Even when the sun shines the sluggish water beside the sea wall looks the same uniform grey because of the mud from the Demerara river. Litter often floats about a little off shore and I have never known a coastline anywhere that screams Schwimmen Verboten quite so loudly. At least there is an inviting pool at the Pegasus, the circular hotel on the edge of this forlorn stretch of the Atlantic. It has changed owners, and its name, at different times but it remains the best place to stay for visitors. When I first encountered it in 1974 it was a third world building doing its best to seem more like a hotel than a prison. Its rooms were spartan and its food basic, although during one of my stays they tried to make the dining more sophisticated by employing a pianist whose favourite tune was ‘Tea For Two’, thumped out slowly on an instrument that was clearly in need of tuning and no doubt suffering from the damp. He sounded like a schoolboy who had just learned to play.
Perhaps because of its isolation from the main tourist routes and the economic deprivations that became worse during the dictatorship of Forbes Burnham, experiences in Guyana are actually more memorable than those that linger from more comfortable places. I recall exciting boat trips up the river, a snake hanging down from a mangrove tree, exotic birds from circling eagles to minute humming-birds, monkeys cavorting in the thick jungle, a swim amongst rocks in swirling brown water near a waterfall, another pool where jaguars still drink, and the breath-taking noise and splendour of the Kaieteur Falls. The 822-foot drop is one of the longest in the world and the sheer volume of water plunging down a sheer cliff, with trees thick on either bank, is spectacular.
The people made Guyana different too. As in Trinidad theirs was, and is, a real melting pot of races – Amerindian, Indian, African (the former slaves of the sugar plantations) and whites of European origin. I was rung up one day during one of my earlier tours by a young fisherman, the youngest son of a proud Hindu family, who called himself, simply, ‘Junior’. He asked me twice on subsequent visits to dine with his family in their large house and once took me to the market in the early morning to witness the morning’s catch from the ocean. Junior knew everything about contemporary West Indian cricket and had strong views, like all proper Caribbean enthusiasts for the game. Alas, his sister, a doctor, emailed me in 2009 to say that he had died suddenly in his thirties.
That Mike Atherton has become an even better journalist than he was cricketer (which is saying a great deal) perhaps owes something to the fact that he married a Guyanese girl whom he met on tour, Izzy, the bright and attractive granddaughter of the Test player F.C. De Caires, and daughter of the editor of the only independent local newspaper, the Starboek News. During the ill-fated World Cup in 2007 I played golf with Mike’s mother-in-law, also a stalwart of the newspaper, the feisty Dorothy De Caires. The Georgetown Golf Club, laid out on flat ground amongst the sugar-cane fields, was never destined to be numbered amongst the great courses, but it was thriving again. A decade or so before it had been neglected, with cows wandering everywhere to keep the grass down, puddles abounding and a darts board in the shack which called itself the clubhouse that sent out a cloud of dust when one of our four (Martin Johnson, Mike Selvey, Peter Hayter and I) threw what was probably the first arrow to have struck its surface for twenty years.
Barbados was always the most popular place for English visitors on a tour of the West Indies. It is an over populated island in the south and west, but the sunshine, the bustle, the expensive restaurants and the daytime glimpses, every few hundred yards, of an eau-de-nile sea, are captivating. Inland and on the northern and eastern parts you can drive along deserted roads and, in my case, usually get lost. The island has a unique charm, reflected in the Bajans themselves, a fact that made their sudden hostility to me during England’s tour of 1989/90 all the more shocking.
