by Paul Daniels
Once someone shouted ‘House’, half of the audience would disappear back to the bar in order to refill while I did my magic act. Sometimes Jackie would act as my assistant. More Bingo and then Trevor and I did our comedy spot. While in Hong Kong, I had heard these wonderfully funny American records by a comedy singer called Stan Freeburg. We performed a routine of miming to these records, which, because they had not been heard in the UK, went down really well. What was really funny was the fact that we stuck an old Dansette record player on stage with a microphone up against the tiny speaker at the front in order to amplify it over the rest of the venue. It must have sounded awful but we got a lot of other bookings so maybe we were funnier than we were awful.
By this time, Jackie and I had moved into a first-floor council flat, over a bank, on Normanby High Street. Lenny the Lion was a very popular ventriloquist act and his mother got married to a local councillor and moved in below us. The council offices also moved away from the grime and the smoke of South Bank, but I noticed how many office workers who’d moved there became sick because they were so used to the pollution, while the fresh air was killing them off. I guess you get used to your own environment and I read recently that the medical profession thinks that we are now so protected that we are not building up immunities in the way that we did when, as children, we played in the dirt. Funny old world, isn’t it?
I had made several things for our new home because, on £4 10s a week, we had very little money to spend on furniture. We supplemented our income from the little we got from the clubs, but with a new baby on the way we had to be very careful.
One night we went to bed and suddenly heard strange footsteps outside our room. From the lounge-diner-kitchen, a corridor ran past the bedroom, through to the back end of the old house and down a few steps into the bathroom. The corridor ran past a frosted glass partition outside the bedroom and this is where we heard the footsteps coming from. Leaping out of bed and opening the door, I looked down the corridor only to find it empty.
After several nights of this, during which it was becoming more and more difficult to get some rest, Jackie became convinced the corridor was haunted. If there was no other explanation, then it had to be a ghost, she decided. I didn’t believe in ghosts, but couldn’t figure it out either, so I decided to sit in the corridor one night and ‘ghost watch’.
I was used to ghost watching, in a way, because in Eston Cemetery there was a tomb and, according to legend, if you ran around it three times in the dark of the night, the devil would come out and talk to you. I tried that. It didn’t work. Maybe you had to do it at midnight. I would love to meet a ghost, even though I don’t believe in them. The reason is that if I met one, I would ask it some sensible questions about the afterlife and nobody seems to do that, do they?
With Jackie safely tucked up in bed, I took my seat in the passage complete with a favourite book and waited in the dimming light. About an hour later, I heard footsteps approaching rapidly, walk right through me and vanish off down the hallway. Although there was no sense of coldness, or draughts, it was the most peculiar sensation I had ever experienced.
A blast of inspiration encouraged me to go downstairs and ask if I could look around the downstairs flat. It had exactly the same layout as ours, including the partition and hallway. Then I discovered a clue. Their bedroom had a ‘sticky’ door, which took some effort to open and close properly. I asked if they would open and close this for me, as I dashed back up into our hallway. Sitting in the corridor, the strange sensation happened once more and this time I noticed how the opening of their sticky door caused the floorboards in our hallway to move. As their partition was supporting the floorboards of our hallway, it set off a chain reaction that sounded just like some phantom walking along it. I went back, eased their door, put some long nails diagonally into our floorboards and that was the end of our ghost.
Paul was born, taking us by surprise as he was premature. Jackie had been to the doctor with stomach pains that had interrupted her sleeping and caused acute tiredness. The doctor assured her it was not the baby and gave her some sleeping pills. That night the pains came back and she took a pill. The pains grew stronger so I said, ‘Well, have another pill.’
After about three pills, with no easing of the pain and losing all hope of slumber, we realised it must be something more serious. After a quick warning telephone call, we beetled along to the hospital several miles away in our little car and were told that the arrival had indeed begun. With all the pills Jackie had been taking, apparently they had to keep waking her up in order to deliver the baby.
‘Wake up and push! Wake up and push!’
It must have been one of the most relaxed births of all time. As it was not fashionable for the husband to be present, I was kept outside in the corridor, waiting anxiously for some news. I was everything that you’d expect an expectant dad to be. Nervous, worried, anxious, pacing the floor. When I was called in to see our little boy, wrapped in a sheet, with his tiny little hands and feet, it felt awesome. I was filled with immense love and protection for the little bundle in my arms and I didn’t want to put him down. It was 9 September 1960 and I was a dad to Paul Newton Daniels. Then, a typically male thought entered my brain: ‘I’ve got to pay for this!’
Families gather round as grandmas knit and mothers provide prams, and with our new house, we were the proudest and most contented parents on the planet. It’s a good thing that I didn’t know how short-lived our happiness was going to be.
CHAPTER 7
AGONIES OF THE HEART
The Sixties exploded into the new century like an international firework. Cars, furniture and fashion all pointed to a new era that was desperate to leave the dowdiness of the past behind and embark on a new future. Labour-saving devices now provided more time to relax and encouraged the age of the leisure boom. With the new designer denim jeans heading up the fashion front, the birth of the package holiday was soon bringing up the rear. Even the packaging of everyday items on the shelf became more vibrant.
