The Two of Us

by Sheila Hancock

  beloved on the earth.

  John’s workaholism was the next ogre he tried to fight. In 1999 he did a television film called Waiting Time, a lot of it shot in bleak East Berlin, where he had a sequence reminiscent of the Sweeney days, giving chase over rooftops. It nearly killed him. The redoubtable Pauline had loyally chosen to be with John even though she had been offered a job on the Delia Smith cookery show. They were filming in a stinking herring boat in a freezing cold gale, tossed around in the Baltic Sea. John noticed Pauline had tears running down her cheeks. He put his arm round her and she wailed over the wind and lashing rain, ‘I took the wrong job. I could be in Delia’s warm kitchen now.’ John said, ‘Never again, kid. We’re getting too old for all this.’

  Wanting to lessen his workload, he agreed with Colin Dexter that they should finish their thirteen-year run with Morse. Colin would not entertain the idea of any other actor ever playing Morse; everyone was shocked when it was decided to kill the character off. Even the camera was unhappy. When they were shooting Morse’s fatal heart attack in a college quadrangle the camera broke down five times. That had never happened before. John found the final episode upsetting. Before each shot he had to remind himself he was a sick man and he began to feel really off colour. It was nevertheless a consummate piece of acting from both him and Kevin. When Lewis kissed the dead Morse on the forehead and said, ‘Goodbye, sir’ there were many wet eyes amongst the three quarters of a billion people that watched worldwide. When we went shopping the day after the episode went out, people were stopping him, genuinely distressed. It was the Princess Diana syndrome.

  The talent to act is difficult to explain or pin down. However much technique you acquire, a performance can work magically in front of one audience and inexplicably fail to click the following night. Because of this dependence on chance, actors are a superstitious bunch, forever warding off demons that will come between us and our ability to meld the words, our minds, our emotions, our bodies into expressing ephemeral events. Some people believe it is absolutely necessary to feel nervous before a first night and get nervous if they don’t. I have always found my fear of critics and audience destructive, so I use regular hypnotherapy to help me overcome it. As you stand in the wings waiting to go on, there is nothing but you. No computer, no tool, no machine, just you, facing an empty space with a head full of words. It can be scary and performers often lose their nerve and need help. A pill, a drink or a shrink. Kenneth Williams knew that his personality was not altogether normal, but rejected any suggestion of psychiatric help lest it should take away his talent. Yet John did some of his best work after treatment. In the final Morse, there is a long shot when the camera tracks into Morse’s face as he sits alone in his flat. He is confronted with retirement and loneliness. John does nothing. No movement of the eyes or puff of a cigarette. He just is. It is as powerful a piece of work as he ever did in his career. An example of screen acting at its finest. Something he had striven for since those trips to the Burnage Odeon.

  With John now on a relatively even keel, I set about looking at my own state of mind. The vicissitudes of my life since my cancer and my glimpse of death had made me question my atheism. I would never believe in a biblical God, but I felt the lack of a spiritual dimension in my life. I embarked on a quest, similar to my childhood religious adventures with my father. The Anglican Church was a non-starter, with its absurd reluctance to accept women priests. We had a splendid woman in Betty Boothroyd as Speaker of the House of Commons, easily controlling all the little boys, but the hierarchy of the Church of England was much too scared of women to let them do more than arrange the flowers and make the tea. All those men in frocks, refusing to let women give communion and threatening that the upstart hussies would divide the Church, made it impossible for me to contemplate even entering one of their buildings.

  I tested many weird and wonderful approaches to the religious life. The all-time low was reached in an expensively vulgar house in High Wycombe, where a roomful of coiffed and manicured ladies crouched humming in front of a television. After a lot of ‘ohm’ing an attractive female guru in a fetching red kaftan was beamed to us from New York and we were asked to approach and lay a rose in front of the telly. ‘Oh noo, not for me,’ as Jack would have said.

