MY LIFE AT THE OPERA:
an Autobiography
PART ONE : 1925 - 1955
Chapter One:
1925 - 1939
To the best of my knowledge, I was the first member of my
family ever to go to the opera, and even today, three
generations later, there has been little sign of any such
activity among my many relatives, or even those of my wife.
Which must, I feel sure, amount to quite long odds against my
exhibiting this sort of behaviour, since, in addition to the
usual four grandparents, I had a father with three sisters, two
of them married, one with two daughters; and a mother with
three sisters, one of them married with a son and a daughter.
I myself had a brother and a sister, and five of these seven
cousins eventually married, producing ten offspring between us.
My wife had three brothers and a sister, all but one of whom
got married, producing six children in all. That's forty other
family members and in-laws (not counting eleven spouses, or my
wife's parents and grandparents) who have not, to date,
displayed observable opera-going tendencies. Yet, I attended
my first opera at the age of fifteen, in 1941, and have been
going back, whenever circumstances permit, ever since.
How has this odd behaviour come about? If not from either
nature or nurture, what?
The distinctly underprivileged
circumstances of my formative years would argue strongly
against any attempt to explain it away as being merely the
random result of 10% inclination and 90% opportunity - the
statistic often pleaded in mitigation of adultery (another of
life's optional extras for those who can afford it). Which
leaves only the likelihood that, in my case, there has been a
great deal of chance involved, at least in the early stages,
and it occurs to me that the story of my otherwise very
ordinary life and how it has come, in the end, to embrace so
much of this extraordinary thing called opera may be worth
telling for the benefit of any reader labouring under similar
initial disadvantages to mine who may wish to benefit from my
experience in this one particular respect. Abbreviating,
therefore, the very ordinary, as much as possible, in favour of
the extraordinary....
I was born into a solidly working class family in Bradford,
Yorkshire, England, in 1925, when that city stood at the centre
of the world's woollen industry, so it was no coincidence that
both my parents worked in the wool trade, although neither of
them operated machinery up at'mill. This was because my father
was a woolsorter and my mother a burler and mender, skills
which placed them among the elite of the workforce, but at
opposite ends of the process involved in taking coats
off
sheep and putting them on humans.
The woolsorter (invariably male) worked within chatting
distance of his fellows in the cloistered calm of a well-lit
gallery, or shed, standing at his board wearing his brat - a
garment which covered him from neck to ankle and was tied round
the back like a surgeon's gown – surrounded by skips (wheeled
baskets) waiting to receive the fruits of his labours. His job
was to take the raw fleece as it came out of a bale which may
have originated in Australia or the Argentine, and sort it,
manually, into the various grades required by the industry for
the washing, spinning, dyeing and weaving that were to follow.
The brat was to protect him from whatever came out of the wool,
mainly the lanolin with which his board was always thickly
coated. Obviously, much depended on his expert perceptions
about the quality of the clip and it was not unusual for a
woolsorter's skills, if coupled with ambition and intelligence,
to take him on to higher things in the industry.
Not in my father's case, however, although he certainly had the
innate abilities to go further. He was a Scot from the little
riverside town of Langholm in Dumfrieshire where he had learned
his trade (after being educated at the local academy, as he
frequently reminding us) before surviving active service in
Palestine and France with the King's Own Scottish Borderers
during World War One and moving down to Bradford for the work.
He was quite a handsome fellow, just over six feet tall, with a
good enough physique to play rugby football as a semi-pro into
his twenties - which was before my time, of course.
Unfortunately, like so many of his fellow countrymen, my dad
was far too fond of booze, and, by the time I got to know him,
he was fully conditioned to working hard from Monday morning to
Friday evening and drinking hard from Friday evening to Sunday
evening with unfortunate results for his own well-being and
that of his family.
The burler & mender (invariably female) also worked within
chatting distance of her fellows in the relative peace and
quiet of a well-lit gallery or workshop, but seated, in her
case, in front of a near-vertical board, and wearing only an
ordinary pinafore for protection, much as she would at home.
Her job was to repair any minute imperfections in the finished
cloth, which was drawn down off the roll over her board at eyelevel for that purpose, before it was finally sold to the
clothing manufacturers or the wholesalers. The tools of her
trade were tweezers and scissors, for removing any burls (or
knots) in the weave, and a variety of small sewing needles for
mending, with carefully matched up threads, the tiny holes left
by this or any other glitch in the manufacturing process. Her
handiwork could only be appreciated by not being seen.
My mother was ideally suited to this work, and to the
relatively relaxed social milieu in which it took place, much
preferring it to being a full-time housewife, which was
fortunate, in a number of ways, in view of my father's
propensities. She was a warm, loving, gregarious and quite
unassuming Yorkshirewoman, whose cheerful spirit survived years
of regular weekend brutalisation by my father to bring her out
eventually on top. Her only fault, in my young eyes, was that
she was not conventionally fair of face, and I simply could not
understand why this was so. All the fathers and mothers
pictured in every story book or magazine I looked at, or film I
ever saw, had handsome, regular features, and when I looked
around me at the other members of the family the conclusion was
inescapable - my mother's looks were sub-standard. She was
what I later learned was called, in cultured circles, a jolie
laide, but I didn't know that then, and, to my eternal shame, I
once made my opinion on the subject known to her. I was about
eight years old at the time, so it was an interesting early
example of the power of the media to influence young minds. My
mother took it on the chin, as she had so many of life's blows
(I don't suppose it came as news to her), but she never forgot
it, and got her own back by reminding me of the incident from
time to time in later years when I had grown more mature in
judgement...and more sensitive to the torments of acute
embarrassment. She had already got her own back, as they say
in Yorkshire, by bequeathing me a number of her facial
features.
In spite of the cyclical ups and downs of the wool trade in the
1930s and the depressed level of even skilled workers' wages at
the time, the combined earning power of my parents would have
ensured us a more comfortable existence than we actually
enjoyed, had it not been for my father's refusal to take his
family responsibilities seriously. When in work, he would give
my mother, from his Friday pay packet, as little housekeeping
money as he could cajole, or bully her into accepting, and keep
the rest to fund his own lavish weekend lifestyle in a wide
variety of pubs. When out of work, he would hang on to as much
of his dole money as he needed to buy his way up to those same
bars in the hope of benefiting, once there, from his past
generosity to other boozers. My mother was left to manage the
entire household finances for two adults and three children as
best she could on the little he gave her, augmented by whatever
she could earn herself. Unsurprisingly, there were frequent
rows about money from which my mother inevitably came off
second best. For us children, these often violent
confrontations were the worst part of it, because, although
aware of being marginally worse off for food and clothing than
we might have been, the hand to mouth existence we were leading
was tolerably enjoyable most of the time.
Like many another working class family in Bradford, the five of
us occupied a small back-to-back terrace house, in which my
parents continued to dwell for the rest of their lives. It
consisted of one living room (about 20'x20') and a scullery
kitchen (8"x12'), with steps down from the kitchen to a small
coal cellar, and steps up from the living room to a small
landing and three bedrooms (20'x20',8'x10' and 8'x20'). The
last of these bedrooms was over a passageway which gave access
from the street to the two houses (out of four) which were at
the rear of the row (one of them being ours), and to a back
yard with its two outbuildings, both housing one W.C. at each
end and two dustbins in between, set into a rear wall over
which a row of identical houses in the next street could be
seen. The two front houses had side doors into the passage for
easy access to the back yard, and two of the four houses had,
of course, only two bedrooms. It was all very neat and
functional, fitting four houses and a passageway into a space
about 64 feet wide by 40 feet deep, and very solidly built,
like the rest of Bradford, of Yorkshire stone. This meant that
between forty and fifty families could be housed on each side
of a street which was only a couple of hundred yards long,
making the one street into a veritable village. To increase
the resemblance, there was a corner shop, of course, and
extended families, with grandparents living a few doors away
from grandchildren, aunts and uncles juxtaposed with nieces and
nephews, and childhood friends now grown up and married but
still staying close to each other, as in any other village
community.
Although the houses were crammed together back-to-back and side
by side in terraces, the space between the rows was
comparatively generous, and all the houses had small gardens.
Those at the front were the width of the house and about 10
feet deep, bounded by a low wall surmounted by short iron
railings in which was a gate giving on to a wide pavement of
stone slabs (or flags as we called them), then the street
itself, about 18 feet wide from kerb to kerb, and constructed
entirely of stone blocks, or sets, but always referred to as
cobbles. The gardens at the back were only half the width of
each house but about 25 feet long, enclosed by substantial
stone walls, chest high, to the side and back (incorporating
the two outbuildings, known to us as "t'middins"), leaving a
stone-flagged back yard 30 feet wide by 15 feet deep in
between. Over the wall at the bottom of the garden there was
the identical back garden of an identical house in the next
street.
The houses were designed to be fuelled entirely by coal and gas
- I was 11 years old before we 'got the electric in' - which
meant that half one wall of the living room was occupied by a
full cast-iron cooking range with all the trimmings - oven one
side, water boiler the other, high fire grate in between with
chimney hook above, and hearth with fire-guard, fender and
coal-bucket in front, all surmounted by a useful mantelpiece
shelf. The room was lit by a gas mantle hanging down from the
centre of the ceiling. In the kitchen, there was a zinc water
boiler, with a gas burner underneath and a single free-standing
gas ring on a flexible pipe perched on the lid. There was also
a stone sink with a cold water tap which had to serve for all
personal and domestic ablutions. The coal was delivered in
sacks, emptied (with a sound like thunder) through a small
grate in the passage into the coal cellar beneath, from whence
it was carried up the cellar steps and through the kitchen, a
bucketload at a time, usually by me, as required. There were
gas-jet wall fittings in the cellar, the kitchen, and all three
bedrooms, but these were seldom used, neither was the small
fireplace in the large bedroom. During the long, cold, dark
Pennine winters, the five of us spent much of our time, when
not in bed or out of doors, as close to the coal fire in the
living room as we could get.
Amazingly, my mother managed to feed and launder for a family
of five with these facilities, as well as going out to work to
support us. She could only achieve this by relying heavily,
weekdays, on the gas ring in the kitchen and what are nowadays
called take-away foods of various kinds. The corner shop,
barely 25 yards away, up the passage and across the street from
our door, held all the usual groceries plus cheese, carving ham
and corned beef sold by weight, and even boasted two beer pumps
drawing from barrels in the cellar, so those 25 yards were
traversed by one or other member of our family at very frequent
intervals. Beyond that, within easy walking distance (250
yards) there were no less than three fish and chip shops, a
tripe shop also selling hot pies and peas, and a pork butcher
(under the inevitable German name) purveying an enormous range
of instant foods made from "everything in the pig but its
squeek". Monday to Friday, when both parents were working, we
children were given a hot midday meal (always called dinner just as the evening meal, whatever it consisted of, was "tea")
by a neighbour who had no doubt been contracted to do so by my
mother, but on the Sabbath Day, the oven was stoked up, and we
had the traditional Sunday dinner. This was followed, a few
hours later, by Sunday tea for which we routinely went (without
my father, of course) to the home of our two maiden aunties, my
mother's sisters, about a mile away.
So, we didn't go hungry,
but we ate an awful lot of jam and bread at breakfast and
teatime during the week.
Those two maiden aunties played almost as big a part in our
young lives as our parents. They took it upon themselves to do
what they could, within the limited means available to them as
single working women, to fill the gap in our lifestyle left by
my father's inadequacies, not least by making their house a
second home to us. Although it was even narrower than ours and
had no front garden, theirs was a full through terrace house,
boasting what was always referred to as a 'front room' (there
were no parlours in working class Bradford) and a living
kitchen at the back. Upstairs, two bedrooms and a real
bathroom with hot running water from a fireback boiler in the
kitchen, and, above that, a large attic. So, the traffic
between our house and theirs was pretty constant, and they gave
my mother, their younger sister, unstinting moral and material
support in raising her children for as long as she needed it,
most memorably, by taking us all away to the seaside at
Bridlington for a week each year, leaving my father, of whom
they very strongly disapproved (although nothing much was ever
said about their relationship with him in my young presence),
to fend for himself. Now I come to think of it, I can't
remember ever seeing my aunties in the same room as my father.
Their opinion of him was shared by, among others, his own three
sisters, one of whom actually lived in our street for a time
after returning from a five year stint in Canada.
She and her
husband (a precision toolmaker) occupied a house at the front,
about ten doors away from us, and next but one to the family of
a girlhood friend of hers whose own mother-in-law lived only a
few doors away on the other side. They were both Scots, but
their sojourn in Canada had given them a faintly exotic
cosmopolitan gloss and a rather distinctive manner of speaking
which gradually wore off with the passage of time, although my
aunt (she was never an auntie) remained the most articulate and
well-spoken person in my family circle, with the possible
exception of my father. She was also the most socially
ambitious, and soon moved out of the street to take possession
of a newly built, brick and pebble-dashed semi-detached house
about a mile farther out of town, which, with its indoor WC,
well-equipped kitchen and private garden, provided us children
with our first experience of modern living. There they
remained for the rest of their lives.
Although they were childless, and a close and constant presence
in our neighbourhood during all that time, this aunt and uncle
did not involve themselves in our upbringing to anything like
the extent of my mother's sisters, probably because they were
too wrapped up in themselves. They were a well-matched pair,
my uncle a quiet man in the face of my aunt's volubility, and
where she was merely fastidious, he was a perfectionist, deeply
committed to what is nowadays called DIY, and condemned,
therefore, to lavish all his care and attention on keeping his
house and garden in immaculate condition, even without her
encouragement. But they were kind-hearted people, and as welldisposed towards my brother, sister and me as their selfcentricity would allow. We called on them regularly, usually
on a Sunday morning in our best clothes, but were always
required to leave our shoes on the doormat, and only allowed to
use the spotless indoor toilet in extreme emergency, so we
never felt at home there. On these occasions, after subjecting
us to a brief but thorough scrutiny, my aunt would often give
us a carefully worded lecture on personal hygiene and good
manners before asking after our mother and her sisters (never
our father), before going on to cross-question us about a
number of matters, principally our achievements in and out of
school. It was some years before I realised that, with regard
to these last, I was engaged in a lifetime competition with the
offspring of my aunt's girlhood friend (a boy of my age, and a
girl of my sister's), who continued to live in our street for
some time before eventually achieving a semi of her own.
2
There were up to fifty children of all ages living in the
street, and most of them went to different parts of the same
school as me, which was conveniently situated only yards away
in the very next street. This remarkable institution, the
massive stone outline of which dominated my childhood, was
really a complex arrangement of four different schools – a
kindergarten (or "baby class" as it was called), infants,
juniors and seniors - which, together, catered for the
educational needs of boys and girls aged from three to eighteen
years. What? Eighteen years in the 1930s when the minimum
school-leaving age was fourteen? Yes, the senior, or high
school was, in effect, a sort of utilitarian grammar school,
one of three such in Bradford (in addition to the pukka
Bradford Grammar School), which between them ensured that no
less than one in three youngsters in the city could qualify for
a grammar school place by passing an objective aptitude test at
the age of 11. So, my first piece of luck was to be brought up
in Bradford. Had I lived outside the city's boundaries in the
West Riding of Yorkshire, where there were grammar school
places for only about one in twenty, my parents could certainly
not have afforded the expense of sending me to a county grammar
school, even if I had won a scholarship.
But that was in the future. Of more immediate benefit was the
baby class at the age of three. The compulsory school age was
five, but those two years I spent in the baby class were not
only thoroughly enjoyable, giving me my first coherent set of
early memories, but also got my education off to a flying start
by giving me, I later realised, an academic advantage over
those of my contemporaries whose parents chose not to part with
them until the age of five. And, since the physical
constraints of a home environment into which my sister arrived
before I was three and my brother two and a half years later,
gave me little incentive to spend more time than was absolutely
necessary around the house. When I wasn't at school, I was
playing outside (or "laking out" was the term we used, little
realising it's derivation from the Viking occupation of
Yorkshire a millennium earlier), in our backyard, at first,
but, soon, in the street. There, I joined forces with other
boys of roughly my own age to form what became, over the years,
a moderately delinquent street gang.
Mustering between six and a dozen members at any one time, this
gang roamed around together in the evenings after tea (even
during the cold, dark winter), and from breakfast until bedtime
when school had "broken up" for the holidays, particularly the
long summer holidays, going farther and farther afield in
search of adventure. Over the years our territory became quite
extensive. First, there was a badly battered, grassy half acre
at the top end of our street known as "t'rec", then, the very
large open field behind the school, partly laid out as the
school's playing fields, which boasted a stream running through
it and, in the far corner, the eroded but still substantial
bulk of a slag heap, left behind by some long defunct coal mine
and known, therefore, as "t'pit 'ill". This open space was
called Myra Shay, and, when I first knew it, the remains of the
original 18th century manor house from which it took its name
were still there, but falling further into decay with each
passing year. Unsurprisingly, this ruin was reputed to be
haunted, and there was also a widely held belief that a secret
underground passage connected it to Bradford Cathedral less
than a mile away in the city centre. Some anecdotal confusion
there, perhaps, with the mine workings which must have existed
in the immediate vicinity at some time in the past to have
created t'pit 'ill?.
Juxtaposing these amenities, and partially surrounding them,
there was a fully-flagged 18-hole municipal golf course, easily
accessible from the ancient, unpaved footpath, always referred
to as Boldshay (pronounced Boldsha') Fields), which ran between
the golf course and Myra Shay, to emerge finally into the busy
Ring Road. Given the size and position of these two open
spaces, this footpath provided a very significant short cut for
any pedestrian from our neighbourhood wishing to get to the
ring road without detouring round them, so it saw plenty of
pedestrian traffic in all weathers, and, since my aunt and
uncle's semi was only a few yards away from the top end of
Boldsha' Fields, this probably accounted for the shoes left on
the doormat during our Sunday morning visits to them.
Next, across the ring road, there was a small municipal park
complete with boating lake, tennis courts, bowling and putting
greens, promenade and bandstand, shrubberies, flower beds,
greenhouses and, more importantly to us, a childrens'
playground containing a selection of swings and roundabouts.
These last presented us with the usual challenge of
discovering, by experiment, how many exciting things they were
capable of doing, above and beyond what they had been designed
to do. Another, less dangerous, form of entertainment lay in
angling for the small freshwater crayfish which had somehow
populated the boating lake; the only equipment needed for this
was a pebble on the end of a long enough piece of white string
to reach the bottom. Once a crayfish had been persuaded to
grab hold of the string, it wouldn't let go, even when being
lifted bodily out of the water. Crayfish races on dry land
were not a big success, however, and even if we'd known at the
time that they could be cooked and eaten, the prospect would
certainly not have appealed to us.
Farther out from the park, beyond another half mile of streets
and houses, there were open fields, and farms (offering the
possibility of orchard to raid), accessed by unpaved footpaths.
One of these led down to a wooded valley called Fagley Woods,
which had a disused municipal reservoir in the middle of it,
containing roach and perch, and, at the far end, a textile
mill, with it's usual mill dam, containing frogs and newts;
another track led to a wasteland of disused quarries
conveniently flooded with water. So, there was plenty of scope
for informal group activity of an adventurous nature within a
mile or so of our street, and, if our parents would favour us
with the necessary copper coins and sandwiches, we could voyage
even further afield with remarkable ease, thanks to a form of
transport which was so much a part of our lives that we simply
took its convenient availability for granted.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, tramlines had been
extending outwards from the centre of Bradford to its farthest
extremities, undeterred by the fact that all the roads out of
the city centre, with one exception (Canal Road), ascended
Pennine slopes which were, in places, quite steep. But the
Bradford trams must have been designed to overcome these
gradients, because, by the time I came along, most Bradfordians
were living only a few minutes walk away from a tram stop. In
my case, it was only one street away, with trams arriving every
few minutes in both directions, carrying passengers 'down into
town', or 'up to t'(Bradford) Moor', or even to the terminus at
distant Stanningley, which was nearly on the outskirts of
Leeds. But destination of the expedition our gang would
invariably undertake whenever we had the means to do so, was
much further afield. It was Hirst Woods in faraway Saltaire on
the other side of the city, but getting there was not a
problem, because we could catch a tram down into town, to
Forster Square - where all the city's tramlines seemed to meet
- and change quickly onto a tram going out to Saltaire, there
to disembark and walk the short distance to the entrance to
Hirst Woods, the whole journey taking less than an hour.
And the tram ride would be an adventure in itself, because, in
addition to their ability to climb (and descend) the Pennine
hills, the Bradford trams, although of conventional design in
other respects, were unusual in having open tops at the front
and back of the upper deck. This meant that sitting 'out at'
front upstairs' could be a very invigorating experience,
invariably to be avoided by all adult travellers, but not, of
course, by our gang, who couldn't understand why anyone would
want to be sitting in a cabin, cut off from the outside world,
when you could be out on deck at the very prow of the vessel,
sailing through the traffic with the wind in your face,
exchanging impromptu bandinage with pedestrians in the street
below – an experience well worth the penny or two it cost us.
Hirst Woods, although not much bigger than our own Fagley
Woods, had been spared the depredations of the denizens of any
nearby council estates (and, of course, gangs like ours), and
was, therefore, much more attractive as a picnic spot. Its
biggest attraction was the River Aire running through it in a
wide sweep which created a sort of pebbly beach on its outer
rim from which we could fish for tiddlers. But not with rod
and line – that was to come later – and not with the childish
nets-on-sticks we had dipped so hopefully into the local park
pond. No, the apparatus we used was more effective than either
of these, and must have been a local tradition, because I can't
remember how we learned about it. It consisted of a jam jar
with a piece of linen tied across its mouth, attached to a very
long piece of string. The method was to shove a piece of bread
into the jar through a small hole pierced in the linen cap,
hurl the jar out into the river as far as the string would
extend, and leave it there for about five minutes before
hauling it back in. Very rarely would the jar come back empty,
and it would often have more than one tiddler trapped in it.
Nothing could be easier. But it left us with the problem of
what to do with the fish, once we'd caught them. Since they
were too small to eat, and the thought of putting them back in
the river never occurred to us, our only option was to take
them home as trophies to be exhibited in fish bowls as pets,
and, in anticipation of this, we had usually come equipped with
a large receptacle of some kind, complete with a makeshift
carrying handle, into which, after filling it with river water,
our captives could be decanted. As teatime approached we would
set off back home, carrying our load of tiddlers, first, to the
tramstop, and then, up the tram's back stairs and through to
our favourite vantage point out front, there to indulge in our
usual antics. Our journey would hardly be under way, however,
before the weaker brethren among our tiddlers would begin to
die, and float, belly-up, to the surface, leaving us with
little alternative but to fish them out, and find some amusing
way of disposing of their corpses, and we didn't need to look
far. The tram was running down the middle of the road, of
course, and some of the motorcars passing it on the left had
their sun roofs open, so it was a simple enough matter for us
to lean over the rail and drop a dead tiddler through the
sunroof of a car as it passed. The only snag with this
otherwise quite entertaining piece of mischief was that the
cars were travelling so much quicker than the tram that we were
unable to observe the reactions of the passengers within them
to the sudden arrival in their midst of a dead tiddler.
Needless to say, the small numbers of fish we succeeded in
getting back home to be transferred into goldfish bowls, didn't
survive for long.
Such expeditions were rare, and most of our activities were
confined to our own street and the surrounding territory. We
played the usual games, of course, like football, cricket and
even golf, if and when the necessary equipment could be
assembled, on t'rec and Myra Shay, and a few unusual ones, such
as "taws", "piggy and stick" and "tin can squat" in the street,
but we were most in character as a gang when out marauding for
suitable opportunities to indulge in one or both of our two
favourite pastimes.
The first of these was called "duffs" and offered harm to noone but ourselves. The rules were simple and could be invoked
by any one of our number, at any time or place, with the words
"I duff anyone to [climb that tree] [jump that gap] [walk along
the top of that wall without falling off]" - the permutations
were endless. To which, after a short pause to assess the
difficulty and danger posed by the challenge, the response had
to be "Duffer does it first!", whereupon it became incumbent
upon the individual who had issued the dare to "do the duff".
If he failed in this he became the object of group derision for
having duffed himself, but, if (as was usually the case) he
accomplished the specified feat without injury, all the other
gang members present were obliged to follow suit. And this,
depending on the difficulty of the duff and the numbers
present, could take some time, with the weaker brethren
wavering on the brink, screwing up their courage, or failing
three times (as was permitted) to do the duff, while the rest
hung around emitting cries of encouragement, disparagement, or
exasperation in the light of a number of variables, such as the
proximity of the next mealtime.
Of course, any member of the gang who couldn't rise to the
occasion, was seen to have been publicly "duffed", and became,
for the rest of the day (or until the next duff), the recipient
of any ritual humiliation which the rest cared to heap upon
him. Thus did we test ourselves against each other and our
environment, establishing, as we did so, a pecking order within
the gang. Needless to say, over the years, as both we and our
territory grew, the duffs got progressively harder until they
became downright dangerous, but the only significant injury
sustained by any of us was one broken collarbone, and this
occurred when a routine somersault round a tram stop barrier
only a few feet from the ground ended in a genuinely accidental
fall. Otherwise, our parents knew nothing of these activities,
except insofar as they impinged upon matters of more immediate
concern to them, such as our clothing and footwear, which was,
alas, all too often the case. It was to be some years before I
encountered an army assault course, but, when I did, I was
gratified to discover that the skills and knowledge acquired
while doing duffs with the gang were still mine to command.
The second pastime favoured by the gang differed from the first
by being seasonal and potentially delinquent. It was called
"chumpin'" and consisted of nothing more remarkable, on the
surface, than the gathering of fuel for a bonfire to be lit on
November 5th, or Plot Night, as it was known. This was the
single most important communal event to take place in our
street (the only one, in fact), and must have been a genuine
tradition, because it seemed to occur every year without any
prior organisation other than the advance collection of
combustible material by the interested parties, of which our
gang was by far the most committed, if only because it offered
us such an excellent excuse to go out marauding, armed with
sharp implements and ropes. In our determination to exploit
this situation, and to make our bonfire bigger and better each
year, we began chumping earlier and earlier until we were
starting in late August, towards the end of the long summer
holiday. And once out chumpin', we acquired a whole new set of
values, best summed up as "If it'll burn and it's detachable,
it's ours". I still look back in amazement at the extent to
which we were able to persuade ourselves that any item of a
combustible nature left temporarily unattended had been totally
abandoned by its owner.
In attempting to give effect to this belief, we were not
infrequently disabused of it by the appearance on the scene of
someone who not only knew better, but might even, depending on
the amount of displeasure they felt, feel obliged to give
chase. To us, this would come as something of a bonus, because
"getting chased" was just about the most exciting thing that
could happen to us. It galvanised us into purposeful activity
of an extreme kind without placing us in too much real danger,
given our general level of fitness, fleetness of foot, and the
gymnastic abilities we had acquired by the constant doing of
duffs. If, however, due to the intervention of some mischance,
the unthinkable happened and one or more of us was caught, then
the punishment, which usually consisted of a good hiding, would
be administered on the spot for as long the unlucky recipient
could be held on to. Such an outcome had to be accepted with
as much fortitude as could be mustered, since any complaint by
the victim to his parents about being physically assaulted by
another adult while out chumpin' would, in those days, have
been greeted with little sympathy and possibly a further blow
to reinforce the message of the punishment.
But that was the risk we ran. From most of our forays we would
return triumphant, dragging our spoils behind us (often for
miles), to be added to the stores we were accumulating in as
many of the street's back yards as we could commandeer for the
purpose. And things didn't end there, because, once acquired,
these trophies would present us with the further, not
unwelcome, challenge of guarding them from the depredations of
others. As the nights grew longer and the piles of chumps grew
bigger, it became a more inviting prospect, and a much more
exciting one, to raid the hoards amassed by gangs in
neighbouring streets than to carry on chumpin' abroad in the
dark. Since the gangs in these other streets were similarly
motivated, there would develop, in the final weeks before Plot
Night, a form of urban jungle warfare, across the garden walls,
over the middins and up and down the passages, which could
absorb so much of our energy and interest that it stretched our
resources to the limit. At the height of this struggle,
surprising as it may seem, my own father was not beyond
spending time on sentry duty in the lavatory at the bottom of
our garden, which was always, due to its uncultivated nature,
one of the street's principal chump dumps, from whence he would
emerge to ambush awestruck would-be plunderers and chase them
off the premises.
During this time, gang members would also be taking full
advantage of the temporary availability of that most exciting
of adjuncts to Plot - the fireworks. And to us, fireworks
meant "bangers". The idea of spending the very few pence at
our disposal on such fancy, (and expensive) displays as Golden
Fountains, Catherine Wheels or Roman Candles, simply never
occurred to us. Nothing but bangers would do, and, in those
days, what bangers they were! Of two basic kinds, the ha'penny
(pronounced 'aip'ny) one and the penny one, the difference was
that you got a really big bang with the former and an even
bigger bang with the latter. The penny Cannon was built to
look like a miniature stick of dynamite and, suitably deployed,
could blow an empty tin can about fifteen feet into the air,
or, dropped down a street drain with the fuse well alight,
could go off like a depth charge, showering bystanders with
dirty water. And there was none of this "light the blue
touchpaper and retire to a safe distance" with us, because
playing with bangers meant learning to handle them, and this
meant holding an 'aip'ny Little Demon in the hand for as long
as possible while the fuse spurted flame before throwing it at
the selected target. An essential piece of equipment for
lighting the touchpaper in the first place was a piece of oily
rope called 'millband', which must have served some useful
purpose in the local mill before being discarded and brought
home by a sympathetic parent, and which, once lit, would
continue to burn slowly, glowing red, until extinguished.
It
could also be cupped in the hands to warm them on cold November
nights.
It was inevitable, I suppose, that our lawmakers' efforts to
achieve a risk-free society would result in fireworks becoming
as strictly controlled as they are nowadays, dooming the simple
banger to disappear completely from the scene, but I can't help
feeling that something has been taken from today's children by
turning them into spectators of adult firework displays rather
than firework handlers in their own right. It may be, of
course, that their lives are so much richer and fuller than
ours were, that playing with bangers is not so badly missed,
but I'm certain that my own boyhood would have been a much less
colourful place without the seasonal excitement of Plot, with
its chumpin', and its Little Demons and Cannons... with the
best of it still to come. Penultimately, there was Mischief
Night, which, given the name and what has gone before, can
surely be left to the reader's imagination as a totally
uninhibited Halloween consisting entirely of tricks - the
soliciting of treats being hardly a viable option under the
prevailing circumstances. And, finally, as a grand climax, the
bonfire, itself!
As dusk fell on the fifth of November (gunpowder, treason and
plot!), and the elders arrived home from work, the gang would
proudly disgorge the fruits of its past labours, adding them to
whatever else had been contributed, such as redundant domestic
furniture and defunct skips from the nearby mills, for assembly
into a mighty pile right in the middle of the street. Although
this was made feasible by the virtual indestructibility of its
stone block surface, it must have been in contravention of
several municipal bye-laws, because the resulting conflagration
not only closed the street to through traffic, but also
presented a significant fire risk to any properties immediately
adjacent to it. Certainly, one year, the heat at the height of
the blaze was so intense that it cracked the window glass of
the nearest houses. But the fire soon fell back to manageable
proportions, to be kept alive by judicious feeding while most
of the street's inhabitants stood around, smiling into its red
hot depths and exchanging gossip with neighbours, some of whom,
if living more than a few doors away, may not have been seen
"to talk to" since the previous year.
Meanwhile, the gang, having quickly exhausted their meagre
supply of bangers and grudgingly admired the more conventional
firework displays of others, were waiting impatiently for the
adults to leave them alone with the remains of the fire so that
they could start duffing each other to jump over it before
being called in to bed. Once that finally occurred, it would
all be over for another year, except for the ritual inspection
of the remains of the bonfire on the way to school the
following morning, for any residual signs of life to be
marvelled at, enlarged upon, and boasted about to classmates as
evidence of our superior chumpin' prowess. Since the events of
the previous evening in our street had been duplicated in
dozens of locations throughout the city (giving it, at the
height of the proceedings, the temporary appearance of an urban
Inferno, with clumps of flames flowering on the darkened
hillsides in every direction), the basin in which Bradford was
built would be filled with an even denser pall of smoke than
usual, which could hang around for days and curdle into an
impenetrable, soot-laden smog if the atmospheric conditions
were so inclined. As this was long before the Clean Air Act
banished coal from the domestic grates, we were quite used to
it, and there is probably as much Bradford muck in the deeper
recesses of my lungs today as can still to be seen under the
scars on my knees.
After Plot, as the winter wore on, the gang was left with
little alternative but to pray for snow - for the right sort of
snow, that is. Situated as it was on the eastern slopes of the
Pennines, Bradford got plenty of snow in the depths of winter,
but a lot of it was of the wrong kind. If it didn't come as
stinging sleet in the wind, it might fall steadily and silently
during the night, raising our hopes only to dash them by
degenerating into dirty slush by noon the following day. Also,
snow a foot deep wasn't much good, except for snowball fights,
making snowmen, and rolling giant snowballs - kid's stuff! It
had to be just a couple of inches deep, accompanied by a few
days of sub-zero temperatures. When that happened, conditions
would be right for a wide variety of mostly home-made sledges
to be fetched up from t'cellars t'ave t'rust rubbed off
t'runners.
Our own street was too flat for sledging, but the streets
crossing it at either end were ideal, one of them boasting a 1
in 6 gradient (not uncommon in Bradford) before levelling out,
the other a useful 1 in 10 of greater length. And the stone
block surface of the streets lent itself surprisingly well to
being honed into a solid sheet of ice by the passage across the
snow cover of a sufficient number of sledges. Once this had
been achieved, some quite respectable speeds could be attained
with a short run and a flying start in the prone position.
There have been few greater thrills, in my experience, than
racing each other down those slightly corrugated glassy slopes,
face first, at speeds unachievable by any other means available
to us at the time, with only moon, stars, and an occasional
street lamp to light the way.
Not all the gang's joint activities, however, were of a purely
physical and extrovert nature. We had a common interest in
feeding our collective imagination on any material that would
fuel our constant quest for fresh worlds to explore, or new
roles to play, and, in matters of the mind, we had two main
sources of shared inspiration. Obviously, one was the cinema,
or "t'pitchers" as we always called it, and were we not living
through what many now see as its Golden Age? By the mid-1930s,
there were eight full-sized, full-time cinemas in the Bradford
city centre (three of them converted from pre-war theatres, one
of which has since been reconverted back into a fine concert
hall), and at least thirty locals of varying sizes scattered
around the suburbs. Two of these latter were within easy
walking distance of our street, two more, only half a mile
away, and, in any case, it was less than a mile "into town", so
cinema-going was as much a part of everyday existence then as
television is nowadays.
We were initiated into the habit at the earliest possible age
by being sent to the "tup'ny rush" on a Saturday afternoon at
the nearest establishment, only a couple of hundred yards away.
This was said to be a converted roller-skating rink, built like
an aeroplane hanger, difficult to heat in winter, and pervaded
by a distinctive musty odour which, my dad claimed, was given
off by a fungus growing under the floor. It was run by a
noteworthy individual who was always present in the foyer to
greet the customers, even at the tup'ny rush, clad in full
formal morning dress, complete with high winged collar, cravat
and gloves, sporting a large pearl tie-pin, carefully coiffured
remaining hair, and a small square moustache. He was wellknown in the area for appearing as a Charlie Chaplin lookalike
at local functions of various kinds, and there were signed
photographs from the great Charlot himself on the walls,
attesting to his talents in this direction. Another memorable
aspect of these occasions was the ear-splitting volume of noise
produced by the couple of hundred kids packed into the front
ten rows of the house, working themselves up into a state of
high excitement for at least half an hour before the start of
the show.
When the house lights finally went down and the curtains
parted, even this level of sound would increase perceptibly,
before changing pitch and dying down to an expectant babble,
only to burst out again if the screen lit up with the credits
of a recognisable favourite. Comedies and cowboys were, of
course, the staple fare, and, apart from bewitching us in the
dark, both genres would cast their spell beyond the immediate
occasion to influence the gang's collective behaviour in
different ways. The almost entirely visual humour of the
comedies would be copied and even elaborated upon whenever we
were triggered off into one of those spontaneous mass mummeries
of which young boys, in particular, are so inordinately fond.
The Westerns would have a more sustained, systemic effect,
inspiring us to gallop around the streets on imaginary steeds,
shooting at each other with a variety of imitation weapons,
acquired as birthday or Christmas presents.
As we graduated, with the passing years, from the tupp'ny rush,
to the regular evening shows, we were beamed into realms of the
imagination even more exotic than the Wild West. After "The
Three Musketeers", for example, we would be galloping around on
imaginary steeds again, but now with hastily improvised cloaks,
fastened at the neck, streaming romantically behind us, and
fencing at close quarters with real home-made rapiers instead
of shooting imaginary bullets from toy guns. But the film that
influenced our gang more than any other was "Sanders of the
River", starring the great negro singer Paul Robeson. Based on
an Edgar Wallace yarn, it transported us into the jungles of
darkest Africa where an isolated white District Commissioner
kept order, by sheer nerve and the superiority of his breeding,
among the warring tribes of savage blacks. Not only riveting
stuff to watch, but packed full of characters, incidents and
activities readily assimilable into our own daily doings. We
were, after all, a small tribe; and spears, blow-pipes, drums
and war dances were easily improvised. There were even tribal
songs in the film which we could adopt, and "Yig-a-yo, Yig-ada" became a kind of theme song for us. Best of all, we could
tie one of our weaker brethren to a lamp post and dance around
him, flicking a dirty hanky in his face, like the witch doctor
did to a captive white man in the film before killing him.
This personal experience of the imitative faculties of the
young, and the power of those early films to influence our
behaviour, has made me rather sceptical about the claim that
there is no hard evidence to connect the amount of violence so
graphically depicted on cinema and television screens today,
with the incidence of violent crime in the real world. What is
there to prove? That children learn by imitation? Is it
credible that our gang would have invented its own excuses far
assaulting each other with swords, spears, arrows and
blowpipes, even binding and torture, without having seen it
done at t'pitchers? And those early monochrome movies, in
which very little blood was ever seen to flow, and the dead
either disappeared instantly from view, or made short speeches
before expiring gracefully (depending on whose side they were
on), now look unbelievably restrained when set against the
products of a modern industry which devotes its immense
technical resources to depicting, as realistically as possible,
the most unpleasant things that can be devised to be done to
the human body if the imagination is given totally free rein?
With all that immense ingenuity invested in maximising the
impact of such scenes on the viewer, how can it be argued that
they don't affect us, if only by showing the psychopaths among
us how to become criminal psychopaths?
[The most violent group activity I can recall from my street
gang days, occurred quite spontaneously on a day like any
other, probably during the long summer school holidays, when we
were heading 'down Fagley Woods' as usual, in search of
adventure. We had left the built up area behind, and were on
our way down through the fields to the woods proper, when we
passed a field of rhubarb, as we had done many times before.
There was nothing unusual about a field full of rhubarb in that
vicinity, since we were on the edge of 'the Rhubarb Triangle',
stretching between Bradford, Morley and Leeds, and famous for
its shed-forced rhubarb, grown for the table, but also for its
outdoor rhubarb, grown for commercial purposes (the locals
believing that most of this went to Hartley's jam factory in
Leeds). This outdoor rhubarb was a very robust growth, some of
the sticks nearly 2” thick, and we often helped ourselves to
it, in passing, by way of refreshment, but, in spite of being
stolen, it was very sour. On this occasion, however, one of
our number, having picked a very thick stick, conceived the
novel idea of striking another of our number over the head with
it. Observing that this blow had produced a very satisfying
thwack without causing its recipient any real harm, within
seconds the whole gang of us were uprooting sticks of rhubarb
and hitting each other over the head with them.
Pausing for breath after a while, and looking for ways of
utilising this newly acquired skill, we realised that, standing
in the corner of the rhubarb field, there was, and had been for
as long as we could remember, a derelict, old-fashioned horsedrawn wooden caravan. How it had got there, and what it was
doing there, we had no idea, but the realisation dawned on us
that we had finally found a use for it. We quickly 'picked
sides', and one team went inside the caravan, carrying a pile
of sticks of rhubarb, and the other side, wielding sticks of
rhubarb, set about trying to invade the caravan and dislodge
them. It was a very satisfactory encounter, but, as we finally
called it a draw, and withdrew from the battlefield, we could
not but observe that there was barely half as much rhubarb left
standing in the field as when we arrived, and, needless to say,
I found it very difficult to explain to my mother, when I got
home, why my hair and clothes were drenched in rhubarb juice.
By coincidence, my most frightening adventure with the gang
began quite close to the rhubarb field. I can't remember
whether it was earlier or later than the rhubarb fight, but it
must have been late in the long summer break from school,
because we were going 'down Fagley Woods' again, but, this
time, we were 'going equipped' for chumpin', and I was
burdened, at my mother's insistence, (much to my disgust, and
that of my fellow chumpers), with my young brother, Donald, who
couldn't have been much older than five at the time, because I
was still having to hold his hand to keep him from dropping
back.
The purpose of our expedition was to ransack Fagley Woods for
'chumps' for our Plot bonfire, and we were armed with ropes and
at least one hatchet for the purpose. But, while making our
meandering way down through the fields to the woods, we noticed
that a small field close to the rhubarb field had been laid out
with an array of jumps of the equestrian variety, which had
undoubtedly been put there for use by the pupils of the small
riding school a short distance away. The jumps were
constructed of the usual horizontal poles and supports, and had
a rather home-made look about them, but what caught our
collective eye was the large amounts of brushwood stuffed
underneath the poles to give the obstacles a more substantial
appearance, and it took us only a few seconds to decide that
this material fell to be dealt with under the First Rule of
Chumpin' which was “If it's loose and it'll burn, it's ours”.
Pausing only to satisfy ourselves that we were unobserved, we
swarmed into the field and began attaching ropes to the
brushwood, and, even more feloniously, to a couple of the
poles, and had already succeeded in dragging our spoils some
way along the footpath in a homeward direction before we were
interrupted by the sudden appearance, over a stile in the
middle distance, of a male figure, clad in full riding fig,
waving a riding stock and shouting words we could not hear, but
the purport of which we could all too easily guess at.
Although heading menacingly towards us, he was far enough away
to allow us to abandon our loot, retrieve our ropes and head
off in the opposite direction, two of us dragging my little
brother along by the hands. It was an easy escape to make,
even burdened with 'our kid', since we could easily outrun an
adult in riding boots, breeches and jacket. But we didn't stop
running until we reached the safety of the built-up area,
where, avoiding the main road, we were walking along the back
lane behind the first row of terrace houses, rehearsing among
ourselves the details of our success in both 'getting chased'
and eluding pursuit, when one of our number chanced to look
over his shoulder, and shout “Hey up! He's 'ere on a horse.”
Disbelievingly, we looked back, to find that this was only too
true. The irate individual we had left behind us, tottering
along in his riding boots, was now bearing down on us at high
speed on horseback. After a frozen split-second, we reacted to
this horrifying sight by turning, as one, and running like
hell, scattering in all directions as soon as we reached the
open road at the end of the lane, every man for himself. This
tactic was a sensible one to adopt under the circumstances,
but, handicapped as I was by the immature legs of an attached
infant, it placed me at a serious disadvantage by enabling our
pursuer to single me out as the most likely candidate for
capture, which he did. In a blind panic, dragging Donald
behind me by one hand, I dashed across the road into the
council housing estate opposite. I hadn't the faintest idea of
where I was going, but, with the sound of horses hooves ringing
in my ears, I ran along the first available street, and, in
desperation, as he came clattering round the corner behind me,
I opened the garden gate of the nearest house, and ran up its
front garden path, past the house itself, down through the back
garden, over the fence into the back garden of the house
opposite. and on past that house, into the next street.
It was an inspired move, because the horseman, unable to follow
us through the gardens, was obliged to turn back and gallop
round into the next street, by which time, we had crossed that
street into the gardens of the house opposite and were charging
through them to the next street, and so on, until, emerging
from the housing estate, we finally placed ourselves beyond
reach of pursuit by crossing the Ring Road into the safety of
Boldsha' Fields, where, on the top of t'Pit'ill, the rest of
the gang were re-assembling to exchange accounts of their
escape stories, none of which could compare with the one I had
to tell them. As to how much damage we had done to the flower
beds and vegetable patches in the gardens we trampled through I
neither knew nor cared, and how we'd managed to surmount the
fences between the back to back gardens, I could hardly
remember – it was all a blur – but, fortunately, none of them
had been high enough to prevent me throwing Donald over and and
scrambling after him. It was a narrow escape, and, since.
miraculously, it had left no marks on our clothing or our
persons, we decided to spare my dear mother the knowledge of
it.
Although I shared most of my real life adventures with my
fellow gang members, there was one that came my way so
unexpectedly, and was over so quickly, that I was unable to
share it with anyone. One sunny afternoon in May 1936, I had
left our house, and made my way, as usual, up the passageway
and into the street, bound I know not where, when, looking up,
I beheld, hovering above me, an enormous, silver, cigar-shaped
object. It was so big, that it seemed to fill the sky and, for
a moment, I was as awestruck as a native of a South Sea Island
must have been by his first sight of a European galleon under
full sail. And then I realised it was an airship, and it
wasn't filling the sky, but it was so low that I could hear the
hum of its engines, and see passengers looking down from the
gondolas. And it wasn't hovering overhead, but just beyond the
school buildings in the next street, so I rushed round them and
up Boldsha'Fields to get an even better view, and there it was,
hanging, gleaming, over t'Pit 'ill, a sight I shall never
forget. It was, of course, the most famous airship in the
world, the Hindenberg, and it was taking the liberty of
crossing Britain without permission, on its way back from the
USA to Germany, photographing in passing, so it was alleged,
anything that might be of strategic interest in a future war.
But, before I could run back home to tell my pals about it, it
turned to the east and sped away, leaving me doubly fortunate
in having seen it, because it was to be only one year later
when this magnificent monster would fall in flames from the
sky, bringing the age of transcontinental airship travel to an
end.]
In addition to those we got from t'pitchers, there was a second
stream of images flowing into the collective psyche of our gang
which had a less immediate influence on our group activities at
the time, but was probably just as potent as in shaping our
behaviour in the long run. They have since disappeared, alas,
completely from the scene, but the 1930s was the heyday of the
weekly boys' adventure story magazine, and, although "The Gem"
and "The Magnet" are seen by social historians as generically
more important, working class boys in the West Riding of
Yorkshire found these southern middle class effusions less
appealing than "The Rover", "The Wizard", "The Hotspur" and
"The Skipper", all of which were produced, I believe, in
Scotland. The most remarkable feature of these concoctions was
that they consisted almost entirely of the written word, with
only one illustration behind the title of each of the six or
more stories making up each issue. Imagine ten-year old boys
rushing round to the newsagent on the day of issue to buy
twenty pages of solid print, and, having devoured those,
swapping them, by previous arrangement, for three similar
helpings before the week was out!
The stories were pretty formulaic, of course, but some of the
characters whose adventures were recounted each week were quite
imaginatively drawn (in words, of course) and still inhabit the
memory. There was, for example, the Wolf of Kabul, a British
secret agent operating in the Khyber Pass against the
troublesome tribesmen who proliferate there. He was,
naturally, a master of disguise, invariably wearing native
dress when on a mission, and always accompanied by his faithful
native servant Chang, a squat but immensely powerful heathen,
who wielded a fearsome weapon in the shape of an old, brassbound cricket bat, referred to by him as Clicky-ba, and stained
black with the blood of the many skulls he had cracked with it.
Given that these four magazines were running at least six
stories a week, the range of characters, each with his own
distinctive operational characteristics and background, had to
be extremely wide, even though, once established they could be
kept going with weekly adventures for years.
With a new issue of The Rover in my possession, I was able to
absent myself completely from the crowded family home by
immersing myself in its pages. What a talent it is, to be
rendered totally oblivious of whatever is going on around one
by simply staring at a printed page! Was I born with it, or
was it acquired by devouring all those adventure stories as a
boy? Would my powers of concentration and imagination have
been equally well nourished by the comic book adventures that
were to supersede them? Who cares? Reading has been such a
constant source of pleasure to me ever since then, that I am
happy to accept it as a gift without further question.
In cultivating solitary pastimes like cinemagoing and reading,
even though our experience of them could be shared, aired and
compared, our gang was growing older, and the bonds holding us
together were loosening in favour of closer pairings between
more like-minded members (one of which, in my own case, has
lasted until the present day), but what finally broke us up was
The Scholarship, or, as it would be called today, the eleven
plus exam.
Even though Bradford boasted one grammar school
place for every three of its eleven-year-olds, the alternative,
for those who failed the aptitude test, was to go to the
neighbourhood Secondary Modern and leave school at fourteen.
And not every child who passed the exam was able to take up the
award, since this was conditional upon parents agreeing to a
minimum leaving age of sixteen with its not inconsiderable
financial implications for a working class family. Hence, my
undying gratitude to my parents, who, by allowing me to enter
the High School, took what was possibly the most important
decision ever to affect my life. But the gang was split in
two, and although we continued to live in the same street and
see each other regularly, there was an ever-widening gulf
between the two groups which was finally grew into mutual
disaffection.
In later years, my recollection of this sudden division of our
gang into first and second class citizens, was to make me a
firm believer in comprehensive secondary education delivered at
a community school where all the local children could be
grouped according to their individual abilities in any of the
subjects embraced by the curriculum. This is not to say that I
supported the concept of the mixed ability class, which has
always struck me as deriving more from ideology than
objectivity, and has had the unfortunate effect of giving
comprehensive schooling a bad name. But I could see little
wrong with the kind of streaming that was practised so
successfully at the high school I attended. Admittedly, by
labelling the streams A, B and C, a qualitative distinction was
implied, but, to us, a purely academic one, there being no way
in which the boys in Forms 2B and 2C, for example, would regard
themselves as being the social inferiors of those swots in 2A.
Quite the reverse, in fact. And there was always the
possibility of changing streams in the light of the annual exam
results, although I have to admit that, when I myself was given
the option of switching from B to A at the end of my first
year, I turned the offer down. I had already bonded with the
boys in B to an extent which made the boys in A look a pretty
uninviting lot. My excuse was that the move would have meant
dropping German and catching up on a year's Latin, but,
obviously, the problem would not have arisen at a comprehensive
school.
There was a final twist in the story of our gang. Another kind
of split was developing in its ranks which only became fully
apparent after the eleven plus exam had done its work, although
the signs had been there for quite some time. This was an
internal split over fundamental ethical questions, about which
we were only dimly aware at the time. Such as, for example,
when does pinching become stealing? Obviously, from the very
start, our gang had been pushing against the limits of
legality, particularly when out chumpin', or raiding distant
orchards. We even, once, broke into a house in the next
street, but it had been standing empty for some time, and we
wanted only the use of its back cellar in fulfilment of a long
held ambition to have a Gang Hut of our own. Once we were in,
with candles in bottles, etc., we were at something of a loss
about what to do next, so we left, and our crime never came to
light.
But there were some members of the gang who, out of bravado or
in search of thrills, began to go further and take things from
shops. Little things, at first. It wasn't too difficult to
walk quickly into the corner sweet shop opposite the school
while it was empty of other customers, and pocket a handful of
sweets (always "spice" to us) from the open boxes on the
counter before the owner had time to respond to the doorbell by
emerging from the living quarters at the back to deal with an
innocent request for a ha'porth of humbugs. There were others
members who, lacking the temperament for daredevilry of this
kind, were able to acquire unusually large bags of sweets for
themselves by taking coins from their mothers' purses. But
there were some of us who simply could not bring ourselves to
do such things. We were envious of the fruits of the deeds,
but a little bit more aware, perhaps, of the balance of benefit
and risk involved. Or was it that we didn't need the
excitement, or felt no need to prove ourselves, or laboured
under a greater sensitivity of conscience? Whatever the
reason, there was a line we could not cross.
I was joined in this minority by a lad called Cliff with whom I
had begun to pair off as the gang's bonds loosened. He was an
almost exact contemporary of mine who had lived in our street
even longer, and been in the same class as me right through the
infant and junior schools, having missed out on the baby class,
but, apart from that, we had little in common at first. We
were not exactly opposites, but we later agreed that our
friendship grew out of a gradual appreciation of those
qualities in each of us which were not possessed by the other.
As we progressed through the high school, growing closer
together, other members of the gang who had not been relegated
to the secondary modern school were carrying forward similar
relationships around us, but the ingredients already present in
this mixture eventually combined to produce delinquency of a
more serious nature. When they discovered that the techniques
developed in the local sweet shop could be applied, with little
modification, to the open counters of the big Woolworths store
in the city centre, this faction started shoplifting in
earnest.
They began tentatively, of course, just for the thrill of it,
by taking little things they didn't really want in quantities
they could boast about, but could only dispose of by giving
away. Gaining experience and confidence, however, they soon
graduated to bigger things, although never anything too big to
be secreted in sleeve or pocket, but more valuable.
They
became quite good at it, and they never got caught on the job.
Their undoing came about when they began disposing of the loot
for cash, and truanting from school to spend their ill-gotten
gains on cinema matinees in the city centre followed by
feasting on cream buns at posh cafes. All it took was one
parent to find her offspring with a brand new fountain pen,
bought, he said, from a classmate for a fraction of the shop
price, and report her suspicions to the school, where enquiries
soon revealed the culprits and linked them with the truanting.
At which point, the headmaster took it upon himself to deal
with the matter.
One of the worst experiences of my young life was being
summoned, together with Cliff, to the headmaster's study,
neither of us knowing what for, to be confronted by this
awesome figure of authority, with whom I had never had any
direct dealings before, who greeted us with the demand that, as
members of a now notorious street gang, we should confess to
our involvement in its nefarious activities. Fortunately for
us, there was no difficulty, once we had summoned up enough
spit to even stammer, in establishing our innocence, since all
the evidence, apart from gang membership, was in our favour,
but this did not prevent the hand of fear from groping around
in our entrails as we did so. What the real culprits suffered
at the hands of the head, I shudder to think, and, strangely,
the the subject was never discussed, although once, later,
through the glass partition which separated the classroom I
happened to be in, from the school's assembly hall, I had a
clear view of the headmaster cuffing a boy repeatedly all the
way round it, knocking him off his feet several times.
I do know that the parents of the accused were summoned to
appear before the head, and that justice was dispensed by him
without the involvement of any outside agency. Interestingly,
one of the offenders was the son of my aunt's girlhood friend,
an easygoing lad, undoubtedly led astray by others more venal
than himself, who was from thenceforward forbidden to associate
with any of the other boys in the street - including Cliff and
me! It was the end of the gang, of course, but, as far as I
know, all its members went on to become law-abiding citizens,
even hard-working husbands and fathers. These remembered
experiences, together with the careful observation, later, of
my own son's behaviour, have led me to believe that all boys go
through a delinquent phase during which they are driven to test
the limitations imposed on them by the adult world, mainly for
the thrill of it, and that transgressions, even crimes,
committed during this period, are better dealt with by
authorities outside the criminal justice system, wielding
sanctions which may include corporal punishment, provided that
it is administered in anger. But so many agencies (and so many
jobs) are involved in dealing with this kind of behaviour
nowadays that there will be no turning back from the
criminalisation process which seems to have been the result.
3.
But where was my musical education in all this? Where my
preconditioning to fall instantly in love with opera when
eventually exposed to it? Strangely enough, it had been going
on since my earliest days. My father's way of life may have
denied his family many of the simple luxuries enjoyed by our
neighbours - I was nine years old, for example, before we got a
radio, which must have made us the last household in the street
to gain access to the airwaves - but, at sometime in the past,
he had somehow acquired the one redeeming exception to this
general rule. Standing against the back wall of our
overcrowded living room there was an unusual piece of
furniture, a beautiful example of the cabinet-maker's art,
veneered, varnished and gleaming warmly in the firelight.
About 30" high on four shapely legs, 26" wide and 20" inches
deep, its purpose in repose was not immediately apparent,
although a small round hole in the middle of its right side for
a winding handle was a clue to the fact that its highly
polished top was, in fact, a lid which could be lifted to
reveal the turntable and retractable sound box of a state-ofthe-art acoustic gramophone. On closer inspection, there were
also two doors in the front opening onto the fretwork covered
outlet of a large horn which, after winding down behind the
inner workings of the clockwork motor, would funnel the sound
up and out with ever increasing amplitude.
Since this cabinet of wonders had been a part of my life for as
long as I could remember, I took it for granted, never asking
how it came to be there, but it was the finest example of the
manual acoustic gramophone I ever came across in all the twenty
years I subsequently spent winding numerous other versions of
the genre up. One thing my parents did tell me was that, from
a very early age, I was fascinated by the sounds emitted by
this magic box, astonishing them with my ability to pick out
any gramophone record I wanted to hear long before I could
read. After trying unsuccessfully to fool me with repeated
substitutions, they came to the conclusion that I had learned
to recognise the distinctive arrangement of words and colours
at the centre of each disc, particularly the patterns created
by the little tax stamps borne by every gramophone record in
those days, making this an early example of a non-verbal
intelligence test!
Like the gramophone, my father's record collection must have
been acquired before I became conscious of my surroundings,
since I have no recollection of his adding to it later. Mostly
vocal music, it was a mixture of popular songs and ballads in
various styles, plus one comic monologue - "The Lost Policeman"
by the comedian, Sandy Powell - and a few purely instrumental
pieces, but only by military bands. The songs ranged from the
sublime to the ridiculous, and, needless to say there are
lyrics from each end of this spectrum etched for ever in my
memory. In addition to a number of yodelling records which I
would rather forget, there were several songs by the immortal
Frank Crummit, including "Riding down from Bangor" and "Abdul
Abulbul Amir", both of which I can still sing right through
(accompanying myself, if necessary, as did he, on the guitar),
and a much less cheerful piece called "Hobo Bill's Last Ride".
My dad was inordinately fond of this last, but it inspired my
mother to pull funny faces behind his back, particularly at
such lines as "The sadness in his eyes revealed the torture in
his soul/ He raised a weak and weary hand to brush away the
cold.". Rather more amusing was Jack Hulbert singing "The
Flies Crawl Up The Window" and, on the other side, a longforgotten (except by me) Arabian skit running to several
verses, for example: "Once there was a traveller who went to
see the Shah / (They) took him to the palace gates and said
'Well here you are / (Walk) slowly backwards to the throne, be
sure your face to hide'/ (He) did as he was told, poor chap,
and found himself outside." [More verses on request!].
Many of the serious songs were sung by the Australian baritone,
Peter Dawson, who was amazingly popular in the 20s and 30s. In
addition to the better known ones, such as "Trees" and "The
Floral Dance", there were several now consigned, not unfairly,
to the dustbin of history. One of these, "The Sailor's Grave"
was even more lugubrious than "Hobo Bill" and received the same
disrespectful treatment from my mother, particularly when it
came to "...the wild waves washing-go'er him". Fortunately,
there were several negro spirituals by the great Paul Robeson,
and, unsurprisingly, given my father's origins, a few ethnic
pieces, such as "The Road to the Isles", by Harry Lauder.
There were two rather jolly pieces sung by the ubiquitous Peter
Dawson, one called "Sirs your Toast" and the other "Room for
the Factotum" (why not 'Toreador' and 'Figaro' I wondered?)
which I was later in life to realise were famous operatic
arias, the first I had ever heard. Handel's "Messiah", the
most frequently performed and widely appreciated work of
"serious" music in those days, as I was later to learn, was
represented by two records which included the "Hallelujah
Chorus" and "Comfort Ye, my people". Of more immediate appeal
to me at the time, however, there was, thank God, operetta, and
at its very best, too, in the shape of works by that blessed
pair, Gilbert and Sullivan. Three 12” records were entitled
"Vocal Gems from The Pirates of Penzance/ The Gondoliers/ The
Mikado" respectively, and it was by these, if anything, that
the seed was planted which was eventually to flourish and bear
fruit. But, not for some time yet. When we finally got a
radio, I took a much greater interest in the popular songs
performed by the famous dance bands of the day than in anything
of an operatic nature that might have been available on the
airwaves.
4
One further influence on my childhood remains to be mentioned,
particularly since there was a musical dimension to it. My
mother's family, like so many in Yorkshire were staunchly nonconformist in their Christian faith, being members of the
Methodist Church, or Chapel, as it was always called, which
meant that, every Sunday, as soon as I could walk the distance
involved, I was dressed in my Sunday clothes and sent to Sunday
school. And not just once, but morning and afternoon, together
with my sister and brother when they too were old enough. Off
we went to the Bethesda Chapel, conveniently situated about a
hundred yards away in the opposite direction to the weekday
school, next to the nearest fish and chip shop. My every
attendance there was recorded by the printing of a star in the
appropriate space on a card I carried with me in a ritual known
as "having your star card marked", so that book prizes could be
awarded, with all due ceremony, during the chapel's Anniversary
celebrations, on the basis of the number of stars earned during
the year. Since few other demands were made on my time on
Sundays, I invariably got a First Prize.
Sunday school was another of those things, like saying grace
before and after meals, and prayers before getting into bed,
however perfunctorily, which were accepted without question as
part of my young life, but Sunday school was no hardship, in
fact, I quite enjoyed it. Being a Methodist involved plenty of
hymn singing of the jollier sort, and no ritual, all serious
praying being done from the pulpit, ad lib, by experienced
practitioners. Even the sermons at the morning service, which
we children were trooped up from the Sunday school to hear,
were carefully crafted to hold our interest by ministers who
regarded an ability to do this as the most important part of
their job. There was little talk of sin, and none of fire and
brimstone, but fulminations were directed, from time to time,
at the Demon Drink, and these, of course, fell on quite
receptive ears in my case. The fact that teetotalitarianism
was a basic tenet of Methodism made my father's habits all the
more blameworthy in the eyes of his family. As soon as I was
old enough to do so, I "signed the pledge" to abstain from
alcohol for the rest of my life. Needless to to say, I am now
forsworn.
But there was more to Bethesda than Sunday school, much more.
During the other six days of the week, the chapel became a
multi-purpose social centre. The main building was a single
storey industrial shell with a tie on roof, tacked on the gable
end of a row of terraced back-to-back houses identical to those
in our street, which was in the next street but one. When it
was furnished for worship on Sundays, the elevated platform at
one end of the hall supported a central pulpit flanked by choir
stalls, all in highly varnished dark wood, with a small pipe
organ against the rear wall, and doors on either side of it
below leading to vestries. The other end of the building,
apart from a small entrance vestibule, was partitioned off to
conceal a space which housed, among other things, a fully
functional kitchen, leaving the main body of the hall to be
filled with wooden benches with reversible backs. When
required, the benches could be stacked to the sides to create a
large open floorspace available for any activity not forbidden
by the tenets of the sect, and, similarly, everything on the
raised platform, except the organ, could be dismantled and
stowed under it, to be replaced, from the same source, by the
makings of a proscenium arch, which could be suspended,
together with the necessary curtaining, by an ingenious system
of hooks and pulleys, from the rafters over what was now a
stage, thus converting the hall, with its rows of benches in
place, into a theatre, the vestries becoming backstage dressing
rooms.
It was here that I witnessed my first staged performances by
amateur dramatic societies and concert parties. It was here
that I first trod the boards myself, but, before that could
happen, it was here, every Monday evening, between 6 and 8pm,
that I came to be a Lifeboy. Are there still Lifeboys around?
There are still Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts, but, in those days,
these otherwise admirable organisations tended to draw their
recruits from the more affluent classes and favour the Church
of England. Ministering as they did to the industrial working
class, the non-conformist churches found it expedient to
encourage the formation of the Boys' Brigade and its junior
offshoot, the Lifeboys, the relative cost of whose uniforms was
indicative of this difference in social circumstances. The
Boys' Brigade wore only a jaunty little black and white pillbox
hat and a white webbing belt with brass buckle and shoulder
strap over an ordinary Sunday suit, the Lifeboys sported a navy
blue sailor hat and a large brass and enamel badge in the shape
of a lifebuoy worn pinned to any available upper garment. I
recall that my use of the phrase "..in full uniform - cap and
badge" when referring to our activities, caused my aunties a
great deal of mirth.
These activities were of a mildly militaristic nature. We were
"on parade" on Monday evenings, on the cleared floor of the
chapel, we "fell in" at the word of command, forming a three
sided square of three teams, we stood to attention and saluted
while the Union Jack was raised, we were inspected and did a
certain amount of marching drill. But most of the time was
spent doing synchronised physical exercises (PT) to a piano
accompaniment, or playing competitive team games involving a
minimum of equipment and a maximum of running about. Also, for
half of the year, we were preparing for our annual
Demonstration, at which, as the name implies, we were to
exhibit the full range of our abilities to an audience of
family, friends and relations...on the stage! At this event,
the spaces between the counter-marching, the PT, and the games,
all of which had to be demonstrated, were traditionally filled
with lighter entertainment of various kinds, mainly comedy
sketches and singsongs, most of which involved "dressing up",
and it was for this that we had to rehearse most assiduously.
Thus it was that I made my solo stage debut at the age of ten,
dressed as a cowboy and singing a song called "Cowboy" which
was popular at the time and the words of which are still
engraved on my memory, alongside those accumulated from my
father's gramophone records.
The Bethesda Lifeboys were run by a Mr. and Mrs. Craig with the
assistance of a succession of young ladies whose principal
accomplishment was that they could provide a piano
accompaniment to our marching, PT and singsongs. They seemed
an ill-assorted couple, him being lean, sharp, and disciplined,
and her, plump, floppy and disorganised, but they made a good
team - he provided the control and direction, and she, the
tender loving care. I realise now that their dedication may
have had something to do with the fact that they were childless
themselves, but, at the time, I accepted their unfailingly
benign ministrations over several of my most formative years as
no more than my due, and without questioning their motives.
And the Demonstration, important as it was, did not mark the
high water mark of their endeavours, nor of the benefits I
enjoyed from them, because their crowning achievement was to
give me what must count as the single most thoroughly enjoyable
experience of my young life by taking the Lifeboys away to
summer camp for one week each year.
It was always referred to as "camp", but, fortunately, there
were few of the usual camping activities to distract us from
the many pleasures available at that earthly paradise for boys
called Hawthorn Towers in the county of Durham. I learned
nothing of the place's history, but remember it as a large
country house, built, judging by its architecture (a mixture of
styles surmounted by crenelated battlements) in late Victorian
times, possibly by some newly wealthy mineowner since it was
situated just to the south of the small coalmining town and
port of Seaham Harbour, but, by my time, it had passed to the
King George V Memorial Trust and was run as a holiday hostel
for the benefit of, among others, the children of the urban
poor, like us.
The domestic arrangements were suitably
spartan, but perfectly adequate; we slept in small dormitories
in the main building on straw filled palliasses on the floor,
we ate in a large marquee pitched in the paddock behind a
cookhouse in what had probably been the stable block at the
back, leaving us free, for the rest of our waking hours, to
participate in novel activities of various kinds, few of which
involved bushcraft. About a hundred Lifeboys were taken in at
a time, all from the Bradford troops, so the holiday began with
a long and exciting train journey, by the end of which I had
abused my vocal chords so much that I lost the use of my voice
for the first two days.
Hawthorn Towers stood (and may still stand), facing south, in
its own very extensive grounds. In front of the house there
was a large playing field for ball games and other athletic
activities. Up the eastern side of this field, passing quite
close to the house, ran the main railway line from London to
Edinbrough, so our first big treat was the spectacle of the
most famous steam engines of the day, including the legendary
streamlined (a newly coined word at time) "Flying Scotsman",
roaring past at top speed throughout the day. Beyond the
railway was the clifftop, then the North Sea. The other two
sides of the field were bounded by the densest, most extensive
forest I had ever encountered. This dark wood was virtually
impenetrable beyond the few pathways beaten by the feet of
previous campers to places of particular interest. The main
track wound down to a valley floor, before passing under an
impressive viaduct carrying the railway lines across this
breach in the cliffs, to the beach.
But this was no ordinary beach. It was nothing like the
beaches at Bridlington - no sand, no people, just miles of
rocks, boulders, pebbles and shingle, with towering cliffs on
one side and the wild sea on the other. And, in the cliffs,
caves! Of all shapes and sizes, some as big as a house, some
nearly too small to squeeze into. Often interconnecting, they
fired the imagination with visions of smugglers, and cried out
to be explored. On the beach, apart from the rock pools alive
with all manner of strange marine life, there was an
accumulation of debris, endlessly fascinating in its variety,
left behind by the receding tides. There was even the rusting
wreck of a sizeable cargo ship resting virtually upright
against the cliffs on the rocky shore where it had somehow come
to grief. But, the most curious feature of the beach was to be
found on the stretch closer to Seaham Harbour where a number of
roughly dressed men and women were to be seen picking up the
curious black pebbles on the foreshore there, and loading them
into sacks, to be carried away, when full, often on rickety old
bikes. This was the coal for which the area had been famous
for centuries, detached in pieces from the seams emerging on
the sea bed a few miles off the coast, and washed in slowly
enough to be smoothly pebbled on the way. But I didn't know
that then. I could guess that it was coal they were gathering,
but assumed in my ignorance that its origin lay in the black
spoil which I could see being neverendingly dumped in the sea
off Seaham Harbour from a continuous chain of buckets running
from the pit head to a few hundred yards out to sea on an
elevated railway. By what mysterious process the sea was
converting this dust and debris into pebbles of coal, I could
not imagine, but all things seemed possible in that magical
place.
So, thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Craig, long gone from this life,
for those wonderful days at Hawthorn Towers, the expeditions on
the beach and in the forest, the bonfires and the singsongs,
the water-pistol battles in the dormitories after bedtime, and
for all those other, more routine excitements I experienced
with the Bethesda Lifeboys. I never graduated to the Boys'
Brigade for a number of reasons: the nearest Company's HQ was
some distance away, and the amount of homework I was given,
once I ascended into the High School, left me with little time
in the evenings for other commitments. Also, from the age of
twelve I was working on Friday evenings and all day Saturdays
in a local greengrocery for the sum of two shillings a week,
most of which I saved to spend on my annual week in
Bridlington, since the pocket money disbursed by my father,
consisting for years of a "Friday penny" and never exceeding
sixpence, did not go very far.
5
Apart from my dad's gramophone records, the chapel hymns, the
Lifeboys' singsongs, and, eventually, the radio, the only other
music I heard regularly during this period of my life, was made
at school, and it didn't amount to much. In the infants'
school we sang nursery rhymes, of course, but in the junior
school, I encountered that curious educational fad of the time,
the percussion band. At irregular intervals, a large hamper
containing quantities of triangles, castanets, tambourines, and
a single snare drum, would be wheeled into the classroom and
its contents distributed to us in our orderly rows, the snare
drum going to the Best Boy, or monitor (teacher's pet, to us).
After rudimentary instruction in the time values of crochets,
quavers, minims and semibreves, we were taken through a
sequence of exercises in banging or shaking our allotted
instruments to the rhythms dictated by a single monotonous line
of these entities displayed before us. The noise we made had
no listener-appeal at all, but, being a class of boys, we
enjoyed making it for the short while we were allowed to. The
girls, by the way, had been segregated from us after infant
school into separate classes with their own playground; the
High School would go further, housing us in different and quite
self-sufficient institutions in two halves of the same building
(an huge academic semi), each with its own school yard divided
from the other by walls surmounted by high railings through
which those of the two sexes who wished to do so could make
very little contact during school hours.
Fortunately, in the junior school, our teacher for the final
two years was a formidable lady whose armamentarium included an
ability to play the piano and a robust contralto singing voice.
Miss Dickinson was the very model of a 1930s school mistress,
no longer young, not fair of face, but superbly postured,
perfectly dictioned, and immaculately turned out in a series of
calf-length, figure hugging frocks, always with long sleeves
and high necks, she had a mass of piled up auburn hair from
which the pins would occasionally drop, wore gold rimmed pincenez specs with a safety chain, and extracted unquestioning
obedience from a class of forty congenitally unruly boys
without any apparent effort. In the small amount of time which
could be spared from the all-important three Rs, she patiently
cajoled us into singing quite complicated part songs after
first teaching us to use the Tonic Sol-fa. What is the Tonic
Sol-fa? Is it still in use today, other than in the words of a
popular song from the Rogers and Hammerstein musical "Sound of
Music"? It's a system of ear-training and sight reading which
uses the syllables doh-ray-me-fah-soh-lah-tee-doh to represent
the notes of the diatonic scale, taking doh as the tonic of
whatever key a song is written in. Miss Dickenson introduced
us to it, and I, for one, still use it, mentally, whenever I
need to run up a scale to pitch a particular note in relation
to the tonic.
So, thank you, too, Miss Dickenson. The only thing that could
ruffle your feathers, in my experience, was the arrival in the
classroom of the school's headmaster, the egregious "Pop"
Denby. It is obvious to me now that this large man, with his
thinning ginger hair, his bushy ginger eyebrows, and his even
bushier ginger moustache, was a sadistic bully, but, at the
time, I accepted him without question as typical of the adult
figures set in authority over me outside the home. Enveloped
in an air of ill-suppressed violence, he would burst through
the classroom door unexpectedly at irregular intervals and take
over the lesson from a flustered Miss Dickenson with hardly a
by-your-leave and begin shooting questions around the classroom
like bullets, pointing an accusing finger at each selected
target. "Six nines?", " Forty-two minus twenty-seven?", "Three
into a hundred and two?" or "Spell the word 'receive'!"
"What's an adjective?" depending on the subject being taught.
If the unfortunate recipient of one of these volleys failed to
lob the correct answer back in good time, he would often
receive a sharp rap on the head from a set of enormous knuckles
to the accompaniment of some such admonition as "Come on, lad,
wake up. Is that a brain or a pea rattling round in there?". I
once heard him say, with pitying contempt, to one poor wretch,
reduced to speechless paralysis by this technique, "What use
are you to anyone, lad? Here, take this indiarubber and go rub
yourself off the face of the earth".
Fortunately, his visits
were of short duration, and, thanks to our training, few of his
questions went unanswered. We were, after all, a class in
which only four boys out of forty failed the scholarship exam.
Once in the High School, little time was left for music, just
one lesson period a week, the same as for religious knowledge
(always called Scripture), with both subjects dropping right
out of the curriculum as the School Certificate Examinations
approached. There was, however, a Music Room to which we would
gratefully repair at the appointed time for this short spell of
relaxation from the rigours of the rest of the relentless
timetable imposed upon us. Here we would be issued with copies
of "The Songs of the British Isles" and coerced into chanting
our unsteady way through such gems as "The Lass of Richmond
Hill", "Early one morning" and "Drink to me only with thine
eyes", until the bell rang. And that was it - apart from one
memorable extracurricular musical event. How this came about,
under the auspices of which enlightened authority, I do not
know, but at the age of thirteen I was taken from the school
one afternoon to attend a special children's concert given by a
fully formed symphony orchestra.
