Fixing Sixty Six

by Tim Flower

  ‘What about World Cup Willie?’

  ‘What about him?’ Forsyth was clearly underwhelmed.

  ‘This is the first time there’s been a FIFA mascot for the tournament. And he’s all over the place: on T-shirts, beer mugs, playing cards. There’s even a pop record about him.’

  ‘I’m well aware of that. But we need the man in the street to be proud and excited that the World Cup is coming home, where the game was invented. It doesn’t matter how much tat is produced emblazoned with a bizarrely square-shouldered lion, clothed in a Union Jack, it won’t stir the nation’s passion for the tournament. That requires an expertly devised and executed press campaign. And you have a little more than a month to deliver it.’

  If he had commanded me to win the World Cup itself with the boys who play on our local rec, I couldn’t have been more daunted.

  ‘Wednesday’s game at Wembley was a fiasco,’ he continued. ‘We can’t afford a repetition of that.’

  A vague head nod was all I could manage.

  ‘Who do England play next?’

  I hesitated. ‘Scotland at Hampden Park - I think.’

  ‘You think? Don’t you know?’

  Of course I knew. But the enormity of the task Forsyth had just set me was scrambling my mind. ‘They’re playing Scotland - in Glasgow. In the Home Championship. Definitely.’

  ‘Glasgow,’ he repeated thoughtfully, his pronunciation again betraying him as a native. He tapped a forefinger on his desk impatiently. ‘When is that?’

  ‘It’s on… It’s the first Saturday in April. That must be the—’

  ‘What’s the good of that?’ Forsyth exclaimed, jumping to his feet. That’s after the election!’

  ‘Oh, I see. I didn’t appreciate you were—’

  Again he interrupted. ‘Come back on Monday morning and tell me how we get an inspiring World Cup story on the front page of the nationals next month. Is that clear?’

  The way England were playing, it would be a struggle to get such a story onto the sports pages, any time soon. Nonetheless, I said meekly, ‘Perfectly, Mr Forsyth.’

  He pushed the button on his desk that summoned Miss Davies, and she promptly appeared. ‘Take Miller here and tell him what he needs to know.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Forsyth.’

  ‘That’s all.’

  I got to my feet and offered Forsyth my hand.

  He ignored it. ‘Now you are working for Her Majesty’s Government, I trust you will dress appropriately.’

  I looked down at my brown poly-rayon suit, red and white striped tie and Hush Puppies. This was a perfectly appropriate way for a football reporter to dress. But not, apparently, for one on Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

  If I had had a month of Sundays, I would have struggled to devise a convincing plan to get the World Cup on the next month’s front pages. As it was, I had just one, a Saturday and the rest of that Friday. So I did what any good Mirror sports writer would do when faced with a tough assignment and a tight deadline: I went to The White Swan in Fetter Lane.

  Every Fleet Street paper had its preferred drinking establishments: the places the staff tended to occupy lunchtimes and evenings when, at least notionally, at work. For most Mirror staff it was The White Hart in New Fetter Lane. We knew it as the “Stab in the Back”, or just “The Stab”, because Mirror workers would be bought a last drink there before they were sacked. But the sports desk preferred the 1930’s pub we called “The Mucky Duck”.

  It was easy to lose track of time in its mock-Victorian bar because, not only did they serve a decent pint of Bass, but also - only getting light from two small, obscured glass windows at the front - it was always shrouded in the same cosy gloom, with a comforting aroma of beer and tobacco smoke, regardless of the hour.

  The Mucky Duck’s principal attraction was not, however, its beer or ambiance. It was a barmaid, with a platinum blonde “beehive”, by the name of Diane. It was difficult to put an age on Diane. She had recently asked us to celebrate her 29th birthday with her. But our senior sub-editor, Frank - a dour Glaswegian who had been with the paper since the war - claimed that she had similarly invited him in February 1962.

  Like the best of barmaids, Diane was always willing to lend a sympathetic ear. To avoid the customer having to raise his voice above the busy chatter and the Beatles on the jukebox, she would lean forward over the bar. Since her blouse was never sufficiently buttoned, the worried drinker would get an intimate, and amazingly restorative, sight of her cleavage. Not surprisingly, none of us on the Mirror sports desk hesitated in sharing our troubles with Diane.

