Handsome Brute: The True Story of a Ladykiller

by O'Connor, Sean

  In the New Year, Gilbert travelled down from Derbyshire and visited Margery in her flat at 59 Earls Court Square. He found that she had only recently been discharged from St Mary Abbot’s hospital and was recuperating from a miscarriage. Margery had previously told her mother that she was pregnant with Peter’s child. Fortunately, Peter and his new girlfriend, Tiddles, had been present when Margery started to miscarry and had succeeded in getting her to the hospital.

  After the miscarriage, Margery recovered and moved to Bramham Gardens, her final address, where her mother visited several times. At around this time, Margery confided to Mrs Wheat that she had a new boyfriend, but never revealed his name. She said that he was a ‘nice quiet man who used to turn up for breakfast and bring her something to cook and he would sit with her in the evenings’.35 In all probability, this was Peter Tilley Bailey, who had known Margery for about two years, but had only known her well since the beginning of that year. In January, they had bumped into each other at the Lord Nelson shortly after he had been released from prison having served his sentence for driving a stolen car along Knightsbridge. By June, Tilley Bailey was spending two or three nights a week with Margery at her flat in Earls Court Square and then at Bramham Gardens. He held a key to Margery’s flat, where he was known by the landlady as ‘Peter Gardner’, but he was to offer a very fragile stability.36 Though the relationship was exclusive on Margery’s side, whether she was aware of it or not, Tilley Bailey continued to have relationships with other women.

  Like many women in this period, Margery Gardner clutched at the sexual freedom that the war had offered, but then struggled with the harsh consequences – a hand-to-mouth existence with no security and little consistency in a period already fraught with hardship. Her last letters to her mother also suggest some sort of recurring gynaecological problem as well as an overwhelming sense of exhaustion and depression (‘my nerves have gone to hell’). One of her friends, Iris Humphrey, observed that in the seven or eight years she had known her, she felt that Margery had ‘changed’:

  When I knew Margery some years ago she was a nice girl and I could not help noticing how she had changed in every way. She seemed to have become cheap and acted as if she would not have minded who she was with.37

  Another close friend, Joyce Frost, offered a more compassionate understanding of her character:

  [Margery] was a very straightforward sort of girl with no harm in her at all, and very quiet, who never made male acquaintanceships for money. She was content to spend the night with a man after a few drinks for company.38

  And perhaps this was at the heart of her erratic emotional life. She wanted company or, as her mother had said, ‘a nice quiet man . . . to sit with her in the evenings’. Instead of which she crawled from pub to pub, night after night, living on hand-outs, cadging cigarettes and comfort from a series of feckless men.

  From the perspective of the early twenty-first century, Margery Gardner seems very much a woman formed and defined by the times in which she lived. But she was also a woman ahead of her time. Like Tennessee Williams’ Blanche Dubois,39 she is revealed, in various witness statements and her own letters, to be a highly creative woman in challenging circumstances, emotionally needy, trying to locate a haven for herself in a broken, half-familiar world where she resorted – of necessity – to some pretty desperate choices; dependent if not on the kindness, then on the indulgence of strangers.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Thursday 20 June 1946

  Joyce Frost had been friends with Margery Gardner since the late 1930s, but had lost contact with her for a couple of years during the war. They had bumped into each other again at a Victory Celebration Party on the rain-sodden ‘V’ Day, 8 June, which had been organized by Peter Gardner in Kensington.1 A few days later, they had seen each other again at the Trevor Arms in Knightsbridge. From thereon they had picked up their friendship, meeting at the Nag’s Head in Kinnerton Street, a pub much frequented by guardsmen from the nearby Knightsbridge Barracks. When they met for drinks, Joyce noticed that Margery always drank beer, but she was almost always broke. Joyce was thirty-three, had been married, but was separated from her husband. She lived in a flat at 51 Ennismore Gardens near Hyde Park. A lodger, Desmond O’Dowd, shared the flat with her.2

  On Wednesday night, 19 June, Joyce was drinking in the Nag’s Head at about eight o’clock with her lodger. She caught sight of Margery in the back bar of the pub, just inside the door. Margery was with two men at the time whom she introduced to Joyce as ‘Ken’ and ‘Jimmy’.3 The latter was undoubtedly Heath, fitting his description perfectly: ‘[Joyce] distinctly remember[ed] he had a caterpillar badge in the left lapel buttonhole of his jacket.’4 As the group chatted, Heath told Joyce that he was attached to the South African Air Force and had his own plane. She commented on Heath’s caterpillar badge and he was only too delighted to tell her, ‘That’s for baling out.’5 It seemed that Margery had been introduced to Heath a few weeks before. He had only recently made the Nag’s Head one of his locals as he had previously been stationed abroad.

