by Jon Pertwee
‘Patricia’s bringing them to us,’ he said, joining me, ‘and here she comes.’ I looked up and my heart leapt, for, floating across the garden bearing a tray, was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Corn-coloured hair, rosebud mouth, gently rounded figure – an angel in a print frock.
‘Here we are, Mr Pertwee,’ she said. ‘Bitter for you, and a nice ginger beer for – er . . . ?’
‘My nephew Jon,’ said my uncle.
‘And very nice too,’ said Patricia, dimpling delightfully. ‘You must bring him again. It’s nice to serve a good-looking customer for a change.’ I tried to thank her as she gave me my ginger beer but was too full of emotion to speak. The Cupid’s dart which had pierced my breast had also affected my vocal chords. She sashayed away and my uncle, taking a deep draught of bitter said, ‘You’ve made quite a hit there, my boy.’
I was ecstatic. I had made a hit with Patricia. She had specifically asked my uncle to bring me again. My love was reciprocated.
I went home on a cloud of euphoria. That night I dreamed only of Patricia. Of rescuing her from an assortment of serious dangers, of beguiling her with songs at the piano (my fevered imagination endowing me with not only invincible courage but also musical skills which I did not possess). When I awoke I pondered the matter and realised that my next visit to the Hare and Hounds would only be at my uncle’s whim and, in any event, it would not be very easy for me to declare my love properly over a glass of ginger beer with him sitting next to me. I therefore determined to grasp the nettle and ask her out for a walk, thus getting her to myself without putting any strain on my meagre finances.
I bicycled to the Post Office, bought a postcard with a tasteful photograph of a haystack on it and, addressing it to Patricia? c/o the Hare and Hounds, Caterham, wrote: ‘Dear Patricia, I am Mr Guy Pertwee’s nephew Jon who you met last Thursday in the garden. I was wondering if you would care to come for a walk with me one day. Yours truly, Jon D. R. Pertwee.’
I posted it and bicycled home, confident of an early acceptance. A week elapsed and none came. Nor, in spite of much prompting, did my uncle suggest another visit to the Hare and Hounds; although I had a sneaking suspicion that he had gone there several times without me. I was desperate. I couldn’t sleep, I scarcely ate – well, not as voraciously as usual– and life began to lose its meaning. It was then that I suddenly realised I had not put my home address on the postcard. That Patricia, not knowing how to get in touch with me, would be in a similar state of agonised frustration. So I bought another card with a delightful view of Old Coulsdon on it and, writing my address in block capitals at the top, wrote ‘Dear Patricia, It was all my fault that you couldn’t reply to my invitation as I didn’t send my address. To make sure you get this I shall push it in your box. Yours very sincerely, Jon D. R. Pertwee.’
I bicycled smartly to the Hare and Hounds, popped it through the letter box in the front door and went home to await her early and enthusiastic response.
Again nothing. Zilch! Perhaps my postcard had got stuck under the mat or been chewed up by the dog. I was about to cycle to the Hare and Hounds to investigate when my uncle sent for me. ‘I say look here Jon old boy,’ he said, crossly, ‘I’ve got a letter here from the landlord of the Hare and Hounds. He tells me that you’ve been sending his wife postcards.’
His wife? Jumping Jehosophat! Patricia was another’s! My head reeled, as Uncle Guy went on: ‘The first postcard I gather, invited her to take a walk, which I would like to think was for the sole purpose of enjoying the sights and sounds of the country. The second, and here I quote, states that “to make sure she gets it, you will push it in her box.” An unhappy choice of phrase wouldn’t you say?’
I couldn’t say anything, I was in no condition.
‘If.’ said my uncle, ‘it is your intention to make a career of adultery, I can do little to prevent it, other than earnestly request you not to start it with the wife of the landlord of my favourite pub!’
I hardly heard. My life was in ruins and my world crumbled round my feet. I saw no way out of the tunnel. This black despair lasted all day and well into the next morning. Just before noon, however, I managed to rise above it like a lark and went out, as suggested, to muse on the beauty of Nature, having reconciled myself to a life of total celibacy.
