The Living Years (3 page)

The river at Hartington has a beautiful meander that was always serene and calm, although generally became less so after the Rutherfords and dog had descended. The serious fisherman that used to go there were appalled, not least because my mother had a top-of-the-range Hardy rod but still used a worm for fly-fishing.

Dad wasn’t a great fisherman at all and I think I caught only two fish in my entire career, but Mum had more of a feel for it. When she was young in South Africa she’d been quite sporty: she’d ride horses and sail in races, and she used to shoot too. But those days were gone by the time I appeared.

* * *

Mum was game for anything and would try to loosen Dad up, but there was a stiffness and a formality about my father. He always had a sense of humour – it was very dry and lots of people missed it but it was definitely there – but as far as I was concerned Dad was very reserved, although I always felt loved and secure.

My father had grown up with my grandpa’s tales of the Boer War but he never told me a single war story, although he clearly had plenty to tell. When war was declared in 1939 his first mission was to sail to Canada with a million pounds of gold bullion, which was being sent from France for safekeeping. In 1940, after France had fallen to Germany, he’d been in charge of seizing two French ships in Plymouth harbour, and in 1941 he’d been on the
King George V
when it helped sink the
Bismarck
. But as a child I always sensed that he didn’t want to talk about the war and it didn’t feel appropriate to ask.

Ours was never an unhappy household but it was serious. I had seen my dad practising yoga, which he’d picked up while he was in the Far East, but he would never kick a ball on the lawn with me and we’d never just chat. From a very young age I was also aware that he had incredibly high standards: I knew that his job on Whale Island had been to decide who passed exams and who failed.

One image I have of us together doesn’t quite fit: my dad and I used to share baths when I was very little. I would have a plastic submarine – one of those funny things you got in a cornflake packet and put baking soda in to make it go up and down – and I’m sure Dad, watching me play with it, thought it was only a matter of time until I started my own naval career.

We weren’t really together very much. By the time he came home from work I would often be in bed and then, when I was seven-and-a-half, I was packed off to boarding school. Maybe it was because my father wasn’t a big part of my everyday life that the occasions when we were together felt so important.

As for my mother, I have no idea what she did all day but, whatever it was, she always seemed to be in a rush – my main memory of Mum is of her rushing into a room, smelling of the cold air she’d brought in from outdoors, dropping something off and rushing back out again.

Neither of my parents had many friends and, thinking about it now, I can see what a shock it must have been for both of them having to learn to deal with the real world outside the services at quite a late stage in their lives. Not only had my father never owned a house before – as a Captain, he’d always been on the move and wherever he’d hung his cap, that was home – he’d never even paid a bill. Nor had Mum ever needed to cook a meal or worry about domestic chores: Captain’s wives didn’t.

Perhaps that was why they didn’t quite know how to make a home for Nicky and me. We didn’t really have friends, either: my best friend was our cleaning lady’s son, who I used to play with on the landing at Far Hills.

While we were on Whale Island, the naval carpenters there had made me a beautiful wooden trunk full of oak bricks, which the cleaning lady’s son and I used to make forts from so that we could then fire things at each other. It was great fun but one day I must have thought he was cheating because I threw a brick at his head. There wasn’t much blood but that was the only time my father ever slippered me.

It may sound like a lonely life but I didn’t feel lonely. I was quite self-sufficient. I even provided myself with my own pocket money: half-crowns which I would take off my father’s dresser. They were big, chunky things – they looked substantial – and I’d generally spend them on sweets or model kits: planes, not boats, which I thought were a bit dull. Talk about adding insult to injury. It was only when I got to prep school that I realized what I had been missing out on socially. And there was another discovery, too: music.

‘Now Michael, you’re the son of a naval officer, you must behave like a naval officer and be strong at all times.’

I’ll never forget my father’s words to me as he left me, aged seven, at my prep school, The Leas in Hoylake, for my first term: he was wearing a smart tweed jacket, cavalry twills, brown suede shoes – and I was terrified.

