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The Breaks Came My Way

by Joe Davis

Chapter 20 : The elusive 147

Once, in the rush to catch an edition of an evening paper, two items had become intermixed in the Stop Press column. As a result it read:

THE CRUMBLES MURDER

Newman 12,612

Davis 11,444

BOTH MEN SENTENCED TO DEATH

Well, although I had given up championship play, I was not dead yet.

One of my first ventures after the fun and games of the Royal Horticultural Hall was the formation of the Professional Billiard Players Association with the aims of popularising the games of billiards and snooker, setting up a benevolent fund and, most important, protecting and improving conditions for the pros. I was elected chairman, a post I held for many years, with Sidney Smith as vice-chairman and, on the committee, Kingsley Kennerley, Horace Lindrum, Walter Donaldson, Alec Brown and Sydney Lee. Austin Carris was honorary secretary and the Duke of Roxburghe, who first came to see me with his father and who later presented me with trophies on many occasions, kindly consented to become president.

This out of the way, I concentrated in 1947 on a further trip to South Africa which I was arranging with Horace Lindrum. Everyone seemed terribly keen to have us and I was sure that we would do extremely good business, just as, ten years earlier, I envisaged a roaring success  with his uncle, Walter. I also decided to take June along with me on a sort of delayed honeymoon. The bookings were all made and the three of us were greatly looking forward to the event when Ma Lindrum arrived like a bolt from the blue.

It seemed that she had wearied of running their ten table saloon in Pitt Street, Sydney, single-handed while Horace was on war-time service as a sapper out in the wilds of the Northern Territory. And in his absence she had become famous for yelling at the paying customers: 'Look, cobber, there's plenty of ash trays in this joint. If you can't use 'em, git.' Now she had grandiose expansion plans, including the construction of a new match hall and the formation of an Australian Billiards Council, for all of which I she needed Horace's urgent help. When she learned of our South African venture, however, she decided to shelve her empire-building for a while and announced that she would be Horace's manager on our tour.

I was appalled at the prospect. I offered to allow Horace to break his contract and call off the whole thing. 'You know that this is supposed to be a honeymoon trip for June and me,' I told him. 'And somehow I can't imagine a honeymoon with Vi on it!' But Horace, good-natured fellow that he was, insisted on going through with the tour as planned and promised that he would succeed in smoothing everything over between his mother and me. Like a chump, I let him persuade me...

After a party at home attended, among others, by Tommy Handley, Lynd Joyce and Jean Kent, we set sail for South Africa on April 12th. It was the maiden voyage of the liner Corinthia. What a treat it was, after the gloom of the war years, to have everything so luxurious and sparklingly new: carpets, curtains, cutlery, china and - most of all - food. It was our first sight of white bread in a long while. We met some charming people on board, including Sir George Harvie Watt, who had been Parliamentary Private Secretary to Churchill through the war, and his wife Betty. In later years we spent many happy days at their beautiful home with its croquet lawn, at Elie in Scofland. But less than charming was Vi Lindrum. Indeed she put in her oar on the very first night at sea. I was relaxing in the lounge, playing a game of sixpenny pontoon with film producers John Watt and Love on the Dole playwright Walter Greenwood, when she burst into our cabin to abuse June. 'You!' she screamed like a fishwife, 'you're a right beaut, you are - encouraging my son to play cards so that your husband can clip him.'

'But Horace isn't even playing,' June protested.

However, Vi was never one to let a few details get in the way of a good slanging match. And she was obviously spoiling for a fight. So the next day I arranged through Horace to repay her call. But I could not get any sense out of her rantings and in the end I stopped listening. But we did agree on one thing: that we would not mix or even talk to each other again for the rest of the trip.

Yet this did not prevent her from stirring up trouble from the moment we hit Cape Town. How June managed to share a sleeping compartment with her on the train to Johannesburg that night I shall never know. And when we reached Johannesburg she waded straight into Reg Haswell, the man who was arranging a series of matches between Horace and me at the White City Stadium, which included appearances against Pieter Mans, the South African snooker champion, and Freddie van Rensburg, his Transvaal counterpart. Ma Lindrum demanded that Horace should compete on level terms with me, whom she always referred to as Mr Davis, but I in turn demanded that for every frame on which he started level Horace should put up £500. That was an effective counter-move and Horace accepted the 10-point start with which, until Vi stepped in, he had always been satisfied.

