The Co-Op's Got Bananas

by Hunter Davies

  Margaret and I had a chalet to ourselves, but ate and drank with all the campers. Heats for the glamorous grannies had been running all summer at the various Butlin’s all over the country. Now three judges, including me, had to decide on a winner. They were all stunning, amazingly preserved, fabulously coiffured and made up. Some were quite old, i.e. around forty or fifty, but a few were only in their thirties. One, aged thirty-four, said she had had a daughter at seventeen who had now recently given birth.

  We chose the winner, there was a grand dinner, with music and entertainment by the Redcoats, then Margaret and I went to bed in our chalet, carefully locking the door, as it looked a bit fragile. We had just climbed into bed when there was a tremendous banging at the door. I opened it to find one of the grannies standing there – one who had not won but who had made it to the final shortlist. She was absolutely furious and blamed me, shouting at me, demanding an explanation for why I had not chosen her.

  ‘Everyone says I look like the Queen Mother, they always do, go on ask anyone. So why did you not pick me? I know it was you, don’t lie . . .’

  I managed to wedge the door with my foot to keep her out but she was pushing and shouting, determined to come in. She might have had a few drinks. Then she got all flirtatious, fluttering her eyelashes, as if jumping into bed with me now would make the judges alter their minds.

  I said I had chosen her, she was my number one, but the other judges had overruled me. Eventually I pushed her away before she managed to get into the chalet, and into my bed, where of course Margaret was trying to sleep, praying that she never had to spend a weekend in a holiday camp ever again. Even if it was free.

  There was another time we went away together to the seaside, not as a freebie, for a romantic break, just the two of us. She was supposedly working hard for her final exams, or schools as they were then called at Oxford, but we still met most weekends. She either came to London or I went through to Oxford, much nearer now, compared with Manchester, and quick, as I could afford to go on the train.

  We looked at a map; I talked to people in the office, asked where the really attractive seaside places near London were. Rye was recommended, and Camber Sands. I rang a pub which had rooms and said I wanted a double. They asked for my name and address – and if I was married. They did not allow unmarrieds to sleep together in the same room. Otherwise I would need to book two rooms. This was a pub, in a remote area, 1959, in the wicked South, or so we Cumbrians had been led to believe. I said of course we were married.

  We arrived too early, and the pub wouldn’t let us in, so we went for a walk on Camber Sands. We walked for ages, trying to get to the sea, but gave up as the tide was so far out. When we were eventually allowed into the pub, I had to sign us in as Mr and Mrs Davies. It looked strange, written down in the residents’ book. Margaret had to write her name as well – Mrs Davies. Which was something she had said she never wanted to happen.

  29

  DOUBLE THRILLS

  Margaret had always said she was never going to have children. She didn’t want to be responsible for bringing another human being into the world, which was a pretty rotten place. So, therefore, why get married? It was logical not to.

  She was always very hot on logic, most of it pessimistic, that things would go wrong, and if they went right, it would not be for long. She had reasons and explanations for every eventuality, all quite convincing, except I was never convinced. With people, I always believe the best in everyone. With events and life and all that, I believe the best is yet to come, though really, it is pretty good now.

  Our really awful rows and arguments had settled down over the last four years, when I used to sulk or she would storm off. They hadn’t ceased, but we had a modus operandi to deal with them. One way was to stop the other going back over who had started it, who had said what. We had always been doing that, arguing about the argument, which always led to more arguments. Another way was not to let it last till bedtime, to call a truce at the end of the day. Strangely enough, the next day’s petty disagreements always seemed to follow the same old pattern as the day before.

  When we stayed overnight in the pub at Rye, I did buy her a ring – a pretend wedding ring from Woolworths, bought specially for that occasion. She also had a pretend engagement ring she had worn on our sailing holiday in Holland, made of coal, which turned her fingers black when it rained. We were told it was a real stone, which it was, made of haematite. The point of these fake rings was for appearances. It is hard to believe now how difficult society made it for couples to sleep together, even long-established courting couples.

