Shirley

by Burgess, Muriel

  Mark was also at a Swiss boarding school. He too, was finding that life was not always easy.

  Shirley’s three children did, however, get on well with Sergio. They all called him Dad, and were very fond of him. It was the way of life, the touring and the concerts, the tempers that flared unexpectedly, that didn’t always make for a peaceful home life. Now that the children were all at school, Thelma had gone. Shirley later readily admitted that she failed as a mother; show business still remains number one and she knows she’ll go on and on until she’s too old to move.

  Thelma had always known that when Samantha and then Mark went off to school her job would be over. She returned to London and found getting another job harder than she thought. When she was getting desperate she asked Bo Mills, Shirley’s friend, if he could help her find a position. Bo, a generous-hearted man, offered Thelma a job as his housekeeper. Some time later Bernard Hall, who was also a friend of Bo’s, was delighted when Bo asked him to dinner cooked by the new housekeeper, Thelma. The surprise guest of honour that evening turned out to be Shirley, and she thoroughly enjoyed herself. She had three good-looking men to entertain her: Bo, Bernard and Yves, who was Bo’s partner in the business. They were all making a great fuss of her, hanging on her every word and laughing uproariously at her jokes. It did cross Bernard’s mind that they appeared to him to be behaving rather like three court jesters, whose only wish was to make Shirley, the Queen of Hearts, happy.

  But jokes aside, Shirley was going through a difficult time; she was drinking too much and she knew it. Bo Mills and Bernard both worried about her, but Shirley didn’t tend to welcome advice.

  Eight or nine years after Shirley had made Sergio her manager their marriage had begun to falter. Their son Mark knew this tempestuous marriage was breaking up the day the arguments ended. He thought that all married people fought because his adopted father and mother had fought for as long as he could remember. ‘They seemed to live in a boxing ring,’ he recalled, ‘and when they stopped fighting, that was it, their marriage was over.’

  Mark hadn’t got it quite right, the marriage didn’t collapse as suddenly as all that, but it was going wrong and it was only a matter of time before Shirley decided enough was enough. One of the reasons the marriage was failing was because these two people did not understand each other. Shirley and Sergio came from very different backgrounds and they had widely divergent perspectives on life. Poverty had scarred Shirley, who was still vulnerable under the bravado and feared that one day she might lose all she had worked for.

  The Italian personality is not at all like the Welsh. There is sometimes an undercurrent of pessimism in those born near the Welsh hills. From the beginning of her career Shirley had been suspicious of men who looked after her earnings. She has said, ‘Moneywise, I’ve looked after all the men in my life.’ She was probably right about the first two. Michael Sullivan always acted as if he was doing Shirley a favour, and Kenneth Hume, although he taught Shirley a good deal about finance, did gamble away portions of Shirley’s hard-earned money.

  ‘No man has ever taken care of me and my children,’ said Shirley. ‘I have paid the bills with my money and it has always been like that.’ Both Samantha and Mark could relate to this, they had known Dads who were kind to them but not their real fathers. Only Sharon had been lucky enough to have a permanent foster father and mother in Bill and Iris.

  One of the reasons Shirley fell in love with Sergio was, no doubt, because she was always attracted by mature men who represented a protective father figure. Not that Sergio was much older than she, but he was certainly more wise and sophisticated in the ways of the world. Once he became her manager, however, there had been too much close contact. A star and her manager should live apart. Better still, a star’s manager should go home each night to another woman who will soothe his nerves which have been pulverised by his close involvement with the star and her demands.

  Shirley admitted, ‘When Sergio became my manager it did not work.’

  Few men could understand the physical strain Shirley was under when she toured. As she put it, ‘I need strength. For instance, when I’ve got a bad cold and I have to go on singing, it’s tough. And if it’s two shows a night, it’s murder. I hate two shows a night anyway because you get yourself all charged up for your first performance and the adrenalin’s going and then you need something like two hours to calm down, and just as you’re starting to relax, you have to gear yourself up for another performance. It’s hell.’

