So Who's Your Mother

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by Tarquin Olivier


  The Abbey had an efficient secretariat. They advised that for them and the BBC, Larry’s memorial service would be the grandest occasion since the Coronation. They agreed with the music I recommended, much by William Walton, and Alec Guinness for the address, the vari-ous readers and who should be in the procession. They suggested that all Larry’s orders and decorations should be carried in on cushions, led by Douglas Fairbanks with the Order of Merit. I said no one would know which medals were what and it might make him look like a Latin-American dictator.

  Joan asked the well-known theatre director, my old friend Patrick Garland, to take control of the procession and the participants, all actors in need of an experienced director like him. After Douglas Fair-banks with Larry’s OM should come Michael Caine with Larry’s Oscar for Lifetime Achievement, Maggie Smith with a silver model of Chich-ester Theatre, Paul Scofield with a silver model of the National, Derek Jacobi with the Richard III crown worn in the film, Dorothy Tutin with Lear’s crown on TV, Jean Simmons with the Hamlet film script, Ian McKellen with Coriolanus’s laurel wreath, and Frank Finlay with the sword which had been given to Larry by Gielgud to mark his perfor-mance as Richard III after the war, with the Old Vic company at the New Theatre, now the Albery. It had been worn by Edmund Kean, then by Sir Henry Irving.

  The family sat along the aisle in the south pews, between the transept and the choir, Richard and Shelley nearest the altar, then Tamsin, Joan, Julie-Kate and me. In the second row under the VIP stalls, Zelfa was behind Shelley, then Tristan, Isis, Clavelle, and my mother. A steward guided her into the Abbey in a wheelchair. I helped her up the steps to her seat behind me.

  The Abbey was filled to capacity: two thousand with their tickets awarded by the secretariat on a first come first served basis. There were exceptions at our own request for those whom we could not bear to be absent. The lights for the TV cameras blazed down the full length of the clerestory. Many hundreds of people stood outside to watch the arrivals, then hear the service relayed to them. It would have pleased Larry if I had had a notice placed at the west doors saying ‘house full’.

  The organ began to play. We all stood as the procession came down the nave towards us. First the choir, then the shining Cross. The young male chorister had to tilt the Cross far forward towards us to come under the arch of the organ screen. The Dean and Precentor were in gold copes followed by their hierarchy.

  The organ music and the sight of the Cross seized me, from my guts to my head with all the strength of remembered belief. I had played the organ, and at the height of my religious passion as Keeper of the Lower Chapel Choir I had carried the Cross. It had taken me years to climb out of the definitive and attractive simplicities of religion. It now gave me a bursting sense of outrage that I had ever found it so beguiling. But on the other hand, my early faith had been a comfort, a constant rock during those years of such hastening and categorical changes, of body, mind and soul. That sense of belonging then was axiomatic to a sense of stability. My recollection gave me a sense of gratitude.

  Douglas Fairbanks followed with Larry’s OM laid on a cushion, with the others and their offerings in pairs behind him. In the east he mounted the steps to the sacrarium. He handed the cushion with the OM to the Dean who placed it on the High Altar and eventually the sword; the other pieces were placed on blue covered tables each side. They took their seats up there. John Gielgud sat nearby like an icon, with Peggy Ashcroft opposite.

  In the silence the Dean read out the bidding in a mellow voice, echoed gently by the loudspeakers.

  He said: ‘On Friday 20 October 1905 Sir Henry Irving was buried in Poets’ Corner. Eighty-four years later to the day we come to honour the greatest actor of our time, and next year the ashes of Laurence Olivier will lie beside those of Irving and Garrick, beneath the bust of Shake-speare, and within a stone’s throw of the graves of Henry V and the Lady Anne, Queen to Richard III.

  ‘Laurence Olivier received from God a unique and awesome talent which he used to the full. We come then to give thanks …’

  Later in the service again were words thanking God for Laurence Olivier. Alec Guinness delivered his address. At the end of it we all felt we knew Larry just that bit better. Peggy Ashcroft gave a reading from Milton’s ‘Lycidas’, John Gielgud from John Donne’s sonnet ‘Death be not proud’. He finished with words from Hamlet: ‘There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now, if it be not now, yet it will come; the readi-ness is all.’

