There's Something I've Been Dying to Tell You

by Lynda Bellingham

  Anyway, cut to Christmas Day and Michael presented me with a small box. I opened it and discovered a miniature version of the Cockington rocking horse. It was perfect in every way and I was thrilled with it. Michael looked at me very strangely and then burst out laughing: ‘You silly cow! Do you really think I would give you that as your Christmas present?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ I replied. ‘I love it, and we agreed we would not spend loads of money this year.’

  ‘Well that’s too bad because the real thing will be being delivered very soon.’

  He gave me a big hug. I am a very lucky girl, I know. Well, lucky in love let’s say and not so great in the health department, as we all now know.

  The horse did indeed arrive, and Jack and his wife, Alison, put it all together in my window. It really is a work of art and better than any antique because we can use it. My grandson loves it, as do my sons and my hubbie, and it is so sturdy an adult can sit and have a rock! I often sit and rock looking out of the window and having a think about things.

  It is a wonderful reminder of those weeks spent hurtling around the countryside in Batty my camper van, being paid to enjoy and learn and eat new things and meet lots of wonderful people.

  Everyone should do it. Get out there and go on your own tasty travels. Life is too short.

  10

  HALFWAY THERE

  October 2013

  I couldn’t believe it when October had already rolled around and I was over halfway through my twelve sessions of chemotherapy. Things seemed to have thankfully settled down in the stomach cramps area and I was finding that I was able to keep the pooh in hand. Well, not in my hand literally, you understand! So life, or my life as it had now become, was ticking along and I had become used to the rhythm of it all.

  It is still amazing to me that days go by and I fill them with activity. A typical day in the life goes something like this:

  I get up at 6.30 a.m. and I still make a hot drink for me and my hubbie with squeezed fresh lemon. I have a teaspoon of manuka honey in mine because it gives it a bit of sweetness, and manuka is supposed to have all sorts of healing powers. I then have to take ten different pills! I make a juice for Michael which is currently two handfuls of spinach, three sticks of celery, three small courgettes and a fresh pear or apple with the juice of half a lemon or lime and some fresh ginger. I pop everything into the smoothie maker for twenty seconds with some mango, Bob’s your uncle!

  The other one he likes is half a lemon, four whole oranges peeled and a little piece of fresh ginger. It is delicious and it provides you with all of your vitamins for the day. Michael has a glass of energised greens bought from Deborah Morgan’s website too. I eat a bowl of porridge or natural yoghurt, again with a bit of honey. I have tried the gluten-free bread and it is disgusting, so I am going back to my toast and butter. There is no doubt I am developing a sweet tooth but I am careful to limit the intake.

  We then go for a walk round the park. I leave Michael after three laps and he steams off, and I go back and clear up, put washing in and work out what I am going to give the hoard for dinner. I must say it is quite challenging coming up with different meals every night. I make a homemade tomato sauce every week and that lasts, in the fridge, for when the boys come in late and just want a pasta dish. I make myself shepherd’s pie but often find it has been snaffled away in the middle of the night. And of course the hard one to cook for is Michael, as he does like his meat or fish and vegetables. I keep telling him it is an expensive way to live but he takes no notice.

  Mind you he rarely eats lunch, so that helps, because then having finished my morning chores I retire to my bedroom and start up my computer. I do all the work emails first, and considering I am not really working as such there is still a good deal to cope with: answering requests for charity appearances and endorsements and things. I had a very unexpected request to write the foreword for the 2014 Giles cartoon book. I was very flattered, and reading the cartoons brought back so many memories of my childhood on the farm. It was also a useful reference as to the history of the years gone by, and what went on. It seemed to me things just go round in circles in politics. I don’t know if that is a good or bad thing.

  I finish my correspondence and then open up my novel.

  When I am writing I try to work for three or four hours on the trot, but since I have been having chemo I find that at about noon I just fall asleep at my desk! That is the signal to take more pills and lie down for a couple of hours. Then I get up and watch Come Dine with Me to which I am now addicted. I cannot believe people will make such idiots of themselves on TV. So many of the contestants are deluded about their cooking skills and some of the guests are just so rude. I love it!

  By 6 p.m. I am always prepping dinner for whoever may be around. Sometimes meals in our house are eaten in shifts and my husband gets very cross because the lads all come in at different times, but I have become quite adept. The meals and dishes are all cleared away by 7.30 p.m. for Coronation Street. Helen Worth and Sue Johnston are good friends of mine and I never stop to marvel at how they manage to keep their performances so fresh. Actually most of the cast are wonderful and I like the humour. We did watch Hayley and Roy’s story, and how they had to deal with her pancreatic cancer, with some fear and trepidation, and I must say I did shed a few tears. We both did, but it also got us discussing all the various issues surrounding a terminal illness. The trouble with watching a story like that three times a week is that a discussion is unavoidable.