  Seeing me approaching the bar, Diane said, ‘What’s the matter, darling?’

  I caught a whiff of her sweet-smelling scent and hair spray.

  ‘You look like a wet weekend.’

  And I felt like one. The anxiety I had experienced on my way to, and at, Number 10, had given way to a dull disquiet. I was brooding about Forsyth’s headmasterly demeanour, bordering on disdain, and his dubious conviction that I could engender the national pride that would secure the Government’s re-election. Whilst I wanted to offload to Diane, I wasn’t about to risk years of rock breaking in Strangeways, even with an eyeful of Diane’s bosom into the bargain.

  So I blamed the miserable weather, bought the obligatory round of bitter for my colleagues - whom I could see sat on bentwood chairs around our usual table at the back - and went to join them.

  As I did so, Mike Grade emptied his glass and rose to his feet. Mike was the young columnist I had introduced to Da. He was the son of the theatrical agent, Leslie Grade, and had made the mistake of arriving on his first day at the paper in his father’s chauffeured Rolls Royce. Monte - a Cockney Jew and the original “smudger” - had never allowed him to forget it.

  ‘Are you getting a lift to the bar, Mike?’ he said with a smirk. ‘Get twenty Players while you’re there.’

  ‘I’m going back. Some of us have to work for a living.’

  Monte retorted, ‘What, like your old man?’ and laughed.

  Frank and Reg - a Brummie who, appropriately, covered Midlands football - laughed too, and I forced myself to join in.

  Mike waved a dismissive arm and left. I took his chair and, whilst preparing a pipe, promptly sank my pint and most of the one I had bought for Mike.

  ‘You drank that quick. You okay, Harry?’ said Reg, in a monotonous, Midland’s tone.

  Monte cheerily chimed in, ‘Been caught fiddling yer exes, have yer?’

  ‘He’d nay do that. Pete bollocked him for not claiming enough.’

  Frank was right. I had learnt my trade on the Liverpool Echo from an old school editor, who above all else demanded accuracy and integrity. So, if I travelled to a match on a bus and had a cup of tea and a snack, I made a careful note of the cost and claimed exactly that back. In my second week at the Mirror, Pete, a senior reporter, reprimanded me for my exes claim in no uncertain terms. “This is Fleet Street. We don’t take buses - or eat snacks. We travel by taxi and have three proper meals a day, plus refreshments. What’s more, we ensure that our contacts are similarly transported, fed and watered.”

  He didn’t mean this literally, of course. He and my other colleagues frequently took the bus and made do with a cup of tea and a bun. But that wasn’t what their exes showed.

  I blamed my subdued manner on my two England stories being spiked. From there - by way of a surreptitious sharing of Forsyth’s conundrum - I segued into asking the boys, ‘What sort of football stories do you get on the front page?’

  ‘Why do you wanna know that?’ said Monte, unusually stumped for a quip.

  Being a subbie, Frank demanded precision. ‘What do you mean by football stories? Ones about football matches, or just somehow related to the game - like, eh, the Munich Air Crash?’

  Desperate for help, I wasn’t going to rule out anything. ‘Doesn’t matter. Either.’

  Reg offered, ‘Chile v Italy, 1962. That match was on the front page.’

  �
��The “Battle of Santiago”!’ Monte exclaimed. ‘That weren’t a match: it were two gangs of eleven kicking the shit out of each other.’

  ‘Of course it were a match,’ said Frank. ‘In Group Two - last World Cup. Look it up, Monte.’ He drained his glass and peered expectantly at Reg.

  Before Monte could respond, I steered the conservation back to front page stories. ‘What about something a little happier? You know, that didn’t involve people being hurt or killed?’

  Avoiding Frank’s stare, Reg again offered a suggestion. ‘What about the Swan/Kay match fixing scandal? That was on the front page of the People, more than once.’

  Then all I needed to do, I thought, within the next fortnight, was uncover a plan for the favourites, Brazil, to throw the World Cup. My mood fell further.

  Understandably, Frank couldn’t see the point of my questions. ‘Why yer asking? You’re stopping Reg here getting to the bar.’

