The Two of Us

by Sheila Hancock

  Stuck at home with a small baby and a difficult ten-year-old, I was having nowhere near as much fun. In addition, having just finished converting one new home, John had heard that a Victorian Gothic house at the end of the road, with a garden backing on to the river, was up for sale. He insisted on a visit. We were shown round by an old lady who had lived there for years without doing anything to the house. There was no heating, gas lighting, and the kitchen was a cracked sink and rusty cooker in the basement. Original features, they called them. But there were also stained-glass windows, marble fireplaces and a Victorian summerhouse with the Thames lapping at its windows. John leaned against the stone wall at the bottom of the garden, the river behind him, and uttered quietly the phrase I came to dread: ‘I wan’ it.’ By this time Mrs Fitzwalter was enchanted by John’s passion for the house, which extended to mowing the overgrown lawn for her. She rejected all the rich Arabs and pop stars fighting for it and was prepared to wait till we had raised the asking price, which she lowered for us. So, once more, I was plunged into the nightmare of builders not turning up and then going bankrupt, exquisite original tiled floors collapsing with dry rot, and cats being trapped under floorboards. Despite our odd childhoods, both of us had grown up with the belief, still prevalent in the seventies, that a woman’s place really is in the home and the man is the official hunter-gatherer. Trouble was, I too was hunting and gathering as well as earth-mothering, and I’d read The Female Eunuch.

  Then there was the jealousy. While I was cow-like feeding my baby, at work he was leaping between the sheets with lithe beauties with no stretch marks. I could not believe they did not lust after him as I did. John, for his part, was shocked that I should doubt the loyalty of a man who doesn’t play games.

  As I was working at night in a theatre play and John during the day on television, we saw little of each other. John was working a sixteen-hour day so he was exhausted. In three short years he had gone from being a bachelor, seeing his one child at weekends, doing the odd bit of telly, to becoming a husband and father with two homes, three children and worldwide renown. It was no wonder that he needed a few drinks to help him on the way. Just like my father and Alec. Aware that the drinks had become more than a few, on my advice he decided to go to a health farm to recuperate, starting with a fast. There he obviously ruminated on my moans: ‘Just a little note to tell you I feel very weak and can’t get it together, I have a terrible headache and I love you very much. I was talking to Roy [a masseur] about your This Is Your Life and felt very proud to be part of that life. I’m very proud of the love you give me, the trouble you go through for me, and proud of the children you gave me. In short you are the most beautiful woman – person – in the world, kid. Help me, help me, mangé, mangé.’ I liked the pc use of ‘person’.

  26 February

  Woke up after a few hours’ sleep and realised it was still true. Girls phoned to say they are coming to get me, but I am not fit to face anyone. Thousands of letters. I know these people are actually hurting, but oh God what I’m feeling is beyond comfort. Nothing helps. Especially that ‘Death is nothing at all’ bollocks. Oh really? And no, he isn’t in the sodding next room. The thoughtful strangers say it will help me but it makes me roar with rage. OK, you say I’ll meet him again. Prove it. I would like to believe it, God would I like to. If I thought it was true I’d kill myself and meet him now. I have absolutely no sense of his presence. He is utterly gone and I can’t bear it.

  One aspect of his success John relished was the increased wealth it brought. His childhood had given him a dread of poverty. Yet for both of us there was ambivalence in our attitude to our newfound affluence; relish tinged with guilt. But John needed tangible proof of his success – a big motor, a big house. He loved giving presents. He showered me with jewellery and the kids with toys. I only had to admire something and he would say, ‘You wan’ it, kid?’, be it a saucepan, a Picasso in the Tate or the Eiffel Tower. It was a way of demonstrating his love and he lapped up our pleasure. He was bad at receiving presents, often not undoing his Christmas gifts from one year to the next. It was as though he felt unworthy of them. The one thing he bought for himself was radios. He could never resist a new model. Especially for the bathroom. If he turned on the radio loud enough, he could stay there for ages, not hearing our calls. If he did, his reply was, ‘Ahm in ze bas’ and we would know we’d lost him for another hour.

