You Have Not a Leg to Stand On (9 page)

London

I found myself back in London, no particular place in London, just ‘in London'. I wandered the streets of London. I distinctly remember coming up from the ‘underground' at Piccadilly Circus, spat out from a hole in the ground, into a teeming mass of people. A moving crowd, I was part of the whole crowd, but not knowing a single person, I was completely alone. I might as well have been in the middle of the Sahara Desert. I moved about unseen, I could do anything, and yet I could do nothing. I had nothing. Why was I here with nothing? In the middle of this teeming mass of humanity, completely alone. I had a loving family, I had a beautiful home and yet I was here with nothing.

I bought the Evening Standard newspaper. I found a room in Nothing Hill Gate for £2 10 shillings a week. It was a brown room, up four flights of brown stairs, in a brown house, owned by a thin, old, bent stick of a landlady. She had iron grey hair pulled tightly back into a bun and wore the same faded floral apron all the time I was there. At the end of each week I padded down the brown stairs into a half-lit brown basement and knocked at a brown door. I paid my faded, bent, little old stick of a landlady, her rent. I could hardly distinguish her from her surroundings. Her tight sallow, parchment cheeks, slowly pulled back her thin lips into a half smile and she said softly, ‘Thank you.'

My grandfather was a very, very wealthy, self-made Australian, who built the first sugar refinery in ‘Black Africa'. I never met him, and my father never referred to him in any way. My father's nickname, to his seven brothers and four sisters, was Squib. Although he never so much as raised his voice to us, his close family, I had cause to witness his explosive temper on some occasions. I think his temper had a lot to do with the relationship he had with his father.

Later, my father had asked Lord Lyle, of Tate and Lyle, to give his son a job, in the head offices of Tate and Lyle, in the city of London. The order to employ me had filtered down from on-high to the manager of lump sugar sales. I was welcomed with open arms, the prodigal son. I was given my own desk, £10 a week and an account at Lloyds bank in the city. I had ‘made it. Well, perhaps I might have ‘made it' had I ever discovered what on earth I was supposed to do at my beautiful desk, with its green leather top, drawers each side, and my own telephone. There were nine other desks in the room, with a row of four busy tapping secretaries at the front. Everyone was so industrious, If they weren't scribbling in huge manuals they were talking earnestly on their telephones, or they were walking about quickly from desk to desk. In and out of the office, speaking into dictaphones, pieces of paper flying from in-tray to out tray, the whole office thrummed. I was a fly on the wall, I can see the whole scene as clearly now as I felt it then. I was part of a machine, in the same way, I was of the crowd at Piccadilly Circus, but a spare-part waiting to be used. All the other cogs were in good working order. Lunchtime thankfully arrived. A delicious lunch was provided in a canteen for all office staff, and the managers of all departments had their own restaurant. I met a chap there who'd been working for Tate and Lyle for more than ten years and was relieved to hear he didn't seem to know what he was doing either. He was perfectly happy with his situation and intended to go on working for the company until he retired in 35 years. Could I actually go on doing this for the next 40 years? The thought was terrifying. I persevered for eighteen months.

A few months before I handed in my gratefully received notice, by a relieved departmental manager, I'd turned desperately to the Evening Standard's classified ads looking for anything that might catch my eye. I'd no idea what I was looking for, but suddenly a little two-liner jumped out of the page. Drama classes. Auditions held at 23 Berwick St. W1. 6pm. I knew Berwick St. was well known for its material shops, but I was yet to find out the nature of the other trade for which it was better known. I climbed the stairs up to another brown door. I knocked. The door swung back and in front of me stood, a short, fat middle-aged woman with a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth and wearing a flimsy, frilly see-through nightdress. She said, in a broad cockney accent, ‘Wanna short time love?' I didn't then know what ‘a short-time' was and said, ‘No I've come about the drama classes.' The door slammed shut. I eventually found myself sitting opposite a pretty little, round-faced girl, with white, clear skin and large doe-like brown eyes and long dark straight brown hair. She asked me to do my audition piece. I can't remember what I did, but with my fiver on the table I was accepted.

I didn't know then, but do know now, this little meeting, held in such a different place to anywhere I had ever been or experienced, was to have a profound effect on the direction of my life. Not only did I find a group of open-minded friends, from such diverse backgrounds, I'd broken myself free from the chains to which I had willingly tied myself, those of my own background.

My father didn't want me to have anything to do with farming, but I wondered what he'd think of my present choice.

