The waiters in the Savoy restaurant thought it was a lover’s tiff.
A small woman in a blue suit would not stop crying. ‘How could you? How could you?’ she wailed.
The man beside her, a smarter-looking, older gentleman in a cashmere suit, was turned away from her, but still raised his voice to hiss: ‘For God’s sake, Phyllis, how dare you make a scene! Everybody is looking. Be quiet now. How can I have two demented women in my life?’
‘Now I know what drove Mama insane,’ the woman shouted.
If anyone had been able to eat their beef soup or rabbit pie up until then – well, now their hushed voices fell to an absolute silence. It was, they believed, perfectly acceptable to put down their cutlery and stare as the woman accused her companion of being a philandering adulterer, a devil and a megalomaniac, before throwing over her chair and running from the room. She flounced past the bellboys and out on to the street, and for the first time in two years, Phyllis walked, sobbing and sobbing, until she could sob and walk no more.
The dinner had started off civilly enough, but then Sandor had insisted on pulling out his favourite topic – women – as he perused the menu. Hungarian wives are so much more accepting than English and American ones. They forgive peccadilloes as long as one doesn’t desert them, whereas Englishwomen demand monogamy.
In her mind, Phyllis could see her poor, bandaged Mama, paralysed after the riding accident. She could feel her hand stiffen in hers, as Sandor threw insult after insult at her pathetic form. All Bella had ever asked for was his support and love.
Some might say Phyllis’s outburst was connected to posttraumatic stress disorder after the plane crash. Others, that Phyllis came face to face with her own mental fragility. But that night, it seemed to her that Sandor had been employing the same sadistic, demoralising tactics in the office and in the restaurant, that had eventually robbed Phyllis of her mother.
The next day, Tony received a letter from Sandor, a copy of which went to Phyllis. As an artist, Tony could not rise to any of the family squabbles about business. He skimmed through his father’s letter, but found himself untroubled by what he felt was petty. He had no interest in maps, in production or in being a company director. Whether his father’s actions were legal, given that he had handed over the reins to his daughter, is also questionable today.
I write to say that Phyllis thrust convulsive scenes upon me in a restaurant this evening, where I am well known. She hurled abuse at me and her hysterical eyes were those of a madwoman, her voice shriller and louder than I have ever heard.
I therefore have no alternative but to give you full control of the Geographers’ Map Company. I shall issue further shares in your name. I advise you to look into the accounts. She has to be watched.
Your loving father,
Sandor Gross.
PS On receipt of a copy of your will, I will take the necessary legal steps.
That night, after receiving her copy of the letter, Phyllis had a stroke.
For two months, Phyllis was blind. The shock of her father’s wrath and her own vulnerability had snatched away her sight. Sandor had already flown home to New York, but on hearing the news from Mrs Ford, he sent a telegram, DO NOT WORRY. RETHINK. GET BACK IN OFFICE ASAP.
His cruelty at tearing all her hard work out of her hands in one swipe, and handing it back in the next, had sickened her. Tears flooded her face as she curled up alone at home in her bed, realising that she was one step nearer her beloved Mama. She did not dare believe that her sight was gone for ever. She did not dare feel that her business would flounder and sink without her.
To keep herself occupied during the day, she dictated stories to Mrs Ford about her travels in Spain. These would eventually be published in The New Yorker in 1955.
After weeks of darkness, Phyllis awoke one morning and a mottled vision of the ceiling came into view. She could hardly breathe with excitement as she blinked and blinked, and out of nowhere, her sight flickered back into focus. It was, Phyllis would say in later years, like the Road to Damascus conversion. Having been an atheist, from that moment onwards she conducted her life and her company as a Christian – born again, in the true sense of the meaning. Whether it was in the quotations from the Bible in her Christmas cards, to references to the Bible in her company manifesto, her enthusiasm for Christianity would become as keen as it was for maps.
