My mother didn’t know my father and Sheila were having an affair. Her suspicions had only been raised once. She’d gone to Dover Street with a business associate and they were asked to wait outside my father’s office while Sheila went to see if he was free. My mother and the associate heard a squeak – the kind of sound that comes from a woman when she’s having her bottom pinched. It seemed that flirting was going on. Sheila came out and said to my mother, ‘You look so smart today,’ but my mother’s appearance was always stylish and immaculate and she chided Sheila with, ‘Try not to sound so surprised, that could have sounded like an insult not a compliment, which I’m sure you meant.’ As she left the office that day, my mother noticed the book on Sheila’s desk – a romantic novel, and thought to herself that Sheila was not my father’s type. He always chose very intellectual women, and Sheila said many times that she was not that.
My father’s philandering started early on in my parent’s marriage. The first affair was with Birgitta, a beautiful Swedish woman my father met when my parents were travelling, with my one-year-old sister Jane, by overnight sleeper train to an International Union of Socialist Youth conference in Sweden. Six months later, when my mother was giving birth to me in hospital at Isleworth, my father was supposed to be at an international socialist event in France but, when he returned, the date stamps in his passport told a different story. When my mother questioned him about inconsistencies in his stories, he couldn’t lie very well – it always showed in his eyes. Although he told her the usual ‘she doesn’t mean anything’ story, with him, it was always love. He fell in love with beautiful, intelligent women, and they with him, and the affairs could last a couple of years. As well as Birgitta, another long-term relationship was with an English Financial Times reporter. My mother stayed with my father because her own parents had divorced, and her childhood had been difficult as a result. She didn’t want that for us and, above all, tried to keep the family together. One day my mother was at home with their three children and there was a phone call from number 10 Downing Street. Usually my mother wouldn’t bother him but this was possibly urgent, so she phoned the hotel where she knew he was staying in Birmingham, and the receptionist said ‘Oh, Mr and Mrs Stonehouse have just gone in to dinner. Shall I give him a message?’ My mother replied ‘Yes, tell him his secretary phoned.’ He was always sorry, always begging her forgiveness. In 1974 he knew, because my mother had previously told him, if she found out he’d had another affair, she’d divorce him.
It came as a complete shock to me to find out that my father had been having an affair with Sheila and, moreover, had phoned her from Hawaii two days after disappearing in Miami, and met her in Copenhagen two weeks later. We’d all known Sheila for years. She’d once given me a lift in her Mini to the constituency, and on that long journey I talked about my boyfriend and asked about hers. She said she’d only ever loved one man, and he was married. It didn’t occur to me that she was talking about my father. During the ‘missing month’ between 20th November and 24th December, my mother, sister and I went to my father’s office in Dover Street to see what needed to be done. Sheila said to me, ‘Oh, your eyebrows are so nice.’ At the time, I thought it was an inappropriate comment in the circumstances, but as the truth of her relationship with my father emerged, it seemed cold. I didn’t want to hear about eyebrows; I wanted to hear that my father was alive.
Betty Boothroyd recalled in her autobiography that following the disappearance, and as a former secretary herself, she was worried about Sheila being out of work and invited her to tea on the terrace of the House of Commons. Betty asked Sheila if she’d be interested in taking a job with another Midlands MP, Bruce George, who was looking for a parliamentary secretary: ‘“Shall I speak to him? You know the area and the local authority. Your knowledge could be quite valuable to him.” “I am only valuable to John,” she replied, looking me straight in the eye … She fooled me completely … She was the best liar I ever met.’2 Coming from a former Speaker of the House of Commons, that’s quite something. To be fair, Sheila had her reasons for not letting anyone know my father was alive. She was terrified he’d kill himself and, after he was discovered in Australia, that became the family’s number one concern as well.
My mother left Melbourne on the 16th January, and would be in London for three weeks, making various urgent arrangements before returning to Melbourne. On the 17th or 18th my father returned to Yellingbo, where the trunk he’d sent out to Melbourne before faking his death had been delivered. On the 19th, my fourteen-year-old brother, Mathew, arrived in Melbourne. He was expecting to meet my father at the home of the British consul general in Melbourne, Ivor Vincent, where my father had stayed overnight, but the location of the reunion had to be changed when the British high commissioner in Canberra, Sir Morris James, found out my father was staying with Vincent and gave instructions that my father was to leave immediately. It wouldn’t look good if the British authorities were seen to be fraternising with the enemy.
