Lost and Found

by Lynda Bellingham

  I wished I was dead. God I wished that. The hatred that was emanating from him was tangible. I have never been so frightened. I honestly hoped that I might pass out with fright. Or that he might collapse, have a heart attack. Anything to make him stop. After several hours, as it was getting light, he suddenly stopped and sat down opposite me and without moving his gaze from my face he just sort of fell asleep. I waited until I was sure he was really asleep and then crept to the door, unlocked it, and fled the room. I was still shaking as I woke the boys up for school. My head was ringing with his taunts and screams. I wished there was a way I could help him. Make him stop.

  There was another similar incident one morning in front of the builders where he chased me round the kitchen shouting that women like me deserved to die. The men just stood there, open-mouthed.

  I tried to joke about it. Nunzio would then joke about it with me, sometimes, and I could see the confusion in people’s faces. If I didn’t have enough self-respect to stand up for myself, why should they worry? If I didn’t seem to take it too seriously it must be fine.

  The trouble was, I was just too frightened and too cowed. I kept hoping that Nunzio would see how much I loved him, and how much I wanted to please him, and everything would be OK. He must have despised me. I despised myself. At one point, I decided to take a knife to bed with me as protection. What a stupid thing to do. Thank God, I never lost control – it could have ended up with me in prison.

  Even now, I sometimes ask myself if I created this whole scenario? If I had been stronger, and stood up for myself, and been more Italian, maybe we would never have got to the state we did? Just another symptom of the slow grinding down of my self-esteem.

  Dear Catharine would come as often as she could. She tried so hard to keep me sane. We started to write an idea for a TV series together about a woman who runs a refuge for abused women. Nunzio asked us what it was about one day, and we were rather thrown, because we felt he wouldn’t exactly appreciate the subject matter. We hedged a bit and quickly made up a story. That was a big mistake because, in Nunzio’s paranoiac mind, we were plotting against him and Catharine was trying to turn me against him.

  My new series, Faith in the Future – the spin-off series from Second Thoughts – seemed to be a success. I knew I needed to keep pushing on, but my agent, Sara Randall, was just not getting me the work I wanted. I know this is always a tricky situation with actors and their agents, and perhaps all my upsets had made me a difficult client to place. I loved Sara; she was, and is, a fantastic woman, loyal friend and good agent. However, I had the feeling it was time to move on.

  Leaving Sara was going to be hard for a number of different reasons. I talked to Sylvie Boden, who was the director of Faith in the Future. She recommended I talk to Sue Latimer, who was then an agent with William Morris. I did, and liked Sue very much. She was savvy and tough, and had children of her own, so knew all the problems of juggling a career and a family. She had no idea just how much juggling I was doing at the time! We agreed to give it a go and all I had to do now was tell Sara. I was not looking forward to that.

  I SAT IN MY car outside Sara’s office for a good hour. I had consumed half a bottle of vodka and could not stop crying. I wasn’t just upset about leaving her; I was upset about Nunzio and everything that was going on. My life was a mess and I felt I was letting it all pass me by. I finally plucked up the courage to go in and tell her. I sat there and blubbed and said it was all my fault, and I was sorry, but I needed to move on. She was lovely, and gracious, and let me go. I drove home, still blubbing. Nunzio came in and asked me what the matter was and I told him. He gave a laugh of derision; something inside me snapped and I turned on him: ‘I’d be careful if I were you, Nunzio. I have got rid of my agent, I can get rid of you.’ He just laughed.

  The next day was Saturday 6th April, a date that will be for ever emblazoned on my mind. I woke up feeling wrecked, thanks to the vodka, and an evening spent dealing with Nunzio’s put-downs. After lunch, I found myself standing at the bottom of the stairs. Michael had gone to football practice and Robbie was playing in his room with his friend, Felix. Nunzio came down the stairs on his way to work. He passed some comment – I really do not remember what it was – but I flipped. I turned on him and told him to fuck off. His face turned black as thunder and he picked up the broken newel post on the end of the stairs and raised it to hit me.

