The wardrobe eventually toppled over, presumably sending shockwaves down the stair bannisters, across the hall, and into the kitchen, where dear old mum was imperturbably cooking dinner for twelve, anointing one brother with Dettol, strapping another up with Elastoplast, and keeping the third from pulverising himself in the Magi-Mix. She raced upstairs, risking the distinct possibility of all three of them immediately sticking their heads in the gas oven. Rolling around in the dressing room she found a large mahogany wardrobe, temporarily inhabited by a petrified poltergeist, which she forthwith released, and exorcised with a swift clip across the ear.
To this day I remain frightened of the dark. When I think about it, I am sure that the only reason I married the dreaded PHE was so that I need never be alone in the dark again. I had not counted on his becoming an international cricketer.
As a demonstration of the strengths of the human psyche, however, I am proud to relate that I did manage to overcome my paranoia of fur coats. And I still keep that bottle of Lourdes water.
The celebratory mass at the Belmont Park Racecourse was nothing if not triumphalist. The assembled crowd was treated, whilst waiting, to a repertoire of music conducted by former Professor of Music at the University of Western Australia, Sir Frank Calloway. The high note, if you will forgive the pun, was a fanfare, written by the late Master of the Queen’s Music, Sir Arthur Bliss, and dedicated to Sir Frank on the occasion of Australia’s last Commonwealth Games.
Unfortunately, the music for the Mass proper fell outside the mandate of the good professor, and we were served up something modern, complicated, contrapuntal and syncopated, the sort of thing that passes for trendy nowadays. It is odd, in a Church where the message is getting more reactionary by the minute, that the trammelling has become so do-or-die contemporary. Rather give me Brompton Oratory and some good Gregorian plain chant any day of the week, and keep this cacophonic, atonal, arrhythmic aural offensive for the pop-mongers.
In the sacristy after the Mass, skippers and crew of challengers and defenders in the America’s Cup lined up to meet the Pope. Perth entrepreneur Alan Bond, who embraced the faith when he married his wife Eileen, kissed the papal ring, the correct act of obeisance on such occasions, and was afterwards granted a special audience with John Paul. The roads were thronged with waving, excited people, perhaps half the population of Perth as the Popemobile wended its way to the next and final Australian fixture, a nursing home run by nuns. ‘G’day Pope’ proclaimed the quickly assembled placards. No insult intended, just the usual Aussie amalgam of good-natured, affectionate iconoclasm.
‘And whom have you come to see?’ I asked a six-or seven-year-old boy sporting a ‘We love you, Pope’ T-shirt, and a bright red be-mitred balloon. ‘The Pope,’ he answered correctly; ‘he’s come all the way from Italy, where my dad comes from.’
‘And why has he come?’ I continued, putting the poor youngster through an up-to-date catechism mill. ‘He’s come to make sure we keep the America’s Cup, and to help us win the cricket,’ he replied innocently, patently not a product of a Jesuit establishment. It makes you wonder, at the end of this brilliantly organised media-orientated campaign, how much of the proverbial seed has actually fallen on good ground.
Back at the WACA, Australia were in deep trouble. Obdurately defensive captaincy from Mike Gatting, however, in failing to declare England’s second innings at least an hour before the end of play on the fourth day, ensured a dogged draw.
A political scandal is currently causing the government some little embarrassment. It’s been a great year for political scandals and little embarrassments. First there was Oliver North and Iran-gate, then Peter Wright and MI5, and now Paul Keating and the invisible tax returns. For a treasurer, the poor man’s memory would appear to contain more holes than a pair of tart’s fishnet tights. Having initiated a national campaign to encourage, cajole and threaten the Australian taxpayer into filing his tax returns on time, a mysteriously mislaid Inland Revenue letter, which somehow found its way into the possession of the Leader of the Opposition, showed that the good treasurer himself had not filed any tax returns for the previous two years. In the United Kingdom I am convinced the man would have been forced to resign; but Keating demonstrates a melange of pained affront over his mail being tampered with, and a degree of political chutzpah which appears to have side-stepped the issue entirely. Australian politicians certainly seem better at brazening incidents out than most. Anyway, I merely mention this incident because Australia’s pace hopes in this Test had rested fairly heavily on the veteran shoulders of injury-fraught Geoff Lawson. Lawson, sad to say, did not live up to expectation.
