Johnny Cigarini (3 page)

Timothy Wentworth Beaumont, Baron Beaumont of Whitley, clergyman and politician, born 22 November 1928, died 8 April 2008, and I am grateful to him. From what I've read, he seemed to be a great old bloke. As I'm sure you now realise, I was one of the lucky beneficiaries of his inherited fortune. As always in my life, my timing was perfect. I suppose after the lucky birth I had had, this was now the second instance of what would soon become a regular occurrence, and I am talking about landing on my feet. In later life, it was to be known as something more my style: ‘Golden Bollocks Cigarini'.

When I was ready to leave Margate to go to the posh Dean Close School, Granny told me to get a haircut. Until that year in 1960, there was a US airbase at nearby Manston Aerodrome, so US-style flat-top crew cuts or ivy leagues were all the rage in Margate. Although according to the local barber, America claiming the origin of the cut was “just unacceptable” and these crew cuts, according to him, were just a variant of the old English brush cut that had been worn since the eighteenth century. “It's sheer nonsense,” he declared. Nonetheless, that was the cut I got and it was totally inappropriate for Dean Close School.

When my two sisters came over from Rome, they would date the US airmen. These strapping men would show up at our house in fancy 1950s American convertibles with big fins, and that's probably where I got my love for old American cars. The airmen would be allowed out in Margate, but there was always trouble with the local lads. I remember seeing the military police, with their big batons, strolling up and down the promenade. There were black airmen on the base, but I never saw one in Margate. I was told they were not allowed out into the town, for their own protection.

The family got me away from Margate just in time. I was spending a lot of time hanging out at the Dreamland Amusement Park and becoming quite the yob. Perhaps by then that culture of mod-rocker gang hooliganism was beginning to rub off. Who'd have thought! I recall one attraction called ‘The Snail'. Outside, it was like a giant snail, but inside it was pitch black and the corridors had all sorts of obstacles, like soft foam floors, which people would fumble around in. My chums and I would go inside until our eyes got accustomed to the dark, then we would hang around near the entrance waiting for young girls to enter, then grab them and feel them up. I remember the shock I had when I was kissing a young girl and I touched her large breasts. They were just fantastic – trouble is, they were rubber. It's funny now, thinking back over my life and realising how the small, seemingly insignificant events have played a part on the whole. I'm wondering what kind of an effect my chums and I have had on the lives of those girls who went into ‘The Snail'!

I was fifteen and working at the Butlins Hotel in Cliftonville, Margate. I fried the eggs for breakfast – about a hundred of them at a time – on a giant flat pan. Late one night, when all the bars and cafés had closed, I was hanging around outside the hotel with a couple of my hotel workmates. Across the road, there was a closed café with the tables and chairs still outside. Three men had appeared and started throwing the chairs around. They were smartly dressed in suits and ties, in the style favoured by London gangsters. For some reason, my two so-called friends shouted “Hard men!” as loud as they could. It was very stupid indeed and they soon realised it. The gangsters dropped the chairs and crossed the road in our direction, then two of them and my two companions started fighting. I was lucky, I got the biggest, but he was also the kindest for some reason. He towered over me, waiting, but he could see that I was only a young whippersnapper and had no inclination to fight.

“You want to start something?” the man asked me.

I knew the answer, of course; it was an easy one. “No sir.” I stood there nervously. “To be totally honest with you, I don't know these two men very well and have only just begun working at the hotel. It's where we met.”

By this time my colleagues were being picked up by their arms and feet and thrown against a wall. I decided to save myself and darted off in a slalom between the group. Unfortunately, one of the other fighters turned and saw me, and he slammed me in the mouth. I remember at the time seeing my tooth arc through the air as if all time had stopped and only the tooth was moving – in slow motion. It seemed so strange to see my own tooth, in the sky, in the middle of the night, under the stars. It hit the ground and we both looked at one another. I ran like hell. I ran and I ran and they must have chased me for a good two miles. Eventually, I got to the park near where I lived and hid. They gave up the chase and I lived to see another day.

