Mrs Zigzag: The Extraordinary Life of a Secret Agent's Wife (6 page)

One night when Eddie was there with me, a man who wanted to take me to America was outside with a gun and wanted to kill Eddie! He was going to shoot him and take me off to America. Exactly how he thought he was going to do that is not at all clear! Actually, after that night I never saw him again.

Even after Eddie’s return, Betty and Eddie didn’t move in together. In part, this was because he was always coming and going. The strains of the war hadn’t helped Eddie’s emotional balance. By her own admission, Betty was a little afraid of him. He could easily explode without warning: ‘If anyone approached me in any way, Eddie would almost kill them,’ Betty says. ‘That was why I had to be so careful if I ever had any friendships that he never knew about, because he would have killed me and them too.’ This was no idle fear. While before the war there is no evidence that Eddie had an inclination to violence (indeed, as a young man he won an award for saving a child’s life), after the war, perhaps unsurprisingly given his experiences and his training, things had changed.

Betty recalls one particularly upsetting incident:

We were once returning home from a party to celebrate VE Day with some friends, and we were in a car following another car when it stopped without warning and we ran into the back of it. Everyone got out of their cars and there were a lot of angry exchanges as to whose fault it was and finally the driver of the car in front turned to me and said, ‘Why don’t you just go home? I wouldn’t mind going home with you’, whereupon all hell was let loose! Eddie didn’t like the remark. A fight started and it ended up on the other side of the road in a shop next to Harrods. Eddie took one final swing and the poor fellow went through the window. Never another word was spoken on it.

Many such incidents would occur in their life, and as a result Betty tended to withdraw from social life. Inevitably this meant that Eddie strayed for companionship:

One time I found some underwear of Eddie’s with another woman’s lipstick marks on them, so it was my turn to be angry. I threw the underwear out of the window and they landed on a woman’s head passing by! At that time we had a cat which actually belonged to the osteopath who treated Eddie. When I went down to retrieve the underwear, the woman said, ‘There are very strange people living in this area these days.’ Then she saw the cat I was carrying and went absolutely crazy about it. This lady had eleven cats herself and she was going off to America and taking some of the cats with her, going through so much trouble for it. We agreed to give her the cat, and then every day she used to call up and give us reports on the cat; how it had salmon for breakfast and the like. Eventually that cat ended up in America!

Of that time, Betty says:

Eddie was so restless after the war, I would never know what to expect. I couldn’t deal with it but had to go along with it, although unlike his earlier life, he had me as a stabiliser. Our life together was exciting and adventurous, and oh so dangerous. But it was also disruptive because I always had some project on the go, and he would take me away from it. If Eddie went out drinking it could end up as three or four days of drinking and could end in blazing rows. One day he came home saying he had spent the night listening to music, mostly Mozart, with a young lady in Earls Court Square, my old friend Julie Cooper’s best friend [Julie Cooper was the wife of the famous actor Terence Cooper]. This became a habit. If he wasn’t home, he would be spending the night in her flat listening to music. Supposedly.

When we were together and theoretically living a normal life, I got up in the morning but could never be sure where I would end my day! It could be Paris, Dublin, Rome, Brighton Beach, New York, or en route elsewhere. Otherwise it was a late breakfast and around lunchtime Eddie was on his way alone to meet a chum or have a drink in the local pub. I could be sitting around waiting for him for the rest of the day or even a couple of days or more – time had no meaning for Eddie.

But when we were together he was all attention, holding my hand and all that. He loved shopping for clothes for me or himself, and had a good dress sense; he loved me in flamboyant outfits, although I often wanted something simple and understated. He tended to want to show me off and we’d often row in our busy lives because it wasn’t my style. Contradictory really because if any member of the opposite sex dare pay any attention to me he was ill tempered, it was not acceptable to him.