Following the series in Johannesburg Horace and I went our separate ways, apart from a few joint exhibitions, and finally Vi took him off home to Sydney. June and I motored 3,000 miles to Livingstone on the tip of Northern Rhodesia where I played at the Livingstone Club and together we watched the astonishing Victoria Falls. From there I played my way through Salisbury, Bulawayo and other towns before returning to Cape Town via the Kruger National Park, Durban, Port Elizabeth and East London. Apart from the attraction of a ration-free country so soon after the war June loved the sunshine and the scenery so much that we even considered eventual retirement there.

From Cape Town we sailed home on the Durban Castle, stopping off again at Madeira where we were entertained all day and I gave an impromptu show at the Sports Club. We were loaded down with presents and practically smothered in flowers and took so long to get into the launch that we nearly missed the ship. They were just about to haul up the companionway when we roared up.

Back home, a new era was about to begin in the world of billiards and snooker. Bob Jelks, with support and encouragement from our Professional Billiard Players Association, had set about reviving a billiards and snooker mecca on the site of the old Thurston's Hall since Thurston's themselves did not appear interested in recapturing former glories. The ground landlords, the Automobile Association, were agreeable and the hall, much modernised and renamed the Leicester Square Hall, opened on Saturday, October 3rd, 1947, with Bob, Sidney Smith and me as directors. Sidney and I began a week's baptismal match on the following Monday. The hall proved a great centre and lifeline for the game and we kept our head above water financially thanks to being charged a minimal rent. It therefore came as a blow when in 1954 the AA decided that they needed the site on which to extend their buildings. On January 28th, 1955, Fred and I played the last exhibition match on the famous table which had been rescued from the blitzed Thurston's and millions of television viewers saw Fred make the last century - 102 - and saw me send down the last black. The match was marked by the seventy-eight-year-old J.W. Clark who had officiated at the opening night of Thurston's fifty-four years earlier.

A few weeks later an auction of the effects was held at which the famous table was inexplicably bought for 270 guineas by a Loughton bus driver called William Palmer. He seemed to have no interest in the game nor any room for the table at home and soon sold it to the News Chronicle who wanted it for an amateur competition they were launching. I myself bought lot 52b for my home: the original mahogany swing doors through which I had first walked nearly forty years earlier. One forms the entrance to our flat and the other to the billiard-room.

The first real match at the new hall was the 1947 snooker championship between my brother Fred and the canny Scot Walter Donaldson. Walter had not touched a cue for the five years during which he was a sergeant with the Royal Signals. But after demob he vanished, unbelievably, into the capacious loft of a neighbour's bungalow at Belvedere in Kent which was equipped with a full-size table and forty seats for any friends who wanted to watch Walter practising. He was a good orthodox player who had made a break of 142 against John Pulman (which was not recognised) shortly after his defeat in an early round of the 1946 championship. Nevertheless I fancied Fred to keep the 'Davis Cup' in the family and was surprised and disappointed when Walter beat him by 82 games to 63. However Fred rectified matters the next year by taking the title from Walter and holding in 1949. He lost it to Walter in 1950, but regained it in 1951 and then kept it until it was taken in 1958 by John Pulman who had it for a decade.

Even as Fred and Walter were contesting their first final in 1947 John was showing impressive form as the newest newcomer to the professional ranks. He had come to my attention the year before when he beat Albert Brown in the amateur championship. Then, shortly after this, he abandoned his job in an Income Tax department in Exeter and turned professional. But although he won £400 in his first tournament times were not easy for a young pro, so I talked about John to my dear old friend Bill Lampard who ran a bakery and a couple of confectioners' shops in Bristol. He was a tireless charity worker, especially for St Dunstan's, and helped in the Dockland Settlement scheme in the city before the war. I often went to help him at the Settlement, both giving exhibitions and helping the Duchess of Beaufort to distribute food from the kitchens there. Bill was also a great supporter of the game, being chairman of the Bristol Billiards Association and a member of the BA&CC, and he built a beautiful billiard-room at his house in 'The Park' at Almondsbury overlooking the River Severn. I often stayed there and had a few drinks with a famous neighbour of his, the cricketer Wally Hammond. Bill agreed to sponsor Pulman and took him into his home where he rapidly became one of the most brilliant cue-men the world has seen. He was always a great attraction, well turned-out and with a flamboyant style - though inclined to be temperamental. I am sure he could have achieved even greater honours in the game if only he had been less inclined later on to enjoy the so-called good things in life. Bill himself I kept in very close touch with until he suddenly died and I was astonished to find that in his will he had left his house and all its contents to me. I would have loved to live there but my life was so integrated into London that I could not see it working out. Now I am retired, of course, it would be heaven.

