Such is the lot of a brace of jobbing actors that I went back to work almost immediately after Sam was born and Pru did likewise within a few weeks. When Sam arrived, I had just started rehearsing a play about Samuel Johnson in which I played the lead role alongside Julian Glover (of 2B, Bristol Grammar School) who was playing James Boswell. In actual fact, I wasn’t supposed to be playing Dr Johnson at all. My original role had been Sir John Hawkins, one of Johnson’s biographers, but when we started rehearsals, the actor playing Johnson didn’t turn up. Indeed, there seemed to be some secrecy as to the identity of this actor and all such enquiries were met with a grim face and stony silence.
When it became clear that the actor wasn’t arriving, I was asked to stand in and read for him on the first day. He still wasn’t there the next day, or the next. By the end of the week, we were all becoming a little bit tetchy. The part was significant, with Johnson being on stage practically from start to finish. Finally, the director turned to me one morning and said, ‘Well, I suppose you’d better do it.’
‘Fine,’ I replied. ‘I’d be delighted.’ There was no improvement financially, but the role was far more substantial and would be a welcome addition to my CV.
At one point during the play, Julian and I were required to dance. A chap called Ben Pearce Higgins had written some beautiful music and a choreographer named Bill Drysdale was called in for the occasion.
‘Have you ever danced before, Tim?’ Bill enquired cheerily on his first day.
‘Well, yes,’ I replied. ‘Although never very well. I’m afraid I have …’
‘Don’t tell me,’ he interrupted. ‘Two left feet?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘We’ll see,’ he said, showing off a wide smile. ‘I’m sure you’ll be fine.’
Bill had obviously heard this line a thousand times before and by the somewhat confident nature of his reply he had a decent record of turning two left feet into one of each.
‘Now, Tim,’ he began at the start of his choreography. ‘This is very simple – just like walking really. Sway back on the first beat, and on the third, step forward with your left foot – no, left foot … All right, we’ll do something even simpler.’
At this point Bill was still cheerfully confident but soon enough my inability to comprehend and repeat even the most rudimentary steps had started to wear him down.
‘You’ve been smoking rather heavily this afternoon, Bill?’ I said towards the end of the day.
‘Have I?’ he snapped.
He stopped short of blaming me directly, but I could tell that I had become his nemesis.
Pru was sympathetic. ‘That poor man,’ she said. ‘What an awful thing to have to do. I bet he doesn’t last the course.’
‘What do you mean?’ I said.
‘He won’t be able to teach you. Some things just aren’t possible.’
At the time I didn’t agree with Pru’s assessment but by the end of the third day I was beginning to see her point of view. Bill had been smoking constantly and looked like he hadn’t slept a wink. What’s more, his proteges had made next to no progress.
He put another cigarette on the ashtray ready to take the place of the one he was smoking. ‘Places, please,’ he said, clapping his hands. ‘Come on, we’ve a lot to do.’
That day was by far the worst of the three as in conclusion Bill claimed that, far from having made any progress since his arrival, we had actually got worse.
‘Never mind,’ I mumbled in desperation. ‘We still have one more day.’
Roughly fifteen hours later Julian and I stood in the centre of the rehearsal room staring at our watches. ‘He’s not coming, is he?’ I surmised.
‘Nope,’ agreed Julian. ‘Pru was obviously right.’
With regards to the actual routine we’d been meant to learn we just had to try our best and it became a source of light relief. A kind of comedic interlude.
Roughly five years later, while I was staying at Mrs McKay’s celebrated Astra House (the Home of the Stars) in Manchester, I came down to breakfast one morning to find Bill Drysdale sitting at a table buttering a slice of toast.
‘Hello, Bill,’ I said. ‘Remember me? Timothy West? Dr Johnson?’
The knife dropped from his pale, nerveless fingers. ‘Oh my God,’ he whispered faintly. ‘You’re not in Ragtime for the BBC?’
‘No, I’m doing a series for Granada.’
His fearful face suddenly broke into a smile, and he stood up and gleefully shook my hand.
It’s different now, I’m happy to say, but in our younger years Pru in particular feared penury more than anything else on earth and so when jobs came along, providing they wouldn’t damage our careers, we’d take them.