One male friend he was okay about was Colin Park.
¹
I had become acquainted with him, and he was later the best man at our wedding. Once Eddie was going off to Paris to renew some acquaintances – no doubt female – and Colin said, ‘Let’s go to Ireland.’ So we went off to Ireland. I wasn’t romantically interested in him. He had booked the rooms in the hotel, but when we arrived I wasn’t feeling well. Perhaps it was the journey. The doctor was called, and I was in bed. In came the doctor with Colin. The doctor asked what the matter was, and he had me strip right off. And there was Colin standing there who had never seen me undressed. The doctor said to him, ‘Your wife couldn’t be pregnant could she?’ I thought, ‘It would be the immaculate conception if I am!’

We actually stayed overnight and came back the next day, and in the meanwhile Eddie had returned from Paris. Eddie went to a place we knew called the Wellington in Knightsbridge. Colin had already gone there for some reason, and since he knew Eddie they both got very drunk together. Eddie had a French-made car at that time, and I don’t think the drink-driving restrictions were as severe then, or Eddie would have never got into the car. The Wellington asked Eddie to take his friend out, as they were not going to serve him any more drink because he was too drunk. So, he took him out to the car, and found a card in his pocket to see that he was staying at the Mt. Royal Hotel. When they arrived at the Mt. Royal they refused to let them in because they were drunk. So, they gave him [Colin] his clothes and away they went.

They got back into the car and Colin said, ‘Let me drive.’ Eddie said ‘no way’, even though he was as drunk as Colin. He pleaded with Eddie and in the end Eddie let him drive. So, they were driving along Piccadilly, and they hit one of the big council bins alongside the road. The car went over several times and they wound up facing the opposite direction. When the police arrived they asked who was driving and Colin turned to Eddie. The policeman recognised Colin, and Colin said to him, ‘I know you. You were my batman in Burma.’ So, Colin was the golden boy, and Eddie was the villain. Eddie brought him home, where we had a big flat with a spare bedroom, and put him to bed. The following morning he said to me, ‘By the way I brought a friend home last night, give him some breakfast, although he may not be feeling very well.’

So, I went in and to my surprise who should I see! Meanwhile Colin had told Eddie that he had been away for the weekend with a girlfriend who had given him the cold shoulder. Eddie said to him that he had been visiting old girlfriends in Paris, and they were chatting away. In the end it came out that it was me who he [Colin] had been away with, but because nothing had happened Eddie didn’t get upset about it. In fact they were great friends and drinking buddies for a long time after.

Despite persistent proposals, Betty still had doubts about marrying Eddie:

Eddie had asked me to marry him every day for months, and I kept turning him down. I was getting tired of hearing it! He finally caught me at a weak moment and so I said yes. In the end I decided that life would be more interesting with him than without him. I guess I knew I ought not to tie myself to someone like Eddie. I did have reservations and I knew he wasn’t really suitable. I realised almost at once I wasn’t going to have anything like a ‘normal’ married life, but at the same time I found my life with him was exciting. So, I went ahead and tied the knot with him.

They were married on 9 October 1947, at Kensington Registry Office, which Betty describes as ‘a cold, informal affair’.
²
She continues:

We made up for it with a great get-together afterwards with a few friends at my flat in Queensgate. I wore a lovely suit, as did Eddie. Our witnesses were Colin Park and another friend from an estate agent’s near the Ritz. That evening after we married we went to The Little Club, before the party at my place in Knightsbridge for some drinks. It was all done in rather a hurry. Then we left for the country to spend a few days with a friend who owned a hotel, Frensham Ponds in Farnham, Surrey. It was intended to be a honeymoon of sorts, but I ended up helping out a lot because I knew the hotel business. Even so, it was therapeutic being there.

Prior to their marriage, in 1946, Eddie began writing his memoirs. Eddie’s relationship with MI5, which was never the best, broke down towards the end of the war. He had contacts in Russia, mainly through Luba Dastier, which MI5 wanted him to exploit and obtain information, and which he refused to do. He also had a new handler at MI5 who took an instant dislike to Eddie, and was vigorously blackguarding him on the official records.

