The Two of Us (15 page)

Alec and I had bought a derelict cottage in Tarlton in Gloucestershire, which Harry was converting to provide a country escape.
Maybe because I’d had no settled base as a child, creating homes became a passion. When I bought the cottage, the Cotswold
stone tile roof was collapsing and there was a rotting cat and piles of dead flies inside. As each fee came in it went to
a new roof, staircase or windows. The cottage was set in an acre of wilderness; Alec and I planted trees and shrubs and formed
paths as I had with Daddy in Bexleyheath. It is satisfying to make gardens, which will be there for other families long after
your death. My friends Brian Sack and Frances Coulson had a wonderful garden round their exquisite hotel by Ullswater in the
Lake District. One day I was wandering round it, feeling a bit low, when, as I walked on the camomile lawn, for no reason
my spirits soared and I felt delight. I saw no apparition and heard no voice, but I knew there was a woman with me. I questioned
Frances, who told me that a hundred years ago a woman had indeed designed and lovingly laid out all the little nooks and crannies,
pools, plants and statues.

My mother enjoyed our homes and loved her granddaughter. We clashed over the importance of clean white socks and nice table
manners, but she was an invaluable support. Not for me all the worry of nannies and au pairs. In working-class tradition I
had my mum to help out. It all seemed too good to be true. It was. I accompanied my mother to the doctor when she complained
of a pain in her side. As she re-dressed herself behind the screen, the doctor silently shook her head at me. She turned out
to have a form of cancer called Hodgkin’s disease and the prognosis was bad.

That night I told my mates at the theatre. I could hardly get through the show, so preoccupied was I with what lay ahead.
The next day John called in for his usual pre-show visit. He asked me to sit on the shabby armchair and put on a pair of earphones.
He clicked on the cassette player and left the room.

When you’re weary

Feeling small

When tears are in your eyes

I’ll dry them all. I’m on your side

When times get rough

And friends just can’t be found

Like a bridge over troubled water I will lay me down

Like a bridge over troubled water I will lay me down.

I was deeply touched by his sweetness. Yet again this young man had realised I was less able to cope than everyone thought.
For several more months I continued to do my daffy performance while dealing with horror at home. I was relieved when the
show drew to an end, although it had been fun to do. I would certainly miss the companionship of the cast.

17 January

Recorded
Just a Minute
in Hastings. I thought it would be
hard to be funny, but as always it was therapeutic to forget
myself and, high on adrenaline, become a performer again.
Mind you, after the show I fell apart and actually crashed
my car. That’s all I bloody need.

One night in the last week of the run, John asked me to drop by for a drink on the way home. He had bought a flat in Troy
Court in Kensington High Street and was very proud of it. He said he had something to discuss with me before the show closed.
I thought he wanted advice about his career as I knew by now he respected my opinion. He sat on the other side of the room
with a drink in his hand. The ice was clinking against the glass. The traffic hummed outside. Inside our idle chat subsided
and we sat in silence, looking at one another. At last he said casually: ‘The thing is . . . I have a bit of a problem.’

Long pause.

‘Well, what is it?’

A puzzled laugh. ‘Well, you see, I’m afraid I’ve fallen in love with you. It’s a nuisance.’

Gobsmacked silence.

‘And the bugger is, I know this is for the rest of my life. You needn’t say anything. I just wanted you to know, that’s all.
’Nother drink?’

It never occurs to me that I can be an object of love. It didn’t with Alec. I take a lot of persuading. This friend, as I
thought of him, nonchalantly declaring his love was not convincing. I was embarrassed. Romances on tour and during shows are
par for the course but were not really my style. When I recovered my wind I rattled on about propinquity and how, when the
show ended, so would his infatuation. He sat, white-faced, on the other side of the room and I could see I had got it wrong.
He just said quietly, ‘I don’t play games. I love you.’

