Spike: An Intimate Memoir

It was an exciting month. The girls were different from my friends at home. All were extremely clothes-conscious and some very blah, but others brought a mixture of accents from all over the country. This was at a time when anything but an educated southern accent was a problem for the ambitious, so those of us from the Midlands and North Country were encouraged to lose them. I was an eager learner. We were shown how to use cutlery, how to make introductions and, most importantly, how to look after clothes and shoes. Of an evening we met in coffee bars – the new rage to hit London and later to spread to the provinces – and talked excitedly about how the course would change our lives. When we parted, sometimes close to midnight, I travelled safely to South London where I was staying with a cousin.

The experience opened the door to a glamorous new world and gave me poise and confidence. It had never been my intention to make a career of modelling, but when I returned to Thornaby I was offered evening and weekend jobs by Robinson’s and a hairdresser who had made a name for himself on local television. So typing was interspersed with fashion shows but my feet became even itchier than before. Local girls and boys seemed drab in comparison with their metropolitan counterparts. Nonetheless recruiting nights continued with my best friend, Pat Howden, at the dear old Saltburn Spa. We never missed a Saturday night of flirting. And we started planning for our summer holidays.

After a taste of London sophistication I was thirsty to travel further afield than Blackpool, where my parents used to take me every year. Package holidays were then in their infancy and flights expensive. Only the moderately wealthy took a ferry across the Channel and drove down Route Nationale 7 to magical places such as Juan-les-Pins, St Tropez (then still a fishing port), Cannes and Nice. But our imagination was fired by news stories of young people who had hitch-hiked their way to the sun and we were desperate to do the same. The trouble was that our parents were equally desperate to save us from the white slave trade, which they were convinced flourished twenty-two miles the other side of Dover. Throughout the winter of 1953 we pleaded our cause.

France! The home of the Folies Bergére, teeny-weeny bikinis, chic, garlic and Gauloise cigarettes. Mum was fearful, Dad apprehensive, but eventually they gave their permission, with one big proviso: I must not do anything that might bring shame to the family. Not the shame that dare not speak its name – coming back pregnant – but even losing you know what. Mum had heard that girls purposely dressed skimpily to catch the eye of drivers as they raced to the sinful south and she was adamant that my clothes should be modest. The same condition was placed on Pat so we left Thornaby dressed demurely in passion-killing long shorts. As soon as we were out of sight we changed into pairs that were short and tight enough to make sitting down an artful manoeuvre, packing the long ones at the bottom of our rucksacks to be retrieved on our return.

Those cheek-popping shorts served us well and they certainly made drivers take their eyes off the road, so much so that we were able to disdain offers of lifts from lorries and small cars; luxury sedans and saloons became our favoured mode of transport. We were careful to stay on the main road to the south, never hitched after five o’clock and as travelling was free we stayed at decent hotels, not only because they were cleaner but because they might contain eligible young men.

Over the next few years I went back to France and visited Italy and Spain with Pat and then another friend, Aideen Thornton. On the second trip I met someone who made a lasting impression, though we knew each other for only a few days.

It happened on the Champs Elysées. Aideen was taking my photograph with the boulevard’s nameplate in the background so I could show off back home. Then as it was her turn a tall man in his late twenties asked, ‘Would you like me to take both of you?’ Talk about hearts stopping. He was a young English Gary Cooper, slim, smart and outrageously handsome. Unbelievably, he said he was hitch-hiking. Hitch-hiking! He looked as though his everyday conveyance should be a Rolls.

‘Where to?’ I asked.

‘Juan-les-Pins. And you?’

There was no hesitation. ‘Juan-les-Pins.’

He smiled captivatingly. Would we care to join him for coffee? Would we. Over coffee he proved to be a fabulous raconteur. He knew Paris like a native and the afternoon whizzed by. How about dinner at this tiny bistro? How could we refuse? With him I would have shared a baguette on the beach. John, as he was called, told us he was staying in Paris for three or four days and between us we soon persuaded Aideen that we should do the same, to see the sights, of course.

He was the most charming man I had ever met, always immaculate in a spotless white shirt and one of those famous public school ties. He showed us Paris as expertly as, and a lot more charmingly than, a tourist guide but every evening at nine o’clock he turned Cinderella. He would look at his watch, apologize and leave. I wondered who she was.

