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Chapter 7

A Nickel or Two in the Jukebox

When I first became one half of a serious relationship it seemed like a romantic idea to have a record we thought of as ‘our song’. What I hadn’t realised was that by the time I married my third and present wife, Tina, I would need a bloody jukebox to keep them all on.

The first Mrs Hines was Christine, who I met when I was about sixteen. In those infant days of pop music we always looked on Chuck Berry’s ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ and ‘Dream Lover’ sung by Bobby Darin as our special tunes. Christine and I just seemed to happen. What with karting and building the business, I guess I just became too busy to think about other girls and stopped looking. Eventually, we had been girlfriend and boyfriend so long that everyone expected us to get married, including us, so we drifted into our wedding day at the church up the road – me in my sharp new suit, Christine radiant in white, and Mum in a new hat specially bought for the occasion.

It was about ten days before it hit me what I had done. It wasn’t Christine’s fault: we’d just met far too young and I realised there was a lot of fruit I hadn’t tasted and tons of wild oats I hadn’t sown. I set about sowing them as fast as I could.

I was starting to do a lot of travelling, which provided plenty of opportunity to scatter a few seeds on foreign soil. Mostly it was here today, forgotten tomorrow, but then I met someone I found I couldn’t put out of my mind quite so easily. It was time to load another record on the jukebox, this time Andy Williams’s version of ‘Strangers in the Night’.

It started on the ferry going over for a race in Paris with my mate Chris. We travelled on the Wednesday night, in time for testing on Thursday and Friday. Then Mum, Dad and Christine were going to join us on Saturday morning, in time for the qualifying and racing on Sunday. After a bite to eat on the ferry, Chris and I went to the bar for a drink and I spotted a very attractive girl sitting at a table on her own. I’d always been brought up to be polite, so, naturally, I went over to talk to her. We couldn’t let the girl be lonely, could we?

She told us her name was Mary, that she was French-Canadian and on her way to Paris to live with her uncle’s family for six months, experiencing the French way of life while working as an au pair. Then she would return home to marry her fiancé. Alarm bells clanged briefly – women will be unfaithful to their husbands but not usually their fiancés – but there was something about this girl that made me ignore the warning. She was not only beautiful and had a great body, but there was something in her eyes and her smile that made me want to get to know her better. A lot better.

After a couple of glasses of wine and a bit more chitchat, she accepted my offer of a lift to Paris. So far, so good. I decided to push a bit harder.

‘Do you have to be in Paris tomorrow?’ I asked.

‘Not necessarily.’

Good reply. ‘So you could spend a couple of days with us at the track. You’ll love it.’

There was some hesitation, but after a little urging that glint returned to her eyes and she agreed.

Chris and I were booked to share a twin room at the Cheval Rouge hotel until the family came over, but luckily it wasn’t too difficult to arrange a second room when we arrived. After a few drinks in the bar, I decided it was only professional for me to turn in early so I’d be in peak condition for testing the next day. I made sure I had both sets of keys and when we reached the first room I said, ‘Mary, you’re in there.’ Then I threw the other key to Chris and said, ‘You’re over there.’ With that I gently pushed Mary into the room and followed her in.

This could have been the moment when the best-laid schemes of a lecherous karter came to an embarrassing, face-slapping halt. Instead, it was not at all awkward and felt as though we had known each other for ages.

The next couple of days flew by, as near perfect as you could hope for. Testing went well and Mary and I went even better. It was one of those rare times in your life that you wish would last for ever, because it is just so idyllic. I had never felt so comfortable with a woman, or enjoyed having her with me every second of the day. By Friday night, of course, we had to draw up some contingency plans. I’d been completely honest with her and told her my wife was arriving on Saturday morning, but said I would put her on a train to Paris, and promised we would definitely meet again.

I don’t know what time we eventually drifted off to sleep on Friday night but it was a far gentler process than our awakening. We were jolted upright at about 6.30 by one of the other drivers hammering on our door. I detected more than a hint of joy in his voice as he yelled, ‘Martin, your mum and dad and Christine are down in reception! You’re in the shit, mate.’

Looking back, I realised that what I should have done was to collect Mary’s things together and put them and her in what had become Chris’s room to give me time to sort things out. But even Einstein would have problems thinking clearly on being woken up with a lover before dawn by someone carrying the news that his wife is downstairs. Suddenly, I knew exactly how a hedgehog feels when it sees headlights approaching. My first instinct was to roll up into a ball, hoping for the best, but, as the panic levels subsided to mere crisis, I told Mary to collect her stuff together while I went down to stall them and figured out what to do.

The family were sitting in reception and definitely more pleased to see me than I was to see them. Dad told me he’d decided he might as well drive through the night and catch some kip on the ferry. Thanks, Dad. I explained that the rooms weren’t ready yet but, if they had some breakfast, I’d sort it out. ‘Just give me half an hour,’ I said as I left them tucking into croissants in the dining room.

Taking the front or back doors was too risky. There was only one option: it had to be the window. It didn’t look too difficult. All we had to do was to ease our way across a flattish roof, shimmy down on to a balcony, drop to the car park and make our way to the station. Hell, if James Bond could do it…

I explained the plan to Mary and instead of protesting, as most women would in that situation, she laughed and said, ‘Pourquoi pas, mon cher?’ and led the way. Sliding her cases before us, feeling somewhat exposed yet very alive, we eventually made it.

By the time I got back from the station, I was feeling quite pleased with myself. Then I realised I had to climb back into the room the same way I’d come down. That was much harder and not achieved entirely elegantly, but the effort was rewarded when I found a pencilled note from Mary leaving me in no doubt how much those two days had meant to her. This was a woman I had to see again.

Meanwhile, I had to carry on with the rest of the weekend as though nothing had happened. The other drivers thought the whole escapade was hilarious and I’m sure Christine walked in on a number of conversations where the subject changed awkwardly when she arrived, but somehow we survived without her being any the wiser.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay away from Mary long. I planned a ‘business’ trip to France and arranged to meet her under the Eiffel Tower. She managed to take a week off work but told me she wouldn’t be able to meet me until midnight because she had to babysit while the family went to the opera. It was about ten minutes past when I eased my car to a halt under the Tower. In those pre-terrorist days you could park right underneath, and what could be more elegant under the world-renowned French landmark than an iconic, British, racing-green, E-type, 4.2-litre Mark II?

I sat there for about an hour with no sign of her. I thought maybe she had arrived at midnight and left before I turned up, or perhaps she’d changed her mind and wasn’t coming. It seemed hopeless but I couldn’t bring myself to leave and somehow dozed off, which is quite an achievement in an E-type when you are six foot tall. I was jerked out of a fitful sleep by rapping on the window. It was Mary, full of apologies, explaining that the family had gone on for a meal, so she wasn’t able to get away.

‘Don’t worry about it, I’m just pleased to see you,’ I said, and after a couple of minutes to become re-acquainted – and rub the cramp out of my legs – we set off for a fabulous few days’ touring round France to a soundtrack of Andy Williams’s Love Songs album on my eight-track cartridge player. As we drew into a service station, ‘Strangers in the Night’ was playing. Mary said, ‘That’s what we were when we met on the ferry. This is our song.’

That was pretty much the pattern for the next few months. I worked my butt off to develop our business in France so I had an excuse to keep going over there, and Mary also joined me when I went to Denmark and Sweden. Sometimes, I would fly her to London so she could travel with us. It was intense and very special. We couldn’t get enough of each other. But as the time went on there was a cloud building up on the horizon: she was due to go back to Canada to be married. A couple of weeks before she was booked to fly home, we spent four days together, talking about little else. It was a difficult, occasionally tearful time, which we knew would have a profound effect on the rest of our lives. I felt I was ready to leave Christine, and Mary said she would stay in England with me. It was a momentous decision but it felt right for us.

However, we were also aware we were just about to shatter a lot of other people’s lives. And what if it didn’t work out in the long run? After all, we were from different worlds and, while we had been magic together, we’d never spent more than a few days at a time in each other’s company and never had to face up to the mundane hassles of everyday life that so often kill the romance in a relationship. We were reasonably sure we knew what we wanted but gave ourselves a while apart to make absolutely certain. Once again, Mary was different class. There were no hysterics or threats, just a simple plan.

She said, ‘I will fly into Heathrow and I will wait half an hour. If you turn up we will be together. If you don’t, I will catch my flight to Canada and get married.’

I didn’t turn up.

I still don’t know why and as it ticked past the moment I knew she would be boarding the plane to Canada, I ached with regret. I wondered how she felt. I don’t know if she did wait – I have no idea what happened to her from that day to this. I would very much like to know and hope that life turned out well for her. Above all, I would like her to understand it was not a casual thing for me but something I look back on with great tenderness. In fact, I would go as far as to say that, while I have known a lot of women in my life, there have only ever been two that I truly loved: Tina and Mary. They say that the follies a man regrets most are those he didn’t have the courage to commit, and, while I have few regrets about my life, I do occasionally wonder how different it would have been if I’d turned up at Heathrow.

Mary apart, most of my dalliances were casual affairs, the majority one-night stands, nothing that would distract from karting. I was working my way through the ranks as a driver and Dad decided it was time for him to become a major promoter. Typically, he started off in a big way.

There had never been a world championship in Britain and in 1968 he was given permission to stage it at Rye House, which is still the only time the 100cc title has been raced for in this country. Being the man he was, Dad went about it with enormous energy and style. He spent a lot of money advertising and promoting the event and ran coaches from London down to the track. There wasn’t a parking spot to be had in Hoddesdon and that wasn’t all that got clogged up. The only toilets at Rye House were buckets in little sheds and, with well over 10,000 people descending on the place, they were soon full! But it was a great occasion and Ronnie Nilsson emerged as a worthy champion.

I was too involved in helping Dad with the organising to race but the following year I came into my own and became the top driver in Europe.