In order to facilitate this, childcare had to be arranged, and so when working out our budget as a family of three we had to factor in the cost of a fulltime nanny. We had many over the years, but our first nanny was a young lady called Rosie, who hailed from Aberdeen. I forget how they knew each other, but she came highly recommended by Pru’s own childhood nanny, Nan Patterson, and sure enough Rosie was marvellous. When Pru was working away from home, Rosie would travel with her and look after Sam while Pru was either rehearsing or performing.
The first job Pru accepted after Sam was born was a part in a revue at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford called Night is for Delight. As well as not being too far from home, the engagement only lasted a couple of weeks and was a perfect opportunity for Pru and Rosie to get to know each other, and to work out how on earth you’re supposed to manage day-to-day while on tour with a baby. Fortunately, Pru and Rosie got along famously.
‘She’s not really a theatregoer,’ Pru said, during a rare telephone conversation one day.
‘You’ll have to educate her then,’ I suggested.
‘What, with this show? She’d never forgive me.’
Pru set about furthering Rosie’s education and one matinee she asked the wardrobe mistress to look after Sam while Rosie went out and watched the show. I was appearing in something at the Arts Theatre in Cambridge at the time and the following day I received a letter from Pru telling me how it had gone.
‘I think she was dazed,’ wrote Pru. ‘Everyone was very sweet to her and sent up her accent and told her what lovely hair she had and she hardly stopped giggling.’
No sooner had Night is for Delight come to an end than Pru, Rosie and Sam were on the road again, this time in a production of Noël Coward’s Hay Fever starring Celia Johnson and Roland Culver. The only potential problem with this show was the fact that Noël Coward’s own legendary production, which had taken place at the National Theatre and had starred the likes of Maggie Smith, Derek Jacobi, Robert Stephens and my own former co-star, Dame Edith Evans, had appeared just a few years previously. Comparisons would undoubtedly be made. Pru wasn’t worried, exactly, although when word got out that Noël Coward himself would be attending one of the run-throughs, she got an attack of the jitters.
‘I do wish they hadn’t told us he was coming,’ she complained. ‘I shall be ever so nervous now.’
‘Look,’ I said. ‘Who was it who played your role in his production originally? Lynn Redgrave?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Well, as long as you don’t mention her, you’ll be fine.’
The rehearsal took place in the afternoon and when Pru returned home early that evening she looked crestfallen.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘He wanted to shake hands with everyone afterwards and when he got to me, I couldn’t think of anything to say.’
‘You should have let him speak first.’
‘I know that now.’
‘What happened then?’
‘He said some awfully nice things to Roland and Celia, then to Richard Vernon, and when he got to me, he just shook my hand and smiled rather glibly. I muttered something about Lynn Redgrave being a very hard act to follow and as he continued down the line he said, “Oh yes, wasn’t she good.”’
‘Oh dear,’ I said putting my arms around her. ‘Would you like a drink?’
‘Yes, please. Actually, I’ll have two. One for me and one for Lynn.’
The play was due to run at the Duke of York’s Theatre on St Martin’s Lane, but not before a lengthy tour of the provinces, hence Pru, Rosie and Sam going straight back on the road. One of the early dates was in Brighton and the day after opening a tired and exasperated Pru wrote me a letter explaining that she’d had rather a day of it.
I had to sleep with Sam, who wakes at six and sings and makes plughole noises for an hour, and Rosie, who snores very gently all through it, and what with that and a really appalling hangover, I didn’t think I’d be able to open at all. But caught up just in time, and it was OK I think, though will be better and I haven’t seen any notices yet.
Her next letter arrived two days later, on a Friday, offering me a vivid description of the digs they were sharing.
We’re living a very ‘Look Back in Anger’ existence, with the clotheshorse the salient feature in the room, and in a way thank God you missed it. But Sam is being pretty ravishing and has settled down very well. He sings rather loudly from 7 a.m. on, which is not very engaging, and I swear has woken me up every morning by sheer hypnotism through the bars in his cot.
The thing that perturbed Pru the most during the first few months of Sam’s existence was the constant lack of sleep. This was compounded further by the fact that Pru’s worrying had gone into overdrive, so even if she wasn’t awakened by a baby or an au pair, the chances are an anxiety of some kind would do it instead. I must have at least a hundred letters from Pru that were written between the hours of three and four in the morning.
‘You really will have to do something about this,’ I said to her over the telephone one day.
‘I shall just have to see if I can nap before the show,’ she said. ‘If I can grab an hour and a half or even just an hour, I’ll be fine.’
And so, it came to pass. Pru arrived at the theatre in good time for the show, lay down on the sofa, closed her eyes and succumbed to the sandman.
