by Hamish Ross
His circle of close friends included teachers, lawyers, auctioneers and rose growers. One of his close friends was Ambrose McGonigal, older brother of Eoin. Ambrose had served in a Commando during the war and was also in the law profession. In that particular circle, Mayne almost never spoke of his war experiences. One of his friends, who had served in the same ATS unit as Frances Mayne, recalled that once he spoke at length about it. But this was unusual.
He was a man of some substance; he was able to indulge his taste and mark his individuality. Car production was slow in the early postwar years as companies tooled up for new designs after six years of national effort for the military. Mayne was a fast and competent driver, and when he was able to get a car he went for style, elegance and power in buying a red 2.5-litre Riley RM Roadster. It was a beautiful car, which was manufactured only from 1948 to 1951. It was over fifteen feet in length and it was also a very heavy vehicle.
Mayne’s style of drinking remained as predictable as it had been during the war: dry periods and moderate to heavy tippling with occasional binges. One of which cost him a night in police cells and a fine for assault. It happened in Dublin after a rugby match one February night. It is the only authenticated instance of Mayne being charged with an offence after the war. Meandering in a mist of alcohol through the streets of Dublin, Mayne went in error to a house in a fashionable district, believing it to be a club he had frequented in his rugby-playing days. On being told the establishment he sought was next door, he was convinced that he was being fobbed off and refused entry. Ironically, his instinct in finding key targets during operations, particularly in the Western Desert, was only partly dulled by drink, because the house he came to belonged to a senior politician, Senator Quirke. What was reported in the press was the unadorned transcription of statements in court. In the witness stand, Senator Quirke said that about 8.30 p.m. he had heard a knock at the door, which his son answered, remaining in conversation with someone for about ten minutes.
On going out, witness saw Col Mayne, who said he was looking for the Old Belvedere Club. Witness told him it was next door.
The defendant, however, refused to leave and, when witness told him he must go, replied: ‘Would you put me out? I am an old international and you will not put me out.’
Witness began to move Col Mayne towards the gate and he resisted. In the struggle witness fell on his face on the gravel on the lawn and cut his nose. His son’s shirt was torn and an antique chair that was in the hall was damaged. Eventually they got him on the ground and sent for the police.
A police witness said that when he arrived the defendant, who had apparently some drink taken, was on the lawn and was quiet.16
Mayne’s solicitor, T. O’Reilly, said that his client had nothing to say to excuse his conduct. He added that he had known him for over twenty years; and then he went on to utter the shibboleth that is frequently used when someone without previous convictions pleads guilty: ‘He could assure the Court that his conduct on this occasion was entirely repugnant to his normal behaviour.’ There can be little doubt, though – from what Mayne revealed of himself in his journal – that Mr O’Reilly truly expressed his client’s sentiments. He was fined £10 for assaulting Senator Quirke, £10 for assaulting his son Michael and £5 for damage to an antique chair.
It was a sorry incident. For Mayne – according to the criteria he set down in his journal – had committed the cardinal error of being a nuisance when under the influence of drink. This incident undoubtedly became part of the baggage of guilt he carried with him about drinking sprees. Bradford and Dillon’s account of this took a different interpretation. Conceding that the case was well documented, they then proceeded to ignore that documentation, having the Senator knocked out by a single blow – although, according to statements in court, he somehow recovered sufficiently to restrain the defendant.
The propensity to embellish this sort of incident took off in Northern Ireland and went much further afield in later decades, as interest in the regiment that Mayne once led was generated by the media.17 And expectations were created. Someone who grapples with a war hero, the leader of 1 SAS, who had also been an amateur heavyweight boxer, is not expected to fall in the struggle and cut his nose on the gravel. Nor is such a hero expected to be subdued by a middle-aged politician and his son and then remain somewhat pathetically waiting for the police. However, the trend for hyperbole concerning Mayne had been long established. As early as 1947, when Mayne was decorated by the king, the press, not content that he was an outstanding war hero, made him into something of a biological miracle: according to their report, Mayne – by now in his thirties – had grown another four inches in height to become six feet six.
The world of his former regiment remained alive. In October 1945, the SAS Regimental Association was inaugurated; David Stirling became its president and Mayne one of its vice-presidents. Reunions were held and links were maintained. Mayne invited at least four of his former colleagues across to his home in Ireland for a few days. One was Bob Bennet, who at one of their reunions told Jimmy Storie what had transpired one night during his visit. Late one evening Mayne took Bennet out to a local pub, although it was well past the very restrictive opening hours that were in force at the time. Well aware of this, Mayne simply forced the lock on a side door; they served themselves generously for a few hours. Storie recounts the outcome:
When Bob wakened in the morning on the floor of the pub Paddy wasn’t there, but he had left money for the drink and the damaged door. So Bob went over to Mount Pleasant and found Paddy chopping wood. Paddy said to him, ‘Don’t tell my mother where we were last night.’18
After Mike Sadler terminated his contract with the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey a year early, he returned to the UK and married Anne Hetherington. They led an itinerant life travelling abroad. But the marriage did not last, and they divorced. Sadler was not yet established in a career and decided to apply for the Foreign Service. He too spent a few days with Mayne at Mount Pleasant, but his experiences were different from Bob Bennet’s. There was no drinking session; they went out in Mayne’s car: ‘He took me for spins, which we enjoyed because we were both quite fond of cars at that time.’ They went dinghy racing on Strangford Lough, ‘and for some reason I did quite well, although I was totally inexperienced. When I came ashore, some local thought I was some well-known Irish dinghy sailor. But it was just chance. It was very light weather; anyone could have won really.’ Did Mayne seem happy after the war? Sadler replied, ‘I think reasonably, yes.’19
On 27 July 1951, not long after Sadler stayed with him, Mayne wrote to Peter Swan, Press Officer at the British Embassy in Montevideo, whom he had become friendly with during the three weeks before the survey team sailed to the Falklands.
