Chapter Twenty Three

     Our son Clive had remained at Ryde School until he was 16 in 1962. He was never a keen scholar, much preferring to find out things on his own, rather than being told them. He was anxious to get out into the world at the first opportunity. He was trying to decide whether to be a farmer or an hotelier! But there was no capital available to set him up in a farm so hotel-keeping it had to be. So he decided he would like to train properly and not just pick it up as he went along as we had done.

     A previous Assistant Manager of ours, Bryan Edwards, at the Goddard Arms had now assumed the lofty position of Banqueting Manager at the Savoy Hotel, London. Here he had been re-christened Eduardo Brioni!  We contacted him for advice. He arranged for Clive to be interviewed by Silvino Trompetto, the Maitre Chef together with the General Manager, Michael Shepherd. They were prepared to accept him for a place in the five year Management Training Scheme when he became seventeen. They insisted however that he spent the intervening year getting some experience elsewhere.

      Once again our contact with Antonio Franco of Las Mercedes Hotel in Torremolinos came in useful. He agreed for Clive to spend a year there with the opportunity of getting experience in the kitchen, restaurant, bars and Reception office.   

      Within a very short time at the age of sixteen, Clive arrived in the Costa de Sol, not knowing a single word of Spanish. His French teacher at school had stopped him learning French after the first year, saying he would never become a linguist. By learning through necessity, within three months, Clive was speaking Spanish fluently. Once again it proved he was better at finding things out in his own way. He had a great year in Spain, finally becoming Antonio’s assistant in opening a second hotel, El Delfin.       

     On his return to England, armed with new confidence, he returned to the Savoy and began five years of hard but valuable training. His first two years were spent in the kitchens under Silvini Trompetto, affectionately known as ‘Tromps’. Clive began in the Garde Manger (the Larder) and moved through all the ‘parties.’ The kitchen was run on the brigade system with the different parties or departments, as designated by Auguste Escoffier in the late Nineteenth Century.

      Kitchen training covered experience in the Hors d’oeuvre section, Fish, Roasts, Entremetier ( Vegetables) and the Pastry department. The hours were long and split into two halves, 9 am to 2.30 pm, and 5 pm to 10 pm. The kitchen was hot and steamy, the pressures to produce top quality food at all times, enormous. The two and half hour break was spent in the AM Club, designed for catering staff where members perfected their snooker techniques. It was a six day week and the pay was minimal. It costs us more to keep him in London for the five years than to sending him to a top university.

     Many were the times when returning to his flat in Belsize Park late at night, he would be stopped by the Police. They would insist on searching him, especially looking in the heavy box he carried. This contained his full set of kitchen knives, something every potential chef owned and guarded with his life. He had to show his Savoy pass to persuade them he was just returning home from work and had no ulterior motive in mind!

     His third year saw him working as a commis waiter in the main Restaurant. The commis did all the carrying of the dishes for the station waiters to serve. This entailed walking miles, clad in a long white apron and with aching feet, along extensive corridors, up and down huge flights of stairs, over acres of thick wool carpet. When he came home on occasional breaks, his feet would be bleeding. It was not an easy life by any means.

    There were however compensations. His great moment came when the Queen Mother dined there and requested she be served only by English waiters. Since so many of the staff was foreign, the trainee boys were recruited, issued with white gloves and told to do their best! This was an honour indeed. Another great memory he always recalled was the day of the funeral of Winston Churchill. The staff was able to see his coffin as it was carried in the Royal barge on the Thames, as it passed the windows of the River Room. Winston was a regular client of the Savoy. On this solemn day, the waiters that usually served him arranged to keep his special table free.  They together contributed to pay for his favourite dish. With reverence, they carried in and placed on the table an ice carving of a swan, bearing amongst its wings his favourite Beluga caviar; a touching gesture by a usually tough and cynical group of waiters.

      Clive’s main complaint about working in the restaurant was if he received a good tip, on occasions as much as £25, he had to put it in the tronc. This is the customary method of dealing with tips. Every level of staff receives a proportion of the monthly total, dependent upon one’s rank, the Maitre d’, of  course, getting the most and the poor unfortunate commis the least

      The next six months were spent in the Audit and Control Office, learning how to check on any illicit staff activities and ensuring the profit margins were reached. Six months bar training followed and this was succeeded by a most interesting year spent at the Front Office Reception desk. Here he was to meet the notables of the time; Elizabeth Taylor, Bing Crosby who practised his golf shots along the corridors of the Savoy bedrooms, Lord Thomson of the Times newspaper and of course the Beatles. On several occasions he helped them escape the waiting Press hordes by escorting them out of the rear entrance of the hotel.

      Finally in 1968 he finished an arduous but incomparable training. The Savoy Management students received no certificate at the end of their course. They were told that anyone needing to know whether they had completed the training successfully should write for a reference! These five years were to hold Clive in great stead in the future.