  That night, Margery left the pub at about 10 p.m., but not before sitting down with Joyce and her lodger again, with Heath standing near them. Margery excitedly told Joyce that ‘Jimmy is going to fly me to Brussels or Paris’. The two women arranged to meet for lunch the next day.

  Thursday 20 June was the last day of Margery Gardner’s life.

  Peter Tilley Bailey called round to see Margery for about ten minutes at about 11 a.m. in the morning, finding her still in bed.He had stayed over at Bramham Gardens on the previous Sunday evening, as well as another night that week. Margery told him that she had met somebody that she hadn’t seen for some time. She didn’t say who it was or when she was going to meet him – and she may well have been testing Peter, trying to provoke a reaction from him.6 The status of the relationship between Margery and Tilley Bailey is hard to read. He retained his own flat in Coliseum Terrace in Regent’s Park, yet spent two or three nights of the week at Bramham Gardens. They were sufficiently close for him to leave his identity card with Margery,7 but though she was in dire need of money, he doesn’t seem to have offered to help her out financially.

  Just before lunch, Margery met Joyce and her lodger for a drink at the Packenham Pub on Knightsbridge Green. From there, they headed to the Lido Café which was opposite another of their locals, the Paxton’s Head. Joyce paid for Margery’s lunch, as she was broke again. After eating they went over the road to the Paxton’s Head for another drink. O’Dowd left, leaving the two women alone together. They each had a glass of beer and Joyce subbed Margery some cigarettes. Margery was dressed in the same clothes she had worn the night before – her pale grey two-piece suit, a greyish brown cape made of possum fur, ‘very dark nail varnish’ and an unusual pair of earrings made from flowery fabric. Margery complained of a stain on her right-hand skirt pocket and went to buy a bottle of ‘Thawpit’ from Barnes’ the chemist next door. She told Joyce that the shilling she had just spent on the cleaning fluid was her last, but it’d be worth it as she wanted to look her best that night.

  ‘Why do you want to look your best tonight? Are you meeting somebody particular?’ asked Joyce.

  ‘An old boyfriend. Haven’t seen him in a while.’

  ‘Anyone I know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And this mystery man – is he on a promise?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  According to Peter Tilley Bailey, Margery had been faithful to him throughout their relationship, but perhaps she was beginning to realize that this was not reciprocated. Despite her fidelity, her relationship with Tilley Bailey had not resulted in any tangible support from him. If Margery was contemplating being wined, dined and romanced by her date that evening, it would be the first time she had done so since she had started her relationship with Tilley Bailey.

  Margery and Joyce carried on from the Paxton’s Head to Cooper’s Stores on the Brompton Road where Joyce bought some food. They then walked on
to Joyce’s flat in Ennismore Gardens. On the way to the flat, it started to rain. Margery took her headscarf from her handbag – an RAF scarf – and covered her head from the shower. When they got back to the flat, they continued chatting for about a quarter of an hour. Margery remembered that she was supposed to see her lady doctor (the Dr Kelly that she mentions in her letters to her mother), but she’d have to put it off until the next day. Whilst at the flat, Margery asked if Joyce would mind if she drew her picture? Joyce thought Margery a very good artist and readily agreed. While she was drawing, they continued their conversation.8

  ‘Will you be in the Nag’s Head tonight?’ asked Joyce. ‘Desmond and I are going.’

  ‘I might do,’ said Margery, then asked, ‘Do you know Jimmy’s surname?’

  ‘How could I? I only met him last night.’

  ‘Flying abroad. Exciting, isn’t it? His own plane as well.’

  ‘Margy. Do you have any money for this date tonight? How about I lend you £1?’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Take it. You said you spent your last shilling on the“Thawpit”.’

