Lady Lucan - her story

Lord and Lady Lucan. They look like an iconic 60s British couple, possibly even minor Royalty, with their photogenic looks and well-styled clothes. At one point Lord Lucan was offered a screen test for James Bond. 

Perhaps that is why Lady Lucan clearly finds it hard to let complete go of the glamorous dream which became a nightmare, just as some people struggle to accept that the apparent fairy tale of Charles and Diana should never have happened, and may even still sup from their Royal Wedding commemorative cup.

Yet Veronica Lucan alone emerges from this tragic tale of financial ruin, madness and murder like a 20th Century Victorian heroine, against all the odds, her voice finally heard, to tell her story in full, 43 years after that fateful night.

Some have passed judgement on her, saying she has 'just done it for the money'. I disagree. She has had 43 years in which to cash in on one of the most notorious crimes of the 20th century if that were the case. Why wait until she is an old lady and live so frugally and privately all this time when she could have been in clover? It seems more likely that she wants the world to know her side of the story before she dies. Plus she probably could do with a few quid for her twilight years. She may live in a small mews house in Belgravia, but you can't eat bricks and mortar, and she is apparently wholly reliant on her state pension. 

Some have accused her of being 'cold'. Again, I disagree. Not only is she a product of her class and times when the stiff upper lip and farming your children out to nannies was the norm for posh people, but she has necessarily had to build a high wall around her emotions over the years for the sake of her sanity and survival. Her devastation is evidenced in the fact she still lives in her husband's former bolt hole, a stone's throw from the murder house, has never remarried or recommenced a career. She has battled brain injury from her husband's attack and entirely understandable depression from his psychological and physical abuse of her, even before his attempt to murder her. As if all this weren't bad enough, she was subsequently ganged up on by his friends and family who blamed her for 'driving him to it', (if they admitted he had anything to do with it at all - some tried to insist the crime was committed by an unknown intruder), by contesting him for custody of the children following their separation. She then saw her children eventually turned against her by the wealthy relations who offered to look after them for a while as Lady Lucan tried to come off her medications so that she has now not seen them for 35 years, never mind meeting her five grandchildren. 

As for being 'a bad mother' - was she ever given a chance and the right support following the tragedy to become a good one? And let's not forget this is a woman whose husband repeatedly tried to get her declared insane and committed to a mental institution as part of his psychological abuse of her in the years leading up to the crime, with the compromise that she at least agree to take the heavy medication prescribed by his doctor friends to regulate her anxiety and depression for her 'own good' and despite crippling side effects. Certainly she was a financially impoverished mother following the crime and not able to keep her three children in the style to which they had become accustomed, unlike her relations, who were.

And every day. Every day she is haunted by the murder of her nanny, Sandra Rivett, a good and decent woman, who shouldn't have even been in the house on that fateful November night in 1974 were it not for the fact she had asked to switch evenings off in order to spend time with her new boyfriend and Lady Lucan had agreed.  Lord Lucan, having watched the house for some weeks to observe the pattern of comings and goings had been floored by this and assumed the woman making tea in the kitchen - of similar height and build to his estranged wife in the gloom - was his wife. However his horror at realising his mistake once he had bludgeoned the nanny to death did not stop him trying to murder Lady Lucan in the same manner, and it is only by dint of her quick-wittedness, that she managed to distract his attention long enough to flee the house and summon help at the nearest pub, despite severe injuries. However, prior to her escape, he was confident enough of the fact she wouldn't live to tell the tale to admit to her that he had killed the nanny.

I didn't know what to expect when I watched the ITV television interview with Lady Lucan last night but I found myself transfixed by her elegance, her grace, her unflinching honesty and her unfashionable lack of self-pity. There was even a little flash of humour here and there, hints of the sparkling woman she could have been. Even more impressive was her absence of hatred towards all those who had conspired to control her, badmouth her, kill her and finally desert her during her adult life. Ultimately as she admitted, all she had wanted was to have a family who loved her and whom she loved. 

