Things I Couldn't Tell My Mother: A Memoir

by Sue Johnston

  ‘You’re right,’ her friend said in agreement before popping another sweet in her mouth. ‘And the food’s not great there either.’

  I did sit on Equity council for a time. I was alongside Kenneth Williams and I enjoyed his company immensely. He was wildly funny and indiscreet and had something to say about everyone. Politically we were poles apart but that didn’t seem to matter. He was a real gentleman and I looked forward to the time I got to spend with him.

  We never did achieve the branch and delegate structure, and the power of Equity has been greatly diluted since it is no longer a requirement to be a member in order to act. I still encourage young people who are new to the profession to join because if things go wrong and they are treated badly in a job, Equity will step in and fight their corner.

  *

  One of the stand-out plays we performed at Coventry Belgrade was about Craig and Bentley, which we would use for older children. It is the true story that has since been made into a film about Derek Bentley, a young man with learning difficulties, who was hanged for his part in the murder of a policeman after an attempted robbery went badly wrong. He was famously claimed to have told Christopher Craig to ‘Let him have it’. Bentley was in police custody as his friend fired on the police, shooting dead a police constable.

  The case was so controversial because all evidence pointed to the fact that Bentley had nothing to do with the shooting of the policeman; it was his friend who had led him there and who had murdered the officer. Also, the fact that a young man with the mental age of eleven was allowed to be hanged begged many questions. It was quite a controversial piece to bring into schools, but we always checked with teachers that they were happy for us to come and perform and workshop afterwards.

  There was one lad who was deeply affected by the story of Craig and Bentley. After the workshop he was waiting for us and wanted to come back to the theatre to discuss what had happened. He really thought that there had been a miscarriage of justice and couldn’t believe that it had happened in fairly recent times. A few days later he came back to see us, his mind completely changed. ‘I’ve been talking to my dad,’ he said, ‘and he’s in the army. He should have definitely hanged.’ He said that his mind was made up. I thought the turnaround in this thoughtful young man was very sad. We were all living and breathing politics at the time. We wanted our group to reflect the world in which we lived. It was very important to us to challenge the status quo and get children thinking. On some occasions the teacher would say that they didn’t necessarily agree with what we said, but that the work was always stimulating and thoughtprovoking and worked in tandem with the curriculum.

  We did, however, come in for criticism from the press for being the ‘Reds under the bed’. The idea that we were going into schools with communist rhetoric was just preposterous. We were politically minded educational practitioners for sure, but we weren’t spreading some sort of ultra-left-wing thinking. We just wanted to introduce stories to children and allow them to think for themselves, to give a fresh perspective to age-old tales. The head teachers in Coventry stood up for us in the face of this accusation, backing our methods and what we brought to their pupils. It was great to have the support from the schools, because we genuinely believed we were doing good, important work with young people.

  One other production that we produced and performed was the Rare Earth trilogy. I was working with Maggie Steed, Mervyn Watson and Clive Russell. There were two plays written by David Holman and a follow-up workshop. They were all about the environment long before we knew anything about the ozone layer or the polar ice caps melting.

  The first play was about the way that Native Americans were in touch with and respectful of the earth and how the West wasn’t. The second was called Minamata, named after the small city where a local mercury factory tipped raw waste into the lake where the town’s population drew their water supply. It was a true story and very powerful. It was performed using the Japanese Noh theatre style, using masks and mime.

  First the wildlife began to die, and then children began to be born with deformities or died from drinking the water. The factory denied any wrongdoing. Lawyers got involved and it looked like the local people would have to bow to the financial prowess of the factory. However, someone in the local community realised that if they bought shares in the factory they could attend the shareholders meeting. They did just that, bringing with them a bucket of water from the lake. They confronted the board and stated that if the water was so safe then they should drink it. They closed the meeting and they were forced to close the factory.

  The people of this town overcame the might of the mercury producer. It was a very powerful piece of theatre and has been performed many times since. Theatrically it was very simple. We tried to get the essence of the Japanese people from how with such dignity they refused to accept what was happening to them. It was extraordinary that these people lobbied this huge factory. The play also shows a little girl deteriorate after she ate fish from the lake. Children, as children are, were quite pragmatic audience members. They got it totally, but the most distressed people watching were the teachers weeping in the corner.

  Throughout my time in TIE I heard the objection that such complex and emotional issues shouldn’t be presented to children. But I think that we should not underestimate their emotional and intellectual capacity.

  I still meet people, now in their forties, who remember us visiting their school in Coventry and the positive impact it had. Only a few weeks ago I heard of one girl who saw us and attributes this visit to her going on to join the Coventry Belgrade youth theatre and then went on to be a performer and actress herself.

  *

  When I first saw Coventry Belgrade perform back at the TIE conference, the director had given a talk when the demonstration was over. He was extremely charismatic and I thought he looked a little like Che Guevara. A few nights later I went out for dinner with our group, and who should be in the restaurant but this handsome director. That evening we spoke, and I have to say from that moment I was smitten. He was funny and witty and utterly charming, and offered me the place with Coventry TIE.

