Her name was Florence Enid Stevenson and we met at a dance in the local village hall. She was very pretty and, since she was a seamstress, very smartly dressed, too. She was two years and one week older than me.
In those days village halls all over the country were the principal meeting places of boy and girl; many a marriage had its beginnings at such a dance. And so it was with us. We had no means of knowing then, of course, that, twenty years later, it would end in divorce.
Florrie - whom I called Queenie - was brought up with her three sisters and two brothers in the village of Barlow about two and a half miles from Whittington Moor. But at the time that we met she was living with her married sister in Whittington Moor to enable her to carry on her job in Chesterfield.
Her parents were both hard-working, honest, church-going types - her mother a very genteel lady who kept their delightful little cottage spotlessly clean and tidy; her father, a coal miner and a very gentle man. His working day was, typically for the time, a very long one. Every morning come rain, sleet or snow, began with him walking two and a half miles to the 'paddy mail' - the train which took him to the colliery. The journey itself took a further twenty minutes. And all this had to be accomplished at an incredibly early hour, since he had to report for duty by 6 a.m. After eight hours toiling in the darkness he had to make the return journey, ending with that two-and-a-half-mile walk. In any spare time he and his wife cultivated a small-holding.
But in spite of these apparently inauspicious circumstances they fed, clothed and brought up their six children - and still managed to save enough to enable them in later years to buy two or three small cottages.
After a time with her sister Queenie went back again to live with her parents in Barlow, which made my courting something of a problem. Essentially, what happened was that on my half-day off from looking after Ernest Rudge's billiard-hall in Hasland I would trudge the couple of miles or so to Barlow across a number of fields which had a right of way. The journey there was always made tolerable by anticipation but the journey back was often very disagreeable, especially on a pitch-black winter evening. Just as it always seems to rain on a gala day or Sunday school outing, so the weather always seemed to be at its worst on my half-day. I lost count of the number of drenchings that I got on my way back from Barlow. But then, I suppose, that is what love is all about.
It was in the middle of 1921, after my failure at the Midland Counties Championship, that we decided to get married. I was only twenty, we had nowhere to live and, despite the headlines, the income from my games and exhibitions was scarcely enough to keep one body and soul together, let alone two.
My father was furious about the decision, my mother was none too pleased and even Ernest Rudge was distinctly cool. Nor were Mr and Mrs Stevenson overjoyed at the prospect.
It was therefore on my own that on the morning of Wednesday, June 8th I took a 1½d tram ride down into Chesterfield. There, at the Methodist Church, I met Queenie - and her sister and brother-in-law, who were the only guests. What little money I had managed to save just before the wedding I spent on engaging a motor car and chauffeur, who drove us after the ceremony to Castleton, in the Peak District. There the four of us visited the famous Blue John Caverns and celebrated the wedding with afternoon tea and scones at a little café nearby. And so to bed.
Speaking of which. . . my father had said, in no uncertain terms, that as I had made my own bed I must now lie on it. Queenie and I would not be welcome to stay in his house. Yet if he had thought a little more carefully he would have realised that we could not actually afford anything as grand as a bed of our own.
We therefore moved in with Queenie's sister. And a period of estrangement from my parents ensued.
It was this period of estrangement, I think, which meant that I never really got close to my father. My emergence into manhood, with the possibility of at least some success in my chosen career, might have been just the moment for the advent of a new kind of association with him. But, especially bearing in mind that I was travelling about a fair amount, it was not to be.
Certainly, I had never really known my father in my earlier years. This was partly, of course, because of his absence during the war - yet this was not the sole reason, for my brother Fred and our three sisters all in later years said that they felt the same. I suppose that it was simply because we did not have an ordinary family life. Apart from Christmas, I doubt whether the whole family were all together for one evening. For my father, business was virtually the be-all and end-all: cinemas, pubs, billiard-halls and so on. And when he was not away working he was away playing. I never knew father to sit at home quietly, except when he had gout from time to time. During one bout he was actually confined to the house for several days until the swelling went down slightly, enabling him to cut open a shoe and to stuff his foot inside. Immediately he went off to some pub or other to drink whisky, after which, predictably, he arrived home at about midnight pretty heavily under the weather.
'How silly to get tight when you were beginning to get rid of the gout,' I said boldly.
'If it's whisky that causes gout,' replied pop, 'then I'll find out in the morning, because I'll have it like hell.'