Lying awake in my dormitory that night, boys either side whimpering and crying, a cold bath looming in the morning, I remember repeating Dad’s words to myself – ‘You’re the son of a naval officer: be strong, don’t show your feelings and you’ll be all right’ – and sure enough I was. For about three weeks. Then one morning when I was having my milk in the big gym hall it suddenly dawned on me: my parents had left me and I wouldn’t see them for another six weeks. I was trapped. I’d been done.

With my milk bottle still in my hand, I burst into tears and then howled all the way through the rest of the break. The other boys had got over it all weeks ago, of course, and were no doubt thinking, ‘What’s wrong with Rutherford?’ But I always was a bit slow getting there emotionally.

* * *

My father had also been to a prep school. It was in Rochester and, with its ‘chipped desks, cracked inkpots, primitive lavatories, characteristic smell and regimen of porridge, cottage pie, sausage rolls, suet roll and rice pudding’, was typical of its kind. That was in 1914, and things hadn’t changed much by the time I got to The Leas. The only real difference was that Dad had to wear an Eton jacket and white kid gloves for dancing lessons whereas I wore plimsoles – which wasn’t ideal because my partner, Jones Minor, always trod on my feet. He always had a runny nose, too.

I had only asked my parents for one thing before leaving for The Leas and that was that they’d promise me I wouldn’t have to do dancing lessons. Waltzing my way painfully round the gym a few weeks later I can remember feeling very let down.

I didn’t feel angry at being sent away but I did feel rather sorry for myself. After my first term at The Leas I’d made up my mind: there was no way I was going back for more. My parents were very clever about the situation, though. They never tried to sell the school to me. I think they knew I would smell a rat. Instead, Mum would say, ‘Now Mikey, we’re already in January, so we don’t count January. You’re coming home in March, so there’s only February. Four weeks!’ And I would think, ‘Oh yeah! What am I worrying about?’

It’s amazing what the passage of time does and how you can just get used to things. Looking back The Leas really wasn’t so bad: it was a big, four-storey building with creeper on it, grand front doors for the headmaster and lots of wings sticking out. Down an avenue of trees were the science blocks, playing fields and an indoor swimming pool (unheated, typically). There was also a roller-skating area – not exactly a rink – and in the evenings the light from the classrooms lit it up so that for about an hour after the bell went you could still skate. That was almost like freedom.

The food was generally disgusting – that was one thing that definitely hadn’t changed since 1914 – but there was a fruit hut, which was a bit like a cross between a Nissen hut and a refrigerated greenhouse. Every morning at elevenses we’d go there to choose something to have with our milk and the smell inside was fantastic.

Fruit was encouraged at The Leas and boys coming back from visits home would often bring baskets of oranges, apples and pears. My mother, who was quite eccentric on a food level, as well as on every other level, would send me back with pomegranates and lychees. (Bananas were a whole other story. During the holidays, if she ever saw me about to eat one with a brown bit in it, she’d take one look and say, ‘Oh, darling, that’s off. Give it to Dad.’)

I was a scout at The Leas, the leader of Squirrel Patrol. We’d have treasure hunts in which we would be sent into Hoylake to collect a list of various odd items against the clock. As I found out one day, this didn’t mean that you were allowed to take the bus. I thought I’d shown great ingenuity but it wasn’t appreciated by the master who beat me with a very hard slipper afterwards.

Scouts also meant scout camp every summer, which I loved. My father leant me his captain’s cap – an incredibly trusting thing for him to have done – and off we’d go to Wales, miles away from anywhere. We’d walk up Cader Idris and down scree slopes and do all kinds of other outward-bound type things. I thought the scoutmaster, Mr Waring, was great, although looking back now I slightly wonder whether his behaviour would be deemed appropriate these days. He had a lovely old Rolls-Royce with huge fenders and he’d drive round Wales with boys hanging off the sides.

I was never particularly sporty at school but I did excel at swimming and golf. I was always trying to beat a Malaysian boy at swimming: he was far superior to me and the only time I would manage it was when he wasn’t feeling well. There were a couple of times when I thought about dirty tactics – spiking his food and so on – but when I won a few rounds of golf and was made school Golf Captain I decided I would concentrate on being superior at that. (Admittedly, there weren’t too many other candidates fighting for the position but I was still proud of myself.)