Soon after Paul’s arrival, the council offered us a brand-new semi-detached home in Nightingale Road, Teesville. It was much bigger than the flat and we had our own garden, although the laziness of the builders meant that we grew bricks in the borders. At the end of our road was another street of similar houses and, driving past one day, I saw a lady pushing a pram. I hardly recognised her but it was Irene, the girl with whom I had shared my first real passion. Irene was now a very large woman, not tall, just large, and remembering the fear I had of fat ladies, I was relieved that our one moment of enthusiasm hadn’t led to anything more serious.
It’s funny how little things stay in your memory. A man called one day to allow us a free one-month trial of a brand-new design in vacuum cleaners. In fact, he called on the entire street selling from the back of a large van. We all signed up for the free trial, gave the carpet cleaner a good workout and enjoyed clean carpets for months to come because he never came back either to collect it or to collect any money.
Our neighbours thought we were quite barmy. It wasn’t the magic or the comings and goings at strange times, it was the gadgets. My father, supporting his new family, especially his grandson, as much as possible, was always bringing new laboursaving contraptions around for us to try out.
Imagine a slatted wardrobe door made from big chunky wood, laid flat, with two paving slabs on top to make it heavy and connected to two ropes. This was Dad’s super-duper garden ploughing device. By dragging it along the ground it would break down and turn over the top surface of soil extremely effectively. The square plough should be dragged one way, then dragged the other, until your garden was in the right state for sowing your seeds. Even the stones would be removed, as they would come up through the slats and gather on the top. It was a clever gizmo, but to anyone watching over the fence it must have looked pretty silly.
What made them talk even more was when I marked off the area of lawn and grass-seeded it, before unrolling what look
ed like a thin strip of fibreglass sheeting around the edges of the lawn. Having placed these sheets on the ground, I covered them with a thin layer of soil and watered it. The neighbour’s curiosity became too much and I heard his voice over the hedge, ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m planting my borders,’ I replied, trying to keep him in suspense as much as possible. Within an amazingly short time, up came a perfectly measured out, fully flowering ‘frame’ around my lawn. I had found these ‘instant’ edgings in some magazine where they incorporate the plant seeds within the fibreglass. Once the sheeting rots away, it automatically plants the seeds in symmetrical rows. My neighbour couldn’t believe his eyes. Don’t you just love gardening with no work?
Eighteen months happily passed with every normal aspect of family life imaginable. I had been able to afford our own television, telephone and run our own car on family day trips into the beautiful surrounding countryside.
You don’t have to drive far from Teesside to find some of the most glorious views in the world. I went to work which once again was in an office around the corner. On Monday evenings I went to the Middlesbrough Circle of Magicians and Jackie went to ballroom dancing classes. To me, everything inside and outside our garden was rosy, which makes the following story seem even more incredulous. I really never saw it coming. I am not the first to say that and I know I won’t be the last.
Arriving home from work one evening, I sensed that something was seriously amiss. The house was very quiet and this was so alien to our normal timetable that a premonition dawned that something was not right. As I stood in the front room wondering what had happened, I remembered that I had seen something I thought was odd that afternoon. While out delivering the staff wages, I had seen Jackie’s mum pushing Paul in a pram long after the time Jackie should have collected him and taken him home. It was an odd sight and I can remember somehow feeling very strange about it as I continued with my work.
Looking around the front room, my eye caught sight of a note on the mantelpiece, next to a photo of our wedding. As I saw it, I started to go cold and, as I took it in my hands, my skin began to turn to ice. Reading the letter only made things worse. It was from Jackie, saying that she had left me. Her words hit me as if I had been punched in the stomach and I gasped out loud for air. I had no idea, not an inkling that anything had been off-beam between us. The previous night we had made love. How could this be?
One hint gave the real truth away, when she wrote, ‘… When we are settled down, we’ll come back for Paul.’ At first I was stunned, as the reality of the situation began to sink in. She had left us both. The room started to spin. It was as if all my emotions had been frozen. I sat on the floor. I didn’t know what to do. I felt sick, dizzy and the world really was spinning away from me.
In the middle of all this, very suddenly, I thought about Paul. I had to get Paul. The last time I had seen him was in the street being pushed by Jackie’s mum. I got into the car, almost out of my mind with worry and confusion and was not really in any fit state to drive. Screeching and swerving the few miles to the next town, I miraculously arrived in one piece and knocked on the door of Jackie’s mum and tried to act as calm and as normal as I possibly could.
Her mother answered the door and I told her that I had come for Paul. ‘Where’s Jackie?’ she asked and I managed to act as if everything was OK and I had agreed to pick him up. I didn’t mention the note. There was a danger she would have kept Paul had she known and I wasn’t willing to risk that. I wanted him by my side, where I knew he was going to be safe.
I was desperate to get the tot in the car and frantically threw my ‘goodbyes’ over my shoulder as I walked away. Once on the road again, I drove straight round to Mam and Dad’s and sat with my face in my hands, as Mam rocked Paul back to sleep. Oddly, Mam and Dad told me that they had already suspected that Jackie had met someone else. They were both there for me at the moment I needed them most, offering comfort or practical support, but it was one of the worst times of my life.