  The climax of the service was the recorded voice of Larry as Henry V, inspiring his troops with the Crispin’s Day Speech, crying out: ‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers … upon St Crispin’s Dayeeee …’ echoing round the Abbey.

  After the Blessing the Dean led from the High Altar and passed us, followed by the Cross, lowered again under the organ screen, then the choir. Joan and her family. My mother’s wheelchair took some time to arrive, attended by the steward. I helped her down the steps. She sat and then he moved her slowly forward. When we came under the organ screen I saw Joan and her family hurrying out, through the great west doors.

  I put my hand on my mother’s arm, Zelfa and my family behind me, at the speed of a slow march. This, with the sustained splendour of the Abbey’s full organ, gave rise to further emotions. My mother had done so much to create Larry in his early years. We were watched by hundreds of people on either side, come to pay their last respects to my father, for whom they had all thanked God.

  Then through the soles of my shoes I felt the relief shapes of some brass letters. They were the words on the tomb of Livingstone. My hero. Retracing his footsteps in the Zambezi region of Central Africa had altered the entire course of my life. It had led me to working in eighty countries, hoping to create or at least sustain wealth in one way or another. His was one of the noblest hearts ever produced by the British Empire, embodying the highest ideals in the service of man. Then we came to the poppies, stretching in a line across our approach, surrounding the Grave of the Unknown Warrior, represent-ing the world’s most terrible tragedies in the fall of millions, laying down their lives that we might live in freedom. This place was a core of the whole purpose of human existence. We wheeled my mother to one side of the grave, to the glorious bass diapason notes, and wended our way outside.

  Twenty-three

  Zelfa and I were married on Monday 30 October 1989 at the Kensing-ton Registry Office. We had been there several months before, each clutching copies of our divorce certificates. We went into the vestibule, sat down and waited. A woman opened the office door and looked down at us, a large municipal woman.

  ‘So you’ve come to give notice?’

  ‘Yes,’ we said, feeling like domestic staff.

  We sat in front of her desk.

  I explained that we would like to get married on a Monday because that was a convenient day for my club to hold a reception.

  ‘That should be all right,’ she said. ‘Monday is usually a bad day.’ I said we had both been married before and brought copies of our divorce papers.

  ‘Let me see.’ She rubbed them between finger and thumb. I felt as if she was feel-ing a sensate part of me. She found the copies unworthy and said they would not do. She had to see the originals.

  We went a week later when we knew someone else would be in charge. It turned out to be a man who had worked for Larry as a travel agent in the early days of the National Theatre. The date was fixed, the Garrick Morning Room reserved for an evening reception, and Zelfa immersed herself with her dressmaker.

  On the day my children were there and my half-brother Richard as a witness. Zelfa’s dress was a trim fit of embossed silk, cream coloured. It was topped with a bridal touch of tulle stretched across her collar bones, with a chic little jacket and no hat. Whenever her name had to be read out our officiating man in the Registry had to ask for help. Understandably. She stated her name: ‘Sahnebat Zelfa Salihoglu’. When it came to the marriage ce
rtificate her late father’s profession was far grander than mine: ‘landowner’.

  The reception at the Garrick was a success. There were tons of flow-ers from Turkey, tons of Turks, outnumbered by dozens of English friends my mother had not seen for years. Afterwards the actor Robert Hardy gave dinner for the two of us and Zelfa’s mother at Buck’s Club. We flew to Bordeaux for our honeymoon in the Bas-Pyrenées. I wanted her to see Nay, between Pau and Lourdes, where the Oliviers came from.

  My mother had set her heart on surviving to be at Larry’s memorial service. She had made it but within a year she died. Joy stayed on in the house until she felt that she should go to a home to be nearer to her son, who lived in Great Missenden.

