-made shortbread and a rich fruit cake, which, with the state of the food at Menabilly, were gratefully received (‘Your mother’, she told the children pityingly, ‘could live off the smell of an oil rag’).1

  Life changed as soon as she was settled in. At 9.15 the children went to her flat, knocked, and heard her say ‘You may enter.’ There would be a delicious smell of bacon and toast, and it felt cosy and comfortable. (Tod found the cold at Menabilly quite unbearable and saw to it that her flat was the warmest place.) The girls took to her at once, which was fortunate since there was open warfare between them at the time, but Kits was not at first won over. He naturally preferred his mother, who so openly adored him and to whom he was so close, and would not, at almost five, readily give his allegiance to any other woman. But eventually even Kits tolerated Tod, and Daphne was left free to correct The King’s General.

  Sheila Bush, who had started working for Victor Gollancz as his secretary, and had taken over from Norman Collins as Daphne’s editor with Hungry Hill, saw at once that, so far as editing went, there was a great deal to do to this novel. Daphne always acknowledged this perfectly cheerfully – she knew her spelling was atrocious, her paragraphing haphazard, and that she made many a grammatical slip. She had always needed someone to put these minor things right and had been grateful for the tedious work in which it involved her editors. There was never anything of the prima donna about her – on the contrary, she was humble and self-conscious whenever she sent in a manuscript, and always, even when she became a long-established bestselling author, said that she expected to have her typescript sent back with ‘See me’ written all over it. When it came to general editorial criticisms she was equally receptive and willing to listen to any suggestions for improvement – ‘If Norman Collins can think of any alterations . . . to the general story, will you please ask him to let me know?’ she had written to Victor when she gave him Rebecca. And when Norman did suggest various ways in which she could strengthen the narrative, she proved she meant what she said by giving them careful consideration. With Sheila Bush, she had now begun a working relationship which served her well.

  The plot of The King’s General was the most complex Daphne had yet attempted, because it covered so much real history and yet had interwoven in it an entirely imagined love-story. It begins with an atmospheric monologue, in the style of Rebecca, then moves on to a light-hearted, romantic flashback with a feeling of Frenchman’s Creek, before expanding into a dense saga reminiscent of Hungry Hill, The character of the heroine, Honor, is central to everything that happens, and when she is crippled in a melodramatic accident near the beginning of the story of her life (which she is relating), it becomes obvious that this is to be a love-story of a very strange and dark kind. ‘You will never see me wed to the man I love,’ warns the crippled Honor, ‘. . . but you will learn how that love never faltered.’ She refuses to let Richard Grenvile see her and he marries someone else. Firmly, she schools herself to forget him, but when the Civil War breaks out she is sent for safety to Menabilly, where Richard finds her. There follows a very odd chapter in which Honor and Richard dine together, the first time for fifteen years they have been in each other’s company. Richard says he still wants her and Honor makes him inspect her injuries. These are described as ‘crumpled limbs that he had once known whole and clean’. Richard does not flinch but ‘kissed my ugly twisted legs’. All looks set for reconciliation and a happy outcome, but then Honor decides that, in spite of the tenderness he has shown, Richard has changed – ‘suffering and bitterness had turned him hard’. He is cruel and ruthless, ‘what my tragedy had made him’. If she lets him come back into her life, ‘I must put up with the fever engendered in me which could never more be stilled.’ She is a strong woman, but she knows Richard is stronger and that if she lets herself love him she will become his victim – ‘First a soldier, second a lover’, Richard will never put her first, he will only bring her ‘torments’.