We had Michael Manley and his girlfriend Bev to dinner, together with the Grahams. Halfway through the meal I described my idea. If he liked it, as Leader of the Opposition, he could promote it. Everybody expected him to win the next election and this would help. He leapt to his feet, smacked the wall and said it was the best politics he had ever heard. I was delighted with his reaction but said that we had to find a word to identify the idea, a phrase, preferably a Jamaican one in dialect, for the concept to be made attractive for everyone involved, including the providers. He agreed.
I took the family halfway up Blue Mountain to a house built during the reign of Charles II, which belonged to a lovely old pantomime actress Louise Bennett, ‘Miss Lou’, and her actor husband Eric Cover-ley. They had a Bechstein grand piano which I played and so did Isis, sort of. I told them my idea. Miss Lou understood it very well and liked it; but I said that to get it accepted there had to be a by-line to sell it. I told her: ‘Me want me word.’
I telephoned a week later and she had thought of it.
‘Brawta,’ she said.
‘What di hell is that, Miss Lou?’
‘Man, ye go to di market and buy some tings. You then say “gimme brawta” and him give you two more.’ So that was it. ‘Gimme brawta.’
Michael’s advisers told him to wait until he had actually won the election. Then the providers would be happy to support a party which was in power. After I had left Jamaica and after he had won the elec-tion, he put the idea into practice. A couple of dozen wooden school-rooms and small hospital wards were put together over a few weeks in a surge of political support for him, from PNM craftsmen as well as JLP, all for the sake of the excellent lunch provided by the Matalons, the Ashenheims and others. He had been nicknamed ‘Joshua’ as the one who would lead them out of the wilderness. The idea matched the mood. Years later, when Douglas Graham, as a minister, had to go to England he came specially to Norfolk where Riddelle and I were having our family holiday, to convey Michael Manley’s thanks. I have to say that is the only thing I started which was of creative help to Jamaica, modest though it was. Unfortunately Michael and his top followers fell in love with Castroism and their first government ended in catastrophe.
Almost everyone we knew came to the opening of Riddelle’s exhi-bition at the John Peartree Gallery. We had to invite Gordon and Joan. It was obvious that they knew hardly any of them, not even the Bank of England representative. No wonder they had no feel for Jamaica.
When eventually he gave me my marching orders he was compas-sionate, using well-worn phrases such as ‘I think that with us you are wasting your time’. He was supportive when the General Manager of the Sheraton Kingston recommended me to his hotel’s Group Treasurer whom I went to meet in Boston, Massachusetts on 14 November. I was excited because I had enjoyed my involvement with CDC’s hotels. The whole of life happened in them, a people business. I had written to Hallway but they were retrenching although they said that normally they would have liked to have me. Sheraton, a subsidiary of the mighty ITT, had just committed $750 million to hotel development. A meeting was arranged for me with the President of Sheraton International, Claude Fenninger. We discussed Cyprus and he was interested that I had recommended against CDC involvement there. He wanted me to work for him in Brussels starting next February, 1971, to represent them all over Europe, negotiating franchises, leases, management agreements, eventually even internationally, all towards their objective of becoming the world’s best. Back in Jamaica Riddelle was sceptical. Wisely, because everything fell through. Sheraton also had decided to retrench.
During our year in Jamaica we had made wonderful Jamaican friends, This made the disruption of being sacked much worse. We found a good home for Tammy, and one for her two puppies to be taken together. We advertised an end-of-term sale of house furnishings and sold everything, even the chairs and sofa I had made. Everything except the pouffe. Perhaps I should have called it something else.
Thirteen
Luckily the tenants of 31 Queensdale Road were keen to terminate their lease and we could move in, home, on our arrival. Both children went to Basset House School nearby. I began job-seeking, humiliated by the dole but grateful for it. Gordon had suggested I go for something related to the arts, antiques perhaps, or a particular era of painting or sculpture, become an expert and so forth. That all struck me as a zero sum game; I wanted to contribute to wealth in the Third World. Many were the meetings I had with the great and the good.