  I have no idea whether it helps Michael to talk about the state of play or not. I sometimes think we have to talk about it as it is now a part of our relationship. We can’t have deep meaningful, life-affirming sex anymore. Well we could try but my condition and everything that goes with it is a bit of a turn-off and cystitis rears its ugly head. I am being really honest and brutal here and I guess Michael might hate me for saying all this, but it has to be faced. I miss our physical life so much and sometimes there are no words and you just have to hold each other. Everyone going through an illness or crisis will understand where I am coming from, and if you haven’t but you are about to begin this journey, I think you should know just how painful it can be. Sticking it to the back of your mind every day is not right. Being aware of your body, as I said before, is really important. It can tell you when it is the right time to cry or scream or just hold each other in an all-embracing silence.

  I have tried very hard not to cry in front of the boys, and I am also aware that Michael is trying to stay positive as well, but every now and then things just well up and it is important to acknowledge these down moments. There was one night when after I had gone to bed I could hear Michael on the phone talking to our vicar, Peter Delaney, who had married us. Michael was literally sobbing his heart out. I felt so bad for him. When he came to bed we both just held each other and cried together.

  ‘It is so fucking unfair!’ was the cri de cœur.

  ‘I know, I know, but there is nothing we can do about it except live our lives to the full for the time we have,’ would always be my reply.

  As I’ve said, I don’t have a bucket list. One often hears about people in our position going off round the world. But Michael has a huge development to build, and why would I spend any spare money that we are certainly going to need in the future enjoying myself halfway across the world? Well, for starters the professor wouldn’t let me do long haul, and secondly I could not deal with the guilt!

  So our life goes on as normal, except it is in no way normal. On a bad day the cancer hangs over me like a black cloud. Sometimes I have such bad dreams when I have my afternoon nap that I want to hide under the duvet and never come out again. Those days are especially hard but that is when I drag myself to the kitchen and cook.

  Towards the end of the month I noticed my tummy was distending again, so after my chemo session on Friday 25 October Justin Stebbing admitted me to the clinic for a scan. I always feel like such a drama queen when he does this. I don’t w
ant to be a bother and I worry about wasting money. However, it is not in my hands. Poor Michael must be so bored sitting in that very clinical room hour after hour. Sometimes, though, I think it might just do him good to sit quietly after a heavy week on site.

  By Saturday I was ready to go home. Justin visited me at seven in the morning. That man really is a saint. When on earth does he manage to see his family? He told me I must starve my windy tummy by eating just yoghurt and white fish. Oh how dull is this? But I did as I was told for the rest of the weekend and blow me down by Sunday night I had no cramps, and no bloating and, best of all, I did not need to take any painkillers. I went to bed at nine and slept like a baby.

  That lasted until 5 November when I was back in hospital again for the night, and there was not a sparkler in sight!

  11

  A REAL-LIFE PRINCE

  November 2013

  While I was juggling my pills and troubles, things went on in my life as a kind of backdrop, whereas before I would normally be chasing everything like a wild dervish. My first novel Tell Me Tomorrow had been published at the end of August, and had gone to number twelve in the top one hundred which was very exciting. I did not do as much publicity as I would have liked because most of the journalists only wanted to talk about the cancer, and at that point in my life I didn’t feel ready to talk about it. I needed to understand what was happening to me before I could share any feelings about it all.

  It is very difficult to talk about something when everybody who goes through it has such a different experience. I never talked to my sister Barbara about her lung cancer because I was too preoccupied in trying to make her feel better. I am the kind of person who copes with problems by trying to solve them. Is that an obvious thing to say? I don’t think so, because I know people who would acknowledge that if there is a problem in their lives they either ignore it or absorb it somehow into their everyday life. However, at this point in my life I had no answers at all, so I preferred to hide away for a bit.

  However, I had been almost forced out into the open because of the situation with the play. The production having to be cancelled had meant the potential audience needed and deserved an explanation. I also owed my fiction publishers, Simon & Schuster, some promotion for the novel. So I agreed to go on This Morning but I was determined to set my own agenda and get past the whole cancer thing quickly so the last thing people would remember from the interview, hopefully, was the title of my book.

  Poor Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby hardly got a word in edgeways as I prattled on. But it worked and the studio went very quiet when I talked about my illness and explained that my white hair had been for my play, not a side effect of the chemo as the press had been quick to assume. When the interview finished Phillip whispered in my ear ‘Well done, girl, it is good to see a pro at work!’ But the papers only picked up on the hair and there was hardly a mention of the book – it was so frustrating. I would love to have gone round the country doing book signings, like I used to do when I was on tour with Calendar Girls, but I was just not well enough, so my appearance on This Morning was even more important to me. Because it was all so sudden I was still in denial, and did not fully understand what this was going to mean to me and the family and my career. It had just ended, like a kick to the head. Everything I loved and had ever worked for in my life was over!

  I left ITV Studios, but not before I had stuck my head round the door of the make-up room for Loose Women and said ‘Hi’ to Linda and Donna, the ladies who make us look gorgeous. I was on automatic pilot, doing what I would have done in normal circumstances after a TV appearance. I seem to remember though that I was aware that my hands and legs were shaking and I felt light-headed. Then I went to meet Suzanne Baboneau, my editor at Simon & Schuster, Gordon Wise, my literary agent, and Sue Latimer, my theatrical agent. We were going to celebrate the publication of my book. It felt just like the old days, sitting in Sheekey’s drinking champagne. But again I think I was in complete denial. It was never going to be like the old days again. Ever.