The next morning the swelling had vanished. Father was as right as rain, walking around with his ordinary shoe on. Nevertheless I feel I cannot recommend universally his treatment for the ailment.
I was not accustomed to answering my father back - still less were any of the younger children. But I remember one occasion, later, when we were with some of his friends in a public bar and I was being pressed to have a drink which, being in training for billiards I did not want.
'No, he mustn't drink,' said father. 'I do all the drinking and he does all the playing.'
'That's right,' I piped up. 'And if I play as well as you drink I shall become world champion.'
As for my father's words of wisdom, I learned to take them or leave them. But one piece of advice which I decided to take was offered at the outset of my playing career when pop told me that from time to time I would probably have to make a speech. His maxim was to think of an opening sentence, think of a closing sentence and join the two together as rapidly as possible. This, if not entirely original, remains a good tip and one which I usually tried to follow in later years. But there are occasions on which brevity is not necessarily the best policy - a lesson which I learned early on. I had won a small local snooker competition in which the prize was a set of snooker balls in a box, and afterwards, quite late in the evening, I walked home with the box, tied up in brown paper, under my arm. On the way I was approached by a 'hello, hello' police sergeant who asked me, in classical style, whether I would mind telling him what I was carrying. 'Balls,' I answered succinctly.
'Don't you speak to me like that, sonny,' he replied.
In my enthusiasm for brevity I had overlooked the importance of the word 'snooker'.
In absolute contrast, my mother was an ever-present influence on us children. Yet even she could not give any obviously close affection; she was too busy. Her affection for us was expressed through her tirelessly administering to our wants and needs - though this fact is something which is easier to realise in retrospect than as a child. From her earliest days she was hardworking, taking her cue from her own parents who were very poor. She often told me that from the age of about nine she would go out after school - what little there was - to do household chores for a better-off family living nearby. (How different from those of today's youngsters with time on their hands to use in demonstrating, etc. - and 'etc.' covers a good deal of ground.)
Mother was never happy unless she was busy: acting as barmaid, cook, housekeeper and cinema box office attendant. She never wasted tune waiting for trams, she just walked. Even after my father died she never had a car. Nor, to my knowledge, did she ever have a pair of slippers. She just kept her shoes on till bedtime!
I never remember her complaining of any illness and I doubt whether she ever had as much as a headache - nor did I, for that matter. And we certainly never suffered from indigestion for mother was a champion plain cook. For years we had the same north-country breakfast on Sunday: pig's feet and shin beef which would simmer on the hob from Saturday afternoon and all through the night, a wonderful meal. During the week, too, we always had a good cooked breakfast. 'A good start to the day,' was one of mother's mottoes. None of your tea and toast. And apart from her celebrated pigeon pies, mother used to be a mouth-watering user of the hares which pop sometimes brought home from shooting expeditions: jugged in Guinness and port wine. What a treat.
Naturally there was no question of anyone dieting in our house. If anyone was overweight they were spoken of as being bonny. It is undeniable that people in those days did not live as long as we do today - but I feel that it is the advance of medical science that is responsible rather than the change in out diets.
My sisters too, when young, were kept busy round the house; in fact the youngest, Evelyn, stayed busy - living with my mother for many years until getting married. Gladys, the eldest and next to me, was also kept occupied by my father. When she was old enough he used her as a chauffeur since he had a car but had discouraged her to such an extent that she gave it up.
My own musical activities were somewhat easier to discourage.
At the age of ten I was supposed to be learning the piano from a long-suffering local tutor, but my heart was not in it, to put it mildly, and my thoughts were in the billiard-room. Finally my father could bear my excruciatingly bad practising no longer. 'You'll never be a Rubinstein,' he pronounced and banished me for ever from the piano stool.
I can honestly say that I never saw any of my sisters with a billiard-cue in their hands, and apart from following the ups and downs of Fred and myself I am sure that they, like my mother, had no interest in the game at all.
Though my mother was displeased at my marriage to Queenie, I do not think she ever wished me to lie in the bed I had made for myself. She realised that it would be too hard. She supported us by helping to stock our larder each week during the summer months of 1921 until the winter billiards season began, with its prospect of gainful employ.
And as the months rolled by my father, too, relented - not exactly killing the fatted call or altering his views on my foolhardiness, but at least to the extent of agreeing that Queenie and I could live with the family at their home in Queens Street, Whittington Moor. We moved in gratefully.
