The source of his problem was not his ability in the air, but his issues with money. Though he had become an RAF officer by gaining a short service commission, he had not come from one of the major public schools or universities like many of his brother officers, nor, crucially, was he cosseted by their private incomes. Having succeeded in entering the well-to-do world of RAF mess dinners with their class-ridden rituals and parties, Neville Heath, the grammar-school boy from Wimbledon, was challenged with the task of keeping up with his peers without the money to do so. His father estimated that Heath’s service wage was £250 to £300 a year, which was clearly insufficient (for Heath anyway) to support the lavish officer lifestyle to which he aspired. Like Pip in Great Expectations, despite the veneer of gentility and his accumulation of upper-class manners and tastes, Heath was not and would never be ‘the real thing’.
Whilst at RAF Duxford, Heath was frequently to be found in the various pubs around Cambridge and became acquainted with students from the university. One of them, Allen Dyson Perrins, was introduced to Heath around this time.
He joined my circle of friends and I saw him frequently for about three weeks. He was never more than a mere acquaintance. He appeared to be fond of the company of women and frequented public houses. He mentioned that he had been to Eton and Oxford and I had no reason to doubt this. On occasions he visited me to my lodgings . . . I missed three cheques from my cheque book which I had left on my desk and I suspected Heath of taking them. I later received a telegram from my bank regarding one of the cheques. It transpired that it had been presented for payment, and as a result he advised me to communicate with the Cambridge Police.63
Already, at the age of nineteen, Heath was lying about his background and stealing money from friends. But it is within the RAF that he was to find himself in more serious trouble. On 15 March 1937, Pilot Officer Heath was transferred to Mildenhall to join 73 Squadron. He was already living beyond his means and was worried about money. He had arranged a loan from Lloyds Bank in Pall Mall and even had an appointment to go and discuss his financial issues with them on 16 March, arranging to do this by telegram the day before. But despite this, two cheques of his were returned; one for £1 10s. paid to the mess secretary at Duxford and another for £3 to the Aviation Club. Investigating Heath’s recently released court martial files, it’s interesting to note the sequence of events here, as the outcome of this incident was to have a profound effect on the rest of his life. Most significantly, the whole scenario could have been avoided if Heath had simply come clean and told the truth.
He didn’t.
RAF Mildenhall had played a celebrated role in aviation history in the 1930s, famously hosting the Royal Aero Club’s MacRobertson Air Race from London to Melbourne in 1934. At the time, the air race stood as the longest race ever devised and attracted over 70,000 spectators to Mildenhall, including George V and Queen Mary. For young flyers brought up on Flight magazine and tales of the pioneering aviators of their time, a transfer to Mildenhall must have felt like an extraordinary privilege. With no warning, Heath’s squadron were transferred to Mildenhall overnight.
On his arrival, Heath had a telephone call from his commanding officer at Duxford, Squadron Leader J. W. Turton Jones, who had an ‘official and serious’ conversation with him about cheques he had written to pay his mess bill and the Aviation Club. The bank had returned them. After the telephone call, rather than thinking the matter through rationally, Heath panicked. Needlessly so, as is indicated by the records of the RAF, who investigated the matter with his bank, and discovered that he had indeed arranged a loan to cover the cheques.
In view of the fact that the accused officer had on a previous occasion been granted by the Bank an overdraft to an amount greater than that which would have resulted from the honouring of either of these cheques, I am of opinion that the circumstances are insufficient to support charges under the Air Force Act in respect of these transactions.64
But next morning, when the squadron assembled on their first day at Mildenhall, Pilot Officer Heath had disappeared.
