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

by Lynda Bellingham

  Well, he would not shut up and I could see the Prince was left in a very awkward position, so I put my hand on Mohammed’s arm halfway through his long involved account of how he had started his business, and literally dragged him off, turning back to Prince Charles, saying, ‘Thank you for your time, Sir, you must be very busy!’

  He smiled and mouthed a thank you.

  My friend Mohammed hardly seemed to notice and was off into the crowd to tell others of his good fortune.

  At the beginning of September there was sad news as news broke that David Frost had died very suddenly of a heart attack. I was so sad for his wife and family. He was an extraordinarily talented man, and I had the pleasure of spending some time with him in New York when my friend Libby Reeves Purdie was his PA. I went to stay with Libby when she first moved to New York to work with Sir David, and that first time we went to see Bruce Forsyth on Broadway with Sammy Davis Jr. We had a great night and ended up in Régine’s nightclub, which was the height of chic in the late seventies, let me tell you. We danced down Fifth Avenue at four in the morning with no shoes on. Happy days!

  I was getting out and about quite a bit but every now and then I would be acutely aware that I was not the same Lynda physically. There was certainly no dancing barefoot anymore but even so I was disappointed sometimes when I couldn’t even get through the day without falling asleep. I tried to stick to lunchtime events as that seemed bearable. But visits to the theatre proved a tad more difficult which depressed me, because I had rediscovered the Hampstead Theatre which was directly opposite my old drama school, the Central School of Speech and Drama at Swiss Cottage. I went to the opening of a new play, Hysteria, there.

  I had many happy memories of this theatre, not just from the sixties, when it was more like a shack than a theatre, but as recently as 2005 when I had opened in a play there called Losing Louis, written by Simon Mendes da Costa, produced by Michael Codron and directed by Robin Lefèvre. In fact those three months from November 2004 until February 2005 were incredibly important to me in so many ways. I had met Michael in Spain in November and he started to come over at the weekends to visit me. I wanted to keep it all away from the press as my ex-husband was being very difficult and making things awkward for the boys and me, so I wanted to be sure that my relationship with Michael was solid before I introduced him to my sons. After all it had only been me and them for the last eight years! Alison Steadman was the other actress in the play and she devised the nickname Mr Spain for Michael. That was the secret password.

  ‘Is Mr Spain coming over this weekend?’

  He would arrive with his hand luggage full of Rioja and stay until Sunday night. In the week between Christmas and New Year I fell down some stairs and was on my back for three days (and not in a romantic sense!). Rehearsals were held up and I felt so guilty.

  This play was such a big deal for me because it was a long time since I had been offered a decent role and I was so thrilled that Robin the director had thought of me. However, as is so often the case in my life, the reasons behind me getting the role were probably not as I would have wanted. There was a comedy element to the role and it involved a bare bottom! So it was nothing to do with my hidden depths as an actress then? But having said that it was a wonderful scene, and though I say so myself I pulled it off with aplomb.

  I was playing the part of a neglected wife and in order to spice up my husband’s sex life I agree to have my vagina pierced. He arrives in the bedroom and I turn with my back to the audience and seemingly open my dressing gown and show him the finished product. Under the dressing gown I am wearing a basque and stockings and suspenders with my bottom very naked. Why? The question begged to be asked, because for my own modesty I could at least have worn a pair of M&S knickers under the dressing gown and felt a little less vulnerable to my fellow actor, the fragrant Brian Protheroe. Why? Because the scene that followed would have suffered as I was asked to rush into the ensuite bathroom, with glass door, to make love to my husband who was suitably impressed by the piercing to ravish me against the bathroom door and all the audience see is my bare bottom pressed up against the glass!

  I have to say it was very funny, and got a round of applause every night, but it was hardly Lady Macbeth and the offers from the Royal Shakespeare Company did not come flooding in.

