Our Time of Day

by Kika Markham

  Every time we sat down and waited for a play to begin we were living in the moment waiting only for the next moment with anticipation, free of dread, and EQUAL. There was something else that gave us peace and contentment: driving. ‘Ignore him...,’ ‘Pull over a bit more...,’ ‘Push on a bit...,’ ‘Bastard, don’t give in to him...’. Such familiar comments were not onerous but comforting. I loved them. Whenever we drove it was as if nothing had ever happened.

  A week after Corin came home, we started to be politically active again. The first event we took part in, was a vigil outside Stockwell tube station for Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician who’d been shot dead in the tube by the police in a botched case of mistaken identity. During the next four years we tried to attend any meetings for Shaker Aamer, still in Guantanamo and now extremely ill having been tortured.

  We did readings in Trafalgar Square for ‘Voices of Lebanon and Palestine’ protesting against the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza and ‘Naming the Dead’, reciting the names of British soldiers and Afghan civilians killed in the first ten years of the war in Afghanistan.

  Corin’s diary

  Saturday 28 March 2009

  We took part in a rally in Trafalgar Square.

  I read Robert Fisk.

  We stood together on the platform – Kika read the diary of Zena el Khalil.

  It was an honour to take part in such a dire, dreadful situation. It was important to feel that we could contribute, even in a small way.

  We met Harvey and Jodie which was delightful. And Arden was there, dear Arden.

  There was a Tamil hunger strike in Parliament Square. They were protesting against the wholesale slaughter that was being carried out by the Sri Lankan government against them. We went there and found the hunger striker lying in a tent. Corin managed to crawl on all fours through the tent flap to shake the man’s hand, turn around and crawl back.

  Corin’s diary

  Apparently the protest is there every day. Simon Hughes, Lib Dem MP has been to visit the protest, but no other MP, so far as we heard.

  I thought we should organise a meeting and get some well-known speakers to come.

  In 2009, Corin reprised the part of Dalton Trumbo in the play Trumbo, with Nick Waring as Dalton’s son. They had worked together before as Wilde and Bosie and laughed a lot. Corin loved Nick. John Dove directed them again for the Jermyn Street Theatre in London and at the Octagon in Bolton.

  In March 2009 Corin’s niece, Natasha Richardson died in a skiing accident. All the West End theatres dimmed their lights and Corin, who hadn’t written anything down, came forward at the end of the play and spoke with great feeling and delicacy about how he remembered Natasha playing Ophelia, and that he’d taken Michael, his father, to see her performance, and that he loved her very much.

  Kika’s diary

  Friday 24 July 2009

  A visit to Tuscany.

  Vanessa invites me out to where she and Franco (Nero) are making a movie on location in Tuscany for the weekend. San Quirico d’Orcia seems as hot as Africa and very beautiful. Vanessa and Franco make a very handsome couple. As they walk down the high street holding hands, people smile and wave and call out, ‘Franco!’ Walking behind them, I feel like their governess. It is Sunday and Vanessa wants to light some candles for Tasha. We go into the little eleventh-century Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta. No bigger than a cool, dark high-ceilinged room. Four wooden pews on either side and a little aisle in the middle. Vanessa sits on the second pew at one end and I sit at the other. Franco lights some candles and then sits between us. We are silent. The quiet around us is gentle. Some tourists wander in and go out again. They don’t disturb us.

  Gradually we become enveloped in an intense sorrow. An outpouring of grief. Vanessa cries quietly with each breath and I cry too. We choke and sniff and weep and wipe the snot with our hands, no one seems to have any tissues. After a bit Franco says softly ‘Andiamo’ to Vanessa. She gets up and lights more candles and, after a bit, I light some with her.

  We notice people have left notes to their loved ones pinned to the wall and want to write one too.

  Thank you darling Tash, for all the love you gave, Mum xxx

  Dearest Tasha, you are in our hearts and minds every day. All my love, Kika x

  Franco writes in Italian.

