The Two of Us

by Sheila Hancock

  23 April

  John has a really good singing voice. He’s learning all these new things and taking to them like a duck to water. They all love working with him but he gets a bit irritated by the usual musical company jolliness. They keep saying what ‘fun’ it all is. He hates all that campery. ‘Acting isn’t fun, it’s a fucking job.’

  Life for me was full of hope. I loved learning. Our teachers were dedicated to improving our chances at a time when good jobs for women were thin on the ground. Even grammar school girls were guided towards nursing rather than aspiring to be doctors or, God forbid, surgeons, and all the professions were deemed too difficult to combine with the obligatory first priority of marriage. Which is probably why my teachers were either spinsters, who may have lost fiancés in World War I, or lesbians. Whatever the reason, I remember only one who was married; their lives were dedicated to us girls.

  I heard my first classical music, apart from Dad’s arias, with Miss Tudor Craig. She told us what to listen for, then sat drinking it in with knees apart, showing a glimpse of passion-killer drawer elastic just above her knee. In Music Appreciation class she played us Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy Overture to Romeo and Juliet. The build-up of the orgasmic melody gave me the same sensation as running down my secret hill in Crewkerne and floating in the water of Dancing Ledge. I rushed to the local music store with my money box and asked for the record, with some difficulty over the pronunciation. They did not have it but kindly suggested alternative pieces by Tchaikovsky or works by other composers. I rejected them, not believing anything could be as lovely as the one I wanted. What a lifetime of joy lay ahead of me discovering how wrong I was. Under Miss Tudor Craig’s guidance I started a vinyl collection for my wind-up gramophone and searched the wireless waves for more magic music. Years later I did a play called Prin, about a head teacher, in which I based my characterisation on Miss Tudor Craig, hoping to repay a little of the debt I owe all those inspirational women. They introduced me to history, literature and culture. Everything I hold dear in my old age was first shown to me by them. They encouraged me to believe I could achieve anything – however humble my origins. Them and my Dad’s constant urging to be the best.

  ‘I was second in maths, Dad.’

  ‘Oh, who was top?’

  I was all set to try for a State Scholarship to university when I was fatally diverted. Dartford Grammar was an all-girl school. The boys were in a separate building, where later Mick Jagger would start the Rolling Stones. Our concentration on our studies was absolute. Or supposed to be. My raging hormones made me the best bat in the cricket team because, with a bit of luck, in the practice net I could hit the ball into the boys’ playing field adjacent to ours. I was also a keen member of the Young Farmers’ Union as the rabbitry ran alongside their fence and, whilst cleaning out the creatures’ unsavoury hutches, I could peek at the boys through the wire. I volunteered for bell duty on the days their sixth form used our chemistry lab. However much I flashed my quite nice long legs running down the corridor and violently shaking the bell as I passed the laboratory glass door, I elicited not a glance from these paragons. I was very tall, a terrible embarrassment in those days, and resplendent with acne. No wonder they were more interested in the Snow Whites who acted cool and hard to get. I hadn’t got a chance. Until I was cast as St Joan in the school play directed by Mrs Wilby, our only married teacher whom we all treated as a friend, very unusual in those overly respectful days. She concealed my spots with theatrical Five and Nine make-up and I threw myself into the role. The next day, when I did my usual frenzied bell ritual, the blond, devastatingly handsome head boy, Alan Coast, beckoned me over and asked me to accompany him to the end-of-term dance, telling me that he thought I was ‘all right’ in the play. The die was cast. An ignoble reason for going on the stage, but a succession of Greek gods and glamorous parties seemed infinitely preferable to more school, as I imagined university to be, never having been near one.

  My Quaker headmistress, Miss Fryer, tried to persuade me to go for something safer, using my good brain, but when I was adamant, she pointed me towards RADA and suggested I should get some help to prepare for the audition. My accent and appearance can’t have inspired her with confidence about my chances in my chosen career. Miraculously, she persuaded Kent Education Authority to award me a scholarship – the first for drama in that county – covering my fees and some subsistence, subject to my being accepted at RADA.

