By the time we got back from the Christmas drinks party, Bobby and I were a little bit ‘under the weather’ and when we went to push the hostess trolley plus contents into the dining room, everything shot onto the floor. We picked up what was salvageable, then rang Lou. ‘Bring it round here,’ he said, so we had Christmas dinner chez Lou Wade that year.
I suppose that, by today’s standards, our Gants Hill house was pretty modest, but Bobby had previously lived in a small house close to an industrial site and I’d had a flat with an outside loo, so to us it was fantastic. Even so, I found the first year of our marriage a bit uncomfortable. It took a long time to adjust to such a huge change in my life. Bobby didn’t want me to work, because he trained in the mornings only and came home for lunch. In those days, the close season started in May and stretched on until well into August, so we could get away for lovely long summer holidays. But I missed the company and stimulation of working life at first.
In so many ways, Bobby was a paragon among husbands - I never had to tidy up after him. Not only immaculately dressed, he was also obsessively neat. He just had to arrange everything in order and just so. The clothes in his wardrobe were lined up as though they had been prepared for inspection. His jumpers were hung in sequence from dark to light. It was almost an aesthetic pleasure to open the wardrobe. Something I did find difficult about those early days, though, was that Bobby had been cosseted by his parents, whether it was Big Bob cleaning his muddy boots for him on a Saturday night after the game or Doss’s five-star ironing and sewing service. But the incident of the sub-standard Vs in his shorts should have been a warning to me. I had trouble coming up to Doss’s standards.
In my own way, I’d been equally spoilt. My mother felt guilty about leaving me to go to work every day and I’d usually be treated to breakfast in bed before she set off. I never ironed. I hadn’t really learnt to cook, either, although as my family always ate well, at least I knew how things ought to taste.
After I’d been married for six months, I solved the problem of the ironing. Sometimes I’d visit West Ham to help out in Bobby’s sports goods shop. My mother had given up her job as manageress of a large clothes shop to run it for him. It was opposite the stadium in Green Street and one day I took a wander up the road and discovered a Chinese laundry. That was the end of my ironing angst - I just took everything there from then on. I never let on to Doss, though.
It wasn’t only the housework which got me down. In that first year of marriage, Bobby’s England career began to take off big time. That, plus his West Ham commitments, meant he was often away. I felt isolated because I’d been used to the warmth and security of Christchurch Road, with Auntie Mum, Uncle Jim and my three cousins, Marlene, Jenny and Jimmy, just a flight of stairs away.
A while before I got married, Auntie Mum and her family had moved to Barkingside, so I reverted to the bosom of my family, driving round there in my Hillman Minx, Pele in his cat basket beside me. It meant I could spend time with my cousin Jimmy, to whom I’d always been close. Although Jimmy wasn’t much older than me, he was now more or less housebound. He had been doing his National Service when he came home for a spell on leave and started staggering when he walked. Soon he couldn’t even carry his bike indoors. Uncle Jim thought he was malingering because he didn’t want to go back to the Army, but the reality was much, much worse; he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
Jimmy suffered from a particularly virulent form of the disease and he wasn’t with us for much longer. After he died, Bobby helped me to organize an auction of West Ham and England autographed memorabilia, which made enough to buy and adapt a transport van for MS sufferers to use, so at least Jimmy’s death resulted in some benefit to others.
It was after the World Cup in Chile that Bobby’s fame really started to spread. By the end of 1962, Walter Winter-bottom had decided to stand down as England manager and Alf Ramsey, who replaced him, made it clear from very early on that he saw Bobby as his future captain. Alf was quiet, self-controlled and introverted. He also knew exactly what he wanted and I think he saw his mirror image in Bobby. England’s first game under Alf was against France in the European Championships. England were beaten 5-2, but Bobby came back full of the joys because Alf had actually sat down next to him as the team bus was leaving Paris. ‘He was asking me all sorts of questions about the team under Walter and where I thought I should play,’ marvelled Bobby. ‘I get the idea he’s really going to sort things out.’
In spite of the fact that Bobby was young and relatively new to the team, Alf made him captain within a few months of that France defeat, against Czechoslovakia on 12 May 1963 - Bobby’s twelfth cap. Bobby revelled in leading the side out in front of the fanatically partisan crowd in Bratislava. England won 4-2 and the big occasion inspired him to a performance that brought rave reviews from the English press.
I had to wrestle with my feelings about Bobby’s increasing fame. On the one hand I was thrilled for him that things were going so well. On the other hand, now everybody wanted to be Bobby Moore’s friend. That was a little difficult to deal with at first. Before we got married, we’d been an ordinary courting couple. Having the press at our wedding and all those strangers crowding around to wish us well had been lovely, but beyond that it really hadn’t occurred to me that we’d be in the public eye all the time and what that would entail.
I’d been used to having Bobby to myself more or less one hundred per cent and, naively, thought that was how it would continue. Now the hangers-on were starting to appear. I was actually quite taken aback when we kept getting interrupted while we were out for a quiet dinner.
Through friends we met one Stanley Flashman, king of ticket touts and future owner of Barnet FC, where he achieved legendary status by employing Barry Fry as manager, then sacking and re-instating him almost on a weekly basis at one stage. Stan’s industrial-sized figure made him instantly recognizable. He would come up with tickets and backstage passes to all the top shows and introduce us to a whole host of people who then invited us to parties, weddings, bar mitzvahs . . . you name it. Some of those events were great. Others, where it would turn out that Bobby was the prize exhibit and used for photo opportunities, were a pain. He caught on to it soon enough. He hated letting people down and was never, ever abrupt or rude, but he had a way of withdrawing behind a wall of politeness if necessary.
I loved the real fans. They were wonderful. What I didn’t like was the idea of Bobby being exploited by people for their own benefit, or used and taken advantage of. I was protective of him. In fact, we had an understanding: when it got too much for him, he would give me a special look. Very soon after, I would rush up to him and say, ‘Oh! Bobby, don’t forget we’ve got to . . .’ and then produce some fictitious commitment which meant we had to leave tout de suite. Then we would head off somewhere where we knew we wouldn’t be disturbed, like the White Elephant Club. Bobby’s party trick there was to stand behind the bar, seemingly innocuously. It was only if you looked behind the bar that you would see he had his trousers down.
Totally out of character for the dignified, self-controlled Bobby Moore? Not a bit of it. It’s a thing young men do. It wasn’t even terribly naughty. Mind you, he did keep his boxer shorts on.
It was around this time, incidentally, that Bobby’s existence was noted by the world of high fashion. The September 1962 issue of Vogue pictured him in his West Ham strip, surrounded by four gorgeous models. The rest of the world was discovering what I already knew - that Bobby Moore was beautiful as well as brilliant. And soon he would prove that he was brave as well.
Bobby’s yelp of pain jerked me wide awake. Slowly, because I was heavily pregnant, I sat up and switched on the lamp. ‘Bobby, what’s the matter?’ I said.