There were about eight of us altogether. At first we met once a week in the back of the little material shop in Berwick Street. But we found we enjoyed each other's company so much, we booked another room in Holborn to meet more often. The classes were taken by the little white-faced, dark-haired girl called Zoe and a Scottish actor called Jeremy Ure. Quite quickly it became apparent who could act, and who just found it liberating to mix with others of open, friendly diversity.

Surprisingly, very surprisingly, I found myself drawn to the whole notion of the theatre. Not necessarily acting in itself, but the whole thing. I'd stumbled upon something where everyone concerned had the same enthusiasm, a sense of envelopment. Only in retrospect can I equate that sense, as equivalent to belonging to my home. A warmth, satisfaction, a calmness. No one could honestly recommend it as a profession, and I can truthfully say the idea of acting at all, let alone a profession was never even a spark. But all those to whom we were introduced by Jeremy Ure and little doe-eyed Zoe, loved doing what they did.

It wasn't long before I was given my first job. A six-month contract as an ASM, assistant stage manager, in the repertory theatre at Northampton. I received the princely sum of six pounds a week. The room in which I lodged nearby cost thirty shillings a week with use of the kitchen. That left me four pounds ten shillings for everything else. Even then a struggle. I don't know how I managed, but I loved it.

Nairobi

When we first met, I was an actor in the small repertory theatre, called The Donovan Maule in Nairobi. I lived in theatre accommodation and my little wife-to-be shared various houses in Nairobi having been invited out to Kenya to stay with a close school friend. Just imagine if she'd known then, what was going to befall her. Even after I'd come out of that loathsome tunnel, she's still left with a raspberry. Cockney slang, ‘raspberry ripple, cripple'.

My contract with the theatre was for a year, and the ‘Light of my Life' was about to leave any time soon. What to do, what to do, desperate action was called for. I knew she liked the theatre and all the life around it, but my trump card was the garden. Nobody could resist the call of the garden. Every Saturday night the curtain came down at ten thirty, so we made our way out of Nairobi, about forty miles, to my magical home. The main road out of Nairobi, was tarmac, so that was usually uneventful. The magic started as soon as you turned off the main road on to the earth road, my father built, through the forest, down the side of the Great Rift Valley to the house. In our headlights, we might encounter all manner of beautiful animals. Regularly, little Diker would dart out of the undergrowth, come to a grinding halt dazzled by the headlights, wait, then gingerly take high slow steps until back to the safety of the bush on the other side. Less often, but possible any time, were Buffalo, crashing about, Waterbuck, cleverly turning away from the lights showing off their perky white bottoms, to walk down their own shadow. There were sometimes Giraffe, although what they thought they were doing in the forest away from their home on the plain among the little yellow thorn trees, God only knows. But occasionally, very occasionally, and you'd remember it forever, a leopard would be caught by the lights. On the occasions it happened, they didn't seem to mind. They stood there, head up, neck long, full height, alert, looking about, confident. Then they'd turn away from the car, walk-on nonchalantly in front of the lights, as we followed slowly behind. On one occasion, we followed that beautiful, majestic animal for what seemed like ten minutes. At the end of this two-mile exciting drive, even if we'd seen nothing, we'd nuzzle into the car park under the great fig tree, with its long roots hanging from its great bows. The electric light generator had stopped and the night guard was soundly asleep. My mother always left out a hurricane lantern, making an inviting warm glow over the veranda, and inside, on the dining room table, a delicious little feast. Then ‘She' went to her room, and me to mine.

Sunday mornings were always a delight. My father was born into a rugged Australian family whose father owned thousands of acres of sugar in northern Queensland, so a sumptuous breakfast was the most important meal of the day. First, fruit from the garden, mine was always avocado pear with cream and sugar, then a Thompson's gazelle's liver and kidneys, and two fried eggs. Then our own bread and marmalade followed by two large cups of the most delicious coffee you can think of. It's the first thing my father ‘got on the go' when he came through to the dining room, in the mornings.

I don't think My father was ever seduced by the garden in the same way I was, he liked to be out on the hot plains with his cattle and the plain's game all around. As indeed did I. I can see now that that's where I should have been, by his side where I always had been, before being sent away to England to be ‘educated'.

Now, to be an actor, I mean I ask you. He couldn't really understand how that came to be. My father always came back to the garden, every evening, he knew how beautiful it was, but that was my mother's domain. She could do anything she wanted, and she did. She always had a project on the go. My Ayah, Di-dee, who now had no more children to look after, although she still always told me to wear my hat and proper shoes, so I wouldn't get burnt or get jiggers underneath my toenails which only she knew how to take out, now became head gardener. A position she took to like a duck to water, and held until the day she died.

