Driven: A pioneer for women in motorsport – an autobiography

Driven: A pioneer for women in motorsport – an autobiography Rosemary Smith The inspirational story of the female motorsport pioneer who broke through the gender barrier to compete in and win some of the most iconic rallies in the world.Rosemary Smith is recognised internationally for her outstanding achievements in the world of motorsport. A female pioneer in a notoriously male-dominated sport, she drove in the Monte Carlo rally eight times, winning the Coupe des Dames on numerous occasions as well as competing in most other iconic rallies all over the world, including the London to Sydney in 1968, the World Cup London to Mexico in 1970 and the East African Safari Rally in the 1970s. In a Hillman Imp, Rosemary won the Tulip Rally outright, beating all the male drivers to the finish.Now, for the first time, Rosemary reveals the inside story of her amazing life, recounting many memorable adventures and exploits both on and off the track.But Rosemary’s story is not all fast cars and marathon rallies. She writes with honesty about her early life, about a disastrous marriage and money troubles – and how she overcame it all. (#u44828260-38fc-5484-81c8-008bd15eeebf) Copyright (#u44828260-38fc-5484-81c8-008bd15eeebf) HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk) First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018 FIRST EDITION © Rosemary Smith 2018 Cover layout design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018 Cover photographs courtesy of the author All other images courtesy of the author unless otherwise indicated. While every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright material reproduced herein and secure permissions, the publishers would like to apologise for any omissions and will be pleased to incorporate missing acknowledgements in any future edition of this book. Rosemary Smith asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at www.harpercollins.co.uk/green (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/green) Source ISBN: 9780008301859 Ebook Edition © October 2018 ISBN: 9780008301873 Version: 2018-09-13 Dedication (#u44828260-38fc-5484-81c8-008bd15eeebf) Dedicated to Patricia (Pat) Doyle, my lifelong friend Contents Cover (#u01279f94-67a6-50d0-bef0-8fc91c409b12) Title Page (#uce27fa94-7d8f-5a67-b118-e2443de36877) Copyright (#u56c2a1f0-ec19-5e44-90a5-19f827ab4b23) Dedication (#u3a5d4f64-e996-5c2e-a49d-b27cef0b9698) FOREWORD BY EDDIE JORDAN (#uaf665772-e131-5c00-b420-838f59f5c837) INTRODUCTION (#u192d61b1-262b-5fee-a292-1b06411197da) CHAPTER 1: THE START (#u1674e704-28d8-553f-942a-e15feee696da) CHAPTER 2: SPECIAL STAGES (#u5d021022-889d-5e5a-8bc8-0bf426a04148) CHAPTER 3: ‘YOU DRIVE,’ SHE SAID (#u03317731-b5d6-5165-ac37-8e859e3d9a72) CHAPTER 4: AND WE’RE OFF! (#ub2959c55-2623-54b3-9e03-6224a7c18af2) CHAPTER 5: REVVING UP WITH ROOTES (#u7e10a533-40de-5c5a-b8fe-1e7f9b7cd36a) CHAPTER 6: THE AMERICAS (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 7: AVOIDABLE ACCIDENTS (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 8: MOVING ON (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 9: DOWN UNDER (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 10: SOUTH OF THE BORDER (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 11: MEN, MARRIAGE AND MORTGAGES (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 12: RAINY KENYA (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 13: RACING AROUND (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 14: FROM BAD TO WORSE (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 15: ROCK BOTTOM (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 16: LET’S FACE IT (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 17: IN BUSINESS (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 18: SEEKING SOLUTIONS (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 19: RECOLLECTIONS AND REGRETS (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 20: D?J? VU (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER 21: PASSION FOR LIFE (#litres_trial_promo) PICTURE SECTION (#litres_trial_promo) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#litres_trial_promo) ABOUT THE AUTHORS (#litres_trial_promo) LIST OF SEARCHABLE TERMS (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) (Independent Newspapers Ltd) Foreword (#u44828260-38fc-5484-81c8-008bd15eeebf) by Eddie Jordan I hear people these days talking non-stop about passion and commitment, and that’s great, because without them there won’t be success. But these two elements come after the primary vital ingredient: inspiration. Rosemary Smith inspired a generation of young Irish drivers, myself included, to pursue our dreams of an international career. As a young lad going to Synge Street School in Dublin, I was mad about cars – inspired initially by my cousin Noel Smith, who was a fine rally driver and got his hands on a Porsche 911 from time to time. But up in the stratosphere there was a supercool Irish icon who inspired the following generation of Irish drivers that we could achieve success on the international stage – and that icon was Rosemary Smith. Like most young car nuts of that era, I bought Autosport when I could, and I remember Rosemary getting the front cover for her heroic outright win in the Tulip Rally in 1965. It was the equivalent of a WRC event today. The Swinging Sixties was in full flow in London and Paddy Hopkirk’s Monte Carlo Rally wins brought the Mini (the car, not the skirt!) and motorsport on to the front pages and into the social columns. Motorsport was uber-cool and Rosemary was the queen of it. She was an Irish superstar, a Dusty Springfield lookalike who was incredibly talented behind the wheel. Breakfast with Jim Clark on the RAC Rally in the 1960s (Mirrorpix) In 1966 I did my Leaving Cert (A-levels) and Rosemary was entered into the RAC Rally, reports of which we followed in detail when we should have been studying. There were 150 entries headed by Jim Clark and Graham Hill – two racing world champions. The real Stig (Blomqvist) and Roger Clarke and dozens of other rally aces were joined by Rosemary in her tiny Hillman Imp. She has an incredible knack of being able to drive error-free and managed to be one of only 50 finishers, ending in a magnificent 14th place. Rosemary was incredibly glamorous and made rallying and racing the sport we longed to be part of. She was a rare Irish driver on the world stage and it is great that in motorsport she is still treated like royalty – in fact, better than royalty – and she deserves it. We first met around 1975 when I was starting to race in England, with Aintree being the closest UK circuit, and she was campaigning a Ford Escort. She was a fine circuit racer who could hold her own against the best. The Renault F1 team told me in 2017 that they were going to give her a run at Paul Ricard and I was delighted. Rosemary is a pioneer for women in motorsport and remains a great ambassador for her sport, and especially women’s place in it. Hers is a remarkable story of a lifetime of success at the very highest level in one of the most male-dominated sports on the planet. It is a story every aspiring driver can draw inspiration from. Introduction (#u44828260-38fc-5484-81c8-008bd15eeebf) As I sat behind the wheel of Renault’s 800bhp Formula 1 car, my hands were sweaty, my pulse was racing and my heart was banging away in my chest. What had I let myself in for? A week before, I had been happily drinking tea and watching Flog It on the telly and now I was surrounded by film cameras and mechanics all yelling instructions at me. As I wedged my body into the car and the mechanics wheeled me out of the garage, I was shaking. I was nervous, terrified, but nothing was going to stop me. I hadn’t felt like this since I attempted to break the Irish National Land Speed Record in 1978. As I began to drive, the noise was deafening, but all I could do was keep going as the air whistled past me. It was then that the adrenaline kicked in and I was away, without a thought for my safety or survival. The sheer excitement of it all overtook me as the engine roared and my speed increased. I had fire in my belly and I just went with it. Fright and exhilaration all at the same time, a sensation I will never forget! It was a truly amazing experience and the only reason I became involved was because two charming men, Paddy McGee and James Boyer of Renault, suggested it. They wanted to make a documentary of the old girl driving a Formula 1 car around the Circuit Paul Ricard in France and it didn’t take much to persuade me: I love a challenge. I was well known in motorsports circles in my day, having achieved notoriety for competing against, and sometimes beating, many of the male drivers, but I was never really famous until I went to Marseille in June 2017 to drive that Formula 1 racing car. After that, I received more publicity than I ever had before in my entire life. Of course, when I was driving in rallies and racing all over Europe, there was no social media to promote events and certainly no Google or YouTube. The documentary made of that Formula 1 drive has thousands of hits on YouTube and they keep telling me I have gone viral, but that just sounds like a bad dose of the flu to me! When I was asked to go to Silverstone prior to the British Grand Prix to celebrate my Formula 1 drive, I was treated like a celebrity and that’s a nice feeling when you are coming up to your 80th birthday. I’ve had six stents inserted, a broken collarbone, a cracked kneecap and a sprained ankle (and none of them in a car) and I survived. Eighty isn’t old any longer and I see no reason to stop doing the things I love. A lot of my contemporaries are still going strong: Paddy Hopkirk, Jackie Stewart, Rauno Aaltonen – I see them all at functions and parties. I am enjoying life to the full; running the driving school, giving private lessons and generally keeping busy. Recently, I gave a talk to a large group of people at a seminar in the International Financial Services Centre in Dublin. