Old rage, p.5
Old Rage, page 5
I am discovering now that the relationship often ends with this strange role reversal as the mother ages. I ended up bed-bathing my mother and carrying out intimate care in the last weeks of her life, something that mortified her but seemed just repayment for all the years she had nurtured me. As I combed her hair, I would tell her she was beautiful. It was obvious no one had ever done that before. In fact, she shyly told me that she had always been worried about her looks. She was, in old age and, judging by photos, when she was young, dazzlingly lovely. How tragic that in those austere days no one made her feel attractive, except maybe my dad in a jokey, awkward way, although he would protect her from difficult customers in the pub, and once slapped me hard for being rude to her. My mother was a successful worker behind the bar in hotels and pubs, and on the counters of shops, but she always saw her most important job as being a wife and mother. Which is all very well if you’re a good one, which I wasn’t.
Two weeks before Ellie Jane was born I was doing a broadcast, and two weeks after I was giving my all as Senna, wife of Hengist Pod, in Carry On Cleo. I was proud to be part of a film in which my friend Kenneth Williams as Julius Caesar had the deathless phrase ‘Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!’ but it was not a comfortable engagement. I was still breastfeeding Ellie Jane, so my mother was in the dressing room waiting to thrust her at me whenever I could escape from the set. The Carry Ons didn’t hang around. Only one take was expected and then quickly on to the next. Time off to feed a baby was not an option. So there was none of that lovely quiet bonding that is intended to take place between mother and child. It was a salutary lesson for baby Ellie Jane, perhaps a forewarning of a childhood being pushed from pillar to post by my job. All of my girls have spent much time in tatty dressing rooms, digs and neighbours’ houses, looked after by my mother and, after her death, by dressers, fellow cast members, various wonderful au pairs and friends. My youngest daughter, Joanna, sat in a box at Drury Lane on matinee days of Sweeney Todd. I thought it was a treat. Only recently did she explain that she was completely traumatised by seeing her mother regularly thrown into a red-hot oven.
We seldom had holidays. Neither of my husbands nor I did holidays as children. John occasionally stayed in a relative’s caravan in Wales and I remember a pub outing to Ramsgate when I was about six, mainly for being groped by one of Dad’s customers whilst crushed next to him on a fairground ride. My girls’ children have several holidays a year.
In my defence I did spend absolutely all the time that I was not working with my children, and turned down any jobs that would interfere with their schoolwork. When she was a baby, I dragged Ellie Jane, along with my mother, to New York, when I was doing Entertaining Mr Sloane on Broadway, for which I was nominated for a Tony Award, but once she and Jo were school age I would not leave them, thereby vetoing a possible career in America. Mrs Brigstocke, the high mistress of St Paul’s Girls’ School, said I was unusual amongst all the high-flying parents in that I would always respond to her request for a meeting to discuss Ellie Jane’s latest misdemeanour, once rushing to the school wearing full stage make-up and wig between the matinee and evening performances of Annie to cope with the latest drama.
I may not have taken them on holiday much, but I provided them with lovely homes. When Ellie Jane was born I was living in a rented basement flat in which the kitchen was combined with the bathroom. Then I daringly bought a cottage with an outside lavatory, which I did up, paying for it one job at a time, eventually selling it for a tidy profit. I was on the property ladder, which gave me and my family a bit of security, so that even in out-of-work periods we had a roof over our heads.
Despite my absences due to work, I loved my girls with all my heart and soul, which may have contributed a bit to them turning out to be splendid women. But there is no doubt that their childhoods lacked stability. Joanna probably suffered the most; being the youngest by ten years, she became the peacemaker. I realise the toll this took every Christmas when I receive a DVD from her husband, another son-in-law called Matt, of the year’s events. Their three children go on wonderful adventures and holidays and there in the middle, shrieking with delight, is Joanna, belatedly living the fun childhood she didn’t have enough of.
My only comfort is that, despite their rackety childhoods, all three of my daughters are wonderful mothers. They have demanding jobs yet manage to be there for their offspring much more than I ever was for them. They are considerably helped by partners who totally share the burdens and delights of running a home and bringing up children. I was married to men from old-fashioned working-class backgrounds who, with the best will in the world, and despite efforts to acknowledge the feminist revolution, were brought up in times when men wouldn’t be seen pushing a pram, let alone changing a nappy.
As far as mothering skills go, maybe my daughters have benefited from my example of how not to do it, just as my disorderly approach was probably a reaction to my mother’s rigidity and her disquiet when our lives became chaotic through circumstance. The one behaviour I did inherit from her is allowing the household to revolve around the moods of the paterfamilias. ‘You just wait till your dad gets home’ became my ‘Don’t upset Daddy, he’s in a bit of a mood.’
We all smile now at the memory of the first visits home of my sons-in-law, who were greeted by a grunt or snarl from John, then frantic, compensatory prattle from me. John didn’t like people invading his space, even potential sons-in-law. All this changed towards the end of his life, when he found sobriety, and I am anguished to think how much he would have enjoyed his eight grandchildren had he met them. The three that he did meet remember him with pleasure. The others are very proud that Mister Tom was their grandad. Lola and Molly-Mae are at Manchester University and secretly took a photo of themselves outside the John Thaw Studio. Not bad, I told them, for a boy who only got one O level.