Meanwhile, as the lads fought over the championship, I continued with exhibitions large and small, intermingled with overseas trips and business ventures. And some strange experiences I had.

Once, after an afternoon session at the Leicester Square Hall referee Tommy Leng came over to say that he had lined up a fellow who wanted to play me for £100. 'That sounds all right to me,' I said. 'What's the catch?'

'He wants you both to play blindfolded,' said Tommy.

The other fellow turned out to be a Kashmiri by the name of Kuda Buks who specialised in this sort of stunt so I politely declined his offer. But, since he was there, I persuaded him to let me see him do his stuff. Tommy and I covered his eyes with pads of dough which he brought with him, stuck half-crowns on top of each pad, followed up with sticking plaster and finished off with swathes of black bandage. And he could still tell a red from a white and pot it. I never did find out how it was done.

Slightly less amazing, but considerably more alarming, was an incident which took place at the Drill Hall in Truro during the week that Fred was being beaten by Walter Donaldson in the 1947 final. At the end of my snooker exhibition I always wound up with my famous machine-gun shot. Eight balls are lined up along the baulk line, the cue ball is then played very slowly from the side cushion with just enough pace to reach the far corner pocket, and before it goes down the other eight balls are rattled separately into the same pocket. It is a shot calling for great accuracy and rapid reflexes.

The only trouble with the machine-gun was that the string net pockets in use in those days became overfull when holding only four balls and had to be emptied with a very deft touch. Down in Truro the pockets had this usual capacity but were different from any I had encountered before in that the balls were not picked out of the top but fished out through an aperture in the side. (I cannot say, however, that this significantly simplified the emptying operation.) I arranged with Albert James, an enthusiast who had been marking and refereeing for me all afternoon, to help me with my grand finale. 'Stand close to,' I instructed him, 'and as the balls go in pick some out to make room for the rest. But they come pretty quick, so be prepared.' Famous last words; Albert was nothing like quick enough. The pocket was full before he knew what was happening and as I continued to fire the balls in he bent down to wrestle with the pocket. As the last ball was on its way in it struck the top ball in the pocket and flew up like a guided missile to catch poor Albert right in the centre of his forehead. I dropped my cue and rushed round the table just in time to catch him as he fell. Happily, my instant vision of a courtroom scene featuring me as defendant was ill-founded. Albert was unconscious for about ten minutes with a lump the size of an egg between the eyes, but recovered to referee again in the evening. Only this time he left the trick shots to somebody else.

A happier occasion altogether was at the Kelvin Hall, Glasgow, on February 9th, 1948 (just after we had moved to a house in Phillimore Gardens, Kensington, enabling me for the first time to have a billiard-table in my own home). Crowning a week in which 18,000 people came to see my match with Walter Donaldson, I made a break of 140, beating by 2 points my record set up ten years earlier. The fifteen reds were followed by ten blacks, three pinks and two blues - and when faced with an awkward stance for the brown I potted it left-handed.

It was later that year, with the Sunday Empire News £1,000 tournament imminent, that disaster again befell my cue. On November 12th June drove me to Victoria Station, London, where I was catching a train to Birchington for an exhibition and I instructed a porter to take my overnight case, snooker ball case and cue case to the platform where I would meet him to board the train. I trotted behind him for some distance and noticed someone walking almost alongside him who appeared somewhat intoxicated, but then I lost sight of them as I peeled off to buy my ticket. On reaching the platform I could see no sign of the baggage nor could I recognise the porter himself, not having taken any particular notice of him. Eventually I described my luggage to a ticket collector and asked whether he had seen it. He said a porter had indeed arrived and had stood by it until someone had called him away for a minute or two. By this time panic had set in, with the train due to pull out at any moment. There was, however, no point in going to Birchington without my equipment so, with a sick feeling in my stomach, I called June to bring a spare set of equipment and watched the train leave without me. Then I contacted the police and together we questioned porter after porter. Finally the railway police corralled all the available porters for an identification parade but even then I could not be sure which man had been in charge of my luggage.