  If I’m honest I never thought I had a chance with him but once I moved cities Dave and I began to get to know one another and we started a relationship. I fell hook, line and sinker for him and for the following four years we had a blissful time together. Dave was very exciting and driven by both the theatre and politics. I found him interesting and challenging but also great fun to be around.

  One of Dave’s hobbies was restoring old cars. He already had a 1933 Morris Minor sports car with a split windscreen, which he thought was the bee’s knees. But then he bought a newer 1950s Morris Minor for eight pounds. We had a lot of fun hand-painting it and Dave bought an engine and gearbox from a scrapyard.

  Once the car was in working order, we decided to take ourselves to Devon. We managed to get all the way to Devon from Coventry and were rather pleased with the capabilities of our new car. As we headed back home, and were less than an hour from Coventry, the car began spluttering. ‘What’s that?’ Dave asked, pulling on the wheel to keep us driving in a straight line.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ I said, looking out of the windscreen over the bonnet to see if smoke was about to come billowing out.

  The car shuddered to a halt at the side of a country road. ‘It’ll be that engine,’ I said, ‘I knew we shouldn’t have got it from the scrapyard. They saw us coming.’

  Dave popped the bonnet open. He spent a few moments pulling at wires and looking at the engine, then he pulled his head out and said, ‘It’s the fan belt.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound great,’ I said, slumping down at the side of the road, sure that we were going to have to leave our pride and joy on the verge and thumb a lift to a garage.

  ‘It’s fixable. Give us your tights, Sue,’ he said, holding out his hand.

  ‘My tights?’ I said. I had on a lovely pair of brand-new tights, fresh out of the packet that mor
ning, and he wanted me to hand them over for a makeshift fan belt?

  ‘Tights,’ Dave said, giving me a wry look.

  I huffed and puffed but eventually handed over my tights. I was glad I did, as my faithful hosiery got us home to Coventry!

  There was a pet shop not too far from the garage which Dave used when doing up his cars. I had been to see Dave one day when I walked past and in the window were some beautiful, tiny little puppies. They were German Shepherd/Collie cross. I fell in love as I looked through the window and immediately went inside and bought one. She was so tiny and adorable that I put her inside my coat to protect her from the outside world. I then caught the bus to the garage to show Dave my new acquisition. On the way there she threw up all over me!

  ‘Dave, I’ve got something to show you,’ I said when I arrived at the garage, taking this tiny bundle out from my coat.

  Dave immediately took the little puppy from me and she nestled in his hands, her big brown eyes looking up at him. ‘She’s gorgeous,’ he agreed.

  We decided that we should call her Woodbine, as there was a joke that someone had told Dave about a dog called Woodbine and people would ask if they could take it out for a drag. We quite liked that, so the name and the joke stuck.

  A few weeks later Dave came home with another bundle. While he was at the theatre he had seen a little dog in the yard and watched as a caretaker kicked the poor little thing. Dave had gone berserk and asked this man what he thought he was doing to this poor, defenceless little animal. He had picked the dog up and taken it there and then, and that was how we came to have Bugswart, or Bugsy for short. Bugsy had a tail that curled tightly round and she was a real Heinz 57, a mixture of every breed going, and maybe a little bit of pig thrown in. We felt like a real family, and in March 1973 Dave and I married.

  We would go and visit his friends John and Dot who lived in a place called Whitworth on the outskirts of Rochdale. Their cottage backed on to a nature reserve and was the most idyllic place, ideal for walking Bugsy and Woody. I became good friends with Dot.

  One weekend they called to say that they had spotted a house in the area that would be perfect for us so the next weekend we went up and fell for it. We put in an offer and when it was accepted I was thrilled. A few months later I was offered a job at Bolton Octagon TIE. I had had a great three years in Coventry, but I decided that it was the perfect time for a change.

  I moved up to the house and started to settle in to the new area. Dave would follow me twelve months later when he formed a theatre group in the north.

  *

  When I began work at the Octagon, the first play we performed was on the rise of fascism. They’d had a request from a headmaster in the area because he was concerned about the children in his school being recruited by the National Front. We decided that if we were going to do this play justice we needed to see just how the National Front operated. So I went along with another member of the theatre.

  I dressed in a twinset and pearls – a far cry from my usual dungarees – so that I looked respectable and fitted in with the crowd. The police were guarding the event and we were ushered in and told to take a seat. Someone was handing out leaflets with a crude copy of the progression of man from ape. But it had been adapted so that it was about brain size, and claiming to demonstrate that someone from the West Indies had a brain the size of a chimp. I was outraged.

  The meeting got going and I’ve never heard such a load of claptrap in my life. But everyone in that room seemed to be in such agreement at this propaganda and racism. In the end I got so angry I shouted something out, I was very emotional. There was unrest in the room at my comments and a policeman came over and said to me, ‘For your own good I think you ought to leave.’

  The sheer one-sided bitterness in that room really disappointed me. After that we were galvanised and felt that we really had to do a play that addressed this scapegoating that was going on in the community. We devised a play called Non Passeran, which means ‘none shall pass’ and came from the Spanish Civil War. One of my roles was as a young Jewish violinist who had been forced to play at the gates of the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Mike Kay – who would go on to play a big part in my life along with his wife Veron – played a young Jewish boxer. It was a play that taught about the dangers of complacency against extremism and one that I think is as relevant today as it was in the seventies.

  *

  As is happening today, Bolton Octagon was soon affected by governmental cuts. We lost our LEA grant and some of us began to wonder if we might be better setting up on our own. We started looking at places where we could house our new venture, should it ever get off the ground. The Gracie Fields Centre had been built in Rochdale and wasn’t overrun with people trying to use it, so we decided that if we could set up there and prove we could provide educational theatre for the area, we might be able to qualify for a grant to go into schools.

  We left the Octagon and threw all our energies into this new project. We called ourselves M6 because we knew that this venture would involve a lot of touring and that we’d be spending a lot of time on the M6 motorway. We worked in Manchester, London, Bolton and Rochdale. All over the place. We revived Pow Wow, which proved as popular as ever. We did a lot of stuff for schools for children with severe learning difficulties. At the time they were called severely subnormal schools – hard to believe now, I know! At one of these schools Maggie Steed was dressed as a clown. The aim was to get the children to teach the clown how to walk and talk. Maggie wasn’t allowed to do anything that wasn’t a direct instruction from the children. Unfortunately, there was a hole in the crotch of Maggie’s costume which one little boy discovered and began working his finger into it. On that day, for the first time, the clown quite rightly stepped out of character and cried, ‘Help!’

  I was with M6 for about three years. But the company is still around and keeps on going from strength to strength. It has been run wonderfully for over thirty years by Dot, the friend who found me the house in Whitworth. It is one of the most innovative TIE companies in the country, always pushing boundaries, always coming up with fresh ideas. Two generations of children have now benefitted from the work of M6 and that is a credit to Dot and all of her team’s hard work.

  Chapter Eight

  THERE’S AN OLD Native American saying: ‘A child is an arrow from the bow. You let them go, you let them go free.’ And that is how I have always felt about my son Joel. I may have brought him into the world but he is his own person with his own thoughts and feelings and I hope that I have always respected that.

  I was living in Rochdale and working at M6 Theatre Company when I found out that I was pregnant with Joel. It was late 1978, and I was with Dot when I did the pregnancy test. I remember seeing the little blue line and knowing that my life was about to change. At the time my marriage wasn’t as perfect as it had been, but I had a very real sense that my biological clock was ticking and that I really wanted to be a mother. Whatever happened, I would make it work. When it hit home that I really was pregnant I was scared to death and delighted in equal measure.

  I tried to keep my pregnancy quiet at first. But I was working with Andy Hay and Les Smith, the resident writer at M6, on some pieces of theatre aimed at secondary school children. I had to keep going to the loo and kept falling asleep in meetings. Eventually I decided it was time to tell them.

  Taking a big breath, I announced delightedly, ‘I’m pregnant!’

  ‘We kind of guessed,’ Andy said, laughing.

  I suppose the falling asleep on the table was a slight giveaway.

  I felt sick for the first three months with terrible nausea that saw me crawling to my bed whenever I could. I’m sure the notion of morning sickness is a myth; I might have been able to manage if it had just confined itself to the hours before midday. Everyone kept telling me, ‘After three months it will just go,’ and amazingly they were right, overnight I felt fantastic. After that I just loved being pregnant. I bloomed and had a really lovely
pregnancy. I understand why some women become addicted to having babies. I think I could have gone on to have several pregnancies if life had turned out differently.

  I had been in the pub the evening before Joel was born when I felt a dull ache. My friend Dave Swap was there and we were talking about the fact that there would be a baby here any time soon. ‘Well, I hope it doesn’t have your feet, Sue,’ he said.

  ‘What’s wrong with my feet?’ I asked indignantly.

  ‘What’s right with your feet?’ Dave said, laughing.

  That night I went home and watched Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, which isn’t the most relaxing of films, and then I tried to sleep but the ache continued and got worse. This was it.

  ‘I think the baby’s coming,’ I told my husband Dave, and he grabbed his coat, bundled me in the car and we made our way to the hospital. As I clung to the door handle and tried to breathe through my contractions, we came to a roundabout where a police car was parked in the middle of it. Dave put his foot down and hared around the roundabout, not once, but twice. ‘What are you doing?’ I shouted.

  ‘I want him to follow me,’ he said, ‘and when he asks why I’m driving like a lunatic, I’ll say, “My wife’s in labour”!’

  I think the look on my face made him realise that he might have to do without the police escort and just get me to the hospital. Having my husband there made him quite the Renaissance man at the time, I suppose.

  When the gas and air was wheeled out, no sooner had I had a go than, playing the joker, he had the tube in his mouth, breathing in deeply. He seemed very taken with it and every time the midwife’s back was turned he was on it, high as a kite. I hardly got a look in.

  I got my own back. When a nurse turned up with Dave’s breakfast, I took one look and threw up all over it!