When life gets hard for my girls it is gut-wrenching to just be an onlooker. To relinquish my front-line duty of leading them not into temptation and delivering them from evil, and letting them take the responsibility themselves with the help of their immediate loved ones, as befits my age and status, is not natural to me. What John used to call my Messiah complex is still deep in my psyche, and he was right that oftentimes it takes away people’s own power and ability to look after themselves. Right and proper, but this back seat is uncomfortable.
Why can’t I relax and enjoy my daughters’ solicitude? Contentment and wisdom have not come to me in old age. I am a grumpy old woman. It is true, particularly in the last two years, that I have become more aware of pain than pleasure. Grenfell Tower, immigrants drowning and reviled, food banks, appalling crimes against children, bloody Brexit, have tortured my mind. Ludicrously and unhealthily out-of-proportion misery has swamped my brain.
November 2017
My mental pain has suddenly become physical.
I went to see the stage show of An American in Paris, in which my friend Julie was appearing, and planned a lovely supper after the show, trying to cheer my miserable self up.
The road on which I parked my car had an incline and it was an effort to push open my car door. As I did so I had a sudden searing pain in my right hand. The show was a delight, but could not distract me from the continuing acute pain. I made some excuse about missing supper.
The next day I had to fly to Antibes, where my sister was seriously ill, and, convinced I had broken a bone, I went to the chemist at Heathrow and bought a hand splint. Over the next few days, distracted by trying to make Billie comfortable, and swallowing massive analgesic doses, I gradually subdued the pain. I flew back and forth over a period of two weeks, torn between the needs of my sister and those of my ailing daughter. Then my left hand suddenly developed an agonising pain too, rendering it useless. I tried to ignore my body’s erratic behaviour until one day, after sitting for an hour studying a script, I stood up and found I could not walk. My right leg was hurting more than anything I can remember, except perhaps childbirth. In fact the groans, yelps and foul language that came out of me were similar to that experience. I threw down yet another handful of painkillers, and covered my knee with frozen peas. I tried but couldn’t move it without terrible pain.
The next day it had recovered just enough for me to drag myself to my GP, who took a blood test. My inflammation levels were sky-high and I was dispatched to a specialist. He gave me a massive steroid injection, which had a very quick effect, and he then went through a series of tests to find a diagnosis. At one point, when he surmised that it might be something that would go away as suddenly as it arrived, my lovely GP said, ‘Oh well, thank goodness it’s not rheumatoid arthritis.’
‘Why?’
Her face said it all. ‘Don’t let’s go there.’
December 2017
Unfortunately, that was exactly where we did go.
But the painful business of diagnosing what was happening to my body had to wait. Billie had been moved into a hospital and was apparently fading fast.
An age gap of eight years, the war and Billie’s adventurous nature meant I saw little of my sister as I grew up. If she appeared in a theatre in London I went to see the show, but when she moved to Paris after the death of variety theatre in England, we seldom met. I did admire, nay worship, her as a child, especially in her raffish ENSA uniform during the war, and when I researched her life for the book Just Me I was flabbergasted at her adventures, which she thought were just normal life. We were there for each other in times of trouble. So, with splints on my two hands, and knee, and a bagful of painkillers, I hobbled over to Antibes.
Billie had fought tooth and nail to stay in her flat after her fall, but despite having huge support from the health services – she was particularly impressed by the flowers sent to all old people at Christmas, and wielded her pass to go to the front of a queue with fierce zeal – I could see what a burden it was becoming for her devoted friends to look after her. She took a lot of persuading to go as a resident to the home she had attended for the physiotherapy on her hip fracture.
In no time she was practically running the place. She took to sitting in the entrance hall vetting visitors and playing with visiting children. In the dining room she took it upon herself to feed some of the badly disabled inmates. She would introduce me to them in her appalling French, and sometimes a smile would cross their impassive faces. ‘Poor old buggers,’ she would say loudly to me.
Her friends made her room homely with all the photos of her early career, looking stunning in her tights and satin corselette, which greatly impressed the staff. She was forever complaining. Her independent spirit was never really happy in an institution. As time went on she was becoming visibly troubled, clinging to a notebook which she constantly referred to or scribbled in but wouldn’t let anyone take from her.
Now I was shocked to find her in bed in a hospital, looking wizened and fearful. She had multiple ailments that she had always kept at bay with the usual French over-medication and sheer willpower. It appeared she was letting go, her energy ebbing. In the hospital I sat by her bedside day and night, talking to her and holding her hand. She was in a ward on her own, so I sang some of the songs Mum and Dad used to sing in the pubs: ‘The Riff Song’ – ‘Ho! So we sing as we are riding. Ho!’ – and for Mum ‘Just a song at twilight, when the lights are low’. I started their duet ‘If you were the only girl in the world . . .’, and her lips mouthed, ‘. . . and I were the only boy.’