‘Come on, Lawson,’ remonstrated one less-than-sympathetic larrikin in the crowd, pyramid of empty Swan lagers at his side, nose glistening greasily from under the crushed raspberry-coloured zinc cream. ‘Come on, Lawson, you look about as fast as Keating’s tax returns!’
The Australians were not the only cricketers copping flak, however. In the Channel 9 television commentary box, ex-England captain and erstwhile incomparable strategic genius Bob Willis was drawling away in his own inimitably soporific fashion. I am sure that PBL marketing, who package and sell cricket here in Australia on behalf of the less commercially minded Australian Cricket Board, could do a lot for Bob. If nothing else, they could market his dreary monologue laced with relentless inaccuracy as non-proprietary alternative to Mogadon. In the England dressing room, where everybody knows that Willis is in more danger of saying something original than of saying anything positive about Phil, the team was in fits. Left-arm spinner Edmonds had picked up 2–50 while off-spinner Emburey had figures of about1–100.
‘But forget the figures,’ droned Willis; ‘you can see that Emburey has been by far the better bowler today.’ On that particular day, frankly, informed opinion could not. Let us forget for a moment his totally incorrect assertions that the entire England team has sent me to Coventry over Another Bloody Tour, although they are conceivably actionable, causing me as they do such terrible mental distress. I just hope by now that any listeners automatically assume that anything Bob says about la famille Edmonds borders on being highly economical with the truth. Why on earth the Channel has not hired the mellifluous Welsh tones of the far more perceptive ex-England captain Tony Lewis instead is something I for one cannot fathom. I do believe I am not alone.
It was an eminently forgettable Test match, just the sort of game which reinforces the belief expressed by Western Australian and Australian left-arm pace-man, Chris Matthews. He went on record as saying that he found cricket a boring game to watch. If the players themselves find it boring, what hope is there for the rest of us?
Not, of course, that I spent much time in physical propinquity to the ground. There was too much going on that week to take time out watching run-choked draws at the WACA. The day before the start of the Test, I had been prevailed upon to address the Western Australian section of the Lord’s Taverners. In England, the Taverners do a lot of good work for handicapped kids, but in Australia their efforts are focussed more on providing sporting facilities for children in need.
Prior to my departure a few telexes had arrived in London from honorary secretary Harry Sorenson, inquiring whether I would care to be the first woman ever to make the keynote speech at a Lord’s Taverners’ thrash in Australia. These telexes I studiously ignored, much as Phil and Paul Keating do income tax returns, hoping that in the fullness of time they would merely fade away. Mr Sorenson, however, is more tenacious than that. I met him on our first trip to Perth for the state match, at a Lord’s Taverners’ cocktail party thrown in honour of the two teams. Malleably good-natured as I am, after two flutes of Moët I had acceded to his request. I woke up the next morning, as ladies often do after New Year’s Eve parties, wondering what on earth had possessed me to say yes. I had done quite a bit of public speaking at school and, for want of competition, even won the odd English Speaking Union award. There had been no choice in the matter. Being embarrass
ingly useless at games of all sorts in those less than halcyon convent days, the majority of my leisure time had had to be spent in more satisfyingly vocal pursuits. Whilst my Amazonian contemporaries thwacked hell out of one another on the lacrosse field, and bashed one another’s shins black and blue with ladylike dexterity on the hockey pitch, I wimped out unobtrusively into extra drama, singing and public speaking lessons. I had extra piano lessons too, although they were more of a penance. Mother Benigna would rap me painfully over the knuckles for imperfect renditions of mindlessly repetitive arpeggios, whilst the acme of my musical aspiration was simply to bang out bad boogie, hard honky-tonk and passably simplified imitations of Burt Bacharach.
I had spoken a few times at the Cambridge Union too, deliberately fatuous and apolitical stuff whilst my meaningful left-wing peers were all but throwing themselves under steamrollers over American involvement in Vietnam, or whatever the ‘in’ outrage of the day was at that time. Now, after a decade of public speaking silence, I was on the podium again for a thirty-minute speech.