  There were many things to go through, all well ordered. In the attic among folded curtains, rolled carpets and various boxes there was a pile of letters stacked in bundles on its own. They went back to her earliest days with Larry: weekly letters she had written to her mother. They gave a first-hand account of how she had been the prime influence on his developing career. It was she who had signed his first contract with Hollywood. He had not dared. His own autobiography Confessions of an Actor had fallen far short of the truth in terms of his profes-sional and his personal life.

  It was obvious to me that the whole purpose of my mother’s keeping those letters would be fulfilled if I included them in a book. I wrote it between many film-related activities in Turkey and Los Angeles. Having been a radio journalist I could write anywhere no matter what interruptions. The first draft even smells of sun lotion from my writing it lying down by a swimming pool. One afternoon at the Hilton a curvaceous model in a bikini was being photographed. One picture shows her stooped over me, her cleavage within my grasp and I never noticed, scribbling away.

  My old friend Andrew Sinclair, now married to Sonia Melchett, introduced me to his literary agent Gillon Aitken who gave it to Hodder Headline. They published My Father Laurence Olivier at the end of summer 1992. The first review was by Alexander Walker, the film critic of the London Evening Standard. It announced the book above the headline on the front page with my picture. He wrote two supportive pages. All the reviews were good. There was relief that I had written generously because I had loved Larry, Vivien and my mother. The book had been produced with wonderful pictures and was reprinted a number of times. It sold more than 15,000 copies in hard cover and paperback, but there were no translations.

  I had a powerful agent in New York. My previous publisher William Morrow and a number of others turned the book down despite saying how much they admired it. The writing had made them laugh, and added depth of understanding and insights and so forth, but no, they could not sell it States side. When Zelfa and I were next there we went to see the agent. He looked less than the top class, authoritative agent we had expected.

  ‘Ya sure,’ he said, ‘liked the book. It made me laugh. I was even a bit moved. Clearly you loved your father right through and held him in high regard.’

  ‘Yes, most certainly,’ I said.

  ‘C’mon,’ he jeered. ‘This is America. That won’t wash.’

  I digested that for a moment. His was not the America I had grown up in and loved. I took aim and fired back: ‘There’s something you should know.’

  ‘Aha, what’s that?’

  ‘It’s something I have never written about.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘In fact I have never even talked about it.’

  ‘Yeah, so, fine. Go ahead.”

  ‘You should know that my father buggered me.’

  A yelp of delight: ‘He did!? Wow. Now you’re talking.’

  As if. In England I received more than a hundred letters about the memoir, all positive. Three listed some errors which should have been picked up by the editor. Two were from old Coldstreamers who had been in my platoon. They said I had been a bit of a disciplinarian but that they had trusted me. Not too bad – it was the Brigade of Guards after all. Several people implored me to write a screenplay.

  For me the difference between writing a book and a script is categorical. Work on a book can withstand interruption. A screenplay can’t, because it is almost entirely dialogue and you have to key instinctively into the tones of voice, the moods, expressions and even eye language, visualisation of the most precise kind. I suppose you could call it ‘method writing’. God forbid the association. I had written several scripts before, taken seriously but not made into movies. With ‘Larry and Viv’, not surprisingly, I became carried away on a surge for the three deceased people I had most loved in the world. I started writing at 5 a.m. and worked straight through with a quick breakfast and lunch, until 7 p.m. It went wonderfully. If the phone rang in the next room I ignored it. Page followed page on the right hand side of an A4 hard cover writing book, any extraneous ideas or inserts on the left page. In a tearing hurry, spelling mistakes galore, I was flying. Even after writing the memoir, further memories came back for the script, they showed their faces, gave me their voices as if I were unfolding a palimpsest. The retentiveness of memory is one of the mysteries which everyone would find rewarding to explore. As there was no research required, that script took less than the usual year I needed, including all the rewrites.

  When the first draft was only a day or two from the end I wanted it never to finish, like a mother weaning her baby. I eased off a bit. The telephone rang in the next room. I decided to go and answer it.

  ‘Hello, is Zelfa there?’

  ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘Zelfa. I’m returning her call,’

  ‘No one here by that name,’ I hung up and went back to Larry and Viv. It had been one of Zelfa’s girlfriends. She called that evening and demanded to know what the hell was going on with Tarquin. Zelfa, of course, understood and explained: ‘You see he’s writing a script. He’s in 1958.’

  Her friend found that difficult to credit. Zelfa’s understanding brought us ever closer.

  The dinner parties we gave with her at the helm were all wonderful. She was an instinctive and fabulous cook, taking infinite care to create original dishes, often guided by recipes she cut from magazines and pasted away in scrapbooks.

  One dinner party stands out. We had Robin Day, the one time Grand Inquisitor of the TV Panorama programmes, and still larger than life, and for the lady opposite him we had the ex-wife of Asil Nadir, one time of Polly Peck; she was called Ays ¸egül, with emerald green eyes, the most beautiful face and fine hands. The other guests were the play-wright and screenplay writer Ronald Harwood and his wife Natasha, and the actor Derek Nimmo and Pat.

  The evening went well from the start. Robin was very taken by Ays¸egül. Half way through dinner he leant over the table to her and asked, in his loud perfunctory way everyone knew so well; ‘Tell me. Have you had a nose job?’

  I nearly died.

  ‘Yes’, she said directly.

  Now with Robin there was such a tonnage of kinetic energy that you couldn’t make him change track. He was like a speeding freight train. He went on:

  ‘Are you pleased with your nose job?’

  ‘Oh very.’

  Luckily Derek Nimmo spoke up, with his slight stammer: ‘I had a nose job too.’

  We all turned to him with relief.

  ‘I was born with an Ottoman proboscis. That was wrong for the sort of universal actor I wanted to be. I needed a straight nose. So I had the nose job. Unfortunately they left me with a turned up button of a nose. So I was con-con-condemned to com-comedy.’

  Only he could have saved the moment.

  Lunch at the Garrick Club on Thursdays was usually with Robin Day, the theatre critic Milton Shulman, Ed Pickering, vice-chairman of Times Newspapers, William Rees-Mogg, one-time editor of The Times, Alistair McAlpine, of the construction company family, and one or two others. We were joined by Michael, Earl of Onslow, a gregarious man with a wonderful sense of humour. We had such a good time that I asked him and his wife Robin to have dinner at home with me and Zelfa, just the four of us. Zelfa surpass
ed even her high standard of food and our foursome made for the most stimulating evening. Robin’s letter said she had never known anything like it.

  One Saturday they invited us for a lunch they were giving for Dennis and Margaret Thatcher a few years after she had retired. On a table of a dozen I sat opposite Denis, while the ex-Prime Minister sat on Michael’s right and Zelfa on his left. Lunch started at one o’clock and continued until six. Margaret Thatcher held forth strongly at her end of the table. She complained about the corruption in Brussels, the stul-tifying bureaucracy, our having to adhere to their directives without their being approved in Parliament, all the usual euro-sceptic points, and the appointment of commissioners like Neil Kinnock who were no more than superannuated politicians with no experience in power. She made a point of criticising the German Chancellor Helmut Kohl for signing up for the unification of East and West Germany without even advising her of the timing.

  The conversation drifted towards the euro. I suggested that few seemed to consider the immense damage done by the unified currency in the United States: the American dollar. This caught her attention. Her blue eyes focused on mine with their full voltage, so I continued. I said there were many different economies in that country, separated by hundreds, even thousands of miles: Alaska with its own unique needs, Seattle with Boeing and internet media, the High Sierras, Los Angeles the one industry town and Silicon Valley nearby, the South with its backwardness, Texas and oil, the ‘Fly-over’ states’ so heavily subsidised by billions of food stamps paid for by everybody else, the Rust Belt, New York and so forth, all needing their own monetary and fiscal policies. All of them were compromised and some damaged for want of them. Amid the unified fixity something had to be flexible. It’s the people that have to give. Forty million Americans move house every year. In the United States one of the first questions any American asks another is: ‘Where are you from?’ The only reason the system works at all is because of their common language, their unity under the Stars and Stripes, and a federal government which dictates the common monetary and fiscal policy.

 

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