  I was still thinking of a convincing justification, when Monte answered for me.‘He wants a front page byline, don’t you ‘arry.’

  ‘Then he’ll have to join them tossers in News,’ said Frank, voicing the low opinion sports writers had of their colleagues in News (which the News Desk reciprocated).

  ‘And drink in The Stab,’ Monte added.

  I forced myself to laugh with them.

  ‘I’ve had a major news story, Reg piped up proudly. ‘On the back page, though, not the front. It was about the FA Cup being stolen from a sports shop in Birmingham, when it was on display there after Aston Villa had won it.’

  Frank looked incredulous. ‘What in ‘57?’

  ‘No, 1895.’

  ‘1895! You’ve aged well, Reg,’ said Monte, and led the laughter.

  ‘They never found the cup. But, sixty-three years later, I found the thief - in the welfare section of a hospital in Birmingham.’

  Frank remained unconvinced. ‘I don’t remember you having a back-page splash.’

  ‘It didn’t carry my byline, ‘cause it was on a news page.’

  ‘You also broke the story of Churchill’s death,’ Monte scoffed, ‘didn’t you Reg?’

  Reg ignored him. ‘The thief admitted stealing the cup and said he’d melted it down to make counterfeit half-crowns.’

  ‘Very interesting, Reg,’ said Frank, impatient for a refill. ‘Now get ‘em in.’

  I gave up hope of gaining inspiration in the Mucky Duck and declined another pint. I headed back to the office and spent the rest of the afternoon drinking tea to counteract the beer and desperately seeking inspiration in the reference library.

  When my mate Norman was at the Daily Express, he would have been one of the stream of men who regularly left the paper’s black glass faced, 1930’s building and crossed the road to The Old Bell. By the time I came to Fleet Street, he had changed employers and, therefore, watering holes. So The Bell, first opened 300 years earlier for the men constructing St. Bride’s Church, became a neutral ground on which we met every Friday. Until, that is, that Friday.

  I had spent over three hours scouring the Mirror’s newspaper cutting archive and come up with nothing. If I could have vented my frustration and anxiety to Norman, I would have met him in The Bell that evening as usual and stayed there until we were no longer capable of perching on its triangular stools. But since I was unable to share anything about Number 10, I decided to feign “the runs”, enjoy a few bottles of beer at home and watch The Virginian on TV.

  Consequently, I arrived home early for a Friday. The first floor was deserted; although, upstairs, I could hear Nell ordering Alison to brush her teeth. From her tone, it sounded like Alison was in the doghouse. I thought it best to get myself a beer and wait downstairs.

  Nell liked to sit in the armchair that matched our settee. On the teak table by the side of it, I noticed a splayed paperback by Virginia Woolf and a burnt-out Consulate in her ashtray. Those type of books always put Nell in a mood; and I had told her numerous times about leaving lit cigarettes unattended. But what concerned me much more was that they were accompanied by an empty sherry glass.

  I plucked the glass off the table and buried my nose in it. As I feared, I got a rich aroma of Bristol Cream and marmalade. Nell was solo-drinking Marsala again.

  She had been getting through a bottle a week. We talked about it, and she said she had made a New Year’s resolution to have nothing stronger than coffee until I got home. If she did, it had lasted less than two months.

  Another time, I would have rushed up stairs and confronted her with the evidence. That evening, I simply couldn’t face it. Instead I collapsed into my tan leatherette, swivel armchair, lit a pipe and started on the Daily Mirror crossword.

  Eight clues later, Nell emerged. ‘You’re back early,’ she said in a cool, almost critical manner. ‘Something happened to Norman?’ She stood, ankles crossed, with a fresh tea-towel draped over one arm and holding the Andy Pandy cup in which Alison had her hot milk. In black slacks and a plain white blouse that could have been a shirt of mine, she looked like a long-haired waiter.

  ‘No, I just fancied a night in.’ I tried to sound relaxed and matter-of-fact.