Of course, I knew what a symphony orchestra looked and sounded
like, having recently seen the young and beautiful singing star
Deanna Durbin (with whom I was currently deeply in love) in a
film called "One Hundred Men and a Girl" in which Leopold
Stokowski and his Philadelphia Orchestra were also present, but
this was the first time I had been in the same room as one. It
was the Halle Orchestra from Manchester, and the room was the
only viable concert venue in Bradford (since the purpose-built
St.George's Hall was still in bondage to cinema at the time)
the Eastbrook Hall, which, although merely a Methodist chapel,
was a very large one, more of a Methodist cathedral. A few
years later I was to become a regular attender at the monthly
subscription concerts given by the Halle in the Eastbrook Hall,
but I can remember little of this first encounter, other than
the excitement of the occasion, most of which was due to being
let out of school with my classmates during school hours.
Although we were given a pamphlet showing the different
instruments of the orchestra, and these were demonstrated to us
during the course of the proceedings, I have no recollection of
what great works were performed, only that it was a special
treat for which I was duly grateful. It left less of an
impression on me, than did the traditional Christmas pantomime
at the Alhambra theatre to which I was taken by my mother and
aunties at about the same time, and it was never to be
repeated.
These, then, were the main features of my existence at the age
of thirteen.
It is difficult to see how they could have led
to my attendance at the opera only two years later without some
divine, or diabolic intervention. In my case, it was the
latter, of course, in the shape of one Adolf Hitler, thanks to
whose territorial ambitions World War Two broke out just before
my fourteenth birthday, and, together with thousands of other
children, plucked me from these all-too-familiar surroundings
to become an evacuee.
MY LIFE AT THE OPERA:
Chapter Two.
PART I
1939 - 1941
As social upheavals go, the mass evacuation of schoolchildren
from our major cities, prior to the outbreak of World War Two,
must rank high among any seen in Britain since the Industrial
Revolution, or even perhaps the Civil War, and much has been
written about it in both fact and fiction. In Bradford,
however, it was a phenomenon more noteworthy for its
ephemerality than for anything else. The exercise had been
mounted in the expectation that bombs might rain from the skies
on our industrial centres in the days immediately following the
outbreak of hostilities, but, in the event, nothing like that
happened for nearly a year (Hitler being otherwise engaged),
and when the air raids eventually began they were targeted
mainly on the South East and the Midlands, which was perhaps
just as well, because, by then, all the evacuees in my own
contingent had gone back home - except for my sister, my
brother and myself.
This homeward drift owed something, no doubt, to the fact that
our destination, as we stood, carefully labelled, on a Bradford
railway station platform, was not some remote country village
in North Yorkshire, but the quite sizeable town of Keighley
(pronounced Keethly), only eighteen miles away and connected to
Bradford (via Shipley, Saltaire, Cottingley, Bingley and
Crossflats) by a regular half-hourly bus service. Even the
Bradford City tramlines extended as far as Crossflats. To
those parents who questioned whether positioning their
offspring so conveniently close at hand would suffice to
protect them from harm, it was explained that calculations
based on sound scientific principles had indicated that enough
of the Pennines lay between Bradford and Keighley to dilute any
likely risk - a hypothesis which was, indeed, validated by
events, in that Bradford suffered one major air raid on the
night of August 31st 1940 (10.30pm to 3am) during which 120
bombs fell, killing 2 people and injuring 127, but, throughout
the war, no bombs ever fell on Keighley.
As luck would have
it, although still an evacuee at the time of that one raid on
Bradford, I had been sent home to recover from a severe case of
cellulitis in my left arm, and I have to confess that I would
have been very sorry to have missed such an exciting
experience.
The evacuation scheme was organised and funded by the
government, but it was a purely voluntary affair in which many
parents either declined to participate (those of my pal Cliff,
for instance), or did so in the expectation that the bombing
would start immediately. Similarly, at the receiving end, many
good people agreed to accept evacuees in the belief that war
would probably be avoided, or that, if not, it either wouldn't
last long, or they would be offering shelter to some dream
child from a similar social background to their own. When the
first flush of patriotic fervour engendered by the outbreak of
war subsided and the reality of the situation dawned upon them,
many of these putative foster parents found they had pressing
domestic, medical, or business reasons for withdrawing their
services. Even the weekly accommodation and subsistence
allowance from the government which accompanied each evacuee,
and was, in my estimation, a not unimportant consideration in
four of the six households I was billeted on during the first
seven months of my exile, proved insufficient to give me
security of tenure until I reached the last of these, which
was, amazingly, a farm!
Yes, having been evacuated from one industrial town to another,
I ended up on a real farm, and lived there, with my brother,
for the next eighteen months. But this was not one of those
Yorkshire farms to be found clinging, like Wuthering Heights,
to the edge of the moors at the end of some rough track, ankle
deep in mud and cow dung, and frequently rendered impassable by
snow. This farm was conveniently situated in the suburb
village of Utley, at the end of the last row of houses on the
right on the Skipton road out of Keighley. From the front, in
fact, the farmhouse looked like any other detached, double
fronted, two storey, stone built, Victorian dwelling, even down
to the front garden surrounded by iron railings with a gate
letting out on to a broad pavement which could safely be walked
in all weathers back to Keighley's town centre about a mile
away. This aspect of the house, however, was merely the upper
storeys of a substantial building extending behind and below it
(since it was built on a steep slope), embracing a barn,
stables, cowshed, dairy and commodious basement kitchen where
all the human inhabitants actually lived when not in bed.
A high, wooden double gate to the right of the front garden
opened to reveal a cobbled driveway sweeping down the side and
round the back of these premises, and ending in a proper
farmyard complete with midden, pigsty, chickens, barking dogs,
a back door into the kitchen, and even a small kitchen garden,
all invisible from the road except to anyone looking over the
wall, or sitting on the top deck of a passing bus. The view
from this backyard was to become a treasured memory of mine,
since it embraced the wonders of Airedale, looking out across
the famously fortuitous Aire Gap in the Pennines through which
the road, railway, river, and canal run intertwining with each
other all the way from Leeds to Lancashire. The farm stood at
the precise point where the dale, finally freed from
industrialisation and urbanisation, could be seen in something
like its original splendour, the deep green of the watermeadows
giving way, through the rising sweep of the hillside woods and
pastures to the bleaker tints of the Rivock Edge of Ilkley
Moor. What a piece of luck to end up here!
It was a small dairy farm, milking a herd of about twenty
Friesians, raising a few pigs and a flock of free-ranging hens.
Anything grown in the fields was for fodder. Farmer Wrathall
was a tall, leathery individual, a rural patriarch who
dominated our small household with a stern presence and very
few words, seldom strung together into a coherent sentence in
my hearing. He harboured, we were given to understand, an
intense admiration for the late, great Admiral Lord Horatio
Nelson whose tragic death at the Battle of Trafalgar was the
subject of a large, framed print hanging on the back wall of
the kitchen. That he was a staunch patriot was quite evident,
since he insisted on all present standing to attention whenever
the National Anthem was played on the radio, which it
frequently was in those days. Mrs. Wrathall was in complete
contrast, but still the very model of a farmer's wife - short,
round, and jolly, with rosy cheeks and long black hair coiled
up round a winsome face - and an accomplished cook. Their one
offspring, a son, Jim, about the same age as my brother, was a
rather weedy, lugubrious youth - having inherited his father's
long head, stringy frame, and humourless outlook - who seemed
to accept our presence in what had hitherto been his exclusive
domain without exhibiting either enthusiasm or resentment.
The only other member of the household was a resident farmhand
called Alan who, as a young, unmarried man at such close
quarters, was a novelty of some interest, and the fact that he
was of military age but not in uniform made him a rare bird
indeed. Unfortunately, like Farmer Wrathall, Alan had little
to say for himself and I was not of an age that entitled me to
question him about his antecedents or the present workings of
his mind and body, so I saw him as a closed book to be left
unread, gazing in silent wonder at his metamorphosis, on
Saturday evenings, from the taciturn, unkempt, workaday yokel I
knew into an impeccably besuited and behatted man-about-town
who sallied forth to enjoy I knew not what adventures.
Although an employee, Alan was treated as virtually a member of
the family, as were my brother and I, and we soon settled into
the businesslike routine of the farm, grateful to find a
comfortable billet which fed us well and demanded nothing of us
but co-operative behaviour and regular habits.
It was, however, a household without music, and here was I,
barely a year away from my first visit to the opera. From
which it must follow that, although there was plenty about life
on the farm to interest and entertain me (and I thoroughly
enjoyed the routine tasks I inevitably became involved in,
particularly the haymaking which was still a group activity
with festive overtones in those days), the more significant
developments in my life during this period were taking place
elsewhere. But, before looking into these, one lasting result
of my sojourn on the farm is worth recording - my confirmation
into the Church of England. This came about almost casually,
but somehow inevitably, following a process of gradual
conditioning which was initiated when, as a matter of simple
convenience, my brother and I began attending the local parish
church as part of the family.
I found the experience intriguing at first and then quite
congenial. The more colourful ceremonial and elaborate rituals
of the Church of England seemed better suited to my adolescent
religious yearnings (which happened at the time to be receiving
a stimulus from another quarter), than the bare bones of
Methodism I was leaving behind. Also, the social life of the
parish church promised more satisfaction to other developing
needs of a less spiritual nature (arising mainly from a
burgeoning interest in the opposite sex), than did the more
sober and celibate activities permitted in the precincts of a
chapel. There was, for example, the monthly Whist Drive and
Dance in the church hall, which I attended initially to partner
Mrs. Wrathall at the whist, but where I was allowed to remain,
after the supper interval when the whist had finished, to
listen to the dance band. This, given the venue, was usually a
pretty basic combination - saxophone, piano and drums,
augmented by the occasional trumpet on a good night - but
recognisably of the same species, and playing the same tunes,
as the famous dance bands I had taken to listening to, whenever
I could, on the radio.
Although the pursuit of this initial interest was to find me
playing in a dance band myself within three years, its
immediate result was to awaken me to the possibilities of what
was happening on the dance floor. There, members of both
sexes, many not much older than me, were gliding and gyrating
around the hall in pairs, locked in the kind of close embrace
which would only be permitted elsewhere between married couples
in private. I was looking, of course, at what was, for the
best part of half a century, the principal mating ritual of
western civilisation, and there were sound, practical reasons,
therefore, why my awareness of its possibilities should
outgrow, for a time, my interest in the band. Unfortunately,
the dance steps looked far too difficult for me to master on my
own and I could see no prospect of my learning them from anyone
at the farm. My only hope, in this, as in matters operatic,
lay, therefore, in the new acquaintanceships I had been
cultivating elsewhere in Keighley, and these, not surprisingly
under the circumstances, were centred entirely around my new
school.
2.
Keighley Boys' Grammar was, given its county catchment area, a
cut above Hanson High in social status (playing rugger instead
of soccer, for example), but the two were sufficiently alike in
every observable respect to be virtually indistinguishable to
me. Of course, the teachers were different, and the text books
were different, and there was some initial confusion arising
from idiosyncrasies in the labelling of the classes at Hanson,
but, once in my correct slot - Form 4B - I soon felt quite at
home with the curriculum, the regimen, and the routine. One
noteworthy feature, however, was the school's location. It
formed part of a massive Victorian pile which also contained
the Municipal Hall and its attendant offices, plus a College of
Art and a Technical College complete with textile and
engineering workshops, all surmounted by an imposing clock
tower, standing in the very centre of the town, within easy
reach of trains, buses, cafes, cinemas, shops, and such
amenities as the central public library and municipal swimming
baths, but some distance from its playing fields, which, like
the Girls' Grammar School (newly built, alas, on a greenfield
site), were on the outskirts of town. The general effect was
to facilitate social intercourse outside school hours with
classmates living in other parts of the town, and even, if
fortune smiled, with any girls from the grammar school who
happened to be passing through.
Initially, of course, I tended to hang out with those few of my
classmates who were fellow evacuees, but as these departed, one
by one, for their own homes during the so-called Phoney War, I
was left to look elsewhere for companionship. By a stroke of
great good fortune, I did not have to look very far as there
was a boy sitting right behind me in Form 4B whose proximity
proved to be the key to what was to become a close and enduring
friendship. His name was Joseph, but he has always been known
to me as Brad because his surname was Bradwell and the use of
Christian names between classmates, even the closest of chums,
was simply not an option under the unwritten conventions of the
school. So I was Scott to him - and even to his family, with
whom I was soon on visiting terms.
Brad was an attractive and popular boy, charming, cheerful,
well-mannered and well-behaved, but with an unexpectedly
subversive streak and a wry sense of humour. He was not quite
as brainy as me, but easily outshone me in other respects. He
had a fine physique which equipped him to excel at all the
school's sporting activities without taking them too seriously.
For example, he carried off the Intermediate Championship at
the school sports with minimal prior training by simply
entering for all the events in the competition. His
performances with the discus and javelin were an embarrassment,
but his natural running and jumping abilities enabled him to
pile on the points in most other events. He was extremely
successful with girls, for which I envied him greatly, but the
thing I most admired about him was his piano playing, which,
although not in the virtuoso class, was, for his age, very,
very accomplished. When we first met, he was already the
school's regular accompanist at morning prayers and hall
assemblies, and had been official organist at his local
Methodist chapel for over a year. He even went on eventually
to perform briefly on the organ at the local Ritz cinema,
rising up through the floor in the traditional manner for the
purpose.
I became a frequent visitor at his home where I was fortunate
enough to be accepted as a semi-permanent resident by his
mother, father and three older sisters, the youngest of whom
was about four years older than me and very fair of face and
figure, although when I first met her she was pale and
woebegone, in mourning for a fiancee who had just been lost at
sea, an early casualty of the war. There were ten and fifteen
year gaps between Brad and his other two sisters who were both
married and lived nearby, which meant that Brad's mother and
father (a ticket inspector at the railway station) were quite
elderly by my standards. They lived in a roomy through-terrace
house out on the Bradford Road, about a mile from the farm, a
distance easily traversed by bike and well worth the effort as
there was much more fun to be had at the Bradwells in more
congenial surroundings than at the Wrathalls, since, apart from
doing homework together and listening to our favourite
programmes on the radio, Brad and I spent a lot of time at the
piano, mainly in the company of Messrs Gilbert and Sullivan.
Although unable to play an instrument or read music at that
time, I was good with words, and, (thanks, possibly, to the
gramophone lessons of my childhood) had a keen enough ear to
master any of the popular songs of the day after only a few
hearings on the radio. I was not, therefore, inadequately
equipped to pull my weight vocally on these music-making
occasions. Brad had the piano scores of most of the Savoy
Operas, all of which were well within his capabilities, but we
must have spent more time on the "The Mikado" and "The
Gondoliers" than any of the rest, since many of the songs from
these two works are still engraved on my memory. As luck would
have it, Hollywood chose to make a film of "The Mikado" in
glorious technicolour (a very adventurous thing to do in those
days), which arrived at our local cinema at just about this
time. And a very good film it was, too. I can vouch for this
because I have recently seen it shown on television and was
pleasantly surprised to find how well it had worn.
Fortunately, I was able to videotape it and send the copy to
Brad, who had recently celebrated his 60th year as a Church
organist, to remind him of the pleasure we got from seeing it
together at the Regent Cinema in Keighley.
Our duets were purely recreational, of course, but they
nourished my interest in music generally and left me with a
deep respect for the achievements of W.S.Gilbert and Sir Arthur
Sullivan whose words and music seem to me to be as fresh and
fruity today as they were when I first came across them, and it
seems more than likely that my affectionate familiarity with
these witty musical comedies prepared the ground for my
appreciation of the weightier music dramas I was soon to
experience. Frivolous they may be, but never shallow, and,
when judged against their design objectives, they must surely
rank as masterpieces of the musical theatre. They may even, in
performance, teach a valuable lesson to their more serious
operatic relatives about the importance of articulating both
the words and the music if the fullest impact of the whole on
the listener is to be achieved.
The next development in my musical education came about in the
strangest possible way. There was another boy in Class 4b who
was not a bit like Brad...or me, for that matter. His name was
Parkinson, and, since his initials were R.C., his
unaffectionate nickname was Arsey, but his politer classmates
called him Parkie. [As an interesting aside on school culture,
when his younger brother arrived at the school with a different
set of initials, his markedly sunnier disposition, did not
prevent him from being nicknamed Little Arsey.] Parkie himself
was slight of build, but physically well proportioned with
something rather feline about his movements. His facial
features were arranged, for most of the time, in a shrouded,
sardonic expression but this could suddenly be replaced with a
puckish mask of manic glee when his infantile sense of humour
was tickled - usually by some outrageous piece of rudery,
because Parkie was a very rude boy.
He first came to my startled attention by suddenly taking out
his tumescent penis in the classroom in order to brag about its
size before running around between the desks to give us all a
better look. Since the teacher for the next lesson period was
expected through the door at any moment, the degree of risk
involved in this enterprise only added to my sense of shock,
but I gathered from the reactions of his classmates that,
having witnessed the performance on a number of previous
occasions, they could hardly wait for Arsey to stop showing off
and revert to being his usual boring self. When I got to know
him better I found that he came from a broken home, in that his
mother was missing, gone I never found out where, probably
divorced (an unusual circumstance in those days), leaving her
two sons in the care of their father. He certainly laboured
under some sense of inferiority, to which the fact that he was
bottom of the class academically must have made a contribution,
and I soon realised that much of his behaviour in public was
attempting to compensate for this. In private, he was sly and
ingratiating, but could be entertaining in a sarcastic kind of
way.
I can't remember quite how Brad and I came to team up with
Parkie. By the end of the first year at my new school, I was
top of the class, a position I managed to occupy until I left,
Brad was a little lower down the exam results table, but
undoubtedly the most popular boy in the class, and Parkie was
at the bottom and probably the least popular boy in the class.
But team up we did, if only in school hours, even to the extent
of forming a silly secret society called We Three (or oui3, in
the curious frangleutsch that Brad favoured, eg "go away"
became either "geh un chemin" or "allez ein Weg") which devoted
itself to acts of meaningless minor mischief in the classroom,
leaving cryptic and vaguely threatening messages behind. Given
its unlikely nature, the membership of this organisation was
never suspected, and it would soon have fizzled out for want of
any new and different indignities to visit on our classmates if
an unusual turn of events had not led the three of us to begin
associating out of school.
3
Although bottom of the class in all other respects, Parkie was
top of the class in one subject - Art. In those days, at
schools like ours, Art simply meant one double-period a week in
an Art Room, purpose-built to have a huge north-facing window,
where the major activity was the pencil-drawing of an
assortment of objects, selected and arranged for the purpose by
an Art Master, who might pass amongst us from time to time
giving help and encouragement as appropriate. There were
occasional bouts of excitement when we were initiated into more
esoteric techniques, such as lino-cutting, scraper board, and
poster paints, but, for the most part, Art was seen as a
pleasant, relaxing interlude between other, more demanding,
scholastic pursuits. The seriousness with which the school
took Art can be inferred from the fact that it was dropped from
our curriculum in the fifth form, together with Geography, to
enable a greater concentration of energies on the eight really
important subjects to be taken in the School Certificate exams.
But, in our year, a special dispensation was granted to Parkie,
who was considered to be so good at Art, and so committed to
the subject, that he was allowed to continue with lessons in
order to matriculate in it.
Under these circumstances, it was hardly surprising that Parkie
developed a special relationship with the Art Master. Rather
less predictable was that Brad and I, his inartistic
classmates, should eventually have become involved in this to
the extent that we did. It was a fairly gradual process which
began with us joining, at Parkie's urging, an outdoor sketching
group run by the Art Master, out of school hours during the
summer months. Our sketching activities on these occasions
tended to be rather desultory. interspersed with more detailed
explorations of any woodlands adjacent to the chosen sites (e.g
Bolton Abbey and East Riddlesden Hall) for blackberries and
birds nests, but Mr. Harpin (as we called him then) was very
indulgent of these inattentions, and seemed quite unconcerned
by our our lack of enthusiasm for the actual sketching. From
the very beginning, without being in any way eccentric in
manner and appearance, there was something about him that set
him apart from the rest of the teaching staff. At first, I put
this down to his being the Art Master - not a proper teacher at
all, as it were - but, as our relationship developed, I found
that what made him different was that he was, in certain
respects, a truly exceptional being, not least in having
dedicated his life totally to God.
In his early thirties, unmarried, of medium height and very
spare build, the only remarkable thing about Mr. Harpin at
first sight was his face. In repose and in public, it was the
face of an aesthete - long jaw, long upper lip, expressive
mouth, sensitive nose, large, lidded eyes, high forehead - but,
in private, given the right stimulus, it could light up like a
cinema screen, revealing a variety of hidden characteristics,
and even glow, on occasions, with the inspirational fervour of
a self-flagellating monk. He had arrived in his present
position by a rather circuitous route, having been born in
nearby Huddersfield and won a scholarship to the Royal College
of Art in London, where his talents earned him a travelling
scholarship and the Prix de Rome, after which he had travelled
extensively in Europe and the Middle East before returning to
England and a career as a professional artist specialising in
church mural paintings.
More significantly, while at the RCA he had abandoned the nonconformist faith of his upbringing to be received, after
instruction at nearby Brompton Oratory, into the Roman Catholic
Church, thus beginning a lifelong quest for sainthood which led
him, in his mid-twenties, to take the extreme step of joining
the Salvatorian Fathers in Hertfordshire. Unfortunately, the
austerities of the monastic regime proved to be such that,
before he could be ordained, his health broke down and he was
invalided out of the order back to the parental home in
Huddersfield to recover and convalesce. Subsequent medical
advice was that his internal organs would benefit more from
regular employment than the uncertain life of a professional
artist and it was this that brought him to teach art in
Keighley. But none of this was known to us (and some of it
emerged only much, much later), on the day when Mr. Harpin
invited Parkie, Brad and me to afternoon tea at his home.
He was living, at the time, in furnished rooms (or digs, as
they were called) quite close to the school, so the occasion
was a rather formal one, overseen by his landlady with all due
ceremony, but during the course of these polite proceedings he
informed us that he had just taken possession of a small
cottage out in the country, across the valley on the edge of
the moor, to which he would be moving as soon as it could be
made ready. The three of us would be invited to inspect his
new home at the first available opportunity. This was not long
in coming, and, since much of my life was to centre on this
place during the next couple of years, it can be described in
some detail. It was an end cottage in a terrace of three
standing starkly alone, about half way up a narrow, winding
lane climbing out of the small town of Silsden towards the
towering Nab at the watershed corner of Rombalds Moor (better
known as Ilkley Moor) between Wharfedale and Airedale.
Together with three nearby farms and a few houses lower down
the road, these dwellings comprise the hamlet of Swartha - a
fine old English name.
Like the nearby farms buildings and the walls in the
surrounding fields, Number 3, Swartha Cottages was made of
local stone. It had two rooms, one up, one down, each about 18
feet square, and, tacked on the side, a scullery kitchen with a
walk-in pantry, but no electricity, gas or running water.
There was a pump for wellwater in the kitchen and a paraffin
oil cooking stove, but the lavatory, or jakes as we learned to
call it, was across the road in a shed in the small kitchen
garden that came with the property, and it had to be emptied by
hand when full. There was no front garden and very little
verge between the cottages and the road, but passing traffic
was virtually non-existent in those days, so the road could be
used as a front terrace when the weather was suitable.
Amazingly, this small and primitive dwelling was able to
accommodate more than a dozen bods overnight on several
occasions at the height of its popularity, but that was some
way in the future when Brad, Parkie and I paid our first visit,
having taken the Ilkley bus from Keighley and alighted from it
half way up The Cringles (as the steep Ilkley road out of
Silsden is called) at the bottom of a field path which led up
to Swartha and was soon to become very familiar to us.
We were still on our best behaviour, of course, but Mr. Harpin
gave us a very good afternoon tea and set about making us feel
at home, which wasn't difficult in these novel surroundings.
The furniture and floor coverings were basic, but sturdy and
comfortable, there was a full bookcase, a portable gramophone
with a collection of records, all waiting to be explored, an
upright piano with a pile of sheet music, and a small shrine to
the Virgin Mary, but no radio. After showing us round the
property, and talking about his plans for it, our host seated
himself at the piano and astonished us by stepping completely
out of character to play and sing one of the best known popular
songs of the time in a very extrovert and accomplished manner.
He told us later that he had developed this impressive barroom technique while at college where the students were wont to
mount sing-song battles from adjoining rooms during which
competing teams would strive to silence the opposition by any
means available (including buckets of water) while barracading
their own performers against such attacks. Defeat was only
conceded when the pianist stopped playing.
The singsong round the piano that followed this stunning
curtainraiser was the first of many to come, and marked the
beginning of a change in our relationship with Mr. Harpin.
Within a few months he had ceased to be a schoolteacher and
become, if not exactly a friend (the difference in our ages was
too great for that), or a father figure (he was too young for
that), then an ever-welcoming host, an entertaining companion,
and, above all, a very knowledgeable guide and mentor in a
world with wider horizons than our own. We soon learned to
address him, outside school, by his Christian name of Hildred.
We began visiting the cottage regularly, by bike or bus, and
soon the three of us were invited to spend a weekend there,
staying overnight, sleeping on the floor on roll-up matresses.
This, too, became a regular thing, particularly during school
holidays, culminating, in my own case, in a stay of several
weeks during the summer of 1941, recuperating from the allimportant School Certificate Exams and awaiting the outcome.
We didn't always go together, although Brad and I usually did.
Parkie spent more time there than anyone else, and other boys
from school began to arrive, invited by Hildred, or attracted
by the easygoing hospitality known to be available there inside
an ever open door. Even Cliff came over from Bradford, at my
suggestion, to join what became in the end a circle of about
two dozen regular visitors, all of them, with two exceptions,
young males, although there came a time when a lady teacher
colleague of Hildred's from the Keighley School of Art took on
the other end cottage with the ostensible purpose of emulating
Hildred's informal boys' club with young females similarly
inclined to ourselves. We were dimly aware, however, of the
possibility that she might really be after the apparently
eminently eligible Hildred, in which case she would certainly
be wasting her time.
The two exceptions were Hildred's sister Kathleen who came over
occasionally from Huddersfield to try and sort out our chaotic
domestic arrangements and invariably found herself joining in
the fun, and a hairy, tweedy, pipe-smoking individual called
Maurice from Leeds, about the same age as Hildred and equally
well educated and well-informed, but much more one of the boys.
I'm not sure how he came to be there, or what his occupation
was, but I do know that he had literary pretensions and ended
up marrying Kathleen. I owe him a particular debt because, in
addition to treating me as a fellow adult in our discussions
about reading and writing, he introduced me to his recorder, an
instrument enjoying a revivalist vogue at the time, which he
always brought with him and encouraged me to practice on until
I acquired one of my own.
But what really went on at Swartha? What, as they say, was it
all about? Other than what it appeared to be, that is - a sort
of impromptu, anonymous holiday camp or clubhouse for boys set
in healthy surroundings? There can be little doubt that
Hildred was interested in boys, even attracted to boys in ways
that would nowadays be labelled as homosexual, but any
predilection he may have had for our bodies had been
sublimated, by the time we knew him (at who knows what cost to
himself?), into a passionate concern for our immortal souls.
So, what went on at Swartha was a deliberate attempt by
Hildred, first, to persuade us that the cultivation of the
immortal soul was the primary objective of human existence,
and, then, to equip us with the armamentarium of Christian
beliefs and observances required for success in such a venture.
He did it quite gently, with no force-feeding, or lecturing,
simply by practising his own religion routinely around the
place, talking about it in a matter-of-fact way, answering our
questions, and giving us books to read.
Bright lads that we were, it wasn't long before I, for one, had
acquired from Hildred a complete picture of the elaborate,
ingenious, and, one has to admit, satisfyingly complete system
evolved over the centuries by the Roman Catholic Church for use
by any adherent wishing to strive after spiritual perfection.
I now saw that there was more to being a Christian than
worshipping God, praying to Jesus, and obeying the
Commandments, that there was a spiritual life to be lived as
continuously and as vigorously, on a day to day basis, as the
physical life which was merely its temporal vessel. I learned
about the power of prayer, the redemptive value of selfsacrifice, and the eternal significance of those rare human
beings who attain sainthood.
We were soon joining Hildred in his devotions, saying "Hail
Marys" and "Our Fathers" where appropriate (Parkie with more
enthusiasm than me, and I with more than Brad), and we all
learned to sing the Lourdes Hymn during our singsongs round the
piano. Within a few months, with the arrival of several other
regular acolytes from the school, the Swartha cottage had taken
on many of the attributes of an established religious retreat,
even to the extent of having a shrine in the kitchen garden
(well away from the jakes) to which we could process, singing
the Lourdes Hymn, on appropriate Feast Days. Calling upon his
professional skills, Hildred covered the plain plaster walls of
the cottage with beautifully executed murals depicting not only
scenes from local history, such as the Boy Egramont jumping The
Strid, and the picturesque ruins of Bolton Abbey, but also
incidents in the life of St. Francis of Assisi, his own patron
saint, and, in pride of place, on the chimney breast over the
fireplace, glowing and radiant, Our Lady of Swartha, although I
have to confess that I never felt as comfortable with Hildred's
Mariolatry, as I did with the rest of his doctrine.
But it was all good stuff, and spiritually uplifting at a time
when World War Two was raging around us, and going very badly
indeed for Britain throughout the whole of 1940 and 1941.
Also, there was more to Swartha than religious instruction,
because Hildred was not only a monk manque and a professional
painter, but also a man of broad culture, well-travelled,
widely read, an accomplished musician and even, in his youth,
an acclaimed amateur actor. Thus, of more lasting importance
to my own future development, perhaps, than Our Lady of Swartha
was Hildred's gramophone record collection which I can still
recall in some detail, bearing in mind that, during the long
lamplit evenings at the cottage, there was no television or
radio, and singsongs round the piano, being dependant on the
mood of the moment and the numbers present, were a limited
option, which left Brad and me to spend a great deal of time
winding up that little portable gramophone, playing the same
records over and over again, engraving them (like my father's
collection) forever on my memory, and moving my musical
education forward apace.
In pride of place, there was Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto,
"The Emperor", closely followed by Mozart's Eine Kleine
Nachtmusic, both of which, in those 78rpm days, ran to several
records each and could, therefore, only be enjoyed at the cost
of much re-winding. To this day, however, I cannot hear the
opening bars of either of these pieces without being
transported back, if only for a second, to the lamplit interior
of that cottage. Other favourites were Chopin"s Ballade No.2
for solo piano, two records of the Italian tenor Beniamano
Gigli singing, among other things, Bizet's Agnus Dei, one of
the Russian bass Chaliapin singing excerpts from the Russian
Orthodox Mass with a full choir, and one of the English
soprano, Joan Cross, whom I was soon to see performing in the
flesh, singing two of Mozart's operatic arias - "I remember"
(the Countess's aria) from "The Marriage of Figaro" and
"Ah,'tis gone" (Pamina's aria) from "The Magic Flute".
One frequently played record was intriguingly labelled "Wotan's
Farewell and the Fire music". This, Hildred explained, was an
orchestral version of the closing moments of Wagner's opera
"The Valkyrie", and I can clearly remember him describing how,
in the production he had seen, Wotan's summoning up of the
flames round Brunhilde's rock had been greeted by the other
Valkyries, seated on surrounding mountain peaks which appeared
to recede into the distance, by the simultaneous raising of
clenched fists at appropriate points in the music. It was to
be forty years before I was able to watch this great scene
being played out for myself, only to find, to my great
disappointment, that the presence of the other Valkyries was
not a requirement of the script. Incidentally, I can also
remember Hildred describing (with actions) how a famous ballet
dancer called Anton Dolin performed his solo version of
Ravell's popular "Bolero" - beginning by standing motionless
with arms outstretched, then moving only his fingers in time to
the music, then his hands, then his arms, and so on, as the
crescendo developed, until, at the climax, his entire body was
one enormous twitch. We realised that these and other wonders
had come Hildred's way while studying in faraway London, but,
little did we know that, even as he spoke, events were
conspiring to bring some of London's distant attractions to us.
The Germans, although clearly winning the war, had failed to
win the Battle of Britain in August, 1940, so the Luftwaffe
started blitzing London in earnest that September. Among the
many institutions subsequently "bombed out" by this onslaught
were the Sadler's Wells Opera and Ballet Companies, who lost
the theatre that was their London home together with most of
their scenery and costumes. This was bad news for some but
good news for others, in that, for the rest of the war, two of
the brightest jewels in Britain's cultural crown had little
alternative but to go on more or less permanent tour in the
provinces. And so it came to pass that, on Monday, August
25th, 1941, the Sadler's Wells Opera and Orchestra came to The
Hippodrome Theatre, Keighley, for a whole week, and, taking
advantage of this truly unusual, if not unique event, occurring
as it did towards the end of the long summer vacation, so much
of which I had spent at Swartha, Hildred offered to take Brad
and me to the opera. Not surprisingly, we accepted.
4.
Although I couldn't know it at the time, I saw and heard my
first opera under virtually ideal conditions. Given the
circumstances, of course, the stage scenery was vestigial,
consisting of little more than two or three folding screens
with doors in them, but the props and costumes were more than
adequate, and the Keighley Hippodrome was a little gem of a
theatre, traditionally oval in shape with boxes, stalls,
circle, upper circle, and an orchestra pit of sufficient size
to accommadate the Sadler's Wells Orchestra, which, according
to the programme (a single folded sheet, priced at twopence)
consisted of three 1st and two 2nd violins, one viola, one
violoncello, one double bass, a flute, an oboe, a clarionet
(sic), a bassoon, two horns and a pianoforte, but it seemed
bigger than that to me, so perhaps it was augmented by a few
local musicians. The opera was Mozart's "The Marriage of
Figaro", sung in English - the perfect choice. God bless you,
Hildred.
Seated somewhere in the stalls, I could hear everything - every
note, every word - and see every gesture, and although I cannot
speak for the quality of the singing or the acting, of course,
I can say that, from the moment the curtain rose, following the
famous overture, to reveal John Hargreaves as Figaro and Joan
Collier as Susanna making a duet out of measuring up for a bed
and trying on a hat, nothing came between me and the complete
suspension of my disbelief until the final curtain fell. It
all seemed so perfectly natural - the characters, the story,
the short bits of sung dialogue linking those wonderful songs with everything moving the outrageous plot along at a spanking
pace with never a dull moment. And very funny at times! I
came out into the night in a pleasurable daze, knowing that I
could sit through the whole thing again with undiminished
pleasure.
Hardly had I recovered from this ravishment of the senses,
when, only two nights later, I was taken to another opera!
This time it was Verdi's "La Traviata" - a completely different
musical and dramatic experience, but with the same underlying
fundamentals - characters, story (tragic this time, of course),
a string of memorable songs, following each other in quick
succession as the plot unfolded - all in place. Again, I found
myself totally involved in the fate of Violetta (Janet
Hamilton-Smith), and pretty disgusted with the behaviour of
Alfred (Ben Williams), and his father (Tom Williams), hardly
noticing any inadequacies in the production with regard to
either the premises on which the action was supposed to be
taking place, or the crowds of glamorous partygoers alleged to
be present in two of the scenes. The programme gives the names
of eleven members of the Sadler's Wells Chorus, but five of
these appear against minor characters in the cast list
opposite. Obviously, what I was seeing was a rather anorectic
version of the real thing, but I didn't know any better, and it
certainly worked for me, even without the ballet!, so Hildred
had done it again. By the end of that week, I knew without a
doubt that I liked opera enough to take any future opportunity
of witnessing it that came my way.
Things might have turned out differently, of course, if the
first operas I had been taken to see had not been so wisely
chosen. There were other operas in the repertoire that week
which I would certainly have found less immediately captivating
at the time. Almost exactly one year later, for example, I
watched the same company perform Puccini's "Madame Butterfly"
with a sense of growing bewilderment as it emerged that there
were only two good songs in the whole work, one of those with
no words, even, and neither of them in the first act. Amazing,
isn't it? But there it is - I wasn't ready for the idiom. My
musical education had not yet reached the level at which my ear
could perceive the patterns in the continuous musical tapestry
woven by the composer in Act One, the beauties of which I was
later to greet with increasing rapture.
There would have been a less favourable outcome, also, if,
under some different dispensation, I had been taken to hear the
same two operas sung in Italian. I can assert with some
confidence, on the basis of subsequent experience, that I could
never have entered so completely into the worlds of Figaro and
Violetta if such a language barrier had been erected between
us. Any pleasure I might have derived from the singing would
have been diminished by the growing irritation I would
certainly have felt at not being able to understand what was
being sung. There will be more on this topic later, no doubt,
but suffice it to say here, that my first experience of opera
would have been much less unequivocally favourable if I had not
had equal access to both the words and the music.
Worthy of note in this context, too, is the fact that Hildred
bought us seats in the stalls on both occasions. I cannot
recall what contribution, if any, I made to the cost of these
from my meagre schoolboy's pocket money, but I do know that it
was to be many, many years before I felt able to afford any but
the cheapest of seats for the opera (always upgraded, of
course, by careful forward booking or, where unavoidable,
queueing), and I cannot say by how much the impact on me of
those first operas would have been diminished by occupying
upper circle seats, but, obviously, the experience might not
have been quite so decisive.
Years later - on Saturday, 30th
June, 1951, to be precise - I bought tickets for a performance
of Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde" at The Royal Opera House,
Covent Garden, with Set Svanholm and Kirsten Flagstad in the
title roles, and found myself perched so far up in the roof
that I was unable to see all the stage, or understand much of
what was going on - in German, of course The principals
appeared to be singing well, and at great length, but I left
the building at the first interval with a very poor first
impression of Wagner's operas, of which "Tristan and Isolde" is
still my least favourite for reasons which I will be happy to
give at a more appropriate juncture.
Meanwhile, for the benefit of anyone fortunate enough to be
presented with an opportunity to follow in my early footsteps,
I will nominate those other operas for which, if sung in
English, it would be safe to accept the best seats affordable
in as small a theatre as possible:
From the popular repertoire:
Mozart's "Don Giovanni", "The Magic Flute", "Cosi fan Tutte"
and "Il Seraglio".
Beethoven's "Fidelio"
Rossini's "The Barber of Seville", "La Cenerentola, and "The
Italian Girl in Algiers"
Gounod's "Faust"
Verdi's "Rigoletto" "Il Travatore" and "Aida"
Bizet's "Carmen"
Mascagni's “Cavalleria Rusticana”
Leoncavello's “Pagliacci”
And less frequently performed:
Weber"s "Der Freischutz" and "Oberon"
Offenbach's "The Tales of Hoffman"
Donizetti's "L'Elisir D'Amore" and "Don Pasquale"
Delibes's "Lakme"
Smetena's "The Bartered Bride"
Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess"
Obviously, this list is compiled with the benefit of my
subsequent operagoing, but it seems appropriate to include it
here, on the grounds that, since all these works tell
interesting stories in ways which allow the characters involved
to sing attractive and memorable songs at frequent intervals,
witnessing a performance of any of them could do a budding
propensity to explore the world of opera no positive harm.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the time was now approaching
when I would be obliged to put my school days (and Keighley
with them) behind me, but because my sixteenth birthday fell in
October my departure was delayed until the end of the first
term of the new school year. In spite of the quality of my
School Certificate results, there was never any question of my
going on to what is nowadays called Further Education, although
it would have been available free up to Higher School
Certificate level, with scholarships and bursaries to be
competed for after that. But there was none of the guaranteed
government support of the post-war years, and my parents,
having done well, by the standards of the time, to keep me at
school for two years longer than the statutory school leaving
age, took it for granted that I would start to earn my living
as soon as I was free to do so - as, indeed, did I myself. A
pity, really, because I thoroughly enjoyed my one term in the
Sixth Form.
I can still recall the pleasurable shock I got from the change
in teachers' attitudes and methods I experienced on entering
the Lower Sixth Arts. I could hardly believe I was in the same
building, or that these were the same teachers as before. Less
than a dozen of us in the class, of course, and much more
emphasis on individual reading and research. I remember
thinking "This is what school should really be like" and
throwing myself into the work I was given with the desperate
enthusiasm of a condemned man eating his last meal. Brad, on
the other hand (whose birthday fell just after mine), found
this new environment so confusing, even disturbing, that he
applied for and was given permission to go back down into the
Fifth until the time came for us both to leave. Needless to
say, Parkie's schooldays had ended with the School Certificate
exams, and, although I continued to see him at Swartha for the
rest of the year, I was soon to lose touch with him afterwards.
Only two things of note occurred outside the limbo of that last
term at school. On October 26th, I attended a performance of
Handel's "Messiah" at the Temple Street Methodist Church,
Keighley, featuring Miss Isobel Baillie, Soprano, Miss Eileen
Pilcher, Contralto, Mr. Ronald Murgatroyd, Tenor, Mr. Henry
Gill, Bass, and Mr. John Paley, Trumpeter, all of them, in
their day, names to conjure with, since none of the many
Messiahs performed throughout the county of Yorkshire each year
would have been considered complete without some contribution
from at least one of their number. Although familiar with many
of its airs and choruses from gramophone records and the radio,
this was the first time I had heard the work, live, in its
entirety, but it was not, by any means, to be the last. In
those dark wartime days in England, Handel's Messiah was a
treasured national asset to be breathed into frequent life
during the winter months in chapels and concert halls
throughout the land. Had it not been for a fortuitous
combination of Adolf Hitler and Hildred Harpin, this great
oratorio, together with the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan,
would have constituted the full extent of my musical-dramatical
experience, outside the cinema, at the age of sixteen.
And the second thing? After a determined effort involving much
practice with like-minded classmates in the garage of one of
the more affluent of them, I succeeded in mastering the basic
steps of a number of ballroom dances sufficiently well to feel
suitably equipped to invite some young lady to trust herself
onto the dance floor with me at the next available opportunity.
By doing so, I had crossed a very important watershed in my
young life - some of those steps were quite complicated and the
dance hall was, in those days, the only open forum where
matters of mutual interest could be tentatively explored with a
succession of strangers of the opposite sex. But I hardly had
time to practice these hard won skills at those Saturday night
dances in the parish church hall before midnight struck in the
shape of the end of term and I was returned to my home in
Bradford almost as abruptly as I had been sent to Keighley in
the first place. Suddenly, my boyhood was over and the adult
world lay before me like a foreign country.MY LIFE AT THE OPERA
: PART ONE
Chapter Three: 1941-43
My return to the family home was greeted by my parents with the
same pragmatism which had sped my departure from it two years
previously and kept my sister, my brother and me in Keighley
while our fellow evacuees drifted back to Bradford. And who
could blame them? The arrangement enjoyed the full approval of
the authorities, it placed no greater burden on the family
finances than keeping us at home, and was, on balance, of some
benefit to all concerned. Thanks to the war effort, both my
parents were in continuous full-time employment, earning better
money than they had ever done before, and not only were their
domestic circumstances, after years of coping with three
youngsters and a dysfunctional relationship in cramped
quarters, much more tolerable, but they were free to lead their
separate lives without impediment - an opportunity exploited
more by my mother than my father who simply carried on as
before.
Nor could it be said that there was hardship to be endured on
our part. Quite the reverse. After the initial period of
adjustment to the change in circumstances experienced by all
evacuees, we had settled quite comfortably into surroundings
which could hardly fail to be more orderly and commodious than
those we had left behind. Our education certainly hadn't
suffered, and we could be back at home in an hour by public
transport whenever we felt like it, or needed special care.
Also, the German air raids, after a slow start, were not to be
underestimated as a constant threat. Leeds and Sheffield,
unprotected by the sooty fog which frequently filled the
Pennine basin in which Bradford nestled, were regularly
targeted. And there was never any doubt in our minds that we
would have been taken back home, whatever the inconvenience, at
the first signs of any genuine discomfort with our lot. I,
myself, had come home only because there was no alternative,
which is not to say that I resented having to do so. Leaving
my comfortable life in Keighley behind was a bit of a wrench,
of course, but the break was neither unanticipated, nor
complete, thanks to its proximity to Bradford, now working in
reverse. Any qualms I felt were of a different order and arose
from quite another source, because I was now face to face with
the unavoidable necessity of earning a living.
Not surprisingly, I had given a certain amount of thought to
this looming problem during the preceding months, years even,
if only because people kept asking me what I planned to be when
I left school. But, I found it a very difficult question to
get my mind around, there being so few pointers in my personal
experience or immediate background. Obviously, with my
superior academic qualifications, I wasn't going to be a
woolsorter like my dad, or, indeed, go inta t'mill in any other
capacity if I could help it. On the other hand, lacking the
necessary higher education, I couldn't become a schoolteacher the only other role model held up before me. Inspired, no
doubt, by the praise I had always received for the English
essays I had produced over the years, and the pleasure derived
from composing them, the only thing I really wanted to be was a
writer, and the only interpretation I could put on this, in
career terms, was to aspire to become a journalist, although I
had no clear idea of the practicalities involved in achieving
this.
Enquiries revealed, however, that the route to my objective
probably lay through employment by a newspaper in some capacity
or other, so I wrote, early in my final term at school, to the
editor of the only daily newspaper within practical striking
distance - the Bradford "Telegraph and Argus" - to ask for
employment. This initiative was rewarded with my first ever
job interview at which I sat, completely overawed by my
surroundings and virtually tongue-tied, while the great man
explained to me why, with vacancies on his reporting staff
occurring at such infrequent intervals and competition for them
being so fierce, I would be unwise to hope for too much too
soon. But if, in spite of the odds against me, I wished to
persist in my folly, perhaps I would be good enough to go home
and produce a sample of my written work for his consideration.
This I hastened to do, having racked my brains for a suitable
subject and finally settled on the only, in any way unusual
topic I could report on with real authority, "Experiences of an
Evacuee", and sent him the result without delay.
Nothing happened for some time, but, in response to my
persistent enquiries, I was finally granted another interview
at which the editor, to give the busy man his due, was able to
lay his hands on my manuscript without too protracted a search,
and refresh his memory as to its content while I waited
expectantly for his verdict. Finally, he read the first
sentence out aloud. Not surprisingly, it referred, in suitably
dramatic terms, to the summer of 1939 and the sudden domestic
disruption to which thousands like myself had been subjected.
He looked across his desk at me and said, rather sadly, "Not
very newsy, is it?" I could neither disagree, nor fail to get
the message that, although the editor went on to praise other
aspects of the work and assure me of his continued interest
while repeating his warnings about the infrequency of vacancies
and the intensity of the competition for them, that I was not
going to step straight out of school into a career in
journalism.
It never occurred to me at the time that, if and when such a
rare vacancy occurred, it might be filled by an applicant whose
family enjoyed a higher social status and wielded more clout in
the community than my own, which wouldn't be difficult. Even
when, many moons later, I found that the very well-spoken and
self-assured boy who had been the teacher's pet in Miss
Dickenson's class and whose father was a respected local
headmaster, was now employed as a junior reporter on the
"Telegraph and Argus", I assumed that he had simply interviewed
better than me. I knew that I was as clever as him, and far
more street-wise and hungry-nosed, but I had, and always have
had, a defective appreciation of the weight to be attached to
the old boy network and its analogues, possibly because I
myself have never been in a position to benefit from any such
extrinsic factor. All I knew for certain, when I finally left
school, was that the start of my career as a journalist would
have to be deferred for an indefinite period due to
circumstances beyond my control, and, in the meantime, I would
have to make do with some other job which I would be obliged to
find for myself.
The problem was, I had no particular ambition in any other
direction, but, with the idealism of youth, I knew that I
didn't want what was referred to scathingly in the Lower Sixth
Arts as an "office job", of which there were plenty on offer
for school-leavers like me. What I wanted was an "interesting
job", but where were these to be found, and how were they to be
identified? For some reason the word "laboratory" had quite
exciting connotations in those days, and, yes, I could see
myself doing interesting things in a laboratory, so I combed
the Situations Vacant in the "Telegraph and Argus" for suitable
opportunities in that direction. Two very dispiriting
encounters resulted from this strategy, one in a sauce factory
in Shipley, the other in an enamelling plant in Keighley, but
before I could lose heart, my mother, deeply involved in my
predicament in her own quiet way, drew my attention to a very
small ad which read something like "X Ray Department, Bradford
Royal Infirmary, trainee wanted, School Certificates
essential". X Rays, I thought, how mysterious! Could be
interesting. So I applied.
And thus, called quickly to an interview, I passed for the
first time through the portals of the establishment which was
to be the centre of my universe for the next four eventful
years, not realising then, of course, that the BRI, as we
always called it, was no ordinary hospital, having been so
recently built, by voluntary contribution in those pre-NHS
days, that one final block had to be left unfinished at the
outbreak of war, which made it probably the most modern
hospital in the country, state-of-the-art in every detail.
Standing three storeys high on one of the more salubrious
outskirts of Bradford, above the smog line, and faced
throughout in honey coloured stone, it was an impressive sight,
but the inside was even more impressive, having been built on
the "key" principle, with a long central corridor block from
which the functional blocks protruded at intervals, commodious
lifts at every junction, the four ward blocks at the front,
their twelve balconies looking out over the city, and the
operating theatre block, laboratories, and other service blocks
at the rear. Thanks to the spacious design, large windows,
bright tiles and marbled floors (all the corners hygienically
curved) the whole place was as light and airy as a seaside
hotel. From the Duke of York's Home (for private patients) at
one end, to the X Ray Department tacked on as a single storey
building, because of its radiation risk presumably, at the
other, the BRI was nearly a quarter of a mile long. But I must
have been singularly unimpressed by all this at the time
because I nearly talked myself out of the job.
Since the title then given to the administrative head of a
voluntary hospital was Secretary to the Board of Governors, I
was interviewed by the Deputy Secretary, who was, in effect,
the Chief Clerk. He explained to me that the job consisted of
a four-year working student-apprenticeship in the X Ray
Department starting with a year in the darkroom and ending with
a qualifying examination, after which, if successful, I would
be free to practice anywhere in the country for the rest of my
life. It was a job, therefore, to be given only to an
applicant willing to stay with it for the required period of
time. Even I could see that what I was being offered, in the
end, was "a steady job", something which only someone who had
lived through the 20s and 30s could truly appreciate. A steady
job was what school teachers and other public servants had. A
steady job paying 5 pounds a week, unaffected by the vagaries
of the economic cycle, was regarded in those days as the
primary objective of any right-thinking school-leaver, since it
would enable him to get married, set up house, start a family,
and live happily ever after.
I explained to the nice gentleman that I was very attracted by
the prospect held out before me. It sounded like a very
interesting job indeed, but, unfortunately, my ambition was to
be a journalist, and I was looking for something merely to keep
me going until a suitable opening occurred on the local
newspaper. If the Deputy Secretary was taken aback by this
confession, he concealed it well, and proceeded to ignore it
completely. Whether he was a better judge than me of my
chances of getting into journalism, or was simply desperate to
fill a rather minor vacancy on the hospital staff for which
there were no other suitable applicants, I never found out, but
he offered me the job at a starting wage of 17s/6d a week, and
I agreed to accept it, whereupon he handed me over, no doubt
thankfully, to an X Ray Department which seemed to have taken
little interest in the selection process up to that point.
And so began, in this casual, almost accidental manner, my
education in the University of Life. Given my circumstances at
the time, I cannot see it as anything other than a tremendous
stroke of luck to have been taken on board by this eminent
institution in however lowly a capacity at first, because it
was soon to become evident to me that the big hospital was
really a small world supporting a complex social organisation
rich in colourful characters, class distinctions and
interlocking hierarchies. Dominating all, of course, were the
surgical and medical staffs, the godlike consultants, their
often cleverer registrars, and their overworked housemen
(housewomen being few and far between). Most in evidence,
because of their numbers, were the nursing staff, The Matron
and her henchwoman the Sister Tutor, the Ward Sisters, the
Staff Nurses, the Trainee Nurses and the Probationers, each
with their distinctive uniform and accessories (male nurses
being virtually unknown). Less immediately visible, just
behind the front line as it were, the technical support teams,
diagnostic and therapeutic, X Ray Department, Pathological
Laboratory, Pharmacy, Physiotherapy. Behind the scenes, the
administrative staff (surprisingly small in numbers when
compared with later developments), the kitchens, the laundry,
and the cleaners And, finally, supporting the whole mighty
edifice, a small army of hospital porters, doing their cunning
best, with some success, to mould the organisation above them
to their own convenience.
To fall back on a hackneyed phrase, this world was to be my
oyster for the next four years, and I have always looked back
with some amazement, almost disbelief, at both the quantity and
diversity of the activities I somehow managed to cram into my
life during that period, using my home for only bed and
breakfast, and not always that, and my loving mother for basic
life support. There was opera, of course, and there was
ballet, there was even Barbarolli, but there was much, much
more, and, as it all seemed to revolve around my full-time
employment in the X Ray Department of the BRI, my account has
to start there, where the facilities, in those pre-NHS days,
consisted originally of only two X Ray equipment rooms with a
dark room in between, plus the usual offices. It was staffed
by two qualified radiographers, three trainees, three nurseattendants and a secretariat of two, all of whom I would get to
know well as colleagues and even friends, but it was the other
two trainees, Leonard and Jack, who would figure significantly
in my all-important private life.
And the least of these, in the long run, would be Leonard, but,
as my immediate predecessor in the hierarchy, he was the
appointed mentor whose own emergence from the brown-coated
obscurity of the darkroom into the white-coated eminence of the
X-Ray examination rooms was totally dependent upon his ability
to teach me the job he had been doing for the last year.
Naturally, he didn't waste any time, and, me being a quick
learner, it wasn't long before I was in sole charge of the
whole darkroom process which began with the exposed films in
their protective aluminium cassettes of various sizes being
dumped into one of the two-way hatches connecting the X Ray
rooms to the darkroom. The sequence of events was then as
follows: take cassette from hatch to workbench; open cassette
and extract film; select metal hanger of appropriate size from
racks above workbench; mount film into hanger (one clip at each
corner); suspend hanger in deep developing tank taking care to
replace lid; set timer; reload cassette with unexposed film
from swingout drawer below workbench and return to appropriate
slot in wall hatch for re-use.
All this had to be done in a darkness alleviated only by the
faint greenish glow from safelights overhead, while continuing
to process what could be, during the busy morning sessions, a
continuous flow of earlier films from both hatches through the
developing tank, the fixer tank, the washing tank, the electric
fan drying cabinet, and, finally, corners neatly trimmed,
across into the office for sorting and filing, ready for
inspection and interpretation by the consultant radiologist who
visited the department twice a week. Physically, therefore,
the job presented quite a challenge, which, thanks to a six
foot frame of near-skeletal proportions, endowed with the
stamina and muscular co-ordination of a long-distance running
hunter-gatherer, inherited from my father, and honed on the
'duffs' of the Wingfield Street gang, I was well able to meet.
Intellectually and socially, however, the job seemed, on the
surface, unpromising, but, fortunately, it had compensatory
aspects in both these directions.
The radiographers, having taken their pictures, needed to
ensure that they were adequate for the prescribed purpose
before releasing the patient, and could only achieve this by
direct visual inspection of the films immediately after the
initial processing, a requirement which ensured a constant flow
of traffic in and out of the darkroom via the two doorless,
walk-through light locks connecting it to each of the
examination rooms. This meant that I was rarely alone in my
gloomy domain for long. It also meant that, whenever a
radiographer came groping round the corner, I was required, as
soon as it was safe to do so, to illuminate the large viewing
box which stood above the tanks and hold up the requested films
for inspection, and also, if time allowed, for comment, there
being an obligation on the radiographers, all of whom had
laboured in the darkroom before me, to do what they could to
initiate me into the mysteries of their craft by talking about
the pictures and answering my questions about them.
It was in this way that I began to familiarise myself with
human anatomy and physiology and all the ills the flesh is heir
to. My vocabulary expanded rapidly to embrace not only these
terminologies but also that of the business we were in - the
intravenous pyelograms, cholecystograms, gastro-intestinal
barium meals and enemas, etc., that would eventually become my
own stock-in-trade. And the radiographers were not my only
visitors, since there were frequent requests from various parts
of the hospital for films, still in their hangers, wet from the
washer, to be fetched from the darkroom, usually by the most
junior nurse available, for urgent viewing, and, although
Leonard, always on watch outside, did his best to interpose
himself between any fair messenger and the object of her
errand, he didn't always succeed, particularly when the films
were being returned, and, on these occasions, assisted by the
darkness turning on and off at my behest, I strove, without
much initial success, to make contact with contemporaries of
the opposite sex.
My special relationship with Jack, however, blossomed quickly
during those brief, darkroom tutorials in front of the viewing
box, where he proved, despite first impressions, to be the most
intelligent and well-informed of my new associates. When first
we met, he was the senior trainee, soon to sit his qualifying
exam with the Society of Radiographers at the age of twenty,
which made him three years older than me and two years older
than Leonard, the gap between the two of them being accounted
for by the untimely departure of its former occupant, a
handsome and gifted young man by all accounts, who had cast
aside the protection of a reserved occupation to volunteer for
the RAF, where he was soon, alas, to achieve hero status among
his ex-collegues by being killed in a flying accident. Jack,
on the other hand, was of singularly unprepossessing appearance
and sadly uncharismatic. Of medium height with round shoulders
and a rather sluggish physique, his beaky nose, receding chin
and large Adam's apple gave him a turkeycock appearance which
was not improved by his thin gingery hair, straggling
moustache, and the thick spectacles he always wore. But never
was there so excellent a book inside such unprepossessing
covers.
Having penetrated his disguise and overcome the reticence that
went with it, I soon established an appreciative rapport with
the sharp wit and laconic wisdom I found within. I also found,
more importantly, that Jack was an accomplished violinist,
playing regularly in an amateur concert orchestra, and the
possessor of an extensive and detailed knowledge of the world
of serious music which he was only too willing to share with
me' if and when an opportunity to do so arose. Such
opportunities cannot have been long in coming, because it was
barely six months after I started work at the BRI that Jack and
I went to our first opera together, inaugurating a
companionship lasting four years and laying the foundations of
a musical education on which I would build for the rest of my
life. But, before enlarging on this theme, there is another
character waiting in the wings who was to influence my musical
tastes almost as decisively as Jack did, but in a rather
different direction, and whose lasting friendship was to have a
much greater effect on the future course of my life than anyone
introduced so far. He also worked at the BRI but not in the X
Ray Department.
Whereas Leonard could now claim the whole hospital as his
stage, frequently wheeling a mobile apparatus out to the wards,
and even on occasion to the operating theatre, to X Ray
patients unable to come to the department, my own
responsibilities were such as to confine me almost entirely to
the darkroom. But I had one excuse to sally forth at regular
intervals, which, needless to say, I exploited to the fullest.
Whereas the chemical solution used for developing the films
could be mixed in the darkroom, as required, from a
commercially available kit, the fixing solution, for obscure
economic reasons, was made up in the pharmacy, or dispensary as
we always called it, and had to be fetched from there in large
bottles on a trolley at least once a week, and that is how I
encountered Frank, who was serving his pharmaceutical
apprenticeship there.
Strangely, although we had never knowingly met before, we
recognised each other immediately, and soon worked out that
this was because we had lived only a couple of streets apart
for many years and must have seen one another around the
neighbourhood quite frequently - Frank belonging, of course, to
a different gang. The reason I hadn't come across him at
school was that he was a Roman Catholic, and compelled thereby
to follow a different scholastic path which took him finally to
the Catholic grammar school, St. Bede's, on the other side of
town. We soon found that we had much in common and in no time
at all were travelling to and from the BRI together daily and
had been accepted as honorary members of each others' families.
Frank, about eighteen months older than me, was both
opinionated and facetious, with a strong outgoing personality
and bags of self-confidence fostered no doubt by his being the
eldest and cleverest of three brothers, and having two sisters,
one older then him, who were just as sharp as he was. In spite
of his keen intelligence, however, he was not a budding
intellectual in the sense that I was, having little time for
serious literature, drama, and music, and none at all for
opera, and was, indeed, rather dismissive of such interests, as
he was of anything else that didn't appeal to him. But he was
passionately fond of jazz, and had a well-developed taste for
it.
My first contact with small band jazz, as opposed to the big
band variety played by the livelier dance bands which Brad and
I were listening to on the radio at the time, had been made at
Swartha when one of the least conformist and worst mannered of
the boys on the fringe of our group brought a few of his
records up to the cottage one weekend, and, after expounding at
length on their merits, very kindly left them there long enough
for us to get to know them better. It was from his lips that I
first heard such strange names as Jelly Roll Moreton, and Jack
Teagarden. I knew about Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, of
course, who were probably the best known black men in the
world, after Paul Robeson, and I doted on Nat Gonella, the
English band leader who was doing his best to play and sing
like Louis on the radio, but the wilder shores of jazz were
still in a foreign country, accessible only through the
gramophone records I could not yet afford, even if I'd known
which ones to buy. It took a weekly pay packet, however small,
and the meeting with Frank to change all that.
He already had a large collection of jazz records, most of
which, I later discovered, belonged to his remarkable older
sister Kathleen, whose discriminating taste in jazz had
developed ahead of his own and no doubt influenced it. Better
still, however, was the fact that Frank's house had a front
room, or parlour, to which we could retire with the gramophone
in order to give the records the undivided attention they
deserved. We couldn't know, of course, that we were living
through a golden age of recorded jazz and that these ten inch
78s and those which Frank and I subsequently bought after
agonising over them in the sampling booths of J.Wood's record
shop on many a Saturday afternoon, would become classics of
their genre, to be reissued repeatedly in later, more
technically advanced, formats - LPs, audiotapes, and CDs enabling me, together with generations then unborn, to enjoy
them still today.
In addition to contributions from the famous names already
mentioned, we had, for example, a number of records by such all
time greats as Fats Waller and Sidney Bechet [we even had
George Chisholm and his Jive Five], but there were two bands
whose every recording we treasured above all. Muggsy Spanier
and his Ragtimers, and Bob Crosby"s Bobcats seemed to us to be
producing small band jazz in its most perfect form - eight
different instruments improvising collectively around a given
theme without colliding at any point into discord in what
became known, rather misleadingly, as the Dixieland style - and
this admiration of ours was to have a significant effect on
future events. In the meantime, my taste in jazz, under
Frank's influence, progressed in parallel with my exploration
of the larger world of concert music under Jack's tutelage and
although the two began to overlap at the edges when Jack took
an interest in jazz for reasons yet to emerge, Frank found
himself totally unable to make any move in the opposite
direction.
But, even as I set out to pursue these adventures in music with
them, quite a different common interest was bringing Leonard,
Jack, Frank and me together in a shared activity on a regular
basis outside working hours. Since there was, after all, a war
on, in which our armed forces were continuing to fare rather
badly, all able-bodied male civilians not called to the colours
had been invited to bear arms in defence of the nation against
enemy attack, and due, no doubt, to the size of its male staff,
its dominating location, and the excellence of its facilities,
I had arrived at the BRI to find that it boasted a Home Guard
Company of its very own, of which my new colleges were already
serving members. Naturally, I joined up as soon as I could,
and can safely say that the total amount of my precious spare
time I contributed, through this commitment, to the war effort
over the next three years far exceeded that absorbed by any one
of my many other activities.
We were expected to be on parade on at least one of two
evenings a week for indoor weapons training, and every Sunday
morning for outdoor activities of various kinds, but the main
duty of the unit was to man an Observation Post standing on the
flat roof of that one wing of the hospital left uncompleted at
the outbreak of war. For this purpose, the Company was divided
into a sufficient number of squads to serve one night in every
eight sleeping in a crudely furnished, ill-lit, and badly
ventilated guardroom at the very top of this unfinished shell,
each member of the squad taking it in turns, throughout the
night, to go out onto the roof and sit for an hour in the OP
with his back, in winter, pressed against the flue pipe of the
temperamental stove supposedly generating heat below. From
this eyrie virtually the whole of Bradford was visible, when
not shrouded in the smoke from its thousands of coal-burning
chimneys, and it was equipped with a simple apparatus to enable
any source of light, whether a fire during an air-raid or a
breach in the blackout, to be pinpointed and its references
transmitted by telephone to the appropriate authority.
In spite of the many discomforts attendant upon these duties,
each squad strove, with varying degrees of success, to turn its
guard night into as much of a party as wartime restrictions on
food and drink permitted, but the taste in one's mouth when
awakening in the foetid air of that overcrowded room in the
morning was an experience not to be treasured. As the tide of
war turned and our armament improved, our Company was given its
own "defended locality" in the shape of a key crossroads close
by, around which we manoeuvred frequently, even at night, often
with hilarious results, because, although we took our Home
Guard training seriously enough for it to stand me in very good
stead when I eventually went into the real army, there was,
about our activities, a distinct element of that deservedly
popular BBC TV series which was to appear long after the war,
"Dad's Army". This arose partly from the fact that, being the
BRI platoon, its command structure was obliged to reflect the
professional hierarchies of the the hospital, regardless of the
soldierly competence of the individuals concerned.
Thus, the company commanding officer was the Chairman of the
Board of Governors. Short, round, bouncy, and bossy, a
successful local businessman (not unlike Captain Mainwaring in
appearance) who had served in the last war and had the medal
ribbons to prove it, he was, therefore, not unsuited to the
role, unlike his unfortunate second-in-command, who was none
other than the Hospital Secretary, a large, fat, pallid,
individual whose menacing silent stare could effectively
intimidate his subordinates as the hospital's chief executive,
but was of little use in steering squads of armed men through
even the least elaborate of manoeuvres. Having no previous
experience of military matters, and being badly designed
physically for any participation in them, his performance as 2
i/c of the company, from the inaudibility of his words of
command and his inability to do an about face without losing
his balance, to the large V of extra material inserted into the
seat of his uniform trousers to accommodate his outsize bum,
was a source of much discreetly suppressed merriment to those
members of the hospital staff whom he had previously overawed
with his superior status.
Similarly, the rank of Company Sergeant Major had been bestowed
on the hospital's Head Porter, who, with his now rather flabby
form still clad in the full dress uniform of his old regiment
(complete, of course, with medal ribbons), was a respected
wielder of despotic power over his daytime army, largely by
telephone, from a cubicle which was strategically placed just
inside the main entrance to the hospital to enable him also to
serve as sentry or commissionaire, depending on the antecedents
of any person coming through the doors. In his Home Guard
khaki, however, he cut a sadly unimposing figure, looking so
much more comfortable with a clipboard in his hand than a
weapon of any kind that there were serious doubts as to whether
he had ever fired a shot in anger during his previous army
service, or, if called upon to do so, would be any less wobbly
than his own somewhat pendulous jowls.
And so on down the rankings of the other NCOs. The chief
radiographer, for example, was a sergeant, as was the chief
engineer, and when Jack qualified as a radiographer, he was
promoted from lance corporal to corporal. Even Frank, on
becoming senior apprentice, was made a lance corporal. But an
exception had to be made to this cosy arrangement when filling
the all-important post of musketry sergeant, since the
necessary expertise was found to reside exclusively in the
person of one of the porters who had acquired it on active
service in the last war. Fortunately, however, he was no
ordinary porter, being, in fact, the mortuary porter, an
appropriately cadaverous individual whose responsibility it was
to remove any corpses from the wards, convey them as discreetly
as possible to the mortuary, and, after assisting with any
necessary post mortem examination, display them on demand,
suitably arranged, to the grieving relatives in the small
chapel attached to the mortuary for the purpose. This was
quite a highly skilled job, in fact, and Reggie was good at it.
We knew this because Frank, Leonard and I were allowed to
attend post mortems as part of our training, and, since we
never missed an opportunity to scive off from our normal duties
to experience something new and different, we often saw him in
action. He was a good musketry instructor, too, and it was
convenient to have his mortuary to return to, after a day out
on the shooting range at Oxenhope, to clean out our rifles.
With these Home Guard duties making such regular demands, we
were constantly in and out of uniform, and spending so much of
our time at the BRI that, rather than go home and come back in
the morning, we often found it convenient to sleep there, Frank
in the dispensary where a camp bed was maintained for
firewatching purposes, Jack, Leonard and I in the X Ray
Department, where only the bare X Ray couches and hospital
trolleys were available, but could be made quite comfortable by
the use of the blankets and pillows which were in generous
supply. This practice was made possible only by the fact that,
in those pre-NHS days, hard as it may now be to believe, the X
Ray Department's hours of business were 9am to 5pm, Monday to
Friday, and 9am to 12 noon on Saturday. In the unlikely event
of X Rays being urgently required outside these hours, the
chief radiographer, who lived close by, would be sent a special
request to make himself available, but, this being a voluntary
hospital, operating on a tight budget, the definition of
urgency was an extremely narrow one - an acutely lifethreatening diagnostic dilemma which only an X Ray examination
could resolve, no less. Anything else could wait until opening
time.
Our slumbers in the deserted department were, therefore, rarely
disturbed, and, after a wake-up call from the hospital
switchboard, it was a simple enough matter to don a white coat
and go foraging for breakfast on the wards, where there was
always food to be had, if only bread, butter and jam. Little
wonder, then, that by the end of my first year, an institution,
which was, in effect, a large, patient-processing factory, had
become, for me, a congenial home from home, where, in addition
to bed and board, I had the use of a study and a bathroom, both
missing from my real home, and could enjoy either privacy, or
good company, depending on my need for the former and the
extent to which I chose to take advantage of opportunities for
the latter, since there was more going on at the BRI after
hours than the Home Guard and firewatching.
The trainee nurses were accommodated in a large Nurse's Home
behind the hospital, where dances were regularly held with
excellent bands, to which Frank and I were invariably invited
because we always gave such very good value, dancing every
dance, of course, with indefatigable elan, with as many
different partners as possible to ensure our future welcome at
breakfast-time (and tea time) on all twelve wards. We were
also very active in the BRISC, a social circle for the nonresident staff, organising gramophone dances, and amateur
nights in a spacious basement conference room during the
winter, and hikes and other healthy outings in the summer. But
this is to anticipate future involvements, when my intention
has been merely to sketch in the background against which these
and other, more extramural, activities such as operagoing were
to be pursued, with, it almost seems, the primary objective of
avoiding going home except to sleep and change my linen.
2
Before looking further into my life at the opera, however, one
other musical thread has to be followed for a while. Due
possibly to my experience with the recorder, on which I still
continued to tootle whenever the spirit moved me (and time
allowed), my interest in dance music and jazz had led me to
fantasise, in a way not uncommon among sixteen year old youths,
about performing to great acclaim on the instrument that seemed
to resemble it most - the clarinet. Since I had never actually
held one in my hand, when a specimen appeared in a local
pawnbroker's window, I took a keen interest in it, pausing to
examine its gleaming complexities through the glass each
morning on my way to work, and to make sure that it was still
there. It was priced at thirty shillings, a considerable
enough sum (at a time when ten cigarettes cost sixpence) to
inspire caution, but matters came to a head when I went to see
a film called "Second Chorus" in which the ostensible stars
were Fred Astaire and John Garfield, but the real attraction
was Artie Shaw and his Orchestra.
After watching entranced as Artie fingered his flashy way
through his "Concerto for Clarinet" (soon to be acquired as a
12" record and its every note learned by heart), I left the
cinema with my mind made up. The following Saturday I arranged
with the pawnbroker to pay five shillings deposit and five
shillings a week until the clarinet was mine. Never have five
weeks passed more slowly, but eventually I was allowed to carry
my trophy triumphantly home to be examined in loving detail for
the first time. I had already spent a shilling on a tutor book
called "First Steps in the Clarinet" and studied its diagrams
closely, making comparisons with the fingering on my recorder,
but I was totally unprepared for my initial inability to make
any sound at all by blowing into the mouthpiece. This was my
first encounter, of course, with a clarinet's cane reed, which,
unlike the recorder's whistle, has to be coaxed by the lips and
teeth into vibrating against the mouthpiece to create its
distinctive sound, and it was a very disconcerting experience.
How on earth was I going to follow in the footsteps of Artie
Shaw and Benny Goodman if I couldn't even get a peep out of the
thing?
Perseverance brought a modicum of success, of course, but in a
form that was a far cry from the liquid tones I had imagined
myself producing. Fortunately, my mother's cousin Harry, an
amiable giant who had taught me to swim some years earlier, had
a friend, universally known as Little Joe for the unsurprising
reason that he was of unusually diminutive stature, who,
enquiries now revealed, had, at some time in the past, played
the clarinet in a military band and was prepared to give me
lessons - at two bob a time, of course, since it was a firm
tenet of Yorkshire faith that anything that wasn't paid for
wasn't properly appreciated. As a result of this financial
incentive to extract as much benefit as possible from Little
Joe's lessons, very few of them were needed to put me in
possession of the essential skills and knowledge I required to
carry on teaching myself, free of charge, by diligent practice
- an activity which was not of an entirely solitary nature due
to the fact that my old pal Cliff, who still lived just up the
street, had meanwhile acquired, in similar fashion, a trumpet.
We were soon fumbling our way through simple duets, making much
more progress practising together than we would ever have done
alone and apart, spurred on by the prospect of playing the
popular music of the day in a manner that would evoke the
admiration of our contemporaries, if ever they could be
persuaded to grant us an audience. That such an opportunity
was not long in presenting itself owed less to our burgeoning
skills than to the apparently unrelated fact that, having left
Bradford a Methodist and returned as a confirmed member of the
Church of England, I had now joined Cliff in attending the
local parish church, conveniently situated in the next street,
just across the main road from our old school. This church,
like the one in Utley, had a church hall equipped to
accommodate the usual Whist Drives and Dances as well as plays
and concerts of various kinds, and it also had a thriving Young
People's Fellowship which, due possibly to the fact that it was
presided over by a young, handsome, and quite virile curate,
boasted several pretty girls as members.