  ‘I’ll be all right once I meet my date tonight.’

  Margery’s date was never identified, but she was very clear that he was nobody Joyce knew. In no way did she suggest that she would be meeting either Jimmy Heath or Peter Tilley Bailey. About a quarter past three, Margery stopped her drawing as time was getting on.

  ‘I want to get back to the flat. I have washing and ironing to do before tonight.’ Margery paused. ‘Joyce . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t suppose I could borrow a few pennies, could I?’

  ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘Just for my fare home.’

  ‘How much do you need?’

  ‘Fivepence?’

  Joyce gave Margery the 5d. for her tube fare home to Bramham Gardens. She would never see her friend alive again.

  The physical geography of the Earls Court and South Kensington areas that Margery lived and socialized in would have been very familiar to her today: terraces of tall, stuccoed buildings, graced with entrance pillars, and Edwardian red-brick town houses with leaded windows, all crouched in the shadow of the great cultural edifices on the Cromwell Road – the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Museum of Natural History. But the inhabitants of the area have changed dramatically since the mid-forties. Gone are the bedsits, boarding houses and bomb sites that Margery would have known, replaced by duplex apartments and day nurseries with clipped box hedging. Bramham Gardens itself is a shady garden square in Earls Court. The flat, at number 24, was in a slim, five-storey red-brick terrace. It is now part of a retirement home and retains an air of down-at-heel gentility; the brickwork dulled by years of soot and traffic, yellowing net curtains draped at windows permanently fastened by decades of paint.

  Margery successfully managed to clean the stain from her skirt pocket with the ‘Thawpit’, as she wore the same outfit that evening. Leaving the flat, she put her door key in her brown leather handbag and walked out past the derelict house next door, uninhabitable since the Blitz, and made her way to the Nag’s Head.

  Often hurriedly grabbed at the first sound of an air raid, Margery’s handbag offers a revealing and intimate snapshot of her life.9 Amongst some pencils and a notebook bearing her name was a pair of imitation suede gloves. Her cigarette case contained eight cigarettes. Margery – not vain, but always trying to make the best of her appearance – wore glasses occasionally and in their red case, together with her spectacles, there was a cheque for £4, payable to her husband. She also had a pair of white-framed sunglasses for the sunny weather that June promised but never delivered that summer. As well as a powder compact, a powder puff, a box of eyeliner, two broken combs and a hair clip, Margery had another small make-up purse containing lipstick, cream and rouge. Knowing she was expecting her period soon she carried three Tampax sanitary towels just in case, as well as a tube of Gynomin tablets (‘the scientifically balanced, Antiseptic and Deodorant Contraceptive Tablet’).10 In a black leather wallet, she kept a large volume of letters from her family and a variety of male friends as well as some personal photographs, including one of her young daughter, Melody, now two years old. In her bag, she also kept her identity card, which would later help the police to identify her body – as well as an application for the replacement of some clothing coupons to buy the new clothes that she so desperately wanted.

  Three pawn tickets spoke of the unstable fortunes that Margery had suffered in the preceding months. She had pawned an overcoat in February of 1945, one of the coldest months of that year, a possum fur cape in April of 1946 (which she must have redeemed as she was wearing it that night), and a typewriter. At the bottom of the bag was a single pink handkerchief, clean and folded – perhaps even washed and ironed by her that afternoon – and bearing the initials ‘M. A. B. Gardner’. In her purse Margery had a single silver sixpence and two coppers, a total of 8d. (a pint of Guinness cost 11d. at the time). Even as she stepped out of her door and into the streets of Earls Court, Margery’s options on the night of 20 June were extremely limited.

  By 6.30 that evening, Margery was in the Nag’s Head, where she chatted to the landlady, Eva Cole.11 She told Mrs Cole that she was waiting for a telephone call, which finally came after she had been there about three-quarters of an hour. A few moments after she put the phone down she walked out of the pub, saying ‘Goodnight’ to Mrs Cole. She didn’t indicate who the call was from, but it may well have been her friend Trevethan Frampton, whom she then went on to meet. She walked to the nearby Trevor Arms, across the road from Knightsbridge tube station where she met Frampton, an art student with whom she had been friendly since the beginning of the year. They stayed together for about an hour and during this time were joined by a number of men, two or three of whom Margery had met before. One of these was Jimmy Heath.