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked the woman who telephoned to ask me to do the talk, because I knew the people attending would all be highly educated with senior positions in their organisations. I only know how to drive cars and win rallies, but apparently that is enough. I rarely turn anything down, but I did a week ago when I was asked to take part in an event testing a self-driving car. ‘Autonomous,’ they call them. I was supposed to sit in the car with the windows blacked out and a little laptop on my knee to steer. That I declined to do! People often ask, When are you going to retire? and I just laugh at them. Do they really believe I could sit watching television and eating marshmallows with my feet up for the rest of my life? I am glad to say that there is always something to be done. I have a huge calendar on the wall, on which I write down all my appointments, and as I sit looking at it today, my life looks very full. Last week, I had a telephone call from a man asking me to drive his car from London to Spain next year in a classic rally. I said I would, thanks very much, but these days I always include the proviso: If I’m still alive. I contemplate death from time to time but I sorted out my funeral arrangements long ago. When my mother died, I had a headstone made for the family grave in Deansgrange and it set me thinking about how I would like to go. In 2003 I saw Adam Faith’s funeral on the television and he was the first person I had ever seen buried in a wickerwork casket and I fell in love with it. I have observed so many beautiful oak coffins go through those curtains at the crematorium and I think it’s a disgrace and a terrible waste of good timber! I am sure they unscrew the brass handles to be recycled before they reach the furnace, but even so … I talked to my friend, Pat Doyle, who told me about a very good funeral parlour in Bray, County Wicklow, and I asked her to accompany me so that we could order the casket. It was a lovely place, and when we entered, a very suave gentleman approached us, looking suitably sombre. ‘I want to order a coffin, please,’ I said. ‘It has to be a wickerwork casket and must be sprayed pink.’ The man replied that this was most unusual but it could be done and then he wanted to know who had passed away. ‘It’s for me,’ I told him. ‘Could you let me know when you want it?’ he asked. ‘I’m not sure,’ I replied, ‘but my friend Pat here will let you know.’ We went out of that funeral parlour laughing our heads off and drove straight to the solicitors to make my will. I gave my solicitor details of friends and family to whom I would bequeath whatever I had left and he duly took notes. Then I told him about my visit to the funeral director and all about the pink wickerwork casket I had ordered. When I am cremated, I want the church softly lit as I look better in low lighting and nobody is to wear black, nobody, I told him. As my casket is wheeled up, I want the music ‘Blaze Away’ by Josef Locke, singing about making a bonfire of his troubles and watching them blaze away. Then, as I am going through the curtains, Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman will be singing ‘Time to Say Goodbye’, and if you could arrange for an enormous cardboard hand to be waving at everyone that would be great. The poor solicitor is still looking at me! The will and the funeral arrangements are all sorted but I’m not ready to say goodbye just yet, and before I go I am determined to do what so many people have suggested: tell my story. I have driven cars in rallies all over the world – Africa, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, you name it, I’ve been there – but when I started off on my career, 60 years ago, I had no idea that anybody would have the slightest interest in my story and so I didn’t make notes and I have never kept a diary – when things are over, they are over as far as I’m concerned. So this is what I’m up against, but I will do my best to write about my life as honestly as my memory allows. September 2018 CHAPTER 1 The start (#u44828260-38fc-5484-81c8-008bd15eeebf) Despite what some people think, I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. For some reason, people always have the impression that I come from a very wealthy family. The truth is, we were always on some sort of economy drive, although my mother did her best to ignore that. My dad, John Metcalf Smith, had a small garage in Rathmines and in the early days, when there were very few cars on the roads, there was not a great deal of business. But he was a good, kind man and people took to him and the clients he had were loyal. My dad was a Methodist and he had what I call the Protestant ethic: hard-working, reliable and straight as a die. My mother, Jane, was a Catholic, and as well as the religious divide, there was little else they had in common. As it was a mixed marriage, the ceremony took place on the side altar of the church in Dunboyne, County Meath. In the late 1920s, if a Protestant married a Catholic, a solemn promise was made whereby the children of the marriage would be brought up as Catholics. My father was scrupulous in this regard and every Sunday he dropped us all off for Mass and then went on alone to the Rathgar Methodist Church on Brighton Road. My parents had three children in quick succession and I was the youngest of the family; Pamela was the eldest and Roger was the middle child. Pamela was beautiful, small and dark with lovely eyes. Dad’s mother and father were not happy with him marrying a Catholic. Once Pamela arrived, all that changed, because she was the most adorable baby. At school, she passed every exam with flying colours but she had no interest in clothes or fashion, much to my mother’s disappointment. When they went out to buy a new coat or dress, Pamela would have a book in her hand, and would barely look up when my mother asked her opinion on the item in question. Instead she just nodded her head and turned over the page. She always seemed to me to be totally self-contained; she did her own thing from a very early age. After leaving school, she went to London to study at a Montessori Teacher Training College. Pamela just wanted to get away, and who could blame her? Our home was not a peaceful one. My mother was constantly nagging and having tantrums and Dad seemed unable or reluctant to stand up to her; he adored her. Pamela, who never smoked or drank, died of cancer when she was 64. She had five children and lived near Seattle, in the USA, in a house overlooking the Puget Sound. My mother favoured my brother, Roger. Roger was lovely and, if he were around today, he and I would be great friends. Poor Roger died tragically of a heart attack at 42 years of age, when his wife, Jackie, was pregnant with their second child. When Roger left school, he helped Dad run the garage. But the way Roger wanted to run the business was totally different from my father. Someone would come in for work to be done and Roger would give an estimate and Dad would say, ‘No, no, he’s a good customer and maybe he mightn’t have the money.’ ‘Of course he’s a good customer if we don’t charge him,’ Roger replied. I might be a millionaire now if I hadn’t inherited my father’s lack of business acumen. In the early days, one of my father’s customers was Jeff Smurfit, who owned a small business and rented a shed around the corner from Dad’s garage in Rathmines. Sometimes his truck would break down in the middle of the night and my father thought nothing of going out to help him, whatever the time of day, much to my mother’s annoyance. Mr Smurfit was always late paying his bills, which annoyed her even more. At the end of one month, the bill was particularly high and Jeff Smurfit made my father an offer: ‘Instead of paying the bill, I’ll give you half the business,’ he said. The business was a small box company, which wasn’t doing too well, and my mother didn’t like this idea at all and told Dad to refuse. Sometimes you miss the boat; Dad certainly did on that occasion – Smurfit’s is now a multibillion-dollar business. If only my dad had taken the chance with Mr Smurfit, if only he had let Roger run the business, if only … If ‘ifs’ and ‘ands’ were pots and pans, there’d be no work for tinkers’ hands … you know that silly saying. My dad’s work ethic was to do an honest day’s labour without taking advantage of his customers. He lacked real business flair, however, and his heart often ruled his head, except when my mother got in the way. Roger couldn’t work with my father – their ideas on how to run a business were totally different, but they both loved cars and competed in a few races without much success, I’m sorry to say. They didn’t have decent cars and despite the fact that he was a good driver, probably better than me, Roger never reached his potential. After practice he would be delighted to find himself in pole position and then in the race, after two or three laps, the car would blow up. Roger took off to England to work for a Ford dealership and I never saw much of him after that. In their spare time, he and a friend of his drove around the countryside of Yorkshire, calling into farmhouses and cottages looking for clocks that didn’t work and offering to buy them for little or nothing. ‘Oh here, take it away, it hasn’t worked for years,’ people would say. They accumulated an assortment of clocks, which they tried to repair, not always successfully, and then sold them on at markets and to antique shops. Roger was a very good salesman and this was a nice little sideline for a while. My wonderful dad taught Roger, Pamela and me to swim and drive when we were very young – ‘In case of emergencies,’ he said. We learnt to drive in a big old-fashioned Vauxhall and I was only 11 when I first got behind the wheel. I loved it from the off; I was so small that I had to sit on cushions to see over the steering wheel. Dad had bought a field in Old Bawn, Tallaght (one of his better ideas), and we would drive round and round on the wet grass. Little did I know at the time, but this experience was to come in useful years later when I drove in the Monte Carlo rallies over those icy roads in Europe. My dad was right about emergencies, because learning to drive at such a young age came in very handy one day. I must have been about 13 when it happened. My mother and I were alone in the kitchen in our house in Rathfarnham. She had been washing dishes in the sink and with wet hands she tried to pull the plug of the electric fire out of the socket on the wall. In those days plugs weren’t earthed, and she screamed as she dropped to the stone floor, unconscious, still clutching the plug. I rushed to her side, pulled the plug from her hand and quickly decided I had to get her to a doctor. We had a telephone but for some reason it didn’t occur to me to ring for my father or an ambulance – I didn’t stop to think, all I was concerned with was getting help as soon as I could. I dragged my mother outside and somehow got her into the old Vauxhall parked in the driveway. The driveway was very narrow, barely the width of the car, and I bumped along, hitting the walls on either side. Somehow I managed to get out of the driveway, on to the steep hill and turn right. I was in first gear as we chugged down to Dr Donald, who lived on our road