While my mother was in the UK, my father became obsessed with the idea of bringing Sheila out to Australia. She was being hounded by the press, it was true, but as my mother was due to return on the 6th February and had told my father she wouldn’t tolerate Sheila being around, my father’s lawyer, Jim Patterson, was very much against the idea. My father made the mistake of turning to Ian Ward, a Daily Telegraph correspondent who was lurking around looking for an ‘in’, and asked for his help. My father was looking for an ally, but had instead found a snake who was going to cause him and Sheila irreparable harm. To begin with, Ward appeared helpful. He arranged for his friend, Lionel Blake, to fly with Sheila to Amsterdam on the 6th February, the very day my mother was due back in Melbourne, to get inoculations before flying on to Singapore. There, Ward had arranged for Sheila to stay a few days with his friend, Miss Yeo. Sheila thought they were just being friendly and supportive but, of course, she was being set up, and in girly chats Sheila told Miss Yeo she’d met my father in Copenhagen. Miss Yeo duly relayed that information to Mr Ward.
On the 5th February, my father and brother moved into a small ‘unit’ at 840 Toorak Road, fronting a drive-in cinema, where Ian Ward found my father unpacking the trunk he’d earlier had delivered from customs to Yellingbo. Mr Ward took mental notes that, a week later, he’d turn into an elaborate distortion of the truth that would utterly destroy my father and help to get Sheila a two-year conviction. My mother arrived the next day.
A couple of evenings after arriving, my mother picked up the phone and found Sheila on the line. ‘Where are you?’ my mother asked. ‘Singapore,’ replied Sheila, ‘John asked me to come.’ My mother handed the phone to my father and heard them making arrangements to meet in Perth. My mother was terribly upset, and felt she was being used. She told my father, ‘If she comes to Australia, she can take on the role of nursemaid, secretary, chief cook and bottle washer. I’m going home.’ There was a silence, and then my father lost control. He grabbed my mother and threw her to the floor, yelling, ‘Why can’t you understand?’ My mother was face-down on the floor and my father leant down, grabbed her hair, and used it to bang her head up and down on the floor. Mathew was in the sitting room and came running in shouting, ‘Stop it, Dad, stop it!’ and pulled him off, telling my mother to get in the kitchen and shut the door. My mother stood with her back to the door, panting and amazed because nothing like that had ever happened to her in her life before. He’d turned into a monster. Usually, my father was so gentle. He could be emotionally cruel, but never violent. In the bedroom, he was banging his head against the wall and crying his heart out. My mother reached for the phone to try and contact his psychiatrist, but my father burst in, snatched the phone from her hand, and shouted, ‘Who are you calling? I suppose you’re calling the police.’ ‘I’m trying to get the doctor, you need help,’ my mother replied. He shouted, ‘Yes, I do need help, your help! And what do you do? You call the police. You bitch!’ He then pulled the phone cord from its socket and starte
d beating my mother about the head with the handset. It broke, shattering on the floor. Then he put his hands around her throat and started banging her head against the wall. My mother thought he’d choke her to death, but Mathew managed to drag him off, and into the hall. My father broke loose, and rushed out the front door, shouting, ‘I’m going. Do you hear? This is the last you’ll see of me! I’m going to kill myself. That’s what everybody wants and then you’ll all be happy.’
Mathew ran after him, but he was in the car and away. Despite her injuries, my mother and Mathew set off into the street looking for help – a policeman, a phone box, a taxi, anything. They were terrified he’d do something to himself or drive so carelessly he’d hurt someone else. The first phone box was broken. Eventually they found a cab and took it to Jim Patterson’s house. His wife, Peggy, opened the door. Jim was out but she got on the phone to him immediately. After finding out what happened, Jim spoke to his son, Kevin, who ran out to his car and drove away. My mother tried to track down the psychiatrist on the phone, but his wife would only suggest they take my father to a hospital. Jim and Kevin tracked my father down and took him back to the apartment. After several hours, Kevin returned to my mother and said, ‘It’s OK, Pa says you can go home now. I’ll take you back.’ ‘What sort of state is he in?’ she asked, and Kevin replied ‘Oh, he’s as good as gold. Very subdued. Probably in a bit of shock.’
