Under Cover

by Jeremy Robson

  When the Suez war broke out, Carole and her family were on holiday in Europe and couldn’t go back. Her father lost everything – his successful business, which was taken over by his Egyptian partner, his flat, his savings. To make matters worse, because he had a Spanish passport, he and Carole’s mother, Jocy, were only allowed to stay in England for short periods and had to go in and out of the country, renewing their permits regularly. Meanwhile, Carole, who was then just fourteen, and her brother Gerard were sent to boarding school while their entrepreneurial father, drawing on his contacts in Europe, endeavoured to secure some kind of future for his family. Fortunately for Carole, she’d switched to an English school in her last two years in Cairo, so she knew some English. Her freezing Eastbourne boarding school gave her a lifelong aversion to porridge and semolina; Gerard, some six years younger, was less resilient, and the years he spent at school in Kidderminster were painful in every respect.

  The family’s luck took a sudden turn, and all because of her father’s sporting prowess. In Egypt, at the sporting club, Ben had been an outstanding cricketer, once even playing for Egypt at Lord’s, and I later saw cuttings that paid tribute to the centuries he’d scored and the wickets he’d taken with his left-handed spin. His tennis was every bit as good. When by great good fortune his papers happened to land on the desk of someone who not only recognised his name but who’d played cricket with him in Cairo, obstacles to his obtaining a British passport seemed to vanish and the precious citizenship was granted. Meanwhile, having passed her O levels, Carole was able to continue her education in London. That was some three or so years before we met. At the same time, with the drive and tenacity that characterised his left-handed forehand, her father gradually re-established himself. Fortunately, I could at least match him on the tennis court, and before very long we found ourselves battling across the net at Queen’s Club, no quarter given. I was chuffed to learn later that one boyfriend of Carole’s who’d boasted about his tennis had fared miserably when put to the test.

  Carole seemed to me exotic and sophisticated, though shy and reserved, and since she had other boyfriends it was not all plain sailing. Soon after our slow dance at the party where we met, she took off on the back of someone’s motorbike for another party we’d all been invited to, and where I eventually caught up with her. Later, after I left, I realised that I had neither her phone number nor her surname, so it took some sleuthing to track her down. An inauspicious start. As I began to get to know her, I sensed that, having been uprooted from her home, she felt insecure and I was hardly in a position to provide security, even if I’d wanted to at that stage. Yet I started introducing her to my close friends, especially the Abses, for who could resist Dannie and Joan’s warmth and charm? Max Geldray was another friend I took her to meet. Max had just come back from appearing at a Butlin’s holiday camp, which he described in amusing detail, particularly the ladies of a certain age who flocked into breakfast still in their overnight curlers. What did Carole make of that, I wondered.

  Of course, I also had to introduce her to poetry and jazz – with the Centre 42 and other concerts looming, there could be no escape. How strange all this must have seemed, and what a long way from the pyramids. I tried to further my cause by giving Carole a surprise 21st birthday party, but still, for quite some time, it remained a red/green, stop/go relationship. And understandably so.

  * * *

  The Centre 42 festivals were a triumph for Arnold Wesker, who devoted all his creative energies to making them exciting and full of the unexpected. Who would do such a thing now? His headquarters were in Fitzroy Square and I went to a number of meetings there as he called on all those involved in the various events to pool their ideas. These included a trade union exhibition, using historical documents, paintings, banners, emblems, specially commissioned murals, music etc.; the first production of a commissioned play; a jazz dance featuring a fifteen-piece band with an all-star line-up; musical theatre including Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale and an unperformed work; a folk concert and performances in pubs and working men’s clubs; a film festival; poetry readings in factories alongside our concerts; an exhibition of works by local artists and children’s paintings; a special presentation of a play for schools – and a great deal more, including backdrops for various events created by the artist Feliks Topolski.

  I was the youngest and least experienced of Arnold’s inner team, but his personal warmth made me feel welcome and part of it. With him, the conventional was never an option, even when it came to transport to the various venues: for some he would hire a double-decker London bus to convey us. In 1964, when the festivals had proved themselves, he took over the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm as Centre 42’s artistic hub. Built in 1847 and originally a Victorian railway turntable, it later became a gin warehouse. At the opening event I remember the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, being present, though not the slightest whiff of gin. Shortly after, Pete Seeger gave an inspiring concert that moved me to write a poem entitled ‘Pete Seeger at the Roundhouse’:

  You brought us songs from the Spanish soul,

  pure loud voices of the peasant’s labour.

  Guantanamera: I am a truthful man.

  From Little Rock, Montgomery, Birmingham,

  charged songs of the Freedom Fighters.

  We shall not, we shall not be moved.

  From black German camps, Dachau, Belsen,

  you brought hope, the human voice rising in song.

  Up and down the guards are pacing.

  In Turkish, Yiddish, Bantu, French,

  gentle man, you brought us strength,

  and on that stark, freezing night, a roof.

  Only a few months ago, our friends Tony and Lisette Stalbow took us to hear the legendary Joan Baez at the Albert Hall. Before singing a Pete Seeger song, Baez recalled how, when she was fourteen, she was taken to hear him sing and how moved she was, and I thought back to that night at the Roundhouse all those years ago, and how moved I was then. The threads of history.

