Chapter Six

Running on Empty

I remember watching a programme on TV back in 1977 called Rock Follies. I was sitting in my brown candlewick dressing gown. It had a zip down its front for baby’s easy feeding access. It wasn’t glamorous. I was staring at the television, thinking, ‘I used to do that.’ I never thought I’d be a human being again, let alone a vibrant one. I really thought I’d done myself in. Born too soon, Chloe was sick. She was finding it very difficult to latch on and feed. When she did she thew up – projectile vomiting. I had to take her back to the hospital. It was hard. It was frantically horrible.

My husband didn’t love me any more. All communication was gone and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know that when someone feels guilty they can’t talk to you. Six weeks after Phoebe was born in 1974, I’d been back making a movie. This time was very different. I couldn’t sleep. Because Chloe wasn’t feeding properly I had to wake her every two hours to try to get her to feed. In the morning I had to cope with a two-year-old bouncing off the walls.

I remember a moment of silence. ‘Ahh, silence,’ then, ‘Silence?’ I ran to the stairs. Phoebe had Chloe’s head, and her friend Claire, another two-year-old, had her feet. They were swinging her, about to see if she’d bounce down the stairs.

After I’d put the children to bed at 6:30 p.m. the world used to close down around me. With no test card and music, just a blank screen. I couldn’t even go out for a walk. Simply going down the garden to get the washing from the line, my ears would be constantly peeled, listening out for the babies. For a young woman – a young selfish woman, who’s co-starred in movies, on stage and TV, and who’s grown used to having her own money – to find herself suddenly alone and broke with two young babies and thinking she can’t cope without her husband; it felt like I’d really mucked up my life.

John and I had decided to have a trial separation. He’d gone to Stratford-upon-Avon to work with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I didn’t think I would be able to manage on my own without him. Phoebe was going through the terrible twos. I had to make a conscious decision to still allow some love for John. If I didn’t I knew I wouldn’t be able to love Phoebe and Chloe. I think you have to have love for the father or you won’t have true love for your baby – you’re trapped. It felt like a real decision I had to make. Now it hardly seems real – this old friend of mine, this silly old actor – it was another life. At the time, though, it was heart-breaking. I’ve always said John’s a splendid actor but a ridiculous husband.

How could he leave? I was totally disbelieving. I kept thinking he’d come to his senses. How can you have a young wife and two babies and just leave them like that? I was convinced he’d come back, but he didn’t. Truth is, I was running on empty before Chloe was born. I had no understanding of marriages not working. You made your vows, put on your ring and made it work. Nobody in my family got separated or divorced. I took my vows seriously, and now I felt my little tribe had been betrayed. I guess I should have had a clue when John lost his ring down the drain.

The problem with adultery is the conspiracy. Other people know what you don’t. On the level of personal pride it’s really hurtful, and the conspiracy leads to people avoiding you. My isolation became horrible. I couldn’t understand why friends were staying away. I thought it was because I was toxic in my misery. I’m sure I was, but it was more than that. They had information that I didn’t. When I did find out what had been going on, my world completely cracked apart.

I wish I hadn’t been brought up with Walt Disney. I wish I hadn’t had this expectation that “one day your prince will come” and, when he comes, that’s it. It’s so sadly unrealistic. The dishonesty of the conspiracy, the lying: when truth is withheld – it’s crippling. Being unfaithful to the one you love is a disloyalty and it’s not fair; it is a conspiracy. There was that attempt in the Sixties for free love, but we weren’t up to it. We did a distortion. Partner-up if you want, but if you can’t do it honestly, then don’t do it.

Before John went to Stratford he was always going missing. One time I had a full plate of meat and roast potatoes, gravy, peas; the lot. John was on his way out of the door to go and see a man about a dog or whatever he was doing. I told him if he went the plate was going on the ceiling. He just looked at me and kept walking. I threw the plate so hard the peas embedded themselves in the plaster. They dried there and had to be painted over.

