Norma Farnes - Spike - An Intimate Memoir

He looked at me impassively. More blurting.

‘Is Katherine at home? Is the Duke here? I didn’t want to do this. He made me. I’d have lost my job if I’d refused.’

He took pity. ‘The Duke isn’t here. He’s with Miss Katherine at Nawton Hall.’ Which, I knew, was where the Countess of Feversham lived.

I jumped in the car. It was such a relief to drive off. Did I say drive? More accurately, hiccough past the gates where Jack was waiting, along with thirty or forty reporters and photographers who had heard that an E-type had been admitted to the Hall. I pulled up and stalled the engine as I had forgotten to take it out of gear.

I made straight for Jack, absolutely furious. ‘Don’t ever put me through that sort of thing again!’ I yelled. He put me back into the car and got behind the wheel.

‘Tell us what happened, love,’ one of the reporters shouted.

Jack put the car into gear. ‘You can read all about it tomorrow,’ he told them. And we roared off.

From such flimsy details he wrote a story that made several page leads and one of our photographers got an exclusive picture of the Duke and Katherine leaving Nawton Hall, the first of them both together.

‘I’ll never do that again,’ I said. But I did, and I got better at it. The best was when I was sent to a local Lady who had held a charity sale of fashion clothes but instead, it was rumoured, had put most of the proceeds into her handbag. After Jack had broken the story hinting at her misdeeds her ladyship was very wary of the Press when she held a second sale. When I was dispatched to the manor, in the E-type again, she was delighted to show a ‘model from London’ around. After chatting for a quarter of an hour we were bosom pals. ‘I do hope we come across one another again,’ she said as I made to leave. ‘It’s so nice to meet a working gal.’

And then KERPOW. A camera bulb flashed in my face. Somehow the reporters had got to the front door again and one of them shouted at her ladyship, ‘I thought you said reporters weren’t allowed in the house. What about her?’

‘I’m certainly not a reporter,’ I said, quite truthfully. ‘He’s obviously mistaken me for someone else – dreadful man!’

‘Riff raff,’ agreed her ladyship.

Head held high, I walked disdainfully through the throng of pressmen, some of whom I recognized, and got into the car quickly. And this time, thank God, I drove away smoothly.

Jack was delighted with my description of the house, Lady , and the clothes on offer. He wrote his piece, with carefully guarded hints about the proceeds of the previous sale having shrunk by the time they reached the charity, and sure enough, the nationals splashed with it.

‘I should get a bonus for this. I got the story and you’ve made money out of it,’ I told him.

‘But you couldn’t have written it.’

‘Without me you wouldn’t have had anything to write about.’

‘But you’re on a salary.’

‘Yes, as a secretary and researcher. Not an undercover reporter.’

He sighed. ‘You win.’ He gave me a generous bonus and I now realize that this was my first stab at negotiating.

Life in Jack’s office could be tough. I still remember going home after a particularly bad day. The reporters had ragged me, Jack was in an impossible mood because one of them had lost a story to someone else – ‘You’ll be lucky to hold down a job on a sleepy country weekly’ – and in his fury he started to throw things around the office.

The sheer pressure of the day made me burst into tears when I got home. My dear mother was mortified. I can still hear her now. ‘Dear oh dear. For goodness’ sake don’t go back there any more. All this upset. It’s only a job. I’ll have a word with Dick Colclough at the Town Hall. He’ll get you a respectable job in his department. There’ll be none of this upset there.’

The tears dried up immediately. ‘What do you mean – a job at the Town Hall? I couldn’t stand it. Boring, boring, boring! If you think I’m going to let Jack Clarke browbeat me you’re wrong. When I go in tomorrow I’ll give him a piece of my mind.’

Mum could not understand my reasoning then and to the end of her days wished I had gone to the Town Hall or stayed at ICI, married a local boy, settled down and provided her with grandchildren. But I was not interested. The same determination not to give in to Jack’s forceful personality would serve me well as I refused to wilt when times were bad with Spike.

When I arrived at the office the next morning Jack behaved as if nothing had happened. That was yesterday’s news and therefore history as far as he was concerned.

Jack and I had a vibrant, loving relationship for almost three years. He would leave his family: this week, next week, after Christmas, sometime, never. Eventually I realized I took second place to them, though I knew he adored me. It had been the most wonderful and exciting time of my life and he would always be in my heart, but the time had come to part. I was desperately sad and I think I decided then that this journalism lark was not for me. Jack had opened the door into the world of television and I was fascinated by it.

Back in the office I looked at Kenneth Kendall. ‘It’s time to move on again,’ I told him. I was ambitious and determined to find a production job in television. There was only one place for that – London. I made a vow. I would never have another affair with a colleague or a married man. I had learned my lesson. I never did.

Pat Howden, my friend from hitch-hiking days, had gone to work in London a year or so earlier. She had asked me to join her but I did not want to leave Jack. ‘Idiot!’ she said. ‘There’s no future in that.’

Since then I had spent the odd weekend in London, staying in the flat she shared with four other girls. I got on well with all of them, particularly Diana Holloway, a lovely Welsh girl. When Pat moved to Paris to join her future husband I telephoned Diana to see if I could bum a bed for three or four weeks until I found a flat. ‘You can have the spare room and it’ll help us with the rent,’ said the ever practical Diana. So off I set for my new home, a flat with two double bedrooms, both with two single beds, and a box room – the one I was to use – in a Victorian house on the Fulham Road.

I have no trouble remembering the date I moved in because as I walked through the front door a television newsreader announced, ‘Marilyn Monroe has been found dead.’ 4 August 1962. Marilyn was, and still is, someone I idolize. Instead of an evening of celebration for the start of a new period in my life it was one of mourning. ‘Welcome to London and all its glitter,’ I thought glumly.

I unpacked my case in the box room, squeezed six outfits into the built-in wardrobe, turned a small table under the window into a dressing table, shoved my suitcase under the bed, and Norma Fames of 32 Langley Avenue, Thornaby sank onto it to mourn Norma Jean of Tinsel Town. What a depressing start to my new life.

The next morning my eyes opened to sunshine. No time to waste. Up bright and early to find some temp work to pay for my share of the expenses.

Household duties were on a roster basis. The one who did the shopping also did the cooking, and it soon emerged that only Diana and I were prepared to splurge on extravagances to relieve the interminable diet of chops and mince. Diana worked in the Burlington Arcade and told me there was an employment agency round the corner, Nu Type. I put on my glad rags and was interviewed by a Mrs Long, who tested my shorthand and typing speeds. Satisfied, she eyed me. ‘You’re very well groomed, very smart. You’ll be easy to place.’ She made me feel like the final piece of a jigsaw. I said I needed temporary work until I found something permanent.