of her life. She loved Brian, and she accepted his infidelities. ‘I couldn’t expect him to be faithful, because of being away for so long.’ But Kaye wasn’t prepared to be lonely either.’ There was an officer in the RAF, though I didn’t actually sleep with him … and there was a New Zealander who took me out to dinner at the Bodega … And there was Jack – he was a warrant officer in the army; I met him in the pub, and when he was on leave he used to come and see me, and he did sleep with me. He hoped I would leave Brian. Well – I told Brian about mine, because he told me about his … But he was the first to stray.’
Honesty and goodwill on both sides rescued the Bastin marriage. ‘I’m the sort of person who can take on these problems and deal with them,’ she says today. ‘The important thing is not to make a fuss about everything.’ Unlike those of thousands of separated wives, Kaye’s wartime marriage didn’t end in divorce. In 1938 fewer than 10,000 divorce petitions had been filed, less than half by husbands. By 1945 the numbers would reach 25,000. Over half of these – 14,500 – were filed by husbands, of which about 10,150 (70 per cent) were on the grounds of adultery by their wives. Each case, in that torrent of petitions flooding the courts throughout the 1940s, told its own tale of loneliness, infidelity, adultery, betrayal. There was Mrs Louis, a Berkshire woman whose RAF husband came home on leave and, having peremptorily informed her that he would be divorcing her to marry someone else, not only sent a furniture van round to remove all the household goods, but had all the lights ripped out of their fittings. There was Elizabeth Jane Howard, who felt she had made a mistake from the outset when she married her husband, Peter Scott (son of the Arctic explorer), but despite many flagrant infidelitieswaited till the war was over before divorcing him: ‘He was fourteen years older than me so it was not a success really from the start … but I felt I couldn’t go while he was fighting the war.’
Margaret Perry, a Nottinghamshire nineteen-year-old, was another who married in haste in 1942; neither Margaret nor her new husband, Roy, had thought things through. Isolated in a miserable lodging in north London, Margaret soon fled back to stay with her mum in Nottingham and got a job in the city’s chief department store; unknown to Roy she fell under the spell of a married RAF officer twice her age, who impressed her with his ‘mature’ ideas about politics and vegetarianism. Margaret, eager to learn but young and bewildered, was easy prey. Later she was conscripted into a munitions factory, where she became fascinated by her boss, Peter, a pacifist – also married. ‘I began to worship [him] in a way that was not good for me. Roy and I began to quarrel violently.’ By 1944 Roy could take no more of his young wife’s infidelities ‘of mind and body’. They parted. ‘He’d had a very raw deal from me.’
Precipitate marriages followed by prolonged absence were putting unendurable strain on relationships. The Mass Observation diarist Shirley Goodhart recorded the distress of a friend whose husband had left her ‘for another girl whom he met abroad. This separation is breaking up many marriages.’ Shirley herself had married her doctor husband, Jack, early in 1941. Soon after that he was sent to India; she would not see him again for four years. Could their marriage survive?
Barbara Cartland worked as a welfare officer during the war. Her sympathies were with the women, but she was equally non-judgemental about the men:
I was often sorry for the ‘bad’ women … They started by not meaning any harm, just desiring a little change from the monotony of looking after their children, queuing for food and cleaning the house with no man to appreciate them or their cooking.
… and who should blame a man who is cooped up in camp all day or risking his life over Germany for smiling at
Honesty and goodwill on both sides rescued the Bastin marriage. ‘I’m the sort of person who can take on these problems and deal with them,’ she says today. ‘The important thing is not to make a fuss about everything.’ Unlike those of thousands of separated wives, Kaye’s wartime marriage didn’t end in divorce. In 1938 fewer than 10,000 divorce petitions had been filed, less than half by husbands. By 1945 the numbers would reach 25,000. Over half of these – 14,500 – were filed by husbands, of which about 10,150 (70 per cent) were on the grounds of adultery by their wives. Each case, in that torrent of petitions flooding the courts throughout the 1940s, told its own tale of loneliness, infidelity, adultery, betrayal. There was Mrs Louis, a Berkshire woman whose RAF husband came home on leave and, having peremptorily informed her that he would be divorcing her to marry someone else, not only sent a furniture van round to remove all the household goods, but had all the lights ripped out of their fittings. There was Elizabeth Jane Howard, who felt she had made a mistake from the outset when she married her husband, Peter Scott (son of the Arctic explorer), but despite many flagrant infidelitieswaited till the war was over before divorcing him: ‘He was fourteen years older than me so it was not a success really from the start … but I felt I couldn’t go while he was fighting the war.’
Margaret Perry, a Nottinghamshire nineteen-year-old, was another who married in haste in 1942; neither Margaret nor her new husband, Roy, had thought things through. Isolated in a miserable lodging in north London, Margaret soon fled back to stay with her mum in Nottingham and got a job in the city’s chief department store; unknown to Roy she fell under the spell of a married RAF officer twice her age, who impressed her with his ‘mature’ ideas about politics and vegetarianism. Margaret, eager to learn but young and bewildered, was easy prey. Later she was conscripted into a munitions factory, where she became fascinated by her boss, Peter, a pacifist – also married. ‘I began to worship [him] in a way that was not good for me. Roy and I began to quarrel violently.’ By 1944 Roy could take no more of his young wife’s infidelities ‘of mind and body’. They parted. ‘He’d had a very raw deal from me.’
Precipitate marriages followed by prolonged absence were putting unendurable strain on relationships. The Mass Observation diarist Shirley Goodhart recorded the distress of a friend whose husband had left her ‘for another girl whom he met abroad. This separation is breaking up many marriages.’ Shirley herself had married her doctor husband, Jack, early in 1941. Soon after that he was sent to India; she would not see him again for four years. Could their marriage survive?
Barbara Cartland worked as a welfare officer during the war. Her sympathies were with the women, but she was equally non-judgemental about the men:
I was often sorry for the ‘bad’ women … They started by not meaning any harm, just desiring a little change from the monotony of looking after their children, queuing for food and cleaning the house with no man to appreciate them or their cooking.
… and who should blame a man who is cooped up in camp all day or risking his life over Germany for smiling at
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