Fixing Sixty Six

by Tim Flower

  So I decided to take the story to “Paul” on the News Desk, who had written the front page report of the trophy’s theft, and who I hoped would be more sympathetic to my predicament.

  I found him lounging in his chair, his Bri-Nylon shirt straining to confine his potbelly. His left shoulder was propping a telephone receiver to his ear, whilst he simultaneously lit a Players and badgered what sounded like a potential source. Having noticed me above the precarious piles of paper in front of him, he gestured for me to wait and, with a less than heartfelt “Thanks for talking to me, anyway”, promptly wound up the call.

  He searched his desk in vain for an ashtray. ‘What’s the sense in re-housing young families in hi-rise blocks? Where are the kiddies going to play? That Crossman hasn’t got a clue.’

  Dick Crossman was the Labour Minister responsible for housing. ‘You won’t be voting for Harold then’, I said, hoping that only a small minority shared Paul’s dissatisfaction with the current government. I need not have worried.

  ‘I’ll have to. I’m not voting for Heath. He sounds like he’s got a carrot stuck up his arse.’

  I explained to Paul that I had a “hot” story for him. I couldn’t bring myself to pitch it to him in quite the way Forsyth had to me. But I did highlight that Corbett was an ordinary working man who, by his prompt, civic-minded action, had ensured the safe return of the World Cup to the custody of the English FA. Surely, I pleaded, this justified a place on the front page - like the original theft.

  ‘You know, as well as I do, what Dan will say.’ Parodying Ferrari’s blunt delivery, he told me anyway. ‘Give me news, Paul, not history.’

  ‘What do you mean? It’s a scoop. None of the others will have a sniff of it yet.’

  ‘How did you hear about it then?’

  I realised I had strayed into dangerous territory. ‘I’m not giving you both my source and my story,’ I said with a wink.

  ‘We all know coppers who like a drink, Harry. I expect the whole of Fleet Street - not to say radio and TV news - will have it by teatime. There’s no way we’ll be breaking it tomorrow, that’s for sure.’

  I changed tack. ‘But none of the others will have my information about the thief’s identity.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Everyone knows his identity. He’s already appeared in court.’

  ‘Has he?’

  ‘Don’t you Sports guys read the news?’

  I usually read the Mirror cover to cover. But that morning I had only got as far as the “Heath Speaks” feature on the centre pages, when I gave up my seat on the tube to a spastic kid and his mum.

  Paul read from the back of that day’s Mirror. ‘A 47-year-old dock labourer was charged in Bow Street Court, London, on Saturday with stealing the Cup. He was remanded in custody until 1st April.’

  According to Scotland Yard’s report, “the Pole”, who they were hunting, was in his early thirties. Certainly, the man I had seen leaving Central Hall looked about that age and was dressed like a civil servant. He couldn’t possibly have passed for a middle-aged member of Da’s union.

  ‘The thief wasn’t a 47-year-old dock labourer,’ I said with conviction.

  ‘How do you know?’

  Since I couldn’t mention the Pole or his scar without inviting more questions about my source, I said, ‘I was trying to get into the exhibition at the time the trophy was stolen and I saw a suspicious-looking man in a suit leaving the hall with a briefcase. No way was he a manual worker in his late-forties.’

  Paul smirked, ‘That’s hardly the basis for a miscarriage of justice piece, Harry.’

  ‘I know. I was just — ’

  ‘The bloke you saw could have been some randy bank manager going home to his misses, after a quick fumble with some tottie in the church.’ He looked wistful. ‘Lucky bugger.’

  I realised that, short of disclosing my source and risking imprisonment, I wasn’t going to convince him as an eyewitness. So I took a different approach. ‘What I don’t understand is, why would a docker want to steal the World Cup?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t he? It’s worth thirty grand.’

  ‘Yeah. But we’re not talking about a consignment of Hong Kong radios that have fallen off the back of a ship. He‘s hardly going to sell the World Cup down Petticoat lane.’

  ‘He took it for the ransom, didn’t he.’