Yet, this simple wish shared by so many, turned out to be an impossible dream which eluded her.  She is a woman who was unlucky in love, and all the other bad things in her life emanated from that simple fact. But like many abused wives, presumably she always lived in hope that Lord Lucan would change, just as he undoubtedly always hoped for that 'big win' which would set him up for life. 'Lucky' Lucan, it turned out, was an ironic nickname as he was never that lucky after his beginner's luck ran out and he subsequently fell under the thrall of John Aspinall and the Claremont Club. 

Aspinall is said to be the key to the whole mystery of what happened to Lord Lucan, but Aspinall died in 2000 taking any secrets to the grave.

And though Lady Lucan knew Lord Lucan (aka John Bingham) best of all, her theory of what happened to her fugitive husband (she believes he committed suicide by throwing himself onto the propellors of a cross-channel ferry from Newhaven, shortly after the attack) is not even in the top three.

What seems remarkable is that there are still people out there who continue to avow Lord Lucan's innocence of the crime or make excuses for him. As if a blue-blood can do no wrong or should not be expected to live by the same rules as everyone else. Many individuals face financial ruin through gambling addictions and other ill luck, but they don't go around killing people.  Nor had Lady Lucan obstructed his access to the children following their separation to offer any justification for his unconscionable rage. If anything she still loved the idiot and hoped for an eventual reconciliation.

Lady Lucan may not be perfect (she freely admitted she often verbally retaliated quite cruelly herself when her husband provoked her or stayed in bed all day when she was depressed) but what she gave in her television interview was a masterclass in human dignity and survival against the odds. So let's hear no more of this 'victim blaming'. If it's not acceptable to blame any other victim of domestic violence for their fate, why should it be acceptable in Lady Lucan's case, just because she is well spoken?

The 'Cinderella Law'

The emotional abuse or neglect of children is to become illegal if the proposed new 'Cinderella Law' is introduced. Crimes such as the withholding of love toward a child could become an imprisonable offence, carrying a sentence of up to ten years!

Goodness knows where this would have left my late father who, by and large, could only show affection to cats and whom I now firmly suspect was on the autistic spectrum. Would my sister and I have been taken into care?

On a more serious note, while the sentiment of stamping out emotional abuse and psychological harm is admirable, how on earth would it be policed and established beyond reasonable doubt, let alone enforced? Prior to which would be the more pressing urgency to have 'neglect' and 'abuse' legally defined and categorised, to exclude the parent who makes their child do its homework each night, refuses to buy it the latest branded trainers and disallows it to live on ice cream and marshmallows! (always a childhood dream of mine). Notwithstanding, there are plenty of parents who are simply not very good at parenting or have psychological impairments to expressing emotion like my father. They may not mean to ignore or act inconsistently to their children and their children may love them in spite of their shortcomings or, what may appear to outside eyes, a latter-day Dickensian scenario. Then there's the opposite scenario of 'loving neglect' - where children may have all the gadgets, holidays and ponies that money can buy - and a whole string of au pairs or nannies - just very little time spent with their actual parents. Sending children to boarding school too could potentially be classed as emotional neglect or abuse, depending on who you ask/which boarding school (an ex of mine was very badly affected by being packed off to boarding school from the age of eight). And what of all the ill-educated parents who have little idea of how to stimulate and intellectually nourish their children and consider that to feed, clothe and send them off to school each day is enough? From what I have read, this law almost assumes that all parents are middle-class and well educated, therefore any neglect must be deliberate.

Curiously however, there is no mention of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), the syndrome in which the resident parent effectively coaches or coerces a child into hating a formerly beloved non-resident parent (and sometimes that non-resident parents' entire side of the family) post divorce/relationship breakdown, using much emotional manipulation up to and including threats of dire consequences if the child defies them. Some resident parents even make false criminal allegations to paint their former partners in the darkest possible light or get them into trouble with the law.

