by Sue Johnston
Other than that, the labour was an amazing experience. I zoned out of everything that was going on around me, breathing slowly and deeply. When Joel popped out into the world and was handed to me, I just had this overwhelming rush of love for him. I was smitten. But the first question I asked was, ‘Are his feet all right?’ Never mind is he healthy but are his feet all right?
The midwife was very surprised at how quickly he had arrived, considering he was my first. ‘If you have another one, once you get to nine months make sure you don’t cough,’ she said with a smile, handing me a cup of tea. No cup of tea tastes as good as the one after labour. I had the shakes, but I was determined to drink it.
‘Wait there,’ the midwife said, as if it was likely that I would run off down the corridor. She came back a few minutes later with a sippy cup designed for a toddler, full of the precious brew.
For me, having a child felt like I was partaking in the circle of life. Nature takes over your body. All the changes to your body are out of your control. I became very aware of life and death and the order of things, and gained a little understanding of nature’s way and what we are all part of. The whole thing had been such a wonderful experience.
It wasn’t to last, though. I needed stitches and rather than sending an experienced doctor I’m sure they sent in a child that they’d found on work experience. As Bet Lynch once famously said, ‘I’ve got tights older than him.’ And I seem to recall he was dressed like a fisherman. But what do you say in those circumstances, when you’re lying there, vulnerable, legs akimbo: ‘Sorry, but do you mind getting me someone who can shave and isn’t off to get his first catch of the day after this?’
Being stitched up was the most painful experience I had ever been through. Far more painful than the birth. I started screaming and Dave came running in. I honestly think he thought I must be having twins. Afterwards I was very angry. Why hadn’t they anaesthetised me? I felt violated and that my wonderful experience had been marred by this one person. The following day a midwife came to check me. I was telling her of the terrible experience I had had. She took one look at the fisherman’s handiwork and said, ‘No wonder it hurt, he’s sewn through one of the piles!’ I wanted to patrol the corridors and find him to inflict the same torture he’d inflicted on me.
After the birth and once the throbbing from the pile incident subsided I slept, as in those days the midwife would take the baby away to the nursery to give the mum some rest. When I awoke I walked down to the nursery to see my lovely little boy, still not believing that it was real – the idea of me, a mum! I walked into the room and all of the babies were lined up in little cots. Joel began to cry and I knew straight away that it was him. There was an immediate surge of milk into my breasts; it was the strangest thing to experience for the first time, that my body knew my baby, out of all the babies in the room.
One thing having a child does is it makes you look outside yourself. It stops you from obsessing over your own problems and focuses you on this other little being who is relying on you for everything. And no one can make you understand the love that you feel for your child. I still find it quite overwhelming.
I don’t think they do this in hospital any more, but when I had Joel we had to attend a class to show us how to bathe our new baby. It seemed that most of us were in the same boat on my ward, all new mums who didn’t know how to bathe a tiny child correctly. So the midwife set to showing us what to do. She took Joel and soaped him and handed him back to me. I couldn’t hold him; I was terrified of him slipping out of my hands. The midwife took him back and said, ‘Right then, we’ll try you with a Ribena bottle.’ She soaped up the bottle and handed it to me. I followed her instructions to the letter and felt very pleased with myself.
I came away knowing exactly how to wash a bottle of pop but none the wiser about how to bathe a baby. It was only afterwards when a friend said that I didn’t have to be so regimented and there wasn’t an exact way to bathe a child that I realised I could relax and just dunk him in the bath without following fifty separate instructions.
I was on the ward for a few days after having Joel; there wasn’t the rush to get you home that there seems to be nowadays. In the bed opposite me was an Asian lady who obviously hadn’t been in the country long and understood no English. When she came back from having her child she was in a terrible state, crying and wailing. I thought that something must have happened to her baby. The nurses ran around to see if they could find someone who spoke her language. Eventually, they came back with a doctor who could communicate with her. It turned out that after this woman’s baby had been born she saw the afterbirth and thought that it was her soul. She was absolutely terrified. The doctor explained to her exactly what the afterbirth was and left this woman a little more reassured. I did feel very sorry for her, so scared and miles away from her family in this strange town.