I caught the next train to Birchington exceedingly despondent and gave very much a sub-standard show, though the club members were very understanding. Running through my mind was the thought that if my cue was not returned I would have to retire. I could not face the hard months of toil necessary to become accustomed to a new cue.

My next move was to contact my old friend Ted Greeno of Scotland Yard who soothed my ruffled spirits and told me he 'would have the gear back in no time. But despite Ted's confidence I called in the Press and announced a reward of £50 for information leading to the recovery of the cue (the balls and clothing I was not concerned about). Only two nights later, the police called me to say that a cue and case which they thought could be mine had been banded in at Tooting police station. By this time I had virtually resigned myself to the thought that whoever had stolen the case had done so on the off-chance, not knowing what it contained, and would destroy it when they found that it held only a piece of wood which was to them quite worthless. So I could not get to Tooting quick enough when the hopeful news came through.

It was indeed my precious cue and after I had examined it lovingly the superintendent in charge took me through to another room to meet the man who had banded it in, a lorry driver called Vic North. He told me he had found the balls and the cue case on his vehicle which he had parked outside his home while having an evening meal and, having seen the newspaper stories, thought they could well be mine. I thanked him most heartily and asked him for his address so that I could send him his £50 reward, the police having verified that his story was genuine. He was quite indignant and said he did not want a penny. I told him I was only too pleased to let him have the money but he flatly refused to take even the few pounds I had in my pocket to buy his wife a present. 'It's your gear,' he said simply. 'Why should you have to pay anyone for returning something which belongs to you?' But he did ask whether he could have seats for his wife and himself for the Sunday Empire News snooker tourney. I was delighted to oblige a man who had restored my faith in human nature.

The theft of my cue even made headlines out in Bermuda which I was about to visit. June and I set sail from Liverpool on January 13th, 1949 aboard the Reino del Pacifico. It was a nightmarish journey. The Reino was always inclined to be top-heavy and the high seas that ran for most of the voyage only made matters worse. June, never a good sailor at the best of times, was confined to her cabin for most of the journey and I was also in semi-quarantine thanks to the various facial dressings I was having to endure to cure barber's rash which I had contracted. But on arrival we were royally entertained by the organiser of the trip and president of the Bermuda Amateur Billiards Association, Frank Ford, and Robie Robinson, our host at the Eagle's Nest Hotel, made our stay one of the most enjoyable experiences ever.

I did not know until I arrived, however, that the trip was to be no rest-cure. I was booked to play the Canadian snooker champion George Chenier, a first-class player who had never been seen in the UK but whose reputation was formidable. He was credited at the time with a break of 142, while I on New Year's Day had just made a new record break of 141 in an exhibition against Walter Donaldson at the Leicester Square Hall, potting eleven blacks, three pinks and a brown in conjunction with the reds. So there was naturally much interest in Bermuda as to whether either of us would improve on these breaks to push the record even further into the stratosphere. But the record stayed intact, and although George brought the house down in making the first century break the island had ever seen, it was I who ran out the winner by 41 frames to 30. George and I got on very well together, his stunt shots were a revelation and he was an entertaining talker. We discussed the Canadian and American style of game a good deal; certainly their mode of dress was different. George played in slacks and a white shirt and had a passion for very wide and voluble ties which dangled all over the table as he played. I felt sure that the referee would sooner or later penalise him but he always seemed to have them under control. After our match George returned to Canada - but not before I had arranged for him to come over for his first trip to Britain later in the year.

We made some good friends on our stay, particularly an American, Brock Park, and his English wife Bobbie, with whom we later spent a wonderful three-week holiday. But I worked hard, too, playing innumerable exhibitions to enthusiastic houses in the coloured clubs where they had 6 feet or 7 feet tables - and once at Government House for the Governor, Admiral Sir Ralph Leatham and Lady Leatham. And then it was time to cut across to New York. June and I left the island in blazing sunshine and arrived in the USA in a blizzard.