PAS can happen to children of any age - it is merely the tactics which change. The good news is that PAS is provable by means of The Warshak Test, a psychological test developed by leading PAS authority, Dr Richard Warshak, which could easily be insisted upon by a judge in cases where mediation is refused or a child is reported as not wishing to see the non-resident parent. The resident parent could then face losing their maintenance payments, and potentially custody of the child or a prison term in extreme cases if it is proven that they are deliberately psychologically harming their child by obstructing a relationship with the non-resident parent out of their own need for revenge or spite, rather than acting in the child's best interests, (and why on earth are children still not required to appear in UK family courts?) How is a judge supposed to establish the truth from a third party report, or even the hardly unbiased word of the resident parent, who may be largely responsible for the child not wishing to see the other parent?!

I believe that stamping out the emotional abuse of PAS would be a much easier ask for the family courts to address than the decidedly grey and uncharted territory of how much parental love and attention is enough to produce a healthy, happy and productive new member of society.

Some childcare experts would furthermore argue that, at the lower end of the scale, being allowed to get bored or frustrated sometimes is an essential part of child development in its own right as the child who is never allowed to grow bored or frustrated never fully develops their creative side or the resilience and independence they will need to survive adult life.

Nicer Than PIE

All kids knew who Mary Whitehouse was when I was growing up. She was that interfering old biddy-body (and self-appointed chief of the Viewers and Listeners Association, which she founded), forever on the telly with her 'Clean Up TV' campaign railing to stop us kids hearing any rude words or watching or hearing anything else we shouldn't. In short she was out to spoil our fun and make us conform to white middle-class Christian values just like hers.
She was a figure of widescale derision, perhaps hardly surprisingly when she demanded that the word 'knickers' be removed from the Beatles 'I Am A Walrus' prior to broadcast on TV, complained about Mick Jagger's suggestive microphone positioning and as for Chuck Berry - he could keep his disgusting 'Ding-A-Ling!' to himself, stateside! All these and more legendary demands for 'public decency' long before two young comedians thought to wind her up with their TV comedy show The Mary Whitehouse Experience.
Now I read we children had reason to be more grateful to this retired RE teacher than we imagined as she was the one who exposed that PIE (the Paedophile Information Exchange - yes they really were that blatant back then) was being partly funded by government money and even had supporters from within the Home Office. Not only had PIE hitched its bandwagon to The National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty) where it found naive support among some now-senior political figures (sic recent scandal), it had attempted to do the same with feminism and the Gay Liberation Front. In an age of 'anything goes', it chanced its arm to sneak in and pretend to be a valid maligned minority group arguing for its rights to be recognised and enshrined in law just like any other. Not to mention the rights of children to sleep with ancient raddled adults (don't remember waving my junior placard on that particular protest).
Had Mary Whitehouse not shone a timely torch on PIE and their activities, who knows how much further PIE might have got?
Here is a chilling BBC interview with two of the proponents of PIE arguing for the age of consent to be abolished, incest to be legalised, and claiming that it is child molesters who are the dodgy ones out to exploit children - 'paedophiles love children' - the term paedophile meaning 'lover of children'. The interviewer seems worryingly out of his depth too in coming up with effective counter-arguments or killer questions.
Of course even in this area Mary Whitehouse did not always get her moral compass right.  When her National Viewers and Listeners Association decided to dish out annual awards to what they considered fine and upstandingly wholesome British TV shows, Jimmy Savile won one for 'Jim'll Fix It' and Mrs Whitehouse was quoted as sighing; 'If only they were all like that nice Mr Savile.'
How she must be turning in her grave now, poor dear.
At the end of the day though Mrs W was proven right in her suspicion that standards were in steep decline. Nowadays you don't even have to wait for the 9pm watershed to witness scenes of gratuitous sex, violence and swearing on TV. Then computer games, the internet and mobile devices came along. Now any individual of any age can watch anything, anytime, almost anywhere. It's like the nation has lost any sense of responsibility towards its young or vulnerable. Either that or I am getting old and this isn't really happening. On the flip side at least most youngsters know what a paedophile is these days (without it having to be explained to them by a broadcaster) and forewarned is forearmed. The law also takes paedophile crimes seriously nowadays as oppose to just sweeping them under the carpet and encouraging any victims brave enough to come forward to just forget about it as the law would have done in the 70s and 80s. Though as broadcaster Matthew Parris opines, plenty of right-minded individuals were as horrified by PIE in the 1970s/80s as we would be today, and it is thanks to their efforts then that PIE was eventually forced to officially disband in 1984, mission for acceptance, legal rights and protection for their activities unaccomplished. Thankfully.