  The only man who worked for Shirley and understood what she went through was another performer, Bernard Hall, and he was a six-foot tall muscular dancer, not a medium-height slim girl. Sergio didn’t always have an easy time; not only had he never been a performer himself, but show business was foreign territory for him, and it was impossible for him to understand what Shirley went through.

  Shirley always loved going back to Cardiff to see her mother. She had bought her another house, this time a bungalow because her mother was nearing eighty. It was in the same outer suburb of Cardiff called Llanrumney. Eliza hated leaving her little garden with all the bulbs she had planted each year, but she was philosophical in accepting that this happened to everyone when they grew old. As long as Shirley found the time to come and visit her and the rest of the family were still living around her, she was happy.

  Shirley arranged that Ella, her older sister who had once lived in Islington, should, with her husband, also move into the bungalow to make sure that Mrs Mendi was well looked after. Towards the late ’70s there came a time when Shirley went down to see her mother with a heavy heart. She knew she had to tell her that her marriage to Sergio was on the rocks and she and Sergio were soon to separate permanently. But she knew she had to tell her soon, before she made the formal announcement.

  In 1979 Shirley called a press conference at the Dorchester Hotel to announce that she and Sergio were divorcing. The press were, as usual, good-tempered. Shirley agreed with them that she’d made mistakes but, ‘I won’t make the same mistake again,’ she declared defiantly, ‘because I shan’t get married again.’

  One of the journalists at this conference asked Shirley whether, since she was now divorcing Sergio Novak, Kenneth Carter was her new manager.

  ‘Kenneth Carter is my road manager,’ explained Shirley. A road manager’s job is to keep the show on the road and look after the comfort and well-being of the star. Bernard Hall was once Shirley’s road manager and he could have added that the job also entailed being at her beck and call and ducking when the exasperated star throws her shoes at you. The pitfall of becoming too closely entangled with a star is that the road manager often loses his freedom.

  Shirley’s new road manager, Kenneth Carter, was an Australian who was said to be a strong and silent type. In a picture of the two taken at that time, Shirley looks beautiful and happy and Kenneth towers above her. He had none of the suave good looks of Peter Finch or Sergio Novak. His hair, in the fashion of the time, was longish and his eyebrows were bushy. According to Hilary Levy, who was then Shirley’s secretary, he was Shirley’s boyfriend.

  Now that Sergio was no longer travelling with her, Shirley liked employing people as companions: she referred to them as her family. Kenneth Carter was one and Hilary Levy, another. Touring is an isolated business and according to Shirley the more successful one becomes the worse it gets – and as you grow older it gets even harder.

  Hilary Levy met Shirley in 1978 when she was working as PA to a concert promoter. Sergio and Shirley were still together, and Sergio asked Hilary if she would like to accompany Shirley on her winter tour of Britain and Scandinavia. Hilary accepted at once. She was twenty-nine years old, her marriage was over, and she was free to travel wherever she pleased.

  By the time the Novaks divorced, Hilary had become a fixture in Shirley’s life, as had Kenneth Carter, who quickly learned the ropes as road manager. Every time Shirley came to London for a concert or a recording, her friends, like Soraya Khashoggi, who
had a house in Belgravia, arranged parties and social events for her. One of them, unfortunately went disastrously wrong.

  One evening in December 1978, Shirley and a party of eight went to the Country Cousins Restaurant in Fulham to have dinner and listen to a new pop group performing there. It was somebody’s birthday and Shirley got up and sang Happy Birthday. She was soon the centre of attraction and the evening turned into a party. At three a.m. they left and adjourned to a house in Eaton Square where the party continued until neighbours complained and the police arrived.

  One of the women in the house kept singing a song called, ‘Quando, quando’ and the police told her to keep quiet. When she refused to be quiet the police arrested her. She became distraught and agitated when, reeking of alcohol and her speech slurred, she was led outside. At one point she had pushed a police officer in the back, causing him to fall against another officer.

  It was reported that Shirley was then taken to Gerald Road police station and charged with being drunk and disorderly. She gave her name as Shirley Carter, but everyone realised that she was Shirley Bassey.

