Chapman / Bonewitz Mrs Zigzag

The Extraordinary Life of a Secret Agent's Wife
1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7524-9276-6
Verlag: The History Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten

When Betty Farmer married double agent Eddie Chapman, Agent Zigzag, she knew her life would never be ordinary. Yet even before her marriage to Eddie, her life involved incendiary bombs, serial killers, film roles and love affairs with flying aces. After her marriage she coped with Eddie's mistresses, his criminal activities, separations and personal traumas. Coming from humble origins, Betty would, in time, own a beauty business, a health farm and a castle in Ireland, become the friend and confidante of film stars and an African president, and the honoured guest of Middle Eastern royalty. In an age where women were still very much second-class, she became a perfect example of what, in spite of everything, was possible. Much has been written about Eddie Chapman, films have been made, television programmes produced. Yet alongside Eddie for most of his extraordinary life was an equally extraordinary woman: Mrs Zigzag. This book tells the story of the Chapmans' often fraught but ultimately loving relationship for the first time.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Chapman, Betty

Bonewitz, Ronald L.

Leseproben

1

EDDIE IS DEAD,
LONG LIVE EDDIE

The February sun was unusually dazzling as it shone through the French windows of the restaurant, sending up sparkles from the fine crystal and polished silver adorning the elegant tablecloth. Equally dazzling was the blonde woman sitting with three male companions. They had let it be known that they were ‘film people’ and it took no imagination whatsoever to believe that the Harlowesque blonde was the star of some upcoming celluloid epic. The man to whom she devoted most of her attention was film-star material himself – tall, thin, rakishly handsome and with a thin moustache. The two rougher men with them easily could have been mistaken for bodyguards. The woman was Betty Farmer, and they had been in Jersey for a week. This lazy, idyllic Sunday lunchtime in February 1939 was among the best moments of her life. She couldn’t have imagined that she was just a few heartbeats away from the worst.

The handsome man was talking to her about a boat trip that he had seen advertised in the harbour area, but she recalls that her attention was more taken by the small vase of freesias that smelt ‘absolutely heavenly’. At some stage in the conversation, however, she became aware that both the tone and the speed of his speech had changed. Before she knew what was happening, he leapt from his seat, kissed her shoulder and dived through the closed French windows in a shower of broken glass. The man now disappearing through the gardens of the hotel, leaving behind shattered glass, broken crockery, shouting waiters and policemen, and a bewildered and stunned Betty, was Arnold Edward Chapman – professional criminal, safe-breaker extraordinaire, and wanted man. The next time he and Betty would meet, nearly six years later, he would be Arnold Edward Chapman, darling of both the German and British intelligence services, one of the most audacious double agents of all time, and loose cannon. And, grudgingly – to the British Establishment at least – a national hero: Agent Zigzag.

Those few minutes of utter chaos in the restaurant were, unbeknown to Betty Farmer, the pivot point of her life.

Born twenty-two years previously on a small farm near Neen Sollars in Shropshire, Betty was the first of eleven children. If there was a far corner of the Earth in the late 1930s, the farms surrounding this minuscule village in the English midlands were it. The village comprised a few houses, a public house, a church and a school. Betty’s nearest neighbour was a mile away. The farm was surrounded by woodlands and she had to walk to and from her house along a small track a mile or so long, which led to a narrow tarmac road. She walked everywhere, except when the weather was very bad and her father took her in his pony carriage. They would drive some 3 or 4 miles to a main road, and then she walked the rest of the way to school. It was miles away, quite literally, from the bright lights of London and the glittering, glamorous life that awaited her.

As a teenager Betty’s emerging beauty hadn’t gone unnoticed. For a time she went out with the son of the local squire. She was very keen on him but he finally finished the relationship to go out with a more sophisticated girl who had come to the area from London. Betty had a further complication in that the local vicar had fallen in love with her.1 She was going out with him at the same time that she was dating the squire’s son. When that relationship finished she was very upset, but did not want to continue her relationship with the vicar. This caused a local scandal in the village:

People thought I was flighty and as I did not intend to have a serious relationship with the vicar I decided the easiest option was to leave. To be honest, I did not want the responsibility of bringing up my 10 brothers and sisters either, so that was a part of my decision to leave, but not the main reason. So, I decided to go to London.

It is hard to imagine in the twenty-first century how radical such a step was. Even as late as the 1960s it was difficult for a single woman to get a bank account in England without a man’s signature. Dickensian England did not die with Charles Dickens.

