Mrs Zigzag: The Extraordinary Life of a Secret Agent's Wife (7 page)

With all of this going on, there was immense press intrusion. ‘Eddie’s notoriety brought endless people into our lives,’ Betty recalls. ‘The press were forever present. In many ways the media had contributed largely to our miseries.’ She has a great deal to say about the press, even now:

Although we cannot bury our heads in the sand, the obsession with people’s private lives has gone beyond acceptable, wrecking people’s lives just for news. How can we fight for protection on one hand and then traumatise others with such media exposure? Trauma causes the mind to go into shock. Media manipulation distorts so much. Even when Eddie died, everyone clambered on the bandwagon to make money out of his exploits. It was a nightmare.

Betty has even stronger views about her own government:

Eddie was paid by the Germans but never 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. 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.

People often ask me what life was like after the war with Eddie. Some mornings he would get up and say to me we’re off to Paris, or Rome, or Tangier, or Dublin, or Brighton Beach; it could be the South of France, or any number of other places. Could be almost anywhere. And he would expect me to get up and get ready and get organised to go. No excuses, he just got up and went. I always had a project going, and it was difficult to just drop it. You never knew how long you were going to be away.

Their married life was far from blissful, although it had its brighter moments:

Eddie used to play away at times. I would get so lonely and down. I wouldn’t say that I never interrogated Eddie on his return from one of his away trips. I would sit and tell him my news and then ask for his. At first no angry words; they would come later, sometimes a week or two. I then sifted through fact from fiction and so we went on. He only won his battles because I would consider what he had been through war-wise and had to come to terms with. But he surely took advantage of me and got away with nothing short of murder. After seven years of marriage, I became so lonely and seriously considered having a child. This would be the most far-reaching decision I would ever make. Eddie was quietly old-fashioned in many ways: he was courteous, but he expected me to perform all the duties of a wife for our whole time together, as well as propping him through all his business ventures. It was not at all unusual to get calls at all hours of the night to go to some sleazy nightclub to collect Eddie. One of these clubs was called the Maisonette. The woman who owned it would call me to say ‘Come and get him, he’s had enough.’

Betty continues: ‘So in some ways when he left home to go away with one of his mistresses to carry on an affair, it was bliss time for me to rest and establish some order again.’ In some of the more sensationalised accounts of Eddie’s life, women – as much as danger – were said to be an addiction. Betty is typically frank. ‘He had six mistresses in his life. And I used to say, when he was getting towards his end, “You know, you had all those mistresses. How I wish there was one here now who could help me with you!” This usually elicited a laugh.’ Sometimes he would introduce her to people as ‘my wife, Betty. She’s lived through six mistresses, haven’t you darling?’ Annoying as this was to Betty, she would always smile and say ‘yes’. When his MI5 files were declassified, Betty was disgusted when it was said ‘that he slept with girls and gave them some disease’. The stuffy security services, and one man in particular, as revealed later, found every excuse to blacken Eddie’s pre-war activities. ‘He attracted women on the fringe of London society,’ it was noted, ‘indulged in violent affairs with them and then proceeded to blackmail them by producing compromising pictures taken by an accomplice. He confessed to an experiment in sodomy.’ According to Betty, none of this is true. When this material was inserted into Eddie’s files is uncertain, but it may well have been after the previously mentioned change of handlers.

Betty states:

Although Eddie treated me appallingly at times, all other times he treated me so well. He loved special occasions. Always when I had a birthday with Eddie he would take me out. One birthday Eddie bought me my broadtail flat fur coat and a pillbox hat with an ostrich feather. Mostly we went to Les Ambassadeurs in Park Lane for my birthdays.
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One special birthday Eddie bought me some diamond clips that could be used as clothes clips or as earrings. They were very expensive and really nice. He was always very generous with his presents and would always think of something different. For him, birthdays went on for a long time. Our daughter is now a bit like that; it seems that she can never think of enough to give me. Eddie loved treating me in the Latin Quarter of Paris. There, Eddie and I used to go to a nude club. Eddie was forever trying to amuse or embarrass me and so he decided to take me there. I would sit by his side and the nude ladies would come and sit on Eddie’s lap and fondle him in front of me! And I sat there trying to be grown up! Eddie once said that it was better to live one day as a tiger than a whole life as a lamb.

Another embarrassing moment also came in Paris:

We had a very special friend who lived in Paris, Cecile Robson. He had a small beautiful house in the city, surrounded by a brick wall. He had worked for British Intelligence hence he knew Eddie. I went to stay with him along with Eddie, and we were sitting in his library one day. I was looking at his paintings that surrounded the walls and there were a couple of what I considered to be very strange paintings that didn’t make much sense to me. I asked Cecile what on earth they were. He said ‘Betty, don’t you know a Picasso when you see one?’

Apart from the fact that I grew very fond of Cecile, I loved going to his house to stay because he had a bathroom like one I had never ever seen before. It had every kind of perfume and bath oil that had ever been produced! The bedsheets were of the best pure silk, it was just like being in heaven! He also had real fur throws on the bed; it was a fabulous place to stay. It was a fantastic house, and garden as well. He knew all of the nightclubs in Paris and we’d always visit them together when we were there. Cecile’s father, brother and sister-in-law lived in London, in St John’s Wood.
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One day Cecile and Eddie decided that they would send the father to the theatre with me, a George Black show I think it was. They dropped us off there and arranged a pick-up later. They wanted a bit of freedom as their dad was known for wandering off. One day, when their dad was staying down in the country, they couldn’t find him as he had wandered away. They eventually found him in a freezer room trying to have an affair with a manicurist!

