The Two of Us

by Sheila Hancock

  20 March

  Lovely letter from Sally:

  I am so sorry, so sad about John’s death. His fierce reserve never extended to his love for you, which he revealed almost every time he opened his mouth and from the moment he met you. I will always love John for giving me my beautiful daughter and for the friendship of you and Ellie Jane and Jo.

  Very touched. A triumph for all of us that we achieved that, I think.

  Maybe he would have heeded the warning and stopped drinking but I had to tell him news which pushed him further into the mire. While in Devon I was having a shower when I came across a small lump in my breast. I knew instantly, before the test proved it, that it was malignant. A few days before I had seen some stills of myself in a bathing costume and had been shocked by the sight of my backbone sticking out from my thin body. I was terrified when the doctor told me the verdict. I rushed home, expecting comfort from John, but my Bridge over Troubled Water collapsed at the news. Now I was going to leave him. Like the others. He couldn’t stop me dying. So he turned his back. He walked away from trouble. He would not discuss it or see a doctor with me. I was just as likely to get run over by a bus. What was all the fuss about? Forget it. He hid in the spare room and barely spoke to me.

  I knew he was in despair. I knew he was torn apart, but I needed support. I went for a week to the Bristol Cancer Centre with my eldest daughter. When I returned, the house felt dank with misery. It was October 1987 and terrible storms whipped across the country. I stood alone at my bedroom window and watched the branches bending and breaking and the Thames lashing. I really didn’t care if I died. John was in another room, doing his best to kill himself with drink. By this time I was incapable of action. My daughter took control and found a little rented house for me to move into. John was indifferent, relieved in fact. Now he could drink in peace. I too enjoyed the respite of being on my own, with my children and my friends free to come and go.

  The press got hold of the news. I told them a cock and bull story about needing space to come to terms with my illness; John said nothing. We were used to being secretive about John’s drinking, so I accepted, without contradiction, that I should take the blame for having deserted this sweet man. One of the newspapers found out I had gone to Bristol and visited a healer at St James’s Church in Piccadilly. An article appeared asking how could I turn to silly New Age remedies and leave poor lovely John, when he yearned to look after me? A picture was published of him wearing a superimposed apron, maintaining he was henpecked and demeaned by my intransigence.

  I had a lumpectomy followed by six weeks of radiotherapy. After the treatment and my visit to Bristol I began to feel better, but I could not get John out of my mind. Every now and then he would phone sounding wretched. Bristol had taught me to be aware of negative thoughts and language. When I thought about John, I was worried sick. Worried to death? Not a good idea. So when Derek Nimmo offered to take me off on one of his theatrical tours of the Middle East, it was an opportunity to put sea and deserts between us. Maybe then I could forget him.

  21 March

  A very odd thing. John had one of his DIY disasters with the light in the oven hood. He couldn’t get it to work. He sweated and swore for a whole morning trying to fix it and then gave up. I came down this morning and it was on.

  Derek’s main motivation for setting up these tours was a passion for travelling and he was the best of companions on a trip. His relish for life made him the ideal person to be with. We hadn’t decided on the show for the tour when I bumped into Kenneth Williams. We stood on an island beside Broadcasting House, with traffic hurtling past us on either side. He looked ashen and wretched, his mouth pursed in pain and his eyes flicking around abstractedly. He told me of worries about his health. The usual obsession about his bum’ole, I thought. There was no work; he only got offered crap. I suggested he get away from it all with Derek and me. We could do some of our revue stuff. Have a laugh. He snapped at me angrily, asking how I thought he could leave Louie, his mother. He had always loved his mother and she him. They were inseparable, but now he rambled obscenely about her incontinence and dependence on him. I knew he was in a bad way but so was I. I had had enough of unreasonable rage. I told him not to be cruel. He turned on his heel and sped off through the crowd, pinched face held high to avoid the stares. I shouted that I’d ring him. I didn’t. Ten days later a newspaper placard told me: ‘Kenneth Williams dead’.

  The sun in the Gulf took the chill off my soul, as did the company. Derek led us off on strange and wonderful adventures. There was a world elsewhere. Every now and then my heart wrenched at the thought of John like a ghost alone in that huge, sad house in Chiswick. As Al Anon’s twelve steps said, I was powerless, but I felt riven with guilt.

  In Oman I went with a young teacher to visit a group of dwellings in the desert. We were invited into a mud hovel. The teacher sat with the man but I was ordered on to the other side of a sheet of sacking with his two women. We sat cross-legged on the sand floor. The women curiously stroked my hair and clothes and dabbed heady perfumed oil on my brow and wrists. They offered me strong sweet coffee, and dates covered with flies – they had nothing else. The place was bare apart from a blackened cooking pot. I had on my little finger one of the rings that had belonged to John’s mother. It was gold with a tiny diamond. It was not very valuable but a fortune to these women. I put my finger to my mouth, signalling secrecy, took it off and gave it to them. I no longer wanted the ring of the woman whose cruelty had blighted John’s life and, indirectly, mine. They glanced at the curtain and one of them slipped the ring down the front of her gown. I hoped it might buy them freedom, a future. Who knows, maybe the women now run a nice little business in Muscat.