On the morning we were to say goodbye he arrived with two brown carrier bags. His luggage. I could not believe it. True, he said. Inside the first, very neatly folded, was his underwear, plus three or four white shirts, a toilet bag and a jar of Frank Cooper’s coarse-cut marmalade. In the second was a pair of shoes by John Lobb, complete with trees. They weighed a ton. Definitely an eccentric, I thought. Why did he not carry everything in a rucksack like other hitch-hikers?

If I had asked him to wear brown boots in London he could not have been more horrified. ‘Oh dear me no. Most definitely not.’ There was a suggestion of a shudder. In his world rucksacks were definitely not de rigueur. I was glad he had not seen us on the road.

‘We must meet in Juan-les-Pins,’ he said. Not only a charmer but a mind reader. ‘Let’s split up now, go our separate ways and meet in three days. At the Hotel .’ I have forgotten the name of the hotel but not him.

We made Juan in two days. The next afternoon we met, as arranged, at his hotel, naturally the one with the most stars of any in the resort. He was draped languidly but elegantly in a chair at the best table with a glass of wine. He seemed as delighted to see us as we were to see him and we arranged to travel to Cannes, the queen of the Riviera. The next morning we met outside his hotel at the arranged time, but he had forgotten something in his room. Great. I would go with him. I wanted to see inside this famous hotel.

‘Come along,’ he said. But instead of going into the hotel he walked away from it.

‘Where are you going?’ I said.

‘To my hotel.’

‘Isn’t this it?’

He laughed. ‘I couldn’t afford their prices.’

I was disappointed although I should have realized that if he chose to hitch-hike he too must be on a budget. Aideen and I followed him along side streets well away from the promenade, through a quiet courtyard, and stopped at a brightly painted house which looked like a private home.

He invited us up and ushered us into his barely furnished room. He had his back to us as he sorted through a drawer and I caught a glimpse of a passport on the wash stand. I thumbed through it quickly and the shock rocked me on my heels. ‘John Huggins, Clerk in Holy Orders.’

‘You’re a clergyman!’ I gasped.

He nodded. ‘A vicar.’

‘How come you’re hitch-hiking?’

‘It’s a bit complicated.’

‘Uncomplicate it for me.’

It was the only time I saw him slightly embarrassed. ‘You see –’ he started, almost in a whisper, then hesitated.

‘Go on.’

‘I was caught kissing a girl in the vestry.’

‘Well, I suppose the vestry isn’t the place for that, but it’s not criminal.’

Again a hesitation, then a cough. ‘It was a shock to my wife.’

Not as big a shock as the ‘wife’ was to me. I could excuse a kiss. But a married man …

After it happened, he explained, everyone thought it better that he should leave the district. I suppose it had shocked the strait-laced among his parishioners but even in those days the offence did not seem to merit the punishment. That was why he was in France. He had no private means but was bilingual and worked as an interpreter. He explained his disappearance every evening: he was being hired by wealthy tourists who might lose thousands at the casino if they said ‘Oui’ at the wrong time.

‘I’ve let everybody down,’ he said, looking so crestfallen I could have hugged him. ‘The church, my wife, the family, they’re all very critical, except my brother, Jeremy. But he’s different. He’s an actor.’

I had never heard of an actor called Jeremy Huggins.

‘His professional name is Jeremy Brett,’ said John.

The name meant nothing until I saw Brett many years later as an unforgettable Sherlock Holmes. He was good-looking all right, and female viewers swooned over him, but John was the more handsome brother.

After this discovery a black cloud seemed to have settled over Cannes, but being only twenty, I found my spirits revived in the days that followed, and I was dazzled once more by his charm. The two of us went out together on our last night in Juan before leaving for Cap Ferrat. As we left the bistro he repeated what he had done in the vestry. It was our first and last kiss. A street photographer spotted us and took our picture. His resulting panic was out of all proportion. ‘My wife’s put a detective on me! It’ll be a divorce if she sees the picture.’ Paranoid no doubt, but the next morning as he said a more formal goodbye he gave me a gardenia. I knew he could not afford it, which made it all the more touching.