In the middle of the show, dad had his hand inside my blouse and was trying to undo it! I was doing my best to stop this and still watch the show. He didn’t succeed, and he decided he had to go to the toilet. Off he went and he hadn’t returned by the time the play ended. I searched everywhere for him, even with the help of the theatre staff. When Eddie and Cecile returned to pick us up, he still hadn’t appeared. I am not sure where they found him; it may well have been in the actual toilet he’d gone to anyway! I’d never even thought to go into the men’s toilet myself to check!

Betty remarks with classic English understatement: ‘He was such a difficult man.’

Once Betty was asked what it was like for her when Eddie was away so long, either when he was with his mistresses or on some mysterious errand. Her reply was, ‘I didn’t let the grass grow!’ The grass was not growing while Eddie was away in Ireland (see Chapter 4):

Whilst the shipping company was going on, I was having a minor flirtation with Keith Bedwell, who owned a place called Wigmore House on Wigmore Street in London, the headquarters of the Diners Club, which he started. I was meeting Kathleen Ryan,
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an actress who was making
Odd Man Out
with James Mason.
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We were going to Paris for the weekend together. Keith had his own aeroplane and said he would take us over. I think he thought it would be fun for all of us! Katy was looking forward to the idea, but the film was over-shot and running late so plans had to change for Katy.

So, Betty flew on to Paris where Bedwell had booked a suite in the Hotel George Cinq. Betty says, ‘Now the Lord is my judge, he slept on the sofa, I slept in the bed.’

Back in England, Eddie’s brother got wind of this: ‘He told Eddie that I was playing games with him and was on my way to Paris with another man. I’d told Eddie I was going with Kathleen – as I was supposed to have been, until her filming over-ran.’ With his jealousy rising, Eddie rang Kathleen’s London hotel and spoke to her. Clearly she was not in Paris. Without waiting for further explanations, he then rang the Hotel Cinq to ask, ‘Have you got a Mrs Chapman staying there?’ When they said no, he made his way to Paris, convinced that Betty had registered under a false name.

When he eventually arrived, he contacted a friend from his days in France with the Germans, Armand Amalou, a newspaper reporter who was working as a mercenary. Betty recalls:

He said to Armand, ‘You kill him and I’ll kill her myself.’ Fortunately, when he arrived I wasn’t in the hotel, and Kathleen had arrived to join us earlier that morning. Eddie was boiling, but when he arrived, Keith had left on a business trip to buy timber. With Keith gone and Kathleen arrived, Eddie had nothing against me! I got left some money by Keith so that Kathleen and I could have a nice time in Paris. When Eddie joined us and calmed down, we all had a ball together. I have to say, Kathleen was in love with Eddie. And I was in love with her husband, who was the number one surgeon at the Limerick hospital!

Despite Eddie’s explosive moments, underneath it all, Betty felt he had a good heart, and this was one of the things that caused her to stay with him. This was an opinion shared by many who knew Eddie later in life. And, whatever else might happen, ‘life with him would never be dull’. One unexpected result of the
News of the World
furore was that they became celebrities. They mixed with the elite and became friends with Hollywood stars such as Stewart Granger, Richard Todd, Orson Welles and Burl Ives. The Rothschilds were a family that Eddie knew well.
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‘One of the Rothschild women was even keen about Eddie’ – Betty remarked with a chuckle. And, despite all the ups and downs in her life with Eddie, at the same time Betty was beginning to build up experience in business that would serve her very well in later life.

4

B
EAUTY AND THE SEA

B
etty battled to keep Eddie on the straight and narrow. After the war, Eddie still had some dubious friends; Betty had the benefit of a stable and happy home background and an innate morality. Villainy was always attractive to Eddie. Not for the money, but for the excitement. Betty was therefore constantly trying to channel his evident talent and ability into safer, legal projects.

Life with an unusual man like Eddie Chapman was bound to be full of challenges. A less self-contained and resilient woman than Betty would have given up at the first hurdle. But Betty was an unusual woman. Today she would have made it to the top in any calling she responded to. Yet the barriers to high achievement for a woman of her time were virtually insurmountable for most. Nevertheless, she persevered, albeit aided by the fame that came with marriage to Eddie, whose story was now emerging, bit by bit. Even so, she was on her own much of the time, and her achievements were hers alone. She looks back on the time:

I don’t now know whether I would have chosen all the sudden changes in my life. If I had not been married to him, what would I have done? I don’t know. I was driven by the fact that I was the one who had to keep on and keep things together. I began my married life looking for a way to bring stability to our lives. I suppose partly to portray a respectable life, although at the time I was motivated often by the money to live. There were several times when we were completely stonewalled up against it, and I always managed to find a way out, either persuading someone to help me start something, or persuade the banks to help me.

For instance, a simple thing: I saw a board advertising a property for sale one day, and it had the name of the company who owned the property. So I rang, and they asked me my name, and I said ‘Miss Farmer’ and he said ‘Hello, darling’, and he thought it was his wife, because his name was Palmer. He and I became very good friends – great friends. I don’t think the relationship with his wife was very strong. And I got the property at a very reasonable price, and I was able to sell it and make a good profit. So when I managed to get the property in West Halkin Street, the agent was a friend – he was at our wedding, and it was through him that I got that house. I just happened to be fortunate.