For Heath, this became his favoured response to difficult circumstances. Rather than attempting to explain, his instinctive reaction was to run away. He didn’t want to have a discussion about his behaviour – but he did want to make a statement about it, so would frequently send a letter. Again, this became a recurrent tactic in his life – flight followed by explanation – but only on his own terms, in his own time and with the sole objective of justifying his actions. Before leaving Duxford, Heath had left a letter for Turton Jones, promising to honour the cheques. In another he tendered his resignation. ‘I think it will be the easiest way out to save dragging the name of a decent squadron in the mud,’ he wrote. ‘I consider I have been a disgrace to the service which will be well rid of me.’65
He added that he was going to Scotland, but intended to go abroad in a fortnight. He wanted to keep the affair from his parents as his father was unwell, but he would settle all outstanding bills within the month. He gave no indication how he would be able to honour this. A postscript added that he could be contacted through the personal column of the Morning Post (again, this detail of offering contact through the personal column of a daily newspaper became a regular tactic). If he had stayed at Mildenhall and the RAF authorities had confirmed the loan with Lloyd’s Bank, everything could have been resolved. As it was, Heath compounded the problem by absconding, starting a whole series of complicated events from which it would be impossible for him to extract himself.
After leaving Mildenhall, Heath didn’t go abroad – he didn’t even make it to Scotland – but instead he went home to Wimbledon where he stayed for the next three months, living openly in Merton Hall Road with his parents. There was no sense that he was in any way on the run or in hiding. He even wore his RAF tie.
It wasn’t until 22 June that the RAF service police arrived to arrest him on charges of desertion. Flying Officer Kerby went to Merton Hall Road and saw Heath running towards him.
‘Are you Pilot Officer Heath?’
Heath initially denied it. He was surprised to see Kerby – confused even, but soon collected himself.
‘All right. I won’t run away.’66
Heath was taken to Debden Aerodrome near Saffron Walden to await court martial for desertion and fraud. He was kept under open arrest and allowed the freedom of the aerodrome, the RAF taking his word as an officer and a gentleman that he wouldn’t abscond. Ian Scoular, who was stationed at Debden at the time, remembered Heath’s time under arrest there: ‘Twice a day he had to be escorted around the aerodrome for exercise, and if any members of 73 [Squadron] were airborne they would see how close they could land to him, sending him on his face in the grass.’67
For Heath had not been well liked by all quarters. Johnny Kent, the Canadian Flying Ace, met Heath in this period and thought him a ‘strange and rather unpleasant young man,’ finding Heath very moody.68 But this may well be because of the pressures Heath was trying to manage at the time, knowing that the life and career he’d striven for was under threat.
Heath’s word as a gentleman proved to be worth very little and in the early hours of 22 July, he further exacerbated his situation by running away again. He stuffed some pillows on top of his bed under a blanket, stole a car belonging to another officer and drove to London, abandoning the car in Waterloo Road. He had decided on a ‘party in London’ – threatening his whole career with the RAF for a night on the town. He was later arrested and on 20 August 1937 attended his court martial hearing at Debden. He was defended by H. L. B. Milmo, a civilian barrister who argued that Heath was guilty of escaping and stealing the car but not desertion. Heath made a rather disingenuous statement:
Having sent in my resignation, I expected an answer, but I received no intimation that the resignation had not been accepted. Had I been notified, I would have returned to the squadron or communicated with the Air Ministry.69
Milmo reminded the court that this was Heath’
s first offence and that he should be treated leniently. His reasons for leaving RAF Mildenhall were ‘due to a sudden impulse after experiencing financial difficulties’. He was a decent young man who had got into a scrape simply because of inexperience. He had admitted his mistakes and was both sorry and ashamed, as was indicated by his chivalrous letter sent to his squadron leader. As to the charge of desertion, Milmo was appalled at the thought. ‘The charge is repulsive to an officer and a soldier. This “mere boy” has been a foolish fellow, but did not intend to desert,’70 he claimed.
Heath was acquitted on the charge of desertion but was found guilty of the lesser offence of going absent without leave. He was also found guilty of escaping whilst under arrest and of stealing a superior officer’s car without permission. The charges of fraud regarding the mess funds were dismissed when Heath’s bank confirmed their loan. The court martial marked his first appearance in the pages of both the London and the national press: ‘RAF Officer Not Guilty of Desertion’ (Evening Standard),71 ‘Officer of 20 Did Not Desert from RAF’ (Daily Mirror).72
Heath was dismissed from the service with effect from 20 September 1937. He had been an officer in the RAF for less than a year.
