GHOSTING ON THE ISLAND OF ELBA

 I was in the garden studying a worm with my little son Nicolas when the phone rang. It was my agent with news of a job.
 'I’ve been asked by a publisher to find an author who speaks french fluently and has a knowledge of the fashion world to ghost the couturier Pierre Balmain’s autobiography in English for the American market. You fit the bill perfectly. Can you meet him in Paris next Tuesday for preliminary talks, all expenses paid?.
 I said yes.

 I was met at Orly airport by a chauffeur in a dove grey uniform who drove me in a dove grey limousine to the Pierre Balmain fashion house in Rue François 1er..
 A neat oriental youth greeted me in reception and bid me follow him up majestically curving stairs, into a crowded showroom where mannequins were parading the latest collection and through tall double doors to a Louis XV salon.                           
 Pierre Balmain himself was standing by the window.
 He was a heavily built man, portly, reminding me a little of photographs I had seen of Mussolini, without the lantern jaw. There was power there and expectancy that everyone would bow to his every whim. He was immaculately dressed in a blue suit and perfumed to the back of his ears, presumably with one of his own brands of scent.
 He crossed the room, shook me firmly by the hand and bid me sit down on one of the many fauteuils apparently once owned by Madame de Pompadour. He sat down opposite me.
 After introductory chatter and a discussion on how best we would work, I launched forth with a vital question.
 'I have read a great deal about your professional achievements'  I started 'but know very little about your private life. Are you or were you ever married?  'It was a way I had planned of finding out if he would talk of his homosexuality or want to avoid the subject which in those days was delicate.
 'Mon cher! 'he exclaimed as though outraged, 'I am one of the most renowned perverts in Paris!' he looked me up and down. 'You are clearly quite terrified, so let me put your mind at rest. You are not at all my type. I prefer strong, body building Italian peasants, preferably those who ride motorbikes.'
 'I am relieved,' I said.
 'Ha!' he countered, 'don’t try to hide your inner desires from me. We all know that young Englishmen like you who are fascinated by 'le monde de haute couture' and marry models long to come out of their little closets.'
 I smiled resignedly thinking it wise not to contradict him.
 He outlined what he had in mind for the book. I learned about his childhood, his education and rise to fame which. unfortunately, suggested a dull story.
 The outcome of this tête a tête was that he found me intelligent enough to have me ghost his autobiography. He suggested we work together at his retreat on the Island of Elba later in the year. His secretary would contact me to make the necessary arrangements.

 I went home happy, finished my third thriller for Tom Boardman and, in September, flew to Rome, took a train North to the coastal town of Piombino where I boarded a ferry for Portoferraio on the Island where Napoleon had been exiled in 1814.
 I was met by Monsieur Balmain who was waiting for me on the quay side in an open white Cadillac.
 He greeted me warmly and took me for a quick tour of the island before driving up a steep road which led to his most extraordinary residence.. It was a futuristic building, elliptical in shape, a cross between a flying saucer and a giant egg perched on a cliff. He led me past a large oval swimming pool at the centre of a water garden supplied by natural springs. Inside, the villa was similar to a marbled luxury liner with views of the sea from countless windows, every piece of furniture a priceless antique, every objet d’art clearly priceless, a Degas, a  Modigliani, a van Dongen hung on the walls.
 He showed me to my room which had dove grey walls and lemon yellow curtains, 'The colours I am launching for next season’s collection, 'he informed me and, after tea on one of the terraces, served by a local young man to whom he must have given a Harley Davidson, he took me down to a basement where an elderly artisan was delicately tapping paper thin strips of gold onto an elaborate wrought iron frame.
 'As you well know I am Queen Sirikit of Thailand’s couturier,'  Balmain said to me, 'she pays me in gold leaf, and this gentleman is a Florentine goldsmith whom I employ to guild whatever I choose. This is part of a 15th century bed that belonged to one of the Medicis. By the time he has finished, it will be a quite superb piece suitable for my bedroom.
 I spent the week listening to my host, writing passages of the book, swimming in the pool, visiting the museum which had once been Bonaparte’s residence and eating very well.
 The day I was due to leave, Balmain suggested I should delay my return to England and join him on his drive back to Paris in the Cadillac, stopping in Florence on the way. It was of course an exceptional invitation, but I wanted to get back to Eve whose time was getting close.
 Pierre Balmain did not understand me preferring to go home to a domestic scene of childbirth to travelling with him through Italy and France. He was so nettled that he coldly bid me goodbye there and then, told me one of his gardeners would drive me to the ferry and went into his study closing the door. I never saw him again.
 I sent him chapters during the following months. There was a long period of silence then, two years later, his autobiography was published, supposedly translated from the French by an American but bearing some similarity to the work I had done. I had been well rewarded financially and the week of extravagance I experienced on the Island of Elba had been an insight into a world I could never afford, unfortunately it triggered off a desire in me to be more fastidious about my surroundings and be richar than I could ever hope to be in the profession I had chosen. 