I discovered later he had already told several of his friends, including Ken Parry and his ex-wife Sally. I was the last to
know. I explained to him as gently as I could that I did not play games either. I hadn’t meant to lead him on. He must not
think of this as another rejection, I was just not available.

I got into my car and sat for some time in shock. It had not dawned on me, and I would not let it now, that I too loved him.
I did not do that sort of thing. I had been married for seventeen years and something fresh and exciting was tempting, but
Alec and I had a pretty good set-up in which our five-year-old daughter was secure and happy. Besides, Alec needed me, John
did not.

18 January

Took Ray to Heathrow. John didn’t see him off. He sat in
the car in the car park. Ray clung to me, crying. Those two
little boys . . .

11

When the Journey Was Rough

AFTER SO WHAT ABOUT LOVE? we both went our different ways. I was glad to see John’s career flourish. Having honed his comedy
technique during the run of the play, he went straight into a classy TV comedy series
Thick as Thieves
by Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement. He and Bob Hoskins played two ex-convicts vying for the love of the same woman, played
by Pat Ashton. He continued to do theatre work as well as his telly, with a success in a play at the Edinburgh Festival and
another at the Royal Court, but his private life was unsettled. After his sons had left home, John’s father had remarried,
to a delightful woman, Mildred, and lived comfortably with her in Marple, a posh suburb of Manchester, where John felt less
able to arrive without warning if he needed his father. His brother was now settled in a good job with Ford in Brisbane; the
refuge of Daneholme Road, however rough and ready, was gone, and even though he had his flat at Troy Court, he was on his
own. He had a few girlfriends but none meant a lot to him and he treated them badly, often brutally walking away from a relationship
without giving a reason.

When the play closed, I too went back to sitcom land in a top-rating series called
Mr Digby, Darling
. It was about a firm manufacturing rat poison in which I doted on my boss, played by my old
Rag Trade
mate Peter Jones. Incomparable laugh-getters. I also did some plays in the theatre. I submerged myself in work and family
and the nitty-gritty of everyday living. The experience with John had already shaken me, then three traumatic events hit me
that radically changed my philosophy of life, insofar as I had one.

Since my convent childhood I had been deeply religious. Indoctrination about hellfire is not easy to shake off. When I was
a child my father and I would visit different churches every Sunday in a quest for the perfect sermon, the best choir, the
friendliest congregation. We never quite decided on a denomination, but heads turned in visited churches as my father lustily
joined in hymns, usually offering a descant or harmony. Occasionally we would have delicious giggles, crouching under the
brown pew on hairy hassocks while worshippers around us leaped up and down in accordance with the ritual. We tried to fathom
what was going on with the goblets and vestments round the altar and Dad’s outrageous whispered theories about priests not
being able to make up their minds what frock to wear and gasping for a drink had me convulsed. Despite his irreverence, he
had a simple belief in an all-loving God. He just didn’t know the best way to express it. Whenever I was on tour or in repertory
I was uneasy if I could not attend at least one Sunday service.

My mother’s illness became increasingly distressing. I prayed as hard as I could for her deliverance, at least from pain.
In the event, what relief she had was from the ministrations of my friend Dilys Laye, a born carer, who supported me in nursing
her. There seemed little help from on high. I tried to see a divine plan in her suffering, but it was hard to equate the indignities
inflicted on this good woman, of incontinence pads and violent vomiting, with a merciful God. My father had the luxury of
being a volatile delight only because my mother was the rock of the family. Like most women of her generation, her happiness
was seeing other people happy. Her single-mindedness about what was ‘right’ and ‘not right’ could irk, but it was a useful
yardstick to measure whether revolt or conformity was appropriate.

19 January

The Euro has been launched in France, but we hang on to
the pound and resolutely drive on the wrong side of the
road. I feel so European I cannot identify in any way with
this strange obsession about a bit of paper with the Queen’s
head on. John’s tube pipe taken out. Radiotherapy has
shrunk the tumour. He now has a hole in his throat which
he delights in making farting noises with.