It became for me an unexpected personal crisis. It stemmed from a report delivered at the close of the fourth day’s play of the fourth Test for the Today programme. Late on the day in question the Northamptonshire and England batsman Rob Bailey was given out caught down the leg-side, after a long delay, by the umpire at the bowler’s end, the tubby, bespectacled Bajan Lloyd Barker. To me and all other reporters on the ground, especially those of us behind the batsman who could see clearly enough that the ball had brushed only Bailey’s thigh pad, it appeared that Mr. Barker had initially said ‘not out’, indicated that it was ‘over’ and made his way towards square-leg. Then, seeing Viv Richards bearing down upon him in a prolonged appeal, he belatedly lifted his finger. Judging these leg-side catches, and whether they have come off bat, thigh-pad or glove, is notoriously difficult for all umpires, a fact that I should have made clearer at the time.
The cricketing background was that the West Indies were one down in the series, had been lucky to escape with a draw at Port of Spain when Richards was absent, and in another close match were desperate to win, something to which they had become accustomed. The social context was that some West Indians had been offended by criticism of their team on Sky television, which was transmitting the matches to the Caribbean (and to the UK) for the first time that winter. At Bridgetown, several members of the local press were offended, naturally enough, to be placed in an overspill press box, pushed out of their normal positions by the sheer volume of visiting British journalists.
These factors no doubt contributed to the hysterical reaction when my report, which had been re-transmitted to the Caribbean on the BBC World Service, was picked up by a local producer with a ‘chip’ who quickly spread the word that I had called the umpire a ‘cheat’. This was anything but the truth. I had been critical throughout the tour of the over rates (saying in this report that both sides were cheating each other by slowing down over rates deliberately) and I deplored the growing tendency of players on both sides to put pressure on inexperienced umpires by appealing en masse, sometimes when they knew a batsman was not out. Bailey had been, I suggested (in common with most of those reporting to newspapers), an unfortunate victim of this practice. I was specifically critical of Viv, whose exaggerated appeal seemed to have persuaded the umpire (whom I had not named) to ‘change his mind’.
For the next two days I was the object of mass criticism on local phone-in programmes and the main item in national news bulletins throughout the Caribbean. It was suggested that I should be deported, shot, or introduced to a bull-pizzle. I was served with a writ for defamation of the umpire in the final Test in Antigua the following week, for which I had been taken off the local airways and allowed to commentate only for the BBC.
It was extremely unpleasant for a time, and alarming for Judy and the children, who had been with me in Barbados and feared for my safety in Antigua. It all blew over, of course. Mr Barker made a small amount –$100 I think – when the subsequent case was settled out of court by the BBC lawyers. But I knew for certain that I had been forgiven in Barbados when my son Robin toured there with his school the following winter. Handing over his passport at the immigration desk he was asked if he was any relation of Christopher Martin-Jenkins and for a moment he feared the worst. Instead, when he had answered in the affirmative, he was greeted with a beaming smile and the comment: ‘I just love that man’s commentaries.’ The Lloyd Barker incident apart, my most unusual experience on Barbados occurred during England’s ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’ period in the mid 1980s. On the rest day of the Test match I interviewed Ian Botham in the room he was sharing with Les Taylor at the Rockley Beach resort, at a pre-arranged time in the afternoon. He introduced me first to a strikingly attractive green-eyed girl who turned out to be Lindy Field, the former Miss Barbados whose subsequent Sunday newspaper revelations made her some money and caused the great all-rounder much embarassment. Later on that tour Paul Downton’s wife had arrived in Antigua and was swimming in the sea when a Sunday ‘news’ man, sent out to dig for dirt and mistaking her for a young lady in search of fun, finished their brief conversation with: ‘You’ll get some luck soon, darlin’, the England cricket team are flying in tomorrow
.’
Cricket writers, thank goodness, can concentrate on the game and mind their own business otherwise. In any case, cricket always came first in Barbados. Years before, on my first tour, shortly before Judy’s arrival, I had been to a police station to get on her behalf the necessary local driving permit which all visitors require before being allowed to drive on the island. She was bringing her British driving licence with her and at first I was firmly told that there could be no permit without the physical evidence of a licence. Then, the local sergeant on duty noticed my name. ‘You de fellah who talk on the radio ’bout cricket’? he inquired. ‘Yes I am indeed’, I said, hope rising that the red tape might be circumvented. Then a second question: ‘What you think of Collis King and Nolan Clarke?’