  We splashed out on a swimming pool, which gave him endless pleasure. Not to swim in. He rarely ventured into the water and, when he did, the shuddering and howling were heard throughout Chiswick. His chief joy was cleaning it. He had a mechanical cleaner that he christened Fred. He passed many a happy morning chuckling as it scurried round the bottom of the pool, cracking its plastic tail. Jo refused to go into the pool for several days after he warned her that it ate little girls. Other than that, he would scoop off the leaves with a net and then clamber clumsily on to a big plastic lilo on which he would float blissfully, imbibing a large one sitting on a lilo of its own. ‘Oh yes, this is ze life, I tell you.’

  Our luck was not shared by the rest of the country. The miners and teachers were building up to major strikes and people were being made redundant as unemployment rose. Heath had gone to the country hoping for a vote of confidence on his ‘Who Rules Britain’ ticket, only to be defeated by Wilson whose comment on victory was, ‘All I can say is my prayers.’ The atmosphere was not helped by a series of horrific murders carried out by a mysterious Yorkshire Ripper. It seemed a good time to go abroad.

  John’s brother Ray was feeling homesick in Brisbane, so when we were offered a tour of Michael Frayn’s play The Two of Us in Australia, it was an opportunity to take the whole family on a visit. The first night in Melbourne could not be counted as a triumph. The last act of the piece required us to play many parts, changing costume in the wings and rushing on miraculously transformed. It was meant to be funny, but was not to the rather stuffy people of Melbourne, which in architecture and atmosphere felt like Cheltenham. There was scarcely a titter. One of the last lines commenting on the party we were depicting was, ‘I think that went well, don’t you?’ Sweating and wilting, John collapsed into giggles, I followed suit and the curtain descended in confusion. We decided it was not wise for The Two of Us to work together.

  Our journey home too had its down side. We took Ellie Jane with us to Bali, and then India. Bali in the seventies was not such a popular tourist destination as it is now. Our trip was organised by that great traveller, Derek Nimmo, and we were staying with a Balinese antique dealer, Jimmy Pandi. We dined under the stars, swam in the warm sea and visited remote villages full of beautiful people. So unused were they to foreigners that they crowded round us, particularly fascinated by blonde, blue-eyed Ellie Jane. There were dark tales of purges of Communists and corruption in high places, but it seemed a blissfully happy place. By contrast, the poverty we saw in India made it impossible for us really to enjoy its magnificence. The Taj Mahal is beautiful beyond expectation, seeming to float on air, but we found it difficult to see through the beggars. One day when I was entering into the spirit of the place and bartering with a merchant over the price of a bracelet, John leaned on the stall and wailed, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to see Doris at the Express Dairy.’ He shut himself in the hotel and ordered a bottle of vodka and a bottle of whisky. So amazed were they at this lavish order of exorbitantly priced drinks that it arrived with thirty glasses and a bowl of peanuts. John hid away in the hotel with his booze and refused to go out any more. Ellie and I braved the huge bats and rabid dogs of Udaipur alone. It is a philistine reaction to an obviously fascinating country, but we were riddled with guilt to be flashing cameras and other signs of wealth about whilst others needed to beg to eat.

  27 February

  Propped up my face with make-up and took four-year-old Lola as protection to face the world in Marks and Spencer. People kept clutching my hand and saying kind things. I bit the sides of my mouth to stop crying. Lola was strangely s
ilent, sitting on my trolley. She listened to all these comments and looked at me struggling and suddenly in a sing-song voice with a sort of mock-Jewish shrug she said at the checkout, ‘Now look, Grandad’s dead, he won’t come back, but you’re very old so you’ll be dead soon too.’ It was obviously a garbled version of Ellie’s attempt to explain things to her. It was the first time I’ve laughed, so of course she went on and on: ‘Grandad won’t want that coffee because he’s dead,’ ‘Grandad likes cream cake but he won’t want them now because he’s gone for ever.’ At least she’s coming to terms with it.

