Lives in Cricket No 28 - Keith Carmody

46 were single women: two of them in Bournemouth, where his stint in England had begun, one in Carlisle and another in Bedford. Inevitably, however, London was the centre of his necessarily limited but evidently busy social life. The capital was a magnet for servicemen, even without the cricket that constantly drew Keith and his fellow-RAAF players to Lord’s. Although he listed young ladies in such outlying places as Shepperton, Southall and Peckham, it seems that Mayfair, more particularly its less aristocratic corner, was his favourite haunt. The first two names on his list were José Chicherio at Shepherd’s Tavern in Hertford Street and Bette Davis, living in a flat in Park Lane. It would be wrong to read into Keith’s fondness for the New Inn in Maidstone or Shepherd’s in Mayfair early evidence of the heavy drinking that was to mar his later life. It’s clear that his main interest in Shepherd’s was focused on Josephine, usually ‘José’ or ‘Josie’, the daughter of the tavern’s catering manager, Swiss- born Oscar Umberto Chicherio. 24 She was the first to write to his commanding officer at 455 squadron seeking information immediately after he was reported missing on 19 June. The 24 Oscar Chicherio was listed in The London Gazette , 24 October 1941, at the time of his taking up British citzenship, as a catering manager, of 50 Hertford Street, London W1. In the Air and on the Field with the RAAF Shepherd’s Inn, in Mayfair, not long after Keith was a wartime ‘regular’. It has become far glossier since his time.