I put earphones at her head and played show selections. I sneaked in some Elgar, which made her frown, but eventually, amazingly, nod approval.
The hospital let me sleep on the other bed in her ward but it was difficult with the pain I was suffering, and I was exhausted. Eventually they suggested I went back to the hotel for a sleep and they would phone me if necessary. For some reason, before I left, I said our childhood prayer to her:
Jesus, tender shepherd, hear me,
Bless thy little lamb tonight.
Through the darkness be thou near me,
Keep me safe till morning light.
All this day thy hand hast led me,
And I thank thee for thy care.
Thou hast warmed and clothed and fed me;
Listen to my evening prayer.
Let my sins be all forgiven,
Bless the friends I love so well.
Take me when I die to heaven,
Happy there with thee to dwell.
And I left her.
There was no phone call, so I went in the next morning very early. There was no one around. Billie was lying sleeping peacefully. Then I noticed rose petals spread around her pillow. I touched her and she was cold. The night nurse had not rung me. She died alone. As, ultimately, we all do, I suppose.
By the bedside was the notebook she always clung to. I was devastated when I looked through it to see how desperately she had tried to bring order to her chaotic thoughts.
Written in blue and crossed out in red are mundane entries like:
1 o’clock lunch
2.30 walk round grounds
Do big toilet
Sheila coming
What today???
Every now and then, amidst the obsessive diary-keeping, are repeated plaintive cries in capital letters, sometimes the paper perforated with the pen so fiercely has she written them.
Me 91 years old
Me
Me young woman
Who me
It was as though she was trying to cling on to her identity, her past, her presence. And she succeeded, until, at ninety-three, on 18 December 2017, she quietly let go her grasp.
December 2017
Billie’s friends and I organised a small funeral for her in Antibes. As Ellie Jane was flattened by ongoing gruelling cancer treatment, my granddaughter Lola came with me and read out her mother’s eulogy for her beloved aunt. It captures the spirit of my colourful sister.
‘My extraordinary, exotic, extravagant, energetic, eccentric, exasperating Auntie Billie.
‘Right from early primary-school days, Aunt Bill was a legend amongst my peers. Who was this blue-haired woman with a man’s name that I would spend school holidays in Paris with? I would come back full of stories, lapped up by my friends, of strip clubs and topless girls, and visits to the ballet, and stilt acts.
‘“What does she do?” they would ask. Well, Uncle Roy used to be on stilts, and she pretended to be his puppet, but now they both put their heads on top of small puppet bodies, and do the cancan in between the strip acts. They would be open-mouthed with amazement at such tales.
‘I spent some of the happiest days of my childhood in Auntie Bill and Uncle Roy’s minuscule flat on the Rue d’Amsterdam. Right from when I was very small, when a visit to the ballet would become central to the trip. She would make me my outfit, and there was such a build-up you would have thought we were going to Prince Charming’s ball, and I did end up walking up the steps of the Opéra de Paris feeling like Cinderella, expecting everyone to turn and look at me. She did the same again many years later, for the first night of Miss Saigon in London, spending hours making me feel wonderful and special, with huge attention to detail. Which reminds me of the most incredible gift I think I ever received from anyone. Four shoeboxes converted into wardrobes for an exquisite set of clothes for my Barbie. Some she had hand-sewn and some were vintage. All with matching shoes and handbags. She must have worked so hard making that for me; I just hope I was grateful enough.
‘Just going about everyday business with Auntie Bill was fun. She was such a well-known figure in the area and everyone loved her, as she barked out greetings to them in her best Franglais. How she managed to spend so much time in a country without learning the language still remains a mystery, but it didn’t stop her being friends with everyone.
‘There was always some major drama going on, every time I visited. Either a new act that needed rehearsing, or more usually something to do with “Papers”, e.g. Uncle Roy’s tax affairs. We often had to go early in the morning to strange offices to do paperwork, and poor old Uncle Roy would be shouted at, and brow-beaten by a stressed-out Billie. But then her “paperwork” was always a cause for stress, until very recently, as I’m sure Stella, Nicky, Juliana and Mum will verify.
‘There were always lovely people around, who clearly adored her. Madame Gérard, Giselle the dancer downstairs, Stella, who we visited with her chimp (another thing my friends would be agog at), Bert and Marianne. Life was always colourful and fun.
‘I was lucky to have an aunt who didn’t have her own children who took more than a passing interest in her niece. When I went back to live in Paris after I finished school, it was a great comfort to have her there. I would visit her from my grim hostel, for hot dinners and some home comforts. She would have me parade around her front room, semi-naked, with books on my head, and then invite the neighbours in to have a look, and see if I might be eligible for a topless job at the Moulin Rouge. I can’t believe I agreed to that. But she was very persuasive, was Auntie Billie.
‘She could also be exasperating, as we all know. She never listened, she talked for England, forcing even her strong-willed sister into silent submission, she was full of deeply dubious and ill-informed political opinions – i.e. she read the Daily Mail. But if you forgave her these things, she was a ferocious whirlwind of energy, a positive force for life, and a loving aunt.