The chemistry of this group was such that it wasn't very long
before we decided to put on our own show in the church hall,
and write all the material ourselves. The star attraction was,
of course, the curate, who turned out to have had relevant
experience of an unexpectedly ribald nature in his college
days, but Cliff and I, in addition to figuring comically in
certain sketches, were invited to provide some kind of
instrumental interlude, and, after a careful assessment of our
own inadequacies, decided to team up for the purpose with an
attractive girl called Audrey who we knew to be taking lessons
in jazz singing. The result was that, after much rehearsal,
Cliff and I played the bare minimum necessary to introduce and
accompany her in a couple of solo vocals before joining in a
quite creditable imitation of Bing Crosby, Jack Teagarden and
Mary Martin singing "The Waiter and the Porter, and the
Upstairs Maid" in a film called "Birth of the Blues" which we
had seen several times because it was mainly about jazz, and,
although Crosby's miming on the clarinet was a bit of a turn
off, featured several well-known jazz musicians.
Having made our stage debut to such good effect, and learned
much in the process, we were reluctant to return entirely to
"woodshedding" (as solitary practice is known among the jazz
fraternity) without exploring every possibility, however
remote, for further public performances, and, against all the
odds, our efforts struck oil in a most unlikely quarter. My
colleague Leonard at the BRI, although not noted for either his
wit and wisdom, or his social graces, turned out to have two
quite valuable but hitherto unsuspected virtues. The first of
these was an ability to play the piano - not as well as Brad,
of course, but, given the two-fisted determination with which
Leonard approached all life's challenges, good enough to cope
with a popular song if he had practised the piece and had the
music in front of him. The value of his second claim on my
interest was not so immediately obvious since it resided in the
fact that his father was employed by the Co-op, or The Cooperative Wholesale Society to give it it's full name, as a
butcher.
The Co-operative Movement was quite a power in the land in
those days, particularly in the North, because there was more
to it than shopping at the Co-op in order to claim a dividend,
or "divi", on the accumulated value of purchases recorded by a
cumbersome process involving the sticking of small strips of
paper in a little book. Membership of the Co-op carried with
it an entitlement to participate, on a democratic basis, in all
the other activities of the organisation, both political and
social, a privilege taken more advantage of by its employees
than its customers, as a result of which Leonard's father,
being a very active "co-operator", was a greater power in the
Bradford Co-op than his role behind the butcher's counter at
the suburban branch in Dudley Hill might imply. He held a
position of some authority, for example, at the Co-op
Institute, a substantial building in the city centre, nestling
discreetly in the shadow of the multi-story department store
which boasted the first moving staircase ever to be installed
in Bradford and was the jewel in the CWS's crown - the Co-op
Emporium.
The Co-op Institute, as it's name implies, was given over to
various kinds of group activities, mostly of an improving
nature, but, like a secular church, it housed a small assembly
hall, complete with stage, which could be used for, among other
things, dances. Private dances, of course, for the benefit
only of members and their families, held regularly on Saturday
nights, hitherto using gramophone records on a radiogram, but
they were desperate for a live band, provided that it cost
little or nothing. Thanks to Leonard's dad, we were invited to
attempt to satisfy this felt want, "we" being Leonard on piano,
Jack on violin, me on clarinet, and Cliff on trumpet, so, all
we lacked was a drummer, a gap not too difficult to fill as
there was a surfeit of youths in the population who aspired to
being such, some of whom, usually the only children of
indulgent parents, had acquired more than a pair of drumsticks
and a collection of pots and pans to play with. The grapevine
soon led us to one such, Vic, who lived in the next street to
Leonard, and possessed a full drum kit which he seemed to know
how to use.
Having recruited Vic, we had the makings of a band, but what
music were we going to play? Obviously, the popular songs of
the day, but all of us, except for Vic of course, needed some
form of musical score to read from if we were to perform for
the extended period required of us - two hours, at least.
Where was this to come from? Since none of us, apart from
Jack, was up to reading proper orchestrations, even if they
were available, the only solution was to beg, borrow, or, if
totally unavoidable, buy the piano sheet-music of as many
currently popular songs as we could muster (and Leonard could
master), and copy out the melody line of the choruses for Jack,
Cliff and me separately, transposing up a tone, of course, for
the two Bflat instruments. The end result was a performance in
which each number followed the same pattern - an opening chorus
with all the "front line" instruments playing together in
unison, followed by a solo chorus from each of them (sticking
strictly to the melody) and a final chorus, full ensemble,
still in unison - no variations, no modulations, no
harmonisations.
It must have sounded totally dire. To make matters worse, our
repertoire was at first so limited that we had to keep playing
the same few numbers over and over again, and even we felt
embarrassed about that. But, amazingly, none of these
shortcomings seemed to bother the young people who we found to
be dancing round the floor whenever we dared to look shyly up
from our labours. Round and round they went, completely
wrapped up in each other and the rhythms of the dance, quite
oblivious, it seemed, to the boringly repetitious monotony
emanating from the bandstand, and happy, even, to applaud after
each set.
At the end of the evening, against all the odds and
somewhat to our surprise, the success of our first "gig" at the
Co-op Institute turned out to have been such that we were given
five shillings each, and booked to perform there at regular
intervals throughout the rest of the winter. A dance band,
however misshapen and underweight, had been born!
From such inept beginnings, and given those frequent
opportunities to play together in public, we could not but
improve, and we did, with quite gratifying speed - or most of
us did! In due course I acquired, from another pawnbroker, an
Eflat alto saxophone, and Jack bought a Bflat tenor sax, thus
equipping us to play carefully selected portions of any bona
fide dance band orchestrations we could get hold of. Such
arrangements, we had learned, were the staple fare of the
numerous dance bands, pro. and semi-pro., servicing the many
dance halls, public and private, functioning in Bradford at the
time (as well as all those Saturday night hops in church halls
outside the city centre), but their existence had come as a
total revelation to us. Often based on arrangements made
famous by well-known big bands in their recordings or radio
broadcasts, they invariably consisted of separate band parts
for four or five saxophones (two altos, two tenors and a
baritone - all presumed to be doubling on clarinets), two or
three trumpets, one or two trombones, piano, bass, guitar and
drums, all woven together, often quite elaborately, with ad lib
solos for selected instruments and modulations, at times, into
fairly remote keys.
Central to these daunting complexities, however, there was
always a full chorus of the basic tune complete with vocal,
which could be separated out if necessary. In addition to
this, the principal parts (often four pages long, but formatted
sideways to open out flat for convenience, occasionally with a
second number printed on the reverse side) were cued in to
allow for key portions of the whole to be played by whatever
limited resources were available, all the way down to a basic
alto sax, piano and drums. Surprisingly, these compendious
publications cost only a few shillings each, which was still
enough to put them out of our reach at first, bearing in mind
that a substantial number of them was needed for a working
library, but they pointed the way forward for us, and the
problem of cost was eventually overcome by the purchase of a
second-hand library from a retired local dance-band leader.
But before that could happen, there were other problems which
were not so easily solved. The first, unfortunately, was
Leonard, who, it soon became clear, had been at the limit of
his capabilities from the onset and entertained no discernible
ambition to transcend either his own limitations or those of
the Co-op Institute. To make matters worse, he was totally
besotted with a girlfriend called Joyce, as was she with him,
to the extent that they insisted on her sitting by his side on
the bandstand, regardless of the embarrassment this caused the
rest of us. The same affliction was eventually to strike down
our drummer, Vic, but, in the meantime, it seemed inevitable
that Leonard would have to go, even if it meant losing our gigs
at the Co-op. Our second problem was that Cliff was rapidly
approaching the age of eighteen, and, unlike the rest of us,
was not in a reserved occupation and would soon be conscripted
into the armed forces.
Throughout the summer of 1943, with the tide of war finally
turning in favour of the Allies, I wrestled with the question
of where to take the band from here. Since the field we were
in was new to him, Jack's ability to assist with practical
solutions was limited, but we could always rely on getting
advice and help from Frank, whose relationship with the band
had been of an intimate but rather equivocal nature from the
very start. As a friend of Jack, Leonard, and me, and, through
me, inevitably, Cliff, he couldn't help getting involved in the
formation of the group, nor could he avoid feeling left out of
things when the band began to play at the Co-op. On the other
hand, as a connoisseur of jazz music and its derivatives, he
had found himself distinctly unimpressed by the sounds we
produced initially, and there was also the undeniable fact that
he did not possess a suitable instrument upon which to perform,
however badly, himself.
Frank's problem was that he had a keen musical ear feeding a
discerning taste for the kind of music we were aspiring to, and
a powerful yearning to play it himself superlatively well, but
he simply could not find an instrument which would allow him to
achieve this end without subjecting him to an intervening
period of humiliating inadequacy. By the end of the summer,
however, all these difficulties, including Frank's, had been
overcome and a bigger and better band had been formed. Through
Frank we found Les, a fellow pharmacy student at the Bradford
Technical College who played trombone in a local brass band,
and Les led us to Ken, a mechanical engineer who played trumpet
in the same band. Frank also recruited Bert, an old school
pal, who played acoustic guitar and worked as a draughtsman for
the engineering firm which also employed Ken. But the big
discovery was Jim, who, at the age of barely seventeen, had
already made a reputation for himself in Bradford as a jazz
pianist.
He was a big, slow-moving lad with enormous hands (spanning an
octave and a fourth) who simply lived for the piano, even
working among pianos in the backroom of J. Wood & Sons,
Bradford's biggest music shop, as a technician and tuner. He
was a master of all the famous jazz piano styles, Count Basie's
being his particular favourite, but he could play like Earl
Hines, Teddy Wilson, Fats Waller and Jimmy Yancey on demand,
and was already giving lessons in these techniques to other
pianists, but none of this talent could be inferred from a
demeanour which was modest in the extreme. He seemed flattered
that we had sought him out, and happy to join us when he
realised what it was we were hoping to achieve with such a
significantly bigger band than was needed for the simple task
of propelling the dancing couples round the sorts of hall in
which we could expect to perform, because it had now become our
declared ambition to play, not simply dance music, but the kind
of jazz that Frank and I so much admired, and, for this,
nothing less than an eight piece band would do.
It was an article of faith with us that such a band needed a
four-piece "rhythm section" - piano, string bass, guitar and
drums - to give it the necessary drive and "lift", and that the
rest should be built on this firm foundation. With alto sax,
tenor sax, trumpet and trombone it would then be possible to
give a good account of any dance band arrangements we could
acquire, but, more to the point, by substituting a clarinet for
the alto sax, we would have transformed ourselves into a group
with exactly the same instrumentation as those current wonders
of the jazz world, Muggsy Spanier's Ragtimers and The Bobcats,
in whose ineffable, improvisatory style it was our ultimate aim
to play. It was a novel idea, long before the Trad Jazz
Revival of the mid-fifties, to form an eight-piece dance band
with the object of playing some of the quick-steps and slow
foxtrots as a jazz band rather than a swing band, but it gave
us the best of both worlds, and we were quite prepared to
accept less money per head for our gigs for the pleasure of
playing our stuff in public to an appreciative audience.
With Jim's recruitment and the acquisition of that second-hand
library of orchestrations, we were able to start rehearsing in
earnest in whoever's front room was available, and parents
amenable. The next step was to write to the vicar of my local
church, to inform him of the existence in his very own parish
of a young and enthusiastic dance band, etc., etc., and invite
him to make use of our services at one of the monthly dances in
his church hall. As an active member of the Young People's
Fellowship and a regular communicant (Cliff and I competing
with each other for bigger swigs of the wine from the chalice)
I was quite well known to the vicar, of course, but he was a
rather indistinct figure to me. Short, balding, bespectacled,
and softly spoken, he was, unlike his curate, ill-equipped for
evangelical histrionics, but he turned out to be a pleasure to
deal with.
His letter back to me, poking gentle fun at the rather
overblown style in which my own had been composed, invited me
to call on him at the manse where he gave me tea and biscuits
and took great delight in showing me the filing system he had
installed to minimise the effort involved in discharging his
parochial duties, the most onerous of which, according to him,
was the production of two twenty minute sermons each week for
the Sunday morning and evening services without resorting to
the prefabricated tracts which were readily available to all
clergymen, apparently, at a price. To this end, the files in
one drawer of his cabinet bore labels such as "Compassion",
"Humility", "Salvation" and "Redemption" and into these it was
his habit to drop any relevant material he came across during
his daily reading in order to fish these bits and pieces out at
the appropriate time and make his burden less with a simple
scissors and paste job. Thus I watched our vicar metamorphose
into a small businessman, who, after asking a few intelligent
questions about the band, awarded us a trial engagement.
With the great day approaching, we were now practising in
deadly earnest, since what lay ahead of us was quite an ordeal
- a full three hours of hard pounding, during which we would be
expected to play about forty different numbers, not only the
quicksteps and foxtrots which were our meat and drink, but
waltzes, rhumbas, tangos, an Olde Thyme Medley (valeeta, St.
Bernard's waltz, military two-step) and something called the
Palais Glide. A major distraction was that, until the very
last moment, we still stood in need of a bassist to make our
dream come true, since, not surprisingly, there were very few
youths around who were sufficiently attracted by the unwieldy
contours and limited soloing scope of the double bass (the
electric bass guitar having not yet been invented) to take it
up in earnest. But, fortunately, help was at hand from an
unexpected quarter, because it was at this point that Frank
suddenly saw the light, and, after a complicated series of
manoeuvres, finally succeeded in joining us on the big night
after a bare minimum of familiarisation with a recently
borrowed instrument.
Although the double bass wasn't quite the instrument Frank had
imagined himself playing jazz on, it turned out to be ideally
suited to his temperament and abilities. By no means easy to
play well, even when limited to the perpetual pizzicato of
jazz, it was not too difficult to play adequately, given a good
ear, a proper understanding of its role in the rhythm section
of a jazz band, and the intelligence to keep within one's
current limitations when performing in public, all of which
Frank possessed in abundance. Other essentials, like digital
strength, physical stamina, and the ability to read and
understand chords, he would develop as he went along to make
him, in the end, one of the best jazz bassists in the West
Riding. Initially, of course, just to have him inside the band
looking out rather than outside looking in, was a great asset,
because, at that stage, half the band, three-quarters of the
front line in fact, had little previous experience of the jazz
idiom and would need coaching by those of us who had, if our
objective of playing fully improvised jazz was to be achieved.
Even with Frank's presence in the rhythm section, however, it
cannot be said that our debut as The Semitones (a name finally
chosen after a great deal of debate) was an unqualified
success, although everything went according to plan for about
90% of the time. As we worked our way through the programme,
our initial state of extreme nervous tension gradually
dissipated in the face of the evident pleasure the dancers were
taking in our performance, to such an extent that, during our
interval break we were feeling decidedly pleased with
ourselves. But the second half of any gig is always more
physically taxing than the first, and, given our inexperience,
there could be no relaxation in our intense concentration on
the dots for fear of making mistakes. Even so, the end was
clearly in sight and we were half way through "When Day is
Done", which was to be the last slow foxtrot of the evening,
before disaster struck in the shape, initially, of a completely
unscripted roll on the drums from Vic followed by a distinct
degeneration in the ensemble of the brass section.
With the band grinding to a halt around me, I tore my attention
away from my own part and looked up in some irritation to find
that Jim had fainted completely away and was sprawled insensate
over the piano keyboard. There was a moment of shocked
silence, broken only by Bert the Introvert's guitar still
ching-chinging doggedly along behind me, during which I
remembered that, for all his big, shambling frame, Jim had what
was called a "weak chest" (possibly the result of childhood
asthma developing, as it so often did in Bradford's soot-laden
fogs, into chronic bronchitis), which had probably made him
more vulnerable than the rest of us to the unprecedented strain
of the occasion. There was nothing for it but to invite the
bemused dancers to take a break, while we carried him into the
wings where he quickly recovered from his blackout but not from
the acute embarrassment that immediately overwhelmed him.
Fortunately, a pianist friend of his was on hand to take us
through to the last waltz, after playing which we were assured
by the ovation we got from the dance floor and the words of
praise from individual customers afterwards, that, in spite of
this hiatus, the Semitones were on their way.
In the two years that followed, as the band went from strength
to strength, Jim never passed out again, although, as a welcome
bonus, his chest remaining weak enough to prevent his call-up
into the armed forces when he reached the age of eighteen.
Superstitiously, however, by unspoken agreement, we never
played "When Day is Done" again. Vic soon forsook us to
concentrate on courting Rita and was replaced by John, a
trainee architect with much superior skills, whose ability to
read music, rare in a drummer, brought about an immediate
improvement in the sound of the band, and we were soon playing
virtually every Saturday night throughout the winter months to
enthusiastic crowds of dancers many of whom were keen enough to
follow us from hall to hall until we finally achieved the
ultimate success of becoming resident band at Frank's (and
Bert's) old school, which, being Roman Catholic, had no qualms
about holding regular fundraising dances in its fine main hall.
Obviously, the Semitones were more than just a dance band.
Being all of an age, and committed to playing swing and jazz
for pleasure more than profit, brought us together in frequent
happy association between gigs, particularly on Sunday
afternoons when we would forgather in Frank's front room,
initially to familiarise the brass section with the jazz idiom
by exposing them to the recorded sound of the bands we wished
to emulate, but, later, to listen to, and criticise, each
other's newly acquired records. Or we might wander round
Bradford city centre on Sunday evenings in a self-absorbed,
garrulous group before bestowing our patronage on some film or
other. Buying new arrangements for the band entailed a halfday's outing en masse to a specialist music shop in Leeds,
where we would stand around carefully scrutinising our
individual parts before voting on which numbers to buy.
Strange as it may seem today, we never went out boozing
together because none of us had yet developed a taste for
alcoholic beverages, although most of us smoked a great deal,
as was not uncommon at that time.
It may also be worth recording that none of us had the use of a
motor car, or only one of us was on the telephone. Our normal
fee for a gig was 10 pounds, made up of 1 pound each, plus 1
for the taxi and 1 for the Band Fund. As individuals, we were
able to travel to and from most of our gigs by public transport
but a taxi was needed for John's drum kit, our six music stands
(specially built to our own design), and, soon, a treasured
four-valve 15 watt amplifier with its single microphone for
instrumental solos, vocals and announcements. Wartime
restrictions made taxis a rather uncertain quantity, but we
struck up an early association with a very tall, very thin,
extremely haggard operator called Sid, whose taciturnity
prevented us from ever discovering whether his baggy-eyed
emaciation was due to the pressures of his lifestyle or
whatever disease it was that had kept him out of the armed
forces, but he soon became known to us as "Bloody Sid" because
of the uncertainty which often seemed to surround his
movements, particularly when he was booked to pick us up in
some out of the way spot after a gig.
Sid's redeeming feature was his large saloon car, big enough to
accommodate six passengers, thanks to the two drop-down seats
facing the back seat, but into which, on one memorable
occasion, we managed to cram all eight of us with our entire
paraphernalia - the double bass strapped, as usual, on the
nearside running board, the drum kit on the top luggage rack,
the music stands and tenor sax on the rear rack (there being no
boot, as such, in those cars), and the rest of the instruments
and our precious amp inside on our laps, but only after an
extra passenger had been piled on the one already in the front
seat, and another (which happened to be me) balanced,
precariously and painfully, between the two drop-down seats in
the back. These extreme measures were required for a very
special gig at the Armley Baths Hall in distant Leeds, and
never has a half-hour journey seemed so long. On arrival, I
fell out onto the pavement, unable to stand up until normal
circulation had returned to my legs.
Fortunately, such impositions were rare, and, by way of
compensation, there were frequent occasions when, after a gig,
our gear could be sent off in the taxi together with the more
distantly dwelling of our number, allowing the rest of us to
walk home together across Bradford, dropping off, one by one,
as each of our destinations was reached, until only Frank and
me were left. The warm glow of shared achievement and
companionship which enveloped us, as we talked our way through
the lamplit streets under the moon and stars towards a final
mug of tea in front of a dying fire in one of the homes of we
last two before reluctantly going our separate ways to bed,
made such moments memorable indeed. I find myself looking back
on the Semitones with unalloyed pleasure, not because we never
had a dud gig, or a painful experience - we had several of both
- nor because we achieved great heights of excellence in our
performances, which were never more than a sketchy caricature
of what we were aiming at, but because, whatever befell us,
there was never any significant friction within the band.
In spite of our diverse personalities, occupations, and other
interests, we continued to enjoy playing together (for less
money than many of us could have earned with other bands),
accepting each other's peculiarities of taste and behaviour
with tolerant good humour, until the band finally broke up for
reasons quite beyond our control. Perhaps if we had stayed
together longer and been more ambitious for commercial success,
cracks would have appeared in the cement which bound us
together. As it was, none of us had any wish to "turn
professional" and none of the others exhibited the slightest
interest in the larger world of music which Jack and I were
continuing to explore, in parallel, as it were, with our
commitment to the band, occasionally going directly to a
Saturday night gig from an afternoon concert which we had been
obliged to attend wearing our evening dress suits, the regular
working uniform of the dance band musician, discreetly shrouded
under gaberdine raincoats.
3.
In those days, the City of Bradford was a County Borough, ruled
over by something called "t'Corporation" which meant that it
was virtually a self-governing island, so complete unto itself
that there was little need for the inhabitants to venture
outside its boundaries, other than to visit the countryside,
the seaside, or London, where, admittedly, certain things were
to be found which were not available in Bradford.
The larger
city of Leeds was only a few miles away, but there was little
in Leeds that could not be more conveniently obtained in
Bradford, and, until I went there with the Semitones for those
band parts, I had only ever been to Leeds to board a "sharrer"
(short for charabanc) to Bridlington for the annual family
holidays of my childhood, which were always taken during
Bowling Tide Week (a Tide being a Fair, and this one being
traditionally held in the suburban village of Bowling), when
all the mills and factories in Bradford closed down
simultaneously.
Bradford's superior educational system has already been
referred to, as has its extensive public transport network,
access to which never seemed to be more than a short walk away.
In addition to nurturing a Yorkshire County Cricket ground and
a thriving weekend cricket league, each village suburb fielding
its own team, Bradford had two soccer teams in the Football
League - Bradford (Park Avenue) and Bradford City - and one
team, Bradford Northern, in the Rugby League. There were two
main line railway stations in the city centre - the London,
North Eastern's Bradford (Exchange), and the London, Midland
and Scottish's Bradford (Forster Square) - both of which, given
the height of the Pennine Hills to the west, were termini
facing in opposite directions, north and south, only a few
hundred yards apart, but with the commercial heart of the city
in between. There was a Bradford Cathedral, the size of a
large parish church, and a massive Town Hall, the most
impressive building in the city centre, with a clock tower,
modelled on that of a famous Florentine building [check this
out], which was audible and even visible, on a clear day, from
virtually everywhere in the city.
Other large municipal buildings were the Bradford Technical
College, a well-stocked Central Library, the Central Swimming
Baths which doubled ingeniously as a ballroom, and, out at
Manningham Park, on the way to Keighley, below the enormous
bulk of Lister's Mill with it's towering mill chimney round the
top of which it was said to be possible to drive a horse and
cart, there was a City Museum housed in an imposingly Grecian
be-columned edifice called Cartwright Hall. This being
Yorkshire, however, the motivation behind the provision of
these admirable civic amenities was of a distinctly practical
nature, aimed at improving the minds and bodies of the
ratepaying population in measurable ways. Consequently,
although there was a branch public lending library and even a
public bath house (always referred to as the "slipper baths")
within a short walk of my own home, and no less than three
public swimming baths within a radius of a mile of it, there
was no municipal concert hall in Bradford's city centre.
Fortunately, there was that mega Methodist chapel, the
Eastbrook Hall, easily converted, like the Bethesda chapel of
my childhood, if on a much grander scale, into a quite
serviceable concert hall (for the audience at least), to which
I had been taken by my old school to first hear the Halle
Orchestra play. It was there that my school held its annual
Speech Day and it was there that the Saturday afternoon
concerts were given which Jack and I attended before sometimes
going on to play in the Semitones. But this was some time
after we had first gone to the opera together, in August, 1942,
barely six months after I had started work at the BRI and
almost exactly one year to the day after experiencing my first
opera in Keighley. And, once again, it was the Sadler's Wells
Opera Company, still on permanent tour.
There were two commercial theatres in Bradford at the time,
both of them in the hands of that great Northern impresario,
Francis Laidler, as was, indeed, the Keighley Hippodrome. One,
the imposing, free-standing Alhambra, dominated one corner of
Town Hall Square with its twin towers and large, ornamental
dome, the other, the smaller, less conspicuous Prince's Theatre
facing one side of it from beyond the cenotaph. The Alhambra
was renowned throughout Yorkshire for its magnificent Christmas
Pantomimes featuring national, and even international,
celebrities of stage, screen and radio, and for the equally
star-studded variety shows it mounted during the rest of the
year. The Prince's was occupied, for most of the time, by a
repertory theatre company known locally as "'Arry 'Anson's
Players" who performed there twice nightly, with matinees on
Wednesday and Saturday, mostly drawingroom dramas. Not
surprisingly, it was to the Prince's Theatre that the Sadler's
Wells Opera Company came when they visited Bradford, which they
continued to do, I'm happy to say, at irregular intervals until
the end of the war.
Although slightly larger than the Keighley Hippodrome, the
Prince's was cast in the same Victorian mould, with stalls,
circle, and an upper circle, where my friend and I were
invariably to be found on these occasions because, at a time
when I was earning only seventeen shillings and sixpence a
week, the cheapness of the seats made it possible for us to
afford all the four operas usually included in the week's
repertoire, each given twice (there being six evening
performances and matinees on Thursday and Saturday). But
sitting in "t'Gods", at the Prince's Theatre, was a unique
experience in its own right, since there were no separate seats
up there, only mounting rows of thinly-padded, continuous
benches, curving round from one end of the balcony to the
other. One consequence of this was that seats could not be
reserved in advance, and only secured by queueing in the street
outside the side door of the theatre until the box office
opened before the performance.
With the war now in its third year, there was no shortage of
supplicants for a glimpse of other, more colourful worlds
through any crack in the ambient austerity surrounding them, so
the queues for balcony seats for those opera performance at the
Prince's began to form early, and, by the time the doors
opened, had grown to seemingly over-optimistic lengths. But
Jack and I were always well to the fore, and, having bought our
tickets, would race up the spiral staircase to bag the best
possible positions on the front benches, spreading our limbs
out, once there, to occupy as comfortable an amount of space as
possible. All around us, other patrons, mainly the impecunious
young, would be similarly engaged in staking their claims until
all the benches seemed to be completely full, at which point, a
uniformed attendant of burly build, who soon became known to us
as "The Bumshifter", would appear, and proceed, by a series of
increasingly expressive gestures, to persuade, cajole or bully
those already in situ to squeeze up closer together along the
benches and make it possible for another quantum of ticket
holders to be admitted.
To this day, I cannot encounter the expression "a packed house"
without recalling that solid wall of humanity, stacked up into
the roof of the Prince's Theatre, Bradford. It was a far cry
from the stalls at the Hippodrome, Keighley, from which I had
viewed my first operas in such ideal conditions, but I soon
learned that, when the lights went down and the curtain went
up, silence would descend, all fidgeting cease, and any sense
of discomfort go into suspension (together, usually, with my
disbelief) as the music drama took hold. But, unfortunately,
the work performed on that first Monday evening in August,
1942, was Puccini's "Madame Butterfly" and the magic didn't
work quite as well as I had led myself to expect.
For a start, there was no overture, as such, just a few dozen
bars of incidental music allowing time for the audience to
inspect the quaint oriental interior revealed by the rising
curtain before an American naval lieutenant in uniform and a
Japanese native in a curious mixture of traditional and western
attire entered and began discussing the idiosyncrasies of the
local domestic architecture and the country's property laws
before moving on to inspect the servants. This was followed by
the arrival of an older Yank in civvies and a conversation
between the two compatriots about a forthcoming marriage,
punctuated by exchanges on the subject of liquid refreshment
such as "Another whisky?" "Yes, but not much soda", all of
which I found rather uninvolving.
Obviously, I knew who these characters were and what they were
up to, thanks to information gleaned from the programme, and,
as the first act unfolded, snatches of melody were sung from
time to time which sounded quite promising, but none of them
ever seemed to really got going. Early in the second act the
tragic heroine sang the only identifiably complete song in the
opera, "One Fine Day", and at the end of the act there was the
charming Humming Chorus, but the last act, absorbing though the
drama had now become, yielded nothing I could take away with me
except a resolve to find out what there was about the opera
that I had missed.
It never occurred to me to doubt that the
fault was in myself, since I took it entirely for granted that
Sadler's Wells would not have brought any but their most
deservedly popular operas to wartime Bradford. Perhaps I
should add that, this deferential attitude to any acclaimed
artistic masterpiece which I personally found unrewarding on
first acquaintance, was to stand me in pretty good stead until
my own critical faculties were sufficiently well-developed for
me to trust my own judgement. I can recommend it.
What I did not appreciate at the time was that Puccini's
"Madame Butterfly" was a twentieth century opera (1904),
whereas Verdi's "La Traviata" had been written in the
nineteenth (1853), and Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" in the
eighteenth centuries (1786), and that, during the hundred and
twenty years between the first and the last of these, there had
been a continuous evolution in the complexity and scope of
European orchestral music which had not only been reflected in
the operas conceived while it was taking place, but had owed a
great deal to innovations made by the composers of those very
same operas, who, striving always after increasingly dramatic
effect, were freer to experiment with orchestral colour and
even musical form in the opera house than in the concert hall.
As a result of these pressures, the operatic conventions
inherited from the seventeenth century had been fashioned into
new and quite different shapes.
I was eventually to learn that opera, as a distinct art form,
had been literally invented, from scratch, in Florence in 1597,
long before Mozart, by a group of artists, musicians and poets
in imitation of what they imagined to be the characteristics of
classic Greek drama, a combination of all the arts - poetry,
drama, music, singing, dancing, and scene painting - in one
vehicle. The idea caught on, particularly in Venice, and the
earliest surviving operas still performed today are those of
Monteverdi - "Orpheus" (1607), "The Return of Ulysses" (1641),
and "The Coronation of Poppea"(1642). These are by no means
museum pieces, and the last two in particular can, in
sympathetic hands, be more engaging than many of the operas
produced in later years when opera had become a popular form of
entertainment throughout the whole of Europe. By which time
three different kinds of opera had developed.
The two most prominent forms were Italian in origin - serious
opera (opera seria) and comic opera (opera buffa) - each with
its own set of conventions, although both relied on the
unfolding of a story line upon which separate songs (arias)
were strung like beads, and such dialogue as was required to
move the plot along between the arias was sung, to sketchy
instrumental accompaniment, in a sort of declamatory freestyle
chant called recitative. Opera seria concerned itself with
stories and legends, usually of a tragic nature, about the
gods, heroes, kings, and queens of antiquity, who expressed
themselves, because of their exalted status, entirely in
elaborately ornamented solo arias of an introspective nature,
which were delivered by singers of such highly acclaimed
virtuosity that credibility of plot was progressively
sacrificed on the alter of vocal display.
Opera buffa was
developed in reaction to the unremitting nobility of the
sentiments aired by one statuesque protagonist after another in
opera seria, drawing on earlier forms of popular musical
entertainment, such as the traditional comedia del arte, to
portray more recognisable, less morally elevated characters,
usually involved in amorous intrigues of a sufficiently
convoluted nature to give rise to duets, trios, quartets, and
other ensembles of an exhilarating complexity.
This is the
style in which Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" was composed.
Meanwhile, in countries outside Italy, other forms of light
opera were being developed using the local vernacular, with
spoken dialogue between the songs instead of recitative. This
was known as ballad opera in England, opera comique in France,
singspiel in Germany, and zarzuella in Spain. Mozart wrote two
fine examples of singspiel, "The Escape from the Seraglio" and
"The Magic Flute" which still feature in the popular
repertoire. Mozart, in fact, played a pivotal role in the
development of opera, moving freely between opera seria, opera
buffa and singspiel, allowing his genius to disregard the
conventions whenever it suited him to introduce elements of
opera seria into both opera buffa and singspiel. His
masterpiece, "Don Giovanni", is ostensibly a free-flowing opera
buffa, but it starts with an indecent assault followed quickly
by a murder, and ends with the unrepentant culprit being
dragged down to hell by an animated stone statue. Lots of fun
and games in between, of course, but dark deeds and detective
work dominate the plot and colour the music to such an extent
that what is arguably the greatest opera ever written is quite
impossible to categorise.
By Verdi's time, commercial pressures (particularly from the
bourgeois Parisian audiences whose tastes now dominated the
European operatic scene), had continued the erosion of these
earlier distinctions until opera seria had become grand opera,
which, as the name implies, was as lavishly mounted as the size
of the theatre and the ingenuity of its stage machinery would
allow. Like opera seria, it was sung throughout, but now told
romantic tales with tragic endings about members of the upper
classes who had figured in momentous events in the not too
distant past, or in contemporary plays or novels on similar
themes. It differed from opera seria, also, in featuring onstage choruses and ballets as well as ensembles ranging from
duets to sextets between the various protagonists whenever a
suitable opportunity to do so arose from the plot, all of them
borrowings, originally, from opera buffa, which, itself,
continued to thrive in a "grander" form. As did opera comique,
which, in spite of its name, was not necessarily funny in
intention. and differed from grand opera, in the end, only by
involving more characters from the lower orders and using
spoken dialogue between the arias.
More importantly for the future, however, was the tendency in
the mainstream grand opera for the demarcation between
recitative and aria to disappear as the dialogue between the
arias, and the orchestral accompaniment to it, became more
aria-like (or arioso) in conception, and the arias became less
decorative and introspective. Because it dared to be a
contemporary moral tale rather than a romantic period drama,
Verdi's "La Traviata" was a commercial failure when it was
first performed, but, in other respects, it is not untypical of
the grand opera of its period. The luxurious salon-ballroomcasino scenes allow plenty of scope for extravagant display and
even for the introduction of the ballet dancers, with whom the
Parisian male audiences were so besotted that no opera was
thought to be complete without them. More remarkable, however,
is the continuous, sinewy flow of the music, carrying the
action along and supporting the vocal line between the arias,
particularly in the all-important first act which gets the
story off to flying start. There are several recognisably
distinct arias in this act but they seem to emerge quite
naturally from the sung dialogue, and, although they contain a
certain amount of decoration and even some repetition, their
gist is to move the story forward instead of holding up the
action in the interests of vocal display, as had the arias in
the opera seria of the past. Clearly, the dramatic is taking
over from the decorative.
But it was a contemporary of Verdi's, the German composer
Richard Wagner (whose works I had yet to encounter), who took
the ultimate step of integrating all the contributory elements
of traditional opera into one continuously unfolding tapestry
of interwoven words and music, and ensure that, by the time
Puccini came to write "Madame Butterfly" the transformation, in
Italian opera, was complete, and the boundaries between
dialogue and aria had all but disappeared in the interests of
realism, or verismo, as it was called when it was adopted as a
deliberate style of opera composition in the 1890s. Decoration
and repetition had also gone from the vocal line and even from
the orchestral accompaniment which now took on a significantly
expanded role in the narration of the story, in fact, the
orchestra had become, not only a major player in the drama, but
a reliable source of information about what was happening on
the stage. Thus, the musical structure of opera had grown to
resemble that of a symphonic poem, or, better still, a concerto
for voices and orchestra, in which significant patterns emerge
in either the vocal line or the orchestral accompaniment, and
are developed, intertwined, distorted, and deconstructed to any
extent that might serve to increase the emotional impact of the
drama.
Little wonder, then, that, after "The Marriage of Figaro", and
"La Traviata", I found "Madame Butterfly" rather unrewarding on
first acquaintance. I was sixteen, I was looking at the
surface and listening for the songs. By the time Sadler's
Wells brought the opera to Bradford again (with no less a
person than Joan Cross in the title role) I was learning to
listen to the music three-dimensionally, as it were, and
Puccini's magic had begun to cast the spell which continues to
bind me to his operas today. How, I ask myself now, could I
ever have found that first act of "Madame Butterfly" with its
heavenly choir announcing the arrival of the bride and her
retinue, its brutal execration of the apostate Butterfly by her
uncle the Bonze, and its final love duet, probably the most
erotic piece of musical intercourse ever performed on an
operatic stage, all this thematic material woven throughout the
act into one organic whole, how could I ever have found it so
uninvolving? But I did then. Fortunately. however, the
following evening my friend and I went to the opera again, this
time it was Verdi's "Rigoletto". What a comeback!
If anything was needed to restore my belief in opera as value
for money, it was this masterpiece of Verdi's middle period.
"Rigoletto" has everything - a convincing storyline, lifelike
characters interacting with each other in ways which inspired
Verdi to produce a wider variety of vocal and orchestral
effects than he had ever done before. It was a milestone in a
career which still had more than forty successful years to go,
and he himself was known to refer to it later as his best
opera, describing it once as "...the best subject as regards
theatrical effect that I've ever set to music." It certainly
went down well with me. I sat through it completely entranced
by the story and the music, unfolding in a seemingly continuous
succession of arias, many of which I recognised - choruses,
solos, duets, trios, culminating, of course, in the famous
quartet in the last act. [For the record, Rigoletto was sung
that night by Tom Williams, the Duke by Ben Williams (there was
even a Rhys Williams singing Borsa!), Gilda by Rose Hill, the
murderous Sparafucile, one of my favourite opera characters, by
Roderick Lloyd (the Welsh were out in force, it seems, with
Myfanwy Edwards singing Giovanna), and Maddalena by Rose
Morris].
After "Rigoletto", only the wildest of horses could have
prevented me from going to any opera that came Bradford's way
during the next four years, and I soon found that such
visitations did not depend only on the wartime wanderings of
Sadler's Wells. Surprising as it may seem today, there was
another opera company in existence at the time which had been
touring the provinces since long before Sadler's Wells had been
blitzed into doing so. Now called the Royal Carl Rosa Opera
Company, it had been founded as long ago as 1873 by a German
violinist of that name, allegedly as a showcase for the talents
of his wife, Euphrosene Parepa, an English-born soprano of
Greek/Italian parentage, but with the overt aim of presenting
opera in English, and had not only given the first performances
in English of such famous works as "The Flying Dutchman",
"Rienzi", "Lohengrin", "Carmen", and "Aida" but had also
commissioned a number of British composers to write operas for
the company.
[I later learned that, in its heyday the Carl Rosa had three
ensembles touring simultaneously and even had its own train,
with its principals up front, gentlemen's chorus behind and a
separate carriage for the ladies chorus. The company began to
flounder after WWII and finally folded in 1960. Its reserves
were used to support a trust charged with maintaining its
historic costume collection and music archive and funding
scholarships for young singers. Amazingly resuscitated in 1998
for a three week tour of the North of England to celebrate the
125th anniversary of its foundation which was so successful
that a three month season followed in 1999 and by 2000, an
ensemble of 60+ singers and musicians was performing for 47
weeks a year and embarked on a tour of ANZ in 2001, Japan on
2002.]
Originally given to mounting long London seasons followed by
star-studded stints in Manchester and other major provincial
cities, plus tours of America, by the time it came to my
grateful attention the Carl Rosa had undoubtedly seen better
days, but I didn't know that then, although it was obvious,
even to me, that the company's singers did not quite measure up
to the vocal talents of the Sadler's Wells team. What the Carl
Rosa did have, however, was the scenery and props available to
mount more ambitious productions, and, being an established
touring company, to do this at the more prestigious Alhambra
whenever it visited Bradford. For my friend and me, this meant
the relative luxury of separate Upper Circle seats, bookable in
advance, and relief from the attentions of the Prince's
Theatre's "Bumshifter", although it has to be said that the
Alhambra had the steepest rake of an Upper Circle I have ever
encountered. Taking one's seat up there for the first time
could be a rather unnerving experience (and probably still is),
a bit like looking over the edge of a cliff. I can remember on
one occasion, meeting, as I was going in, two soldiers coming
out, one of whom, obviously distressed and pale, was trying to
explain to the other that he couldn't possibly occupy the seat
he had just purchased without being taken ill. The poor devil
must have been acrophobic.
Unfortunately, my only Carl Rosa programmes to have survived
the vicissitudes of my seventy plus years on earth since then,
are for Johann Strauss's "Die Fledermaus" and Puccini's "La
Boheme", but I know that I also saw them do Verdi's "Il
Trovatore" and that ever popular double bill of short operas,
Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana" and Leoncavello's "I
Pagliacci" (commonly known as "Cav and Pag"). I know this
because I can clearly remember two things about these
performances which might serve to convey the flavour of those
wartime Carl Rosa productions.
The first occurred in the
second act of "Il Trovatore" when the curtain rose on the
famous Anvil Chorus to reveal that, in the hope of lending an
air of verisimilitude to the proceedings, a fully functioning
electrical carbon arc had been incorporated into the hammer and
anvil of one of the labouring blacksmiths. The result was that
three of the gypsies were hammering away mightily to no visible
effect while a fourth was lightly touching hammer to anvil with
extreme caution to produce an almighty blinding flash which was
not only rather distracting to the cast, but gave rise to much
rib-nudging in the upper circle.
The other incident arose from the exigencies of the plot and
the casting of a particular performance of "Cavalleria
Rusticana", in the second half of which, Alfio, the wronged
husband, challenges Turiddu, the adulterer, to a duel. In
accepting the challenge, Turiddu is obliged by Sicilian custom
(this being a verismo opera) to grab hold of Alfio and bite his
ear, an action which, difficult enough as it was to interpret
when first beheld, was rendered even more ambiguous, in the
Carl Rosa production, by the fact that the role of Alfio was
filled by Kingsley Lark, well-known at the time for being "the
tallest man in opera", standing well over six feet, while the
tenor playing Turiddu was barely five feet tall and rather on
the plump side. This meant that we were treated to the
spectacle of an impassioned Turiddu rushing across the stage to
leap up and wrap his arms around the neck of an Alfio who had
obligingly bent himself forward to receive what looked very
like a fond embrace sealed with a loving kiss.
sorting out, as they say in Yorkshire.
It took some
Verdi wrote "Il Trovatore" between "Rigoletto" and "La
Traviata" and it contains some of his finest music, but, unlike
the other two, it tells a story which is dramatically
unconvincing. The opera is notorious for the alleged
incomprehensibility of its plot, but this is not entirely fair,
since, compared with, say, Verdi's own "Simon Boccanegra", the
plot of "Il Trovatore" is a model of clarity, although it does
rely rather heavily on a lot of early exposition of the "letme-remind-all-of-you-that-the-boss-is-madly-in-love-with-theheroine-and-very-jealous-of-an-elusive-rival" variety, and even
has to resort to the "tell-us-that-story-again-old-man-abouthow-the-boss's-brother-mysteriously-disappeared-about-twentyyears-ago" ploy in order to prepare the audience for future
developments. And it has to be conceded that, even when sung
in English, this important information can be difficult to
grasp, but the real problem is the unbelievability of the plot
which harks back to the days when the libretto of an opera was
expected to provide excuses, rather than reasons, for the arias
to be sung, and characters were motivated and behaved in ways
which served this purpose with little regard for the realities
of life as it was actually lived.
None of which prevented "Il Trovatore" from being a big success
from the beginning, nor its music from becoming immensely
popular in the world outside the opera house, but the fact that
it could be enjoyed for the music alone did not blind me to its
shortcomings, even at that first encounter, because I was
already beginning to learn from my own reactions to it that
opera, as music drama, can be more powerfully affecting than
either music or drama experienced separately. For this magic
to work, however, there has to be something like a chemical
reaction between the constituent elements to produce an effect
which is more than the sum of its parts and makes the whole
work superior in quality to the music, or the drama, or even
the singing that goes into it. For me, the catalyst for this
transmutation seems to lie in the credibility of the characters
and the extent to which I can be persuaded to care about them.
The importance of this extra dimension was made apparent to me
by the juxtaposition of "Cav and Pag". Mascagni's "Cavalleria
Rusticana" was sensationally successful when it first appeared
in 1890 and is credited with initiating the verismo movement in
opera by exploring rough peasant life in a remote Sicilian
village "according to concepts which are absolutely modern (in
that) its music springs and spreads solely from the situation
and not according to the old pattern of construction (based) on
the aria." as one eminent contemporary critic wrote. There is
no doubt that Mascagni's music is arresting, although it
features both arias and choruses which would not have seemed
out of place in more conventional operas of the time, and there
are passages where the emotional weight of the music overloads
the banality of the words being sung.
The plot, however, is easy to follow, since it verges on the
vestigial and is entirely set in the village square on Easter
Sunday, but it doesn't get going until a good deal of local
colour has been evoked, first, by a chorus of villagers singing
about the joys of being villagers, then, by Alfio, a waggoner,
singing about the joys of being a waggoner. After the
villagers have gone into church, what eventually emerges, as
told by a young woman, Santuzza, to an older one, Lucia, who
keeps the corner wineshop, is that the latter's son, the
eponymous hero, Turridu, an unemployed ex-soldier, is a man
with few redeeming features. Having previously seduced
Santuzza with promises of marriage, he has now cast her aside
to pursue an adulterous affair with the lovely Lola, whenever
her husband, Alfio, is waggoning away from home. This
exposition is followed by a static choral number, an Easter
Hymn, after which everyone goes into church except Santuzza,
who waits to confront Turridu, when he finally makes his
appearance, with her knowledge of his affair with Lola, and
begs him to make an honest doormat of her, a request which
Turridu contemptuously refuses after abusing her for spying on
him. Their conversation is interrupted at one point by Lola
herself flouncing across the stage on her belated way to
church, giving the guilty pair an opportunity to humiliate
Santuzza still further by flaunting their illicit relationship
at her.
After Turridu has followed Lola into church, along comes Alfio,
also late for church, to be told by the now vengeful Santuzza
about what has been going on in his bed behind his back. Not
surprisingly, Alfio reacts to this news with threats of
violence against his wife's lover, whereupon Santuzza is moved
to indulge in remorse for her indiscretion before they both go
off, leaving the stage empty for the famously lyrical
orchestral Intermezzo, after which events take their inevitable
course. The villagers emerge from the church and head for the
wineshop where Turridu sings an ingratiating drinking song, but
Alfio insults the offered wine in words which leave Turridu
with no alternative but to bite his ear. Alfio exits to await
their confrontation in the orchard, while Turridu, rather
confusingly, voices concern about what will become of Santuzza
if he loses the knife fight, and, after asking his bemused
mother for her blessing and urging her to take care of Santuzza
if anything should happen to him, rushes off to meet his doom,
which is announced by an off-stage scream and suitably
portentious music barely sixty seconds after his departure.
Apart from the ear-biting incident, itself just another piece
of local colour added on for effect, there is so little onstage action in "Cavalleria Rusticana" that the piece could be
performed in the concert hall as an oratorio with little loss
of dramatic impact, thus failing what was to become, in my
view, the acid test of opera-worthiness. But no such criticism
can be levelled at Leoncavello's "Pagliacci", which appeared
only two years later with a libretto by the composer, allegedly
based on an actual incident. This opera also takes place in an
Italian village square, where a temporary stage has been
erected for a performance later that Easter Monday evening by a
troupe of travelling comedia del arte players, of which the
opera's principal protagonists, Canio, the middle-aged actormanager, Nedda, his lovely young wife, and Tonio, an ugly
hunchback, are members.
Before the opening scene can be
revealed, however, the overture is dramatically interrupted by
Tonio bursting through the curtains, in full clown's fig, to
sing a prologue at the startled audience which sets out the
underlying theme of what is to follow.
The gist of this well-known aria is that, under their fancy
costumes and make-up, actors are ordinary human beings, subject
to the same feelings, faults and failings as the audience, a
fact which the drama they are about to witness will
demonstrate. The curtain then rises on a scene of great
excitement among the villagers as the troupe arrives on site
with drums beating and much comic hoop-la. During the course
of these celebrations, however, Canio is provoked into
revealing a jealous nature when the crowd pokes fun at him over
a piece of impromptu character-acting between Tonio and Nedda.
He declares that he may be made a fool of by Columbine's
flirtations with Harlequin on stage but anyone trying it on
with his wife in real life would elicit quite a different
response. After announcing the time of the evening's
performance, Canio and the other member of the troup, Peppe
(the Harlequin), go off with some of the village men to the
local pub, but Tonio elects to stay behind.
Alone with Nedda, the shambling hunchback clumsily reveals that
he is harbouring a genuine passion for her, and although Nedda
treats this declaration as a joke at first, when Tonio tries to
demonstrate his ardour, she cannot conceal her revulsion and
beats him off with a whip, after which he slinks away, vowing
to take his revenge. An opportunity to do so quickly presents
itself when a young man called Silvio enters to reveal himself
as Nedda's secret lover, and tries to persuade her to give up
her wandering life and come away with him, little knowing that
their preliminary embraces have been observed by the still
lurking Tonio who has gone off to fetch Canio from the tavern.
The two of them arrive back just as Nedda has agreed to elope
with Silvio after the evening's performance and the couple are
again demonstrating their affection for each other, at the
sight of which Canio explodes with rage and pursues the fleeing
Silvio into the woods, leaving Tonio to gloat over Nedda's
predicament.
When the distraught Canio returns, having failed to catch up
with his quarry, he threatens to kill Nedda unless she tells
him the name of her lover, something which she steadfastly
refuses to do, but before he can carry out his threat, Tonio
takes him aside and advises him to hold his hand, pointing out
that Nedda's lover will certainly be in the audience for the
evening's performance and might somehow reveal himself. This
calms Canio down sufficiently for him to declare that, as the
show must go on, he will deal with Nedda later, but, left alone
to prepare himself for the performance, he gives vent to his
true feelings about this tactic in one of the most famous (and
self-pitying) arias ever written.
The dramatic impact of the second part of "Pagliacci" owes much
to the fact that the action takes place on a stage on the
stage. The audience assembles, the curtain rises and the
players begin to perform their well-worn routines to the
accompaniment of suitably light-hearted music. Pagliacco is
enticed away by Taddeo so that Columbine can entertain
Harlequin to supper in his absence, much to the delight of the
audience, but a sombre note soon intrudes as Canio, unable to
control his feelings when returning to the stage, steps out of
character to reproach Nedda for her infidelity, something which
the audience greets at first as a new and entertaining twist to
the old plot. The tension heightens as Nedda tries desperately
to return to the spirit of the original comedy, but Canio is
too far gone in rage and demands to know the name of her lover.
When she replies inconsequentially with the forced lightness of
a Columbine, he snaps completely and, picking up a table knife,
stabs her in the heart. Realising, too late, that Nedda needs
help, Silvio rushes to her assistance from his place in the now
horrified audience only to be stabbed to death himself by
Canio, who then lowers the curtain and tells us that the comedy
is ended.
Now, that is an opera! It may be second rate drama set to
second rate music, but, in my book at least, it is undoubtedly
first rate opera. All the action takes place on stage, the
characters are well enough drawn for us to empathise with them,
they interact with each other in credible ways, and sing
passionate words set to music which adds to their emotional
weight without overloading them. Little wonder, then, that
"Pagliacci" was as big a hit as "Cavalleria Rusticana" had
been, nor that the two operas became so indissolubly linked
together in the operatic repertoire. On the strength of this
achievement, both Mascagni and Leoncavello went on to write
further operas, but none of these has stood the test of time,
although Leoncavello did enjoy some success with his "La
Boheme", but, unfortunately, it wasn't as good as Puccini's
version which had appeared the year before.
"La Boheme" was Puccini's first really verismo opera, but I was
unaware of this distinction when I saw it done by the Carl
Rosa, who, incidentally, had been responsible for its first
performance in England back in 1897. Fortunately, I found it
less uninvolving on first acquaintance than "Madame Butterfly",
having been bounced by Puccini, once again, sans overture,
straight into the opera buffa behaviour of an impecunious and
irreverent bunch of male bohemians (poet, painter, scholar and
musician) making mock high drama out of trying to keep
themselves warm and fed (and avoid paying the rent) in their
Parisian garret. This opening sequence of male voice duet,
trio, quartet, and, finally (with the arrival of the landlord),
quintet could hardly fail to be entertaining, but, cleverly
written as it is, it depends, for its full effect, on a better
understanding of the genuinely witty words than can usually be
obtained from a live performance, even when sung in English.
It was to be many years before I came to appreciate this fact
while watching the opera sung in Italian, but subtitled in
English, on video.
There is no difficulty, however, in following what transpires
when a young lady from upstairs drops in on the now solitary
poet before he can follow his boisterous friends to the pub.
It's a simple case of boy meets girl, and, after chatting each
other up in the moonlight, they fall in love, but it would be
no exaggeration to say that, in the sequence of arias Puccini
wrote for this lovely long exchange between Mimi and Rudolfo,
he was presenting the world with the credentials of an opera
composer standing head and shoulders above his contemporaries.
It was only spoiled for me, on that first occasion, by the
failure of either of the Carl Rosa principals quite to reach
the excruciatingly high final notes they are required to sing
off stage as they depart, arm in arm, to join the gang at the
Cafe Momus where the second act is to take place. A second
act, happily, no less accessible than the first, and, given the
number of characters on stage and the amount of activity they
engage in during the course of it, one of Puccini's greatest
pieces of operatic architecture.
The bohemians' rendezvous is a pavement cafe in a bright and
busy square in the Latin Quarter where a lot of last minute
Christmas Eve shopping is taking place, but the principal theme
of the action is the stormy relationship between the painter,
Marcello, and his estranged girl friend, Musetta, who quite
ruins his evening by making a flamboyant entrance on the arm of
an elderly admirer and deliberately seating herself at an
adjoining table. Provoked by Marcello's attempts to ignore
her, she embarks on an increasingly outrageous counteroffensive to attract his attention, culminating in an aria
which entertains everyone within earshot to a catalogue of her
own physical charms. This is, of course, the so-called Waltz
Song I had first encountered on a gramophone record in that
cottage on the edge of the moors, but, seductive as it is, it
fails to achieve her desired effect until the now desperate
Musetta tricks her consort into leaving the scene, whereupon
Marcello finally succumbs. Rising from his seat, to a swirling
orchestral arpeggio, he sings of his admiration for her to the
melody of her own song, a vocal tribute in which he is quickly
joined by Colline and Schaunard, the other two bohemians, who
have been deriving a great deal of amusement from the
"stupendous comedy" being played out before them.
For me, this is one of those really great moments in opera when
music and drama combine to deliver something I like to think of
as "the authentic operatic experience" - a genuinely physical
effect, a sort of tingling sensation running pleasurably down
the spine, more intense than any such thrill produced by music
or drama separately, although the hairs at the back of my neck
have never been immune to being disturbed by either. There are
none of these moments, however, in the third act of "La Boheme"
which is, to my mind, more "Cavalleria Rusticana" than
"Pagliacci". There is plenty of good music, of course, and the
setting is picturesque, but the action is confined to a series
of rather contrived exchanges between the four principals
conveying the information that, in the two months which have
elapsed since the end of the second act, the rosy glow has
faded and the relationship between Rudolfo and Mimi has proved
even more unworkable, if for different reasons, than that
between Marcello and Musetta. Although Mimi goes off with
Rudolfo in the end, this is not before she has overheard him
telling Marcello that she is dying of tuberculosis and needs
someone wealthier than him to look after her.
The purpose of this third act is merely to set things up for
the last act which takes place in the Monmatre garret where it
all began, and where generous helpings of top quality opera
remain to be served, ranging from the pinings of Rudolfo and
Marcello for their lost loves, through the escapist horseplay
they indulge in when joined by their fellow bohemians,
dramatically interrupted by the entrance of Musetta with the
news that the dying Mimi is outside, to the final death bed
scene itself. Needless to say, Puccini does not allow any of
these opportunities to slip through his fingers when weaving
his musical web around them, and while it would be wrong to say
that everyone in the audience weeps over the death of little
Mimi, it is difficult to see how any operagoer could remain
unmoved by it. Puccini wrings more pathos out of Mimi than he
does out of either Butterfly or Tosca, both of whom die heroic,
and poignant deaths by their own hand to the accompaniment of
orchestral fortissimos which leave the audience stunned with
horror and pity, rather than shedding a silent tear. Like his
Manon before her, Mimi simply fades away, but more affectingly.
With "La Boheme", Puccini joined Mozart and Verdi in my
personal Holy Trinity of opera, but I had to wait a long time
for his "Tosca" and much longer for "Turandot", because the
only other opera staged in wartime Bradford, apart from "Die
Fledermaus", impossible not to enjoy at first acquaintance, was
a work of even greater appeal. This was Rossini's "The Barber
of Seville", surely the most successful opera buffa ever
written after "The Marriage of Figaro", with which, remarkably,
it is has no less than five characters in common, since it
purports to show how the Count Almaviva of the latter work met
and married his Countess, snatching her from the clutches of
her guardian, Doctor Bartolo, with the help of the eponymous
barber, Figaro, and the venal music-master, Don Basilio, all of
whom had appeared in the earlier work. There are marked
differences in characterisation, however, because "The Barber"
is much more overtly farcical than "The Marriage", and was
cobbled together by Rossini in about three weeks to fill a gap
in an opera season already in progress by utilising a specific
range of vocal talents available to him at the time.
Even Rossini, hardened pro that he was, might have been
surprised to learn that, of the 40 operas he wrote in 15 years
before retiring from the stage, a wealthy man, in his midthirties, this early pot boiler would be the one he was to be
most remembered by, but repeated viewings never seem to detract
from its appeal. The plot is virtually traditional commedia
del arte - the plans of an elderly guardian to marry his nubile
ward are frustrated by a young nobleman, who, posing as a poor
student and ably assisted by the harliquinesque local barber,
penetrates the heavily guarded household in disguise, twice,
before succeeding in marrying the girl himself after a failed
elopement - but, as it rattles along behind the almost too
famous overture, it throws up some of the most memorable arias
in the operatic repertoire (including, of course, that "Room
for the Factotum" I had encountered on my father's gramophone
in my childhood), interspersed with episodes of highly
inventive musical comedy, and a first act finale which involves
the entire cast and chorus in a masterly crescendo of confusion
that leaves everyone, audience included, quite breathless.
"The Barber of Seville" was the last of the five operas in the
repertoire of the itinerant Sadler's Wells. Added to those
being toured by the Carl Rosa at the time, this brought the
number of different operas I had seen performed by the end of
the war to ten, but the value of this investment only became
apparent to me later. At the time, my appetite for opera was
no greater than that for the other cultural delights on offer
in Bradford during those years. One of the most memorable of
which I owed to the same bombs that had rendered the Sadler's
Wells Opera temporarily homeless, since, in doing so, it had
simultaneously evicted the Sadler's Wells Ballet. Needless to
say, my friend and I stood ready to take the fullest possible
advantage of their misfortune when they came to the same
Prince's Theatre as had their sibling company.
At the age of seventeen, my first encounter with ballet was at
least as affecting as my introduction to opera had been at
fifteen, possibly more so, there being fewer conventions in the
way of full comprehension, and virtually no barriers to my
appreciation of either the music or the dancing. The mild
initial shock I experienced at the sight of men in tights
dancing in a manner I had hitherto regarded as normal only in
women, quickly gave way to my admiration for their artistry,
and the muscular athleticism underpinning it - and it goes
without saying that women in tights presented no problem at
all. Compared to opera, which was to give me much the greater
satisfaction in later years, ballet can seem rather twodimensional, particularly if taken in excess, but there is
little to dislike about it and much to enjoy, and I have to
admit that I have never spent a boring evening at the ballet,
whereas I have, alas, sat through several such at the opera.
It may be that the disciplines of the dance virtually guarantee
that its performers will excel in beauty of form and grace of
movement, unaffected by the sorts of visual incongruity which
can dilute one's concentration during even the best opera
productions, when, for example, the possessor of the ideal
voice does not find it possible to look the part, let alone act
it. But it may also be that ballet has been better positioned
than opera to cope with the profound changes which have taken
place, during the twentieth century, in the melodies, harmonies
and rhythms favoured by the composers of serious music, some of
whom have even used ballet as their chosen medium for
experiment. It certainly seems to be the case that, where a
modern composer has written for both ballet and opera, his
ballets have found their way into the popular repertoire more
easily than his operas, and also that, audiences nurtured on
the operas of past centuries have experienced more difficulty
in relating to the works of the 20th century than have
audiences for ballets of such different vintages.
Or is it simply that opera, being more complex, is more
difficult to bring off, dispensing greater pleasure when it
succeeds but more acute discomfort when it fails? Happily,
questions of this kind were very far from my mind when I first
saw a young Margot Fonteyn dance Swanhilda to Robert Helpman's
Doctor Coppelius on a cold January evening in wartime Bradford.
Of course, the names meant little to me then, and I knew
nothing about the finer points of ballet dancing, but I can
clearly remember how Fonteyn seemed to light up the stage
whenever she appeared on it, and Helpman's performances were
simply riveting. My programme for Delibes "Coppelia" is the
only one to survive from those Sadler's Wells Ballet Company
visits, but I'm pretty certain that I also saw them do "Swan
Lake" and "Giselle", although my memories of those occasions
have been overwritten by later performances, and there must
have been evenings devoted to shorter works, such as "Les
(perennial) Sylphides", because I can vividly recall the impact
made on me by Helpman in one such piece.
This was a ballet version of Shakespeare's "Hamlet",
choreographed, if I remember rightly, by Helpman himself (but ?
Bronislava Nijinska) to the music of Tchaikovsky's FantasyOverture, Opus 67, of the same name, thus requiring the entire
plot of Hamlet to be encompassed within the space of just under
twenty minutes, so lots of hard miming was involved, but the
ballet opened with a remarkable coup de theatre. It was
achieved by raising the curtain on a completely darkened stage,
and then, to the accompaniment of the opening drum roll
crescendo, beaming a single narrow spotlight down onto the
pallid, inverted face of Helpman/Hamlet, suspended, apparently,
in mid-air. There was barely time to realise that this effect
had been achieved by laying Helpman flat on his back on the
shoulders of four black-clad pall-bears with his head hung down
backwards towards the audience, before the apparition moved
rapidly away, in step with the eight descending bass clef
chords with which Tchaikovsky opens the proceedings proper.
This startling preview of the aftermath to Hamlet's death was
repeated, once the events leading up to it had been portrayed,
in its rightful place at the end of the ballet.
What a pity my programme for that performance hasn't survived.
The programme for "Coppelia" shows, incidentally, that Franz
was danced by Alexis Rassine, the orchestra was conducted by
Constant Lambert, and, buried in the ranks of the corps de
ballet, there is the name of Moira Shearer. The programme also
states that "OXO will be served during the Interval. Kindly
place your order with the attendant" and displays the
obligatory AIR RAID WARNING NOTICE which reads "In the event of
an Air Raid Warning being received during the performance, the
audience will be informed at once from the stage. It should be
remembered that the warning does not necessarily mean that a
raid will take place and that in any case it is not likely to
occur for at least five minutes. Anyone who desires to leave
the theatre may do so but the performance will continue, and
patrons are advised in their own interests to remain in the
building".
Just as the temporary displacement of the Sadler's Wells Opera
Company from its London home had led me to welcome the Royal
Carl Rosa Opera Company when it too came along, so this visit
by the Sadler's Wells Ballet prepared the way for the later
arrival, at the Alhambra, of another touring company called the
International Ballet, about whom I know nothing more than what
my recollections of their performances can add to such
information as can be gleaned from the three programmes of
their performances which have somehow survived. The prima
ballerina was a rather plump little lady called Mona Inglesby,
whose sad-faced but very correct performances contrasted well
with those of the other female star, the more elegent and fiery
Nina Tarakanova. The leading male, Harold Turner, possessed a
striking masculine physique and impressed me greatly with his
use of it, while the male character parts were played by Leslie
French, who was quite well-known as a Shakespearean actor at
the time.
These programmes were made up of four short pieces, such as
"Les Sylphides", "Carnaval", "Swan Lake (Act II), and "The
Dances from Prince Igor", with one exception, when, after "Les
Sylphides", they put on a two act ballet version of
Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night", music by Grieg, choreography by
Andree Howard, with Leslie French in the part of Feste. There
were two other curiosities, both of a comic nature. One was a
"Humourous Ballet in Two Acts" entitled "Planetomania", music
Norman Demuth, choreography Mona Inglesby, in which she cast
herself as "Charlotte, an observant maid of plain countenance"
opposite Leslie French's "Adam (a scientist)", and Tarakanova
as the goddess Venus, with Turner playing Adonis. The second
comic ballet was called "Adam and Eve and Ferdinand", music by
Ernest Irvine, no choreographer mentioned, with a cast
featuring Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel, Ferdinand (a snake), and a
bevy of Cave Girls. It was even more far-fetched and farcical
than the first, and totally unmemorable, but these pieces
opened my eyes to the hitherto unsuspected comedic
possibilities of ballet and gave the dancers a chance to show
us a different side to their artistic personalities. As both
these pieces were sandwiched together between "Swan Lake (Act
II)" and the "Dances from Prince Igor" which brought the
evening to a rousing conclusion, there was little to complain
about.
[More than 60 years later, on October 14, 2006 to be precise, I
was astonished to discover, from a lengthy obituary in the
Sydney Morning Herald, reprinted from The Daily Telegraph,
London, that there was much, much more to Mona Inglesby, who
had died at the age of 88, than had been apparent to me at the
time. Born Mona Vrendenberg, the daughter of a Dutch
entrepreneur who had settled in England, she danced under her
mother's maiden name after studying under Marie Rambert in
London and exiled members of the Imperial Russian Ballet in
Paris. At the age of 21, while working as a volunteer
ambulance driver in the early days of World War Two, she
decided that she could do more for the war effort by forming a
ballet company to tour the country, and, borrowing enough money
from her father to do so, she launched the International Ballet
in spring 1940 with 40 dancers, including several from the
Ballet Rambert and Sadlers Wells. She soon paid back the loan,
and for the next 13 years took classical ballet to theatres and
cinemas all over Britain, even to Butlin's Holiday Camps,
giving the inaugural performance at the new Royal Festival Hall
in 1951. The company prided itself on being “the only unit of
its size in the world to present ballet consistently without
adding to the taxpayers' burden”. Her other claim to fame was
that she played a pivotal role in acquiring and preserving the
notations of the entire repertoire of Russian Imperial Ballet,
most of it created by by the great Marius Petipa, which had
been smuggled out of the country following the Revolution. Of
little apparent interest to anyone else at the time, these
records were subsequently to enable the post-communist Kirov
Ballet to reconstruct and perform “The Sleeping Beauty” in its
original form to worldwide acclaim, and, “during a London tour
in 2000, the reconstructors (sic) visited Inglesby...in a care
home in Bexhill-on-Sea to thank her for saving these crucial
texts of ballet history, though she was too frail to attend a
performance”.]
As for me, by now a committed hedonist, determined to cultivate
my aesthetic sensibilities to the fullest possible extent, I
strove to supplement the insights gained from my visits to both
the opera and ballet by devouring any printed matter I could
lay my hands on that might improve my appreciation of these and
any future such experiences. Fortunately, in spite of wartime
restrictions, Penguin Books had recently begun publishing their
admirably cheap Pelican Specials and these included "Opera" by
Edward Dent, and "Ballet" by Arnold Haskell, both of which I
acquired in 1943. Amazingly, considering the wartime quality
of the paper, the latter is still in my possession, its
tattered cover proudly proclaiming "The first COMPLETE GUIDE to
BALLET and for the price of a theatre programme; its history,
its theory, notes on the leading personalities and creators of
modern Ballet, studies of individual ballets and of some
contemporary dancers..."
Among these last I found Margot Fonteyn "...the first ballerina
to be produced by the National Ballet at Sadler's
Wells...ideally built, an essentially intelligent dancer with
rare musicality. She has progressed from a slow, dreamy,
eternal Sylphide mood into an intensity of attack that has
opened to her every role in the classical repertoire."; Robert
Helpman "...would be an outstanding artist at any
period...incapable of making an ungraceful movement. Perfectly
musical, he is a perfect partner, for partnering is a question
of ear as well as of strength and good manners. His range is
enormous: classical, romantic, broad farce, or subtle comedy.
He shares with Massine alone the ultimate secret of true art in
dancing, the ability to give positive value to a static pose.";
and Harold Turner "...a magnificent technician and a truly
virile personality, an example to the majority of young
dancers...a classical dancer of the old type...the true premier
danseur, brilliant rather than lyrical, but he has a wide
enough range to be excellent in character and broad comedy.
Such an artist illustrates better than anyone my remarks
(elsewhere) on male dancing, and should do much to remove the
national prejudice against male dancers."
That final sentence is a telling reflection on contemporary
mores. Of the other dancers I had seen, Nina Tarakanova is
credited with "charm and personality, which she is inclined to
substitute for technique", but no reference is made, alas, to
either Mona Inglesby, or the International Ballet Company.
These ancient comments by Arnold Haskell are reproduced here
because they tended to confirm the impressions these dancers
had made upon my own untutored eye, and encourage my critical
interest in ballet, although this never amounted to the passion
I was later to develop for opera.
But it was upon the concert hall that my serious interest was
focussed at that time, and I saw these intermittent incursions
into opera and ballet, however welcome, as merely icing on a
musical cake made up of two main layers. The most important of
these was my regular attendance at the Bradford Subscription
Concerts mounted monthly on Saturday afternoons from October to
March at the Eastbrook Hall. The 1942-43 season (the seventyeighth, this admirable institution having originated in 1866)
consisted of six concerts by the Manchester-based Halle
Orchestra. For some reason, the Halle had been without a
resident conductor for quite a while, and relied entirely on a
stable of guest conductors, who, that season, included a most
illustrious pair, Sir Henry Wood, and Sir Adrian Boult. Since
the soloists were pianists Solomon, Moiseiwitsch and Clifford
Curzon, and violinists Ida Haendel, Eda Kersey and Henry Holst,
all of them names to conjure with at the time, these concerts
were very substantial affairs with hardly an empty seat in the
house.
One of their most notable features, particularly in retrospect,
was the availability at each concert of the Analytical
Programme Notes, price sixpence. At a time when wartime
restrictions had reduced the programmes at the Prince's and the
Alhambra to a single flimsy folded sheet, these publications
must have represented a very considerable achievement on
somebody's part. My surviving programme for the fifth concert
of that season (February 27th) runs to fourteen internal pages
of text (numbered 66 to 79 to enable them to be bound in
sequence with the notes for the other concerts in the season),
lavishly interspersed with musical illustrations. Even the
Overture (Schubert's "Rosamunde") merits five musical quotes,
while the Brahms Violin Concerto gets fourteen, and the first
piece after the interval, the Symphony No.1, Op.10, by one
Dmitri Shostakovitch, a composer I had never heard of until
then, has nine quotes, some of them running to several lines of
stave. Although, at this point in the war, the music of our
Russian allies was being extensively featured in concert
programmes at the expense of that of our German foes, it says
something for the artistic standards of those subscription
concerts that they should feature a work by a living foreign
composer only fifteen years after its first performance.
The conductor, on this occasion, was Leslie Heward, by
permission of the City of Birmingham Orchestra whose musical
director he had been since 1930. A local boy, born in nearby
Liversedge, he was now only forty-six years old but this was to
be his last Bradford concert before he died three months later.
He must have been quite ill when he gave it because I can still
remember the great difficulty he obviously experienced in
climbing the narrow curving stairs which were the only way up
to the podium after emerging from the ground-floor vestry
underneath. For all its size and importance to the cultural
life of Bradford, the Eastbrook Hall was still the giant
Methodist Chapel it had been designed to be. The podium,
replacing the pulpit, and elevated about ten feet above ground
floor level, was surrounded by the stepped up stages where the
choir stalls had been, and on which were now precariously
perched the various sections of the orchestra, overshadowed by
the massive pipes of the biggest organ in Bradford. It may
have been a bit of an ordeal for the instrumentalists but I
have no reason to believe that the acoustics of this intimate
but light, spacious and airy hall were in any way deficient.
Although he didn't conduct any of its concerts that season, it
was during 1942 that John Barbirolli, who was to conduct the
Halle at all the future Subscription Concerts I attended,
appeared on the scene. I know this because the programme has
survived of a concert he gave with the London Symphony
Orchestra sometime in May-June somewhere in Bradford, probably
the Eastbrook Hall. Being the usual wartime single folded
sheet produced to serve on what might be a number of different
occasions, this document is short on specific information. It
gives no date other than May-June 1942 and names no venue, but
states on the front that the concert is "...given under the
auspices of the Carnegie Trust" and on the back that "The
Directors of the London Symphony Orchestra are deeply indebted
to Mr. John Barbirolli for his magnificent gesture in
conducting this series of concerts without remuneration." One
can only speculate about the sequence of events which had led
to this sudden reappearance in our midst of a conductor who, a
few years earlier, had leapt from obscurity in Glasgow to world
fame by taking over the baton of New York Philharmonic
Orchestra when Arturo Toscanini finally relinquished it.
It seems possible that Barbirolli's New York appointment,
though well deserved on merit (as his subsequent career was to
prove), was an outcome of the internal power politics of the
American music establishment, which left the noses of certain
influential members of it out of joint, and that a loose
conspiracy of these disaffected individuals made life
sufficiently uncomfortable for Barbirolli, in spite of his
undoubted success with the public, for him to see a return to
wartime England as both a patriotic duty and a happier option.
Whatever the reason, New York's loss was the North of England's
gain because his effect upon Halle Orchestra at those
Subscription Concerts which he conducted and I attended for the
next three seasons, was quite electric. His diminutive body
and big, birdlike head with its curtain of hair round those
lustrous eyes, gave him a Napoleonic presence which simply
dominated the Eastbrook Hall.
And how he loved to play up to the audience, if only by having
a good look round them after making his entrance, and watching
ostentatiously while any unfortunate stragglers found their
seats, as they were allowed to do after the National Anthem had
invariably been played. At the first concert of his first
season, after seeing off Weber's "Oberon" Overture and taking a
bow, he fiddled around with the scores on his desk for a while,
then turned round and leaned over the podium rail to ask the
front row of the audience below what he was supposed to be
conducting next. After recovering from their surprise, they
somehow managed to tell him that it was the Five Variants of
"Dives and Lazarus" by Vaughan Williams, followed by the
Symphonic Fragments from "Daphnis and Chloe" by Ravel, rather
than the other way round. What a showman!
Even that earlier, unremunerated, concert with the London
Symphony Orchestra bore the stamp of his individuality. Not
only was it an All German programme at a time when we were
still losing the war, but, after the respectable Beethoven's
"Egmont" Overture and Seventh Symphony, the second half was
devoted entirely to the music of Richard Wagner, who I had
recently seen described in a book by Stefan Zweig as "The
Founder of the Germany of Adolf Hitler", comprising the Prelude
and Liebestod from "Tristan and Isolde", (a gramophone record
of which I immediately went out and bought), the so-called
"Forest Murmers" from "Siegfried". and the Overture to
"Tannhauser". Quite a statement to make about our common
ownership of the music of a nation with whom we were currently
engaged in a fight to the death. My seven surviving Programme
Notes from his three subsequent seasons of Subscription
Concerts show some quite adventurous inclusions, such as the
Delius Violin and Cello Concerto, Stravinsky's "Firebird"
(another record purchase), and Martinu's First Symphony, but
the programme for the piece I remember best from those concerts
has not, alas, survived. Barbirolli's performance of Gustav
Mahler's "Song of Earth" left me stunned with admiration,
although it would be many years before concert programming (and
long play gramophone records) allowed me to follow this up by
exploring Mahler's other works.