My wife (not yet!) got a job she loved. She worked for the Voice of Kenya, reading the news and presenting programmes, but the thing she enjoyed most of all was reading ‘The Book at Bed Time'. It's remarkable how she reads a story or a newspaper article. She doesn't have to read it through first to get the emphasis right, she just reads it and it's always right.

Our year came to an end, almost as though we'd just taken our first breath. The theatre offered me another year, but I said ‘thank you but I need to get back to London to further my career.' How could I not have known, going back at that time, was the wrong thing to do for my career. I needed more of what I was doing, I needed experience. I needed as many years as they'd give me. If I had done that, my life would have been entirely different. In retrospect that was a pivotal point. My wife would not be my wife. She would have gone back to England on her own and I'm pretty certain she would not have come back. Instead, what we did was to seal our fate together forever. We drove back to England in a small Toyota Estate my father had given me. He couldn't possibly recommend it for what we had in mind, he'd only given it to me because it had come to the end of its useful life and he was chucking it out.

Another thing, apart from the garden, with which I seduced my poor little, unknowing wife-to-be, was my Aunt Ginger's astounding house on the coast near Mombasa. My Aunt Ginger was a wonderful, unique, eccentric, enveloping individual. Her real name was Penelope, but her hair was bright ginger, and as she got older there was no hint of grey, the ginger simply got softer. But her loving, warm, embracing personality never faded. She died a few days short of her hundredth birthday. Such a shame, she would have loved to have had a telegram from the Queen.

The cruelty of old age had taken her sight and her ability to walk. She'd taken to her bed for the last few years of her life and she held regular audiences for the many, many people who wanted to be with her, laugh with her. She never lost her lovely laugh, she'd close her eyes, her head would go back and a deep chuckle would pour out of this incredible, unique person. Whatever story you told her, she always said it was the funniest story she'd ever heard!

All the houses she ever lived in, she built and designed herself. She never made a drawing the builders could work from. They had no idea how to price or plan the work before they started. The central theme of her houses, rather like her enticing personality, was to let the outside in, the outside to be an integral part of the inside. So how better to achieve that, than to have no walls, or as few walls as possible. The whole structure of the house was there, ceilings, roof and corner supports et cetera, but you could look right through the house to the view beyond. The house became part of the view, you lived within the view, so the structure of the house and the views all around became as one.

I have a cousin who lives in Australia who took it one step further. When we last saw him, I asked him what was the first thing he would do when he got back home after being away for so long? He replied, ‘I suppose we'll have to weed the sitting room.'

So the view Ginger brought into her house was the vast magnificence of the modern ocean-going ships and liners that sailed the world's oceans and then berthed at Mombasa harbour.

She built her house atop a two-hundred foot high coral cliff whose base plunged deep down to form the edge of the creek. All the ships slowly slipped by, with a deep throbbing rumble, to get to their berths. Sometimes, if their berths were taken, and they'd have to wait a couple of days, they'd anchor right in front of the house, filling all the windows with their massive presence. As the tide changed, flowing in or out, they would swing slowly round on their anchor chains. The sterns so close you'd think surely one day, the pilots would misjudge the length of the ship and it would come crashing into the sitting room. All this was, of course, tantalising, enticing, to a twenty-one year old English girl still wet behind the ears.

And now the chance to make a trip almost beyond imagining with excitement and change. Quite understandably her mother was in panic mode. Her beautiful daughter, who she'd brought up with such care and attention to every detail, ready to be launched upon the marriage market to a suitable Englishman from a good background, with a sound income, was about to throw her reputation away. All for a worthless, unknown, out-of-work actor from the colonies. As I look back on that time now, I ache with sympathy.

We vaguely worked out the route of our whole trip, with the help of the AA in Nairobi. They were very helpful. The only thing we could be sure of was which countries we had to drive through to get to England. All the middle eastern ones needed visas for ourselves, and a carnet for the car. If it hadn't been for them it would have taken weeks of trailing around Nairobi from embassy to embassy, standing in interminable queues for hours. Often to be told, when you finally get to the top, ‘The office is now closed, come back tomorrow.' I don't know about other African countries, but Nairobi is famous for ‘how to tackle a queue'. You have to know how to buy your way along. But the way in which you buy your way along is the art. Only Kenyans know how to do it, and only certain Kenyans specialise in certain types of queues. The AA need to get to the top of queues on a daily basis, so it's vital they do it quickly or else a logjam will build up and they'll cease to function.

