The Two of Us

by Sheila Hancock

  The births of the ten Ablotts were spread over twenty years. The eldest had to help look after the youngest. Sometimes supper was a bag of chips between them, or anything they could scrounge. Dolly, being a lively kid, was especially good at this. There was no question of further education. Dolly had to leave school at fourteen, although she was as bright as a button. She would give some of her wages to her mum and any of her brothers or sisters who needed it. They pooled their resources. First up was best dressed. A girl’s best chance of betterment was to hook a good bloke. She had to look smart.

  When things became scarce during the war Dolly painted her legs with gravy browning and drew a pencil line up the back for seams. She used beetroot juice on her lips and soot round her eyes, and kept her hair in metal Dinkie curlers, concealed under a turban, except when she went out on the town. Once a week she touched up her roots with peroxide and styled her hair after the stars she saw at the local cinema – Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth were her favourites. She and her sisters cut a dash when they hit Belle Vue. Wherever Dolly went she attracted attention. Her clothes were daring and stood out in the crowd. She once wangled some precious nylons out of a GI stationed in the park and flaunted her lovely legs. There was something about her. She wanted to have fun, but often she had to look after the baby. Why the hell did her mum keep having kids?

  One day a tall, good-looking youth asked her to dance. They revolved around the wooden floor under the stars with the lake illuminated beside it. Like James Stewart off the films, he was gentle and shy so she made all the going. He didn’t say much, but when he did he made her laugh. No one could have been less like her father. They agreed to meet again. After a few dates he introduced her to his family. They were warm and fun to be with. His mother cooked a wonderful meal and they all had a sing-song round the piano. Jack was besotted with her. She had never been so loved. She felt like a film star – the centre of his world. Her bloody father messed up the engagement party, but once she was married she would move in near the Thaws and be shot of him and having to look after everyone.

  Her little house in Stowell Street was her pride and joy. She scrubbed her front stoop, as she saw the other Thaws do, and cooked imaginatively with the meagre rations. For the first few months she acted the perfect housewife and, whenever Jack was free, they went out to town or Belle Vue. She understood when Jack got moody about the horrors he was facing on the bomb sites, but she could easily cheer him up. She was nineteen and sexy and, despite the war, full of hope.

  4 August

  I like the vicar from St Martin-in-the-Fields, Nick Holtam. Getting the religious content right is tricky. John used to have what he called ‘my God’ but never went to church. I told him I didn’t want stuff about meeting in another place and he emailed me this lovely piece not to be used in the service but just for me, which was used at the funeral of the theologian John Taylor. It was apparently a prayer from somebody just before the outbreak of the First World War.

  ‘To have given me self-consciousness for an hour in a world so breathless for beauty would have been enough. But Thou has preserved it within me for twenty years and more, and has crowned it with the joy of this summer of summers. And so, come what may, whether life or death, and, if death, whether bliss unimaginable or nothingness, I thank Thee and bless Thy name.’

  When, after only three months of marriage, Dolly fell pregnant it terrified her. She dreaded the drudgery of her mother’s life. She went to her mother’s house to have the baby and it was a difficult and painful birth. She had to give up work and Jack started doing even more night shifts to make up the gap in their keep. She had never slept in a bed on her own in crowded Norman Grove, so she would take little John into bed with her for company. She enjoyed dressing him up and parading him in front of the neighbours. By the time he was toddling and more independent she began to love her sweet-natured babe. She got her figure back and managed to work a morning shift in the pub at the Longsight Gate of Belle Vue, where they let her bring him with her. She was a good barmaid and she enjoyed it. Life wasn’t so bad.

  Then, at twenty-one, she fell pregnant again. Clumsy birth control was useless for someone as passionate and impetuous as she. Was her life going to be endless children and housework? Jack was now sent away to work in the mines and she was all on her own with a new baby and a toddler, tied to the house. The Thaws were supportive but they would never understand this burning desire to improve herself. She knew she was known as a two-bit millionaire and was thought to dress too tartily for a young mother. She knew she wasn’t cut out for looking after kids, she found it boring and exhausting, but she was good at every job she did and full of ideas. People always commented on her ability. She never had a problem getting work.

  One of her bosses asked her to go away with him. He said he loved her and he had a bob or two. He promised her a future with him where she could provide for her boys and have more freedom. Always impulsive, she went. Only to discover that what he wanted was a dirty weekend. She had to return and face the street again. Jack was a kind man and, in spite of everything, adored her. He took her back and they decided she would be happier if they lived with her family. There was always someone to keep an eye on the kids there so Dolly could go out a bit more and take on longer hours at the pub. So off they went to make a fresh start. Dolly brushed up well, despite her two kids. The spirit of the war led to flirtations with one or two men. What the hell; we might all be dead tomorrow. Jack was always so tired and grumpy. There were endless rows between him and her father, which ended with the bastard putting her few sticks of furniture out in the front and telling them to bugger off. They traipsed off to Wythenshawe, a dirty flat in a slum area.