  Someone in the shop told Mummy about a wonderful old actor laddie who directed amateur shows and would be prepared to give me intensive elocution lessons. Mr Hadley Prestage and I slaved over my vowels and consonants, driving my family mad with my vocal exercises. My sister designed a New Look outfit for me and my mum made it up on the treadle Singer sewing machine. The austerity of the war had been replaced by ballerina skirts, waists nipped in with waspy corsets, and layers of frilly petticoats. Dolled up in this outfit, I walked through the door of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in Gower Street rigid with fear, but determined not to let down Dad, waiting anxiously outside.

  I had prepared a piece from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, playing both Titania and, in a different voice, Bottom. I stood up for Bottom and sprawled on the floor for Titania, jumping up and down like a yo-yo. Maybe they liked my cheek, or they felt sorry for this spotty, gangling girl with an awful voice and a desperate glint in her eye, but they accepted me.

  26 April

  We did it! I almost forgot to have stage fright, so scared was I for John. And what happened? He sailed through it loving every minute, and I was all over the place. He actually went so far as to admit afterwards that it was ‘fun’. He was so cocky he even giggled at Jo’s divine Red Indian war dance as Tiger Lily and twinkled at me as he declaimed ‘Floreat Etona’. The grandchildren loved it but looked a bit askance when they first saw him after the show. I think they were relieved he had survived the crocodile. It was a glorious, happy, triumphant evening. Someone suggested he should play Professor Higgins. He could too. Something for the future?

  It was the last time John ever performed.

  4

  The Teenager

  ‘TURN YOUR BACKS.’ Jack sat the boys down. ‘We’re on our own now. We’ve got to look after each other; and you must turn your back on any trouble. Just walk away, don’t get involved, or they’ll take you away from me and put you in a Home.’

  Turn your back. Potent advice.

  As a little boy, despite his family’s grinding poverty, John had been happy. When his adored mother walked out of his life, leaving him to be brought up by his often absent father and responsible, at the age of seven, for the care of his five-year-old brother, everything changed. Her desertion inflicted a wound that took the rest of his life to heal. From that day forward he followed his father’s advice. The Back Treatment became his chosen weapon of self-defence.

  Jack went to court to get custody of the boys, which the magistrate allowed, subject to Auntie Beattie supporting him – an almost unheard-of decision in those days when fathers were considered incapable of looking after kids. Dorothy stayed away from the court, and her mother and her sister, Cissie, remained silent throughout the hearing.

  The Thaw family and the neighbours rallied round Jack and his sons. Auntie Beat took the tram to Burnage twice a week with ham and pea soup and other goodies. The conductor would ask, ‘What’s on the menu this week?’ If Charlie hadn’t had much work that week, she would walk. The people in the flat above checked that the boys were in bed by nine and they, or some other neighbour, would make sure that they got off to school in the morning. Jack was still away a lot on the long-distance lorries and it is to the everlasting credit of those kindly people that the seven- and five-year-old boys were not taken into care. It became easier when their dad got a job driving ambulances and was home more.

  27 May

  Filming EastEnders. I was like a sad fan gawping at all the characters. Martin Kemp took me to see the Albert Square set. I couldn’t have been
more thrilled if it had been Ben-Hur. Rushed home to tell John. What with EastEnders and The Archers our tastes are not exactly highbrow. But I still maintain there is more good acting and camera work in EastEnders than many other shows. And God, do they work under pressure. Kick, bollock and scramble all day, however emotional the scene. No wanky discussion and analysis – just do it. I told John it would suit him down to the ground. ‘But not the money, darling.’

  One day the boys saw their mother outside the flat sitting in a car with a man. She didn’t talk to them. Ray never saw her again. Beattie saw her once. Dorothy came up to her in the street.

  ‘Hello, Beat.’

  ‘What d’you want then?’

  ‘Could you give the boys this?’

  ‘No – they don’t want money, they want a mother.’

  And that was that.

