Adventures with my mother and a Morris Oxford

The rather crumpled picture above is the only one I have of my mother somewhere on her remarkable journey to the other side of the world in 1950. Exactly 75 years ago. She was 19 (just) when she embarked on this expedition, as much as was possible across land in a Morris Oxford, destination Christchurch, New Zealand.  It was the first trip she had ever made outside the UK. An adventure that was to change her life.

The man in the hat standing next to her is John Godley. They’d met while both were working on the Daily Mirror. She had a job in the typing pool, he was its racing correspondent, a position he had gained by dint of his uncanny ability to dream the names of winning racehorses. He’d run a bookie at school (it almost got him expelled) so he knew about form, but it was after serving in the Fleet Air Arm during the war, and when he had returned to take up his studies at Balliol College, Oxford, that on and off for three years he dreamed overnight  that he had been party to the racing results for the following day. On one occasion in his sleep, he had seen himself walking from his flat in Walton Street to the Randolph Hotel where he telephoned his bookmaker to ask him who had won the last race. Waking the following morning he checked in the paper to see if there were any horse running with a similar name. Sure enough a horse named Mentores (near enough to the Monumentor he had remembered) was forecast as favourite at five to four in the last race at Worcester. He put £4 on to win. Recreating the events of his dream, he lit a cigarette, walked up Beaumont Street to the Randolph and when he knew the results would be known put in a call to his bookmakers. “This is Mr Godley,” he said when he got through. “I wonder if you could tell me the results of the last race?”

“Certainly, sir,” he replied. “Mentores at six to four.” A slight mistake in the odds but it was his fourth dreamed winner that had come home.

John hadn’t long met my mother when he received an invitation to the centenary celebrations of the Province of Canterbury in New Zealand. Its capital, Christchurch, had been named after the college in Oxford attended by John’s great grandfather, John Robert Godley, an Anglo-Irish Protestant, who believing that emigration was a remedy for the social deprivation of the day, especially in Ireland, had set sail in 1850 to establish a settlement there. 100 years later a grand party was planned, and as his direct descendant and great grandson, John was summoned to attend. A chance to travel the world was an exciting prospect.

However instead of taking the proffered boat passage, he decided it would be more interesting to travel overland. But with no money and no car, he needed to devise a plan. So he secured an interview with the Chief Publicity Officer of the Nuffield Organisation who after some thought agreed to lend him a Morris Oxford, as well as provide free maintenance at any Morris garage (at this time one in at least every capital city) and free shipment of the car whenever ‘the sea intervenes’. In return John would write regular pieces for his newspaper, by now the Sunday Express. He even arranged for his departure to be covered by the BBC. It was all agreed. 

My mother was invited last minute. John already had one companion, his friend Hank Niese from New Jersey, an artist, a good mechanic and the other man in the picture above. (I have no idea who the person hiding in the front seat is, or who the dog belonged to). Perhaps it was the fact that she couldn’t drive that took him so long to ask, but by the time he did it was too late for her to secure the relevant visas to travel through the European countries behind what was then the Iron Curtain. So John and Hank did the first leg on their own, collecting the grey Morris from Cowley, the boot filled with spare parts and the car modified for the journey by adding a larger petrol tank, and a detachable luggage rack holding a tent, a primus stove, some cooking pans and extra gas cans. Then armed with a few maps and a compass they set off. Leaving my mother to catch the night ferry to Paris, onwards through France and Italy to Genoa where she travelled ‘deck’ on a cargo boat to Piraeus, the port in Athens where they would all meet up. 

Five days later they drove to Delphi, where they found a place to camp on the other side of the village, built on a narrow ledge in the foothills of Parnassus. Intending to stay only one night they befriended the locals who brought them plentiful supplies of almonds and retsina. They also showed them round, up to the ancient springs where in times gone by visitors would wash before heading up the Sacred Way to the Temple of Apollo where they hoped to consult the Oracle. It was still being excavated, fragments of decorated stone and ruined columns littering the area. They had it to themselves as there were no tourists to speak of.  They stayed three weeks.

Then on to Istanbul, through Turkey, Syria, Transjordan, Iraq and Persia. In Tehran, where Hank left them, they were guests of General Razmara who arranged for them to go sturgeon fishing on the Caspian Sea with a fleet of boats manned with Azerbaijani fishermen. They lived off caviar for days afterwards.