Eventually, after my son Derrick was born, I took stock of my financial situation and decided that I could just about scrape together enough money to rent a small house in Brampton, where I had played my first pro match. Earlier Ernest Rudge had saved a little money for me which he had invested in shares in his cinema and these I now had to sell in order to buy a few sticks of furniture and generally make the place habitable. But the money was there to be spent and this seemed a good cause.
Ernest was also a great help in another direction because he was acting all this time as my manager - without pay, of course. He had publicity material printed which carried my picture, details of my best breaks and extracts from favourable Press cuttings. An early comment was from the Sporting Chronicle. I cannot quite follow the syntax, but the message is clear enough. It read: 'As a sign of the times and the oncoming of the younger generation of billiard players, commend me to the performance of a seventeen-year-old lad, Joe Davis. In a match against the well-known Birmingham professional, Fred Lawrence, young Davis put together 23 breaks over the hundred.... He must be very good indeed, quite another Tom Newman.' And a cutting from the Nottingham Express read: 'Viewing Davis dispassionately and reflectively we see no reason why some day he should not be a super Stevenson (the champion of earlier years who was the first all-round player to make a break of 1,000)'.
Ernest wrote dozen after countless dozen of letters on my behalf, enclosing this and similar material and offering my services for exhibitions. At the outset I did not possess very much business acumen but I was a good listener and watcher when it come to people who were successful and I learnt from Ernest. He took charge of my earnings from the start and advised me how to save and invest. Never having had any money to call my own I was determined that I would never waste it once I got it in my grasp - and since getting what I did was not an easy task I made sure that 'easy come, easy go' should never be applied to me. I often walked a mile to save an extra penny on a tram fare, reckoning on the old adage that if you look after the pennies, the pounds will look after themselves. Maybe this early experience made me over-cautious throughout my business affairs but I have never regretted it.
In one way my early marriage concentrated my mind on my career. I realised that I was unlikely to receive much in the way of an inheritance and that I had to make my own way in the world to give myself and my family a chance. It was therefore important to make a certain amount of money - not millions of pounds, but enough. As Professor C. M. Joad observed many years later on the radio programme the Brain's Trust, 'Money will not necessarily make you happy, but it will enable you to live miserably in comfort' (or words to that effect). I am sure that being pretty rich is preferable to being pretty poor. I have been both, so you can take it from me.
Of course, I was one of the lucky ones, I was happy at the job I was doing and content to roam the countryside with my cue case and play for anyone anywhere. If Ernest told me he had fixed up an exhibition that was good enough for me. Off I went.
Often the financial reward was so nugatory that a job would scarcely seem worth while. But a job of work was better than no job of work and a small profit was better than no profit. So I worked.
It was particularly hard to make a profit if I had to travel by rail or if an overnight stay was involved. I would quite often find that, after my exhibition, there was no late bus or train back home. But rather than incur the profit-swallowing expense of an overnight stay I would stand on a station platform until the milk train arrived as the cold grey light of dawn broke over a gasometer, or some such delightful feature of the landscape. If I was lucky I would be allowed to huddle like a tramp on the hard bench of a waiting-room, dozing fitfully.
That was how it was, and I am not complaining. Let us just say that it is not the sort of life-style to which today's bright young professionals are accustomed.
One occasion when I was forced to stay overnight was when I had an engagement at the working men's club in a country village. The only way to get there and back was by bus, and they did not run in the evening. When I arrived in the afternoon it was raining quite heavily and I dashed straight for the local hostelry to ask if they could let me have a room because I would be giving a billiards exhibition at the club until late that evening. The proprietor happily agreed to put me up and said that, since it was raining, he could save me a trip up to the club to practice, by letting me use his own billiard-table.
'Well, that's marvellous,' I said. 'Is it full size?'
'Yes,' he said, 'but I'm afraid it isn't used very much - and it's over the stable in the yard.'
I reflected that in my travels I had played on all manner of tables - some of them little better than the stable yard itself - so that this particular example could hold no fears. I therefore thanked the proprietor, made my way over to the room and switched on the light. The table was certainly a far cry from Thurston's but it was good enough to enable me to put in some useful cue practice before my exhibition. The next morning I renewed my thanks to the boss, paid my bill and left for home.
Nearly a year later, I was invited back by the committee of the working men's club and again made a beeline for the pub after getting off the bus. And again I approached the proprietor for a room. This time, however, my welcome was not quite so fulsome.
'Aren't you the fellow who came here a while back to play billiards at the club?' he asked belligerently.
I agreed that I was.
'I thought I recognised you,' he said. 'Well, until you hand over £5 you can't stay here.'
Naturally I was taken aback - until he explained further. 'A few weeks after you'd been here I happened to go into the billiard-room and found you'd left the lights on!'
I apologised profusely but, since a year had elapsed, the proprietor's wrath had long since abated. He let me off and again put me up for the night. It was just as well; I was receiving only four guineas for my show, and that had to cover my night's stay and bus fares.
By this time I was beginning to corner quite a few engagements - enough, anyway, to keep Queenie in housekeeping and to enable us to buy a few more things for the house (cash down, of course; no insidious hire purchase for me).
Pretty well every week I was playing matches against second division men such as Fred Lawrence, Arthur Peall, Tom Tothill and Tom Carpenter. Some I won, some I lost. But I was still practising furiously and felt that I was progressing in the profession. I had pulled through my bad patch and was becoming established as one of the leading second division players.
An important landmark was the Midland Counties Championship which I again entered in 1922. Not surprisingly, it was Fred Lawrence, fourteen years my senior, whom I met in the week-long final in Birmingham. But this time I turned the tables on Fred to win the trophy. And this just before my twenty-first birthday.
After the compulsory speeches and congratulations I had to trek home to Chesterfield, arriving at the station at two o'clock on the Sunday morning. As I was not in the habit of catching taxis - anyway, I could not afford than - I began to walk home, reflecting happily on the cup and my new title. However, it is a fact of life, as any night worker will confirm, that in the early hours any activity on the streets, no matter how innocent, is likely to attract the attention of a bored policeman. And so it was on this occasion - though I appreciate the motives of the PC who approached me. I must have looked a pretty shady character as I trudged the darkened streets. In one hand I clutched a suitcase and a cue case (which could have contained anything) and in the other a large brown paper parcel (which also could have contained anything).
'Now then,' said the constable, 'what have you got there?'
'A cup,' I answered. 'A silver cup,' I added - quickly, recalling that brevity with the constabulary had its drawbacks.
'Oh. And I suppose you caught it with that fishing rod,' said the PC with leaden humour, indicating my cue case. 'Let's just take a walk down to the station and talk to the sergeant about it.'
Happily the sergeant turned out to be a billiards enthusiast and informed the constable that he had just run in a local celebrity. The constable congratulated me, promised that he would recognise me in future and, with this, they kindly allowed me to continue my two-and-a-half mile walk back to Whittington Moor. If it had been Z Cars I would at least have had a police car to drive me home.
All in all 1922 was a good year for me. Not only did I beat Fred to take the Midlands championship, I also entered the second division championship again and beat Arthur Peall in the final. It must have been a severe blow to Arthur who was over forty and for whom, after years knocking on the door of the top rankers, time was running out.
I never had any money to back myself in matches in those days but I had quite a few Chesterfield followers who backed me, and my father, having got over my marriage, always put up money for me in important matches. In this particular final he found £50 as my side stake and came down to London to watch my progress.
During play Arthur seemed to irritate me and put me off. First there was his odd cue action when addressing the ball, and before this palaver, as he got down to the table, he wiggled like Marilyn Monroe with a fly down her back. Whether Arthur's idiosyncrasies were entirely to blame I cannot say but I certainly found myself playing badly. After three days I was lagging behind to such an extent that pop packed his bags and left me to it.
Before the final session on Saturday, being worried about the fate of pop's £50, I hesitantly suggested to Arthur that whoever won would give the other £25 back - in other words we would halve our risks. Arthur, I am glad to say, was 'chicken' at all times and to my great relief agreed to the deal - though I will never know why for he was about 500 points in the lead. On the Saturday, however, I had a very good session to notch up 1,063 points against Arthur's 509 and so snatched victory, much to my surprise, by a bare margin of 143 points.
An even greater surprise, though, was in store for my father when I got home. His grin as he held out his hand for his winnings of £50 turned to a grimace when I counted out a paltry twenty-five £1 notes.
When I explained the circumstances he agreed that the odds before the Saturday session were such that the bargain had seemed a good one. But it left me wondering who, after all, had been 'chicken' - Arthur or me.