22 January
Very scary State of the Union address by Bush about the axis of evil: Iraq, Iran and North Korea. What is he building up to? He probably, understandably, feels he has to wreak revenge for the American people for September 11th. Please God he is restrained by calmer voices.
Germaine has a lot to answer for. Sally, John’s ex-wife, was more active than I was. She ended up in a police cell, having thrown flour at Bob Hope during a Miss World contest and stubbed her fag out on a policeman’s hand. When she was arrested she phoned John, and he supported her but must have wondered, when he also read some of my polemic in the newspapers, why he fell in love with such troublesome women. My new credo scuppered my comedy career with the BBC. Analysing my well-meaning sitcom roles, I realised all of them conformed to the comforting stereotype of dizzy blonde desperate for a man. At a grand BBC party, I loudly demanded to be taken more seriously by the powers that be, in those days mainly retired admirals and certainly all white, male and middle class. I nagged them to distraction, so to shut me up, they gave me a series, to go out very late at night, called But Seriously – It’s Sheila Hancock. I devised it with Barry Took, and we used clever clogs from university to write it, including John Cleese, Peter Cook and Graham Chapman. In one sketch, by Ken Hoare, I portrayed a malevolent landlady, mad with prejudice against everyone: Jews, Irish, black, pink, fat people, thin people. It was deemed from on high that it would shock people and spoil my image. I fought every inch of the way and did it. It was a success, I was proved right, but it was ten years before I worked for the BBC again.
With women like Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French and Victoria Wood leading the way and writing their own material, there’s nothing now that women can’t say or do, but in those days we were only allowed to be funny as long as we stayed charming and didn’t rock the men’s boat. In Seriously I had a guest star to chat with each week. One of them was Germaine Greer. I have met many eminent people. All our prime ministers since the sixties (I always preferred their wives), other important politicians, barristers, most of the royals, writers, surgeons, you name ’em, I’ve come across ’em. Of them all, Germaine has never disappointed. She has remained true to herself, even to the extent of admitting she is wrong, an invaluable virtue. She took – and still takes – ill-thought-out, vicious criticism and rises above it all with wisdom and strength.
To fill the void in my life I got involved with more and more causes, some worthy, some daft. My new humanist approach demanded I relinquish hope of divine intervention and do it myself. My messiah complex, as John later called it. Drug addicts, the bereaved, the dying, Vietnam, cats, the homeless, Vietnamese homeless cats only had to look balefully in my direction and I was in there fighting. My reaction to the picture of a naked Vietnamese child running down a road with her little friends, her back aflame with napalm, or to the man kneeling while another shot him in the head, presented no great philosophical dilemma to me: I knew why it happened. People, especially men, for they were usually the perpetrators, were shit. Especially people who thought they had a monopoly on what was right. It didn’t occur to me that I myself might be included in that category. Bloody Sunday, when demonstrators were shot at in Ireland, and the massacre of Israelis at the Olympic Games merely confirmed my abhorrence of religious fanaticism. I had a whale of a time, hating people and institutions. The problem was, what could I love? I smothered Ellie Jane. Though so young, she was made to feel solely responsible for my happiness. I had a couple of affairs that left me feeling cheap, as both men were married. I loved the idea of promiscuity but was hopeless at doing it. My conditioning was stronger than Germaine’s logic. I needed a man.
3 February
He is fading. I want to pull him back. Force him to stay. I want to scream don’t leave me you bastard, but I pretend and smile and smile and smile.
12
It Took You
I CANNOT REMEMBER A glad reunion with John. I vaguely recollect a meal at a Chinese restaurant with a lot of gazing into each other’s eyes, and walking round the Serpentine holding hands, but not much else. I suppose I was still dazed from the shock of the events of my life and the total change in my circumstances. John was quoted later as saying, ‘Sheila Hancock is all mature woman. I wanted her and I was determined to get her.’ He was just gradually there, presumably not by accident. He laid siege and I was only too willing to surrender. He later claimed I jumped on him, which is probably true, but he was there waiting for me to pounce. It did not feel like a betrayal of Alec, relatively soon after his death. His loss propelled my need for comfort and passion. His affection gone, a vacuum was left in my life. I was powerless anyway. Our mutual consuming need exploded in each other’s arms.