Coffee with Lexi

Recently I spotted a former colleague *Lexi in the street. 'I'm so glad I ran into you!' she exclaimed. 'Did you get my Facebook invitation?' I had to admit I seldom checked my Facebook invitations. 'I'm going back to New Zealand for my 30th birthday and I might not be coming back.' she explained. As it turned out, I could not make her leaving do, but luckily she was free for an impromptu coffee there and then.
Lexi still loved Oxford it seemed, but she was stuck in a dead end job and the immigration people were on her back again. In additon the latest boyfriend had just fallen through. On the plus side, the economic situation in her home town had improved in the seven years she had been travelling and she was very much looking forward to her 30th birthday bash. 'My parents have clubbed together to buy me a car and they will both be there for the first time in sixteen years.'
'How come?' I asked.
'Well they split up when I was fourteen, so I normally have two birthday celebrations, one with my mum and one brother and one with my dad and other brothers, the following night. Now they are finally talking to each other and being civil and I am so chuffed. It's almost as good a birthday present as the car.'
'That's great', I said.
'Of course, Dad's remarried now, so they'll never get back together again.. They fought like cat and dog besides, but I still never expected them to split up. Y'know, some people, that's just how they go on. Argy bargying all the time. They always used to pretend it was 'play fighting' in front of us, and I believed them when I was little, but then I realised there was more to it as I got older.'
'How did their split affect you?' I asked
'Oh I was a complete bitch to my mum for at least two years. I blamed her for everything. Even though I knew she wasn't to blame for everything. She was just there. But I had to show her much I was hurting. By hurting her, I guess. I mean the grown-ups are meant to be in charge, right? How could they f*** things up like that? How could they fail me and my brothers?''
'And your dad...?' I asked
'He lived round the corner with his new woman. Which was f***ing hard. I would only meet him in diners and give him a hard time. For years. But credit to him, he never refused to see me for his latest ear bashing and would listen patiently 'til I ran out of steam. And he let me have anything on the menu I wanted, which mum didn't.'
'What about your brothers?'
'Oh they would move to mum's for a while and then back to dad's at various times, then they each finally left home, the three of them being quite a bit older than me. I was my parents' 'bonus baby', the one who stayed with mum all the time.'
'Did your mum ever meet anyone else?'
'Yeah. About a year later. But I soon nixed that for her by making her choose between him and me. She never met another bloke after that. I feel bad about that now. I never thought about how one day I would be all grown up and she might be lonely. Now she's over sixty and I guess she'll be alone for the rest of her life.'
At this point, Lexi grew tearful.
'Now come on Lexi, she's had at least seven years to meet someone while you've been globetrotting. You can't blame yourself for any decisions that your mother has made. She's a grown woman.'
'Yeah. I s'pose so.' she agreed. 'It will be so nice to see the parents together for my party though.'
'Yes, it will. You can have full family photos again at least.'
'Oh I used to cut them up and splice them together anyway and pretend. It was such a relief when my mum finally stopped slagging my dad off and blaming him for everything except the weather. At first I used to join in because it felt good and he was someone to vent at. And it was the b***ard's fault that he had fallen in love with someone at his work and left us, but in the end it started to feel bad, as if me and my mum were slagging part of me off too, and I had to ask her to stop, especially when she said things like; 'I wish I'd never laid eyes on the bugger!'
