Driven: A pioneer for women in motorsport – an autobiography

Delphine was fond of a good time and used rallying as an excuse to get away from her husband and flirt with other men. But it took me a while to work that out, naïve and innocent as I was. It was convenient for her to have a woman with her and that’s why she asked me to go along when she went rallying. ‘We’re going to Kilkenny on Sunday,’ she said, ‘and you are going to navigate.’ She knew I could drive but hadn’t thought to ask whether I could read a map, which I can’t, even to this day. We got in the car and she handed me a map and a list of reference numbers. I kept turning the map as we went around corners and telling her to turn left and right. After about three miles we found ourselves in somebody’s farmyard. My dad never cursed and Mum might say ‘damn’ now and again, so when Delphine began to swear at me that day I truly didn’t understand what she was saying. The words she shouted were all new to me, she might as well have been speaking Swahili, but I could tell she was cross!

‘I hope you drive better than you navigate. Get in the bloody car!’ she snapped, getting out and leaving the door open for me to get in the driver’s seat. In between giving me instructions, she was muttering and cursing, and so I did what I was told until eventually we got back on the road. As we neared the finish, Delphine told me to get out of the car. ‘It wouldn’t do for you to be seen driving,’ she said, so we changed places.

This business of changing places went on for weeks and nobody knew that I was doing the driving until one day we were found out. In front of us that day there was a car upside down in a ditch. I slowed down and Delphine was adamant that we shouldn’t stop, but for once I took no notice. I pulled over and asked, could we do anything, but the man sitting on the side of the road with a broken arm said that someone else had already gone for help. To tell the truth, if I had been more experienced I probably wouldn’t have stopped to enquire how the man in the ditch was; sentiment has no place in rallying. When we arrived at the finish, word had got around that I was seen in the driver’s seat and Delphine wasn’t happy, but she decided that as people knew anyway it would make sense for me to drive permanently.

When I eventually realised that Delphine had a boyfriend on the side and that I was only being brought along as a sort of decoy, I didn’t complain. I was having great fun and loved every minute of our monthly events, but that Circuit of Leinster rally when the accident happened nearly ruined everything. We started in the evening and we were driving through the night; it was three o’clock in the morning and in my experience that is the time when the body is at its lowest ebb, both mentally and physically. Delphine was navigating and as we were coming to a crossroad she told me to go straight ahead. It was foggy, the road was wet and slippery as I followed her instructions, only to find she had directed me to a T end, not a crossroad, and there was a resounding crash as we ran straight into a stone wall.

We were in a Mini and in those days the sun visor was held on with a metal clip. The impact of the crash caused Delphine to fall forward and the front of her head hit the metal of the visor and was sliced open. Blood was streaming down her face and she was unconscious, just slumped there and not responding. I had a torch, a scarf and a box of tissues in the car, and instinctively I knew what I had to do. I pulled the flap of skin back in place on her forehead, grabbed a bunch of tissues, put them on the top of her head and wrapped the scarf around the whole lot as tightly as I could.

I was frantic to get help, but when I tried to get out of the car the door was jammed tight. The windows in the Mini then were made of Perspex, but I managed to force my way out and set off down the road in the freezing fog, torch in hand. As always in situations like this, my shoes were left behind, so there I was, covered in blood, stumbling down a country road in the middle of the night, barefoot. Away in the distance I saw a light in a farmhouse, and as I approached dogs started to bark. I banged on the door and a man opened an upstairs window with a shotgun in his hands as he looked down at me.

‘I think I’ve killed my co-driver. I need help,’ I shouted up at him.

‘Women shouldn’t be driving anyway,’ was his muttered reply.

He came down, and when he saw the state I was in he went back into the house for his keys. He didn’t have a car, just a cattle truck. He had been to the mart that morning so the truck was stinking to high heaven and full of cow dung.

We drove back to the car and the farmer banged away at the buckled door with a sledgehammer. We managed to pull the unconscious Delphine out and carried her into the smelly truck. She groaned as we moved her and I was so glad to hear that moan because it meant she was still alive. The farmer drove us to a hospital in Goresbridge, County Carlow, which I remember thinking at the time was a very appropriate name, considering Delphine and I were covered in blood.