When Chloe was five months old John and I both got work in Sheffield – in plays at The Crucible Theatre. I was being directed by Peter James in Alan Ayckbourn’s Absurd Person Singular and John was in Gogol’s The Government Inspector. We shared a flat with Hildegarde Neil, Brian Blessed and their baby, and I had my two. It was above a rice and curry store. Strangely, it was the perfect way to get back into work. Phoebe started saying ‘Mummy’s working’ in a Sheffield accent and John was John. One night we had a visit from the police. John had performed one of his very special tricks. He’d done it before and he’s done it again since. It involves racing against flashing blue lights. When he was finally stopped and taken to the police station, he jumped on the station desk, telling them they couldn’t arrest him because he was the government inspector. He was completely drunk. Sheffield had its moments of fun but Sheffield was difficult.

Back in London I was on my own again with the girls. I’d walk up and down Kilburn High Road looking for the cheapest tomatoes. ‘Eggy-in-the-Nest’ became our favourite meal. I did what work I could, but money was tight. An egg on spinach is a very cost-effective and nutritious dish.

Once, I had a matinee performance and the babysitter was late. I had to leave. I left a note outside for the babysitter, put Chloe in her basket, and took her and Phoebe over the road to the convent opposite our house. I knocked on its imposing front door. Two hairy nuns answered. Phoebe looked up at them, doe eyed, while they peered down on the slumbering Chloe – wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a basket. Their faces softened. I explained my predicament and they took the girls in. I whispered a word of thanks to Mary as I passed her statue in the garden.

I don’t think they suffered from the experience; and they were given their first chocolate. Phoebe took to using a chair to reach the door handle to open the front door. She’d sneak across the road where she’d pick flowers from the convent’s garden, knock on the door and exchange them for sweets with the nuns.

We were living in a huge house in West Hampstead. It cost a fortune to heat and I was skint. I kept the living room cold and we lived in the kitchen with the Rayburn. I used to turn the heater on in the bathroom 20 minutes before the kids were going to have their bath. It was miserable but I did four new plays in 1978: The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs with Susannah York, An Audience Called Edouard with Susan Hampshire and Jeremy Irons, The London Cuckolds with Ken Cranham and Can You Hear Me at the Back? with Hannah Gordon. All brilliant to do, but they didn’t pay a lot. By the time I’d paid for childcare there was just enough to keep Eggy-in-the-Nest on our table.

In Albert Nobbs, Susannah and I played two 19th-century women who lived their lives as men in order to escape the crushing poverty that would usually have been a single woman’s lot back then. It’s a play about gender and inequality. I did it a year after Marilyn French’s book The Women’s Room came out. Once again I found myself involved in a percolating energy of the time. And I was living it: experiencing the impact of gender inequality at the hard end.

The fourth play I did that year, Can You Hear Me at the Back? had the most darling cast ever – Peter Barkworth, Hannah Gordon, Edward Hardwicke and Michael Maloney – but it was one of the worst plays ever. We toured for a few weeks and then brought it to the West End and spent a year at the Piccadilly Theatre. It was solid money but I didn’t get the slightest bit of satisfaction from one performance.

Left to right: Edward Hardwicke, Hannah Gordon and Michael Maloney in my dressing room with Phoebe’s paintings on the wall

I was working hard, always working; I was supporting my family but dragging myself along, in a deep depression. I called Peter Barkworth one day and told him I was just too low to do the performance that evening. He came round immediately.

‘You have to do it, Stephie,’ Peter warned me. ‘The producers won’t notice the difference if you’re feeling off, but when the curtain goes up they’ll notice if you’re not there.’

Just after I’d co-starred in The Nightcomers with Marlon Brando, back in 1971, I’d failed to appreciate the power and influence producers have. I’d refused to do some publicity in New York. I was young, naive and didn’t know how to deal with the different aspects of the business. It had resulted in the door to Hollywood being firmly shut in my face for a long time. Peter was a dear, wise man. It wasn’t just the producers. I owed it to the cast to get myself together and go to work.