  In 1978, when we returned to England, Margaret Thatcher was being heavily promoted as a possible prime minister. I had met her in 1975 as a fellow panellist on Any Questions. At that time she was being groomed for the leadership of the Tory Party and her posse of supporters came with her, including Airey Neave, who was later killed by a car bomb in the House of Commons car park. I had no one advising me but I held my own against her on the programme, and even scored a few points. On our return from Australia, I played Miss Hannigan, in charge of the orphanage in the musical Annie, at the Victoria Palace. One night the tannoy demanded that we wait on stage after the curtain call to greet Mrs Thatcher, the newly appointed Leader of the Opposition. I did not think she would remember me or care if I told the stage manager I had to get home and relieve my babysitter. I was in my bra and pants and a very grubby kimono when there was a knock at my dressing-room door. The lacquered blonde smiled sweetly into my greasy, makeup-less face and purred in her studiedly soft voice ‘I didn’t want to miss you.’ ’Vantage, Thatcher. A few years later, John and I visited Number 10 for a party and she welcomed the guests in front of the press photographers. As I put out my hand she grasped it and hurled me across her to clear the shot for the far more beguiling picture of the Prime Minister with Inspector Morse.

  In 1979, when she was elected the first female prime minister, it was a triumph for feminism. On her election as leader of her party she had said, ‘I beat four chaps, now let’s get down to work,’ so we hoped she would give some credit to the campaigning women without whom her position would have been out of the question a few years previously. For her victory speech she chose to ooze a prayer of St Francis of Assisi, which up until then I had rather liked.

  Lord make me an instrument of your peace,

  Where there is hatred let me sow love

  Where there is injury pardon

  Where there is doubt faith

  Where there is despair hope

  Where there is darkness light

  Where there is sadness joy.

  The previous year, after fifty-three episodes and two features films, John had decided to quit The Sweeney while it was still a huge success. The last speech spoken by Jack Regan started with, ‘I’m thoroughly pissed off with this lot’ and ended, ‘You can stuff it’ – rather more in the mood of the country than Maggie’s unctuous prayer.

  28 February

  Daunted by all the planning. The ashes ceremony at home for close friends and then, sometime, a memorial service. It is expected. He has become a sort of icon for people. He would be utterly bemused and probably pretty cynical about the reaction to his death. People didn’t really know him, and what most of them are mourning is Morse, or Kavanagh, or Jack Regan. People want someone to look up to. He always played fundamentally decent, if troubled, men. But he was decent as it happens. He was worthy of their respect but not for the reasons that most of them have imposed on him.

  14

  It Takes Care

  WE HAD WHAT WAS known as the Winter of Discontent in 1979. Strikes had become violent, rubbish was uncollected and bodies unburied. Maggie endeavoured to bring about a glorious summer by balancing the books as her shopkeeper father had taught her. Her main objectives were less public spending, lower taxes and control of the unions. How she achieved them had a lasting effect on our country. Our hopes of her boldly advancing the feminist cause were soon dashed; the Sexual Discrimination and Equal Pay Act in 1975 had nothing to do with her. Nevertheless, women were making progress in the seventies and eighties. They were allowed on to the floor of the Stock Exchange for the first time, and in 1977 Angela Rippon was permitted to read international news on the BBC. ITN followed suit with Anna Ford the following year, and, even more daring, in 1981 a black woman, Moira Stuart, was allowed to announce serious matters to the nation. She still receives hate mail more than twenty years later.

  In the eighties the Thaws conformed to Maggie’s belief of the importance of the family unit. Take care of you and yours and society will take care of itself. There’s no such thing as society, only individuals. We joined the Me Generation. Our family was all right. We were having a very good time. Not being involved in a demanding series, John was around more. He cooked Sunday lunches, on one occasion varying the regulation roast with an attempt at Peking duck – lunch was served at 6 p.m., preceded by a lot of blow-drying of the scraggy bird with hairdryers and a fair amount of bad language, but we were duly appreciative of his efforts. Barbecues were less of a success. Richard Briers was usually his co-cook and they always miscalculated how long it took to light the barbecue and get the coke glowing. They used everything from paraffin to gin to encourage the fire, and we dreaded their burnt sausages with petrol sauce. My Christmas parties were not hugely popular with them. The games I organised drove John and Richard to cower in the basement with a bottle of gin – or two. My treasure hunt with clever clues laid round the house and garden usually descended into open warfare. Thaws Junior and Senior used spying and violence in the battle to pick up clues. On one occasion one of my cunning ruses took them to the phone box in the street where they had to phone home and pick up the next riddle on the answer-phone. They were in the middle of a pitched battle to prevent each other using the phone when Lucy Briers arrived wailing that she had no coins. John sweetly paused to give her his, then continued to do battle with his father. The neighbours nearly called the police.

