Romance in Le Havre and St Raphael.

Get out of bed and go dancing!

Sometime in 1932 Nancie returned to Kilmacolm with a hacking cough, probably due to all the cigarettes she'd smoked. She hadn't smoked until she met Esther in Le Havre and started with Esther's encouragement. The family doctor, Dr Ferguson, diagnosed a spot on her lung and, fearing TB, told her to stay in bed. After several weeks a specialist came to see her. He examined her and gave her his professional opinion. It was, in so many words, " Get up out of bed and go dancing". Nancie didn't need telling twice. She followed his advice. 

Whenever she came home from her travels abroad, her faithful friend Duncan Harrigan was always there to take her out. Before she left for Baghdad she had become unofficially engaged to Bill Park.

That was a useful ploy to keep other men at arms' length. Out in Baghdad, Nancie had met lots of young men who were serving in the RAF and was in great demand for dancing with at the various social occasions.

Whilst in Le Havre with the Doublets she had met Harry (Henry/Henri) Legroua who was to have quite a profound effect on her. He was a dashing, good-looking man and Nancie really fell for him.

All the other women did as well and 'threw themselves at him'. Nancie, however, had reservations.

Having seen how unhappy her employer, Charlotte was in her marriage; Nancie knew she didn't want to commit herself until she found the right man.  Harry was rather wild and exciting but definitely not good husband material, as far as she was concerned.

One evening when they were with a group of friends at the Bal de Couturiers at the Frascati Hotel in Le Havre a girl rushed up to Harry and grabbed him by the hand, pulling him into the Ladies' Powder Room. Nancie walked on with the rest of the group and Harry reappeared a little while later looking rather sheepish. She had no illusions about his reliability as a boyfriend, never mind a husband. As she put it: 'I realised that happiness and security were not within his power'

He wanted to marry her, he said, and in a grand gesture to prove his love, showed her eight letters that he had written to eight of the women in his life in Paris, telling them he had at last met the scots girl that he was going to marry. He made her read them before sealing and posting them. She later discovered that he'd put the wrong address on them all!

He was prone to dramatic demonstrations of his love. The most famous was the time he parked his sports car on the cliffs at Sainte Adresse and flashed his headlights at the cross channel ferry that Nancie was sailing home on, nearly causing an international incident! The Captain came onto the deck and joined her, watching the lights flashing and escorted her back to the ship's lounge.

She realised then that the man she would agree to marry one day would have to be very special and probably nothing like the dashing, romantic but unreliable Harry! They met again a few years later (1934?) when Nancie was living at The Maquis in St Raphael and he took her to Monte Carlo to see the Grand Prix. They saw some famous racing drivers such as Rudolf Caracciola and Earl Howe. He had a rendezvous there with some other friends. Nancie thought it was probably with a blonde, a special one. She enjoyed seeing him again, although it was briefly.

The Hotel Frascati in Le Havre was sadly destroyed by enemy bombing in 1944. The site is now occupied by a museum.

Nancie describes how she met Gerald Higby at the casino in Le Havre. She was there with a party and he asked her to dance. Then followed one of those conversations that went thus:

"Ah, you're a Scot. So is my Mother."

"Where is she from?" Nancie asked,

"Oh, a little village you will never have heard of," was the reply.

"Where is that?"

"It's called Kilmacolm."

Gales of laughter followed from Nancie, as you can imagine.

Gerald became rather serious about her but she didn't fancy him. His Mother was a Kinloch and one of Nancie's teachers at Kilmacolm  school was also a Kinloch.

Nancie had many proposals of marriage over the years but she didn't want to be tied down. She used to say she'd been engaged five times before she met Jack, which is probably true. She would say later that God had protected her on all her travels and kept her safe from unwise relationships. She also saw that money did not necessarily bring happiness.