The Co-Op's Got Bananas

by Hunter Davies

  My first proper out-of-town story was about some Manchester University students on a rag-week stunt. It involved them pushing a pram or perhaps a fridge, something stupid anyway, all the way to Edinburgh. For charity, of course. I was allowed to go with them, travelling there on the bus, a day trip, and met the students up there. I fancied the older hacks on the desk were a bit jealous. One of them did say afterwards, ‘Lucky beggar, you’ll make some expenses there.’ I had never thought of that and forgot to acquire any receipts.

  I was trying to set myself up as the reporter on the newsdesk who covered university affairs. I had worked out that was a way to gain promotion, one of two directions for getting on.

  Become a specialist, of any sort, and you would have your own little field where Harold, however smart he was, would not know everything and not always know where you were.

  The specialist area I really, really fancied was football reporting. Alf Clarke, who had died at Munich, had covered Manchester United for the paper and was a big star on the paper, and in football. He had been an amateur in his youth, on the books of Man United, and always had great contacts during the Busby era. He was credited as being the first reporter to spot the potential of young Duncan Edwards, giving him a rave review in a minor game. Obviously, I could never compete with Alf Clarke, his contacts or his knowledge.

  His replacement on the paper, covering Man United, was Keith Dewhurst. Man City was covered by Ray Wergan. I so envied both of them, the job they did, the access they got, or I imagined they got, meeting all the stars, the free tickets to games and most of all their white raincoats. They were possibly not quite white, just off-white, and were perhaps not even raincoats, but in my mind’s eye I can see them leaving our floor in the middle of the morning, while I was still struggling with the wretched calls, their collars up, their white raincoats flapping, off to Old Trafford or Maine Road, to join the team bus or the reserved train carriage, travelling with our heroes down to Arsenal for the big match. Meanwhile, Harold would be screaming at me for the calls.

  I never actually talked to Keith or Ray, not properly, as they were both older than me. I was never sure where their office was, though eventually I became quite friendly with Ray. It was only much later, when Keith Dewhurst went on to become an eminent scriptwriter, for films and TV, and an author, that I realised he had not been all that much older than me – just five years – and he had been to Cambridge. I think Ray Wergan had been there as well. So both had probably been graduate trainees on the paper, just like me.

  One day, however, Harold Mellor called me into his office and said he was sending me to Old Trafford for the Big Derby against City. Stand by in an hour for an office car, which I would need in order to avoid the traffic. This was a sure sign of going on a big story. I was thrilled.

  But I never got inside Old Trafford, or even saw the game. When he properly briefed me, it turned out that my job was to stand outside the ground, before, during and after, then file a colour piece about the atmosphere, with quotes from the fans. I was so disappointed, having imagined it was going to be the start of my great career as a specialist, a football reporter no less, the most glamorous and desirable speciality of all.

  The other career move, so it seemed to me, looking round the newsroom, working out who everyone was and how they got there, was to be a subeditor.

  Subbing seemed to be an expertise worth mastering and many of the assistant editors seemed to have been subs. One of my fantasies in those early months, which I discussed with Margaret, was that one day, when I was really old, say about forty, wouldn’t it be great to retire to Carlisle and be editor of the Cumberland News, be someone in the community, with status and position, with a nice house not far away in the country, such as Wetheral? I would need to have had subbing experience to do that job properly.

  On the other hand being a sub meant working inside all day long, not going out and interviewing people, which is what I enjoyed most. And, above all, it would presumably mean being able to spell properly . . .

  24

  MANCHESTER LIFE

  I had no one in Manchester to ask for advice on where to stay. I knew nobody, nor any of the streets or place names or districts, their images or reputations.