When we arrived at the hospital the nurse informed us that all the doctors were at a party and we would have to go to Carlow, 14 miles away. She telephoned to the hospital, telling them to expect us, and there was a doctor and nurse waiting when we arrived. They put poor Delphine on a stretcher so short that her head was hanging over the end; she had lost so much blood, the doctor didn’t think she would live. She was wheeled away to an operating theatre, and as I sat there in a daze a doctor came over to attend to my face. I hadn’t realised it but there was a gash on my cheek and the doctor decided I needed stitches. I think he might have been one of the doctors who had been at that party the nurse had told us about, because the smell of alcohol as he leant over me was potent, although it might have been ether. He began work on my face but he didn’t use any injection or anaesthetic, just sewed me up with what looked like a large carpet needle. It didn’t matter; I was beyond feeling anything anyway.

I lay on the bed in the Accident and Emergency and must have dozed for a while and then woke to find that Delphine was out of surgery. She had 49 stitches across her hairline but she was alive and that was all I cared about. I telephoned Delphine’s husband, Frank, with the bad news. I told him the Mini was a write-off, but Delphine was fine. He didn’t seem to care about the car and said he would come and get me straight away.

Frank arrived in a lovely little Triumph Herald to take me home. When we left the hospital I went to get into the passenger seat and he said, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ He insisted that I got into the car and drove home from Carlow to Dunboyne in County Meath to my house. It took us four hours and I was shaking from exhaustion and delayed shock. He kept putting his hand on the steering wheel to keep us on the road. Frank knew that if he didn’t make me drive I might never get behind the wheel again.

When we arrived home I was in a terrible state. I had a black eye, there was blood all over my clothes, mostly Delphine’s, and my face was swollen from the stitches. Dad was very calm and told me to have a bath and go straight to bed. The next day after breakfast he said that we were going to Laytown. Once again I went to get in the passenger seat but my father insisted I should drive. He did exactly the same thing as Frank, and to my amazement we were only a mile from the house when I was driving normally without any bother. Any of the accidents I had after that, and thank goodness I didn’t have too many, I did what my father and Frank had told me to do: I just carried on.

Delphine recovered well and after a few weeks she was home and raring to go. She was lucky that she had a very low hairline and with that wonderful hair cascading around her face the scar never showed. Delphine never held the accident against me – she knew she was the one who was navigating and I was just obeying orders – but nevertheless I was relieved that we were still the best of friends. She didn’t let a little thing like a crash into a wall affect her, and with a new boyfriend in tow we were back on the road to do weekend rallies and test drives.

Frank Bigger pushed me to enter rallies with Delphine; he had a high opinion of my driving abilities and also the money to back us. After a number of two-day rallies, we went for the big event: the Circuit of Ireland in 1959. In its heyday, just about everyone with an interest in motorsport migrated to Killarney, County Kerry, at Easter. People came from all over Ireland just to be part of it. Killarney was buzzing and it was nearly impossible to get somewhere to stay.

The Circuit of Ireland differed from many other rallies as it was run over closed roads. The organisers tried to keep the route secret but this was frustrated by the fact that six months before the event advertisements had to be placed in local and national newspapers to let people know that roads in their area would be closed. Three weeks prior to the rally the organisers arrived to tell local residents when and for how long the road would be out of bounds. This didn’t go down too well with some of the clergy as the rally took place at Easter and they were anxious that the parishioners would be able to fulfil their religious duties.

In 1965 a farmer and his wife blocked the road near Croom in County Limerick. When a car halted, the farmer banged the windscreen with a stick and his wife threw a stone at the rear window as the drivers drove away, bypassing the blockade. But that was an exception; generally people were enthusiastic and lined the route all around the country, cheering us on.

The other significant factor in the Circuit of Ireland Rally was that pace notes were banned. In rallying, pace notes are used to describe the route to be driven, the speed anticipated to complete each stage and the turnings and junctions. Without pace notes, what you rely on is instinct, a good car, a good crew and the sheer joy of competing – and if you’re lucky, winning. Nowadays rallies use notes supplied by the organisers, or alternatively, competitors are allowed to make a full reconnaissance as opposed to rallying the stages blindly. Although pace notes were banned, that didn’t prevent some people from cheating and it was very difficult to get around that despite the best efforts of the marshals.