  We put it on the picture, but it doesn’t look very safe as there are no pins. Vanessa finds a little packet of tissues and we blow our noses. I put my arms around her and we stand like that for a minute. Then we go out into the blazing sun, but passing a stationery shop we dive in and Franco manages to get hold of a piece of Sellotape which he takes back to the church to fix Tasha’s note more firmly to the wall. He takes Vanessa’s hand and we walk back down the street.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  2009

  Memories

  Corin’s diary:

  Friday 12 June 2009

  I bought a packet of cigarettes, Rothmans, which upset Kika terribly. We both gave up smoking 14 years ago. But I told her, for comfort, that I wasn’t intending to take it up again, only to take a step on – to do some bad things now and then!

  Corin’s diary

  Friday 16 June 2009

  Lying in bed is not necessarily tiredness, but finding a way to start the day. Arden told us some wonderful news. He got a 2:2 for his degree!! BRAVO ARDEN!!!! It hasn’t been easy for him, with me being ill, and with him changing course in mid-stream. Tony Kushner came to supper. We talked a lot about writing.

  Despite a great deal more exercise and a new, friendly carer – an aspiring writer, Alec Feest – and an analyst, Corin’s health was deteriorating. We had been seeing Mike Kopelman with his colleague Liz Scott regularly, and together they would diplomatically but harshly challenge Corin over his drinking habits, and Mike had remarked in our last session that ‘Corin is drinking himself to death’. The only person in the world who could now help him was Dr B, but she couldn’t see him on the NHS. His allotted time was over, it would have to be private. I talked things over with Vanessa, and once again she came to our rescue and offered to pay for more sessions with Dr B.

  These sessions were very significant and helped Corin greatly, both mentally and emotionally. But physically, he was deteriorating as he continued to smoke and drink.

  We tried giving him non-alcoholic wine as (at first) he didn’t seem to know the difference. It meant that I didn’t have to nag him to have ‘just one glass’ all the time, but complicated things greatly if we were at an occasion where there was only real wine. I thought I should tell him the truth, that he was drinking sugared water, but the majority of the family thought otherwise and in the end Corin recovered enough to be able to tell the difference and wouldn’t touch the non-alcoholic stuff!

  One of the most painful and addictive habits, is thinking about our previous life. It’s like picking a scab: you know it will bleed so you shouldn’t, but you can’t help it. The Old Life... Our flat in Paris; deciding which restaurant to try; what to eat; travelling on Eurostar together; acting together; making love; talking... talking, just talking; cooking; someone to put a plaster on your finger; to come to a hospital visit with you... Someone that leaves you beautifully written notes about shopping:

  Wednesday 16 December 2009

  ‘I’ve had cancer!’ says Corin.

  We are on our way to Dr B’s on a terrible cold night, through the dark turrets of Wimbledon. We are listening to Radio 4, to an account of the latest breakthrough in cancer research.

  ‘Yes I know, I was with you at St George’s Hospital when Roger [Kirby] diagnosed it. Do you remember?’

  ‘No I don’t.’

  ‘How do you know you’ve had it then?’ ‘I’m not sure, I just do.’ ‘Do you remember the French restaurant we used to go to after your radiotherapy? And kind, elegant Miss Eyles? Our oncologist?’

  ‘No, but do let’s go to the restaurant next week. Perhaps I would remember it then.’ Quite...

&nbs
p; Inside the Wolfson in the reception area a man in a wheelchair was greeting strangers.

  ‘Hello, are you a patient or a visitor?’ he asks Corin. ‘A visitor,’ answers Corin.

  OK, I think. I’m going to battle over this.

  For once I begin the session by putting forward the idea that the reason Corin doesn’t like coming to see Dr B is because it makes him feel there’s ‘something wrong with him’ – that he doesn’t believe that he’s ‘in recovery’ because he doesn’t think there’s anything the matter. A further exchange with Dr B shows that he’s not sure he’s even got a memory problem. I remind him that he didn’t remember anything about his cancer, coming out of The Cherry Orchard, our holiday in Sweden afterwards, the hatred of the drugs he had to take.