  Although admiring of the various Eastern religions I explored, I always felt a bit silly participating. I am British or, as I like to think, European, and my inclination is towards something based on Christianity and my conditioning. I eventually found a home in the Society of Friends.

  The Quakers are an odd lot. There is no one in charge, everyone believes something different, but the silent meetings are potent and you can continue to question faith but with others equally curious. The Society of Friends is, like Al Anon, dependent on the wisdom of ordinary folk. The homeless always welcome the Quaker sandwiches and soup the most because we don’t judge or preach. My interest in prison reform is also something Quakers support and, of course, pacifism. Quakers are to be found negotiating secretly on most war fronts. Theirs is an active pacifism. They too like a good demo. They have a proud history of reform in all spheres of life and are not sexist or homophobic.

  30 June

  Went to Brighton to spend the day with Neil and James. How I value my gay friends. They have always brought style and affection to my life. Their lovely homes, their taste, their cosseting, their humour. All through my life I have been supported by gay men – and women. Now more than ever. We went to a very odd secluded beach where naked, rather unattractive guys were eyeing the trade. The sadder side of their lifestyle. On the other hand, on other beaches heterosexuals are doing exactly the same thing. But I was sure some of these were bank clerks living with their mothers, and that only on this beach could they furtively be themselves. Probably not true. I’m stuck in my memories of gay friends in the fifties, terrified of being found out. Dear Jack who committed suicide. An immaculate charming man who was forced by society to be ashamed of loving – or I suppose lusting. Nothing wrong with a bit of lusting, in my opinion.

  I am not a good Quaker. I hypocritically hide my Jaguar round the corner when I go to meetings, as it hardly conforms to their ideas of simplicity or, in its petrol consumption, their regard for the environment. Sadly, because Quakers don’t put themselves about, most people still confuse them with folk in white collars and pointy hats, but they are in fact the most unpuritanical people you could wish to meet. I am lucky to have found them.

  Religions based on a book make me nervous, whether it’s the Koran, the Torah or the Bible. Extremists can use them to justify anything. The Quakers’ only book of importance is called, endearingly, Advices and Queries – no laws or creeds for them. One ‘advice’ is ‘Speak truth to power’; right from the start Quakers have stood outside and questioned authority. Suits me. I like a bit of anarchy. In the nineties I had a sneaking admiration for Nick Leeson who stood the Stock Exchange on its head and nearly ruined Baring’s Bank. I also enjoyed the discovery of a very old lady in Bexleyheath of all places who had been a spy. It was claimed she gave atomic information to the Russians on principle, to keep the balance of power. It obviously wasn’t for money or surely she would not have chosen to live out her life in a bungalow in Bexleyheath.

  By the nineties my campaigning zeal was beginning to wane. I did not join the anti-poll-tax riots under Thatcher or the demos against pit closures under Major. When I worked with Harold Pinter in a revue at the Lyric Hammersmith in 1997 we agreed we were probably even angrier than when we were young, but unlike Harold I had that disease of old age – resignation. When I got to sixty, things began to repeat themselves and I questioned the effort I had wasted in attempts to change the world. I was, however, delighted when, at last, Labour was returned to power in 1997. My favourite moment, as it was for many, was the defeat of Michael Portillo by a rather startled gay man. Portillo has now become a softie, but I could not forget a truly shocking speech he made at the Tory Conference in 1993 when he lambasted Europ
e and came on strong about law and order and the proud SAS, which would not have been out of place at a Nuremberg rally. The blue-rinse brigade lapped it up. Now they were choking on this landslide defeat.

  My happiness on the home front was reflected at work where I did some good and interesting stuff. In the theatre I landed two great roles, in David Eldridge’s Under the Blue Sky at the Royal Court and then in In Extremis by Neil Bartlett at the National. In The Russian Bride on television I received a BAFTA nomination for playing a blousy, tarty woman who destroys her son’s life, who John said reminded him of his mother.

