Fixing Sixty Six

by Tim Flower

  I interjected, ‘Or her, Harry,’ and immediately regretted doing so.

  ‘Or her,’ he added impatiently, ‘your three months’ work for free.’

  Although accurate, his description made the arrangement sound distinctly unattractive.

  ‘Exactly. Although, as you might imagine, I’m hoping I won’t end up doing three months’ work for nothing.’

  Harry didn’t empathise. Instead, he sought to shift more risk onto me.

  ‘There also has to be a… what do you call it… when you have time to change your mind and you don’t have to go ahead?’ It was clear I hadn’t been the only one cogitating over the previous hour.

  ‘Do you mean a cooling off period?’ I said, feeling irritated again. I was offering to write his story, not insure his life.

  ‘That’s it. If, after we’ve started, I find you’re not right for it, I can call it off.’

  ‘And the bloke you replace me with gets my work product?’

  He ignored my dig. ‘Yes, I can’t afford to waste any time.’

  ‘How long do you need to decide whether I am the right one?’ I asked, expecting him to say twenty-four or forty-eight hours.

  ‘You normally get thirty days, don’t you?’

  ‘You’re asking for a month’s trial?’

  ‘I suppose that’s what it amounts to.’

  I felt my confidence in both him and the story wane. Harry wanted to be free to simply change his mind. I could expend a great deal of time working on his story, only for him to decide he’d rather give it to different journalist - a male one, perhaps.

  The issues with the story were tangling in my mind, like washing in a machine. Contriving an opportunity to untangle them, I said, ‘Harry, I’m going to chase up my coffee and take advantage of their facilities. I’ll be right back.’

  Having established that the hotel had unilaterally cancelled my latte order because they didn’t have skimmed milk, I took refuge in the “Smallest Place for Ladies”.

  Even if Harry’s story did live up to its headlines, I told myself, in the absence of a corroborative source, there would inevitably be a twenty-four-point question-mark over its authenticity - and, therefore, its marketability. It demanded a huge time commitment and I could end up with nothing in return. Whilst I had some savings, with the top-up on Mum’s residential care to pay for, I wasn’t in any financial position to work pro bono.

  On the other hand, I was being offered the British equivalent of Watergate, from an exceptional source: a former insider at Number 10. If I declined, I could be forgoing a unique opportunity to expose, for the very first time, the truth about the state of our nation in the mid-sixties. And if Harry’s cancer got the better of him before he found another journalist to write his story, the truth - assuming that’s what it was - could be lost for ever.

  I finished pretending to tinker with my rudimentary makeup and returned to the terrace. There I found, Harry refilling his pipe and, cooling on my half of the table, a cappuccino with chocolate sprinkles I hadn’t ordered.

  Before I could reject the unwanted coffee, Harry asked impatiently, ‘So, do we have a deal?’

  I had decided I simply couldn’t pass on Williegate. It offered an opportunity to expose myths that had beguiled the majority of the nation - and my father in particular - for the last fifty years. But I had to manage the risks.

  ‘Yes, provided I can have the same cooling off period.’ Within a month, I hoped to be able to judge whether the story would “stand up”. This way, if I wasn’t confident it would, I could pull out before I’d wasted too much time on it.

  Harry gazed at me, as if trying to see inside my head. He then took out a Swan Vesta, struck it on the paving beside his chair and started puffing like a steam locomotive. ‘When could we start?’

  ‘So you’re okay with the trial basis being mutual, are you?’

  ‘That depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On when you can start.’

  I needed a few moments to think. ‘Excuse me, Harry: I’m just going to give them back their cappuccino.’

  I wandered inside the hotel, left the coffee on the nearest table and thought quickly.

  We both had the same strong incentive to begin as soon as possible. In a matter of weeks, his ability to tell his story could be seriously compromised or lost entirely.

  There was no one I had to be in London for anymore. Whilst Tom, my adult son, still didn’t earn enough to move out, he would be delighted to have the house to himself.

  I could get a room at the hotel (or an equally modest establishment nearby), drive to Birmingham, where Cameron was speaking, to probe him on his referendum machinations, and return to the room that night, ready to begin work the following morning.