in the first house over the bridge. He was just on his way out when we arrived and you can imagine his amazement when he saw me driving the car with my unconscious mother in the back. He gave her CPR and called an ambulance and gradually she came back to life. My mother wasn’t dead and the doctor congratulated me and assured me she was going to be all right. It was then I started shaking as the enormity of what I had just done overcame me. I left the car there and ran home. We went most years to Bettystown, a small village on the coast in County Meath, for our holidays. It was lovely there – beautiful beaches and long, lazy days of doing nothing. My father loved golf and he played in all weathers. Thunderstorms didn’t bother him; he just didn’t seem to care as he had a most peculiar affinity with the elements. Mother said he could have been killed with a steel club in his hand and the lightning flashing. I was preoccupied with other things and got my first kiss on the beach in Bettystown from a 14-year-old boy from Glasnevin and I thought I was in love. On the drive to and from Bettystown, I often felt sick sitting in the back of the car. Our old car would wobble along and then, as I watched the cars flashing by out of the side window, I would get dizzy and shout to my father to stop as I was going to be sick. I only ever felt ill when someone else was driving; when I was behind the wheel, I was perfectly fine. Driving was something that I could do well and I badly needed something to boost my confidence. I was dreadfully shy, maybe because I grew so tall at a very young age, and I used to walk around with my head and shoulders down, trying to make myself smaller, my arms dangling like a gorilla. I remember my first dance. I was sitting on a chair at the side of the hall, as was the custom: boys on one side, girls on the other. A good-looking boy crossed the floor, his dark hair stiff with Brylcreem, and asked me to dance. I was thrilled, but when I stood up I was towering over him; he made some hasty excuse and ran off. As I surveyed the boys in the hall that night, it seemed to me that they were all training to be jockeys. It took me years to get over my shyness. It was so bad at one stage, whenever we won something in a rally, I would send my co-driver up first to collect the trophy, but once I got into a car I felt insulated and confident. I was always happiest behind the wheel. Maybe in the beginning the car was like a home for me, the only thing I had complete control over and where I felt secure. Growing up, there was little sense of security and maybe this was because our family lived in so many different locations. My mother was a nomad and never wanted to be in one residence for long. We lived in so many places: Bray, where I was born, then Dundrum, Terenure, Rathfarnham, Blackrock and Sandymount before finally settling down in Dunboyne, County Meath. I grew up falling over paint cans and ladders. When I got married I would stay in the same house all my life, I vowed, but the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, as the saying goes. We lived in a beautiful house in Waltham Terrace in Blackrock for a while. It was a wreck when my parents bought it but Dad was great with his hands and with help from some friends he renovated it. There were steps up to the hall door and a basement leading out to the garden. They bought it for ?8,000, and when they put it on the market a few years later it made twice as much. That was a great transaction but in most cases they would buy at the wrong time and sell again at an even worse one. When we moved into the house at Strand Road, Sandymount, my mother loved it because the sea was on our doorstep. It had six bedrooms and she took in students from Trinity College. One evening in the kitchen of that house, with its stone-flagged floor, Mother dropped a plate and Dad mumbled something like ‘That’s right, drop the lot’ in a jokey kind of a way. My mother took every plate she could put her hands on and smashed them to the ground deliberately, one after the other. Dad stood there looking at her, his face expressionless, without making a comment, and when everything lay shattered on the floor, he took up the brush and swept up the mess. He never reacted to anything she did, but calmly accepted it, and maybe that’s where he went wrong. I believe my mother wanted him to retaliate but he never did. She got her own way all the time and that’s why we moved around so much. She could never stay in any house for long and my father just went along with her wishes. Moving didn’t really make a difference – my mother was never content, no matter where we lived, and there were constant rows, not just with my father, but all of us. She was an attractive woman and everybody who didn’t have to live with her thought she was wonderful. My mother was talented, a good dressmaker, with a great sense of style, and we found out too that she could write. When Pamela went to live in America, she wrote long letters describing everything at home in such detail; she had hidden talent and so much pent-up energy. I believe she was frustrated by not having the opportunity to express herself and maybe that was why she was such a very heavy smoker. There were packets of Gold Flake and Player’s around the house and my father was always begging her to give them up. Eventually, after years of smoking and a doctor’s warning, she did. Being married to my father, staying home and minding children didn’t suit her, and let’s face it, there were three people in their relationship: my father, my mother and my father’s best friend. He was a builder and we lived for a time in a bungalow he built for them in Terenure. Poor old dad would go out the back door to go to the garage early in the morning and his best friend would come in the front door. Roger and I were told to run out into the garden and play while they talked or whatever they were doing! He was married to a woman he had met on holiday in England and my mother was only introduced to him after she had married Dad. Little things would upset me, like the Christmas when Dad bought my mother a beautiful Christian Dior necklace with two little diamonds; it is beautiful, I still have it. She took it from him with a very offhand thank you, but when Dad’s friend came in with a handbag, pure leather, from Brown Thomas, she thanked him profusely and raved about it for weeks. She told me in later years that Dad’s friend had asked her to go away with him, but she refused because of us. I often wished she had taken him up on his offer because life at home would have been happier for everyone. I used to pull my jumper over my ears so as not to hear her when she was screaming at Dad; Pamela just stuck her nose in a book and Roger would go out to get away from it all. I once asked my father why he didn’t leave her and he told me that he had tried. He went up to Belfast to join the army but his eyesight wasn’t good enough and he was turned down and came back home. As he got older, his life was miserable. He suffered from Bell’s palsy and had a series of mini strokes. My mother’s behaviour didn’t help his condition and I never really understood why she was so unkind to him. When my brother got married in Middlesbrough, in England, we all went over for the wedding. My mother, my Aunt Lily and a family friend sat in the car during the long drive back through the Pennines, taking delight in talking about my father and his many shortcomings as if he wasn’t there. I sat beside him, holding his hand, as the tears ran down his face. A trusting, loving man, he was abused by my mother and betrayed by his best friend. My father died when he was 73 and the wife of his friend went the year after, so my mother was finally free to marry. She bought a beautiful, long, brown velvet coat and she looked absolutely gorgeous. My father’s friend had two daughters and they were there in the church with their husbands on the day of the marriage. At the altar, my mother was asked by Roger, the son-in-law of the man she was about to marry, to sign a pre-nuptial agreement waiving all rights to his fortune. She did as she was asked without any fuss or question. It amazed me that the family could possibly have thought she was after his money; surely they must have known that this affair had been going on for over 40 years? I loved my father and we had a great relationship – he was always my biggest supporter. He was a wonderful husband; he never looked at another woman, never drank alcohol or smoked. Everything was for my mother, but she didn’t appreciate any of that and made life a misery with her constant yelling, slamming doors and generally behaving like a spoilt child. Her animosity towards my father seemed to spill over on to me. Nothing I ever did was quite right in her eyes, from how I did my hair to choosing a husband. Mother–daughter relationships are often troubled, but ours was particularly so. She did nothing to help my confidence; it was Dad who did his best to encourage me, yet she knew I had talent. But my mother endeavoured to fulfil some of her own ambitions and aspirations through me, especially after I left school. CHAPTER 2 Special stages (#u44828260-38fc-5484-81c8-008bd15eeebf) I went to Beaufort High School in Rathfarnham, run by the Loreto nuns. The nuns wore hard white wimples covering their foreheads so not a wisp of hair could be seen, a black veil over the top, a long black habit, and they smelt of carbolic soap. Our uniform was no better. We were made to wear a chocolate brown pinafore dress, with a square neck with pleats at the front, which made the girls who had a bit of a bosom look huge, and the sash belts tied around our middles didn’t help. A yellow and brown striped tie, a beige jumper and brown knickers with elastic around our knees completed the hideous outfit. I hated every bit of it and I’ve never worn brown since. I was popular with some of my classmates because I was always ready for a bit of devilment. I loved playing hockey but the nun in charge always put me in goal because she didn’t like me. She would referee running around the pitch with her habit tucked into the cord at her waist. One rainy morning when we were playing, she ran towards the goal, calling out to the girls to shoot. I put out my hockey stick and deliberately tripped her up. Sister went down with a bang, and when she got up she was covered in mud from head to foot. My friends loved that because she was a particularly nasty woman, whom we all detested. I had a lot of friends at school, some of whom I still see. Doris Joyce was one of the best and the last person in the world you would think would become a nun. My cousin Noelle