  I just didn’t care any more.

  ‘Go on, hit me,’ I said, dully. ‘Go on, Nunzio, I don’t care any more. I’m sick to death of being frightened of you. Put me out of my misery.’ He put down the post and his eyes held mine. I was so tired of feeling scared. My heart always in my mouth, and being on my guard. It had to stop. Someone had to make him stop. I had to make it stop. A light turned on in my head.

  I ran into the kitchen and called the police. Nunzio followed me and pulled the phone jack out of its socket, but it was too late. The call was logged. Five minutes later, the police arrived. They put Nunzio in one room and me in another, and interviewed us separately. I sat there, sobbing, and kept saying, ‘I’m so sorry. Please don’t tell anyone. Please don’t tell the press or I’ll lose my job. If they find out Mrs Oxo is being abused they’ll crucify me. I’m so sorry.’

  They calmed me down and, as they left, they told Nunzio to watch it. That was it. I stood there looking at Nunzio, who seemed to be in shock. He picked Robbie up, went into the kitchen, sat down on the sofa and turned on the TV. Michael arrived home and ran in to sit with his dad. Whoever had brought him home very kindly agreed to take Felix back to his house.

  I shut the front door and stood in the hall. That was it then. It was all over. Finally, I had let in the outside world. Just that fact was enough. To face those policemen and admit defeat was enough to show me it was finished. I went into the kitchen and looked at Nunzio sitting there on the sofa, with an arm tightly round each child. They looked at me with bewilderment. What was going on, Mum? Nunzio then said, ‘You see, boys, what your mummy has done? She is very bad; she wants to send your daddy to prison. Daddy will go to prison; he will have to leave you.’ The boys started to cry.

  How I hated Nunzio at that moment. The emotional blackmail and manipulation. It was suddenly all so clear. Everything boiled down to him; it was all, and only ever had been, about him. He didn’t love his children if he could put them through this. He certainly didn’t love me. It was time to go. As I had said the day before, I could leave my agent, so I could leave him.

  While he was sitting with the boys, I ran upstairs and got our passports and shoved them in a bag. Keeping an ear out, I packed up some of the boys’ clothes, and put the case under the bed. I was able to go out of the front door, round the side of the house to the back garden where the car was parked without being seen. I made two or three journeys and filled the car and threw a rug over everything in the back. Then I went into the kitchen. They were all sitting just as I had left them, staring at the TV.

  ‘You’ll be late. You need to open the restaurant,’ I said. No answer. ‘Come on, Nunzio. I’m going to take the boys out.’

  ‘You’re not taking my boys anywhere. I will stop you, you bitch.’

  ‘I’m going to take them to the park.’ I hoped my shaky voice wouldn’t betray me. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you, guys? We can get a McDonald’s, too.’ The boys jumped up and seemed relieved that the tension had been broken.

  ‘OK, you can go, but you do not take the dog. The dog comes with me.’

  Nunzio stared at me and I felt my heart sink. Did he know what I was planning? Was he going to come back and catch us? I held his eye and he got up and went out into the hall. I followed him, keeping my distance. I didn’t want to look too eager to get him out of the house. He went upstairs to the bathroom and I held my breath. He came down and went back to the kitchen. It was as though he was teasing me. Finally, he kissed the boys and started for the door, throwing a: ‘You walking to the park?’ over his shoulder.

  I swal
lowed and held my breath, then replied, ‘No, because we’re going to stop at McDonald’s.’ Nunzio stood there, looking at me. Then he seemed satisfied with my answer, because he called the dog to him and left. I stood just inside the front door, until I heard his car start up and leave. I waited a good ten minutes and then I called to the children: ‘Come on, guys. Quick, quick, we need to go.’ They were faffing around trying to find their football boots and their hats, and I was getting more and more nervous.

