The Lost Babes by Jeff Connor
Author:Jeff Connor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
As he had two years earlier in the same arena when England reached the end of another long and winding road and lifted the Jules Rimet trophy, Bobby Charlton wept copiously at the end of the 1968 final, the emotions flooding out of a man usually noted for his unsmiling, reserved demeanour. Later, as the United party celebrated long into the night, someone looked round for the captain, but whether through tiredness or emotion he had retired to his hotel room long before midnight. The curtains had been drawn again.
It would take a very odd personality not to be changed by something as traumatic as a plane crash in which a large number of friends died, and Charlton’s metamorphosis was immediate. The stern, unsmiling manner he adopted after Munich was the most notable sign that his youth, in a metaphorical sense, came to an end there. The burdens and expectations thrust upon him from then on could only be borne by a powerful and focused personality, but like many survivors in the public eye, he was wary of how others would view him.
The first clue that Charlton had settled on the image he would carry henceforth through life came in hospital in Munich when he was close to discharge and a return to England.
‘He had asked me to go and look for a coat,’ says Sandy Busby. ‘I brought one back, a navy blue Italian-style job and Bob took one look at it and said: “Sandy, it’s too flash, I can’t be seen in that.”’
Pre-Munich, Charlton had been one of the boys. Despite a low tolerance for alcohol he enjoyed the occasional drink, usually with his best friend David Pegg, and like every other young player at Old Trafford—Duncan Edwards included—had flirted with smoking. He was also an enthusiastic, but hopelessly unskilled, poker player on United away trips.
He idolized Pegg and it was the young Yorkshireman who had taken Charlton under his wing when he first arrived from the North-East. Their shared background helped an unlikely friendship along. Pegg was a handsome smiling lad of twenty-two with film-star looks and a ready smile, Charlton shy and unprepossessing. After Pegg bought his first car, a light-blue Vauxhall Victor, Charlton did likewise. His was dark blue and Tommy Taylor followed suit with a red one and the three of them—in three separate cars—would motor in convoy across to Bill and Jessie Pegg’s home in Highfields, travelling in those pre-M62 days over the Howden and Thurlstone moors and parking line abreast in the street, much to the astonishment of the neighbours.
Once, on the border between Lancashire and Yorkshire, a policeman flagged Pegg down and asked him ‘if you’ve got a pilot’s licence for this thing’.
‘Our David took Bob under his wing,’ says Pegg’s sister Irene. ‘Bob was shy and my dad and his brother taught them both how to fish on the Trent. They would go to sleep on the bank. Tommy was lovely and Bob was a smashing lad. I think he had problems with George Best later because of the examples of David, Liam Whelan and the others.
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