  ‘I know about dodgy dockers. They’re opportunists. They pocket one or two items from a load, knowing that they won’t be missed and can be easily flogged in the pub that night. They don’t break into guarded exhibition halls, steal a world-famous trophy and then try to extort fifteen thousand pounds from the FA.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Anyway, having gone to all that trouble, why would he carefully wrap up the trophy so it didn’t get damaged and leave it where any old…’ An image of a disapproving Forsyth in his “downstairs office” flashed across my mind. ‘… where an honest John could find it and ensure we could all enjoy England’s challenge for the trophy this summer after all?’

  Paul scoffed, ‘You’re now sounding like Pathé News.’

  I laughed self-consciously.

  ‘I appreciate the story, Harry. I’ll take a smudger with me down to South Norwood and see what we can get.’

  ‘It’s a lead story, Paul.’

  ‘Don’t you worry, Harry: I’ll wring all I can out of it.’

  Whilst I was confident Paul would do as he said, as I changed out of my wedding suit and returned to my desk, I worried whether he would tell the story to Forsyth’s satisfaction - and whether Ferrari would let him.

  But I could do nothing further. Like it or not, my World Cup future was in their hands. So I left the building, bought a fresh supply of Gallagher’s Rich Dark Honeydew from the Dickensian tobacconist on Holborn and, with two minutes to go before opening time, strode purposefully towards the Mucky Duck.

  ‘There’s a man on a mission.’ Norman’s Scouse drawl was unmistakable. As I turned into Fetter Lane, he was scurrying towards me, his beloved Rolleiflex twin lens camera and a heavy-looking flash gun, dancing above his nascent beer gut. Seeing him, I felt embarrassed about the number of Friday drinks I had cancelled because of my fear of inadvertently disclosing my involvement at Number 10.

  ‘Hi Norm. I’m going for a beer. Do you fancy one?’

  ‘I thought you’d gone teetotal.’

  ‘Never,’ I said dismissively. ‘Just working too hard.’

  ‘As it happens, I could murder a pint. But I’m shooting Greavsie in an hour.’

  ‘Why?’ I joked. ‘What’s he done to you?’

  ‘Don’t be soft. The Anglo-American Sporting Club have just honoured him for his England goal scoring.’

  ‘I know.’

  Norman glanced over each shoulder and then muttered out of the side of his mouth, ‘What you won’t know is that we’re doing a feature on him - ahead of the England v Scotland game on Saturday like.’ Norman was the salt of the earth; but he couldn’t keep a confidence to save his life. ‘Don’t know why: can’t think he’ll play.’

  ‘He should. He’s the most naturally talented player we’ve got.’

  Norman wagged a disapproving finger. ‘Don’t let the lads in The Kop hear you say that.’

  ‘Our Rog is an honest and hardworking, and he scores a lot of goals, I know. But he doesn’t have Greavsie’s flair, his… individuality. No-one does - not in England.’

  ‘We’re not like them foreign teams, Harry. We don’t go in for all that fancy-dan stuff.’ Norman pouted and waved a pointed foot like a ballet dancer.

  ‘You mean Ramsey doesn’t. And that’s our problem. We won’t get the better of Pele and Brazil, playing kick-and-rush.’

  ‘Whether or not he plays, like, it could be a waste of my shoe leather. The piece is only a space filler.’

  This was a frustration for a daily newspaper’s nibs and smudgers. Whether broadsheet or tabloid, the pages had to be filled without fail. And if there was a shor
tage of real news, the journos were expected to create some. But if Man United then sold Georgie Best for a hundred and fifty thousand pounds, the product of your hard-worked imagination would be mercilessly spiked.

  Norman’s words gave me an idea that would take my World Cup fate out of Paul’s and Ferrari’s exclusive hands. ‘The Standard won’t need fillers tonight, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Why? What’s happened?’

  I hesitated. If Ferrari heard what I was about to divulge, I was certain I would be collecting my cards before Norman could say “watch the birdie”. I was equally sure, however, that Forsyth would treat a failure to divulge as nothing less than a capital offence. ‘You didn’t get this from me, okay?’

  ‘Come on, you big girl’s blouse. Spit it out.’