‘Meet me in Juan when you decide to go home,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you how to travel back in style.’ He explained his method. Before leaving he visited the best hotel to find out from the concierge whether he was expecting any English visitors who would be driven to the Riviera by their chauffeurs. Their employers considered it cheaper to send them back to England for the month or so of their holidays and then ring for them when they decided to make the return trip. He travelled back with the chauffeurs, who ‘appreciated the company.’ He was unashamedly elitist about it. ‘I get the chauffeurs’ names and registration numbers and choose the best Bentley or Rolls available.’

Trust John Huggins to have worked that one out. We said we would meet when we returned to Juan, but that never happened as Cap Ferrat had its own unattached attractions. We have never met since, but as you can see, I have never forgotten him.

All holidays come to an end and once more it was Saturday nights at Saltburn Spa. There I met Michael Williams and we fell in love. He was an officer in the Merchant Navy, good-looking and reliable but fun, in fact every working-class mother’s dream of a suitable son-in-law. We had wonderful times when he was on leave and became unofficially engaged. Everyone, including me, expected us to walk down the aisle. But a new man, not yet in my life, put paid to that.

After five years at ICI I was ready for a change. I stopped going to Saltburn Spa because Pat had moved to London and I was more or less engaged. Kenneth Kendall still looked benignly at me but one day I had a few words with him. ‘It’s time we moved on.’ What I needed was a more demanding job. I was lucky because that same evening I spotted just what I was looking for in the local newspaper:

National newspaper journalist needs hard working secretary with good shorthand typing speeds. Clock watchers need not apply. This is a challenging post and merits a commensurately higher than usual salary. Telephone 4500.

That was more like it. I made an appointment, dressed with care and set off with all the aplomb of a Lucy Clayton graduate. I sat in the waiting room and was about to leave after fifteen minutes when a girl walked out of his office, looked at me and mouthed one word: ‘Bastard’.

Although based in the north-east Jack Clarke was probably at that time the U.K.’s highest-paid journalist. Savile Row suits and the latest sports cars were his badges of success. He had worked in Fleet Street and become a news editor, but decided he could make more money as a freelance investigative journalist. Jack would travel anywhere, any time to get an exclusive where others had been rebuffed, so he prospered. When I met him he employed six reporters, two photographers and a cine man, and supplied national newspapers and television stations with stories from the region. At the time, however, I did not know much about him.

When the ‘bastard’ opened his office door, I saw a man in his mid-thirties, five feet nine or so, with a receding hairline but very well groomed and wearing a bow tie. Not dapper but smart. I liked that. He had twinkling blue eyes and, though no Hollywood heartthrob, had something about him. He smiled after the departing girl. ‘Come in, if she hasn’t put you off.’ How could he know? I soon found out that he read people very well, and quickly.

It was unlike any interview I had had. Questions about all sorts of things; current affairs, gossip, all discussed at a whirlwind rate as if time was money. He asked me courteously enough if I would mind taking some dictation, handed me a pad and pencil, then rattled off a letter at about one hundred and thirty words a minute, which I only just managed to get down.

‘Now type it.’ He must have noticed my expression. ‘If you don’t mind, and you want the job.’

I typed the letter quickly and confidently handed it to him. He read it and reeled back in his chair, as if in shock. ‘Christ! Didn’t anyone teach you punctuation?’

The bosses were not rude like that at ICI. Who did he think he was?

‘When people dictate they normally indicate commas and full stops. You didn’t. I’m a secretary. Not a graduate in grammar and punctuation.’

He grinned. I got three months’ trial at fifteen pounds a week, about fifty per cent above the going rate, plus a wonderful if tough initiation into the world of newspapers and television. I did not know it then but it was the beginning of the road to Number Nine, Orme Court.

In addition to being his secretary I was the office’s general dogsbody, tea lady and wages clerk. I typed reporters’ copy when they phoned in their stories, read them over to Jack on the telephone if he was out of the office, altered them according to the Clarke gospel and then dictated them to the nationals. The work never seemed to stop. I wondered if Jack ever spared the time to see his wife and children.