  ‘Oh yes, that’s true...’

  And then Dr B reminds him how, when she first treated him four years ago, he refused to believe he’d had a heart attack and how angry that made him because, as he couldn’t remember having one, he thought people were lying to him and that his life was in danger, which was what led to his psychotic behaviour. It was only when she showed him reports on the internet of the call to the ambulance from Basildon Hall, the accounts in the papers, after weeks and weeks of going over similar material he gradually learned that perhaps it was true that he really had had a heart attack.

  It became clear that Corin was neither aware of his extraordinary achievements in his ability to work, nor of his addiction to alcohol and how it affected him. That there is a ‘flatness’ in brain injury – a blankness – that makes drinking very comforting.

  ‘What is the cause of my alcoholism?’ Corin suddenly asked. Dr B said that would be difficult to answer and probably only he could, but again she reminded Corin of how he talked of growing up in an environment where drink was always on hand. In his words ‘a reliable friend, in times of sadness or of happiness and success’. It was an unremarkable part of daily life – normal. Corin’s resistance to acknowledging his problem with alcohol seems to come from his image of tramps covered in blankets, down by the Thames Embankment, drinking meths. Michael’s drinking was glamorous to him. ‘I remember my father taking me to this very smart wine shop in St James’ Street. Berry Brothers...’ and his face softened and brightened as he spoke about it. ‘I’d like to go there again...’

  Corin then remembered that we had both recently re-seen Time Without Pity, a film by Joseph Losey, made in protest against capital punishment. In the programme notes Losey had made some startling remarks about Michael Redgrave which has struck Corin greatly.

  It’s unbelievably stupid that anybody, any society, could any longer believe that human beings have the right to take the lives of other human beings, under any circumstances. It’s incomprehensible to me. I was making an English picture. It was very cheap, there was no question of the black list for the first time; it was the first picture on which I’d put my name in all that time. We were very limited on budget. But all those pictures: I was able to do them as well as I wanted, however well that was, and to have resources for them because in every case I could interest an actor who brought money and seriousness. In this case it was principally Redgrave and McKern. Redgrave is a great actor. He also did a wonderful job in The Go-Between. And I like him immensely, personally. And his gifts are more than acting: he’s an intellectual, a poet, a literary man, an innovator in the theatre. But he’s completely destroyed by alcohol. And even at that time there were one or two days when he was actually alcoholic. It was a big problem. But one of the remarkable things about him, and this is something every actor will understand and agree with, is that he never ever drank when he was playing a drunk.

  At the end of the session we talked more about memory. Dr B asked Corin, ‘Does it upset you not to have memories of your life together with Kika?’ ‘No, not really, it’s strange...’ She explained that he does have the memory but it can’t always be accessed as the route to it, the cells which encode and retrieve memory, have been damaged. So the diary or notebook must be his prompt and that it can help him in just the same way as his glasses help him to see.

  Later that night in bed, I remorselessly continue.

  ‘...so I’ve got all the memories of us – and you have none. You don’t know anything of me at all.’

  ‘Oh yes I do...’ He’s getting sleepy.

  ‘But I suppose I don’t really know much about you now, you’ve come back so different... SO perhaps, perhaps... we have more in common than we thought. We’ve both got to begin learning about one another all over again. Do you think?’ But he was asleep. Some things don’t change.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  APRIL 2010

  Goodbye

  Corin’s diary

  To all in the world who listen and like to hear the truth – even if it is uncomfortable and painful – I am Corin... married to Kika... Redgrave. And that is my only claim to happiness. My dear, good, absolutely beautiful wife. Without her... I would have nothing. With her... I have... everything!!!