  Broken homes were rare in those days. Whether from shame or fear, the boys kept quiet about their absent mother. The teachers at Green End Junior School only found out about it when John arrived clutching a dirty hankie to a bad cut on his hand. When questioned, he explained that he had done it opening a can of beans for their breakfast.

  With their mother’s barmaid’s income gone, there was even less money. The pawn shop was a regular trip, and diving behind the sofa when the rent man came was a favourite game. For the rest of their lives John and his father would never answer a doorbell if they could help it.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘I don’t know – go and see.’

  ‘No, no, kid – you go.’

  John took his little brother everywhere. In the absence of a mother, Ray doted on John. They wandered the streets a lot but had a good time. They went to see Manchester City at Maine Road. (Ray and Jack were besotted with the team – it had, after all, started in 1880 in West Gorton as St Mark’s FC, the very church that Auntie Beat had married in. John, too, supported City until February 1958 when an air crash in Munich killed seven of United’s Busby Babes, three staff members and seven journalists. Out of sympathy John switched his allegiance to Manchester United. His father and brother never quite forgave him.) Auntie Beat took the two boys on the tram to grimy Manchester for knickerbocker glories and milkshakes in the café in Lewis’s. John incongruously joined the Young Farmers’ Club and dreamed of country life. He also joined the Boys’ Brigade, the Church Army and the Cubs, but only long enough to qualify for the outings to Blackpool. Various uncles and aunts visited, and Grandma Thaw, or Beattie, did a lovely Sunday dinner back in West Gorton; and afterwards Uncle Charlie took the boys and all the cousins to Belle Vue.

  There were regular holidays in Charlie’s tiny caravan in Rhyl. While there, young John started a business gathering golf-balls from the local links and selling them, a racket that ended when John, over-zealously, took a ball that was still in play, and, like one of his later scenes in The Sweeney, ordered his brother and cousin Sandra to run to the caravan, lie flat on the floor and deny they knew each other if anyone found them. Another scam was the result of a kindly local chemist offering money for rosehips. John got all the kids on the site working for him, producing sack-fuls of booty for the startled chemist. When the man hastily ended his contract, John wailed, ‘Oh no, just when we were getting a good trade going.’ He became yo-yo champion of the area when he discovered there were competitions with money prizes.

  John’s chief source of pocket money was his talent. He now turned his experiments with Uncle Charlie’s microphone under the stairs in Stowell Street to practical use. The impersonations were worked on and added to, to form a stage act. He sought out every talent competition in the area, which he invariably won, dividing his prizes between his brother and cousins to buy sherbet fountains and ice cream. His own share was spent on books of jokes, which he put into his act, trying them out on his longsuffering family: ‘I’m going to treat you all.’ Every Saturday morning he did his stand-up in the local cinema in Burnage, where he became the star turn. His Charlie Chaplin was especially fine and he quaintly took off Bransby Williams, a very grand old actor whom he had seen doing monologues at Ardwick Hippodrome. He discovered that though his mother may not have found him beguiling, other people did. He could command their attention and make them clap and laugh. All right, he had to go home with Ray to an empty flat, but he would occupy his mind in planning new acts, inventing material from his accurate observation of other performers. His confidence grew. He’d show ’em. Or her.

  In 1952 the musical play Where the Rainbow Ends, which had so impressed the girl at the Holborn Empire, was to affect John profoundly too. The ten-year-old made his acting debut at Green End Junior School, as Uncle Joseph in pursuit of the same old rainbow. This was proper acting in a play, creating a character as he imagined it, not just mimicking other people. He would much rather have played the flashy Dragon, but he had no trouble, then as later, playing much older than his age. ‘I was born old.’

  29 May

  The Glass is aired. John not thrilled by it. Nor me. The casting of him in romantic competition for Sarah Lancashire, with Joe McFadden, our Peter Pan, who looks two years old, as his rival, is an executive’s fantasy. He must choose better than this. He’s nervous of the future, I can tell. Absurd of course, he is inundated with offers but the death of Morse was the end of an era and he must start again. This is not the way. He is a wonderful actor even in this ill-conceived venture and it will happen.

