Lost and Found

by Lynda Bellingham

  New Year’s Eve of 2004 was spent lying on my back in agony. I got several calls from Mr Pattemore making sure I was OK and, as the evening progressed, he kept telling me what was going on at his end, including how some woman was trying to chat him up. I didn’t want to know! I finally turned my phone off, had a good cry and went to sleep.

  I did feel a bit better the next day, and the day after I went back to work. I spoke to Michael who was on his way back to Spain but I was beginning to think that the chances for my hoped-for reunion with him were fading fast.

  Oh, me of little faith. He was soon back on the phone telling me he was coming over next weekend.

  We had a fantastic couple of weekends after that. I was suddenly nervous about anyone finding out about us because I didn’t want the boys to know, unless I was sure of the relationship, and I certainly didn’t want Nunzio to find out, because he would put the mockers on it straight away. I wouldn’t let Michael come to my opening night because of all the press. He did come to the show one Friday night, when he arrived from Gatwick. I asked him to buy a bottle of wine to drink in the bar with the girls and a bottle of wine for us to have in the hotel. I was so nervous I rushed into the bar and went straight past him!

  After some confused episodes when I was talking about Michael Pattemore to the few people who knew of him in the early days – because of my son being Michael as well – I coined the name ‘Mr Spain’ for him. It somehow seemed to go well with our clandestine meetings in the Marriott Hotel, Swiss Cottage.

  Michael had left his girlfriend by now, and we seemed to be getting very close, very fast. Early on, I completely freaked because he had booked some weekends in advance, without consulting me, and I suddenly felt I was being taken over. We had a row and I told him to cancel the flights. He went back to Spain and didn’t call me for a week. I panicked even more and realised that was not at all what I wanted. So I rang him and asked him to come the following weekend. I booked into the Marriott to make it special, and this set a pattern.

  Mr Spain used to arrive quite late on a Friday night with his wheelie hand-luggage bag crammed with bottles of red wine. This time I was very nervous, because I hadn’t seen him for a couple of weeks, and I had tried hard to make myself be less intense about the relationship as I felt we needed to calm down. But I opened the door, saw him standing there, realised how much I fancied him and forgot all about my good intentions!

  We were going through a great deal in these first few weeks, especially with it all being played out in hotel rooms. And we also had another problem, which I discovered on one of our ‘Friday Nights’.

  I was waiting impatiently for Mr Spain to arrive. I had booked the Athenaeum because if I could get away from North London sometimes I felt more secure. It was also such a lovely place to be and I reckoned we deserved a little luxury. I answered the knock on the door and there was my beloved with his hand luggage as usual. I gave him a big hug and proceeded to open a bottle of wine. I was so busy running about that I didn’t notice he hadn’t taken his jacket off. I turned to give him a glass of wine and he told me to sit down and listen to what he had to say: ‘You may not want to ever see me again after you hear what I have to say, Lynda.’ Oh my God, what now?

  Michael began to tell me his story from the beginning. His early days as a roofer in Crewkerne. Meeting his wife, Jan, and going to live in Cornwall. Getting married and having his two children, Stacey and Bradley. He opened the biggest nightclub in Blackpool in the eighties called the Palace, and was at the top of his game. Then disaster struck, recession hit and he found himself penniless. He tried, unsuccessfully, to run a nightclub in Florida. He then met a man who introduced him to a man … It was an incredible story and ended with him being wanted by the FBI in 1997. And the next time he had returned to the UK he had been detained at Gatwick airport, picked up by the police and then taken to the nearest police station. He had been forced to go to court charged with ‘Recklessness’ because the British police couldn’t think of what to charge him with. His wife was also being charged with him so he was given the option of pleading guilty, even though he was innocent and prepared to fight the case, so that he could go free. With two small children they could not face a long-drawn-out court case with the possibility that they might both go to prison.