But these were not the only orchestral concerts which it was
given to me to attend in Bradford during those wartime years,
nor, as it turned out, was the Eastbrook Hall the only venue
capable of hosting such events, although it was not without a
certain amount of surprise that Jack and I found ourselves
embedded, once again, in the human wall in t'Gods at the
Princess Theatre, gazing down, this time, on a stage which
supported the tiered ranks of a full symphony orchestra. This
was during "Bradford's International Music Week, presented by
Harold Fielding" in December 1942, when, against all the odds,
the fortunes of war (assisted by considerable entrepreneurial
ingenuity and, possibly, a government grant) had brought the
Bournemouth Philharmonic Orchestra from the depths of winter in
a seaside town on the south coast of England, which was now, of
course, the front line in the war with Germany, to the
hospitable bosom of a crowded Prince's Theatre, where, with
true wartime spirit, they gave eight concerts in six days,
starting 6.15pm every night from Monday to Saturday, and 2.30pm
on Thursday and Saturday.
My one surviving programme from this bonanza relates to the
Wednesday evening, devoted entirely to Tschaikovsky and
conducted by Dr. Malcolm Sargent. This was my first encounter
with "Flash Harry" (as he later came to be called by the
groundlings at the Albert Hall Promenade Concerts) of whom I
became a lasting admirer (and never saw any conductor of his
generation handle a choir better). The programme consisted of
the March Slav, the B flat minor Piano Concerto, with the
ubiquitous Solomon as soloist, and the Fourth Symphony.
Information on the back of the programme reveals that the
following night was all Beethoven, with Anatole Fistoulari
conducting, and Solomon again soloing in my beloved "Emperor"
Concerto - what power and stamina the man had!. Three other
concerts featured piano duetists Rawicz and Landauer, who were
famously popular at the time, but of more interest now is that
two of these were conducted by one Reginald Goodall, who must
surely be the he, who, thirty years later, was significantly to
improve the quality of my life by his conducting of, first,
Wagner's "Mastersingers" and then, his complete Ring cycle for
the English National Opera at the Coliseum - a far cry from
the concerts he gave on that occasion, one of which featured
Rawicz and Landauer "in a special arrangement of the music from
Walt Disney's greatest triumph SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN
DWARFS", and somebody called Piccaver in "well-known songs and
arias".
Given my age and relative inexperience, I cannot vouch for the
quality of the performances I witnessed during that
extraordinary week at the Prince's Theatre, but I do know that,
of all the many concerts I have attended since, there have been
few I enjoyed more. After the cool, clear, sacramental spaces
of the Eastbrook Hall, the sheer physical immediacy of the
orchestra, piled up on the stage below us in the darkened
little theatre, fully focussed the attention and made for
concentration of a truly transcendental order. Seeing every
move the musicians made, hearing every note they played, I
could feel my comprehension of the inner workings of that great
musical machine growing exponentially as I watched. But my
deepening appreciation of the music I heard at these
performances was due largely to the enlightenment I was
gaining, in the spaces between concert-going, from the steady
diet of classical music on gramophone records being fed to me
by my friend and colleague, Jack. This was the second layer in
my musical cake.
Although Jack's record collection, unlike Frank's, consisted of
mainly 12" records which could accommodate nearly twice as much
music as the 10" ones more common in jazz, this still amounted
to little more than 5 minutes on each side at 78rpm, with the
result that any substantial opus required a multi-record set
and a great deal of work on the winding handle. But this was
an inconvenience to which we were inured. A bigger problem was
that, whereas Frank lived within easy walking distance of my
home, Jack lived at the other side of the city, making it
difficult to arrange the more settled conditions required for
listening to the longer lengths of classical music.
Fortunately, however, Jack and I had a second home in common at
the BRI where, in the Dermatology Department right next door to
the X Ray Department, there happened to be a large acoustic
gramophone. This venerable instrument was used by the Skin
Department (as it was always called) for a purpose which casts
an interesting light on the therapeutic practices of the
period.
Before the discovery of antibiotics and cortisone, the
treatment of those debilitating skin conditions which were to
respond so miraculously to these wonder drugs relied on
remedies bordering at times on witchcraft. In desperation, the
dermatologists of the day were driven to experiment with any
combination of substances, whether approved by the British
Pharmacopoeia or not, which might bring relief from suffering
when applied to the affected part, and Frank spent a great deal
of his time in the dispensary preparing these often foul
smelling unguents. There was, however, one 20th century
therapy, Ultraviolet Radiation, which promised some benefit,
however small, in these cases, and the Skin Department was
generously supplied with the means for delivering it.
The
main treatment room had four tall, powerful UVR lamps standing
equidistantly apart outside a large white circle painted on the
floor, around which, with all four lamps full on, numbers of
patients were required to process in the semi-nude for
carefully calculated periods of time, first in one direction
and then the other.
Since they were all wearing very dark goggles to protect their
eyes from the rays, this activity was more easily accomplished
without mishap at a measured pace to the sound of suitable
marching music, and this, of course, was where the gramophone
came in. "The Teddy bears' Picnic" was a great favourite, I
remember. Needless to say, the staff of the X Ray Department
were not slow to avail themselves of this artificial sunshine,
after hours, in the depths of winter, although Leonard, as
usual, tended to overdo it, and appear before us next morning
incongruously red in the face, with sharply contrasting white
eye sockets. And there was nothing to prevent Jack and I from
commandeering the gramophone for our own use whenever we stayed
overnight at the BRI, which we often did, after those Saturday
evening gigs at the Co-op Instutute, finding it more convenient
to sleep at the BRI than to go home and cross Bradford again
for the Home Guard parade there on Sunday morning. On these
occasions, Jack having brought a selection of records to the
BRI beforehand, we were able to spend many a happy hour
together in the staff room of the darkened and isolated X Ray
Department listening to them in rapt concentration.
Since Jack's record collection reflected his remarkable mind
rather than his unremarkable appearance, there was little in it
of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, whose works, he
pointed out, were well enough represented in the concerts
broadcast by the BBC to leave him free to invest in composers
held in lower regard by the musical establishment of the time,
such as Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, and Richard Strauss.
In those days, classical music was still seen, to a great
extent, as the province of an elite who had been brought up
with access to it, and could afford to attend concerts
regularly, and there was a distinct bias among this class of
person in favour of the symphonic form as the most elevated
state to which music could aspire, and any composer whose works
were judged to be deficient in this respect, or insufficiently
rigorous in pursuit of it, was regarded as second rate. An
additional anathema was reserved for those whose compositions
were sufficiently tuneful to be dismissed as "popular", so
Tchaikovsky, with his three symphonies, two concertos, three
full-length ballets, two operas (one of them a true
masterwork), and sundry chamber pieces still regularly
performed, was excluded from the top table on both counts.
But not from my friend's collection, which was strongly
inclined towards the more colourful orchestral outpourings of
the so-called Romantic movement. In addition to Tchaikowsky's
5th and 6th, and Sibelius's 1st and 2nd Symphonies, however, a
particular favourite of those late night sessions in the X Ray
Department was Berlioz's "Fantastic Symphony". This
revolutionary work, written in 1828, only a year after the
death of Beethoven, and five years before Brahms was born, when
Wagner was a mere 25 years old, pointed a way ahead for the
symphony which took, via Liszt, more than half a century to
come to fruition in Tchaikovsky, and, after him, Mahler.
Bruckner and Sibelius.
The "Symphonie Fantastique" occupies a
special place in my affections because I got to know it better
than any piece of classical music I had previously heard. This
was due to the fact that my companion introduced me to a
version of it, the like of which I had never previously
encountered - the full orchestral score.
Naturally, I was overwhelmed by the prospect at first, because,
although I had, since returning to Bradford, learned to play
the clarinet and saxophone well enough to form a dance band, my
ability to read even a single line of music was still
underdeveloped, but, to my own amazement, under Jack's careful
tutelage, and with regular practice, I soon found myself able
to follow, initially, the first violins - who usually have the
most to do - without getting lost, and then the other parts in
more and more detail. It was a remarkable experience to
undergo barely two years after going out into the world as a
musical ignoramus, and it marked a sort of watershed in my
development. It was as if I had been initiated into a secret
society from which I could never be expelled, and although I
never achieved the kind of mastery enjoyed by those gifted few
who can sight read a full score in the same way that the rest
of us can read a play and reconstitute it in the theatre of the
mind, I became perceptive enough, eventually, to be able to
"see" things buried in the undergrowth of a musical landscape
unrolling before me which I had failed to "hear" before.
From this point onward, my musical horizons never ceased to
expand, nor my tastes to develop and my confidence in them to
grow, but in this, as in so many other things in life,
opportunity continued to be more important than the ability to
take advantage of it. Fortunately for me, in spite of the war
(or because of it, perhaps) opportunities continued to present
themselves from the most unlikely sources on a broad cultural
front.MY LIFE AT THE OPERA: PART ONE
Chapter Four: 1943-46
Hitherto, while the unfolding tapestry of my own young life was
being so richly embroidered in Bradford, my less fortunate
country had elsewhere been losing the war, but a turning point
came in the winter of 1942-3 when the Germans, after finally
giving ground at El Alamain and Stalingrad, began their long
walk backwards to Berlin, and, by the end of 1943, the Allies
were slowly moving into the ascendant. As a possible
consequence of this, when my eighteenth birthday came around in
October (shortly after Italy had surrendered), the Government
decided that I would be of more use to the country taking XRays at the BRI until I could qualify as a Member of the
Society of Radiographers at the age of twenty, than serving in
some minor capacity in the armed forces. Consequently, the
winter of 1943-4 found me left behind on the Home Front with
Frank and Jack and the other Semitones while my old classmates,
Cliff and Brad, were "called up", both, coincidentally, into
the Navy, Brad into the admin branch to wear an ill-fitting
dark blue suit over a white shirt with collar and tie, Cliff
into the real Navy as a rating clad in the traditional uniform
with its huge collar and bell-bottomed trousers.
Any gap in my busy life created by their departure was quickly
filled by a new friend I was making at the time whose name was
Mike. Like Frank, he had lived for years quite close at hand,
barely a quarter of a mile away, up a short steep hill in what
was virtually an extension of my own street into a better class
area of detached and semi-detached stone houses bordering on
the upper edge of the municipal golf course. He had even
attended my old school, and was still in the Upper Sixth there
taking his Higher School Certificate when our closer
acquaintanceship began, but his being a year younger than me
and my two year's absence in Keighley had prevented our paths
from crossing before. I was aware of his existence, of course,
and those of his brother Keith (who had also attended the
school, but a year ahead of me), and his two sisters, Barbara
and Josephine, having seen them around the neighbourhood. They
were a remarkable family in a number of ways, not the least of
which being that they were Southerners who did not seek to
disguise a manner of speech which set them clearly apart from
the local tribe.
Having been brought up to "mind your own business" and "take
people as you find them" without asking "nosey" questions about
their background and antecedents (and being, in any case, far
too pre-occupied with the fascinating here and now of my own
expanding horizons to care deeply about such things at the
time), I never got the full picture, nor was I ever volunteered
a detailed explanation of why it was that they had a mother but
no father living with them, although it was never clearly
stated that their father was dead. Or how they came to have an
older step-brother who visited them occasionally and was a
regular NCO in the RAF, a fact that was to have a significant
bearing on Mike's future. Or even which part of "The South"
they had come from, when, and why. I simply took them at face
value without wondering what it was about them, other than
their posh accents, that made them so different from me and
mine, because I was only too pleased to find, in Mike, someone
with whom I could share most of my burgeoning cultural
interests in a hugely convivial manner.
I was to realise later that, in spite of the modest material
circumstances in which they were currently living, they were,
in fact, the first middle class family I had ever penetrated,
but, at the time, I was relatively insensitive to class
distinctions, and even after becoming fully alive to their
significance, have never felt unduly constrained by them in my
daily dealings with the world. I knew, of course, that I
myself was working class, but felt no discomfort with the
knowledge, and I could see that Mike was different, but I put
this down to his being 'affected', which he undoubtedly seemed
to be. Now, in mid-twentieth century Yorkshire, affectation in
any shape or form was just about the worst sin in the book, and
anyone "putting on airs" was seen as crying out to be "taken
down a peg or two". But my two years at the BRI had brought me
into contact with many strange intruders from the outside
world, particularly among the junior housemen, so the impact on
me of Mike's distinguishing mannerisms was less than it might
previously have been.
Being the strong character he was, it is possible that the
unfavourable reception which his strange southern speech would
undoubtedly have received from his Yorkshire classmates when he
was first dropped in among them, had produced in him a stubborn
reaction against conforming to their rude northern ways pushing him, rather, into emphasising his difference from them,
flaunting it, even? Or it may have been an inherent fondness
for theatricality. Whatever the reason, he came across, at
seventeen, in speech and manner, as a fully formed
sophisticate, wittily wise in the ways of a world that was on
no account to be taken seriously. And he certainly looked the
part, being tall and handsome, with a large, patrician head
surmounted by a generous amount of blond hair. I soon found
that underneath this rather insouciant exterior there was a
hard-nosed realist, ambitious for the good things in life, and
determined to obtain them by any legal means. He was hungry,
therefore, like me, for new adventures, whether social or
cultural, and ready to sally forth in search of them whenever
an opportunity to do so presented itself. All of which made
him extremely good company, and the rapport we established was
soon to come to full fruition in what I can only describe as a
week-long cultural debauch in the last place I would have
expected to find myself at that time - the distant metropolis
of London.
Not surprisingly, it took an unlikely sequence of events to
bring this about, and the first step was taken by Messrs Kodak
Ltd., the world-famous manufacturers of, among other things, X
Ray films, who, as part of their long-term marketing strategy,
suddenly began offering free courses for student radiographers
at their London headquarters in Kingsway. Next, our friendly
Chief Radiographer, ever alive to his tutorial
responsibilities, succeeded, against the odds, in persuading
the BRI to take advantage of this opportunity and send Leonard
and me off, with a modest but adequate travel and subsistence
allowance, for a whole working week in London. We could
scarcely believe our luck. The course turned out to be a
pretty undemanding affair, hastily cobbled together under
wartime conditions, which left us completely free from 5pm til
bedtime to find out how much of the affordable nightlife of
London we could reach from our bed and breakfast accommodation.
This turned out to be quite a lot, because we had been booked
in at the Central YMCA in Great Russell Street, a remarkably
cheap and ideally situated base of operations with the whole of
the West End within walking distance, and easy access to the
entire Tube network (and what a revelation that was!) virtually
on the doorstep. Amazingly, it also boasted a full-sized
swimming pool in the basement, an unusual feature of which, was
that use could only be made of it by not wearing a bathing
costume. The purpose of this rule, we were given to
understand, was to make it possible for visitors like ourselves
who had understandably failed to pack such an item, to avail
themselves of the facility without embarrassment. I could not
help noticing, however, that our indulgence in what was, for us
provincials, the unique experience of nude bathing among
strangers was covertly observed on each occasion by several
well-hung older men who, having apparently bathed, were slowly
towelling themselves dry while appearing to be deep in
conversation among themselves.
Our victualling arrangements were completed by the discovery
that, strategically placed around the West End there were
establishments called Lyons' Corner Houses, the best of them
only a few yards away at the corner of Oxford Street and
Tottenham Court Road, which could provide us with any other
meals we needed at very reasonable prices. What a great
institution they were! What a congenial and reliable
introduction to dining out in London they offered to the
inexperienced and impecunious young provincials of the day!
And not just because they were cheap. They had many
attractive, even exotic, features. The one nearest the Central
YMCA housed several very different establishments. On the
ground floor, open for breakfast, there was the "Old Vienna", an imitation Viennese coffee house, all mahogany, red plush and
brass, with high-backed chairs, marble-topped tables and
newspapers available in one-handed reading frames, the like of
which we had never seen before. Upstairs, there was a
lunchtime restaurant called "The Salad Bowl" where, for a few
shillings, you could add as much salad as you could eat to the
basic amount of protein you were issued with, and, having eaten
that, go back for more. This kind of self service was
something we had never encountered before in a public
restaurant and Leonard, for one, couldn't get enough of it.
My own favourite place, however, was "The Brasserie" in the
basement, where, again for a few shillings, a perfectly
adequate evening meal could be had in the most agreeable of
surroundings. It was a sort of light and airy underground
cave, cheerfully decorated and warmly lit in the vaguely
continental manner of a bierkeller boasting an open serving bar
at one end and waiters uniformed in waistcoat and apron toing
and froing with trays of food and (un)foaming tankards of
English beer. Best of all, it had Faulkner and his Apache Band
playing gypsy music in an alternatingly lively and sentimental
manner, during the course of which (wonder of wonders!)
Faulkner himself would occasionally wander among the tables
wringing passionate melodies from his violin. Of course, given
the price and the wartime conditions, the food was pretty
basic, but the ambience more than made up for any shortcomings
in that direction since gourmets were we not. And, wherever in
Central London we were at supper time, we could rely on our
young legs and the Underground to get us back in a matter of
minutes to the unfailing delights available on passing from the
wartime blackout into the warm and welcoming Brasserie.
As for the nightlife, Leonard being my companion on this
occasion, there would have been little of a more elevated
nature than the likes of Tommy Trinder at the London Palladium
and Lou Praeger and his Band at the Hammersmith Palais (not
that I didn't enjoy both tremendously) had it not been for the
fact that I had recently acquired, against all the odds, a
London girlfriend! How had I managed to do this? By that most
cliched of means, meeting her on holiday. But not, of course,
in quite the usual way, since holidays of the traditional sort
were not easy to come by during the war, the usual resorts
having been closed for the duration, their beaches festooned
with barbed wire, and their accommodation taken over by one or
other of the armed forces as training and administration
centres. But the vacuum thus created had been partially filled
when the Government, always on the lookout for ways of
mobilising any spare civilian resources into its all-out war
effort, a major objective of which was to "Grow More Food",
began establishing Agricultural Holiday Camps at strategic
points in the countryside.
The idea was to assist the farming community with its vital
task, and, at the same time, offer healthy, outdoor activity
holidays to young (and impecunious) city dwellers, by inviting
them to provide cheap labour at harvest time in return for bed,
board, and a modest amount of remuneration, in some sort of
communal accommodation where, it was hinted, there would be
plenty of scope for social intercourse with members of the
opposite sex, both during and after working hours. Being
young, impecunious, badly in need of a holiday, and not
uninterested in the opposite sex, I had volunteered for a
fortnight in one of these institutions during the previous
summer, and found myself housed in a converted country house
near the village of Alne deep in the countryside to the north
of York. The hostel provided all the basic amenities, as
promised, plus a large common room, a library, and a sports
field.
The work I was given to do was very boring and quite arduous it consisted of picking, not food, but flax (a crop I had never
previously encountered and certainly never want to meet again)
by hand. Since flax is grown for the toughness of its fibres,
which are used to make linen, it is not an easy plant to
harvest, but, fortunately, it rained quite a lot. This meant
that, although I didn't get paid as much as I'd hoped, my
aching back and raw fingers were given frequent rest periods
during which I was free to socialise with my fellow campers who
turned out to be a reasonably friendly and lively lot. Among
those present were two young ladies from "The South", who had
seized this opportunity of getting away from the attentions of
the Luftwaffe in an affordable way. Since one of them, Joan,
was undoubtedly the prettiest girl in the place, I began
manoeuvring myself into their company without delay, and when I
found that they were both students at the Royal College of
Music I redoubled my efforts (as a fellow musician, you
understand) to amuse and entertain them with stories about The
Semitones, while exchanging views about any classical music
with which we were jointly familiar.
Rather to my surprise, Joan seemed to find me as interesting as
I found her (for different reasons, no doubt), and, by the end
of the "holiday" we were affectionate friends, parting with
the expressed intent of keeping in touch in spite of the
obvious difficulties in the way of our doing so. Fortunately,
Joan, who lived in faraway Chingford, Essex, was not only
lovely, shapely, intelligent and a gifted musician, but turned
out to be a first class correspondent, writing me long and
chatty letters of a kind that I had never received before. How
I delighted in those letters! And how assiduous I was in
replying to them, striving always to maintain a high
entertainment level in what turned out to be the first of
several such exchanges I was to involve myself in during the
next few years with other girls. What pages and pages we wrote
to each other in those days in order to keep treasured
relationships alive during periods of enforced separation,
since the only way to be sure of receiving letters was to write
letters. Also, it was very good practice for someone like
myself who still had ambitions to be a writer of some sort.
Unfortunately, my holiday romance with Joan did not long
survive my attempts to renew its ardours in the bleak realities
of wartime London, where, in spite of our fortuitous proximity,
assignations proved surprisingly difficult to make and keep.
We were both tied up during the day, of course, I at Kodak and
she at the RCM (commuting in from Chingford), and my dependence
on the Tube, given my unfamiliarity with the surface geography
of Central London, left me strangely vulnerable to the first of
Hitler's secret weapons, the V1 Flying Bombs, "buzz bombs" or
"doodlebugs", which happened, at the time, to be falling
indiscriminatingly on London at irregular intervals. Although
the odds against being hit by one of these things were pretty
high, I was unfortunate in twice having my journey to a
rendezvous with Joan disrupted by their rude attentions to the
extent of being decanted from some intermediate tube station
into unfamiliar streets from which it took me far too long to
find the way to my destination. Joan was not amused at being
kept waiting, nor were the purlieus of, for example, Liverpool
Street Station, as conducive as the leafy lanes of Yorkshire
had been to intimate exchanges of any kind.
I did, however, contrive to be punctual enough to join her for
the very first of the many, many concerts I was to attend
during the next sixty years at the Royal Albert Hall, but so
besotted was I with my fair companion, and so dazzled by the
size and splendour of that vast interior that I can remember
nothing at all about the occasion except that Joan spoke very
disparagingly of the place as a concert hall on account of its
acoustics which were held in such contempt by the musical
cognoscenti of the day that they afforded Sir Thomas Beecham
frequent opportunities to exercise his well-known wit at their
expense during orchestral rehearsals.
This, of course, was
long before those inverted mushrooms were suspended from the
ceiling in what proved to be a pretty successful attempt to get
rid of the notorious echo. Interesting, also, were Joan's
comments about that massive Albert Memorial across the road
from the Hall. The collective view of the local student body,
it seemed, was that the destruction of this ugly monstrosity by
Hitler's bombs was to be prayed for every night by all persons
of taste and discernment. As a provincial, I was suitably
impressed by such daring iconoclasm and was to recall it with
some amusement when, on a recent visit to London, I made a
point of detouring to South Kensington to admire the Albert
Memorial in all its magnificently refurbished splendour. O
Fortuna!
I returned to Bradford with my loving relationship with Joan
terminally impaired (although I didn't fully realise it at the
time), but wildly enthusiastic about the pleasures available in
London and, more importantly, fully conversant with the ways
and means of enjoying them at minimal cost. On the strength of
my report, Mike took no persuading at all to accompany me on a
return visit the following year. And that is how it came to
pass that we spent that wonderful week in London (B&Bing at the
Central YMCA, where else?) during which we contrived to take in
no less than fourteen different shows of one kind or another.
How did we do this? By very careful planning and lots of leg
work after finding that there was at least one matinee
performance per week of everything we wished to see, and that
one of these could be found on every afternoon, Monday to
Saturday, with orchestral concerts on Sundays. The legwork was
not simply to get us from theatre to theatre and back to base
in between, but to buy the tickets in the first place, since
these were invariably for cheap seats up in the gods, and often
available only at the theatre on the day of the performance.
To my eternal regret, I kept none of the programmes (which were
probably commandeered by Mike, as we could only afford one
between two of us) nor any other record of the shows we saw
that week, and my memory of them is blurred by the recollection
of others I attended on subsequent visits during the next few
years. There was no opera, of course, and only a limited
amount of ballet which seemed to consist of scratch companies
performing extracts from the major works as divertissements.
But there were orchestral concerts and plenty of theatre,
enough to keep us both fully engaged. Laurence Olivier and
Ralph Richardson were performing to great acclaim in a sort of
super rep at the New Theatre, the former in that justly famous
double bill of one-acters, Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex" and
Sheriden's "The Critic", the latter in Cyrano de Bergerac, both
of which I know we saw. There is one feature of that
remarkable week, however, that I can clearly remember. It is
that, although Hitler's V1 flying bombs were no longer around
to disrupt our tight schedule, his second secret weapon, the V2
rockets, had begun to arrive at not infrequent intervals.
Unlike the doodlebugs, there was absolutely no warning that one
of these missiles was on its way. Mike and I, for example,
were eating breakfast in the cloistered calm of the YMCA at
about 8am on a Sunday morning, when a sudden, very loud
explosion close at hand caused the crockery and cutlery on the
tables to rattle and shake. It was as if the whole building
had leapt several inches into the air, but, after looking
around in wide-eyed alarm for a few moments, we could see no
alternative but to continue with our meal as if nothing had
happened. Afterwards, we walked down Oxford Street to find
that the rocket had fallen, fairly harmlessly, just inside the
Marble Arch corner of Hyde Park - well clear of the Albert
Memorial which is in the opposite corner! But, as we looked
down into the huge crater, I realised that this was, in fact,
the famous Speakers' Corner, where, if the explosion had
occurred a couple of hours later, large numbers of people would
have been gathered together to listen to, and heckle, the many
soap-box orators who were allowed by tradition to expound their
often outrageous views there on a Sunday morning. What a
shambles that would have been!
Mike and I returned to Bradford physically and financially
exhausted but spiritually uplifted by our cultural marathon,
and secure in the knowledge that our new-found familiarity with
the theatres, concert halls, restaurants, place names, tube
trains and buses of Central London (the pubs, strange as it may
seem, held little appeal to us at that time) had set us forever
apart from our previously provincial selves. We knew also that
we would return there in the future whenever an opportunity to
do so presented itself, and, although I cannot recall the
circumstances, and Mike is no longer available to consult about
them (and hasn't been, alas, for sixty years), I know that I
myself must have gone back there quite soon because three
programmes from that later visit have somehow survived.
The first is for a Sunday afternoon concert at the Albert Hall
on the 11th of March, 1945 given by the BBC Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Sir Adrian Boult with Iso Elinson as the soloist
in Brahms' Piano Concerto No.2., other items being Mozart's
Haffner Symphony and Elgar's Enigma Variations. The programme
is the usual wartime four-pages on a single folded sheet but
the analytical notes by Edwin Evans are quite thorough, if a
little compressed. One curiosity is that the bottom of the
front page, below the soloist's name and above "Programme and
Notes 6d" appears the legend SMOKING - CIGARETTES ONLY, a
reminder that, in those days, everybody smoked everywhere
unless expressly forbidden to do so, and you could smoke a
cigarette in the Albert Hall while actually listening to a
concert in much the same way as you can nowadays sip a glass of
wine in your box there. The third programme is for another
concert at the Albert Hall on the evening of Tuesday the 13th,
this time it is the less distinguished National Symphony
Orchestra conducted by Sidney Beer with soloists (i) Arthur
Cleghorn in Bach's Suite No. 2 for flute and strings, and
Gluck's Ballet Scene for flute and strings from "Orfeo", (ii)
Clifford Curzon in Grieg's Piano Concerto, and (iii) Geraldine
MacCartie narrating Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf". The only
other item was Three Excerpts from Act III of Wagner's "The
Mastersingers".
The second programme, however, is a little more interesting.
It is for a performance of "The Tragedy of HAMLET Prince of
Denmark" by William Shakespeare, given at the Theatre Royal,
Haymarket, on Monday, March 12th with John Gielgud in the title
role. Other famous names are Peggy Ashcroft as Ophelia, Miles
Malleson as Polonius and Max Adrian playing both Osric and
Rosencrantz. Who could ask for anything more? And, according
to the back page of the programme, Gielgud and Co. were really
piling it on at the Theatre Royal, doing "Hamlet" Mondays and
Tuesdays, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Wednesdays and Thursdays
(matinee and evening both days), and "The Circle" (?Somerset
Maughan) Fridays and Saturdays (matinee and evening), for weeks
on end. There was no shortage of audiences, of course. The
war in Europe was nearing its end and London was crowded with
uniforms of every possible hue, and everyone, troops and
civilians alike, was hungry for entertainment of any kind after
surviving the dark days. And it was all going cheap.
2.
These visits to London were stimulating interludes in a life in
Bradford that was far from dull, but had settled into a
pattern, seemingly and probably, designed to ensure that my
every waking moment was occupied by some activity which took me
outside the crowded family home. At the BRI, I was now, in
effect, a fully functioning radiographer, routinely entrusted
with all but the most esoteric of examinations, and, although
this was to be the least rewarding of my three careers, I
always enjoyed the work. It called for a happy combination of
hand, eye and brain - the technical, the physical and the
social - which suited me very well without being too demanding.
I was good at it, and did well at it, but always saw it mainly
as a means of earning enough money to exploit my spare time to
the maximum possible extent, a purpose for which its strictly
limited working hours, due to the dangers of overexposure to
radiation, made it ideally suited. It was the quintessential
nine to five job.
In order to prepare myself to pass the qualifying exam,
however, there was a certain amount of additional knowledge I
needed to acquire, and, since there was no School of
Radiography at the the BRI in those days, I was obliged to seek
it elsewhere, outside working hours. But I didn't have to look
very far, since, waiting there around me, every weekday
evening, autumn, winter and spring, there was the wonderful
world of "Nightschool" with its centres of population, large
and small, in virtually every day school in the county borough.
In these classrooms, the seats still warm from the bums of the
daytime pupils, all the skills and knowledge under the sun
appeared to be freely available, thanks to the enlightened
generosity of t'Corporation, and I soon found what I needed at
the greatest institution of them all, the Bradford Technical
College, or "t'Tec", as it was always called, where I duly
enrolled for "Physics II" and "Zoology I".
Of course, Zoo One, was a real eye-opener, because, in those
days, biology was a subject taught only in girls' schools,
instead of physics and chemistry, which were taught only in
boys' schools. So, this was my first encounter with the amoeba
and the parameceum, those single-celled organisms, observable
only through a microscope, from which we have all evolved, and,
naturally, I was absolutely fascinated. I have since come to
the conclusion that nobody's education can be regarded as
complete unless it has included a basic understanding of the
anatomy and physiology underlying the human cerebration that we
value so highly. I still find it amazing that so many of my
fellow men seem to have a better understanding of the workings
of the internal combustion engine than they have of their own
bodies. Which is not to say that everyone should be required
to mount the mouth parts of a cockroach on a slide, as I did in
Zoo One, or fully dissect a frog, as I did in Zoo Two, but
somewhere in the syllabus of every school there should be a
space marked Evolutionary Biology.
So great was my hunger for further education, and so apparently
limitless the capacity of my teenage mind to absorb it, that my
forays into nightschool ranged well outside the territory
defined by the practical requirements of my chosen career. I
enrolled for anything that took my fancy. The language of our
Russian allies, for example, was very fashionable at the time,
so I enrolled for that, and such must have been my fascination
with language, that I even, at one point, enrolled for Spanish,
little knowing how useful this would turn out to be later. But
I can remember nothing about these classes now. Much more
memorable, were the courses I took in English Literature and
Music Appreciation, the first of which took the form of a
series of lectures given by one Reverend Alan (?) Bullock MA
whose name was to be seen prominently displayed outside the
Unitarian Church in Town Hall Square as its minister. Much as
I would have liked to, I never went to hear him preach there,
but if his classroom performance was anything to go by, he must
have been well worth listening to.
He was a short, square man with a large head rising necklessly
out of massive shoulders to present the world with a rugged red
face sloping backwards from a jutting chin to a full crown of
bristling white hair. His manner was very professorial and his
erudition seemed unbounded, he neither talked down to us nor
sought to ingratiate himself with us, but delivered his
uncompromising assessment of a chosen book or author each week
as if we were a bunch of undergraduates, before politely
inviting and answering our questions. I particularly recall
his view that D.H.Lawrence's novels were inadequately realised
as regards character and plot with the possible exception of
"Sons and Lovers" which, being largely autobiographical, was
more successful than the rest. The best of Lawrence, he said,
was to be found in his often neglected shorter fiction which
constituted, collectively, one of the truly great works of 20th
century English literature. I still have the rather battered
secondhand copy of "The Tales of D.H.Lawrence" published by
Martin Secker in 1934 which I went out and bought after hearing
him speak. That's one five shillings I have never regretted
spending.
The Mr.Mumby who took the Music Appreciation classes was a
complete contrast to the Reverend Bullock in appearance and
manner, but fully his match in the mastery of his subject. He
was younger, thinner and lame in one leg, with a small, pale
face, large specs with thick lenses, and lank, black hair. A
rather non-descript little man to look at, in fact, but, in his
case, appearances were deceptive. He had been appointed music
master at my old school while I was away in Keighley and had
quite revolutionised the school's approach to the subject. I
remembered Cliff reporting on his achievements with some awe,
because, not only had he succeeded in injecting small doses of
musical entertainment into the dull routine of the morning
assembly, but had even introduced a gramophone into the music
room where, instead of simply singing the same old songs, as in
my day, the classes were now taught about the history and
development of Western music and compelled to listen to
appropriate excerpts from major works on gramophone records. I
had, myself, seen him in action when I attended a final school
Speech Day to receive my School Certificates. I found that he
had virtually taken the occasion over, turning it into a miniconcert featuring a revitalised school orchestra and a number
of pupil soloists, introducing all the items himself from the
piano while the Head sat staring moodily into space.
As an accomplished performer who quite enjoyed showing off, he
never strayed far from the piano during our encounters on those
winter evenings in that ill-lit classroom, using it with great
fluency to illustrate any point he wished to make about the
music we had been listening to on gramophone records. It was
obvious that he lived for music and loved to communicate his
enthusiasm to anyone who would listen. I remember him drawing
our attention to what he called the "brown notes" which occur
on the downbeat, with curiously pungent effect, in the
"promenade" theme from Moussorgsky's "Pictures at an
Exhibition" - the original solo piano version, of course - he
was a bit sniffy about Ravel's orchestration of the piece and
quite scathing about "a second rate composer like Rimsky
Korsakov tampering with the work of a genius like Moussorgsky".
He was by no means a purist, however, and cast a pretty wide
net in selecting music for us to appreciate, but he may have
had a predilection for purely instrumental music. His
disparagement of Rimsky Korsakov's orchestration of
Moussorgsky's work was about the nearest he came to opera since
he was probably referring to "Boris Godonov" not "A Night on
the Bare Mountain" as I thought at the time. The latter piece
was very popular just then, being not only an exciting example
of the music of our gallant Russian allies, but of a length
that could conveniently be accommodated on a 12"x78rpm
gramophone record. Also, it was to feature in what was for me
the most memorable musical event of the last year of the war the screening in Bradford of Walt Disney's film "Fantasia". It
may sound childish, but I can remember very few experiences in
theatre or concert hall which have made such a vivid impression
on me as that sequence of animated cartoons, and, after
repeated viewings, I still see it as one of the great artworks
of the 20th century.
Much of the pictorialisation is pretty conventional, of course,
even cloying, and some of the musical pieces fairly
lightweight, but there is none in which the artistic invention
of the film's creators is less than inspired, and most are
simply spellbinding. In the opening segment, for example,
where the instruments of the orchestra playing Stokowski's
orchestration of Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D" are gradually
replaced by abstract symbols gyrating around the screen in
patterns reflecting the architecture of the score, the
combination of sound, shape and colour is quite stunning. The
realisation of Dukas' "Sorcerer's Apprentice" with Mickey Mouse
in the title role is a cartoon classic, Ponchielli's "Dance of
the Hours" wickedly witty, Moussorgsky's "Night on a Bare
Mountain" a tour de force of imaginative terror, contrasting
well with the beautifully drawn Schubert's "Ave Maria", and
Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite" the quintessence of ballet.
Even the long, very Hollywoodesque representation of
Beethoven's "Pastoral Symphony" as a collage of Greek
mythographies, suitably sterilised to include a teenage petting
party of nude centaurs with no nipples, and a Bacchanalia of
monumental but totally unlicentious proportions, is endlessly
inventive and does no real harm to the music.
But Fantasia's greatest achievement was to take Stravinsky's
"Rite of Spring", such a notoriously "difficult" piece of music
that it was rarely performed in the concert hall at the time,
and present it in a manner which made it perfectly acceptable
to the ears of a mass audience.
Even though much of its
dissonant idiom had already been assimilated into film music
without the public realising it, usually to reinforce images of
violence, great courage must have been required on somebody's
part to include this seminal masterpiece as a finale to a film
which was already so innovative that its making represented a
considerable commercial risk. And what a masterstroke to use
the piece as incidental music to no less a story than the
evolution of life on earth, taking us from the emergence of the
amoeba to the extinction of the dinosaurs in only half an hour,
with earthquakes, volcanoes and species competing graphically
for survival in between. Who could fault it? Certainly not I,
who can still watch it with pleasure on video, even though it
contains so little singing!
"Fantasia" was made by the same Walt Disney who had given us,
to great acclaim, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", but the
film was so little to the popular taste of the time that its
first screening in Bradford took place, not in one of those
great emporia of film which dominated the city centre, such as
the Ritz, the Odeon and the New Victoria, nor even in one of
the smaller suburban cinemas, but in what would nowadays be
called an art-house cinema, except that this one was not even a
real cinema, it was the Bradford Civic Theatre, invariably
referred to as t'Civic.
Yes, there was indeed another theatre
in Bradford besides the Alhambra, the Prince's, and the
Mechanics Institute, but it was easily overlooked, because,
although professionally managed on behalf of the Corporation,
it was home to a company of mere amateurs and tucked away up a
side-street by the Eastbrook Hall - a rather shabby little
place with a slightly unsavoury reputation among respectable
Bradfordians, probably because, given its nature, it generated
a certain amount of sinful affection in its habituees.
Although not exactly a beacon of enlightenment in a sea of
total indifference to serious drama (Bradford's most famous son
at the time was, after all, none other than J.B.Priestley, the
playwright), the Civic was the city's only permanent cultural
hot spot, committed as it was to staging the sort of play
unlikely ever to be found in the repertoire of 'Arry 'Anson's
Players at the Prince's - I saw, for example, my first Ibsen
play there, "The Masterbuilder", which didn't, I should add,
impress me much at the time. But, with it's limited resources,
the Civic could not afford to mount a continuous succession of
stageplays, so it filled the gaps between productions by
converting itself into a cinema, and I have to confess that I
was initially enticed into its cosy little interior by the
films being shown there. As with the plays, these were films
unlikely to appear on the screens of Bradford's many other
cinemas, if only because most of them were foreign language
films which could only be fully understood by a British
audience if the spoken dialogue in them had been translated
into English and printed at the bottom of the screen.
Which is how I made my first acquaintance with the device that
was to play such a large part in my enjoyment of opera in
these, my declining years. Thanks to subtitles, and the Civic,
I was able to experience virtually all the classics of the prewar French cinema, and even a few German ones. "Le Jour se
Leve", "Un Carnet de Bal", the Pagnol trilogy, "Marius",
"Fanny" and "Cesar", "La Femme du Boulanger", "The Cabinet of
Doctor Caligari", "The Blue Angel" - how those titles conjure
up the excitement I felt at discovering a world of film outside
the Anglo-American cinema, a more realistic world in many ways,
and certainly a less sexually inhibited world. Compared with
the explicit sex and violence which are such a feature of the
cinema today, those pre-war continental films would now seem
pretty tame, but to a generation raised on the carefully
sanitised products of Hollywood they were the first adult
movies we had seen. The subtitles, after the first few minutes
of adjustment, presented no significant barrier to enjoyment
and, with their assistance, my schoolboy French and German have
much improved over the years. I have even picked up a little
operatic Italian, but not enough to appreciate Rossini, Verdi
and Puccini without the subtitles - unless sung in English
translation, of course..
Surprising as it may seem, given my full-time employment, my
three or four nights a week at nightschool, my gigs with the
Semitones, my duties with the Home Guard, the swotting I had to
do in my own time for the impending MSR exams, and my theatre,
film and concert going, I still managed somehow to find the
time for my preferred career as a writer by pursuing the only
option open to me under the circumstances - writing short
stories. I even had the nerve to submit a couple of them to a
publication which was gamely carrying the flag of encouragement
to authorship by appearing at irregular intervals during the
darkest days of the war - Penguin's "New Writing" [edited by
John Lehmann]. My rejected manuscripts were returned with a
brief but not unkindly note of criticism from the editor,
describing one of the stories, I remember, as "formulaic" and
another as "orgiastic", words I had never encountered before.
Yes, I seriously wanted to write, and really enjoyed writing,
but writing about what? In spite of the wide range of my
interests I had great difficulty in conceiving of intriguing
human situations about which to make profound observations, or
to manipulate in significant ways.
Nothing unusual about
that, I told myself, in one too young to have digested what
little experience of life he has already had.
But my real problem was that I was more in the thick of things
than on the periphery taking notes, enjoying my own life too
much to devote the attention to my fellow beings and their
concerns that the authorship of successful fiction requires.
There was also the unpalatable fact that solitary activity
which resulted in unpublishable short stories was much less
effective than my other pursuits in bringing me into the
company of girls - that being the other thing I somehow managed
to find time for. Not with too serious an intent, of course,
but not for purely platonic reasons, either, except in one
case. Given my other commitments, and with the dreadful
examples of Leonard and Vic before me, there was no question of
a single, exclusive relationship, but nor was there, in those
days, in the circles in which I moved, any question of casual
sexual intercourse before marriage, not, at the very least,
before the engagement ring was firmly on the finger.
Fortunately, however, almost anything short of that was
allowed, but could only be arrived at progressively by amorous
persuasion on successive occasions in complete privacy, the
last of these being by far the most difficult to achieve.
Meeting girls one would like to undress in private was not a
problem, however, because suitable arrangements were in place
for experimental encounters with complete strangers of the
opposite sex at all the public dance halls in Bradford. Here,
boys and girls (most of whom would have arrived there with
friends of the same sex), could congregate on opposite sides of
the dance floor, eyeing each other up with the object of
identifying desirable partners for the ritual to be followed
once the signal had been given. This usually took the form of
an announcement from the bandstand, eg., "Take your partners
for a quickstep" whereupon any boy was permitted by convention
to approach any girl not obviously partnered already for this
particular dance (even one who had arrived in the company of a
boyfriend), and ask her to dance this dance with him. The girl
in question had two options open to her - she could decline the
invitation with a simple "No, thank you" adding any emphasis or
addendum she chose in order to aggravate or ameliorate the
verdict, or she could accept.
In which case, the couple would normally have a set of three
dances, each lasting about four minutes, to size each other up
from a number of aspects, the most immediately important of
which would be those revealed during the close embrace
permitted by the need to move as smoothly as possible round the
dance floor in time to the music. Without in any way
overstepping the bounds of outward propriety, a great deal of
information could be gathered in a very short time about the
physical characteristics and erotic disposition of one's
partner in this way, given a modicum of cooperation on both
sides. There was the closer visual inspection, of course, and
the smell, and the touch of the hand, but it was the contours
and consistency of the bodies under the clothing, as revealed
by the closeness of the contact between them and the way they
moved together to the rhythm of the dance, that counted for
most. If the chemistry was right, the couple could spend as
much of the dance as they chose in full frontal conjunction
from neck to thigh without attracting unfavourable attention
from anyone looking on. Little wonder that an old admiral's
definition of ballroom dancing was "A navel engagement with no
loss of semen"?
Time and opportunity would also be available during the dance
for the pair to establish more than just a basic physical
compatibility. In those days, before the invention of overamplification by microchip, it was perfectly feasible for an
intimate conversation to be conducted at normal voice levels
while gyrating round the dance floor in each other's arms.
However banal this chat may be, it provided an additional
source of useful information about the partner which, like that
gleaned from the close embrace, is not nowadays available to
young disco dancers, separated as they are by both distance and
decibels. By the end of the set, then, a couple who had never
met before could have learned quite a lot about each other,
enough, at least, to know whether they wished to learn more.
After returning the girl to her place and himself to his, it
would then be up to the boy to decide whether and when to ask
the girl for another dance, an invitation which the girl would
again be at liberty to accept or decline.
This basic algorithm made it possible for young people not only
to sort through a variety of potential partners fairly quickly,
but also to advance, step by step, towards closer involvement
with any one of them without irrevocable commitment on either
side at any stage. And procedures of an equally wellestablished nature existed for taking the acquaintanceship
beyond the dance floor. At the end of a set, for example, the
couple could linger, chatting long enough for the the next
number to be announced and, by mutual agreement, danced
together, after which it would be up to the boy to decide which
option to pursue next. "Can I buy you a drink?", however,
would not be one of them, because the draconian licensing laws
of the day ensured that no alcoholic beverages were available
for consumption in public dance halls, most of which, in
addition, enforced a strict NO PASSOUTS policy to prevent any
recourse to a nearby pub without paying for re-entry.
Also, this being wartime England, even tea was in short supply,
coffee virtually unobtainable, fruit juice non-existent, and
soft drinks still at the "Dandelion and Burdock" stage of their
development (remember "Oxo will be served in the interval..."
even at the opera?). In any case, even youths in full
employment did not have the money at their disposal to make the
lavish gestures they can indulge in today. Fortunately,
Bradford girls were fully aware of this and had so little
expectation of having money spent on them until a more intimate
relationship had been established that they viewed the motives
of anyone offering to do so with a healthy suspicion. No, the
next move, if there was to be one, would take them out of the
dance hall and depend on such information as the boy had been
able to extract from the girl during the course of the evening
about her social habits and, in particular, her habitat,
because, before taking the most obvious step of asking if he
could see her home after the last waltz, it was important to
know what this would entail. Very important!
Although, at that time, nobody of their years and means would
have had the use of a private car, transport to the girl's
front door would not be a problem, since the dance would be
timed to end before the last tram, bus, or even train departed
from the vicinity of the dance hall at, usually, the early
wartime hour of about 10pm. It was the difficulty of getting
back home from this destination that had to be weighed in the
balance against the likely rewards of the venture. Two or
three miles across Bradford was no deterrent - a distance I
often covered walking home from the BRI after missing the last
trolleybus - provided, of course, that the weather was not too
inclement, but a girl met at the New Victoria Ballroom in the
city centre might have come from as far away as Bingley,
Buttershaw, or even Pudsey. I remember one occasion when Mike
allowed gallantry to prevail over caution to the extent of
offering to see home a girl who had taken his fancy (which,
admittedly, was not easily done) before finding out that she
lived in distant Bramhope, and was too much of a gent to back
down when he did. His reward was a short conversation with the
girl's father who was waiting at the front gate, and a twelve
mile hike before breakfast.
A less risky investment than escorting the girl to her door in
return for whatever could be achieved so close to her means of
escape would be to arrange to meet again in surroundings more
conducive to greater intimacy than that permitted on the dance
floor. But the only other opportunities for taking matters
further in that direction with a girlfriend who was not yet a
fiancee would occurr in circumstances which were too exposed to
prying eyes to be of any real use. There were occasional
parties, of course, at which games might be played involving
pairing off and putting the lights out, during which a certain
amount of what we called snogging could take place, but there
would be too many couples in too small a space for any further
exploration of the female anatomy to be successfully attempted.
Also, the partygiver's parents, in those days, were never far
away. More readily available was the back row of the cinema,
but that was only good for the aforementioned snogging,
anything further soon attracting the attentions of the
usherette's torch, even though several of Bradford's suburban
cinemas still had double seats in the back row for the
convenience of courting couples.
Forays into the surrounding countryside with amorous intent
were feasible only during the summer months when, if the
conditions were right for a little horizontal outdoor lovemaking, they would also be suitable for other, more innocent
activities on the part of upright citizens in search of
exercise, fresh air and, possibly, wild blackberries (or
'blegs' as we called them). There was also a troublesome
species of elderly male equipped with binoculars and sporting
the sort of flat cap, which was often called a "hogger",
because that was the name given to its wearers in this context,
whose pastime it was to spy on couples who had become
sufficiently carried away with each other to ignore the
discomforts of the underlying flora and fauna and expose
themselves indecently to the elements. This may, today, seem
like a hard way for a scopophile to get his kicks, but this was
long before the advent of the X rated film and the later
pornographic video had rendered such strenuous outdoor
activities, which were not without the risk of physical assault
if apprehended, redundant. There was simply nothing else of
the sort available to watch at the time.
So, privacy was a very real problem for any young man wishing
to persuade a young lady to allow herself to be disrobed. But
not for one, who, as already noted, had the whole of the X Ray
Department at his disposal after 5pm, and the unquestioned
right to remain on the deserted premises, ostensibly to study
for his pending exams in the kind of solitude not available to
him at home. It was here that I wrote my short stories, of
course, little expecting, as I did so, that the facility would
prove useful for a more successful enterprise. But,
unbelievably lax as the hospital's security was at the time, it
would not have been easy for me to introduce any of my regular
girl friends into this secluded spot (in the unlikely event of
their having agreed to come), nor would it even have occurred
to me to try, since my expectations of finding a partner
willing to cooperate in the realisation of my erotic fantasies
were virtually nil until experience taught me otherwise.
This experience was with a girl, who, when she joined the staff
of the Department as an office worker, hardly registered with
me as an object of desire at all. She was not unattractive in
a rather furtive way, but everything about her was so very
unremarkable that I would never have singled her out for
attention in a public dancehall, and what little she had to say
for herself was quite uninteresting. But, she was young and
female, and, more importantly, she was there every day,
familiar and friendly, as part of a working routine which
frequently threw us together. One of her duties was to file
away redundant X Ray films in a large windowless wooden hut
which stood outside the Department's back door emergency exit,
and it was there that I discovered her one day, standing on the
upper rungs of a stepladder in order to reach a top shelf.
Whatever else she may have lacked, she had very good legs and,
on this occasion, a skirt that was short enough to afford me a
generous eyeful of white thighs and suspenders above her
stocking tops and arouse my open admiration - which she
pretended not to notice.
Driven by hormonal impulse, I put my hand where my eye had
already been, and, since this produced no other reaction than a
faint blush mounting her cheeks, contrived to fondle her silky
thighs while we conversed, a trifle breathlessly, about the
business which had brought me to the foot of her ladder. I
returned to my duties in such a glow of self-satisfaction that
I was sure my colleagues would notice, but they were all as
preoccupied with their work as they assumed I was with mine,
and, thanks to the exigencies of the filing system and her
willing cooperation, I was soon able to repeat the experience.
Thus began a relationship which, by tacit agreement, was never
publicly acknowledged by either of us, but had all too soon,
alas, explored the outer limits of what could be achieved,
without risk of discovery, in the nooks and crannies of a busy
X Ray Department. But further developments suddenly became
possible when, one memorable evening, to my surprise and
delight, my private studies in the deserted department were
disturbed by the sound of the outer doors opening and the
unmistakable clicking of her heels approaching along the
corridor.
I cannot recall what pretext had brought her back from her
nearby home at such a late hour on that first occasion, but it
provided me with a sufficient excuse to accompany her into the
ladies' staff room in the remotest corner of the darkened
department, where I could safely pursue the objective of
removing her clothing without fear of being disturbed. It took
patient persuasion over several visits to achieve this but
achieve it I did, and very exciting the experience was while it
lasted. But, strange as it may seem, once I had this
completely naked girl at my disposal, I found myself at a loss
about what to do next. This was not because I didn't know how
to proceed and she didn't know how to show me, which was all
too true, but rather that I had never had any desire to do
anything other than undress her, gloat over her nakedness, and
fondle her now defenceless body.
In the light of my later proclivities, I can only look back
with amazement at the vague distaste I felt, then, for what
little I knew about the act of sexual intercourse, an
uneasiness which extended to the thought of having anything to
do with the bit between the girl's legs. It all seemed so
messily bodily functional compared to the pure, aesthetic
pleasures of strip, stroke and see, which I had already
enjoyed. Not only that, but I was extremely shy about
uncovering my own private parts in the presence of a member of
the opposite sex, which is probably why I took such pleasure in
exposing theirs. I was, in fact, a typical product of an
upbringing which had encouraged my admiration of the female
form and titillated my curiosity about its secondary sexual
characteristics while discouraging me from contemplating the
act of procreation with anything but disgust.
Not surprisingly, given the unlikelihood of my enrolling for a
reconditioning course with a qualified therapist, it took me
some time to overcome these romantic inhibitions and gain
access to the greater satisfaction which lies beyond foreplay.
I was still technically a virgin, in fact, when I got married
several years later - but only just, and not, towards the end,
through lack of trying not to be, although the constraints on
the amount of privacy available in which to achieve this
objective with my future wife became, if anything, more severe.
Looking back at my earlier condition as described above,
however, I must emphasise that I did not suffer from any sense
of deprivation at the time. Far from it. My life was getting
progressively richer and fuller, driven, quite possibly, by the
sublimation of those energies which might otherwise have been
expended in pursuit of coitus, and I was no stranger to orgasm,
having discovered at an early age that a quantity of relief
could be obtained from it in private which far outweighed the
amount of time and energy required to bring it about.
Strange as it may seem by today's standards, therefore, I
regarded my sex-life, in spite of its minor frustrations, as
quite satisfactory. I can still recall the warmth of the glow
I felt when it dawned on me, shortly after starting work at the
BRI, that one didn't need to be as good-looking as Brad to
attract the interest of girls - that, in fact, an intelligent
and articulate youth with no frankly repellent characteristics
and a modest armamentarium of social skills would find few
insurmountable obstacles in the way of his making friends with
any young lady he felt attracted to, however unapproachable her
beauty may have appeared to him to render her, initially.
Equally pleasurable was the realisation that Nature had
arranged for girls to like having done to them what boys liked
doing to them - as long as it didn't involve sexual intercourse
before marriage, of course, which, like the state of matrimony
itself, held little appeal for me until later in life.
All of which left me free to strike up as intimate a friendship
as I could contrive with any girl I was attracted to, provided
that it didn't "get serious", and the clandestine affair with
my junior colleague, before losing its sense of adventure and
petering out, had given me useful practice in exploiting any
opportunities that were to come my way with girl friends of my
own choosing in the future. These arrangements worked very
well, I might add, for both sexes since they allowed for a
great deal of experimentation with relationships without too
much commitment. There were those, of course, like Leonard and
Vic, who couldn't wait to 'get serious', but, for those of us
who were still expanding our horizons, there was no barrier to
exploring as many relationships with members of the opposite
sex as we could find the time and energy for.
Thirty years were to pass before I began to appreciate the true
value of these conventions when observing the restrictions
imposed on my own daughter's generation by the permissive
society of 70's. Once sexual intercourse before marriage had
become the acceptable norm, the freedom to enjoy intimate
friendships with a number of different partners seemed to
disappear. Eighteen-year-olds who, in my day, would have been
"playing the field", now found themselves "shacked up" with
their lovers in relationships which made it difficult for them
to develop close friendships with new acquaintances of the
opposite sex without being accused of infidelity and even
promiscuity. The result was a great deal of heartache for any
couple whose personalities and predilections continued to
develop and diverge, as they can so easily do, between their
late teens and mid-twenties. Without wishing to draw any
profound inferences from a single case, I can report that,
between leaving school and getting married, I was fortunate
enough to enjoy at least half a dozen very rewarding
friendships with lovely, lively girls, only one of which could
be described as platonic, and none of which ended in tears.
It may also be worth mentioning, while on the subject, that,
whatever else it did for me, my upbringing in what is now seen
as a male-dominated society did not condition me to think of
women as fundamentally inferior to men in anything but basic
muscle power. Nor, however, as innately, in some way,
superior. Simply as different, thank God! But with the same
intellectual potential, at least, and to be valued as
individuals, sexual attractions aside, for much the same
qualities that I admired in my male friends. As for the value
to be attached to the difference, well, since millions of years
of evolution have ordained that the survival of our species is
best ensured by some form of co-operation, in the production
and rearing of its young, between two separate sexes, it would
be foolish to assume that the contribution made by one of them
to this undertaking does not complement that of the other in
some vitally essential way.
Clearly, the human race did not become the dominant species on
this planet by favouring same-sex relationships and one-parent
families, or defaulting on its parental responsibilities before
they had been fully discharged, however attractive these
options may appear to be, now that we are free to choose them.
On the other hand, there is no evidence that this eminence has
been achieved by accepting certain practices as absolutely
right or absolutely wrong, now and forever, on the authority of
some man-made institution, spiritual or temporal, which claims
to know what is best for us - particularly when, thanks to that
one inequality in brute strength, these doctrines have tended
always to devalue the role of the "weaker vessel". This
doesn't mean that the two sexes are equal (how can they be
equal and different?) only that their indispensability to each
other would make them of equal worth in the eyes of any outside
observer who, for whatever reason, took an interest in us.
Needless to say, I didn't articulate thoughts like these at the
time. Thanks to Hildred's legacy, I was still a practising
Christian making Holy Communion once a month, saying my prayers
every night, and cultivating my immortal soul whenever an
opportunity to do so presented itself. I was an AngloCatholic, I suppose, having given some consideration to
becoming a Roman Catholic shortly after leaving school, while
Hildred's influence was at its strongest, but my appetite for
such a course of action had waned as my immersion in the world
of work and play had increased. There was also the fact that
it would have deeply distressed my mother, who, as a member of
the respectable Methodist working class, viewed the Roman
Catholics of Bradford, many of whom were of Irish descent and
lived in certain notoriously slummy areas closer to the city
centre, with a distaste and distrust which was too tribally
ingrained ever to change.
of a foreign power?
Were they not, after all, the agents
There is an old Yorkshire joke about the staunchly Methodist
Halifax patriarch, who, after being told by his doctor that his
illness had left him with only a few months to live, announced
to his horrified family that he had decided to become a
Catholic. When asked by his younger brother, summoned from
Huddersfield for the purpose, why he had decided to take this
unthinkable step, he replied "Nay, lad, Ah'd raither one'a them
dee than one uv us". Fortunately, my mother's prejudice
against Roman Catholics did not extend to my friend Frank who
she made as welcome in our house as I was in his, but a
Catholic girlfriend would have received quite a different
reception. I have often mused upon the benefits bestowed by
the colour of their skin upon the Irish Catholics in Bradford.
They worshipped at different churches and attended different
schools, but, in a crowd, they simply could not be told apart
from the rest of us. Nowadays they are 'us', of course, and
the Pakistani Muslims are 'them', but they will never be able
to lose themselves in a crowd of us, will they?
3
The realities of war finally intruded on my privileged
existence in June 1944 when, little more than 48 hours after
the D Day landings began, a convoy of wounded soldiers arrived
at the BRI. Since all were serious bone injuries, shipped as
far north as Bradford by previous arrangement because of the
reputation of our consultant orthopaedic surgeon, they required
a great deal of X Raying. Most were hips and femurs, some of
them badly shattered and impregnated with shrapnel, and still
encased, when they arrived late at night, in the massive
plaster of paris sarcophagi applied in the field hospitals to
enable them to be shipped out safely. A few of these plasters
were inscribed with the magic words "Penicillin 10,000 units" my first encounter with the miracle drug which was to
revolutionise the treatment of infections throughout the world.
Another unusual feature was the maggots we found infesting the
wounds revealed by the removal of the casings. Shocking at
first, until we realised that the little scavengers were
cleaning up the wounds by feeding only on pus and dead tissue.
Two whole wards had been cleared in anticipation of these
arrivals, most of whom were soon lying with at least one leg in
the air, suspended by weights dangling at the end of rope
threaded through a pulley in an overhead beam - so many of them
that the ward was a veritable forest of wooden frames, and
Leonard and I were kept busy, manoeuvring our mobile X Ray set
around them virtually every day for weeks on end. Not
surprisingly, since some of the patients were the same age as
us, we felt a little self-conscious about our civilian status,
but they seemed to take our presence there for granted and
accept our ministrations without demur. Although badly
injured, most of them seemed happy to be alive and out of the
conflict, and their high spirits turned those two wards into
noisy enclaves in the surrounding sober hush of the BRI. There
was nothing that even Matron or medical staff between them
could do to damp things down, even when they invented a game of
bed-ridden hockey which was played with walking sticks and ball
of rug wool, using each other's frames as goalposts. They were
simply not ill enough or old enough to be overawed by the
authorities. The nurses loved them, of course.
Soon, the war was going so well that, in November 1944, the
Home Guard was stood down, by which time our weapons and
training had made us much more of a force to be reckoned with
than we had been after Dunkirk. Then, with only half a dozen
WWI Lee-Enfield .303 rifles between us (and one elderly Thomson
sub-machine gun for demonstration purposes only), we would
sacrifice an entire Sunday for the privilege of bussing out to
the butts at Oxenhope to shoot a mere three rounds apiece with
them. Now, we had all the rifles and ammunition we could use
plus several highly prized Sten guns. We also had something
called a Blacker Bombard with which I was able to earn for
myself a brief moment of local fame. This contraption was the
primitive ancestor of the better known and much more effective
PIAT projector - those initials standing, I think, for Portable
Infantry Anti Tank. There was nothing portable about the
Blacker once it was assembled from its constituent parts by the
team of four strong men required to do so.
Four pieces of 3 inch steel piping about 4 feet in length had
to be fitted horizontally, at right angles to each other, into
a central mount and their outer ends anchored to the ground by
18 inch metal stakes (using the sledgehammer provided for the
purpose!) before the massive business end of the contraption
could be lowered into place on a vertical swivelling peg.
This part consisted of a 5 inch wide 18inch deep mortar barrel
protruding from a 3 foot wide, 2 foot high protective shield
behind which the operator was intended to lie prone on the
ground, manipulating the weapon by means of two vertical
handlebars - an activity which put considerable strain on the
arms and shoulders in that position. The missile to be
projected was, in effect, a flying bomb nearly 6 inches in
diameter mounted on a hollow shaft about 2 inches thick and 18
inches long with fins on the back end. When loaded, this
hollow shaft fitted precisely on to a polished metal spigot
occupying the central axis of the mortar barrel. The end of
the spigot housed a firing pin and, at the top of the hollow
shaft, behind the bomb, there was a cartridge powerful enough
to hurl the aerial torpedo about two hundred yards when
triggered off.
I doubt if this unwieldy apparatus ever saw active service, or,
if it had done, whether any of its crew would have lived to
tell the tale. As an anti-tank weapon, it was an obvious
sitting duck to any approaching tank, but it was our sitting
duck and we drilled with it religiously, assembling it
repeatedly in the field behind the pub at the crossroads which
was our "defended locality", and pointing it threateningly at
imaginary German tanks approaching down Allerton Road, having,
presumably, crossed the Pennines via Wuthering Heights. I
became the chosen marksman of the team solely because the
length of my forearms made it possible for me to manipulate the
monster with my elbows on the ground, but I was only ever
allowed to shoot with it once.
The Bradford Home Guard Battalion's inter-Company Blacker
Bombard Shooting Competition was held somewhere in West
Bowling, on a large piece of waste ground containing one of
those "pit 'ills" - residual slag heaps from long defunct coal
mines - which featured in the urban landscape of so many
Yorkshire towns, and on the side of which, on this occasion,
three sheets of newspaper were laid out a few feet apart to be
shot at from about 150 yards away. It has to be said that,
when launched, the Blacker's bomb floated most impressively
through the air - almost, it seemed, in slow motion - towards
its target, and I'm sure a direct hit would have made a pretty
large dent in any tank. We were not, of course, using live
warheads to blow up sheets of newspaper, but the firing
cartridges were real, allowing the marksmanship to be quite
adequately tested, and I can report that, thanks to my long
forearms and reasonably good eye, ours was the only team to
puncture three sheets of newspaper.
As our final missile reached its target and a cheer went up
from the BRI platoon, our CO bounced forward, salivating
copiously in and around his pipe stem
congratulate us, me in particular, on
had, we soon learned, won him several
COs of our rival teams, thus enabling
round in a local pub afterwards.
as was his wont, to
our achievement, which
pounds in bets from the
him to buy us drinks all
The Blacker Bombard was not the only unwieldy weapon to pass
into history with the Home Guard. There was another anti-tank
device called the "Sticky Bomb", which came to hand, initially,
as a metal sphere, about the size of a lavatory ballcock, with
a protruding handle. When prepared for action, however, by the
removal of this outer casing (held in place by adhesive tape),
it was revealed to be a glass ball covered in a gauze
impregnated with a thick brown glue which gave it the
appearance of a very large toffee apple. We were assured that,
if bashed against the armour of a tank with sufficient force to
break the glass, the Sticky Bomb would stay in position long
enough for the full force of the explosive it contained to be
directed through the point of impact. Suitable techniques for
getting close enough to a tank to stick the bomb on it (and for
getting away intact having done so) were left to our individual
initiatives.
But the honour of being the weapon in the Home Guard's
armamentarium with the highest lethal potential for its user
went to a hand thrown grenade whose correct name escapes me (it
was something like "the ED20"), probably because, due to its
size and shape, I always thought of it as the "Thermos Flask
Bomb".
Given its dimensions and weight, the delivery of this
device to its intended target called for a unique two-handed
underarm action, as follows: with the throwing arm hanging
straight down, the cylinder was balanced upright in the cupped
hand along the length of the inside forearm and held in place
by the other hand while the arm was swung backwards and
forwards to generate maximum momentum on release. To
complicate matters, the grenade was triggered by an impact fuse
protruding from its base which had to be primed by the
withdrawal of a safety pin after it had been thrown but before
it struck the ground. This difficult feat was made possible,
in theory, by attaching a length of tape to the pin which had a
ring at the other end of it for placing over the middle finger
of the throwing hand, thus enabling the pin to be pulled out in
mid-air once the tape (which was coiled around the impact fuse)
had unrolled to its full length.
In addition to the problems inherent in this rather complex
procedure, the weapon had two main disadvantages. The first
was that it could only be thrown while standing fully erect and
facing the enemy, the second that, given its size and weight,
the best throw achievable was between 15 and 20 yards whereas
the amount of explosive it contained could be lethal up to 50
yards. It was extremely important, therefore, for the thrower,
having pulled out the pin by jerking on the tape, to fall flat
on his face before the missile hit the ground.
I was privileged to witness two of these grenades being thrown,
live, for demonstration purposes, on the bombing range one day.
The sequence of actions outlined above was correctly followed
in each case (particularly the last!), but both bombs failed to
explode on impact. It turned out that success depended on the
trigger in the base striking the ground with the vertical
weight of the bomb above it, a outcome which the jerky
withdrawal of the safety pin in mid-air rendered virtually
impossible to achieve. One after another their unexploded
contents had to be dealt with by the bomb disposal squad, whose
activities I was observing with keen interest from what I
thought to be a safe distance until they succeeded in blowing
up the first container and the blast nearly knocked me off my
feet. I still find it hard to believe that the Thermos Flask
Bomb ever got off the drawing board. Fortunately, we of the
BRI platoon were on the bombing range that day to throw the
tried and trusty Mills Bomb which presented no problems at all
and even afforded some of us a certain amount of amusement at
the expense of the supervising Bombing Officer.
The grenades were being hurled from a shallow trench towards a
piece of moorland where they could explode harmlessly, throwing
up nothing more dangerous than clods of earth. Overlooking the
rear of the throwing trench, there was a corrugated iron
watchtower from which the Bombing Officer could observe and
control the proceedings. As each pair of bombardiers stepped
forward ,in turn, with their grenades held at the ready, he
would give the orders "Prepare to throw!" at which the pins
would be extracted, then, "Throw!", followed by "Down!". Frank
and I, while loafing about in the sheltered area at the foot of
the watchtower before and after our throws, noticed that when
the Bombing Officer had satisfied himself that the grenades had
been correctly hurled, he would duck down out of sight behind
his protective shield before they detonated and not reappear
until sufficient time had elapsed for any flying debris to have
cleared.
When we also noticed that, in spite of this precaution, small
pieces of moorland turf, propelled by the force of the
explosions, would occasionally come flying through the air and
land inside his shelter, it didn't take us long to arrive at
the idea of reproducing this phenomenon manually whenever we
could do so unobserved by anyone in authority. The poor fellow
must have felt that the god of fortune had suddenly turned
against him when he found himself assailed by this inexplicable
increase in the number of stray turves invading his sanctuary.
By the end of the day they had accumulated underfoot to a
volume sufficient to raise him up on a mound of sods over a
foot deep, but, needless to say, whenever his head reappeared
above the parapet of his protective enclosure, we were always
looking the other way.
In spite of this and the many other amusements that Frank and I
were able to extract from its warlike activities, I was not
sorry, on balance, to see the Home Guard disbanded at a time
when the demands being made on my waking hours by my other
activities, both inside and outside the BRI, seemed to be
mounting exponentially. Its demise left me free, during what
turned out to be the last winter of the war, to make the most
of the opportunities coming my way from the other directions I
have already signposted. I must confess that it was a
wonderful thing to be me, at that time. I seemed to have
tapped into a bottomless well of creative energy fuelling a
personal quest for enlightenment and experience on all
available fronts, and, fortunately for me, the County Borough
of Bradford, even in wartime, was a big enough world to
accommodate my interests and reward my endeavours - with a
little help from my visits to the distant metropolis.
VE Day, when it arrived on the 8th of May 1945, took me, like
many others, rather by surprise. In London, spontaneous mass
eruptions of public joy were made possible by the presence of
the large numbers of Allied servicemen and women who were
already milling around there, and the focus provided by the
balcony of Buckingham Palace. Out in the provinces, on hearing
the news, we experienced a certain amount of relief but didn't
quite know what to do about it on the day. We had to wait the
three months until VJ day, before we could celebrate the end of
the war in a properly organised manner. In the meantime, I,
for one, carried on my fun-filled existence as usual.
Obviously, I had had a very good war. Only thirteen years old
when it started, I had been too young to appreciate the full
seriousness of the country's situation during the dark days
from 1940 to 42. I could see we were losing, but my youthful
optimism was such that I never doubted we would win in the end.
By the time I was old enough to realise that, if Hitler hadn't
been stupid enough to invade Russia and the Japanese to bomb
Pearl Harbour, things would have turned out very differently,
we were manifestly winning the war.
4
The interregnum between VE Day and VJ Day was not without
incident. The relaxation in wartime restrictions had made it
possible for holidays to be taken in parts of the country which
had been virtually inaccessible to civilians "for the
duration", but I would never have embarked on so ambitious a
venture as a cycling tour of Devon, Cornwall and Somerset had I
not been talked into it by Bert the Introvert, our guitarist in
the Semitones. For one thing, I was a hiker not a biker.
Naturally, I had always possessed a roadworthy bike, no boy
could be without one in those days, and, while living in
Keighley, I had relied on it extensively for getting about the
town and making forays into the countryside, such as my visits
to Hildred's cottage at Swartha. I had even spent a week
"barn-owling" round the Lake District on it in the company of
Brad during the school holidays. But Bradford was too hilly,
and far too well provided with public transport to make the
daily use of a bike an attractive proposition to anyone other
than a dedicated weekend cyclist - which Bert was, of course.
Hiking, on the other hand, I have always enjoyed, and it was a
very popular form of group activity during the war - cheap and
cheerful, equally accessible to both sexes, and, in Bradford at
least, with all those Yorkshire moors and dales so close at
hand, very easy to indulge in. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the
BRI Social Circle had a thriving hiking offshoot of which I was
an active member, spending many a happy hour in the liveliest
of company, rambling over hill and dale, usually on Sundays in
summer. But our most memorable ventures were of a more unusual
order.
I cannot remember where the idea of the "moonlight
hike" came from, but, given our appetite for novel activities
involving members of both sexes, the concept cast an immediate
spell over our collective imagination. Which is how it came to
pass that, one Saturday night in June, chosen for the fullness
of its moon, after all the cinemas and dance halls had emptied,
a good three dozen of us met at Forster Square Station to catch
the last train to Skipton.
From Skipton, under a blazing moon, we walked to Bolton Abbey,
passing through slumbering hamlets many of whose inhabitants
must have woken in wonder at the sound of our tramping feet and
ceaseless chatter.
It was a perfect night for a picnic among
the picturesque ruins by the shining river, and, after that,
for a stroll along the Wharfe to Ilkley and, finally, a
strenuous last leg over Ilkley Moor into Airedale with dawn
breaking in quite spectacular fashion over Baildon Moor to our
left.
Coming down the path off the moor to meet the road
above Eldwick, we arrived at a pub known to all Bradfordians
then and now as "Dick Hudson's", even though, at the time, it's
correct name was "The Fleece Inn", this being long before it
bowed to the force of the local custom and officially adopted
it's famous nickname. Here, by a stroke of genius, we had
arranged to be served with what is nowadays called a Full
English Breakfast, not an easy thing to organise under wartime
constraints and only achieved on this occasion on condition
that we all brought our weekly bacon rations with us.
After gaining admission to the pub by rousing the still
sleeping occupants, there followed a rather subdued interval
during which we sat around in the cold comfort of a hostelry
still redolent with the stale odours of the night before, while
the landlord and his wife set about preparing the promised meal
from scratch. But our spirits rose as the ineffable aroma of
frying bacon emanated from the kitchen, driving all other
considerations from our minds, and when the fried egg, bacon,
sausage, mushrooms, and tomatoes arrived, together with gallons
of hot tea, a party atmosphere quickly developed and the meal
became a truly memorable occasion. To participate in a festive
breakfast with over thirty companions at the end of an allnight hike of nearly twenty miles must be counted unusual in
itself, even unique, but it was also the first time I had
encountered what was to become the staple of so many of my
subsequent breakfasts, marmalade on toast. Nothing reflects
quite so poignantly upon the circumstances of my early years as
the fact that I had to reach the age of eighteen before
experiencing marmalade on toast.
Two years later, my bike ride round the West Country was to be
an equally memorable experience, if not one of quite such
unalloyed pleasure as the moonlight hike. Unusually for me at
the time, I had nothing whatever to do with the planning of the
tour. This was undertaken by Bert and our two other fellowtravellers-to-be, Fred and Brian, who were workmates of his at
the local engineering factory, then fully engaged in war work,
of course, which accounted for the fact that, although a couple
of years older than us, they were not in uniform. Both lived
in Leeds, but were reasonably compatible, Fred the more
outgoing and jocular, Brian the more reserved and judgemental.