Peter Barkworth and me

Despite the uninspiring nature of the play, it wasn’t without its laughs. During one performance Peter managed to turn the line, ‘I’ve watched you lose your nerve’ to, ‘I’ve natched you wooze your lerve.’ He had me in fits on stage. I responded with ‘Uh-huh’ to which he replied, ‘Oh, you beast.’ We were playing. I badly needed to play. After another performance a young Canadian guy was waiting for me at the stage door. He came out with a line about ‘falling in love with my back,’ and asked me to a restaurant. To be in a situation where I’d have to talk was the last thing I wanted. I was so full of my story of misery I didn’t dare go out to dinner. I told him to take me skating. He took me to the Electric Ballroom in Camden. It was perfect for me, a roller disco – no talking, just all-night dancing on roller skates. I became a regular. It was one of a few clubs that played host to the black dance music scene in London at that time. After work I’d go dancing. I’d get home at daybreak, the music still pulsing through me and my body buzzing. When you totally lose yourself in the music, dancing induces its own kind of catharsis. It was what I needed: distraction – vibrant and intense distraction from my emotional pain. It was an unconscious recovery process and I became fit, in a head-turning kind of way. I discovered that if I didn’t stop, if I kept on running, I could outpace the pain.

The process I’d use these days would be entirely different. I would try to sit with the pain. Far better to just sit with the pain; to let go of the fear, go through the pain and accept it as part of life at that moment. Back then I had to keep running for a long time. I didn’t have a toolkit to draw on; I just kept on the move. On my 35th birthday I went hang-gliding on skis. I jumped off a cliff near Val d’Isère. I skied off the edge of the mountain thinking, ‘If I die now, I’ll die flying.’

While we were doing Can You Hear Me at the Back? I invited Michael Maloney to lodge with us. One day I asked him what he’d been doing earlier. He told me he’d been looking for a flat. I said, ‘You’re going to come into our house and be the big brother my girls need – the constant male.’ I felt we needed that energy around the house. Michael was a 20-year-old macrobiotic of Jesuit schooling. He was the right person at the right time. Sent by the universe – as well as being opportunism of the highest order on my part. It’s still how I live. Don’t be shy – seize the moment.

I was lost in my own emotional state, as far as my own needs went, but I knew what my kids needed. It’s because of them that I survived. My children made me brave.

There was only one time, when I saw them so happy with my mother and father, that I felt they’d be better off without me.

Soon after John and I separated I made a death dare. It wasn’t a suicide attempt. I didn’t decide to kill myself; I just didn’t care about my life any more. I’d left Phoebe and Chloe with Granny and Gonky – as my father was called – and was driving back to London. They’d seemed so happy there. I thought that they’d be better off and happier if they lived with their grandparents permanently. My husband was already in another relationship and didn’t need me. I thought everybody would be better off if I wasn’t around. A lorry was driving towards me and I put destiny to the test. I switched to the other side of the road and drove head-on towards it, thinking, ‘I’m not swerving.’ It was a monstrously irresponsible thing to do. I am so lucky the driver of the lorry didn’t go down the bank at the side of the road. For those seconds of idiocy I wasn’t thinking. The lorry swerved and missed me.

For a few moments I stopped thinking, then I started thinking that if I did want to end the mess that was my life, I’d better tidy everything up. I got home and did just that. I tidied and tidied, and threw things away and tidied some more. When I’d finished, I thought, ‘What a very neat house.’ Then the children returned and went back to their nursery school, and I carried on. It’s only later you realize that the thought of ending it all was not only an act of great selfishness but also an act of enormous foolishness, and totally misguided. Afterwards Mummy said to me, ‘We were just putting on a brave face because we could see you were a bit glum.’

It seems so far away now, I feel as if I’m talking about a character in a novel. At the time, though, it was ghastly. The end of my marriage rent me apart. I couldn’t conceive that this was the way my life was meant to be.

