The Two of Us

by Sheila Hancock

  31 December

  In Lucky. Family gone back to London. Felt wretched and sorry for myself while the rest of the country celebrated. I’ve been invited to a lovely party by Amanda Redman, but chose to be miserable with my sister. Am I finding comfort in my grief? This feeling that wells from the pit of my stomach, tightens the back of my throat and contorts my face into a parody of a Greek tragic mask. Is the pain beginning to be a substitute for you? I think of you – you’re not there, but the pain is. So something is. Better than nothing. It is proof of your non-existence. If that goes what is left of you?

  3 January 2003

  John’s birthday. Dear God, how these anniversaries come round. I’m not usually one for birthdays – I’ve been known to forget my own children’s and I never know how old anyone is, but suddenly since John’s death I’ve started marking events. This time last year, etc., etc. It’s pointless and negative and I’m going to stop it. The two biggies are looming: his death and my 70th. Not looking forward to either. Jo and Matt came round and did some DIY for me and Ellie Jane came with the kids. New life, new focus.

  8 January

  Lola’s first day at proper school. She looked like Little Orphan Annie standing on the doorstep in the snow in her uniform, which Ellie Jane has bought to last – till she’s sixteen, by the look of it. We are on the brink of a war with Iraq. Poison gas found in Wood Green. These bastard politicians had better watch their step and not ruin the world for the Lolas, Molly Maes and Jacks. Or I’ll . . . I’ll what? God knows. On top of that I discovered that our little local Hammersmith Post Office has been held up by armed robbers for the umpteenth time. What a world. No wonder Auntie Ruby said before she died that she would be happy to go, she didn’t belong any more. I used to want to take on everyone. Wave banners, write letters, make speeches, but like my parents I see the patterns repeating over and over and I have lost heart.

  14 January

  Party for the tenth year of Breakfast with Frost. Hell of an achievement. He has had every top person on his show. A lot of them were there looking rather grey and small. Why are most ‘great’ people a disappointment? I went into my usual mode of being rude and discourteous. What is it with me that I have to insult important people? Is it an engrained inferiority complex, an I’ll-show-you mentality? Or years, generations, of ordinary people being shat on by the likes of them, that I want to get even for? Whatever it is, it’s singularly unattractive. Went for supper with Esther Rantzen.

  15 January

  Extraordinary coincidence. I described the restaurant I went to last night to Billie and she told me that during the war she had come back from a tour with a friend and went down this self-same passageway, to find the pub that this girl’s parents owned had been destroyed by a bomb. They went on a frantic search, finding her parents alive, but her brother dead in a temporary morgue. Billie must have been about sixteen or seventeen. The actual fact of war is so awful. This generation, including Blair, has not experienced it first hand or they would move heaven and earth to avoid it, instead of being drawn to it as they seem to be.

  18 January

  A lovely day (never thought I’d say that again). Wrote in the morning then went to see Mnemonic at Riverside Studios. An extraordinary, beautiful show. Then on to a new – to me – restaurant, the Patio in Shepherd’s Bush with Geraldine McEwan and Alan Rickman and their friends. All new to me, but we stayed until 1.30 a.m. I really laughed.

  22 January

  The German Ambassador says that Germany will not fight Iraq, as they have started two world wars and will not be involved in another. Amazing. People are really standing up and being counted on this issue. I’m terrified for us all. I do not see how this war against terrorism can possibly be won.

  23 January

  Went to lunch with Chris Kelly and Ted Childs in the place in Charlotte Street where they used to go with John. It was curious. I had a lovely time with them, but I’m sure they were aching for John instead.

  24 January

  ‘Bleeooming great war clouds are leeooming’ as Kenny Williams would say. Signed a letter to be published trying to stop the war. Fat chance. Benjamin is a darling and keeps me occupied. He is someone to care for – I need that. No, Sheila, some thing, he is not a person. Oh dear, I must not become a silly old woman doting on her pet.

  25 January

  Heard Condoleeza Rice talking about the US mission to save the world. She is intelligent and put her case persuasively. But the impression was of a group of messianic people in Washington bent on a mission that they believe with all their hearts is right. I worry that their obsession with Iraq is making them take their eye off the ball in the search for terrorists. Quaker Advices and Queries, ‘Consider it possible you might be mistaken.’

  30 January

  Dreamt John and I were separated and I thought – as I used to – oh, it’s OK, I’ll go back to him later, then remembered he was gone for ever. Woke up gasping and shaky. I keep thinking I’m getting better and wallop it’s back again. I miss him, I miss him. I know now I have to allow myself to have shitty days. Just give in to it, but stop inflicting it on others. Hide away and scream and shout and it will pass.

  1 February

  You see? Today I felt OK. A good night’s sleep is always a help. In the early days I couldn’t sleep and that made me exhausted and that made me wretched – it’s a vicious circle. My doctor has set a personal trainer on me, John. He puts me through my paces with various implements including ferocious weights. I need to get physically fit in order to be mentally better, I know that. I have been neglecting myself. Ellie Jane arrived at 8.30. He opened the door and she was confronted with me in tights lying over a large rubber ball with this rather dishy young man looking on. I hope she believed my explanation.