*
A few miles from our house was a famous World War One fighter station, Kenley Aerodrome, which had many wartime flying aces stationed there flying Bristol Fighters and Siskins. Mike and I used to cycle up to the airfield to spend the day lying in the grass and watching ‘the intrepid aviators’ demonstrating their skills. They climbed straight up from a steep dive, literally hanging on their propellers before peeling off into another dive that took them at full speed right over the trees above our heads. Many a time an under-carriage would hit a small top branch, leaving it to sway to and fro in the stillness of the summer’s day. Another favourite heart-stopper was the ‘falling leaf’, in which the aeroplane at the top of its climb would, on reaching stalling speed, suddenly fall from the skies, spinning round and round like, as the name of the manoeuvre implies, a ‘falling leaf’. Then at the last second the pilot would pull out and roar across the field towards us; performing what was later to be known in the Second World War as the Victory Roll. Afterwards, struck dumb by their fearless audacity, we would cycle home without a word spoken.
I think the reason we stopped plane watching was that one day one of our favourite ‘aces’ powered himself at full bore right into the ground above a chalkpit in Warlingham. Cycling full tilt towards the plume of tell-tale smoke, we became more and more apprehensive and fearful. We had started the mad dash to the scene of the crash with the usual callous excitement of all small boys for disasters, but finished staring tearfully, with gigantic lumps in our throats, at the sight of that burning, smoking wreck with its pitiful charred contents.
Nevertheless, it didn’t stop me from going to see Sir Alan Cobham, the celebrated flying ace, with Granny and ‘Uncky’.
Sir Alan was an especial hero of ours, and later ran an exciting Air Circus where we saw for the first time wing-walking, dog-fights, hanging upside-down from the under-carriage and clambering from one plane to another in mid-flight. However, in This Year of Grace 1926, he had just broken the World Air Speed Record from England to Australia and back, in his open, single-seater De Havilland DH50, with specially adapted floats for landing in the water, so we simply had to be part of the crowds gathered on the banks of the Thames to welcome him when he arrived.
It was an epic and historical moment. Granny, ‘Uncky’ and I, suitably provided against hunger and thirst by a bag of Bovril sandwiches and a thermos of sweet tea, took our places on Waterloo Bridge, right opposite the House of Commons, to await his arrival.
He arrived on the dot . . . some five hours later . . . flying right under the bridge beneath us and landing to the roars of thousands, right before the assembled Government sitting waiting on the terrace. For this he received, quite correctly, his knighthood.
*
Although bicycles were our main form of personal transport, just riding a bicycle was not much cop in itself. It needed that additional fillip – something that would amaze and impress the passer-by! So when free-wheeling down the long Stanstead Road, we decided ‘running repairs’ were the answer. This necessitated turning your caps back to front, leaning forward over the handlebars, legs outstretched behind and balancing without hands. This, because both hands were busily occupied, twiddling and tightening invisible knobs and nuts, adjusting non-existent brakes and oiling wheel-hubs with an imaginary oil-can.
The expressions on the faces of the passing pedestrians were read by us to denote nothing less than unstinted admiration. ‘Will you just look at those boys, Herbert! They are actually repairing their bikes while on the move!’
‘Well I’m damned, Lottie! Whatever next, I wonder?’
When Michael perfected the equivalent of the pursued cowboy crouched at full gallop on on
e side of his steed with both feet in one stirrup, the question was answered. Danger was the order of the day! Even of the bicycle! To prove he was the bravest of us all, Michael made up his mind to re-enact the tale of William Tell, standing with his back to Granny’s sunhouse, with a cox’s orange pippin balanced precariously on his head. His chosen archer, one Wally Wall, drew his long-bow and before the assembled multitude of six assorted scruffs, shot Mr Tell junior in the eye. Well when I say in it, close alongside it, enough to cause a lot of blood to flow and various members of the multitude to have the vapours. It also brought sharp criticism of Master Wall’s bowmanship from those still able to speak. Wally took great umbrage at this and claimed that he’d been under the impression that we’d been playing King Harold at the Battle of Hastings.