  The lawyers, and even the police dealing with the case, were convinced that Michael would only get a suspended sentence. He had no criminal record and had never had a whiff of trouble in his professional life. So he took their advice and pleaded guilty. However, the judge had other ideas and had decided to make an example of Michael. He sentenced him to twenty months.

  By the time Michael finished telling me his story, dawn was breaking. He stood up to go. I grabbed him and gave him a big kiss.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous! I don’t care what you did. It’s in the past. Let’s forget about it and get on with the present.’

  (I actually had dinner with the policeman who was in charge of the case at the time. He and his wife came to see Losing Louis and then we went out for a meal. He was a lovely man and couldn’t stop telling me how shocked the police had been that Michael was sent to prison.)

  We embarked on our affair with gusto. Sadly, we couldn’t enjoy the start of it for long because my father died in January 2005. Once again, Michael and I were at the Athenaeum. It was a Saturday night and I had done two shows and was feeling very tired. I knew Dad was failing and I was intending to go down the next day, Sunday, to see him. Michael and I were having supper in our room and I was really edgy and giving him a hard time. I felt guilty being there when I should have been with Barbara and Jean and Dad. I told Michael I wanted to leave early the next morning. Poor Michael. He was being so understanding, and I was being such a bitch. In the middle of the night I woke up with a terrible feeling of dread and I just could not go back to sleep. I got dressed and left with hardly a word to Michael, simply that I would ring him later.

  ‘I hope your father hasn’t died, Lynda, because you’ll always blame me for keeping you here when you should have been there.’ He was right. But it was in no way his fault. I knew that. I drove home to change and get some things, but the next thing I knew, my mobile phone rang, and it was Barbara telling me that Dad had died in his sleep.

  My world went dark. I rang Michael and told him. I told him it was not his fault and I would love to see him next week. I needed him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  MY BELOVED PARENTS TAKE THEIR LEAVE

  THAT CHRISTMAS OF 2004 was a turning point in so many ways. As if meeting Michael Pattemore was not emotional enough, I was aware all the time that my father was dying. For the last six weeks of the year he could not leave his bed. He stopped eating and it was as if he had decided he had had enough. The last twelve years had been so painful for him in so many ways…

  The last time I remember seeing my parents together was for my fiftieth birthday party. Mum and Dad had always come to all my parties: Mum loved to chat to all the actors and I think Dad enjoyed standing back and just watching. I held the party in my garden at Avenue Road in 1998. It was a lovely sunny day and I had a hundred people who all had a special place in my heart. Dill, my neighbour, had a jazz combo and agreed to play. I, of course, insisted on singing. Jean had made me a lovely cake and I did all the catering. I also wrote a poem mentioning almost everyone there by name.

  We had a lovely day and it was so good to have Mum and Dad there as usual. I think the Alzheimer’s was beginning to kick in then as she was starting to forget things, but she was in her seventies and we thought it was just the aging process. Her mother, my granny, had suffered from dementia and my mum had had to look after her. I remember her saying it was such hard work because my Gran was very independent, and insisted she could look after herself. But she couldn’t. She would go to the village shop, for example, and buy stuff, then get home and realise she had forgotten most of the things on her list. So then Mum would have to go again. Everything had to be done twice.
r />   As far as we can ascertain, Mum started showing signs of Alzheimer’s in 1993 but dear Dad kept it from us. It only became really apparent after my father had a fall in 1999. When he had given up the farm, he had kept a couple of fields on because he just loved to be out doing things. I think that it also helped him deal with Mum’s dementia because he had somewhere he could escape to for a few hours.

  The day he fell, Dad, typically, was cutting down a tree, standing on a log in the back of a minivan, in the middle of a field. At the age of 80! As he landed, he said he heard his neck go, and there he was, just him and his Jack Russell dog, who sat faithfully at his side and would not budge. He had been lying there for four hours, when a couple of walkers passed and found him. He was taken to Stoke Mandeville Hospital where he was X-rayed and pronounced fit to leave, but for the next six weeks he was in agony.