Dear Peter
I am afraid that I am a very bad correspondent but this is a short note to introduce a very good friend of mine – Brian Baxter. I hope you will be able to have a gin or two together.
I saw Malcolm for a few minutes after the Irish–Scots match at Murrayfield. He has grown a lot since I last saw him and is turning into a very sizeable schoolboy. He looked fit and seemed quite happy.
I also saw Mike Sadler a few months ago. He was applying for a position in the Foreign Office; I haven’t heard whether or not he was successful.
Ted Bingham is at the naval depot in Londonderry. I haven’t seen him and I am not particularly keen to do so as I am afraid he bores me.
I myself am living my usual quiet life here. I would very much like to be sailing out with Brian and to have an opportunity of seeing you all again at the club. However, it can’t be done and so all I can do is to send my very best wishes and to hope that there will be an opportunity sometime.
Yours as ever
Paddy20
Fraser McLuskey was another visitor to Mount Pleasant. He published his book, about his wartime experiences in the SAS, Parachute Padre, in 1951; it was some time afterwards that he stayed with Mayne. His impres
sion was, ‘Paddy was very much a family man and he was devoted to his mother and to Barbara and to Francie, and he was very fond of Dougie, too.’ Then Fraser gave a Celtic perspective on social life and Mayne’s circle of friends:
It was partly that the atmosphere in Northern Ireland was very convivial. I’m not much of a drinker. I’m not teetotal. The first time I went over to Ireland, not Paddy but his friends were so hospitable that I was wondering if I’d get home. You know, that was the atmosphere there: ‘Padre, come and have a drink.’ Well you had to go and do something. I’m not in the way of having more than a modest drink. I always remember, by the time they came to see me off on the boat I was wondering if I would get up the gangway. They were so kind. They did not want to make trouble for me, but that was the way they were. So if Paddy had occasionally too much to drink, it was partly the convention of the situation.21
The Mayne family tended to spend part of the summer months at a property in Donaghadee. It was here that Mayne took his friend from No. 11 (Scottish) Commando days, Tommy Macpherson. Macpherson had been captured in November 1941, during a reconnaissance probe in advance of the raid on the house assumed to have been Rommel’s headquarters. He escaped two years later and went on to distinguish himself. He was gazetted MC in 1943 in relation to Commando operations, joined SOE and won the first Bar to the MC in France and the second in Italy. Although he wrote to Mayne when 1 SAS was stationed at Darvel in 1944, they had not met since June 1941:
So Blair passed out of my ken from then. I next saw him after the war when he invited me over to Donaghadee; I stayed with him for a weekend there. He was going through one of his very quiet periods and he couldn’t have been a better host, living alone. What he talked about was serious and not in any way provocative or inflammatory, but I thought he was depressed; I thought he was just dead bored and finding life a little purposeless.22
Considering the way Mayne – in his journal – expressed his interest in women, one would have anticipated that, as he became established in his job, it would not take long before he formed a relationship and married. It is the case that he was inexperienced with women; the joke he wrote in his journal of the curate on honeymoon was partly against himself. When he had been a student, when there was most opportunity to go out with girls, he was committed to sport at a high level. Then came six years of war, much of it spent overseas, and much of that in combat zones. But, at some point after he returned from Antarctica, an unfortunate situation arose. During the war, Mayne had written an appreciation of an officer of his regiment who had been killed in action and who, at the time of his death, was engaged to be married. After the war, the fiancée took a teaching post in Northern Ireland, making it very obvious from her behaviour and her interest that she had set her cap at Mayne. However, he did not reciprocate the feeling; and a combination of his natural courtesy and lack of experience delayed a quick termination of an embarrassing situation that went on for about two years or so, until she returned to England. His discomfort was certainly known about in the family and by his friends; and it may well have become the basis of anecdotal wisdom suggesting that Mayne was uncomfortable in female company.