I went home, exhausted, exhilarated, and a tooth short. Granny was, of course, suspicious, what with the reports flying around town of all the thuggery and ‘tomfoolery', and I didn't make matters any better by telling her I had walked into some furniture. Even now, at seventy, I regret not telling her the truth. It was to be the only time I would ever lie to Granny.

I went back to Cliftonville the next morning and found it. Sound the trumpets! I found my tooth and it was right there, in the gutter. It was a whole tooth and root, and it was all intact, and it was there, and it was mine. It must have been over an inch long and it was simply wonderful to see it. It was as if the bullies were now unable to claim victory, now I had been reunited with my tooth. I later had it filed down and put on a small denture, and my mouth was back to normal.

I don't know whose idea it was – either my granny's or the Revd Senior's – but the decision was made that because I was going to an exclusive school, I should get rid of my Italian name and change it to that of my granny: Davies. England was not as cosmopolitan in those days, and there were not many Italian people around, as the diaspora of Italians had mainly gone to America. I don't remember having much of a say about changing the name. I don't even remember having my opinion sought, but my life was in such turmoil, leaving Granny and going away with my child molester, that I just went along with it.

Sometimes in Margate, it would feel as though T. S. Eliot was right. To quote
The Wasteland
: “On Margate sands I can connect nothing with nothing.” Maybe it was all part of growing up. I remember that night running up to my room so I would be with my things and my toy car, the one my father gave me. Sometimes I'd wish he were not dead. Sometimes I would pray for him to return. Her, too.

My name was changed by deed poll to John Victor Davies and it would stay that way for three years at Dean Close School, one year on Voluntary Service Overseas and three years at Durham University, where I was one of five John Davieses. But get this… I found out later that even the Davies name wasn't real! My grandfather's family had in fact been Irish and when they came to England, they changed their name to a Welsh one to avoid being stigmatised for being Irish. People in Durham University were always asking, “John Davies? Which one?” I got fed up with it all and considering it wasn't my real name, or even a real fake name, I changed it back to Cigarini when I graduated and started working in advertising. By then I was pronouncing it the Italian way, with the C like Ch as in ‘Chigarini'. Before in Margate, it had always been pronounced with the C like cigar. But right now, I was Davies and I was ready for Dean Close School.

Dean Close was one of the strict Church of England schools in 1960. Pupils had to wear shirts with starched detachable Van Heusen collars in style 11, not 22 (too long) or 33 (too cut away). Jackets had to be done up, but only with the middle button. Hands were not to be put in trouser pockets, and for going into town, pupils wore beige duffle coats and mortarboards. In fact, the students from all three boys' schools in Cheltenham – Cheltenham College, Dean Close School and Cheltenham Grammar School – wore mortarboards in town. This way of life all came as a bit of a shock to me, with my south coast accent (similar to cockney) and my flat-top crew cut. On my first day, the head boy was overheard saying, “I give him a month.” I was nicknamed ‘Johnny Margate' and the name was to follow me. In the mid-eighties, I was filming on the street outside Sotheby's, Belgravia, when I heard someone shout across the road “Oi! Johnny Margate!” It was one of the old boys. England. Small world.

I was in my first year at Dean Close when some bad news came to me. My granny had died. I immediately went for a walk in the grounds. To this day, I remember the occasion and the feeling of numbness I had. I didn't cry. I just felt… nothing. With both parents having died at an early age, death had already played a big part in my life and I remember even at the time being quite shocked that I didn't feel more remorse over the death of my granny, who I loved. “On Margate sands I can connect nothing with nothing.” I walked for hours that day. Hours and hours.