  John was less lucky. The Glass was not a great success but he enjoyed working with Sarah Lancashire. He loved it when Sarah was terribly nervous about kissing him passionately as he was ‘a national treasure and shouldn’t be rummaged about with’. He had high hopes of another of Ted’s ideas. Monsignor Renard was a priest in wartime France. Chris Kelly was again producing and all the Scallywags decamped with him to France. John brought his usual self-discipline to the role. He learned to do a High Mass in Latin from a priest at my old school, St Ethelreda’s in Ely Place. He was word and gesture perfect.

  1 July

  Chris Kelly tells me he had a Mass said for John at St Ethelreda’s. I wonder if some little girl was sitting in the church holding her nose as the incense went by.

  To lose weight for the part he did not eat at all at night. In the land of good food and fine wine he could enjoy neither. Everyone was thrilled with the first series. It was a perfect part for John and the series was impressive in its historical accuracy. Nick Elliot, the head of the network centre, who chooses what we see on ITV, wanted more. Two money men who have since left Carlton, Lord Waheed Ali and Michael Foster, dithered for some time and then decided to ditch the series as they deemed it too expensive. Caught in political infighting, the series was abandoned. Everyone was dumbfounded by the decision and John was bitterly disappointed, as well as being disillusioned by the new criteria for commissioning shows, so different from his early career, when good quality was paramount rather than immediate financial returns. As with any of John’s shows, the programme would have ultimately repaid them handsomely in overseas sales. He consoled himself by thinking it would have been gruelling work for the next four years of the proposed schedule and he could have a few holidays instead, as Udi had recommended.

  5 July

  At last an antidote to ‘Death is nothing at all’. It’s by Edna St Vincent Millay and was sent by another stranger:

  Time does not bring relief; you all have lied

  Who told me time would ease me of my pain!

  I miss him in the weeping of the rain;

  I want him at the shrinking of the tide;

  The old snows melt from every mountainside,

  And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;

  But last year’s bitter loving must remain

  Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.

  There are a hundred places where I fear

  To go, – so with his memory they brim!

  And entering with relief some quiet place

  Where never fell his foot or shone his face

  I say, ‘There is no memory of him here!’

  And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

  That’s more like it. As we Quakers say, that ‘speaks to my condition’. Good old Edna. She knew a thing or two about loss. I can barely lift my eyes and look around me without some memory jumping up and biting my brain. As I drive around London – this café, that doctor’s surgery, that stage door, everything I lay eyes on makes me ‘stand stricken’ – not wise when you are driving a Jaguar XKR and I can’t even look at that without remembering his joy when he gave it to me and saying it was for putting up with him for twenty-five years. I am a human-shaped container filled to eye level with water, which spills over, cascading down my face, whatever I look at. A startling apparition to draw alongside at the traffic lights.

  John was not good at holidays. In the past, a trip to Lake Garda had nearly ended in disaster. To avoid the British tourists, we took to hiring a pedalo and, singing ‘I’m a pedalo and I don’t care’, we’d pedal as far away from the beach as possible. One day a gale blew up and it took us an hour and very achy legs to get to shore.

  My obsession with guidebooks and determination to see everything in them ruined a visit to Rome. When I was not dragging John around museums and ruins, we were sitting on the lavatory, with our feet soaking in the bidet, to ease what John christened our Marble Foot Rot. In 1998 we had a better experience with a guidebook. The Links’ Guide to Venice took us to glorious hidden corners and selected some special treasures from that cornucopia of a place. John never complained as he limped round Mr Links’s suggested walks. Being carnival time, masked figures floated past and musicians serenaded us in hidden squares that the Guide led us to. It was a magic holiday. The relish of this most beautiful of cities is increased selfishly for me by thinking that one day it might be completely submerged under the sea so we are transiently privileged to experience it. We also took a wonderful holiday in Oman where John ventured with me into the desert, but he had to wait outside the winding alleys of old Muscat where only women visitors were allowed. I searched for two special women but never found them. Nor did I tell John about the ring I had given away. Discussion of his mother was still out of bounds.

