Mrs Zigzag: The Extraordinary Life of a Secret Agent's Wife (23 page)

I know we were indeed very lucky despite our setbacks to have enjoyed such freedom from doom and gloom. Muggings and murderers hardly ever happened, and there was hardly any talk of terrorism. Television was very low-key, there were great films in the cinema, and wonderful theatre. Communications were perfectly adequate with no mobile phones or computers, and you counted on your fingers, not a calculator. Progress I feel has not bettered our life. Money-grabbing developers have ruined our country with money. I am happy I lived in the era I did, I simply loath life as it is today. In our days we had such good, clean fun and were able to walk in the streets and at all hours and anywhere, and go to bed without locking the doors and windows. Or, without being deafened with all the kind of noises of today – it cannot be called music. Everyone used to respect each other.

I was asked frequently how I managed to survive so many years with Eddie. When reflecting I am staggered, I think my religious background and my strong beliefs held me up throughout my long journey. I believe Eddie was moulded by his early life. His father was at sea a lot and he was usually left to his mother’s attentions. He was very fond of his mother. He got a message one day to say that his mother was ill and could he go immediately. He went off to the hospital, a special one for people that had no money, called a ‘poor house’. They were not nice places to die in. His mum saw him all dressed in his Guards uniform and was ever so proud of him. She died whilst he was there. Eddie grew very bitter; he was absolutely shocked and said that ‘if that is the way that society would treat his mother then screw society!’ His father was a marine engineer and always away at sea so his mother took care of all whilst he was growing up. Eddie’s parents also had a pub called ‘The Clipper Inn’ in Sunderland. So Eddie went off to London; he bought an old bicycle and rode all the way there. Then when he got there he got mixed up with a bad gang of people and was going to nightclubs and started getting into trouble.

I was never sure if Eddie’s experiences caused him to live in a wonderful fantasy on his own. In Norway he was facing certain execution for the slightest slip, and periods of solitary confinement also enabled him to live long periods alone. He spent two years in the Canaries with few past contacts. He also spent long periods at sea on the cargo boat. Another thing that stays in my mind is when his father died, and I said, ‘Now you must go to the funeral.’ He said, ‘You come with me’ but I said, ‘No, you must go, it’s your family.’ Then he said, ‘You are my family.’ It took all my time to get him to go. He was always very hard about his father. Now whether it was because of the beatings, I don’t know. They say that you knock one devil out and another devil comes in. He never seemed to want to have anything more to do with him.

Betty still fails to understand Eddie’s treatment by the Security Service. She remembers when, many years later, the espionage writer Nigel West organised a reunion of the surviving wartime double agents, and Eddie was deliberately not invited. Eventually, at West’s insistence, a number of wartime case officers very grudgingly allowed Eddie to attend.

Betty sees this as a result of Eddie’s ‘not being one of us’ in the eyes of the Security Services. Her opinion is that the Security Services were always pretty impressed with themselves, and Eddie made them look foolish. ‘Any way they could undermine him, they would,’ Betty states. ‘The problem was MI5 didn’t like any criticism.’ And though the service maintained that Eddie had been remunerated handsomely – mostly by the Germans (which they fail to note) – Betty remarks that they ‘weren’t so generous once they had finished using him’.

Betty is not happy with the way Eddie has been portrayed in the media. Remarking about the portrayal of him in a television documentary, she says:

His voice was spoken by an actor who spoke with a very harsh East End of London accent. It sounded nothing like Eddie, who spoke with a very cultured accent. And when his MI5 files were released, all the press commented on was his criminal past and his womanising. It always made me laugh when Eddie was described as a ‘master safe-cracker’. If you ever got locked out, Eddie could never pick a lock and get you in. He might have been able to take a crowbar to it. He was the most useless man in the house. That is probably why they used gelignite!

Betty remarks with some force:

Eddie was paid by the Germans but never by the British; why give Eddie a bouquet with one hand and stick a knife in his back with another? He was treated so badly. I frequently became outraged at the character assassination of Eddie, which just seemed to go on and on. Perhaps I am wrong with my attitude, but I cannot forgive whoever was responsible for the grief inflicted on Eddie throughout his life after the war until he died. So, in the end, the Germans were paying for his day-to-day existence. Conspiracy was rife, not by the press but by our own people, so I was always careful who I spoke to and what I said. But the CIA and the FBI came to visit Eddie in London once the war was over to say how grateful they were to him, as his work also helped the Americans. I recently came across a note in Eddie’s war records saying that he had been suggested for a decoration. Many people have since said that they will fight to get him the acknowledgement that he deserved but no one has kept their word.

Eddie was philosophical about his lack of official recognition. He told Frank Owen: ‘My luck with those fellows (the Security Services) is wearing thin. I’m not collecting gongs [medals], and anyway, I have my Iron Cross.’ But sadly, in his last months and looking back, Eddie remarked: ‘They didn’t even say thank you.’

Betty says quietly:

I wonder, if he was alive today, how Eddie would enjoy the current political circumstances. Also, what he would think about all those who are still going on about him. I wonder if he would still deny so many things and still be as interesting to people. Eddie always had a capacity for turning tables, I wonder if it would still be the same. He was very popular wherever he went. I was there at the beginning of his fame, and I found it difficult. He was always strong like a rock. You could understand that he could do what he did.

Betty doesn’t always recognise the part she played in Eddie’s life. Lilian Verner-Bonds remarks:

For all of his life he had Betty there. Even during his time in Germany he still knew that she was there. I remember that every time I spoke to Eddie, it was always Betty this and Betty that. She was always at the front of his life. I remember coming to Shenley and walking around with Eddie. He would always be saying, ‘Where’s Betty?’