  With regard to our own contributions to the Centre 42 festivals, it was gratifying to read a long article by Michael Kustow, the festival organiser, in which he frankly discussed the successes and disappointments, writing:

  The actors and musicians had full houses or empty ones, bad ones or exciting ones. The folk singers in the pubs either had the freeze or sang until they clicked with the customers and when they did click the pubs burst at the seams. The poets-with-jazz always clicked; the jazz band was a hit.

  * * *

  Having just written the above, I was shocked to pick up the morning paper and see headlined there the news of Arnold Wesker’s death. I knew he’d been very ill for some time, but nothing ever prepares one for such news, particularly when it involves someone who has affected your life in a meaningful way, as Arnold had mine. We were in touch only spasmodically over the years but nevertheless the memories flooded back, not only of the Centre 42 years, but other things too – his presence at our wedding, stopping me on the synagogue steps to discuss the ceremony, which had appealed to his dramatic instincts. And on the table in our living room now is the special metal pot for brewing Turkish coffee (an ibrik) that he gave us. I also still have the candid letter he wrote me about his memoirs: ‘I didn’t want to write this autobiography. What could I remember? Did I trust my memory? Did I know the truth? But I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse … Still, I find myself having ambitions for the work. I’ve written 190,000 words! Not that quantity means anything.’

  I’m glad I was able to make him laugh by recounting an occasion at what was then the Golders Green Hippodrome (it is now an El-Shaddai International Christian Centre), where Carole and I had gone to see Arnold’s Love Play, The Four Seasons, starring Alan Bates and Diane Cilento. Rarely have I seen an audience (not a Jewish one, anyway!) so engrossed as at the moment when Alan Bates began to make a very large apple strudel on stage. As he started to add the ingredients (perhaps it was the eggs), a woman in the audience sudd
enly screamed, ‘Too much, that’s too much!’, almost stopping Bates in his tracks. Arnold loved that story. I was amused to learn that Diane Cilento had refused to comply with the script, which called for her to expose her breasts at one point, instead turning her back on the audience and facing Bates with her nipples covered by Elastoplast. Arnold was not amused, writing ruefully that ‘it was the first of my plays which appeared on stage not as I conceived it’.

  Despite his knighthood, Arnold felt neglected by the British theatre establishment and locked in the time warp when his trilogy had created such a sensation and he had been top of the theatrical world. I’ve known actors who have felt like that: Ron Moody, often only thought of as Fagin in Oliver! when he did so much else; the brilliantly versatile Maureen Lipman, at one time pigeon-holed as Beattie in the well-loved BT television commercials; Topol, the eternal Fiddler on the Roof. In the fullness of time, though, I’m sure Arnold Wesker and his work will take their important historical place. His friend Bernard Kops, whose background was similar and whose play Enter Solly Gold had been premiered in the 42 Festivals, paid tribute: ‘Arnold was a great man, a wonderful man, but he didn’t act like a great man. He created change.’

  * * *

  Throughout the Centre 42 period I continued dutifully to turn out publicity for Harrap, who were remarkably understanding, perhaps a little intrigued, about my weekly dashes to this or that town. Even when the festivals were over and 1962 moved to its close, there were several more concerts, including an unusual one in the Wood Green Council Chamber, where two outstanding poets, Alan Brownjohn and Peter Porter, made their first appearances. It was Peter’s 40th birthday and we ended up having a dicey curry in Camden Town which laid us all flat for some days. Then out of the blue an Italian film company, Titinus Films of Rome, decided that along with Teddy boys and nuclear disarmament we were at the cutting edge of what was happening in Britain, and that they should include some poetry and jazz in a full-length documentary they were making called Young Europe. The director, Franco Giraldi, wanted something original and had the bright idea of filming us (or rather, me) reading with jazz accompaniment outside the Old Vic theatre in Waterloo. An upright piano was found for Michael Garrick and placed against the side of the theatre, and there, one cold Saturday morning, we battled against the weather and the noise of the traffic, Joe Harriott playing in his overcoat, collar up, and me doing my best to be heard – not exactly an Oscar-winning performance. A large crowd gathered, which is just what Giraldi wanted as he pranced around, gesticulating and being every inch the director, and it all caused such a disturbance that the police were called to keep order. I have no idea whether the film ever saw the light of day – perhaps in some arty cinema in the backstreets of Rome. It was certainly the nearest I’ve ever got to performing at the venerable Old Vic.