You might have thought the vehicle we'd use, for what could well turn out to be quite an arduous expedition, would be a reasonably substantial 4x4. Spare wheels bolted around the body, roof rack, sand filters for the engine, heaters for going across the Alps and through Northern Europe at that time of year, a substantial vehicle. But no, it was a very ordinary, everyday, small run-about, Toyota Estate, my father had chucked out because it had come to the end of its useful life. From our meagre earnings, we'd managed to scrape together the tidy sum of sixty pounds each, which was to cover everything from petrol to food to breakdowns, the lot. Even for then, 1965, it was very little. How we thought we'd manage, I don't know, we just wanted to do it, in our bones we had to do it.

The next task to be addressed was the procurement of a chaperone. Its achievement was probably even more vital than anything else, because without it, there was no chance of going anywhere. Funny now, but not funny then. But how to find one? We knew no one who fitted the bill. After a great deal of discussion we eventually decided to post an advert on the screen of one of the big cinemas in Nairobi, “Girl needed to chaperone unmarried couple to drive to England, for as long as it might take”. We went to the performance the evening it was shown. A little giggle trickled through the audience. I think they thought it was a spoof. We had one reply. She was a tall blond German girl called Hanalora, Honey. She'd come to Kenya as an au pair to an English family and her contract had come to an end. Like us, she wanted to do something different and exciting before settling back into everyday living in our home countries. She'd managed to scrape together the same amount of money as ourselves, so we started off on equal terms. She couldn't quite understand the chaperoning bit, but as the three of us would be sleeping together in our little 6ft x 5ft tent, the duty of chaperone wouldn't be particularly arduous.

How we ever thought, living in such close proximity, eating and sleeping and washing and everything else, would work for at least four months, I have no idea. But oddly, very oddly, it did work. It worked well enough for us to be on fond, kissing goodbye terms when we said goodbye in Hamburg. You might say, at least you deserve one night together now, no one would know. Well, you'd be wrong. I drove non-stop, other than a couple of hours on the boat, from Hamburg to Central London, to stay with my Uncle and Aunt, more than 24 hours later. I'd meant us to stay with my grandmother in Tunbridge Wells, but she inconveniently died while we were en route.

***

So, back to the beginning. The start of this trip was, for me, and as it happened for my wife-to-be, the beginning of my life again. I've told you about various episodes, and my education, but the whole direction of my life was without purpose, aimless, drifting about, no idea what I might do from day-to-day. The only thing I knew I had to do was get through the emptiness of a day, only to be confronted with another empty day. My poor parents had done their utmost to give me the best start in life they knew how. It had cost them more than they could afford. When all they need have done was, let me stay at home. I had a completeness at home, a satisfaction, a wholeness. Becoming an actor and joining a repertory company had, for the first time since leaving home, sent away from home, given me a sense of belonging. Being part of something and a direction in which I knew I would like to go. So finding this girl and starting out with nothing, really nothing, which I didn't think a hindrance at all, quite the opposite, we would discover a whole new life together. This was July 1966. We got married on 1
st
December 1967. No one could have known, just nine quick years later, my life would take a devastating, shattering turn with which I had no idea how to deal. Even now in 2015, thirty-nine years after that dreadful day in June 1976, although we've found a reasonable contentedness and we've achieved quite a lot I suppose, given the limitations in the intervening years, I still feel we're not lucky I'm alive.

So, on that July day in 1966, we three were standing on the upper deck of our elegant 8000 ton Dutch cargo ship, whose name escapes me, watching our little Toyota Estate being lifted off the Quay and onto its deck. This really was the beginning of a journey of a lifetime. There were only three or four cabins on the ship, so we were the only passengers. We'd been invited by the Captain to have dinner with him and his officers, that evening. I asked, as we'd be sailing early the following day if I could ask my father aboard, as there'd be nothing he'd enjoy more than having dinner at the Captain's table. The picture of the meal he'd conjured up was quite infectious. We were all getting excited by the same idea. Oh dear, oh dear. The meal could not have been more ordinary. A few slices of a sort of Dutch cold spam and Edam cheese downed with a glass or two of sparkling water. This was a cargo ship after all. My father could only laugh as he walked down the gangway to the quay and wave goodbye. Early the next morning we sailed majestically past my Aunt Ginger's house, everyone there merrily waving us on our way. The only person who wasn't merry in any way whatsoever was my future mother-in-law. She hadn't given up trying to stop us. She managed to get Aunt Ginger's telephone number and begged her to stop us, or at least send her daughter, her precious daughter, back home.