Outrageous Fortune: Growing Up at Leeds Castle

by Anthony Russell

  “Glute, would you be very kind and bring in the fenders, those white buggers dangling over the side?” Woody asked. I managed to accomplish this task without falling overboard and then seated myself on the white plastic bench behind Woody and Mr. Renshaw, who stood at the driver’s console as we picked up speed and headed out into the bay. For a minute or two I just sat there enjoying the roar of the outboard motor and watching Villa Cansoun recede into our wake, her pinkness highlighted against the surrounding greenery and the grey stone walls of nearby properties.

  Woody had removed his dressing gown to reveal a pair of bathing trunks remarkably similar to Mr. Renshaw’s, to the extent they existed at all. No sooner had this thought crossed my mind than, to my horror, both men proceeded to remove what was left of their modest coverings altogether. I had no idea where to look. No more than three feet in front of me stood two very tall men—both of whom I had previously only seen dressed formally in jackets, trousers, and ties—stark naked, their ageing posteriors shaking and wobbling all over the place like two of Miss Preston’s classic blancmanges, chatting to each other as if I weren’t there or at least giving the impression that it shouldn’t matter that I was.

  Curiously, they both held their trunks in front of their willies as if such coverage would pass muster with the censors (and keep their private parts private). Despite my valiant efforts not to look and keep my gaze fixed on the pretty tree-lined hills of Cap-Ferrat, I could not avoid catching a glimpse now and then of both men’s protrusions, neither of which struck me as an obvious candidate for the Guinness Book of Records. This peculiar impasse reached new levels when we dropped anchor in what felt like a secluded spot and Woody asked me, “Now then, Glute, are you ready for a little swim?”

  It was the first time either of them had said a word to me since we left the quay. Now that we weren’t moving they both dispensed with any attempt to hold their trunks in place. “You should try swimming with us au naturel,” Mickey Renshaw said to me, smiling broadly. “It’s delightful. I’m sure you’d love it.” Thoroughly stymied by the situation I said nothing, and so, leaving me to my own devices, both men dived into the sea and swam elegantly away from the boat, in the same direction, in a synchronized, aerodynamically correct crawl.

  Such were the limitations of my swimming abilities I was obliged to take a more deliberate path into the water by way of the steps. As I swam I gave some thought to the possibility of someone with binoculars watching us from high atop the hills. I wondered what conclusion they might draw if they spotted a brace of naked older men in the water near a young chap steadfastly attached to his swimwear. I was simply too shy to swim naked with Woody and Mr. Renshaw, though both seemed to think I might enjoy doing so.

  Much vigorous rubbing down and drying of bits ensued when Woody and Mr. Renshaw climbed back onto the boat. The two of them were still clearly amused by my embarrassment and kept up a steady repartee about the glorious sensation of being naked in the water. “One’s balls feel so liberated,” Mickey Renshaw said with feeling.

  “Chacun son goût,” I managed, which made me feel better and surprised them both.

  * * *

  The dock for the Villa Leopolda was round the other side of the Cap, and there were a couple of men in white shirts and white trousers waiting for us as we approached the quay. Fortunately Woody and Mr. Renshaw had put their swimming trunks back on.

  Amidst a flurry of “Bonjour, messieurs” we were, indeed, led to the swimming-pool area, where I waited for the men to shower off the salt water and put on their lunch clothes—I’d had enough nudity for one morning.

  Self-consciously I stood under the water with my trunks still on, rapidly undressed to towel myself dry, and slipped on my shirt and shorts as if performing against the clock. Stepping outside into the bright sun, I discovered that Woody and Mickey Renshaw were nowhere to be seen. One of the men in white was waiting to lead me on to my next port of call. I couldn’t believe it. Just when I needed a full military escort, I’d been dumped. What was with these people? I asked myself. Did the castle way make no provisions at all for the feelings of others? (Precious few.) Was it so wrapped up in its convoluted mechanisms that the trials and tribulations of its younger members were of no consequence? (Seemingly so.)