I was consumed with guilt at how I had taken my mother for granted since my father died, and tried to make up for it in her
last months. I lavished as much love on her as she would allow. She bore the suffering with her usual stiff upper lip, spending
what little respite she had from the pain setting things in order for her death. Dilys and I had given her an injection and
she seemed peaceful but suddenly sat up and, clear as a bell, said, ‘Now wait a minute, Rick, I have things to do.’ Busy till
the end, but on the way to her beloved Enrico. I believed that implicitly. I kissed her as she died, realising I had never
done so before. She had kissed me on the forehead as a child when she said, ‘Goodnight, sleep tight, hope the fleas don’t
bite,’ but I didn’t kiss her back. People didn’t kiss their mothers where I came from. I wished I had. I knelt by her body
and thanked God for her deliverance, whatever that meant.

The next day I was recording an episode of
Mr Digby, Darling
. I told no one of her death lest it should make it difficult to deliver all the rat jokes. After the recording in front of
the studio audience, I crept behind the set and sat on the floor and wept. A passing stagehand crouched beside me and said,
‘Come on, Sheila love – it wasn’t that bad.’ When I told him why I was crying it was a relief to cuddle him and laugh together.
I had a message of condolence from John.

I had barely steadied myself after my mother’s death when the second blow struck. Alec was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus.
If, as a result of John’s declaration, I had any doubts about my marriage, they disappeared as soon as the specialist delivered
his verdict. My father, mother and now Alec, the three people who loved me unconditionally however badly I behaved. There
was hope that Alec could have a new life-saving operation. That proved impossible. He was given weeks to live. Having had
little outside help, apart from Dilys, in nursing my mother, I was relieved when he was referred to St Christopher’s Hospice.
With the help of their palliative care in the home, Alec lived another nine months. He sweetly bore my only slightly improved
nursing. During a particularly nasty procedure he said, ‘You are an angel.’

In apology for past hurts, I said, ‘I always meant to be an angel.’

He said, ‘Yes, a militant angel.’

I felt ashamed, but he said it with such tenderness I supposed he had forgiven me for the bullying it implied.

20 January

Brian Sack from Sharrow Bay Hotel is dead. That place
has been a solace throughout my life. Now he and Frances
are both gone. Oh dear, everything is slipping away. The
old standards are changing too. Awful pictures of prisoners
shackled and covered with hoods shuffling around a prison
in Guantanamo Bay, where they have no rights under the
Geneva Convention, according to the Americans. This is
us behaving like that, not some despotic alien power.

Alec was a lovely man. Feckless, but with graceful charm. He did not appear to realise how unfair his life had been. He greeted
the blows with a lopsided, wry smile. And now, at forty-nine, he was dead. My Christian forbearance left me. I was very angry.
One year after kneeling at my mother’s deathbed, I stood by his. As I stared at his emaciated body that had so gently loved
mine, I said aloud, as in prayer, ‘There is no God.’

I felt no lightning strike me, no hellfire consume me, just profound relief flooding me. No need to ask, ‘Why suffering –
why this?’ It just happened. We are human. We are born, we make mistakes, we sometimes suffer and are sometimes happy. We
die. No one else is involved. It’s up to us. I entertained no thoughts of a future life. It would have been comforting to
think of meeting again, but until somebody scientifically proved me wrong, I would not waste my energy on hoping. It made
my sorrow more harrowing but at least it was real.

As with my mother’s death, a misunderstanding soon had me rocking with unseemly laughter. It was a heartless requirement of
the state that you go in person to register a death. My good friend Tony Beckley agreed to accompany me. He loved Alec and
was as shattered as I by his death. We both looked drained and dishevelled as we slumped in a gloomy room waiting for the
arrival of the registrar of births, deaths and marriages. He breezed in, chortling with delight, ‘And are you the happy couple?’

