Sheila Hancock - The Two of Us: My Life with John Thaw

THE TWO OF US

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Ramblings of an Actress

THE TWO OF US

My Life with John Thaw

SHEILA HANCOCK

First published in Great Britain 2004

Copyright Sheila Hancock

This electronic edition published 2009 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

The right of Sheila Hancock to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

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Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

eISBN: 978-1-40880-693-7

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When Clare Venables was dying, her friend Peter Thompson wrote her this letter.

My much-loved friend,

It matters to have trodden the earth proudly, not arrogantly, but on feet that arent afraid to stand their ground, and move quickly when the need arises. It matters that your eyes have been on the object always, aware of its drift but not caught up in it. It matters that we were young together, and that you never lost the instincts and intuitions of a pioneer. It matters that you have been brave when retreat would have been easier. It matters that, in many places and at many times, you have made a difference. Your laugh has mattered. Your love has mattered. Above all, it matters that you have been loved.

Nothing else matters.

The sentiments he expresses apply equally to my husband John Thaw. I borrow them in dedicating this book to them both.

I also wish to pay tribute to Johns brother Ray, who died in June 2004.

It takes two.

I thought one was enough,

Its not true;

It takes two of us.

You came through

When the journey was rough.

It took you.

It took two of us.

It takes care.

It takes patience and fear and despair

To change.

Though you swear to change,

Who can tell if you do?

It takes two.

It Takes Two from Into the Woods by

Stephen Sondheim

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My deepest gratitude to Alexandra Pringle, without whom this book would never have been started, and Victoria Millar, without whose gentle guidance and advice it would certainly never have been finished.

Also thanks to many people I have interviewed to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of Johns life.

Some of the proceeds of this book will go to The John Thaw Foundation which aids young people who need a helping hand.

The John Thaw Foundation

PO Box 38848

London

W12 9XN

Contents

3 September 2000

Walking in our field. A soft mist of rain. The sun shiningbehind the drizzle. A rainbow forms across the sky behindme. It reflects in the raindrops on grass and trees. Millionsof multicoloured baubles, iridescent, extraordinary.

John, quick, come and look.

Racing back over the wooden bridge, into the conservatory,I toss aside his script, grab his hand and pull him,limping and protesting, to my magic vision.

Its gone.

Oh, great. Miserable wet trees, pissing rain and soakingwet trouser legs thanks a bunch.

But it was beautiful.

Well, you daft cow, why didnt you stay and enjoy it?

I couldnt enjoy it properly without you.

Oh, come ere, Diddle-oh.

Arms pulling me tight, hands on bum, wet faces nuzzling,laughing. An aging man and woman, happy in a wet field.

You should have known it wouldnt last, kid.

He meant the rainbow.

26 January 2001

Been asked to do the narration in a recording of a musicalversion of Peter Pan at the Festival Hall. Was playing ademo of the score, which is charming, when I noticed Johnlurking.

I, THE GIRL, Sheila Cameron Hancock, was born on the Isle of Wight on 22 February 1933, nine years before him. He, the boy, John Edward Thaw, was born in Manchester on 3 January 1942. The intrusion of World War II was not the only similarity in our childhoods. Varying degrees of fear, abandonment and delight were common moulding influences. As was a performance of Where the Rainbow Ends, a musical play for children about St Georges quest to slay the dragon.

As the girl was the first to arrive, well start with her.

When I was three years old I sat entranced in the Holborn Empire watching a beautiful sprite called Will o the Wisp floating about on rainbow-coloured wings. When my mummy whispered that it was my sister Billie leading Uncle Joseph to the end of the rainbow I absolutely believed in magic, because I could see it there, in front of me, on this enchanted place called a stage. So dumbfounded was I by my sisters transformation that I had a massive nosebleed. I refused to leave, preferring to ruin the cotton hankies of half the audience in the dress circle. People didnt use tissues in those days.

My father worked for the brewery, Brakspeare Beers, that put him and my mother into various pubs and hotels around the country as managers. They were working at the Blackgang Hotel on the Isle of Wight when I was born. Its windswept Chine, with the skeleton of a whale in the garden, looks pretty bleak in photos.

We moved directly after my birth so I remember nothing of it, but my parents told tales of smugglers and incest in that cutoff part of the island. My seven-year-old sister lived in dread of the adders that infested the garden and of the cliff adjacent to the hotel crumbling into the sea, as it often did. Now the Chine is a rip-roaring amusement centre, but in 1933 it cant have been a very jolly place from which to greet the world.

After a brief spell in Berkshire we landed up in a spit and sawdust pub called The Carpenters Arms in Kings Cross. We lived in the flat above the bars. It reeked of stale beer and the whole place shook and glasses rattled as trains passed the backyard. Sleep was not easy. I was often still awake when Dad shouted, Time, gentlemen, please, hoping that the shouts on the pavement outside would not be accompanied by too much breaking glass and thuds and screams. The jollity was equally raucous. I was not allowed into the public or saloon bars, or Dad might lose his licence, so I sat on the stairs leading up to our quarters, listening to the adults letting loose. Mummy played the piano for Daddy to sing The Road to Mandalay and then both of them silenced the babble with:

If you were the only girl in the world

And I were the only boy

Nothing else would matter in this world today

We would go on loving in the same old way

A garden of Eden just made for two