The Two of Us (31 page)

24 January

‘Bleeooming great war clouds are leeooming’ as Kenny
Williams would say. Signed a letter to be published trying
to stop the war. Fat chance. Benjamin is a darling and keeps
me occupied. He is someone to care for – I need that. No,
Sheila, some
thing
, he is not a person. Oh dear, I must not
become a silly old woman doting on her pet.

25 January

Heard Condoleeza Rice talking about the US mission to save
the world. She is intelligent and put her case persuasively.
But the impression was of a group of messianic people in
Washington bent on a mission that they believe with all their
hearts is right. I worry that their obsession with Iraq is
making them take their eye off the ball in the search for
terrorists. Quaker
Advices and Queries
, ‘Consider it possible
you might be mistaken.’

30 January

Dreamt John and I were separated and I thought – as I
used to – oh, it’s OK, I’ll go back to him later, then remembered
he was gone for ever. Woke up gasping and shaky.
I keep thinking I’m getting better and wallop it’s back again.
I miss him, I miss him. I know now I have to allow myself
to have shitty days. Just give in to it, but stop inflicting it
on others. Hide away and scream and shout and it will
pass.

1 February

You see? Today I felt OK. A good night’s sleep is always
a help. In the early days I couldn’t sleep and that made me
exhausted and that made me wretched – it’s a vicious circle.
My doctor has set a personal trainer on me, John. He puts
me through my paces with various implements including
ferocious weights. I need to get physically fit in order to
be mentally better, I know that. I have been neglecting
myself. Ellie Jane arrived at 8.30. He opened the door and
she was confronted with me in tights lying over a large
rubber ball with this rather dishy young man looking on.
I hope she believed my explanation.

2 February

Memorial concert for Joan Littlewood at Stratford East.
There we were, old codgers remembering the days when
we were full of passion. Joan would have pulled her woolly
hat over her eyes in disgust at such sentiment. Sitting on
that stage I remembered the terrified girl in the wings. Oh
Joan of blessed memory, an idealist, and God they are rare.
She remained true to her beliefs right to the end. I shall
miss her postcards and phone calls.

4 February

Heard radio programme about bereavement. ‘Everyone
avoids me.’ ‘People should be taught about bereavement at
school.’ Oh, get a grip! It’s part of life for God’s sake.
Surely we don’t have to have classes in grieving now. Sheila,
beware self-pity, it’s so unattractive.

8 February

It’s his bass notes I miss. Without John my life is thin and
reedy, insubstantial, without depth. I glide over the surface
of events. I don’t discuss them after to analyse and put in
perspective. When something happened in the past I
couldn’t wait to tell John and we’d talk and laugh about
it, now it just evaporates or, worse, just whirls around in
my mind, unresolved. I’m not grounded any more. How
do I get round this one?

12 February

Coming up to the anniversary of his death. A year?
Unbelievable. He is still so – not near – but potent to me.

14 February

Extraordinary Valentine’s Day. The children round with cards
and presents (they were pretty startled by John, the personal
trainer, the handsome hunk). Then to a Story Competition
do for the Great Ormond Street Hospital at Waterstone’s.
Felt pretty grumpy on arrival, then posed for photos next to
a youth in a chair. Twisted body, can’t walk or talk. He has
a gadget to tap out words and I put in ‘hello’ and got talking
to him, rubbishing the photographers who were taking ages.
I was thinking, ‘This could have been Jack – he had a similar
tumour.’ Later, his parents called me over and said he wanted
to give me something. It was a single red rose. I told him I
was dreading Valentine’s Day, but he had made it lovely.

15 February

Biggest demo ever in London against the war. If there is
one good thing to come out of this madness it is that the
public has found a voice and a passion. Youngsters are
revolting in the best sense of the word instead of the worst.
People are actually concerned about the so-called enemy.
In the old days if we were told someone was an enemy,
we’d have believed them and started hating to order. Now
people worry about the women and children, and separate
out the leaders and the led. I only hope the people we are
bombing know how we feel.

18 February

Tom Courtenay’s first night in show about Philip Larkin,
produced by my son-not-in-law, Matt. It is curious that
poetry has always flummoxed me before but this year has
been a revelation. John and I used to switch off poetry
programmes. ‘Wanky.’ ‘Oh noo, not for me.’ But it was
often the sanctimonious style of delivery, or worse, the
mock-ordinary flatness of the Liverpool poets. Whatever –
it irritated. And now the poems that people have sent me
have helped enormously. There were several in Tom’s show
and the phrase ‘What will survive of us is love’ spoke to
my condition totally.