In 1946, when recalling this period ‘when [he] really began to go astray’, Heath remembered the events rather differently. He claimed that he had been arrested for ‘a flying offence’. This incident he mentioned throughout his career and even to his defence counsel during his trial – that he had flown an aircraft, without permission, under a bridge, threatening his own life, public property and an expensive aircraft. There is no evidence that this incident took place. It might well be an early example of Heath’s boastful and flamboyant deceit. But it’s also exactly the kind of needlessly dangerous, devil-may-care prank that was typical of him. It’s also true that young pilots were encouraged to take out planes on jaunts, as it gave them extra flying practice. Certainly, being arrested and dismissed from the RAF for such an act of daring makes a much better story than being arrested for signing a dodgy cheque. Already, Heath was altering the facts, heightening reality, embroidering his own myth.
After his dismissal from the RAF, Heath returned home to Wimbledon. He hired a car from a local garage and on 5 October he travelled by road to the Midlands, looking for a job. He also borrowed £18 from his fiancée, Arlene. This was the last time she would actually see him – or her money. On hearing that he had been dismissed from the RAF and with his name all over the papers, she broke off the engagement and despite his attempts to phone her, refused to take his calls.73
He first went to Cambridge, well known to him from his time at Duxford, and stayed at the Lion Hotel. He then travelled on to Nottingham and booked into the Victoria Station Hotel. On both occasions he left without paying the bill. From 15 October to 6 November, he continued to tender worthless cheques to shopkeepers and bought expensive clothes costing £47 8s. He then tried to buy a car worth £175 from the landlord of the Sherwood Inn, Nottingham, promising that he’d send a cheque in the post. Throughout this spree in the Midlands, the identity Heath used most frequently was that of ‘Lord Dudley’.
Heath’s adoption of this aristocratic identity is one of the more audacious fictions that he was to present. The Earl of Dudley had been a friend and confidante of the Duke of Windsor when he was Prince of Wales, so his name would certainly have had currency with the people that Heath met at this time, the abdication having only taken place in December of the preceding year. But there may be a more prosaic reason for Heath using Dudley as a pseudonym. Throughout his career he would use genuine names and addresses that would quickly come to mind, in order to give his stories a sense of authenticity. These names and addresses frequently did exist, as if he was keen to stay as close to the truth as possible; Dudley Road was the name of the street where Heath was born.
But local police soon tracked Heath down to an hotel. Detective Inspector Hickman of Nottingham CID approached him at the bar, where Heath was drinking, pipe in hand.
‘Are you Lord Dudley?’
‘Yes I am, old man.’
‘Well, I am Detective Inspector Hickman of the CID.’
‘Then, in that case, I am not Lord Dudley.’74
Heath was arrested and appeared at Nottingham Petty Sessions on 11 November 1937.
As well as attempting to obtain the car and money by false pretences, he was charged with eight other offences in Cambridge, Stafford and Peterborough. All these petty crimes had taken place in the three months since he had been dismissed from the RAF. He justified his actions at Nottingham by saying that he had been on a mad spree after the disgrace of his dismissal from the RAF. They were boyish pranks for which he was heartily sorry, particularly for the shame that it would bring on his family. Effectively he adopted the defence that he was to use throughout the rest of his life – that he was a good lad, high-spirited and foolish but not a felon: ‘My parents want me home. I have learned my lesson.’75 This tactic certainly worked at Nottingham; Heath was placed on probation – bound over on remand for two years and placed under the supervision of Mr F. V. Dale, a probation officer in Wimbledon. Again, Heath’s misdemeanours were reported in the national press (‘Ex RAF Man: “I’m Lord Dudley” – But Not If You’re A Detective, Old Man’). Bessie Heath, interviewed by the Daily Mirror, was supportive, but weary of her son’s behaviour:
I am afraid that Neville has been spoiled. By his last escapade he has ruined his father’s business.76 He is not a criminal. He is a really clean-living decent young fellow – a good sportsman. This will be a severe lesson to him and now he will have to find a job. His father and I are waiting for him to come back so that we can do our utmost to help him.77
He was lucky; this time he had got away with it. This sense of inviolability was to develop over the years – and with good reason – as Heath became more adept at side-stepping his way out of trouble. Despite his record of persistent offending, various authorities seduced by his ‘hail fellow, well met’ manner would continue to give this charming young man the benefit of the doubt, which can only have fuelled his confidence that he could get away with anything.