Of that time, Betty recalls:

My mother was a very good mother. She worked hard bringing up eleven children with only her mother’s help to aid her. She did all the cooking and baking, and father was always out working, running the farm. They were very upset when I left; they did not want me to leave and I didn’t see my mother and father for a good many years afterwards. But I wanted a fresh start and London was a big city with lots of opportunities. The situation at home with Richard and the vicar was too awkward so I needed to leave. I had a few hundred pounds, which was given to me by my two aunts who lived in Rhyl, and who wanted to help me. I used to go to them when I needed clothes and money and they would help me out. My aunts were on my mother’s side of the family. They spent their life in service working for the same family, who were very wealthy. When the last of the family died they did not have any heirs, so left their estate to my aunts. I had the name of an Irish lady, Wonnie Carey, who ran a bed-and-breakfast boarding house for young ladies in Baron’s Court, west London. I moved in and she took me under her wing.

Wonnie Carey introduced Betty to many people, including Charles Hawtree who owned hotels on the Isle of Man, where she later trained for a year to learn the hotel business.

Because I had been brought up very religiously, I carried on going to church. Wonnie would go to church but she was Catholic. Whenever I’ve been in different countries, whatever the faith, I’ve always gone to church. I used to go with her to the Catholic Church. There were two rules: no trousers, and you had to wear gloves on Sunday.

Betty also adds with a chuckle: ‘no smoking or swearing or any of that either! She was a very religious lady and ran what was referred to at the time as a good clean house. I met a lot of people through her. She was very “correct”.’ Betty chuckles again: ‘I couldn’t have a fellow in. The telephone was in the hallway and if you were expecting a call you hung around in the hallway. There wasn’t much privacy.’

Young, pretty and vivacious, Betty went out from time to time with a man she met at the B&B who took her out to a number of London clubs. It was during this time that she was offered the job of social secretary at a social club on Church Street in Kensington (a wealthy enclave of London) as an evening job. She also worked in a fashion shop during the day. It was at this club that she had her first encounter with Eddie Chapman. One evening as she was playing on the pinball machine a member came in with a new young man. The new man, tall, thin and handsome, stood by the machine having a drink with his friend, and as she moved away, she heard the newcomer say ‘I’m going to marry her.’

‘In a pig’s ear!’ she replied.

Despite her ‘pig’s ear’ remark, she ended up talking with him and having a drink. He said he wanted to see her again. He told her that at that time he was sharing a cottage in Hertfordshire with Terence Young. Young was best known in later years for directing three of the films in the James Bond series, Dr No, From Russia with Love and Thunderball. In his Wikipedia profile, it says: ‘Terence Young WAS James Bond’. There is little doubt that Young fitted the profile of Bond – the erudite, sophisticated ladykiller, dressed in Savile Row suits, always witty, well-versed in wine, and comfortable at home and abroad. It was remarked that Sean Connery, the first Bond, ‘was simply doing a Terence Young impression’. It doesn’t require too much imagination to believe that so, too, was Eddie. Terence was already flirting with the film business by then, so later when Eddie accounted to Betty for his absences as being related to films, it was entirely credible. That he was involved with a criminal gang and out blowing safes would never have entered Betty’s mind.

Despite Betty’s initial resistance, they started going out together. Gradually, a romance developed and, in late 1938, they began living together. Betty continues: ‘In those days, living together was frowned upon by everyone: by one’s parents, by the Church and, if one were in normal employment, by one’s employers.’ As a safebreaker, however, the normal conditions of employment were a little different for Eddie and, even if he had not been handsome and captivatingly charming, she would still have found the excitement of being with him to have been ‘almost unbearable’. It is also worth remembering that Betty still believed that Eddie was ‘in films’, and as such the ‘normal conditions of employment’ didn’t apply there either. At one point, Eddie revealed to Terence that he was, in fact, a crook and blew up safes for a living. Far from being shocked, Terence saw this as adding to the excitement and glamour of their lives.

It was a glamorous time, even though the clubs Eddie took Betty to were on the sleazy side. But as she remarks: ‘they were places of their time’. Eddie himself was a glamorous character, and seemed to know all of the club owners, although why he should was a mystery to Betty. In reality, Eddie moved in the criminal underworld; the clubs he took Betty to were his natural haunts. By the time Betty went to Jersey, she knew this.

Betty takes up the story of the startling events on Jersey, with her and Eddie checked into a hotel as ‘Mr and Mrs Farmer’ of Torquay:

The restaurant at the Hotel de la Plage, right on the waterfront in Havre des Pas, was the...