That was easy. Both had made centuries that day against MCC. I described at some length what terrific batsmen I thought they were before adding, ‘Well, I must be getting back to my hotel now’.
‘What d’you mean’, he said. ‘You haven’t got your wife’s permit.’ He handed it over with a broad grin on his face.
I wonder, sadly, if cricket would mean so much to every young Barbadian policeman these days.
12
A SECOND FAMILY
It is the curse of the free-lancer to feel a permanent sense of insecurity. One imagines that if one offer is turned down, similar opportunities will dry up. With apologies to Oscar Hammerstein for a minor bowdlerisation, I’m just a guy who can’t say no. I claim a noble motive, however. Although it must from time to time have seemed not to be the case to my wife and children, all my work over the years – writing, broadcasting and making speeches – has been done primarily for my family.
For Judy and me there was never much of a surplus in the bank but until the housing market turned sour on us we were extremely fortunate with our choice of homes. Pilgrim’s Cottage at Albury was the most exciting, simply because it was the first. Anyone who has had the experience of actually owning one’s own home knows the feeling. It was a romantic place to start married life and we spent our second night there, before a honeymoon on Corfu at a hotel that seemed glamorous at the time but seriously down market when we revisited it many years later.
Our first night, after the wedding in Brackley, was supposed to have been spent at a hotel specially chosen by me on the banks of the Thames in Oxfordshire. But we had had a long engagement and I had made the booking so long before that the hotel had lost it when we arrived in the early evening, full of expectation. Fortunately I had been efficient for once and had their letter of confirmation in my pocket. Much embarrassed they booked the best room in the George Hotel at Dorchester-on-Thames instead so after a short journey we were welcomed to a large room with a four-poster bed and a free bottle of champagne waiting on ice for us, courtesy of the originally chosen hotel. Judy already knew from my accident with the paving stone and consequent broken toes that life with me would never be entirely straightforward, and this was confirmation.
Pilgrim’s Cottage stood (and still stands) in the centre of Albury, a pretty little village, with a 100 foot garden (well, strip of grass) at the back leading to the Tillingbourne stream. Mallard frequently waddled up our lawn, herons sat like statues on the bank waiting for their breakfasts and very occasionally a kingfisher flashed downstream in a little streak of shimmering blue.
In our first three years of marriage there was at least a pattern to my working and family life. Once the touring started that was less the case and the decision to turn free-lance in 1980 pushed me closer to becoming a workaholic.
The worst example of mistaken priorities, however, had nothing to do with over-work. When our elder son James was called to the bar in 1997 I was playing golf in Norfolk at the annual meeting of the Gibbons, a collection of cricket writers who let their hair down every October after the rigours of the cricket season.
We play in an arduous competition – thirty-six holes a day in all weathers – each of us in the hope of winning but primarily to have fun on two beautiful links courses at Hunstanton and Brancaster. I was relatively new to this convivial little society and felt that it would be bad form to leave them in the middle of the week. I thought that James, as a golfer himself, would understand. He has never said that he did not, but I deeply regret having missed the chance to see him enjoying one of the great achievements of his life. It was quite the wrong decision.
When such things as school fees – once one has decided to go down the route of independent schooling – or keeping up a reasonable standard of living at home are taken into account, accepting a fee for travelling on a Friday evening to some welcoming but obscure cricket club in, say, Nottinghamshire, becomes, perhaps, more understandable. Increasingly Judy has taken to seizing my diary and entering family or local social engagements in the space for the relevant day in large letters so that I do not double book. But she understands financial imperatives and she has been remarkably tolerant about my disappearances from home to pay for the bread and butter.
