Norma Farnes - Spike - An Intimate Memoir

‘Right, I’ll come to the office with you and have it out.’

‘No,’ I insisted. ‘I’ll do it myself.’ I did not want anyone to think I was a wimp.

Dad advised me to confront him and demand that he should call the police. When I did he spluttered like a pricked sausage and I knew I had come across my first bully. He flushed and scuttled out of the office, but did not have the grace to apologize, although the missing money was not mentioned again. In my remaining time there he kept out of my way, which was fine by me. But after eighteen months I got itchy feet and successfully applied for a job as shorthand typist at ICI, then the largest employer on Teesside, at Kiora House, a mansion two miles north of Stockton.

I was there for three years, at first in the typists’ pool under the strict eye of Winnie Gatenby. She was not the Miss Brodie type, more Mother Hen, because her girls were definitely not crème de la crème. Rather we were young, boy crazy, and spent our days discussing the shortcomings or otherwise of the young men who worked in the building and what had happened at the Saturday dance at Saltburn Spa. Winnie often had to crack the whip, which she always did rather apologetically.

It was a very happy office. There was the usual flirting but cupboards were used for their intended purpose and it was all fairly innocent. I have no memories of winters at Kiora. It always seemed to be summer, with sandwich lunches on the lawn, where we would bask and gossip until it was time to return to work. It was then that I developed a crush on a BBC television newsreader, Kenneth Kendall. I cut his photograph out of the Radio Times and stuck it on the wall to the left of my desk so I could gaze at it every time I flicked back the typewriter carriage. My dream was to meet him but as he was out of reach I was left with the local talent. I was quite devoted, however, and when we were moved to another ICI country house, down came Kenneth and up he went on another wall in our new home.

But I felt restless, and soon afterwards I realized a long-held ambition to go to modelling school. I had always been interested in fashion and grooming. ICI gave me a leave of absence and Dad the necessary wherewithal, and off I went to the Lucy Clayton School in Grosvenor Place, London, which was then considered to be the very best. There I joined twenty girls for a month-long course. Although at five feet five I was an inch too small to qualify for the Mannequin Certificate, the all-important diploma for those who wanted to follow in the footsteps of Barbara Goalen and my idol, Fiona Campbell-Walters, I graduated in every other respect.

It was an exciting month. The girls were different from my friends at home. All were extremely clothes-conscious and some very blah, but others brought a mixture of accents from all over the country. This was at a time when anything but an educated southern accent was a problem for the ambitious, so those of us from the Midlands and North Country were encouraged to lose them. I was an eager learner. We were shown how to use cutlery, how to make introductions and, most importantly, how to look after clothes and shoes. Of an evening we met in coffee bars – the new rage to hit London and later to spread to the provinces – and talked excitedly about how the course would change our lives. When we parted, sometimes close to midnight, I travelled safely to South London where I was staying with a cousin.

The experience opened the door to a glamorous new world and gave me poise and confidence. It had never been my intention to make a career of modelling, but when I returned to Thornaby I was offered evening and weekend jobs by Robinson’s and a hairdresser who had made a name for himself on local television. So typing was interspersed with fashion shows but my feet became even itchier than before. Local girls and boys seemed drab in comparison with their metropolitan counterparts. Nonetheless recruiting nights continued with my best friend, Pat Howden, at the dear old Saltburn Spa. We never missed a Saturday night of flirting. And we started planning for our summer holidays.

After a taste of London sophistication I was thirsty to travel further afield than Blackpool, where my parents used to take me every year. Package holidays were then in their infancy and flights expensive. Only the moderately wealthy took a ferry across the Channel and drove down Route Nationale 7 to magical places such as Juan-les-Pins, St Tropez (then still a fishing port), Cannes and Nice. But our imagination was fired by news stories of young people who had hitch-hiked their way to the sun and we were desperate to do the same. The trouble was that our parents were equally desperate to save us from the white slave trade, which they were convinced flourished twenty-two miles the other side of Dover. Throughout the winter of 1953 we pleaded our cause.

France! The home of the Folies Bergére, teeny-weeny bikinis, chic, garlic and Gauloise cigarettes. Mum was fearful, Dad apprehensive, but eventually they gave their permission, with one big proviso: I must not do anything that might bring shame to the family. Not the shame that dare not speak its name – coming back pregnant – but even losing you know what. Mum had heard that girls purposely dressed skimpily to catch the eye of drivers as they raced to the sinful south and she was adamant that my clothes should be modest. The same condition was placed on Pat so we left Thornaby dressed demurely in passion-killing long shorts. As soon as we were out of sight we changed into pairs that were short and tight enough to make sitting down an artful manoeuvre, packing the long ones at the bottom of our rucksacks to be retrieved on our return.

Those cheek-popping shorts served us well and they certainly made drivers take their eyes off the road, so much so that we were able to disdain offers of lifts from lorries and small cars; luxury sedans and saloons became our favoured mode of transport. We were careful to stay on the main road to the south, never hitched after five o’clock and as travelling was free we stayed at decent hotels, not only because they were cleaner but because they might contain eligible young men.

Over the next few years I went back to France and visited Italy and Spain with Pat and then another friend, Aideen Thornton. On the second trip I met someone who made a lasting impression, though we knew each other for only a few days.

It happened on the Champs Elysées. Aideen was taking my photograph with the boulevard’s nameplate in the background so I could show off back home. Then as it was her turn a tall man in his late twenties asked, ‘Would you like me to take both of you?’ Talk about hearts stopping. He was a young English Gary Cooper, slim, smart and outrageously handsome. Unbelievably, he said he was hitch-hiking. Hitch-hiking! He looked as though his everyday conveyance should be a Rolls.

‘Where to?’ I asked.

‘Juan-les-Pins. And you?’

There was no hesitation. ‘Juan-les-Pins.’

He smiled captivatingly. Would we care to join him for coffee? Would we. Over coffee he proved to be a fabulous raconteur. He knew Paris like a native and the afternoon whizzed by. How about dinner at this tiny bistro? How could we refuse? With him I would have shared a baguette on the beach. John, as he was called, told us he was staying in Paris for three or four days and between us we soon persuaded Aideen that we should do the same, to see the sights, of course.

He was the most charming man I had ever met, always immaculate in a spotless white shirt and one of those famous public school ties. He showed us Paris as expertly as, and a lot more charmingly than, a tourist guide but every evening at nine o’clock he turned Cinderella. He would look at his watch, apologize and leave. I wondered who she was.