  Even names I thought I did know, such as Northwest, were confusing. In the Chron and the News there were often stories about ‘Northwest couple win the pools’ or ‘Northwest woman in holiday tragedy’. I would turn to the story expecting it to be about somebody from Carlisle or at least Cumberland, thinking I might know them, or where they live. In Cumberland we always considered ourselves to be the Northwest of England, which it is, if you look at the map. But here in Manchester they considered themselves, and the whole of Lancashire, to be the real, true Northwest, as if unaware of the map of England, which any fool can see goes on for another 100 miles before it reaches Scotland.

  When I came to look at the map of Manchester for somewhere I might stay, I did not know where to start. Withy Grove seemed to be in the heart of the city, perhaps just slightly on the northern side, full of businesses and big office buildings, so I looked for any local bus routes that would take me directly to work. Which is how I ended up in Cheetham Hill. What a mistake. I took a room in Heywood Street, the first place I looked at. What a dump.

  The area appeared to be filled with decaying houses, many of which had been turned into sweatshops, with European migrants making raincoats, mostly sleeping on the premises. Cheetham Hill had traditionally been an immigrant area for decades, starting with the Irish in the nineteenth century and the Jews in the twentieth century.

  I had a single room on the ground floor, at the front, crammed with elderly brown furniture, with a kitchen in an alcove in the communal hall. I shared the bathroom and WC with the rest of the occupants, none of whom I saw for a long time, though I heard them at night, banging around.

  Margaret came to see me as soon as I was vaguely settled, but I had to keep her away from the landlord. I had taken the room as a single man, so I would have had to pay more as a couple, but as we were not married, it would have been difficult if not impossible. Landlords, even dodgy landlords in scruffy areas, did not want to encourage unmarried couples to live together.

  One evening, when Margaret was staying, the landlord did turn up unexpectedly, wanting his rent. I could hear him in the hall, so we jumped out of bed and I pushed Margaret into the wardrobe and closed the door. I managed to keep the landlord talking in the doorway to my room, then behind me I heard a crashing noise and a small scream. The bed was an old and battered let-you-down sofa bed, which you folded up during the day. It had suddenly decided to jackknife itself, presumably because we’d jumped out of it so quickly, and had sprung up against the wardrobe, giving Margaret, trapped inside, the most awful fright. I managed to keep the landlord out of my room, as he was busy counting the rent, and ushered him to the front door.

  Another time, in the middle of the night, when we were in that awful bed, we suddenly felt a draught coming in through the window beside us. Margaret wakened in alarm. And then she woke me up, whispering in my ear.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘it’s just the wind, go back to sleep.’

  ‘It’s not the wind, someone is there, outside.’

  I vaguely glanced at the window, and could see nothing, so turned over and pulled the blankets over my head.

  ‘He’s trying to get in!’

  ‘He’ll go away, don’t worry.’

  ‘He’s coming in!’

  At this point I was forced to sit up and, sure enough, a figure was clambering through our window, rather unsteadily, as if he had been drinking. I didn’t quite get out of bed, half-crouching under the bedclothes, but I did manage to shout at him, asking him what the hell he was doing. He realised his mistake, that he was climbing into the wrong house, and retreated, muttering some sort of apology in what sounded like Polish, and staggered on to the pavement again. I might well have muttered something in reply, such as, ‘That’s all r
ight, pal’ – and then went back to sleep.

  Margaret, of course, never returned to sleep – and next morning she went on about my useless behaviour, just lying there, when we could both have been murdered in our beds. Which is what my mother always used to say. What I was supposed to have done, got up and punched him?

  After several visits, Margaret managed to make my awful room a bit more habitable, cleaned it and dusted, bought some end-of-line fabrics to cover the revolting bedclothes and nasty chairs. And one evening we gave our first dinner party. It was our first bit of entertaining as a couple, a couple who had their own place, just one room, it is true, but it was ours, as opposed our parents’ council houses.

  I invited another journalist, Harry Evans, whom I had recently met, and his wife, Enid. This was the Harold Evans I had been told about at Durham, who had been at my college then gone off to be a journalist, but no one at Durham had a contact for him. I had bumped into him while covering some Manchester University event, which he was covering as well for our rival paper, the Evening News.

