Spike: An Intimate Memoir. Norma Farnes

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СКАЧАТЬ so that we were able to disdain offers of lifts from lorries and small cars; luxury sedans and saloons became our favoured mode of transport. We were careful to stay on the main road to the south, never hitched after five o’clock and as travelling was free we stayed at decent hotels, not only because they were cleaner but because they might contain eligible young men.

      Over the next few years I went back to France and visited Italy and Spain with Pat and then another friend, Aideen Thornton. On the second trip I met someone who made a lasting impression, though we knew each other for only a few days.

      It happened on the Champs Elysées. Aideen was taking my photograph with the boulevard’s nameplate in the background so I could show off back home. Then as it was her turn a tall man in his late twenties asked, ‘Would you like me to take both of you?’ Talk about hearts stopping. He was a young English Gary Cooper, slim, smart and outrageously handsome. Unbelievably, he said he was hitch-hiking. Hitch-hiking! He looked as though his everyday conveyance should be a Rolls.

      ‘Where to?’ I asked.

      ‘Juan-les-Pins. And you?’

      There was no hesitation. ‘Juan-les-Pins.’

      He smiled captivatingly. Would we care to join him for coffee? Would we. Over coffee he proved to be a fabulous raconteur. He knew Paris like a native and the afternoon whizzed by. How about dinner at this tiny bistro? How could we refuse? With him I would have shared a baguette on the beach. John, as he was called, told us he was staying in Paris for three or four days and between us we soon persuaded Aideen that we should do the same, to see the sights, of course.

      He was the most charming man I had ever met, always immaculate in a spotless white shirt and one of those famous public school ties. He showed us Paris as expertly as, and a lot more charmingly than, a tourist guide but every evening at nine o’clock he turned Cinderella. He would look at his watch, apologize and leave. I wondered who she was.

      On the morning we were to say goodbye he arrived with two brown carrier bags. His luggage. I could not believe it. True, he said. Inside the first, very neatly folded, was his underwear, plus three or four white shirts, a toilet bag and a jar of Frank Cooper’s coarse-cut marmalade. In the second was a pair of shoes by John Lobb, complete with trees. They weighed a ton. Definitely an eccentric, I thought. Why did he not carry everything in a rucksack like other hitch-hikers?

      If I had asked him to wear brown boots in London he could not have been more horrified. ‘Oh dear me no. Most definitely not.’ There was a suggestion of a shudder. In his world rucksacks were definitely not de rigueur. I was glad he had not seen us on the road.

      ‘We must meet in Juan-les-Pins,’ he said. Not only a charmer but a mind reader. ‘Let’s split up now, go our separate ways and meet in three days. At the Hotel .’ I have forgotten the name of the hotel but not him.

      We made Juan in two days. The next afternoon we met, as arranged, at his hotel, naturally the one with the most stars of any in the resort. He was draped languidly but elegantly in a chair at the best table with a glass of wine. He seemed as delighted to see us as we were to see him and we arranged to travel to Cannes, the queen of the Riviera. The next morning we met outside his hotel at the arranged time, but he had forgotten something in his room. Great. I would go with him. I wanted to see inside this famous hotel.

      ‘Come along,’ he said. But instead of going into the hotel he walked away from it.

      ‘Where are you going?’ I said.

      ‘To my hotel.’

      ‘Isn’t this it?’

      He laughed. ‘I couldn’t afford their prices.’

      I was disappointed although I should have realized that if he chose to hitch-hike he too must be on a budget. Aideen and I followed him along side streets well away from the promenade, through a quiet courtyard, and stopped at a brightly painted house which looked like a private home.

      He invited us up and ushered us into his barely furnished room. He had his back to us as he sorted through a drawer and I caught a glimpse of a passport on the wash stand. I thumbed through it quickly and the shock rocked me on my heels. ‘John Huggins, Clerk in Holy Orders.’

      ‘You’re a clergyman!’ I gasped.

      He nodded. ‘A vicar.’

      ‘How come you’re hitch-hiking?’

      ‘It’s a bit complicated.’

      ‘Uncomplicate it for me.’

      It was the only time I saw him slightly embarrassed. ‘You see –’ he started, almost in a whisper, then hesitated.

      ‘Go on.’

      ‘I was caught kissing a girl in the vestry.’

      ‘Well, I suppose the vestry isn’t the place for that, but it’s not criminal.’

      Again a hesitation, then a cough. ‘It was a shock to my wife.’

      Not as big a shock as the ‘wife’ was to me. I could excuse a kiss. But a married man …

      After it happened, he explained, everyone thought it better that he should leave the district. I suppose it had shocked the strait-laced among his parishioners but even in those days the offence did not seem to merit the punishment. That was why he was in France. He had no private means but was bilingual and worked as an interpreter. He explained his disappearance every evening: he was being hired by wealthy tourists who might lose thousands at the casino if they said ‘Oui’ at the wrong time.

      ‘I’ve let everybody down,’ he said, looking so crestfallen I could have hugged him. ‘The church, my wife, the family, they’re all very critical, except my brother, Jeremy. But he’s different. He’s an actor.’

      I had never heard of an actor called Jeremy Huggins.

      ‘His professional name is Jeremy Brett,’ said John.

      The name meant nothing until I saw Brett many years later as an unforgettable Sherlock Holmes. He was good-looking all right, and female viewers swooned over him, but John was the more handsome brother.

      After this discovery a black cloud seemed to have settled over Cannes, but being only twenty, I found my spirits revived in the days that followed, and I was dazzled once more by his charm. The two of us went out together on our last night in Juan before leaving for Cap Ferrat. As we left the bistro he repeated what he had done in the vestry. It was our first and last kiss. A street photographer spotted us and took our picture. His resulting panic was out of all proportion. ‘My wife’s put a detective on me! It’ll be a divorce if she sees the picture.’ Paranoid no doubt, but the next morning as he said a more formal goodbye he gave me a gardenia. I knew he could not afford it, which made it all the more touching.

      ‘Meet me in Juan when you decide to go home,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you how to travel back in style.’ He explained his method. Before leaving he visited the best hotel to find out from the concierge whether he was expecting any English visitors who would be driven to the Riviera by their chauffeurs. Their employers considered it cheaper to send them back to England for the month or so of their holidays and then ring for them when they decided to make the return trip. He travelled back with the chauffeurs, who ‘appreciated the company.’ He was unashamedly elitist about it. ‘I get the chauffeurs’ СКАЧАТЬ