  My sisters and my mother nursed him, and that was when Barbara and Jean realised that not only was Dad very poorly, but that he had been hiding the fact that Mum was struggling to maintain her normal life. What clarified it for them was when Mum asked Barbara how to use the washing machine.

  Jean had been a nurse at one point in her life and whenever the family needed medical attention, it usually came down to her to sort things out. So she arranged to take Mum to see the GP. Jean said it was awful because Mum seemed to know something was wrong and was trying to hide it. Whenever the doctor asked her a question she turned to Jean and asked her, until eventually the doctor had to ask Jean to wait outside the room.

  Alzheimer’s was diagnosed. My father was devastated. He’d managed to look after her really well until he had his accident.

  Dad was normally a terrible patient and a bit of a hypochondriac (what man isn’t?), so when he complained that his neck was not getting any better, Barbara and Jean didn’t take much notice. But after six weeks it did cause concern. Finally, Barbara had a discussion with a physiotherapist who thought it was a good idea to get him checked out, and Barbara decided to get a private X-ray done for him. Lo and behold, he had broken his neck and had been walking around in grave danger – if he had fallen again he could have either died or been paralysed for life. He was taken back to Stoke Mandeville and had to be put in traction because his neck had set incorrectly in the weeks he did not get treatment. It was incredibly painful and he was so distressed. By the time they got him on the operating table he was very weak and he crashed. This resulted in making him very frail, and he never fully got back up to speed again. The doctor told us he probably had a stroke as well and this in turn made him forgetful. Not badly at first but enough to trouble him.

  He definitely started to deteriorate after this. He had always been such a strong man, physically and mentally, and it was awful to have to see him struggle to keep things together. When I was young, I remember stories about his flying days. Not that he talked a lot about the war, but he did mention the odd incident, and this one has always made me feel proud. My father was flying bombers and on one mission was being harried by a German fighter plane that was trying to shoot him down. Dad was able to put in some good defensive manoeuvres, limited as he was in a bomber, but he was lucky because eventually the German pilot had flown alongside my Dad’s plane, tipped his wings at him, given him the thumbs up and flown away. Maybe the pilot’s heart just wasn’t in it. But now, my hero dad was starting to slowly lose his grip on things, and became very emotional, especially about Mum.

  And so the dreaded moment arrived when we had to decide what to do for the best. Mum had recently had a fall and broken her hip so she was now very disabled, and Dad just did not have the strength to lift her.

  It was decided that we had to put Mum in a nursing home. Like most families who have to go through the pain of putting elderly relatives in care, my sisters and I saw over a dozen before we chose what we thought was the right place for Mum. But it turned out to be more of a respite home and they could not deal with the dementia. This is the trouble with so much of the care available – it is not specific enough for Alzheimer’s. It takes a very special kind of carer to deal with these patients. I do a lot of work now with the Alzheimer’s Society and it is vital we, as a society, recognise the importance of care for the elderly, particularly those with dementia. It is going to affect so many of us in the next twenty years because we live so much longer now.

  Mum then went to a horrible place where they drugged her and mistreated her. It was awful. Then, finally, we found Chiltern View Nursing Home and it was brilliant. The staff were just fantastic and the whole atmosphere in the place was caring and loving.

  I recall a wonderful moment once when I went to visit Mum. There was a lovely man who used to come and sit next to her. We were sitting together and he came and joined us, and took Mum’s hand and gave it a kiss. She looked at him for quite a long moment and then she turned to me, smiled and said, ‘I know it’s the wrong man but it doesn’t really matter now!’

  It was so sweet and touching and funny. One grasped those moments because they just helped one get through all the pain.

  Mum was a very easy patient in some respects. One of the most difficult aspects of Alzheimer’s is the aggression that many patients exhibit towards their carers. Fortunately, Mum was not like that, except the day she was taken to the first home we had found for her. I cannot begin to know how terrible it must have been for our father, but my sisters told me that Mum just kept screaming at him, ‘Why are you doing this to me? You said you loved me. Don’t leave me. I want to stay in my home. I looked after my mother when she was ill; why can’t you look after me? If you really loved me you wouldn’t do this!’