  The Evening News was owned by the Manchester Guardian and considered itself higher class than the Chron. They were a broadsheet and we were tabloid, but really, I could see little between them in terms of general content. They both had a massive readership. The News was more the business paper, strong in the centre of the city, while the Chron was strong out in the suburbs and local Lancashire towns.

  The News staff, in their appearance and working habits, were very like us, competing for the same pastures. The Guardian journalists, despite being part of the same company, appeared a different breed. Whenever I came across them on stories, I so envied their casual confidence. I was at one event where Terry Coleman was holding forth, cross-examining some official as if he, Coleman, was in charge of the press conference, doing them a favour by being there. I never spoke to him. I knew my place.

  I admired the casual clothes of the Guardian reporters, often just open-necked shirts, whereas we had to wear jackets and ties and look smart. I suppose that proves we were a tabloid paper. On the whole, then and now, the lower class the paper, the smarter, better dressed, more presentable their reporters felt they had to be. But the News, being an evening paper, was neither low class nor high class. Too busy to worry about that. A bit like us on the Chron, so I liked to imagine.

  Harry had recently been promoted to assistant to the editor on the Evening News, whatever that meant, but was still going out doing university stories. He was eight years older than me, much more advanced in his career, and was married to Enid, who had also been at Durham. They lived in Altrincham, Cheshire, which I knew by then was very smart, as was anything in Cheshire.

  Harry was born locally in Eccles, had left school at sixteen, got a job on a local paper, then did his national service in the RAF. After that, he passed various exams and applied as a mature student to all fourteen universities in England, which was the total number at the time. Durham was the first to offer him a place. At Durham, he had gone on to edit Palatinate, so was clearly highly talented.

  Margaret had decorated the room most artistically, with flowers and candles, and had made a lovely meal of fresh herring and oatmeal, very 1950s. The moment Harry started eating his fish, he was fussing about the bones. He then suddenly jumped up and switched on all the glaring, vulgar overhead lights, the better to see what he was eating. By doing so, he immediately revealed the full horror of our crummy, nasty, dingy room which Margaret had worked so hard to disguise. Margaret was mortified.

  Harry and Enid did, however, invite us back to their place, which turned out to be only half a semi, but even so, I was well impressed. He knew so much about Manchester and Lancashire, having been brought up there, and also about journalism. He became a valuable help when I was asking about local people, places and institutions.

  I met Harry by chance a few months later at Piccadilly railway station. He was rushing for the London train. He was small and thin, but fit and athletic-looking, and seemed to be in a continual whir, full of action and ideas. Sometimes he could be evasive, speaking out of the corner of his mouth, as if he knew stuff he could not reveal. I did, though, ask him where he was going and eventually it came out. He was going to London, so he said, to be interviewed for a job as the BBC’s economic correspondent. But I had not to mention it. Nobody knew at the News.

  He never got that job. A bit afterwards I heard he had moved to Darlington, on the Northern Echo. That seemed a bit of a comedown, going back to the provinces, compared with the media heights of Manchester.

  Darlington was where I might well have moved to, just a few months earlier, straight from Durham, had I not got the Kemsley training scheme. At the end of my very last term, I received a letter from Mr Harrop in the education department saying he had been approached by Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Darlington, who were looking for a teacher for the lower forms and would recommend me, if I was interested. I wrote and said thanks, but I was fixed up. I did not reveal what I was going to do instead, that I had wasted their time and the government’s money training to be a teacher, and then never intending to practise. Or so I hoped.

  I had no contact with Harry after he moved to Darlington, nor saw him for several years, till by chance we met again. But he did okay as a journalist – becoming Sir Harold Evans, editor of the Sunday Times and The Times.