  He showed stage presence as Uncle Joseph, and the headmaster’s meticulously handwritten log-book records that the performance was ‘well received by the parents’. John was praised and applauded. He resolved there and then to be a proper actor, although he had little idea of what that was or how it happened. He knew he enjoyed being someone else. Maybe because at that time he did not much enjoy being himself.

  A short while after his triumph in Where the Rainbow Ends, by the skin of his teeth and after some pressure by his father, John got into Ducie Technical College in Moss Side. It was no longer the salubrious neighbourhood that Charlotte Brontë wrote about when she stayed with Mrs Gaskell in nearby Plymouth Grove in 1850: ‘In this hot weather the windows are kept open, the whispering of leaves and perfume of flowers pervades the rooms.’ The school was a Victorian edifice near a road that was now an endless source of interest to the boys as a haunt for prostitutes. It was not a great school. It was said it prepared boys to be policemen, salesmen or burglars.

  It nevertheless boasted two teachers, Sam Hughes and John Lee, the headmaster, who were to change many people’s lives, including John’s. They followed in the proud tradition of intellectuals in Manchester, who tried to introduce the world of hard labour to the pleasure of the arts. In 1925 one brave soul twisted the mill-owners’ arms to subsidise an influential exhibition. ‘What on earth do you want with art in Manchester? Why can’t you stick to your cotton spinning?’ they replied. John Lee, the history teacher, was also determined that his boys should aspire to more than cotton spinning. John Monks, head of the TUC, developed his life-long passion for union battles under Lee’s tutelage. Now, when anyone presumes Monks must have gone to the illustrious Manchester Grammar, he says: ‘No, Ducie Tech, same as John Thaw,’ which he maintains impresses them more.

  Aside from teaching history, John Lee’s passion was amateur dramatics. He produced the school play and pounced on John’s obvious talent. His first role at Ducie Tech was a challenge to any young boy, but John’s Mistress Quickly, wrapped in a huge white cloak, quelled the audience’s misplaced giggles and held them spellbound.

  Knowing he had something exceptional to work with, John Lee challenged John with ever more difficult roles. He introduced him to the classics, which John devoured from local library books. This careful honing of his talent culminated with the fiendishly demanding role of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. So immersed was John in the manic Scot’s world that when a luckless boy came on late and forgot his lines he nearly throttled him on stage, while filling in for him in perfect improvised iambic pentameter.
/>   3 June

  Arrived back from location filming to find John in kitchen looking wild-eyed and drawn. It shocked me – echoes of the drinking days – but I think it’s because he has been coping on his own. I noticed his voice is still croaky from the singing and he said it had got worse. I feel a bit uneasy and we must look into it but he said it was worth it – he had enjoyed Peter Pan so much.

  For light relief John was compere for the Burnage Community Theatre that went round old people’s homes and local halls with their shows. While his brother Ray showed his defiance to the world by becoming the youngest cricket captain in Manchester and playing football for several teams, including the Manchester Under 15s, John sat on the edge of the playing field reading and learning lines. It is no wonder that he only achieved one O-level as the set books held no interest for him.

  John mimicked the teachers’ regional accents so accurately that they let him get away with it. Or maybe they were intimidated by this fierce lad. He was treated respectfully in the playground. His reputation was such that he ran a protection racket for a much-bullied lad called Bradshaw, in return for his sandwiches. He was mindful of his dad’s warning not to get caught, so another lad was forced to nick things on his behalf from a local shop. John became fat and unkempt. The boys’ diet was not helped by the end of sweet rationing in 1953. Despite Beattie’s watchful eye and the neighbours’ solicitude there was no woman at home and frequently, because of his work, no father either. John was known as the boy with the grey vest and no underpants. His great discovery, with the help of John Lee, was that he could turn his back on all this by pretending to be someone else. In his early teens John had little time for girls, although he did languish after the beautiful Alison Lui, whose parents ran the Chinese laundry; he did not risk seeking love after his mother left. But something in him attracted it. He and Ray received much kindness from people – most of them with little but their compassion to give.