  Then, of course, there were her parents. They could not help it, being products of their generation. They had seen and heard of the social and economic devastation caused by having a baby out of wedlock, so they would have been appalled by the thought of their offspring enjoying carnal relations without being married. And of what other people would say, if they ever found out. There was also the fact that ‘Jesus would not like it’. Which was how Lily, Margaret’s mother, thought. So we always had to keep up pretences in front of Margaret’s parents, about how often Margaret was visiting me, and what we were doing.

  During the summer of 1959, my first in London, in my own rather des res, Margaret stayed with me most of the time from June, when she broke up, to October – but she could not tell her parents that. Instead, she told them she would be mostly in Europe. All her well-off girlfriends at Somerville were off to exotic places, or their luxurious family villas. Margaret wrote in advance a series of postcards to her parents, showing scenes of Paris, Venice, Rome and elsewhere, depending on when and where her friends were going. They were supposed to post each one on a certain date, following a certain order, so that when Margaret said from Paris that she was having a great time there and next week would be in Venice, the Venice card did not arrive before the Paris one. One of the girls did get the order wrong, which puzzled Margaret’s father, Arthur. He loved reading postcards, kept them in an album, examining the stamps and the postmarks, turning them over and muttering, ‘Oh aye, oh aye’, a sure sign that something was puzzling him. As Margaret explained, the post in France and Italy is useless, not like England. That seemed to satisfy him.

  I didn’t tell my own mother the true facts about us either, but I didn’t worry about her. She didn’t really take in such things as arrangements and places and addresses, and, anyway, as far as she was concerned I had gone, flown the nest.

  Traditionally, working-class parents don’t worry about their sons as much as their daughters.

  Nevertheless, all this pretending to her parents, all the complications with booking places, did become annoying. And there was one obvious and easy solution to it. I can’t say it was the most important reason for getting married, but it was one of them. It was mainly that we had got to that stage in life and in our relationship when, at that time in the Western world, it was what people did. My generation did marry young, in their early twenties, and it was often really for sexual reasons, to sleep together.

  I never proposed. Never went down on one knee, far less asked Arthur for his daughter’s hand. I would have got a good kicking, or looks that could have withered. Whenever over the last few years she had said that she did not want to get married, I would always reply, ‘Who’s asking you?’

  Marriage just sort of happened. I know, I am always saying that, or telling myself that, but there was no definite moment when I remember that we agreed, yes, we will get married. It just became sort of inevitable. It seemed obvious that she would come and live with me in London, so why not get married, make it simple and easy?

  She was keen to leave Oxford and move to London, but had no idea what she might do, what sort of work or career. She had turned down that Woman’s Own offer, having no interest in journalism. She felt she did not have the cheek and impudence to ask people questions. As a young girl, she had wanted to be a missionary, and then an MP. Those ambitions had rather faded. All she knew was that she
wanted to be independent, earn her own money, not be reliant on a husband, as her mother had been, as almost all mothers had been for centuries.

  She had realised in about her second year at Oxford that she was not academic after all, having gone through her school life with everyone telling her she was. She found it tedious having to write essays to a formula, having to be controlled and measured, saying ‘on the one hand’ and then ‘on the other’. She felt she’d had more of a spark, more originality, before she went to Oxford, when no one was trying to knock her into shape, guide her thoughts and her style.

  She did, though, apply for one thing, the BBC training scheme for producers. The university appointments board suggested it, and gave her the forms to fill in. She got down to the last six and was interviewed by a panel at Broadcasting House. Without being asked, or the subject being mentioned, as even then questions of a personal nature were not encouraged, she told them that she was getting married in a week. The atmosphere totally changed. She was never offered a place.

  We had decided to get married as soon as possible after she left Oxford. Or even earlier. She discovered she could do it before she had technically left, the day after her final exam was over, before her term was officially finished, if she got permission from the principal, which she did.