  It was much more fun and more convenient visiting Margaret in Oxford at the beginning of her second year, October 1958. She and her friend Theo moved out of college and into a flat in Winchester Road, round the corner from a row of shops called North Parade, not far from Somerville. Iris Murdoch was pointed out to me one day, walking along Winchester Road, as she lived there or nearby, but I had no idea who she was. She had her head down, rather untidy, as if in a dream, or thinking great thoughts.

  Margaret and Theo had a room each and shared a bathroom on the first floor of a little terrace house. I could sleep there with her during the day and the evening till quite late, but not stay the night, as Mrs Brown, the landlady, would have been very upset. I usually stayed overnight with the Parfitts in Northmoor Road, not far away.

  Mrs Brown, who had taken in Oxford students for some years, wore a lace cap and a shawl, straight out of Jane Austen, and was very formal and severe-looking. Living with her was Fanny, who was untidy and wild-looking, always cursing and mumbling, rather volatile, but jolly and smiley. She had a pronounced accent, possibly rural Oxford, or West Country, while Mrs Brown sounded posh and refined. I was not very good on any accents south of Manchester and still confused Yorkshire and Lancashire.

  Fanny wore a white pinny that reached down to her heavy black shoes and seemed to do all the cooking and domestic work. She always addressed Margaret as Miss Margaret and Theo as Miss Theodora, and was always gracious and friendly to them, but you sensed she had a sharp tongue behind their backs.

  Then there was Reg, who lived somewhere up in the attic. He did any heavy lifting, such as bringing in the coals. Fanny shouted at him all the time and bossed him around, thinking no one else in the house could hear her scolding him – ‘Bring them damn coals in!’, ‘Get on with them potatoes!’ On a Saturday evening, Reg could be heard in his attic room, singing to himself, getting louder and louder. ‘Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!’ We presumed he did have a bottle up there for company.

  All three were old, probably about seventy, but neither Theo nor Margaret ever found out their history. They were apparently sisters, despite their different accents, but was Reg a brother or a lodger who had stayed on? I would have found out quickly, seen it as a challenge, made it my business to get the gen about them, but I was warned not to cross-examine them.

  Despite having five people living so tightly in a small house, plus a regular visitor, there was an air of formality, with Fanny pressing herself against a wall should I pass her. Mrs Brown had taken in generations of students, and no doubt was wise to their ways, but kept her distance, if all seemed well.

  I never abu
sed the situation by staying the night, or becoming too inquisitive, for Margaret absolutely loved living there. She didn’t want to lose it. It made Oxford worthwhile, so she said. In her room was a gas fire on which she toasted crumpets on the dark autumn evenings. We would then go to bed for a few hours, till it was time for me to creep out and go to Northmoor Road.

  Jessie Parfitt, Theo’s mother, grabbed me one evening when I was letting myself into her house. I wondered what she wanted – had I done something wrong, were they fed up with me sleeping there every few weeks? She was holding an advertisement cut out from a newspaper, the Daily Herald. It was an advert for a raincoat factory in Manchester which was selling coats half price, all new. She wanted me to personally go to the factory, which would therefore also save her on postage, and buy a raincoat in these measurements. I assumed Derek needed a new raincoat for Eton. Middle classes, eh, they don’t waste money.

  The moment I got my first £14 wage packet, in cash, in a brown envelope, Margaret insisted I send £1 home to my mother. I said I’d like to wait, till I knew where I was with the rent and living expenses. I also wanted to buy a portable typewriter and I needed some decent clothes. She said no, I had to do it now, at once, or I would always have reasons to put it off.

  She was right, of course. My mother had given me so much, sacrificed so much, paid for so much when she had so little herself. So I sent her £1 every week, with a scribbled note about what I had been doing. I did think of sending her a postal order, but that seemed a faff, having to go and buy one. So I sent it in cash, a pound note. Never once, in all the years that I sent her cash, did any go missing. While I basked in a nice warm glow of righteousness.