Judy
Stories and memories
Abandoned by Wyn
Despite Wyn’s abandonment, Isobel refused to give up her daughter and was determined to be a good mother which as Judy herself says, she absolutely was. She and baby Judy moved in with Jack and Hazel in Virginia Water. Isobel and Wyn’s divorce came through in 1940, and Isobel married her solicitor Robert Gibson-Fleming in 1941 when Judy was two. Judy remembers him well: “My stepfather was 6’4”, slim, very good-looking and highly intelligent but with no small talk at all. He wasn’t very fond of children, and it was ironic that my mother, having been abandoned by one man over his aversion to children should take up with another who felt the same way! He was brought up in India by his father who was in the army and his mother who was a nurse in WW1. He had an excellent education at Clifton College, and went on to read law at Oxford and then studied naval architecture. He loved cars, sailing and photography which suited me very well, and his family had a huge yacht and a lot of land in Ireland just south of Dublin. He was the one who taught me all the constellations for navigation which kicked off my fascination with astronomy. He suffered a brain injury in WW2 when he was commander of a minesweeper (he was awarded the DSC) which made him slightly mentally unstable on occasion and could explain the times he became more difficult than usual.”
Robert was only 47 when he was killed on the evening of 4 December 1957. The train he was on crashed with another in dense fog near Lewisham in south-east London and he was one of 90 fatalities while another 173 were injured.
The cat's let out of the bag
Judy loved the Drewetts, especially Hazel as she was such a support to Isobel. Her mother cared for Carolyn as a surrogate daughter as Hazel did with her. The four of them were inseparable peas in the same pod. Both girls had red hair and looked more like twins than Carolyn did with her brother Chris, and went to school together at St Teresa’s in Effingham near Dorking.
As a young child, Judy had been told by an angry and hurt Isobel that her father had died in a plane crash, but all the Drewetts (including the kids Richard, Chris and Carolyn) knew the truth of the matter and were sworn to secrecy. It was only when Isobel and Carolyn were in the school playground in 1950 that the skeletons came tumbling out of the cupboard. A gaggle of 12-year-old girls were playing one-upmanship about their parents when Judy played her trump sympathy card: “My father died in a plane crash.” Carolyn retorted: “That’s not true! He’s still alive. I’ve met him.” There were some panicked calls zipping along the phone lines that night! Wyn was summoned to the neutral ground of the Drewett’s Dorking house pronto to meet his daughter now that the cat was out of the bag. It was a lot for Judy to absorb but Wyn turned up to meet her for the first time in his Frazer Nash Mille Miglia, and as an avid car nut, she couldn’t have been more thrilled.
Father/daughter 'lite'
Judy didn’t have much contact with Wyn in her teens as it upset her mother, but Hazel did host the odd weekend stays for them both in Dorking. They set about building a father/daughter relationship ‘lite’ and wrote to each other, she calling him Wyn as he never favoured ‘Dad’. He bought her many beautiful gifts (gold bracelets from India, silk scarves from the far east) and even involved her in his businesses later on, allocating her shares and making use of her impressive administrative skills.
Although never close, the bond strengthened until the future (and final) Mrs Wyndham Hewitt IV came on the scene when Judy was in her early 20s. The age gap between daughter and new girlfriend was only seven years and a tidal wave of irrational and immature jealousy around the father/daughter relationship surged across the English Channel towards Judy. The French vixen gave Wyn a very unfair ultimatum – it’s her or me. Wyn caved in to her demand and he stopped writing to Judy in 1962 until out of the blue he contacted her again many years later when he wanted something.
Judy had the measure of her father and quickly understood he would always be looking for an edge where money was involved. Wyn had tried to get Fred’s trust rules changed to his advantage but as they were under the jurisprudence of the Public Trustee, he’d failed miserably. He was a crafty old devil though and moved on to Plan B, inviting Judy to stay with him for a couple of weeks in France.
“He was absolutely delightful,” said Judy, “but it very soon became clear he had an ulterior motive of course. I’d been there about a week, and he casually presented me with a letter to the Public Trustee that he wanted me to sign, asking the PT to allow all the funds that only paid 3% dividend to be moved to something with a higher rate of return. The terms of the Trust allowed him to draw income from the capital, and he wanted higher interest payments so he would get more income. I’d sussed his plan but signed the letter anyway. It was a hollow victory in my opinion, but it seemed to matter to him and at least the door to our relationship opened a crack again which I was very glad about."
A chip off the old block
Judy definitely swims the same gene pool as her father. Her fascination with cars and flying developed very early and she’s always had terrific gumption and an appetite for adventure but of course, had no idea where it all came from. Her stepfather had similar interests, but this didn’t explain the innate passions burning inside her.
“By the age of 8 my copy of The Observer’s Book of Aircraft was dog-eared, and I knew it by heart. I went on to build transistor radios and was very active in shortwave and amateur radio, I learnt morse code, photography and astronomy and still belong to the local Deep Sky Observers Club. When I was 12 I read ‘Marco Polo – The Travels’ written by Rustichello of Pisa in the 13th century. I determined then and there that I would cover the same ground which I have with the exception of Iran. I’ve been to 157 countries including the Arctic and Antarctica, Patagonia, Easter Island, Mongolia, Tibet, and travelled the Karakouram highway from Pakistan to China, crossed the Atacama and the Taklamakan desert by jeep, done the Trans-Siberian railway from Vladivostok to Moscow and St Petersburg, and been to Mount Everest.
I passed my driving test when I was 18 in 1960 and got my first car - an MG PB, what else? - when I was a student in London and sharing a flat in Earls Court with Carolyn. I’ve owned about 20 cars - not quite as many as Dad’s list of 66 - but they included a TR2 and a Triumph Spitfire in Hong Kong in 1962. Dad and I had some very interesting conversations about cars and our driving styles are similar. When I visited him in Provence, he drove me through the mountain switchbacks at breakneck speed, and I just loved every minute.
Like Dad, I entered a lot of rallies and hill climb competitions in the UK and Canada where I had a British racing green MGA and certainly won a few. A friend and I won a rally in a TR3 with me as navigator, using a slide rule! Sadly, Dad never saw me race as he was living in France by then, but I always took a photo of me driving every car I got into, including a 1932 Bugatti. He saw those and was secretly very proud I’m sure.
I learnt to fly in Florida in 2000 and two years later I bought a third share in a 1940 Tiger Moth DH80 registration G-ANEN for US$20,000 (about £26,000 in today’s money) which I owned until 2015. It was stored at Goodwood in West Sussex and we flew out over Thorney Island and over the Channel and to visit friends all over the south."