Spike: An Intimate Memoir. Norma Farnes

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СКАЧАТЬ woolly hat topped with a pompom. He looked up but did not greet me.

      ‘It’s freezing in here,’ I said.

      ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I hate the Americans.’

      Well, naturally. That explained everything. I later discovered that this reply summed up Spike’s convoluted logic, and its speed was typical of him. He would always fly to the conversational winning-post while others laboured over the hurdles of qualification and explanation, and he expected you to fly with him. If you could not, then bad luck. Should I tell him that the Romans invented central heating and not the Americans? I decided to leave it.

      I looked around the office. On top of a filing cabinet to his right were some packets of Swoop bird seed. Reminders of his family crowded every available surface. Drawings by his children; a very old toy dog; a much-cuddled teddy bear; two pairs of baby boots; a wool bonnet; and a large brown rosary which lay beside a smaller green one underneath a picture of a benevolent Jesus Christ. I wondered what His views were about all that went on in that room. Although there was electric light numerous oil lamps were dotted about, two on top of an upright piano before which stood a rickety chair. Shelves packed with files lined three walls and the fourth was covered with photographs of his children. A large Victorian bureau, double doors open wide, revealed numerous compartments, all open and filled. Every file, cassette and tape it contained looked to be neatly labelled. Under another window was a divan bed. What initially seemed chaotic had a streak of unorthodox order about it, not unlike the workings of his mind, as I would find out. Even a glance told me that this room was a refuge to him, and somewhere to kip when he felt like it.

      He opened the conversation with a few desultory questions, none of which amounted to much. I waited for him to get down to business. And waited.

      The Bureau had said he was forty-nine but at first glance he looked older, with what is now called designer stubble and was then considered the sign of a man too lazy to shave. There was an air of vulnerability about him and, despite my first impression, something childlike in his manner which made him seem younger than his years. We talked about this and that. Then, without any warning, looking me straight in the eye, he said, ‘You won’t mind if I shout at you from time to time, will you?’

      I had had experience of that sort of thing before. ‘No. Not if you don’t mind if I shout back.’

      He appeared crestfallen. ‘You must never do that. It would break me up.’ I could tell from his expression that it would. Suddenly he got up, took one of the packets of Swoop and sprinkled some seed over the balcony floor and the empty window boxes. ‘Morning, lads,’ he said, looking into the sky. Within a minute or so there were half a dozen pigeons tucking in.

      He turned to me, pointing at the birds. ‘That’s Hoppity. He’s a bugger, first every time. I reckon he’s an argumentative sod, always in fights. I bet that’s why he’s lame.’ He sat down behind a table and gazed at me, nothing rude about it, more of a dispassionate survey, I felt. ‘You’ve got legs just like Olive Oyl,’ he said. ‘Who’d want to make love to an elastic band?’

      ‘Another elastic band.’

      He grinned. ‘You’ll do for me.’

      I wondered whether he would do for me.

      He told me that at the end of February he was going to Australia to see his parents and do some work. When he came back at the end of June he would be in touch. I had not bargained for that but decided to stick with my job at the Independent Television Companies’ Association (ITCA) in the meantime, keeping an eye open for a vacancy in television production. I quite fancied working for Spike so if nothing spectacular came up I would wait for his call.

      June came and went and he had not rung. Then the Alfred Marks Bureau called. They wanted my permission to give Spike my telephone number, which he had lost. A few minutes later the phone rang.

      ‘Spike here. I’m back from Oz. Do you want to come and see if you still want to work in this madhouse?’

      I had had long enough to consider whether it was the right move but there would be no harm in seeing him again. So off to Number Nine for the second time. And I met a completely different Spike: bright, alert and brimming with energy. Yes, I thought, I’ll give it a whirl, if only for a few months. It might be fun.

      I told him I would have to give a month’s notice to the ITCA so could start at the end of August. That was fine by him because he was taking his family on holiday to Tunisia so would see me again on 29 August. He took me downstairs to a room immediately behind reception and left me with his agent, David Conyers, to sort out the details. David suggested I start early and have a week to settle in before Spike’s return. It was all very informal. Yes, I thought to myself, it could be very pleasant working here.

       Chapter Two

      I could have been born in a different galaxy from the frenetic world of Number Nine. In fact it was at 45 Barnard Street, Thornaby On Tees, on New Year’s Eve 1934. The town, tucked between Middlesbrough and Stockton, was still suffering from the deprivations of the Depression. My father was lucky with a construction job at ICI Billingham, a dangerous occupation but comparatively well paid. My mother was a rarity in those pre-war years because she was a working mum and served behind the counter of Robinson’s, an upmarket department store.

      At that time sons and daughters generally lived in the same neighbourhood as their parents and family ties were strong, if somewhat binding for those with an instinct to break the mould. After school, when my friends had tea with their mums, I went to my maternal grandmother’s house, two doors away from our own. When Mum finished work she often came for tea with us, not a dainty Ritz-like affair with cucumber sandwiches but a knife and fork meal with ham and salad or a Newbould’s pork pie.

      My parents were judged to be somewhat unusual. They were among the very few people on our street to cast their votes for the Conservative Party and did not mind who knew it. And although my straight-as-a-die Dad conformed to the archetype of the working man in that he was a sports fanatic, there the resemblance ended. He went to his barber every Saturday morning, not just for a haircut but a manicure. He must have been the only manual worker on Teesside to do so. He was also a non-smoker and almost teetotal, but could be persuaded to have a whisky at Christmas. And he was potty about variety theatre.

      As soon as he decided I was old enough Dad took me with him to the Middlesbrough Empire on Wednesday evenings, Saturdays too if there had been a change of act during the week. The ritual never altered. At the interval he would say, ‘Come on. We’ll go and see Ally at work in the Circle Bar.’ In fifteen minutes Ally could serve more pints than it is possible to imagine. Although a big woman she would swoop gracefully from customers to the pumps, arrange six pint glasses in a hand as big as a navvy’s and fill them with just the right amount of froth on top. Then in one fluid movement she would bang the pints down, take the money, scatter change on the counter and somehow pull another six.

      Visitors from out of town were told not to miss Ally. Even the artistes came to witness her performance. ‘She’s a class act,’ my father claimed he heard one customer tell a comedian who had died before the interval. ‘Better than owt on stage. So far, that is.’

      Dad’s favourite acts were peerless comic Jimmy James; Wilson, Kepel and Betty, the sand dancers; comedians Rob Wilton and Billy Bennett, and the incomparable G. H. Elliott, who, blacked-up, sang ‘Lily of Laguna’ hauntingly as he glided across the stage. Above all Dad idolized a great ballad singer, fiery Dorothy Squires. After meeting in the Empire bar СКАЧАТЬ