  I found myself being led up many steps, through beautifully landscaped gardens with tall hedges and flowers everywhere. When we eventually reached the top, I was immediately confronted with probably sixty grown-ups, most of whom I had never seen before, milling around the columned terrace. “Voilà, monsieur,” the man in white said, and left.

  I waited for someone to spot me, gaining greater sympathy for ducks who found themselves out of water as each moment went by. I noticed one or two people casting an eye in my direction, but after swiftly concluding they could be of no assistance, they carried on with their conversation. Finally, to my relief, my mother emerged from the crowd, glass in hand, saying, “Darling, there you are!”

  Yes, I’m here … have been for a while.

  “Hello, Mummy. Who are all these people?”

  “They’re friends and houseguests of Mrs. Lasker’s, darling. How was the boat trip?”

  “A bit odd, actually. After a decent start I had the good fortune to be treated to Woody and Mr. Renshaw putting on a bum-and-willie show.”

  “What do you mean, darling?” My mother had noticed people watching us and seemed to want to rejoin the crowd.

  “They thought I’d like to swim naked with them. Of course I didn’t. It was all a bit embarrassing.”

  “Come along now, darling, let’s mingle; we’ll have a chance to chat later.”

  Our way through the throng was interrupted countless times by friends who wished to have a few words with my mother, most of whom peered at me briefly but said nothing.

  * * *

  Luncheon was a very grand affair. Six round tables were laid under the awnings, which covered two sides of the house with spectacular views of the sea below and the coastlines both East and West. A platoon of men in white served food the likes of which I had never encountered before, and as a result I ate very little. My mother sat on my left and talked to me throughout, which was saintly because the woman on my right contributed purely snide criticism all the time we spent in each other’s company. “Have you never eaten lobster before, young man?” came at an early stage, and “Try not to mess up a Grand Marnier soufflé in such a vulgar fashion,” came later as I mashed my pudding in a vain effort to make it look as if I’d eaten something.

  At our table alone I heard French, Italian, and English being spoken, and two of the guests had American accents. I glanced often at Mrs. Lasker across the terrace, but the nature of things saw to it that an encounter was avoided. My mother told me that, like Granny B, she was very much involved in raising money for medical research, and that she was an art collector of some repute. I noticed that people treated her with the deference that was always accorded Granny B, and it was interesting to see them at the same table, important-looking men hanging on their every word like courtiers, which, of course, they were.

  All the men were dressed in colourful shirts and linen trousers. The ladies wore light dresses and minimal jewellery. But by the end of it all I’d had more than enough sophistication for one day, on top of which all anyone had wanted to talk about were the North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. destroyers in the Tonkin Gulf. My interests lay in securing a ride back to the villa, in a motor car, with my mother, as soon as possible. “Of course, darling, but I’m sure Woody and Mr. Renshaw would be happy to take you back.”

  “I’d rather not, if that’s all right?”

  I rode home with my mother, Granny, and Morg, who discussed the upcoming dinner with David Niven and Noël Coward in endless detail. I sat up front with Mr. Brewer and discussed Mrs. Brewer’s scones, which, to my mind, had taken on legendary status down at Leeds.

  * * *

  My father turned up the afternoon of the Coward/Niven dinner party, thus
depriving me of my first stargazing experience. Truth to tell, his arrival also rescued me from another agonizing social conundrum: To be there or not to be there? Difficult to say, particularly when given the choice.

  Shunted to the smallest bedroom in the house, I had a few words with my father: “My dear sir, are you having a lovely time? Does the South of France agree with you?” (“I think it’s great!”), before having an omelette on a tray in my room and spending the early part of the evening leaning out of the window straining to catch a glimpse of the famous faces and listen a bit to the conversation. I saw Noël Coward: His pink blazer and midnight-blue trousers were easy to spot, as was his mellifluous, theatrical voice and ever-present cigarette in a holder. As my eyes roamed over the many other coiffed and bejewelled guests, everybody’s words soon melded into a sea of cocktail-party chatter and I went to bed, falling asleep to the sounds of raucous laughter drifting up from far below, wondering what I was missing.

  16.