The Circuit is still held today but it is not the same as it is restricted to a short route, mostly in the north of Ireland. In the early days the Circuit was a 1,200- to 1,500-mile event (depending on the chosen route) that encompassed the whole island of Ireland. It became an important event on the rallying calendar, with drivers coming from the United Kingdom and further afield to compete.

The rally went on day and night and was hard going, but I loved it. Cars would leave Belfast on Friday night, although some years they allowed drivers to start from different locations, just like the Monte Carlo rallies, and we were able to set off from Dawson Street in Dublin one year. Typically, the route took us over the Mourne Mountains through Friday night and then down the east coast to finish in Killarney on Saturday evening. On Sunday we drove around the Ring of Kerry, then right up the west coast to Donegal on Monday. On Tuesday we drove east across Northern Ireland to finish in Bangor for the prize-giving.

My faithful Imp (Bill Mansill)

As I have said, the Circuit of Ireland was always run over the Easter weekend, and sometimes there would be snow in the southwest on the Tim Healy Pass. I drove a little Hillman Imp for many of the Circuit of Ireland events and it was perfect for the narrow and twisty road around the lakes and over the mountains. I have driven in the Circuit of Ireland Rally at least eight times, winning the Ladies’ Award on numerous occasions, and was placed high overall many times. In 1968 I was third overall when Roger Clark came first in a Ford Escort, Adrian Boyd second in a Mini Cooper and I drove my faithful Imp.

I brought that Imp, EDU 710C, back to Ireland in 2003, after it had been discovered, dismantled in a hay barn on a Hampshire farm, by Imp specialist Clark Dawson. The farmer also kept horses, and pinned to a wall of the barn behind all the horseshow rosettes was the tax disc. Clark telephoned the car registration office in Swansea and they confirmed that the number had not been transferred to another vehicle. He spent two years meticulously restoring that little car and wouldn’t let me pay him for his expertise and hard work – he just told me to take my Imp home and drive it.

Thanks to my good friends John and Cepta Sheppard, my Imp has been kept in pristine condition ever since. John started the Imp Club of Ireland and I am very proud to say he made me honorary president. That Imp has appeared in Classic Car magazines and I have driven it in many events in Ireland and the UK ever since.

The Circuit of Ireland rallies were great, but Delphine became more ambitious and decided we would enter the RAC Rally in Britain. This was madness as we were totally unprepared and inexperienced, but she was determined and of course I was happy to go along with it and do as I was told.

That first RAC Rally in November 1961 with Delphine was a great learning experience and stood to me when I drove in the rally again in 1965 with Susan Reeves and then in 1966 with Valerie Domleo. The RAC Rally at that time meant driving for 2,400 miles over five days and three nights, with only one proper overnight stop. Today’s rallies cannot compare to this, but we thought nothing of it then.

Unlike the Circuit of Ireland, the closure of public roads in Britain was impossible due to traffic restrictions. In 1960 the organisers of the RAC Rally persuaded the Forestry Commission to open up some of its closed roads for competitors, so they could drive flat out, away from the traffic regulations of the public roads. They opened up 200 miles of forest roads. The roads through the forest were mud and grit and the only other vehicles that ever went through were trucks. This meant the track had a grass mound in the middle with two big dips either side. We bumped along the uneven road and if anybody came up behind, wanting to pass, we had to pull over as quickly as possible, otherwise we would get pushed out of the way. That was the way it was because each of the stages was timed so speed was all-important.

Driving in the dark was especially difficult on those forest roads. Our little Mini had a spotlight on the roof and Delphine put her hand up to swivel the handle of the lamp whenever she saw we were coming to a bend.

Typically, the start and finish points of the RAC Rally were at the Excelsior Hotel, near Heathrow Airport, outside London. The rally started on Saturday morning and the route went west to Dorset and Somerset, then north through Wales for the night drive, where we encountered mountain tracks and treacherous surfaces, which were a nightmare. Once through Wales, we drove on through the Lake District and into Scotland, with a breakfast stop Monday morning at Bathgate. The only overnight stop was at Aviemore in the Scottish Highlands. Tuesday morning, we set off to go south via Dumfries and into the Yorkshire forests. We managed to finish that RAC Rally, and, considering it was our first time, we didn’t do too badly.