  I went for broke and told him the “Nation celebrates ordinary Englishman and his dog’s World Cup recovery at the home of football” story.

  Norman loved it. ‘It wasn’t a bulldog by any chance, was it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why don’t you head down to South Norwood and see?’

  ‘I will. I’ll go now. Greavsie won’t mind meeting later. I’ll get one of the newsboys to meet us there.’

  ‘That way you’ll be ahead of the pack,’ I said, keen he shouldn’t delay. ‘You can get a bus to London Bridge, and there’s a direct train from there to Norwood Junction.’

  I led Norman over to the bus stop. As he looked up the road for a bus heading south, he said, ‘They’ll be knocking back the G&T’s at the FA tonight.’

  ‘What, celebrating getting the trophy back, you mean?’

  ‘Not just that. Before it was nicked like, I heard they’d hardly sold any World Cup tickets. Now, everyone and his ma are sending in applications.’

  As I thought of the pleasure Forsyth would get from this news, Norman spotted a posse of buses approaching. Holding his camera and flash gun to his chest, he mounted the platform of a number 17, turned and shouted, ‘Ta, Harry. I owe you one, mate.’

  I thought to myself, no Norm: if you get the story right and on the front page, I’ll owe you, big time.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Thursday, 31st March 1966

  My scoop appeared on page three of the next day’s Mirror. Of course, I would have preferred to have seen it on the front. But it filled almost the entire inside page, with an all-cap headline and a three-column photograph of Pickles at the top. This, in a five million circulation national daily, couldn’t be considered less than excellent exposure for the story.

  What wasn’t so good was the nature of the piece. As Paul had predicted, by breakfast on the Tuesday, the actual finding of the trophy was as stale as last week’s Watneys. So his angle on it was whether Pickles’ owner, David Corbett, would get the more than six-thousand pounds in rewards that had been offered for the safe return of the cup. This wouldn’t have generated any nationalistic fervour in even the most patriotic reader. But I couldn’t blame him or Dan Ferrari.

  Tipping off Norman, however, had gone entirely according to plan. A blow by blow account of how an honest English lighterman and his dog had rescued the cup for the nation, had knocked the General Election off the front page of the later editions of Monday’s Evening Standard.

  However, I had been unable to inform Forsyth of my role in this: he had been too busy masterminding the final days of Labour’s campaign to grant me an audience. So, as Nell and I left the house to cast our votes on what was a grey election day morning, I was sure he would think I had failed to do my job in the first phase of Operation Jules Britannia. As we headed towards the Finchley Baptist church, which that day would serve as our polling station, I clung to the hope that if Labour could win the election nonetheless - another tiny majority would do - I might just be given a second chance on phase two.

  When I learnt, earlier in the year, that the England World Cup squad would all be supplied with fashionable new Baracuta macs, I had decided it was time to ditch my old Bogey raincoat and get one myself. Unfortunately, when Nell saw it, she had me withdraw ten pounds from my account at the National Provincial, so she could go to the ladies outfitters in the High Road and buy one herself. Expecting rain that morning, we had both worn our macs; therefore, we had agreed I would walk a few paces ahead, to avoid us looking like we were modelling for Freemans catalogue. In any case - as had become commonplace - Nell wasn’t in the mood for chatting.

  Fleet Street widely expected Labour to win. But I knew, better than most, not to believe what I read in newspapers. And my journey to the polling station did nothing to settle my nerves. Many of the houses we passed on the way were temporarily splashed with vivid colour. Some the red and yellow of Labour; a large amber one demanded, “If you think like a Liberal, vote like a Liberal”; but, depressingly, the majority were a true Tory blue.

  The local Conservative Party headquarters displayed a huge poster of Ted Heath, inviting the electorate to go with him into Europe. I stopped, turned to face Nell - who by this time was a good ten yards behind me - and, waving my hand dismissively at Heath’s image, called out, ‘We’re not going anywhere with him!’

  I expected Nell to acknowledge the absurdity of the notion. But she didn’t. Instead, she walked up to me and said calmly, but firmly, ‘You are over twenty-one and a British citizen. You can vote for who you like, on any grounds you like. And, thanks to some very brave and determined women early this century, so can I. I don’t need to follow your choice of candidate.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to.’