  Poor Dad had just wept. But it was impossible for him to manage because of his neck. He could hardly push her wheelchair, never mind lift her into bed. He was also starting to make mistakes with his driving. This was the hardest thing to tell him.

  He used to go off to Tesco and have his breakfast in the café and chat to the ladies who worked there. They got to know him. One day one of the ladies took my sister aside and said she was concerned because he had been in and had breakfast, then come back an hour later and ordered another one. This was followed by an incident in the car park when Dad hit another car. Finally we had to break it to him that it wasn’t safe for him to drive. He hated not being able to go off when he felt like it, and it was very hard on my sister Barbara as she had most of the care to deal with.

  Those last few months that Mum was at home, my sisters bore the burden of most of the care but I did get down, sometimes, spending a few days with my parents and helping. I was grateful, in a way, to have those intimate times with them both. It is a cliché, I know, but we do revert to childhood as we get older, especially if we have to be cared for, and it is very touching as a child of an adult to have the roles reversed.

  The hardest thing when dealing every day with dementia is the repetition. The same conversations over and over again. It drives one mad and it is very difficult not to get cross with the person. It was easy for me in a way because I was not there all the time, but I did make a special effort to never get grumpy. I loved making Mum laugh and would tell her stories and jokes and cook her all her favourite foods. I cherished those moments with her and they are the memories I have in my mind’s eye, now. One memory that will always stay with me is that Mother had incredibly soft white skin. She never sunbathed and she was remarkably free of wrinkles. She had one of those walk-in baths and she would sit there quite happily chatting away. She loved all things purple so there was lots of mauve around. Her towels and soap, and always a lingering fragrance in the air of lavender.

  I was not much use at this time as I was trying to keep things going in London. I had to work to keep all the bills paid and, even after the injunction on Nunzio, he was still giving me grief one way or another. Jean helped as much as she could and would drive down most weekends. However, we both decided that Barbara needed a rest and persuaded her, and her family, to take a break. Barbara was a bit of a control freak and left
copious notes and instructions for feeding the dogs and cats and generally running the household.

  I spent a very happy week with Dad. We would go for walks and then visit Mum. Dad would get very sad then and we would have a cry together over a glass of red wine. We would light a fire and sit in front of the flames with our toes toasting nicely and talk about everything from childhood days to the war, and my troubles with Nunzio, and how the boys were doing at school.

  DAD DIED IN mid January 2005, and Mum died the following month. Apparently, the staff at her nursing home had been discussing the death of Mr Bellingham and, that night, Mum had a stroke and never regained consciousness. It was as if she knew. Yet for the past year she had been completely unresponsive. There was no recognition in her eyes at all and her health had deteriorated so much we had all been expecting her to go.

  I let myself down very badly over Mum’s final hours. I was invited to the christening of Lynda La Plante’s adopted son, Lorcan, in February 2005. It was on a Sunday afternoon and I was not sure that I should have been going as I really should have been visiting Mum. I only had the Sunday off as I was in the West End appearing in Losing Louis at the Trafalgar Theatre. I talked to my sisters and they agreed I should go to the christening because Mum loved Lynda La Plante and would have wanted me to go and support her. During the afternoon I spoke to my sisters, who told me Mum was fading fast.

  I’m afraid to say I got very drunk, and decided to get a mini cab down that night to Aylesbury to be with her. I sat in the back of the car with a bottle of wine and cried all the way to the nursing home. I must have arrived in the early hours of the morning, but the staff were fantastic and made me loads of cups of coffee. I sat with Mum and tried to tell her everything was OK and that Dad would see her very soon. Talking about it later to Jean, she told me that Mum had not been distressed until I arrived drunk and sat and poured my heart out to her. Typical me, I guess. Selfish to the end. I pray I did not really cause my mother distress in her last few hours. She died the next day in her sleep.