14 February
Slevin tells me the end is near. I tell him to tell John, he says he has tried but some people choose not to know. That is their right. The modern belief that we all should be told everything doesn’t work for everyone. He advised me to keep John in the clinic as there could be disastrous complications that I can’t handle. When I saw him in that bleak room I knew he had to go home. I’ll take the risk. The palliative care man is utterly honest with John but still he says when he leaves, ‘Well, that all sounded very positive, didn’t it, kid?’ I arm myself with drugs and information, phone Macmillan Nurses, Dr Heathcock in Luckington, trying to cover all eventualities and we – Jo, John and I – head for Luckington. It’s Valentine’s Day.
John maintained that the age difference worked in our favour. A man’s sexual potency is reckoned to be at its highest between seventeen and twenty-six years old, while a woman’s is between thirty-five and forty-two. So at thirty and thirty-nine, he would have to make an effort whilst I had a few years in hand. He certainly showed no signs of being past his peak. He bought a beautiful brass bed for his flat in Troy Court, to celebrate our love. He got purple satin sheets that seemed the height of sensuality. We did tend to slip off them and they were beasts to iron but he enjoyed a bit of ironing. The bed had belonged to Ivor Novello, doyen of sentimental musical comedies with titles like Glamorous Night, The Dancing Years and Perchance to Dream. One night, John woke convinced someone was strangling him. Doubtless it was Ivor, aghast at our heterosexual goings-on. Many years later, we bought a grand piano that belonged to Siegfried Sassoon, lover of Ivor. We liked to think of them being linked again through us.
John was touchingly romantic. After one row, he drove all ninety-eight miles from London to my house in Tarlton, left a single rose on the doorstep and drove straight back without knocking at the door. Another row had a less happy conclusion. I bought him a beautiful ring. I gave it to him, sitting in his MG in a country lane. He was delighted. Then I took it back and said he would have it for good when he stopped smoking. He berated me for treating him like a child and imposing rules. In a temper, I threw the ring out of the window and he roared off. Next day, having made up, we crawled around on our hands and knees looking for the ring, but eventually left it for the non-smoking rabbits and squirrels.
We had fun together. Fun had been in short supply in my life. He wined and dined me like an old-fashioned beau. Although I was a much higher earner than him, he always insisted on picking up the bill – a novelty for me. He was excited one night about taking me on a treat. He had booked at what was then the most highly rated, and highly priced, restaurant in London, Le Gavroche. He retold endlessly how I spent the whole meal complaining about the rotten table we had been given, and what it was costing. I was not used to being gracious with men. But he said he preferred my honesty to girlie guile. On one occasion I was flirting with someone else, I suppose to make him jealous, and he grabbed my shoulders so hard they bruised saying, ‘Don’t. Don’t play games with me. Don’t ever play games.’
17 February
Luckington looks lovely. Extraordinarily warm. Spring already. The daphne is in bloom, the perfume drifting through the window. John spent the morning choosing the colours and extras for his new Jag and discussing wheth
er he should sign up for another year with Carlton. My heart is breaking.
We were more at home in the less grand bistros in the King’s Road in Chelsea like The Casserole. A favourite was Daisy’s, where Jose Feliciano tapes became our theme songs, ‘Light My Fire’ and ‘I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight’ having special resonance. John called me his ‘Uptown Girl’, which I wasn’t, and I christened him my ‘Little Northern Peasant’, which he was. As I hit forty, my biological clock was ticking loudly and I decided that I wanted another baby before it was too late. We were not married or even living together, but that was all right. The new modern Sheila didn’t want all that conventional set-up. I conceived almost at once and when I told John he was beside himself with joy. So were our two daughters. Ellie Jane was delighted that this groovy, funny guy who had a constant supply of Mars Bars had entered her life and she had a new ready- made sister and another on the way. Abigail and Ellie Jane had settled into a happy relationship. They kept dropping hints about becoming proper sisters. Sixties permissiveness notwithstanding, John and I were not really comfortable with the half-in, half-out nature of our relationship. It didn’t work for us. In our backgrounds, you got married and created a home together, so that’s what we decided to do.