*
And so, sadly, we say farewell to baby Pertwee sinking slowly in his cot, hang up the bonnet, put on the school cap and move, with considerable reluctance on my part, to becoming a ‘young gentleman’ in ‘Miss Maxwell’s junior School for Young Ladies and Gentlemen . . .
Chapter Two
When we first attended junior School, we lived in Campden Grove, Granny’s London retreat. It was a lovely little house, and I have many nostalgic memories of the area. I suppose that, coming from such a theatrically-orientated family, it was natural that the desire to show off in public would appear at a very early age, and I must have been all of four years old for my first performance in a small hall between High Street Kensington and the Earl’s Court Road.
It was all Granny’s idea, for she was already convinced that as far as I was concerned Laurence Olivier had better look to his laurels. I waited nervously in the wings for my big moment, and then, due to over excitement, unfortunately had one, necessitating a quick change of underpants and white shorts, and a hurried rush back to the stage. Came my cue and with a firm push I was slid out on to the stage.
‘Round the corner out of thight,’ I squeaked. ‘Luckily all of uth armed to fight. “Who go’th there?” cried little Jack, and a thmall voice answered “Quack, Quack, Quack.”’ ‘Bravo! Bravo!’ roared the tumultuous throng. ‘More, more!’ I’d done it. A star was born. Gran was ecstatic and allowed her ‘I told you so’ look to wreath her proud and smiling face. Naturally, I was invited the following year to repeat my sensational success. Uncle Guy came up with a spanking new verse in which for no apparent reason I wished I were a sausage. I can only tell you that after the shrieks of silence that followed my splendid rendition of the piece, I sincerely wished that I was.
My uncle Guy had a great love and knowledge of classical music in all its forms, and would daily play to us on his gramophone various examples to be read, marked, learned and inwardly digested. This early influence gave me the catholic appreciation that I have for music today. There being no television, the radio and gramophone were the principal sources of sedentary entertainment. I thus grew to have a good basic knowledge of opera, chansons and the popular classics.
I tried to imbue this self-same influence on my own two children but with resounding failure. They took one look at each other after only a few minutes of the chosen ‘piece’ and collapsed into uncontrollable giggles. A pity really.
Amongst my most treasured memories of life in Campden Grove are the varied cries of the street vendors. The ‘Muffin Man’ regularly strolled up our road wearing a flat black cap, hard, padded ring atop to facilitate the balancing of a large tray of muffins and crumpets, and his Muffin Man’s brass bell ringing to tell us there would be hot buttered crumpets for tea. The muffins and crumpets were covered by a bright green-baize cloth, which, though highly decorative, was hardly hygienic, as I doubt if it made many visits to the washtub!
The Muffin Man rang the brass bell in his right hand without fervour, cling-clang-cling-clang, at the same time crying out, ‘Muffins, come get yer fresh muffins!’
When approached by a customer he would whip the tray off his head and bang it down on the pavement. A tower of crumpets was quickly purchased and rushed away to a sitting room to be toasted on toasting forks before a blazing fire.
Another favourite cry was the coster-monger’s, so when the first strains of ‘the Lavender family’s’ songs floated down the Grove, I was up straightaway to the window, to enjoy the sights and sounds they brought. The father, pushing an intricately painted coster-barrow with handles to the front as was a coster’s wont, led the traditional chant. Grey-tophatted he sang in fine baritone ‘Who will buy my sweet-scented lavender’ and his family dotted all around him, in long skirts and braided hair in colourful kerchiefs, would hold before them bunches of ribboned lavender as they picked up the chant in perfect modal harmony. These harmonies were of the primitive kind, but oh what a glorious sound they made against the rumbling of the solid-tyred London traffic.
Of our Junior School I remember very little and recently found that some of that was wrong! Called ‘Miss Maxwell’s junior School for Young Ladies and Gentlemen’, it was just around the corner from us, and was ruled with strictness, yet kindness by Miss Maxwell, a lady of not a little authority. That much is correct.
However, to my childlike mind, the school was a big, imposing building with numerous large classrooms on each of many floors. Imagine my amazement, therefore, at passing by some twenty years later to discover it to be nothing but a small terraced house of some two floors only, with a dingy basement. So much for the accuracy of a child’s memory.