  I headed back to the terrace and, whilst still standing, said to Harry, ‘How about ten o’clock tomorrow, right here?’

  ‘Do you mean by that, ten twenty-five?’ He winked.

  He was lucky his story’s teaser was compelling and his condition aroused my compassion, because he wasn’t going to woo me with his charm. ‘I take it you agree. In which case, I’ll put it all down in writing for you.’

  ‘There’s no need for that,’ he said dismissively. ‘I trust you.’

  I don’t know whether it was because he was a fellow journalist but, despite us having not yet built anything resembling a rapport, I instinctively trusted him too. ‘Likewise, Harry. Likewise.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Wednesday, 6th April 2016

  By nine forty-five the following morning, I was back on the awning-covered terrace at the First Place Hotel. I had managed to see, but sadly not skewer, David Cameron. However, I had succeeded in booking a rare single room at the hotel for the next month and so, by staying on site, could ensure I didn’t keep my testy source waiting.

  I had laid out my shorthand notebooks and pens on the large, round, rattan-effect table, and checked that my digital recorder was fully charged. Fortunately, the day was fine and warm for early April, so the patio heater wasn’t attempting to bring the entire Earth’s atmosphere up to temperature and I could sit comfortably, with a black Americano and a clear conscience, and wait for my “Deep Throat” to arrive.

  I checked my phone every few minutes. When it displayed “09:57” and there was no sign of Harry, I began to wonder whether he’d had second thoughts. On reflection, had he decided someone white and male would do a better job? Andrew Marr, perhaps?

  However, two minutes later he arrived carrying a bulging, Tesco “bag for life”. With nothing more than a sharp ‘Morning’, he tucked the bag underneath his chair, laid his pipe and accessories on the table and ordered his usual refreshment.

  I expected he would be impatient to tell his story in his way. Given the opportunity, he would straightaway launch into describing the events he wished to highlight. Once a source is motoring forward in this way, powered by a strong personal narrative, it’s not easy to persuade her or him to stop and give you the necessary context and background. Therefore, as soon as he had been served his tea and lit his pipe, I switched on my recorder and asked Harry how he came to work in Fleet Street.

  ‘Why do you need to know that?’

  His defensiveness took me aback. ‘Isn’t that a good place to start?’

  ‘This is a story about the Wilson Government of ‘66 - not about me.’

  ‘You are the source of it, Harry - the only source, apparently. Necessarily, it is about you too. Readers of the story - and, more critically for you, potential buyers - will want to know how a docker’s son from Birkenhead came to be working at Number 10.’

  ‘In my day it was: this is the story; those are the facts; that’s what they said; phone it in. Job done.’

  ‘When I was a political correspondent, it was the same - except I typed it up myself and sent it electronically. However, this isn’t a five-hundred-word story, Harry. At least, I hope it isn’t. More like a five-hundred-page book, serialised by a national
newspaper over a good few days. When this is published, you will become an instant celebrity. People will want to know everything about you.’

  He looked perturbed, but didn’t comment.

  ‘You do understand that, don’t you?’

  ‘It doesn’t bother me,’ he said in a weak show of bravado.

  Harry didn’t strike me as someone who would relish being in the public eye. I wondered if, by the publication date, he was banking on being uncontactable.

  ‘Okay good.’

  ‘Let’s get on with it then,’ he said impatiently. ‘What do you need to know?’

  Based on the brief answers he then gave me, in the course of what seemed more like an interrogation than an interview, I subsequently compiled the following curriculum vitae covering his early career as a journalist:

  Harry Mullaly was born in 1936. After leaving school he joined the Liverpool Echo as a photographic messenger. Sitting on the grass behind the goal at football matches, he could see what the press box couldn’t and started to write it up. In this way, he graduated to being a sports reporter.

  After his National Service in the army, he got a job with the Daily Mail’s sports team in Manchester. That’s how he met Nell, his former wife. She was born in Italy. Her parents were Italian Jews who came to Britain as refugees in 1938. She was working as an interpreter for an Italian football manager, whose team was playing Manchester United at Old Trafford.