  ‘Good.’ She started to walk on.

  ‘But you aren’t really going to vote for Heath, are you?’

  She turned and gave me a non-committal stare.

  ‘We had thirteen years of Tory misrule. Labour have had just eighteen months to sort out the mess they inherited. They’ve made a good start - modernising, making things better for ordinary people. The country is getting going again. Like they say, we should let them finish the job.’

  ‘It’s a secret ballot. I don’t have to tell you how I vote. But what I will tell you is that I won’t be voting for a man.’

  ‘What are you talking about? They are all men. It’s Wilson, Heath or Grimond.’

  ‘Yes, but mercifully, the candidates in Finchley aren’t.’

  Nell was right. The name of the Tory, fighting the seat for the first time, was Margaret Thatcher. ‘You’re going to vote Tory? You’ve got to be joking.’

  ‘Did you read Mrs Thatcher’s election address?’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  Nell reached into her handbag and, to my horror, produced a copy. ‘Read the sentence I’ve marked.’

  I was relieved that Da was voting two hundred miles away in Birkenhead. If he had learnt that Nell was contemplating voting Tory, he would have blamed me for allowing it and considered it tantamount to deserting Liverpool and supporting Everton; in other words, grounds for permanent excommunication.

  Beneath a banner headline, “A PROGRAMME for ACTION”, the blue pamphlet contained a statement of Mrs Thatcher’s beliefs. Nell had underlined, “That we should take the initiative in foreign affairs and not merely follow our American friends”.

  I couldn’t see Nell’s point. ‘So?’

  ‘Unlike Wilson, she isn’t blindly supporting the Vietnam War.’

  ‘You can’t vote for her just because of that.’

  ‘Why not? She wants to lessen American influence. Heath wants to move us closer to Europe. I want both of those things.’ She snatched back the pamphlet and strode off.

  It was my turn to walk a few paces behind Nell. I chewed over her attraction to Thatcher. Yes, what with her elder brother Mark being killed in Korea, I could understand her being anti the Vietnam War. But millions were opposed to it, many of them young and socialist. It wasn’t the preserve of Conservative voters. Was it merely because the Tory candidate wore a skirt? Surely not. Although, in recent months, she had become more and more preoccupied with women’s this and women’s that. But surely sh
e wouldn’t let this determine who she wanted to run the country.

  As I turned into East End Road, I could see the polling station - a modest, utilitarian, red brick building - on the corner. I had less than a hundred yards in which to persuade Nell not to vote, in effect, for my dismissal from Number 10 and consignment into the World Cup wilderness. So I accelerated sharply to catch her up.

  ‘Are you really going to vote Tory, just because their candidate’s a girl?’

  ‘Who said I was going to vote Tory?’

  ‘You did, just now.’

  ‘What I said was, I wasn’t going to vote for a man.’

  ‘It amounts to the same thing.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’ Nell looked as if she was enjoying our exchange. ‘Anyway, who are you going to vote for?’

  ‘You know full well who I’m voting for,’ I said, beginning to feel apprehensive.

  ‘Then clearly you’re quite prepared to vote for a candidate you know nothing about.’

  ‘What do you mean? He’s the official Labour Party candidate. That’s all I need to know.’

  ‘Labour’s candidate is Yvonne Sieve. She’s a young mother, who also works part-time as an economics lecturer.’ Nell smiled smugly. ‘That presents you with a bit of a dilemma, doesn’t it?’

  Only knowing the candidate’s surname, I had assumed “Sieve” was a man. I tried to conceal my surprise and pretend I didn’t understand the issue she was alluding to. ‘Not at all. I will vote Labour, as I’ve always have done. You’re the one who seems to be in two minds about it, not me.’

  ‘So you’re going to endorse a young mother’s bid to spend even more time working away from the home than she already does, are you?’

  ‘I’m not interested in the local candidate’s gender or employment situation. I am voting for the party - the Labour Party. And I can’t see any reason for you not to do the same.’