  2 February

  Memorial concert for Joan Littlewood at Stratford East. There we were, old codgers remembering the days when we were full of passion. Joan would have pulled her woolly hat over her eyes in disgust at such sentiment. Sitting on that stage I remembered the terrified girl in the wings. Oh Joan of blessed memory, an idealist, and God they are rare. She remained true to her beliefs right to the end. I shall miss her postcards and phone calls.

  4 February

  Heard radio programme about bereavement. ‘Everyone avoids me.’ ‘People should be taught about bereavement at school.’ Oh, get a grip! It’s part of life for God’s sake. Surely we don’t have to have classes in grieving now. Sheila, beware self-pity, it’s so unattractive.

  8 February

  It’s his bass notes I miss. Without John my life is thin and reedy, insubstantial, without depth. I glide over the surface of events. I don’t discuss them after to analyse and put in perspective. When something happened in the past I couldn’t wait to tell John and we’d talk and laugh about it, now it just evaporates or, worse, just whirls around in my mind, unresolved. I’m not grounded any more. How do I get round this one?

  12 February

  Coming up to the anniversary of his death. A year? Unbelievable. He is still so – not near – but potent to me.

  14 February

  Extraordinary Valentine’s Day. The children round with cards and presents (they were pretty startled by John, the personal trainer, the handsome hunk). Then to a Story Competition do for the Great Ormond Street Hospital at Waterstone’s. Felt pretty grumpy on arrival, then posed for photos next to a youth in a chair. Twisted body, can’t walk or talk. He has a gadget to tap out words and I put in ‘hello’ and got talking to him, rubbishing the photographers who were taking ages. I was thinking, ‘This could have been Jack – he had a similar tumour.’ Later, his parents called me over and said he wanted to give me something. It was a single red rose. I told him I was dreading Valentine’s Day, but he had made it lovely.

  15 February

  Biggest demo ever in London against the war. If there is one good thing to come out of this madness it is that the public has found a voice and a passion. Youngsters are revolt
ing in the best sense of the word instead of the worst. People are actually concerned about the so-called enemy. In the old days if we were told someone was an enemy, we’d have believed them and started hating to order. Now people worry about the women and children, and separate out the leaders and the led. I only hope the people we are bombing know how we feel.

  18 February

  Tom Courtenay’s first night in show about Philip Larkin, produced by my son-not-in-law, Matt. It is curious that poetry has always flummoxed me before but this year has been a revelation. John and I used to switch off poetry programmes. ‘Wanky.’ ‘Oh noo, not for me.’ But it was often the sanctimonious style of delivery, or worse, the mock-ordinary flatness of the Liverpool poets. Whatever – it irritated. And now the poems that people have sent me have helped enormously. There were several in Tom’s show and the phrase ‘What will survive of us is love’ spoke to my condition totally.

  21 February

  A year since my best beloved died. Strange. I have been dreading this day and it was lovely. The three girls and I went to the church near Manchester Square where I had lit a candle for Jack when he was ill and we lit one for John and sat quietly for a while. I love London churches. The city sounds in the distance and the calm inside. Then to lunch at the Wallace Collection and a look at the pictures. I had my babes to stay the night and went to the cinema with them and Matt and Jo and tea after. Lots of laughter at bath and story time. This – they – are the future. That can’t be bad. Larkin on the death of a hedgehog:

  Next morning I got up and it did not

  The first day after death, a new absence

  Is always the same; we should be careful

  Of each other, we should be kind

  While there is still time.

  22 February

  Seventy. Seventy? No, not seventy? Yes. Bloody seventy! My babes greeted me with lovely presents. We had fun with me acting a very old lady. We went to the Wallace Collection again. An eighteenth-century day – when I was born, practically. Lola, Abs and Molly Mae danced a minuet. Lola got in a strop because she couldn’t make a fan and Molly Mae could. That evening I went, supposedly for a quiet dinner, to Ellie Jane’s and was amazed to find the place full of my friends, from the past and new ones that I have made this year. I’m so blessed. I felt full of love for them all. Another lovely poem through the post. It was sent to me by Lynda Tavakali, whom I have corresponded with for years, since her friend died of breast cancer. It was in Nicholas Evans’ book, The Smoke Jumper. A riposte to Edna. The fact that it works for me now shows that I have moved on since Edna’s despair consumed me.

  If I be the first of us to die,

  Let grief not blacken long your sky.

  Be bold yet modest in your grieving.

  There is change but not a leaving.

  For just as death is part of life,

  The dead live on forever in the living.

  For all the gathered riches of our journey,

  The moments shared, the mysteries explored,

  The steady layer of intimacy stored,

  The things that made us laugh or weep or sing,

  The joy of sunlit snow or first unfurling of the spring,

  The wordless language of look and touch,

  The knowing,

  Each giving and each taking,

  These are not flowers that fade,

  Nor trees that fall and crumble,

  Nor are they stone

  For even stone cannot the wind and rain withstand

  And mighty mountain peaks in time reduce to sand.

  What we were, we are.

  What we had, we have.

  A conjoined past imperishably present.

  So when you walk the woods where once we walked together

  And scan in vain the dappled bank beside you for my shadow,

  Or pause where we always did upon the hill to gaze across the land,

  And spotting something, reach by habit for my hand,

  And finding none, feel sorrow start to steal upon you,

  Be still.

  Close your eyes.

  Breathe.

  Listen for my footfall in your heart.

  I am not gone but merely walk within you.

  8 March

  I am really not at all keen on this old age thing. I am on the receiving end of respect and I hate it. The PA even calls me ‘my love’ – ‘Let me help you, my love’ – as if I were a helpless geriatric. But worse – they ask for my advice as if I were a fount of wisdom, which I’m not. About their love lives and such, whereas I fancy the focus-puller who I suddenly realise is twenty-six and I am seventy. I have to watch all the usual flirtations instead of having one. I am the cause of no gossip at all. I suppose I never was but I could have been and now I can’t. It’s a bugger. After the broadcast everyone was going for a drink and the director said, ‘I don’t suppose you’ll want to come.’ Why bloody not? I’m too old to get across the road? Too grand? In the old days I would have wanted to rush home to John who didn’t find me old at all. He found me rude and feisty and sexy and as young as when we met. But now I just went home and watched the telly on my own – with a bloody great drink.

  18 March

  It is countdown to war and already ‘the boys’ are excited. Detailed descriptions of all the various toys including cluster bombs. You can feel the playground atmosphere. The antis are expected to come to heel now. ‘Our boys’ or ‘our lads’ are out there. I always get worried when men call one another lads and boys – like football hooligans. I don’t support the lads. I weep for them and rage that they might die or be traumatised in such a misconceived venture.

  20 March

  Trinity College as guest for the Domus dinner. Standing in for John. Lovely evening but felt a bit ratty when I arrived. Greeted by some academic who kept saying ‘No trouble at all.’ I hate that phrase. Everyone says it all the time. What does it mean for God’s sake? He’s educated, he should use language accurately. I should bloody well think it’s no trouble to hand me a paper, or press the lift button on number 3. And while I’m at it, how disgusting is the phrase ‘shock and awe’ to describe an operation to kill people? Awe is caused by looking at the Grinling Gibbons carvings at the chapel here at Trinity. Awe is the thought of all the scholarship these walls have witnessed since the sixteenth century. Not frightening badly-defended Arabs to death by an obscene show of might. But yes, I’m shocked all right.

  * http://johnthaw.topcities.com/

  Epilogue

  2 April

  France. Bought a new washing machine made by Laden. Not Osama Bin, I hope. The bombs, the wounded children, the woman caught on a bridge between firing men seem far away here. My sorrow has broadened, it is no longer just for me and mine. As you get older you cannot help but be melancholy. The turmoil of the world is palpable. But there are still rapturous moments. I went down to the stream through the cherry orchard. I came to a glade where the sun was beaming in rays through a roof of blossom. Beneath was a carpet of wild narcissi, the perfume took my breath away. I could hear the stream rippling. I was panting and trembling, it was so beautiful. Oh I wish – No, stop. Then I tried:

  Be still.

  Close your eyes.

  Breathe.

  Listen for my footfall in your heart.

  I’m not gone but merely walk in you.

  And it sort of worked. Cracked it, kid?

  COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  For permission to reprint copyright material the author and publishers gratefully acknowledge the following:

  Songs

  ‘It Takes Two’ from Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim. Reproduced by kind permission of Stephen Sondheim.

  Extract from ‘The Sun Has Got His Hat On’, words and music by Ralph Butler and Noel Gay. Reproduced by permission of West’s, London WC2H 0QY (EMI have a 50% interest), Richard Armitage Limited and G. Schirmer, Inc. and Associated Music Publishers, Inc. (USA). All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.
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  Extract from ‘If You Were the Only Girl in the World’, words by Clifford Grey and music by Nat D. Ayer. Reproduced by permission of B. Feldman & Co Ltd, London WC2H 0QY (EMI have a 50% interest) and Redwood Music Ltd/Carlin, London NW1 8BD.

  Extract from ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, words and music by Paul Simon. Copyright © 1969 Paul Simon.

  Extract from ‘As Time Goes By’, words and music by Herman Hupfield. Copyright © 1931 by Warner Bros Inc. (Renewed). All Rights Reserved. Lyric reproduced by kind permission of Redwood Music Ltd/Carlin, London NW1 8BD for the Commonwealth of Nations including Canada, Australasia and Hong Kong, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Africa and Spain.

  Extract from ‘The Riff Song’ from The Desert Song (1926), words by Otto Harbach (b. Otto Abels Hauerbach), music by Sigmund Romberg. Copyright © Warner Chappel Ltd, UK.

  Poems

  Raymond Carver, ‘Late Fragment’ from All of Us: The Collected Poems of Raymond Carver, published by The Harvill Press. Copyright © Tess Gallagher. Reproduced by permission of The Random House Group Ltd, UK and ICM Talent, Inc., USA.