Moon Boots and Dinner Suits

by Jon Pertwee

  The next day I plucked up courage and rang him.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Why didn’t you come round after the show and say hello to me last night ?

  ‘What show? Where?’ he said with feigned surprise.

  ‘Interference, on the West Pier Brighton, remember?’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course, so sorry old chap I couldn’t make it, too busy, you understand?’

  Of course I didn’t understand and never will, but I suppose in his own strange way he had shown me more than a little concern and interest in my abilities as an actor by going to Brighton at all. The recollection of him sitting there alone, and his denial of it, will remain with me always.

  My first recollection of him was also from my playpen at Caterham. I can only assume that it happened on the same day that I bit Michael’s finger. Either that, or I spent more time locked in my pen than out!

  He arrived at the garden gate with a wave of his hat and a loud ‘Huzzah!’ Michael ran up over the rockery to receive a hug, a kiss and a ‘chuck-in-the-air’, whilst I was left to hurl myself around my cage in yet another agony of frustration. After what seemed an eternity, he strolled across the lawn towards me with a beaming smile across his face, Michael under one arm, and an enormous tin of Sharp’s Toffees under the other. Michael always claims that it was a tin of Mackintosh’s, but it was inaccuracies like this that probably made me bite him! What headway my father imagined that a two-year-old boy with baby teeth would make on a treacle toffee I’ve never ascertained. Perhaps he reasoned that if I could bite through a finger, I would make short work of a ‘Sharps’.

  Granny was a cuddly soul, and I spent a lot of time with her in my early years being rocked, read to, sung to, or just plain loved! Perhaps my own tactility is a legacy of that love. Every morning when I awoke, now in the toddling stage, I clambered up the steep stairs to Granny’s bedroom where I hurled myself into her brass bed and waited for my morning ‘buppers’. Delicious! Granny used to have a tray of tea brought up and a plate of fresh French bread, sliced and buttered. These came to be known as ‘buppers’, for it was easier for me to say ‘Can I have another bupper, please Gran?’ than ‘Can I have another slice of bread and butter, please Gran?’

  After my morning ‘buppers’ with Granny, it was always into Uncky’s bed to watch him dress and do about twenty things at once. His morning routine was always the same. He had his breakfast, read the paper, talked to us, was attentive to his mother and habitually finished with a last minute rush out of the front door to start his mile walk to the station. This he did twice daily at great speed, which probably accounted for his never having a day’s illness in his life! I only once knew him to take an aspirin, and this nearly did him in, for he promptly changed colour, perspired and panted to such a degree that we thought he was having a coronary! Although Uncle Guy commuted daily by train to his position as Professor of Elocution and Verse at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, he had an immaculate old Morris open tourer stashed away in the garage. This machine was only allowed out at weekends and holidays and was lovingly washed, brushed, polished and talked to by my uncle who looked upon it almost as a member of the family. We used to go for ‘spins’, but the preparation for these events was considerable. First, as the roof was seldom up, we had to put on very warm clothes and woolly over-ears hats. Granny had a special motoring hat with a veil over it, tied under the chin, a rug around her legs and her feet pushed into a fur-lined foot warmer, for no cars had heaters in those 1920s days. Then came the awkward rigmarole of assembling and adjusting Granny’s glass windscreen and waterproof skirt (not hers – the windscreen’s!) The apparatus comprised a series of hinged chrome rods supporting a main screen, and required constant reference to the instruction book every time it was put up. This unenviable task would have been quite superfluous if only Granny had taken notice of Uncle Guy’s request to sit in the front, like anybody else of her years, but no, she was adamant - in the back, like the Queen, or she wasn’t going!

  Once started, the trip was always immensely enjoyable. There were jolly songs, interesting information on flora and fauna, and stops for tea. There was also the endless fascination of watching and listening to Uncle Guy, with felt homburg hat’s brim blown up flat against the wind, whispering, coaxing and cajoling the car up anything but the smallest gradient.

  ‘Come on, old girl, you’ll make it.’

  ‘Easy now, easy.’