  Heath asked Margery if she would have dinner with him later that evening, but she told him that she had already arranged to have dinner with an army captain who was in the bar. Margery’s friend Frampton left at 8.30 p.m. to go back to his hotel for dinner. He told Margery that if she was free later, he would meet her at the Renaissance Club in Harrington Road. He would aim to get there himself for about 9.30 p.m. Margery said she’d most likely join him later, after she’d had dinner with her date.

  However, the army captain that Margery had arranged to meet that night had met an old school friend at the bar and left the Trevor Arms with him, leaving her alone. All that Margery had in her purse was small change – not enough to buy a drink and certainly not enough to buy herself a proper meal. Catching sight of her alone, Heath went to the bar and brought her over to some of his RAF friends, introducing her as a ‘great little scout’. The four men and Margery drank on for a couple of hours during which some half-dozen further rounds were ordered. Seeing that Heath was apparently flush with cash, Margery saw an opportunity to salvage her evening – and her chances of dinner at somebody else’s expense. She wondered if she could take Heath up on his earlier offer? She would love to have dinner with him. Heath by now was spending his way through the £30 (an average month’s wages at the time) he had acquired earlier that day and seemed like he had money to burn. So it was that Margery, not wanting to be alone at the bar and not having enough money to buy her own drinks or dinner, effectively sealed her fate.

  Heath and Margery then left the Trevor Arms and went to the Normandie Hotel for dinner. They left between 9.30 and 10 p.m. and popped in to the nearby Torch Club for a drink. They then decided to go to the Panama Club, which had a late licence, where Heath had entertained Yvonne Symonds only the weekend before. Heath signed the yellow Visitors’ Form ‘Lt. Col. Heath and friends’.

  Heath and Margery went up to the main bar on the second floor, with Margery carrying her opossum coat over her arm. Almost immediately they bumped into Peter Tilley Bailey accompanied by 25-year-old Catherine Hardie, a nurse at Battersea General Hospital. Gi
ven that Peter had spent two of the previous four nights at her flat, Margery may well have been surprised to meet him so blatantly dating another woman. Margery and Peter curtly acknowledged each other, without introducing their companions. Margery said nothing, but there was certainly a frostiness at this meeting. When Catherine Hardie was later questioned about Margery’s movements that evening, she claimed that she deliberately ignored her: ‘When I am with a party of men, I don’t look around, especially as Peter Bailey had passed the time of day with her.’12

  Another of Tilley Bailey’s party that evening, Ronald Birch, was also a casual acquaintance of Margery’s. At one point, he noticed her in company with Heath at the bar. They were holding hands and though she seemed very attentive to Heath, he appeared ‘slightly indifferent’ to her. Birch later recalled: ‘All the time she stood at the bar she appeared to be trying to promote [Heath’s] interest, so rather obviously that I thought that she did it deliberately to annoy Peter Bailey.’13

  Margery then ran into another friend of hers, Iris Humphrey, a civil servant who lived in Earls Court Square. She had known Margery for about eight or nine years.14 They had been very friendly before the war, but had lost touch during it when Iris had been evacuated to Bath. Since Iris had moved back to London in April 1946, the two women had met in various pubs around Earls Court. Iris was sitting in the club room by the dance floor with her friend John Le Mee Power when Margery entered with Heath. Margery called ‘hallo’ over to their table. When Iris and Le Mee Power got up to dance, Iris went over to the table that Margery had sat down at with her handsome companion.

  ‘Would you mind looking after my things whilst we have a dance?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Margery.

  She took Iris’ handbag and copy of Vogue and put it on the table in front of her. Iris and Le Mee Power went off to the dance floor before Margery could introduce them to Heath. After a short while, Heath and Margery got up to dance themselves. Iris and Le Mee Power left the dance floor and went to collect her bag and magazine. For the next hour, Iris observed Margery and Heath sitting at their table, holding each other’s hands, smoking and drinking – with Heath rubbing his hand against Margery’s leg. At the time, Iris commented to Le Mee Power that she thought that Margery’s companion looked ‘dissipated’, with big bags under his eyes. She remarked, with terrible prescience, that ‘Margery was in for a bad time’ that night.15