was in my class and very kindly says today that she doesn’t remember what a disastrous student I was. I disliked most everything about school but I developed other passions to make up for it. I loved driving and I adored my riding classes at Iris Kellett’s school in Mespil Road. It was seven shillings and sixpence a lesson and it was a good thing that Pamela and Roger weren’t interested, as my father complained about the cost and certainly wouldn’t have stretched the budget to allow all three of us to attend. Iris Kellett was the only child of a veterinary surgeon who had left the British Army to help start up Kellett’s, a drapery business in Georges Street. He also acquired the British Army cavalry stables in Mespil Road and Iris helped him run it as a riding school. Iris was a brilliant equestrian and during her lifetime she became known and respected internationally. Iris took us down to Sandymount Strand very early in the morning and I had a little pony, Penny, who was very docile and sweet until she got on the beach and then she ran and ran, leaving me hanging on for dear life. I competed in gymkhanas and eventually in the RDS in Ballsbridge, when I rode a pony called Lauralie. This was a great achievement for me and I was thrilled with myself. I cantered around and then, when I got to the first jump, Lauralie stopped dead. You are allowed two refusals, and next time she approached the fence she was over it in a flash. We cantered around, taking all the jumps after that, and were doing well until the fence at the top of the arena when the pony stopped dead, and this time I went flying over. The pony looked at me and seemed to laugh as I picked myself up to do the walk of shame back down past the big stand, where all the children were sniggering at my downfall. I was more successful playing golf with my father in Rathfarnham. I was good at it, but hated all the rules and regulations, and the clothes that some of the women wore were horrendous. I had a handicap of 12 when I had to give it up because of a problem with my back and I have never played since. I loved tennis and joined the Sandyford Tennis Club and soon became a team member. Going away to compete against other clubs was great fun. Anything to do with physical activity makes me happy but don’t ask me to sit still and concentrate. I’ll never understand how my sister and brother found studying so easy. At school, there were no ponies, no golf, no cars or tennis, nothing that interested me. I was good at sport, sewing, geography and art, but that was about all. I really didn’t apply myself or care for that matter and I believe it might have been the Irish exam that brought the wrath of the head nun down on my head. I put my name at the top of the page, R?sm?ire N? Gowan, and then proceeded to draw lots of little horses jumping over fences. At the end of the exam, I just folded my paper and handed it in. I got 1 per cent – I think that must have been for writing my name in Irish! The Mother Superior rang my father and asked him to come in to discuss my progress. When they met, the nun didn’t hold back. ‘Mr Smith,’ she said, ‘your daughter is stupid.’ To this day, I believe what Mother Superior meant was I had the brains but I was stupid because I wouldn’t use them; that’s what I like to think anyway. My father didn’t take it like that and he was furious. ‘No nun is going to tell me that my daughter is stupid,’ he said, his prejudice coming to the fore, and he removed me from the school straight away, even though I was only 15. I can’t remember being particularly upset by this decision and I spent a very happy summer, left to my own devices. My mother wasn’t pleased at the prospect of having me hanging around the house. Roger was helping my father run the business, Pamela was studying in London, and so Mother made the decision to send me to the Grafton Academy of Fashion Design. She had taught me to sew and knew that I was good with a needle and thread. I always loved clothes and as a child made dresses for my dolls, which were much admired by my friends and relatives. I had one particular favourite doll that had a papier m?ch? head; the rest of her body was stuffed. Unfortunately, I left her outside one night and it spilled rain and the whole doll’s body and face were ruined, not to mention her taffeta dress. I was heartbroken. The Grafton Academy was Ireland’s first fashion design school and was at the heart of the Irish fashion industry. It was run by a pioneering woman, Mrs Pauline Clotworthy, who opened the Academy in 1938. She had been trained at the British Institute of Dress Designing alongside Hardy Amies and Norman Hartnell, who was later to become Queen Elizabeth’s couturier. Pauline Clotworthy was determined to pass on her knowledge and expertise to young people in Ireland. Over the years, the Academy has trained many of the country’s leading designers and I hoped I could be one of them. Sending me to the Academy was one of my mother’s better ideas and I started there in September 1953, a month after my 16th birthday. Mrs Clotworthy was a wonderful teacher with endless patience and she took a great interest in me and my work. I was happy there because I was well able to follow instruction outside of the dreaded school environment. I found the art of dressmaking came easily and all the teachers were very encouraging and complimentary about my efforts. I was meant to be undertaking a two-year course but in the following April, after only eight months, I asked if I could graduate with the students who had been studying for two years. At first Mrs Clotworthy said it couldn’t be done but when she saw some of my work she relented. In order to graduate I had to make four outfits, which I modelled myself. When I wore the beachwear I’m sure I looked like a scarecrow. I was 5’10”, which I still am today, and a size 8, which I am no longer. I made the evening dress out of felt and no one had ever used that fabric before in dresses. I will never forget that bright pink, strapless dress; the front was knee-length and the back went right to the ground and I stuck big black felt circles around the end of the skirt and even had shoes dyed to match. On the day of the graduation I nearly collapsed when the results were announced: Rosemary Smith, Overall Student of the Year. From the Academy, I went to the boutique of Irene Gilbert in South Frederick Street, Dublin, the street famed for fashion houses at the time. Irene Gilbert was a very shy woman but that didn’t stop her from being the first woman to run a successful fashion business in Ireland and becoming a famous couturier. She used tweed material to great effect and liaised with the mills to create the exact colours she wanted. Some people preferred Sybil Connolly, another great Irish designer, because of her fabrics, especially the pleated linen, for which she was famous, but to my mind no one could touch Irene Gilbert. One of her most famous creations was a Carrickmacross lace evening dress commissioned by Princess Grace, and she also dressed many celebrities in Ireland, including Phyllis Ryan, the wife of President Se?n T. O’Kelly. I was privileged to be working with her as an apprentice and she taught me a great deal. She had the most wonderful finish on her garments and taught me all linings must be hand sewn, hooks and eyes must not be seen. Now I was on my way to becoming a dress designer and, for many years, the press always hung that qualification on to the end of everything – Rosemary Smith, Dress Designer, wins whatever. What the dress designing had to do with the driving was beyond me but maybe it drew attention to the fact that I was a woman in a man’s world. There was no real chance to show off my dress designing skills working for Irene Gilbert, as my position in her studio was such a modest one. I was ambitious and left to try my luck at designing for T. J. Cullen, a company situated along the quays, where Temple Bar is now. Old Mrs Cullen was a formidable woman who moved with the aid of a walking stick and managed the place with great authority. My wages were two pounds, eight shillings and eight pence per week and as we lived in Sandyford at the time I had to get up at seven in the morning to catch the 44 bus to work. I designed two summer dresses, which the buyers liked, and Cullen’s got orders to make 100 dozen of each garment. I asked Mrs Cullen for a rise on the strength of that and she gave me another halfpenny an hour! Una Tapley was in charge of cutting out the fabric and when she started the machine one day, a rat suddenly ran across the factory floor. Una lost concentration and the saw cut off the top of her finger. Blood was spurting everywhere, all over the material, and everybody was screaming. Mrs Cullen came out of the office and asked what all the fuss was about. ‘Una’s cut the top of her finger off,’ I told her. ‘Very careless,’ Mrs Cullen said. ‘She has destroyed all this material.’ Mrs Cullen stopped the cost of the fabric from Una’s wages, but nobody was surprised – that was how things were in those days. Una went to the hospital that day and she never came back. After that, I couldn’t bear working there any more. I was restless and I suppose my family wanted me to make use of my talents, such as they were. It was my Uncle Jimmy, who was walking behind me one day, who suggested it. He poked me in the back with his walking stick as I slouched along. ‘Be proud of your height,’ he said to me. ‘Stand up straight, Rosemary.’ Even to this day, I have to remember to make a conscious effort to stand tall. My mother agreed with him about my posture and that’s how it was that she enrolled me with the Miriam Woodbyrne Modelling Agency in South Frederick Street to learn deportment. I was taught how to glide rather than walk, swivel my head, pose for photographers and make best use of my long legs, skinny body and blonde hair. Miriam was a lovely lady, very motherly and caring, and gave me great encouragement. It was a case of being in the right place at the right time because Christian Dior brought a collection to Brown Thomas in Dublin called the New Look. The dresses had billowing skirts, tiny wasp waists and soft rounded shoulders. Adrienne Ring, another model, and I were the only Irish girls at the agency with the right figure for his clothes. Adrienne was beautiful. She was dark, I was blonde, so we looked well together, and Dior brought some of his own models from Paris as well. I loved modelling but didn’t realise at the time that this experience would be so beneficial to my career in the motor industry. At 18 years of age I thought that fashion was going to be my life. I had no idea that one day I would be sitting on top of the bonnet of a car, flashing my legs for the photographers. My mother was a very good dressmaker and she suggested that we open a little boutique together. It wasn’t like the boutique dress shops you see today – we didn’t sell dresses off the peg, but designed and made dresses to order. I was in good company as Ib Jorgensen was also designing dresses in a similar set-up in Dublin. Our shop was upstairs at 23 South Anne Street in Dublin and had a back room, which we furnished with a lovely antique desk and big ornate standing mirrors, where clients came for fittings. The front room was where we did the cutting and sewing for the bespoke garments. Dad’s best friend financed the setting up of the business and on the first day we opened he took us for a celebratory meal in the Royal Hibernian Hotel, then one of the most fashionable places to eat in Dublin. I ate unfamiliar food and drank champagne for the first time that day; that night, I was very sick and vowed never to drink again! We employed a wonderful machinist, as well as Betty, who came to work for us as a finisher and a go-for to assist us. Betty was about my age, we were both young and innocent and mad keen on pop music. We loved The Beatles but I am a little embarrassed to say that the only singer that ever really got to me was Adam Faith, a British teen idol from London, who was in the charts non-stop. He had developed this sexy way of singing, pronouncing every word in a distinctive way, which sent me, and thousands of other girls, crazy. When he came to Dublin, Betty and I went to the Theatre Royal to see him. There were the usual supporting acts but I can’t remember any of them; I was impatient to see Adam, everyone else was irrelevant. When he finally appeared on stage the audience erupted and sang along to his latest hit: ‘What Do You Want If You Don’t Want Money?’ Betty and I knew what we wanted! We found out that he was going to appear at the Pavilion Ballroom in Blackrock, County Louth, and that was when Betty and I became groupies. I drove us to Blackrock in great excitement. When Adam came on the stage and I saw him up close, just a few feet away, he was even more adorable; he was gorgeous, tiny but gorgeous. Betty and I stood close to the stage and somehow he noticed me – well, I suppose at 5’10”, with long legs, blonde hair, painted-on freckles and screaming into his face, he could hardly miss me. As he was leaving the stage, he came over, stood beside me and asked my name. I looked down at him – he was only up to my shoulder – and I stammered: ‘Rosie.’ We went backstage afterwards and Adam and I got on very well. Mind you, he did most of the talking, because I was breathless and, in any case, had nothing to say. We just sort of clicked, as they say. I know now that Adam was a notorious womaniser but at the time I imagined he only had eyes for me. He said how much he loved Irish girls and their red hair, which upset me a bit, and I decided there and then that I would become a redhead. He went back to England and he telephoned from time to time and sent me postcards. Adam was playing Dick Whittington in the Wimbledon Theatre later that year and asked would I like to come to the pantomime to see him. Would I what? I was surprised that my mother made no objection and she said I could stay with my sister Pamela, who was by then married and living in London. So I dyed my hair and discovered, much to my annoyance, that you need a special complexion for bright red hair, which I didn’t have, but the damage was done. I made a skin-tight green dress to get the real Irish look and made sure to wear dead flat shoes. At the time I thought I was the bee’s knees, but looking back I’m not so sure. The tickets were there at the box office with a little note saying that I should come backstage after the show and we could go for something to eat. The theatre was magnificent, all brown and rose-pink with hints of cream and gold, a bit like the Theatre Royal in Dublin. As I looked around me I thought I was in heaven, and when I sat in my seat in the stalls and he blew me a kiss, I was ready to pass out. When I went backstage, he introduced me to Eve Taylor, his manager, and we were supposed to go out to dinner but he was too tired. He was living with Eve and her husband at the time and it was taken for granted that I would stay with them. When we got back to the house, we had a drink and then Adam said he was going to bed, which was understandable, considering he had spent most of the evening onstage with a cat, trying to become the Lord Mayor of London. We went upstairs and he brought me into the bedroom and I realised then that we were meant to be sleeping together in the same bed. He got undressed and got into the bed and was fast asleep in no time. I took off my shoes and maybe I might have undressed but I had on one of those waspie things – waist clinchers, they were called – and I didn’t want him to see me in that. I climbed on to the bed, and as I lay there it dawned on me that, although he was asleep now, eventually he was going to wake up. I wasn’t ready for what might happen when he did. I waited, thinking what to do, and then made my decision: I crept downstairs, opened the hall door, never thinking there would be an alarm, and left the house behind me with the bells ringing in my ears. I didn’t care, I was out of there. I met Adam in London 30 years later. He had been in a TV series, Budgie, which was now a musical, playing at the Cambridge Theatre in the West End of London. A friend of mine told me she had heard that he had afternoon tea every day in Harvey Nichols and suggested we go along. He remembered me, or at least he said he did, but the magic was gone: we were both that much older and wiser. The boutique in South Anne Street continued to attract custom, although I felt we could do better. When we received an order from Cutex, the nail polish company, who were bringing out a new shade of pink, I was delighted. They had heard about us and asked me to make a dress in exactly the same colour as the polish. This was just the kind of publicity we needed, and the business flourished after that. In celebration of the success of the company, for my 21st birthday present my father decided to drive us to Spain. It was my first time on the continent and I was very excited – I didn’t realise at the time that driving the roads of Europe would be something I was to become very familiar with. We stayed in Sitges, a historic town on the Mediterranean coast, where the beaches were wonderful. It was so different from Ireland and I loved it. The following year, my good friend, Mair?ad Whelan, and I decided to go on our own. I met Mair?ad through rugby. Her father, who was President of the Old Belvedere Rugby Club, got us tickets for the matches in Lansdowne Road. We sat in the front row, sometimes holding our see-through plastic umbrellas, enthusiastically watching the players running around in their short shorts and blowing them kisses. I don’t think they ever noticed us. It was no easy trip because, first, there was the ferry to Liverpool, then a train to London, another to Dover and the journey across the English Channel to France and yet another train. Two young women travelling alone in Franco’s Spain attracted attention and we met some amazing people along the way. We were late arriving in Barcelona that first night and missed the train to Sitges. Exhausted, and not sure where we were going to sleep, we sat drinking coffee in an almost deserted bar. Our salvation came in the form of two tall American men in naval uniform with fancy epaulettes and medals on their chests. It turned out they were officers on a huge naval vessel moored in Barcelona and offered us accommodation in the stateroom of the ship. We looked at one another, wondering if this was a wise move, but we went with them anyway. They were intrigued that two Irish women were travelling alone and seemed genuine in their concern for us. We needn’t have worried as they behaved like perfect gentlemen and the stateroom they gave us to sleep in was fit for royalty. One of the officers appeared to be well connected and spoke in familiar terms about the Kennedys. He told us that Jackie Kennedy had been offered one million dollars to stay with John F. Kennedy until after the presidential election in 1960. He obviously didn’t think much of Jackie as he said she was an odd woman. The next morning they gave us breakfast and brought us back to the station and we got the train to Sitges. We stayed in Sitges, in a little old house in the centre of the town, for three weeks and had a ball. We lazed about on the beach, swam in the sea and in the evening we watched the Flamenco dancers and enjoyed the nightlife. It was beside a pool on that holiday that I followed my father’s swimming instructions in an attempt to save a little girl’s life. As I lay on my sunbed beside the pool, I heard a splash and a scream and saw a young child disappearing under the water. I dived into the pool without a thought and grabbed the child by her long blonde hair and dragged her over to the side of the pool, only to be berated by several members of her family, who shouted at me in Spanish. Apparently the child was not as young as I thought; she was a good little swimmer and had only been playing. I never practised my life-saving skills again. The trips abroad were wonderful but I still had to concentrate on making sure the business was successful and that meant hard work and long hours. Everything was going fine until I made a big mistake. I designed and sewed the clothes for a wedding: the bride’s wedding dress, six bridesmaids’ dresses, the mother of the bride’s dress, the bride’s going away outfit, everything. We worked on those dresses for three months and borrowed to pay for the fabric, which was the very best quality. The young lady in question married a very wealthy man and, although I pursued both of them, I never got paid. I still have the wedding photographs as a constant reminder of my lack of business sense, or maybe it’s just my trusting nature. I dreamed up other ways of making money but unfortunately, for one reason or another, they didn’t work. TLC was the name of one product I invented, which stood for Trouser Lining Company and also, of course, tender loving care. In the 1950s tailored trousers were becoming popular and the more expensive ones were lined. I thought that it would be brilliant to be able to buy lining as a separate item so that they could be worn underneath any pair of slacks. I made samples in white, black and cream, and Roches Stores was very interested. I tried to get them made in Ireland, but the cost was prohibitive so I researched