Jim was at the front door when they got back. ‘He’s terribly upset about tonight. I’ve been talking to him for two hours flat and it’s like walking on eggshells. I don’t think he really knows even now what he did. I’ll take you in.’ As they stood there talking, my father suddenly bounced out of the sitting room, smiles all over his face, wrapping my mother in a big embrace and kissing her, but with tears streaming down his face. ‘I’m so sorry, darling, I’m so sorry I hurt you.’ These quick mood changes weren’t unusual in Australia, but in these new circumstances of violence and abuse, my mother suddenly felt very frightened again. ‘I’m not staying,’ she told Jim, ‘I’m going back to England and taking Mathew with me. Sheila Buckley will be here tomorrow and can cope with him.’ My father looked surprised and upset. Jim told him, ‘You could have killed her tonight, you can hardly expect her to feel differently. Perhaps we can sort things out tomorrow. Sleep on it.’
The next day my father went to Perth to meet Sheila. At the airport, out of nowhere, Ian Ward and a photographer appeared. My father and Sheila were desperate not to be photographed together and went in different directions, without even having said ‘hallo’. My father had a taxi waiting, and Sheila grabbed another, and they both took off, eventually losing Ward but staying in communication through the taxis’ radios. They pulled over in a side street, and Sheila got into my father’s taxi. They flew to Adelaide but by this time all the press knew they were together and although they got off the plane separately, both were besieged. Again, using the two-taxi ruse, they avoided having their picture taken together. They hired a car and set off for Sydney. My father told Sheila that although my mother wasn’t happy about her coming to Australia she was ‘slightly mollified’ by the fact that Sheila would be staying with friends in Sydney.3 In fact, my mother and brother were already packing.
My father’s manic behaviour in Australia in 1975 was so out of character it was frightening. It could well have been a symptom of him withdrawing off Mandrax, a procedure so dangerous it often necessitated hospital supervision. He no longer had his regular suppliers at hand – the doctors in the House of Commons who were unaware he had suppliers additional to them. He only had one bottle of pills in his washbag and what they were, I do not know. Perhaps he had taken some Mandrax or Mogadon to Miami when he faked his death and these were the last of his supply. Perhaps they were another drug altogether, prescribed by his psychiatrist. In the 1970s people were so trusting of doctors, and talked in generic terms about ‘sleeping tablets’, without being too fussed about what they were or their possible side-effects, whereas today we have the internet and can all be pharmacology experts. Eventually the medical profession became wise to the dangers of the highly addictive Mandrax and it was banned in the UK and USA in 1984 – ten years too late for my father.
Sheila later explained to the readers of Woman magazine why she’d gone to Australia: ‘Yes, of course, I was upset when I realised that we were now having the same set-up in Australia as we had had in London – John back with his wife, and just seeing me when he could. But – and I think only a woman who has ever been in love with a married man will understand this – I understood. And I was prepared to put up with the situation just to be with him. I felt then that this was what he wanted and my main concern was that he should have what he wanted. I know it might sound extraordinary and as if I had absolutely no pride but that’s how it was. I loved him, you see, loved him more than myself. And, if this was how he wanted it, this was how he should have it.’4 With this level of blind devotion, my father loving both Sheila and my mother, and my mother not prepared to put up with it, there was bound to be a showdown.