Determined to carry on as much as normal, I took the little 18-month-old back home with me later that evening, where he slept in his cot. I lay awake all night in a cold numbness, unable to think clearly and unable to stop thinking. I just couldn’t imagine what tomorrow would bring.
I took some time off work initially, making some feeble excuse about there being sickness at home, but when I was alone in the house with Paul, I felt so isolated I just thought I was going to go crackers. Mam took over the regular day-to-day bringing up of Paul, while I went to work, returning each evening to take him back home. Although I tried to carry on as much as possible, it was a really difficult task and I was in a state of bewilderment for several days. I didn’t know which way to turn or what to do. What I didn’t realise at the time was the care my father had shown, when years later he admitted to having parked his car outside our house on that first night, just in case we needed him. That’s fatherhood! Until you have a child you never realise that, no matter how old they become, you never stop worrying or caring about them.
Coming somewhat to my senses one day, I decided that I had to find Jackie and sort it all out once and for all. My first port of call was Phil Whitcombe’s dancing school. As I sailed in, he looked up and smiled nervously.
By this time, my anger had taken over and I was mad.
‘Where is Jackie?’ I demanded.
Phil was quite a nice guy, dressed flamboyantly and was easily the campest man in town. He had known me from the days of trying to dance with Jackie until I suggested that she did the dancing and I did the magic. His effete reply came as no surprise.
‘Her dancing partner, Ted. I did warn her. I could see it happening,’ he stammered.
I got his name and swept out as fast as I had arrived, leaving a very white-faced Phil gazing after me. I knew this dancing partner to be a guy who had tended to use women and decided to find out all I could about him before making my approach.
In local government we had a system for identifying and finding bad payers. I used the process to hunt down the man who had stolen my wife and found the address of a flat they had rented in Saltburn. Taking legal advice, I telephoned my friend Martin from the Middlesbrough Circle of Magicians and asked if he would accompany me. To my relief and despite the tremendous imposition I was placing on him, he agreed.
We drove up to the block. It turned out to be part of an old Victorian house that had been converted into flats. It had a round tower window on the corner and this style was to haunt me for the rest of my life whenever I drove past a similar feature. We found the number on the first floor and I knocked loudly. When they opened the door, they were extremely surprised to see me, but I just marched straight through the open door with Martin behind me.
Jackie was sitting in the bed-sit, smoking. I had never seen her smoke before and the scene seemed unreal because of this. I just thought it all looked so sordid. The guy started to speak and, in very clear terms, I immediately told him to shut up.
‘I want to speak to Jackie,’ I announced. Standing in the silence, looking directly at her, I asked her the question I wanted to know more than anything.
‘Are you coming back?’
‘No.’
The emotions churned around inside like a giant washing machine.
‘Well, I’ll ask you again. Are you coming back?’
‘No.’
Something really odd happened. As soon as she said the word the second time, I went icy cold. Shutters came down inside me. I couldn’t have cared less about her. I guess there is some safety mechanism inside us to protect us from trauma. It certainly protected me. Now I can’t even remember the guy’s name, so I’ll just call him Bob.
‘What are you going to do then?’
‘Bob has a job in the Middle East and we’re going to live there.’
A moment’s pause. ‘No, you’re not,’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’ she enquired, as I tried not to make it obvious that I was watchi
ng him out of the corner of my eye. ‘His contract in the Middle East forbids him to take a woman with him.’
He couldn’t argue. I opened up a file I had been carrying and showed them both the information I had collected on Bob.
‘You’ll also find, Jackie, that he is still married and has children and two more with another woman.’
I didn’t hit Bob, I didn’t strike her, I was seemingly so indifferent to the situation, I became a ‘nothing’ person. As I revealed the dossier, the guy’s eyes narrowed as I calmly pointed out the maternity suits and court orders that pursued him. Bob began to get very defensive and did his best to make excuses, but the mud had stuck.
Spinning round to Jackie who sat speechless on the bed with two inches of fag ash hanging from her cigarette, I coolly said, ‘so you haven’t done yourself any favours, chuck!’ And with that, knowing there was nothing left to either say or hear, I turned to leave.
Martin, who had met Jackie on many occasions and was becoming a family friend, spoke for the first time.
‘I would like to have a word with Jackie alone, please.’
Amazingly, Bob and I went and sat in the car. After a few moments of stillness, I started the engine and drove off down the road, out into the country and towards a cliff top. I had no thoughts of suicide in my head but I knew Bob wasn’t too sure; I was just driving aimlessly and dangerously. I just couldn’t have cared less what happened to us.
I drove back to where I had left my friend, who was waiting on the doorstep on our return. Martin drove me back home and worried for me, asking if I was all right every few minutes.
‘It’s over, Martin,’ was all I could say. I sat in a trance as the street lights flashed past and I really felt that part of me had died. From that moment on, I was going to get on with my life and make sure Paul was OK. That was all.