During the last few months of his work as an agent for MI5, he had casually informed his handlers that he was writing an autobiography. They went ballistic, and forcefully reminded Eddie of his obligations under the Official Secrets Act – that it would be impossible for him to disclose any of his wartime activities for a very long time. Not only that, but if he revealed any information about his criminal past, it might leave him open to prosecution. Eddie claimed he had never signed the Act, but complied nonetheless to the extent that he was going to write everything down while it was still fresh in his mind, but would not publish it. People working with sensitive information are commonly required to sign a statement to the effect that they agree to abide by the restrictions of the Act, popularly referred to as ‘signing the Official Secrets Act’. But the Act is a law and not a contract, so individuals are bound by it whether or not they have signed it – signing it is more of a reminder than a commitment – thus Eddie was bound by it.

The idea of writing an autobiography started at some point in 1945 when Nye Bevan introduced Eddie to Sir Compton Mackenzie. He had been present at the VE night celebration, after which Eddie put the man through the window of Harrods. Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan was deputy leader of the British Labour Party from 1959 until his death in 1960. His most famous accomplishment came when, as Minister of Health in the post-war Attlee government, he spearheaded the establishment of the National Health Service. Compton Mackenzie is best known as a writer (his most famous book,
Whisky Galore!
(1947), was later made into a film). He was also a resolute poker of fun at the espionage establishment. A former intelligence officer himself, in his book
Water on the Brain
(1933), officers of MI5 and MI6 spent most of their time spying on each other. Mackenzie had built a house with a magnificent library on the Isle of Barra, an Atlantic island in the Outer Hebrides, where Eddie was invited to stay in order to write about his experiences, starting a manuscript in longhand. ‘He went and stayed there for about six months, I think,’ Betty recollects. He was also encouraged by another thorn in the pre-war intelligence establishment’s side, Wilfred Macartney, who was once accused of being a Soviet agent, and became a regular visitor to the Chapman home. ‘Oh, he was a crazy one,’ Betty remembers. ‘He would stand in our flat and be looking through the window towards the Brompton Oratory and shout, “I am God! I am God!” after he had been boozing.’

Eddie was warned by a friend that if he didn’t destroy the manuscript that he had written with Compton Mackenzie, his life would be in danger. ‘MI5 even raided our flat in Queen’s Gate, looking for Eddie’s manuscript. What upset Eddie most was they took away his new suit and his new suitcase,’ Betty says. MI5 eventually found the handwritten manuscript hidden in the flat and destroyed it. That, they hoped, was the end of the story. How wrong they were.

Some of Eddie’s wartime experiences were serialised in a French newspaper in the spring of 1946. When the British newspaper
News of the World
tried to do the same, Eddie found himself in court in breach of the Official Secrets Act. British Intelligence brought a case against him, and John Ritchie, a well-known barrister at that time, represented Eddie. Later, Eddie got Frank Owen, the editor of the London
Evening Standard
newspaper, to rewrite it. As a consequence, it didn’t have Eddie’s name on it and didn’t contain specific information. ‘I don’t remember how many thousands of copies went out before MI5 stopped the presses,’ Betty recalls. ‘The story was that it was the first time ever they had stopped the print-run at the beginning of a serialisation. Eventually the rewritten book was published, but due to the Official Secrets Act, the full story could not be told, and Eddie appeared to have been a traitor.’

When Eddie’s book first came out, he went to lunch to celebrate with the actor Richard Burton at Les Ambassadeurs, in Hamilton Place, Park Lane. Betty remembers: ‘I lunched at the same time with Elizabeth Taylor
³
and George Burns.
⁴
He seemed about 90 when I met him!’ Eddie’s book was then released and serialised in a French newspaper,
L’Etoile du Soir
. Betty remembers all too well those days:

Whilst Eddie was staying with Mackenzie, his film
Whisky Galore!
was being made. I went to the Black Forest in Germany, investigating for Eddie’s book. I found myself thinking about all of the German tanks going through the forest and it gave me such shivers. Conspiracy was rife, not by the press but by other people, so I was always careful who I spoke to and what I said.