Considering that I had hardly known these two beforehand and
that the quality of my bike and bikemanship fell some way short
of those of my three companions, the four of us managed to rub
along together pretty well through fair and foul weather for a
fortnight, during which, fortunately for me, my intrinsic
physical stamina backed by grim determination enabled me to
keep up with them, no matter how adverse the conditions or
gruelling the pace.
Apart from revealing the many attractions of the West Country
to me for the first time, the expedition proved to be of value
in two other respects. The first arose from the simple fact
that the itinerary my companions had planned for us created a
requirement for me to join an organisation called the Youth
Hostels Association. Given the extent to which the growth in
our personal affluence has been reflected in the holiday
industry in the second half of the twentieth century, it may be
difficult, today, for anyone under the age of seventy to
appreciate what a godsend the YHA was to the impecunious youth
of that first post-war decade. With its basic hostel
accommodation housed in a motley collection of buildings dotted
throughout the land but more densely in North Wales, the Lake
District, and the Peak, the YHA made it possible for us to have
walking, biking, and climbing holidays in all the best places
for only a few shillings a night. The only baggage requirement
was a personal cotton sleeping bag and any food to be cooked on
such facilities as were provided, although some of the hostels
served basic meals at rock bottom prices.
An overnight journey by train as far as Bridgewater, our bikes
in the luggage van, brought us within striking distance of the
first of a chain of youth hostels stretching round Somerset,
Devon and Cornwall, each within reach of another by bike or
public transport (unlike those I was later to visit in North
Wales which were within hiking distance) – the use of motorcars
and motorbikes being against YHA rules. Since we lodged at a
different hostel every night, covering a lot of ground (most of
it very hilly), I was introduced to a pretty representative
cross-section of the YHA's hostels, but the only two that stick
in my mind after all this time were those at Bigbury Bay and
Dunsford. This may be because I was to revisit both places at
intervals in future years, particularly the latter since my old
pal Cliff has lived near it for fifty years, but is more likely
to be due to their distinctive features at the time.
Anyone who has been to Bigbury Bay will vouch, I am sure, for
its scenic charms. Apart from the wide sweep of sand and sea,
its most attractive feature was the causeway to Burgh Island
across which it was possible to walk, at low tide, to visit a
little pub called The Pilchard, constructed, seemingly, out of
flotsam and jetsam, where beer was served in china pots. Gosh!
After Bridlington and Morecambe, Bigbury Bay was the equivalent
of a Mediterranean experience for me at the time. The youth
hostel was unusual in being a modern, purpose-built, timber
bungalow overlooking the beach and boasting all-electric
cooking facilities.
The hostel at Dunsford was also of timber construction and
purpose-built, but, otherwise, in complete contrast. Standing
in a small clearing in the dense woods which adorn the Teign
Valley at that point, it was a simple structure with its
sleeping quarters in an upper storey reached by external steps
leading up to a balcony. There was no mains electricity, and
the water supply came from a large hand-operated pump which
stood in front of the entrance to the ground floor cooking and
eating facilities, within easy reach of the enamel bowls on a
trestle table which served for outdoor ablutions. After eating
whatever meal we were able to prepare on the primus stoves
provided, the four of us, the evening being fine and warm,
strolled along to the village pub where, given the novelty of
it all, we needed little encouragement to sample the
deceptively drinkable local draught cider.
Fred and Brian, older and more experienced, stood up to this
encounter well, but, unaccustomed to alcohol as I then was, I
became more inebriated than I had ever been before in my life
after only two half pints, and Bert, who was very ascetic in
his habits, but subscribed to the view so mistakenly held by
many at the time that cider (being made from healthy apples)
didn't really count as booze, was almost legless by the time we
wended our merry way back the hostel. There, Bert took himself
quickly off to bed, while the rest of us joined a number of
other overnight residents who were chatting pleasantly in the
twilight round the pump. Before many minutes had passed,
however, this light-hearted conclave was brought to an abrupt
end by the sudden appearance of Bert on the balcony above,
helplessly vomiting over the handrail. O, how we scattered!
The following morning poor Bert, whose congenital shyness made
him a martyr to embarrassment at the best of times, neither
spoke nor lifted his chin from his chest until the scene of his
mortification was well behind us.
Unlike my discovery of the wonders of the YHA, the second
revelation granted me on this holiday brought no immediate
benefit, but it opened my mind to an aspect of human affairs I
had hitherto hardly noticed but which would continue to absorb
my interest long after my youth hostelling years were over. It
occurred towards the end of the tour, when, coming back along
the North Devon coast, we spent the night in a hostel near the
top of the infamous Porlock Hill, so steep that, in the earlier
days of motoring, the villagers of Porlock would amuse
themselves on Sundays by sitting on a wall opposite the
crippling bend half way up it, in order to watch the climbing
vehicles, their radiators boiling over, stall and run back.
After carefully wheeling our bikes down most of the hill we
arrived in the village of Porlock where Fred, after a brief
word with Brian, disappeared inside the newsagent's shop, to
emerge a few moments later in a state of high excitement waving
a newspaper which carried the banner headline "LABOUR
LANDSLIDE". I then watched with some bewilderment as Fred and
Brian literally danced with joy at receiving this news.
So wrapped up had I been in my own affairs that I had hardly
noticed the general election going on around me, in addition to
which, I must confess to having previously taken virtually no
interest in politics at all, while in my own defence pointing
out that the war had broken out just before my fourteenth
birthday and overt party political activity had been in a state
of suspended animation ever since.
Before the war, political
discussion of any rational kind within the family circle, had
been a luxury for which time could not be afforded from the
arguments arising from the daily struggle to make ends meet.
My father was an avid reader of Beaverbrook's "Daily Express"
but, if the subject ever came up, professed to being a Liberal,
while my mother, if she voted at all, probably voted
Conservative, one of her favourite sayings being "the British
working man is his own worst enemy"
Certainly, neither of
them supported Labour.
This backwater of political apathy had, however, been given an
occasional stir from outside, usually on a Sunday morning, by
my 'Uncle' Eddie. He wasn't a real uncle, of course, but he
and his wife Minnie were the only couple my mother and father
had been friends with before their marriage who had not since
been alienated by my father's anti-social habits and
irresponsible behaviour. This may have been due, in part, to
the fact that they lived just up the street and could drop in
on us in a neighbourly fashion without being invited or giving
formal notice of their intention to do so. They had a
daughter, Edwina, who was my sister's age and two younger girl
twins of about my brother's age. Auntie Minnie was a rather
flabby, sad and bewildered lady who suffered, as I recall, from
a succession of ailments associated with her nerves. Uncle
Eddie, on the other hand, had a wiry frame, a birdlike head, a
lively manner, and smoked a pipe. As a model husband and
father, he was, in many ways, the very antithesis of my dad,
but they were both intelligent, articulate and argumentative
enough to make their relationship worth sustaining in spite of
the many differences in their respective lifestyles.
Two things set Uncle Eddie apart from everyone else in our
acquaintance. First, he was a civil servant, something which,
I was given to understand, it was a very good thing to be,
since it immunised him, in some way, against the diseases then
afflicting the economy, and meant that he was never out of
work. Living in our street, he must have been, I later
realised, a fairly low grade civil servant, probably a Clerical
Officer, and I never knew which great department of state his
Bradford office represented locally, but he always dressed the
part, going to work in pin-stripe trousers, dark jacket and a
Homberg hat, the bowler hat of later tradition being considered
quite 'common' at the time - even my father had one!
The second unusual thing about Uncle Eddie was that he was a
devout communist who made no secret of the fact at a time when
the Bolshevic Terror of the 1920s was still fresh in most adult
minds, and the jury was still out on whether Stalin's communism
or Hitler's fascism would supersede the entrepreneurial
capitalism which is still with us today, but had, at that time,
been brought into such disrepute by, first, the Great War, and
then the Great Depression. He was, of course, an armchair
communist who would never have united with his fellow workers
under the scarlet banner, let alone manned the barricades, and,
even at the time, I was never quite sure whether he was a true
believer or had simply adopted a creed which gave him a certain
intellectual distinction and was easier to defend in theory
than its alternatives, not having been tested in practice for
any length of time. Or perhaps he had recognised, however
dimly, that, under communism, everyone who worked for a living,
at whatever level, would be a government servant, thus giving
him a significant advantage.
Whatever his motivation, his Sunday morning visits, during
which he would almost invariably produce and read from a copy
of the Daily Worker, were quite lively affairs, thanks to my
father's customary reaction of scoffing scepticism. But, these
arguments bore little relation to the party politics of the
real world which, at the time, seemed mainly concerned with
foreign affairs, and continued to excite little interest in me
until that moment in Porlock. Nor, I would guess, was I alone
in being rudely awakened. No event in British politics since
that day has produced anything like the shock effect of
Labour's landslide defeat of the Tories under a Winston
Churchill who had just led the nation to victory in a war
which, at one point, we looked like losing. It seemed to come
from nowhere, that Labour Government, with its outrageous
commitment to the state ownership of just about everything,
including my own dear BRI. Suddenly, as a result, politics
became interesting, and it wouldn't be long before I realised
that I myself was a democratic socialist and began to subscribe
to the "New Statesman".
But all that was somewhere in the future when I returned from
the West Country to celebrate the end of World War ll on VJ Day
and address myself to life in post-war Bradford where my
teenage years were drawing to a close and, with them, the
sheltered existence which had enabled me to exploit my waking
hours to such good effect in the University of Life. By the
spring of 1946, after one last winter of more of the same, but
with peacetime bells on, my world had changed. Having sat and
passed the prescribed exams as soon as possible after my
twentieth birthday, I was now a qualified radiographer in
search, theoretically, of a job, but eligible, now, for
military service.
My friend Frank, about six months older
than me, had qualified as a pharmacist earlier and already been
called up, as had his fellow-student Les, the trombonist in the
band. With their departure and the threat of conscription
hanging over many of the rest of us, we had decided to disband
the Semitones while we were still going strong rather than
disintegrate by degrees. It was the end of an era.
My other close friend, Mike, having passed his Higher School
Certificate, had also departed, not to a University, but to
pursue a career in the armed forces, but not, amazingly, as a
conscript. He had enlisted in the RAF, having applied for and
been granted a place in the RAF's apprentice training scheme
from which he would emerge, after two years of full-time
instruction, bed and board included, at no cost to himself or
his family, as a qualified aircraft engineer.
Knowing Mike's
capabilities as I did, however, not to mention his
proclivities, I found this course of action difficult to
understand. I simply could not see him being satisfied with a
life in uniform as an NCO engineer, however well qualified.
But I soon learned that it was all part of a cunning plan.
What Mike knew, thanks to inside information supplied, no
doubt, by his older step-brother, was that the apprentice who
passed out at the end of each course with the highest marks,
could, subject to the usual provisos, be funded by the RAF
through a science degree at Cambridge University and given a
long-service commission, and he was gambling on his own ability
to win this prize, knowing that the odds were not too long,
since he was a very clever lad and the competition was unlikely
to be all that fierce.
Quite suddenly, then, I was in a kind of limbo, waiting for my
call-up papers. But my life wasn't entirely empty. Jack and I
had continued to explore the world of music together by
attending one last season of the Halle Orchestra's monthly
Subscription Concerts at the Eastbrook Hall, but gone were the
heady days when the Bournemouth Symphony or the Sadler's Wells
Opera were happy to come and perform for us night after night
at the Prince's Theatre. As of old, most of our adventures
into music had to rely on gramophone records, of which I had
now acquired a few of my own, although they suffered from the
same disadvantage as the symphony concerts frequently broadcast
on the radio - I could only listen to them when I had the house
to myself, which was hardly ever. But I was happy to share
them with anyone who had a radiogram and the time and space
available to make use of it. Not only that, but, with the
enthusiasm of the recently converted, I was also keen to share
with anyone who could be persuaded to listen, everything I had
learned from my diligent researches into the music they
contained.
A feature of the age was the existence of certain groups called
gramophone record societies, often attached to some church or
chapel, whose members would meet at regular intervals to listen
to each other's classical music records, or those of some
visiting speaker, in the kind of serious silence not easily
achieved, as in my own case, at home.
There was, in
consequence, one new venture to be embarked upon before this
chapter of my life was closed. I persuaded Jack to join me in
exploiting what was obviously a godsent opportunity to both
play our records and air our views to a captive audience by
offering our services in some such capacity to any of these
groups whose members seemed likely to know less about classical
music than we did. And, in a trice, as they say, this target
having turned out to be not too difficult to hit, there I was,
a few short years after learning to explore the riches of our
musical heritage for my own gratification, sharing my new-found
knowledge with groups of people who seemed quite grateful to
receive it. What a nerve!
Quite so, although the thought never occurred to me at the
time. But neither did I appreciate that, from a standing start
only four years earlier, I had succeeded in laying the
foundations of a taste in music, and, indeed, in all the
performing arts, on which I would be able to build for the rest
of my life, whenever the opportunity to do so presented itself.
It was an investment I can recommend to any young person who
has the inclination, and, of course, the time available, to
make.
Had I been fortunate enough to continue in full time
education into my early twenties instead of leaving school at
sixteen, I doubt whether I would ever have been able to pursue
my musical education as assiduously as I did. I came to this
conclusion in later years, having met and made friends with
individuals whose late teens, unlike mine, had been spent in
full time further education, studying hard to acquire skills
and knowledge that would qualify them for a significantly
higher professional status (and earning power) than me, but who
regretted never having found the time to "understand music" as
they often put it. It seems to me now that, if the love of
good music has not been an enveloping presence in the family
home, or, failing that, the ability to "understand" it has not
been somehow acquired by the age of twenty, it may be too late
to start.
My final fling, however, took me, in early June, 1946, far from
concert hall, dance hall and gramophone to the mountains of
North Wales, where, having benefited from my initiation into
the YHA the previous year, I had identified a chain of hostels
within a day's walk of each other, starting from Chester,
reaching south to Dolgellau, then north through Snowdonia to
Bangor before heading for home. It was the first serious
walking I had ever done but my legs were in such good condition
that I found I could pound along for up to eight hours a day
without unbearable fatigue. Also, I was alone - a novel
experience for me. After a life lived, hitherto, largely in
the company of others, whether at home, work, or play, it was a
significant departure from past practice for me to choose to
spend nearly a fortnight in my own company. Rather to my own
surprise, I developed a taste for it, and, while never denying
myself the company of others whenever it has been offered, most
of the serious walking I have done since then has been solo.
Admittedly, one reason for this may have been that, as with
opera, none of my family and friends has shared my passion for
it, the difference being that I have always found opera
marginally less enjoyable when attended without a companion,
while solitary walking has never left me feeling similarly
deprived, provided that the prospect around me was fair. After
walking alone all day, however, I do like to spend my evenings
convivially, if possible. Fortunately, during my
peregrinations in North Wales, the weather was kind, the
scenery left nothing to be desired, and the company of my
fellow hostellers turned out to be most enjoyable. It may have
been the result of the demobilisation which had started soon
after the end of the war or the pervading sense of profound
relief at having survived it, or it may have been simply
because I was travelling alone, but the hostellers I met on
this occasion seemed more mature and sociable than those I
encountered a few years later when I covered much the same
ground with my wife-to-be. They were certainly high-spirited,
and several of our paths crossed at different hostels
(Snowdonia being quite a small world, really), whereupon we
renewed our bantering exchanges with gusto, and even succeeded,
on occasion, in generating quite a party atmosphere in rather
unpromising surroundings - with sing-songs, even!
The scenery, of course, enjoys a fame which needs no
endorsement from me, but my most memorable encounter with it
occurred when I set out to cross "over the top" from Ffestiniog
to Bedgellert starting from the village of Tan y Griseau.
After walking up a narrow gauge railway track, I found myself
in the most inhospitable landscape I had ever encountered.
A
couple of centuries of quarrying slate out the mountain had
left behind a huge, dark, cratered valley surrounded by
menacing grey cliffs, not a sign of vegetation, not a blade of
grass, anywhere, all of it mirrored in the dull, metallic lake
in its floor. Talk about eerie, it was like being on another
planet, and it seemed to go on for ever, nothing but sharp,
slatey spoil underfoot and piled everywhere in mounds. It was
the deadest place I've ever been in. And there, in the middle
of the lake, a solitary individual was rowing about slowly,
silently, and with apparent aimlessness in a small boat.
wonder what was he up to.
I
At the end of it all, I arrived back home delighted with what I
had accomplished, and fighting fit, which was just as well
because, in my absence, my call-up papers had arrived,
instructing me to report to a distant army training depot in
less than a fortnight.
MY LIFE AT THE OPERA: PART ONE
Chapter Five:
1946 - 1948
Even when meeting as strangers, most of us who were of
pensionable age by the end of the twentieth century could feel
confident that, unlike later generations, we were connected to
each other by an invisible thread of shared experience
stretching back to the time we had spent in the armed forces
during World War Two, or afterwards, until conscription was
abolished in 1960. But the fact that all those with whom I
have exchanged reminiscences on the subject have testified to
the broadening effect of this interlude on their minds, should
not be taken as an endorsement of the view that either war, or
compulsory National Service, is a good thing. Few may have
come out of it as the person they were when they went in, but
most emerged from the experience with relief.
Cliff, Brad, Frank, Mike and I were all in uniform together for
an overlapping period of about a year, and all of us, while
serving king and country, made overseas journeys we could not
have made, and saw sights that we would not have seen, without
being paid to do so by His Majesty's Government. Living as we
now do in an age of international tourism when millions of
ordinary individuals can afford to travel thousands of miles
each year to ever more remote destinations in search of
excitement or relaxation, or both, it is difficult to
appreciate the wide-eyed wonder with which, back then, those of
us who had not been born into the ranks of a privileged
minority in pre-war Britain viewed the prospect of any sort of
foreign travel.
If Cliff and Brad had joined the navy to see the world, they
were not disappointed. Their initial training was hardly
complete before D-Day came along and the conflict in Europe
became a land war requiring little active support from the
Navy, and, in the end, most of their seafaring was undertaken
at minimal risk to life and limb, after hostilities had ended.
Cliff, serving as an Able Seaman on the frigate "White Sand
Bay", got as far as Hiroshima, visiting The Pyramids and
various other exotic places en route, before succumbing to a
serious dose of dengue fever which prevented him, much to his
annoyance, from sailing on with his shipmates to the antipodes.
Brad, meanwhile, was pushing a pen aboard the battle cruiser
"Liverpool" as it meandered around the Mediterranean calling at
such colourful ports as Naples, Algiers, Tangier, and
Casablanca. From Naples he was taken by army lorry, at no cost
to himself (other than the pain in his backside after the 150
miles journey) to Rome for several days shore leave, then, from
Casablanca, for more of the same, to Marrakesch. All these
distant landfalls were being made during my last frustrating
months in Civvy Street, and were described to me in letters
written with the expressed purpose of turning me green with
envy. Which they did.
Frank and I, going later into the more earthbound Army, could
have little expectation of emulating these exploits, and no
grounds whatsoever for daring to hope that a roll of fortune's
dice would soon enable me to do so, or that Frank, after many
frustrations, would succeed in manipulating the system to the
same end. It came as no surprise, therefore, to find that my
first six months in the Army did little to broaden my
geographical horizons, although my very first journey on an
army travel warrant took me about as far away from home as it
was possible to get without actually leaving the country. At
96 PTC, Bodmin, Cornwall, I found myself sharing the customary
barrack room with the traditional bunch of complete strangers
assembled from around the country to undergo the mandatory sixweeks basic infantry training in each others' company - an
experience which many of them found both unsettling and
exhausting. But not I. With my Bradford backstreet
background, and my years in the Home Guard, I was well equipped
to cope with anything either the Army or my new acquaintances
could confront me with. Also, having recently walked my way
round the rugged landscape of Snowdonia, I was so physically
fit that, while all around me seemed to be either losing weight
or gaining it, mine never varied by an ounce.
I quite enjoyed my spell in Bodmin. It was the height of the
Cornish summer, the weather was kind, the sun seemed to shine
interminably down on us, lolling about on the grass, smoking
between military exertions of various kinds, or tramping around
Bodmin Moor on the inevitable route marches, singing the
traditional rude songs. But, when allowed out of barracks to
the grudging extent to which our lowly status entitled us, we
found that there was little of interest in the town, and that
the natives, conditioned, no doubt, by years of experience,
were less than friendly. The only function at which we were
made really welcome was an amateur talent competition held
every Sunday evening in the local cinema. Entertainmentwise,
therefore, this was the high spot of the week, and fortunately,
after carefully weighing possible benefits against likely
risks, I had decided to take my precious clarinet along with me
into the Army - a good move, as it turned out, since, in
addition to the comfort of its companionship, it provided the
means of supplementing my meagre army pay, sometimes in the
most unlikely circumstances, throughout my entire military
career.
As on this occasion, for example, where the prizes were in cash
- one pound, first, ten shillings, second, and five bob, third,
quite good money in those days - and the resident piano
accompanist was competent enough to back me up in a sufficient
number of jazz standards to enable me to win one first prize,
two seconds and a third during my stay there. Judgements were
made entirely on the basis of the volume of audience applause
following each act, and the fact that most of the other
competitors were solo singers of popular songs and ballads (pop
groups not having been invented yet), gave me and my clarinet a
novel edge, which tended, of course, to wear off as the weeks
passed. But two pounds five shillings for a total of about one
hour's playing was not a bad haul, enough to fund a couple of
excursions into the surrounding countryside to get me away from
the barracks for a while (an outing to the picturesque little
fishing port of Mevagissy being particularly memorable) and my
success in the talent contests conferred a certain celebrity on
me in the barrack room which was not entirely unwelcome, since
it ensured that nobody complained when I practised.
My next move after Bodmin was to what was then a very obscure
little railway station in Hampshire called Fleet. Twenty five
years later, following a most unlikely sequence of events, I
would become, for twenty years, a daily commuter to London's
Waterloo (and a regular patron of, among other institutions,
the English National Opera Company) from this very same station
- much upgraded by then, of course, in keeping with the
burgeoning affluence of its legions of regular users - but my
reason for de-training there on that first occasion, together
with dozens of other khaki clad arrivals, was that it was the
nearest railway station to Boyce Barracks, Church Crookham,
which was, at that time, the home of the Royal Army Medical
Corps.
As a qualified radiographer, I was not surprised to be assigned
to the RAMC, but I was quite unprepared for the amount of
discomfort I was made to suffer during my first two months in
its ranks. This being the Army, and me being a conscript, the
regulations would not allow me to be sent to the X-Ray
Department of some military hospital, which was clearly my
ultimate destination, until I had wasted eight weeks training
to be a Nursing Orderly Class III. This, I did not enjoy. In
fact, until the age of 45, when worse things befell me, I
thought of those eight weeks I spent at Boyce Barracks as the
worst time of my life - which must mean that I've been pretty
lucky, really, because it wasn't all that bad. No physical
pain or punishment was experienced, no mental torture
undergone, but it was all so bloody boring. The place had a
collective IQ of significantly less than 100 and the amount of
bullshit was unbelievable.
Whether it was an overreaction to the low regard in which our
soldierly qualities were traditionally held by the rest of the
British Army, or the knowledge that, once we had escaped from
its clutches, we would enter a working environment from which
the more extreme manifestations of military discipline would be
conspicuously absent, or whether they simply didn't know what
else to do with us during the eight weeks allotted for a course
which could easily have been accomplished in four, one can only
speculate. But some combination of motives had inspired the
RAMC's Training Command to impose a regime on us that was far
more oppressive than the one I had left behind at Bodmin.
Although we no longer had rifles, we spent more time on the
parade ground, drilling, than we did in the classroom. We
spent more time blancoing our webbing, and polishing our boots
and brasses than we did bandaging each other up and
stretchering each other about.
We were paraded for inspection, we had barrack room
inspections, kit inspections, interminably, with punishments in
the way of fatigue duties ("jankers") dished out for the
smallest of shortcomings by an instructional staff who had
obviously been chosen for their parade ground rather than
classroom skills. The constraints on our freedom to leave the
barracks, when off duty, were severe, and, even when allowed
outside, the nearest town of any size, Fleet and Crookham being
tiny villages then, was ugly old Aldershot, "The Home of the
British Army", four miles away by bus, with little to offer
except thousands of other "squaddies" wandering aimlessly
about, a few cinemas, and more pubs per square mile than
anywhere else in Britain (with the possible exception of
Pontefract in Yorkshire). The more attractive, ancient town of
Farnham was actually closer, just over the ridge, but, being
across the border in Surrey, it was not connected by bus to
Church Crookham, nor is it to this day.
Only three bright spots were to shine for me through this subhuman spit and polish gloom. During the very first hour of my
arrival there, while I was still queueing up with all my kit to
report in, I was approached by a small, rather furtive
individual, obviously a camp resident, who asked me, almost out
of the corner of his mouth, what was in the instrument case I
was carrying, and what my name and number were? Having
received my answers, he hurried away without further comment.
About ten days later, I received a visit from another stranger
who was obviously a regular soldier from some other part of the
barracks. After a brief chat about my previous dance band
experience, he asked me if I would be interested in doing a gig
for him the following Saturday, 8pm til midnight, three quid.
Three quid! Where? In Hartley Wintney, 3 miles away. How
could I possibly do a thing like that? A person in my lowly
station had to be back in barracks by 10pm, on pain of death,
and "lights out" was at 10.30pm, after which a thorough bedcheck was conducted by the orderly NCO. No problem, he said,
just be at the main gate, opposite the guardroom, clarinet in
hand, next Saturday at 7pm.
And so it came to pass that, having followed these
instructions, I was picked up outside that dreaded guardroom in
an army vehicle and driven past the gate guard, no questions
asked, to a small hall in Hartley Row where I spent a very
pleasant evening with four other musicians playing for dancing
at a jolly private party and being plied with food and drink at one point by the host and hostess themselves, Lord and Lady
Allenbrooke, no less. After the last waltz and Auld Lang Syne,
I was given three pounds and driven, in the same army vehicle,
back to barracks, past the guardhouse, well after midnight,
nobody interested, and dropped off outside my slumbering
barrack room, from which my absence had not, apparently, been
officially noticed. Three weeks later, another gig of a
similar nature. Same arrangements. How could this possibly be
happening to me?
The explanation was as follows: Boyce Barracks, being the
RAMC's Regimental HQ, was the home of the regimental band. I
knew this because I had listened to them with pleasure when
they occasionally practised on the square, since I love the
sound of a military band. I was also aware that there would
certainly be a regimental dance band, formed from among their
number, the instrumentation being much the same in those days,
and this being standard practice throughout the armed forces at
the time. What I didn't know was that certain members of this
band were 'moonlighting, outside the barracks, in small dance
bands formed jointly with local civilians. The problem with
this arrangement was that, from time to time, the regimental
dance band could be called upon, at relatively short notice, to
play for dancing in some officers' mess or other on the same
evening as one of these illicit extramural gigs. Hence the
scrutiny of every new intake of trainees for possible last
minute substitutes, and hence my trips out on the magic carpet.
The fact that the military machinery of the camp could so
easily be subverted in favour of an underprivileged nonentity
such as myself says a lot about who was operating it for who's
benefit at the time.
The second bright spot, unlikely as it may seem, was the large
dental surgery with which the barracks, as befitted the RAMC's
own HQ, was equipped. It was here, following a compulsory
dental inspection, that I made the important discovery that
teeth could be drilled and cavities filled under a local
anaesthetic at the cost of a relatively small amount of quite
bearable pain, thus obviating the need to have them extracted
under a general anaesthetic at a later date. Having been born
into a working class home in the 1920s, my childhood experience
of dentistry had been restricted to irregular encounters with a
series of "School Dentists" who had done everything they could
to put me off dentists for life. In their hands, tooth
extractions, seemingly the only option available in my early
years, were made to resemble some form of medieval torture,
beginning with the insertion into the mouth of a metal
implement designed to hold it open while "the gas" was
administered.
This fiendish gadget was a spring-loaded reverse clamp with a
rachet which prevented it from closing but not, of course, from
opening, with the appalling result that the victim's last
sensation before sinking into unconsciousness was of the lower
jaw being inexorably torn from the upper. Even the nitrousoxide-induced euphoria enjoyed when awakening to spit blood and
find that the offending tooth had been painlessly removed,
could not prevent me from developing such an aversion to this
chamber of horrors that, later, when I was old enough for a
filling to be attempted, the peremptory plunge of the needle
into the gum and the noisy grinding of the drill against the
tooth seemed more excruciatingly painful than they probably
were, and a totally unacceptable price to pay for the end
result. The long term effect of this kind of experience,
coupled with the high cost of private dentistry, was to
encourage the almost universally held view among low wage
earners and their families that the only sensible attitude to
adopt towards one's teeth was that of benign neglect,
punctuated by extractions made unavoidable by toothache, until
it became expedient to have all the remaining teeth pulled out,
at one go, and replaced with a full set of cheap dentures.
During the four years I had spent at the BRI, I had used my
privileged position on the staff to gain backstairs access to
the Dental Surgery (conveniently situated next door to Frank's
Dispensary), there to have any tooth that was so far gone that
it was starting to keep me awake at night, expertly removed,
under gas, between patient appointments. Consequently, by the
time I arrived at Boyce Barracks, I had already lost several
molars and premolars but, fortunately, none of my incisors or
canines. I am happy to relate that, thanks to the conversion I
underwent at the sympathetic hands of the young army dentists
there and my assiduous patronage of their colleagues during
subsequent postings, and, later, under the yet-to-be created
National Health Service, I emerged from the army with pretty
much the same teeth as I still have today. They may be nothing
to swank about, but they are mine own - except for the part
replacement of a dwarfish upper left second incisor, broken off
while I was attacking a grilled pork chop at my favourite
taverna in Georgioupolis, Crete, nearly fifty years later. So,
thank you, Boyce Barracks, for this legacy, at least.
The final bright spot was a surprise visit from Frank. On
being called up, we had promised each other that, wherever we
were, whatever the obstacles, we would somehow contrive to meet
somewhere, sometime. This pact was to achieve its ultimate
apotheosis over a year later in a spectacular fashion, but in
the meantime, here he was (surprise, surprise), lying on my bed
when I got back from the cookhouse one Saturday dinnertime.
After completing his preliminary infantry training, Frank,
never one to undervalue his own potential, or to miss out on an
opportunity for realising it, had talked the army into
accepting him for officer training in the Royal Army Ordinance
Corps, and was stationed, at the time, only about fifty miles
away, but too far for us to meet half-way, given the
restrictions imposed upon our movements. Today, however, he
was on a 48 hour pass, and, Bradford being so far away, and
there being nobody there, anyway, except family, of course, who
didn't really count, he had decided to come and spend it with
me.
There followed a short conference with my barrack room mates,
after which, one, who's home was within easy enough reach,
agreed to grab the opportunity afforded by Frank's presence to
pay his family a surprise overnight visit, leaving Frank to
occupy his bed for the 10.30pm body count which was the only
check made on our presence in the barracks over the weekend, we
being officially off-duty and the instructional staff as keen
to have their weekends free of us, as we were to be free of
them. Once these arrangements had been made, Frank and I were
at liberty to enjoy each other's company and such facilities as
were available, on or off the premises, without let or
hindrance - provided we were back in barracks by 10pm, of
course, and in bed by 10.30. Nobody remarked on Frank's
presence at mealtimes in the canteen, or in the Naafi, or going
in and out of the main gate. His army uniform, even with its
RAOC shoulder flashes, rendered him quite unworthy of note as
we roamed about, hither and thither, talking each other's heads
off.
At that point, obviously, he was enjoying a much more
interesting and rewarding army career than I was, and feeling
very pleased with himself for having made it into the OCTU,
from which he was justifiably confident in his ability to pass
out with a pip. But it was not, alas, to be. A short while
after our weekend together, somewhere in Whitehall the dice
rolled against him. The Director of Army Medical Services
suddenly found himself dangerously short of pharmacists and the
order went out that any suitably qualified conscripts who was
under training anywhere in the Army should immediately be
transferred into the RAMC. Overnight, Frank was
unceremoniously plucked out of the RAOC's OCTU and dropped into
the RAMC's Dispensing Services Depot, where he was promoted to
sergeant, and sent out to some remote army sick bay where his
skills were desperately needed. There followed an almost
unbelievable series of short postings up and down the country,
far too many to keep track of, which involved him (the way he
told it to me afterwards) in arriving, usually late at night,
in some godforsaken spot to find a dispensary in complete and
utter disarray which he was required to remedy, working night
and day for as long as it took, before being moved along to the
next shambles. It was months before he managed to escape from
this pharmaceutical treadmill.
But all that lay ahead, when (on my 21st birthday, as it
happened), having served my sentence, I shook the blanco of
Bloody Boyce Barracks forever out of my hair (or so I thought),
and, after a few days home leave, was sent to something more
like civilisation as I knew it, in the shape of a large
Military Hospital at Horley, Surrey where I soon settled into a
comfortable, if relatively unexciting, routine. The sergeant
i/c the X Ray Department was a seasoned regular, an armytrained radiographer, who had recently been repatriated from
somewhere in the Far East. When he realised that I was a
qualified radiographer, he welcomed me with open arms, and
insisted on the CO promoting me to Lance Corporal on the
grounds that, as an MSR, I knew more about the job than he did
and should really be a sergeant. He then put in for the very
large amount of leave that was owing to him and disappeared,
leaving me in complete charge of the department for weeks on
end, which was no hardship to me at all, since I was only too
glad to be back in harness.
An army hospital, I found, was very like a civilian one, the
main difference being that most of the nursing staff were male,
an important exception being the nursing sisters, who, as
members of Queen Alexandria's Imperial Medical Nursing Service
were ladies of officer rank and, as such, out of bounds to
other ranks. This proved to be no great hardship at Horley
where none of them was attractive enough, even if young enough,
to be of interest. Fortunately, there was a small group of
younger ladies present, clad in dark blue uniforms with
charming little hats, who were referred to as VAD's because
they were members of a body of auxiliary nurses called
Voluntary Aid Detachment which was, somehow, not part of the
regular RAMC. All I can remember, now, is that one of them,
Audrey, was outstandingly pretty and soon became the object of
my friendly attentions. But the most unusual feature of the
establishment was the large contingent of German prisoners-ofwar who were living and working there as general duty
orderlies, eighteen months after the end of hostilities in
Europe, one of their number having been assigned to the X Ray
Department.
And so it came about that my first face-to-face encounter with
the enemy whose all-enveloping military might had cast such a
pall of menace over my adolescent years occurred while I was
being shown around the X Ray Department by the sergeant on my
first day there. Coming out of the darkroom we were confronted
by a blond-haired, blue-eyed young man whose truly handsome and
genuinely Teutonic head was set on a smaller-than-average body
terminating in larger-than-average hands and feet. He was
wearing a nursing orderly's smock, baggy fatigues and big
boots, and carrying a mop and bucket which he immediately
dropped while springing noisily to attention at the sight of
us, the manifest harmlessness of his appearance quickly
dissipating any shock I felt at meeting my first real German
soldier.
His name turned out to be Gerhardt, and we soon
became as friendly as my schoolboy German, his smattering of
English, and the constraints of the circumstances in which we
found ourselves would allow.
Why the Germans were still there, so long after VE Day, was a
question I never bothered to ask myself at the time. I knew
that much of Germany was in ruins and assumed that their
repatriation had been delayed by logistical problems. I now
realise that it may have been because their homes were in the
Russian Zone and a more complicated explanation was possible,
although this was before the onset of the Cold War while the
Russians were still our gallant allies. Whatever the reasons,
here they were, in their own separate compound to which they
were ostensibly confined, when off-duty, by the prevailing
policy of "no fraternisation", but the military regime of the
establishment was so relaxed that the only real constraints on
their freedom were the perimeter fence (easily breached, but
why bother?) and a chronic shortage of cash, which they sought
to remedy in a number of ways - a barber's shop and a tailor's
shop, for example - to which, because of their usefulness, a
blind eye was turned by the authorities.
Objectively, their lot was a not too unhappy one, but they had
lost the war, and their equivocal status in the hospital
community, coupled with the emotional stress of waiting to go
home and dreading what they were likely to find there, seemed
enough to keep them, as a group, rather subdued and withdrawn
most of the time. The one exception was their contribution to
the Christmas Concert, when they overcame the language barrier
by producing a highly original and quite hilarious slapstick
comedy sketch and a couple of memorable musical numbers, one of
which was a visual realisation of their famous wartime song
"Lili Marlene" with my new associate, Gerhardt, appropriately
dressed, playing, quite convincingly (except for the size of
the feet), the part of Lili waiting underneath the lamplight by
the barrack gate, while the male voice choir sang off-stage. A
choral rendition of "Stille Nacht" was the other musical treat
they gave us. But the high spot of the concert was a stunning
Can-can performed in full traditional costume with tremendous
panache by a chorus line of VAD's, among whose lovely thighs,
those of my Audrey were the most refulgent.
The amount of talent and enthusiasm on display at the Christmas
Concert served to underline the fact that another thing this
military hospital had in common with the BRI was a welldeveloped internal social life, into which, needless to say, I
quickly strove to insert myself by, among other things,
floating the possibility of forming a unit dance band. The CO,
a youngish major with a Clark Gable moustache, was quite taken
with the idea and promptly instituted a trawl of all the
personnel under his command for potential instrumentalists.
Without even awaiting the outcome, he also dispatched a
requisition to "Army Welfare" for a selection of suitable
instruments, which, to my surprise, were not long in arriving
and were in excellent condition when they did. It was my first
experience of the cornucopia of largesse which seemed to be
available to those commanding officers willing to tap into it
for the promotion of any activity which could broadly be
classed as welfare. This resource was probably a legacy of the
recent war when everything possible had been done by a grateful
country to bring comfort to our fighting men and women, but it
must have been a godsend to those whose command of the huge
numbers still in uniform included a pressing need to keep them
entertained in peacetime.
My active participation in the hospital's social life did not,
however, prevent me from exploiting its other major asset,
which was the proximity of Horley to London and the frequent
train service between the two. As a radiographer, my hours of
exposure to X Rays could be no more than they had been in civvy
street and there were no restrictions on my movements in and
out of "the camp" (as we always called it) provided I didn't
absent myself overnight without permission, which was easily
obtained. The only constraint on my extra-mural activities was
the paucity of my army pay, and the only remedy I found for
that was to become an inveterate fare dodger on the railway.
Since this was something of a national sport at the time, it
was nothing to be too ashamed about - Mike, for example, made
it a point of honour never to travel with a valid ticket,
regarding the battle of wits with the authorities as a useful
test of his survival skills. Having perfected my own
technique, I began visiting London at the weekends, together,
it seemed, with thousands of others in uniform, for whom,
fortunately, cheap overnight accommodation was available in a
number of makeshift hostels run by various charities.
The YMCA, for one, had taken over a large building on that
acutely angled corner between Victoria Street and Tothill
Street, from the generously proportioned windows of which, it
was possible to consult Big Ben's clock face across Parliament
Square without getting out of bed. But the most memorable bed
I occupied during this period was deep inside a disused London
Underground Station somewhere east of the West End - its exact
location now escapes me, since I used it only once, late at
night, as a last resort. Here, after purchasing a ticket from
the box office at ground level, one descended a seemingly
interminable spiral staircase to find that the familiar network
of tube-shaped corridors, when finally reached, housed a
sequence of triple bunks, set at right angles to one wall about
six feet apart, and stretching away interminably into the
distance. The instructions were to walk along a designated
corridor until the bunks already occupied were reached and then
claim the next vacant one.
I awoke next morning to find that all the bunks in the corridor
behind me had filled up while I slept, and that, as far as the
eye could see in either direction, there were male bodies in
various stages of undress, disposed in postures ranging from
recumbent to vertical, overlapping each other into ultimate
impenetrability. Most were smoking, of course, but the steady
breeze created by the Tube Network's ventilation system was
more than a match for this man-made atmospheric pollution.
What a place! How surrealistic! If I hadn't seen it for myself
I would never have believed it. A relic of the blitz, no
doubt, when thousands of Londoners were obliged to descend into
the Underground every night, carrying their bedding, to escape
the German bombs, but probably installed by the government
after the worst was over, just in case the Luftwaffe paid a
return visit, and not put to use until now.
It must have been during one of those weekend visits to London
from Horley that I found myself dancing on the stage at the
Royal Opera House, Convent Garden, and even singing, if only
sotto voce into the ear of my fair dancing partner. Yes, it's
the truth.
Although Sadlers Wells Opera had returned to its
London home shortly after VE Day with a stunning production of
Benjamin Britten"s "Peter Grimes", "grand opera" was still in
hibernation and that hallowed hall had been converted into a
palais de dance by planking the auditorium over at the same
level as the stage to create a dance floor stretching from the
back of the stalls to the back of the stage with a bandstand in
the middle and the couples circulating round it. This
ingenious arrangement was marred only by the small but rather
disconcerting change in the level of the floor which was
perceptible when dancing from the ex-stage to the ex-auditorium
via the proscenium arch, and back again. Sacrilegious as it
may now seem, this radical transformation was somehow symbolic
of the crucial importance of the public dance hall to the
social life of Britain at the time, and, even today, nothing
quite recalls the unique flavour of that distant age to those
of us who lived through it, as does the sight of swirling
couples on a crowded dance floor, glimpsed in some documentary
film about the period on today's television.
But I had hardly begun to explore the range of opportunities
offered by my Horley posting, when, one morning in January,
barely three months after my arrival there, the hand of
providence reached out and took hold of my strings, with the
result that I was summoned urgently to appear before an
uncharacteristically peevish CO who informed me that, in spite
of all his efforts to prevent it, I had been posted out from
under him. "What am I going to do with this lot now?" he said
accusingly, pointing to the pile of recently arrived instrument
cases in the corner, before going on to reveal that my presence
was required so urgently overseas that I was to be allowed only
the bare minimum of embarkation leave, starting now, so I could
pack up and go home for 10 days. The mental blur that followed
this confrontation has left me with no clear impression of when
it was that I found out my posting was to be to the Rock of
Gibraltar, but I can clearly remember feeling disappointed when
I did. From what little I knew about it then, Gib seemed a
pretty unpromising prospect, virtually uninhabitable, not
really "abroad" at all, and certainly not "foreign" enough to
hold out the hope of novel experiences of a pleasurably exotic
kind. How wrong I was!
The next couple of weeks were a cross between a shambles and a
circus. I was leaving Horley at the onset of what was to
become the worst winter in living memory, and, wherever I went,
there was snow, ice and sub-zero temperatures, aggravated by
fuel shortages and power cuts. There was nobody to share my
leave with in Bradford except my family, and I had hardly
arrived home before a policeman came to the door with a message
for me to report to an office in the Town Hall as a matter of
urgency. There, I was informed that, since I would be flying
to Gibraltar over foreign countries, regulations required me to
be inoculated against yellow fever(?) and, for this to be done,
it would be necessary for me to report to an army hospital in
York at 2pm the following day, travel warrant provided. York!
Nearly 50 miles away by rail, change at Leeds, and, thanks to
the adverse travelling conditions and the hospital being a long
bus ride from the railway station, by the time I got there it
was nearly 3pm. I was greeted with the news that I had arrived
too late to receive the inoculation that day, and would have to
come back tomorrow. What?
In response to my protestations, it was explained that,
although the stuff was scarce, it came in a multidose vial to
be opened at a pre-arranged time for administration to those
who were present to receive it, after which any remaining doses
quickly "went off" and had to be discarded. The next vial
would not be made available until 2pm the following day. How
much of this unlikely-sounding tale was true, I have never
bothered to find out, but this was the army, and I had no
option but to undertake the long journey again the following
day, after which, as a result of either the jab, or the double
dose of icy draughts to which I had been subjected on York
station while waiting for trains, or both, I quickly developed
a severe enough fever to keep me in bed for two days and leave
me feeling decidedly wobbly for the remainder of my leave. But
I struggled gamely on, determined to bid a suitable farewell to
my pals, who, since they could not come to me, I would be
compelled to seek out for myself.
This meant that the last few days of my leave were spent in
trains, buses and strange beds, all equally cold and
uncomfortable. The carriages of the train out of Bradford, for
example, had been standing in a siding all night and were
coated inside with ice, and most of the passengers were running
on the spot to keep their blood from coagulating.
Mike, my
first call, was deep in snow-covered Lincolnshire, but I
managed to get to him for just one night, most of which we
spent in a Nisson hut trying to keep warm. Cliff, now back in
England, was at Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey where he was
engaged in sweeping the Thames estuary for stray mines left
over from the recent conflict, and a combination of these
duties and the virtual inaccessibility of his location
frustrated our efforts to meet, bearing in mind that our
communications with each other in those days had to rely almost
entirely on the Royal Mail. Brad was somewhere at sea, and
Frank was somewhere in Buckinghamshire, ministering to the
sick, but he, at least, was able to get up to London for a few
hours one evening, while I was passing through, to give me some
sort of a send off.
It was a rather subdued affair. Like me, Frank knew little
that was encouraging about Gibraltar, except that, situated
where it was, it was unlikely to be experiencing the kind of
winter presently afflicting us. Our meeting was made
memorable, however, by being the occasion on which Frank made
his promise that, in keeping with established tradition, he
would somehow contrive to come and visit me in my exile. Rash
as it sounded, this pledge was not entirely based on wishful
thinking, because Frank had spotted a means of escape from his
present predicament which carried with it the promise of
foreign travel, and had already applied for a posting to
"trooping" i.e. as a resident pharmacist in the sick bay of one
of the great troopships still voyaging to distant parts of the
Empire, bringing time-expired men home and taking their
replacements out. Obviously, the garrison on Gibraltar would
be a candidate for this service, making it possible for a
troopship with Frank on board, if his application was
successful, to pay it a call, but it seemed like a pretty long
shot at the time.
My embarkation leave had been riddled with discomfort, but
worse was to follow, when, at the end of it, I was obliged to
report back to the RAMC's Holding and Drafting Depot which was
situated in the last place I ever wanted to see again - Boyce
Barracks, Church Crookham, Hants. I arrived to find the
surrounding countryside under about a foot of snow, and
conditions at the depot resembling in some respects the frozen
inner circle of Dante's Hell, and in others a Peter Breughel
winter scene. The place was crawling with troops, some
recently arrived from far away places with strange sounding
names, some waiting to be sent overseas, all unemployed, all in
a limbo of uncertainty, and all trying to get warm. The
heating arrangements were, to say the least, primitive, even in
the communal buildings, and the wooden barrack room/dormitories
were each entirely dependant on a single pot-bellied stove, for
which little fuel was officially available.
The result was an obsessive mass-scavenging for combustible
materials which was far more comprehensive in its scope than
that portrayed in the first act of "La Boheme", but had much in
common with the pre-Plot-night "chumping" of my boyhood.
Anything that would burn, and was loose, or could be loosened,
was eligible for breaking up into small enough pieces to be fed
into the stove. Chairs, tables, doors, fencing, the lot. Not
surprisingly, the troops who had returned from tropical climes
were suffering the most, some of them even experienced a sudden
recrudescence of the malaria contracted out there, brought on
by the intense cold, or so I was told when one of them
collapsed during the parade ground muster which was held each
morning to harangue us about our collective shortcomings and
allocate us duties which, it was hoped, would keep us out of
mischief for a while.
My own status in this morning assembly was invidious in two
respects. Firstly, whereas 99% of those present on the parade
ground were in contingents of between twenty and a hundred,
depending on their common destination, and were arranged for
inspection with the smallest group in front and the largest at
the back, I was one of only a handful of individual postings,
or "Indivs" as we were called, who were consequently obliged to
line up separately at the very front. This proved unfortunate
for me, because my second singularity was that I was still
sporting my lance-corporal's stripe, something which, as
everybody, including myself, knew, was a glaring anomaly,
because the rank of lance corporal was a local promotion, not
transferable to a new posting, and my first action, on leaving
Horley, should have been to remove the single stripe from my
uniform. For some reason, however, possibly to do with the
exceptional nature of my posting, the powers-that-be had
decreed that I should travel with it on display, but the fact
that this distinction had been duly noted in whatever
documentation had accompanied me to Boyce Barracks did not
prevent every NCO on the staff whose eye fell upon the
offending item, whether on the parade ground or off, from
turning red in the face and bawling at me to get it off.
The inconvenience of that one 'dog leg' did not end there. My
first full day at the depot had been taken up with the
formalities attendant upon my imminent departure from the
country, but on the second morning I was on parade in the
freezing cold, and available, like the rest, for whatever
duties could be dreamed up for us under the prevailing
circumstances. The staff sergeant responsible for this
unrewarding task began by assigning the largest contingent
first, to snow-shovelling, then the next largest, to cookhouse
fatigues, and so on, in reverse size order, each group marching
off under the command of its own senior NCO on receiving its
instructions, until only our sorry little band of "indivs" was
left, by which time he had run out of both ideas and patience.
Fixing my single stripe, the only one among us, with a
bloodshot eye, he said, "Right, corporal, you can march this
lot over to the - er - um - oh - cookhouse for cleaning
fatigues". It was to be the only time in my army career that I
was given command of a body of men.
I brought them to attention, turned them right, and marched
them off in single file to the cookhouse, only to be told, in
quite colourful terms, by the Duty Warrant Officer i/c that
they were not wanted there. He already had more little
helpers, all of whom were on the look out for any edible
substances left temporarily unattended, than he could possibly
keep an eye on. Take the buggers somewhere else. But where?
There was obviously nowhere in that frozen sink of misery that
I could usefully take them, and the NAAFI wouldn't be open for
hours. There was nothing for it but to show some initiative.
After a brief consultation with my temporary subordinates, I
marched them boldly out of the depot through a gap in the
perimeter fence, across a snow-covered field, to a large
detached house, still standing, when I last looked, on the
Aldershot Road, close to Crookham Crossroads, which was, in
those days, a transport cafe. There, I fell them out and
relinquished my authority. How cosy and warm it was inside!
What an oasis of peace and comfort! But after spending the
whole morning there, drinking tea and smoking, I returned to
the depot for lunch to find myself a wanted man.
I entered my refrigerated billet to be told that "they" had
been scouring the depot for me with a message to report
immediately to the company office. What had I done? Could it
be that my unorthodox disposal of the unwanted indivs had been
observed and reported? Surely not? But I was confronted by
the very staff sergeant who had given me command of them,
fixing me with the same bloodshot eye. Fortunately, he wasn't
interested in my lost patrol. "Where the bloody hell have you
been? You've been off the camp, haven't you? And I haven't
even got time to give you a proper bollocking. Get back here
in half an hour with all your kit. You have to report to the
War Office in London by 5 o'clock this afternoon." O blessed
release! The next 48 hours had an almost dreamlike quality. I
was given army transport to Fleet station, but from there I was
completely on my own. It was a curious sensation after six
months of always being under someone else's orders. I felt
quite light-headed.
But I managed to find my way to the War Office building in
Whitehall before 5pm, where I was directed through echoing
corridors to a room containing a very pleasant young lady in
civilian clothes, who, after informing me that I would be
flying out to Gibraltar next day by the civilian airline,
British Imperial Airways, handed me the ticket together with
instructions to report to the Victoria Air Terminal at 9am the
following morning. Trying to act as if this kind of thing
happened to me all the time, I signed for the ticket and gave
her a questioning look, which she kindly returned. "And what
now?" I said. "What now?" she said, confused. "Where do I go
from here?" I said. "Where am I supposed to spend the night?"
Enlightenment dawned. "Oh," she said, reaching for the
phone,"do you want me to find you a billet." "Not unless you
have to," I said. "As far as we're concerned," she said,
"you're free to do whatever you like until 9am tomorrow,". So,
off I went, down Whitehall, round Parliament Square to that
YMCA at the bottom of Victoria Street with the close-up view of
the clock face of Big Ben from its bedroom windows, where I
booked in and dumped my gear before going out on the town.
Although I had nobody to share it with, the evening went very
well, mainly, I think, because I felt so pleased with myself.
'I may look like an ordinary lance-corporal in the RAMC to
you,' I mentally informed the London crowds as I passed
nonchalantly among them, 'but I am, in fact, an individual of
some importance who is spending his last night in England
before being flown out by British Imperial Airways to no less a
place than the Rock of Gibraltar.' My first stop was the kiosk
in Leicester Square where unsold same-day tickets for West End
shows were dispensed to members of the armed forces at giveaway
prices. There, I managed to secure a ticket for "Anthony and
Cleopatra" at the Piccadilly Theatre starring Edith Evans and
Godfrey Tearle, a show I really wanted to see because Mike had
told me that, in addition to its considerable intrinsic merits,
an ex-pupil from our old school called Leslie Sands, who went
on later to become quite famous on British television, was
making his professional acting debut in it, in the small part
of Silius.
He was four years older than me, so I never knew him
personally, but I remembered him well, both from school, where
he cut a considerable dash, even at the age of sixteen, and
from seeing him around the neighbourhood, since he lived only a
few streets away from me and our paths crossed occasionally.
That night, he spoke his dozen or so lines of blank verse quite
impeccably, and his brief appearance on the stage added yet
another touch of distinction to the evening, which I rounded
off, of course, with a visit to my favourite Lyons Corner
House. The following morning, I made my way, under a grey sky
through the grey slush that was still lying about on London's
pavements, to the marble halls of the air terminal building
behind Victoria station, from there to be bussed out to
Northholt Airport where I boarded a shiny twin-engined plane
for my first ever flight.
I was told that the aircraft was a
Dakota and was rather surprised to find that, once we had taken
off, it was not unlike being in a rather noisy single-decker
bus, right down to the twin seats on either side of a central
aisle, all of them occupied by important-looking people in
mufti, me being the only passenger in uniform.
Except for the last few minutes of it, the journey passed in a
pleasant daze of low-level excitement. We touched down at
Bordeaux for re-fuelling, but missed out on Madrid, for some
reason, probably adverse weather conditions - the Dakota was
flying nearer the ground than the planes do nowadays, and I was
too busy looking out of the window at the passing scene below
to pay much attention to anything else. Eventually, however,
the well-dressed young man of Mediterranean appearance in the
next seat engaged me in polite conversation, asking the usual
questions. When I told him that I hadn't been to Gibralter
before and was wondering what the "wogs" were like, he nearly
burst a blood vessel - not at my casual use of a term which, in
the British army parlance of the period, embraced all the nonwhites in the earth's population who were not "nignogs", but at
my application of it to the natives of Gibraltar, of which, I
suddenly realised, he was one. After recovering his
equilibrium with a considerable effort, he advised me, very
civilly under the circumstances I thought, against nurturing a
line of thinking that might lead me ever to use the expression
in the same context again.
Finally, we were circling the Rock, preparing to land, and I
was surprised to see that a large part of the back side of it
was sheeted from top to bottom with concrete - the water
catchment area, my neighbour informed me. Almost equally
surprising was the extent of the built-up area clinging to its
skirts down towards sea level round the harbour. Then we were
coming in, over the water, to the narrow runway, built out to
sea on both sides of the isthmus, across the road connecting
Gib to Spain, which ran between swing gates and traffic lights.
We were almost down, with the sheer rock face, towering above
us, flashing past on our right, when the plane was suddenly
hurled off course, as if by a giant hand. After lurching
sickeningly sideways, it jerked upwards, engines roaring, at a
very steep angle to become fully airbourne again, all so
quickly that I hardly had time to feel scared by the
experience, which was due, apparently, to the idiosyncratic
sidewind for which Gibraltar's one-way runway was, and still
is, notorious among airline pilots. I have flown all over the
world since then, on business and pleasure, but never yet had a
worse fright in an aeroplane than the one I had on my very
first flight ever. Touch wood!
Unable to land at Gibraltar, there was nothing for it, we were
told, but to fly on to the US airforce base at Port Lyauty,
near Casablanca, for the night. After what we had been
through, the journey there seemed interminable. We were never
told how little fuel remained in the tanks when, long after
dark, hungry and tired, we finally arrived at our destination a huddled mass yearning to be on terra ferma. The Yanks had
done what they could, at short notice, to make arrangements to
receive such a large party of civilians, and we were given a
decent supper in an officers' mess during which the glaring
anomaly of my uniform and rank was dealt with by everyone
pretending I wasn't there, except for the Morrocan waiters,
fortunately, whose presence, together with the ambient
temperature and the ceiling fans, was the only indication that
we were in Africa. But, after that, we were led to the sort of
spartan dormitory accommodation in a Nisson hut to which I, of
course, was not unaccustomed, but many of my fellow travellers,
to judge by their reactions, were.
Since our luggage was still in the plane's hold, and none of us
had anticipated an overnight stay without it, we were obliged,
when turning in, to expose ourselves to each other in our
underwear, than which there can be few more levelling
experiences. Ironically, in these reduced circumstances I
became the object of some envy, when it emerged that, having
taken my side-pack on board the plane with me out of habit, I
was alone in possessing the essential toiletries with which to
clean my teeth and shave. But, since I was still following my
father's example and using a 'cut-throat' razor at the time,
there were no requests to borrow it.
The following morning, we were given breakfast and flown back
to Gibraltar, where we landed, this time, without mishap. As I
walked across the sun-drenched tarmac, with the Rock towering
above, the Mediterranean Sea on either side, and the coast of
Spain at my back, I could hardly believe that, barely 48 hours
after leaving the frostbitten hell of Boyce Barracks, I was
entering some sort of lukewarm heaven about which I knew little
except that it was, indisputably, 'abroad'.
2.
But, apart from the welcome mildness in the air, it didn't seem
much like being abroad at first. I was driven up from the
airfield through massive fortress gates into the bustling main
street of a sizeable small town displaying many distinctly
British characteristics. The street lamps, pillar boxes,
telephone booths, and policemen all looked familiar, the signs
on display were in English, and even the names on some of the
shop fronts were known to me. But, as the road continued
upwards, out of the town, clinging to the steep hillside, the
prospect of sea and sky opening up to my right was as
reassuringly unfamiliar as it was spectacular, and I was soon
to learn that the place where I was to live and work for the
next eighteen months, situated as it was at the highest point
reached by the road before it dropped down to continue on its
way round the unpopulated backside of the Rock, enjoyed the
very best view of it. Not for nothing was the promontory above
which it stood called Buena Vista.
It was a good thing, too, that the road at that point was not,
in those days, a busy one, because it ran right through the
middle of 28 Company RAMC's domain, separating the living
quarters, which were squeezed up against the Rock on one side,
from the hospital on the seaward side, giving rise to a
constant stream of pedestrian traffic across it. There were
other unusual features deriving from the precipitate nature of
the terrain and the scarcity of building land. The most
noticable difference between these premises and those I had
left behind at 18 Company, Horley, and, indeed, Boyce Barracks
and Bodmin Barracks was that they were (a) built to last, and
(b) built upward. There were very few single storey structures
on Gibraltar.
The military hospital itself was a substantial building, four
storeys high in places, solidly built in an attractive colonial
style with shady balconies at the end of each ward and
cloistered walkways in between. My X Ray Department was on the
top floor at the back, next to the operating theatre and joined
to it by a short glassed-in corridor looking out upon what must
be one of the most wonderful views in the world, all 180
degrees of it, from the distant port of Ceuta in Morocco to the
left, round to the nearby port of Algecieras, across the bay in
Spain on the right, and, in between, just visible on a clear
day in the distance, the white buildings of Tangier - all of
them places I would eventually visit. The scene was dominated
by a great mountain, Mount Hacho, looming up out of the sea
across the Straits, the other Pillar of Hercules, which seemed
to change its colours and even its proximity from day to day,
depending on the weather.
Looking down afforded a bird's eye
view of the parade ground and buildings of Buena Vista
Barracks, almost vertically below, jutting out to sea, home to
the Cameron Highland Regiment at the time, and, further over to
the right, the beginnings of Gibraltar's great harbour. It was
a vantage point from which there would never be a shortage of
things to observe and wonder at.
Even so, it was some time before I began to appreciate how
fortunate I had been to be posted to the Rock. There was no
formal briefing about the amusements available outside working
hours, or the extent to which I might be able to afford them.
No mentor was appointed to initiate me into any local customs
and practices of a potentially pleasurable nature, and, having
been parachuted in, as it were, solo, I had no travelling
companions with whom to compare notes during the first few
days, which passed, therefore, in a whirl of self-briefing. I
learned, for example, that, as the only qualified radiographer,
either military or civilian, on the Rock, I would be "on call"
24 hours a day, seven days a week, and was replacing a
predecessor, one WO2 O'Hara, who had succumbed to "the DT's"
and been shipped out in a sorry state several weeks earlier.
An unpromising start! No handover, no trained assistance, and
a backlog of work waiting to be done. But first, a complete
inventory had to be made, in my presence, of every single item
in the X Ray Department, including apparatus worth many
thousands of pounds, which I was then obliged to sign, on the
understanding that, when the time came for me to leave, the
cost of making good any defects or deficiencies would be
deducted from my pay.
From initial conversations with my new comrades in the barrack
block across the road, I learned that army life in Gibraltar
was just about as boring as it could possibly get, offering
none of the excitements available in such places as, say, West
Hartlepool, reminiscences about which were popular topics for
conversation, along with "demob numbers" and the tally of
months, days, and even hours, to be endured before these "came
up" and the troopship home could be boarded. On the face of
it, there was some justification for this attitude, since Gib
was very small, less than 2.5 miles square, and populated
almost entirely by male members of the British armed forces.
Barely eighteen months after the war had ended, the total
garrison was still huge, completely dwarfing the small civilian
population, many of whom had been evacuated to places of
greater safety during the war and had only recently returned.
More desperate, therefore, even than the shortage of fresh
water and building land on Gib was the shortage of female
company.
But things, I was assured, were not as bad as they had been
during "the dark days" of wartime, when the garrison had been
even bigger, the number of women smaller, recreational outlets
fewer, and the isolation from the rest of the world more
complete. This environment had given frequent rise, in
susceptible individuals, to a derangement of the mind so
distinctive that sufferers from it were said to be "Rock
happy", and the fact that cases were still occurring was cited
as evidence that things had not improved all that much since
then. The condition was marked by periods of deep depression
followed by outbursts of incoherent babbling and irrational
behaviour, and was probably what is nowadays known as bipolar
disorder and is quite treatable, but there was nothing for it
then but to sedate the patients heavily and ship them
home...but not until some of them, I was to find, had been
sent, in the desperate search for some underlying physical
source of their distress, for X Rays of "chest, sinuses and all
teeth ? septic focus", which wasn't much fun for me.
There was one big difference, however, between now and then.
Following the defeat of the Axis powers, the border with Spain
had been opened, under strict controls, of course, a this move
significantly extended the horizons of anyone prepared to take
advantage of it. The principal beneficiaries had been the
inhabitants of La Linea de la Conceptione, the small town
immediately across the border, many of whom were now permitted
to cross the short stretch of "no man's land" to the Gibraltar
customs post, after the gates on the Spanish side had opened in
the morning, and walk back before they closed at midnight.
They came to work in various capacities, mostly menial, but
among them were a number of lovely young ladies who were
allowed to sing and dance in some of the many bars which
alternated with the shops in Main Street. And, while on
British soil, that was all they were allowed to do, apart from
chatting up the customers in return for expensive drinks, since
any hint of other services being offered this side of the
border would result in instant dismissal and loss of work
permit. Because their singing and dancing was invariably
accompanied by the sound of castanets, these exotic creatures
were known collectively to the troops as "the clapper girls",
hence the little known fact that the colloquialism "going like
the clappers" originated in Gib.
On our side, anyone who had been resident for 48 hours could
apply for a visa allowing daily access, in civilian clothes, to
as much of Spain as could be reached without an overnight stay,
mainly La Linea, of course, but Algeceras, San Roque, and even
Malaga, could be visited by bus in a day. According to my
early informants, however, the prospect was not a particularly
inviting one, Spain being a very backward country where I would
encounter dirt, disease, beggars, many of them barefoot
children, and bars less attractive than those in Gib. The only
entertainments on offer in La Linea which were not available in
Gib were in the brothel quarter and the bullring, both
disproportionately large for the size of the town due to its
proximity to Gib, and both offering wares of a soiled and
sordid nature, particularly the latter. The principal
attraction over there, it seemed, was the abundance and
cheapness of things like food and drink, but considerations of
sanitation and hygiene meant the food was risky, and in any
case it was oily and stank of garlic, which left only the
booze, and unfortunately, the Spanish beer was a very unBritish
(at that time) lager, served chilled, would you believe. It
was, however, available on draught and, although relatively
tasteless, actually stronger than ours, making it cheaper to
get pissed over there than over here.
That was about all the advance information to be gleaned about
Spain while waiting for my pass to come through. Oh, except
for something called "the peseta rate" which was quite
complicated. The Spanish Government's official rate for the
peseta was fixed at about 40 to the pound with a concessionary
tourist rate of about 60 to the pound. But there were shops in
Gibraltar Main Street where a rate of 90 to the pound was on
discreet offer, and, across in Tangier, apparently, there was
an open money market where rates as high as 120 to the pound
could be obtained. Of course, it was illegal to import pesetas
into Spain, which meant that a token amount of pesetas had to
be purchased at the official rate when passing through the
Spanish customs, but that was seen by all concerned, including
the Spanish customs officials, as the price to be paid for
admission to the country, and could often be waived, I was to
learn, with impunity. But, before I could begin to find out
how far my minuscule army pay would take me in sampling the
delights of "going abroad", it received a considerable and very
welcome boost, when, after only a few days in my new posting, I
was suddenly promoted to sergeant.
And the transformation in my lifestyle resulting from this
dizzying rise through the ranks was not confined to the
increase in my disposable income. I was moved immediately out
of the communal barrack block into my own private sleeping
quarters and became a member of the sergeants' mess, the
premises of which, although small (there being only a dozen of
us) and of utilitarian aspect, seemed positively palatial to
me, occupying as they did a whole floor above the messing and
recreational facilities available to all the lower ranks. It
boasted a light and airy dining room, a table tennis alcove,
and a common room big enough to accommodate a full sized
billiard table, a dartboard, card tables and an attractive
corner bar complete with bar stools - plus two full time
orderlies to serve us with food and drink. What could be
better?
I found that my new messmates, who accepted my sudden elevation
into their midst without undue emotional display, fell into two
distinct groups - the conscripts and the 'regulars'. The
conscripts were there, like me, because of their professional
qualifications, and consisted of (i) the pharmacist, Stan, with
whom I was able to establish an instant rapport, because he
hailed from Pudsey, near Bradford, and had been a near
contemporary of Frank's at the Bradford Tech, (ii) the path lab
technician, Kenneth, very shy, from Middlesex, difficult to get
to know but friendly enough in his quiet way, and (iii) a good
natured dental mechanic who was never called anything in my
presence but Lofty, because he was a gangling 6 feet 8 inches
tall with a large prognathous head, towering over Stan, who was
barely 5 feet. I was to find that Lofty attracted a
considerable amount of attention whenever he ventured across
into La Linea where the average height of the population was
not much over 5 feet. Small crowds of children would gather
and people could be seen emerging from doorways to watch him
pass by. If he chanced to walk down "Gib Street", as the
brothel quarter was called, many of the girls, none of whom (as
far as I am aware) he knew professionally, would emerge to
greet him with shouts of "Hola, Losti!" followed by the usual
invitations, all of which he would ignore, marching on with
huge strides, staring straight ahead, a faint flush mounting
his cheeks.
The 'regulars' in the mess, having got there the hard way, and
being responsible for various important aspects of the
organisation and management of 28 Company and the military
hospital which was its raison d'etre, were mostly older men of
solid character and, this being the RAMC, relatively unmilitary
disposition, with sociable natures and moderate habits, more
wary of each other than they were of me. The next sixteen
months would see a substantial turnover in the membership of
the mess, leaving me virtually the longest serving member by
the time I left, but the only friction I ever experienced
personally was with the first of the two Regimental Sergeant
Majors I served under, a very unpopular character of whom
everyone was glad to see the back, who complained about my
failure to "support the mess" by gracing it with my off-duty
presence, particularly on mess nights when those few members
who, like himself, lived out in married quarters were present
with their wives.
There were two reasons for this shortcoming on my part. The
first was that, although I enjoyed our meals together and had
good working relationships with them during the day, the
evening company of my colleagues in the mess held little appeal
for me. I had not yet developed a taste for beer in any
quantity, nor the ability to exchange either jocular banter or
polite chitchat over an extended period with people whose
interests I didn't share and with most of whom I had already
eaten breakfast, dinner and tea that day. Failing any
reasonable alternative, I would, no doubt, have made the best
of the boozing and bandinage round the billiard table, but the
main reason for my absence was that, by the time I had been
there a couple of months, I was so deeply involved in
extramural activities of various kinds that I simply could not
spare the time. Outside working hours, my life had become
fuller, even, than it had been during those action-packed years
at the BRI. But, before leaving the sergeants' mess to enlarge
upon these matters, two of the regulars who were in situ when I
first arrived are deserving of further mention.
One, Harry, was unusual in being a 'regular' sergeant of my own
age. He had decided, when faced with the inevitability of
conscription, that he might do better for himself in the army
by enlisting in the RAMC on a short service contract. His
elevation to sergeant at such a tender age had proved him
right, but of more interest to me was that he hailed from Leeds
where he had been an apprentice tailor before joining up, and
would continue to pursue this trade after his discharge. Fairhaired and friendly, the similarity in our backgrounds made it
almost inevitable that we should feel comfortable in each
other's company in the mess, and even, on occasion, outside it,
with the result that Harry became the only individual I
encountered in my entire army career with whom I am still in
touch. After contacting each other sporadically, post-demob,
our paths began to cross more frequently a few years later when
we were both married and he was in business for himself. By
that time, being no longer a radiographer, I needed to be
better dressed and was happy to have him make every suit I ever
wore until I retired from gainful employment. Which meant that
I saw Harry, his wife Margaret and even their daughter Rebecca,
at regular intervals down through the years, and we still
exchange Christmas cards across the world.
The other, Sid, I never saw again, nor heard anything of, once
he had sailed away from Gib, but I would love to know what
became of him, because he was a man who seemed capable of being
much more than a Staff Sergeant in the the RAMC. As Company
Clerk, he held a key position in the administrative hierarchy
of the hospital, and was reputed to be a financial wizard. He
was also Jewish, but not typically so, being squarish of build,
sharpish of feature and quite hard of eye, keeping himself to
himself in the mess, and leading an active, but closely guarded
private life outside it. His relationships with his fellow
regulars were cool, bordering on the contemptuous in some
cases, but he was quite well-disposed towards us conscripts and
was able to demonstrate this in a practical way, as we shall
later see, because, unlike his fellows, he had taken the
trouble to learn Spanish and investigate the Spain outside La
Linea. His interest may not have been entirely academic,
however, because there were hints that he was exploring the
possibility of buying property over there.
Today, looking at that stretch of coastline between Gibralter
and Malaga, the self-styled Costa del Sol, one of the great,
glittering, overdeveloped holiday playgrounds of the world, it
is difficult to imagine what it was like in 1947 when there was
nothing there but a few fishing villages separated by empty
beaches punctuated by rocky outcrops. Not long after my
arrival, for example, the sergeants' mess decided to organise a
day out for ourselves, for which purpose a large army lorry was
acquired, fitted out with benches, loaded up with crates of
beer and a picnic lunch, and driven across the border, along
the coast road for about twenty miles to a large, deserted
beach in front of a small fishing village where there was just
one small bar. After driving unhindered onto the beach, we
unloaded the bottles of beer and stuck them in the sand along
the water's edge to keep them as cool as possible while we
kicked a ball about and cavorted noisily up and down the beach,
but not, curiously, in and out of the sea, as we would almost
certainly have done in later years. Before departing, a few of
us wandered up to the bar in the sleepy little village for a
final drink, during the course of which I asked the barman
where we were. If my memory serves me correctly, the answer
was "Estapona".
Sid's interest in buying into this barren wasteland may look
like inspired entreprenurial foresight now, but it seemed
decidedly odd at the time. With so much that was new for me to
do and see on land, I was slow to appreciate the simple
pleasures on offer from the Mediterranean itself. Sea bathing,
for example, was not the addiction it later became for me. I
was a reasonably strong swimmer, having spent hours of my youth
socialising in the Municipal Baths in Bradford and Keighley,
but my childhood holidays in Bridlington had not endeared me to
the experience of total immersion in an element which, given
its murky depths and tidal swell in the North Sea, seemed less
than friendly. And, even though I had unhesitatingly plunged
into the cold, clear waters of a mountain tarn outside one of
the youth hostels during my recent hike round North Wales, my
earlier cycling tour of the West Country with its golden
beaches had been unmarked by any swimming at all. Added to
which, such beaches as there were below the hospital in
Gibralter were not particularly inviting, being covered in
pebbles which were invariably thick with oil from the shipping
in the bay, and I was not alone in undervaluing these
amenities.
As spring turned to summer, however, and the temperatures rose,
the attraction of the water overcame the misgivings of an
adventurous few of us, but the pebbles and the oil were a high
price to pay for a cooling swim. Fortunately, round the
otherwise inhospitable back side of the Rock, an easy walk from
the hospital, there was an inlet which boasted a short stretch
of sandy beach, fringed, surprisingly, by a small fishing
village inhabited by a people who, I was told, were not truly
Gibraltarian, having arrived there sometime in the past from
Catalonia (under circumstances never explained to me) and kept
themselves apart from the main community ever since. I was
later to be assured by a Gibraltarian friend of mine that the
only occasions on which the inhabitants of Catalan Bay, as it
was called, had visited Gibraltar town, en masse, in the past,
had been to attend the opera house when Bizet's "Pearl Fishers"
was being performed there, but, at the time, my interest lay in
the beach rather than the fishing boats drawn up on it. And it
was there that I learned to value the unique pleasures of that
long and leisurely swim in the silken waters of the
Mediterranean Sea, many more opportunities for which, off many
other beaches, I was to arrange for myself, in the next fifty
years.
Another memorable experience to come my way with the onset of
the Mediterranean summer was my active participation in the
sudden, simultaneous unveiling of the entire garrison's knees.
I had arrived in February to find everyone in the uniforms I
had left behind in the UK, but, on a given day in early May, as
decreed in Garrison Standing Orders, all members of the armed
forces on the Rock were obliged, without exception, to replace
their long worsted trousers with cotton shorts. This early
morning refulgence of such a wide variety of pallid knees,
particularly those underpinning figures of authority, was
startling in its effect, giving rise to much innocent merriment
among the lower orders, and the fact that the shorts were of
such amply flared proportions, and that, in Gib, the normal
battledress blouse was retained for a hybrid month before being
replaced by the short sleeved cotton shirt, did nothing to
detract from the risibility of the spectacle. Of course, we
soon got used to seeing each other in shorts, and we were
grateful for them as the summer warmed up and we could shout
"Get yer knees brown!" to new arrivals, but, strange as it may
seem today, whenever we changed into civvies to pursue any offduty non-sporting activity, we never, ever wore shorts, no
matter how hot it got.
By the time we went into "half KD", as it was called, my offduty activities were shaping up nicely, and I was well settled
into my new post, where I found myself occupying an
unexpectedly strong position in the hospital hierarchy, since,
not only was I the only radiographer available, but the absence
of a diagnostic radiologist (to interpret the X Rays) left me
unencumbered by any superior officer qualified to give me
technical directions, and rendered my own unofficial
radiological expertise, which was quite considerable, virtually
indispensable to those calling on my services. Added to which,
I was the only member of the staff, below officer rank, with
enough prior experience in a large civilian hospital to be able
to judge the quality of the skills being practised around me.
In recognition of all this, most of the medicos were happy to
treat me on equal terms - as a valued colleague, in fact inside my X Ray Department, while maintaining their correct
distance, of course, outside it. This applied also, I was
happy to find, to the ward and theatre sisters, all of whom
were, naturally, officers in the QAIMNS.
These ladies enjoyed an even more privileged status than their
colleagues back in Horley. Such was the shortage of single
young women in Gibraltar, and such was the isolation of the
British community there, that it would be no exaggeration to
say that this tiny band of nursing sisters had the entire male
garrison of the Rock at their feet, and several of them took
advantage of this, during my time there, to secure very good
marriages for themselves. The demand for their favours was
such that, given the inclination and the stamina, each and
every one of them could have been out partying til dawn, every
night - all of which made it highly unlikely that any of them
would wish to commit the offence of consorting in public with a
member of the armed forces of below commissioned rank, even if
it had been possible to do so without being observed in such a
closed community. This was unfortunate for me because I soon
found myself quite fixated on the one of them who was, by
common consent, the fairest of them all.
I simply couldn't help myself. I seemed to have developed a
compulsive need to arouse reciprocal feelings in any member of
the opposite sex who had become, through daily contact, the
prime object of my admiration and desire, and there was no
other candidate in sight. To make my case even more hopeless,
the lovely Frances was a few years older than me, and very cool
and controlled in her outward demeanour, giving no detectable
encouragement by word or gesture, even to those who were
entitled by their rank to lay legitimate siege to her virtue.
I was to discover later that she had encased herself in this
glacial armour as a defence against the heat of the emotions
she found herself arousing in practically every eligible male
she encountered, and also that, like many beautiful women (as I
was later to find), she was less happy with her lot than she
should have been, given the superior quality of her assets.
Whether this shadow of discontent was due to lack of confidence
in her own judgement in the face of such a wide choice between
potential suitors, or to doubts about her own intrinsic worth
arising from the unfailing appeal of her extrinsic charms, I
never discovered, but, in setting out to melt the ice and
persuade her to at least take a friendly interest in me, I
found that I was not as handicapped as had, at first sight,
seemed likely.
For one thing, I had easier access to her
presence than most of my many competitors, since our paths
could, if so desired, be made to cross at intervals during the
course of every working day, and, for another, the very fact
that my inferior rank ruled me out as a contestant for her
companionship off-duty, made it easier for me to develop a
relaxed and uncomplicated relationship with her during working
hours. We were, after all, of equal status, professionally.
Even so, it was slow going at first, but, finally, as the weeks
went by, my gentle persistence succeeded in both gaining her
affections and tapping into the springs of an underlying
romantic nature which saw the artificial barrier between us as
not too dissimilar from that which had confronted Cathy and her
Heathcliffe in the recent film of "Wuthering Heights" starring
Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier. Truly!
But the obstacles in the way of proceeding towards a more
physical intimacy were formidable, and, in the end, alas, the
watchful eyes around us and the topography of the Rock, proved
to be an unbeatable combination. The frustrations I suffered
at my repeated failure to rendezvous with Frances at some
accessible spot which sufficiently resembled those remote,
secluded and grassy Haworth moors to make even the most
tentative lovemaking acceptable to her, came finally to
outweigh any satisfaction I got from my success in persuading
her to join me in each fresh attempt. Not only that, but the
construction of the elaborate deceptions involved in the
planning and execution of these clandestine manoeuvres, and the
unrealisable fantasies they aroused in my fervid imagination,
were distractions I could well have done without as the
Mediterranean summer progressed and other claims on my
attention multiplied.
For I had found that, contrary to the
discouraging reports I had received on my arrival, Gibraltar
was alive with all manner of potentially absorbing off-duty
interests.
There were a number of reasons for this. The sheer size of the
garrison, its isolation, and the fact that the cessation of
hostilities had left most of its members with few tasks of a
meaningful nature to perform while on duty, added up to a great
deal of youthful energy clamouring to be disposed of during
off-duty hours where the absence of single girls, already
noted, simply added to the pressure for its release. Since
most of these young men were conscripts drawn from every walk
of life, a fair proportion of them were sufficiently
intelligent and well-educated to seek outlets other than
overindulgence in the usual competitive sports, or idling away
the time until their demob numbers came up. The result was a
proliferation of indoor recreational activities of any type
that was not dependent on, either the expenditure of hard cash,
or the active participation of members of the opposite sex chess clubs, bridge clubs, debating societies, play reading,
poetry reading, gramophone societies, and every kind of
instrumental combination from a full orchestra to string
quartets, to name but a few.
The military authorities, of course, had a vested interest in
encouraging these pursuits, and, judging by the resources they
made available, and their responsiveness to any identifiable
opportunity to provide new benefits, the off-duty welfare of
the troops must have been a major preoccupation of garrison HQ.
But the existence of this proliferating subculture was not
immediately apparent from the military hospital out at Buena
Vista, where the work of 28 Company RAMC, given its nature, had
been less affected by the coming of the peace than had that of
the more combative elements of the armed forces. It was left
to me to find my way into it for myself, and, once again, it
was my clarinet that showed me how.
My initial exploration of Gibraltar's night life had led me to
patronise one particular Main Street bar which featured,
instead of the ubiquitous "clapper girls", a small band of
Spanish musicians who were doing their best to play, in
addition to the usual pasa dobles, tunes of a more familiar
nature in the jazz idiom, and succeeding well enough to make
them worth listening to. After a couple of visits to show my
appreciation and make their acquaintance, I took my clarinet
along with me one evening and found that they were only too
happy to let me "sit in" with them for a few of my favourite
numbers. Afterwards, a small group, obviously young servicemen
in civvies, who had applauded my performance enthusiastically,
engaged me in a conversation about musical matters of mutual
interest. They turned out to be RAF types, and the quite
astonishing outcome of our meeting was an invitation to join a
recently-formed RAF (Gibraltar) Dance Orchestra, which,
needless to say, I unhesitatingly accepted.
A few days later, after wending my way down to the distant RAF
Station beside the airfield for the first of the many such
visits I was to make in the months to come, I found myself a
member of nothing less than a twelve piece dance band - four
saxes, two trumpets, two trombones, piano, bass, guitar and
drums. I could hardly believe my luck, even though it wasn't
quite the transcendental experience it sounds, since the band
was, in spite of its name, entirely unofficial and amateur,
being the brainchild of the station welfare officer who had
fulfilled an ambition of his own to play the drums in such a
band by first creating the band and then appointing himself
drummer, and he wasn't the only member who was learning by
doing, but his personal commitment ensured that the band lacked
for nothing. In addition to the piles of instruments, we had a
dedicated rehearsal room, hand-made music stands displaying the
band's logo, stacks of orchestrations, and a guaranteed gig in
the officers' mess once a month. It emerged that the reason
for my recruitment as the only non-RAF member of the ensemble
was the extent of my previous experience with the Semitones
which ensured that I was immediately elected lead alto and put
in charge of rehearsals.
That my newfound associates were a mixture of officers, nco's
and erks, only became apparent with the passage of time since
we usually met in civvies, performing in a simple uniform of
white shirt and dark trousers, and rank was irrelevant to our
common purpose. Of more concern was the unevenness of the
instrumental expertise, but this was mitigated, to a large
extent, by the enthusiasm of the weaker vessels, most of whom
were able and willing to practice their parts daily for hours
between the weekly rehearsals, with the result that we were
soon producing a reasonable approximation to the authentic big
band sound of the era, although the drums, alas, were never
much of a force to be reckoned with, but there was little we
could do about that under the circumstances. For me, it was an
exhilarating experience to be playing in such a big band, if
only for the time allowed us by the inexorable onward march of
the demob numbers which could, and eventually did, reduce the
band literally overnight to a residual quintet, hopefully
awaiting the arrival of any new recruits the next troopship
might bring.
But, before that happened, I had contrived to put together,
almost by accident, and quite independently of the RAF or any
other official establishment, a small band of my own.
The
unlikely catalyst of this process was a self-styled "Korny
Kockney Komic" called Ted, who had emerged from somewhere in
the garrison through welfare channels to form a concert party
called "The Rockapers" (geddit?), principally as a showcase for
his own comedic talents, which, though quite substantial, left
plenty of room for supporting acts to fill the bill. In the
meantime, mainly through my occasional ad lib performances in
the bar on Main Street (which continued until the Spanish band
moved on to pastures new), I had made the acquaintance of a
number of other amateur jazz musicians serving in various
capacities somewhere on the Rock, and discussed with them,
sporadically, the possibility of forming a small group to play
for pleasure and, if possible, profit, but nothing had come of
this until Ted started trawling around for talent to flesh out
the show he was mounting at the Garrison Theatre, to be called
(wait for it!) "Krazy Kapers".
When we were finally put in touch with each other by a series
of intermediaries, Ted asked me whether I could get a band
together to be featured in the show, using, as a vocalist, the
daughter of a friend of his, a sixteen-year old who turned out,
fortunately, to have a big, bluesy, adult voice. Can a duck
swim? as my mother used to say. Once the word was out, the
band seemed to come together as if by magic, a mixture of
servicemen and civilians, British and Gibraltarian - me on
clarinet, plus alto sax, tenor sax, piano, bass, guitar, and
drums, all competent performers needing the minimum of
rehearsal, with the added bonus that the tenor saxist turned
out to be a talented budding arranger.
We were given a
fifteen minute spot as a curtain raiser for the second half of
the show, which ran for three consecutive nights, and we filled
it, judging by the applause, with considerable success.
Once up and running, and thus promoted, the band was free, of
course, to accept gigs anywhere on the Rock from anyone who
wanted us, but it turned out, alas, that not many did, and for
a reason that was not far to seek, since the chronic shortage
of female dancing partners ensured that any local "hop" of the
kind for which our brand of music was best suited, would have
been a rather one-sided affair. We were invited to perform in
the canteen at the Military Hospital a couple of times, which
was good for my image there, particularly with Frances, and we
even played once at a private function at the famous Rock
Hotel, but my clarinet, it seemed, had taken me as far as it
could in my new milieu, and my greatest claim to local
celebrity, when it later came to be mounted on the stage of
that same Garrison Theatre, would owe nothing to it. The
further complexities of my spare time activities on the Rock
can best be appreciated, however, by tracing the parallel
development of my flirtation with Spain, or, to be more
precise, the province of Andalusia.
3
Spain, needless to say, was a far more "foreign" country to a
lad from Bradford in 1947 than it would be to his counterpart
today, and Andalusia was, as it still (behind the coastal
holiday strip) is, the most exotic part of it. My first
impressions, however, were of a brown and barren land
interspersed by decrepit municipalities lacking many of the
civic amenities taken for granted back home. The poverty and
social inequalities were all too glaringly obvious, but there
was nothing I could do about that, except become a tourist and
spend money there, if, that is, I could find anything worth
spending it on, but there seemed to be little within a day's
bus ride that could be classed, in those days, as a tourist
attraction. My first tentative forays across the border
revealed that La Linea was an unattractive small town, that
Algecieras was an unattractive small port, and that Malaga was
an unattractive larger port. The only features of any interest
were the lavishly decorated interiors of the massive churches
which seemed to loom up round every corner, giving employment,
apparently, to the numerous individuals of both sexes who could
be seen perambulating around the nearby streets in a wider
variety of ecclesiastical attire than I had ever previously
encountered.
My most vivid memory of my day's excursion by bus to Malaga is
of the size of the pork chop I was served, after I had plucked
up enough courage to enter one of the local restaurants and
order lunch. As I gazed down upon it, I realised that, due to
the deprivations of my childhood and the vicissitudes of the
intervening war, it was the biggest piece of meat I had ever
had on my own plate. Back in Gibraltar, we were still living
with wartime rationing - worse, in fact, because most of the
garrison's food was imported in cans or reconstituted from
powders of various kinds. There seemed to be no properly
organised local traffic in fresh meat, fruit and vegetables,
and, even the small cafe/restaurants in the town had little to
offer but bacon, eggs, sausages and chips - admittedly, the
sort of savoury fare which those of us who could afford it were
inclined to favour as a filling for any corner left unfilled by
"tea" (as it was then called, dinner being taken at lunchtime).
That pork chop and the sopa de mariscos that preceded it marked
the dawning of a realisation that, gastronomically, at least,
Spain had more to offer than had at first seemed likely. But
my main constraint, when venturing abroad initially, was that I
was unaccompanied by any kindred spirit. If one of my pals had
been there, particularly Mike, I might have been more
adventurous and quicker to appreciate a culture which was
sufficiently rich and strange to repay exploring in depth.
What I really needed was a local mentor, preferably a Spanish
one, but I was half way through my tour before I found one, by
which time I had succeeded in gaining some preliminary
appreciation of the two uniquely Spanish attractions, apart
from the food and drink, which were available close at hand the bullfights and the music. I had also, rather to my own
surprise, made two week-long expeditions further afield - to
Granada and Seville, no less. But first, the bulls...
The position I took on the ethics of bullfighting, when I
returned home to regale my friends and family with my
experiences, was that, yes, it was a cruel sport and I would
probably vote for its abolition if given the choice, but, in
the meantime, I could see no objection to studying it at close
quarters whenever I could. What a cop out! Today, although it
is fifty years since I attended one, I would greet the
abolition of the Spanish bullfight with the kind of regret I
would feel at the final extinction of a rare species of wild
animal. In my experience, in the whole wide world of
entertainment, there is nothing to compare with a good
bullfight, to which must be added the corollary that there are
few things worse than a bad bullfight. It is not unlike opera
in that respect. But when I went to my first corrida, I hardly
knew what to expect, my previous acquaintance with the
spectacle having been confined to glimpses on the cinema
screen, of Tyrone Power's sketchy impersonation of a matador in
"Blood and Sand", and, more memorably, of the comedian Eddie
Cantor's performance in the bullring in "The Kid from Spain",
one hilarious sequence from which I was eventually to see
repeated in real life during the strangest bullfight I ever
attended.
Fortunately, all my early bullfights were good ones, because
the small town of La Linea, thanks, no doubt, to the proximity
of the relatively prosperous population of Gibraltar, boasted
one of the biggest bullrings in Spain and could attract the
very best in bullfighting talent. Even the great Manolete
fought there, but was gored to death in Linares before I could
get to see him - demonstrating, yet again, that bullfighting is
not the one-sided contest many claim it to be. But these
wonders were still in store for me, when, in the late afternoon
of the day of the first bullfight of the season, I joined the
crowds converging, through the drab streets of La Linea with a
markedly festive air, on the bullring. I was in the company of
my messmate Harry, who was sufficiently well-informed on the
subject (and well-disposed towards it) to instruct me in the
basic essentials, beginning with the advice that it was
significantly cheaper to buy a big straw hat and sit in the
"sol" half of the arena, than in the expensive "sombra" side.
Once seated on a rented cushion in the midst of a fairly
bibulous Spanish audience, however, I needed little help from
Harry in following the rest of the plot, or understanding the
roles of the protagonists, or even appreciating their
performances, since the purpose of the ritual was easy to
perceive and the steps by which it was achieved quite
unambiguous in their execution. It added up to what would
nowadays be called a mind-blowing experience, catalysed, for
me, by the ambivalence of my own reactions to the welter of
conflicting emotions - amazement, revulsion, apprehension and
admiration – I felt, all struggling for supremacy. By the end
of the day, however, admiration had won and I was hooked. I
became an aficionado, attending every bullfight available until
I left for home, even buying the occasional bullfighting
magazine, but, with the exception of the one I attended in
Barcelona a few years later, since leaving Gib, I have not, on
any of the many visits I have subsequently paid to the beaches
of Spain, been to another.
But I do not regret the pleasure I took from seeing so many
brave bulls dispatched, nor do I feel the need to defend myself
for having done so. Bullfighting was there. I was there. It
would have been foolish of me to miss out on something that is
more than just a sport to be compared favourably with shooting
birds and animals with guns from a safe distance, or
unfavourably with tennis or boxing, and more than just a
colourful spectacle, to be compared with rodeos, circuses or
the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, more, even, than an
art form, although the colourful costumes, the presence of the
music at crucial moments, and the studied grace of the toreros'
movements, lends it a certain resemblance to ballet. It is a
ritual celebration of the continuing existence among us of two
atavistic entities, the lone warrior and the wild bull, and of
the "moment of truth" between them. And everything depends on
the bull being wild, since he is the most important character
in the ring. Without his acting true to the form for which he
has been so carefully bred, there would be nothing there for
the toreros to confront, and nothing for the crowd to admire.
So nothing incenses a Spanish audience more than a bull that
does not run true to form.
Such a bull came on at Number Four in one of the corridas I
attended later in my tour of duty. Generally, bullfights
featured six bulls and three matadors, taking one bull each in
turn. The matadors, on this occasion, were not of the first
rank, but neither were they novilleros, and each of them had
already dealt with one bull apiece to the general satisfaction
of the crowd when Number Four was released into the arena. He
was suitably impressive as to size and appearance, but gave an
early indication of what was to follow when, having charged
once around the empty arena, he returned to the exact spot
where he had come in, even though it had now been rendered
indistinguishable from the rest of the barrera by the
replacement of the sections masking the gate, where he assumed
the stance of one who was hoping to be let out again. Any
impression that this was due to cowardice was quickly dispelled
when members of the cuadrilla, coming forward to make the
preliminary passes which are intended to reveal the bull's
individual behavioural characteristics to the watching matador,
were vigorously attacked.
It soon became evident that this bull was not only brave and
clever, but also had a peculiar swerving charge. My own guess
was that this was due to his being blind in one eye, but,
whatever the reason, it made him very difficult to deal with.
This didn't bother the picadores, high in the saddle of their
horses, sticking their lances into the bull's neck, nor, any
more than usual, their padded, blinkered horses; it didn't
bother the banderilleros too much either, dancing over the
horns to stick their beribboned darts in the bulls neck, but it
certainly bothered the matador when he stepped forward to show
what he could do. A few tentative passes later, the bull's
idiosyncratic charge got the better of him, and he went flying
through the air, having taken a horn in the groin. Following
his horizontal departure from the field after his rescue by his
cuadrillo, the matador next in line stepped forward, as he had
previously contracted himself to do, with a view to finishing
the bull off with all possible speed. Unfortunately the bull
would not cooperate, and, after making several attempts to get
him into position for the sword thrust, it was the matador
himself who was dispatched, caught by one of those wickedly
waving horns.
By this time the crowd was in an uproar, showering every kind
of verbal abuse on the offending animal, which responded by
exhibited even more aggression, and chasing quickly out of the
ring any torero who ventured near enough to try a few passes.
And then it happened! An event I had never expected to witness
at a real bullfight. After trying in vain to reach his
tormentors through the narrow gaps in the barrera provided for
their escape, the burladeros, this bull from hell succeeded in
leaping right over the barrera, out of the ring, into the
callejon, the alleyway round it - the offstage area, in effect
- whereupon, without a moment's hesitation, everyone in the
callejon, about twenty assorted members of the cast, jumped
simultaneously over the barrera into the ring - just as they
had done in that old Eddie Cantor film under similar
circumstances, and to equally hilarious effect - in my eyes, at
least.
Most of the fugitives were just as quick to vacate the arena
when the bull was channelled back into it to allow the third
matador to make a trembling attempt to fulfil his contract by
killing it, by which time, alas, given the state he was in,
there could be little doubt as to how the confrontation would
end. But, once the poor chap had been duly gored, rescued, and
carried off, leaving the bull in undisputed mastery of the
field, the interesting question arose as to how it would be
removed, since he still looked lethally unapproachable to me.
The answer was not long in coming. Heralded by the unexpected
clanking of cow bells, the gates opened, and a small herd of
cattle was driven into the ring, and began mooching aimlessly
about. After a few minutes, the bull walked quietly over and
joined them, whereupon they all wandered out again. What an
anticlimax! But what a match! Matadors - nil : Bull - 3.
Not the least of bullfighting's attractions for me was the
conspicuous presence, throughout the entire proceedings, of a
small orchestra, making a big contribution to the unique
flavour of the prevailing atmosphere from a dominating position
next to the box of the presidente. A reed, brass and
percussion ensemble, very like a military band, it played an
integral part in the unfolding of the drama, heralding each
stage with a traditional toque, or trumpet signal, sometimes
accompanying the action, sometimes filling in the gaps between
the "acts", always setting the mood of the moment and governing
the tempo of the proceedings. Apart from the characteristic,
and often quite elaborate trumpet calls, most of the incidental
music was in pasa doble rhythm, swaggering along heroically, as
befitted the occasion, but often in a minor key, hinting at the
possibility of a tragic outcome. There is a substantial subgenre of Spanish music for the bullring, which is so
distinctive that, having experienced it in its proper setting,
even so long ago, a few bars heard today can instantly
transport me back through time to the living reality of the
occasion.
But most of Spain's music is like that - instantly recognisable
as Spanish (even when emanating from South America!), and very
evocative of its country of origin. I soon realised, however,
that there were several different strands to it, even though
most, if not all, were song and dance music. Thanks to Radio
Gibraltar, which re-defused a constant stream of high quality
sound through landlines into every habitation on the Rock, my
earliest acquaintance was with the commercially successful
Cuban strain, the principal exponent of which was a very
popular coloured singer called Antonio Machin, who I was
eventually to see perform live in Tangiers. Singing in a light
tenor voice, carefully enunciating every word, he churned out a
continuous stream of hit records, mostly romantic love songs,
in an ingratiating, crooning manner, over mainly South American
rhythms, slow rhumbas and quick sambas, to hypnotic effect.
Several of the songs he made famous were translated into
English and did well in the Anglo-American market, one of
them,"Quizas", being frequently heard, even today, as
"Perhaps".
His biggest success in the Spanish speaking world was with a
song called "Angelitos Negros", (Little Black Angels), a gentle
but telling protest against racial discrimination, well ahead
of its time. I was so taken with this song that I bought the
sheet music to learn the Spanish lyrics by heart, and can still
remember most of them. I also bought a couple of his records
to bring home with me, which I still have somewhere in the
attic. Like many of our own long-dead crooners, Antonio Machin
continues to sell well today in his own linguistic domain where
compilation tapes and even CDs of his old 78rpm recordings are
readily available. Oddly, however, he does not figure in The
Faber Companion to Twentieth Century Popular Music, although a
search for his name on the Internet throws up more than six
thousand site references. But, attractive and commercially
successful as it was, his turned out to be pretty mild stuff
when set against the uniquely Spanish song and dance music that
was my next discovery.
Across the border lay Andalusia, whose best known export to the
rest of the world (including the rest of Spain) is the flamenco
music made increasingly popular by the exposure to it of the
millions of sun-seeking tourists who have flocked to the Costas
in the second half of the twentieth century, but little heard
in the UK in only the second year after the end of the war. I
was fortunate to come across flamenco while it was still
genuinely a music of the people, before it had evolved into the
elaborately stylised virtuoso vehicle it has since become. It
struck me as having much in common with jazz, having been
developed, around the turn of the century, from elements of
local folk song and traditional gypsy music, by performers in
the low-life cantinas of certain towns in Andalusia,
improvising with simple materials - the guitar, the voice, the
rhythmic hand-clapping and heel-rapping (the castanets being a
later addition) - but, having experienced only the pre-digested
cabaret version delivered by the "clapper girls", I didn't
fully appreciate this until I went to see a visiting company of
professionals perform at the Gibraltar opera house.
It was there that I realised that the heart of flamenco lay in
the cante jondo, literally, "the deep song". After the show
had opened with a series of traditional Andalusian dances
performed to the accompaniment of guitars and castanets by a
troupe of mostly women but with several men in evidence, the
curtains rose to reveal a stage that was empty but for two
ordinary kitchen chairs standing side by side in the centre, at
which a rustle of expectation ran through the mainly
Gibraltarian audience. A few seconds later, two soberly
dressed men entered, one of quite mature years, the other
carrying a guitar, and sat down on the chairs, looking rather
unsmilingly at the audience, as if waiting for the complete
silence which was very soon forthcoming, whereupon the
guitarist began to play a typical sultry Spanish tune
underpinned by a driving, full-fingered dance rhythm. After
listening thoughtfully, nodding approval, for a short while,
his companion suddenly began to sing, in a shouting, throaty
voice which carried easily to every corner of the theatre.
I was immediately captivated by the idiom, with its archaic,
quasi-oriental melody line, its uninhibited, uncompromising
style of delivery, and its improvisational nature, which became
increasingly evident as the singer, driven, apparently, by the
emotion generated within him by the lyrics, sang with such
mounting passion that, unable to remain seated any longer, he
stood impulsively up, moving by degrees until the climax of his
song found him standing behind his chair supporting himself its
back with one hand while extending the other hand dramatically
to the heavens. Obviously, this was a traditional sequence of
gestures, repeated at each performance, but I always found it
impressive and the improvisation was undoubtedly genuine. The
audience loved it (emitting quiet "ole"s from time to time),
and so did I, although I couldn't understand what he was
singing about, except that the word "morena" cropped up from
time to time, as it does, I was to find, in many of these
songs. It means "dark-haired girl". Another, less conspicuous
word, of course, is "rubia" which means "fair-haired girl".
But not all the songs are about sexual attraction, some deal
with other serious matters.
What I had witnessed, I later learned, was the cante jondo, the
basic genetic material from which the flamenco style of song
and dance has been elaborated over the years, absorbing much
from the indigenous folk music of Andalusia, but retaining the
spontaneous improvisational essence of the duende - a word used
to describe the “possession” I had witnessed of the performers
by the emotions aroused in them by the words or the music.
Afterwards, as the evening progressed, the flamenco flavour of
the dances became more pronounced, culminating in a frenzy of
hand clapping and foot stamping to the accompaniment of several
guitars and the full-throated singing (aimed, it seemed, at the
dancers rather than the audience) of strategically placed
vocalists. It was as if all the parties involved were hyping
each other up into even more exalted levels of duende. Very
like jazz, again, and very exciting, but, being a concert
performance, not quite the real thing. To get closer to that,
I had to take advantage of an unexpected opportunity to leave
the Rock and journey deep into Andalusia.
One of the difficulties facing the garrison high command in
peacetime was that every conscript serving on the Rock had an
annual leave entitlement which it would have been impractical
to meet by shipping them to the UK and back, or, given the
topography of the Rock, by creating some sort of rest camp in
the colony. Fortunately for me, they attempted to solve this
problem by setting up a special unit, a sort of extemporised
travel agency, with a remit to organise and promote cheap
holidays locally for the troops - primitive package deals, in
effect. Naturally, I put my name down for one of these as soon
as I heard about them, and found myself, only a few weeks
later, bouncing along through the night (to avoid the heat of
the day) in the back of an army lorry with about twenty other
bods in civvies, all seated uncomfortably on benches, over the
mountains towards Granada. I was reminded of Brad's
description of his journey from Naples to Rome under similar
circumstances.
To add to our discomfort, we were obliged to share the lorry
with two very large hessian sacks, filled, I was surprised to
find, with loaves of army bread. The reason for their
presence, it emerged, was that members of an exploratory
expedition had found the Spanish bread, made as it was from
unrefined, wholegrain flour, totally unacceptable to them, as a
result of which, this 'best of British' white bread was
travelling with us to be served at every meal. In the event,
of course, after a couple of days in that climate, the stuff
was too rock hard to be edible, but, fortunately, there was
plenty of fresh, wholesome, flavoursome, if rather chewy,
Spanish bread available, and I could find nothing to complain
about in the rest of the amenities. We were booked into a
small hotel near the city centre, probably third class, but it
seemed like the lap of luxury to me at the time - it even had
footbaths in every bedroom - my first encounter with the bidet.
I can remember nothing at all about my companions, most of whom
I met only at mealtimes, but I have quite vivid memories of
those mealtimes.
Of course, the timing took some getting used to, Spanish eating
habits being so different from our own, but concessions to our
presence had been made by augmenting the "continental"
breakfast with more substantial fare, and serving lunch and
dinner early at 1pm and 8pm respectively. This delay in getting
to the trough was amply compensated for by the five-course
meals which were set before us twice a day. Spanish cuisine,
of course, but of excellent quality and generous quantity, and
I imagine that any Spaniard able to afford such an hotel would
have been content to work through the courses selectively at a
leisurely pace, eating such amounts of each as might appeal to
him, leaving room for the next, but these lads were not of that
ilk. Like me, they had spent the whole of their teens
subsisting on the wartime rations which were still being served
up to us back in Gib, and this experience had imbued them with
an almost insatiable appetite for food, plus what was known in
the forces as a "fill yer boots" approach to any legitimate
opportunity to indulge it.
They ate everything put in front of them at every meal.
Everything. Of soup, salad, fish, vegetables, meat, pudding,
cheese, not a scrap remained. The Spanish waiters stood around
and watched the performance with a mixture of awe and
admiration, particularly when, at the end of each meal, with
something of a flourish, a large basket of assorted fresh
fruits was placed in the centre of each table. The intention
was, I suppose, that, after all that had gone before, we should
choose an item each - a peach, a pear, a few grapes - to toy
with, but such a concept was quite foreign to our natures, and,
inevitably, when we finally rose from the table, nothing was
left but the basket. And having risen from the table to find
that we could scarcely walk, most of us would be obliged to
totter off to lie on our beds for a while before we could
venture forth, thus discovering, after lunch at least, the
benefits of that great Spanish institution, the siesta.
Outside, in Granada, there was plenty to do and see, as many
millions of tourists have since discovered, but the big
difference, then, was that we seemed to be the only foreign
visitors around. I heard no English spoken anywhere, except
among ourselves, and no French, German, or Italian at all.
Imagine strolling round the Alhambra with only a handful of
other sightseers about! I had the place virtually to myself,
and I have the photographs to prove it. Imagine visiting the
gypsies at Sacramonte while they still actually lived in the
caves there, instead of commuting in from their homes
elsewhere, as they do nowadays, to put on flamenco shows for
the crowds of tourists. There, like earlier travellers such as
Washington Irving, I was treated to a brief "spontaneous"
outburst of genuine flamenco dancing by a group of attractive
gypsy girls in traditional costume, all of whom undoubtedly
lived there and were putting on a show for the benefit of
myself and any of the other half dozen visitors present who
could be persuaded to part with a few pesetas for the privilege
of observing it. One of the girls was an absolute stunner (and
didn't she know it?), flaunting herself quite outrageously. I
have photographs of her, too.
But there was better flamenco available in Granada than that.
It must have been fiesta time, because a feria was being held
there, and there was a huge fairground within walking distance
of the hotel, making it the obvious place to visit each evening
after the excesses of dinner. In addition to all the colourful
pavilions, bars and cafes, there were the usual fairground
attractions, including numerous entertainment booths lining the
central avenue - as there would be at any fair, of course, but
the difference here was that many of the booths housed, not
boxers, freaks, wild animals or magicians, but flamenco dance
troupes. There were at least half a dozen of them, some even
standing side by side, and all competing with each other for my
custom. What a treat! I can report that the atmosphere inside
those tents was much more conducive to the duende than any
generated in the Gibraltar Opera House, because the members of
the audience, seated on benches, were much closer to the
action. By the end of the week I had heard more cante jondo
and seen more flamenco dancing than I would probably have
experienced in my entire lifetime if His Majesty's Government
had not seen fit to transport me, first to Gibraltar, and then
to Granada.
Apart from this cornucopia of song and dance and the
bullfights, which were very good, there was one other
noteworthy event in Granada that week. I emerged from the
hotel one day to find that large numbers of the locals were
lining the main thoroughfare as if in expectation of the
imminent arrival of some spectacle. Naturally, I was
interested, and, being at least a head taller than the Spanish
throng, I had no difficulty in positioning myself to get a
clear view of whatever it was that they were waiting to see.
Soon, I heard distant cheering, getting closer, until a small
motorcade, complete with motorcycle outriders, came into view,
and I was engulfed by the applause around me, which was
obviously aimed at the sole occupant of the back seat of a
large open-topped limousine - a diminutive, elegantly slim lady
with a flashing smile and shining blonde hair whose iconic
features I would have recognised, even if the crowd had not
been shouting her name. It was Eva Peron, currently on a
triumphal goodwill tour of Franco Spain. Yes, mine eyes have
seen the glory of Evita in the flesh, if only for a passing
moment.
Although I returned from my week in Granada sufficiently
enamoured of the experience to hope for more of the same at
some future date, I could hardly have expected to be making a
second expedition into Andalusia quite as soon as I did, but
the opportunity to do so came from a most unlikely source.
Inspired, possibly, by my excited account of the delights of
Granada, and reluctant to subject himself to the rigours of an
army lorry or the company of the travelling companions he might
encounter on any of the garrison's "package deals", for which,
as a regular NCO, he may not in any case have been eligible, my
entrepreneurial messmate, Staff Sergeant Sid, suddenly came up
with an offer to make all the necessary arrangements for Stan,
Ken, and me, to enjoy a week's holiday in Seville, at quite a
modest cost, if the three of us would care to accompany him
there.
Needless to say, after recovering from our surprise, we
unanimously accepted Sid's proposal, and he quickly set
efficiently to work. Using his phone in the company office and
his workmanlike command of the language he soon had our travel
and accommodation organised, leaving nothing for the rest of us
to do except fork out the cash and acquire British passports something I had already done for my trip to Granada whereupon, barely two months after returning thence, I was off
again. If anyone reading this is wondering how the Military
Hospital, Gibraltar, survived without the services normally
provided by Stan, Ken, and me while we took our leave
entitlement, the answer is, as best they could. There were,
naturally, civilian pharmacists on the Rock, and there was also
the British Colonial Hospital with its dispensary and path lab,
to be called upon in emergencies, but not an X Ray Department.
I know this, because, shortly after my arrival, I had been
asked by the CO to go down there, one afternoon a week, to take
such X Rays as could not be accomplished by a young nursing
sister who had been taught to operate the machinery in a
rudimentary fashion. There was nothing at all onerous about
this duty, since the surroundings were pleasant, and my young
associate was a comely lass - Home Counties and horsey, but
friendly - and the time was to come when she would do me a
very, very great favour. But, in the meantime, any X Ray
examinations at either hospital which required my skills would
have to await my return.
My week in Seville proved less rewarding than the one I had
spent in Granada, but the journey there and back was much more
enjoyable since we travelled by train during the daylight hours
through scenery that was always interesting and, in places,
spectacular. I was particularly impressed by our transit of
the Tajo Gorge at Ronda, and, of course, by the precarious
mountain top position of the town itself. Who wouldn't be?
Almost as impressive was the abundance and variety of the food
on display at an enormous cold buffet, filling the whole of one
wall in the well-appointed restaurant on Ronda station where we
spent an hour, conveniently, changing trains. What a contrast
with the fare available at, say, Leeds Central, or Birmingham
New Street under similar circumstances!
On the other hand, there were no buffet cars on the trains,
which were also devoid of corridors, even in the first class.
But the four of us had a compartment to ourselves, and the
stops en route were sufficiently frequent and lengthy for us to
relieve and refresh ourselves as necessary. And there was
another compensating feature of a more unusual nature. Not
long into our journey, we were startled by the sudden
appearance at the open window of the head and shoulders of a
teenage boy, who quickly allayed our fears for his safety by
offering to sell us bottles of beer from the bucket he was
carrying. Yes, he had been swinging along the outside of the
moving train since our last stop with a large, heavily-laden
bucket over one arm, exploiting a niche in the market, as they
say nowadays, and would, we learned, dismount at the next
station to replenish his stock and catch the next service back,
whereupon another enterprising youth would take his place on
our train, and so on, all the way to Seville, providing as good
a service as any buffet car...and cheaper.
Our days in Seville passed pleasantly enough, but rather
quietly, since it was September and there were no fiestas or
ferias. Plenty to see, of course, but little to do in a city
which was going about its normal business with an introspective
air, and from which, as with Granada, foreign visitors were
conspicuously absent. There may have been a throbbing night
life going on somewhere, but we never went looking for it in
earnest, possibly because the amount of heavy duty sightseeing
we were doing during the day left our energies too depleted to
investigate the nocturnal habits of the locals, who seemed
disinclined to leave their dinner tables in search of other
entertainment until after 10pm. Also, we were a rather illassorted quartet. We got on well enough together, but didn't
really gel as a band of kindred spirits looking for a good
time. Stan and Ken were very cautious in their approach to the
whole Seville experience, reactive rather than proactive, and
Sid and I were inhibited from sallying forth on reconnaissance
together by the difference in our two ages and uncertainty
about each other's tastes. There was also a dearth of
published information, in those pre-tourist days, about local
activities of a possibly diverting nature.
There must, however, have been a shared feeling among us that
we were not making the most of this unique opportunity to
explore the culture of Spain, because, when Sid expressed the
tentative view, one evening after dinner, that we ought not to
leave Seville without having visited a brothel, the rest of us
found ourselves agreeing with him, albeit not very
enthusiastically, since none of us wished to admit to being
either too forward, or too backward, or, in my case at least,
to never having been in a brothel before. But, where were the
brothels? Was there, somewhere in Seville, an up-market
version of La Linea's Gib Street? None of us knew, but Sid
solved the problem by simply flagging down a taxi and asking
the driver to take us to one, which he kindly agreed to do,
dropping us off, after a short drive, in front of a large,
anonymous building in a quiet suburban street, and assuring us
that, in spite of its respectable appearance, this was the kind
of place we were looking for.
And so it turned out to be. But I, for one, had expected
something a little more inviting, and it was plain, as the taxi
disappeared round the corner, leaving us standing in an empty
street, that both Stan and Ken were already having doubts about
the venture. But Sid, by walking up to the heavy front door of
the establishment and quickly gaining entry, managed to
maintain enough momentum to drag the rest of us along in his
wake until the door had closed behind us and we were standing
inside what was now revealed to be a typical example of the
urban domestic architecture of Andalusia. It was a large
dwelling house, built as a hollow square, presenting blank
walls and grilled windows to the outside world, but, concealing
within it a bright and airy inner courtyard, or atrium,
overlooked by open balconies round the inside of the upper
storeys, with rooms leading off in all directions. A design
ideally suited to the climate. The only visible indication of
the purpose of the place was the presence in this courtyard of
a dozen or so young ladies, dressed as if for afternoon tea,
who were sitting around in small groups chatting among
themselves, a couple of them knitting.
There was one older lady of more statuesque proportions
present, and she was seated behind the only incongruous item in
sight - a cash register. Anything less conducive to the
arousal of erotic feelings it would have been difficult to
imagine, and I felt completely disorientated, as, I could
clearly see, did Stan and Ken. But not Sid, who again led the
way by exchanging a few words with the senora and pointing to
one of the senoritas who rose quickly from her chair and led
him, without a word, away into the wings, leaving me in no
doubt about what was expected of me, but racked by indecision.
Having come this far, however, I could not bring myself to flee
the possibility of an encounter which, as an aspiring author, I
knew I should be embracing, so I looked hopefully at the girls,
seeking inspiration, and the girls looked back at me, but no
spark of mutual attraction passed. Finally, in desperation, I
pointed to the one who seemed from where I stood to have the
most appealing features and was led by her into an adjacent
bedroom, but not before I had observed that Stan and Ken were
heading for the street door.
What followed was acutely embarrassing. The bedroom was
spotlessly clean, but sparsely furnished in a style which bore
no resemblance whatsoever to the seductive decor I had assumed
would feature in such places. As for the girl: having got me
started on the task of removing my own clothing, she stripped
herself down, as if for a quick swim, and crossed to the bidet
where she began to wash her private parts in an ostentatious
manner, humming quietly to herself, leaving me to gaze upon the
protruding backbone and ribs of the skinny little body now
revealed to me, and feel not the slightest twinge of arousal.
Even worse, as she came towards me, ready for action, the awful
realisation dawned on me that I would be quite unable to bring
myself to part with my underpants in her presence. Overcome by
a mixture of shame, revulsion and guilt about the effect on the
girl of this rejection of her professional attentions, I fended
her off as best I could, dressed in record time, and fled the
building, having paid whatever was demanded of me at the till,
hardly raising my eyes off the ground until I was safely out in
the street, where Ken and Stan were waiting for me and Sid
joined us eventually. Needless to say, there was little
conversation between us as we made our way back to the hotel.
A much happier experience was our visit to Seville's Royal
Tobacco Factory, world-famous as the setting for Act One of
Bizet's opera "Carmen", even though we arrived there to find
the entrance guarded by two armed soldiers who informed us that
it was not open to the public. On hearing this, the rest of us
would have turned away, but the intrepid Sid, refusing to
accept defeat, proceeded to engage the sentries in a solemn
conversation during which he reached inside his wallet and took
out the card which all of us serving in the RAMC carried on our
person to certify that we were non-combatants. Although
written in English, its principal feature was the large red
cross it bore, and this emblem, together with Sid's confident
misrepresentation of it as evidence of our official status, so
impressed the young soldiers that, after conferring briefly
with each other, they not only agreed to admit us to the
building, but also arranged for us to be shown around inside.
Never was there a better demonstration of the truth of the old
army saying that "bullshit baffles brains".
Since the old Tobacco Factory was one of the largest buildings
in Spain, we were able to see only a part of it, and my
memories of our brief visit have become blurred with time. It
was no longer fully in use for its original purpose, the
manufacture of cigarettes and cheap cigars having been taken
over by modern machinery elsewhere, and there were no young
ladies sitting around in provocative dishabille, rolling the
more expensive cigars on their thighs, as reported by earlier
visitors. There was, however, one large room in which cigars
were being rolled by hand on bench tops by female operatives
clad in overalls and working at high speed in complete silence,
and there were other rooms containing other female workers
using sewing machines. Most of the overseers were nuns, and I
was conscious of a curiously subdued air about the place, which
became more understandable when we learned that the premises
were currently part of a House for Convertites, a term I have
never heard used before or since to describe what the
Victorians would have called a Home for Fallen Women. I have
since learned that the treatment meted out to the inmates of
such institutions in Catholic countries under the guise of
redeeming their sinful souls by hard work and harsh discipline,
was, in fact, a form of slavery. Little wonder, then, that
there were no smiling faces around during our visit.
As it turned out, Seville was to be the last of my forays into
the Andalusian hinterland, largely because, by the time I was
due for further leave, I had found a place with more to offer
in the way of excitement and interest, not only during one or
two weeks of fiesta time, but all the year round. This was
Tangier, which the garrison travel agency began to exploit with
its 'package deals' during the second half of my time in Gib.
Also, however, I had made the acquaintance of someone who was
able to lead me eventually to a closer familiarity with the
culture and lifestyle of Spain without going any further afield
than La Linea. This was Victor, who I met, by chance, at about
the mid-point of my tour but whose closer companionship I only
enjoyed after we had become involved together in a way which
gave us both a brief moment of local fame following another
roll of fortune's dice.
4
I first met Victor and his friend Roy in the small, backstreet
restaurant I frequented, whenever I could afford to fill the
empty corners left by "tea" in the mess with the generous
platefuls of frying pan fare, served there at low prices by an
unfailingly cheerful Spanish waiter - a combination which also
appealed to a number of like-minded individuals whose company I
grew to enjoy because the tables were so close together that
regular customers could hardly avoid becoming well enough
acquainted with each other to progress from an exchange of
pleasantries to conversations of a more discursive nature.
Most of the other habitues were members, like me, of the armed
forces - Roy, for example, was in the Royal Artillery - but
Victor was different, being not only a civilian, but also a
Gibraltarian, and some years older than the rest of us.
They were an oddly assorted couple. Victor, medium height,
well-proportioned, graceful in his movements, very expressive
hands, beautifully mannered, quietly dressed, but always
immaculately turned out, handkerchief in top pocket, collar and
tie, thick black hair carefully groomed above his latin-loverlike features. His companion, Roy, in complete visual
contrast, tall and slender, with a round, almost baby face,
blue eyes, fair hair already thinning, but equally wellmannered and very well-spoken. They were both, in a word,
charming, and I was always pleased to find them seated at a
table within chatting distance of mine, and, had it not been
for an improbable turn of events, this is about as far as our
intimacy would have gone, since Vic and Roy were what is
nowadays called "an item", and, although such a relationship
had to be concealed at the time, I could not help becoming
aware that they were wrapped up in each other to an extent
which would normally have precluded any further development of
our acquaintanceship.
Initially, I found Roy the more interesting of the two and
Victor something of an enigma, clearly the odd man out in the
present milieu, listening with obvious relish to our exchanges,
but putting in only the occasional word or two. But when Roy
laid claim to having been a professional actor in civvy street,
I thought at first he was pulling my leg, since his appearance
and manner did not conform to any preconceptions I had of the
type. On reflection, of course, I realised that there were
plenty of roles, not all of them subordinate, which did not
call for the profile and physical presence of an Olivier or
even a Leslie Sands - Oswald in Ibsen's "Ghosts", for example,
was a part which Roy had already played, and for which I could
see he would have been ideally suited. And, if any doubts
remained, they were soon to be dispelled by my first hand
experience of his professional skills.
Had it not been for Roy, the approach of the Annual Gibraltar
Drama Festival would have been of little interest to me, except
as a potential spectator, since it took the form of a friendly
competition between drama groups already active in the
garrison, and there was no such group at the Military Hospital.
Unfortunately for Roy, who was keenly interested in this
opportunity to practice his craft, there was, in spite of his
efforts to create one, no such group in his small RA battery
either, and his only chance of participating in the festival
was to find some other group willing to take him on, something
which, when he raised the subject with me one evening, he had
so far failed to do. And when, in answer to his probing, I had
to confess to having seen no sign of any enthusiasm for amateur
dramatics in 28 Company RAMC, his disappointment was such, that
I impulsively offered to see what I could do to remedy this so inexhaustible was my energy at the time!
With the CO's permission, I put a notice on the Order Board
calling together all those interested in mounting a Company
entry into the Drama Festival. The few who turned up were all
male, of course, the QAIMNS sisterhood having no incentive
whatsoever to make a public spectacle of themselves, but this
came as no surprise, nor was it seen as much of a handicap,
since we could feel confident that most of our competitors
would be in the same boat. Apart from Roy, Victor, and me,
only my messmate and recent traveling companion, Kenneth (a
most unlikely thespian), was in attendance, plus a couple of
other bods whose identities I have forgotten, and the six of us
sat around, feeling rather inadequate, considering the options
open to us. The conditions of entry called for the performance
of either a one act play, or a single act from a full length
play of not more than one hour's duration, so our first task
was to decide on a suitable vehicle for our collective talents.
Naturally, we all looked to Roy for suggestions, but rack his
brains as he might, he had nothing to offer which seemed
remotely feasible.
The whole venture seemed about to founder, when somebody
pointed out that there was a prize on offer for the best
original script. "That", I heard myself saying, without
pausing for thought, "is the answer. I'll write an original
script for us."
Needless to say, the surprise with which this
offer was received was not untinged with scepticism, but, since
no alternative solution to our problem was forthcoming, they
had little choice but to accept what they obviously saw as a
pretty forlorn hope and suspend final judgement until the
promised work was available for inspection. For my part, I
simply went away and wrote a one act play. Yes, I did. It
speaks volumes for the creative energy at my disposal in those
days, not to mention the amount of spare time I had available
during working hours, that I was able to closet myself in the
privacy of the X Ray department and pound away at the old
typewriter there, until I had produced the play which was
eventually to win first prize at the Gibraltar Drama Festival.
The February 1948 edition of the monthly magazine "Gibraltar"
Illustrated (No.14. Vol.2.) contained a lengthy report on the
Gibraltar Drama Festival by one Paul Ableman, a national
serviceman at the time, from which I will quote, as follows:
' "The Three Wise Men" was awarded the single "A" Certificate.
It was written locally by Sgt. P. M. Scott RAMC. As an
original script it deserves a great deal of commendation. The
play is set in Palestine today. It tells the story of a
British Army Doctor, a Jewish Doctor, and a German Doctor, now
a prisoner of war, who meet again in a small base hospital.
These three are old friends and their meeting is both a source
of pleasure at reunion and a source of deep regret at the folly
in which they have all participated since their pre-war
friendship.
The author has used this theme symbolically and has
succeeded in conveying his views on the responsibility for
warfare which, he feels, is shared by us all. When presented
at the YMCA the play was sensitively acted by Sgt. Scott, Sgt.
Roy Parker RA, and Victor Power.'
To which I need only add that armed hostilities between Jews
and Arabs in Palestine were prominent in the news bulletins of
the time (plus ca change...!), with the British Army doing its
best to hold the ring prior to withdrawing from the scene in
1948, and that the play's action took place on Christmas Eve
with gunfire crackling in the distance as two of the doctors
await the arrival of the third, a German POW who has
volunteered his services to help deal with the casualties from
the conflict, and who turns out to be their pre-war friend.
This reunion generates the main substance of the play and is
finally interrupted by a sudden call to deal with the emergency
admission of, not the expected casualties from the armed
struggle, but a Jewish girl enduring a difficult labour, to
whom they all rush off to minister aid. Hence the title.
[Other entries I can recall were Acts I of Shaw's "Doctors'
Dilemma", and Priestley's "Desert Highway". and Coward's one
acter "Hands Across the Table(?)"]
It was a double triumph. Winning entry and best original
script (the only one in competition, of course!), and it gave
me great pleasure to hang the framed certificates on the wall
of the Sergeant's Mess next to the trophies for billiards and
darts. A lot of the credit for our success must be given to
Roy, who directed the play, coaxing performances out of Victor
and me which his own, as the German, did not put too far into
the shade. And Kenneth performed admirably as the stage
manager. All very neat. And, in addition to raising the value
of my stock with my colleagues at the hospital, not excluding
the lovely Frances (from whom, nevertheless, circumstances
continued to deny me any tangible reward), my success had the
effect of crystallising my authorial aspirations around a
single literary form. My future was now clear. I would be a
playright.
Fortunately for me, in setting out to achieve an
ambition to which I would devote countless happy hours of my
spare time during the coming years, I was unaware that my
theatrical career had already passed its peak.
Of more relevance here, is that, a few weeks after his
performance in "The Three Wise Men", Roy's demob number came
up, and, suddenly, he was gone, back to the real world, leaving
a lovelorn Victor behind and placing me in the rather invidious
position of a sympathetic friend who had no wish to substitute
for Roy in any other respect. Fortunately, Victor was happy to
settle for half a loaf, although he continued to woo me very
discreetly for the other half during our ensuing encounters
which soon settled down into a comfortable routine.
Once a
week, we would meet after working hours, and stroll across noman's-land to La Linea, there to spend the evening drinking and
chatting at one of the small backstreet bodegas patronised by
the locals - well away from the brothels of Gib Street. Not
very exciting, perhaps, but, for me, a quintessentially Spanish
experience.
First, there was the wine bar itself with its stone floors,
crude wooden furniture, and huge barrels piled up behind a
plain bar counter on which the bartender kept the tally for
each customer with a piece of chalk. Then there was the
brandy, straight from the barrel into small glasses (none of
your snifters here!), that lovely, nutty Spanish brandy for
which I was developing a taste that was to last me for the rest
of my life. Then the tapas, inspired Spanish custom of serving
an appetising snack of some kind with the drink, ranging from a
simple dish of olives to a selection from a wide variety of sea
foods, depending on the kind of establishment being patronised.
But the main attraction was Victor's conversation, which I
found endlessly entertaining, since he was extremely wellinformed about all things Spanish, particularly the songs and
dances of Andalusia, having learned to perform them himself in
his early youth at the classes to which it was customary, I
learned, for most Gibraltarian children of both sexes to be
sent by their parents.
I never saw Victor dance, the nearest he got to it was to
demonstrate his remarkable ability to snap his thumbs across
the four fingers of each hand at such a high speed that they
rattled like castanets, but I did hear him sing on numerous
occasions, usually sotto voce to demonstrate some piece of
flamenco without attracting public attention. On one memorable
evening, however, to celebrate his birthday, he surprised me by
hiring the back room of one of our favourite bars, "El
Hormiguero", together with two musicians (guitar and mandolin),
to play and sing for us while we feasted on l'especialidad de
la casa, a dish of deep fried, lightly battered whole baby
sqid. As the evening progressed, Vic, with the enthusiastic
encouragement of the accompanying musicians, began to
demonstrate his cante jondo at something like full throttle, to
stunning effect. Since, however, my Spanish was nowhere near
good enough for me to understand the words he appeared to be
addressing solely to me with such obvious passion, I was able
to enjoy the performance without feeling obliged to respond to
it.
From the first, Victor imposed a curious piece of ritual on
these Spanish evenings by insisting that, when making our way
back to Gib before the border closed at midnight, we should
call at a large, brightly lit confectioner's shop (still open,
this being Spain, at such a late hour), to buy a selection of
the richest concoctions on display, and carry them to a nearby
cafe for consumption, washing them down with quantities of
coffee. These creations were like nothing I had ever seen in
England, even before the war. Standing several inches high,
with multiple alternating layers of cream, custard, or jam
between pastry or cake, they were so elaborately constructed
and fragile that they could only be handled by the toothpicks
embedded in their topmost layer, and only eaten with a spoon or
fork. It was Victor's belief that, after an evening's steady
boozing, this emetic experience had a bracing effect on the
stomach, "settling it down" by testing its powers of retention
to the limit. It certainly achieved the latter in my case, the
confections being of an unsurpassable richness, and many of the
flavours used in them, such as aniseed, foreign to my palate,
but, for whatever reason, I can report that they always had the
desired effect of enabling me to make my way back across the
causeway without being sick, even though my path was invariably
beset by others of my fellow countrymen who were vomiting
noisily.
Not that our drinking was ever excessive. The only time I came
anywhere near to being drunk was when Vic and I arrived in La
Linea on one of our evenings to find that the local cinema was
showing the old Alexander Korda classic version of H.G.Wells's
"Things to Come", a film I had long wished to see, having
admired Arthur Bliss's incidental music to it. After some
discussion, we decided to compromise by taking half a bottle of
brandy each into the cinema with us, but my enjoyment of the
film was marred by the fact that, instead of being subtitled in
Spanish as I had expected, it was dubbed in Spanish (my first
experience of the technique, subjecting me to the spectacle of
the normally silver-tongued Ralph Richardson and Raymond Massey
jabbering away incomprehensibly. Fortunately, I was able to
alleviate my disappointment by sipping sparingly, as I thought,
at the brandy, but when the lights went up at the end, and I
stood up to leave, I surprised myself by nearly falling over.
5
Those "Nights in the Bodegas of Spain" with Victor were like
beads on the one bright thread of friendship running through my
final months in Gib. The ticking clockwork of demob had
removed, not only Roy, but all my original chums from the
sergeants' mess and most of my old mates from the RAF Dance
Band and the concert party. But my life was far from
uneventful, and my youthful energies continued to expend
themselves with unabated prodigality. Hardly was the ink dry
on "The Three Wise Men" when, in an attempt to infuse into the
disparate elements of a military hospital something of the
communal party spirit which had been such a feature of life at
the BRI during the war, I not only volunteered to produce a
monthly Company Magazine, but even succeeded in getting two
issues published before it petered out, mainly through lack of
support in the way of contributions from anyone else but me.
Amazingly, copies of both issues have survived to remind me of,
among other things, the primitive means and materials at our
disposal in those distant days before word-processors and
photocopiers were invented.
Each consists of twelve sheets of coarse wartime economy paper,
9" by 7", bound together by a ribbon threaded through two punch
holes and knotted by hand, each sheet printed unevenly on both
sides by means of the only office technology, other than a
manual typewriter, available for the purpose at the time something called a Gestetner machine, a laborious process
involving a thin layer of jelly which was only good for a
couple of dozen copies before deterioration into total
illegibility ensued. Fortunately, a junior clerk in the
company office had been appointed to assist me with the
production process, but the content was entirely my concern
and, although I managed to rustle up a few contributions from
other hands for the first edition, I ended up writing the whole
of the second edition myself under a variety of pseudonyms.
There are the usual jokes, limericks, anecdotes, and
disrespectful innuendos about easily recognisable personalities
on the hospital staff (mainly the officers and senior nco's), a
couple of very short stories, accounts of the few recent inhouse social events and DIY entertainments (in most of which,
it seems, I had a hand myself). Unremarkable stuff. The only
pieces I can view with any satisfaction at this distance are
the two in which I attempted to direct attention to particular
volumes in the well-stocked but chronically underused Unit
library. The first of these was about a book I had actually
bought for myself, at the age of seventeen, using a book token
won, during my churchgoing phase, as first prize (there having
been only two entries!) in an essay competition held by the
Bradford diocese on the subject of "How can the Church help
Youth?". Truly! And, in recalling, only as I write, that an
additional reward was to have it printed in full in the
Bradford "Telegraph & Argus", I have realised, belatedly, that
this long-lost essay has become, in spite of all my intervening
efforts, my only published work to date. Sad, isn't it?
More to the point, however, is that the award took place in
1943, just as I was embarking, with Jack, upon my explorations
of the world of classical music, by which time "The Musical
Companion", edited by A.L. Bacherach, had, since its
publication in 1934, become sufficiently indispensable to
anyone pursuing such a course to have run through eleven
impressions, six of them in wartime. It's seven sections, each
by a different expert (including Edward J. Dent, of course, on
opera), told me virtually everything I needed to know about the
origins and development of European music and the achievements
of its main expositors, and I can still consult my copy, as I
do from time to time, in the confident knowledge that it will
almost certainly cast some light on any question arising from
any aspect of the entire range of Western classical music
produced before World War II. Naturally, I was surprised and
delighted to discover a copy in the Unit library and only too
happy to share my appreciation of it with anyone who might be
interested, and, if nothing else, fill a couple of pages in the
magazine!
The other book I chose to recommend was "Sons and Lovers" by
D.H.Lawrence, drawing extensively for the purpose, on my
recollection of the Reverend Alan Bullock's night-school
lecture on Lawrence, and I reprint it here, more as a tribute
to him than to my youthful self, as follows:
"Somebody once said to me of D.H. Lawrence that "he wrote from
the pit of his stomach" and, much as I object to people saying
such clever things, I must agree to his statement being partly
true.
Lawrence was the enemy of modern civilisation, the opponent of
dispassionate intellectualism: he believed that mankind was
losing touch with Nature... not the idyllic and rather
constipated Nature of the lyricist but that cruel, inscrutable
natural force, the vital mainspring of life, which is the
driving power behind all living things: and Lawrence thought
that until men regained the consciousness of their fundamental
"oneness" with the whole of Nature, they could never be fullbloodedly happy but would remain the dull, anaemic crowd they
are at present.
Whether agreeing with his outlook or not, one has to admit
that it gave Lawrence an uncanny insight into things: he seemed
to possess the fresh untainted vision of a little child to whom
everything in the world is new and significant. Notice his
choice of adjectives, how simple they are: things are hard or
soft, cold or warm. thick or thin... but in his hands these
soiled, everyday words seem to be reborn and glow with fresh
significance.
In "Sons and Lovers" there is much of Lawrence's vision and
little of his philosophy.....that is probably why it is
considered to be his best novel. The story is, I understand, a
slightly disguised autobiography and this also helps towards
its success because the author is able to give to his
characters that additional touch of authenticity which sometime
seems lacking in his other novels.
I said you will find little of Lawrence's philosophy, that is
true, but you will find its artistic application: the natural
setting of the story is never forgotten, or sacrificed . The
characters, wherever they are and whatever they are doing,
never take the reader away from the background against which
they move.... they are part of it, they are influenced by it.
Notice particularly the Seasons of the year and how they affect
the behaviour of the people in the story, and the way in which
the smell of bread, baking in the oven, appears repeatedly in
some household scenes.... like a theme from some incidental
music.
I can recommend this book: in it you will meet living people
and you will see the world through D.H Lawrence's eyes... and
that, I think, is a great privilege."
Following the early demise of the Company magazine, no new
opportunity for creative writing was to present itself during
the remainder of my stay in Gib, but my pen was never idle. I
was still corresponding voluminously, as I had been from the
moment I had arrived there, with as many of the friends I had
left behind (girlfriends especially) as I could persuade to
write back to me, and no account of my life out there would be
complete without some mention of the amount of time and effort
which, in spite of all my other commitments, I devoted to this
activity, and of the importance I attached to the achievement
of its primary objective. Separated as we were on the whim of
the War Office from the mainstream of life as we had lived it
before being called up, and isolated as we were from even voice
contact with friends and family by the inadequacies of post-war
communications, it would be difficult to exaggerate the hunger
we conscripts felt for letters from home. And the only
reliable way of getting letters was to write letters, a
challenge I gladly accepted.
There was, I must confess, a less innocent aspect to this
pursuit. The public nature of the eagerly awaited mail call
encouraged an element of male machismo competitiveness in those
hopefully assembled for it, to which I was not immune.
The
thrill of pleasure at being awarded a letter was enhanced, to
no small extent, by the envy of those who remained empty
handed, and the supreme accolade of winning more letters than
anyone else was an achievement which could only be fully
savoured at the expense of the less fortunate. It was
difficult not to exult on these occasions, and I can only
plead, in my defence, that all my letters were written to
seduce, rather than cajole the recipients into writing back,
and that, in them, I strove always to give better value than I
received. I was, after all, a budding writer who thought
nothing of dashing off twenty foolscap pages at a sitting,
forty to a favoured correspondent, striving always to amuse and
entertain. I did it willingly for my friends, and even, once a
fortnight, to her great delight, for my dear mother, whether
she had written back or not. It was the least I could do for
her after all she'd done for me.
But, suddenly, a more tangible manifestation of the spirit of
friendship was at hand. A letter arrived from Frank informing
me that the troopship on which he was now serving, which had
sailed to the Far East without calling at Gibraltar, was due to
call there on its way back, thus allowing him finally to fulfil
his rash promise to come and see me. Detailed arrangements for
the actual meeting, however, would have to be made by me, a
task which proved, alas, to be beyond my powers. The problem
was that the troopships did not dock inside the harbour when
they arrived. There was no need. They simply dropped anchor
in the bay for a few hours at a convenient enough distance to
allow the escapees to be ferried out to them by tender. Try as
I might, there was no way, from my lowly position in the
garrison, that I could wangle myself out to the ship for a
rendezvous with Frank.
It so happened, however, that the day of Frank's arrival was
the day of my weekly stint at the Colonial Hospital, during
which I was moved to unburden myself, to my comely young
colleague there, of the acute frustration I was feeling at
being unable to get out to the trooper, now clearly visible
from the X Ray Department window, to see the close friend who
was passing through. Her reaction came as a complete surprise.
"I think I may be able to help you, there" she said. "It just
so happens that the embarkation officer is a boyfriend of mine.
Hang on a minute." Whereupon she waltzed out of the room to
use the phone, returning triumphantly a few minutes later to
tell me that the necessary arrangements had been made and give
me precise instructions as to how to find her inamorato down in
the port. Within no time at all, it seemed, after a dash to
the docks and a short sea trip in a crowded tender, I was
standing on a swaying pontoon at the bottom of a gangway
leading up into the bowels of the biggest ship I had ever seen
at such close quarters.
It was a daunting prospect. I had strict instructions not to
leave the pontoon until the tender came back with its last load
to take me off. Looking up from sea level, I was confronted by
a wall of faces, lining the rails, deck above deck, from end to
end of the enormous structure towering above, faces which I
scanned in vain for the one I could recognise. Thankfully,
there was an area amidships, directly above me, where the rails
were deserted - the admin block, presumably - and it was at one
of these that Frank suddenly appeared, gazing down at me with
wild surmise, and, after gesturing, quite unnecessarily, that I
should stay where I was, then disappeared, to reappear a few
minutes later at the head of the gangway talking animatedly to
the duty officer who was finally persuaded to allow him to
descend to my waiting arms. Not that we actually embraced, of
course. Chaps didn't go in for that kind of thing in those
days. But we did, exceptionally, shake hands.
After which, we stood and stared at each other for a moment,
exulting in the magnitude of our achievement. Then Frank said
"You're going bald", and I said "You're getting fat" and we
broke out the cigarettes. For the next half-hour we continued
to exchange readily forgettable banalities, while basking in
the warm glow of our freedom to do so. I can, however, recall
Frank telling me that, by a remarkable coincidence, the other
pharmacist serving on the trooper was someone he already knew
very well, and who I may also have met, because he had studied
in the same year as Frank at the Bradford Tech, and had been a
near contemporary of mine at my old school. His name was Bob,
he lived about half a mile away from the two of us back in
Bradford, and his father had a chemist's shop nearby. While I
was searching my memory, Frank said "Look, that's him there"
and pointed up at the drowsy and dishevelled features, beaming
down upon us, like some hung-over Cheshire Cat, from the deck
on which Frank had first appeared, of one of the most
remarkable characters I have ever met, although I couldn't
quite place him at the time, and would only get to know him
well in the future.
And that was it. The tender took me off, and the troopship
sailed away, leaving our brief meeting, achieved against all
the odds, to stand as a noteworthy example of the power and
influence wielded in the colony by the British nursing
sisterhood. Nor was it the only occasion on which I benefited
personally from my attachment to this magic circle. The
magnificent St. Michael Cave complex, now such a feature of
Gibraltar's tourist trade, had only recently been discovered by
the sappers, as they tunneled away inside the Rock, always
extending the fortifications, and it was not yet accessible to
any but a privileged few by invitation only. It will come as
no surprise to learn which members of the entire population of
Gibraltar the officers of the Royal Engineers were most anxious
to take on personally conducted tours of this subterranean
wonderland. Frances, needless to say, was one of the favoured
few, and was keen to go, but agreed to accept the invitation,
bless her, only on condition that I was included in it.
It turned out to be quite a scramble, since the caves were
still in a near pristine state with few added amenities, just
guide-ropes to hang on to, and only the most primitive of
lighting - a long series of inspection lamps strung out on
wire, stretching ahead and behind. Frances and I were given
overalls to wear, and we had a great time, helping each other
over obstacles, etc. It was the only time I had been allowed to
lay hands on her in public, so I made the most of it, much to
the chagrin of the young officer who was our host for the
occasion and who had no doubt been looking forward to handling
her himself. The splendour of the caves, now readily available
to all, needs no encomium here from me. I was very lucky to
have so early a private viewing of them before
commercialisation had set in, and very grateful to Frances for
making it possible.
6
Only one more adventure remains to be recorded. Having
acquired, early in 1948, a full-time assistant capable of
holding the fort while I was away, I arranged, through our
friendly garrison travel agency, to take a fortnight's leave in
Tangier, which I had previously visited only on the day trips
which allowed just a few hours ashore, although the crossing in
the small ferryboat was a worthwhile experience in itself, but
only for a good sailor, since the Straits could be very bumpy,
even in fair weather. One of the attractions of the trip was
the large numbers of dolphins which attached themselves to the
little boat as soon as it left the harbour, frollicking around
it all the way across, weaving and looping exuberantly in front
of the bouncing prow, so close that I felt as if I could reach
out and stick a finger down a blowhole. And there were flying
fish, too.
Tangier, I found entirely captivating. In the sea of
devastation and deprivation left by World War II, it seemed an
island of colour, luxury and freedom, having reverted to the
International Zone status it had enjoyed before the war, where
the writ of no individual European power ran. It was the most
enthralling place I had ever visited, on the one hand,
extrovert and inviting, on the other, mysterious and exotic.
Not as authentically picturesque as the walled Arab city of
Tetuan, where I had spent a few hours after crossing to Ceuta
for the day, but a bubbling melting pot in which Europe, Africa
and Arabia were free to intermingle uninhibitedly, commercially
and culturally. The original walled city was there, of course,
the casbah, the souks, the mosques, the palaces, but all
embedded now in a matrix of European boulevards and avenues
where balconied apartment blocks of modern design, hinted at a
life of pre-war affluence within.
Against all the odds, two picture postcards I sent to my mother
from Tangier have survived, the one showing "Le Grand Socco
vers la Mosque", crowded with authentic Arabs, the other, the
Avenida de Espana stretching along the sea front, lined with
palm trees, peopled by a few picturesquely attired pedestrians,
with not a motor vehicle in sight. On the back of the first I
have written, would you believe, "This is the town I want to
live in", and on the second, "Resting myself to death under the
African sun...I'm afraid Morecambe will seem pretty tame after
this." Obviously, I was smitten. And who could not be, in
those rationed, restricted and regulated times, by such things
as the money market in the Socco Chico, where the wares on sale
were currency notes and coins from all over the world which any
customer was free to buy with whatever money he had available,
having ascertained the most favourable rate of exchange on
offer by a quick tour of the dealers sitting behind the stalls?
The whole city seemed to be vibrating with energy and optimism
in complete contrast to the mood prevailing across the straits
in Franco's Spain.
My only regret was that none of my pals from home was there to
share my enjoyment. Fortunately, however, some of the members
of the leave party turned out to be a little more lively than
the crowd I had shared that bumpy ride to Granada with. We
were booked into a small hotel on the outskirts of town, run by
a rather taciturn American with three pretty daughters, two of
them twins, who were, however, a bit too young to be of
interest, and, after a couple of days, about half a dozen of us
began teaming up to go out on the town of an evening, looking
for fun, but only two of these forays have stayed in my mind.
The first was made, at my instigation, to see Antonio Machin,
the excessively popular Cuban bolero singer, famous throughout
the Spanish speaking world at the time, who, I had discovered,
was performing at a theatre in town. He and his band put on an
extremely lively show, performing all his greatest hits,
singing and dancing round the stage, mainly to the irresistible
rhythm of the samba, in a manner which inspired many in the
audience to follow suit, up and down the aisles, where they
were joined in a final grande melee by the performers.
Our second memorable group outing was, inevitably, to a
brothel, although, given my experience in Seville, it was with
some trepidation that I agreed to join the party. My fears
turned out to be unwarranted, however, for this was to be a
better class of brothel altogether, where there was fun to be
had without risking sex. The Black Cat, alias Le Chat Noir,
alias El Gato Negro, was famous, not just in Gibraltar, but
throughout the Med., and there was nothing shuttered and
surreptitious about its premises - a warmly lit foyer led into
a sort of night club with soft lights, a bar, a dance floor
surrounded by small tables, and a band! But when our party
walked in, the first customers of the evening, there was little
sign of life, just the members of the band playing cards and
smoking and a barman reading a newspaper. Our arrival changed
all that, of course.
The band, galvanised into frantic
activity, were suddenly playing loudly and the sound brought
several young ladies hurrying into view whose animated
behaviour towards us showed no sign of having been activated
from scratch by our sudden appearance. It was a remarkable
transformation. Quite convincing.
After buying one of the girls the obligatory drink in order to
enjoy the pleasure of her company, I was whirling her round the
dance floor with an exuberance, the kind of which I had not
been given an opportunity to exhibit for quite some time, when
I heard voices cheering me on from the bandstand - by name!
How could that be? My bewilderment turned to amazement as I
realised that the current resident band at the Black Cat was
none other than the bunch I had regularly "sat in" with in that
bar in Gibraltar's Main Street shortly after my arrival there.
And I am gratified to report that, after making the usual
ribald comments about my presence in the establishment, they
invited me to join them again for a couple of numbers, even
lending me an instrument for the purpose, with the undeniable
result that, like many of its illustrious progenitors, I could
afterwards lay genuine claim to having once played jazz in a
brothel. Cap that, as they say in Yorkshire.
But the party was moving on. Not to the bedrooms, but to
somewhere more interesting - to me, at least - because, during
my absence on the bandstand, arrangements had been made for us
to view something called "the blue films". After handing over
an agreed sum to Madame at the cash register, we were ushered
into an oblong, windowless room, comfortably furnished with
divans and floor cushions on which to loll with the girls, if
we so desired, while being titillated. At one end, a white
wall - the screen - at the other, high up, an aperture through
which Madame herself could be glimpsed, filling a tiny
projection room with her ample proportions, and fiddling
expertly with the controls of an ancient apparatus which
eventually caused the lights to go down and the show to begin.
I am not ashamed to admit that I found what followed to be a
very enjoyable experience. Not an erotic one, however.
Educational, certainly, astonishing, occasionally, but, mainly,
very, very amusing.
The films themselves were well-worn and elderly. Single reel,
black and white, and silent, they dated back, judging by the
ladies' clothing (what there was of it), to the late twenties,
early thirties. Consequently, although very explicit in
places, with little time to waste in getting to the point,
there was something rather quaint and other-worldly about them.
But there was nothing quaint or other-worldly about the
audience's reaction to them. Uninhibited by either good taste
or the presence of members of polite society, free rein was
given to every kind of barrack-room ribaldry, and some of the
ad lib commentary was quite inspired. I certainly laughed a
lot. Finally, one of our ringleaders, who had obviously been
there before, jumped up and addressed Madame through the hole
in the wall, saying "Hey Mama, show us that one where these two
birds come into a bar and start playing with each other while
the barman is tossing himself off behind the bar...". Madame
looked puzzled for a moment, and then said, "Oh, that was last
week", a reply which seemed to imply the existence of a North
African brothel cinema circuit around which these venerable
antiques were endlessly circulating.
[I am reminded by this episode of one of the most remarkable,
but least publicised, facts about Gibraltar. It was the only
port in the Mediterranean, possibly in the whole world, without
brothels of its own. The garrison, of course, had no need of
them. With La Linea de la Con(tra)cepcion just a short walk
away, the authorities were able to enforce the strict local
laws against prostitution and soliciting with little
difficulty. The "clapper girls" were free, if they chose, to
arrange assignations on the other side of the border with
willing admirers, but would certainly lose their work permits
if caught canoodling anywhere in Gib. There was, however, one
small loophole in this regime, which was permitted to exist
because there were a number of males resident in the colony
who, for sound political reasons, were unable to cross the
border into Spain. Their needs were catered for by a lady of
mature years called, improbably, Mrs Wink, who lived at Number
11, Chicado's Passage. Everybody knew about this because
Garrison Standing Orders, clearly stated that Number 11,
Chicado's Passage was "out of bounds to all ranks", added to
which, the proprieties were observed by hauling the good woman
up in court from time to time to be fined for soliciting. It
was all quite orderly.