For occupation between times I converted our dining room into a playroom. The hefty table was sold. Using the pinewood from our pack-ing cases from Jamaica I made an ottoman for toys, a carpenter’s bench with shelves on one side, and a folding dining table which could seat eight when unfolded. The floor I laid with black and white temple tiles.
At the Garrick Club the founder of the Edinburgh Festival, Sir Ian Hunter, said the next big thing in people’s homes would be video tapes and recording machines, so they could record television programmes and buy or rent tapes of any films they wanted to watch. A company had already been set up called Crown Cassettes. While networking I found that Alun Chalfont was looking for someone to lead a similar company which he was putting together with the publisher George Weidenfeld as chairman. We had a series of discussions and they very much liked my idea of using this means to create video tapes on educa-tion for developing countries, using local teachers, the best ones, to help make up for their scarcity. Education was the key to practically every-thing.
This took flight. It suited my idealism, was practical and carried with it a salary which was substantial enough to cope with that worry, far off but still looming: public school fees and the interim premiums for assurance policies to help pay for them. They said they would prepare a contract for me, meanwhile they had rented offices in Wimpole Street and were drawing their directors’ fees. I was called upon to pay a visit to the labour exchange. For six months they had been paying the dole and wanted to know of my progress. The interviewer was alert and supportive. He said that what I had found was perfect for me and wished me the very best.
A couple of days later I was telephoned by a senior partner in a City law firm. He knew all about my progress but had bad news. That morning, he said, the financier behind my company had broken his word in the City and so ‘My dear fellow, I thought I should let you know: the whole thing is fucked. Including your job.’
So that was that. I could not go on living in Queensdale Road and still send the two kids to school on dole money. I rented the house out and took a cheap and gloomy basement flat, 3 Holland Park, next to the Greek Embassy Residence. It was a good address and was next to Holland Park, but we hated it. I was elderly – all of thirty-four – and difficult to employ. Riddelle and the children were miserable there, but needs must. ‘This grotty flat’ we called it. I had no idea how long it would take to get a proper job with career prospects and I was damned if I would sell our house.
The basement flat was in a large house owned by the dreariest of men. The top two floors were occupied by a former diplomat, Mr Moumin, who had been Pakistan’s Ambassador in the Argentine. The unity of Pakistan, East and West, separated by thirteen hundred miles of India, had been led to Independence in 1947 under Mohammed Jinnah. Now it was tearing itself to pieces. With the bloody civil war between them Mr Moumin, a Bengali, eventually resigned his position and declared his support for East Pakistan, newly named Bangladesh. He had been granted asylum in Britain and was awaiting events. The leader of his people, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was in a West Pakistan prison, allegedly having had to dig a grave for himself in the earth floor next to his bed. He came to be called ‘Father of the Nation’.
We took the children to spend a weekend with Larry and Joan in Brighton. Richard was aged around nine, Tamsin seven and Julie-Kate four, and a nanny looked after them. Tristan was five and Isis three and a half, so the families of father and son overlapped. Larry’s previ-ous enchantment had been outstripped by the children’s int
erruptions and demands which could not be contained even by the most experi-enced nanny. The magic balm of Mother Nature was no longer the preserver of his love life with Joan. He also felt put upon by the stresses of the National Theatre. His magnificent Rolls had been replaced by a hearse-like ten-seat Volvo. I asked what had happened. He snapped that he couldn’t afford it and it would have been better if he had shot himself.
Larry and Joan had bought an acre of land half an hour away near Steyning, with an old cottage called The Malthouse. He found a wonderful old gardener called Reg and set about landscaping a series of spaces, each separate like a small stage set, the main feature being a curved ‘where’er you walk’ tunnel of trained lime trees, redolent of Notley. Herbaceous borders abounded. Beyond the pond was a small swimming pool and then a tennis court and a fine view of the South Downs. The house itself was cosy and they hung vibrant Spanish curtains. There were large fireplaces in the tiny drawing room and dining room where they hung French Impressionist paintings and a portrait of David Garrick.