On the day I was allowed out of hospital with Joel my parents came to get me. We got back to the house and I wanted my mother and father to stay with me and show me what to do! They stayed for a little while, but of course I had to face the world as a mum and just get on with it. That said, it was lovely to see my parents with Joel. They loved this new baby so much. My dad was so taken with his new grandson. At first he struggled to hold him as he was so small – I think he thought he might break him – but as he got a little bigger and filled out my dad became more confident in picking him up.
It was shortly after I had Joel that my marriage to Dave ended. We had been trying to hold it together but things had been going wrong for some time. I wanted it to work, for us to be a family unit, but I had to admit that we weren’t going to be together and quickly adjust to life as a single mother. Because the nature of our work meant that we spent a lot of time apart, I didn’t find him not being there all the time particularly strange at first and, anyway, I had a baby to look after. But these things catch up on you and I soon missed him, and started to wonder what had gone wrong and blame myself for the breakdown of our marriage.
I really wanted to be a brilliant mum. I hoped that I would be able to breeze it but anyone who’s ever had a child will tell you (and if they don’t they’re lying!) that it’s hard work at first. Back then everyone used towelling nappies, so as well as the sleepless nights, the fretful days and the sheer responsibility of having a child, there was also the relentless washing of bloody nappies! One day I was at the sink, dragging nappies out of the ammonia bucket they’d been soaking in, when I suddenly burst into tears. I remember thinking very clearly, ‘I can’t do this, I’m going to kill him or drop him or hurt him.’ I was on my own and I was really beginning to feel it. I felt so vulnerable and lonely.
I wouldn’t let anyone smoke in the house – this is the norm now, but at the time everyone smoked willy-nilly. I would also have the heating on and it was paralysingly hot. One day I called Cathy, a retired midwife friend of mine, because I was worried to death about a rash that Joel had.
‘Has he got a temperature?’ she asked calmly.
‘Well, yes, he’s hot,’ I said, looking at Joel sweltering in his cot.
‘Is he lethargic? Is he responding to your voice?’ Cathy was being the voice of reason in response to my near hysteria.
‘Joel!’ I said gently. ‘Joel!’
His face was red and hot and he looked totally fed up but he recognised my voice.
‘Yes, yes he is, but he’s covered in this rash and lobster red. I don’t know what to do, Cathy,’ I said, panicking. ‘I think at this rate I’ll have to take him to the hospital.’
There was a pause on the other end of the phone then Cathy asked, ‘Sue, have you got the windows shut?’
‘Yes,’ I answered.
‘And the heating?’
‘That’s on too.’
‘And is he in his cot?’
‘Yes, all tucked in,’ I said.
‘Sue, it’s the middle of summer, the sun’s cracking the flags, you don’t need to take him to the hospital, you just ne
ed to cool him down!’
Poor Joel was dressed for an arctic winter, but it was the only way I knew. When we’d been in hospital the wards had been boiling hot and we would be chastised if we so much as went near a window to open it. I unswaddled my poor boy and not very surprisingly his rash went within the hour.
I was forever putting Joel in the car and rushing him to the doctor’s. I’m sure the doctor’s receptionist used to peek through the blinds and think, ‘Here comes that bloody woman again.’
Andy Hay, one of my dearest friends, was a lodger in the house at the time and my friends Dot and Margot were nearby and I could talk to or ask them for help. Everybody was so supportive and my friends and family really got me through that difficult time. Life began to get back on an even keel.