We chose Christmas Eve for our wedding as I was appearing in Absurd Person Singular, appropriately back at the Criterion Theatre, and would have one day off for a honeymoon, on Christmas Day. It was a very different occasion from both of our first weddings. We kept it quiet to avoid the press, not realising that the Cirencester Registry Office was opposite the local paper’s office. I wore a long suede jacket given to me by Tony Beckley just before he died – I wanted him there in spirit – and a rather nasty suede hat. I did not look my best. John wore a trendy suit and the girls thought he looked dashing. He was every bit the Prince Charming coming to rescue Ellie Jane from her mother’s grief. He and the two now official sisters leaped around gleefully.
They had a whale of a time. Me, less so, as I was suffering from chronic morning sickness. The only other people present were Maureen, our help, and a neighbour at Tarlton we scarcely knew, who acted as best man. After a hasty, but happy, lunch we drove back for the evening show. On the way, the radio announced that Sheila Hancock had got married that day. In London, the newspaper placards announced: ‘Sheila weds in secret.’ On the covers were huge photographs of me and little tiny ones of the young actor I had married. John swallowed this billing rather better than he did the following year’s entry in Who’s Who, which under his name said: ‘See Sheila Hancock’. All that was soon to change.
The first years of our marriage were a time of ecstatic happiness. We really did feel our lives had been leading up to this union. We rejoiced in the coincidences linking our childhood and early experiences, and were intrigued by the differences. That old cliché, ‘We were meant for each other’, was true, though not in a sedate way. From the start it was tempestuous and exciting, but underlying everything then and for ever was the certainty, which John had known before me, that this was for the rest of our lives.
19 February
‘I feel I’m on holiday, kid.’ The steroids seem to have put him on a high. ‘I’ve turned a corner, I’m sure of it.’ Asked me if I liked it now in the country. I told him I’ll always be a city girl but I love anywhere with you. We went round the ‘estate’. ‘It’s ours, I tell you – we’ve cracked it.’ Saw someone in the field. Pretend loading of gun, country gent voice, ‘I say, bugger orf my land.’ He’s eating well, looks great, full of energy compared with recent weeks. I think he’s really happy. My guts are wrenching. I love him, I love him, I love him. I can’t believe what’s happening. I long to pour my heart out to him, for him to comfort me, for us to talk about it. But that is pure self-indulgence on my part. His whole behaviour makes it clear he wants business as usual. The Back Treatment comes into its own. What could we say more than we have already? How would it be for him if he knew he might choke to death? I’ll deal with it for him. He will be all right.
The press bombarded us with questions about the age difference. It’s the stock question they always churn out. For us, it was meaningless. I had married one man ten years older than me, and now my new husband was nine years younger. So? If anything, the answer was the reverse of what they expected. My frequent whine during our marriage when John was dragging his feet, or in his case tripping over them, was, ‘You’re too old for me.’ In an interview with Sally Brompton she reported that ‘He is the brown ale of the partnership and she is the champagne.’ Over the years this somehow became ‘You’re stale beer to my champagne.’ Kevin Whately said, ‘Sparks always flew when they were together. A great double act.’ Things were never boring. I sold my little house in Hammersmith and he his flat and we bought a place in Chiswick big enough to house our instant family. With the birth of Joanna in 1974 and John’s adoption of Ellie Jane in 1975, and Abigail’s frequent visits, we had three daughters to accommodate plus Maureen, later replaced by Mary, to help out in place of my mother. John would open the back door and yell to the world, ‘Help me, help me, I’m surrounded by women.’ On less harassed occasions he would waltz round with the baby in his arms singing, ‘Isn’t she lovely?’