  She and Harry married in 1961, the same year their daughter, Alison, was born. In 1962, the Daily Mirror spotted Harry’s talent, and he became their football reporter in Manchester, where Nell’s family lived. Two years later, on the back of an interview he did with Bill Shankly - the manager of the new League champions, Liverpool - the London editor offered him a similar job in Fleet Street.

  In an attempt to energise the interview, I asked him about his career defining move down south.

  ‘How was it being admitted to the home of British journalism in what was soon to be dubbed “Swinging London”?’

  If I had asked him about being summarily sacked, his reply couldn’t have been more subdued. ‘In 1964, my ultimate ambition was to report on England winning the World Cup at Wembley in two years’ time. Moving to Fleet Street got me two hundred miles closer to achieving this.’

  ‘How about Nell?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘How did she feel about coming down to London?’

  ‘What’s she got to do with it?’

  I silently thanked goodness I had reserved the right to cancel our arrangement. ‘You’re a journalist, Harry - or were. I need some background. You know that.’

  ‘If I’d have asked…’ He appeared to grasp for words that were just beyond his reach. ‘You know the England manager in ‘66…’

  ‘Alf Ramsey.’ Another name that my father had embedded in my brain.

  ‘If I’d have asked Alf Ramsey to describe his wife’s feelings about…,’ he paused again, ‘anything actually, that would have been the last time he’d have ever given me an interview.’

  ‘Okay, Harry: I’ve got the message.’ I tried not to sound irritated, but probably failed. ‘How do you want to do this? It’s your story: you tell me.’

  ‘I want to start on the actual story, so we finish before I meet my maker. In other words, let’s skip the “His best friend at school was Glenda Jackson” bit and cut to the— ’

  ‘Glenda Jackson? Was she?’ I knew Glenda from my time at Westminster. I couldn’t imagine her and Harry being two peas in a pod.

  ‘Here we go again,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘We went to the same school. That’s all. The end.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Harry. Where would you like to start?’

  He took the Tesco carrier from beneath his chair, put it on his lap and produced from it what looked like a classic flight bag. But on the faded blue fabric, instead of an airline logo, there was a picture of “World Cup Willie”, in his Union Flag waistcoat. Harry unzipped the bag and took out handfuls of used, shorthand notebooks, each carrying a date in 1966. He carefully arranged them on the table in front of us.

  ‘How about we start at the beginning,’ he said.

  The notebooks, piled several deep in places, covered the table. ‘Are these your notes Harry?’

  He nodded.

  ‘When did you make them?’

  ‘On the dates it says on the covers.’

  ‘So they’re contemporaneous?’ I said excitedly. With a crotchety late-septuagenarian sole source, I thought, they could be gold dust.

  ‘Not strictly. They told me on no account should I make any record of what I was doing.’

  ‘Who are “they”?’

  ‘No 10. Specifically Forsyth. But it’s no good saying that to a reporter.’ Harry smirked. ‘I made notes incessantly. You could never be sure what would prove useful.’

  He was right: telling a journalist not to take notes is like asking a politician to be frank.

  ‘As, obviously, I couldn’t be seen to be writing anything down, they aren’t actually contemporaneous. But I’d make them often within hours, and never any later than the same day, whilst it was all still fresh in my mind.’

  ‘Can I take a look?’

  ‘You won’t be able to read them. They’re all in the old Pitman shorthand.’

  Harry was right. Turning the cover of one of the notebooks revealed for me just a mass of meaningless squiggles. I tried to learn the successor version of Pitman, but I couldn’t get on with it and taught myself Speedwriting instead. ‘Pity. I could have taken them away to read. It would have sped up the process. But it’s a great you’ve got them to refer to.’

  Harry took back the notebook I had been examining and carefully returned it to its chronological place on the table.

  ‘When do your notes start?’ I asked.

  He picked up the top notebook from the pile furthest from me. ‘23rd February 1966. Very appropriately, as it turned out.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘On that day England beat West Germany at Wembley.’

  ‘I thought the World Cup was played in the summer?’

  ‘It was. But what most people have long forgotten is that the teams played a friendly earlier the same year.’