It happened at Albury. Somewhere on his road trip east with Sheila, my father had phoned my mother and, getting no reply, phoned his lawyer, Jim Patterson. My mother had been to his office to give him the apartment key and told him she was going to Sydney. Jim calculated that they’d stop at Albury and phoned all the hotels and motels until he located my mother and Mathew late in the evening at the Boomerang Hotel. Jim persuaded my mother it would be good for them all to talk and, against her better judgement, she agreed to wait there until my father and Sheila caught up with them. The next day, my mother and brother drove around the town and discovered a nice seating area near the dam. Back at the hotel, as it began to get dark, my brother went downstairs and saw a policeman and a cameraman eating in the restaurant, near the door. They’d probably found them because, as we discovered later, Jim’s phone was being tapped by the police (who, of course, passed information to the press). My mother and Mathew sneaked out while the policeman and cameraman were still eating, and my mother stayed in the parked car while my brother went around the back, in case my father and Sheila arrived that way. Clearly, any meeting would have to be far away from the hotel. They only needed to wait half an hour before my father drove into the car park. He walked towards the hotel but my mother leapt out of her car and told him they needed to get away. She picked Mathew up from the back of the hotel and, in two cars, they drove towards the dam which, at this time of the evening, was likely to be deserted. On the way, my mother saw in her rear-view mirror that my father was flashing his headlights. They were low on petrol, so my father and Sheila got into the rear of my mother’s hired car and the strange party drove in silence to the dam, and parked up. Mathew stayed in the car while the love triangle sat at a picnic table.
My father told my mother he wanted them both in Melbourne: my mother so she could transcribe his book; Sheila so she could help him with impending questions from the DTI inspectors, who would be arriving in Melbourne shortly. The insensitivity of his request didn’t seem apparent to him even if, as he suggested, they live in different places. My mother told him, ‘No. I won’t have that girl there. If she goes to Melbourne, I go back to England with Mathew.’ Now they got to the nub of the problem: he shouted ‘I want you both. You are both important to me.’ My father completely failed to appreciate the situation he was asking my mother to put herself in, plus they were already being hounded by the press and he didn’t consider that his proposed living arrangement would fuel the media circus. But his needs were more important to him at this moment than any other emotional or logical reality. ‘Look,’ my mother said, ‘our suitcases are packed and in the boot of the car. I’m ready to fly to England tomorrow with Mathew and I will do so if you bring that girl back to Melbourne.’ My mother meant it. At that moment she could quite cheerfully have got on the first plane and never seen him again. Suddenly, he jumped to his feet and yelled, ‘If you leave me, Barbara, I’ll kill myself,’ and started runni
ng towards the dam. Sheila and my mother stood up, and Sheila screamed at my mother, ‘Barbara, you must do something.’ Something inside my mother snapped and she turned to Sheila and said, ‘You do something.’ Sheila ran after him. My brother had seen all this and had started the car and turned the headlights onto the scene of my father climbing up onto the dam. He drove up to my mother and she slipped into the driving seat and they sped towards my father and Sheila. By now, he was off the dam and he and Sheila were sobbing in each other’s arms.
My mother drove them back to their car. She told my father that she was going to Sydney in the morning and if he wanted to contact her, he could call her old friends from Potters Bar, Mike and Billie Kirlew, who were now living in Sydney and would give him her phone number, but not her address. She followed them to a petrol station, then returned to the hotel with Mathew. Sheila and my father stayed in a motel. Sheila wrote: ‘John seemed to go all to pieces. For once he didn’t seem able to talk to me. It was as though he was going backwards again, back to the awful highly strung state he’d been in when he first had his breakdown. I was desperately depressed. I’d got him almost back to normal again during those first two days in Australia but now here he was, a wreck once more. I felt utterly exhausted and, worse than that, for the first time I felt I’d really taken enough. That night, I lay awake for hours. I said a prayer of thanks that he was still alive. Then I started worrying. I was terrified that he was going to think it was really all my fault, that terrible scene. I thought, maybe he wants Barbara really and I’m in the way. Next morning, he was still very quiet but as we drove towards Sydney he seemed to become more and more like his old self.’ My father told Sheila he was going to try and get my mother to go back to Melbourne. Sheila wrote: ‘I said that if that was what he wanted then that was what we’d try to achieve. I said I would stay in Sydney but that I’d miss him a lot and that I loved him very much. And, if that sounds saintly, it wasn’t. I’m really terribly selfish about him. I love him, you see, and he comes first. Before me, before everyone. I’d do absolutely anything for him.’5
John Stonehouse, My Father Page 16