     Almost immediately he was offered an Assistant Manager’s post at the much respected North British Hotel in Edinburgh, part of the British Transport Hotel chain. He spent a happy year in Scotland where we were able to visit him and were accommodated in a most sumptuous suite in this Victorian hotel. He also spent some time at their Turnbury and Gleneagles Hotels to widen his experience and later was promoted to Senior Assistant Manager at the Station Hotel in Hull, not quite so pleasant a posting.

     He was ready to spread his wings. He answered an advertisement in the Caterer for General Manager of a large outside catering concern in Wales. On being invited to an interview, he found it was with Hamard Caterers of Barry, a company owned by our friends Chris and Vivien Pollard. His London training was just what they wanted for their expanding business and he was appointed. This lead to him managing many diverse events, ranging from Royal occasions for both the Queen and the Prince of Wales, the Welsh Eisteddfod, Cardiff City banquets and most of the Jewish celebrations of Bar mitzvahs and weddings in the area.

      By this time we had left the Duke and he came home from time to time to his own space in the Court Farm House. We had met many of his girl friends from London, Wiltshire, Scotland and now Wales but he showed no signs of settling down.

     He had been promised the opportunity of a directorship in the company but there seemed no signs of it in the immediate future. He was impatient and once more he was feeling restive. In early 1970 my brother by then in Pasadena, California, wrote to Clive suggesting he might like to get some American experience and Dennis would guarantee his expenses if Clive could get a visitor’s permit. The demands of outside catering were getting frustrating and he felt he would like to get back into hotels again. This opportunity of visiting America was tempting so he gave in his notice, obtained the necessary visitor’s visa and armed with friends’ connections and addresses, set off on this new adventure. Little did we know what it would lead to in later years.

      Arriving in New York, he telephoned one of the contacts he’d received and spent a few nights as their guest. They were most hospitable and showed him New York lifestyle. Then he set off, hitchhiking down the Atlantic coast to Florida where he spent a week with the cousin of one of my WAAF friends. He found American hospitality generous and welcoming. Bussing and hitching his way through the Southern states, he arrived in Houston to a welcome from yet another Good Samaritan. He spent two weeks with Skeet and Mary Kent Stewart and was treated like their own son. He visited the Houston Space Center, ate oysters in Galveston, saw the Presidential Library in Austin and tasted the temptations of Dallas. The Stewarts became great friends of our family and we had Olva their daughter as our guest the following year. Skeet turned out to be the first American Army Officer to be sent to Bletchley Park to work on the Enigma code. On a subsequent visit to their home, I noticed an enigma wheel in his study and then we found out that he was the officer in charge at Canons Park of the eight WRNS officer I had known in our Officers Mess at Fighter Command, all those years ago. It was only then I found out what work they were engaged in – code and cipher intelligence for Bletchley. What a strange world of coincidence it is!

    It was time for Clive to move on. Tired of bussing and hitching, he used his remaining cash to buy a train ticket to San Francisco. In his usual manner, he made friends with two young men in the carriage who offered to put him up for his stay in their home city. He saw all the sights, Fisherman’s Wharf, China Town, the Golden Bridge and of course a lot of the night life. Finally a week later, he took the Greyhound bus south and arrived at my brother’s home for a rest.

     After a week or so getting to know the area, he decided he would look for a job and decided to head for Palm Springs. Dennis gave him some cash and  

Clive headed for the desert. During a previous visit, Peter and I had made contact with Peggy Younghusband, who lived in the High Desert at Yucca Valley, about 20 minutes from Palm Desert. She suggested Clive stayed with her until he found a job. He paid for his keep by painting her house and helping her son build his bungalow whilst looking out for a suitable post. Within a month he was appointed Manager of Indian Wells Hotel, the famous site of the Bob Hope Classic Golf competition.

     On a visitor’s visa, he was not permitted to work but this didn’t deter Clive. He soon put his stamp on the hotel and brought a little Savoy style to the menu. Then as now there were many illegal Mexicans working in the hospitality industry. There were frequent visits from Immigration Inspectors to the hotel, investigating the status of the employees. Clive would show them round. They would interrogate all the Mexicans but never once did it occur to them to ask Clive for his permit to work! He spent a happy season there but in the hot summer months the hotel closed so off he went to Las Vegas once more looking for work. Before long he found himself employed as the Road Manager for the Platters, the well-known Afro-American group who were still touring. He went all over the country with them and into Mexico. He had hair-raising times with them, getting them to gigs on time when they were stoned with drink and drugs. The tour lasted for three months. He had never taken drugs in his life and this experience made him even more sure he never would.

     When the Indian Wells reopened for the following winter, he returned there once more as Manager. The time came when his visa was due to expire. Returning to Dennis in Pasadena, he spent a little time with them, repaying the money Dennis had given him as he had manage to save quite a bit from his earnings. He took them out for a final thank you dinner and then the following day, left LAX to return home. It was 1972, he wondered what would come next.

    It may seem that Clive had taken many different posts during these early years but this is not at all unusual in the hotel and catering industry. The wider the experience one manages to have, the more useful one becomes. 

Catching up with Clive

Bridging the Centuries 

By Eileen Younghusband