During those summer months any interest in recruiting me for an executive job had ceased. Riddelle and I decided to have a holiday in Glen Tilt, staying in a Scottish friend’s cottage. At the same time David Mitchell-Innes asked if I would like a cruise of a few days to Honfleur, the harbour which William the Conqueror had used to mount the Norman invasion of 1066. Riddelle, ever the free spirit, said that was fine. She would drive up to Scotland on her own with the cat and the children, stopping to see friends on the way, and be ready for my train when it stopped at Blair Atholl.
On the most enjoyable cruise with David and his wife Christine and another couple we discussed school fees. Over our wine we decided that it was almost certain that we would have to plump for state schools after all. That meant that we could have more children. I knew this would please Riddelle and might help her settle down, at least for a while. She had been very good about our reduced circumstances, the limitations of the dole, and I did so want to please her.
The London-Scottish Express halted at tiny Blair Atholl station at five in the morning. There was Riddelle, and in the back of the car the children asleep with the cat. It was half an hour’s drive to the glen and I told her of my decision that we could have another child if she wished. She wanted to stop the car, rush off into a field and make love immedi-ately. I persuaded her to wait until we were inside the cottage.
We did have a wonderful holiday. For some reason the estate factor kept leaving us freshly shot grouse. They were delicious but I had to pluck the little beasts, shirtless in the sunshine, feathers sticking to my chest in the breeze. On our next shopping trip I bought bamboo staves, a ball of string and then made a big kite with one of our sheets, modelled on the ones the RAF used, seven feet by four and with a long tail. It rose up high into the sky to the end of the hundred yards of string. The children hung on to it together. I made some handkerchief-sized parachutes and spiralled wire runners to slide up to the kite and then break away and float down. The children chased after them, rush-ing back and saying ‘Daddy, do it again.’ While the cat played with butterflies.
That autumn I went to see a headhunter called Ella Heath. I had sent her my curriculum vitae. She called me into her little office in St James’s Place, off St James’s Street. She was a Polish lady with a great length of red hair wound round her head, over and over, and a conspiratorial voice. I felt that spiritually she had never left the Polish Secret Service. She bade me have a seat.
‘Der Ler Roo,’ she said.
Next time I understood better. ‘De La Rue. The banknote printers.’
This sounded excellent, and involved developing countries: what more could be done for their good than assure the integrity of their currency? Economic plasma, while I had the prospect of an overseas posting and the company paying two-thirds of the school fees. The company was based in Basingstoke which was a bore, but then I could always sleep or read on the train. The point was that it was a job with career prospects and a fine reputation. I was dying for it. Ella assured me they would like my c.v.
I took the train to Basingstoke and walked over to their new two-storey building, flat and undistinguished. My meeting was with the Field Sales Manager, Pat Turner. He had been a non-commissioned officer in the RAF for his National Service. All I saw now was that he had a well-cut suit, black hair like an overgrown pot brush, a turned-up nose and a brusque manner. Like a sergeant major.
‘I liked your book,’ he said as soon as I had sat down. He seemed the sort to appreciate a challenge so I asked whether he had bought a copy or got it from the public library. ‘The latter, actually.’ South-East Asia was a part of the world he was extremely fond of. He asked about Livingstone, CDC and home life. He introduced me to the General Sales Manager, David Rowe-Beddoe. Now he in rolled up shirt sleeves, with domed head and rounded features, was a most impressive man, a booming extrovert comfort figure with a twinkle. He was pulsating with energy. He was more like an actor in the role of Brigadier Gerard. All I remember him saying was what fun it was flying round the world flogging banknotes.
I had lunch with the Banknote Sales Manager, Don Ring, who had been a policeman in East Africa and spoke Swahili, so we had plenty to gossip about. He asked if I had any questions about the company. I said I had done my homework and looked forward to getting a detailed understanding of the business. He wanted to know if I intended to continue writing. I assured him that I would never write anything that would compromise the company and in any event would always submit anything for approval.