I wanted to brighten my bedroom so I bought some wallpaper decorated with roses. The thing is, I couldn’t afford enough wallpaper to cover the whole room. I decided to cut the roses out and stick them on the walls. After I put the girls to bed I started cutting and sticking. Within an hour I’d given up. I felt exhausted – defeated. I started to weep. Suddenly Phoebe and Chloe were standing by me in their red jumpsuits.

‘Why are you crying, Mummy?’ Phoebe asked, her voice filled with concern.

‘I’m not, honey,’ I replied. ‘I got wallpaper paste in my eyes.’

I pulled myself back to the here and now and, together, we started cutting and pasting. We made a great team: I cut, Phoebe pasted and Chloe slapped into place. We were up most of the night and we did the whole room. My children made me survive. For them, I had to be brave.

My favourite quote about having children is: ‘Your children ruin your life and without them your life would have no purpose whatsoever.’ I’ve always thought that my children were my greatest work of art, though with some of the things that have happened over the course of our lives together, I’m thankful I’ve also had my craft. Back then, they were my saviours.

Some people say you never get more than God knows you can cope with, and some say you are pushed to the very limit and always you will need help. And help is always there; your guardian angels, a higher power you can access. Towards the end of her life, when she was very frail, my mother was in the bath. She’d hit her head and was stuck. She didn’t know how to get out. She said a prayer: ‘Please God, help me to use my intelligence to get out of this bath.’ In an instant, she had an answer. She pulled out the plug with her toe and, once the bath had drained, was able to get out. She was far too vain to push the emergency button, my mother.

Tenko

It was 1980 and a new decade was just beginning. I was having lunch with the great actor John Standing. He told me how he’d suddenly got the thought in his head that he’d like to go to India. He said the more he thought about it, the more appealing the idea of going there got. ‘Then, the most extraordinary thing happened,’ he continued. ‘Out the blue I suddenly got a call saying could I possibly go out there – and now I’m going. I had this thought and then it happened.’ I thought that was pretty cool, and wondered what I wanted. John gave me a concept and I flew with it. I don’t think about things. I just do things.

I thought about myself in hot sunshine, being supported by the company of women. Maureen called me. The BBC was casting for a new drama series and my name had come up. The series was called Tenko. It was about a group of women interned in a Japanese camp in Singapore during the Second World War. There’d be just a couple of men in it. Initially, filming was happening on location in the Far East. Was I interested? I went for an interview with the producer Ken Riddington and the director Pennant Roberts. I let go and let God; visualizing myself glowing golden again, and with a very nice sun tan.

Old Camp Women (I’m front row, left)

In terms of seniority of age, Jean Anderson came first. She played Jocelyn Holbrook. Jean was one of the greatest people you could ever wish to meet. She couldn’t settle in the morning till she’d placed her bet for the 3:30 at Cheltenham that afternoon. That was Jean’s thing. She was stalwart. I remember one time we were filming in the jungle and Pennant was doing a close-up of Jean. Her arm was supposedly broken, in a sling with a chair leg as a splint. As they were filming the close-up, with Jean standing, she started to move slowly out of frame, passing out stone-cold on the floor. The chair leg was too heavy, pulling down on the sling and constricting the veins in her neck. She’d fainted – and, of course, without complaining.

Next was Patty Lawrence – also, sadly, no longer with us. Patty played Sister Ulrica and she always had the best magazines – the ones that you wouldn’t dare buy. Women’s magazines like Woman’s Own, Woman’s Realm, Women’s Wear Daily – they were heaven. A lot of advice was had from them and a lot of swapping went on. Patty was generous and wise, and she had one of the dearest husbands – Greville Poke.