  I bumped into Michael Codron, one of the West End’s most important producers. I worked for him on several occasions – in The Sisters Rosensweig at the Old Vic and Noises Off at the Savoy and Look No Hans! starring Sir David Jason – so there was much water under the bridge between us. I used to be in awe of Mr Codron, but now I had other things on my mind I greeted him like a long lost uncle, and arranged to have lunch with him soon. It is so weird that one is so conditioned as an actor never to miss an opportunity to engage with a potential source of work even if, as in my case, I was in no position to do so. Actually, in some ways, not being able to work made life easier. And being able to arrange lunches made me feel I was still part of the action. I was determined not to be forgotten!

  I had recently met a fantastic lady called Judy Counihan. We had really hit it off when I went to see her for a general chat about work. We talked for ages, and I was pitching her an idea that my friend Catharine and I had had floating around for years, about domestic violence. Since there had been such success on the television lately with programmes like Borgen, Wallander and Spiral, a French series, Judy really wanted to try and do the same with a British cast led by me, which was such an inspiring idea and so encouraging as far as I was concerned.

  It was great to have met someone who could appreciate my talents beyond Oxo gravy or being a Loose Woman, as I had really struggled over the past couple of years to persuade anyone in TV to give me a break. The answer was always the same, ‘It’s difficult to get away from that image and be taken seriously.’ I struggled to understand why that was the case, because I felt that if I was popular with audiences – and the figures showed I was – why would an audience not also watch me in a drama? I did it in The Bill when I played Irene Radford after all. I found it especially frustrating when it seemed that when one format or idea for a television show works, then channels would stick with it until it was well and truly done then move on to the next hit. It often feels like channels just repeat the same old, same old, and mostly for the same old money!

  I’d thought, now, maybe, I had the opportunity to collaborate on a new project involving my talent. I don’t wish to seem big-headed but at the same time I was still not sure the powers that be had ever really recognised my abilities as a straight actress and it had been on my ‘to do list’ for some time. I wanted to make them sit up and listen to me!

  I sometimes wonder, looking back over the last forty-five years, if there was more I could have done to get those parts I craved. It is a very touchy subject among actors, male and female, the question of the ‘casting couch’. I do know people who have no compunction about sleeping with a director or producer to get the job, but it is not as easy as it seems! It takes time, months even, of chatting up the right person and then making a move and insinuating yourself into their lives. Frankly I couldn’t be bothered and assumed talent will always out. But that is so naive and untrue! Luck is what everyone needs. Right time, right place and the right face.

  I had been told at drama school I would never work until I was forty. I was not pretty enough for the juvenile lead and not ugly enough to play ‘the friend’. It sounds very crude and cruel but if an actor does not learn very quickly his or her USP then all is lost.

  I know my son, Michael, struggles with the same problem and it is even harder these days to be unique and different. ‘Branding’ is the buzz word. Nowhere in that idea do I see talent mentioned. I had always believed that one day I would find my role. The one part that would pitch me into the big time. It is an actor’s sad lot in life to carry on, possibly never finding that moment, but always waiting and hoping that one day they will be discovered.

  Now, here was I, basically being told by the big director in the sky that I might never work again. The moment could never happen. Now that is what I call a tough break.

  I did not want to end my career as yet another blast from the past opening fetes and doing ‘good works’, but, having said
that, one of my greatest pleasures as a result of being a famous face was all the charity work I had been doing over the last thirty years. It had taught me so many interesting and important things about life and introduced me to so many lovely people, both famous and not so famous. I had recently joined PRIME, The Prince’s Initiative for Mature Enterprise, and I had been invited to a showcase event at St James’s Palace.

  This charity sits at the other end of the spectrum to the Prince’s Trust which benefits young people. In contrast, PRIME is for people over fifty. The logo at the time said ‘Age has No Limits’ and I was first introduced to it a couple of years previously. The charity works with people over the age of fifty to help them turn their ideas, energy and experience into successful businesses. The work that they do is fascinating, and the invitation was to meet and greet and to enjoy the fruits of people’s labours so far, all in the presence of Prince Charles. There was a huge array of very different ideas and products for sale. I met this incredible woman there called Alison Cork who has an online soft furnishings and home design business. We struck up an immediate friendship and decided we would go out to lunch and, over a few glasses of champagne, decide how we could find a way to make PRIME a bit more sexy! While we were talking a very jolly man called Mohammed came over and introduced himself and explained that he and his wife were fans of mine, which was nice to hear. He was worried that he would not get to meet the Prince so he had decided to stick with me as I was a better bet! So for the next ten minutes I was shadowed by this gentleman and sure enough, as I was asked to form a line so the Prince could say hello, there was Mohammed at my elbow. The court official gave me a bit of a look but I just smiled sweetly. We had earlier been told that His Royal Highness did like to chat with people, but obviously time was of the essence, so would we please refrain from going into any stories about our latest family holiday, etc.! As the Prince moved in to shake my hand Mohammed eased in front of me and took over, saying: ‘Oh how lovely to meet you, sir. I am with her you know,’ pointing at me.