Another thing that got me through, believe it or not, was the delivery of second-hand twin tub that my parents had bought me. I was finally freed from the nappy drudgery. Not long afterwards I borrowed ninety quid off my mother and bought a washing machine – I thought all my birthdays had come at once when that arrived! It was so joyful as, unlike the twin tub which needed constant supervision, the washing machine could be loaded and left. The wonders of modern technology! I could now go for a nap when Joel slept.
The best advice I got at the time, and that I pass on to any new mums, is sleep when the baby sleeps. Let everything else go and hang. Being constantly tired just exacerbates everything else that you have to deal with as a new mum. Lack of sleep made me feel weepy and despondent but as soon as I had forty winks I was ready to take on the world again. Although I felt down and unable to cope at times, I feel blessed that I was spared the curse of post-natal depression. Having suffered from depression I might well have been predisposed to it, but the black dog stayed away at this time in my life.
I had to go back to work after seven weeks. At the time, statutory maternity leave was only about three months and I’d used some of it up before I had Joel. I started to get into a panic, as I hadn’t made any arrangements for what I was going to do when I returned to work. It had never occurred to me to sign on the dole, and while Dave was generous I didn’t want to rely on him for money now that we had split up. Anyway, I have always felt that if I’m capable of working, then I should.
It was my friend Clive Russell – an actor I’d met through Bolton Octagon – who told me straight that I didn’t have a choice, I had to get back to work and I needed to sort out some childcare, not just hope that some would fall from the sky. Although funnily enough once my decision to get back to work was made it did feel like my childcare prayers were quickly answered.
One of the actors who was in the M6 Theatre Company said that his wife would be able to look after Joel. She could come to our house in the morning to take over and then I could come home at lunchtime to breastfeed and then return to work. The guilt of leaving Joel at such a young age was somewhat tempered by the trust I had for this lady. I knew that he would be well cared for.
At night I found it hard being on my own. I didn’t have anyone to help me with the day-to-day routine: sharing the load while I dealt with working full-time, sleepless nights and breastfeeding…well, they have a term for it now: ‘breastfeeding on demand’, my term for it was ‘relentless’. I remember Veron thinking she was being helpful saying, ‘He should be sleeping right through by now,’ when Joel was about six months old because her daughter Gemma was sleeping through beautifully. Everyone was chipping in with their ‘helpful’ advice. I knew what he should be doing, he just wasn’t doing it! In fact, the first time that Joel slept through for more than five hours I woke him up as I was so worried by the anomaly.
My parents were really helpful throughout this time. They used to come over and clean the house, but my mother being my mother didn’t stop at putting the vac round. I’d come home and the entire house would be rearranged. Tables, chairs, beds. When I objected, she looked at me like I was totally ungrateful and said, ‘Well, it all looked wrong.’
A few months later the woman who was looking after Joel got pregnant so I was stuck again, but my mother and father stepped in. I had weaned Joel by this time so they used to take him to their house in Warrington, where they’d moved after I left home, and I used to absolutely hate it when he stayed there overnight. I would come home from work to a babyless house and feel bereft. But we established a little routine. My parents would take him off, I’d weep, my mum would tell me to stop fussing and I’d go to work.
I did try him at a babyminder’s in Rochdale but he hated it – crying when I left and as soon as he saw me again – so it was back to my parents once more. I have to say that my mum and dad were always fantastic with Joel, they had such energy for him and there is no way I could have brought him up and gone back to work without them. This for me is testimony to the fact that life just isn’t black and white. On the whole, my relationship with my mother wasn’t what I would have wanted it to be, I would have liked to be closer, for her to have been more loving. But there were times when she really engaged with me and where I was at. I suppose it was when it was to do with family. Anything outside of our family frightened her, but when dealing with her own she was a force to be reckoned with.
So I kept working and my parents looked after Joel. On his first birthday I was there in the morning but in the afternoon I had to travel to London with M6. It was then that Joel walked for the first time. I hated the fact that I wasn’t there, I still do.