  About this time a salesman called Alan West came into the pub. He was selling sticky tape and his patter was so good he off-loaded a caseload during the lunch hour. He had red-blond hair, a snappy suit and a car. Dolly had only ever been in a van before, so he took her for a ride. He confided his plans for his future. He was going to make a lot of money, get a bigger car and buy a house at Alderley Edge. He was going to make it somehow. He looked like Van Johnson and acted like Mickey Rooney. She believed every word he said.

  Jack thought their dream had come true when he landed a flat on the new estate in Burnage. A nice area for the kids to grow up in, a bit of garden even; everyone wanted to live in the model Kingsway Estate. But not Dolly. She couldn’t help it. She wanted more. It was the suburbs. She hated the bloody garden and lace curtains and the endless tram rides to town. It was miles from Belle Vue and dead as a door nail. Alan understood. He could see she was a good businesswoman and a bobby-dazzler. She was wasted. Why not come with him and they would set up in business together? They would make a great team. But what about Jack and the kids?

  She really tried to make a go of being a wife and mother. She arranged a tea party for Ray’s fifth birthday. She made cakes and jellies and both families came round. The tea-cups clinked. ‘This is very nice.’ ‘Well, you couldn’t want better than this.’ ‘When are you going to have another littl’un?’ Was this it for the rest of her life? She had to get away or she would die. Jack would get used to it, he was very easy-going. She vaguely thought she could get the kids later, but Alan wasn’t having that – they would get in the way of his big plans – and neither was Jack.

  Suddenly the worm turned. Jack swore he would never see her again. She didn’t believe him; he had always given in before and she knew he still loved her. Then he went to court and she was banned for ever from seeing her kids. She hadn’t a chance: she had deserted her children and her husband. A lot of husbands, returning as strangers from the war, were leaving their wives, but the other way round was unheard of. Her own mother was bitterly ashamed of her and all her brothers and sisters told her what a fool she was. Alan West was a spiv. He was a ‘I love me, who do you love?’ kind of bloke. Couldn’t she see that?

  No, she couldn’t. He was her key to a great future. For a while they lived in her sister’
s front room. Then they got tenancy of various pubs and were successful landlords. The pubs got bigger and she did catering – an innovation in those days. Dolly became quite well known. Especially when Coronation Street started and she had a pub near Granada Studios. She managed to push thoughts of Jack out of her mind, but she worried about the children. One day she was distraught and Alan offered to drive her to Burnage to try to catch a glimpse of them. They saw her and didn’t seem much interested. John showed up with a friend one day when she was at the Shakespeare Pub in Central Manchester. Was he just trying to show his pal he really had a mother or did he love her in spite of what she had done? He often turned up after that. She gave him sandwiches, but he was an odd lad – quiet one minute, then showing off and putting on voices the next. She would be in trouble if Jack found out, but she knew her son would keep it secret. He was good at secrets.

  10 August

  I have really lived this grief. I have been totally centred on my pain. That’s some sort of achievement. Most of my life has been postponing feeling or thinking what comes next. But grief like this can’t be avoided. It’s utterly real and has to be experienced there and then. I am doing what I have always striven to do – live the moment. I am here now. Shame I had to learn through pain rather than pleasure.

  She did not tell John or anyone that the man on whom she had pinned her hopes and for whom she had given up everything was a phoney and a drunk. That it was she who worked her arse off running the business while he drank the profits. She kept going as long as she could, performing the happy barmaid, while behind the scenes she dealt with a cruel drunk. Her son’s visits petered out but he began appearing on her TV screen.

  He visited her once with a friend when he was working in a theatre in Liverpool, but didn’t stay long. Now, even though she knew he was working in Manchester, she only read about it. He never mentioned her in the papers; or, if he did, it was to say he didn’t know her. She never told anyone in the pub she was his mother and, although friends told her she could make a fortune talking to the papers, she would not stoop to that. When she managed to get away from Alan she gave up running pubs and went to live with her sister Cissie while she sorted herself out. She was at a low ebb. She had put on weight and at the age of forty-nine it wasn’t easy to find work or attract men. Cissie heard that John was working in Manchester with that Sheila Hancock and took the risk of phoning and asking if he would visit his mum. When he agreed, Dolly was in a right flap, trying out various outfits, spending hours in the hairdresser’s, manicuring her nails.

  He arrived in a snorting blue MG with the roof down. He looked every inch the star. When Dolly linked her arm in his for a photo he felt a bit stiff, but his jacket was soft and expensive and his green silk shirt had obviously cost a bob or two. He told her his shoes were handmade in Italy. She had always turned him out nice, so perhaps something had stuck. She couldn’t think of much to say to him – his was a different world, the world she had dreamed of. She was so pleased for him – not proud, she had no right to be proud.

  30 August

  Have been searching for John’s old Gucci jacket that we bought in Rome on idyllic hols. Went for a manicure at the Nail Place and found it on the clothes peg. It must have been there for months. No one had taken it or thrown it out – it was patiently waiting to be found.

  She got a job near her sister’s house and again made herself indispensable to her boss (possibly Mr Welsh, the other name on the bill). So much so that when he was too ill to continue running the pub he sold up and took Dolly to Llandudno to run a boarding house in partnership with him. It was a lovely little business. Her mother and her sister came on a visit and were very impressed. Things were looking good again. Six months after everything was up and running she began to have back pain. Then she started to haemorrhage down below. Her sister took her back to Leedale Road. She had cancer of the cervix, womb and spine. Her family cared for her. She endured chemotherapy and radiotherapy and acute pain, always convinced she would get better. She spoke often of her sons. Her family tried to contact John. Ray had moved to somewhere in Australia. John was either unable or unwilling to see her. Reduced to skin and bone, just before she died, she sat bolt upright and said, ‘Right, pay t’bill and let’s be off.’ At fifty-two she had paid all right, but would go no further. They had a whip-round and sold her radiogram to pay for the funeral. Cissie insisted that her rings be given to young John for that was what Dolly had wanted.

  As I am leaving, Stuart indicates not one but two fifties-style cocktail cabinets – all gilt and mirrors, faux walnut and sliding glass doors. They were Dolly’s. Of course they were. And the Bell’s whisky bottle converted into a lamp with the gold satin shade. Surely John would have enjoyed that. ‘Yeah, go for it, girl.’

  I find her grave. Her mother outlived her by two years and tended it every week until her death but it is neglected now. She ended up at fifty-two a single woman, in a cemetery in West Gorton, buried in the same hole as her mother and father because it was cheaper. She didn’t get away, but her sons did. As I look at the shabby tombstone on this freezing cold grey day, I find myself crying. My new friend Shaun touches my arm, puzzled, but I suppose I am weeping for all the people who have mucked up their lives, thinking the grass is greener on the other side, only to find it’s a desert. For my mother’s generation and their mothers before them, who have been given no encouragement. And because the Ivys and Dollys never wept for themselves.

  5 September

  We did it. Sick to death of ‘in celebration’. ‘Memorial’ was too grandiose so settled for Remembering John. After all the preparation it worked a treat yesterday. I actually think John would have enjoyed it. The balance of laughter and tears was just right and Jack, Lola and Molly Mae running in at the end lifted all our hearts. Trafalgar Square came to a standstill for the balloons. Letter from Dr Piggott, our doctor for many years, summed it all up.

  Dear Sheila,

  We felt very proud to have been able to share with you, the family, your friends and your colleagues at that wonderful outpouring of love and caring. It was simply an amazing occasion. I could not help but wonder how John’s father would have thought and felt had he known that his precious son had had a service remembering him and devoted to his honour in St Martin’s, that the Prince of Wales and the wife of the Prime Minister of the day were there, that some of the most notable of his and your professional colleagues were there, that numberless members of the public, his fans, were there, that the bells rang out for him over Trafalgar Square and the police were needed to control the public and the traffic: surely he would have burst with pride, surely you and your daughters must have too. Was ever a man more deeply honoured, was ever there more beautiful music on such an occasion, was ever there more beautiful moving verse written and spoken so perfectly by Abigail, were ever so many emotionally in tatters at such an occasion? And did he not greatly deserve it?

  20

  I Thought One Was Enough,

  It’s Not True

  6 September

  TV tribute went out. Jack Gold did a great job. God how he was loved. I wish I had told him more how wonderful he was – but then he wasn’t always. We are all in rags now but we did him proud. Wish he could be here to see it all. Ray was very brave and has become a star after his contribution to the tribute which he did superbly. Tom made me laugh at the memorial. Said how he and John knew this very camp musician who used to speak in a strange and affected way. One of the things he used to say was, ‘Let’s commit telephonage.’ That was the last thing John said to Tom, ‘I tell you what, Tommy, let’s commit telephonage.’ They never did again, but it was a sweet note to go out on.

  11 September

  Dull dead feeling now all the tension of our public performance for John is over. Life goes on – and on and on. I don’t think it should. The world should stop as mine has. I’m sure the relatives of those that died in the US last year feel the same. Rumblings of pre-emptive strikes on Iraq. The big boys
want to show their powerful toys off and frighten the little ones. Never mind that bloody phrase ‘weapons of mass destruction’. The carnage of 9/11 was caused with the help of a few penknives and fanatical hatred. War is not a sensible option. It creates more terrorists, especially if they lose. We have backed some appalling people like the Majahadein including Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan and then are surprised when they turn on us, using the weapons we sold them to kill us.

  12 September

  To Oxford to open a scanner at the Radcliffe Hospital. Nice dinner in University College with medical types. Forced myself to be entertaining and acted enjoying myself and eventually I did. Nice people.

  13 September

  Took Jack and Lola to Somerset House. They loved running into the fountains. Ended up sopping wet. Shrieking with laughter. They are upset by John’s death but can still experience pure joy. Albert Camus: ‘In the midst of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.’ There certainly is in kids. My summer is a bit more vincible at present.

  16 September

  I feel I have reached a fork in the road. One route leads to recovery, the other to life-long martyrdom. There are no oughts or shoulds but I could choose the positive route. I almost feel I’m in danger of clinging on to my grief for fear of losing him if I let it go. A poem someone sent me sums it up: