The Living Years (2 page)

As a boy I mostly took after my mother.

My mother had wanted to go to art college but girls didn’t in her day; she’d also wanted to be a ballet dancer but had grown too tall. She was very aware of sounds and energy, and a sunset or a blue sky would set her off every time: ‘Darling! The colours!’

She was a wonderfully, beautifully dotty woman. I think my father enjoyed the way she was her own person but he was also quite long-suffering: when they were living in Melbourne, for instance, my mother had got carried away collecting wattle flowers, which she loved both because they were bright yellow and reminded her of home in South Africa. What she didn’t know was that, unlike in South Africa, wattle was a protected species in Australia. One day she filled my father’s car with wattle equivalent to a £200 fine. He had to drive to the beach in the middle of the night, dig a hole and bury it.

Mum was a widow, although her previous marriage wasn’t something that my parents spoke about. It wasn’t until I was thirteen and we were on a family holiday in Italy that I began to wonder out loud why every single piece of silver on our dining-room cabinet at home had the name ‘Captain Woods’ engraved on it. There was a startled hush and Mum went completely white. In those days there was still a stigma attached to being married more than once; plus ‘Captain Woods’ had died of cancer, which no one ever talked about. I think it must have been Mum’s idea to sweep her history under the carpet because my father was too direct to hide things.

Maybe they also kept it quiet because they were genuinely worried that it would have an effect on me – although if they were really concerned about it, perhaps they shouldn’t have had all that engraved silver lying around. Of course, it made no difference to me whatsoever.

I was five years old when my father was appointed Commanding Officer of Whale Island in Portsmouth Harbour. Dad had trained as a naval gunnery officer there twenty years earlier; now, in 1955, he was returning to take charge.

It was the pinnacle of his naval career and he was soon installed in the Captain’s house, as were my mother, Nicky and I. The arrangement was a bit unusual. Until the end of the Second World War, the Captain’s house had been very much bachelor territory (wives and families were expected to stay at home on shore). Also, most officers, by the time they reached the rank of Captain, had children who were grown up and at university. My father, who was forty-nine in 1955, had a seven-year-old daughter and a five-year-old son – although it seems that Nicky and I learned to fit in pretty quickly:

Both children took their appointed station in the establishment and there was no child psychology or anything like that. Their tricycles, when not in use, were placed between their own little white lines in the tricycle park outside the Captain’s house, gear was replaced in a seamanlike manner after every playtime and if they ever asked: ‘Is that an order?’ and the reply happened to be: ‘Yes – right turn – double march!’ that was all there was to it.

Like my father when he was a child, I had a nanny, at least while we were living on Whale Island. She was the daughter of a Lieutenant and could run like the wind, which came in handy whenever I cycled off. My aim was always to get to the beach – rumour had it there were pieces of eight buried there – but I never got very far. What’s more, on the rare occasions when I did manage to out-pedal Nanny, I was thwarted by the island’s public address system, which would inform everyone that I was on the loose: ‘Anyone sighting the Captain’s son is requested to report position, course and speed, intercept and return him to base.’

Disappointingly they always did.

I still managed to have plenty of adventures on Whaley. I delivered the pigswill with the head stableman, Mr Brown – a clean bin was kept on his horse-drawn cart so that if it rained I could be put inside and the lid put on. In our second year on the island I also joined the HMS
Excellent
boy cadets. I was five by this time but still underage; however, my father was the Commander so no one was going to argue. According to Dad’s book, I fell in a goldfish pond before one parade and bawled my eyes out in a ‘most unseamanlike manner’ when I wasn’t allowed to carry on in my wet trousers. I do wonder if he came to regret bending the rules.

There was also the time when one of the island’s guns was fired unexpectedly:

Michael was riding Joey the pony on the upper lawn supervised by Mr Brown. At the sound of the gunfire Joey bucked and unseated Mike who hung upside down suspended by one leg and held up by the stirrup.

When remounted his morale was quite unaffected as he assumed that it was all part of riding and that to hang upside down occasionally like a Cossack was quite normal.

A highlight of our time on Whaley was the time a Russian naval squadron visited Portsmouth and my father was given the job of looking after a Sverdlov-class cruiser and its crew. After the Captain had been for tea at our house, I was invited to spend the next day aboard his ship in return. I duly came back loaded with presents so it was a great success from my point of view, although I think my father was a bit disappointed that I hadn’t also managed to glean some cold-war secrets while I was at it. In the end the only thing I learned was the Russian word for ‘thank you’: I realized that the more I said it, the more chocolates I got. They were enormous things – about the size of my hand – but I still thank you-ed my way through six of them. Then I went home and was sick.

What I remember most about Whaley is how big everything was: the pageantry was huge, there were vast spaces to run around in, the parade ground seemed to go on forever. And at the centre of it all was my father. Every ceremony revolved around him, everyone saluted him wherever he went. (I loved saluting, it seemed very grown up: something only men did. I would always be trying to get away from Nanny and my sister because nobody ever saluted them.)

Walking around the island with my father, I can remember puffing out my chest to be as big as possible, feeling the importance of being by his side.

* * *

It was a letter from the Admiralty that changed everything for my father. Instead of bringing the news that he was promoted to the position of Rear Admiral, as he’d hoped, the letter told him instead that he’d be expected to retire from the Navy in two months’ time.

At the time this letter arrived Dad had been in the Navy for thirty-six years, gained two Mentions-in-Despatches in the Second World War and a Distinguished Service Order earned off the coast of Korea in the early fifties. Suddenly he was out of work. With a wife and two young children to provide for, retirement was out of the question. For the first time in his life, he had to go job-hunting and the signs didn’t look good:

I was [. . . ] given an official booklet giving advice upon the transition to civilian life. This I read one evening. It was the most depressing thing I have ever read and by the end of it, I needed a couple of stiff whiskies to restore my morale. It appeared that I was virtually valueless to the labour market and must adopt a humble and low profile ready to accept a modest job in the hope of climbing the ladder once more if I was lucky enough to get on the ladder at all.

In the words of today’s young people it was dead dreary.

Quite a few rejections followed but then my father applied for a job working on the Blue Steel missile defence system that was being developed by Hawker Siddeley (which later became part of British Aerospace). He was successful, but the job meant moving to the opposite end of the country, Cheshire, where Hawker Siddeley had their headquarters. My father always believed in the right outfit for the occasion and on the day he left for Wilmslow, he did so in his new uniform: a bowler hat, rolled umbrella and pigskin gloves.

Mum, Nicky and I followed not long after and moved into a Manchester hotel, the Dean Water, while my parents were looking for a house. The hotel used to have dances on a Saturday evening and my sister and I, dressed in our pyjamas, would look over the banisters at the dancers going past in their smart evening gear. It was like a glimpse into another world: very exciting.

Far Hills, the house that my parents found, was a detached, brick-built 1930s house about four miles from the Hawker Siddeley base. This meant that whenever the black, triangular Vulcan Bombers flew overhead, the whole place shook, which impressed any guests we had staying. I was more impressed by the fact I could use the base’s runway as a go-carting track.

I had a yellow 30 cc go-cart – very cool – and we would put it in the back of our big red-and-white Austin and drive to the base with it sticking out of the boot. My main memory is of me trying to start the damn thing, but when I did get it going, I went flying.

Mum would always drive me to the airbase and she’d also drive Dad to work each day. Her style was probably best described as colourful. On one occasion we were late going to the train station and we hurried to the car, which was parked in the garage. Nicky and I in piled into the back and were looking out of the rear window in anticipation when Mum went full throttle straight through the garage wall in front.

Driving up to visit our relatives in Scotland was also a drama. One year we hired a caravan and Nicky and I went with Mum to collect it the night before. By the time she’d negotiated it back through our narrow gates into the driveway I was already hoping that Dad would take the helm the next morning. We would be manoeuvring out straight on to a main road which, with Mum at the wheel, was the kind of thing that left you afraid for your life.