Because of Lilian’s long-time friendship with the Chapmans, and as a keen observer of humanity, she has the last word about Betty’s life with Eddie: ‘She was the anchor of his life. She was the core and the rock.’

N
OTES

Prologue

1.
     
The Guardian
, Wednesday 24 January 2007.

Chapter 1

1.
     In the Church of England, also called the Anglican Church, the ordained minister of a local congregation is called a vicar, from the Latin
vicarius
. In other Christian denominations he would be called the minister or the priest.

Chapter 2

1.
     The International Isle of Man TT (Tourist Trophy) Race is a motorcycle-racing event held on the island. In the 1930s, the TT races became the predominant international motor-cycling event in the racing calendar, and the decade is seen as the classic era of racing in the Isle of Man.

2.
     Betty is referring to Mayfair SW1, one of the most exclusive areas in London.

3.
     The British Security Service, commonly known as MI5 (Military Intelligence, Section 5) is the United Kingdom’s counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of the intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, or MI6).

4.
     In civilian life Jasper Maskelyne was an accomplished magician and illusionist. They covered the entire roof of the powerhouse with canvas and painted it to look as if it had been sabotaged. They made papier mâché dummies of pieces of the sabotaged generator and added chipped chunks of brick and cracked cement blocks etc., in order to fool the surveillance aircraft that were allowed to fly over the scene.

5.
     The highly decorated Group Captain (Colonel) John ‘Cat’s Eyes’ Cunningham (1917–2002), was a Royal Air Force night-fighter ace during the Second World War and a test pilot, both before and after the war. He was credited with twenty kills, of which nineteen were claimed at night. Cunningham returned to de Havilland as a test pilot after the war. In 1946, he succeeded Betty’s friend Geoffrey de Havilland as chief test pilot following the latter’s death. He went on to test the de Havilland Comet, the world’s first jet airliner.

6.
     This book was later turned into a film of the same name, starring Dirk Bogarde.

7.
     Also called ‘doodlebugs’ and ‘buzz bombs’ by the British. Betty uses the term ‘buzz bombs’ in her recollections of the time.

8.
     Squares have long been a feature of London. A few were built as public open spaces, but most of them originally contained private communal gardens for use by the inhabitants of the surrounding houses.

9.
     Sir Archibald McIndoe (1900–60) was a pioneering New Zealand plastic surgeon who worked for the RAF during the Second World War. He greatly improved the treatment and rehabilitation of badly burned aircrew, and received a knighthood in 1947 for his innovative work and reconstructive surgery techniques.

Chapter 3

1.
     His father was Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park. He was in operational command during the Battle of Britain and later in the Battle of Malta. In February 1945 he was appointed Allied Air Commander, South East Asia.

2.
     Kensington is a district of west and central London. The area has some of London’s most expensive streets and squares.

3.
     Dame Elizabeth Rosemond ‘Liz’ Taylor, DBE was a British-American actress. She appeared in her first motion picture at the age of 9, and became one of the all-time great Hollywood screen actresses. Her much-publicised personal life included eight marriages. From the mid–1980s, she championed HIV and AIDS programmes, and received numerous awards and honours for her charity work.

4.
     George Burns was an American comedian, actor and writer, whose career successfully spanned vaudeville, film, radio and television. A television pioneer, he is probably remembered best for taking his successful radio programme
The Burns and Allen Show
to television in 1950. Burns was also a best-selling author who wrote a total of ten books. One of his most famous lines was: ‘When I was young, they called me a rebel. When I was middle-aged, they called me eccentric. Now that I’m old, I’m doing the same thing I’ve always done and they call me senile.’ He died in 1996, at the age of 100.

5.
     One of London’s premier restaurants of the time.

6.
     Another wealthy London enclave.

7.
     Kathleen Ryan was born in Dublin of Tipperary parentage and was a spirited and heart-warming actress who appeared in British and Hollywood movies between 1947 and 1957. She was one of Ireland’s great beauties of her time, and a long-time friend of the Chapmans.

8.
     James Neville Mason was an English actor who attained stardom in both British and American films. Mason remained a powerful figure in the industry throughout his career and was nominated for three Academy Awards as well as three Golden Globes.

9.
     The Rothschild family is a European dynasty of German-Jewish origin that established European banking and finance houses starting in the late eighteenth century. The British branch of the family was elevated to British nobility at the request of Queen Victoria. The name of Rothschild became synonymous with extravagance and great wealth. The dynasty was also renowned for its art collecting, its palaces and its philanthropy.

Chapter 4

1.
     The hustle and bustle of this traditional Devon shipbuilding and fishing village appealed to Eddie after his brother became a director of Appledore Shipyard. Eddie eventually bought a house in Odun Road.

2.
     The Troubles: the insurrection against British rule.

3.
     The Irish Republican Army was a paramilitary organisation seeking the end of British rule in Northern Ireland and the unification of the province with the Republic of Ireland. In 2005 the IRA announced an end to its armed campaign.

4.
     Quoted in
ZigZag
, by Nicholas Booth.

5.
     Stormont was the location of the Northern Ireland government of the day.

6.
     Aristotle Onassis was a Greek shipping magnate who developed a huge fleet of supertankers and freighters. His second marriage was to Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, the widow of US President John F. Kennedy, in 1968.

7.
     Maria Callas was an American operatic soprano, whose much- publicised volatile temperament resulted in numerous lengthy feuds with rivals and managers. She had a long and intimate relationship with Onassis prior to his marriage to Jacqueline Kennedy.