20 February
Another beautiful day. On our own, relishing each other. He wanted a Lancashire Hot Pot so I cooked one with him giving instructions. We went round the garden. He was leaning on me until he saw Jane, working in the garden, and then he pushed me away and walked on his own. Wanted to inspect the new wall, noticed a tree missing, smelt his beloved daphne, glowed with pleasure. He stared long and hard at everything. Was he getting the energy to move on or drinking everything in for fear of losing it? He watched TV and he made his usual funny snide comments. The family arrived late and he went to bed happily. Ellie took him up his hot chocolate. He says it takes the place of alcohol – he’s addicted. I gave him his pills and methadone, his ‘cough mixture’, as he calls it. He’s very calm and happy.
One of the joys of my marriage to John was the family that came with him. Especially Grandad. After John and Ray left home Jack became a social worker. He had no formal training but his experience in dealing with difficult lads was invaluable. He was tough but caring. With little girls, especially ours, he was useless. He was putty in their hands. If they misbehaved, the habitual reaction was a laugh and ‘Eeeee, ye little bogger.’ He was enchanted by them. They could do no wrong. Nor could he for them. They laughed at his northern vernacular when he called them ‘pretty pigs’ or ‘yer mardyarse’. His passionate hatred of Manchester United was the only area they could not mock. He meant it. He would sit alone, watching them on the telly, spitting ‘Bastards’ if they scored a goal. His mealtime grace was ‘Right, let the dog see the rabbit’ and his ‘Go on then, just a little’ was the cue to pile his plate high with a second helping. He introduced the girls to Eccles cakes, Archer’s pies and pickled walnuts but their attempts to get him to taste garlic or any other foreign muck was greeted by an implacable ‘Oh noo, not for me.’ Any lack of love as he toiled to bring up his lads was recompensed by that showered on him by Jo, Abigail and Ellie Jane. The romps, the tickles, the cuddles were non-stop. He was their contact with the roots that John and I had moved away from. We were in a classless limbo, not really middle class, no longer working class, but Grandad was. He was the genuine article.
Despite his shouldering of his sudden responsibilities, John had puzzling moments of childlike naivety. He didn’t seem to know how to behave. When we were moving he showed me a bundle of letters from a past girlfriend and asked, ‘What should I do with these? Is it all right to throw them away?’ I realised how little his childhood had prepared him for the niceties of life. He wanted so much to get it right but he hadn’t been taught the rules. If you told him they weren’t important he would protest that only people who knew them said that.
A similar dilemma was presented by the death of his mother in 1974. Only this time he defied convention on the right
thing and declined to visit her during her final illness. His implacable rejection was not up for discussion. He did not go to her funeral either. Later he gave me some rings of hers, with the offhand comment – always a sign of deep emotion for John – ‘You’d better have ’em. You won’t leave me, will you?’ In those halcyon days I couldn’t imagine that I ever would.
21 February
About 5.00 a.m. he woke, not able to breathe. I was kneeling on the bed with my body supporting his back. His weight was toppling me. I said to the girls, ‘Help me, I can’t take his weight,’ and I felt this gasping, struggling, dear sweet man try to go forward to relieve me. His last panted words were not epic, comic in fact, in their denial: ‘I’ll be all right, you didn’t give me enough cough mixture, pet,’ but his last gesture was that of the selfless man he was. He went into a deep sleep. We sat in his room for the next hours, talking to him, hoping he could hear how much we adored him. The girls left me alone with him and I lay on the bed – our beautiful brass bed – and held him in my arms. Then I called the girls. With the sound of his grandchildren playing in the garden he drifted away. Thank God none of the horrors I’d been warned about happened and his death was full of grace. He died so elegantly. He did it with style. He looked beautiful. Like a Roman statue.
The Two of Us Page 15