  ‘But that wouldn’t have been particularly significant at the time. Why did you start your notes then?’

  ‘Because that’s when it all changed.’

  Harry gazed into the distance, widening his eyes and pursing his mouth. Then he snatched up his pipe and broke two matches in the process of lighting it. After taking a long draw and expelling the smoke like steam from a whistle, he looked at me with moist eyes and said, ‘You know, back then I was living the dream, getting paid to do what I loved: watch football. The World Cup in England was less than twenty weeks away and I was going to be there, reporting on it, to five million readers. I had a beautiful wife, a kid, a nice new house in Finchley. I was on top of the world.’

  ‘So, what happened on 23rd February?’

  He gave me a resigned smile and started sharing with me, in strict chronological order, the contents of his meticulously kept notebooks.

  What follows is Harry’s story, as he told it in this way to me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  NINETEEN SIXTY SIX: Wednesday, 23rd February

  ‘Official programme - only a shilling.’

  ‘Hot dogs! Hamburgers!’

  ‘Rattles and scarves. Support your country.’

  Like the two sides that would soon take to the pitch of the famous Empire Stadium, Wembley, the street traders on Empire Way were rehearsing for that summer’s World Cup. As were the ticket touts.

  ‘Tickets for the match. Who needs tickets!’

  Fortunately, I didn’t have to do business with the likes of “Fat Stan” Flashman (who claimed he could get you tickets for anything - including a Royal Garden Party). I had my press pass and the Daily Mirror had kindly donated a ticket for my Da.

  The paper acquired the tic
kets for the bosses to entertain important people; therefore, they would always be for decent seats, in the North or South stands. Since the supply for ‘friendlies’ at Wembley invariably exceeded the demand from those on high (and February’s England v West Germany match was a ‘friendly’, if only in the sense that it wasn’t part of a competition) I could generally get free tickets for them by sweet-talking the secretaries at the top of the building.

  ‘Get yer rosette, all the teams.’

  ‘Chestnuts, hot chestnuts.’

  ‘Wear yer colours.’

  Da pointed to a couple in their late teens or twenties buying a blue and white stripped football rattle. ‘Look at ‘em. Yer can’t tell if they’re fellas or birds.’ He was of the generation that disapproved of the Beatle cut. They could have accused him of jealousy. For, hidden beneath his flat cap, Da had a Bobby Charlton like comb-over.

  His whole attire left no room for doubt as to his gender, or even social class. He wore a black donkey jacket over a coarse, blue open-necked shirt, moleskin “kecks” and black, steel-toed boots. Ma had made some sarnies for his tea and he carried them in an old gas mask case, together with a bottle of light ale. Walking with him towards Wembley’s imposing twin towers in my working attire - a grey car coat, navy flannel trousers and a white shirt with a skinny tie - I am ashamed to say, I felt a little embarrassed at the prospect of taking him into the posh seats.

  Da’s habit of speaking his mind, in a thick Scouse accent and at full volume, heightened this unease. ‘Did yer ‘ear them?’ he cried, referring to a gaggle of West Germans chanting their support. ‘Bloody krauts. You’d think thems had won the war.’

  He usually watched his football standing on the terraces at The Kop end at Liverpool. With him being a staunch republican, I hadn’t let on that, for this match, he would be sitting in the Royal Box (although I knew he would secretly enjoy it). Having checked that none of the recognisable Royals were due to attend, I had merely told him he would be sitting near the halfway line.

  Walking up a few flights of steps to the Royal Box, left Da coughing and wheezing. He was employed under the National Dock Labour Board Scheme in Liverpool and used to unload some very dusty cargoes. The work was hard and “casual”. He would have to attend a “call” at 8.00am every working day and stand in his “pen” at Birkenhead docks with the other “holdsmen” and wait to see if he was chosen. If he wasn’t, he would return for the afternoon call. Sometimes he had to go as far as Preston or Manchester to get work. Although he denied having any chest problems, he had recently been excused from working in dusty conditions. Watching him struggle to reach the mid-tier of the North stand, I couldn’t see it had helped him any.