*

In spite of everything, I survived three years at Dean Close School. The first year I was a dayboy, living with the Senior family in a large house near the school. Sadly, there was that same atmosphere of paedophilia in the house, one I had unfortunately come to know about. As well as me, the Seniors had now fostered another boy, Barry, who was a couple of years younger than me. It seemed that Revd Ken Senior had given up on me, and at sixteen, I was probably too old for his taste anyway, but he was happy enough – he had Barry now. The scandal was, as with the priests, that the child molesting was done under the guise of religion. Ken Senior would go into Barry's room at bedtime to do ‘Bible reading' and the abuse would occur. I was sure of it, because I would often see him leaving Barry's room with an erection in his trousers. Although I was very aware of it, Ken's wife Nora was either totally innocent and naïve, or she just turned a blind eye to it all – a strange thing to do considering how it was now all happening in her home. Rumour had it that Ken had confessed his weakness to her before they got married, but in my experience, abusers' wives turn the other way, not wanting to suffer the consequences of exposure. It's strange, the secrecy that surrounds child sexual abuse, because it is a secrecy that even carries over to the victims. Barry and I were very good friends for example, but we never discussed it. Never ever.

After a school scandal that was written about in the
Daily Mirror
, Ken Senior left Dean Close School and moved his family to a British Forces school in Wilhelmshaven, Germany, and that was it – they were gone. I had only been fostered for a year, but I was back on my own. Alone. It was strange when they left because I didn't want them to, despite it all. I became a boarder at Dean Close and it remained that way for the next two years.

I enjoyed my time at the school and eventually the other pupils accepted me. Actually, in spite of the twitch, I became quite popular. Also, the school seemed to turn around my descent into Margate uncouthness, taking the edge off my south coast accent. It also taught me how to play sport, namely grass hockey, and I would go for long cycle rides to Cirencester or the Cotswolds, alone of course, turning the wheels of my bicycle softly through the towns, daydreaming, singing sometimes. I loved the light breeze on me that Gloucestershire gave, especially in spring. At times I would visit Cheltenham, which is a beautiful town. Alone, of course.

By 1961, the Senior family were in Germany and my granny was gone forever, so I had nowhere to go in the school holidays. The Rolls Royces and Armstrong Siddeleys would arrive to collect little Henry and his trunk, and I was alone, sitting on my bed, well-behaved like orphans tend to be, and wondered, on many occasion, what to do with myself.

By this time, my eldest sister Maria had moved back to Rome and had married Pietro Rebecchini, the head of operations for Pan American Airways. Pietro came from a well-known Roman family; his uncle had been mayor of Rome for many years. I decided to spend my summer holidays in Rome. My travel lust was beginning to really grow, or maybe the loneliness was too much to bear for one orphan, and I hitchhiked to get there.

I had just turned seventeen. I'd take the evening boat train from Victoria Station to Dover and catch the night ferry to Calais. It would dock around five in the morning and I would usually get my first ride from the ferry. It would take me about three days to get there through France and I would always arrive around the same time, in the middle of the night. My sister Maria eventually got used to being woken up by me, Little Johnny. I would do this journey for the next six years throughout the remainder of my time at Dean Close School and at Durham University.

*

In spite of being a child molester, Ken Senior did very little to harm me, and was, by and large, a benevolent figure in my life – as strange as that may sound. He had two further great influences on me. He encouraged me to apply to university, not something I would have dreamt of doing had I stayed in Margate (more likely I would have become a more professional-type hooligan), and he also suggested I take a gap year and do something called Voluntary Service Overseas. I had never heard of such a thing. Voluntary Service Overseas… what on earth could it be?

At the end of my second year at Dean Close, I took my GCE ‘A' (advanced) level exams. My grades were not great – I think a D and an E – but they were still pass grades in the UK and it was decided I should stay on a third year to do them again at ‘S' (scholarship) level. In the meantime, Ken Senior had recommended Durham as a fine university. He was certainly right about that.

I went for an interview in Durham Castle, next to the cathedral. I was now in my late teens and very impressed with my accommodation in the keep, and I had an interview with the master, Mr Slater. The interview was rather brief to say the least:

The next week I got a letter offering me a place, provided I improve my grades one level. I didn't let him down and I became college and university captain of hockey. The grades went up, too. Sports scholarships didn't really exist in England, but I guess that was an early version of one.