  I couldn’t understand why Nell had taken to wearing slacks, since she had great legs. In fact, her legs were what initially attracted me to her - that and her Latin temperament. We met when I was reporting on Manchester United’s 2-1 win in the first game of their 1958 tie against AC Milan. I tried to get Milan’s manager, for whom Nell was interpreting, to say why he thought they had lost. The manager clearly considered the question impertinent, for he ranted for some while in Italian. When he eventually finished, Nell got up - revealing her slender, black-stockinged legs - looked me straight in the eye and with a wry smile spat, “They hadn’t lost: it was only the first leg. Ask Manchester’s manager the same question next week.” She hooked me right then.

  With other aspects of her appearance, she made less effort than she once did. Applying lipstick and mascara used to be an essential part of her morning routine. And she would reapply them in anticipation of my arrival home. Since I had got back early, she could be forgiven for not having touched up her make-up. However, looking at her pretty, but indistinct, features, it was obvious she hadn’t worn any all day.

  And that wasn’t all. She used to go to the hairdressers every fortnight to keep her hair - the colour of Camp Coffee - in a neat bouffant. Since Christmas, she hadn’t been at all and relied on one of an assortment of hair bands to control her Mediterranean mop.

  I saw her spot her empty Marsala glass on the side table and pretended not to notice her take it into the kitchen, concealed beneath the tea-towel.

  A few moment later, she called out from the kitchen, ‘Now I suppose you want me to cook a meal for both of us?’

  I tried to make the best of my change of plan. ‘I thought it would be nice to eat together and watch some telly,’ I said cheerily. ‘The Walker Brothers are on Ready Steady Go: did you see?’

  When I went to The Bell for a drink with Norman, I wouldn’t be back until late. So Nell would cook tea for herself and I would buy a cod supper from the chipper on the way home.

  ‘Oh, are they?’ Nell replied without enthusiasm. She appeared at the kitchen door. ‘Did you get a Standard?’

  Normally I would because Norman would have delivered a free one to me in The Bell. ‘No. Like I said, I didn’t meet Norman.’

  ‘You could have bought one at the station.’

  As an educated liberal, Nell wanted us to take The Guardian every day. (She had got a scholarship to read Russian and French at Cambridge, where she supported “banning the bomb” and abolishing capital punishment) Nonetheless, she also liked to read the Evening Standard, ever since learning about its stance against Mussolini.

  ‘I know, I forgot. I’m sorry. I’ve had a tough day.’

  ‘Poor you.’ Nell pulled a mock sad face. ‘Of course, I’ve had it easy,’ she continued. ‘I’ve only had to do the shopping, get Alison to and from school twice, make
her lunch and tea, clean the cooker, iron your shirts, make a cake for the weekend, bath Alison and perform the whole bedtime routine. So I’m looking forward to making a meal for two now out of ingredients for one.’

  ‘I wasn’t implying that you haven’t been working. I appreciate that you do a lot with Alison, and around the house.’

  ‘How gracious of you.’

  ‘I was just explaining why I forgot your Standard.’

  Whilst I tried not to sound annoyed, I was feeling it. The truth was, Nell didn’t have to hold down a full-time job. She had none of the responsibility of putting bread on the table or a roof over our heads. And she had all the modern kitchen appliances and gadgets - including an automatic washing machine - to make the life of a housewife and mother easy. I wanted to tell her that her day at 6, Elm Park Close was not in the same league as mine at 10, Downing Street. But, of course, I couldn’t. Nor, given her mood, would it have been wise.

  Over recent months, she had become increasingly grumpy. At first, I put it down to “women’s things”. But then it started happening too frequently for that. The girl I married was warm, passionate, full of life. She could certainly be feisty: our relationship had always been punctuated with Latin temper tantrums. Until recently, however, she had been never been sullen, caustic or cold. I couldn’t understand what had changed.

  She withdrew again into the kitchen and, by the sound of it, started preparing tea - aggressively. I got myself another beer, re-lit my pipe and returned to the crossword.

  I had completed it, watched Ready Steady Go and had turned over to BBC1 to avoid Crossroads, by the time Nell re-emerged from kitchen. I thought she was going to tell me tea was ready. Instead she asked, ‘Did you know the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are going to be in the World Cup finals?’

  I thought it a strange question; and I still had the Walker Brothers’ “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore” echoing in my head. So it was only after some hesitation I replied, ‘If you mean North Korea, yeah. Why do you ask?’