The only time my mother considered they came close to death was on the next leg of the journey. There was 4,500 miles to cover from Tehran to Calcutta. Much of it desert. They had a routine. Rise early, drive a while, stop at the occasional oasis; in the early evening pull off the road, eat a supper of fried eggs and coffee, watch the extraordinary desert sunsets, and sleep under a sky of infinite stars. But one evening, still 200 miles from the Pakistan border, a violent sandstorm set in. Taking refuge inside the car, grit piled up around the wheels, slapped against the windscreen and filled every nook and cranny under the bonnet. The engine resolutely failed to start. They were stuck. With only enough water and food for two days at the most. And the chance of passing traffic minimal.

As it turned out they were saved by a bus load of white robed passengers which in ordinary circumstances would not have come this way until the following week. There was extra demand for the journey it seems. Anyway they piled out of the bus and with much excited pushing and shoving and manhandling, the car was dug out and then towed to a place where it could be picked up and transported to the nearest garage. A small town where much to their surprise, they were invited to play tennis by the only European in town, the English Bank manager. Whites and flannels provided.

They arrived in Karachi on the third anniversary of partition, and here the car was given a total overhaul by the local Morris agent, a Parsi by the name of Kandawalla. Onwards then to Calcutta from where they island hopped through Indonesia while the car was shipped to Australia for the last hurrah. And so it was after 17,707 miles the Morris Oxford arrived (with the same battery and six tyres it set out with from Oxford) in Christchurch, New Zealand. In good time for the celebrations.

During the trip to New Zealand, John learned that his father had died unexpectantly. Being the eldest son, he inherited a title – he became Lord Kilbracken – as well as a large tumbledown estate in Ireland. And though they remained friends his relationship with my mother petered out. However he did do something for which I am eternally grateful. He encouraged her to apply to university. Which she did and won a place to study English at Trinity College Dublin, becoming the first in her family ever to enter tertiary education. It was here that she met my father, and a new chapter in her life began. 

After my mother died six years ago, I found a bag of notes made during her travels, written in her distinctive rounded handwriting. There was also a book written by John Godley, called ‘Living like a Lord’ in which a chapter is devoted to his adventures across the world. They are two very different accounts from which I gleaned the story above. 

It has taken me a while to get to sifting through my mother’s musings. They were in ‘one hell of a muddle’ to use one of her favourite expressions. But there are so many charming passages, a few of which I reproduce below. I hope you enjoy them.

SETTING OUT

‘It was late on a Monday evening when I set out from Victoria Station. The excitement I had felt during the day had entirely evaporated and couldn’t even be pepped up by the two brandies my father bought me in the pub across the way. There were only a dozen passengers waiting for the night ferry and the prospect of a lonely passage was not that cheery. But suddenly I was on the train and waving goodbye to familiar faces, as the train gathered speed. In a moment’s panic I thought, “Was I really right to come?” 

But it was too late; I was on my way, swiftly heading towards Dover and Paris.‘

GRASSHOPPER

‘Our friend Freddy joined us somewhere on the road from Athens. He sat on the windscreen joyfully playing his fiddle, sometimes he sang too. His eyes were big and bulging, his body long and streamlined, his antennae, at least an inch long neatly curled at the ends.

Sometimes an unwary ant or fly would wander in his direction. Then in a thousandth of a second his tongue would dart out and the insect would be gone forever. 

Freddy stayed with us for four days changing his position from time to time. Then he disappeared. Maybe he was pining for a girl of his own kind. We missed him after he left. We saw plenty more grasshoppers. But none were so big or so green as Freddy.‘

ISTANBUL

‘One of Istanbul’s specialities is the shoeshine boys. They stand in groups at street corners, they besiege you as you walk along the street, they come into your hotel and follow you into restaurants. Usually, I clean my shoes once a year but here I had my shoes cleaned every day.  By the same man.

He was a master shoe shiner. A real artist. His box was made of mahogany edged with engraved silver, his bottles and brushes arranged neatly in compartments. His work played out like a symphony. First brush the mud off, softly, then harder and harder to a crescendo. Pause. Then on with the polish, slowly, smoothly through the second movement. Finally, the polishing. A steady paced rhythm followed by sharp quick stabs and a sudden stop. A quick tap and it was all was over. I would have to force myself out of my trance to pay him his 10 piastres.‘

A PLACE IN THE DESERT

‘While we were waiting for the car to be rescued, we were taken to an oasis of half a dozen mud huts. We lived in a sort of coffee shop and ate water melons and bitter unleavened bread. It was clear they didn’t know what to do with me as the women lived separately to the men in a communal hut with the children and animals. However as a special concession I was allowed to stay with the men.

The women regarded me curiously, partly because I was fair, and I had short hair – and horrors, I showed my legs. One day I unpacked my suitcase and brought out nylon stockings and European style underwear. They had never seen the like before and exclaimed in delight and amazement.‘