As he observed Heath’s progress over the Christmas of 1937 and the New Year of 1938, Heath’s probation officer noted the good relations he had with his parents, but was also concerned that Bessie Heath seemed to shield her son and excuse his conduct when he misbehaved. Mr Dale felt that this sort of indulgence was exactly the wrong way to force Heath to face his responsibilities.78 Even by the beginning of 1938, Dale felt that young Heath was drifting into a ‘slack and irresponsible mode of living’.79 He reported regularly to the Court House in Queens Road in Wimbledon and he certainly gave Mr Dale the impression that he was settling down and making an effort to find work. He was always full of wonderful offers and opportunities that had come his way, but none of these ever materialized. And in February, Heath suddenly stopped reporting to Mr Dale and began a spree of petty theft and swindling, unprecedented in his career to date.
On 24 February, Mrs Maud Archdall of Woburn Sands, Buckinghamshire was rushing for the 4.10 p.m. train from Euston to Bletchley. Thinking she might miss her train, she flagged down a taxi to take her to the station. She made the train, but soon realized that she had left her handbag in the cab. In the bag were many personal items, some money and seven blank cheques. The next person to pick up the cab was Neville Heath. Broke, unemployed and desperate – this was too good an opportunity for him to pass up. He spent Mrs Archdall’s cash and when that was all gone, he used the cheques to fund a swindling holiday across the country – from Sussex to Somerset, from Leicestershire to London.80
From 22 February, Heath had been lodging at 15 Oxford Terrace in Paddington under the name A. J. Banham. The day he moved in, he paid a visit to the gentleman’s outfitters, Moss Bros in Covent Garden, announcing himself as Pilot Officer Banham. He walked out of the shop with £27 1s. 8d.-worth of new clothes; if he was really going to succeed in his latter-day Rake’s Progress,
he would need to dress the part. The real Officer Banham was later traced and the forgery detected. But by now Heath’s deceptions had developed into an easy skill and, as well as his way with women, he was now practised at exploiting the deferential trust that lower-class shop workers placed in the officer class to which he confidently appeared to belong.
When he left Oxford Terrace on 7 March, he paid the landlady Mrs Bayley with one of the cheques that he had stolen from Mrs Archdall’s handbag. On 18 March, he bought a wireless at Deaford in Leicestershire with another of the cheques. The rest were cashed under a variety of pseudonyms: J. Donaldson, J. R. Denvers, Richard C. Jeffries and James R. Bulmar.
Out of the blue, on 22 March, Heath’s former fiancée Arlene Blakely received a letter from him with no address, enclosing a cheque for £20. She had never believed that she would see her money again. Surprised, but delighted, she paid the cheque into her account at Chancery Lane Post Office two days later. The cheque bounced. Given that she lived so close to his parents, it is understandable that Heath should want to repay the debt. But to make the grand gesture of sending a letter and cheque to dispatch it, knowing that it would bounce, seems perverse – particularly knowing how it would further embarrass his parents. But Heath seemed blind to the consequences.
At Deaford where he bought the wireless, Heath had accidentally left behind a sheet of paper with several names and addresses scribbled on it. These seemed to be leads that he was following up in pursuit of various jobs. One of the addresses was for the Hoover shop in Regent Street which trained vacuum-cleaner salesmen, hardly the obvious choice for this swaggering young man about town. Other names at Wardour Street and Gainsborough Studios suggested that he might have been looking for work much more suited to him as a film extra.81 He does seem to have considered some sort of film work, as when he arrived at borstal later that year, his father wrote that his son was ‘awaiting the results of these proceedings before signing a film contract’.82 This, of course, wasn’t true.
Handsome Brute: The True Story of a Ladykiller Page 14