Wrong – in more ways than he could possibly imagine. He was visibly shocked when we told him, through tears of laughter, that
we had come to register a death. Perhaps when the happy couple arrived, they greeted their marriage with floods of tears.

I was trying to adjust to being a single mother of a seven-year-old daughter, with all my crutches taken away, when the third
challenge arrived. I read
The Female Eunuch
. In 1971, when I was aged thirty-eight, it threw my whole approach to life into question. At Ely Place Convent I had accepted
the rightness of priests coming in to perform the holy rituals while the nuns kept quiet and watched; I was indoctrinated
to believe that men were superior to women. My mother’s genuine fear of my stepping beyond the safety of home had made my
ambition for myself and a career seem unnatural. My father’s belief, albeit later shaken, in the infallibility of leaders
never questioned for a moment that they were all men. Up until
The Female Eunuch
, my search for and wish to please Greek gods had dominated my life. The book, together with my loss of faith, demanded a
rethink.

So flummoxed was I that I joined one of the women’s groups that sprang up and then formed one of my own, with three actress
friends, that meets to this day. These meetings were sacrosanct. If one of the male of the species asked us out it was no
longer understood that that took precedence over a date with a girlfriend. Not any more. Women mattered. They must stand on
their own two feet and not look for a man to lean on, emotionally or materially. I had little choice at the time, so it made
sound sense. I was enraged when I contemplated how men and we ourselves had colluded in forcing women to take a back seat
in every area of life. I threw aside my angel wings and became a militant feminist. I spoke up, rather muddle-headedly, wherever
I could, becoming the first woman to win the Best After-Dinner Speaker of the Year. In 2002, I won the Women in Film Award
for the Most Outspoken Woman, proving that I have bored on for thirty-odd years.

22 January

Very scary State of the Union address by Bush about the
axis of evil: Iraq, Iran and North Korea. What is he building
up to? He probably, understandably, feels he has to wreak
revenge for the American people for September 11th. Please
God he is restrained by calmer voices.

Germaine has a lot to answer for. Sally, John’s ex-wife, was more active than I was. She ended up in a police cell, having
thrown flour at Bob Hope during a Miss World contest and stubbed her fag out on a policeman’s hand. When she was arrested
she phoned John, and he supported her but must have wondered, when he also read some of my polemic in the newspapers, why
he fell in love with such troublesome women. My new credo scuppered my comedy career with the BBC. Analysing my well-meaning
sitcom roles, I realised all of them conformed to the comforting stereotype of dizzy blonde desperate for a man. At a grand
BBC party, I loudly demanded to be taken more seriously by the powers that be, in those days mainly retired admirals and certainly
all white, male and middle class. I nagged them to distraction, so to shut me up, they gave me a series, to go out very late
at night, called
But Seriously – It’s Sheila Hancock
. I devised it with Barry Took, and we used clever clogs from university to write it, including John Cleese, Peter Cook and
Graham Chapman. In one sketch, by Ken Hoare, I portrayed a malevolent landlady, mad with prejudice against everyone: Jews,
Irish, black, pink, fat people, thin people. It was deemed from on high that it would shock people and spoil my image. I fought
every inch of the way and did it. It was a success, I was proved right, but it was ten years before I worked for the BBC again.

With women like Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French and Victoria Wood leading the way and writing their own material, there’s nothing
now that women can’t say or do, but in those days we were only allowed to be funny as long as we stayed charming and didn’t
rock the men’s boat. In
Seriously
I had a guest star to chat with each week. One of them was Germaine Greer. I have met many eminent people. All our prime ministers
since the sixties (I always preferred their wives), other important politicians, barristers, most of the royals, writers,
surgeons, you name ’em, I’ve come across ’em. Of them all, Germaine has never disappointed. She has remained true to herself,
even to the extent of admitting she is wrong, an invaluable virtue. She took – and still takes – ill-thought-out, vicious
criticism and rises above it all with wisdom and strength.