‘I did it,’ she said the following day. ‘I slept for almost two hours before the show last night and woke up feeling marvellous. I was awakened at the crack of dawn this morning, of course, but I don’t care anymore. Anyway, how are you, my love?’
I later found out that Pru had form in this department. When I say form, what I mean is that she had a history of falling asleep in theatres, except that instead of confining this to a sofa in a dressing room or a seat in the stalls even, she had actually managed to achieve it not only on a stage, but during a performance of Othello while playing Desdemona with Salisbury Rep. Pru informed me that the actor playing Othello was quite a large fellow and for some reason he used to take an awfully long time over the final scene, in which he commits suicide after killing Desdemona.
‘It was a matinee, and I must have been out the night before,’ she told me. ‘Anyway, halfway through being murdered I started to feel ever so sleepy. At first, I tried to fight it but then I realized that in a few moments I would have to play dead anyway, so I just succumbed to it.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ I said scratching my head. ‘You mean you consciously decided to nod off in the middle of the afternoon on a stage in Salisbury during a performance of Othello?’
‘That’s right. It was right at the end of the performance, though, and I was about to die. I’d have woken up for the curtain call.’
I don’t know how long it took Othello to do away with himself but sometime in between him doing so and then Cassio saying, ‘This did I fear, but thought he had no weapon,’ Pru woke up with a loud shriek, which resulted in several even louder shrieks from the audience.
‘Good God,’ I said. ‘What on earth did you do?’
‘Well, it took me a few seconds to come around, but after I did, I realized our predicament.’
‘What, that Desdemona had come back to life suddenly in front of a live audience after having been murdered by somebody who had now killed themselves?’
‘That’s right. You should have seen the looks on the actor’s faces. They were as white as sheets.’
‘And what of Othello?’
‘At first, he didn’t move so I gave him a nudge.’
‘You nudged a dead Othello?’
‘That’s right. Eventually he began to stir, and I whispered, “Sorry, but you’re going to have to kill me again.”’
‘And what did he say?’
‘Nothing. He was so shocked, I think, that at first, he just lay there staring at me, but only out of one eye.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘I gave him another nudge, which seemed to bring him round, and eventually he started murdering me again – a bit more hurriedly this time – and then killed himself, again, in next to no time. The applause was rather muted at the end.’
‘I can’t say I’m surprised. Do you know, Pru,’ I said, taking her in my arms. ‘I think that might be my new favourite anecdote.’
The next date of the tour was up in Edinburgh (a mere 464 miles) and although I advised against it Pru insisted on driving the three of them up there.
‘It’s going to take you at least ten hours,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you just go by train like everyone else?’
‘We’ll be fine,’ said Pru. ‘As long as we set off at the right time.’
I dislike the phrase ‘I told you so’, and so I kept my mouth shut even when I learned that, due to a constant and extremely powerful headwind, the journey from Brighton to Edinburgh had taken Pru, Sam and Rosie the best part of thirteen hours.
‘We were going so slowly I thought we’d broken down,’ said Pru. ‘And poor Rosie. It’s a wonder she hasn’t taken the opportunity to abandon us in Edinburgh and catch a train back to Aberdeen.’
Instead of staying in another John Osborne-esque boarding house, Pru, Rosie and Sam had been invited to go and stay with an ex-boyfriend of Pru’s called Bill Blackwood. Pru and Bill had first met back in 1959, so a couple of years before I arrived on the scene. An engineer by trade, Bill was a wildly eccentric man who lived in a large house with his bedridden mother, her nurse and a cook. He had decided many years previously not to become involved in the family business and had put all his efforts into building ski-lifts on the Cairngorms near Aviemore. It was a ridiculously impractical plan as he had no money and was having to work in London. Moreover, the ski-lifts he’d designed were little more than ropes attached to tractors. That said, the three tractors that he’d managed to purchase had been named PS1, PS2 and PS3 after Pru.
‘Do you miss him?’ I asked.
‘Sometimes,’ she said. ‘But only because he’s so entertaining.’
They were at Bill’s bleak house for five or six nights and by the time they left for Glasgow, Pru had turned to drowning her sorrows and Rosie had committed to memory the entire train timetable from Glasgow to Aberdeen for the entire year. Fortunately, their experience in Scotland improved on every level, and not just with regards to the accommodation. The notices for the show, for instance, had been polite at best until now but in Glasgow they were positively fawning. Despite the upturn in fortunes, Pru had decided that it might be better for both nanny and baby if Rosie took Sam to visit her family for a few days. After all, she’d memorized the timetable. Pru wrote to me shortly after.