Delphine, by this time, had moved into a flat on Sussex Road in Dublin 4. They were called ‘flats’ then but no one seems to use that word in Ireland these days, not even for the tiniest of properties. I think we must have adopted the word from America over the years, like so many other things. Mespil Flats were one of the first purpose-built apartment blocks in Dublin, and they were magnificent. Delphine’s flat was pure luxury, with high ceilings, timber floors, central heating and two spacious bedrooms. In the basement there was a laundry with tumble-dryers and on the roof was a beautiful garden and, of course, a lift. The height of sophistication was the intercom system so she could let people in without having to leave the flat, just like in the movies. I had never seen anything like it before and loved going there to visit and often stayed overnight.

When the drivers came over from Britain to race at the Phoenix Park and Dunboyne races, Delphine would hold great parties in the flat, to which everyone was invited and the shenanigans were mighty. I had started racing in the Phoenix Park and I received quite a lot of attention from the male drivers but wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. It was good for my ego, but I was reluctant to get involved. At 23 years of age, and still a virgin, I was on the lookout for someone special, I suppose, and as it turned out it wasn’t one of those racing men I fell for.

I drove out to Bray one evening to meet some friends. As I sat waiting in the hotel lounge, a man at the bar looked over and raised his glass. ‘Can I join you?’ he called. Could he what! He was tall, handsome, with wonderful deep brown, ‘come to bed’ eyes and a voice that sounded like British aristocracy. We chatted and he told me he was filming in Ardmore Studios and had spent the day swashbuckling his way around the Wicklow countryside. He was playing Lord Melton in Sword of Sherwood Forest alongside Richard Greene and Peter Cushing, and his name was Oliver Reed.

We spent nearly every evening of his three-month stay in Ireland together. It was a brief but unforgettable experience and a welcome interlude before the next big rally. I drove out to Bray every evening in a flurry of excitement, to hear how filming had gone that day. Oliver was fascinating and interested in me, which I found unbelievable and very flattering. He was different from any man I had ever met, and I thought I was in love. I didn’t know at the time that he was married to an Irish girl, Kate Byrne, or that she was pregnant. But my conscience is clear because although we had a great time together he was not unfaithful to his wife with me in any physical way – I wasn’t ready for that!

When Oliver left to return to England, he was not entirely truthful with me. He didn’t tell me about his wife but said that he was being forced to marry a daughter of one of the film producers in order to further his career. I commiserated with him about the unfairness of it all. He was some storyteller, but what a charmer!

It was about eight or nine years later when I met him again. I was with a crowd of male drivers at the airport, waiting to fly out to rally somewhere, when they all started whispering and nudging one another: ‘Look who it is!’ Oliver Reed, in the years since I had last seen him, had become famous, especially after playing Bill Sykes in the film Oliver! He had also gained a reputation as a hard drinker and was continuously in the newspapers for some escapade or other. When he saw me, he came straight over and put his arms around me and we chatted until his flight was called. He didn’t look quite as handsome as I remembered him but that didn’t matter. As I stood beside him all the memories came flooding back. Everyone looked at us as we reminisced about our time together in Bray. My colleagues saw me with new eyes and my reputation soared after that. They thought I was just the dumb blonde there to make the cars look good, but being a friend of Oliver Reed, that made them think again.

After our success in the rallies together, Delphine was all set with plans for more outings for the two of us but they didn’t happen because in early December 1961 I received a telegram that was to change everything.

CHAPTER 4

And we’re off! (#ulink_aad4c094-7259-5130-a4a4-7a232994face)

Out of the blue, in December 1961, Sally Anne Cooper sent me a telegram asking me to drive with her in a Sunbeam Rapier for the Monte Carlo Rally the following January. I had never heard her name before and had no idea who she was, or why she had picked me, but I was delighted with the idea. I could only guess that someone must have seen me driving in the RAC Rally and told her about me, but I was never sure if that was true or who it might have been. My father said that the Coopers were a famous family, who had made their fortune from insect repellent aerosols in England.

After that telegram, I spoke with Sally Anne by telephone and she told me she was getting married in May. She wanted to do something glamorous and exciting before she began her married life and had decided that the Monte Carlo Rally was it.

