Spike: An Intimate Memoir - Norma Farnes

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      In my ears

      the sound of the

      coming dead

      All seasons

      All sane

      All living

      All pain

      No opiate to lock still

      my senses

      Only left

      the body locked tenses.

      He told me he had written it in the psychiatric wing of St. Luke’s Hospital from 1953–4, and I realized that the poor devil had suffered like this for decades with little hope of a cure. At such times he could not bear any form of noise. His definition of noise was different from other people’s: the ring of a door bell, the shutting of a door seemed to him as bad as the sound of a pneumatic drill. Unless one had experienced it, he said, it was impossible to imagine the feeling of utter desolation that followed.

      It was devastating to see him in this state, huddled in a chair, his shoulders rounded, his legs up against his chest. No matter how desperate he felt I never feared he would commit suicide because he loved his four children too much to put them through such an ordeal. But his habit of self-medicating worried me. He could so easily forget how many he had taken. Even worse than Tryptozole was a dreadful drug, Tuinol, which had the advantage of bringing him out of the trough more quickly than other medication, but after recovery would plunge him into even deeper misery than he was suffering before. I was told that eight Tuinol was a lethal dose so I started to sneak into his office when he was in the bathroom to see how many he had used. But he had his secret supplier so I could never be sure how many he had taken. Those were nightmare days.

      As soon as Spike sensed that the black dog was about to take over he moved into his office, which must have seemed like a womb to him. There he was self-sufficient and I made sure the outside world could not intrude. He felt he was better alone, and above all was determined that the children should not see him. His system closed down to such an extent that he neither ate, drank nor went to the loo.

      When I came to know him better I used to push notes under the door so he was aware that I was still in the office. I felt it was a comfort for him to know there was somebody else in the building. Often I stayed until nine-thirty or ten and would then write another note to let him know I would be home in twenty minutes if he wanted someone to talk to. On reflection I wonder whether this was more for my peace of mind than his.

      Sometimes the phone would ring at two or three in the morning.

      ‘Are you awake?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Well, you are now.’

      On those occasions he never discussed himself or his depression. He just wanted to talk to somebody.

      ‘Tell me about yourself,’ he would say. ‘Are you all right, Norm?’ And then we would chat inconsequentially, sometimes for an hour or two.

      I knew he was emerging from a depression as soon as a note appeared on his door. It meant he was preparing to come back into the world. It would say, ‘Leave me alone,’ or something else, less polite.

      Then he would come out of his office, his whole appearance changed, with large purple bags hanging over his cheek bones, his body hunched and his gait unsure. The next stage would be a curt, nasty, ‘Why do you keep me unemployed?’ But I always shrugged it off.

       Chapter Seven

      On 7 November 1968 Spike wrote in his diary, ‘I should shoot her.’ I got married the following day. To me he said, ‘Keep your own flat and let him keep his. You’ve been very happy for nearly a year together. Don’t cock it up.’

      John Hyman was everything I considered I was not: educated, professional, liberal and only too ready to agree that there were grey areas which needed to be discussed on most topics. He was quite different from Spike, who shared a number of liberal ideas with him, but did so vehemently leaving little room for argument. John seemed well-balanced and reliable. He was an extremely successful solicitor, with offices in Harrow and Regent Street, and did not expect me to give up the job I enjoyed.

      I was so busy that sometimes I wonder how I fitted a private life around it. We met on New Year’s Eve. I was dating a BBC director but he was in Scotland and snowed in. A friend dragged me out to a party in Pinner and I was immediately charmed by him.

      We did not follow Spike’s advice and moved in together. Spike’s version of married life was not an example I wanted to follow. There was no doubting Spike and Paddy’s tremendous mutual attraction. Within minutes of meeting he told her, ‘I’m going to marry you.’ But their relationship oscillated between tender love and furious rows. They would argue, she would not give in, he would accuse her of being an iceberg and then move into Number Nine. As well as his office he had a large sitting room on the next floor up. It was furnished in the style beloved of Edwardian gentlemen, with a fireplace, deep armchairs, oil lamps and walls lined with bookshelves. Once he had taken up residence he would greet me in the morning and still be there when I left at night.

      During these periods he always asked if Paddy had phoned, just as he would when he was in a depression. She would not sit in at home, however, as Spike thought she should, but went out with friends. I am certain she never had an affair. Which is more than could be said of him, although he loved her very much. She did not only have to deal with Spike’s depressions; when he was living at Number Nine Spike would also spend time with what I came to call the Bayswater Harem. He did not try to hide it from me, indeed he claimed he had slept with three leading ladies during one theatre run. He was not the first man who thought there was one rule for him and another for his wife, but if you had asked him he would have professed a complete belief in a faithful marriage. Once I asked him, straight out, what he was up to. He gazed at me sadly out of his blue Irish eyes. ‘Oh, Norma. I’m sleeping with some of them. One day I’ll pay for my sins.’ He had not entirely forgotten his Catholic upbringing.

      There seemed to be anything between half a dozen and a dozen women in the harem at any given time. While he embraced the sexual emancipation of the Sixties and Seventies and enjoyed cocking a snook at authority, Spike still lived part of his life according to Victorian values. He always stood when a woman entered a room, helped her into a chair, arranged corsages when they were his guests at dinner and insisted on paying their taxi fares home. Nearly all his intimate girlfriends were friendly with one another and few seemed jealous about taking their turn in his bed. He seemed to have the knack of persuading them that there was nothing unusual about such an arrangement.

      Spike’s love life was his business and I was determined not to sit in judgement. To paraphrase Johnny Speight, he did not trouble me and I did not trouble him. I soon got to know Liz Cowley, his long-standing girlfriend, a diminutive, bubbly and highly intelligent Canadian journalist who became Deputy Producer of the BBC current affairs flagship programme, Tonight. She was at least his intellectual equal and great fun. Sometimes he found it difficult to cope with her independence. Because she did the same as him and slept with other partners he also considered her amoral. It takes a man to work that one out. She never showed the slightest jealousy and I think that irked him more than he liked to admit. I always thought she was ideally suited to him. They continued to meet until two years before his death. Spike would say to me, ‘Ssh. I’m in town because you need to see me.’ Then came a grin and a wink.

      He and Liz first met when she was working for Reveille, an armed forces orientated newspaper, which wanted a feature on The Goon Show. There was an immediate attraction, he said, and he invited her to dinner, the first of scores. He told me he could never understand why she enjoyed their conversations.

      ‘She’s a real highbrow – went to university and I didn’t.’

      The lack of formal education was something that bugged him all his life. I reminded him that his friend, Robert Graves, had written that Spike

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