The reporters’ room was thick with smoke, the desks dotted with a dozen mugs or so containing milky dregs of tea leaves and stubbed-out cigarettes. I could not believe the bad language they used and Jack was probably worse. The Sunday school teacher came out in me and I imposed a penalty of sixpence for a curse, which enhanced the contribution he made to nuns who called every month for donations to their missionary order.

Jack’s television work was fascinating to me. When ITN came on air he soon became their man in the north and when the region’s broadcaster, Tyne Tees, was launched he had a weekly political programme and appeared in a nightly current affairs magazine. About six months after starting work for him I became his researcher and consequently he thought it would be a good idea if I met some of the producers. I got to know one very well, Malcolm Morris, a crinkly-haired, bespectacled young man who was bubbling with ideas. When Malcolm was appointed Programme Controller he gave Jack his own shows, which he wrote and produced.

Increasingly, I made the round trip of eighty miles to the studio at breakneck speeds in one of Jack’s sports cars (this was before the days of speed limits). One evening, when his show finished after ten, we were both hungry, having existed since early morning on canteen sandwiches, and he suggested dinner. That was a surprise because until then it had been very much a boss and employee relationship but I was famished and agreed.

In those days in the provinces most dining rooms and restaurants closed their doors around 8.30 p.m., but an Italian restaurant on the outskirts of Gateshead was daring enough to stay open as long as there were customers to serve. That evening I saw Jack in a new light. This often abrupt dynamo of a man changed into an attentive host. I found it difficult to believe I was with the same person who was so focused in his work that anyone who got in his way had to look out. Even the waiters seemed to find him charming. I found him attractive and fascinating. Whether, like an angler, he had been casting his line for a catch I do not know but by the end of the evening, I was hooked and ready to be hauled in.

In the meantime Michael Williams had gone back to sea and I simply stopped writing to him. My parents were sad about Michael, but they never knew the real reason we drifted apart. This is not to say that Jack changed overnight, only when we were out together, after hours. Whenever something went wrong in the office he flared up at the incompetents who had caused it, me included. Then of an evening that dazzling charm would return.

As I became more researcher than secretary I also began to help Jack cover some stories and I was there when he met his match. He had unrivalled sources at the Army’s Catterick Camp, then the biggest in the country, and discovered that a certain eligible lieutenant in the Greys, who happened to be the Duke of Kent, was about to announce his engagement to Katherine Worsley, who was not royal or even titled but the daughter of Sir William Worsley, the Lord Lieutenant of the North Riding. Jack’s photographer got a picture of the Duke’s arrival at the Worsley home, Hovingham Hall. This was an exclusive and within hours of its publication reporters and photographers were sent to the sleepy village, which was still very feudal in its outlook. Journalists slaked the thirsts of locals in the Hovingham Arms but they were a tight-lipped lot. News editors were screaming for something new. Even Jack could not make any headway. Then he had an idea.

At that time he owned one of the very first E-type Jaguars. I had often wanted to drive it on quiet country roads, but his answer was always ‘No’. Fair enough, I suppose, since I had not got a driving licence. Now he smiled at me.

‘There’s time to kill so why don’t we give you a lesson in the Jag? The lanes round here are very quiet so it should be all right.’

I was so excited at the prospect that I was taken in. Silly me. Then I became nervous. What if I smashed it up?

‘Nonsense!’ he said. ‘You’ve always been keen enough before. All cars are the same. Four wheels and an engine. Get in and I’ll show you how.’ So for ten minutes I was given a lesson by an unusually quiet, patient Jack Clarke. Until the car hiccoughed.

‘For Christ’s sake, woman!’ He turned puce but somehow stifled his anger. ‘It happens to us all.’ Then he smiled once more. ‘Excellent. Do you feel more confident now?’

I nodded.

‘Good, because I’ve got an idea. You’ve always wanted to be a reporter. Now’s your big chance. Katherine’s girlfriends are driving past the gatekeeper with flowers and stuff. To congratulate her, I suppose. I want you to do the same.’

‘You’re out of your mind.’

‘No I’m not. You’ll see. It’ll work. The reporters and photographers are all in the pub so nobody will recognize you.’

‘How about the gatekeeper? He’ll stop me.’