Our New York stay was very short; in fact we were only there in order to return home on the Queen Elizabeth but I did agree to play Ed Lee, the US amateur snooker champion, at the New York Athletic Club. I was looking round the club on the afternoon before our evening game when I happened to see Ed in practice. He was performing the most amazing screw-shots I had ever seen. After he had finished I introduced myself and asked whether I could try a few shots myself. I then discovered the reason: the cue ball was much lighter in weight than the other balls. In the evening Ed said he would be perfectly happy to play with my own set of snooker balls but he found that he could not manipulate them as he was accustomed to and since I established early on that he had only a rudimentary knowledge of safety play I soon tied him in knots.

My only disappointment about my New York stop-over was that I could not see Willie Mosconi, champion of pocket billiards (though I did meet him for a day quite recently when he was in London). His game, formerly known as pool, is similar to snooker and is the one often seen, to the bemusement of UK audiences, in American films. Basically it consists of a white cue ball and fifteen striped balls, each bearing a number. Many different types of game can be played with them but in the championship game, known as 14-1,the numbers are ignored and the aim is to pocket fourteen balls leaving one on the table. The fourteen pocketed balls are then placed in the triangle and you hope to pocket the remaining ball by smashing into the pack. If you are successful you may then continue as before.

But I did have the pleasure of seeing in New York Willie Hoppe, virtuoso of three-cushion billiards even at the age of sixty-odd. This game is played on a table which is usually only 9 feet by 4 feet 6 inches, with large balls and no pockets. The cue ball must be played on to the red or white and then strike three cushions before completing the cannon, known in the States as a carom.

I was well acquainted with the US games as I had put in a great deal of practice on an American table at the home of Tony Tarver, a somewhat wayward but eminently likeable fellow of twenty-six who was a frequent visitor to the Leicester Square Hall. Pool was booming in the States and the intention was for him to sponsor me on a tour of the States in which I would also compete in the US Pool Championship. We really went to town on the idea, roping in an American to guide me on the rules and the niceties of positional play, and we were looking forward to an extremely busy but lucrative schedule. Then one day, as our plans were well advanced, I received a telephone call to inform me, to my great shock, that Tony had been found dead in his flat. And that was the end of my pool ambitions.

I arrived home on the Queen Elizabeth to prepare for a major new event on the professional scene - the News of the World tournaments for which Bill Carr, later Sir William, chairman of the News of the World, put up £1,000 in prize money. Since I had become their billiards and snooker writer after Tom Newman had been buried alongside his cue in Ilford in 1943 I was naturally closely involved. It was to this first tournament, which opened in  October 1949, that I had invited George Chenier and also Pieter Mans, the South African champion, to add a little international colour.

During the ten-year existence of the tournament the handicapping committee did a first-class job - as evidenced by the fact that six different players took the title. The first year I was handicapped by owing a black, Walter Donaldson, snooker champion at the time, was on scratch, Horace Lindrum, Sidney Smith and George Chenier received 13, John Pulman 14, Pieter Mans 16 and the winner of the qualifying 'Section B', Albert Brown, received 30. The matches, played at cities all over the country, were three days long, the best of 37 frames. Albert was the only person to beat me in that 1949 - 50 tournament so I took the first prize of £500 quite comfortably but the following year I could only come in third behind Alec Brown and the young John Pulman. A smiling Sidney Smith won the 1951-2 £500 and I followed in top spot again the next year. Thereafter the winners were John Pulman, Jackie Rae (with Rex Williams, a relative newcomer who made his mark during this tournament), me again in 1955-6, beating Fred at the Houldsworth Hall, then John Pullman and in 1957-8 Fred. The last tournament of all, the following year, was a slightly different, more compressed, arrangement. Fred, John Pulman, Walter Donaldson and myself all met each other twice, our matches comprising 13 frames played in a day at the Burroughes and Watts Hall. Fred was again the winner.

The arrival of George Chenier for the first of these tournaments brought fresh interest to the game as we toured the country playing together - but never more so than after George shattered my world snooker record by making a break of 144 against Walter Donaldson at the Leicester Square Hall on February 3rd, 1950 - following the reds with twelve blacks and three pinks. It was the third time in succession that Walter had sat it out while a world record was being compiled. I was not surprised that George had pushed the record to 3 points away from the maximum and could not see myself beating it, if at all, for a long time. After all, I had made over 350 centuries without doing it and so, as I wrote to a friend in America, I envisaged that the record would be going home with George. But, as Teddy Diggle said of billiards, snooker is a funny game. And on March 1st, less than a month after George's 144, I moved the record on another 2 points to 146 in a match at the Houldsworth Hall. And George was there to watch me; he was my opponent. I owed the successful continuation of the break to potting the brown from a snookered position - by which time the audience was standing and cheering every pot. And if only I had not been snookered on the black after sinking my fifth red, thus being forced to pot the pink instead, I would have achieved the maximum possible. But at that stage of the game, of course, I had no means of knowing that I would follow the pink by potting black after black to take me so close to the 147.