  On December 21 Shirley, soberly dressed in black and wearing a hat with a veil, arrived at Horseferry Road Magistrates Court. Her barrister said that here was a lady of unblemished character celebrating twenty-five years in show business, and she was extremely sorry that she had disturbed the neighbours. The magistrate bound her over for three months and said he was confident that it would not happen again.

  Hilary Levy and Kenneth Carter were learning the hard way that although they travelled first-class, lived in luxury and were very well paid, a twenty-four-hour schedule was often on the cards, and Shirley could sometimes be a very demanding lady. Hilary says that Shirley always insisted that they had adjoining rooms and sometimes, when she couldn’t sleep and needed company, she would call out for Hilary to join her. Although their day was supposed to end at two a.m., Shirley’s staff found the biggest drawback was their lack of freedom to live their own lives. Kenneth could buy expensive clothes and drive powerful cars for Shirley in Los Angeles, but had scant time to himself. He managed this for three years before leaving.

  Hilary found out that a superstar’s life can also be lonely and Shirley wanted a friend to confide in. It became even harder for Hilary when Kenneth Carter left. When all was going well Shirley was charming and the two women got on very well together. Hilary looked a lot like Shirley; she was shorter but she was slim and could get into all Shirley’s clothes. Her hair was dark and worn in the same bouffant style as Shirley’s naturally curly dark hair or her wigs. People often wondered if they were related.

  Touring always sparked difficulties. Sometimes the hotel day would begin with Shirley wanting an unusual breakfast like steamed kippers or, if she was on a diet, just vegetable juice. Then if she felt tired she would spend the hours until she had to prepare for the evening concert, watching television. Hilary was expected to stay within call, or hurry out to do some shopping for her.

  Shirley would worry about her children, and whether she was a good enough mother. Sharon had suffered problems in her life, but she had always coped remarkably well. She lived in a little house in Thornbury, a pretty town near Bristol, and she’d had a baby, a little boy, who was just one year old. She was a single parent and called herself Sharon Denning, assuming the name of her foster parents. She was caring for little Luke, Shirley’s first grandchild, whilst enjoying her job as a part-time children’s nurse.

  Samantha, however, was a problem. Shirley recognised that she too had been a rebel, but she’d had no money to rebel with. She often worried that Samantha was spoilt. At school they said she was too independent-minded. Was giving a girl all the things she herself had missed as child bad for her? And Mark, who Shirley wanted to gain a profession, was also having problems as school.

  Then something happened that stopped Shirley in her tracks. Eliza Mendi, her mother, died.

  Shirley’s mother turned eighty in 1981. A young looking eighty, who didn’t look a day over sixty-five, according to her daughter, though she did have some blood pressure trouble like most women of her age. As she’d had a hard life and was the kind of woman who would never give in, it was no surprise that perhaps her heart wasn’t as strong as it might have been. When she was taken ill, she had all the symptoms of possible heart failure, her blood pressure was low, and she found it hard to swallow anything but liquids. She was admitted to St David’s Hospital.

  Three days after Shirley’s mother’s birthday, she died suddenly. Shirley was heartbroken. ‘She only wanted to give, never to take. I was the baby of the family and I adored her,’ she wept.

  Tiger Bay has its own much loved rituals. When someone dies who has been part of The Bay community, a person who is respected by all, they are given a great send off, a loving farewell. No matter how far away Bay people have moved, they will come back to Tiger Bay to walk behind the coffin. Like an Irish village ceremony, where mourners can stretch for a mile or more the Bay cortège wends its way down the roads and the lanes. It is a ceremony without pomp but still very impressive.

  Eliza Bassey was a respected lady who had brought up seven children in Tiger Bay, and her youngest, her baby, had achieved worldwide fame as a great singer. No one had been more proud of Shirley than Eliza, and no village was more proud of its daughter than Tiger Bay. But Shirley was not the reason the cortege walked behind the coffin, it was for the English girl, Eliza, who had come down from the north and settled in Wales and loved this corner of Cardiff Bay.