having them made in China, but the company there wanted to know how many thousands of pairs I would be wanting, so that idea went out of the window. I struggled on for a while but my heart wasn’t in it. Fortunately, a new friendship offered a welcome distraction. Delphine Bigger was one of our customers who came in for shirts and trousers to be made, which was quite unusual at the time. She ran the Coffee Inn in South Anne Street and was married to Frank Bigger, who, together with Ronnie Adams and Derek Johnston, won the Monte Carlo Rally in 1956. At enormous expense, Delphine bought Herm?s scarves from Brown Thomas, and I would transform them into blouses. They were ?29 each, which was an enormous amount then, and three were needed for each blouse. I thought her the most exotic and extraordinary person I had ever met, and although we were worlds apart we got on very well. I was at a bit of a loose end when one day Delphine asked me to go on a rally with her. I agreed without knowing just what I was letting myself in for. She didn’t tell me that I was going to navigate until we arrived in Kilkenny, but I would have gone anyway. Looking back now, I must have had a sense that this was to be a significant turning point in my life, and so it was. CHAPTER 3 ‘You drive,’ she said (#ulink_56d0143f-1451-5f12-b797-e3d5b4660360) Delphine was 10 years older than me; a striking woman with a head of thick wiry hair and an imposing stature, one of those larger-than-life characters you sometimes meet. She was a woman of the world and, among other things, she taught me to drink. She introduced me to gin and orange, which I didn’t take to, too sticky and sickly for my liking, so I replaced it with vodka and tonic, but I never really got into the habit until much later. Delphine was fond of a good time and used rallying as an excuse to get away from her husband and flirt with other men. But it took me a while to work that out, na?ve and innocent as I was. It was convenient for her to have a woman with her and that’s why she asked me to go along when she went rallying. ‘We’re going to Kilkenny on Sunday,’ she said, ‘and you are going to navigate.’ She knew I could drive but hadn’t thought to ask whether I could read a map, which I can’t, even to this day. We got in the car and she handed me a map and a list of reference numbers. I kept turning the map as we went around corners and telling her to turn left and right. After about three miles we found ourselves in somebody’s farmyard. My dad never cursed and Mum might say ‘damn’ now and again, so when Delphine began to swear at me that day I truly didn’t understand what she was saying. The words she shouted were all new to me, she might as well have been speaking Swahili, but I could tell she was cross! ‘I hope you drive better than you navigate. Get in the bloody car!’ she snapped, getting out and leaving the door open for me to get in the driver’s seat. In between giving me instructions, she was muttering and cursing, and so I did what I was told until eventually we got back on the road. As we neared the finish, Delphine told me to get out of the car. ‘It wouldn’t do for you to be seen driving,’ she said, so we changed places. This business of changing places went on for weeks and nobody knew that I was doing the driving until one day we were found out. In front of us that day there was a car upside down in a ditch. I slowed down and Delphine was adamant that we shouldn’t stop, but for once I took no notice. I pulled over and asked, could we do anything, but the man sitting on the side of the road with a broken arm said that someone else had already gone for help. To tell the truth, if I had been more experienced I probably wouldn’t have stopped to enquire how the man in the ditch was; sentiment has no place in rallying. When we arrived at the finish, word had got around that I was seen in the driver’s seat and Delphine wasn’t happy, but she decided that as people knew anyway it would make sense for me to drive permanently. When I eventually realised that Delphine had a boyfriend on the side and that I was only being brought along as a sort of decoy, I didn’t complain. I was having great fun and loved every minute of our monthly events, but that Circuit of Leinster rally when the accident happened nearly ruined everything. We started in the evening and we were driving through the night; it was three o’clock in the morning and in my experience that is the time when the body is at its lowest ebb, both mentally and physically. Delphine was navigating and as we were coming to a crossroad she told me to go straight ahead. It was foggy, the road was wet and slippery as I followed her instructions, only to find she had directed me to a T end, not a crossroad, and there was a resounding crash as we ran straight into a stone wall. We were in a Mini and in those days the sun visor was held on with a metal clip. The impact of the crash caused Delphine to fall forward and the front of her head hit the metal of the visor and was sliced open. Blood was streaming down her face and she was unconscious, just slumped there and not responding. I had a torch, a scarf and a box of tissues in the car, and instinctively I knew what I had to do. I pulled the flap of skin back in place on her forehead, grabbed a bunch of tissues, put them on the top of her head and wrapped the scarf around the whole lot as tightly as I could. I was frantic to get help, but when I tried to get out of the car the door was jammed tight. The windows in the Mini then were made of Perspex, but I managed to force my way out and set off down the road in the freezing fog, torch in hand. As always in situations like this, my shoes were left behind, so there I was, covered in blood, stumbling down a country road in the middle of the night, barefoot. Away in the distance I saw a light in a farmhouse, and as I approached dogs started to bark. I banged on the door and a man opened an upstairs window with a shotgun in his hands as he looked down at me. ‘I think I’ve killed my co-driver. I need help,’ I shouted up at him. ‘Women shouldn’t be driving anyway,’ was his muttered reply. He came down, and when he saw the state I was in he went back into the house for his keys. He didn’t have a car, just a cattle truck. He had been to the mart that morning so the truck was stinking to high heaven and full of cow dung. We drove back to the car and the farmer banged away at the buckled door with a sledgehammer. We managed to pull the unconscious Delphine out and carried her into the smelly truck. She groaned as we moved her and I was so glad to hear that moan because it meant she was still alive. The farmer drove us to a hospital in Goresbridge, County Carlow, which I remember thinking at the time was a very appropriate name, considering Delphine and I were covered in blood. When we arrived at the hospital the nurse informed us that all the doctors were at a party and we would have to go to Carlow, 14 miles away. She telephoned to the hospital, telling them to expect us, and there was a doctor and nurse waiting when we arrived. They put poor Delphine on a stretcher so short that her head was hanging over the end; she had lost so much blood, the doctor didn’t think she would live. She was wheeled away to an operating theatre, and as I sat there in a daze a doctor came over to attend to my face. I hadn’t realised it but there was a gash on my cheek and the doctor decided I needed stitches. I think he might have been one of the doctors who had been at that party the nurse had told us about, because the smell of alcohol as he leant over me was potent, although it might have been ether. He began work on my face but he didn’t use any injection or anaesthetic, just sewed me up with what looked like a large carpet needle. It didn’t matter; I was beyond feeling anything anyway. I lay on the bed in the Accident and Emergency and must have dozed for a while and then woke to find that Delphine was out of surgery. She had 49 stitches across her hairline but she was alive and that was all I cared about. I telephoned Delphine’s husband, Frank, with the bad news. I told him the Mini was a write-off, but Delphine was fine. He didn’t seem to care about the car and said he would come and get me straight away. Frank arrived in a lovely little Triumph Herald to take me home. When we left the hospital I went to get into the passenger seat and he said, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ He insisted that I got into the car and drove home from Carlow to Dunboyne in County Meath to my house. It took us four hours and I was shaking from exhaustion and delayed shock. He kept putting his hand on the steering wheel to keep us on the road. Frank knew that if he didn’t make me drive I might never get behind the wheel again. When we arrived home I was in a terrible state. I had a black eye, there was blood all over my clothes, mostly Delphine’s, and my face was swollen from the stitches. Dad was very calm and told me to have a bath and go straight to bed. The next day after breakfast he said that we were going to Laytown. Once again I went to get in the passenger seat but my father insisted I should drive. He did exactly the same thing as Frank, and to my amazement we were only a mile from the house when I was driving normally without any bother. Any of the accidents I had after that, and thank goodness I didn’t have too many, I did what my father and Frank had told me to do: I just carried on. Delphine recovered well and after a few weeks she was home and raring to go. She was lucky that she had a very low hairline and with that wonderful hair cascading around her face the scar never showed. Delphine never held the accident against me – she knew she was the one who was navigating and I was just obeying orders – but nevertheless I was relieved that we were still the best of friends. She didn’t let a little thing like a crash into a wall affect her, and with a new boyfriend in tow we were back on the road to do weekend rallies and test drives. Frank Bigger pushed me to enter rallies with Delphine; he had a high opinion of my driving abilities and also the money to back us. After a number of two-day rallies, we went for the big event: the Circuit of Ireland in 1959. In its heyday, just about everyone with an interest in motorsport migrated to Killarney, County Kerry, at Easter. People came from all over Ireland just to be part of it. Killarney was buzzing and it was nearly impossible to get somewhere to stay. The Circuit of Ireland differed from many other rallies as it was run over closed roads. The organisers tried to keep the route secret but this was frustrated by the fact that six months before the event