  ‘There she goes, up and over.’

  All this while swaying back and forth in his driving seat as if the additional momentum of his shifting weight would aid and assist the ancient motor more easily up the hill. In retrospect I am of the opinion that the occasional change of gear might have helped.

  My other favourite mode of transport at that time was with ‘Mick-the-milkman’ in his ‘Chariot’, for that was what it looked like when I was little. It was a brightly painted, two wheeled, iron shod cart drawn by Pogo, a perky little horse bedecked with beautiful leather tack and burnished horse-brasses. It had a polished iron reins-rail up front and an open back for leaping in and out of, just like a real chariot, and up under the reins-rail two enormous steel, brass-bound milk churns with dippers of various sizes clanking from their handles. ‘Come on, Ben-Hur,’ Mick would shout as soon as he had delivered our milk, ‘the race is about to start.’ I’d bid farewell to Granny, leap into the back, preferably with Mick on the move, and away we’d go. At full trot. At each stop a maid or cook would come out with a large jug covered with a glass-beaded net to collect their milk. I would manfully heave off the heavy top of the churn, while Mick sank his dipper into the now - thanks to the bumpy ride - frothy and creamy milk.

  ‘One pint or two, Sarah?’

  ‘Two please, Mick.’

  With a ‘There you are love,’ back would go the dipper, on would bang the lid and after a ‘Thank you Mick’ and a ‘Thank you Ben’ we’d be off on yet another lap of that furious race.

  As I grew older, we could only rarely be inveigled down from our ‘Tarzan’ tree-house. We constructed a platform to lie down on, a pulley to haul our meals up with, and a rope to swing from branch to branch. This caused Granny intense worry and alarm, but ‘Uncky’ managed to dissuade her from going on at us too much, as ‘boys will be boys, you know, Mother! Although on closer inspection they look more like monkeys the way they’re swinging about! And why should you worry about a damned monkey!!’

  One day, after performing one of my most spectacular ‘monkey’ tricks, a ‘left-in-charge’ – and therefore ‘demented-with-worry’ – Nanny pleaded,

  ‘Master Jon, Master Michael, come down from that tree at once! You’re behaving very childishly!’

  We were, severally, six and eight years old at the time . . .

  *

  Granny was such a stalwart soul. She was invincible, unsinkable, a vanquisher, a triumpher. In command, she was like a captain on the bridge, the leader of an orchestra, a cavalry officer heading a charge. At the dinner table when we were allowed to sit with the grown-ups, she was the undisputed mistress of the house. After each course, she followed a strange ceremony, by bowing slowly over the table three times. This was done in complete silence and with grave dignity. Seeing the solemn ritual performed many times, I became convinced that out of respect I too should participate. So when I next saw Granny ‘genuflecting’, I copied her exactly and gave three respectful bows, so deep as to bang my forehead with a slight thump on the table top.

  ‘What on earth are you up to, young fella me lad?’ asked Uncle Guy.

  ‘Ssh, I’m doing Gran’s prayer,’ I whispered.

  ‘Prayer, what prayer, old son?’

  ‘This one,’ I said, demonstrating once again my most reverend

  bow.

  He rocked back in his chair choking with laughter.

  ‘Granny’s not praying, old boy,’ said Uncle Guy, mopping his eyes with his napkin, ‘she’s pressing the bell button under the carpet, to
summon Edie to collect the dishes.’

  For those interested, here is Granny’s bell-code –

  One ring ‘Edie, come in at once, something’s not right.’

  Two rings ‘Send Cook in at once. Something’s definitely not right.’

  Three rings ‘All’s well, come in and remove the plates.’

  *

  There was hardly any reason for our going further afield than that wonderful Caterham hillside to play. It was approached over a stile, and after continuing along the narrow path, afforded a never-ending series of visual delights. The flowers were there then, the primroses, the violets and the most delicate of all wild flowers, the cowslip. Oh! Where have all the cowslips gone? I have seen nary a one in many years of searching, except recently, a few clumps in Le Lot, France.