Problems arose, however, when the US Navy paid us a visit,
which it did from time to time, usually in the shape of an
enormous aircraft carrier with an attendant fleet of smaller
fighting ships. The Yanks, I recall, had perfected an
ostentatious and probably highly irregular method of actually
docking the carrier inside the harbour under its own power.
This was achieved by lining up rows of its aircraft at angles
to each other, anchored to the flight deck, and revving up
their engines as appropriate to propel the huge ship gently in
any required direction. Once ashore, however, no amount of
ingenuity could direct the crewmen to the sexual amenities they
were accustomed to finding in every other port they had ever
visited. Without the crucial 48 hours residence, they were
unable to qualify for crossing the border into La Linea where
their custom would have been more than welcome, and a ring of
US military policemen, the dreaded "snowdrops", stood round
Number 11, Chicado's Passage, truncheons at the ready. They
found their predicament quite bewildering.
On one occasion our mess invited some of our opposite numbers
among the medics on the aircraft carrier to come and enjoy our
hospitality, and a number of them accepted. After plying me
with several drinks, one suspiciously friendly warrant officer
put his arm round my shoulder and drew me to one side, very
conspiratorially, and said "OK, Peter, be a pal and tell me
where it is?" "Where what is?", I said. "Oh, come on, Peter,
stop playing dumb," he said, "Where have you limeys hidden the
broads?" It was the first time I had heard the words "limeys"
and "broads" used outside the cinema. I carefully explained
the situation to him, but he obviously didn't believe me. The
limeys had hidden the broads away somewhere, probably round the
backside of the Rock - in Catalan Bay, perhaps!]
I emerged from The Black Cat with my virginity still intact but
in a much more cheerful frame of mind than when I had left that
cold clinic in Seville. It was the last noteworthy experience
of my army career - except for the short ocean cruise, still to
come, of course. There were a few more bullfights, and a few
more leisurely soirees in La Linea with Victor, but the demob
numbers were mounting inexorably upwards until 73 was next, and
the day of my departure was at hand. Before I could be
released, however, a full inventory of the entire contents of
the X Ray Department had to be made, as a result of which, by
resorting to a number of shady but time-honoured practices (eg.
writing off each piece of a broken item as a whole broken
item), a kindly Quartermaster and his minions contrived to show
that the equipment and accessories I was handing over to my
successor were exactly those for which I had signed on arrival.
The same sleight of hand was applied to my personal issue, of
course.
Based on my own observations I would be willing to bet that
every individual who was ever demobbed from the armed forces
after World War II came away with something of HMGs in their
possession to which they were not entitled. In Gib, the only
limitation on the extent of this practice was that of
portability. My own acquisitions were modest - two officerquality KD jackets which were to serve me in very good stead
during summer holidays for years to come - but then I had lots
of other loot of my own to carry, including several dress
lengths for my womenfolk, newly acquired additions to my own
civilian wardrobe, and my clarinet, of course. Less encumbered
by such luxuries, others of my shipmates would stagger under
the weight of army blankets and bedsheets, crockery, cutlery,
anything that would be of domestic utility back in post-war
Britain where such things were virtually unobtainable. It was
called "gash", and, multiplied by the numbers involved in this
traffic, it must have amounted to larceny on a grand scale, but
none of it showed up in the ledgers so carefully kept in the QM
Stores, thanks to the opportunities presented by the
inevitability of breakages, plus fair wear and tear.
And so it came to pass that, one fine day in June, the Cunard
White Star SS "Samaria" sailed into the bay and, with clockwork
precision, the mighty British war machine delivered me, one of
several human parcels, f.o.b., although I was so encumbered
with luggage that I could hardly climb the gangway. Almost as
suddenly as it had begun, my life on the Rock was over, and,
after bidding farewell to a tearful Victor, promising to keep
in touch, and to a less affected and now for ever unattainable
Frances, I turned my thoughts towards home.
Although coming
close, twenty years later, to being allowed ashore there when
sailing with my wife and two children from Sydney to London, I
would not set foot on Gibraltar again until my sixtieth
birthday.
The sea voyage was uneventful. A four-day interlude of
enforced idleness among a crush of strangers. Gibraltar being
the last port of call before Liverpool, the ship was filled to
overflowing with uniformed humanity, but the circumstances
which had brought us so closely together also served to
generate an air of good natured tolerance among my temporary
messmates. We were all "demob happy", and, being sergeants,
had a mess deck with a porthole through which the daylight
could enter and we could take it in turns to look at the sea.
I slept for the first and last time in a hammock and, between
times, learned how to play bridge. The food was edible, the
sea was calm and the sun shone. It was all quite painless.
Not so the early morning disembarkation at Liverpool where the
more familiar organised chaos quickly reasserted itself.
Thousands of homecoming servicemen, weighed down, like
refugees, by more gear and gash than they could sensibly carry,
milling around on the dockside railway platforms to which they
had been directed and from which they would then be redirected
by muffled commands issued over a crackling tannoy. Very like
the opening scenes in Jacques Tatti's film "Monsieur Hulot's
Holidays" some years later - but not as funny, of course.
Fortunately, we were young and fit - and well rested - but by
the time I boarded the train to York I was decidedly knackered
- more so than after completing the infantry assault course,
way back in Bodmin, oh so long ago. But, in spite of
appearances, the machinery was working with practised
efficiency. The train left on time, everyone had a seat,
packed lunches were issued and buses were waiting at York
station (no icy winds in evidence this time!) to take us out to
the Demobilisation Centre.
What a place! A huge, echoing, factory for processing hundreds
of bods at a time through the procedures involved, not only
with regard to our honourable discharge from HM Forces, and the
handing in of our kit, but in acquiring the various items of
civilian clothing which would together make up the notorious
"demob suit" - a gift from a grateful nation.
Unaccustomed as
we had been of late to exercising choice, we were suddenly
called upon to select from the range on offer - fortunately not
too extensive - shirt, tie, jacket, pants, socks, shoes,
raincoat, each in the best approximation to our correct size,
all at a brisk trot, assisted by a small army of civilian
professionals, who looked as if they could have been on loan
from Burtons of Leeds. I emerged from the other end of this
production line a rather dazed but fully fledged civilian,
obliged to find my own way home, assisted only by a final
travel warrant. To my surprise, enough of the day remained for
me to make the journey by train to Bradford before dusk.
As is not unusual on these occasions, there was a dreamlike
quality about my immediate homecoming - an air of unreality.
Everything looked the same but was somehow different. The
house seemed smaller, of course, and overcrowded with family,
even after the trooper, but it had always been small and
overcrowded, and I was simply looking at my old world with new
eyes. The feeling soon wore off, however, as the elements of
my former existence crowded back in on me. Everyone was there
- mother, father, sister, brother, Cliff, Frank, Brad, Mike,
Jack - and they all seemed glad to see me. I was certainly
glad to see them, and I had a lot to tell them.
MY LIFE AT THE OPERA: PART ONE
Chapter Six:
1948 - 1955
Although I had no intention of remaining there for long, I
found it all too easy to pick up the threads of my former
existence in Bradford after being demobbed from the army. I
knew that, in order to have any hope of achieving my ambition
of becoming a playwright, I needed to get away from the
overcrowded family home to a place of my own, away from all
distractions, preferably in some remote corner of the British
Isles. But, in the meantime, while working out how to do this,
there was a living to be earned and the company of my fellow
men (and women) to be enjoyed. The living was not a problem.
At the Bradford Royal Infirmary, as in every other hospital in
the country, business was booming and jobs were on the
increase. Why? Because, during my absence, a new era had
dawned and a National Health Service had been born.
Ah, those heady, early days of that great socialist experiment,
before it became apparent that the supply of health can never
quite satisfy the demand for it without the intervention of a
price mechanism, or a queueing system, or both, or that the
Treasury Rules would not permit the expenditure of such vast
quantities of public money without employing bureaucracies of
commensurate size to account for it all, in the minutest
detail, to Parliament. But, as the democratic socialist I had
now become (and still, with modifications in the light of later
experience, remain), I knew nothing, then, of the way things
worked in the real world, and I could see only a rosy future
for the NHS at the time. I couldn't help noticing, however,
after my reinstatement at the BRI, that the admin staff of the
hospital had already increased substantially, and was
continuing to increase exponentially. During my previous stint
there, the "hospital office", as it was called, had been
manned, it seemed, by two men and a boy, and responsibility for
the whole of the institution's commissariat rested on the
shoulders of one official with the humble title of Steward.
How was it done? Presumably, by giving the operational
departments responsibility, in the old-fashioned way, for
ordering up their own supplies, a practice which left lots of
room, no doubt, for economies of scale under the new
dispensation. Except in the staffing of the hospital office,
of course.
Several familiar faces still remained in the X Ray Department.
The Chief was the same, and Jack was still there, but Leonard
was across the city, working at St. Luke's, the former
municipal hospital. There were lots of new faces, however, and
some of them were quite pretty, because, wonder of wonders, we
were no longer simply an X Ray Department, but had become a
School of Radiography, taking on several new students every
year up to a total of about ten, most of whom were girls - the
shape of things to come. When I was recruited, nearly all
radiographers were men, but by the time I moved on, fifteen
years later women were in the majority, although most of the
chiefs were still men. Nowadays, there are very few male
radiographers to be found. [Does this mean that women were as
good at the job as men? My answer to this question has always
been that, whilst I have known at least one female radiographer
who was as capable as any man, my personal experience has led
me to the view that the average female was not as good at the
job as the average male. A politically unacceptable
conclusion, perhaps, but there must be other spheres of work in
which this distinction between the particular and the general
could be made to the benefit of one sex or the other, if
objectivity was not nowadays so often compelled to defer to
doctrine].
A number of factors have made radiography less attractive to
the male school leaver. One is that the equipment has been
getting progressively cleverer, reducing the demand for the
human skills of hand, eye, and judgement; another, the wider
range of opportunities for higher education than were available
in my day, leading to jobs with better long term prospects,
because the main drawback to radiography as a career is its
limited scope for personal advancement. No matter how clever
and experienced he is, the radiographer is always subordinate
to the medically qualified radiologist, and, unlike pharmacists
and physiotherapists, has no scope for self-advancement outside
the hospital service. But it was an ideal way of earning a
living for a budding author - regular hours (limited by
statute), interesting work with endless human contact,
physically and mentally demanding, but only to a recreational
extent, with no worries to take home afterwards, and, best of
all, there were jobs available all over the country.
Nevertheless, it took me nearly a year to get away, and even
then it was to somewhere not of my own choosing, but my
recollections of this intermission in Bradford are blurred by
flashbacks to my earlier existence there, the threads of which
it was proving so very easy to take up. with, however, one
notable exception. I had lost all appetite for playing in
dance bands. Had my fill of it. Good while it lasted,
wonderful with the Semitones, useful in the army, but of
strictly limited appeal to a mature adult about to venture
forth into the waiting world as a free creative spirit. But,
although I sold my saxophone, I never parted with my beloved
clarinet, which was to stay by my side, hardly ever seeing the
light of day, for over thirty years, before emerging to take my
hand again and lead me into fields of jazz which were greener
and lusher than any I had ever known before.
My good friend Frank, on the other hand, whose army career and
chosen instrument had not presented him with the intervening
opportunities that mine had, took up his double bass again with
great energy and ever-increasing skill in a band of
contemporaries who were firmly committed to propagating the
recently emergent "bebop" style of jazz, which Frank had
embraced with an enthusiasm I was quite unable to share. I now
realise that this disagreement between us probably resulted
from my appreciation of the larger world of music outside jazz,
most of which was terra incognita to Frank, a fact which did
not prevent him from accusing me of having a mind that was
closed to the wonders of bop. The truth was quite the
opposite. Having made every effort to get to grips with the
music of the more adventurous 20th century classical composers,
I could fully understand that the pioneers of bebop were using
their technical brilliance to explore the remoter harmonics of
the chords underlying the tunes which provide the raw material
for jazz improvisation, but I simply did not find the result
worth listening to. Only later did I work out why.
[The term "jazz" came into use haphazardly to describe a type
of music within which two separate, but interrelated elements,
had developed together. The most familiar of these was the
jazz idiom which sprang from obscure roots in the folksong and
dance rhythms of the southern states of the USA, early in the
twentieth century, to exert a dominant influence on the popular
music of the Western world, and even enter the vocabulary of
some composers of classical music. But the shaping of the jazz
idiom owed a great deal, in its early days, to the jazz method,
which can best be described as collective improvisation by a
number of instrumentalists on a selected theme at an agreed
tempo, and, as such, was a unique contribution to the
performing arts. Of course, there was nothing new about
improvisation. It had been practised since the dawn of time by
gifted musicians such as, in our own era, Mozart, Beethoven,
Liszt and Paganini, to name but a few, but only as solo
instrumentalists, if often, as in folk music, with rhythm
accompaniment. But, for as many as eight musicians, who may
never have met before, to be capable of playing together
completely ad lib, each on a different instrument, and, in so
doing, produce, without a hint of discord, a coherently
polyphonic and original arrangement of a well-known popular
song which the listener may dance to, or even, if familiar with
the words, sing along with - this was something new.
And the singing and dancing were not unimportant, because jazz
originated as functional music (as distinct from concert
music), a music for social occasions, outdoor and indoor dances, fetes, weddings, parties of all kinds, where the
generations could be expected to mingle and might wish to dance
with each other or simply converse without undue difficulty
while lending half an ear to the music. Another attraction of
jazz was its accessibility to young musicians who had enjoyed a
minimum of training, as in my own case, at a time when more
conventional forms were becoming increasingly difficult for the
amateur to master, certainly to the levels required for a
public performance, without having started young. All it took,
when attempting to improvise in the jazz idiom on a simple
theme, was an ability to stay within one's own technical
limitations, however severe.
But although, in quantitative
terms, the amateur musicians may have been the biggest
beneficiaries of jazz, it was, of course, the professional
musicians who developed jazz improvisation to the peaks of
perfection it had reached by the time I came along, mainly by
increasing their instrumental virtuosity and interspersing
their collective improvisations with brilliantly conceived solo
performances. And they managed to achieve all this using only
the popular song and dance formats of the day, and, for the
most part, within the constraints imposed by the 78rpm 10"
gramophone record.
Three minutes! That's all they had available to them when
creating those early recordings without which it is difficult
to conceive of jazz being so widely disseminated as quickly as
it was.
But this technical straitjacket had the beneficial
effect of concentrating the minds of the jazzmen and reducing
the likelihood of their improvisation running out of
inspiration and degenerating into hackneyed repetition. And
three minutes was just about long enough for a dancing couple
to exhaust themselves by cavorting round the room in close
embrace - the very activity which the record had been marketed
to facilitate in the first place. Later, with the advent of
the long-playing record and the audiotape, it became evident
that improvisational jazz was better delivered in small
packages. It was, after all, a sort of urban folk music and,
as such, condemned by the nature of the genre to embroider the
same theme in the same key, over the same rhythm, at the same
tempo, repeatedly, for the length of the entire piece. It made
good artistic sense, therefore, to call a halt after four or
five choruses, and start a new tune, chosen from the many
attractive ones available, in a different key, at a different
tempo.
Bebop turned its back on this tradition, but, in attempting to
extend the frontiers of jazz by using an undoubted instrumental
virtuosity to explore the outer reaches of the harmonies
underlying the chosen theme, often at breakneck speed, the
pioneers discarded much that was unique to jazz while retaining
many of its limitations. The most profound consequence of
their innovations was to turn jazz into an exclusively concert
music, to be appreciated only by listening to it with rapt
attention, thus putting it in direct competition with other
forms of concert music whose complexities, having been
carefully composed in advance, would more consistently,
perhaps, repay such an investment of time and effort. Also
discarded, along with any real possibility of singing or
dancing to the music, was the jewel in the crown - collective
improvisation - which simply was not feasible, given the
dissonances and discontinuities inherent in the new style.
We were left with, typically, an opening statement of the
chosen theme in unison, followed by one soloist after another
in full chromatic flight with rhythm accompaniment - same chord
sequence, same time signature, same tempo, repeated ad lib,
until, eventually, a final chorus, usually a note for note
reprise of the opening chorus, was tacked on the end. It would
have taken an instrumental virtuoso of towering musical genius
to fill the amount of space thus made available with a
continuous stream of improvisation in the musical language of
bebop without resorting to well-worn cliches and hackneyed
repetition. The fact that few such talents were in evidence
was taken as giving support to the contention that bop was too
difficult for most traditional jazz musicians to play, or even
understand, particularly if they were merely amateurs. Could
it be that bebop was not progressive jazz, after all, but
regressive jazz, even, in some respects, anti-jazz?
The jazz that conquered the Western World between the wars was
an essentially good natured thing - even when blueing the
blues. It was extrovert, cooperative, inclusive and sociable.
Bop seemed, in many ways, the opposite: ill-natured,
introvert, competitive, divisive, exclusive and unsociable characteristics often exhibited by some of its most famous
expositors. Worst of all, to my mind, was the encouragement it
gave to pizzicato double bass solos of inordinate length. This
was probably because, being suited only to the solo
instrumentalist, bop was usually performed by small groups,
consisting of one horn (usually trumpet or saxophone), plus a
rhythm section comprising drums, bass, and guitar or keyboard.
This meant that there was a great deal of "concert" space to be
filled and one way of giving the recognised soloists a breather
was to let the double bass take over for a while, even though
it was an instrument manifestly unsuited to to the task,
particularly when confined, as it almost invariably was, to the
pizzicato mode. There are few stranger sights than that of a
roomful of paying customers sitting in respectful silence,
joining up the dots emerging from a frenzy of acrobatic string
plucking lasting, possibly, as long as the time once available
on the old 78s.
To be fair to Frank, the apotheosis of his chosen
instrument was some way off in the future when he and I
disagreed about the merits of bebop. Knowing little of music
but jazz, he was blind to its limitations, and genuinely
excited about what he saw as its progression to a higher plane.
I, on the other hand, reacting equally instinctively, but with
the benefit of a wider musical education, found the stuff quite
unrewarding, and irritating, even, after the first few minutes
of it. Fifty years and a pop music revolution later, there are
still a few professional musicians playing jazz for a living,
some of them in the language of bebop, which has, it seems,
made little further progress in the meantime, but there are
many more amateurs playing what has become known as traditional
jazz, for pleasure and even profit in pubs, clubs, processions,
and open spaces, wherever a party atmosphere is called for and
the generations mingle. “Trad” jazz may not appeal to everyone
but it is a very difficult music actively to dislike - which is
more than can be said for some other kinds of "popular" music.]
Fortunately, Frank's commitment to bebop did not prevent the
resumption of our sessions round the old acoustic gramophone in
his "front room", an indulgence in which we were now joined by
Cliff and, whenever he could get home on leave, Mike. The only
significant change in the pattern of these gatherings which our
years of separation had wrought was to supplement the
continuous smoking of cigarettes with the continuous drinking
of draught beer, obtained from the local off-licence shop in
the largest receptacle we could lay hands on. O, happy band of
bachelor brothers! In spite of our widely differing
personalities, we still had a great deal in common, having
lived within a few hundred yards of each other for most of our
lives, and for the next two years we continued to enjoy each
others' company, whether in twos, threes or fours, as often as
our circumstances allowed, before finally going our separate
ways. It was an interlude thrice blessed by the sharing of a
well-developed sense of humour.
Frank was now employed as a qualified pharmacist, in a large
chemists' shop in the Bradford city centre. Like me, his
future seemed secure. Cliff, on the other hand, due to
circumstances beyond his control and far too complicated to go
into here, had made a rather shaky start in the world of work
after leaving school, ending up with a job which seemed, at the
time, to offer little prospect of future advancement, in a wool
merchant's warehouse in the still beating heart of the trade
which had made Bradford world famous, the old part of the city
lying between the two railway termini known as "Little
Germany". Mike, however, was doing very well. After
completing his RAF apprenticeship by coming top, as planned, in
the final exams, he had duly been offered the prize of a fully
funded science degree course at Cambridge University, but, in a
totally unprecedented move, had somehow succeeded in persuading
the top brass to allow him to exchange this honour for
induction into their elite flying officer training college at
Cranwell from which he would emerge, eventually, with a
promising career ahead of him, starting as a fighter pilot.
Clever bugger!
Outside that friendly foursome, I was still in touch with Brad,
but only tenuously. This was partly due to the fifteen miles
that separated Keighley from Bradford in those car-less and
phone-less days, but there was another reason. At our first
meeting after my demob, Brad had astounded me by declaring, a
propos our plans for the future, "All I want, now, is to catch
the same bus every day to the same place and do the same job
for the rest of my life". I could hardly believe my ears. To
harbour such an outlook at the age of 22 struck me as
positively blasphemous. His experiences in the Navy seemed to
have had the same effect on him as had those in the Lower Sixth
when we were waiting to leave school at sixteen and he applied
to go back down into the Fifth to serve out his time in
comfort. He certainly knew his own mind, and, having resumed
his post as a cashier at the local branch of what was then the
Yorkshire Penny Bank, he retired as manager of the Selby branch
of what had now become the Yorkshire Bank forty three years
after this conversation took place. In retrospect, a very
successful career and a happy working life, but, to me. in
1948, what a depressing prospect! From that point on, although
we kept in touch with each other, and even lived, for a couple
of years, as near neighbours, our friendship tended to
stagnate.
It will come as no surprise to learn that my interlude in
Bradford was enlivened by the pursuit of the most attractive
student in our School of Radiography, but, to be fair to
myself, I must point out that, on this occasion, it was she who
made the first move by sending me a Valentine's Day card.
There must have been a bit of a giggle going on in the women's
staff room at the time, because one of the other girls was
moved to send a Valentine to my friend and colleague Jack which
was to have much farther reaching consequences than the one I
got from my Shirley. Throughout our entire acquaintanceship I
had never known Jack take a romantic interest in a member of
the opposite sex, and had always assumed, if I thought about it
at all, that this was due to lack of inclination rather than
opportunity. He was, admittedly, of rather unprepossessing
appearance, but in good shape physically, a talented musician
with no vices, a good job, and personal qualities which made
him one of the most admirable characters I have ever met. It
had never occurred to me that he was as highly sexed as the
rest of us, but too shy to do anything about it. Well it
wouldn't, would it?
But receiving that Valentine card made it possible for even
Jack to make tentative advances to Muriel, the young lady who
had sent it. Although no oil painting, she was not
unattractive, a small birdlike creature with lively eyes but a
modest manner, a bit older than the other students and,
seemingly, of more mature outlook. She gave Jack the kind of
gentle encouragement he needed and a relationship developed
between them which was eventually to culminate in marriage, an
outcome which, since they seemed ideally suited to each other,
left everyone happy for both of them. Unfortunately, however,
the marriage turned out badly, but this was after I had left
Bradford, and I only learned about it intermittently at second
hand. The salient feature in the reports was that, after
marrying Jack, Muriel either underwent a personality change or
simply revealed her true nature, depending on who was telling
it, to emerge as some sort of nymphomaniac. This metamorphosis
was triggered off by the unlikely circumstance that Jack, after
the dissolution of the Semitones, had gone his own quiet way
and taken to performing regularly with other dance bands.
At the time of their marriage, he was a member of the resident
band at one of several private dance clubs which still
flourished in Bradford to fill the need of any adolescent, who
did not wish to become a social misfit, to acquire a minimum of
expertise in ballroom dancing by the earliest possible date,
and, also, for any who took an inordinate delight in exercising
these skills, to hone them up to competition standard. In
those early post-war years, ballroom dancing was still the
principal lubricant in the wheels of social intercourse, and
immensely popular as an indoor sport with all age groups,
although its days, as we know, were numbered. It was only
natural, then, that Muriel should accompany Jack to the club
whenever he played there to watch and listen and, with her
husband otherwise engaged, find herself invited to dance with
men who were in appearance everything Jack was not, some of
whom, keen to give her instruction (both on and off the dance
floor), encouraged her to take up dancing in earnest.
The experience unleashed some dormant devil in Muriel. Her
make-up and hair style underwent what is nowadays referred to
as a complete makeover. She began to dress provocatively and
flaunt the relationships she was having with successive dancing
partners quite shamelessly. Poor old Jack had to watch all
this from the bandstand, and cope with the home life it
engendered as best he could. Being Jack, of course, he neither
complained about his lot, nor criticised Muriel in public. He
just went on being Jack until Muriel finally decamped and he
could revert to his natural state of enlightened selfsufficiency. What a waste of a good husband and father! I
never heard Muriel's side of it, but, knowing Jack as I did, I
can't believe that he had much of a case to answer.
My affair with Shirley was notable for the frustrations I
experienced in attempting to gain more intimate access to her
person - an intriguing item, the sum of which possessed greater
attractiveness than its parts. Her facial features were
delightful, of course, but they were arranged in an elvish
ensemble falling some way short of conventional beauty; her
lovely, long legs seemed not quite to belong to the boyish body
with its budding breasts of which she was, I think, somewhat
ashamed, since I was denied all access to them on the rare
occasions when a fondle might have been possible. Coltish, in
a word, but sparkling with allure, bubbling with fun, and
radiating a good deal of sexual heat. But, once again, privacy
was the problem. The X Ray Department was no longer shutting
up shop at 5pm sharp, thanks more to the after-hours activities
of the School of Radiography than to the provision of a
properly manned emergency service, a development still
somewhere in the future. So, no joy there. The woods and
fields were never an option with Shirley, who was definitely
not the outdoor type, leaving only the back row of the local
cinema, where, although snogging, as we called it, was still
facilitated by the provision of several quaint old double
seats, little in the way of serious undressing was possible.
Things might have been better, because Shirley lived in a
substantial Edwardian terrace house quite close to the BRI
where a comfortable front lounge was available, but she was
cared for by a mother who was a divorcee (still a rarity in
those days) with watchful eyes and a calculating manner. Her
attitude towards me, when Shirley took me home, made it clear
that her only child had been carefully reared to marry a man
with far better material prospects than I had, a message which,
in itself, did not upset me, since nothing was further from my
thoughts than marriage at the time, but my outright
disqualification as even a potential suitor meant that I was
never allowed to be alone with Shirley in the house for long
enough to find out how far she could be persuaded to succumb to
the passion that crackled between us whenever we were in each
other's presence. How I suffered! But relief, of a sort, was
at hand in the shape of my sudden departure from the BRI,
which, although not a full and final escape from the family
home, was enough to permit Shirley and me to part on friendly
terms.
Our paths were to cross again, by chance, about ten years
later, when I had returned to the West Riding but was no longer
a radiographer. She was married by then to the kind of wealthy
young businessman her mother had groomed her to catch, and
living in an imposing detached house overlooking Peel Park,
where, for a period of time, my itinerary enabled me to call on
her occasionally for afternoon tea.
I had heard from mutual
acquaintances that the marriage was not a happy one, her
husband spending a great deal of his time in the company of
others, but a now rather subdued Shirley never raised the
subject, and I, as a now happily married man, felt no
inclination to do so. We chatted like old friends about
unimportant matters with no coded messages passing between us.
The last I heard was that she was divorced and living with her
mother.
The manner of my departure from the BRI was unusual. I was,
although the term had not yet been invented, head-hunted! The
approach came through my own Chief, who, knowing that I had
been combing the Situations Vacant in the monthly journal of
the Society of Radiographers for a post in the kind of location
which would suit my vocation and compel me to tear myself away
from the fun I was having in Bradford, asked me to consider an
urgent request from a Very Important Person who just happened
to be visiting the Department that day. This was none other
than Joe Blackburn, who was known to me, at the time, as the
President of the Society of Radiographers, but was, I soon
discovered, much more than that. From his relatively obscure
position at a smallish hospital in Pontefract he had risen to
dominate, not only the Society of Radiographers, but the town
of Pontefract itself. A Justice of the Peace and a Town
Councillor for years, he had now been elected Mayor and
desperately needed someone he could rely on to look after his X
Ray Department for him during absences which would now become
even more frequent than ever.
Pontefract? Exactly not the kind of place I was hoping to
honour next with my presence. A small town, somewhere on the
other side of Leeds in the wastelands of the South Yorkshire
coalfield, known to me only as the home of those little
medallions of liquorice called Pontefract Cakes. I had not the
slightest wish to go there, but Joe's powers of persuasion were
formidable. He was a large man, although not as tall as he
looked, running to fat, but light on his feet, with a
remarkable head - big and balding, with a bulging forehead over
eyes like searchlights, which were set in the face of an
outsize baby - and a voice like thick velvet. His way of
asking me for a favour implied that if I granted it, he would
be my friend for life, but if I didn't, it would simply break
his heart. How could I refuse?
I managed to keep sufficient
wits about me to agree to work for him on Senior Radiographer's
pay for one year only, on the understanding that, at the end of
it, he would use his influence to get me any post I chose to
apply for. He accepted without hesitation, and quickly
switched the spotlight of his attention onto any other business
outstanding with my Chief, before dashing off to catch his
train. He was a very busy man, but as good as his word.
2.
In the event, my year in Pontefract turned out to be quite
enjoyable, if rather exhausting, since the town was a much
livelier place than I had imagined. In addition to being a
mining town, and a market town, it was also a horse-racing
town, and, situated as it was, on the outer edge of the West
Riding, near the Great North Road, with nothing much to the
east until York and then Hull, there was something of a
frontier town atmosphere about the place. It was certainly a
law unto itself with regard to licensing hours. There were
more pubs and clubs per head of population than in any other
town I'd ever known, and the opening and closing times which
were strictly enforced in places like Bradford and Leeds, were
honoured, in Pontefract, more in the breach than the
observance. My researches eventually led me to the conclusion
that, if you knew how to go about it, you could buy a drink in
one or other of the many licensed premises in the town at any
hour of the day or night. The fact that Pontefract was a
Labour stronghold, and had been for years, may have accounted
for this dilution of the laws of the land by local magistrates
and police, and also for the egalitarian attitudes which were
undoubtedly rife among its inhabitants.
I soon found that the spirit of the place had not left the
Pontefract General Infirmary unaffected. It was much smaller
than the BRI, of course, and more intimate - in every possible
way, it seemed, including the sexual. There were only three or
four resident housemen, mostly local lads who had trained in
Leeds and were quite uninhibited in their behaviour towards the
nursing staff, mostly local lasses, who, I have to say, seemed
to be equally uninhibited in their responses. The building
itself was unusual in being built on the side of a steep
escarpment at the lower end of the town centre. From the
street it looked like a single storey building but there were
three floors below that, all facing the other way. At the very
bottom was the X Ray Department in a sort of garden basement,
quite pleasant to work in, and separated from the rest of the
hospital by a series of doors and anterooms which rendered it
totally soundproof, and an ideal venue for wild parties! I had
not been working there for long when we opened up the
Department one Monday morning to find the place in a mess, with
empty beer bottles rolling about the floor, and worse things in
the toilets.
Joe was furious, not because the place had been used for a
party, which was, I gathered, not uncommon, but because of the
state it had been left in, which was a definite breach of
hospital etiquette. After conveying his displeasure to the
culprits through informal channels, he had the locks changed
(also not uncommon), but only as a gesture, since it was
impossible to deny the resident medical staff all access to the
Department's keys after hours, and, as at the BRI, security was
very lax in those days. [It was my firm belief at the time
that, if ever I found myself in want of a bed for the night in
a strange town, I need only walk into the local hospital with
the confidence of one who had every right to be there, and
wander officiously about until I found an empty bed, climb in,
and go to sleep.] Parties, therefore, continued to be held in
the X Ray Department at regular intervals but it was some time
before I was able to participate in them because they
invariably took place at weekends when I was back home in
Bradford, having arranged to occupy my digs in Pontefract,
where I knew nobody initially, from Monday to Friday only.
I was soon leading two quite hectic lives, only a couple of
hours apart by public transport. In Bradford, I found myself
exploring the recreational possibilities of a new and most
unlikely activity to which I had been introduced by my pal
Cliff, who had begun the process of transforming himself from
the townsman he was, into the countryman he would eventually
become, by taking up... horseriding! What? In Bradford?
Yes, there was a small riding school, tucked away in the nearby
outer suburb of Fagley, close enough to the very woods we had
wandered through as boys to render its few remaining
bridlepaths accessible on horseback after only a minimum of
manoeuvering through an intervening built-up area. The school
was housed in the stable block of a very large, imposing old
mansion which had obviously seen better days, but was still
home to the remnants of the mill-owning family who had built
it, long before the surrounding suburban streets had crept up
to its walls.
It was a one-man business, and barely viable, but Leslie, the
owner, whose appearance and mannerisms were more like those of
a ballet dancer than a foxhunter, had discovered, at an early
age, that riding horses was the one masculine pursuit he could
enjoy and do well, and this small venture was the nearest he
could get to making a career of it, given his economic
circumstances. Tall and slim, he cut quite a dash when in full
equestrian fig, and, being unmarried, lavished all his love on
the handful of hacks in his care.
Although nothing like as
committed to the activity as Cliff, I was soon feeling
comfortable enough on the back of a horse to invest in a pair
of secondhand jodhpurs and a riding hat, and to progress from a
trot to a canter, but the bridle paths available were far too
cramped for us to risk a gallop, even if Leslie had permitted
it (and the horses had been up to it). So the riding was
rather sedate, but, fortunately, the company was more
stimulating.
There were, including Cliff and me, about ten regular riders of
our own generation, half of them girls, two of whom I would get
to know quite well because they were sisters, and Cliff
eventually married one of them. That was Rosemary, tomboyish,
but attractive with it, unaffected and very outspoken, with a
great sense of humour; her younger sister Lissy was smaller
and prettier, but less attractive, somehow, more withdrawn, and
rather brittle. Their father owned a nearby market garden,
among other things. Lissy's boyfriend and future husband,
David, was a large, fair, solemn youth, who would never be able
to emulate the business success of his father,who was the
holder of the local agency for Jaguar cars. The other girls
have not remained in my memory as well as the boys have,
probably because they were less interesting.
I remember Malcolm, for example, tall, good looking, and
charming, in a rather actorly way, because he was in active
pursuit of Rosemary at the time, and thus became the object of
Cliff's obsessive dislike. I remember Henry, because I had
never come across anyone quite like him before, outside the
theatre. He was the last of the line of the family occupying
the big house, in the grounds of which the stables stood, and
his upbringing had conspired with his lineage (and his
limitations, perhaps) to endow him with many of the
characteristics of those young Edwardian gentleman who perished
in such large numbers in the trenches of World War I. His
manners and appearance were impeccably old-fashioned - he was,
for example, the last person of my own age I ever saw wearing a
starched shirt collar during the day - but his most remarkable
feature was his voice, which seemed to originate somewhere deep
in his chest and reverberate round the inside of his skull
before it emerged, full of fruit, to deliver some brief,
unmemorable observation, in a diction that was perfectly
correct.
And I remember John, because, in addition to being one of the
most unforgettable characters I have ever met, he played a
brief but very significant role in my life. He turned up at
the riding school, as if from another world, in his own twoseater sports car (gosh!), every inch the wealthy playboy tall, fair, blue-eyed, and, although less than handsome, quite
distinguished of feature. I learned later that he was the
scion of a noble house, but all I knew about him at the time
was that his family owned a large blanket factory in Witney,
Oxfordshire, and John had been sent to Bradford to learn t'wool
trade, an experience which he was definitely not enjoying, but
trying to make the best of in any way he could. Being a
complete extravert, he was easily bored, but extremely
inventive in finding ways, however disconcerting they may be to
lesser mortals, of keeping boredom at bay.
A couple of
examples will suffice to demonstrate why it was that it was
difficult to spend a dull half hour in his company.
By a happy chance, there was a large empty room above the
riding school stables which was easily converted, with a few
sticks of furniture and a portable gramophone, into an
unofficial club room in which the kindred spirits among us
began to hold informal gatherings. When a small shadow was
cast upon these proceedings by the news that young David had
received his call-up papers, it was made the excuse for a
series of farewell parties for him, culminating in a sort of
bachelors' night out on his last day of freedom. The evening
began quietly enough with about six of us chaps forgathering in
The Junction Inn, near the city centre, a pub favoured by Cliff
and me, not because it was near the Civic Theatre and
patronised by its devotees, but because it served our favourite
beer, Melbourne Ale, now long since vanished from the scene,
alas, as has the "The Jungle" itself, as we used to call it.
But when orders were being taken for the first round of drinks,
David spoke the fateful words "I'm a teetotaller, I'll just
have a cider", whereupon John said "I'll get these", and went
to the bar.
During the following rounds, John made it his business always
to be present at the bar when the the drinks were being drawn,
and it eventually became clear to the rest of us that he was
paying the barman to put gin in David's cider, with the
inevitable result that, when closing time was called and we
older hands were pleasantly inebriated, David, much to his own
complete bewilderment, was very drunk indeed. While we were
helping him, in the customary boisterous fashion, out onto the
pavement with a view to heading for home, John began to insist
that it was far too early to call it a night. Always keep a
good thing rolling, he said. How? said we, fully aware that,
in those days, Bradford after 10pm (unlike Pontefract) had
absolutely nothing to offer the serious reveller. "We'll all
go back to the club room, said John, and I'll rustle up some
booze on the way." And so he did! With Cliff and me crammed
into his Sunbeam Talbot, he drove out to his digs, an exclusive
residential hotel standing opposite the main gates of
Manningham Park in complete darkness at this late(!) hour, and
went quietly inside, to reappear a few minutes later carrying a
large basket full of bottles of beer.
We arrived at the stables to find the lights ablaze, the
gramophone playing, and the party in full swing, Henry having
bridged the temporary gap in supplies by raiding his family's
drinks cupboard. And of the increasingly uninhibited behaviour
that followed, I can remember only two examples with any
clarity. The first arose from the accidental discovery by one
of us that a 10 inch acetate gramophone record, towards which
he was unfavourably disposed, could be broken over the head of
another of us who did not share his opinion, with a single,
satisfying blow, which, however, did little actual harm to the
recipient of it. In a trice, with this example before us, we
all began breaking our least favourite gramophone records over
each other's heads after only the briefest of prior discussion
of their merits.
It was the only time I ever saw John disconcerted. As I was
about to bash him with one of Victor Sylvester's Strict Tempo
Dance Band records, he said something like, "For Christ's sake,
keep clear of my nose, it's off my arse and on to my face", a
statement which I could only take to mean that the feature in
question had been subjected to plastic surgery on some previous
occasion. This didn't greatly surprise me because it had a
slightly odd appearance, and I was becoming aware of the strong
probability that John's wild ways, particularly when behind the
wheel of a motor car, were unlikely to have left him entirely
unscathed in the past. But, an opportunity to explore this
revelation further never presented itself, and John never spoke
about it again, in fact, he never said much about himself at
all.
The second piece of memorably daft behaviour occurred when,
having found that David's semi-comatose condition was
preventing us from pouring any more beer down his throat, we
resorted to pouring it over his head, with the result that,
when the time came for the poor lad to be taken home, his
clothing was soaking wet, which turned out to be unfortunate,
because the night was very cold, and David had a "weak chest".
Finally, however, John was left with only Cliff and me, turning
out lights and locking up, but still he could not bring himself
to let us go. We must, he insisted, be as ravenously hungry as
he was (which was true), and did we know that there was an allnight transport cafe behind Bradford Town Hall where we could
get a beef dripping teacake and a big mug of tea for a few
pence, even at this ungodly hour? We didn't know, and found it
difficult to refuse his offer to take us there before running
us home, whereupon, he drove us through what were, in those
days, at that hour, totally empty streets at breakneck speed
until we reached the main road into town and found ourselves
being followed by a police car.
Driving along an otherwise deserted Manningham Lane with the
police car behind us, John began to amuse himself by repeatedly
accelerating to above the speed limit before quickly slowing
down to below it. This manouevre produced no reaction from the
police until, as we were heading down Darley Street towards
Town Hall Square, with not a soul in sight, John sounded a loud
blast on his horn, which immediately brought the police car
round in front of us, flagging us down. Did John realise, the
emergent officer politely enquired, that it was an offence to
sound his warning instrument in a built-up area between the
hours of 11pm and 7am? This was news to me, of course, because
another seven years were to pass before I was finally compelled
to learn to drive, having taken little interest in the activity
until then. John responded by adopting an air of vaguely
supercilious puzzlement until the police, having finished their
business with him, allowed us to proceed to the all-night cafe,
which was, indeed, secreted under the massive bulk of Bradford
Town Hall.
To the welcoming warm fug inside, were duly added the promised
beef dripping teacakes and half-pint mugs of tea, the latter
enlivened by the contents of a small bottle of rum, produced,
with an air of studied nonchalance, by the ever-resourceful
John, and we sat around, eating, drinking, chatting and smoking
until the conversation ran out of steam and eyelids were
drooping sufficiently for John to finally agree to run us home.
As we shot up Barkerend Road, turning left at my old parish
church, past my old school, I was unaware of anything amiss
until we stopped at the end of the passageway leading to my
door, when, to my utter amazement, before I could get out, a
police car materialised from nowhere in front of us, from
which, once again, an officer emerged. Did John realise, he
was asked, that he had broken the law by exceeding the
statutory speed limit in Barkerend Road by a margin of x miles
per hour for more than y hundred yards, et cetera...? This
time John was quite indignant, muttering something about
accelerating up a hill with a full load, but once again some
ritual had to be enacted before we were allowed to go, by which
time lights were appearing in bedroom windows all around.
What's a police car doing in our street at this hour? What
indeed? It must have been waiting for us outside the transport
cafe.
What penalties John incurred for his traffic offences that
night, I never discovered, but our treatment of David had
rather more serious consequences. By the time he reported to
the RAF Induction Depot the following day he was developing a
chill which ended, a couple of days later, in double pneumonia.
This was particularly bad news for Cliff, because Lissy, his
future sister-in-law, held him entirely responsible for
allowing the rest of us to treat her future husband as badly as
we had, but, fortunately, all was well in the end. After a
spell in hospital followed by a lengthy, and quite enjoyable
convalescence at government expense, David was invalided out of
the RAF, little the worse for wear, with, I believe, a small
pension. So, we did him a favour, really. Without intending
to, of course. And it will come as no surprise to learn that
the favour John did me during our next escapade was also
unintentional.
It began with him turning up one Bank Holiday Monday morning,
uninvited and totally unexpected, on the doorstep of my humble
back-to-back home. What a shock! As it happened, I was alone
in the house, and my surprise overrode the embarrassment I felt
at being discovered stripped to the waist for my cold water
ablutions at the scullery sink. And John, very noblesse
obligingly, stepped into our single shabby living room without
appearing to notice its many deficiencies, or my state of
undress. But why on earth was he here? It emerged that, like
so many of the friends who had knocked on my door in the past,
John was there to ask if I could come out to play! For reasons
never fully explained, he was without his car, at a loose end,
and desperate for the company of someone, anyone, to spark off
against, so, having remembered where he had dropped me off
after David's Farewell, here he was. Not very flattering, but
I was intrigued, and having nothing better to do myself, I
agreed to go out to play with him.
The venture got off to an unpromising start. It was a Bank
Holiday, probably Whit Monday, a cold, grey day, and Bradford
was dead. The only suggestion John could come up with was that
we should take the train to Leeds, where we arrived to find
that conditions there were pretty much the same. As we
wandered across the deserted city centre towards Briggate,
however, John finally came up with an idea. We would amuse
ourselves, he said, by (i) seeking out the most disreputable
pubs in the seedy streets between the bus station and the
notorious Quarry Hill Flats, (ii) entering these premises
posing as plain clothes police officers, and (iii) observing
how many of the customers were sufficiently disturbed by our
presence to get up and leave. Not surprisingly, having checked
that he was serious, I was less than whelmed with this idea.
How do I pose as a plain clothes policeman? Oh, it's easy,
said John, I've done it before - just keep a really straight
face and do as I do. Unable to think of a saner alternative, I
acquiesced.
He was right. All I had to do was tag along, and admire the
way John threw himself into the part. On entering the selected
pub, he would pause just inside the door, and look slowly and
thoughtfully round the clientele, before strolling confidently
up to the bar and ordering "two halves of bitter, please,
landlord" in a rather officious voice. After paying for the
drinks, he would take a small notebook from his pocket and make
a note in it, as if keeping tabs on his expenses. Then the two
of us would stand at the bar, sipping our drinks, conversing in
low tones, and looking searchingly round the room from time to
time, until, sure enough, one after another, certain
individuals of shifty demeanour would rise and head for the
door. Before we ourselves departed John would give the pot a
final stir by muttering something verisimilitudinous like
"...obviously not in here...better find the sergeant..." loudly
enough to be heard.
After playing this
varying degrees of
exhausted whatever
but, as we started
home, I found that
silly game in three different pubs with
success, even John had to admit that we had
possibilities for amusement it ever had,
back across the city, as if heading for
he hadn't quite finished playing with me
yet. "Why don't we pick up a couple of girls, and see how far
we can get with them," he said. What? I was even less taken
with this idea than the first one. Having always been
reasonably successful in courting those I already knew, I had
never resorted to "picking up" girls, except in dance halls, of
course, where a variety of preliminaries of an exploratory
nature were possible. But, before I could voice my misgivings,
John said "Look! Those two girls up ahead! Let's try to pick
them up. I'll start things off, if you'll back me up?" Caught
completely off balance, and unable to even see their faces, I
looked at the backs of the two female forms walking about
fifteen yards ahead, making the best assessment I could of
their contours, and stammered, "Only if I can have the one on
the right".
"You can have whichever one you like", cried John, over his
shoulder as he dashed forward to execute his dastardly scheme.
Deeply embarrassed, I was hanging too far back to hear what his
opening gambit was, but I later learned that it was something
like, "Excuse me, ladies, my friend and I are strangers in
Leeds and wondered if you could spare us the pleasure of your
company to show us round..." When I saw that the girls had
greeted his approach with polite bewilderment, rather than
screaming for assistance from the passers by, I forced myself
to take the plunge with the one on the right, babbling
apologies for any inconvenience caused...please don't hesitate
to turn us down...only if you have nothing better to do...etc.
We must have made a reasonably favourable impression, because,
following a moment's uncertainty and the exchange of a few
words with each other, the girls consented, albeit without much
evident enthusiasm, to walk and talk with us for an
experimental period, volunteering the information, however,
that only one of them lived in Leeds.
It quickly became apparent that I was to be the principal
beneficiary of John's bold initiative, because, on closer
inspection, the girl on the right turned out to be much fairer
of face and figure than, not only the girl on the left, but, to
my surprise and delight, any other girl of my immediate
acquaintance at the time. In spite of which, John, true to his
word, devoted all his attention to his own inferior prize, and
never made a play for mine, even when fortune continued to
favour me at his expense. As we sat in pairs on two separate
park benches in front of Leeds Town Hall, chatting, and, in our
case, eventually holding hands, my new found Venus, whose name
was Anne, informed me that she lived in Bradford and had been
on her way to the railway station when waylaid by us, whereas
her friend, Rose, lived in the East End of Leeds and would be
heading back there when they parted.
And so it came to pass that, during the train journey back to
Bradford, while I was getting better acquainted with Anne in
one cozy corner of the unlit passenger compartment we had
contrived to secure for ourselves by removing the single light
bulb, John was obliged to keep his own company in the farther
corner, striving to appear detached and unconcerned, like the
gentleman he was. By the end of the line, so taken was I with
Anne that, before we parted, I asked if we could meet again and
she agreed, thus embarking us on a relationship which was to
endure for more than fifty years of marriage. It was a time,
it seems, for meeting future wives, a time when Cliff met his
Rosemary, Frank met his Joyce, and even Brad met his Ruth, a
time from which only Mike was to emerge unattached. It was a
time, also, for making new friendships, two of which were
destined to endure.
I met Bob through Frank, who had first drawn my attention to
him, beaming down on us like a dissolute Buddha from the upper
deck of the troopship during our memorable meeting in Gibraltar
Bay. Some time after my demob, Frank took me to make Bob's
better acquaintance at his home, a large terrace house, quite
close to my Scottish aunt's semi, but looking out over the
Municipal Golf Course towards the back of our old school. One
of the many unusual things about Bob was that he was already
married to Margaret, having unintentionally impregnated her
during the early days of what had yet to become an official
engagement and unhesitatingly done the decent thing. He was
the most unworldly person I have ever had as a friend, and
fortunate in having the resources behind him of a family of
High Church Anglicans, who, while profitably combining
worldliness with godliness, had a tendency towards eccentricity
which had reached its full flower in Bob.
Although well-mannered, good-natured, intelligent, and
articulate, he seemed quite indifferent to both his health and
his appearance, and always looked both unkempt and unwell, but
he would bubble with high spirits when in congenial company,
and was very fond of a drink, preferably beer in convivial
surroundings. His passions were for classical music,
philosophy, and debate, to all of which he brought a surprising
originality of mind. Having been brought up in a family who
were not only regular attenders at any local symphony concerts,
but would journey to York each Christmas to hear Bach's "St.
Matthew Passion" performed in the Minster, his tastes in music
were well developed but idiosyncratic. He doted on Bach,
Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, but was quite unappreciative of
the music of any later composer, finding even Brahms "too
sugary", and the works of more modern composers simply
ludicrous.
At the only concert I ever attended with him, he embarrassed me
by reacting to a Rachmaninov Symphony as if it were a Charlie
Chaplin comedy, giggling uncontrollably during its more
portentous episodes, particularly when the trombones were
"farting" as he called it, and his view of jazz was equally
dismissive, "It's a bit like performing on your penis in
public," he would say. But he would listen with total
concentration, as if in a trance, to his gramophone records of
Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony, over and over again. His taste in
music reflected, to some extent, his other interest in what he
called "idle speculation". He had read his way through most of
the great philosophers, starting with the Greeks, and was
currently finding the works of one F.W.Nietzsche both
intriguing and amusing. As did we, of course, when he began
reading some of the naughty bits out of "Thus Spake
Zarathustra", particularly those appertaining to the treatment
of women, e.g. "Thou goest to women? Remember thy whip!" How
we chortled over that one!
I went on to read Nietzsche's effusions for myself, of course,
and found them entertaining and thought-provoking, if a little
overwritten, but, in the end, unhelpful. Like Bob, I was a
committed autodidact, but searching, in my case, for a personal
philosophy that would make more sense of the world I lived in
than did the Christianity I was still half-heartedly
practising. I, too, had read Plato, and Descartes and even
George Bernard Shaw, to name but a few, because, ever since
Hildred had opened my eyes to the possibility of it, I had been
searching for a framework of beliefs which did not depend for
its coherence on the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient
Creator of All Things, and an Afterlife where He would pass
judgement on the extent to which I had obeyed His laws in this
life and reward or punish me accordingly, since I had come to
the conclusion that no convincing evidence had ever been
uncovered for either.
At the time, I was hardly conscious of this quest and its
purpose, and was certainly not pursuing it with any sense of
urgency. In fact, I only fully realised that I had been
engaged in it when it came to an end, having achieved its
objective, and it was Bob who first pointed me in what proved
to be the right direction by drawing my attention to the
writings of the French philosopher, Henri Bergson (1859-1941),
which, while not as titillatory and quotable as Nietzsche's,
proved to be much, much more rewarding. When I finally found
the time to read his masterwork, "Creative Evolution", I
discovered, to my surprise and delight, that it contained the
answers to all the big questions I had been asking myself about
"life, the universe, and everything" (to quote from a more
recent and less serious author), and gave me a personal creed
which has stood me in unassailably good stead for the rest of
my life. But who has heard of Bergson nowadays? Winner of the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927, his books are out of print,
and even second hand copies are hard to find. Why is this?
Perhaps because he didn't found a religion. Perhaps because he
left subsequent philosophers with so little to add, and
existing religions looking so inadequate that the world found
it more convenient to forget him.
[Bergson was a scientist, a biologist, who began his
speculations by examining the human condition in the light of
the evolutionary process described by Charles Darwin in his
epoch-making work "On the Origin of Species"(1859). He
concluded that, as far back in time as human thought could
reach, there must have been a minimum of two entities in
existence - first, the inanimate, physical universe, and,
second, on this planet at least, some living organism, however
small and primitive. How these two things came into being he
could not tell, but the only explanation he could think of for
the process of evolution which, by imperceptibly small degrees,
over billions of years, has produced our own species, was that
some invisible force was at work, which, starting from that
single point of entry, had powered evolution forward, branching
out, by random mutation and natural selection, in every
possible direction, whenever an opportunity presented itself.
He called it the Life Force, and pointed to the evidence for
its existence in the world around us, where it is so much a
part of our everyday experience that it has simply been taken
for granted, as was the force of gravity until Isaac Newton
came along.
Every living creature, it seems, has the capacity not only to
reproduce itself, but also to multiply, but whence comes the
energy that fuels this process? In our own case, each of us
begins life as a single fertilised ovum the size of a pinhead,
which, properly housed, proceeds to take in nourishment,
multiply and grow of its own accord until it has developed into
a fully formed and independent being capable of passing on the
vital spark of life to another fertilised ovum before itself
degenerating into lifelessness. If we observed this process
occurring in other than a living being, we would surely expect
to find that it was being driven by some extrinsic power
source. Knowing, as we do, that the countless species of
insects, fish, reptiles, birds and mammals, not to mention the
plants and trees, which populate the earth today must have
evolved over aeons of time from a single protoplasmic source,
is it not easier to believe that this effect has been caused by
some potent, propulsive force, rather than by nothing at all?
Having postulated the existence of the Life Force, however,
Bergson had to accept that, on the evidence available, it did
not appear to be pursuing some preconceived plan, proceeding,
rather, by a process of trial and error, infusing its vital
energy indiscriminately into any and every form of life
produced by the interaction between the Darwinian machinery of
random mutation and changes in the physical environment,
ruthlessly discarding any casualties of this process on the
way. Prodigal, indiscriminate, and dispassionate, one
infinitesimal step at a time, the Life Force populated Planet
Earth with one species after another until, finally, our own
species emerged, unremarkable in appearance, but superior to
all the creatures hitherto produced in one particular respect.
Compared to those of many of its evolutionary forbears, the
physical attributes of the human mammal were pretty
unimpressive as regards strength, agility and armament, but
they comprised a wide enough range of capabilities to ensure
the survival of the species - if only as a scavanger at first and included a degree of manual dexterity which would make
possible the fashioning of specialised tools for use in
reshaping the environment, once these objects had been invented
by the remarkable organ that was to be the supreme achievement
of the Life Force. By an almost miraculous evolutionary step,
the human brain had acquired a capacity for abstract reasoning
which is, as far as we know, unique in the universe. Bergson
saw this faculty, the intellect, as being superimposed upon our
inherited mammalian brain, with its already highly evolved
apparatus for receiving, processing and reacting to sensory
information, more like a new tool than an extension of its
existing powers of perception and motivation. He described it,
memorably, as "a tool for cutting round some chosen aspect of
total reality in order to do something about it"
This remarkable instrument has empowered us, step by step, from
the puniest of beginnings, not only to dominate all the other
species on the planet, but to exercise an ever-increasing
control over our environment, exploring the past and predicting
the future. But Bergson, while extolling the virtues of the
intellect, was at pains to point out the extent of its
limitations, and this is where his speculations move from the
metaphysical to the philosophical. The intellect has enabled
us to extract information from the world around us, and to
develop spoken and written languages of great precision with
which to communicate this information to each other and
bequeath it to future generations, but it is of little use in
dealing with the internal workings of our own bodies and the
vital sensual relationships we sustain, throughout our entire
conscious life, with one another and with the seamless totality
of the reality around us. For that we have to rely on whatever
faculties reside in the primitive mammalian brain beneath the
cerebral cortex and even in the reptilian brain beneath that.
These abilities are not inconsiderable. They have enabled the
lower orders in the evolutionary tree to survive, reproduce,
and multiply quite efficiently for countless generations, not
only by managing their essential bodily functions with little
conscious effort, but also by performing, spontaneously, tasks
which appear, to human eyes, to require a high degree of
acquired technical skill. Bergson quotes a number of these,
the most obvious being the spider's web and the bee's
honeycomb, but he was particularly impressed by a species of
wasp which can totally paralyse its prey by injecting a toxin
into exactly the right ganglion to achieve this effect "with
the precision of trained surgeon", and he attributes all such
inherited skills to the existence of a sub-intellectual
cerebral entity, the instinct, operating by means of intuition.
Bergson's main point is that the intellect can be imagined as
having been somehow extruded by the evolutionary process from
the underlying body of instinct like a single prehensile
tentacle, capable of the abstract thought which has made us
masters of our environment, but it is the underlying mass of
instinct we rely on for our relationships with each other and
the world around us.
Bergson was not, of course, the first philosopher to recognise
the limitations of the intellect. The ancient Greeks had
experienced difficulty in getting to grips with "becoming", as
they called it, having observed that their maths could engage
with the flight of an arrow, for example, only by reducing it
to a series of still points, closer and closer together, but
never actually joining up. And Zeno's famous paradox was a
classic exposition of the problem. But Bergson was the first
to draw attention to the indiscriminate nature of the
evolutionary process which had produced this phenomenon, and
the continuing importance, for our wellbeing as a species, of
the intuitive capacities underpinning it.
Since these
faculties, by their very nature, resist definition and
manipulation by the powerful tool which has been increasing its
contribution to our material quality of life exponentially
since our species first emerged, there is a danger that they
might be either undervalued or even ignored, and, consequently,
underutilised.
Bergson went on to use this model to explore some of the more
problematic aspects of the human condition. Since language,
for example, is a product of the intellect, the limitations of
the intellect are reflected in the inability of language, alone
and unaided, to transmit anything other than abstractions
between one human being and another. In order to communicate
with each other at the human level we are obliged to use other
means. We can touch each other in different ways, we can
exchange glances, we can load our spoken words with a
sufficient variety of vocal tone and emphasis to give them
emotional colour and weight, we can even sing to each other.
Music, even without words, is a language which speaks "to the
heart", conveying messages which cannot be put into words. The
same can be said of the images we create for each other, in
fact, the whole of what we call Art can be seen as a means of
communicating personal insights into the natural world which
are not susceptible of intellectual definition.
Those of the Arts which use language as a medium strive to
arouse emotional responses by deploying words in "musical"
patterns, or by telling stories which arrange characters and
events in exciting or disturbing ways, but also, more
interestingly to Bergson, by using symbols - words describing
entities and events which, for historical or cultural reasons,
carry a greater emotional charge than their apparent face
value. For a symbol to "strike a chord", however, the artist
and his audience must have past experiences in common, or share
a knowledge of the past acquired through education, using the
term in its broadest sense. The richer the culture, the higher
the art, of course, but underlying all human cultures, no
matter how sophisticated or primitive they may be, is a common
humanity giving rise to shared experiences - such as birth,
childhood, motherhood, fatherhood, eating, drinking,
friendship, enmity, and death - which can transcend all
cultural barriers, and point the way to what must be the
simplest and most effective of all art forms - the symbolic
gesture.
Looked at in this light, even the religions of the world,
insofar as they seek to elucidate the origins and workings of
the mysterious universe we inhabit, and the purpose of our
existence in it, using purely anecdotal evidence, can be seen
as an artform, manipulating symbols to convey profound truths
about the human condition which cannot be put into mere words,
and performing symbolic acts to communicate with and placate
whichever manifestation of the Life Force they have chosen to
worship. Obviously, mankind's subjugation of a once hostile
environment, and our discovery of the true origins of our
species, have rendered many of the tenets, and much of the
organisational framework, of these religions obsolete, but this
is not to deny the value of certain forms of communal activity
in putting its practitioners in touch with each other - and
with, perhaps, the Life Force - at a sub-intellectual level.
One need only substitute the term "Holy Spirit" for "Life
Force" to appreciate the truth of this.
Bergson's achievement was to reintegrate the Holy Spirit into
what had seemed to be an apparently mindless evolutionary
process taking place in a blankly indifferent physical
universe, and, by so doing, make it possible for each of us to
appreciate, as individuals, its many manifestations in our own
lives, deriving such spiritual refreshment as we can from
gathering with our fellow humans in churches, theatres, concert
halls, art galleries, and even sports grounds, to bask in its
life-enhancing radiance without subscribing to the redundant
dogmas of an ancient religion.]
It was through Bob that I met my second new friend, Gerry, with
whom he had the kind of relationship I had with Cliff - they
were boyhood chums who had gone through our old school as
classmates, only a couple of years ahead of us, but an
unbridgeable gap at the time. And just as Bob had become a
pharmacist like his father, so had Gerry become a schoolteacher
like his, and, when I met them, their families were living only
a few doors apart in those tall Victorian houses (one of which
was the Waverley Nursing Home wherein I had been born) standing
opposite Bradford Moor Park, and backing on to the Municipal
Golf Course, over which they commanded an extensive view of the
smoking chimneys of Bradford below. Otherwise, Gerry resembled
Bob hardly at all. Carefully and conservatively dressed, clean
and tidy, he was rather reserved, initially, but revealed, on
closer acquaintance, a robust no-nonsense, down-to-earth,
commonsensical outlook on life, which, although the perfect
foil for Bob's eccentricities, struck me as rather dull and
uninteresting at first.
But when we started arguing with each other, which we somehow
found ourselves doing whenever we met, he turned out to be a
formidable opponent, quite as capable as I was of passionate
invective and even personal insults in support of his case never conceding defeat, of course, but never carrying the
slightest residue of rancour from the field. We ended up
becoming lifelong friends, although the relationship did not
begin to mature until my return to the West Riding some years
later, by which time I had married Anne, and he had married
Jessie, also a schoolteacher, to make us into a frequent
friendly foursome. Not that I had the remotest intention of
marrying anyone at that time. I saw myself as being, for the
foreseeable future, a confirmed bachelor, wedded only to my
art...which wasn't, I must confess, going as well as it might
have been, just then. Admittedly, I was still weekending in
the crowded family home, but my digs in Pontefract provided me
with full board and the privacy of a room of my own on at least
four nights a week, so I could have been playwriting for hours,
had I chosen to do so.
I did put a certain amount of time and effort in, most
evenings, during the early months of my year there, and I was
fortunate in finding none of the young ladies within reach too
distracting, but I couldn't help making the acquaintance of
chaps of my own age, outside the hospital staff, with three of
whom, against all expectations, I would eventually share a
great adventure. I met Roy, Jerry, and Bernard in the lounge
bar of a pub that was popular with the junior medical staff of
the PGI because it was near enough to the hospital for them to
be reached in an emergency when "on call", and where, in
consequence, other kindred spirits had taken to congregating
during the last hour before closing time. The three of them
knew each other well, of course, and had all served in HM
Forces, Roy in the Navy, Jerry and Bernard in the RAF, and it
was during the customary exchange of our experiences as
conscripts, that I gave them what was, by now, a well-rehearsed
account of my still recent adventures in Spain, ending,
inevitably, with expressions of regret at the apparent
unlikelihood of my ever being able to afford to revisit the
country and take advantage of the substantial amounts of food,
drink, and exotic entertainment which, once there, my pound
sterling would buy.
Subsisting as they were on the austerities of post-war Britain,
the picture I painted stimulated their appetites to such an
extent that they began to think the unthinkable, and consider
whether, by adding their resources to my "expert" knowledge of
the country, some way might not be found of paying it a visit.
We recognised that practical considerations put Andalusia quite
beyond our reach, but Catalonia was just the other side of
France, and it suddenly became a possibility when Jerry found
that he might be able to borrow an uncle's car for a fortnight
if we agreed to comprehensively insure it against all
contingencies - at which point we began to think seriously
about mounting an expedition during the following summer. This
would be no mean feat, of course, at the time, since it was too
soon after the end of the war for any tourist facilities to be
in place across the Channel. But, having inspired the ends, I
was obliged to leave the means to the three of them, since my
year in Pontefract was drawing to a close, and I was determined
to move on.
I can't remember why I decided to go south instead of north to
some more suitably remote spot, like the Hebrides, but the
Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading, was advertising for a Senior
Radiographer, and I told Joe, who had by now relinquished the
mayoral chain of office and knew my time was up, that I
intended to apply for the job. Without demur, he picked up the
phone and got through to the Chief Radiographer there, and
after a brief conversation, informed me that the job was as
good as mine. What a man! There were formalities to be
observed, of course, but the outcome was a foregone conclusion,
and a few weeks later I put my double life in Pontefract and
Bradford behind me, never to live in the family home again.
3
I had broken the news of my imminent departure to my new girl
friend, Anne, with a certain amount of trepidation. In the
months following our first meeting, we had become increasingly
intimate, and the frequency of our assignations had given us
every appearance of "going steady", but, much as I enjoyed her
company, I felt that this was the sort of entanglement which my
commitment, at the time, to indefinite bachelorhood made it
imperative for me to avoid, and I couldn't help seeing my move
to Reading as a way of distancing myself from it. I was
somewhat taken aback, therefore, when Anne reacted to my news
with, not disappointment, but delight. This was just the
trigger she had been waiting for, apparently, to precipitate
her own long held intention of heading south herself independently of me, of course, but, if we kept in touch, who
knows, we might find ourselves within hailing distance of each
other at some time in the not too distant future.
What could
be more reasonable? But why did I feel so uneasy?
Anne had never made any secret of the fact that she did not
like Bradford and, until she met me, did not like Bradford men.
The one big thing we had in common, other than our mutual
attraction to each other, was our Bradford working class
background, the difference between us being that she badly
wanted to get away from hers. Not for any practical reason,
but simply because she aspired to a more colourful and
interesting life in more attractive surroundings. Nor was
there anything dysfunctional about her family. Her father was
a foundry worker of amiable disposition who had discharged his
duties as a husband and father to the best of his abilities,
her mother was an even more amiable ex-weaver, who was too
self-centred and easy going to have performed as well as Anne
would have liked as a wife and mother, but had, nevertheless,
managed to produce and rear five children with reasonable
success, providing Anne with two older brothers, one younger
brother and a younger sister, with all of whom she had shared a
highly interactive, but relatively good-natured childhood.
But the family home in the Sutton Estate on the outskirts of
Bradford had been even more crowded than mine, if more
luxuriously equipped with a bathroom and indoor lavatory, and
she had already escaped from it once by serving in the Women's
Auxiliary Air Force for a couple of years ending shortly before
I met her. Unlike me, however, she had not, in spite of her
intelligence and considerable artistic flair, acquired any
marketable skills upon leaving school, flitting from job to
job, looking for a suitable outlet for her talents, before
going into the WAAF where she served as a wages clerk.
Fortunately, she was a very quick learner, because her
exceptionally good looks made it relatively easy for her to get
jobs for which her other qualifications were inadequate.
Shortly after I left for Reading she did in fact come south,
taking a job for the summer at the Butlin's Holiday Camp at
Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, which was too far from Reading to be a
serious distraction, but near enough to keep the flame alive by
fanning it on a weekend visit.
I arrived there to discover that Anne was working as a
receptionist in the camp photo shop, surrounded by a group of
admiring young male photographers, and leading the kind of
social life to which these circumstances all too readily lent
themselves. But who was I to complain, since, as an aspiring
author, I could not have asked for better conditions than I was
enjoying in Reading? I had secured excellent digs within
walking distance of the hospital, where my workload, although
substantial, was never overtaxing, and none of my new
colleagues evinced any desire for my company after working
hours, or aroused in me any desire for theirs, as a consequence
of which, I found myself with more free time than I had ever
had before, and very well cared for, into the bargain, by my
new landlady.
An elderly widow called Mrs. Hutt, she was one of the most
endearing characters I have ever met, but it took me some time
to appreciate her qualities, because she was not given to
ingratiating herself, and her appearance was decidedly odd, as
was her mode of address. Less than five feet tall, and about
three feet wide, with no neck to speak of, but a large head
with remarkable features - ruddy complexion, a long hooked
nose, a formidable chin, and a shrewd, questioning gaze - the
face of an Italian peasant, which is what, in fact, she was.
And, in spite of the length of time she had lived in England,
her version of the language, delivered in a distinctive,
crowing voice, was not always easy to understand. But she had
managed a large boarding house in Oxford before her English
husband died, and she was a real professional, delivering a
service in exchange for payment to a standard which made the
other landladies I lived with before I got married, look like
the amateurs they were. She never intruded on my privacy, or
sought my company, keeping herself to herself, outside our
mealtimes together, at which she fed me better than I had ever
been fed before.
She did this by being a good cook, of course, but also by
circumventing, in various ways, the restrictions imposed on the
exercise of her skills by the exigencies of the food rationing,
still in force, five years after the end of the war. She had
converted the little back garden of her terrace house into a
smallholding, complete with a flock of hens, fruit canes, and
vegetable plots, and the only favours she ever asked of my
single fellow-lodger and me, were that we kept the ramshackle
henhouse in reasonable repair and turned the garden soil over
occasionally, in return for which we enjoyed many more fresh
eggs than the one per week to which our ration books entitled
us, and more fresh vegetables than were obtainable from the
local shops, where she was held, I discovered, in considerable
awe. At a time when, as a nation, we had become conditioned to
accepting whatever our shopkeepers condescended to dish out to
us, Mrs. Hutt continued to behave as if the war had never
happened, insisting on choosing her own fruit and vegetables in
the Italian manner, and carefully examining every piece of meat
or fish that was offered to her, rejecting any that failed to
meet her exacting standards.
And woe betide any retailer who succeeded, in spite of her
vigilance, in selling her something that turned out, on
investigation in her kitchen, to be substandard. Back she
would go with the offending item, however full the shop of
customers, to berate the miscreant in her crowing voice and
broken English, totally impervious to any disapproval emanating
from her more complaisant fellow shoppers. Small she was, but
big inside, and I grew to be quite fond of her, as did Anne
when she eventually came to visit, and we still recall some of
her more memorable expressions on appropriate occasions with
affection. In the meantime, her single minded devotion to the
welfare of her gentlemen lodgers left me with my evenings and
weekends totally free from any other commitment than the
pursuit of my ambition to be a playwright.
And I was soon fully absorbed in the task, working regularly at
it in my room overlooking the back garden where there was
nothing to distract me but the hens - a routine which still
left me, however, with plenty of time to devote to two of my
favourite pastimes, walking and reading. All my life, I have
found walking to be of inestimable benefit to both body and
mind, and I am never more at peace with the world, than when
striding rhythmically along, immersed in ruminations of that
rare lucidity which this activity seems to promote.
A child
of the 1920s, I grew up walking to any destination within a
half an hour's radius of home, even if it was on a tram route,
since even trams cost money. Later, I was able to take
advantage of the proximity of Yorkshire's moors and dales, and
the popularity of rambling during the war, to tramp across them
in the company of others. But it was hiking alone round the
Youth Hostels of North Wales, prior to my call up, that
revealed solitary walking to be one of life's great pleasures,
henceforward to be indulged in whenever possible.
With this in mind, after settling into my comfortable routine
in Reading, I bought an inch-to-the-mile map of the area, and
identified several footpaths which appeared to lead up to the
nearby Berkshire Downs and were within easy reach by bus. But,
when I set out to explore these, I found, to my dismay, that
rambling in Berkshire was not like rambling in Yorkshire where
well-worn footpaths led invitingly up to open moors to be
roamed at will. The footpaths in Berkshire were quite
difficult to find, being timidly signposted, if at all, and
hedged in by aggressively signposted private property. And
even when found, they showed little sign of recent use, being
so overgrown as to be almost impenetrable. So I never actually
succeeded in gaining access to any open uplands where, as a
member of the public, I would be free to stride out in any
direction I chose. I could only conclude that the inhabitants
of the Thames Valley took their exercise by strolling back and
forth along the banks of the river.
I was more fortunate with my reading. I have earlier described
how, undistracted by television, or even, in my case, radio, I
had grown up looking to the printed word for my main in-house
entertainment. In so doing, I acquired a reading habit which
was to provide me with support and comfort for the rest of my
life, coupled, as it was, with an apparently insatiable
appetite for knowledge. Thus endowed, since leaving school, I
had been pursuing, purely for pleasure and without realising
it, the higher education I had been denied, and, in Reading,
thanks to its excellent public lending library and Mrs Hutt's
ministrations, I was able to immerse myself in serious reading
with the very minimum of distractions. In the absence of any
formal guidance, I was obliged to find my own way through the
vast and varied landscapes of English literature, but I was
assisted in this by, among other things, my regular
subscription to a weekly publication called “The New Statesman
and Nation”, but always referred to simply as “The New
Statesman”.
Under the inspired, if somewhat idiosyncratic editorship of the
irrepressible Kingsley Martin, this left-wing journal had
become an indispensable element in the intellectual life of the
country, attracting contributions from some of our most
respected writers and critics, in addition to politicians and
statesmen of all political persuasions. That was in the front
half. But, in the back half, of equal interest to me, were the
reviews of books, plays, concerts and exhibitions. If the
review of a book caught my interest, I simply went along to
the Reading public library and asked them to get it for me,
which they almost invariably did. And, of course, one book led
to another, since I was particularly drawn to literary
criticism and soon became a worshipper at the shrine of
T.S.Elliot. And it must say something about the extent of my
commitment and the time at my disposal that, during that time,
I also read and enjoyed reading) A.J.Toynbee's monumental and
thought-provoking “Study of History” - all twelve volumes of
it!
But, highly regarded and controversial as it was at the
time, where is that great work now?
On the other hand, and on a lighter note, there was one book
about which the opposite could be said. So intrigued was I by
the praises bestowed upon it in Naiomi Mitchison's memorable
review in the “New Statesman” that I rushed to the library to
be the first to put my name down for J.R.R.Tolkien's “The
Fellowship of the Ring”, and immersed myself in its riches with
almost orgiastic pleasure. Since I was at pains to repeat this
performance when “The Two Towers” and the “The Return of the
King” subsequently appeared, I think I can lay claim to being
one of the first of the many millions who came after me, to
read “The Lords of the Ring”. But my first year in Reading was
not entirely monastic. It was interrupted by a great
adventure.
4
Looking back on it, I am amazed, given the circumstances under
which it was conceived, that our expedition to Spain ever came
to pass. Communications between Reading and Pontefract were
far from easy, and Roy, Jerry, and Bernard were little more
than casual acquaintances at the time, but somehow we put the
arrangements together, with me handling most of the detail
through the Automobile Association's HQ in Leicester Square.