21 February

A year since my best beloved died. Strange. I have been
dreading this day and it was lovely. The three girls and I
went to the church near Manchester Square where I had
lit a candle for Jack when he was ill and we lit one for
John and sat quietly for a while. I love London churches.
The city sounds in the distance and the calm inside. Then
to lunch at the Wallace Collection and a look at the pictures.
I had my babes to stay the night and went to the cinema
with them and Matt and Jo and tea after. Lots of laughter
at bath and story time. This – they – are the future. That
can’t be bad. Larkin on the death of a hedgehog:

Next morning I got up and it did not

The first day after death, a new absence

Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind

While there is still time.

22 February

Seventy. Seventy? No, not seventy? Yes. Bloody seventy!
My babes greeted me with lovely presents. We had fun with
me acting a very old lady. We went to the Wallace Collection
again
. An eighteenth-century day – when I was born, practically.
Lola, Abs and Molly Mae danced a minuet. Lola
got in a strop because she couldn’t make a fan and Molly
Mae could. That evening I went, supposedly for a quiet
dinner, to Ellie Jane’s and was amazed to find the place full
of my friends, from the past and new ones that I have made
this year. I’m so blessed. I felt full of love for them all.
Another lovely poem through the post. It was sent to me
by Lynda Tavakali, whom I have corresponded with for
years, since her friend died of breast cancer. It was in
Nicholas Evans’ book,
The Smoke Jumper.
A riposte to
Edna. The fact that it works for me now shows that I have
moved on since Edna’s despair consumed me.

If I be the first of us to die,

Let grief not blacken long your sky.

Be bold yet modest in your grieving.

There is change but not a leaving.

For just as death is part of life,

The dead live on forever in the living.

For all the gathered riches of our journey,

The moments shared, the mysteries explored,

The steady layer of intimacy stored,

The things that made us laugh or weep or sing,

The joy of sunlit snow or first unfurling of the spring,

The wordless language of look and touch,

The knowing,

Each giving and each taking,

These are not flowers that fade,

Nor trees that fall and crumble,

Nor are they stone

For even stone cannot the wind and rain withstand

And mighty mountain peaks in time reduce to sand.

What we were, we are.

What we had, we have.

A conjoined past imperishably present.

So when you walk the woods where once we walked
together

And scan in vain the dappled bank beside you for my
shadow,

Or pause where we always did upon the hill to gaze across
the land,

And spotting something, reach by habit for my hand,

And finding none, feel sorrow start to steal upon you,

Be still.

Close your eyes.

Breathe.

Listen for my footfall in your heart.

I am not gone but merely walk within you.

8 March

I am really not at all keen on this old age thing. I am on
the receiving end of respect and I hate it. The PA even calls
me ‘my love’ – ‘Let me help you, my love’ – as if I were
a helpless geriatric. But worse – they ask for my advice as
if I were a fount of wisdom, which I’m not. About their
love lives and such, whereas I fancy the focus-puller who
I suddenly realise is twenty-six and I am seventy. I have to
watch all the usual flirtations instead of having one. I am
the cause of no gossip at all. I suppose I never was but I
could have been and now I can’t. It’s a bugger. After the
broadcast everyone was going for a drink and the director
said, ‘I don’t suppose you’ll want to come.’ Why bloody
not? I’m too old to get across the road? Too grand? In the
old days I would have wanted to rush home to John who
didn’t find me old at all. He found me rude and feisty and
sexy and as young as when we met. But now I just went
home and watched the telly on my own – with a bloody
great drink.

18 March

It is countdown to war and already ‘the boys’ are excited.
Detailed descriptions of all the various toys including cluster
bombs. You can feel the playground atmosphere. The antis
are expected to come to heel now. ‘Our boys’ or ‘our lads’
are out there. I always get worried when men call one
another lads and boys – like football hooligans. I don’t
support the lads. I weep for them and rage that they might
die or be traumatised in such a misconceived venture.

20 March

Trinity College as guest for the Domus dinner. Standing in
for John. Lovely evening but felt a bit ratty when I arrived.
Greeted by some academic who kept saying ‘No trouble at
all.’ I hate that phrase. Everyone says it all the time. What
does it mean for God’s sake? He’s educated, he should use
language accurately. I should bloody well think it’s no
trouble to hand me a paper, or press the lift button on
number 3. And while I’m at it, how disgusting is the phrase
‘shock and awe’ to describe an operation to kill people?
Awe is caused by looking at the Grinling Gibbons carvings
at the chapel here at Trinity. Awe is the thought of all the
scholarship these walls have witnessed since the sixteenth
century. Not frightening badly-defended Arabs to death by
an obscene show of might. But yes, I’m shocked all right.

* http://johnthaw.topcities.com/

Epilogue

2 April
France. Bought a new washing machine made by Laden.
Not Osama Bin, I hope. The bombs, the wounded children,
the woman caught on a bridge between firing men
seem far away here. My sorrow has broadened, it is no
longer just for me and mine. As you get older you cannot
help but be melancholy. The turmoil of the world is
palpable. But there are still rapturous moments. I went
down to the stream through the cherry orchard. I came to
a glade where the sun was beaming in rays through a roof
of blossom. Beneath was a carpet of wild narcissi, the
perfume took my breath away. I could hear the stream
rippling. I was panting and trembling, it was so beautiful.
Oh I wish – No, stop. Then I tried:

Be still.

Close your eyes.

Breathe.

Listen for my footfall in your heart.

I’m not gone but merely walk in you.

And it sort of worked. Cracked it, kid?

COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For permission to reprint copyright material the author and publishers gratefully acknowledge the following:

Songs

‘It Takes Two’ from
Into the Woods
by Stephen Sondheim. Reproduced by kind permission of Stephen Sondheim.

Extract from ‘The Sun Has Got His Hat On’, words and music by Ralph Butler and Noel Gay. Reproduced by permission of West’s,
London WC2H 0QY (EMI have a 50% interest), Richard Armitage Limited and G. Schirmer, Inc. and Associated Music Publishers,
Inc. (USA). All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.

Extract from ‘If You Were the Only Girl in the World’, words by Clifford Grey and music by Nat D. Ayer. Reproduced by permission
of B. Feldman & Co Ltd, London WC2H 0QY (EMI have a 50% interest) and Redwood Music Ltd/Carlin, London NW1 8BD.

Extract from ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, words and music by Paul Simon. Copyright © 1969 Paul Simon.

Extract from ‘As Time Goes By’, words and music by Herman Hupfield. Copyright © 1931 by Warner Bros Inc. (Renewed). All Rights
Reserved. Lyric reproduced by kind permission of Redwood Music Ltd/Carlin, London NW1 8BD for the Commonwealth of Nations
including Canada, Australasia and Hong Kong, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Africa and Spain.

Extract from ‘The Riff Song’ from
The Desert Song
(1926), words by Otto Harbach (b. Otto Abels Hauerbach), music by Sigmund Romberg. Copyright © Warner Chappel Ltd, UK.

Poems

Raymond Carver, ‘Late Fragment’ from
All of Us: The Collected Poems of
Raymond Carver
, published by The Harvill Press. Copyright © Tess Gallagher. Reproduced by permission of The Random House Group Ltd, UK and
ICM Talent, Inc., USA.

Nicholas Evans, ‘Walk Within You’ from
The Smoke Jumper
by Nicholas Evans, published by Bantam Press. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd, UK and A. P. Watt Inc.,
USA.

Philip Larkin, ‘The Mower’ from
Collected Poems
by Philip Larkin. Reproduced by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd, UK, and Farrar Straus & Giroux Inc., USA.

Primo Levi, ‘To My Friends’ from
Collected Poems
by Primo Levi. Reproduced by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd, UK, and Farrar Straus & Giroux Inc., USA.

Edna St Vincent Millay, ‘Sonnet 2: Time Does Not Bring Relief’ from
The
Collected Poems of Edna St Vincent Millay
. Reproduced by permission of Random House USA, Inc.

Other

John Madden, John Thaw Obituary (‘His shyness was the source of his genius’),
Observer
, 24 February 2002, reproduced here by kind permission of John Madden.

The author and publishers gratefully acknowledge permission to quote from the private letters of Sally Alexander, Alma Cullen,
Udi Eichler, Peter O’Toole, Dr Brian Piggot and Peter Thompson.

Photographs

All photographs, unless otherwise stated, are from the author’s private collection and are used with permission.

For the photographs on the following pages the publishers would like to credit: John Alexander Studio, First Leisure Corporation
plc, FremantleMedia, Matthew Harvey, John Haynes, ITV/Carlton Television, Manchester Picture Library, Beattie Meyrick, Murray
and Carstair, Torquay, Press Association, Royal Court Theatre, Stuart Simpson, Abigail Thaw, Nigel Whitney,
Woman’s Realm
.