  As well as cowslips, snakes and swinging trees, there could be found flint, spear and arrowheads in abundance. There must have been a Flint Age encampment up there once and why not? Why shouldn’t Flint Age people enjoy a beautiful view like anyone else? It did not take much of a scout along its top-soil before, with a cry of excitement, another souvenir of centuries was kicked into the sunlight. Apart from the spear and arrowheads, there were the daggers, the cutting knives and the flint tools themselves that were used for the chipping and shaping. What a way for a small boy to be transported back through time! During these quests we transformed ourselves into grunting cavemen, and ‘Woe betide any passing female,’ we threatened. She would’ve been grabbed by her long hair, dragged into our cave, and as our imagination could go no further on matters sexual, would’ve been hit over the head with a bone.

  Further along – just before one came to ‘View Point’ (one of the most famous views in England) – was to us the most exciting place of all. Clambering over a locked gate and struggling through a dense forest of ancient yew trees, we came across our chalk-pit. It rose up from the edge of a ‘jungle’, like the temples in King Solomon’s Mines. At its height was a barbed-wire fence. A part of the First World War’s defence against invasion, we were told. From the top, this fence protected our chalk-pit from further invasion, and there was no man, it seemed, prepared to risk his life, fighting through that impenetrable ‘jungle’ at the bottom. So the cliff lay before us to be explored. In the first minute Michael had cried, ‘Hey! look at this.’ Five feet up the cliff-face for all to see was the large and perfect fossil of an ammonite at least six inches across. From that day on with the aid of hammers and picks we collected dozens of near perfect specimens: a small chest of drawers was allotted by Granny to put all our best finds in. At one time it was bursting with every kind of flint weapon and a fossil collection that was the envy of any young collector in Caterham lucky enough to get a peek at it. What became of that museum I shall never know. Maybe it was thrown out by an ignorant cleaning lady who decided that it was nothing but ‘a load of old rubbish’!

  Along the hillside was the ‘swinging tree’, so-called for its near-horizontal branch of some twenty feet, with small, dipped ‘saddle’ for sitting in at its end. Being only a few feet from the ground, the ‘swinger’ – with hands on a lower branch – could control the ups and downs of the ‘swingee’! The idea, as in all small boy sports, was to flip the ‘rider’ off his ‘bronco’, causing him as much grief as possible. Michael and I became virtually unseatable, but the havoc we wrought amongst the local lads was legion.

  In the 60s, when I came to live in the area again, my children and I rediscovered and ‘rode’ the ‘swinging tree’, but of the flints and fossils there was no sign. Had we taken them all, or had they shrunk back into hiding to await later discovery by a band of deserving lads who would really appreciate the finding?

  The cows grazed right across our hillside, kindly depositing many a cowpat for our delight. Why, you may well ask, should cowpats so delight us? The answer lay not in the cowpat itself, but in what lay beneath. We discovered that a sun-warmed pat made the perfect refuge for many varieties of snakes. With a quick flip of a forked stick the pat was overturned to reveal the sleeping serpent; a lunge with the forked stick behind the head and the pinned viper was grabbed with safety and whipped into a bucket, as quick as nine-pence. Luckily we rarely caught anything more dangerous than slow worms and grass snakes, but the latter were so beautifully marked that we were often able to convince apprehensive onlookers that what they saw before them was a bucketful of adders. One day another intrepid serpent-hunter of less tender years tripped before us and fell, literally spraying us with snakes. This time, however, the catch really was a bucketful of adders, causing the junior hunters to take to the hills with all speed and a mutual agreement that we should retire from such sport forthwith.

  Naturally, something new had to be found, something of ‘derring-do’, but what? Suddenly it came to me! Finding a crushed cowboy hat, chaps and gunbelt in a corner of the toy cupboard, I realised that as yet I hadn’t tried ‘the hold up’. So, donning the cowboy outfit, six-gun loaded with new roll of caps, and frightening burnt cork moustache (by courtesy of cook) I advanced boldly and bandy-legged, with all the confidence of my seven-and-a-half years, to the cross roads to await my prospective victims.