Such information as was available about routes to the
Mediterranean through France, in those days, was of a quite
vestigial nature, as was that about the amenities available en
route, but, of course, we could not envisage any better at a
time when the conditions to be encountered, even when touring
post-war Britain were less than encouraging. But, all
preliminaries completed, on the appointed day, at the appointed
time, in the appointed place on Westminster Bridge in in
Central London, there they were, in a quite commodious vehicle
(I think it was a pre-war Morris saloon) waiting to pick me up
and proceed to Dover.
We were an odd mixture. Roy was an active sportsman (rugby
union), and had, like me, “been around a bit”, as they used to
say. He was the only one whose company I would have sought
under normal circumstances. Jerry was a cheerful extrovert,
mechanically minded and car-mad, and quite good company in
small doses. Bernard, on the the other hand, was a complete
enigma to me – dark and watchful, with very little to say for
himself, his close friendship with Roy could only be explained,
I assumed, by the fact that they were both trainees in the
offices of a Pontefract architect called John Poulson, who was,
incidentally, to become nationally notorious a few years later
for his corrupt dealings with several town councils in the
North East. But, ill-assorted as we were, we had all served in
H.M.Forces, and there were to be no personality clashes during
the adventures that befell us in the next fortnight, and our
delight in the magnitude of our achievement and in the
experiences resulting from it, ensured that our spirits were
high for most of the time.
We drove down through France as quickly as possible, marvelling
at the absence of traffic and the post-war impoverishment of
the civic amenities. We discovered, and were thankful for, the
existence of “Les Routiers”, then a basic, refectory-like
version of the superior transport cafes they were to become,
We were well received by the French who waved at us as we
passed through their towns and villages, one of us often
sitting on the open sun roof, and, whenever we came across
another car with a GB plate, which was very, very seldom, we
honked at each other exuberantly. Yes, we did!
But our holiday didn't really begin until we crossed into Spain
and were driving along that spectacular coastal road down the
Costa Brava. We were stunned by the views confronting us round
every bend, and finally stopped on promontory overlooking a
small fishing village, baking in the sun, white houses
clustered round a small, deserted beach enclosed by rocky
headlands, on one of which stood an ancient fortification of
some kind. Unable to resist the attractions of the scene, we
drove down a winding track, right onto the beach - parking next
to the fishing boats - changed hastily into our swimming gear,
and rushed noisily down into the clear, blue sea. For me, that
plunge into the Med was a symbolic return to a shrine at which
I was to worship, whenever the opportunity presented itself,
for the rest of my life, although it was to be twelve years
before I could afford the first of the many annual pilgrimages
I was eventually to make to it in the company of my wife and
children.
As it turned out, the beach was not entirely deserted. There
was a small group of Spaniards, relaxing under a parasol by the
water's edge to whom we paid little attention, until, somewhat
to my surprise, one of them, an attractive young lady, swam out
to us and said, with a big smile “'Allo, are you Ingleesh?” and
indicated that we would be welcome to join them, which we were
only too glad to do, since the other young lady in the party
was even more attractive than the first and the two men were of
a fairly avuncular appearance. Considering that their English
was virtually non-existent and my Spanish vestigial, we managed
to get on quite well together, and, amazingly, after all these
years, I still have the photographs to prove it. Small, 3.5”
by 2.25”, black and white, but still discernible, there I am,
thin as a rake under my mop of black hair, with my arms round
both girls, and there, too, is Roy, beefier and sleeker, in a
similar pose on another. In spite of the communication gap,
and their obvious respectability, it seems that our sudden
arrival on their beach had introduced a welcome element of
excitement into their day.
The first thing we asked them was “Where are we?”, to which
they replied “This is Tossa del Mar. We come here from
Barcelona for the peace and quiet”. True! And, as we got to
know the girls better, we began to explore the possibility of
staying the night, but there was only one small hotel and it
seemed to be full, but the girls went away and negotiated for
us to stay in an annex, a few streets back from the beach. What
followed was a truly memorable evening which lasted, in the
event, all night. It started quietly enough. After checking
in at the hotel and smartening ourselves up, we went for a
stroll round the village with our new friends, but we had run
out of conversation, and were glad to separate from them for
dinner at the hotel, which was served to us on an open patio
overlooking the beach - my first experience of a lifestyle I
would eventually pine for whenever deprived of it for long. My
first experience, too, of the dish which our hostess bore
steaming to our table and presented with a flourish. Paella!
I stared at it in wonder before hastening to sample its mouthwatering delights, but, absorbed as I was, I couldn't help
noticing that, although Roy seemed to be sharing my pleasure,
Jerry and Bernard were distinctly underwhelmed by the
combination of rice and seafood, and it became increasingly
apparent over the next few days that the Spanish food was not
to their liking, and what they pined for was roast beef,
Yorkshire pudding and two veg. What a waste.
After dinner we repaired to the only bar in sight. It was
attached to our hotel and had chairs and tables out on the
beach around a small concrete slab set into the sand for
dancing. My memory of what followed is rather hazy. I think
the girls rejoined us and we danced under the stars to piped
music for a while, but, at some point. I found myself in
earnest conversation with a white-haired older gentleman who
spoke pretty good English and claimed to have been a university
professor before his lack of sympathy for the Franco regime saw
him reduced to earning his living by other means. He was
certainly intelligent and articulate enough for this to have
been the case, and, as we continued drinking and talking
through the night, our exchanges ranged far and wide, but I can
remember only two things about them. I can recall thinking
“This is one of the most profound conversations I have ever
had, I must remember all of it tomorrow”. My only other
recollection is of him turning to me at one point and saying
with great conviction “If there is to be any progress in this
country, we must first kill all the priests.”
By the time dawn broke, Roy and I were pretty drunk. Jerry and
Bernard had long since gone to bed, but, instead of joining
them, we decided that an early morning swim would be in order,
and, since nobody was about, we could take it in the nude. It
was a mistake. Booze has always made me into a good-natured
drunk, but, Roy turned out, alas, to be an ill-natured drunk.
All went well at first. Totally deserted beach. Lovely swim.
Time to get out, which I did. But not Roy. There was an
elegant ocean-going yacht anchored in the bay, about 50 yards
out from the beach, and something about its expensive
appearance got up Roy's nose. “I'm gonna board that boat”, he
announced threateningly, and, before I could do anything to
stop him, had swum out and was attempting to climb the rope
ladder hanging over its side. Fortunately, his drunken
condition prevented him from reaching the top, so he contented
himself with swinging noisily from side to side against the
hull, emitting shouts of abuse. Eventually, a sleepy-looking
individual appeared on deck and began to remonstrate with him
rather half-heartedly, while I stood helplessly on the shore,
waiting for him to come to his senses.
Then something quite astonishing happened.
From out of the
apparently deserted village, in the early morning light, there
emerged a large crowd of young women, moving slowly, like a
herd of cattle, but chattering quietly among themselves, as
they strolled along the beach. I could hardly believe my eyes.
Where had they come from? Why were they here? We discovered
later that this was one of those innumerable Spanish feast
days, and the young ladies were making the most of their time
off work with an early start. Why there were so many of them
gathered together, I never discovered, but my immediate problem
was how to get a naked Roy out of the water under their
collectively bovine gaze. Fortunately, Roy, who was now
treading water close to shore, much subdued by his situation
(“Oh, bloody hell”), had brought his dressing gown with him,
and we agreed that he would crawl into the shallows and I would
wade out, holding up the dressing gown between him and the
onlookers, and, at a word of command, he would stand up and I
would wrap the dressing gown round him.
What a hope! I waded out, as arranged, holding up the dressing
gown, but Roy's condition was such, and the beach floor so
uneven, that, when standing up suddenly, he completely lost his
balance and, after posing for an agonisingly long moment with
his arms outstretched, and his masculine charms on open display
for all to admire, fell over backwards into the water. It only
remained for him to wrap his sodden gown around himself under
water and make his ignominious way up the beach. After which,
we made haste to put Tossa behind us and proceed on our way to
Barcelona. Twelve years later, I returned to find a very
different Tossa del Mar from the one we had left in 1950.
Countless hotels, towering over busy streets full of bars, and
a crowded beach, onto which, needless to say, it was no longer
possible to drive a car, and lots of noise. Our original hotel
was still recognisably there, however, but very much enlarged,
and, when I poked about in the sand in front of its imposing
facade, what did I find, but a small concrete slab!
Barcelona was throbbing with a vitality we had not yet
encountered on our travels, and, as we drove through crowded
streets, looking for somewhere cheap to stay, we were treated
to the spectacle of uniformed police literally kicking any
loitering pedestrians out of the way of our car, which had
become, it seemed, a badge of our superior social status. The
truth of this was confirmed when we finally walked into a third
class hotel to have our booking accepted by a shirt-sleeved,
cigarette-smoking proprietor with little apparent enthusiasm
until we asked him where to put our car, at which his attitude
towards us underwent a complete change. He discarded his
cigarette and virtually sprang to attention – living proof that
we were now in Franco's Spain.
We quickly spruced ourselves up and sallied forth to sample the
delights that our first impressions of Barcelona had hinted at.
And, once again, we struck it lucky. We headed, of course, for
the Ramblas, the old port quarter, famous throughout the Med
for the bars and brothels that lined its narrow, crowded
streets, each bar offering its own distinctive version of
tapas, the appetizer without which no aperitif in Spain would
be complete, and the cooking of which filled the air with
countless competing aromas. Spoilt for choice, we entered a
bar at random and ordered drinks. Imagine our surprise when,
after serving us, the handsome young man behind the bar
addressed us, rather hesitatingly at first, in quite
serviceable English. It turned out that his name was Mario, he
was the son of the bar's proprietor, he was learning English at
the British Institute – one of the few outposts of liberal
enlightenment permitted by the regime – and was so glad to meet
us that he offered to take us out on the town if we would wait
until he came off duty.
What a stroke of luck! Without Mario we could have wandered
around Barcelona for hours, getting nowhere. As it was, we
returned at about 10pm to find him waiting for us in the
company of a friend who, in contrast to Mario's slim good
looks, was rather short, fat, and balding, but very affable,
and, after a brief discussion, the two of them took us to a
most attractive night club. There was nothing unusual about
its layout - a central dance floor surrounded by tables and
chairs, with a band and a bar in the background - but it was
situated in a large, walled garden, open to the stars, and
attractively lit by lights festooning the trees. And it was
full of beautiful girls, several of whom were happy to join us
at our table and dance with us, once we had bought them drinks.
My pleasure in their company was only constrained by what had
become a constant worry about the adequacy of the amount of
money we had brought with us to cover the cost of the trip. It
was certainly not enough to allow us to be anything but very
careful about the rate at which we spent it, and there was no
question, in those days, of replenishing it with a credit card
from a hole in the wall.
It was not, in other words, the nightclub that was expensive
(unless one wished to buy one of the girls, all of whom, we
were assured, were available at a price) but our funds that
were constrained. With the help of Mario and his friend,
however, both of whom paid their corner, I, for one, felt free
to revel in the pleasures of an evening, during which Mario's
friend revealed himself to be, of all unlikely things, a plain
clothes policeman – one of Spain's six different police forces,
we learned, only two of which wore uniforms. As a badge of his
office, he carried, tucked into the waistband of his trousers,
a loaded revolver, which he removed with elaborate discretion
and pushed under the tablecloth whenever getting up to dance
with one of the girls.
My only other surviving memory of Barcelona is of attending a
bullfight which served to confirm my belief that, like opera, a
bullfight, done well, may be sublime, but done badly, can be
repellent. The bullfights of Catalonia were second rate
affairs, sadly lacking in the magic of those I had witnessed in
Andalusia, which failed, understandably, to impress my
travelling companions as being anything but barbarically unfair
to the bulls. They had one feature, however, which was new to
me. Before each bull was released into the ring, a character
billed as Don Tanquero entered the arena, clad from head to
foot in white and carrying a white plinth and a bugle. After
positioning the plinth in front of the entry gate, he climbed
up onto it, and, standing stiffly erect, blew a defiant call on
his bugle, whereupon the gate was opened and the bull emerged.
After taking its bearings, the bull, seeing Don Tanquero in
front of him, made a charge at him, only to stop short, inches
from the legs of the still motionless white figure and turn
away in search of something of more yielding appearance. Very
impressive! Unfortunately, however, on at least two occasions
during the corrida, as the bull turned away, his horn
accidentally hooked the legs of poor Don Tanquero from under
him and precipitated him ignominiously onto the floor of the
arena, requiring his rescue from the bull by the capes of the
torreros who rushed to his aid.
But, all too soon, our time in Barcelona expired, and we were
obliged to start back for home. All went well until we reached
Carcassonne, where water began to leak from the the car's
engine. We limped into the nearest garage to consult a
mechanic, who, after shaking his head over the impossibility of
obtaining a replacement water pump for so foreign a car,
effected a repair which would, he said, with any luck, get us
home. But our luck was out, and we had gone no further than
Narbonne when the water pump began to leak again. This time
the verdict was unequivocal - the car could go no further.
There was no alternative but to garage it and proceed by other
means. Fortunately, I had insured the car with the AA against
such an eventuality, and we knew that it would be recovered
eventually, but our own prospects were less reassuring. The
cost of the abortive repair had made a hole in our finances
which left us, we discovered, with just enough money to buy
four one-way tickets by train as far as Paris where we arrived,
early next morning, hungry, thirsty and broke.
No longer kings of the road, but four bedraggled pedestrians,
staggering under the weight of luggage we had never expected to
have to carry ourselves, we made our way to the British
Consulate where the officials received us with a marked lack of
enthusiasm, inured as they obviously were, to the arrival on
their doorstep of fellow countrymen who, through either
miscalculation or fecklessness, had run out of cash in those
pre-credit card days.
After making it clear that they were
not a charitable institution, they lent a critical ear to our
story, asking us, finally, to produce the bill for the
Carcassonne repair, which, fortunately, I found tucked in the
corner of one of my pockets. Only then did their attitude
towards us thaw sufficiently to allow them to consider lending
us enough money to get back to England, if we could give them
some assurance of our ability to repay it [they were obviously
playing by a set of rules which required the British taxpayers'
money to be disbursed as grudgingly as possible]. The problem
was that none of us was of a sufficiently exalted status to
enjoy the privilege of possessing (in those days) a cheque
book, and only I, it emerged, even had a bank account, and it
was on this that they finally agreed to accept my “note of
hand” for the required sum. More helpfully, they directed us
to a pension where we would be well taken care of overnight
at modest prices.
Once ensconced in our pension, refreshed and rested, the
realisation dawned on us, that, if only through misfortune, and
if only for one night, we were, actually in Paris, of all
places, for the first time in our lives. But how, given our
straitened circumstances, could we possibly take advantage of
this fact? Hurried calculations revealed that, by going
without a decent dinner and putting aside enough money to pay
for the pension and our rail fares to the coast, we might be
left with just enough francs for a couple of rounds of drinks
in some possibly colourful venue situated far enough from the
Champs Elysees to be affordable. So, we smartened ourselves up
and sallied forth for a night on the town.
Montmatre would have been more to our taste, of course, but our
limited resources compelled us to head for the Left Bank where
we found, alas, that the watering holes, while relatively
inexpensive, were culturally unrewarding, and that such
Parisian gaiety as there was in evidence, was painfully low
key. The bars were dimly lit, usually by candlelight, and
peopled by carefully posed individuals who were either engaged
in quiet conversation of a no doubt profound and elevating
nature, or giving their polite attention to equally subdued,
small scale musical entertainment, performed in an
introspective vein, of which they expressed their appreciation,
not by clapping their hands in a loud and vulgar manner, but by
snapping their fingers repeatedly. It was all too, too refined
- and affected. And, since nothing gets up a Yorkshireman's
nose more than affectation, I had great difficulty, after a
couple of drinks, in restraining Roy from turning his glass
upside down (an old naval custom, apparently) to indicate his
willingness to take on anyone in the room. Fortunately, our
money ran out while he was one drink short of exploding into
gratuitous violence, and we made our way back to the pension
carrying with us only the satisfaction of having chalked up a
night out in Paris against all the odds.
The following morning we took the train to the coast and
suffered the ignominy of carting our luggage across acres of
dockyard railway lines in order to reach the car ferry that
would carry us back to our homeland. But, once in Dover, our
troubles were by no means over. We were still short of cash
for the rail fares needed to get home. Our enquiries at the
ticket office revealed that, if we could persuade somebody,
somewhere in England, to go to their nearest British Rail
ticket office and hand over the requisite sum, the tickets
could be issued to us in Dover. The only person I could think
of who might be able and willing to do us this favour was my
ex-chief, the ex-mayor of Pontefract, Joe Blackburn, who, when
telephoned out of the blue, greeted my request with great good
humour and hastened to comply with it. But, still our troubles
were not over. By the time we had obtained our tickets and got
as far as London, it was nearly midnight and, the last trains
to our final destinations had already departed from Paddington
and Kings Cross, leaving us stuck in London overnight.
Once again, it fell to me to rise to the occasion, and it is
apparent to me, now, looking back, that, from the moment we
lost the car, the other three had put their trust in me to get
them home. Until then, unable to drive one, and totally
clueless about cars, I had taken on the subsidiary roles of
“Chancellor of the Exchequer” (holder of the kitty),
interpreter, and tour guide, but from that point on I found
myself assuming the lead without really thinking about it at
the time – dealing with the French, negotiating with the
Embassy officials, and eliciting assistance from Joe. Now,
stranded, penniless, in London, there was only one person I
knew who might be able to give us shelter for the night. I
hadn't seen him since his demob from Gibraltar, and I was never
to see him again, but he had given me his address and invited
me to keep in touch, so I contacted my erstwhile fellow actor,
Roy, and explained my predicament to him.
Recovering from the shock of being roused from his slumbers by
a voice from the past, Roy's essential good nature, even
discounting any obligation placed upon him by our fruitful
association in Gibraltar, left him with little alternative but
to accept the inconvenience we were imposing on him, and, after
muffled exchanges with some other party at the other end of the
line, he instructed us to take a taxi to his door at his
expense. We arrived to find that he was sharing a house with
three other handsome young men of well-groomed and actorly
appearance, all clad in elegant dressing gowns, who accepted
our alien presence in their midst with a mixture of
bewilderment and apprehension. Few words were exchanged as we
were fed and watered and bedded down for the night on whatever
furniture was available, and even fewer in the morning as we
gathered our belongings together and made a hasty departure.
The whole episode had a slightly surreal, almost dreamlike
quality, and provided a fitting conclusion to a journey during
which, once across the Channel, the nearest we had come to
conversing with any of our fellow countrymen was an encounter
with two young New Zealand doctors in Barcelona.
As for my travelling companions, I never saw Jerry or Bernard
again, and Roy only once , when, not long after our return from
Spain, he moved down to London to take up a post in Poulson's
London office, thus enabling us to meet for a drink, somewhere
in the West End. What did we talk about? I can't remember.
Whatever it was, it wasn't of sufficient interest to either of
us to encourage keeping in touch afterwards.
I, for one, was
far too absorbed in other activities and relationships by then.
I had returned from my big adventure to settle gratefully back
into my cloistered routine in Reading c/o Mrs. Hutt, but it
wasn't to last. Towards the end of the year, Anne shook the
dust of Bradford finally from her pretty feet, determined to
try her luck in London, come what may.
It was an act of desperation, taken, without any encouragement
from me, on the basis of a promise of shared accommodation with
a girl she had met at Butlins, which failed, at the last
moment, to materialise. But still she came, arriving in London
with only thirteen shillings and a penny in her purse to impose
herself, for a time, on her mother's sister, Auntie Audrey, who
lived in Hendon, and was the only member of her parents'
families to have escaped from their working class background
into middle class affluence by marrying an ambitious local boy
who, after studying long and hard at the local Technical
College had risen to become a successful consulting engineer.
Anne's next step was to get herself accepted by the GPO as a
trainee teleprinter operator on a ten-week course which she
would be paid to attend – not very much, but enough to live on.
All this happened rather quickly and, by the time I made
contact she was living at a charitable institution of
Dickensian aspect called the Ada Lewis Hostel which provided
the basic necessities of life to single ladies at the lowest
possible cost. Repelled by its Spartan amenities and strict
rules about male visitors, however, Anne quickly made friends
with another resident, a Welsh girl, with whom she could afford
to rent a small furnished flat.
“Small”, as I found when I visited her, was a euphemism.
“Minuscule” would have been closer to the truth. The
entrepreneurial owner of a large Edwardian terrace house had
created the “flat” by partitioning, with his very own hands, an
admittedly quite spacious single first floor front room into a
living room, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom, none of which
could accommodate more than two people at a time, even standing
up. To add to the discomfort, it was on Battersea Bridge Road
at its narrowest point, just south of the bridge, where doubledecker London buses could be heard, smelt, and even felt,
roaring past in both directions every few seconds, almost close
enough to touch from the windows. It was the most
uncomfortable dwelling I have ever been entertained in, and
totally unsuited to intimacies of any kind. I couldn't wait to
get out of it, and, fortunately, there were plenty of
interesting things to do elsewhere, for this was 1951 and,
outside, the Festival of Britain was in full swing.
5
Inevitably, the simultaneous presence, in London, of both Anne
and the Festival of Britain completely transformed my
lifestyle. Given that Reading's railway station, with its
frequent fast trains to London, was within easy walking
distance of my digs, I could be in Paddington within an hour of
setting out, and day return tickets were very cheap, so it
wasn't long before I was making the journey three times a week,
catching the last train back, to be in bed not long after
midnight.
It would be difficult to convey to anyone who had not lived
through the war and its austere aftermath, the uplifting effect
of the Festival of Britain on the spirits of those of us who
were lucky enough to be able to take advantage of the many
pleasures it had to offer, particularly in London, during that
memorable year.
Not only at the South Bank exhibition site,
although the new Royal Festival Hall was a wonder to behold, as
was the new National Film Theatre, but throughout the whole of
London's West End, South Kensington, and even Battersea Park. I
recall that, for months, my wallet was bulging with tickets,
booked well in advance in order to get the best seats at the
cheapest prices (front row of the balcony, usually). So far in
advance, in fact, that, when Anne and I turned up for the very
first concert at the Festival Hall for which tickets had been
made available to the public, we found that, unbeknown to us,
and
to
a
small
band
of
other
ticket-holders
grouped
disconsolately around the box office, the concert had been
cancelled shortly after we had booked, a different one
substituted, and our seats
sold to others. What cheek! The
management, when summoned, was apologetic, of course, assuring
us that the change had been widely publicised in the press,
and, since the hall was, not surprisingly, completely full,
there was nothing they could do but give us our money back.
Not good enough, we said.
Not good enough at all.
We have
valid tickets, we have travelled far, and we demand to be
admitted. We shall not be moved, or words to that effect. In
the end a compromise was reached which allowed me hear my first
concert in the new Royal Festival Hall seated on an ordinary
dining chair positioned in the middle of the broadest aisle
available so as not to breach the Fire Regulations.
Regretfully, only two programmes have survived from that
unforgettable year – I was still a single man, travelling light
with nothing but suitcases in which to store any stuff I chose
to accumulate - but several of the many productions Anne and I
attended have stayed in my mind, although the cast details are
hazy. We saw lots of plays, of course, but the one that
impressed me most was Strindberg's “The Father” with Michael
Redgrave in the lead – very involving plot, cleverly
constructed, relentlessly unfolding to deliver maximum
emotional impact, just the kind of play I would like to have
written. But I also enjoyed Thornton Wilder's “The Skin of our
Teeth” with Vivienne Leigh, gorgeous in black tights, and
George Bernard Shaw's “Man and Superman”. Shaw being very
popular after the war, we also saw, I think, Wendy Hiller in
“Major Barbara”, Roger Livesey in “Captain Brassbound's
Conversion”, and even “Widowers' Houses” around that time. I
can also recall Ralph Richardson in Chekov's “Uncle Vanya, my
problem being that, without the programmes, I can't be sure of
the dates.
One of my two surviving programmes gives details of one of
several concerts we attended that year. It was an impressive
performance of Delius's rarely performed “A Mass of Life” at
the Royal Albert Hall on June 7th given by the Royal
Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir conducted by Sir Thomas
Beecham, a remarkable feature of which was that the name of one
of the four soloists was given as, simply, Fischer-Dieskow.
Remarkable, not because I'd never heard of him, but because he
was so obviously a German, and a young German at that. This
was only a few years after the end of a war during which the
Germans had been our hated enemies, and it came as a bit of a
shock to see one of them standing there, as if to the manner
born, in the purlieus of a city still littered with the bomb
sites created by his compatriots. But he could certainly sing,
as the world now knows well.
My other surviving programme is for an opera! Yes, finally, I
was renewing my acquaintance with the future love of my life,
if somewhat half-heartedly, given the strength of my affection
for stage plays and orchestral concerts, both of which were
more accessible and affordable at the time. It had taken a
while for “grand opera” to resurface in London after the war
ended, but the vacuum had been partly filled by the Sadlers
Wells Opera Company returning to their old home in Rosebury
Avenue,EC1, shortly after VE Day with the premiere of Benjamin
Britten's stunning debut as an opera composer, “Peter Grimes” a bombshell which, although it would change the face of opera
in England for ever, was not received with universal acclaim at
the time, and I have to admit that, on first acquaintance, I
found its contemporary idiom rather difficult to get to grips
with.
Repeated exposure to it since, however, has led me to
the conclusion that it is the most thoroughly satisfying tragic
opera created since World War One.
It has everything going
for it - a credible plot with plenty of action unfolding at a
confident pace, protagonists who are all too human, and an
assortment of colourful minor characters embedded in a chorus
which is itself a protagonist, all firmly wedded to music of
unfailing invention, enormous range and fascinating detail to
generate an emotional impact which could not be delivered by
anything else but an opera.
“Peter Grimes” was an astonishing achievement for a first opera
by a young composer, and one that Britten never quite equalled,
in my opinion, with his subsequent operas, good as they were.
In spite of its modern idiom and verismo libretto, it is oldfashioned enough to feature tunes which one can actually leave
the theatre humming. It also has, in Grimes, the most
ambiguous 'hero' since Don Giovanni. Fortunately for me, the
original production was still in the repertoire (with some of
the original cast) while I was in Reading and I made it the the
object of my first visit to Sadlers Wells. My other surviving
programme recalls, however, not that enjoyable occasion, but my
ill-fated attempt to acquaint myself with Wagner's “Tristan and
Isolde”, on the cheap, at Covent Garden on Saturday, 30th June,
1951, when finding myself, due to the cheapness of my seat,
perched so high up under the ceiling, that I was unable to see
half the stage, hardly able to hear Kirsten Flagstad and Set
Svanholm singing interminably to each other in German, I left
at the first interval with an aversion to Wagner's operas which
was not to be remedied until, twenty years later, I attended a
performance of the famous Sadlers Wells production of “The
Mastersingers” at the London Coliseum under the inspired baton
of Reginald Goodall – although I have to admit that “Tristan
and Isolde” is still my least favourite Wagner opera for
reasons which I will be happy to explain later.
Later in the year, I was persuaded to splash out on better
seats at Covent Garden for a performance of “La Traviata”, the
details of which have not survived, although my memory of the
experience lives on. It was my first full frontal encounter
with “grand opera” and the opulence of the production quite
bowled me over – the sets, the costumes, the chorus and the
orchestra were all of a quite different order from those I had
enjoyed at the Keighley Hippodrome nine years earlier, and the
playing and singing were beyond reproach. But the words were
in Italian, and my inability to understand them prevented me
from immersing myself in the Covent Garden Violetta's world to
anything like the same extent as that of the Keighley
Hippodrome Violetta, with the the result that a persistent
feeling of frustration clouded my enjoyment of the performance
as a whole, leaving behind the realisation that I would be
wise, in future, to invest my meagre resources only in opera
sung in English. Of which, of course, there was plenty
available, fairly cheaply, at Sadlers Wells, but, the problem
with that was the relative inconvenience of getting to and from
the theatre. In those days, I was still, in effect, a
provincial visitor to London, and my familiarity with its
topography was restricted to the West End, South Kensington,
and Hammersmith, relying entirely on the tube network for
getting around. Sadlers Wells Theatre was in Islington, which,
although in EC1, seemed a long way out to me, and the nearest
tube station to it was a couple of streets away, making my
journey back to Reading, via Paddington, after the final
curtain, rather complicated, bearing in mind that there was a
lot of competition for my custom, at the time, from theatres
and concert halls within easier reach.
These obstacles notwithstanding, I journeyed out to Rosebury
Avenue on no less than four occasions during my two years in
Reading, although none of the programmes for these performances
has survived. In addition to his “Peter Grimes”, already
mentioned, I attended Britten's second opera “The Rape of
Lucretia” which I found reasonably rewarding, but rather
uninvolving, due less, I think, to its smaller scale (which
worked well enough for me later in his “Turn of the Screw”)
than to its predictable plot and sermonising libretto. Too
formulaic, I thought, but I awarded it what was, and always has
been, my personal seal of approval, by marking it down as
worthy of closer acquaintance if ever the opportunity presented
itself. Much better value for money, however, was Leos
Janacek's amazing “Katya Kabanova” staged by Sadlers Wells for
the first time in Britain. Like most of my fellow countrymen,
I had never heard of the Czech composer until then, but I took
him to my heart immediately, and have never missed an
opportunity to attend any of his operas since, nor to buy
recordings of his other works once I could afford them.
Janacek was a phenomenon – a genuine original whose musical
idiom seems to have had neither antecedents nor progeny. The
only comparison that springs to mind is with the Spanish
architect, Gaudi, whose buildings in Barcelona cross innovation
with tradition, and the alien with the familiar, to unique
effect. The warmth of Janacek's personality radiates from
everything he wrote, and his unconventional outlook on life is
reflected in the subjects he chose for his operas, but it was
to be a long time after meeting “Katya Kabanova” before I would
enjoy live performances of “Jenufa”, “A Cunning Little Vixen”,
“The Makroupolos Case”, “From the House of the Dead”, The
Adventures of Mr. Broucek”, and “Osud” - a treasure trove
waiting to be discovered.
My final expedition to Sadlers Wells was for a performance of
Puccini's “Tosca”, eventually to become one of my very
favourite operas, but marred for me, on that occasion, by
finding the part of the desirable diva filled (to overflowing)
by a large lady with ginger hair, and that of her ardent lover
by a slender young man with a rather tentative stage presence,
neither of whose names I can recall. What I do remember,
however, is the impression left on me by the rendition of
Scarpia's powerful aria, “Go, Tosca”, at the end of the first
act, by a baritone who, if my memory serves me correctly, was
the same John Hargreaves I had first encountered as Figaro
nearly ten years earlier. This is one of Puccini's most
accomplished pieces of musical architecture, superimposing
Scarpia's malevolent soliloquy, to dramatic effect, on a Te
Deum sung by the church choir, punctuated by tolling bells and
the ominous booming of a base drum, and it certainly succeeded
in giving me the physical thrill I have labelled “the authentic
operatic experience” that evening.
Following the appearance of this impressive Scarpia, I found
the rest of the opera sufficiently absorbing to resolve to make
its closer acquaintance, with the other parts more suitably
cast, at the earliest possible opportunity, little realising
that I would have to wait 25 years to do so. And this was not
entirely due to my being otherwise engaged elsewhere for most
of that period, since “Tosca” was not such a fixture in the
operatic repertoires as “La Boheme” and “Madame Butterfly” in
those days, and it took the sensational Zefferelli production
at Covent Garden in 1964 with Maria Callas as Tosca and Tito
Gobbi as Scarpia to raise its popularity index. And that may
have been seen as too hard an act to follow, because I don't
think the opera was staged again in London until 1976.
Fortunately, by that time, two careers later, I was living and
working in the vicinity, and had become a regular patron of the
English National Opera whose production of it, at the Coliseum,
in February of that year, was quickly overshadowed by a revival
of the Zefferelli spectacular at Covent Garden starring Luciano
Pavarotti as Cavaradossi. By that time, after attending the
ENO version twice, so taken was I with “Tosca”, that I broke
with tradition and went to a performance of the Covent Garden
production in April '77.
Since Callas had been replaced by Raina Kabaivanska, and Tito
Gobbi by Peter Glossop, it wasn't quite the experience it might
have been, but Pavarotti was in good form (and shape!), and,
for much of the time, the performance succeeded in transcending
the language barrier to a sufficient extent to nourish my
growing conviction that “Tosca” can lay serious claim to being
the nearest to perfection of all the tragic operas ever
conceived. Unlike so many of its competitors, it features
quite credible characters embedded in a genuine historical
context, running true to their natures throughout. Its equally
convincing plot is driven by their reaction to the sudden
intrusion of the fugitive Angelotti into their lives and
progresses, in less than 24 hours, from its golden beginnings
to the darkest of conclusions, Puccini's music wringing every
drop of emotion from it, each step of the way. But only, in my
view, if one can follow the words – not just the gist of them,
but the actual words – which isn't easy, even when they are
sung in English.
Tosca's famous Act Two aria, for example, (Vissi d'arte - “Love
and music”) is more than just a lament about the humiliation
she is about to suffer. It's the moral turning point of the
plot. As she contemplates the collapse of her world and the
predicament that Scarpia has blackmailed her into, the devoutly
religious Tosca wonders how this can possibly have happened to
her. She has lived for love and music, never knowingly harmed
anyone, given help where it is needed, prayed at all the right
shrines, done everything she could to deserve heaven's
blessing, and this is how God has rewarded her. Faced with
this betrayal, she summons up enough resolve to bargain with
Scarpia, then, taking matters into her own hands, uses the
knife with which he has been eating his supper to stab him to
death as he comes to force himself upon her. There are few
more satisfying moments in opera.
Similarly, in Cavaradossi's equally famous Act Three aria (E
lucivan le stelle - “The stars were brightly shining”), the
words are even more affecting than the sad circumstances of
their singing. Facing imminent execution, Cavaradossi has
begged pen and paper from his jailer to write a last letter to
his beloved Tosca, but finds himself overtaken instead by
erotic memories of their lovers' meetings under the stars when
she “unveiled her beauty”, and is seized with regret at having
to leave the life he loves so much. No histrionics, no soul
searching, nothing about the artworks left uncreated. It's a
short aria in a short last act, which Puccini has resisted any
temptation to pad out to a greater length. In fact, the whole
opera, from the moment Cavaradossi encounters Angelotti in the
Attavanti chapel, is driven along at a cracking pace without a
single superfluous flourish.
Little of this was brought home to me, needless to say, by that
first encounter at Sadlers Wells, but the promise of it was
there, discernible enough to survive the multiple distractions
of career and family during the intervening years. In the
interests of which, however, the time had now come for me to
move on from Reading, although my motives for doing so were
mixed. On the surface, it was a good career move to become, as
I did, a Deputy Superintendent Radiographer at the Nottingham
General Hospital since it was a better job than Senior
Radiographer at The Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading, but the
underlying truth was that, apart from the ministrations of Mrs.
Hutt, and the easy access to the delights of the metropolis
(and the lovely Anne), I had not enjoyed my working life in
Reading. The X Ray Department was very cramped and
inconveniently laid out, having been hacked out of the ground
floor of the old building by partitioning bits of it off. I
could have lived with that, however, given my adaptability, and
previous experience, and, of course, my tireless energy, if the
staff had been pleasanter to work with, but they were, with one
outstanding exception, a pretty unappetising bunch.
By a curious coincidence, the one exception was not only a
Yorkshireman, but a Bradfordian, a few years older than me, who
had been working at St Luke's Municipal Hospital, while I was
training at the BRI, but our paths had never crossed at the
time. He was an excellent radiographer, even more
knowledgeable than me, but, he was, alas, a frustrated
radiologist, who found himself obliged, from time to time, to
draw to the attention of the qualified radiologists under whom
we served, their more egregious misreadings of the X Ray films
he had taken. In order to do this without appearing to question
their competence, he would resort to humbly begging them to
enlighten him about the possible significance of the anomalies
they had overlooked, without referring to their faulty
reporting, which they would then go away and change. We had a
lot in common, but, being a married man with a wife and young
children living in rented rooms, he was struggling to survive
financially, and totally focussed on work and family.
The rest of my colleagues were Southerners, and not merely
Southerners, against whom, although a Northerner, I harbour
little prejudice (truly!), but Thames Valley Southerners, a
subgroup, towards whom experience has taught me to be less
favourably disposed. They seem to suffer from an inbred classconsciousness, which compels them to affect a social
superiority unfounded on fact, disguising their own
shortcomings under a smokescreen of false modesty, while
damning with faint praise the superior achievements of anyone
they see as less socially favoured than themselves.
The
revered Superintendent Radiographer was a smooth-talking old
phoney who had allowed himself to adopt a hands-off approach to
the practice of radiography while retaining a hands-on approach
to the supervision of those of us who actually did the work.
This left him with nothing to do but fiddle around with the
appointments system at his desk and make a nuisance of himself
generally, but, in particular, by going into the darkroom when
he had nothing better to do, and passing judgement on the
efforts of his betters. I had never encountered such
unprofessional behaviour before, and it irked me considerably.
Matters came to a head one day when I was asked to X Ray the
skull of a baby who had been dropped on its head. Due to the
child's struggling and screaming, it was a near impossible
task, but, by gripping its head firmly (wearing protective
lead-rubber gloves, of course) I managed to get a couple of
quite passable shots with enough of the skull clear of the
opacities of the lead gloves to reveal that there was no
abnormality present. But, as I was inspecting the films in the
darkroom, who should come up behind me but the Chief Inspector,
to study them for a moment and say, “Mm, not very good, do them
again, old man”, his routine use of term “old man” as a form of
address being another his annoying habits. Something in me
snapped, and I said, quite calmly “I'm sorry, old man, that's
the best I can do, but I'm always willing to learn, so perhaps
you will show me how to do better.” There followed a stunned
silence, during which the darkroom technician held her breath,
before he turned to me in disbelief and said “Are you refusing
to do them again, old man?” To which I replied “What would be
the point if that's the best I can do? But I'm only a Senior
Radiographer, you are a Superintendent, you obviously think
better shots are obtainable so I think I'm entitled to ask you
to show me how to to do them” After changing colour several
times, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the darkroom
without another word. He never bothered me again, and I became
persona even less grata with him and his mutual admiration
society for the remainder of my stay.
But I had stumbled upon
a principle of management which was to stand me in good stead
in my future careers. It was “Never tell a subordinate to do
something you could not show them how to do yourself, if
asked”.
5
After the discomforts of the Royal Berkshire Hospital, the
Nottingham General Infirmary was a pleasure to work in. The X
Ray Department was large, light, and well-equipped, the Chief
Radiographer was a small, dark and very capable Welshman, with
whom I struck up an excellent working relationship from the
very start, and, best of all, the department boasted a School
of Radiography, peopled exclusively by students of the female
gender. None of them was as attractive as Anne (or even as
Shirley), but they were, as a group, neither ill-favoured nor
ill-natured and added a delightful sparkle to the working day.
But I was much less fortunate with my digs. Nothing could
compare with Mrs. Hutt's ministrations, of course, but I found
myself in the clutches of a sad and sour widow who had a plain,
unmarried daughter, and resented the fact that, instead of
“keeping them company” of an evening, I took myself off to my
room after dinner, in reality, to struggle with words, but, in
their eyes, because “I thought myself too good for them”. Most
unprofessional. But the food was good and plentiful, and the
house was within easy walking distance of the city centre,
where the Infirmary was situated, and there was nothing better
on offer. But I had every incentive to escape, and,
increasingly, an alternative beckoned.
It was becoming obvious, even to me, that I was approaching a
fork in life's road. Frank had married his Joyce, Cliff his
Rosemary, Gerry his Jessie, and Brad his Ruth. Only Mike and I
remained single, and he was younger than the rest of us and
inhabiting quite a different world. My relationship with Anne
continued to flourish in spite of the distance between us – I
spent weekends in London, and we visited our respective
families in Bradford together, from time to time. We were
still, it appeared, “going steady”, but we were still free
agents, and Anne was never without other admirers, some of whom
had quite honourable intentions. Eventually, the realisation
dawned on me that, averse as I was to either option, I would
have to choose between losing Anne or marrying her, and,
although the outcome was never in any real doubt, it wasn't an
easy decision to take.
In contrast to the insouciance with which so many of my
contemporaries appeared to be embracing it, I could see that,
once the honeymoon was over, marriage could create more
problems than it solved, demanding more than ardent affection
and mutual attraction to make it work. I had come to the
conclusion that, once undying love had been declared, marriage
was best approached as a business partnership aimed at creating
a suitable environment for a comfortable domestic existence and
the eventual production of children, a risky venture involving
the acquisition of property and the exercise of practical
skills which did not derive spontaneously from expertise in
lovemaking. Not, therefore, to be undertaken lightly, and my
subsequent advice, rarely sought, has always been “Marry only
when no reasonable alternative presents itself”.
But in spite of these mature insights, my main concern at the
time was not with Anne's suitability as a business partner, but
as a 'soul mate', to revert to the jargon of the time. Night
after night, in my lonely room,I wrestled with the knowledge
that, in spite of the compatibility of our backgrounds, the
pleasure we took in each others company, and her (apparent)
enjoyment of activities I enjoyed, Anne was not interested in
enlarging her cultural horizons to anything like the extent
that I was. She could enjoy plays and concerts, but had no real
interest in serious music, drama and literature. What she had,
I was eventually to realise, were gifts of a quite different
order, gifts I did not posses, and did not properly appreciate
at the time. She had the extrovert sensibilities of an artist.
Her visual acuity and colour sense were remarkable, as was her
manual dexterity. Occasionally, when we were watching a film
together, she would disrupt my absorption in the plot by
murmuring “They've used that (piece of furniture) in a previous
set”, and I had watched her make a dress for herself out of a
yard and a half of bargain basement material by simply
measuring it against herself, cutting it up, stitching it
together, and putting it on. Many years later, with my
encouragement, she taught herself to paint in oils, acrylics,
and watercolours, producing pictures which rarely failed to
find a buyer. But, there was I, in my ivory tower, worrying
about the uncultivated nature of her mind. What a twerp!
In the event, of course, Anne would contribute more, initially,
to our partnership than I did. Whereas I had been brought up
by a father who had little interest in anything other than
working from Monday to Friday, and boozing from Friday to
Sunday, Anne's father was an accomplished handyman and an
enthusiastic gardener (her mother, on the other hand, was lazy,
where mine was anything but), and her brothers were all
artisans. As a consequence, Anne could not only cook and sew,
but lay lino, hang wallpaper, make chair covers, and grow
vegetables. Fortunately, I was a willing pupil and had
acquired the rudiments of tool use in the woodwork and
metalwork classes of my school days, although I never took to
gardening.
But, before renouncing my freedom (as I saw it), I decided to
embark on one last holiday alone. As a radiographer, my annual
leave allowance was quite generous, but my chronically
constrained finances and the limited options available, in
those still restricted post-war days, made holidays a problem,
and I was always on the lookout for holidays that were
attractive and recreational, but cheap. While in Reading, for
example, apart from the Spanish expedition, I had taken a punt
on, of all things, the recently revived Summer School of Music,
then held at Bryanston School in Dorset, where, not being an
even half-trained musician, I had spent two weeks, completely
out of my depth, but revelling in the performances of others
and furthering my musical education substantially. In addition
to the recently formed Amadeus String Quartet, who played all
six of Bartok's quartets, which blew my mind, and the famous
cellist Pierre Fournier, who played all six of Bach's solo
cello suites, which went in at one ear and out of the other,
the well-known performers who dropped in on us included a
remarkable individual called Alfred Deller. I recall him as a
big chap with a moustache, who I first came across in the bar,
drinking pints of beer, and put him down as an ex-RAF type.
Imagine my astonishment, therefore, when, the following
morning, he stood before us, and began to sing one of those
highly decorated arias which Handel wrote for the castrati of
his day, in a falsetto contralto voice with appropriate
gestures. He was the first of a new breed of singer, the
counter-tenors
In Nottingham, I tackled the holiday problem by joining that
worthy organisation, the Ramblers' Association, and exploring
their catalogue of organised walking holidays, all of which
were graded according to the degree of exertion involved. After
brooding regretfully over some of the more exotic (and
expensive) offerings in far away places with strange sounding
names, I settled for a fortnight at their very own hostel in a
place called Ballachulish in the Scottish Highlands, just south
of Fort William, north of Oban, close to the better known
Glencoe, and accessible by the A82 from Glasgow, but, in my
case, only by rail, which turned out to be an adventure in
itself, since it was the first time I had ever travelled by
overnight sleeper. I awoke in the morning to find that the
enormously long train I had boarded at Crewe the night before
had been reduced to a couple of sleeper carriages and a dining
car chugging through spectacular Scottish Lowland scenery,
having left the rest of itself behind in Glasgow.
These circumstances gave rise to an impromptu party atmosphere
among those of the remaining passengers who repaired to the
dining car to partake of the justly famous British Rail
breakfast. Bearing in mind that the post-war austerity of our
ration books entitled us to only one egg and a rasher of bacon
per week, it was a rare treat to sit down to what is still
today called The Full English Breakfast, particularly when it
was served in such congenial surroundings with spectacular
scenery unrolling outside the window. So immersed was I in the
pleasures of the table and the talk around it that I hardly
noticed when the train stopped at a small railway station and a
distant voice began calling its name. Finally, it penetrated
my consciousness that the name being called (in a broad
Scottish accent) was Tyndrum and that this was where I was
supposed to alight.
There followed a frantic scramble back to my sleeping
compartment, where one of my overnight companions was
obligingly throwing my luggage out onto the platform, on which,
before I knew it, I found myself standing quite alone, a piece
of marmalade toast still in my hand, watching the train
disappear into the distance. It took me several minutes to
adjust to the sudden contrast between the noisy crowded train
and the early morning quiet of the Scottish countryside around
the now deserted little station, the owner of the warning voice
having disappeared without bothering to inspect my ticket.
After gathering myself together, I wandered down into the
little town to catch one of the buses which ran regularly
between Tyndrum and Ballachulish, thirty miles away, in those
far off pre-mass-car-ownership days, to embark upon what proved
to be the most energetic fortnight of my life.
The hostel provided basic dormitory accommodation, breakfast,
packed lunch and evening meal for about twenty ramblers of both
sexes, who could, either do their own thing during the day, or
take advantage of the activities organised and led by a
resident team leader on six days of the week. Most of us chose
to follow the latter course and we soon cohered into a cheerful
band, except when it was raining, which was not infrequently.
Under our super-fit leader we embarked on expeditions of everincreasing duration and difficulty and, by the end of the
fortnight I had conquered every peak in the immediate vicinity
of Ballachulish (including, of course, Ben Nevis), completely
wrecking the pair of army boots in which my feet accomplished
this feat. But I could subsequently boast, to any acquaintance
of mine who might be interested, “If you ever drive through
Glen Coe , you may stop the car, get out, look around and say
'I know someone who's been up every one of those hills'”
An outcome of a more lastingly rewarding nature was the
lifelong friendships I forged with two of my fellow ramblers.
Ken and Mavis were a newly married couple of about my own age
who I got to know better during the evenings spent in the
common room of the hostel than the walks during the day, when
they tended to fall to the rear of the long, straggling
crocodile which resulted from the varying capabilities of its
constituents. Hailing originally from somewhere in the
Midlands, they were currently living in, of all places,
Cleckheaton in the West Riding, where Ken was teaching history
at the local grammar school, and, although I later found that
they shared many of my interests in literature, music and
drama, what first aroused my interest in Ken was that he was,
like me, an aspiring playwright.
More than aspiring, in fact,
because he had already had one play accepted and performed by
the BBC. Although this was to be his one and only such
success, we couldn't know that at the time, and I was deeply
impressed and not a little envious,and arranged to keep in
touch with him after the holiday was over, which it all too
soon was.
Once back in civilisation, it was time for me to face up to the
responsibilities of being a husband-to-be, and my first step
was to arrange for Anne to put her Bohemian existence in
Chelsea's bed-sitterland behind her and join me in Nottingham.
She alighted from the coach looking rather pale, carrying all
her worldly possessions in a small suitcase, except for the
clothes she was wearing, which including a smart new winter
overcoat on which several monthly payments were still owing.
True to form, however, after moving into the local YWCA, she
quickly obtained a secretarial job at the Nottingham HQ of
Boots the Chemist, more on the strength of her lovely legs, I
suspect, then her typing speed, and we began making plans for
our future together.
Wedding plans first. Our circumstances were unusual, in that
both our families lived in Bradford, but Anne's parents were in
no position to bear the cost, as convention dictated, of a
'proper' wedding, and neither were mine, and we certainly
weren't, even if we wanted to have anything to do with that
kind of thing, which we didn't. In our different ways, Anne
and I were both escapees from uncongenial family homes, she
having struggled for years to get away from hers, while the
exigences of my career had released me from mine. Fortunately,
the fact that the banns had to be called on three consecutive
Sundays (was it?) from the pulpit of the church where the
wedding was to take place, made it impractical for us to be
married in Bradford, and Nottingham was too far from Bradford
to make it feasible for our families to attend without
requiring overnight accommodation which we were in no position
to offer them, nor they to afford. Thus was it possible for me
to realise the secret ambition I nourished, to actually enjoy
my own wedding. I had attended the coventional nuptials of my
friends Cliff and Frank, both in Bradford, and watched them
being put through the hoops before the assembled multitudes
with something approaching horror, convincing myself that, in
spite of the glassy look of pleasure on their faces, they were
not really enjoying the experience. Everybody else was, but
not them. Definitely not for me, I thought.
So Anne and I were free to plan an inexpensive wedding with
only friends present, and arrange for it to take place at our
local church, late enough on a Saturday afternoon to allow all
involved to proceed afterwards, on foot, at a leisurely pace,
to a festive dinner in a private room at one of the best hotels
in town, which happened to be within easy walking distance of
the church.
In order to give our sparsely attended wedding
ceremony a more distinctive flavour, I broached with the vicar
the possibility of holding it as an Anglican nuptial mass.
Rather to my surprise, he was attracted to the idea, and
readily agreed to familiarise himself with the details of the
rite, making Anne and me the only couple we have ever met who
have experienced this arcane ritual. In the event, Cliff and
Rosemary came up from Devon, Frank and Joyce came down from
Bradford, and Mike came across from his airfield in East
Yorkshire. The only other person in attendance was my young
brother, Donald, who was present, at my mother's insistence, to
represent my family, and the uncomfortable fact that he was
currently serving his National Service as a lowly Aircraftsman
in the RAF whereas Mike was, by now, a Flying Officer was
easily ignored since they were both in civvies.
Our guests were suitably impressed with the nuptial mass, and
all of them were qualified to join us in receiving Holy
Communion. There was none of the usual hoopla outside the
church afterwards, but I had arranged for a photograph of the
wedding party to be taken by a colleague of mine from the X Ray
Department who turned out to be a worse photographer than he
thought he was, but, fortunately, a few weeks later, a friend
of Anne's from her Butlins days, a professional photographer,
was to pay us a visit and, as a wedding present, take a series
of excellent photographs of us in our wedding attire. After
the festive dinner we repaired to a smaller (cheaper) hotel
overlooking The Forest where we were all booked in for the
night, there to enjoy a convivial and mildly boisterous
couple of hours until bedtime.
The following morning we went
our separate ways, Anne and I to take possession of our new
home, in which we were only too happy to spend a few days
honeymooning together.
We had rented a furnished flat which occupied most of the upper
floor of a large semi-detached house in the leafy suburb of
Sherwood. Our landlords were a Mr.& Mrs. Wagstaffe, who lived
downstairs, but shared the upstairs bathroom with us. They were
an odd couple, but easy to get along with. He was a small man
with a big voice who sounded on the phone like a retired army
colonel but looked, in the flesh, more like a minor civil
servant. His first wife had predeceased him, and the second
Mrs. Wagstaffe was much younger than him, but no longer in the
first flower of youth, and was fortunate, perhaps, to have
found such a caring and competent husband when the likelihood
of her doing so may fast have been ebbing away. Both were
devout Catholics, and also, more apparently to us, practising
musicians. She was an accomplished pianist with a local
reputation as a concert performer, he, a sonorous baritone; she
gave piano lessons and he conducted a local choir. They were
active in local amateur music circles, but careful to ensure
that their musical activities did not unduly inconvenience us
by practising them during the hours when Anne and I were absent
from the premises, although he would occasionally break off
from tending his garden at the weekends to strike chords on the
piano and sing up and down a scale or two.
Anne and I were very happy there. We had no friends in
Nottingham, but we had each other, and it was a good city to be
a friendless young couple of newlyweds in, as there was plenty
for us to do with our spare time. There was the Theatre Royal,
of course, with its spectacular Greek portico andF pre and post
West End productions, but the main attraction for us was the
Playhouse, where a talented repertory company were putting on a
new production every fortnight, and these were not the “George
and Margaret” offerings of 'Arry 'Anson's Players at the
Bradford Prince's Theatre, these were works by the likes of
Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen, Wilde, Fry and Co. produced by John
Harrison, who already had a national reputation, and often
featuring his talented wife, Daphne Slater.
The rest of the
company were of a similar high standard (eg. Hazel Hughes), and
shortly after we arrived, they were joined by a personable
young actor called Denis Quilley, in whose subsequent rise to
fame we consequently allowed ourselves to take a proprietorial
interest. Whether true or not, 1952 was, for us, a golden age
at the Playhouse.
Another big attraction was a small arthouse cinema (The
Palace?), showing foreign films on a regular basis, mainly
French, of course. I'm pretty sure we first saw “Les Enfants
du Paradis” there, and the stunning Cocteau films “La Belle et
la Bete” and “Orphee” and Max Orphul's “La Ronde”, through all
of which we sat enthralled. The only thing Nottingham lacked,
in those days, was a proper concert hall. There was a small
one out at the university, but nothing in the city centre. As
for opera, all I can recall about the only one that came to the
Theatre Royal during our time in Nottingham, was that it was
“Der Freischutz”, and I enjoyed it very much. Oddly enough, it
was the only live production ever to come my way, of what was,
at one time, the most frequently performed opera in the world.
For our in-house entertainment we had nothing but ourselves,
library books and a small radio which regaled us with, among
other things, “A Book at Bedtime”.
Ah! The simple pleasures.
Thanks to our social isolation, it was a lovely, long
honeymoon, but it was also a period of adjustment, especially
for me. There was no getting away from the fact that my career
as a budding playwright was ending in failure. Since leaving
the army, I had completed, to my own satisfaction, two threeact plays, both of them, like “The Three Wise Men”, written in
the blank verse which T.S.Eliot and Christopher Fry had made so
fashionable at the time, but, having finished them, I found
myself at a loss to know what to do with them next. I had no
theatrical connections whatsoever, and no way of cultivating
them. When Ken and Mavis came to spend a weekend with us, and
Ken and I were able to compare notes, I realised that,
regardless of whether or not his stuff was better than mine,
the big difference between us was that he had been actively
involved in amateur dramatics since his student days and this
had given him access, not only to the practicalities of
stagecraft, but also, more importantly, to the possibility of
getting his plays considered for production by his fellow
thespians.
The success of “The Three Wise Men” had arisen
entirely from the circumstances of its conception. A play was
required at the Military Hospital, Gibraltar, for a specific
occasion, and I was able to provide it, an eventuality unlikely
to be repeated in any of the hospitals I had worked in since.
It's possible, I suppose, that, if I hadn't been seduced by the
success of my play, I might have channelled my energies into
more easily marketable forms of creative writing, with better
success. But, the truth was that, by now, I had come to enjoy
writing for its own sake, as virtually an end in itself,
totally absorbing, particularly when wrestling with the complex
simplicities of blank verse, and, although I failed as a
playwright, I have no regrets about the happy hours I invested
in my endeavours to succeed. The skills I developed while
playing with words were to prove a major factor in ensuring my
success in both my subsequent careers. But, of course, I was
unaware of that at a time, as I faced up to the fact that my
responsibilities as a husband and potential father would have
to be met from the earnings of a career which I had hitherto
seen as merely an agreeable way of supporting my spare time
activities. These earnings, though not substantial, were
respectable and reliable, and sufficient, when combined with
Anne's contribution, to support the life style we were enjoying
in Nottingham.
But not sufficient, we found, to enable us to
save the couple of hundred pounds we needed to put down a
deposit on a house and convert the rent we were paying into
mortgage repayments. Two hundred pounds was, at the time,
about four months income.
In order to earn more, I would need to take the next step up my
current career ladder and become a Chief Radiographer, a post
for which I would normally be regarded as being rather too
young, although there was no denying that I was equipped with
the necessary skills and knowledge. Fortunately for me, a
vacancy occurred at the Victoria Hospital in Keighley, my old
second home, for which, I was assured by my former Chief at the
BRI, there would be less competition than usual, since the
Consultant Radiologist there had a reputation for being so
difficult to work with that two previous incumbents of the post
had vacated it in quick succession. And I found, when I met
him, that there was little to like about Dr. Manford, as he
called himself, having changed his name from Mannerheim. He
was an Austrian Jew of distinctly porcine appearance, both
facially and physically, with an overbearing manner, which
arose, I was to find, from a profound basic insecurity
compounded by an almost pathological obsession with unimportant
detail.
All the radiologists I had previously encountered had been
content, even when in full-time attendance and nominally in
charge of the X Ray department, to leave the day to day
management of its activities to the Chief Radiographer, since,
apart from the procedures in which the radiologist was himself
involved (such as the visual screening of parts of the
alimentary canal filled with barium), all his diagnoses were
made by studying X Ray films produced by the radiographers to a
set of agreed specifications. Not so Dr. Manford. Compared to
the Bradford Royal Infirmary, the Nottingham General, and the
Royal Berkshire Hospitals, the Keighley Victoria was pretty
small beer, about as big as the Pontefract General, where the
radiologist used to drop in three days a week. Admittedly, the
Keighley Victoria was the flagship of the the Bingley,
Keighley, Skipton, and Settle Hospital Management Committee,
and there were cottage hospitals with basic X Ray facilities at
both Bingley and Skipton which were serviced from Keighley,
but, even when put together, they didn't add up to much. But
they did to Dr. Manford. They were his empire, and he liked to
feel that he was its respected lord and master, even when he
wasn't. It was the tradition he had been brought up in, and
the inflexibility of his mind made it impossible for him to
adapt to our less formal ways.
Having got the job, I experienced little difficulty in
providing his ego with the support it so badly needed by
meeting his exacting standards and affording him a degree of
professional respect which he soon began to return, because he
was a very good radiologist. My main problem was mediating
between him and the rest of the hospital's medical staff with
whom he was deeply unpopular, due to his arrogant manner and
his insistence on a protocol of his own devising for the
release of X Ray films for inspection by other medics before he
had reported on them. I couldn't help feeling sorry for him,
at times. I remember standing behind him once, and watching
the blood rise up his neck and suffuse his face as he inspected
a film on the viewing box in front of him, not because it was
of poor diagnostic quality, but because its identifying number
plate was in the “wrong” corner of the film and the wrong way
round. He was a coronary thrombosis waiting to happen, but he
was deeply upset when I eventually handed in my notice.
Apart from my dealings with Dr. Manford, the management of the
X Ray Department presented few problems. I had three other
radiographers, and one nurse attendant, but I also had three
students, since we were affiliated to the School of Radiography
at Bradford. My official title was Superintendent Radiographer
and Tutor, and, as far as I am aware, I was the youngest holder
of that rank in the country. But, away from my workplace
things were much less rosy. Anne had no trouble finding
employment in Keighley, but finding suitable accommodation
proved to be much more difficult than we had anticipated when I
applied for the job.
In sharp contrast to Nottingham,
furnished flats for rent were nowhere to be found in Keighley.
The genus seemed quite foreign to an environment, in which
accommodation of any kind was scarce. I suppose we might have
been more successful in Bradford, but it was a long bus ride
away, and I needed to be near enough to the hospital to be
contacted in an emergency.
In the end, we had to settle for
full board in a nearby establishment.
It turned out to be a disaster. The owners were not
professionals, and we were their first “guests”, so they were
making it up as they went along. The landlady was a passable
cook and a hard worker, but struggling with the distraction of
a full time job elsewhere to support the “landlord”, a
lecherous, idle slob with entrepreneurial delusions, whose
latest “venture” the boarding house obviously was. We were
very, very uncomfortable there, and when he found he could make
more money and perv at more young women by taking in performers
at the Keighley Hippodrome, where the shows were by now much
raunchier than those of wartime days, he made it pretty clear
that we were more trouble than we were worth. It was a
desperate situation and Anne and I have always looked back on
it as the unhappiest period in our married life. But, help, of
a sort, was available.
My sister Jean had qualified as a dispensing optician, and,
some years previously, married Reg, a motor mechanic, who would
eventually own his own business, as also would Jean. During
their courtship, living in their respective family homes in
Bradford and Bingley, they had, unlike Anne and me, contrived
to save enough money to put down a deposit on the twobedroomed terrace house in nearby Silsden which they were to
occupy for the next forty years. Situated about 200 yards up
the Cringles, the famous hill leading out of Silsden (in
Airedale) over to Ilkley (in Wharfedale) it was, by a strange
coincidence, opposite the stile which gave access to the
familiar footpath leading up through the fields to Swartha,
where, twelve years earlier, so many of my happiest hours had
been spent.
In desperation, we offered to pay half their
mortgage repayments and council rates if they would let us
share their house with them until something better turned up,
and, much to our relief, they agreed.
All things considered, the arrangement worked quite well. We
had little in common with Jean and Reg except the family
background, but my relations with Jean had always been quite
good, in a condescending, big brotherly way, and Reg was not
too difficult to get along with, but, could be a little prickly
at times. He was a viscerotonic endomorph on a rather short
fuse, and had actually come to blows with my father during his
courtship of Jean, after being sorely provoked by him, as had
the rest of us in the past, but there was no bad blood between
Reg and me over that, and our relationship was good enough to
survive a period of close proximity intact. But it was a short
term solution to a long term problem. Anne and I needed a
place of our own, and the only way we could get one was either
by renting a house, or buying a house, but rented houses were
virtually non-existent in those post-war years, thanks to the
hangover of wartime rent controls, and we still hadn't scraped
together the necessary deposit for a mortgage. In spite of
which, having nothing better to do, we began looking at houses,
and, of course, very soon found one. The house of our dreams
was a semi-detached semi-bungalow. What is a semi-bungalow?
It's a single story house, or bungalow, with upstairs rooms
built into the roof, usually with dormer windows.
Our hoped for home was built of local stone, and had a lounge
room, a dining/sitting room, a double bedroom, bathroom with
toilet, and kitchen on the ground floor, with another bedroom
(with dormer window) and a boxroom in the roof. The ground
floor rooms had been recently, and tastefully re-decorated, but
the house was standing empty. Rumour had it that it had been
bought and furnished by a wealthy Bradford businessman as a
love nest for a mistress, who had found it too remote from life
as she preferred to lead it, to live in. But the most
attractive feature of the house was, in fact, its position.
High on the south facing slope of the superior suburb of
Riddlesden, which straddles the Bradford Road out of Keighley,
it commanded a panoramic view across the Airedale Gap to Druids
Altar, on the edge of Howarth Moor, and beyond, as far as
Wuthering Heights on a clear day. And the lounge had a French
door opening out onto a porch, patio, and small lawn from which
a be-rockeried garden fell away at an angle of 45 degrees to
the front gate. And there was nothing but half a mile of empty
space between the back gate and the edge of Ilkley Moor.
The estate agent informed us that this jewel could be ours for
a mere 1800 pounds, and that he could arrange a mortgage for us
of 1600 pounds. All we had to find, therefore, was the 200
pounds we didn't have, and hadn't the faintest idea about how
we could get it. Then something strange happened. On one of
my regular visits to my mother, while telling her my news, as
usual, I told her about the house and the problem with the
mortgage deposit, and, when I'd finished, she said “How much is
the deposit?”. “It's 200 pounds”, I said, expecting her to
raise her eyebrows at the amount. Instead, she said, quietly,
“I can let you have that”. I simply stared at her in
amazement. I had never dreamed of her as having that kind of
money. Thanks to the fecklessness of my father, we had always
lived on the edge of poverty as children, and, although I knew
that life had changed for my mother once we were able to fend
for ourselves, I hadn't realised how much it had changed.
With her chicks out of harms way, she had proceeded to turn the
tables on my father, standing up to him mentally, and even,
when necessary, physically, and, always in full time employment
herself, created a social life outside the home that did not
include him. She had taken up Olde Tyme Dancing, and acquired
a circle of friends (of both sexes) of whom we knew little,
except that they appreciated her sunny, fun-loving nature,
blossoming now in her new found freedom.
She had also, it
seemed, been saving money, although some of it may have come, I
now realised, as a legacy from her older sister who had died a
few years previously, and I hastened to assure her that I would
regard the 200 pounds as a loan, to be paid back as soon as
possible. It never was, of course, but it would have been, if
she'd asked for it, or needed it, but she never did. Instead,
I expressed the gratitude I felt, and still feel, in every way
I possibly could, down through the years, until she died
suddenly while laughing at a comedy programme she was watching
on the television set in the convenient presence of her one
remaining sister. There never was a more loving son than me.
Taking possession of that little house, transformed our lives.
By the time we'd furnished it, we were deep in hire purchase
debt, but free from care. For the first time since our
marriage we were investing all our money in ourselves. The
house turned out to be everything we'd hoped for – comfortable
and convenient, easily accessible from Keighley, where we both
worked, and from Bradford where so many of our friends and
relations lived, all of whom were attracted by its charms, its
spectacular views, southern exposure, and al fresco amenities.
On one sunny Bank Holiday Monday we had no less than 18
visitors, most of them unexpectedly “dropping in”. Anne was in
her element, of course, making curtains and loose covers, and
instructing me in the crafts of painting and decorating, which
I was quick to master and have always since enjoyed. I became
an apprentice in the skills of DIY joinery guided by Anne's
father who lent me the necessary tools, some of which I still
have, and learned how to lay 'crazy paving' and mix cement. We
were happy householders, revelling in our independence, and
capable, at last, of entertaining our friends in our own home.
Oddly enough, Brad and Ruth, who already had a very young son
and daughter, were living within walking distance, at the
bottom of the hill, across the Bradford Road, in a modern semi
backing on to the famous 16th century East Riddlesden Hall.
Brad was still a cashier at the bank he had joined when he left
school, and seemed quite happy to pick up our relationship
where we'd left off, but Ruth, while not unfriendly, had become
curiously reclusive, and over-protective of her children, and
seemed reluctant to socialise with anyone outside the family.
After a couple of attempts to engage with them, we gave up.
Cliff and Rosemary, on the other hand, were now too far away to
visit us and be visited regularly. This had come about because
the wool firm, in whose Bradford warehouse Cliff had worked
since leaving school, had persuaded him to become a sales
representative, promoting their range of knitting wools and rug
wools to retail outlets in distant Devon and Cornwall. Hand
knitting, was still, at that time, as widely practised by most
women and some men as it had been since the war, and “rugging”,
in those austere postwar days, was a popular indoor sport. But
it was a big territory, and, in the end, too far away to be
conveniently worked from Bradford, so the newly-weds had
'emigrated' from the city of their birth and upbringing to the
West Country where, having fallen under its spell, they were to
remain for the rest of their lives.
The life of a knitting wool salesman, however, held little
appeal for Cliff, but, travelling from town to town, and shop
to shop, he saw a great deal of the Devonshire countryside and
its activities, most of which did appeal to him. Ever since he
had spent several months working on a farm while convalescing
from a serious illness in his mid-teens, Cliff had been
attracted to rural pursuits, hence his keen interest in horse
riding, and he finally decided that, in spite of his urban
past, his future lay in farming. With Rosemary's agreement,
and, I suspect, the backing of her father, who was a market
gardener of some substance, he set about learning to become a
farmer, literally from scratch, by reading everything he could
lay his hands on about the farming industry, and giving up his
job as a commercial traveller and taking a job as a simple farm
worker living in a tied cottage. When satisfied that he had
acquired the necessary skills and knowledge, Rosemary and he
would somehow contrive to buy a small dairy farm of their own
in the Teign Valley outside Exeter, where Anne and I would be
able to visit them and their two children throughout the years
that lay ahead, but they would only rarely be able to visit us.
My friend Mike was living even further away, moving in circles
that had little in common with those inhabited by the rest of
us. After his stint as a fighter pilot in East Yorkshire, his
career had taken a remarkable turn, with his appointment as an
aide to the Commander-in-Chief Far East, Air Vice Marshall
Cunningham(?), based in Singapore, and travelling widely
throughout the region with his boss. How we all envied him.
[I recall that he sent his mother a photograph of himself
holding a koala bear in Australia, which was very similar to
one I taken of myself many years later.] But his luck did not
hold, alas, and his success was his undoing. I was called one
morning to the X Ray Department phone to take a call from
Joyce, who had come across a small paragraph in The Daily
Express which reported that a Flying Officer of Mike's name had
been killed in a driving accident in Singapore. What a shock!
Further details were not easy to come by from his distraught
family, and all we learned was that the crash took place in the
early hours of the morning, that no other vehicle was involved
and Mike was driving in a jeep alone. He was buried in
Singapore.
A very bright star had fallen from my firmament, not with a
bang but a whimper. Tall, blonde, handsome, clever, cultured,
witty, and wickedly worldly, he was the ideal companion of my
youth, but some of the shine seemed to go off him after his
admission to Cranwell. We met for the last time briefly at
Cliff's cottage in Devon, before he went overseas, and he
seemed to me to have aged somehow in both mind and body, and I
didn't feel quite as comfortable in his company as I had
previously done. But I have always treasured the memory of that
wonderful week we spent together in London during the war, and
of the late night sessions at his home up the hill to which I
would find a note, pressingly invited me, no matter how late
the hour of my own arrival home, whenever he was suddenly home
on leave. He has not grown old as we who are left have grown
old.
Socialising with Frank and Joyce, who were now living in
Bradford, and had started a family, presented us with none of
these problems, and they were to play a major role in our
future. Frank's restless ambition had led him to exchange the
respectability of his secure life behind the counter of a
chemist's shop for the apparent insecurities of life as the
sales representative of a pharmaceutical company, and an
American company at that. A giant step in those days. He had
joined, initially, a well-established company, and been given a
territory in Lancashire, but living in Blackpool didn't suit
the two of them, and, after learning the ropes of his new job
to his own satisfaction, he had resigned and returned to
Bradford, to buy a house, and work for a spell as a locum
pharmacist, while he planned his next move. When his
researches revealed that an American pharmaceutical company of
good repute was in the process of opening a subsidiary in the
UK, he had approached them directly, and been rewarded with a
territory embracing Bradford and Leeds.
The mass invasion of Britain by the American pharmaceutical
companies in the post-war years had resulted, partly from the
expanded market created by the National Health Service, but
mainly from the development of new forms of treatment following
the breakthrough with penicillin. Penicillin was a British
discovery, of course, but, under wartime conditions, its mass
production by fermentation could only be achieved by handing it
over to some of the biggest brewers in the USA, and, once the
Yanks had the technology there was no holding them.
Their
pharmaceutical companies scoured the world for moulds that
would yield newer and better antibiotics than penicillin and,
once found, spared no expense in developing, and marketing
them. Other discoveries led to the introduction of whole new
classes of drugs for the effective treatment of ailments which
had been beyond the reach of existing therapies, and the
financial rewards for successful innovation proved to be so
great that investment in research, development, and marketing
increased exponentially, and the modern pharmaceutical industry
was born.
All this would have passed me by, if it hadn't been for Frank,
who wasted no opportunity to extol the benefits he was enjoying
from his new career, the most conspicuous of which was his
'company car' at a time when car ownership was still beyond the
reach of the average family man. But, of more interest to me
was his account of his working relationship with his American
employer. This was still a time when, on this side of the
Atlantic, a salesman of any kind was a not quite respectable
thing to be. Plenty of British firms employed salesmen, of
course, but tended to see them as a necessary evil, in the
mistaken belief that 'if you build a better mousetrap the world
will beat a pathway to your door'. Things were very different
in the USA, where all aspects of marketing were taken very
seriously, and even studied in its centres of learning, and
'salesman' was certainly not a term of abuse, even though the
Americans differentiated quite clearly between merchandising
salesmen, such as Cliff with his knitting wools, and technical
salesmen, like Frank with his pharmaceuticals.
An important consideration, in Frank's case, was that most of
his wares were classified as Dangerous Drugs which could not be
advertised for direct sale to the general public, and were only
available from a qualified pharmacist on production of a
doctor's prescription.
This meant that sales of these
'ethicals', as they were called, were totally dependent on
individual doctors being persuaded to prescribe them, and so
highly did Frank's firm value the skills and knowledge needed
to achieve this end, that all its senior managers, right up to
Board level, were required to join the firm as medical
representatives and gain promotion on merit. Little wonder,
then, that Frank was so enthusiastic about his prospects, but
he was careful not to over-egg the pudding for my benefit.
Everything he told me about his new employer would turn out to
be true, and, as for the job itself, he assured me that it was
no longer considered necessary to be a pharmacist to do it, and
that my medical background, and the training I would get from
the firm, would equip me to do it well. He also pointed out
that the firm was still actively recruiting, and that there
were territories available in the vicinity.
I was seriously tempted. Although my present circumstances
seemed comfortable enough, the uncomfortable truth was that, as
a radiographer, my future prospects were poor. I was near the
top of my profession with most of my working life still ahead
of me, in a career I had embarked upon for no other reason than
to nourish my aspirations to be a writer, an ambition I had
failed to realise, and had now abandoned. Taking all this into
account, including the fact that Anne was newly pregnant, and
propelled, no doubt, by my own frustrated creative urges, I
finally decided to apply for a job as a medical representative
with Frank's firm.
Given his sponsorship and my credentials,
I had little difficulty in being accepted by them and awarded a
territory in the West Riding of Yorkshire which included
Keighley, at a starting salary of little more than I had been
earning as a Superintendent Radiographer, the difference being
that I was now at the bottom of a career ladder instead of the
top, and was the proud custodian of a Company Car.
It was a
risky decision to take, but it turned out to be a good one. I
was leaving an old life behind and embarking on what was to be
a much more interesting and rewarding new one.
END OF PART ONE
Ballina NSW January NSW
Author's note: There will be much more about the opera in Part
Two than there has been in Part One, but, on present form, it
is unlikely to be published for some time. Any reader who is
more interested in my operagoing than in my life should turn to
my “Confessions of an Impecunious Opera Lover” which is freely
available on my website www.peterscott.com.au and deals with that
aspect of my later life separately from the rest.