Eleanor Berry succeeded in terrifying publishing ogre Robert Maxwell.
Robert Maxwell was more tolerant than he was thought to be. When I was thrown out of the YWCA in the early Seventies, for filling in a form saying that its odious manageress wished to join the Communist Party, and was visited by its insistent volunteers like wasps buzzing round a plate, I told Bob about this.
He thought it was hilarious and invited me to stay in his home at Headington Hill Hall, Oxford, for a year, free board and lodging. Sometimes he gave me secretarial work to do after dinner.
I have a lot of irritating habits and there were times when I failed to distinguish myself while staying in his house. The secretarial work he gave me to do was quite easy, but he dictated far too fast.
'For Christ's sake, slow down, Bob!" I shouted.
He gave me a strange, possible haunted look and said in a ponderous, deep voice: 'You are a truly terrifying human being.'
Later that night, there was something wrong with the plumbing. Only one bath was in use. I took one at four o'clock in the morning as I thought everyone would be in bed. Not so. There was a violent rattling of the door handle and banging on the door, while I lay, reading Edgar Allan Poe, in a piping bath on the other side of it.
'Philip, what the f***ing hell are you doing in there?' bellowed Bob.
'It's not Philip. It's Eleanor,' I said.
'All right. I suppose I'll be able to come back in about three hours,' said Bob, in a jaded, fed-up voice that might have belonged to an out-of-work undertaker.
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His sexual chemistry
was such that sometimes I fainted when I saw him
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Not once did he ask me to leave. He actually liked me being in his house, and on another occasion in which I failed to distinguish myself his reaction was not angry but confused and astounded.
His sexual chemistry was such that I sometimes fainted when I saw him. I was walking in his garden, outside the Pergamon Press offices. He was leaving the building to go back to to the house for lunch. It was very hot, at least 90 degrees in the shade. He walked towards me and kissed me.
I made the fatal mistake of looking him in the eye while the sun bore like a screwdriver into the back of my head.
'Nice to see you taking some exercise, Pussycat,' he said.
I tried to avert my eyes but couldn't. I felt ill and knew I was going to pass out. When you come round from a faint, you don't know where you are. Nor do you recognise someone you know very well.
Bob was kneeling on the grass, shaking me violently by the shoulders. For a moment, I thought he was the doctor. To say that my wits were not about me would be an understatement. I rolled up my sleeve and asked him to give me a typhoid injection. He stared at me, looking like a baffled bear whose prey had just been snatched from him.
'I've seen you do this before, haven't I?' he said.
'Yes, I think you have.'
'You're ill, aren't you?'
'No, I'm not.'
He chewed briefly on his unlit cigar. 'I'm extremely worried about the kind of company you are keeping in London,' he said, obscurely.
There was a third occasion. This time, I seriously disgraced myself. It was my birthday and Bob and his wife, Betty, had very kindly organised a lunch for me. I was sitting on Bob's right and he filled my glass of champagne about four times. He asked me what year I was born in. I gave a false date, as any woman would. He went down to the wine cellar and brought a bottle of red wine into my room, labeled the wrong year. He was a bit naughty. He dared me to drink the bottle of wine in one go. I never say no to a dare, so I drank the lot, and was feeling sick.
'Good,' he said. 'Now that you've drunk the wine, I want you to stand up and make a speech.'
'All right, but I'll have to hold the back of the chair with both hands.'
'Never mind about the chair. Just make a speech.'
I was feeling disinhibited and got up and did so. It was at this point that the lamentable trouble started. I raised my voice and told an anecdote about an Irishman going to an employment agency. I cannot print the anecdote, regrettable, as it is disgusting beyond belief and contravenes the Obscene Publications Act. Bob looked pale. Ian, his son, helped him to his feet.
'Are you all right, Mr Maxwell?' asked his personal assistant, Miss Jean Baddeley.
'I am going to my room,' said Bob, his speech slow, deliberate and funeral. 'I wish to be given some hot, sweet tea.'
I turned to Ian, mortified with embarrassment. 'Oh dear, your father's been taken ill,' I ventured.
He was quite angry and fixed me with a stare. 'Don't you dare, ever again, speak to my Dad about necrophilia!' he shouted.
Before describing the following, I must explain that I have an obsessive phobia about illness, both in my case and in that of those close to me. In comparison with the previous incidents, my behavior was fairly reasonable on this occasion. Bob was depressed and slightly irritable.
On Saturday mornings, I often had coffee with him in his office at Pergamon Press. Most times, he was relaxed and I felt I could say anything I wanted to him. That day, we were drinking coffee as usual.
'You don't need five cubes of sugar in your coffee. You'll make yourself sick,' he said. I ignored him. 'Also, take your spoon out of your cup when you've finished stirring your coffee.'
We talked about A la recherche du temps perdu, which I had to study at university. I got a bit heated about the main character, Marcel, his obsession about his bedside light and his tedious memories evoked by a crappy old biscuit.
'His attitude towards his bedside light may not mean anything to you, but it meant a hell of a lot to the boy!' said Bob.
'Perhaps. There was another thing about him.'
'Which was what?'
'His continuously sending messages from his room to his mother's cook, only to find out if his mother would be coming to see him, to prove her love for him. Why should a boy be concerned about whether his mother loves him? What does it matter to him whether she loves him or not, when there's no sexual connection.'
'You've got sex on the brain, you have.'
'Surely, his only logical motive for sending messages to the cook would be prompted by his terror that his mother would be taken ill.'
'Why do you say that? Another thing, stop, stirring the bloody coffee over and over again in that compulsive way. Once or twice is enough.'
I answered his question, while he leant back in his chair, smoking a cigar. He cleared his throat and sounded like a gang of Hell's Angels trying to start their motorbikes. 'It's simple,' I said. 'There couldn't be any other explanation. A child wouldn't be interested in whether his mother loved him. He would only be worried about her imminent death. It wouldn't be rejection he'd fear. It would be illness. He would live in permanent fear that she would die in front of him. He would be terrified of her death, not her lack of love for him.'
'Oh, bollocks!' said Bob.