  The first was a young lady taking her dolly for a walk in her pram – ‘Thstop,’ I yelled in my best baddie voice, ‘hand over your money, or you’re dead.’

  My ‘prey’ was not to be so easily fazed, however, for without pause or any consideration for the dastardly end that might befall her, she sniffed, ‘Go away, you silly little boy, and play your silly game somewhere else! You’ll wake up my dolly!’

  And she was off up the hill with a toss of her curly head.

  So much for victim number one. I must, I decided, do better with number two.

  Hiding behind a wooden paling, contemplating the vagaries of my new profession, I heard footsteps crunching up the gravel road. Unable to see my quarry I lay with madly beating heart until he or she was level with my ambush, then with a loud bloodcurdling yell of ‘your money or your life’, I leapt out into the road with gun blazing, to find my adversary towering over me – a veritable giant of a man of at least five foot three. He went quite white, teetered for a moment, then thrust his hand into his trouser pocket. Pulling forth a handful of coins, he threw them on the road before me, saying with quavering voice, ‘Here take this, it’s all I’ve got!’ and with that he hot-footed it up to the crossroads and was away. I was staggered to find that on counting the haul, it amounted to the grand sum of three shillings and elevenpence halfpenny, truly a king’s ransom. I could retire from banditry, and did so at once! Some years ago I met an old man who said, ‘Pertwee, I know you. You once robbed me of practically everything I had in the world.’ To this day I’m ashamed to admit I believe he spoke the truth.

  *

  Nearby in a pretty little cottage lived a family of husband, wife and daughters, and it was through my close friendship with them that I had my first two sexual encounters. The first, when I was small, only just five, but nonetheless ‘curious’, was with the daughters. Here I had a double advantage, in that when we were playing ‘doctors’, my ‘patients’ happened to be identical twins, and naturally wanted to do everything together. But the venues that I chose for our mutual examinations were not always of the most private, so that one day during ‘morning surgery’, we were observed in mid-inspection by their indignant and irate mother, with the result that my practice was promptly closed down. Strange to relate, when I was in my early teens, my second foray into matters female happened with my previous ‘patients’’ mother.

  Enjoying a cup of tea and a ginger-snap in her cottage one day, I was softly summoned from above, with ‘Jon, can you pop upstairs for a minute?’

  Me: ‘What for?’

  Her: ‘I’ve got something for you.’

  Me: ‘What?’

  Her: ‘Come upstairs and you’ll find out!’

  Testily putting down my tea, my ginger-snap slipping into the overspill, thus ruining its snap, I reluctantly clim
bed the stairs to find my hostess sitting on her bed with a very funny look in her eye.

  Her (coquettishly): ‘Come here.’

  Me: ‘I am here.’

  Her: ‘No, over here, close to me.’

  Tentatively taking the necessary number of paces to close the gap, I was promptly grabbed by the hips as she fell backwards on to the bed pulling me with her, at the same time emitting a strangled cry of ‘Come on, do something, quickly.’ Utterly ignorant of what I was expected to do and flushing furiously, I struggled to get off her, missing the whole point of the exercise. It was not until long afterwards that I came to realise, far too late, the full purpose of that lady’s cunning machinations. Unaware as I was at the time of the appealing and desirable qualities of the Fair Sex, however, I was not to remain forever in that blissful state of limbo – only until the age of fourteen, in fact, when I fell in love – ‘sighing like a furnace, but with no woeful ballad made to his mistress’s eyebrow.’

  It was on a memorable June evening, when my Uncle Guy and I were returning from one of our walks round Caterham Hill that he proposed a drink at the Hare and Hounds, a pleasant old pub to which he paid many a visit. This seemed a manly thing to do, so I readily agreed. ‘Bag a couple of seats in the garden,’ he said when we arrived, ‘and I’ll go in and order. Ginger beer all right for you?’ I would have preferred to try a more adult beverage but, as I clearly wasn’t going to be given any choice in the matter, I thanked him and sat on a wooden bench on the lawn.