  The great sadness that cast a shadow across this whole period was the death of my father in January, followed by the death of my mother four weeks later, and being in this play that was set at a funeral could not have been more poignant or sad. I went to both funerals during the day and then did a performance in the evening. I was a wreck. However, as often happens in life, the tragedy led to great happiness as Michael was so supportive and it sealed our love for each other. I remember holding him one night and sobbing for the loss of my parents but at the same time feeling the overwhelming desire to take him and make love to him with a life-affirming need.

  So here I was again, eight years later, in the foyer bar of the Hampstead Theatre with lots of old friends, including Alison, who happened to be at the same opening night as us. I had such a lovely evening and could almost forget that this was no longer going to be my life until someone would enquire about my health and I would come crashing back to reality. That has been the hardest thing to deal with so far, I think. Gradually I am becoming the face at the window looking in on a life I once knew, and trying to keep the smile straight on that face as it disappears into the distance. So there was a sadness creeping into my everyday life but I was determined not to let it win, and pushed myself to go out and have lunch and be social.

  Then, just as I seemed to have found a sense of calm and pretended normality, once again disaster struck and I was back in hospital. Nobody really seemed to know what was causing these bloody pains in my stomach but they had become unbearable and my prognosis had now changed dramatically. I would not be ending my chemotherapy in December as hoped. The tumour markers were up and it would seem the course of treatment I had been on was not doing the trick. But Justin Stebbing always has a B, and C and D as far as I can see. I was told that I would probably have a couple of weeks over Christmas chemo free, then I’d be back into the routine again. The time allotted to my survival has diminished somewhat, though no one was able to give us a definitive answer. I know it is impossible to do that really, but it helps in a bizarre way to make plans. However, one thing was for sure, it was made clear to me that I would have to have chemo for the rest of my life to keep the thing at bay.

  So at the beginning of November all of my social visits were called off. I missed the Christmas shopping day at Clarence House, which is a wonderful event. You can buy all sorts of rather camp presents for people: wine glasses engraved with the Prince’s crest and baubles and plants and chutney and wine. The previous year we were feeling very flush and bought a watercolour print of Highgrove House painted by Prince Charles. It is number fifty-seven of a limited edition of a hundred, so hopefully the boys will hang that somewhere suitable when I am gone! As well as the shopping at Clarence House, I also missed an incredible party thrown by Robert Lindsay for his ex-wife Diana Weston. Her fiftieth I believe! It was going to be a blast but I was just not well enough to go.

  I had also been starting to organise my own party for Christmas. Please don’t laugh, but I absolutely adore Christmas and the preparations are almost more exciting than the day. I had missed the last two Christmases at home because I was doing pantomime, so I was determined to make this one perfect. The only problem was that my son Michael would be in Wolverhampton, with Joe Pasquale, playing Slimeball in Sleeping Beauty. Ah he is his mother’s son, we always get the glamorous parts! Also my stepson Bradley would have commitments to his mum and family, so I had decided to have our big Christmas lunch on 30 November.

  Now that I was feeling so unwell, Jean and I decided we would find a lovely pub for my family lunch and make things easier for me. We found a beautiful pub in Hampstead called the Old White Bear which had a private room so al
l the family could let off steam without annoying the regulars. I got Michael to bring the tree into the house from the garage and Jean and I had a lovely day decorating it, the idea being we would eat first at the pub and then come home and have pudding and open presents.

  On 11 December, when I woke on the day that I was due to go in for my last scan after my first series of twelve chemos, I had some of the usual niggling pain. By the afternoon it had increased, and when we sat down in front of Justin to discuss my scan and the results of the chemotherapy so far, he looked up at me from the famous screen inside the desk top and said, ‘Are you in pain now by any chance, Lynda?’

  As usual I mumbled something about yes it did hurt a bit but it would pass and not to worry too much.

  To my amazement, and Justin’s I should imagine, Michael burst out, ‘That is not true! Please, Justin, take her into hospital because I am telling you now if you don’t we will be back later and all hell will break loose.’