As her sight grew stronger, she scurried for writing paper. The first thing Phyllis felt compelled to do, was to send letter to her father. Animosity would not be allowed to wear away at her. Forgiveness, she felt, was only fair for him, her dear, darling father. She would try to understand his own loneliness with acceptance and kindness. The relief that came with the release of her own, albeit contained, bitterness, coincided with her call to Christianity and it is around this time that Phyllis wrote of her vision of Christ:
I had the strange sensation of an opaque membrane being peeled from my eyes. Without emotion, I experienced God, as a living, all-powerful presence. ‘Let not your heart be troubled,’ were the words, ‘ye who believe in God, believe in Me.’ And there spiritually He stood. In my heart, closer than hands or feet.
For the rest of her life Phyllis, albeit not a churchgoer, would believe that although her own human father had abandoned her, God had lifted her miraculously above all her troubles and held her tight.
What Phyllis could not foresee was that, despite her forgiveness, her father’s life would only stretch for another six years. After a series of heart attacks in New York, he let business relax as he took a succession of holidays in the South of France. In August 1957, Phyllis received her final telegram from him on the Queen Mary bound for Southampton.
MEET ME OFF THE SHIP PLEASE. 30 AUGUST.
That same night, Sandor was found dead, sitting upright in an armchair in his cabin after dinner, his heart having stopped without warning. The letter then, that Phyllis wrote as a reply that same night, in her firm, looped handwriting, he would never get to read:
My Darling Friend and Father,
I cannot wait to see you. I know that I should thank you for all your help with my business affairs and I truly know how wise you are.
Lovingly and gratefully, Phyllis.
To be greeted then at Southampton dock by a body bag and her father’s suitcase would ordinarily have shattered his daughter. But her faith had allowed her to understand that her family, scattered to the heavens, were no closer than the family at 21 Grays Inn Road.
Back to 1952, and the time of Phyllis’s conversion to Christianity. A strong will and a strong faith now carried her wherever she wanted to go but when her weight fell to less than five stone, her colleagues pleaded with her to check into a Sussex rest home, founded by Dr Octavia Wilberforce, in Backsettown, Henfield. Here, in the Tudor rooms with their views of rolling pastures, Jersey cows and orchards, Phyllis found a haven that she would retreat to often over the next ten years.
Backsettown, read the brochure, supplies a Rest Pause, under special conditions, to the efficient women in every class whose activities are threatened or impaired by the stress of modern life.
There teachers, nurses and academics were cared for with lavish attention, in the comforting surroundings of an old country manor. Phyllis was ordered to rest in bed and fed up on roast dinners with fresh vegetables from the farm, and soggy puddings covered in cream from the Backsettown herd.
When her body plumped up to its usual eight stone, Dr Wilberforce started to reduce her painkillers.
‘I’m afraid you’ve been over-drugged for too many years,’ she told Phyllis, ‘and the process for withdrawal is a gradual one. But you will succeed because you want to, unlike those poor unfortunates who use drugs as an escape.’
The initial three-day roaring nightmare of withdrawal took Phyllis back to her mother’s cell in Bedlam. But when she saw the grey skin on her own flinching face in the mirror, Phyllis vowed she would not linger there.
Through intense prayers and light strolls through the woods and across the downs, Phyllis began to breathe in a happy peace. The emotional race that she had pushed her body to run over the past twenty years, was beginning to feel meaningless.
For once, enjoying the freedom of her own solitude was not as agreeable as passing the hours with the female companions she made at Backsettown. Over a cream tea at the fireside or under the cherry trees, she would paint or talk. It was here that she was introduced to a friend of Octavia’s called Dr Esme Wren, a brilliant heart consultant. The two women became the best of friends. They shared a sociable, intelligent wit, a love of travel and a greed for books. As for chatter, they could talk about any subject until the Backsettown cows came home. In later years, they moved to be near each other in Shoreham-on-Sea, and it was Esme who cared for Phyllis in her final days.