‘He won’t if you drive at him as if you don’t intend to stop. Just give him a casual wave.’

I do not know why I fell for it but I did. Off we went to Helmsley for a giant bouquet and then half a mile from Hovingham he stepped out of the car and I was on my own, with firm instructions to get into the Hall if I could. If Katherine was not there I was to hand the flowers to the butler or footman and remember everything I saw, furniture, pictures on the wall, and ask if the Duke was there with her. If she came to the door then I was to remember what the engagement ring looked like and wish her all the best from Jack’s agency.

I drove off – quite well, actually – at a steady twenty-five miles an hour, never faltering, and waving to the gatekeeper who saluted and opened the gates. I skidded to a halt at the huge door, got out of the car with trembling legs, rang the bell and waited. The door swung open to reveal a liveried manservant, a young, very good-looking one. I opened my mouth but the words would not come. How dare Jack put me in this position. I thrust the flowers into his hands. He looked at me expectantly and then the words tumbled out.

‘I’m not a friend of Katherine Worsley. My boss is a journalist and made me come to ask if the Duke is here with Katherine and if not where are they?’

He looked at me impassively. More blurting.

‘Is Katherine at home? Is the Duke here? I didn’t want to do this. He made me. I’d have lost my job if I’d refused.’

He took pity. ‘The Duke isn’t here. He’s with Miss Katherine at Nawton Hall.’ Which, I knew, was where the Countess of Feversham lived.

I jumped in the car. It was such a relief to drive off. Did I say drive? More accurately, hiccough past the gates where Jack was waiting, along with thirty or forty reporters and photographers who had heard that an E-type had been admitted to the Hall. I pulled up and stalled the engine as I had forgotten to take it out of gear.

I made straight for Jack, absolutely furious. ‘Don’t ever put me through that sort of thing again!’ I yelled. He put me back into the car and got behind the wheel.

‘Tell us what happened, love,’ one of the reporters shouted.

Jack put the car into gear. ‘You can read all about it tomorrow,’ he told them. And we roared off.

From such flimsy details he wrote a story that made several page leads and one of our photographers got an exclusive picture of the Duke and Katherine leaving Nawton Hall, the first of them both together.

‘I’ll never do that again,’ I said. But I did, and I got better at it. The best was when I was sent to a local Lady who had held a charity sale of fashion clothes but instead, it was rumoured, had put most of the proceeds into her handbag. After Jack had broken the story hinting at her misdeeds her ladyship was very wary of the Press when she held a second sale. When I was dispatched to the manor, in the E-type again, she was delighted to show a ‘model from London’ around. After chatting for a quarter of an hour we were bosom pals. ‘I do hope we come across one another again,’ she said as I made to leave. ‘It’s so nice to meet a working gal.’

And then KERPOW. A camera bulb flashed in my face. Somehow the reporters had got to the front door again and one of them shouted at her ladyship, ‘I thought you said reporters weren’t allowed in the house. What about her?’

‘I’m certainly not a reporter,’ I said, quite truthfully. ‘He’s obviously mistaken me for someone else – dreadful man!’

‘Riff raff,’ agreed her ladyship.

Head held high, I walked disdainfully through the throng of pressmen, some of whom I recognized, and got into the car quickly. And this time, thank God, I drove away smoothly.

Jack was delighted with my description of the house, Lady , and the clothes on offer. He wrote his piece, with carefully guarded hints about the proceeds of the previous sale having shrunk by the time they reached the charity, and sure enough, the nationals splashed with it.

‘I should get a bonus for this. I got the story and you’ve made money out of it,’ I told him.

‘But you couldn’t have written it.’

‘Without me you wouldn’t have had anything to write about.’

‘But you’re on a salary.’

‘Yes, as a secretary and researcher. Not an undercover reporter.’

He sighed. ‘You win.’ He gave me a generous bonus and I now realize that this was my first stab at negotiating.

Life in Jack’s office could be tough. I still remember going home after a particularly bad day. The reporters had ragged me, Jack was in an impossible mood because one of them had lost a story to someone else – ‘You’ll be lucky to hold down a job on a sleepy country weekly’ – and in his fury he started to throw things around the office.