  24 March

  A perfect day. We gathered at Lucky, all his close friends and family. Sally, housekeepers, gardeners, his driver, his stand-in, his dresser – his Scallywags, other close colleagues. A Quaker service – silence with people talking if they felt moved to do so. They had brought poems and songs, Auntie Beattie a beautiful scrapbook that Uncle Charlie kept of John’s life. I told them they could cry if they wanted and we all did. Everyone found it a comfort as his death had been a shock to them and they had had no chance to mourn. He would have been proud to hear how they admired his ‘estate’, which most had never visited. He had ordinary friends who loved him profoundly. I hope he knew. When the grandchildren joined us we scattered his ashes in the stream where the kingfisher swoops, by the bank with the primroses and our favourite cowslips. While the Elgar Quintet played in the background the girls recited:

  Do not stand at my grave and weep

  I am not there.

  I do not sleep.

  I am a thousand winds that blow

  I am the diamond glints on snow

  I am the sunlight on ripened grain

  I am the gentle autumn rain

  When you awaken in the morning hush

  I am the swift uplifting rush

  Of quiet birds in circled flight

  I am the soft stars that shine at night

  Do not stand at my grave and cry

  I am not there; I did not die.

  A bit death-is-nothing-at-allish but it fitted the occasion We unveiled the sculpture bench which says: ‘The two John Thaws loved it here’. It was a loving occasion. Everyone said nice things. Nigel especially. ‘I have such respect for you. I feel privileged to know you.’ Pretty fabulous compliment to a mother-in-law, I thought. We did him proud. That’s the personal goodbye. Now we must steel ourselves for the public one.

  16

  Fear and Despair

  MY FLIGHT FROM MY problems had been marred by another frightening encounter with the medical profession. Derek Nimmo’s touring production of Bed Before Yesterday played in Madrid before setting off for the Gulf. No sooner had we opened than I was rushed to hospital with agonising chest pains. I was diagnosed as having possible gallstones leading to pancreatitis, with further exploration needed on my return to
England in the light of my cancer history. John’s reaction was a letter implying that although we were separated he thought we would, as usual, soon patch up our differences – he had not grasped, or chose to ignore, the depth of the rift between us and the gravity of the possible spread of my cancer. His letter was full of loving intimacies, then, ‘Not a day goes by, not an hour but I think of you; a look, a phrase, an incident, a touch, a kiss or even a map! I pray that we can overcome our/my problems in the not too distant future. Hope you are keeping the gallstones and the sheikhs at bay. But if you do meet a homeopathic sheikh, remember that this Mancunian git will always love you more.’

  I probably would have been relieved and rushed back to fall into his arms again had I not had Joanna with me on the tour. Freed for a while from my obsession with John, I had time for my daughter. I saw her horror at my new illness and understood how terrified she had been by my cancer. I had made the classic mistake of thinking it better that she should not be told. At thirteen of course she knew something deeply troubling was happening, but had no one to talk to about it. It was another family secret to be kept. I saw how profoundly affected she was by our erratic behaviour. I could see that I had neglected her. It hardened my resolve. I returned to my little rented house and set about getting life in order independently of John.

  I started with my health. I had the offending gall bladder removed and was scanned for and declared free of cancer metastasis. I wanted to keep it that way. I had pushed my body to excess and now it had given up on me; in quick succession, I had breast cancer, gallstones, shingles, and a dodgy cervical smear result. My approach was a mixture of orthodox and complementary medicine with a dash of any bit of superstitious hokum that came my way. On one occasion secondary cancer was suspected in my bones. I was given an injection of some sinister stuff to make my skeleton illuminate in an x-ray. I went to Regent’s Park while it was taking effect. Wandering around anxiously, I saw a magpie. One magpie.

  One for sorrow, two for joy,

  Three for a letter, four for a boy.

  In my manic state, I had to find another magpie to get me out of sorrow and into joy. My whole future health depended on it. I couldn’t see a mate for Mr Magpie anywhere. Not surprising since my lone bad luck symbol was a singularly unprepossessing creature with one broken tail feather dragging on the ground. A very ill-looking omen. I reckoned that a park that housed a zoo must have at least two magpies. I was frantic. A woman asked me if I was all right and got the confusing reply that no, I was radioactive. I never found a second magpie and my bone scan was clear, so that put paid to that superstition. On the other hand I did salute the one I saw and recited, ‘Hello, Mr Magpie, how are your children?’ so that is probably what did the trick.

  30 March

  A dreadful day. I’ve no one to really talk to. Or not to talk to if we chose. We were utterly on the same wavelength. And I have that with no one else. I am drifting in a vacuum. Hot cross buns on my own. They nearly choked me. It would have been a ‘highlight’ to relish with him. I ache with misery – literally. I keep looking for him, calling his name. All our rituals have gone, I have nothing to anchor myself to. How the hell do I live without him? Queen Mother died today at 101. She managed. She obviously loved her husband but spent years in the public eye without him. Had a lovely letter from one of her ladies-in-waiting telling how when she asked the Queen Mother if the loss gets better she replied, ‘It never gets better, but you get better at it.’