Balmain 
Balmain's house in the Island of Elba

OFF TO THE SEA AND COUNTRYSIDE

It took me a week of gazing out at the dark green turbulent sea through the salt stained windows of the Selsey Coastguard cottage before I hit the typewriter keys again to start on my second detective novel.

During that time of contemplation, I did not think creatively but dwelt on who I now was - a husband and father, therefore a family man with responsibilities, a freelance author but not that ambitious, a temporarily carefree individual with enough in the bank to feel secure providing I was not reckless. It was fortunate that Eve was equally content.
We had both flirted with a little fame, photographs in magazines, reviews in the press, flattering experiences that had been fun but not vital. We’d had our fill of cocktail parties, dinner parties, fashion shows, receptions, balls and the social whirl. Happiness for both of us was now old sweaters, jeans and gumboots, sitting on the windy beach with tiny Nick, cooking mussels picked from nearby rock pools and falling asleep to the sound of the waves lapping up against our bedroom wall.
 Eve started to paint, I started to write and Nicolas grew in size and mind, gurgled, sneezed, coughed, cried and became more lovable than ever, an unimaginable joy.
 But this idyllic life did not last.
 Unbelievably, Major Bill and Doris came down on our first weekend to check that their daughter and grandson had survived without a telephone, a supermarket, friends or acquaintances close by. They could not stay with us for there was no room, but they found a little hotel up the road and joined us for lunch and dinner during which they mapped out their plans for our future..
 Eve was incensed.
 'They are never going to leave us alone!' she shouted out to the sea one night after they had left.
 And they didn’t. For the six months we were in Selsey they came down nearly every weekend. Major Bill proudly informed me that he had put his grandson’s name down for Eton, Harrow and Winchester ( I had vowed never to send my children to boarding school ) Doris warned Eve that she would have to vet the accents of any local children her grandson might play with or he would not grow up speaking the Queen’s English, and they both advised us, separately, that if I was determined to risk the family’s well being by insisting on the precarious life of a writer, we should seriously consider investing what money we had in a country property. They would look for one for us.
 Under this very irritating pressure, we jumped the gun and, whenever the weather permitted, set off in the car with little Nick in his carry-cot on the back seat and toured Hampshire and Dorset armed with sheathes of estate agents literature. We saw new houses, old houses, manor houses, cottages, bungalows, chalets, converted barns, warmed very much to the idea of the country life, and when we finally found a suitably inexpensive tumbledown farmhouse in Wiltshire and told Major Bill and Doris, they threw up their hands in alarm. It was far too far for them to come and visit us at weekends, a fact which had occurred to us.
 We could have ignored these remonstrations had it not been for the bad news pointed out later by the bank manager. Though we were in the 1960s when borrowing funds to buy houses was a doddle compared to today, without a regular income a mortgage would be impossible. With someone suitable guaranteeing regular payments however, a mortgage could be considered.
 Undoubtedly slyly aware of this, Major Bill played a trump card. If we were sensible and chose a property within a 90 minutes drive from London he would be our guarantor. Any such place would, of course, cost more than we had budgeted, but he would help us out if necessary. We were not foolish enough to turn down such an opportunity, so off we went again looking at places, but this time close by. .
 In Old Barnham, twenty minutes drive from Selsey, we found a neatly renovated Georgian cottage with three bedrooms, new kitchen, new bathroom, new plumbing, a garden with seven fruit trees, surrounded by farmland and, opposite, a beautiful Queen Anne manor and Norman church. When we told Major Bill that it was only two miles from Goodwood, he immediately agreed to sign on the dotted line. It would be the perfect base from which he could attend many happy race meetings.
 The purchase took two months to complete during which I became more and more anxious about the expenses that piled up specially as Eve now announced that she was pregnant again.
 One fine Sunday morning, however, when I was in my coastguard cottage study staring out of the window hoping for inspiration, a black Rolls Royce drew up in the driveway and out stepped an impressive bearded gentleman wearing a full length suede coat and fedora at a tilted angle. A ‘theatrical’ if there ever was one.
 'André Launay?' he enquired when I opened the door.
 I nodded.
 "I saw your show ‘If the Crown Fits’ last year and thought I should commiserate. You must have had a trying time with Robert Morley. I worked with him once and it wasn’t easy.'
 'Thank you,' I said, obviously puzzled as to his identity.
 'My name is Jimmy Grafton, I manage the Goons and my own scriptwriters agency. I heard you were living here for a while and thought a chat might be beneficial to both of us. I have a week-end place up the road, why don’t you come round for a drink ? Bring the baby, my wife dotes on them.'
 The outcome of the evening was instant relief from my financial worries for Jimmy suggested I work with him on a television comedy series - The Dicky Henderson Show -  on which he was engaged. It needed fresh input which I could probably supply.   

 We moved into Manor Cottage, Church Lane, Barnham in the Spring of 1962 where we happily settled into a very pleasant country way of life and I finished the third Boardman novel when not writing TV scripts.
 For the first time ever I started gardening, that is I bought a whole range of implements and stared at them for a long time before daring to use them. Once I got the hang of a spade, trowel, scythe and lawn mower, there was no stopping me. What had been a quarter acre of long grass started to look like a lawn, trees were trimmed, seeds and bulbs were planted apple blossom was eagerly awaited. This was the life. A couple of hours at my desk, a couple of hours of manual labour, from now on, except when Major Bill and Doris came to stay, it would just be me, Eve, Nickypoo stamping about in the new flower beds, Jimmy Grafton, Tom Boardman and dandelions.
 Then the phone rang. 

 Photos:

 Selsey during a storm

 Manor cottage

 Dickie Henderson

SHE MODELLED HER COFFIN

 My plan on how to launch myself perilously into the life of a freelance author was simple in concept. Before giving in my notice to the advertising agency I would write a novel and, if I managed to get it published, seek the services of an astute literary agent who would find me work for ever.
 It took me a year of burning the midnight oil to write the book which started off as a sinister mystery but ended up as a light hearted thriller concerning an inefficient  private detective who becomes involved in the doubtful murder of a fashion model. I gave it the title - She Modelled Her Coffin
 I sent it to the director at Macdonalds who had commissioned my cartoons. He contacted me a month later to tell me he wasn’t interested but that he had passed it on to a small publishing house responsible for `The British Bloodhound Mysteries.́ I had never heard of them but, when another month later, a Mr Boardman, who owned the company, asked me to come to his office for a chat, I was more than happy to do so.       
 I found Tom Boardman to be a genial pug faced American in tweeds and a cloud of smoke, puffing at a pipe in a poky little Soho office untidy with piles of dusty books, discarded manuscripts and abandoned cups of coffee,
 'It’s good, it’s good. A kinda loony Raymond Chandler,' he said before I had even shaken his pudgy hand. 'I’ll take it on if you can follow it up with five more featuring the same crazy detective. The book trade likes sets of six and so do lending libraries.'
 He suggested a few changes, said he would publish it within a few months, He’d have a contract ready to sign the next day.
 Now an about-to-be-published-author, I wasted no time searching for the astute literary agent and a friend of a friend pointed me in the direction of Richard Gregson, a tough, aggressive and very ambitious character who did not suffer fools gladly. In time he was to become a successful film producer, marry and divorce Natalie Wood      ( who re-married Robert Wagner and then drowned in suspicious circumstances ) and be mentioned by Anthony Burgess in his autobiography as a man who - `reminded him of the kind of army officer who is eventually killed in the field by his own men.'   Richard immediately advised me to leave the world of advertising, sold an option of the film rights of I Married a Model ( the film was never made ), had me write three episodes of Emergency Ward 10 a popular hospital soap at the time, and sign a contract with ATV tying me down to developing a six part comedy series based on an idea by Robert Morley who would play the lead roll together with his real life mother in law, Gladys Cooper - two very respected high protane thespians..
 The story, which I did not think too original, concerned the monarch of a mythical kingdom who has money problems and relies on his beatnik daughter to keep him out of trouble by inventing doubtful tourist attractions. I was to come up with comic storylines in which the characters came into conflicts with each other.  I managed to do this and, on the first day of rehearsals Robert Morley, with his ungainly bulk, triple chin, fierce eyebrows and famed for playing pompous windbags, took me aside, sat me down in a corner, sat himself heavily down on a chair in front of me and tapped my knee with an authoritative extended index finger.
 'Now dear boy, your storylines are excellent, your plot development perfect, but overall there isn’t enough of my kind of humour to please my many admirers, so unless you object, and even if you do, I will add a few things here and there and hope you won’t be hurt.'
 Before I could say anything he stood up, gripped my shoulders in way of a friendly hug, I thought, but in fact it was to make sure that I wouldn’t get up myself and bother him from then on.
 Screened the following April, If the Crown Fits, as the series was called, was not a complete disaster but hardly a success. The best notice I got was in the Daily Mail for the fourth episode :
 'This Ruritanian series is as unfunny now as it was when it started. For this Robert Morley cannot blame his scriptwriter.'
 The scriptwriter, however, was at fault.
 I had been witness to glaring continuity mistakes made during the rehearsals, I had missed opportunities for funnier lines, and had not spoken up enough because I lacked confidence among these experienced professionals. I had, in fact, felt quite uncomfortable in their company. Memories of Gert and Daisy at the Café Royal came to haunt me. ‘Try writing for others, you’ll be good at that...’ Well maybe I wasn’t.

 Between the end of rehearsals, the recording of the show and its screening, my domestic life took a turn for the chaotic. Grumpy old Grandmere Launay died in Pau, Maman’s second husband died in Nice, Pierre became enamoured of a woman younger than my mother so was kicked out of her life and Eddy reached the age of sixty five and retired from his beloved food trade.
  As Maman inherited a small fortune from her late hubby and, following in her dentist father’s footsteps, had developed a liking for casinos, Simone and Eddy sold Weir Pool and winged it quickly to Nice where they invested her money in a Cote d’Azur mansion where all three settled down to a life of never ending disagreement.
 Meanwhile Eve and I finally left London with our boy child and, seeking a feel for the raw natural life, rented a coastguard cottage in Sussex which was so close to the sea that on stormy nights massive waves thundered against the retaining walls sending gallons of foamy white spray over the roof.  

THE PRAM IN THE HALL

A few weeks ago I went to Malaga airport to meet an important person who was flying in from Los Angeles. I waited at the arrivals barrier with all the other anxious people expecting family members or friends and, when a new wave of passengers appeared through the gates, I sensed a very slight buzz of interest in the crowd, nothing too obvious, but enough for me to stand on tip toe to see what the minor fuss was about.
 Among the travellers was a tall, lanky individual sporting a silver and gold embroidered velvet jacket, a purple porkpie hat pulled down over his long hair and serious dark glasses hiding his eyes. He definitely looked like a rock star, and very nearly was one, but in fact this eccentric individual happened to be my son, Nick Launay, successful record producer.
 'Droopy !' he shouted.
 'Nickypoo !' I shouted back.
 A few eyebrows were raised, but who cared ? Warm, deeply affectionate hugs followed, the tears of joy welling up uncontrollably.
 During the drive home I learned that my little boy would be in Europe for a month, London for a meeting with a record company, somewhere in a South of France studio to work on a new album with Nick Cave, New York for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, then Seattle or Vegas,  or was it Sidney, Australia ? His year had been hectic and the pace was unlikely to slow down.
 Once home he unpacked and looked around, checked if there were any new coffee table books,  anything he hadn’t seen before and I caught myself ridiculously fussing like a mother hen, apologising for the roughness of the towels in the bathroom, the absence of a Kleenex box in his bedroom. When he travelled he stayed in 5-star hotels after all.
 We went down to a beach restaurant for lunch and the conversation centered on the dissimilarity of our lives. His, which was too chaotic, mine now nearly too peaceful. We both had a need to be creative but in his world it was all musical sounds and rhythms and involved other people while in mine it was words and just me alone.
 His iPhone buzzed, a text he answered straight away, then his puzzlement at me only having a simple mobile which I invariably forgot to take with me anyway.
 'I don’t need to communicate with anyone every minute of the day,' I explained.
 'But you’re missing out on so much. There are so many aps that take you into realms you wouldn’t believe.' 
 'I no longer want to go into realms which I won't believe,  besides I wouldn’t be able to see half the stuff that comes up, even with my glasses.'
 Back at the house we settled down on the sofa together and he opened up his lap top and flicked dextrous fingers across the screen showing me photos of  lunatic Hollywood parties he’d attended with girls in amazingly elaborate costumes. Every time there was the launch of a new film they apparently dressed up as the characters.
 'Any permanent partner ? ' I asked tentatively.
 'Difficult' he said. 'I mainly record at night so don’t have the chance to socialize much. But that shouldn’t worry you unduly.'
 He then checked his watch and said he had to Skype someone.
 I left him alone and sauntered out into the patio and thought back to the day he had been born and when Eve had brought him home for the first time.  He had taken over our lives, changing everything from our body clocks to the contents of the fridge. It was extraordinary that the chubby little baby he had been had grown into a tall asparagus with such long hands and feet.
 My mother had come to see him and I had watched her cradle him awkwardly in her arms. 
 'I’ve never liked babies,' she'd said as though I didn’t know. 'He has the same ear lobes as Paul, your real father,'  she’d gone on, then added. 'He also has your eyebrows, so he probably is yours.'
 One day I would perhaps write about a woman whose obsession with her illegitimate son completely ruins her life and that of others
  Eddy did not see the boy till we spent a week end in Pangbourne a month later. He managed the meeting very well, making friendly clucking noises at the newborn as though he didn’t really want to throw him into the river. An unkind supposition, for I was very aware that the encounter was not at all easy for him.
 In an earlier ‘Post’ I mentioned that I had feared fatherhood would limit my ability to write. Cyril Connolly’s quote 'There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall' had started haunting me again, but on reflection I realized that it was not the fear of the child’s demands that might upset me but parental love - a totally new and profoundly emotional experience. Far from wishing to get away from this new little person I found myself so besotted that I did not want to be separated from him for a minute. I still didn’t want to be separated from him, but he could hardly come and live in Spain, or not yet anyway..
 I went back into the house. Nick was talking to someone on the other side of the world. I realized couldn’t keep up with what he was up to and I didn’t understand how he had managed to produce so many albums. His web site is daunting.  With a wife and two children he’d taken the risk of going freelance and hadn’t looked back. I suppose I’d done the same in a different way.. 
 When he was six months old Eve and I had taken him with us to stay with friends in a country cottage far from the madding crowd. Eve had said 'I’d really be perfectly happy to live like this for the rest of my life.'
  'You’d get bored after a while,' I’d suggested.
  'I’d try and paint a bit, read a bit, and you could drift off into your fantasy world not knowing where you really were and write books.'
  It was a dream, precarious, but one which I'd felt I should consider.  If I was not tied down to an office we could leave London. If I could write a book and get it published, if I could get a literary agent to find me regular work..... if...if..if.......   

Nick Launay 

FLOATING HOUSES AND CONDOMS

In 1959, Harold Macmillan, then Prime Minister of Great Britain, told the nation 'You’ve never had it so good' and, as far as I am concerned, he wasn’t far from wrong.
 I had sent my CV and book of cartoons to several advertising agencies hoping to find a job as a copywriter, been interviewed by three and had decided on the one that had the most exciting clients, was closest to the flat and offered me the best salary.
 The David Macaulay Advertising Agency occupied two floors of an art deco building overlooking Marble Arch. On the walls of the thickly carpeted reception area, hung framed advertisements for Smirnoff Vodka, Teacher’s Whisky, Pirelli Tyres and  El Al Airways.The place oozed comfort, silence and luxury.
 'Mr Macaulay is expecting you', the receptionist said and led the way down a short corridor to his office.
 David Macaulay himself, a forceful character quite a few years older than myself, was sitting behind a massive desk in a room that reminded me of the American President’s oval office.The windows behind him looked onto the Marble Arch, there was a small cocktail bar in one corner, magazines, photographs and promotional material everywhere. Very different indeed from the old Dickensian food firm I was used to.
 'I’m looking for a copywriter with flare who can also sketch out ideas for the art department and be able to sell a campaign to prospective clients. You seem to fit the bill', he said. He had my book and CV in front of him.
 I did not contradict him. A date when I would start was agreed.
 My first day at the agency was a revelation. I had not realized how old fashioned, limited in vision and penny pinching the ‘family’ firm had been.
 I was given my own office, the services of a secretary, an IBM typewriter, a drawing board and all the artist’s materials I might need. Coffee, tea, Coca Cola or iced water were available from a dispensing machine and best of all there were no rigid office hours for the creative team. It was accepted that imaginative people were temperamental and needed space.
 I was taken for a tour of the premises by the receptionist and introduced to the people in media, in production, the artists in the studio, the two other copywriters who were a little distant, and several stressed account executives in shirt sleeves who were too busy on the phone to do more than wave a greeting.
 When I returned to my office I found an internal memo on my desk.                       
    
 To : All Departments. From : David Macaulay.
 Drew Launay, cartoonist and television scriptwriter is a face you will be seeing around the 2nd floor from now    
on as a copy consultant.
 In that capacity it will be his job to help writer / accountant people to improve the standard of their work.
    
 It was the first I knew that I was supposed to be an expert in a field I had never worked in before and it explained the slightly chilly attitude of the copywriters.
 For the first few days I did little. No one asked me to re-write their copy nor seemed aware that I existed, so I dipped into a book or two on advertising techniques and thought about writing a novel.
 On my fourth day, now sporting a bow tie and looking every inch the ad man, I attended my first 'brain storming' meeting in the conference room.
 I joined the copywriters, the artists, three accounts executives in the deep armchairs arranged in a semi circle facing David Macaulay who stood by a blackboard. The atmosphere was similar to a briefing by RAF bomber command before an assault on Germany as seen in so many war films.
 'We have a new account,' he started, 'a big one which needs urgent truly original input. Sunley Homes have been building houses in the Thames Valley for years but no one has heard of them. They want us to come up with a staggering campaign that will adjust this dire situation.'
 Their most recent ad material was passed around. I noted that the houses were on two floors with three or four bedrooms and all other mod coms. Nothing very inspiring.
 'Could a free bus tour from central London be organized for people to view the houses - calling it The Sunley Bus Tour' one copywriter piped up.
 David wrote - Sunley Bus Tour - on the board.
 'How about getting a film star couple to move into a house and using them as the basis of the campaign?’ someone else put forward..
 David wrote - Film stars as house owners - on the board.
 There was silence for quite a while and I felt I had to contribute. I was the agency’s copy consultant after all.   
  'We could get Sunley to build a house on a raft and float it up and down the river as an exhibition piece,' I proposed.
 There were sniggers, titters and groans at the idiocy of the idea.
 'Brilliant !' David Macaulay said, silencing them all. 'We get a house built on a barge and sail it down to Tower Bridge. This is the kind of new thinking I’m looking for.' He wrote - Floating House -  on the blackboard, underlined it three times and crossed out the other suggestions.
 I gained instant respect and, though it took a year longer than planned to set everything up, the Sunley house was eventually launched and sailed under Tower Bridge with a band, flags and balloons, not unlike the recent Jubilee pageant..
 Three months and two campaigns later, one for a new girdle which I called Girl Friday and a doubtful cake mix, neither of which sold, David called me to his office.
 'We have another new account right up your street ,'  he said, 'The London Rubber Company'.
  I’d never heard of them. 'What do they produce ?' I asked.
  'The Durex condoms,' and he handed me a box of twenty four.
   When I got home that evening I told Eve about this new assignment and gave her the box.
  'Too late,' she said, 'I saw the gynaecologist again today. All has gone really well. With better luck this time you should be a Daddy about the first week in March.'

ONE FASHION SHOW TOO MANY

How a husband reacts to the news that his wife is pregnant depends, it seems to me, on their personal circumstances. When Eve told me she was expecting, I was not at all sure that I was ready for fatherhood. I had read the literary mandarin Cyril Connoly’s book Enemies of Promise in which he stated that one undoubted enemy of a writer was the pram in the hall. A baby, therefore, was more than likely to stop me taking the risk of going freelance as Eve would obviously have to stop modelling at some stage. So a career in advertising was again the probable solution. I leafed through relevant magazines, sent a CV and my book of cartoons to a number of agencies and, in time, was offered a job as a copywriter which I knew it would be foolish to refuse.
 The big hurdle was telling Eddy of my intention. I chose a Saturday morning in Pangbourne when he was fishing at the bottom of the garden.
 He did not react kindly.
 Did I realize how hard it had been for him to train me for the position I now held ? How difficult it had been for him to convince the Board that I should be made a director? Had I no sense of loyalty? Of gratitude?  I put an end to the flow.

 'Eve is expecting a baby, she wiill have to stop working and I can earn a great deal more in advertising than the firm can afford.' I said.
 He stopped reeling in the little silver spoon at the end of his line, I watched it sink in the shallow water.
 'I suppose it will bear my name?'  he said testily.
 I had not thought about it before, but any child of mine would not be his grandchild. The man was obsessed. It was a bitter comment which gave me a reason to turn on my heels and walk away.
 The atmosphere at lunch time proved so deadly that Eve and I went back to London that afternoon. My mother was again the one to take the brunt of the situation, but she had at last hardened her attitude to the whole sad business and managed to cope.

 Eve was very slim, wasp waisted, not anorexic, but thin enough for the gynaecologist to warn her that because, in her case, the pregnancy might not become very evident, she should resist the temptation to go on modelling for too long.
 She told Digby Morton she would have to leave, he had not quite finished designing a dress for Queen Soraya of Persia, creating and fitting it on Eve, so begged her to stay until after the royal presentation.
 On the day of the show all went well. She walked up and down the rostrum as elegantly as ever, a surprise party to bid her goodbye was thrown by the other models afterwards. The champagne flowed, a good time was had by all, but that night Eve woke up in great pain. Something was going very wrong with the baby.
 I called the doctor, she was rushed to hospital, nothing could be done and she miscarried. 
 I paced the floor of the clinical corridor outside an emergency room and, when she was wheeled out, pale and distraught, she could only repeat again and again through unbearable tears 'It was a little boy...it was a little boy.'
    
 They sedated her. I was told to go home and, numbed, I walked the empty night streets of London realizing that I had not, over the past months, been too concerned about what she had been going through. Suddenly this expected child had been prematurely born and died, a tiny unfinished human being which I had felt kicking magically inside her and which I had never imagined could be lost.
 Eve remained in hospital for the next few days which were spent by both of us being very British, with stiff upper lips, pretending that the tragedy was not a tragedy and that we would get over it without difficulty.
 Major Bill, who avoided unpleasantness at all costs, did not visit her, but  Doris hardly left her side. My mother came once but found it difficult to handle the situation as she sensed that Eve did not want any display of emotion and Eddy, unexpectedly, rang me, offering help, financial or otherwise if we needed it and apologised for the unfair remark he had made when fishing at the bottom of the garden. His genuine sympathy and effort to overcome his own feelings helped towards a reconciliation but did not deter me from giving in my notice to the Board a while later.
 It was agreed that I would not leave the firm for three months and after, would remain as a director of the company and be available as a consultant should my help be needed in the future.
 By the end of April (1959) Eve recovered completely and we went alone to Spain for a holiday before I launched myself in  my new madcap career.    

Eve modeling for queen Soraya of Persia 1958

THE AIMLESS ( Part 2 )

                    The play is set in the ruins of a house that has been
                     burned to the ground. As the curtain rises three young
                     men are sifting through the smoking ashes.

In September 1958 Eve and I drove up to Edinburgh for the dress rehearsals of The Aimless.
John Duncan and his troupe had taken over the Royal Arch Hall in Queen Street three days before and the set was already up. It was basic, the remains of a charred wall and a broken window against a blue sky, branches of a tree, rubble centre stage which would give off smoke if the fire officer gave his permission, a marble statue of Adonis stage left.
 I watched a run through and wasn’t too impressed by the acting. But everyone knew their lines.
 The dress rehearsal was the usual chaos. The lights didn’t work, the sound effects were not on cue, the branches of the tree got in the way of someone’s entrance, but the advance bookings were good.
 Nerves, butterflies, stage fright, sickness, everyone concerned suffered them on the night. The curtain went up. They got through it. Genuine applause. Three curtain calls. I had no idea what to think.
 I sat with Eve in the auditorium numbed. The shock entrance of the father, believed dead at the end of the first act, had worked well, the gay boy got a few laughs when they were not intended but coped, and tension had risen uncomfortably when he kissed the statue a little too sensually - a change from the original script to satisfy the censor. But no one had booed nor thrown rotten eggs and the audience had left in silent thought and whispered discussion.
We went back stage to congratulate the company in the crowded dressing room. Doubt as to their own success occupied each actor as they wiped off the greasepaint, then there was sudden silence.
 I turned. In the doorway stood an effete, immaculately dressed man holding a cigarette between third and fourth finger of his right hand.
 'I think you all d-did sp-splendidly,' he stuttered, for he suffered from this setback.
 It was Kenneth Tynan.
 'And you must be the writer,' he said to me. 'Having the boy kiss a statue was a b-brilliant way of expressing his homosexuality without pointing out that such a thing exists. I was curious to see how you’d get round the problem. Well done. And he was gone.
 The first review by A.V.Coton, drama critic of the Daily Telegraph, came out mid week.
                                  
                                                   THE WIDOWER AND HIS SONS
                                                   Family analysis in fascinating plot.
                  Combing through the tangles of the Edinburgh ‘fringe’ one can find worthy plays dully
                  acted and also dull plays excitingly  presented. The Aimless by André Launay is presented
                  for only a few performances by a mixed group of talents at the Royal Arch Hall. It is a
                  competent well designed play on a permanently interesting theme - the responsibility of fathers
                  towards their children and of children for their father’s actions. Its involved but  plausible plot
                  concerns the stresses between a widower and his three sons whose lives reach a particular climax
                  when their hom is burned down and the three sons have to decide what their lives are about and
                  how much they owe to their father This is an irritating but nevertheless fascinating play whose
                  strong skeleton carries little attractive flesh. Its atmosphere Chekhovian, its language and situations
                  entirely of the 1950s.

    This was followed by a mixture of good and bad notices with some unexpected and some obvious headlines:

                  NEW PLAY IN THE NIHILIST TRADITION.  ( Glasgow Herald )                       
                  SPARKLES AND SHOCKS IN NEW PLAY. ( Daily express )
                  IT'S MERELY AIMLESS. (Daily Mail )
                  THIS PLAY IS TOO OBSCURE. (Edinburgh Evening News )
                  ANGRY YOUNG MEN BLAME FATHER  (The Scotsman )
                  NEW ANGRY YOUNG MAN SPOUTS VENOM ( News Chronicle )

 On Sunday, the last day, Kenneth Tynan’s anxiously awaited critique in the Observer had to be searched for in his long three column piece on the Edinburgh Festival.

           André Launay’s THE AIMLESS, though feverishly ill acted, has a beguiling theme : the rational hatred                     
           of three sons for their hypocritical father. Each of them, through being truthful, learns that truth destroys: 
           We all inhabit prisons from which we cannot escape without injuring somebody else. A defensible idea,
           but one that needs subtler writing to defend it.

My first thoughts were whether these notices would be good enough to lead to a more professional production, my second thoughts were of how Eddy would react to the Telegraph review. It was the paper he read regularly on the train every morning.
 John Duncan and his cast returned to Newcastle with mixed feelings about what had been achieved, Eve and I returned to London where I received congratulations on the phone from my mother and Pierre, complete indifference from Bill and Doris, and a wall of silence from Eddy who never once mentioned the play let alone asked to read it.
 Over the following months I sent The Aimless to a number of producers all of whom rejected it, some kindly, asking to see anything else I might write in the future, but I quickly realized that I was out of step with the plays that were filling the theatres.
 The label ‘Angry Young Man’ had been applied in the early 50s by the media to describe working class playwrights who were disillusioned by traditional English society. Though I had been similarly tagged, I was not a working class young man angry with middle class society. I was a middle class young man angry with my middle class surrogate father and with my interfering upper middle class in-laws. I had also weaned myself on Noel Coward, Terrence Rattigan, Jean Anouilh with a bit of Tennessee Williams thrown in, not John Osborne, Arnold Wesker or Harold Pinter.
 I did not exactly give up, but I decided to put writing for the theatre on the back burner for a while.
 Then Eve informed me that she was pregnant.

  John Duncan was eventually to become head of light entertainment at Yorkshire Television and Nicholas Ferguson, who played the young boy, became a successful television director on Coronation Street, East Enders and many other productions.