A greater than normal percentage of ladies turned up for the lunch at a major international Perth hotel, where over 350 people assembled to hear the life story of the beast of burden that is the professional cricket widow. It was reassuring to see Mrs Ian Chappell, Mrs Rod Marsh and Mrs Greg Shippard attending in kindly supportive sorority. A reporter from London’s Sun was also in evidence, presumably to see if any aggro of the pink-gin-swilling-dodderers variety could be created out of this, another private fundraising function.
It is true that there were people rolling around in the aisles, but whether this was due to my often misunderstood sense of humour, or to violent attacks of gastroenteritis from the inevitable prawn cocktail, was not entirely apparent. The speech revolved around life with PHE and the difficulties of living with a character who must be the world’s most unhandy man. There was the episode when I came home from a conference in Brussels, and found that he had been having a go at Do-It-Yourself. I walked into the bedroom, and there over the Edmonds’ connubial couch was a mirror perilously affixed to the ceiling.
‘What’s this for,’ I asked, ‘so I can watch myself having a headache?’
‘The trouble with you, Frances,’ Phil retorted, ‘is that I cannot remember the last time you said you enjoyed having sex.’
‘Why should you?’ I replied. ‘You weren’t there.’
It was all in a good cause.
The next morning was a very early start. Doing guest spots for the Sydney-based breakfast television show Good Morning Australia generally involves getting up fairly early, but this was ridiculous. Since Perth is three hours behind Sydney, we went on air at 4.30 am, which involved getting up at 3 am. I wandered around the vast lobby of the Merlin at 3.45 am, waiting for the taxi to arrive. The night staff gave me some unashamedly funny looks. All tarted up, with full television make-up, waiting for a taxi at 3.45 in the morning, I must have looked like somebody’s discarded hooker.
The one good thing about doing breakfast TV is that it does leave you the rest of the day free to feel absolutely knackered. I am beginning to feel, in a minor sort of way, how Selina Scott must have felt after a couple of years of this routine.
The phone was ringing as I returned to the sordid sanctuary of our hotel room. The collection of cricket kit, clothes, memorabilia, books, ‘gimmies’, toiletries, rancid laundry bags, coffins, computers, word-processors, executive toys, electronic chess, papers, silly hats, bottles of Johnnie Walker whisky, and half-used tubes of sunscreen has now reached disturbingly seedy hazard proportions. One hotel room does not accommodate two Edmondses. Phil, heaving like a beached whale in between the Janet Reger, could not quite bestir himself to answer the call. It is interesting how a man who can happily wake me up at 4 am with the World Service, is, whenever possible, resolutely comatose until 9 am should I be obliged to make an early start. The call was from Alan Bond’s personal assistant, David Michael. Did I want to go out sailing that day with Eileen Bond?
Did I want to go out sailing with the legendary ‘Red’ Bond? Do fish swim? Is the Pope Catholic? Do David Gower and Frances Edmonds indulge in the odd glass of Bollinger? Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back?
Sailing with Eileen is about as far removed from the twelve-metre concept of the sport as you can get. Sailing with Eileen does not mean winch-grinding, or sail trimming or tacking, or anything in any way remotely strenuous. Sailing with Eileen means boarding one of the sumptuous Bondy cruisers (that day we sailed on Southern Cross II; the mega-million dollar Southern Cross III, just purchased, was still being fitted out), rocking forth comfortably to the starting line, maintaining spirits high with anything from bottles of vintage Dom Perignon to tinnies of the company product, as Eileen calls the Bond produced Swan Lager, taking a brief respite with an oyster and crayfish lunch, and returning replete with the Dom or the company product to watch the sequence of events. It is a splendid way to watch other poor blighters throwing thirty-odd tacks, and breaking their backs sailing a twelve-metre in a thirty-knot wind.
Eileen is great fun, the warm and generous household power behind the Bondy throne. Married to Alan when they were both teenagers, she still takes a keen interest in the manifold ramifications of the enormous Bond empire, and pointed with obvious pride to the Observation City hotel, which the Bonds had built to accommodate the hoped-for influx of tourists for the America’s Cup. Eileen, who runs her own successful interior design company, had organised the decor for the entire place and the tropical swimming pool has to be seen to be believed. Looking out over the Indian Ocean, with peerless views of the racing, Observation City must surely be the place to stay at the moment.
