LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

were wrong.

      In some ways Doris, who was always known as Doss, was a bit of a rebel by her family’s standards. Most of them were Salvation Army. They used to go out on a Sunday carrying the Good Book, singing the hymns and wearing the bonnets - the whole ten yards, in fact. Maybe Doss started off by going with them but decided it wasn’t for her - she was an independent-minded individual. Even so, she and Big Bob were very upright, God-fearing people.

      Their terraced house in Waverley Gardens had a front fence where Big Bob always chained his bike. The first time I stayed round there, I was put in the box room. Doss cornered me there. ‘Any girl,’ she said, ‘who gets My Robert into trouble will have me to deal with.’

      My mother was absolutely furious when I told her. Floored, livid and silent with rage. But she soon recovered her powers of speech. ‘You weren’t brought up to be a floozy!’ she gasped.

      She was right. I was an innocent. Bobby and I did our courting in the pre-pill era. A girl I had been to school with died after a back-street abortion. I read about it in the local paper and felt horrified and frightened. But Doss’s words hung over me. I never got Her Robert into trouble.

      Neither Doss nor Big Bob smoked or drank alcohol and Bobby realized that my mother was much more worldly and sophisticated than them. When the time came for him to introduce them to the mother of the girl he loved, he bought gin and wine for them to serve. Meanwhile, my mother had realized that Doss and Bob Moore were teetotallers. Wanting to make a good impression, she said, ‘I’d love a cup of tea’ when Doss asked her what she would have.

      Equally beside herself to impress, Doss came back with, ‘Cow’s milk, sterilized or condensed?’ It became a running joke between Bobby and me whenever anyone asked what we’d like to drink.

      Actually, Doss could never accept that Bobby could put away a lager or four. If he’d had too many, she’d say he was ‘under the weather’. Quite a few years later, one Christmas after Bobby and I were married, he and a lot of the other West Ham lads went out at lunchtime to celebrate the festive season. Christmas Eve always seemed to be a bit of a nightmare for me. There’d been a couple of times earlier when the turkey, West Ham’s annual Christmas present, would go walkabout instead of coming home. Each time it would be spotted sitting on the bar, with Bobby ordering a lager for himself ‘and a gin and tonic for the bird’. They’d eventually find their way home with the turkey propped up in the front seat.

      On this particular occasion, Bobby and I were due to go to a function in the West End that night but by mid-afternoon, when he and the turkey still hadn’t made it home, I began ringing round all his known haunts. Eventually I tracked him down to the Globe in Stepney and reminded him about the function.

      ‘I’ll be home in twenty minutes,’ he said.

      I waited for an hour, then rang again. ‘Don’t worry,’ said my increasingly merry husband, ‘I’ll finish my drink and be on my way.’

      So I waited another hour, then rang again. ‘If you don’t come home right now, I’ll tell your parents to come and get you,’ I said.

      Even that didn’t flush him out, so I carried out my threat. Doss and Big Bob duly set out for the Globe, where they advanced on him from the rear. Doss laid a hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Home, son.’

      ‘Mum,’ said Bobby as they escorted him out, ‘I’m 31.’

      Doss turned and said to the assembled company, ‘He isn’t usually like this, you know. He’s been under the weather lately.’

      Bobby was their only child, and Doss and Big Bob adored him. He was Mr Perfect, their reason for being. The only bad thing he’d ever done was pee in a milk bottle - disgusting! Doss was involved in everything Bobby did, from supporting him at every single match he played in to washing, bleaching and scrubbing his laces with a nailbrush to make sure they stayed sparkling white, then ironing them.

      It was Big Bob and Doss who took me to Upton Park for my first visit. I’d never been to a match before and I couldn’t believe the number of people there. We sat in D Block with all the other players’ families, behind the Directors Box, and Doss barely took her eyes off Bobby the whole game. She kept shouting, ‘Unload him! Unload him!’ I thought it was a technical term.

      Doss had been very pretty as a girl; she’d won a beauty contest and you could see who Bobby got his looks from. Our daughter, Roberta, has inherited her lovely nose. And she was a very good woman: unaffected, modest, generous to those she loved, and natural. But she was a Scorpio and a typical one in some ways. She would harbour grudges. If anyone said anything bad about Her Robert, that would be it for them. They’d be completely cut out, for good and all time.

      It wasn’t just her looks that were handed down to Bobby. A lot of his personality traits, like his repressed, uptight side, came from her, too. They were both strict with themselves, both terribly disciplined, almost obsessively immaculate. Even after a late, lager-fuelled night, Bobby would get a clothes brush out and brush his whole suit down before turning in. Everything he did had to be faultless, and that was his mother’s way too.

      She used to cut and edge little ‘Vs’ in the side of his shorts just the way he liked them, so naturally when I leapt onto the scene I decided that that was going to be my job from then on. The first time I did it, they split all the way up to the waist during a match, so the first time was also the last. Doss got her job back. My Vs just didn’t cut the mustard.

      I also discovered she was a wonderful knitter, so I embarked on making Bobby a hideous green V-neck sweater. I did aspire, but she set such a terribly high standard. Whenever I ate round at Waverley Gardens, she would serve the mashed potato in exact half-moon shapes, using an ice cream scoop. The cuffs and collars of Bobby’s shirts were always as smooth as glass. She’d never rush anything as crucial as the ironing. But as I’ve said, she and Big Bob were good people, and Doss was a little wounded and put out when Bobby fell in love with me. She felt he’d excluded her from his life. But again, that was Bobby - he only ever had one passion at a time. He met me and that was it. He was absolutely besotted.

      Bobby also realized that his mum was possessive and he rebelled against that to a certain degree. It wasn’t that he cut any ties with his parents. Once we were married, we constantly went round on visits. He was never derogatory about them. It was just that the intimacy, the sense of having one single, special person you shared your world with, had been transferred to me. He shut off from Doss emotionally. It must have hurt.

      Bobby might have been young and a bit square, but he was very romantic and he had exquisite taste. He would send me flowers and place little billets doux under my pillow or in the pocket of my coat. He also had good design and technical skills; if the football hadn’t worked out for him, he’d planned to train as a draughtsman. Once, when I was away for a few days, he redecorated my bedroom as a surprise. He turned a little filing cabinet into a jewellery box and re-upholstered the tub chair in red satin with black buttons. It probably sounds horrendous, but it looked gorgeous.

      He was also very generous. I would receive complete outfits as a surprise. Once, after I had admired what my friend Anita Barker was wearing, he phoned her to ask her to get something similar for me. He even bought a dress off her back once. By the time he went with England to play France, his taste was developing nicely. I received a pink suit, navy blue blouse with pussy-cat bow and a Paco Rabanne chain mail bag.

      When I was 17, we went on holiday to Italy - separate bedrooms, of course - where he presented me with a skirt and paper nylon petticoat he’d just bought. For all his macho credentials as a footballer, in some ways he was one of the most untypical men I would ever meet. Later on, after we were married, he used to help me do my hair and I’d sit there thinking, ‘If only the fans could see him now. The captain of England is bleaching my roots.’ He loved going shopping and - even more bizarre - he actually liked shopping for clothes with me. That isn’t a job for the faint-hearted.

      I’d left school by then to start my job as a junior secretary at the Prudential Assurance Company in Holborn. Every evening when Bobby wasn’t playing, he’d come up to meet me. I saw him every night

Скачать книгу