  BEATLEMANIAC

  It is a strange and wonderful thing how some music can penetrate the inner sanctum of the mind and envelop one’s entire being in a warm, spiritualistic glow. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony did it for some; Wagner’s The Ring held sway with others; Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley had legions of admirers. Beatles music did it for me. Although I shared this sentiment with a large number of other people, the experience was distinctly personal for each of us. More often than not it was impossible to put the intense appeal into words. One listened. One felt. And it was good. One put the LP onto the turntable, soaked up both sides, and, in a transported state, repeated the process if time and circumstances permitted.

  In April 1963 David had returned from Stowe for the holidays, wandered into the playroom at the MT clutching a copy of Please Please Me, the first LP by the Beatles, and told me that the group had recently played at the school and had been a sensation. It was immediately clear why. From the opening “One, two, three, four” to the final shattering chord of “Twist and Shout,” the record was a masterpiece of unbridled energy and musicality the likes of which I had never heard before. Then With the Beatles, their second LP, arrived a few months later, and a new set of superlatives had to be found.

  It soon became obvious that I would need to redefine the term “Beatlemaniac” when the second half of the word started to take on substantive meaning. At the age of eleven, with all policeman, fireman, explorer, and Canadian Mountie aspirations left unceremoniously on the trash heap, I decided that when I grew up I was going to play in a very famous band. Nobody attempted to disabuse me of this notion until three years later, when I was at Stowe, and by then it was far too late. The seeds had long since been planted, and only the most drastic of interventions could have halted their growth. My housemaster, Mr. Gilbert, suggested on several occasions that I was starting to display all the signs of being stupid, irresponsible, and in urgent need of a more mature outlook on life, but he might just as well have been talking to his dog. My parents, too, misread the nature of my ambition or simply thought I was “bound to get over it.”

  My mother used to wonder out loud, as we sat in front of the television watching Thank Your Lucky Stars or Ready Steady Go!, if the Beatles or the Rolling Stones ever had baths. I found this curious and could only answer, “Why not?”

  “Oh, but darling, do look at them,” she would say, her tone awash with concern. “Their strange clothes and all that long hair. So unkempt!”

  If I had been allowed to I would have grown my hair and dressed the same way. I would have enjoyed seeing the court’s reaction if I had turned up for tea one day wearing a high-collared floral shirt, crushed velvet suit, scarves, and Chelsea boots, and with hair down to my shoulders. I expect Morg would have mumbled after I’d left, “Dear fella’s completely lost his marbles!” But there were no outward signs at Leeds during the 1960s that anyone was suffering even the mildest onset of culture shock. No one was paying particular attention to the new cultural forces that were rapidly emerging and that would sweep away their kind of world forever.

  Thankfully, my obsession was not completely dismissed by the family. When the Christmas holidays arrived, my mother announced with great fanfare that Aunt Cicili had procured tickets for the Beatles’ Christmas Show at the London Odeon, Hammersmith. Together with Granny A, she would be taking her boys, John and Michael, and David, James, and me to the concert. Though eccentric at first glance, the fact that Aunt Cicili and Granny A were to be the grown-ups in charge seemed oddly appropriate. Their forceful and enquiring personalities led them to want to find out for themselves what the fuss was all about.

  Thursday, December 31, 1964, found us sitting at 6:15 p.m. in the dress circle of the Odeon, surrounded by screaming teenage girls. And the concert hadn’t even begun. Every time the curtain, a heavy, reddish, velvety-looking affair, moved, the girls went crazy with anticipation. The atmosphere was as electric as electric could conceivably be. Then add more.

  I was sitting between James and Granny A. He was as caught up as I was in the ever-increasing frenzy; she appeared content to sit straight backed, her hands resting on top of her umbrella handle, observing what must to her have seemed utter madness, as if she were studying reptiles through thick glass in the zoo.

  Jimmy Savile, the compère, walked out onstage in front of the curtain, and after trying to tell a joke, announced the Mike Cotton Sound. The curtain rose, the music started. They were good, but they weren’t whom we’d come to see; and you couldn’t hear much because the girls screamed for them too. The Yardbirds were on next, and the audience loved them. Even the men started making a noise, cheering and clapping to the pulsating blues sounds. The blond lead singer, Keith Relf, blew his harmonica and dived about the stage like a man possessed, and their guitarist, Eric Clapton, played guitar solos which boggled the mind. They were genuinely exciting, and the scream level rose. Freddie and the Dreamers, whose songs I found quite dreadful, closed the first half, and I watched in bemusement their tiny singer, who danced about like a circus clown amidst the continuous bedlam.