'Where would that have left you and your brothers????'
'Exactly. She once let slip it was hard to look at me sometimes because I reminded her of him with the same eyes and mouth and how I looked much more like him than her. But she was in a very bad mood. I remember she'd had a patient die unexpectedly on her watch that morning.'
'Is all of this why you are so interested in self-esteem classes and motivational workshops?' I asked, remembering our last meeting where she was just about to drive off to a weekend in Bristol to unlock her true potential..
'Probably' she replied. 'I hadn't really thought about it, but a divorce definitely rocks your world and brings up some core identity issues and a person can spend years sorting their head out. The other thing is there's no one to talk to when you're a kid. Adults, I mean. No one wants to get involved and wind up piggy in the middle dodging the bullets between your folks. And  they're all terrified of saying the wrong thing so clam up or change the subject, just when a kid needs someone to talk to and help them make sense of things the most. You only have other kids to talk to who've been through the same. It's like some secret club you never asked to belong to. Even my nana would quickly change the subject when I tried to tell her how I was feeling or what was happening at home. Baking cupcakes was her answer to everything. They were yummy cupcakes.'
'What about your parents?'
'They were too wrapped up in their own problems and slogging it out in the courts with their divorce for ages. My mum also had to work extra shifts as a nurse to make the mortgage payments until she got promoted. All she wanted to do was sleep when she got home. Helping me with my homework or listening to me were not high on her list. In fact it was often down to me to do the shopping, do the housework and put dinner on the table for her. I guess I wasn't really able to be a kid any more once they split so I ended up with a bee in my bonnet about that too.'
'You seem in a good place now.'
'I am.' Lexi smiled. 'I mean sure it was sad about Mikey and me, but I bounce back far quicker from these kind of things than I used to. If someone's not quite right for me,  I figure that must be because someone even better is waiting in the wings'
'Do you think you'll ever have kids yourself?'
'Well that's the plan, but only when I've found Mr 100% Right and finished doing some living first.'
'So you're determined not to end up like your parents.'
'Not if I can help it. They were the prototype. I'm the finished product!' She giggles.'Sorry.' she added. 'I didn't mean to go into all this stuff. I don't normally.'
'On the contrary, it's fascinating' I replied. 'You could write a book.'
'I could.' Lexi smiled. Then, with a twinkle in her eye; 'I might!'
I wished Lexi all the best and we parted. Her Facebook page duly delivered photos of a beaming birthday celebration several weeks later, one with Lexi cutting the ribbon on her new car, one with Lexi cutting her car-shaped 30th birthday cake and another showing Lexi with an arm round each proud parent.
Although I didn't see Lexi that often after she left my workplace, Oxford suddenly seems very empty without her. She was a real ball of energy, always on the go and into everything from choirs and country rambles to am-dram, not to mention as many parties as she could fit in. Out to get the most out of  every minute of her 'British experience'. I also miss her refreshing Kiwi bluntness and how she would talk about anything and have an opinion on everything, yet display surprising largesse when anyone had an opposing view.

Remembering the Victorians

Before anyone gets me under the 'Goods Descriptions Act' (aka the 're-cycled Victorian' reference in this blog description) I thought it was about time I shared probably my favourite book in the world about Victorian times; an autobiography so vivid you are almost there; better still in relative middle-class comfort rather than as some Dickensian street sweeper or one of Mayhew's baby farmers.

A London Child of the 1870s is the entertaining and detailed chronicle of a young girl growing up with the benefit of four adoring elder brothers, detailing their everyday lives, the games they played, the dreams they dreamed and the harsh reality that often impinged, even on a family where good fortune shone rather than not. It is written by Molly Hughes, who went on to write the equally riveting 'A London Girl in the 1880s', 'A London Home in the 1890's' 'A London Family Between the Wars' as well as the semi-fictionalised 'Vivians' - the tragic mid-Victorian melodrama of her Cornish Aunt's doomed love affair with a Nordic sea captain - as dramatic as anything Daphne Du Maurier subsequently came up with. Molly Hughes herself was an early female University graduate and went on to become one of the first female school inspectors. One of Molly's observations was how; heroine or villain alike; most protagonists had to die at the end of a Victorian children's story to satisfy some Christian moral or other, and how she and her brothers would place bets on the outcome. Here is Molly's description of a typical Victorian children's story;

The Last Shop

A little girl who had a very rich mamma behaved herself so well one day that her kind parent said. 'Rosy dear, we will go for a walk down the street where the shops are, and you shall buy whatever you like, because you have been so good.' Skipping for joy little Rosy began to think of all the things she had been longing for. But mamma made one condition - that Rosy must buy something out of each shop. That seemed very easy, and the walk began well. A doll's perambulator in the first shop, some expensive lollipops in the next, some tarts at the confectioners, a pair of crimson slippers, some fancy coloured note-paper, a whole pineapple, and a real writing desk with some secret drawers in it. In each case the purchase was ordered to be 'sent' and Rosy soon became anxious to go home in order to be ready to receive them. But Mamma's face grew solemn.
'Have you quite finished, my child?'
'Oh, yes, thank you, dear mamma, pray let us return home'
'I fear, my child, that there is one shop that you have omitted.'
So saying, she led Rosy to the undertaker's, and had her measured for a coffin. In this way, my dear young readers, little Rosy was early led to realise that death was the necessary end to all her pleasures.

Talking of 'A London Child in the 1870s' reminds me of my other favourite autobiography, this time set in Edwardian times, 'People Who Say Goodbye' is the account of a precocious and cynical tomboy growing up in London's Wandsworth Common, the product of surprisingly liberal, progressive and loving parents. What is particularly striking is the bold humour and candour of this book - PY Betts had everyone around her weighed up it seems, and a startling ability to conjure the long-dead back to vivid life. Here is a passage from it;

'There was a big boy of eighteen, a young man really, ten years older than me, who lived in one of the houses on the other side of the Field. He had younger brothers and sisters, all older than me, whom I knew only slightly. His name was Tom. He was an art student but for how long I do not know. He was there in the glade and then later on he was not there any more, so very likely he went to the War and was killed. We would lie down in the bushes and he would cuddle me. He would look at me a long time and then ask if he could kiss me. I was not keen on being kissed so he took a Wolff's Lightning Eraser out of his pocket and said he would give it to me if I would kiss him. Being a stationery fetishist I found the India rubber irresistible and let him kiss me. The kiss did not affect me emotionally, all my desires were focussed on the rubber. We met in the hazel coppice several times. Each time he would cuddle me and ask to kiss me. I began to hold out for brand new Wolff's Lighting Erasers, spotless white ones with geometrically sharp corners. He never did anything but cuddle me, look at me, kiss me gently and hand out quantities of new India rubbers, wonderful for swapping at school or keeping and gloating over. It all ended without my noticing. Perhaps the art school got suspicious about the run on erasers, or perhaps Tom was called up and got killed, I did not notice when it ended. I had enough rubbers to be going on with. Their smell was so alluring, so satisfying.'
Both books are now sadly out of print, though probably available from second hand outlets.

To hark back for a moment to Victorian times though, the other weekend I treated myself to our greatest Victorian engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel for £1.20 from Coventry museum - a man whose parents evidently didn't expect much when they christened him! He stands neatly in the palm of my hand. I wonder what he'd make of himself if he could see himself now embodied in miniature effigy form.

I wonder what he would make of modern engineering and how the progress of our railways in particular has gone backwards since his time. I might play with him later.