Eventually, the amount of time that I was spending away from Joel wore me down. There were times when I was rehearsing and performing and practically a week would go by and I hadn’t seen him. I remember working at the Contact Theatre in Manchester and I would try to leave Joel in the morning and he would cling to me. The whole situation had become too much and I needed to address it.
I realised I was again at a juncture, of the same significance as when I decided I had to pursue acting in Liverpool. It required a leap of faith. So I took a twopronged attack. I made enquiries to see if I might be accepted on a teaching course, but I also applied to agencies to try to find an agent who would represent me for TV and radio work. I was lucky enough to find an agent who would take me on.
Chapter Nine
I HAD BEEN with my agent in Manchester only a short time when she put me up for a role in Coronation Street as Mrs Chadwick, the bookie’s wife. I got the part and was absolutely thrilled to be given the opportunity to perform in this great British institution.
Nothing prepared me though for actually walking on that set. The street itself looks smaller in real life than you might expect but it is unmistakably Coronation Street. The new houses had yet to be built at the time, and the extra set of the café and the butcher’s wasn’t there either. It was just the Rovers Return, the row of terraces, the cobbles and the corner shop.
Meeting the actors who played the characters I had watched for years was an experience. I had been an actor for years myself and I knew I should be calm and collected but there was something so iconic about some of those characters that I was as giddy as a kipper.
I was washing my hands in the ladies’ toilet at Granada when Doris Speed who played Annie Walker came in. I stopped in my tracks, face to face with a National Treasure! She came up to the sinks, nodded to me, and then rummaged in her bag. There was so much that I wanted to say to her but I just managed a strangled, ‘Hello.’
She reached in her bag and pulled out a wig, which she placed on the ledge in front of the mirror. Then she took off her hat and fitted the wig over her own hair, transforming into Annie Walker in front of my very eyes. I stood there, still washing my hands, mesmerised. She put her hat in her bag, smiled politely and went on her way. I smiled back, still wringing my hands under the tap. She must have thought I was a compulsive hand washer!
I was then called through to rehearsals where I was just awestruck with everyone I was introduced to. They were all very warm and welcoming, there was none of the cliquishness that you might assume goes on with long-
running shows like Corrie.
Liz Dawn, who played Vera, put me very much at ease. We would go on to become good friends. Then Pat Phoenix came in and she had this amazing charisma about her, your eyes were just drawn to her. She breezed through the room, chatting with everyone. She’d just come back from some time off and had obviously brought with her an unlined face. She claimed it was her second face-lift, and everyone was commenting on how it suited her. I felt like I’d been let into a little club, privy to all this potentially scurrilous information. Years later I would play Pat Phoenix in a TV biopic of her life together with Tony Booth, the actor and father of Cherie Blair. My mother had a picture of me on the wall dressed as Pat with a pack of Pekinese dogs surrounding me. That she loved that picture was due to her admiration for Pat Phoenix, I’m sure!
A little later I was sitting in the Green Room and Bryan Mosley who played Alf Roberts popped his head round and asked if anyone could play bridge. I went to put my hand up to indicate that I did but I couldn’t bring myself to speak up, let alone play – I thought I might let myself down with my nervous shaking hands if I agreed to make up the numbers, so I just stayed put.
I was nervous as hell but I knew that it was a great opportunity so I threw myself into it. Watching my first episode on TV, Andy said that I did well but that my shoulders were up round my ears because I was so tense with nerves. I tried to keep my shoulders where they should be for the rest of my TV career. I was cast in three episodes but a few years later I bumped into the casting director who said that they had wanted to bring me back more permanently but I had already got a job elsewhere.
*
It was 1982 and my agent had put me up for a role in a new drama that was going to be set in Liverpool. The producer Phil Redmond – who had previously created and worked on Grange Hill – had bought a cluster of brand-new houses for Mersey Television. Six of these formed what would become Brookside Close and the rest were used for the canteen, the editing suite, production office, make-up and wardrobe. Phil wanted the whole thing to look and feel real to both the viewers and the actors.