Spike: An Intimate Memoir. Norma Farnes

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СКАЧАТЬ for her, not that she needed any help because she could be as tough as a bar-room brawler. Whenever she was within travelling distance of Thornaby Dad would be in the audience, and through all her tempestuous affairs he was the one who listened quietly to talk of her latest love and the inevitable parting which had given her so much pain – temporarily at least, for there was always a new man in her life. (This was before she married Roger Moore.)

      Dad knew that Dorothy could be a demanding monster with the hide of a politician, and, like many of that breed, she was often ruthless and unforgiving. But because of her talent he excused her frailties. She was the very opposite of my mother. Mum never threw tantrums, was content with her lot and, in the jargon of today, she gave Dad space to enjoy his interests. It was not all one-way traffic, though. Mum took the view that what was good for him was good for her so she went to the local dance halls with her girlfriends. Strange as it may seem, I am sure neither of them strayed.

      My parents often went backstage to see Dorothy after the curtain came down and one evening, when I was about twelve years old, they took me along with them. I was utterly bewitched by this glamorous singer.

      As well as inheriting my parents’ love of entertainment I also picked up their pecuniary habits. In those depressing times half the men in our street were unemployed and dependent on the dole and often the pawnshop. If they could wangle something new for the house it would be on hire purchase. My parents considered this a device of the devil. If they could not pay cash they did without.

      Religion played a large part in my mother’s life. She said her prayers every night until she died so it was not surprising that I was sent to Sunday School from an early age. It was never a chore to me and at fourteen I was asked to teach the younger children there. I did it for three years until I fell out with the new vicar.

      Everyone in my extended family seemed content with their way of life, as they remain to this day, and yet in my teens I had an urge to get away, to broaden my horizons and to travel. There had to be something more interesting than a future in Thornaby.

      Many people reminisce about golden school days but they could not end soon enough for me. I was good at shorthand and typing, becoming sufficiently proficient to teach both for a time at night school, but did not shine at anything else apart from sport. After I left at sixteen my first job was at Head Wrightson, a local steelworks, as receptionist, typist, telephonist and general dogsbody. The manager, a Mr Cussons, treated everyone with charm and courtesy and inspired a family atmosphere. But as with most families, there was an awkward one, the pinstriped junior manager of our small office. Bombastic and opinionated were his better traits. One day some money was found to be missing and he as good as accused me of stealing it. When I went home that evening I told my father. He was furious.

      ‘Right, I’ll come to the office with you and have it out.’

      ‘No,’ I insisted. ‘I’ll do it myself.’ I did not want anyone to think I was a wimp.

      Dad advised me to confront him and demand that he should call the police. When I did he spluttered like a pricked sausage and I knew I had come across my first bully. He flushed and scuttled out of the office, but did not have the grace to apologize, although the missing money was not mentioned again. In my remaining time there he kept out of my way, which was fine by me. But after eighteen months I got itchy feet and successfully applied for a job as shorthand typist at ICI, then the largest employer on Teesside, at Kiora House, a mansion two miles north of Stockton.

      I was there for three years, at first in the typists’ pool under the strict eye of Winnie Gatenby. She was not the Miss Brodie type, more Mother Hen, because her girls were definitely not crème de la crème. Rather we were young, boy crazy, and spent our days discussing the shortcomings or otherwise of the young men who worked in the building and what had happened at the Saturday dance at Saltburn Spa. Winnie often had to crack the whip, which she always did rather apologetically.

      It was a very happy office. There was the usual flirting but cupboards were used for their intended purpose and it was all fairly innocent. I have no memories of winters at Kiora. It always seemed to be summer, with sandwich lunches on the lawn, where we would bask and gossip until it was time to return to work. It was then that I developed a crush on a BBC television newsreader, Kenneth Kendall. I cut his photograph out of the Radio Times and stuck it on the wall to the left of my desk so I could gaze at it every time I flicked back the typewriter carriage. My dream was to meet him but as he was out of reach I was left with the local talent. I was quite devoted, however, and when we were moved to another ICI country house, down came Kenneth and up he went on another wall in our new home.

      But I felt restless, and soon afterwards I realized a long-held ambition to go to modelling school. I had always been interested in fashion and grooming. ICI gave me a leave of absence and Dad the necessary wherewithal, and off I went to the Lucy Clayton School in Grosvenor Place, London, which was then considered to be the very best. There I joined twenty girls for a month-long course. Although at five feet five I was an inch too small to qualify for the Mannequin Certificate, the all-important diploma for those who wanted to follow in the footsteps of Barbara Goalen and my idol, Fiona Campbell-Walters, I graduated in every other respect.

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

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

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

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

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