The Two of Us (10 page)

My mother’s injunctions were now about taking care of my husband rather than being artistic or ambitious. We kept our Pimlico
base but theatrical digs were our nomadic home. Signs stating ‘No blacks, no Irish, no dogs’ would sometimes add ‘no actors’
to their list. In 1955 many West Indians disembarked from their boats dressed in their Sunday best in response to the British
request to fill gaps in the labour market. They were greeted by many with the xenophobia that seems to afflict our country.
The Freedom Movement starting in America was beginning to enlighten and change us. Rosa Parks sitting in the white section
of a segregated bus and Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech were an inspiration. My mild protest was to tear down
all the ‘no blacks’ signs that I could in the towns that we visited. We visited dozens. It always seemed to be winter when
we toured. My sister gave me a cast-off beaver-lamb coat which Alec and I slept under in the freezing digs, spending all our
spare daytime in the Turkish baths if the town had one. I felt as though I was caught on a treadmill, destined to remain in
second-rate repertory and touring companies all my life.

When a friend of mine suggested a change of course I jumped at it. Eric Lloyd was stage manager of
Masquerade
, a concert party on the Isle of Wight starring Cyril Fletcher. They needed a soubrette and Cyril rashly took me on. Alec
was at Shanklin Town Hall in the rep, ploughing through the usual Agatha Christies and dire comedies, whilst I did five changes
of programme on the pier at Sandown. I danced, I sang, I fed Cyril in his act and played in the sketches. Most of my energy
went into working out which item came next and what I should be wearing for it. I once shimmied on to the stage in a Carmen
Miranda outfit and found myself singing ‘My Old Man Said Follow the Van’ in a cockney scena. It was my first experience of
working with a comic and it stood me in good stead when I went to Bromley next to play in
Tons of Money
with Frankie Howerd. I was thrilled to be so near London where someone might see me. I was playing quite a good role but whenever
I was in danger of getting a laugh, Frank would intervene with, ‘No, don’t laugh – poor soul – she went to the RADA, you know’
(pronounced radar by Frank). ‘No, perlease, perlease have some respect.’ Nigel Hawthorne and I watched in awe as he jettisoned
the script and went off into wild fantasies of his own. It was one of Frank’s frequent periods in the theatrical wilderness
and no one important came near us, but supporting this anguished man gave us a friend for life.

Alec and I stayed in the company at the New Theatre, Bromley, a converted swimming pool, and when I played the dual role in
Separate Tables
I wrote to all the good agents asking them to come and see me, as Miriam had retired. It was a double bill. In the first half,
playing an ex-model, I put on the hot black and skintight dress and in the second, playing a dowdy frump, I took off my make-up
and wore flat shoes and a shapeless frock. I worked hard on the two characterisations, using a different voice and physicality
for them. On the first night when I came on transformed after the interval, my mother heard a woman cluck, ‘Oh dear, hasn’t
she let herself go.’

One agent was sufficiently impressed by my performance to summon me to see him. He was John Redway, one of the very top, later
to be John’s agent. I was thrilled. At last. I walked into his sumptuous office and saw his face fall. He sat me under a lamp
and moved my head from side to side. He said I would have to have plastic surgery. Obviously my prayer to look ‘all right
from the front’ had worked, but close up I was a disappointment. I slunk back to Bromley and the comfort of Alec’s love and
his faith in my future, which never wavered. I played principal boy in panto, slapping the now fishnetted best legs from the
knees up with aplomb. For two shows a day plus two matinees the salary was a dizzy £19 per week and Alec earned similar as
Baron Hardup, so we ate well that Christmas.

20 August

Beautiful weather at Luckington. We went for a drive and
had a picnic in a field. Made love in the sun, slightly
hampered by me squashing his chemo tube, then sat in the
grounds of Badminton House having tea from a Thermos
reading the papers. I suggested we buy a couple of fold-up
camp chairs and start sitting in lay-bys with our picnic. We
really are becoming a couple of old farts. And it’s lovely.

Tony Beckley dragged two of his friends down to see me in
Dick Whittington
. It was my first stroke of luck since leaving RADA nine years earlier. Disley Jones, a designer, and Eleanor Fazan, a director
and choreographer, were producing a revue called
One to Another
with Beryl Reid. Known for her work in variety theatre, Beryl was taking a risk by doing a show with material by offbeat writers
like N. F. Simpson, John Mortimer, and my acting colleague, Harold Pinter. Fiz and Dis took the risk of employing an unknown
and I seized the opportunity to display the versatility I’d acquired during my arduous first years in the profession.

Harold’s sketch had Beryl and me playing two old lady tramps discussing bread and cheese and pausing a lot. In rehearsal,
both of us, used to quickfire comedy work, had been appalled by Pinter’s insistence on the very long pauses being meticulously
observed. In front of an audience he was proved right. They held their breath in the silence, then roared with laughter at
the banality or repetition of the line that followed it. It was a huge success for Harold and a perfect sketch that still
worked in 1997 when I played it with Dawn French.

The show brought me to important people’s notice for the first time, but my next job, with the great director Joan Littlewood,
was the one that changed the nature of my career. After leaving RADA in disgust, Joan worked in radio in Manchester. The BBC
there was ruled by Alfie Bradley and Olive Shapley. They were unashamedly revolutionary left-wingers so Joan was very much
at home. She was an innovative broadcaster, one of the first to do interviews on location with ordinary people. Her questions
were sometimes naïve, as when she asked a miner, ‘Tell me, how long is your shaft?’ She turned to the theatre and formed a
brilliant team producing original work in Manchester. Her company, known as Theatre Workshop, then took over the Theatre Royal
in London’s Stratford East. The establishment began taking notice.
Fings Ain’t What They Used
to Be
and
Oh What a Lovely War
blasted the popular musicals of Ivor Novello out of the water, and her plays like Brendan Behan’s
The Hostage
and Shelagh Delaney’s
A Taste of Honey
were putting characters on stage which had never been seen there before. And actors. Joan liked real people. She liked clowns
and characters. She rescued mavericks from oblivion and made them into stars, then was furious when they moved on to make
more money.

22 August

Fabulous Prom. Young Chinese guy, Lang Lang, who no
one had heard of. Rachmaninoff’s Third, that old war horse,
reborn by this youngster, he radiates joy at his genius. Beams
at the orchestra, bounces on his stool and plays like an
angel. The audience started indifferent and ended ecstatic.
I leaped to my feet and yelped with delight. John tugged
at my shirt. ‘Yes, all right, calm down dear,’ but he was
thrilled too. A great star is born and we were there. Must
get the recording. (I wonder if you’ll hear me screaming.)

I managed to get an audition with Joan and stood on the stage in my best dress, giving her my St Joan speech. Loud laughter
came from the stalls. Not what I had hoped for as, with tears in my eyes, I contemplated being burnt at the stake. A square-shaped
woman leaped on to the stage, pulling a cap down over her brows, big eyes bulging. ‘Stop, stop that rubbish! You’re a clown,
a lovely clown. Let’s have some fun, bird.’ Crouching round me, legs astride, bouncing up and down, she led me into a wild
improvisation. From that day on I worshipped the woman. She released my creativity and made me feel clever. She could be a
cow because of her dedication to creating exciting theatre – it was absolute and nothing was allowed to impede it.

Joan gave me a small part in a musical by Wolf Mankowitz called
Make Me an Offer
. The small part grew during improvisations in rehearsal and one day Joan needed something to cover a scene change, so she
ordered Monty Norman to write me a song. ‘It’s Sort of Romantic’ stopped the show on the first night. I did an encore and
still they cheered. Eventually, in true Theatre Workshop tradition, I harangued the audience, explaining I couldn’t keep singing
it over and over so would they please shut up. I stole all the notices. It was my first experience of that sort of success
and it scared me. I thought audiences were expecting so much that I would disappoint them. For several nights Joan stood in
the wings with me before my entrance, making me close my eyes and imagine ‘you’re in a dark, dark forest and out there is
light and warmth and welcome. On you go, you lucky bird.’ And on I bounded with the help of a shove from Joan.

In the pubs and cafés of Angel Lane in Stratford East, Joan’s company talked about politics and I listened. Joan and the people
round her were a huge influence in forming my political conciousness. I felt at home with them. When I was fourteen I had
joined the Young Communists’ League, unbeknown to my parents, mainly because there were a few long-haired Greek gods in the
membership. Stalin, the uprisings in Poland and Hungary and the building of the Berlin Wall had disillusioned me. The Workers’
Revolutionary Party, very important for many people in the profession, did not appeal. My experience of the Blitz, the shock
of Royan and the Fricker boy and above all the invention of the H-Bomb gave me, in common with many of my generation, a profound
fear that underlay my whole existence. The Bomb overshadowed everything. We knew how close the human race was to annihilation.
The Korean war in which two million died, the rattlings of the coming war in Vietnam, and later the Cuban Missile Crisis were
powder kegs. It seemed to me the most important issue of our age.

When CND was formed in 1958, the idealism stirred up by Joan and her friends found an outlet. I sat in Grosvenor Square and
marched and chanted and petitioned all over the place. In 1962 I made an LP with the folk singer and composer Sydney Carter,
curiously named
Putting Out the Dustbins
considering it was all about CND and pacifism. As a filler I recorded a song of Sydney’s about giving up smoking called ‘My
Last Cigarette’ which to my chagrin and, I am sure, Sydney’s was issued as a single and eclipsed the passionate political
message of the rest of the LP. Love and peace were the aspect of the coming sixties that appealed to me more than the King’s
Road hype. To ban the Bomb didn’t seem foolish, it seemed essential before it got into the hands of some maniac like Hitler.
The arguments about the balance of power seemed not to take into account the rogue element in the human race. Not everyone
is sensible enough to say this must never happen. It already had. Twice.

11 September

Horror. Driving to Oxford to chair a conference on the
treatment of young people in prisons. Heard on the news
that a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers in
New York. Thought what an awful accident. Then there
was a second. Couldn’t comprehend what was going on.
It didn’t occur to me that it was deliberate. Turned on the
TV in my room at the Randolph and the full dawning
nightmare had me shaking and weeping. Phoned John and
Jo and Matt in France. They knew nothing so I told them
to turn on the telly. Went to the college to a session and
everyone was stunned and disbelieving. Quite a few
Quakers so we had a silent meeting. Words are useless
anyway. The images of people floating down having jumped
from the windows and what must be happening inside that
hellhole are eating into my brain, I am appalled at the
implications of what could follow. I fear the reaction of
the Americans led by that idiot Bush. It is as shocking an
occurrence as Hiroshima or Nagasaki and like them could
change the world for ever.