Even though I had never driven under extreme snowy or icy conditions, I was thrilled with the idea of driving in the Monte and didn’t have to think twice. A friend of my father, who had some experience of driving in France, sat down with me with very detailed maps of the journey I was about to undertake, which quite honestly meant nothing to me. I tried to be polite and follow what he was saying but my mind was already on the road.

In early January 1962 Sally Anne sent me an airline ticket for the flight from Dublin to Heathrow. I arrived in London to find an immaculately dressed chauffeur standing there with my name on a placard to meet me, something I had only ever seen in films. Outside the airport, we got into a Rolls-Royce and I sat silently in the back of the car, being transported to somewhere in Hertfordshire. I wondered if it was all a dream – maybe I was being kidnapped. I think it only hit me as we drove through the English countryside that I was away from Ireland, all alone and in unfamiliar territory.

It was getting dark by the time we arrived at the house, and as we drove up to the big, imposing mansion my first thought was that there must be a lot of money in fly spray. Sally Anne’s father was a lovely English gentleman. He was so kind and put me at my ease as he showed me to my room. The bedroom was luxurious – all pink, with long white drapes at the window overlooking the gardens. He said how good I was to take the drive and explained that this was Sally Anne’s last fling before her marriage. As I put down my little case, Mr Cooper informed me that dinner would be at 7.30 p.m. and added, ‘We dress for dinner.’ Dress for dinner! I had no evening dress with me and the best clothes I had were on my back. I was wearing a smart grey and white herringbone tweed suit with a long jacket and trousers, which I had made myself. When I confessed that I had no dress, he reassured me and said not to worry about it, I would do fine as I was.

But I was worried; I wanted to make a good impression. I had a quick bath, put on some make-up and had to try to look my best in the tweed trousers and a blouse to wear to dinner. I was young and slim, with long blonde hair, and must have looked well but I certainly wasn’t dressed appropriately as I realised immediately when I went downstairs and met Sally Anne for the first time. She was wearing a pale blue taffeta dress and all the men were in dinner jackets with bow ties. I don’t know what they made of the Irish girl dressed in trousers and a frilly blouse, but it was too late to worry about that.

Sally Anne’s father had bought her a Sunbeam Rapier; it was one of the Rootes’ ex-works cars, which I had never driven before. A two-door, four-seater saloon, it had a chunky look about it. It occurred to me much later that Mr Cooper must have been a friend of Lord Rootes to get that ex-works car. The next day we set off on our journey to Scotland. We were headed for Blythswood Square in Glasgow because the Monte Carlo Rally started from various locations and Glasgow was one of them. In those days the Rally started at points all over Europe and converged on Grenoble, then on to Monte Carlo.

I found the Rapier very heavy going at first but I soon got used to it. My social skills not being the greatest, the prospect of having to sit with strangers in the car for 600 kilometres was harder to cope with than driving a Rapier for the first time. On the way we collected Pat Wright, a friend of Sally Anne, who was to be my co-driver. I had never met her before but was relieved to discover that she was easy to talk to and I liked her from the start.

Sixty-five cars left Glasgow to face the long drive down through England to Dover. Pat sat beside me navigating and Sally Anne sat in the back of the car, dressed in a mink coat and red leather gloves, a picnic basket by her side, as she waved to the crowds. She didn’t do any driving the whole time we were on that rally.

We drove down to Dover, crossed the English Channel and drove north into Holland and Belgium and then back down into France and over the Alps. I had never encountered snow and ice like that before; I thought the Tim Healy Pass in Kerry was challenging, but this was a whole new ball game. Determined not to let myself down, I found to my amazement that all that slipping and sliding in the big, wet field in Dublin, where my father had taught me to drive, had been excellent training for handling icy roads.

The going was slow, but we made it to Monaco three days later. The sun was shining and we stretched ourselves on the harbour wall. Very soon, a Rolls-Royce came to collect Sally Anne and she said that she would send the car back for us, which she did after what seemed an age. The Coopers had a beautiful villa in the South of France, just outside Monte Carlo, and when we were eventually picked up we were shown to our rooms at the top of the house, which must have been the servants’ quarters. Servants’ quarters or not, now that the long drive was over this was like a magical holiday; I enjoyed every minute.