I knew my father had a set of clubs somewhere as he would occasionally recount stories of playing golf with various dignitaries on his travels round the Empire and try to convince whoever would listen that his prowess was on a global scale too. The truth, however, was that he’d only played once since the Second World War. It was in 1952 and he was in Singapore at the time, staying with an RAF commander who co-opted him into his ‘Flying Boat Wing Team’. Realizing he might be a bit rusty, Dad tried to wriggle out of it but it was too late:

As a guest I could hardly make a run for it and an idea of pretending to strain a back muscle during a practice swing was too blatantly transparent.

In due course, I stood on the first tee before an expectant crowd but I did not feel nervous – the drinks and lunch saw to that – and a carefree mood swept over me. If I was to make a ghastly ass of myself – the hell with it!

As it was a short hole I selected an iron club with a head like a shovel and avoiding any practice swing lest I gouged a chunk out of the turf, I addressed the ball and swung.

My guardian angels, the drinks and the lunch ensured that I did not raise my head too soon and the ball screamed straight as a die up the fairway to appreciative murmurs from the onlookers.

So often on these occasions performance exceeds expectations.

As I did not care who won and had not the faintest idea of the score as my amiable opponent marked the card I adopted a relaxed style with no anxieties or inhibitions, my approach shots were confident and my putting deadly – my guardian angels being still in charge to the extent that one of my drives which shot off at a tangent towards some buildings hit a tree and returned to the fairway.

Suddenly, after I fluked a long putt which hit the back of the hole hard, jumped into the air and fell in, my opponent said, ‘Jolly good – your match!’ and on return to tea I found that I had defeated the opposition’s ace player. People said, ‘If you haven’t played for fourteen years you must have been a scratch or plus handicap player’ and I spent the rest of my time at Singapore avoiding offers of games from people who could really play golf.

I did not play again for another ten years when, then retired, I took part in the fathers’ match at my son’s prep school . . .

On the day of that fathers’ match, I wasn’t aware that I should have somehow got my father drunk before he stepped on to the course. We were standing on the first tee when Dad pulled out a rusty-looking wood-shafted driver that, to my eyes, hardly resembled a golf club at all it was so prehistoric. Especially as everyone else had steel-shafted clubs. When he took his first swing with such gusto that he managed to miss the ball completely, I just wanted a hole to appear next to me so that I could putt myself into it.

Unfazed, my father had another attempt and carried on, totally oblivious to my embarrassment. Luckily for me he also got better after that and by the end, even though we didn’t win, I was thoroughly enjoying it.

* * *

Sundays were the real highlight of my time at The Leas, though: lunch out with my parents followed by
Pick of the Pops
.

Leaving prep school on a Sunday always felt like getting out of prison: outside the colours looked brighter, the air smelled better . . . plus you got roast beef. My mother and father would arrive early in the morning to come to chapel – Dad in his cavalry twills, erect and composed, Mum waving and coo-eeing enthusiastically. Then we’d all drive into Hoylake and have lunch at a hotel. After that, Dad would patiently settle down with
The Times
and I would huddle up to the radio in the sitting area, still in my grey school shorts and blue cap, jostling for position with any other Leas boys who might be there too.

It’s hard to explain what an event
Pick of the Pops
was back then. Now, you can listen to anything you want at any time you want; there’s music in every single restaurant, every shop, every airport, every lift. In 1963 pop music was limited to three hours on a Sunday afternoon and the sense of anticipation was amazing. You would be counting the days until a Beatles album was released and when Alan Freeman finally played ‘She Loves You’ or ‘Please, Please Me’ the buzz would be tremendous – I can still feel it now. (The guitar riff from ‘You’ve Really Got Me’ by the Kinks was the same. Nothing that great has ever dated.) It was a blank canvas, pop music. There were no precedents so everything was new and unique and exciting and I loved it all: the Who, the Stones, the Small Faces, Joan Baez, Arthur Brown . . . although my first hero was, without question, Cliff Richard.