  We got married on 11 June 1960 at Oxford register office, straight from her last exam. There was no one else there, apart from our two witnesses – Theodora Parfitt, Margaret’s best friend in Oxford, and Mike Thornhill, our old friend from Carlisle, still at Balliol.

  There was no church ceremony and no reception. After the brief, blank, emotionless, unromantic register office formalities, we went out to the Bear at Woodstock and had lunch. Then we came back to Northmoor Road, the home of Theo’s parents. Some snaps were taken in their back garden, among the roses.

  I wore my best suit, not quite a new one, and it was becoming a bit shiny round the bum, but pretty sharp for 1960, Italian style, dark blue, faintly pinstriped, low-cut jacket, straight at the back, bought from Cecil Gee in Oxford Street. I did buy a new white shirt and a new Van Heusen collar, which was very tight and hellish uncomfortable. But I looked smart and clean, so I thought, and incredibly young.

  Margaret wore, well, clothes, I do remember that. The wedding photos are amateur snaps, very small and in black and white, so it is hard to spot all the details. I can see she was wearing a white cotton sleeveless frock, straight at the neck, for the register office. Then for her going away outfit she changed into a very nice outfit, light jacket and skirt in lilac, I think.

  Margaret refused to have any sort of wedding reception. And I agreed with her. We couldn’t bear to have all that fuss. Nor did we tell our families or anyone else what we were going to do. We had been going out for four years, so, dear God, getting married could not possibly come as a massive surprise to most of our relations.

  But I did get cards printed, which we sent out after the event. I was rather proud of them, of the design and the printing. It was a folded-over green card and contained an illustration by Peynet from his Lovers’ Pocketbook. Raymond Peynet (1908–1999) was a French artist and designer who produced a series of little books about lovers. They featured a thin young man in a bowler hat, supposedly a poet, with his girlfriend. They were enormously popular among students and lovers in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Back then they were considered rather arty and hippy, showing you believed in peace and love, not like the usual corny and soppy romantic Woolworths counter stuff.

  I took one of his drawings, which showed the lovers on a bench, holding up a cut-out heart to each other, to a printer. It was only when we got the proofs that someone at the printing firm asked if I had permission. Oh God, I had never thought of that, yet I was supposed to be a Fleet Street journalist who would surely know about such things. I spent ages making calls to Paris to find out who owned the copyright and managed to clear it, without having to pay. It was anyway a private card, not commercial, to give to friends. Just to cover myself, under the drawing, I printed the publisher’s details.

  The wording on the card was simple: ‘IT WON’T BE A STYLISH MARRIAGE’, so it said on the front. Inside it read: ‘IN FACT . . . JUST HER AND HIM AND NO ONE ELSE’. But it did give details of where and when the unstylish marriage had taken place. And, on the back, it issued a welcome – to our relations and friends to come and visit us at our new address.

  Several relatives were a bit upset at missing a do, any sort of family do. I suppose, looking back, we were a bit mean. All our brothers and sisters in due course did the proper thing, and had church weddings with a full reception, which we went to, and they were all lovely and touching events. Did we regret it? Not really.

  After the snaps had been taken in the Parfitts’ back garden, we were going away on our honeymoon, to a new flat we had acquired in Hampstead. It even had the proper telephone number, HAMpstead 3487. In the Shoot Up Hill flat, my number had been GLAdstone 4788. Numbers did matter in those days and HAMpstead was considered awfully smart. You dialled the first three letters of the phone number, followed by the four figures. I never knew how they managed that. In Manchester, the Chron’s number had been BLAckfriars 1234, while at Thomson House in London our number was TERminus 1234. Great numbers, so easy to remember, so easy to give out, not like today when nobody knows their own mobile number.

  I had just bought my first car, a 1947 Riley 2.5, which cost £100. I had to save like mad because my bank, the Midland at King’s Cross, would not advance me a loan when I told them it was to buy a car. I never forgave them.