One day I was summoned from my class by a white-faced Michael, who told me that we were to go home at once as Gran was desperately ill. We ran hand in hand down the stairs and, filled with trepidation, turned the corner of our street to find that it had been covered from one end to the other with straw. This was to deaden the noise of the wheels of the passing traffic. Standing before our house stood a diabolical monster with long elephantine trunk stretching upwards. It was huffing, puffing and blowing its dreadful breath with great show and noise into our Granny’s bedroom window. Hurtling up to her room we were caught and calmed by Uncle Guy and a lady in a white coat.
‘There’s no need to worry,’ Uncle Guy said. ‘Granny’s got a touch of pneumonia and has to be kept very quiet. You can go in for a moment – she’s been asking for you.’
We crept into the room like frightened mice to see our beloved Gran lying in bed, completely surrounded by an airtight house of a strange see-throughable material. The monster’s trunk intruded through a hole in the side and was still puffing its terrible breath at its victim. It was carefully explained to a near-hysterical me, that this was no monster but an ‘oxygen’ machine that was helping my Gran to breath and therefore to live. I have since had the deepest respect for all machines medical, for I remember so well that one, the one which enabled me to receive so many more years of my Granny’s unselfish love.
*
Things were to change drastically. Our father Roland had a friend, Geoffrey Colbourne of Hove, who was dying. Geoffrey and his young wife Dorothy, known as ‘D’, had a son, and when Geoffrey knew that he hadn’t long to live he said, ‘Bussie [Dad’s nickname], you, “D” and the boy seem to be very fond of each other, and as you are alone with two sons and “D” will very soon be alone with one, when I’m gone, why don’t you marry and amalgamate?
And amalgamate they did in 1927 - where I don’t know, as we weren’t invited to the wedding. A large London house was bought in South Kensington – ‘Red Lodge’, 86 Drayton Gardens. Staff was obtained – Kate Cafferty, cook, and Ada Smith, house parlourmaid. We boys were ensconced on the top floor out of the way. ‘D’s’ son became our new brother. As his name was also Michael, we abbreviated his surname Colbourne to Coby to avoid confusion and ‘Coby’ he became from that day. He was an original and possessed a dry sense of humour that was remarkable in one so young. Dad, who turned a pretty phrase himself; was Coby’s principal sparring partner and to the amusement of all held great verbal jousts with him around the dining table.
Coby looked then much as he does now
(though a trifle younger), with his hair parted neatly on the right and swept across his head to the left, and a permanent coxcomb sticking up on the crown. He wore spectacles that gave him a ‘professorial’ look that he never lost – and which stands him in good stead now that he actually is a professor! Sartorially speaking, he was not out of the top drawer and still isn’t – managing to look then, as now, like an unmade bed. He was nearer to me in age, being only two years older, and I had perhaps a closer rapport with him than with Michael, who is three years older than me. Although in my experience three was an unlucky number. With three, boys or girls, there are always factions. Two will generally break away, leaving the third to play more by himself. It’s a natural thing to do and no-one is to blame. In my case, it was Michael and Coby who were to become the splinter group.
Coby and I shared a bedroom on the top floor, with Mike, as the eldest, being given a room of his own. There was a bathroom with Edwardian bath on legs, and in an emergency, the close proximity of the ever helpful Kate and Ada.
Next floor down, Dad’s study where his writing was done, his dressing room, bathroom and bedroom with a big bed for him, ‘D’ and the dogs.
Ground floor, sitting room with niche, dining room, hall and magnificent mahogany-seated loo with pull-up flush and highly polished lid of same material. It was here that Dad took his daily paper and cut himself off from all outside contact until it was read from cover to cover. How he avoided the legacy of all long-time loo-lingerers, haemorrhoids, is to me a complete mystery!
The sitting room ‘niche’ was a deep bay window of considerable size, with small, padded seats around it, and enough height and width to rig up some front tabs. With curtains drawn across the windows at the back and lit by electric light bulbs in big jam tins, a perfect little stage was set.