Sam and Rosie went off safely yesterday. Sam distressingly jovial, I was nearly in tears … Spent yesterday in bed mostly asleep and felt alarmingly fresh and normal for the show, makes one realize how ‘sub’ one is generally: is this to continue until Sam is grown up? Will I never be able to bring full energy and concentration to a part? Perhaps marriage/babies are incompatible with work, am I giving less than full value, I seem to have felt tired for months, it’s all so unfair.
I should make the point here that Pru playing three roles at once – mother, wife and actress – was both exhausting and incredibly rare. Mothers, regardless of age, were expected to stay at home in the 1960s and those who rallied against this were frowned upon by a great many. Not that it troubled Pru at all. She’s always been able to rise above that kind of nonsense and chose to have her cake and eat it.
‘Sam’s perfectly happy and so am I,’ she said to me at the time. ‘I grant you, it’s damned hard work sometimes, but we manage.’
Pru’s resolve and fortitude were put to the ultimate test in January 1968 when the producers of Hay Fever announced that they would be taking the show to Canada for two weeks. ‘Are you sure you want to take Sam?’ I asked. ‘We could easily make alternative arrangements here. You know, grandparents and nannies. It’d be a break for you. And a well-deserved one at that.’
‘Absolutely not,’ said Pru. ‘As long as I have Jutta with me [Rosie’s successor] I’ll be fine, as will Sam.’
‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘It’s your decision.’
Before anyone starts accusing me of being a chauvinist for standing back, as well as pleading the 1960s (different attitudes etc), I did and still do believe that this was Pru’s decision to make and Pru’s alone.
‘We’ll be absolutely fine,’ she said, while holding Sam at the airport. ‘Won’t we, Sam? Anyway, darling, you take care and I’ll write to you as soon as we get to the hotel.’
The post was rather more reliable and regular in those days than it is today and despite her being on a different continent and many thousands of miles away, Pru’s first letter arrived just two days later.
‘Oh goodness dearie me,’ it started.
Well, we were eight hours on that plane, and I hardly stopped being frightened for one minute. In fact, it was a very good flight and a good landing, but we took off at two and didn’t arrive until HALF PAST THREE, by which time Sam, who had remained remarkably cheerful and winsome, was so crazed with hunger that he couldn’t eat and had to be forcibly fed between screams. The prescribed teaspoon of sedative failed to have any effect at all but Sam eventually slept for about three-quarters of an hour. Otherwise, constant yell. Everyone very nice about it. Even Roland Culver only said, ‘This aeroplane is more like a school bus.’
A few days later I received another letter from Pru informing me that our son had learned some new words. ‘One of which I’m afraid is “elevator”,’ she wrote …
Weather has been very dramatic here. On Sunday it was cold, and the cars were all wrapped in frozen rain like polythene – when you open the door it shattered like the toffee on a toffee apple. Then on Monday it snowed heavily in the morning and stopped magically for the dress rehearsal, leaving all the little cherry trees on the sidewalks encrusted with ice, and looking incredibly valuable. Fantastically efficient clearance of the main streets, and now you’d hardly know, and it’s not much colder than at home.
I’m pleased to report that both the play and the experience of having Sam with her in Canada were a success, and when Pru returned home she was adamant that her decision to combine work with motherhood had been the right one. What’s more, I agreed with her.
A few days later the three of us were at home together one evening enjoying each other’s company (it must have been a Sunday) when we inadvertently presented a scene to our neighbours and to passers-by that resulted in a series of very strange looks and, I’d imagine, not an inconsiderable amount of trauma. We’d never really bothered closing the curtains before in our living room (I don’t think it had ever occurred to us) because on the rare occasions we were in there, we’d just be splayed out on the sofa reading books or talking. On this particular night, however, I was trying on a costume for a play in which I had to cross dress (it was a rather fetching off-the-shoulder number with yards of net at the back) and as Pru advised me how to put it on she was stripped to the waist feeding Sam.
‘Hang on,’ she said suddenly. ‘Somebody’s looking in through the window. There’s two or three of them! Tim, look.’
‘Really? Good God, you’re right. Nothing to see here, sorry,’ I said, closing the curtains while attempting to tame my errant bosom.