  It was a most attractive-looking car, long and racy, with a fabric roof that some vandal had taken a knife to but it had been repaired. Inside it smelled delightful, of wood and oil and age and quality. But it was a total mistake and always breaking down. I got talked into it by Mike. He maintained he knew about cars, and I believed him – when growing up in Carlisle his family had been the only one I knew who had one.

  The day before our wedding, I failed my driving test. For the second time. Oh, the ignominy. And embarrassment. It rather ruined my fantasy of driving my bride away to London straight after our wedding, to our new flat, to our new life. Instead, I had to persuade Mike to come with us in the car, on stage one of our honeymoon.

  Failing the driving test, on the eve of my wedding, could that be a metaphor for marriage and life and the whole damn thing? No, not for one second did I think that.

  Mike, our best man, later became a solicitor and moved to Hong Kong, where he became senior partner in one of the city’s major legal firms. I had lunch with him there a few years ago, in the Hong Kong Club, which was very smart, and I got sent out to put on a tie.

  Ian Johnstone, also from Carlisle, who went to Durham at the same time as me, joined the Colonial Service, serving the Queen in Africa and then moving to New Zealand where he became a well-known TV presenter and newsreader. He still lives in New Zealand.

  My roommate from Durham, John Davies, who was a chemist, did a PhD, worked at Harwell as a nuclear scientist then moved to the USA and worked for the US government on their nuclear programme, which meant he had to become a US citizen. He still lives in California with his family. And still has a Geordie accent.

  Reg Hill, my best friend from Carlisle, whom I had known since I was four, became a teacher after he left Oxford, then a lecturer, before eventually becoming a writer, going on to great success as an award-winning crime novelist, Reginald C. Hill, author of the Dalziel and Pascoe books. He later returned to live in Cumbria with his Cumbrian-born wife Pat and died there in 2012, aged seventy-five.

  I have always enjoyed the fact of getting married in 1960. I can always tot up the years since. Being born in 1936, I have to pause, depending on what time of the year it is, to work out my age. My Durham student years began in, let’s see, thinking back, oh yes, 1954. But the year of my marriage, I can always remember that without thinking. Hurrah for 1960.

  It did seem special at the time, getting marri
ed at the beginning of a new decade, though of course we had no idea what a wondrous decade it was going to be.

  The year 1960 turned out to be doubly special. The second most important event in my long-legged life also happened to happen in 1960. Not long after our wedding. I joined the Sunday Times. Which led on to so many other events and excitements, people and places.

  One of the things they say about the sixties is that if you can remember them, you weren’t there. It’s a joke, of course, the inference being that real sixties people were stoned all the time. As a joke, it is quite amusing. As a fact, it is bollocks.

  You also hear people saying and writing that the sixties did not begin till 1963, perhaps 1966, as that was when the real changes began to happen. This is roughly true, more or less. Time magazine did not come out with their ‘Swinging London’ issue till 15 April 1966. Most modern historians, when writing about the sixties today, looking back to a time most of them never experienced, generally agree that the year 1963 was the birth of what we now call the sixties.

  But personally, I will always consider that the sixties began in 1960. They did for me, in every way.

  If I had to meet myself now, coming down the street in 1960, would I recognise myself, my thoughts, my feelings, my worries? Possibly. But certainly not if I were to meet my 1954 self, going up to Durham, or my 1947 self starting at the Creighton. As for my years in Scotland, they are a foreign country.

  One of the things Margaret and I used to argue about was luck. I always maintained that you made your own luck. The more you did, the more you tried, the more goes you had, the more experiences you were open to, the more ideas and suggestions and offers you put up – then the more chance you had of one of them coming off. Margaret never agreed. Life is random, she said, and you can do nothing about it. Bad luck and good luck, they just happen, despite what you do. So you have to face up to it. Hope for good luck, but accept the bad luck, which everyone will have at some time.