  Very soon after, an even odder performance took place at home when we learned that Max Geldray had decided to move to America. Although Carole and I had enjoyed many convivial evenings with them, I hadn’t quite realised that his five-year liaison with the pretty and much younger Barbara had been disintegrating. Lately, however, with The Goon Show over, Max had been travelling more and more – playing in Australia, on the Queen Elizabeth, and also in Los Angeles, where he caught the American bug. Barbara, meanwhile, had come to several of our concerts, and gradually she’d started to rebuild her own life. I’d always felt a great affection for them both, so when Max made his announcement we decided to throw a small farewell party, inviting his close circle of friends, including Peter Sellers and his then wife Anne, Graham Stark (who’d appeared in many of Peter’s films) and his wife Audrey, Carole, and of course my parents. To add some music to the occasion, I invited Michael Garrick, and he and Max played a few numbers, with Peter Sellers sportingly joining in on my rather makeshift drum set – he’d played drums in army bands. Peter was in such a good mood that in a moment of inspiration I showed him a letter I’d received after the Hampstead Town Hall reading from Tarikul Alam, the Pakistani student I’d become friendly with at the Regent Street Poly. Following his role as the Indian doctor in The Millionairess, Peter was famous for his Indian accent, and the letter appealed to him, as I thought it might. Turning to Michael Garrick, he asked him to play a dirge he’d heard him play earlier, and then, picking up the mike from my recorder, he read the letter over the music, starting very slowly with the address and date, timing every word and catching every inflection and change of pace and mood to perfection, as if he’d rehearsed it for days. It was the perfect script, and I hope Tarikul won’t mind my including it here, just as he wrote it (the reference at the end is to my friends Tony Stalbow and Anne Hooper – Anne of course was at the Poly with him).

  That is a letter and recording I treasure, and Peter followed it with a couple of my own poems, read in different voices. To end a memorable evening, he then treated us to the Demon Barber of Fleet Street act he used to do in variety early in his career, acting it out with great melodramatic exaggeration and panache. And so Max left us with laughter in his ears. We were to meet up again several times, in England and in Palm Springs, where he married and settled. Sad to say, Barbara’s story ended tragically. We’d met a few times after her split with Max and she’d seemed happy enough, and she, too, married before very long. But then we lost touch with her, and were shocked to learn in a letter from Max that she had taken her own life.

  * * *

  The new year, 1963, began with a string of concerts – in Cardiff, at the Hampstead Theatre, at the Royal Court (courtesy of a prickly George Devine, the theatre’s renowned director), and several other venues. But most exciting for me, a maverick record producer called Denis Preston agreed to record a poetry and jazz EP in his Lansdowne Studios in Holland Park. Denis was something of a legend in the jazz world, having recorded not only most of the leading musicians but many young ones he believed in too, always ready to back his taste and instincts. He was a generous entrepreneur but not, I imagine, a man to cross, especially since he was a self-confessed fan of the mobster Bugsy Siegel! When he died, the Sunday Times called him ‘probably the most important figure to emerge from the British jazz business’. In fact, it was at his studios, where I’d gone to discuss an earlier venture that never materialised, that I’d first met a rather intimidating Joe Harriott, who was then deeply into the free-form jazz he pioneered and which Denis was recording. I was well aware of Joe’s great reputation and it was typical of Preston to have produced the revolutionary but exciting music Joe was presenting. That day, in his intense, aristocratic manner, Joe started to explain his free-form vision to me, pointing to a vase of roses and saying he was trying to express the feeling of the inside of a rose petal, to paint it in sound. I was relieved that for the EP we later made together, on which he was joined by Shake Keane, he appeared rather more down-to-earth and his lyrical playing of Garrick’s settings is quite beautiful. However, the burden of the title poem, ‘Blues for the Lonely’, written to Miles Davis’s ‘Blue in Green’, fell to Shake, whose rendition is also masterly. The EP went out on the Columbia label, and at the same time a small booklet of my jazz poems was published in Leicester by Leslie Weston.

  The climax to all this came when a phone call was put through to me at the Harrap office and there was a jubilant Bruce Robb telling me that Sidgwick had finally agreed to publish my book of poems. It wouldn’t be until the following year, but who cared? I could hardly contain my excitement. The only problem was that by the next year I might have some better poems to include, but then I remembered Dannie Abse telling me that when his first book of poems was accepted by Hutchinson he’d also had to wait some time, and on learning the book was about to go to the printer he’d slipped into the office, asked to see the manuscript, and quietly changed a few poems when nobody was looking. I could always do the same.

  Almost immediately after that, in what was becoming a dream period in my life, Elizabeth Thomas phoned from Tribune to say there was an editorial job going at a company call
ed Aldus Books and would I be interested? Well, it seemed I was on a roll, and it didn’t take much thought to answer, ‘Yes!’

  9

  TO ALDUS THEN I WENT

  Nothing could have prepared me for the explosion that was Aldus Books. A subsidiary of the US publisher Doubleday, it was run (dominated) by a remarkable Austrian Jew called Wolfgang Foges, but more on him in a moment. Before that I had to get past first base, and this meant going for an interview with one of their editors, Douglas Hill, a convivial Canadian with thinning ginger hair, a short beard and a clipped accent, who offered me a seat behind a desk and proceeded to give me an editorial test. I hadn’t expected that, naively thinking that after Elizabeth Thomas’s recommendation it would be a fait accompli. Not so! I don’t remember what I was asked to do – perhaps sub or rewrite some copy – but when I’d finished Douglas looked at it quickly, almost apologetically, smiled and said, ‘Well, it’s not the neatest thing I’ve ever seen, but I know your poetry, I write poetry, and it would be great to have someone to talk to… So if you want the job, it’s yours.’