This eccentric book, with its combination of outrageousness, honesty and black humour, reminded me of a Joe Orton play. In a series of anecdotes it tells of the author's friendship with Robert Maxwell over a period of about fifteen years.
The
author is the youngest of four children and comes from a newspaper
family, whose members are Welsh although Eleanor was born and
bred in London. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that her
idol is also a newspaper proprietor.
Berry describes how she was first taken to meet 'Captain Bob' by her brother Nicky, then Financial Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. She is bowled over by Maxwell, 'a hulk of a man, who looked like a beautiful big black labrador (and) who generated a vivid, brutal, astonishing and overpowering sexuality'.
Eleanor's father, former proprietor of two national newspapers, is then preoccupied with preventing a new airport being built near his home in Buckinghamshire, which would result in hundreds of residents losing their homes. He has known of her friendship with 'Bob' although from Eleanor's conversation, and observations from others, it would appear that Eleanor is unlikely to be telling the truth (Eleanor assures him that 'there has never been any impropriety and never will). He asks her to get Maxwell to contribute £5,000 towards the campaign. She is driven to Bob's by her father's chauffeur, Mr. Brightwell, whom she describes as a man with a heart of gold also given to incredible rages.
'I understand you was only invited to tea,' said Mr. Brightwell. 'I hope you're not going to dawdle. I missed Dad's Army last week and I'll be blowed if I'm going to miss it again.'
Several hours later, after a violent attack of vertigo brought on by Bob's 'radiant, god-like and essentially masculine' presence, the kind ministrations of his wife Betty and a reading by Bob in fluent Russian of Eleanor's favourite passage in Yevgeni Onegin, she returns to her father's car, accompanied by her hero, clutching his present of 'beautifully- bound Russian books by Pushkin Gorky and Gogol' plus an envelope containing a cheque. They find Mr. Brightwell, the chauffeur 'engrossed in a tabloid paper showing photographs of naked women'. When Eleanor's father opens the letter he is dissapointed: 'This amount falls short of the £5,000 I asked you to get from Bob!'
Throughout
this lively and entertaining book, Berry freely admits her bias
in favour of Maxwell. She says,'concentrated sex oozed from every
pore of his person when he wasn't too overweight'. However she
concedes that he 'was no saint' and in her summing-up admits:
'Like F E Smith, my maternal grandfather, I can see no bad in
a friend and no good in an enemy.'
She is disarmingly frank about her other disabilities, including the schizophrenia she suffered from her teens, the onset of which she blames partly on her disillusionment with the Communist Party. (There was an amusing scene in her mother's Mayfair hairdresser where Eleanor, holding her copy of the Daily Worker, is loudly lectured to by her mother, Pam Berry on the evils of Stalin's labour camps. 'Suddenly, my mother added as if an afterthought: "Do you realise Lady Glendoven, the Marchioness of Salisbury and Lady Rothmere were all in here today? You've made a laughing stock of us both!"')
During Eleanor's illness Maxwell goes and fetches her out of an 'asylum' in North London and he and his wife are very kind to her. (Eleanor always speaks highly of Betty, Maxwell's widow, once calling her 'a resplendent rose of a woman.')
Berry also makes no secret of her sexual proclivities and includes an odd scene which, after Maxwell has threatened to give his daughter Ghislaine a 'hiding', she and the little girl discuss the three possible instruments of chastisement - a riding crop with a swish to it, a straight riding crop, and a few shoehorns. The nine- year old child is puzzled when in reply to her question as to which 'instrument of discipline' she would choose, Eleanor chooses the most painful.
She is also very funny when she describes her physical disadvantages. On their first meeting Bob orders her to find a bathing suit so she can swim in his pool. "Always dress to please men and not yourself," someone had advised me once... I looked dreadful. The garment would have made the bathing suit Christine Keeler wore at Cliveden look like an outsize maternity dress.'
Later, to imitate Bob's raven tresses, she dyes her own hair black and wears it in a pigtail. 'I was unaware that I looked like a middle-aged Chinaman.'
Although loyal about her own family, Eleanor throws herself whole-heartedly into campaigning for Maxwell when he stands for the Labour Party in Buckinghamshire. She uncharacteristically takes fright when one householder, 'looking like a gangster from the pages of Sapper' tells her: "Fuck off you common little red tart!'
Later she secretly goes up to London to vote Conservative.
On Maxwell's death the book takes a sombre turn. The author ends up at a major London hospital where she annoys the nurses and the other patients by singing Irish rebel songs throughout the night (because the nurses refused to give her sleeping pills) before her elder sister, described as 'a sturdy old soul', is asked to take her away.
Soon after this, still in a state of grief and hysteria, she resourcefully tricks her way into the offices of Private Eye, accompanied by her own doctor 'Ratty'. (A disconcerting footnote informs us: Dr Ratner died in suspicious circumstances since I wrote this book.') Using the false name of Natalie Klein and claiming to have been a cleaner on Maxwell's yacht, Eleanor deceives the Eye's receptionist into allowing her upstairs into the room of editor Ian Hislop, who is preparing to go to a funeral.
She
asks Hislop: 'Do you think there's a possibility that other people,
and I refer in particular to Mrs Maxwell and her children, might
have feelings and be severely hurt by your behaviour?' 'Do you
intend to apologise to Mrs Maxwell on account of this disgusting
outrage?' - adding menacingly 'How would you like a bus-load of
the boys?'
Worried that some readers might not believe all the stories in this bizarre memoir, I have made some enquiries among the characters involved. Eleanors father confirmed that he had indeed asked his daughter to get the sum of £5,000 from Maxwell over the matter of the airport and explained why this precise sum was demanded.
At one of the meetings to discuss the airport, Maxwell accused Evelyn Rothschild of not giving a contribution and said he would match whatever he gave. It emerged that Rothschild had already given £5,000, so Maxwell should have donated the same sum.
The receptionist at Private Eye vividly remembers how Berry and her male companion entered the offices that day. She said that Berry had repeatedly stubbed out cigarettes on the carpet but admitted that her description of the grottiness of the Eye offices was correct. She was completely taken in by Berry's story of having been a cleaner on Maxwell's yacht. She does not recall using the phrases 'pull the Maxwell team' or 'send for the Maxwellologists'.
Whatever one thinks of Maxwell, one has to admire Eleanor Berry for her courage in defending such an unpopular figure. This is certainly one of the most amusing books I have read for a long time, full of farce, lively dialogue and unexpected twists. Eleanor Berry is an original.