Then there was Steph Cole. I was terrified of her. Steph played the rather stern Dr Beatrice Mason. It took me a bit of time to get to know her but she became a dear friend, who I still see. Ann Bell, who played Marion Jefferson, was a completely splendid leader of the women’s camp with a wickedly wonderful sense of humour. Louise Jameson, who I call ‘Miss Thesp’, played Blanche Simmons. When we were filming Tenko there was only one thing wrong with Louise – her eyes were too blue. I used to make sure she wasn’t wearing her blue contact lenses when we did scenes together. We’ve worked together since, in Moira Buffini’s Dinner. She’s a fabulous actress.

And then there was Veronica Roberts – someone I love as dearly as anyone on this planet. Ronnie played Dorothy Bennett. Louise pointed out, quite rightly, ‘She’s the wisest of us all, Stephie.’ Ronnie is the most practical mix of spirituality and usefulness. I’ve often thought that if mankind was all composed of Ronnie, my sister Didi and my friend Patti Nicolella, I don’t know that we’d build Brunel bridges but, my goodness, we’d build happy lives.

I had a dear friend who became celibate. When I asked her why she told me: ‘Because I want to sleep with men I don’t even want to have tea with.’ As far as men were concerned, I felt that I was equally poor at making good choices. I thought it better I gave them a wide berth for a while. Women have a better facility for expressing their emotions and discussing things. They are grand company. I was so fortunate to land in a programme that was all women, and such quality women at that.

When John left me I was terrified the pain I felt would last forever. Now I know that pain is just a feeling and feelings come and go. They’re part of the wonder of being. Being able to feel is one of the wonderful gifts of our embodiment in flesh. Other animals lick their wounds; they rest easy till they’re mended. Accepting heartache, sitting with pain, hurts. We have a tendency to run. We try not to feel. We seek distraction and escape. John didn’t ruin my life back then. The part of me that didn’t feel I’d mucked it up myself allowed his behaviour to make me feel he’d ruined my life. But he hadn’t. If I’d accepted that the pain I was feeling was the pain I was meant to be feeling and took responsibility for it, it would have passed far more quickly. But then I wouldn’t have had the experience of those desperately bleak years in my life to learn from. For that I’m grateful.

God let Job suffer to test his faith. For a moment, driving home one night from my parents’, my faith faltered. I was spared. God also let Job suffer in order to teach him humility. To let him know that none of us is beyond that essential ingredient to our miraculous being – pain. There really is no escaping it. Better to embrace it. Better to love it.

According to the Indian holy man Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, our lives are a river flowing between the banks of pain and pleasure. Desire is the memory of pleasure, and fear the memory of pain. Both make us run, either towards or away. Both are essentially the same thing but wearing a different disguise. And both distract us from the absolute – love. There is no absolute truth other than this, and always so many ways of looking at things, as if through a prism. John had his reasons, and his own lessons to learn.

I used to think middle-aged people were so flaccid. I rather preferred the monstrous certainty of teenagers. People of middle-age and older seemed so noncommittal: ‘Well, I really don’t know.’

‘What?! Why not? You should do – you’re old enough.’

So many different ways of looking at it all, and no absolute truth apart from the fact that we really ought to be a little gentler with ourselves and with other people. Isn’t that love shining through?

Burt Kwouk played Major Yamauchi, the man in Tenko in charge of the internment camp. He’d come in each day and bid us ‘Good morning, ladies,’ then walk over to his desk and stay out of our way till he was on set. We’d have little chats with him now and again during the day, but he let us decide when, and never tried to join the gang. He played the situation with sensitivity and tact.

Celebrity Big Brother

I used Burt Kwouk’s example when I was left last woman standing during Celebrity Big Brother in 2010.

Twenty minutes before I was due to go into the house, I felt so underwhelmed and my spirits were low. I guessed it was fearfulness. Then I thought, ‘I probably have every right to be afraid – I was about to enter car crash television.’ Then I thought, ‘OK, sweet girl, I dare you.’