James was born at Mount Alvernia Hospital in Guildford on 12 June, little more than six months before my first winter tour for the BBC. His arrival was the happiest experience of my life bar none, even though Judy had bombarded me with pillows, flannels and anything close to hand as I tried to be a solicitous husband in her moments of worst agony. I had dashed down the motorway on the fourth evening of the Trent Bridge Test when our doctor, the genial Tony Davies, decided that it was time to give nature a push. I would have been on hand already had not Bev Congdon and Vic Pollard delayed England’s apparently inevitable victory with a heroic stand for New Zealand.
James himself was in no hurry. Even when he was finally delivered it took some gentle bottom slapping and quiet verbal urging from Dr. Davies before we heard the first sounds emerging from a voice-box that was far less reluctant to make itself heard ever after. James Telford Alexander M-J was fortunate enough to inherit his mother’s quick brain. He spoke intelligibly at about eighteen months and amazed us by waking from a deep sleep at the back of the car soon afterwards to announce that he was feeling ‘a bit tired’.
I had never gone to bed in a happier state than I did in the wee small hours of that June morning. Judy’s mother, Muriel, had heard my return as she tried in vain to sleep in the spare room at Pilgrim’s Cottage. ‘Well done’, she said with heartfelt joy when I told her that we had produced a son. She would prove to be a marvellously devoted grandmother and it was desperately sad for her and for Judy that she should have suffered a heart attack only six months after the birth of our second son, Robin, in October 1975. I shall never rid myself of the image of Judy, sitting wretchedly in the ‘drawing-room’ of our second home, Old Harry’s Cottage at East Clandon, when she received the call from the hospital in Banbury that her beloved mother was not going to recover. She died at only seventy after years of selfless service to her local community at Brackley.
Of Robin, the calmest of babies who could always be diverted from almost anything else as a toddler when a ball was produced, I shall write more later but James was also lucky enough to be a useful sportsman. At Oxford he missed the first in Theology for which he had hoped but won the British Universities Rugby fives doubles with his partner, Matt Cavenagh, and won Blues for golf and fives. He might well have added one for cricket had he not concentrated more on golf. At least his batting and off-breaks helped the Authentics to defeat the Crusaders in the Parks.
In the next few years he worked even more assiduously on his law than his putting, met his future wife, Nicola, while at Law School, and overcame fierce competition to get his pupilage before being taken on by a well-regarded Chambers, 2, Harcourt Buildings. He is now a devoted father of three, putting his experience in the law to good effect for Hakluyt, the Corporate Intelligence experts, while Nicola concentrates on being a good wife and mother to Molly, William and Freddie.
Lucy, born like her brothers at Mount Alvernia in Guildford, was a character from the moment that she appeared in July 1979. A beaming sm
ile came readily from the start, she overcame mild dyslexia by sheer conscientiousness and all her life she has not only adored children but been adored by them. Mothers lucky enough to employ her as a Norland-trained nanny have begged her to stay when the time has come to move on. She never shone on the sports field but always loved the outdoors so she has cycled and walked every inch of West Sussex. She hurtled like a hare up and down the 100 miles of the South Downs Way and when she ran in the London Marathon to raise money for research into muscular dystrophy she finished in the same time as Sir Steve Redgrave, still smiling broadly despite shin splints.
Like her father’s, her life has been full of little dramas, invariably shared mainly with her patient mother until, at last, she met a worthy suitor, Henry Forbes, in 2010. She had been determined to wait for the right man so her happiness when she did so was palpable and thoroughly deserved.
We had all too few holidays while the family was growing up, although this was to some extent compensated for by trips abroad when I was away on tour. The home-based breaks were special, notably to Thurlestone in Devon, where the first six holes of the golf course, known as the ‘boozers’ loop’, are a constantly fascinating challenge with a glorious seascape all around, and the local beaches, especially at Bantham, are perfect for children. Once we ventured to North Cyprus, once to Tenerife but schools and houses always consumed most of the hard-earned gains including those made by Judy in her role as a primary school teacher and later as specially trained tutor to children with special learning difficulties.
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