Mum’s objection to Dad’s driving was that he did it as though he was steering a ship. He’d leave the garage as if he were leaving the harbour, set sail down the road at a very respectable pace and be totally unaware of fellow motorists flashing him, shaking their fist and trying to overtake. He’d be completely in his own world, which would drive my mother to distraction. Mum, by contrast, didn’t have a problem with speed: we’d hit the motorway and she’d hit the gas, pushing the car to the limit of the maximum speed it could do. It would shake and rattle, and my father would hang on to the loop above his window with white knuckles. He knew that if he attempted to despatch any orders, he would be ejected immediately. Reaching our destination intact was always a relief.

I particularly enjoyed Scotland and visiting my Great-aunt Jean (from my mother’s side of the family). The Biggars had three farms and bred Galloway cattle and I think it was there that I developed a desire to become a farmer. I loved the lifestyle, the open spaces and especially being around the cows: they felt kind and safe, and hearing them munching their hay in the quiet of the evening was very satisfying.

Generally, though, there wasn’t much love lost between my parents’ families and siblings. There was an Aunty Rosie who lived in Southsea and was artistic and slightly eccentric – especially when helped along by a glass of wine or two – but we only visited her a couple of times. Strange, given that on Whale Island we’d been so nearby. It didn’t end well between Aunty Rosie and me: Mum rang me one day when I was in my twenties and told me that Auntie Rosie had recently got married. I told Mum to give her my congratulations, as you would, but that didn’t go down too well.

‘Not married, darling!
Buried!
’

I saw even less of my mother’s brother, Uncle Berners – in fact I only met him once. When his name was mentioned it was always in lowered tones when my parents thought I was out of earshot. This might have been because he’d acted badly and opted out of looking after his mother, my ‘Jean Granny’, as we used to call her. But it might also have been because Uncle Berners, who was the vicar of Eton for many years, changed his name later on in life to something double-barrelled, which really bugged my parents. My father wasn’t very tolerant of pomposity.

Because of Uncle Berners, Dad ended up paying for the upkeep of both grannies – Jean Granny and his own mother, Granny Malimore – who both lived into their nineties. Granny Malimore (who was called Malimore because that was the name of her house in Farnham) was very bright but not very active. Jean Granny, meanwhile, was very active but not very bright. They’d meet at family occasions and Jean Granny would always find some stairs to rush up and then say things like, ‘Oh, am I going too fast for you, Roberta?’ And Granny Malimore would get her own back by memorizing all kinds of historical facts and embarrassing Jean Granny by asking her questions she couldn’t answer.

I don’t know how Jean Granny managed to live so long but I think Granny Malimore did it by refrigeration. You’d go to her house in Farnham, breathe out, and see your breath in the air. And her fire would be on. It was one of those little smokeless fires, the size of an acorn. The minute a glow got going and a bit of heat started coming out, she’d jump up, bung on a scuttle-full of coal and nearly extinguish the thing.

Granny Malimore had a TV – quite rare in those days – which she’d been given by a wealthy cousin from Cape Town. She watched everything but preferred it if you thought that she only ever read
The Times
. We would go into the room and find her feigning to read the newspaper but if we put our hand on the telly it would always be boiling hot. It probably gave off more heat than the fire.

Meanwhile, Jean Granny lived in a slightly threadbare ‘residential hotel for the elderly’ called Morris Lodge Hotel in Farnham. Morris Lodge played a big part in our family life. While my father had been away during the Korean War my mother had moved there with my sister and me, and I’m sure it was one of the reasons why she was able to cope. Nicky and I were always under surveillance, usually by some colourful character or other. It was run by a Colonel and Mrs Crosse, accompanied by a couple of rather bossy sisters. It’s probably why
Fawlty Towers
later became a favourite of mine: I felt I could identify.

Even after we moved to Cheshire we’d often go back to Morris Lodge for holidays. We’d also spend occasional weekends fishing in the Derbyshire hills. I loved being outdoors and even today rivers move me.