  I believed anything. I went on a series of wild goose chases after perfect health. The nadir was reached in a Kensington mews house where a hefty gentleman hit me hard to remove the djinns that were polluting my body. Good complementary medicine did help me, but without the orthodox treatment as well I would have died. Just as after Alec’s death I found myself involved with issues that related to dying and bereavement, I was now in danger of being regarded as a font of knowledge about cancer and particularly complementary medicine. People are so desperate for help and information that they will accredit someone in the public eye with far more expertise than they have. I tried to resist pushing myself as obsessively as in the past but I have never been able to resist a good campaign.

  One of the most impressive campaigns of the eighties and nineties was that waged by the gay community for research into the illness that was killing so many of my friends. When Tony died the cause of his death had been mysterious, but when Aids was given an identity, we knew that several colleagues in Annie and, later, Sweeney Todd were afflicted. My profession lost many members to the scourge of the disease. Because at first it was thought to affect only gay men it was shamefully ignored until public pressure forced it to be taken seriously. The numerous young deaths taught us a lot about the process of dying. Lighthouse, a hospice for people with Aids, of which I was a patron, changed the process of death from a hole-in-the-corner affair to a fond farewell with rituals and leave-taking, that made it a good experience for the dying and the bereaved. In my childhood, death was at least marked, albeit rather glumly, with drawn curtains and black armbands. Nowadays the tendency is to pretend it isn’t happening. With Aids, the gay community taught us to celebrate life as well as mourning death.

  When the entertainment industry gets the bit between their teeth, they can be very efficient – Bob Geldof with Live Aid in 1985, and Kevin Cahill, Richard Curtis and Emma Freud with Comic Relief, started in 1988 and continued every year since. Both tackled injustice and deprivation, which are often the cause of war, more effectively than President Reagan. His diplomacy produced this statement: ‘Five nations, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Cuba, Nicaragua are a confederation of terrorist states. The strongest collection of looney tunes and squalid criminals.’ This from the country that produced the book How to Win Friends and Influence People. Reagan did, however, make his peace with the ‘Evil Empire’ now that a reforming president was in power in the shape of Gorbachev. In 1991 trouble broke out in Iraq during which many Iraqis and Kurds were killed. Bush Senior intervened in Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. In Operation Desert Storm, Baghdad was bombed.

  Everyone rejoiced when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. In the same year one of the most poignant images of people protest was the lone student standing in front of a line of grotesque tanks during a demonstration in Tiananmen Square. His brave defiance was followed by tragedy when the misnamed People’s Liberation Army slaughtered and injured thousands of their fellow countrymen and women. There was much to protest against.

  2 April

  Lyn said, ‘I have never known great passion or great grief because I wouldn’t take the risk and I tell you that’s no way to live.’ Beautiful letter from a nun, of all people. ‘There is a dark side to the golden coin of love; a paradox of joy and sadness. You are bearing the sadness for him now. He won’t have to weep at your funeral, and feel bereft.’ Talking of his work she said, ‘There was no side, no conceit in his performance.’ Absolutely true. Still the ‘Death is nothing at all’s keep coming. Not true.

  I managed to fit in some theatre and TV engagements between campaigning and my fasts and diets and fitness regimes. However low he felt at my absence, John never let it affect his work. In the midst of all the panic about my illness he did a stunning performance in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, up in his home town at the Manchester Exchange Theatre. At the final curtain there was a long silence before the applause started. It is the greatest compliment an audience can pay an actor: to be so moved and involved that it is hard to come back into the real world.

  For eighteen months we lived apart, but were in agony about it. We made some attempts to get back together but they failed. On one bizarre occasion John phoned to say he was taking Jo and me for a holiday in Ireland in a horse-drawn caravan. It is a measure of my desperation that I could believe for a moment that this could be anything but a disaster. The day before we were due to leave, he phoned to tell us curtly that he had cancelled and to forget the whole thing. Yet again Jo was hurt and bewildered by broken
promises. Ian McKellen came to the rescue, whisking us off to a villa in France where he lit log fires, cooked delicious meals and lovingly cosseted us both. We badly needed it.

  5 April

  We have all come to Barcelona. The trip the girls gave him for his 60th birthday present. My dear friend Helen has come in his place. She is wonderful and positive and loves life. I need people like that. It’s hard going for us all, but two ‘highlights’: a couple of lads playing classical guitar outside a café and some old folk from Catalonia dancing some wonderful stately dances in front of the cathedral to the music of a small local band. Charming. There is nothing more lovely than seeing plain people transformed when they dance. It’s like the old couples ballroom dancing at the Waldorf Hotel tea dances or the Tower Ballroom in Blackpool. Very moving. It’s the same effect as fat people who are miraculously light on their feet. Roy Kinnear was like that. Funny little chap who became Fred Astaire when he danced.