  But the place he loved best was France. He relished good wines and I worried that he would miss them when we drove down to the Luberon with Jo and her partner Matt (Ellie Jane’s partner being Matt Byam Shaw and Jo’s Matt Harvey, I collect son-in-laws called Matt), stopping off in the wine and champagne areas. John enjoyed our descriptions of the wines we tasted but was not tempted to join in. We cooked together from our battered Elizabeth David book, which we had bought from her shop in Pimlico when we were first married. She taught the English, ourselves included, to appreciate good food. We ate in cheap cafés and posh gourmet places. John would choose our wines with care. We enjoyed watching him enjoying us enjoying them.

  His first five years of sobriety, apart from the usual marital spats, were a time of great joy for us. We almost grew up. Ours was not a conventional love affair, but whose is? It was not textbook. We made up our rules as we went along. And then ignored them. It consumed us for twenty-eight years. It was not mature until the very end.

  The millennium celebrations nearly scuppered us again. John hated Christmas. It had always been his worst time. He had obviously had some sad Christmases as a child, but so, I would point out, did I. So did many people. His sock at the end of the bed with just an apple, an orange and one toy was not unusual. I did not even have that when I was evacuated. The build-up to the millennium celebrations made John grumpy. The vacuous Dome and the Wobbly Bridge and the badly organised fireworks display over the Thames were depressing. After Christmas the family went back to London to celebrate with their mates, and we were left alone in Luckington. I felt suddenly left out and old. John was angry that I couldn’t be happy with him alone. We watched the proceedings on television and ended up having a row. It seemed a good time to look through my old diaries and I was appalled by what a miserable cow I had been. I tried to end the twentieth century by burning the most dreary ones in a bonfire in the field, but it was raining and my melodramatic gesture fizzled out. We greeted the new millennium in sulky silence. The girls made a decision for us. Next Christmas we must go away on our own. Forget the family and enjoy each other.

  Our week in Paris over Christmas 2000 was the best of times. We had a suite at the Crillon Hotel and relished it guiltily like the urchins we still felt we were. It was a long way from Stowell Street and the King’s Cross Road. We celebrated our twenty-seventh wedding anniversary in one of the best restaurants in the world, Les Ambassadeurs. We marvelled at the complicated ballet performed by the waiters as they carried out their impeccable service. We were fascinated by the sommelier, tasting a sip of each bottle before it was served, savouring it in hi
s mouth and then elegantly spitting it into a silver spittoon. John was panicked into buying a very expensive one, lest the Mighty One sneered as he spat ours. The food was the best we had ever tasted, the coffee better than at the Grégoire, our yardstick brew from Apt, and the other diners oozed French chic. As we raised our glasses to each other, mine with fine wine and John’s with water, his toast was: ‘Nous avons cracked it, kid.’

  We attended a sung Midnight Mass at the Madeleine and squeezed hands and pressed elbows at the sublime choir. We held hands in front of some exquisite late flower paintings by Manet and I made John laugh by weeping at their beauty – ‘Diddle-oh.’ We went to a concert of Gregorian chant, given by the St Petersburg choir in a beautiful church on the Ile St Louis. Afterwards we ate in one of those tiny French bistros where everybody joins in the conversation until the small hours of the morning. We lingered over coffee in the Place des Vosges. We wandered the streets, arms round each other, in the winter sunshine. Years before, I had lost my wedding ring. It is probably at some costumier’s in the pocket of a dress I wore for a show. John bought me a new one in Paris. It was gold with a little sapphire set in it. Later, at Luckington, I was groping in the earth for potatoes, and I lost the stone. It left a gaping hole. I have not replaced it.

  In April 2001 John played Captain Hook at the Festival Hall.

  In May 2001 his dear friend Tom Courtenay presented him with the highest accolade you can receive in television – a Fellowship of the British Academy of Film and Television.

  In June 2001 he was diagnosed with cancer.

  For the next eight months the fearful man became brave beyond belief. The boy who was not taught to love became the most loving of men.