Which is wrong. Mayne used to take Anne Hetherington, Mike Sadler’s former wife, to SAS Regimental reunions:
I spoke with Anne recently and . . . she said that after she and I had split up, Paddy used to get in touch with her before the regimental annual reunions. He liked including her; they would go out for a meal and he would take her along to the reunion. He was considerate to her but it was not a romance.23
But, as Anne indicated, it was not a romance. Fraser McLuskey, who had known Mayne well, commented:
Paddy, if things had worked out differently, might well have married and would have been a very happy and considerate family man. I’m sure of that because of his attitude to his two sisters and his mother. He was also friendly with another lady whom I happened to know. And if things had worked out differently, it’s not impossible that he might have married someone like that. He wasn’t averse to feminine company, certainly not. Although I’m quite sure that there would only be one or two with whom he was at ease. The fact that Anne was the wife of Mike – she’s one of us, you know.24
There was also the situation at home into which a girlfriend would be introduced. Mayne was the owner of Mount Pleasant, but it was still the family home. Barbara lived there and worked in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast. Frances was a Froebel-trained teacher who taught pre-five children and the early stages of the primary school. After the war she taught in boarding schools in England, but came home at vacations, and in 1948 she returned to teach in Northern Ireland. Neither of the two sisters married. Billy, after his failed marriage, continued living at home, and although he had a long-term girlfriend, for whatever reason she was not invited to Mount Pleasant. In 1948, when Douglas finished studying dentistry at Queen’s, he and his family returned to Newtownards and moved into a property in the grounds of Mount Pleasant, and he went into a practice in the town. His young daughter Fiona used to climb the boundary wall to see Uncle Blair at work in the grounds. Each day, as he drove his red Riley Roadster to and from work, he beeped the car horn as he passed Douglas’s house. So it was not quite an extended family, but it was more than a nuclear family; and presiding over all was Mrs Mayne, a formidable matriarchal figure. Fraser McLuskey spoke in terms of the closeness of the whole family. Sadler also thought that they were a close family; but he said of Mayne and his mother:
I think you could say he was slightly under her thumb, because she was a very strong character, and he was nervous that she should hear something unfavourable.25
However, Mrs Mayne’s health began to deteriorate, and Parkinson’s Disease was diagnosed. The protracted nature of the illness led first to Barbara giving up her job so that she could look after her mother. Barbara, however, had additional skills: she was a keen baker and she kept the family, including Douglas’s, supplied with pancakes and scones. Then Mrs Mayne became confined to a wheelchair. In 1953, Frances resigned from her teaching post to help her sister look after their mother, it would appear, because her head teacher, in accepting Frances’s resignation, wrote that he understood her reasons.
But also at this time, which, ironically, was to be the final stage of it, there emerged a creative period in Mayne’s life: he began a small business venture and he redesigned and restocked the extensive grounds of his home. Planning for the enterprise and development of the grounds began in 1953; it has all the signs of a thoughtful approach – in its sequencing and phasing – as though it had been a military operation. The business venture he had decided on was poultry farming. In January 1954, he had a poultry house built; he employed a man full time to look after the livestock. In December of the same year, he improved the access by having the road into the property resurfaced with tarmacadam. The audited accounts of the business for the first year of trading reveal that he had a viable enterprise; and it continued as a successful concern after his death when it was taken over and managed by Douglas’s wife, Pat. Now, Bradford and Dillon were informed that the business failed, and this fitted their thesis of a general decline in Mayne in the postwar years. But unless their respondent knew something that Mayne’s accountant did not know, their version has no credence and reflects, at best, gossip, or, at worst, spitefulness.
In the meantime, as the business got under way, in the spring of the same year he had plans drawn up for the remodelling and restocking of the grounds. According to the nurseryman’s tender his planting list was considerable:26 he planted twenty-four rhododendrons, twenty azaleas, sixty cotoneasters, one hundred and thirty ericas and a wide range of herbaceous plants and trees. By the following spring and summer, he was deriving a lot of pleasure from the results of that planting; and he carried out a great deal of the work himself. He brought one or two of his friends to see the results. One of them was James Lindsay, probate registrar. He wrote:
much of his great physical energy had
of late been devoted to gardening in which he found an increasing joy. One could not fail to be touched by the shy pride with which, in his garden, he pointed out the beauty of a rare bloom.27
Another friend who was shown over the garden was Ambrose McGonigal, who brought his young son Eoin to see the poultry operation. Mayne was very fond of children, and in particular he was very good to Douglas’s young family. And he was not simply indulgent with them: he was sensitive to them. It probably reflected a lack he felt in his own life. The last Christmas present, for example, that Fiona Mayne received from her uncle Blair (which she actually received after his death) was a year’s subscription to the Children’s Book Club (which was so appreciated by Fiona that her parents kept it up for several years).
As Christmas 1955 approached, Mayne was still a relatively young man. True, like others of his generation who had seen much combat, or their fathers’ generation, who had survived the First World War, he was aged by the experience. Nonetheless, he was only forty, and, from the way he had shaped his environment during the previous two years, he anticipated the future. But, as it turned out, he was to predecease his mother by less than three months.
PART IV
10
ASHES OF SOLDIERS
As I muse, retrospective, murmuring a chant in thought,
Lo! The war resumes – again to my sense your shapes,
And again the advance of armies.
Walt Whitman, ‘Ashes of Soldiers’
After the war, it was difficult for his family to describe the way in which Mayne had changed. In most respects his temperament and behaviour were as they had been. But he had changed from the young man who had gone off to war.