There was no doubt about it, after giving up championship-chasing I was playing better than ever. In 1951 I established a new record by making six century breaks in a week at the Leicester Square Hall and was on my way to my 500th century.

I very much wanted to make this at Leicester Square; mainly for sentimental reasons, but also because many old friends would be on hand to see the performance. As I carried through the 490s I calculated that I might be able to make my 500 in a match against Jackie Rae at Leicester Square in February 1953. The preceding week I was playing Fred in Manchester followed by a Saturday TV show and I reckoned that during these matches I should, on the law of averages, be able to polish off a couple of centuries to leave me on 499 in readiness for the following week. By this time my quest for the 500th century was being followed in all sorts of unlikely places and The Times even devoted an article to the subject, comparing my situation with that of W. G. Grace when hovering on his 100th century. I reached 499 in Manchester without any difficulty and was feeling pretty pleased with the success of my calculations when during one break on the television show I found that I could do nothing wrong. Before I knew where I was my score stood ominously at 96. Fortunately the yellow was unpottable - or so I thought. But it cannoned off another ball and by the biggest fluke in the world it went down: 98. If I potted the green now, I would reach my 500th century and spoil everything. Luckily, however, it was a difficult shot, and so, with millions of viewers watching, I was able to make a dramatic but deliberate miss. From then on my plan worked out, and on February 18th, watched by audiences which included the Charlton football team, I made 101. It was warmly received, though it hardly took anyone by surprise. Jackie Rae even had on hand a silver cigarette stand with which he presented me, and Charlton's legendary goalkeeper Sam Bartram congratulated me afterwards. The real celebration, however, came later when on my 52nd birthday Bob Jelks arranged a fabulous dinner at the Dorchester with a Roy Ullyett cartoon menu card inscribed: 'Given by a host of his sporting friends who couldn't make a break of 52 if they lived to be 500.' And, as if this were not sufficient, they presented me with a gold cigarette box and June with a ruby watch.

Apart from the 600th century this only left me with one burning ambition; to score the elusive 147. And I finally made it on Saturday, January 22nd, 1955 - only a week before the Leicester Square Hall was closed. It was a fitting climax for the venue which had seen so many records made and was one of the greatest moments of my life. Particularly appropriate was the fact that at the time I was playing an exhibition game against my old mentor Willie Smith.

If I was to make the 147 at Leicester Square this was really my last opportunity and I knew I would have to take some chances. So I did just that. When I had an easy pot for some lesser colour I ignored it and went every time for the black. Fortune was favouring the brave on this occasion and the atmosphere was electric. As I passed the century one excited spectator shouted, a la Wilfrid Pickles: 'Come on, Joe - have a go!' I had to smile: 'What do you think I'm doing?' I shouted back.

Thirteen reds went down followed by thirteen blacks but it was on the next red that the break looked as though it would founder.

I know that people tend to concentrate on the value of the colours and imagine that potting the red is a matter of course - but a ball is a ball, and they each have to be potted. This time I had left my cue ball quite on the wrong side of the red for the easy short shot I had intended, so that I had to send it all of 10 feet along the side cushion into the baulk pocket. It is a shot that I have tried many times since and failed on almost every occasion. But this time, as soon as I played the stroke I shouted: 'It's in!' And it was, too.

To avoid stopping to think I scrambled the rest of the balls down as fast as I could and only had the jitters over one further shot. As the final black was still on its way into the pocket Willie Smith threw his arms round me and I was engulfed by a cheering mob, some trying to chair me round the room and others attempting to shake me by the hand. It was a jamboree such as the hall had never seen and would never see again.

As soon as I could regain my breath I staggered to the telephone to ring June. When she answered, though, all I could get out was: 'June. .

She said: 'Oh, Joe, you've done it.' And then there was silence. After a moment or two she added: 'I feel a terrible fool, Joe, but I'm crying.'

'I know,' I said. 'So am I.'