  The Mike Cotton Sound came back to open the second half, but by then I wasn’t really listening to what the other groups or singers were doing. I was simply waiting for the Beatles to appear and pondering which of my favourites I hoped they would play. When the moment actually arrived, and they walked out on stage waving and smiling, the roof was lifted high into the sky by a surge in decibels akin to three thousand steam engines blowing their whistles in unison at the same time. I sat mesmerized, enraptured, in a state of total bliss.

  Ringo climbed up and sat behind his drums. John, Paul, and George plugged in their guitars and struck a few chords. The din was stupendous, the screaming out of control. Directly in front of me a girl was howling like a demented banshee, her hair a tangled mess after she had spent the previous ninety minutes rearranging it in a way that only a Force 10 gale could outdo—and then only at sea. I glanced down our row and noticed that Aunt Cicili, like Granny A, was registering no more than a mild interest in the proceedings. I hoped I was mistaken and that their fixed expressions were simply misleading. John and Michael, David and James, like me, sat and stared, mesmerized.

  I recognized the guitar intro to “I Feel Fine,” and suddenly everything that had gone before passed for polite enthusiasm. Every teenage girl, or younger, gave the distinct impression of having gone stark staring mad. They clutched their hair, they shook their heads, they jumped up and down in their seats. They cried as if their pet hamsters had just been eaten by the cat, and they continued to scream as if their lives depended on it.

  Although we were high up and quite far from the stage, we were in the middle and the view was perfect. The Beatles. Holy cow! Now they were playing “She’s a Woman.” Was it the third song, the fourth? Damn! It was so hard actually to hear the music at all. I watched the stage intent on missing nothing, but though I knew the words and melodies by heart, it was only intermittently that I clearly picked them out. Paul did all the tal
king between songs. John played the fool a bit. George did his little skip occasionally. As they played and sang, I was as happy as I could ever have wished to be. It was magic. Just for this brief moment in time I, and a few thousand like-minded individuals, were breathing it in.

  “Thank you … thank you very much … we’re going to do one more,” said Paul. “And this one’s called ‘Long Tall Sally.’” Good grief! Surely not the last, I said to myself as triple pandemonium erupted from the first few rows to the last. They seemed to have been on stage for only such a short time. The song was flat-out rock and roll, and the hall, myself sedately included, was beside itself. “We’re gonna have some fun tonight … have some fun tonight,” went the refrain. Blimey! Why did this have to end?

  After a final bow, final wave, they left the stage. Gone. The lights went up, handkerchiefs came out, dabbing eyes, wiping away sniffles.

  Still somewhere far away and not wanting to come back down to earth, I stood up just as Granny A gave the girl in front of us a gentle prod with her umbrella and spoke to her in an angelic tone of voice: “You know, my dear, it’s only the plain girls who scream.”

  17.

  STOWE VERSUS HOME FRONT

  The following year I went to Stowe. I’d visited David there and he’d shown me around, but I had found the place austere and cheerless. Even the school’s spectacular setting and architecture had left me curiously unmoved and despondent over what the future might have in store. Now was the time when a health and safety warning on the side of the Leeds Castle luxury brew (it was a home-grown blend and not available to the general public) was needed. I had imbibed all my life (no one said it was not safe for children) on an epic scale, but unlike cigarettes (Smoking Causes Cancer) the brew manufacturers never had the gumption to provide the necessary cautions on the side of their powerful product’s tin, such as: “The luxury brew has been known to induce powerful delusions of grandeur which can, if not treated, last for a great many years and prove harmful to achieving success in meeting life’s myriad challenges. The brew is known to have further unintentional side effects including, but not limited to, obscuring reality. Be aware that the luxury brew will one day cease production without any possibility of being replaced. Consume in moderation and learn to be self-sufficient.”