  As time went on we grew bolder. We took more risks. Corin was asked to perform De Profundis at the Irish Institute in Paris. I didn’t feel I was up to the challenge of accompanying Corin to Paris, given the allure of the bars and restaurants, but didn’t want to deny him the chance of going – work meant so very much to him, especially that work. And our friend Merlin Holland would be there. It was wonderful, therefore, that Colin Chambers, who had worked with Richard Nelson and Corin on the Wilde, offered to take Corin with the help of our good friend Steve Tiller. Of course it was a risk. Corin could have died at any time. Every time he took the tube alone it was a risk. But they all came back in one piece and later, in an even more daring venture, Steve took Corin to Finland to do a play reading of Jim Allen’s brilliant and controversial play Perdition. That, too, was successfully managed by Steve.

  For some time now Corin had grown much more independent, and was having Alexander Technique lessons at the National with Sue Laurie, travelling there and back by himself. He was seeing an analyst once a week in Chalk Farm, sometimes stopping before or after at The Enterprise, the big pub on the corner and often having lunch with Jemma, which he loved. He was also starting to see a counsellor in the alcoholic unit at Springfield and seemed to be getting better.

  Corin’s diary

  January 2010

  I have been making Arden worry about the amount I have been drinking. Last night I never got to Greg and Barbara’s, as I had planned to do, to watch TV. I am determined to take charge of myself, with some real discipline, to stop this habit of drinking morning, noon and night.

  I shall start today. I don’t promise not to drink a single drop today. But both in the time (times) and especially in the amount I drink. I shall start today to be careful. To be normal. Not extravagant.

  I promise myself and the family.

  Jodie and Harvey’s baby arrived on 10 January 2010; another January baby like Vanessa and Jemma. We were all perched around the high hospital bed. Jacquie, Tom, me, Corin, Arden, Jemma and Alfie, and took it in turns to hold little Edie, who put up with this effusion of love, pride and astonishment remarkably well.

  Just before Easter we had a lovely visit at Chilham with Jacquie and Tom Reed and Harvey and Jodie. Corin was tired when we got home and went to bed early. I said good night to him and we said we loved each other, which we did nearly every night. An hour later I heard a strange noise and ran upstairs to find him trying to get round the bed and struggling to keep upright. I got him to the bed and could see him losing consciousness. I shouted to Arden, and he came at once and we tried to keep Corin awake while I called an ambulance. It could have happened any time and anywhere. I try to console myself with the miraculous fact that he was at home and that both Arden and I were with him, and he was never alone.

  The paramedics were wonderful again, and we travelled to St George’s behind the ambulance. From that moment on Corin never regained consciousness. He was in too fragile a state to have any tests or
intervention, and by the time they had stabilised him it was too late to have made a significant operation: he had an aneurism that had bled into the brain. I could have insisted that they operated, but the doctors advised he would have had no quality of life whatsoever. I couldn’t make that decision, so the family made it for me. He would be allowed to die naturally. That I had to give the ‘yes’ to no intervention still haunts and distresses me. Harvey and Arden tried to console me by assuring me Corin wouldn’t have wanted to be helpless and might have preferred not to have been saved the first time around. But still... he had been getting so much better.

  We kept a vigil for a week – me, Luke, Arden, Jemma, Tim, Alfie, Gabe, Jodie and Harvey – and many friends came, we played music and read to him. Harvey and I camped on the floor at night. Oliver, my nephew, was a great comfort. Harvey and I had gone home to get a shower and change of clothes when we had a call to say hurry back, but we got stuck in slow traffic. By the time we got there he had died without me. I understood. Sort of. He didn’t feel free to go while I was there. He knew I couldn’t bear to see him stop breathing. I saw it as a kindness to me. Corin looked like Thomas Chatterton, pale and beautiful – resting quietly. I asked to be alone with him and I told him how proud I was of him and how much I loved him, and would for the rest of my life. It was so comforting being with him I wanted to take him home. An hour later Lynn and Annabel arrived. Lynn in a wheelchair pushed by Malcolm. She was desperately ill with cancer herself, but flew over from New York to see him one last time. We left them together, she holding his hand and gazing at him with a sweet, calm forlornness. Lynn later wrote: