setback and disaster without ever referring to their distress or ill-health. Not for nothing had they spent years in the theatre. They could act. But my mother was ageing fast, and my father retreated ever more into the past. They were never crabby or miserable, but fought adversity in their own way, laughing joyfully at minor triumphs, apparently certain that things would get better; outwardly optimistic and forever hoping for a future that for them, alas, would never come.
They were stoical in the face of all adversity. As my father became more blind, I became his eyes. I would take his arm when he went to collect his pension. In Coldharbour Lane that meant negotiating several flights of stairs, some steep outside stone steps from the door to the pavement and 150 yards of road to the post office. I learned to watch out for uneven paving stones, unleashed dogs, traffic turning into side roads and all the hazards whose avoidance is routine to the fully-sighted. It was good training for a future Minister for the Disabled.
Too stiff and proud to acknowledge ill-fortune, my father saw his troubles, his health, his blindness, as temporary setbacks from which he would somehow emerge triumphant. My mother, seemingly impervious to every blow, brushed them away as of no consequence, defended and cared for my father and was always unvanquished before a sea of troubles. If I found her with wet eyes often enough, I never found her without hope. If the rain came through the ceiling, as it did – well, the water could be mopped up and the ceiling repaired. If the bills piled up, they’d be paid eventually – no one could doubt that. If their health worsened, it would surely improve. There was always tomorrow, full of wonderful possibilities.
Especially, they thought, for me. I was to achieve what they had not. I was to put right what was wrong. My mother was confident of that. And since I had stayed at Rutlish after we moved to Coldharbour Lane, they were sure I had the best possible start. I knew that this confidence, too, was ill-founded, but I never told them.
Living in Brixton meant I had one and a half hours’ travelling each way six days a week, since Rutlish had Saturday-morning school. I travelled by train from Loughborough Junction, first to Merton South and later, when I moved to the third year, which had different classrooms, to Wimbledon Chase. It was on these journeys that I picked up an addiction to morning newspapers – the Daily Express in those days – which I would not break until halfway through my tenure of Downing Street.
I would turn first to the sports pages – it was the time of Surrey’s great run of seven County Cricket championships in a row, from 1952 to 1958 – and then to the news. I still remember my incredulity at the trial and execution for murder in July 1955 of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain. I could not believe her death penalty would not be commuted, and the experience turned me into a lifelong opponent of capital punishment. I remember, too, the dreadful Munich air disaster of February 1958, in which so many wonderful Manchester United footballers died, and the long saga of whether their manager Matt Busby would recover from his injuries. I remember them better than I remember Rutlish.
Our school uniform was expensive and could only be bought from one shop, Ely’s in Wimbledon. My first blazer and cap were new, but as I grew, later uniforms were second-hand. Fortunately Rutlish jumble sales were a source of larger blazers, with the embossed buttons from the outgrown blazer carefully preserved and saved, since they cost two shillings and sixpence each from Ely’s. Whenever my mother bought a jumble-sale blazer she ordered me to stay out of sight – she didn’t want anyone to know for whom it was intended. She always bought them too large for me, in the belief that they would last longer as I grew. She must have thought nobody would notice.
She was wrong. Once, when I had lost two buttons from my sleeve, Mr Winsor, the school secretary, called me to see him, and offered me five shillings from the school fund to replace them. It was a sensitive and kind act, and I thanked him for it. But I couldn’t accept, and my parents would have been horrified had I done so. They would have made me take the money back, which would have been even more shaming. In any event I felt abashed at the well-intended gesture and humiliated at the need for it.
Rutlish and I were not getting on. Some masters, like Bobby Oulton, the deputy head, and Harry Hathaway, who taught maths, remain clear memories, but most have long since been pushed from my mind; although we were not mortal enemies, we were certainly not good friends. I avoided after-school activities because it took too long to travel home. The Combined Cadet Force did not appeal to me – even apart from the cost of the uniform. And the lure of wearing a boater in the upper forms was certainly resistible. It all seemed rather pretentious to me.
My name did lead to squalls at school, though fewer than I had feared. A scrap or two and an early aptitude for rugby soon enabled me to settle well enough among my fellow pupils, and in my first year I was even appointed captain of rugby and told to pick teams for trial games. This was such a welcome task that it took precedence over all academic work. Mr Blenkinsop, the headmaster, was unimpressed when I ignored his valuable Latin tuition to concentrate on rugby trials, but he was too wise to take the responsibility away from me. Anyway, he had probably given up trying to teach me Latin.
Rutlish introduced me to foreign languages and the sciences (all draughty laboratories and odd smells), but the acquaintance was only casual. History and English were more bearable. Such homework as was necessary I did on the train, where an empty carriage provided a better opportunity than two crowded rooms in Brixton.
At school I did as little work as possible. I thought of the place as a penance to be endured. I kept myself to myself and cooperated only so as to keep out of trouble. I just didn’t engage. I never took school interests home or bothered my parents with talk of extra-curricular outings or holidays; I knew they could not afford them.
At about this time, I discovered I was short-sighted. I could read comfortably and play games without difficulty, but – sitting at the back of the class to keep out of harm’s way – I could not easily see the blackboard. In the days of blackboard teaching this was a real problem. No one noticed.
It has been said that I was bullied at school. That is not true: I was too good at sport to be a likely candidate for bullying. I was a member of the cricket and rugby teams for my house, and enjoyed my happiest hours playing those games. It was the best part of school. I even won a certificate from the Evening Standard for taking seven wickets for nine runs against Royal Masonic – including a hat trick. I once won a bet with my team-mate, Tony Weymouth, by hitting a cricket ball through a school window. It wasn’t the window I was aiming for, but it was thought good enough.
Sport was a large part of my out-of-school life as well, and I formed a lasting attachment to Surrey County Cricket Club and Chelsea Football Club. I saw Chelsea play for the first time in 1955, the year they won the championship. They beat Wolves 1–0 with a Peter Sillett penalty, and I was hooked for life. I have spent many happy afternoons at Stamford Bridge, and many frustrating ones as well, as Chelsea demonstrated their legendary unpredictability. I can still smell the cheroot smoke and roasted peanuts of a sunny Easter afternoon in the sixties when they beat Everton 6–2, and Jimmy Greaves scored five goals. Such a result had rarity value, quite apart from the odours of the day. Supporting Chelsea over the years has been a rollercoaster ride, but it has been a great aid in developing a philosophical view of life.
Individual sports have never had the appeal for me of team games – except for athletics. I still remember the wonderful evening Chris Chataway, the great English middle-distance runner, beat Vladimir Kutz, the seemingly invincible Russian champion. ‘Chataway went thataway!’ chanted the delirious crowd, and so he had.
But cricket is my first love. Clement Attlee once referred to cricket as ‘a religion and W.G. [Grace] next to a deity’. He put an old fashioned tickertape machine into Downing Street so he could keep up to date with the cricket scores, and it was still there in my time.
Playing cricket gave me some of the happiest moments of my life – not that I was ever very good, but then many