I took to her immediately. I like any woman who has a reputation for being a legend in her own lunchtime, will sing Irish songs where and when she feels like it and remains resolutely herself. She has a shock of flaming red hair, hence the nickname, a heart of gold and a couple of kilos of diamonds liberally distributed over her person.
‘Well, Alan owns the mine. Why shouldn’t I wear the diamonds?’ she asks. Truly a woman after my own heart.
Some of the less flamboyant, more conservative, perhaps even envious elements of Perth society dismiss the Bonds as ‘new money’. Bond answers such sniping by pointing out that he made his first million by the time he was twenty. Now nearing the half-century mark, he reckons that makes him an old millionaire. Besides, as Nancy Reagan is apocryphally credited with saying: ‘Better nouveau riche than not riche at all.’
That day the Bond syndicate’s Australia IV was sailing against Syd Fischer’s Steak ’n’ Kidney. Sadly for us, the Sydney yacht was leading by quite a substantial margin. Spirits aboard Southern Cross I became proportionately lower. Jody, Eileen’s youngest daughter, went downstairs to watch the television in sheer frustration and despair. All of a sudden I remembered that I had been awake since some ungodly hour, and felt overwhelmingly tired, I asked our hostess whether she minded if I took a quick nap. There were, after all, three magnificently appointed state rooms with en-suite bathrooms on board.
‘You just go into my bedroom and lie down,’ said Eileen, concerned, ‘and make sure you cover yourself up. If there’s anything you want, you just phone upstairs.’
Eileen Bond is clearly first and foremost an extremely soft-touch mother.
By the time I woke up, the celebrations were in full flow. One of Steak ’n’ Kidney’s sails had become entangled in the rudder, and Australia IV had romped home victorious.
Eileen, in a wonderful choice of culinary metaphor, was devouring a steak and kidney pie. She was in fine fettle.
‘I bet Syd Fischer wishes he had kissed the Pope’s ring,’ she laughed.
She admits to being a tiny bit superstitious. During the final round against the New York Yacht Club in Newport, she had been wearing a jumper when Australia II won its first race against Dennis Conner’s Liberty. It was a bulky knit job, with a fur koala bear up a gum tree appliquéd on the front. She kept
on wearing it, laundering it in the evening, and wearing it again the next day until Australia II had won the Cup. Forget Ben Lexcen’s radical winged keel and John Bertrand’s seamanship. Not many people realise that it was Red’s jumper that secured the Auld Mug for the Aussies.
Unfortunately, our mates on White Crusader had had a bad day, vanquished by French Kiss after trouble with their sails. It is such a dicey business, this twelve-metre sailing lark. There are so many variables, vagaries and vicissitudes to cope with, apart from the already complicated business of plain sailing.
‘We’ll have lunch next time you come to Perth,’ said Eileen, handing me her address and telephone number as we moored. I would have to put some practice in on the Irish ballads.
Phil arrived home in a foul mood, berating everyone and as usual muttering darkly about ‘negative fucking tactics’. He lay on the bed zapping from TV station to TV station. I think remote control devices should be banned from all households comprised of more than one person. They are the most anti-social invention since garlic capsules.
It is perhaps a hallmark of Western civilisation that we all need space. Space to sit in, space to move in, space to live in. On my flight to Australia, I sat next to a beautiful petite Malaysian lady. From her perfect poise throughout the twenty-four-hour flight, it was perfectly obvious that the space afforded by a club-class seat would have been more than enough for her to set up house in. Whilst I tried every possible angle and posture in increasingly redundant efforts to doze, she just folded up as neatly as a Pac A Mac and went to sleep for hours. But I am, unfortunately, a real Westerner and living in the close physical proximity of a small hotel room with one large cricketer for months on end is becoming a bit of a trial. Different circadian rhythms, the fact that I want to work when he wants to watch the dot on the television screen once all the broadcasts have finished, all these problems, which are in no way so acute in normal living quarters, become further and further exacerbated in a rabbit-hutch environment. It is also very difficult to write if there is a bed in the immediate vicinity. The tendency is to lie on it and the inevitable kip ensues. But that is my own specific problem. I am merely beginning to realise, albeit in a luxurious sort of way, that a lack of living space must engender aggression, and on a large scale, intense social strife; what our urban developers often forget is that most people prefer their relatively spacious slums to an all mod-con, no social nexus, high-rise box.
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