  ‘Please, hurry up!’ Finally, we got in the car. I put the key in the ignition and tried to keep my hands from trembling. I crashed the gears and stalled the engine. Come on, Lynda, get a grip. We set off up the road. I didn’t look back. I was doing it. I was going to be free. It was April 1996, I was nearly fifty years old and had no husband, no agent and at that point in time, no job. But I was going to be free!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

  I MANAGED TO MOVE us all to a beautiful new home in Highgate. Mum and Dad, Jean and Barbara, and Barbara’s husband David, were all brilliant and helped me so much. Dad had driven me back up to London the day after my flight from home with the boys and we had parked the car round the corner from the house, waiting until Nunzio went to work. Then I slipped in and got some clothes and paperwork and, most important of all, our dear Star!

  It took some adjusting, downsizing from a seven-bedroomed house to a three-bedroomed flat. The boys moaned all the time about giving up their swimming pool and their billiard table, but I ploughed on with all the adrenalin-fuelled energy that comes with major emotional upheaval. Our new flat was on two floors: the ground and basement. We had a lovely garden that backed on to a tennis club, which the boys would join eventually, and they each had their own rooms with a bathroom, so they were hardly slumming it! They didn’t have to change schools or give up their friends, so all in all things were pretty good.

  Then, out of the blue, came an opportunity of a lifetime: to star in a movie to be made in Russia. It was a love story, called The Romanovs. It was based on the diaries of Czar Nicholas about the last year of his and his family’s life, in 1918, when they were under house arrest.

  I first heard about the film in October 1996, when I was down in Dorset spending a couple of weeks on a film called The Scarlet Tunic starring Jean-Marc Barr (swoon) and Emma Fielding. It was adapted from a short story by Thomas Hardy and directed by the lovely Stuart St Paul. I was to play a housekeeper who was having an affair with the boss, played by Jack Shepherd. I would love to say our story was the nub of the piece but the reality was we were the subplot. Other notable actors in the cast were Simon Callow, and Gareth Hale taking a break from his partner Norman Pace (working partner, I hasten to add; that is how rumours start). We were all working for peanuts and staying in a brilliant B&B in West Bay.

  One day, the first assistant came and told me there were two gentlemen to see me – a Mr Big and a Mr Pants-Off, apparently – who had come down to Dorset to discuss a big film role with me. I thought it was probably Noel Edmonds trying to do a ‘Gotcha’ on me for his programme, Noel’s House Party.

  I got back to the B&B to find three men waiting. A producer called Mr Baig, a director called Gleb Panfilov, and another huge bear of a man, who was introduced as Mikail the lighting cameraman, who had a video camera clutched permanently in his hand.

  They wanted to video me for the leading role in a film about Nicholas and Alexandra. They spent two hours filming me and then returned to London. The cast all took the mickey out of me and said it was probably a porn film. The next day I talked to my agent about it and she was quite excited because this was a big Russian film, and the director had originally approached Meryl Streep for the leading role, but she was not keen on the possibility of filming in Moscow. More fool her! It was a big leap of faith from Meryl to me I know, but that’s showbiz!

  As it turned out, however, there was no point in me getting excited because the director did not think I was right for the role. Well, that was a red rag to a bull. This was the first chance I had ever had of coming near a decent role in a film and I was not about to let it go without a fight. I told my agent to get me an interview with them on Sunday, and I would come up from Dorset.

  Everyone knows what the Sunday rail services are like. Limited, to say the least. I got on a train at 9 a.m. and seemed to stay on it for most of the day. I finally made it to the hotel in Bayswater and was shown into a suite. There was the director, Gleb Panfilov, and the producer and the cameraman and various others. They were all sitting behind a big table. I sat down opposite them and waited. Then a lady in a dark suit and enormous horn-rimmed glasses came in and introduced herself as the translator for Gleb Panfilov.

  I had decided to show them a scene from the film I was doing, as it had a wonderful moment in it where I stood at a window talking and a tear rolled down my face. It was very moving and just right for the kind of emotion that would be required in a Russian film. When it had finished, there was a long silence and, suddenly, the director was out of his chair and applauding me and coming round the table and giving me a big hug, chatting nineteen-to-the-dozen. The translator was also applauding and translating: ‘Gleb says you are wonderful. He never thought that English actresses had any soul but you have it. He loves you and wants you to be his empress.’