advertisements had to be placed in local and national newspapers to let people know that roads in their area would be closed. Three weeks prior to the rally the organisers arrived to tell local residents when and for how long the road would be out of bounds. This didn’t go down too well with some of the clergy as the rally took place at Easter and they were anxious that the parishioners would be able to fulfil their religious duties. In 1965 a farmer and his wife blocked the road near Croom in County Limerick. When a car halted, the farmer banged the windscreen with a stick and his wife threw a stone at the rear window as the drivers drove away, bypassing the blockade. But that was an exception; generally people were enthusiastic and lined the route all around the country, cheering us on. The other significant factor in the Circuit of Ireland Rally was that pace notes were banned. In rallying, pace notes are used to describe the route to be driven, the speed anticipated to complete each stage and the turnings and junctions. Without pace notes, what you rely on is instinct, a good car, a good crew and the sheer joy of competing – and if you’re lucky, winning. Nowadays rallies use notes supplied by the organisers, or alternatively, competitors are allowed to make a full reconnaissance as opposed to rallying the stages blindly. Although pace notes were banned, that didn’t prevent some people from cheating and it was very difficult to get around that despite the best efforts of the marshals. The Circuit is still held today but it is not the same as it is restricted to a short route, mostly in the north of Ireland. In the early days the Circuit was a 1,200- to 1,500-mile event (depending on the chosen route) that encompassed the whole island of Ireland. It became an important event on the rallying calendar, with drivers coming from the United Kingdom and further afield to compete. The rally went on day and night and was hard going, but I loved it. Cars would leave Belfast on Friday night, although some years they allowed drivers to start from different locations, just like the Monte Carlo rallies, and we were able to set off from Dawson Street in Dublin one year. Typically, the route took us over the Mourne Mountains through Friday night and then down the east coast to finish in Killarney on Saturday evening. On Sunday we drove around the Ring of Kerry, then right up the west coast to Donegal on Monday. On Tuesday we drove east across Northern Ireland to finish in Bangor for the prize-giving. My faithful Imp (Bill Mansill) As I have said, the Circuit of Ireland was always run over the Easter weekend, and sometimes there would be snow in the southwest on the Tim Healy Pass. I drove a little Hillman Imp for many of the Circuit of Ireland events and it was perfect for the narrow and twisty road around the lakes and over the mountains. I have driven in the Circuit of Ireland Rally at least eight times, winning the Ladies’ Award on numerous occasions, and was placed high overall many times. In 1968 I was third overall when Roger Clark came first in a Ford Escort, Adrian Boyd second in a Mini Cooper and I drove my faithful Imp. I brought that Imp, EDU 710C, back to Ireland in 2003, after it had been discovered, dismantled in a hay barn on a Hampshire farm, by Imp specialist Clark Dawson. The farmer also kept horses, and pinned to a wall of the barn behind all the horseshow rosettes was the tax disc. Clark telephoned the car registration office in Swansea and they confirmed that the number had not been transferred to another vehicle. He spent two years meticulously restoring that little car and wouldn’t let me pay him for his expertise and hard work – he just told me to take my Imp home and drive it. Thanks to my good friends John and Cepta Sheppard, my Imp has been kept in pristine condition ever since. John started the Imp Club of Ireland and I am very proud to say he made me honorary president. That Imp has appeared in Classic Car magazines and I have driven it in many events in Ireland and the UK ever since. The Circuit of Ireland rallies were great, but Delphine became more ambitious and decided we would enter the RAC Rally in Britain. This was madness as we were totally unprepared and inexperienced, but she was determined and of course I was happy to go along with it and do as I was told. That first RAC Rally in November 1961 with Delphine was a great learning experience and stood to me when I drove in the rally again in 1965 with Susan Reeves and then in 1966 with Valerie Domleo. The RAC Rally at that time meant driving for 2,400 miles over five days and three nights, with only one proper overnight stop. Today’s rallies cannot compare to this, but we thought nothing of it then. Unlike the Circuit of Ireland, the closure of public roads in Britain was impossible due to traffic restrictions. In 1960 the organisers of the RAC Rally persuaded the Forestry Commission to open up some of its closed roads for competitors, so they could drive flat out, away from the traffic regulations of the public roads. They opened up 200 miles of forest roads. The roads through the forest were mud and grit and the only other vehicles that ever went through were trucks. This meant the track had a grass mound in the middle with two big dips either side. We bumped along the uneven road and if anybody came up behind, wanting to pass, we had to pull over as quickly as possible, otherwise we would get pushed out of the way. That was the way it was because each of the stages was timed so speed was all-important. Driving in the dark was especially difficult on those forest roads. Our little Mini had a spotlight on the roof and Delphine put her hand up to swivel the handle of the lamp whenever she saw we were coming to a bend. Typically, the start and finish points of the RAC Rally were at the Excelsior Hotel, near Heathrow Airport, outside London. The rally started on Saturday morning and the route went west to Dorset and Somerset, then north through Wales for the night drive, where we encountered mountain tracks and treacherous surfaces, which were a nightmare. Once through Wales, we drove on through the Lake District and into Scotland, with a breakfast stop Monday morning at Bathgate. The only overnight stop was at Aviemore in the Scottish Highlands. Tuesday morning, we set off to go south via Dumfries and into the Yorkshire forests. We managed to finish that RAC Rally, and, considering it was our first time, we didn’t do too badly. Delphine, by this time, had moved into a flat on Sussex Road in Dublin 4. They were called ‘flats’ then but no one seems to use that word in Ireland these days, not even for the tiniest of properties. I think we must have adopted the word from America over the years, like so many other things. Mespil Flats were one of the first purpose-built apartment blocks in Dublin, and they were magnificent. Delphine’s flat was pure luxury, with high ceilings, timber floors, central heating and two spacious bedrooms. In the basement there was a laundry with tumble-dryers and on the roof was a beautiful garden and, of course, a lift. The height of sophistication was the intercom system so she could let people in without having to leave the flat, just like in the movies. I had never seen anything like it before and loved going there to visit and often stayed overnight. When the drivers came over from Britain to race at the Phoenix Park and Dunboyne races, Delphine would hold great parties in the flat, to which everyone was invited and the shenanigans were mighty. I had started racing in the Phoenix Park and I received quite a lot of attention from the male drivers but wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. It was good for my ego, but I was reluctant to get involved. At 23 years of age, and still a virgin, I was on the lookout for someone special, I suppose, and as it turned out it wasn’t one of those racing men I fell for. I drove out to Bray one evening to meet some friends. As I sat waiting in the hotel lounge, a man at the bar looked over and raised his glass. ‘Can I join you?’ he called. Could he what! He was tall, handsome, with wonderful deep brown, ‘come to bed’ eyes and a voice that sounded like British aristocracy. We chatted and he told me he was filming in Ardmore Studios and had spent the day swashbuckling his way around the Wicklow countryside. He was playing Lord Melton in Sword of Sherwood Forest alongside Richard Greene and Peter Cushing, and his name was Oliver Reed. We spent nearly every evening of his three-month stay in Ireland together. It was a brief but unforgettable experience and a welcome interlude before the next big rally. I drove out to Bray every evening in a flurry of excitement, to hear how filming had gone that day. Oliver was fascinating and interested in me, which I found unbelievable and very flattering. He was different from any man I had ever met, and I thought I was in love. I didn’t know at the time that he was married to an Irish girl, Kate Byrne, or that she was pregnant. But my conscience is clear because although we had a great time together he was not unfaithful to his wife with me in any physical way – I wasn’t ready for that! When Oliver left to return to England, he was not entirely truthful with me. He didn’t tell me about his wife but said that he was being forced to marry a daughter of one of the film producers in order to further his career. I commiserated with him about the unfairness of it all. He was some storyteller, but what a charmer! It was about eight or nine years later when I met him again. I was with a crowd of male drivers at the airport, waiting to fly out to rally somewhere, when they all started whispering and nudging one another: ‘Look who it is!’ Oliver Reed, in the years since I had last seen him, had become famous, especially after playing Bill Sykes in the film Oliver! He had also gained a reputation as a hard drinker and was continuously in the newspapers for some escapade or other. When he saw me, he came straight over and put his arms around me and we chatted until his flight was called. He didn’t look quite as handsome as I remembered him but that didn’t matter. As I stood beside him all the memories came flooding back. Everyone looked at us as we reminisced about our time together in Bray. My colleagues saw me with new eyes and my reputation soared after that. They thought I was just the dumb blonde there to make the cars look good, but being a friend of Oliver Reed, that made them think again. After our success in the rallies together, Delphine was all set with plans for more outings for the two of us but they didn’t happen because in early December 1961 I received a telegram that was to change everything. CHAPTER 4 And we’re off! (#ulink_aad4c094-7259-5130-a4a4-7a232994face) Out of the blue, in December 1961, Sally Anne Cooper sent me a telegram asking me to drive with her in a Sunbeam Rapier for the Monte Carlo Rally the following January. I had never heard her name before and had no idea who she was, or why she had picked me, but I was delighted with the idea. I could only guess that someone must have seen me driving in the RAC Rally and told her about me, but I was never sure if that was true or who it might have been. My father said that the Coopers were a famous family, who had made their fortune from insect repellent aerosols in England. After that telegram, I spoke with Sally Anne by telephone and she told me she was getting married in May. She wanted to do something glamorous and exciting before she began her married life and had decided that the Monte Carlo Rally was it. Even though I had never driven under extreme snowy or icy conditions, I was thrilled with the idea of driving in the Monte and didn’t have to think twice. A friend of my father, who had some experience of driving in France, sat down with me with very detailed maps of the journey I was about to undertake, which quite honestly meant nothing to me. I tried to be polite and follow what he was saying but my mind was already on the road. In early January 1962 Sally Anne sent me an airline ticket for the flight from Dublin to Heathrow. I arrived in London to find an immaculately dressed chauffeur standing there with my name on a placard to meet me, something I had only ever seen in films. Outside the airport, we got into a Rolls-Royce and I sat silently in the back of the car, being transported to somewhere in Hertfordshire. I wondered if it was all a dream – maybe I was being kidnapped. I think it only hit me as we drove through the English countryside that I was away from Ireland, all alone and in unfamiliar territory. It was getting dark by the time we arrived at the house, and as we drove up to the big, imposing mansion my first thought was that there must be a lot of money in fly spray. Sally Anne’s father was a lovely English gentleman. He was so kind and put me at my ease as he showed me to my room. The bedroom was luxurious – all pink, with long white drapes at the window overlooking the gardens. He said how good I was to take the drive and explained that this was Sally Anne’s last fling before her marriage. As I put down my little case, Mr Cooper informed me that dinner would be at 7.30 p.m. and added, ‘We dress for dinner.’ Dress for dinner! I had no evening dress with me and the best clothes I had were on my back. I was wearing a smart grey and white herringbone tweed suit with a long jacket and trousers, which I had made myself. When I confessed that I had no dress, he reassured me and said not to worry about it, I would do fine as I was. But I was worried; I wanted to make a good impression. I had a quick bath, put on some make-up and had to try to look my best in the tweed trousers and a blouse to wear to dinner. I was young and slim, with long blonde hair, and must have looked well but I certainly wasn’t dressed appropriately as I realised immediately when I went downstairs and met Sally Anne for the first time. She was wearing a pale blue taffeta dress and all the men were in dinner jackets with bow ties. I don’t know what they made of the Irish girl dressed in trousers and a frilly blouse, but it was too late to worry about that. Sally Anne’s father had bought her a Sunbeam Rapier; it was one of the Rootes’ ex-works cars, which I had never driven before. A two-door, four-seater saloon, it had a chunky look about it. It occurred to me much later that Mr Cooper must have been a friend of Lord Rootes to get that ex-works car. The next day we set off on our journey to Scotland. We were headed for Blythswood Square in Glasgow because the Monte Carlo Rally started from various locations and Glasgow was one of them. In those days the Rally started at points all over Europe and converged on Grenoble, then on to Monte Carlo. I found the Rapier very heavy going at first but I soon got used to it. My social skills not being the greatest, the prospect of having to sit with strangers in the car for 600 kilometres was harder to cope with than driving a Rapier for the first time. On the way we collected Pat Wright, a friend of Sally Anne, who was to be my co-driver. I had never met her before but was relieved to discover that she was easy to talk to and I liked her from the start. Sixty-five cars left Glasgow to face the long drive down through England to Dover. Pat sat beside me navigating and Sally Anne sat in the back of the car, dressed in a mink coat and red leather gloves, a picnic basket by her side, as she waved to the crowds. She didn’t do any driving the whole time we were on that rally. We drove down to Dover, crossed the English Channel and drove north into Holland and Belgium and then back down into France and over the Alps. I had never encountered snow and ice like that before; I thought the Tim Healy Pass in Kerry was challenging, but this was a whole new ball game. Determined not to let myself down, I found to my amazement that all that slipping and sliding in the big, wet field in Dublin, where my father had taught me to drive, had been excellent training for handling icy roads. The going was slow, but we made it to Monaco three days later. The sun was shining and we stretched ourselves on the harbour wall. Very soon, a Rolls-Royce came to collect Sally Anne and she said that she would send the car back for us, which she did after what seemed an age. The Coopers had a beautiful villa in the South of France, just outside Monte Carlo, and when we were eventually picked up we were shown to our rooms at the top of the house, which must have been the servants’ quarters. Servants’ quarters or not, now that the long drive was over this was like a magical holiday; I enjoyed every minute. The first thing I did was to buy myself an evening dress to wear and Pat Wright helped me with that. This was my first time in Monte Carlo and I didn’t know what to expect. There were awards ceremonies and everything and everybody looked so glamorous. To see Princess Grace for the first time in her dark glasses beside her husband, Prince Rainier III, giving out the trophies was something to tell my mother about when I got home. Mixing with all the other rally drivers, who before this had just been names, was exciting; I didn’t know at the time that I would be teammates with some of them before too long. It was on Saturday night, when we had dinner in the Hotel de Paris, that I met Norman Garrad for the first time. He must have been around 60 years old, and when he approached me I tried to ignore him – I was more interested in talking to the young men of my own age and there were plenty of them around. Norman was the competitions manager for Rootes and in his day had been a force to be reckoned with, giving Stirling Moss and Sheila van Damm their first drives in rallying. But to me, knowing none of this at the time, he was just an annoying elderly man and I couldn’t wait to get away from him. When he did manage to get my attention, he offered me the chance to drive on the Rootes’ rally team. But I laughed at him. I made it clear that I wasn’t interested and shoved his business card in my bag and went on dancing. Norman shrugged his shoulders and, with a knowing smile, moved on. I had no idea that his offer was a chance of a lifetime. CHAPTER 5 Revving up with Rootes (#ulink_e74dc9d1-805f-50bc-ae38-8312be3eb858) When I got back to Dublin I told my dad about meeting Norman Garrad and how I had refused his offer of working for him. My father never usually got annoyed, but this time he was furious and asked me, did I realise what an honour it was to have been asked to drive for Rootes? He told me that the Rootes Group was a famous British car manufacturer and a major motor dealer business, with offices in the West End of London and plants in the Midlands and the south of England. I realised from his reaction that maybe I should have paid Mr Garrad’s proposal a little more attention. A few months later I received a letter from the Rootes Group, telling me that they were delighted that I was taking up Norman Garrad’s offer to join the team. My mother explained that she had written to Rootes’ headquarters in London, telling them that I had changed my mind and would be available to join them. My parents insisted this was a chance of a lifetime and I soon realised they were probably right. Apparently, Norman Garrad had been behind me on the road when I was driving for Sally Anne, and a friend since told me that he is quoted in The Rally-Go-Round by Richard Garrett as saying: ‘She was pressing on very smartly and appeared to be the only one alive in the car. I stayed behind her for about two hours, by which time I realised that she had more than average ability.’ Norman was a shrewd and experienced businessman and saw the advantage of having this long-legged Irish girl sitting on the bonnet of one of his cars, or, even better, doing the driving. I was often referred to as the ‘blonde bombshell’. In his eyes, I was a dolly bird and potentially a great marketing tool too. The aim of car manufacturers is to sell cars, and rallying and racing was one of the ways to get their message across: a pretty woman adorning their cars was always a help. One of Norman’s publicity stunts was to put my name down for Le Mans one year. The 24 Heures du Mans is one of the most prestigious automobile races in the world and on the entry list I was ‘R. Smith’ driving a Sunbeam Alpine. Norman knew full well that women weren’t allowed to drive in the race because in 1956 Annie Bousquet, an Austrian-born French driver, was killed in an accident when she lost control of her Porsche 550 in the early stages of the 12 Heures de Reims. The negative publicity and public outcry caused the French motorsport authorities to prohibit women from entering major races, and the Automobile Club de l’Ouest, organisers of the Le Mans 24 Heures, banned female drivers from competing in their race. Yet previously, in June 1955, a disaster at Le Mans occurred when Pierre Levegh crashed and large fragments of debris flew into the crowd, killing 83 spectators and injuring many more. Despite this appalling accident, the 24 Heures du Mans went on uninterrupted, year after year, but without women drivers. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/rosemary-smith/driven-a-pioneer-for-women-in-motorsport-an-autobiography/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. 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