Several days before, when I was making up my mind about whether or not to do it, I’d phoned a dear friend who’s ex-SAS. You’re not meant to say if you’re SAS, and he hadn’t, but I knew he was. He’d served in Ireland and the Gulf. I phoned him and just said, ‘Hostage situation – give me a lecture on survival.’ And he did. Absolutely straight off, with no hesitation: ‘Never volunteer and always support a weaker member of the group – it will empower you and it’ll empower the group. Leave 20 seconds before you respond to anything and never respond with your first emotion. Find humour in everything; they’re going to try to humiliate you and beat you down with whatever they can. If you find everything they do funny you can’t be beaten and your spirit will stay intact.’

I couldn’t have had more useful information. Especially when a cake descended on my head and I went and had a bath and cleaned up; only to be called back to have another cake descend on my head when I was clean, ready for bed and in my only pair of pyjamas. I managed to find it funny, when what they really wanted was for me to get completely furious because they’d just humiliated me. My friend’s advice was invaluable.

The really fascinating thing about Big Brother was that it was very much like being in a convent. There was poverty, obedience and chastity. Well… chastity up to a point. When two members of the house decided to have sex in the bed opposite me, I took sleeping pills – which I had taken in on prescription. You had to make sure everything you thought you might need was on prescription; otherwise it wouldn’t be allowed. I’d taken in prescription sunglasses to deal with the heavy lights, which were always on, and I was very thankful to have the sleeping pills. They meant I could avoid looking at, hearing or being annoyed with my two housemates for their sad tryst.

I snored that night, very loudly. The next morning, rather than being woken by the Joker’s laugh, I heard what at first sounded like a whale, but turned out to be a magnified soundtrack of my own snoring. I laughed, apologized to everyone, and said, ‘I’m so sorry. If you expel me from the house tomorrow, I will so understand.’ But I didn’t get expelled and ended up being the last woman standing. That snore became a ring tone you could download from eBay!

During that experience I discovered, under very difficult communal circumstances, that I was very happy being me; which was honestly, truly surprising. But I’d lived in a commune before; I knew all about sharing, and I have no problem with monastic existence. The whole thing was strangely spiritual. There was no reading allowed, but Stephen Baldwin, who’s a deeply committed Christian, was allowed to have the Bible for an hour a day. We’d gather around and have Bible readings. They were fabulous. He was such a bad reader, though, I used to grab it from him and read out loud. Nicky, one of the girls, would say, ‘Can we have something a bit nicer and not so preachy?’ I’d say, ‘I’m sure we can.’ I read the Song of Solomon and the Book of Ruth; such fun and lovely chapters. I’d always known there are some fabulous things in the Bible. When Stephen left and the Bible was taken away, I cried. Some people put that down to a religious conversion, but I didn’t need converting. I’d always known the Good Book was good.

Vinnie Jones was the alpha male and I was very conscious where I should put myself in relation to him; that I should align myself in second place, and that we should become mum and dad.

I didn’t get into conflict with anyone, apart from one girl who was lazy – Lady Sov. I should have been more loving. The trouble was, she had absolutely no intention whatsoever to learn anything, but there you go.

One thing that really amused me was my being jealous of Ivana Trump coming into the house with two sets of sheets. They were 1,000 thread count percale cotton while the rest of us were sleeping in rather stiff acrylic. I was longing to nab a few sheets off her but I didn’t, and we survived. Good girl, Ivana, hard worker; again, someone who’s got a reputation. She used to be a Czechoslovakian Olympic skier. She’s a grafter and I liked her a lot.

It felt very odd to sleep with four boys in the dormitory on the last couple of nights – very odd indeed. I wondered how best to deal with the situation and then I thought about Burt Kwouk. I remembered how he’d dealt with being the only man among all us girls on Tenko. I let the boys get on with their talking, and their boys-being-boys, and I kept myself to one side. I was the only girl in a group of boys and I didn’t try to be Queen Bee. I was one of the boys when it was appropriate and kept myself to myself when it wasn’t. BB turned out to be one of the great experiences.