  Everyone was laughing and crying, and I had got myself the job! When things had calmed down the translator said to me, ‘Mr Panfilov wishes to know if you have any questions about the script or any problems with the role?’

  Now, I did have one concern, because in the scene I had read for, it said that the Empress sits up in bed and ‘offers up her beautiful naked breasts’. Naked! I tried to make light of it by saying, ‘Does the director really think the audience needs to see these tired old tits?’ The translator looked aghast and asked me if I really wanted her to translate those exact words.

  ‘Yes, please,’ I replied, watching the director. She repeated my words and the director just turned to the cameraman and said something in Russian. Mikail nodded. Gleb then said something to the translator and she turned to me and said, ‘The director says you please him and the lighting cameraman says there will not be a problem.’

  This was not quite the answer I had hoped for and I didn’t really understand what they were saying. But I decided to leave well alone for the time being. I had got the job; that was the main thing. We all kissed and hugged farewell and I was back on the slow train to Dorset.

  The next day I couldn’t believe it had all really happened, but later that day I got a call from the producer, explaining I would be required to travel to Prague the week before Christmas for make-up and costume tests.

  I rang my mother and father with the news. My mum, God rest her soul, put her foot straight in it by saying, ‘The czarina? Alexandra? Are you sure, dear? Alexandra was very tall and very beaut…!’ She stopped herself.

  ‘Beautiful?’ I broke in. ‘Yes, that’s the word, Mother. But I’d like to point out that I’m playing her in the last years of her life when she’s under house arrest, and prematurely grey!’

  Gleb had wanted a British actress because Alexandra was half-English and half-German. He had been told that the film would appeal to Europe if they had someone British in the role. Everyone else in the cast was Russian, apart from my maid who was going to be played by Rebecca Lacey, a super actress who was the daughter of the late Ronald Lacey. We would be filming in Prague and St Petersburg.

  I finished the film in Dorset and came back to London to get busy. The first thing I had to do was get a visa and sort out who would look after the boys. It was also coming up for Christmas and I was determined that this was going to be a special one. It would be our first Christmas in our new house, and although Nunzio was, as usual, doing his best to spoil things for us, I was not going to let that happen. I organised the whole Christmas before I left, including the dinner table and stockings for the boys. I rushed round buying stuff for the Christmas meal, a
nd even set up and decorated the tree, laid the table and bought the crackers. Then I locked the dining room door so that the boys would not see anything until I returned on Christmas Eve.

  Alena was back working with me, which was fantastic. She had had her fair share of ups and downs and was now the mother of two children herself. A boy and a girl. Billy was a year older than Robbie and Katy was four. Alena was probably the only person who really understood what I had been through and was going through, and she had dealt with Nunzio before so I knew the boys would be safe with her.

  The day of the departure to Prague dawned and I was ready. I gave the boys a big hug and told them I would be back before Father Christmas arrived, to hang up their stockings and to sort out the mince pies in time. They were more impressed by the big Limo that had come to pick me up.

  We drove over to pick up Pat and set off for the airport. I had asked if Pat could come as my make-up person and they had agreed. It was so great to think we would finally work together on a big project. It was like having a security blanket for me and just made the whole job so perfect. Sadly for Pat, the budget did not stretch to a first-class ticket for her so at the airport, she turned right for economy class and I turned left. Which I felt bad about, but what a lovely feeling it was to be going first class!

  I was flying with the other British actress, Rebecca Lacey, and we got on like a house on fire. When we touched down in Prague we were both intoxicated with excitement and champagne. Well, it had seemed churlish to refuse the free bubbly…

  We were met in Prague by an even bigger Limo and whisked to a five-star hotel in the city centre. It had that wonderful look of the sixties about it – all a bit orange in décor, with lots of chunky lights and stainless steel. It was all very retro, although the bedrooms were like a standard Holiday Inn. I unpacked what little I had brought with me and rang Pat’s room, and we arranged to meet in the bar.