  Shirley said, ‘On the day of the funeral I was in the most terrible state. I felt rootless, as if my life had been torn apart. She had never doubted me, and she has always been there when I needed her.’

  Shirley wept without cease. She was led away after the funeral, still sobbing. At a small gathering afterwards for the family and close friends, everyone had a drink or two and the talk turned, naturally enough, to the time when they were all young. However the peacemaker, their mother, who held the strings of the family tight, the one who calmed them down when tensions rose, was not there any more.

  An ill-chosen word or a passing recollection at a funeral can often rend a family apart, and this is what happened at the Bassey funeral.

  Shirley, who knew that her mother had been the absolute salvation of the family through every trial and torment, was very angry when someone brought up the story of their father’s departure. Her mother had carved a new life for herself, she had found peace and happiness again, so why disinter the past like this? What had happened so long ago was one of the worst times in Eliza’s life – this was not the occasion to talk about such things. She was in a highly emotional state, holding herself together and trying to keep her feelings of terrible loss under control. At this moment Shirley’s composure finally broke down. People took sides and a bitter family row erupted. Shirley suddenly snapped and got up and left. She did not forget easily and remained silent and distant from her family for a long time afterwards.

  Marina, her sister, has said about the affair, ‘We thought it was because Shirley was so upset over our mother’s death. I honestly don’t know why all this happened. It was just a tiff. We’d once all been so close. Now Shirley doesn’t even exchange Christmas cards or birthday cards. None even arrived for my children or grandchildren.’

  Shirley’s sisters waited anxiously when she was to sing in Cardiff the following June, 1982, to see if seats would, as usual, be left for them at St David’s Hall box office. For some reason no seats materialised, and hurt turned to disappointment and bitterness.

  17

  SAMANTHA

  SHIRLEY HAD TAKEN to spending time in the south of Spain. She was divorced, she no longer had a husband as manager, no man who said with his hand on his heart that he had only her interests at heart. She had learned many lessons in her comparatively short life, and now she wanted to try life on her own without any commitments, apart from her three children. She bought a villa. Her friend Soraya Khashoggi, the
divorced wife of arms dealer, Adnan Khashoggi, had a villa there, and so did Adnan (whose sister was the mother of Dodi Fayed).

  The international set who turned up in Marbella every summer to open up their villas and have fun were a lively lot and they welcomed Shirley with open arms. Between tours she would spend as much as six weeks at a time at her holiday villa. She loved the rackety night life of the town and she had various friends, including the millionaire property developer Roy Boston. He took her dancing one night, along with Soraya Khashoggi and Baron Heinrich von Thyssen, to a new upmarket nightspot, Olivia Valere. Shirley was so carried away that she gave the customers a spontaneous three-hour singalong in the bar.

  ‘The guitar player and pianist were amazed when I jumped up and started singing,’ she recalled. ‘I found myself doing songs like “My Funny Valentine”, which I hadn’t sung for twenty years, and I still remembered the words.’

  Sometimes, when Mark was on holiday from school, Shirley would dress him up in a white tuxedo and take him out on the town with her.

  Drinking had now become part of Shirley’s way of life. She admitted that while her marriage to Sergio was breaking up she had started drinking heavily. Sometimes she had two bottles of champagne on ice with her in her dressing room. She said that the men in her life often counted her drinks. This absolutely infuriated her. And Sergio had gone one better, often committing the unforgivable sin of putting her down verbally until he destroyed her self-confidence. All her life Shirley had been shy of making mistakes because of her lack of education. It took years before she realised that her natural intelligence could make her just as witty and clever as the smartest woman in the room. But in the immediate aftermath of Sergio she still needed a glass of champagne to give her confidence.

  She has said that her life with men had a ring of the ‘Rita Hayworth’ about it; it was a reference to how Prince Aly Khan fell in love with, and married, the film star who played the lead in Gilda. When he took her to bed he always, according to Rita, expected to find the glamourous, confident Gilda lying at his side next morning; instead, he got a little Spanish dancer from South of the border down Mexico way who’d been discovered and cruelly exploited by Hollywood men.