  On the professional front, John was disappointed that a series called Mitch about a crime reporter was left on the shelf for two years, so that when it was aired its topical material was dated. He swore he would never work for that company again, and didn’t. I landed a coveted role in the most expensive musical ever staged at that date. When I was cast as Mrs Lovett in Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, to be performed at the vast Drury Lane Theatre in 1980, I was daunted but, egged on by Steve and Hal Prince, did well in rehearsal, absorbing the complex lyrics and music. At the first band call, when the rest of the cast were cheering excitedly as the complex, sensational score was revealed, I became rigid with fear. I had always suffered from stage fright, starting in my repertory days when every Monday night I had faced audiences with only a sketchy knowledge of my words and moves in the current play. I had a firm conviction, usually proved right in rep, that first nights were synonymous with disaster. It was many years before a hypnotist replaced this engrained negative thinking with something more helpful. But at the Sweeney Todd band call all my usual convictions of inadequacy rendered me sick with terror. Only my family were aware of this, because it would not do for the cast, or the management or, God forbid, the press to know that the leading lady was seriously planning to do a bunk. I would have done, had it not been for John’s hands grasping mine night after night and steadying me.

  1 March

  Vivid dream about John last night. It was so real. I was by the fridge and John came into the kitchen carrying a box and said, ‘Put the stuff for Lucky in here.’ I was doing so when suddenly I remembered he was supposed to be dead. I grabbed his hands, felt their chunky strength and said, ‘It’s you.’ He smiled radiantly. I said, ‘You’ve come back.’ He still glowed. I hugged him. I could feel exactly how that felt. I smelt him. I caressed his hair, felt its silkiness. I kept saying, ‘Please stay. Don’t go. Please please stay.’ He just looked at me with that wry, loving, private smile.

  John had beautiful hands, small, round and always immaculate.
Not manicured, but clean and neat. Next to my bony ones, his were almost feminine. They often spoke for him. If he could not find the words to express his love, his caresses demonstrated it. When I came home from rehearsal he did not know what to say to help me because this sort of destructive dread of performing was alien to him, but he took my shaking hands firmly in both of his, looked me in the eye and said with absolute conviction, ‘You can do it, kid.’ So I did. I got through the run of the show with his help, but my stage fright prevented me from acting for a whole year.

  Instead I turned to directing at the Cambridge Arts Theatre. After a year of that I was tempted by an offer to act again in Stratford-upon-Avon, with the Royal Shakespeare Company. It meant a disruption of our family life, but to begin with John was happy to accept that. In 1981, at forty-eight, I had never appeared in a Shakespeare play and I embraced the Bard with a naïve enthusiasm. I was the only member of the company who had not been to university and read all the right Shakespearean scholars, so my contributions at rehearsals were more ‘Oh my God, isn’t it wonderful?’ and ‘That’s so bloody true’ than a Jan Kott thesis. It was not easy juggling a family and the demands of the company but we just about managed.

  Then John, too, was invited to Stratford to play Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night, Cardinal Wolsey in Henry VIII and Nick in Saroyan’s Time of Your Life. In one episode of the ill-fated Mitch he had worked with Oliver Ford-Davies. Admiring the power of John’s acting, Oliver suggested that he should do more theatre. Six months later, standing in the wings of the Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, buckling under a sweaty wig and heavy regalia, Cardinal Wolsey turned to the Bishop of Winchester and snarled, ‘It’s all your fucking fault.’ John’s attitude puzzled the Young Turks at the RSC. He didn’t join in the earnest discussions on text. In one scene Howard Davies, who directed him in Henry VIII, wanted him to break down in tears and admitted he didn’t know how to help John reach that emotional peak. John just looked at him as if he were a moron, and played the scene. The tears flowed then and every night of the run. Richard Attenborough had a similar experience when directing him as Fred Karno in the movie Chaplin. He had to do a difficult drunk scene and Dear Dear Dickie, as John affectionately called him, wondered if he would like a nip of whisky to help him. John’s gentle reply was, ‘That’s very thoughtful, Dickie, but I thought I might tackle it through acting.’