HENLEY WAS SO wet this year it should have been rechristened Duckley. Happily I was accompanied by two young men so glamorous I hardly noticed the damp and cold. One of them was man-about-town, Johnnie Service. The other, a lynx-eyed naturalist called James McEwan, was just back from stalking leopard in Nepal.
‘What a frightful season,’ grumbled Johnnie, as we drove past battered banks of meadowsweet through the rain-dark tree tunnels leading into Henley. ‘I’ve been pissed on at Ascot, Wimbledon, the Fourth of June and now Henley, and no doubt, I’ll be pissed on at Goodwood.’
Despite the deluge, the band was whizzing through The Marriage of Figaro as we arrived and the carpark filling up with cheerful, broad-bottomed men in coloured jackets and pink and blue caps. Their mouths watered as they unpacked lavish picnics, and chopped up apple and cucumber to make Pimms.
One party had even laid out silver candlesticks on a snow-white table cloth. There’s a Dunkirk (or rather a knife and forklands) spirit about the English which seems to make them enjoy outdoor jaunts even more if the weather is grisly.
Happily, too, Johnnie and James had perfect manners: so quick on the bottle and the umbrella that I never had a dry glass nor a raindrop falling on my head all day. Such a refreshing change from all those role-reversed males who snatch one’s umbrella in a panic in case their perms kink in the rain.
In the distance, the river rippled olive green and shiny as a Harrods carrier bag.
‘Shouldn’t we be watching the races?’ I asked.
‘God no,’ said James refilling my glass. ‘Johnnie only watched two races in four days last year.’
‘Anyway it’s considered frightfully unlucky to look at the water,’ explained Johnnie.
All around us Bucks Fizz seemed to have been replaced by a foul concoction called Bellini, consisting of peach juice and champagne, and tasting like the remains of tinned fruit salad left too long in the fridge.
The rain was getting worse. A pretty girl in a straw hat and a blue mini squelched past in gum boots. Two Barbara Cartlands arrived in a large Bentley which progressed in a series of jerks, and ran over a deckchair to loud cheers. They were followed by a Range Rover full of yelling punks. One young blade had even dyed his rough-haired dachshund’s beard flamingo pink to match his hair.
Johnnie looked disapproving.
‘Do you know the difference between a Range Rover and a hedgehog?’ he asked. ‘The hedgehog has the pricks on the outside.’
James McEwan adjusted his panama hat, and said it was a shame the Henley colours were the same as the Argentinian national flag. Any minute now the band would break into ‘I love Paras in the Springtime’. The Harrier Jump Jet set were also out in force, large ladies in larger hats swooping on one another with an antler clash of umbrellas: ‘Deirdre, dar-ling, you’re not still with Beardie?’
‘My dear, I am,’ screamed back Deirdre. ‘Our house was so jolly cold last winter when the central heating collapsed, Beardie had to come back into my bed, and everything started up again.’
As the weather showed no signs of lifting, we went to lunch. Fortunately there was a bar halfway along the interminable queue so no one needed be without a drink for a second. A sweet girl in a boater told us about her ancient uncle who’d attended her sister’s school play this summer.
‘Uncle Willy’s head kept lolling on to his shoulder, and we all thought he was nodding off. Only later we discovered he had this straw through his buttonhole attached to a hip-flask in his breast-pocket.’
Finally we reached the lunch tent.
‘Good God, tinned potatoes,’ said an outraged dowager. ‘What is Henley coming to?’
After lunch we splashed round the stewards’ enclosure in the drizzle. It seemed illogical that a Scotsman in a kilt was allowed in, but the Mail on Sunday photographer, who was much prettier, had to go into Henley to buy a skirt before she was admitted.
‘Why does everyone look so ghastly?’ complained a beauty, who appeared to be wearing nothing but gym shoes and a cricket sweater.
‘Because they’re all so common,’ drawled her boy friend, ‘Henley’s even lower down in the social scale than Twickenham now.’
Certainly I was surprised, despite the sartorial restrictions, at how messy most of the women looked. As there’s no definite skirt length this year, hemlines were all over the place; and those veiled pillboxes topped with ostrich feathers may have been stunning on the Princess of Wales, but on anyone else look like a parrot moulting over a meat-safe. Perhaps, too, because it’s fashionable for women to crop their hair and wear men’s suits and panama hats, only the men at Henley looked chic, whereas the women in their big hats and floating dresses looked over the top.
The prettiest woman was newscaster Jan Leeming, very suntanned in a white ankle-length Gini Fratini dress and white hat trimmed with pale pink roses. She was accompanied by that great rowing, whisky-drinking institution, John Snagge.
‘It’s so lovely, for a change,’ said Miss Leeming, ‘to have everyone clamouring to talk to John and taking no notice of me.’
I next had a quick whizz round Leander, the most famous rowing club in the world. They even have a president called Mr Rowe. In the bar, ancient members in pink caps, faded pink socks and moth-eaten boating jackets were radiating misogyny and reliving past triumphs.
I was reminded of a conversation overheard by a friend in the Travellers Club some years ago.
‘Whatever happed to J.B.R.?’ mumbled an old buffer from an armchair.
‘Achieved the ultimate glory rowing for Oxford,’ replied another armchair. ‘Then spent the rest of his life in exhausted mediocrity.’
Last year, according to the club PRO, Mr Boswell, Leander had a fierce debate as to whether they should admit female members. Many debaters had seemed keen on the idea, and feelings were running high, when an old buffer struggled very slowly to his feet, and said: ‘If yer put a cat flap in the back door, yer can be damned sure yer’ll get all the neighbouring cats coming in as well,’ and sat down again. He carried the day, and women were voted out by two to one. An unkinder touch is that even though women may now row in women’s events at Henley, only male crews may compete in the Ladies Plate.
Anxious to banish any further suggestion of chauvinism, Mr Boswell changed the subject to the amatory prowess of the oarsman.
‘He’s the best lover in the world,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘With such powerful elbows he can keep going longer than anyone else.’
Not having a high opinion of rowers, I was sceptical of such claims, but as we came out of Leander, I was introduced to Christopher Baillieu, who is not only a silver medallist, but has also twice won the world championships and the Diamond Sculls. The Sebastian Coe of rowing, Mr Baillieu’s beauty Was even more gleaming than Miss Leeming’s. I decided Diamond scullers were a girl’s best friend after all.
Outside I found James and Johnnie extricating themselves from a comely but sulky-looking blond.
‘She actually said she preferred community work to going to Henley,’ said Johnnie in a shocked voice.
‘Pretty though,’ admitted James, ‘for a girl at Lancaster University.’
The drizzle had turned to downpour again, opening up the coloured umbrellas along the bank like a vast herbaceous border. A balloon floated downstream to loud cheers.
‘Well rowed, Eton,’ went up the cry, as the Eton B team hissed by, their duck-egg blue oars flashing in and out of the pitted water.
Half a minute later, the Connecticut crew they’d beaten came by in floods of tears, and were clapped even more loudly because the crowd felt so sorry for them. It’s all part of that kindness which also made the authorities fork out £425 last year for ‘taking up and removing swans’ from this stretch of the river, so they didn’t get hurt or hurt anyone during the regatta.
Even one and three quarter hours getting out of the carpark didn’t dampen our high spirits. Jolly gumbooting weather.