Behind the Laughter. Sherrie Hewson

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      I’d always been aware that my father went missing on occasion but I thought he was just off in his gown van, selling Crombie coats. When I was 10 I learned how to drive that van up and down our very long drive. My mother is fond of telling the story of how one day she saw the van take off through the kitchen window and, thinking my father had left the handbrake off, she dashed outside only to glimpse my head just below the steering wheel. My grandson Oliver is the same – he’s only 4 years old but if there was a van to climb into, away he would go.

      Looking back, I’m guessing that Dad (who was always a ladies’ man) had a female in every port of call. He was such a good-looking man that no one could resist him: I bet every woman he met fell in love with him. Whenever he came home from one or other of his trips there would be another row and another boiled egg whizzing across the breakfast table to splat on the radiator, but I just thought it was par for the course and never took much notice. And I wasn’t surprised when Mum went on holiday with her friends – I just thought that was what women did.

      Since those days, however, my mother has told me that the only reason why she and Dad stayed together for as long as they did was because she was determined they would not split up until Brett and I had left home. They had agreed that once we were gone they would separate and sell the house – and that’s exactly what they did. Dad got a place on his own in Nottingham and Mum went on to live in a beautiful penthouse at the top of a Nottingham hotel, with a stunning view of the river.

      What was lovely about all this was that they remained friends until the day my father died. They didn’t even bother to get a divorce until many years later, when Mum met somebody else. Even then she was reluctant to go through the formalities but I encouraged her to do so because I wanted her to marry again, to be happy. I have always thought it was wonderful that she and Dad stayed friendly because I was never able to remain on good terms with my two former husbands.

      Like most men, my father hated being on his own, and so although he never lived with anyone else he was seldom alone. Even when he grew older, women loved him. He was an easy man to adore, but at the same time one who should probably never have married or had children. A dreamer, a fantasist, a romantic, he just wanted to live in his own world.

      I always thought he was a good father, but he didn’t agree. Years later he told me: ‘I was never a father to you or to Brett. I was never there, never played with you, hardly ever took you on holiday.’ That might have been true but somehow I always knew he loved us: he was never disappointed in me or my brother, his was an unconditional love. By this time Brett had become a successful DJ with his own, extremely busy life working alongside Jimmy Savile and Peter Stringfellow and so we were in separate places. Inevitable, perhaps, but sometimes I felt very sad about it, too.

      By then we were nearing the end of our first year at drama school and were all busy with end-of-year productions. As first years we had to go and watch the year above us in their productions, and so one evening I went along to see the second years in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet starring a young actor called Robert Lindsay. I took one look at his passionate portrayal of Romeo and instantly fell in love. Luckily for me, the passion turned out to be mutual. ‘Bob’, as we knew him then, had dark hair and dark eyes – he was one of the RADA boys that all the girls fancied. We met at a party soon after I’d seen his Romeo, where we talked and laughed all night. I thought he was funny and talented, while he made it clear that he liked me. He asked me on a date the following evening.

      We went to see the musical Godspell starring David Essex, who was then (and still is) a major heart-throb. It was at the Roundhouse in Camden. As we sat in the audience, Bob turned to me and said, ‘One day, I’m going to be up there on stage, starring in this musical.’ And he was right: he did star in it, only two years later, in 1972.

      Within weeks of that first date we were in love and decided to move in together, so I left the flat that I shared with the girls and moved into another one with Bob, this time just off the Tottenham Court Road. Our flat wasn’t really a flat as such – we couldn’t afford anything as grand as that. It was a very old-fashioned room that housed an embarrassingly creaky bed, a couple of shabby chairs, a sofa that had seen far better days and a gas fire. Looking back, I’m sure it should have been condemned for exuding dangerous fumes.

      Two steps down from the main room was another small room housing an old sink and a big old-fashioned bath with a tap that only ever produced a trickle of hot water so it was impossible to have more than a shallow bath. The loo was downstairs (freezing on winter nights) and we had a tiny prehistoric cooker that was barely usable. In fact, the whole building (still standing today) ought to have been condemned, but we were in love and nothing else mattered.

      The only puzzling thing about the block was that lots of single girls seemed to live there and people would come knocking on their doors at all hours. I had no idea what this was about until one afternoon when there was a knock at our door. I opened it only to realise that the old man reeking of booze and eyeing me up was probably not there to read the meter.

      So that was the day when Bob and I worked out that we were not just living in a seedy old block of flats but some kind of brothel and the slimy old sod who had just knocked on the door was a customer. In fact, Bob was standing behind me when I opened the door and he went berserk when he saw the way the guy was leering at me and chased him down the stairs. Afterwards we thought it was really funny and laughed into the night, eating our kebabs in bed while trying to keep warm.

      We actually became a popular squat for other students, who used to come and sleep on our floor. This was largely because they got cheap kebabs from the downstairs shop run by Gig, a lovely Greek man: he made sure we all ate well and we loved him for it.

      Student days should be romantic, sex-fuelled and fun-filled: for Bob and me, they were. When the summer holidays came, we stayed in London and got jobs as ushers at the Palace Theatre, where the once-seen, never-to-be-forgotten Danny La Rue was performing in a spectacular revue, Danny at the Palace. In his big white wigs and diamante-studded ball-gowns, he made the most beautiful-looking, elegant woman. When he first appeared, he’d walk towards the middle of the stage in all his glory and say to the audience in a low baritone, ‘Wotcha, mates!’ The audience loved him, as did we – although I had many a row with the manager there because I was paid £3 10s while Bob got £4 10s. Talk about inequality! But they refused to back down and in the end I was sacked for being such a troublemaker.

      Bob and I had been together in our little love nest for about a year when we decided to get married. There wasn’t a formal proposal, we just agreed one day that it would be a great idea. Together we went to see my mum and then on to Ilkeston, not far from Nottingham, to see his. Around the same time, we also told my father. Both our mothers were lovely to us, but I’m sure that privately they thought we were too young and hoped it would fizzle out. I was still only 20 and Bob, nine months older than me, was 21, but we thought we had found real love and would be together forever.

      We chose a date in the summer holidays, and despite her reservations Mum bought me a beautiful wedding dress embroidered all over with white hearts and a huge skirt and long train. She also purchased lovely outfits for my bridesmaids, who were children of friends, and the pageboy from Bob’s side. Mum and I decided on the venue, while Bob and I chose the guests we wanted to invite and I arranged for our banns to be read.

      Everything was in place and I was ecstatic at the prospect of marrying Bob because I thought he was everything I wanted. He seemed just as happy but perhaps he was having private doubts because only a few weeks before our wedding day everything changed. The summer term had ended and Bob, being a year ahead of me, had graduated from RADA and was heading out into the world to begin his acting career. He was in a play in Exeter, at the Northcott Theatre, and I went down to visit, taking with me a little mongrel puppy as a gift for him. While there, I started to feel uneasy. A couple of the girls he was working with СКАЧАТЬ