My job started in mid-November 1971, with a note on my company desk from Pat Turner saying ‘Welcome to De La Rue, hoping this would be the start of a long and fulfilling career.’ This set me up. Never anything like that from CDC. The letter set out a programme for the next six weeks. I would have to learn about banknote designing with their Preliminaries Department, followed by a month in the main banknote factory up in Gateshead, and then the Security Print Factory in Dunstable, for passports, bonds, stamps and cheques. He took me round and introduced me to everyone in Basingstoke. My overwhelm-ing impression was that they were free men, unlike CDC. They had no constraints. My kind of people.
I wished the tenants would move out of our house but for a further six months we were stuck in the grotty flat where the north-facing semi-basement drawing room was also our dining room, playroom, and store for whatever we could not fit anywhere else. It was full to burst-ing. Arthur Lewis and Maud came to dinner. I asked him to behold what we had been reduced to. He lightened the moment by saying we seemed to have everything. Larry was more direct but in his own way just as funny. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is a bit shitty.’ He bought us a share in the Wine Society and had a carefully selected case delivered to us in our time of need. Our own good news, which we kept to ourselves for a bit, was that Riddelle had conceived. She was radiantly happy.
In Basingstoke I was getting to know my colleagues in the sales force and it seemed they were made for friendship. Considering the top level people overseas whom regional managers had to deal with the pay was paltry, but survivable. Someone said that to work for De La Rue you needed a private income and a sense of humour. The atmosphere made everything worthwhile, the product of the best schools, the best univer-sities, and wonderful management. It was more like a club than a company.
In December 1971 I overheard David Rowe-Beddoe’s booming voice complaining that Bangladesh had burst upon the world as a country, declaring its independence. It needed a national currency and we did not know anyone. We had a regional manager there who was making no headway. I went into his office and said that I knew the newly appointed Foreign Minister, Mr Moumin. Immediately I was drawn in to the sit-uation which confronted Bangladesh as well as West Pakistan. Both enemy states used the same currency, with Mohammed Jinnah’s portrait on the banknotes. This was hair-raising. Either country could have destroyed the other’s economy by flooding it with planeloads of its own banknotes, destroying the medium of exchange. Mas
s starvation would soon follow. Hitler had wanted to use this as a method of warfare against England. Nazi Germany printed millions of counterfeit five pound notes. Before sufficient were accumulated they were identified as false when they used them to pay their spies in England. The quality of their paper was superior to ours. As an insurance we counterfeited the Reichsmark, and let that be known to the Germans. Stalemate was a welcome consequence.
Both new countries desperately required their own banknotes. Pakistan printed their own in Karachi, enough to keep going when times were normal, but nothing like enough capacity to meet a total replacement at speed. For that they would need the De La Rue capacity of Gateshead, as did Bangladesh for its total needs.
I was bundled off with two of our design artists and a lettering artist on a flight to Calcutta, to await any flight to Dhaka. The drive from Dum Dum Airport through the fetid streets of Calcutta was the most sickening I have ever known: fly-blown piles of excrement lodged here and there. The filth of the poor Bengali Hindus was horrifying, they defecated everywhere, yet were busy making things, bargaining, shout-ing and pointing. My artists were almost retching with disgust. The Oberoi Grand Hotel was behind an overcrowded arcade which hid the entrance. A couple of magnificent moustachioed doorkeepers pushed through the scrimmage and opened our taxi doors.
What had happened to the Paris of the East? Shortly after Indepen-dence in 1947 the municipality was dominated by Communists. Nothing was done to prevent the influx of tens of thousands of ever-self-reproducing peasants made landless by overcrowding. They were strangers to urban life, hence the squalor. The city is now much improved.
Once inside the hotel we were uplifted by the classic colonial decora-tion, the spaciousness and service. My artists liked the little mogul pictures in their rooms and after dinner we went to see a performance of Indian dancers. Next day by the pool they admired the elegance even of the women labourers in saris, climbing ladders, one hand steadying a hod on their heads, heavily loaded with tiles, straight-backed, hips swinging, slim and energetic.
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