  ‘I am inclined to agree with you, Michael,’ replied Justin. ‘So, Miss B, you will go now this minute and I am contacting Richard Cohen because I think we may have to do something about this tumour, which seems to have been growing under our noses and is causing you all this discomfort.’

  Before I could say a word I was in a wheelchair on my way to the London Clinic, yet again, and I was not a happy bunny. Suddenly I was so frightened. I knew I could do nothing but put myself in the hands of these incredible surgeons and oncologists who work so hard to keep the likes of you and me alive. But it also meant I was not in control anymore and that scared me.

  12

  ALL CHANGE AGAIN

  December 2013

  A good deal of what happened to me over the next few days I cannot remember, and it becomes Michael my husband’s story in a way. He sat with me in my room and I tried hard to chat, but the pain was so bad by now that all I could do was to concentrate on getting through each minute. It was a bit like giving birth to an elephant. But where in childbirth, the contractions start slowly and come in waves, with a little relief between them, these pains just swept over me relentlessly. I lay there from about four o’clock until ten o’clock, and although nurses would come in and check my vitals, and we would try and explain about the pain, nothing happened. I just hung between waking and sleeping. I could not really focus on anything. Poor Michael told me later he thought I was going to die there and then. Finally he went in search of a ward sister, and finally they gave me painkillers which provided me with relief for a while. I persuaded Michael to go home and said I would see him the following day.

  That night, and the following night, were horrific. The nights are always the worst as we know. Strangely enough it might have been better to have been out in a ward rather than my private room, because I just began to feel I had been abandoned. No one came for hours, and the silence was only sometimes broken when a patient pressed their call button and that usually happened just as I had managed to drop off to sleep. My mind was slow but still going round in circles. What was happening to me? The pain hovered on the edge of my consciousness continually threatening to return. I was terrified and I was the one who was good with pain!

  Finally morning came and with it a little hope. Mr Richard Cohen came to visit and explained that they were going to try and put a stent in to relieve whatever was blocking my colon. Then Mr Imbert arrived to tell us what he was going to do. This was the surgeon who put my port in originally, only to have to put it in again, but we won’t hold that against him.

  It was another long day of pain and a fog of confusion. Why was this happening to me? Dear Michael sat with me but I just couldn’t respond to him and I begged him to go home and be with Bradley and Robbie. I just wanted to grit my teeth and get through the night-time hours that stretched ahead, in that dim blue hospital light, waiting. Eventually it was Friday 13th and time to go down for my operation. Friday 13th? It beggars belief! They came to take me down to theatre around 5 p.m., and Michael came with me. There was a very festive air about the place, as all the staff on that floor were getting ready for their Christmas party that evening.

  Michael waited in the waiting room for about an hour and then the doors opened and he saw me being wheeled out with the anaesthetist, who was shaking his head. ‘It is no good we can’t do anything. We need Mr Cohen, and if we don’t operate within the hour she is going to be dead. I am so sorry.’

  The plan from day one really as far as Mr Cohen was concerned had been to remove the tumour in my colon as soon as possible. However, Professor Stebbing had needed to get at the cancer and stop its inevitable spread, although unfortunately it had already spread to my lungs and my liver. This operation was to insert a valve that would open and close and allow food to pass through the blockage.

  Michael asked where Mr Imbert was, and the nurse told him he was on the phone to Richard Cohen. Michael waited by the trolley sobbing, as the nurses worked around him. Just then Richard Cohen flew through the door calling for a release form. All the nurses produced forms from different places! Michael offered to sign it but Richard Cohen said it had to be me if possible. I just about managed it, maybe I realised it would be the most important autograph I would ever write! Then Richard turned to Michael and said, ‘Do you need me to read the whole form out?’

  Michael just said, ‘No, because I know she will die if you don’t operate.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Richard Cohen. ‘We will be ready to operate in about half an hour.’ And he moved off towards the operating theatre. For the next fifteen minutes, Michael told me, the nurses stood around watching me in silence, then a phone call came through and the porters arrived to wheel me down. Everyone watched us go, and the sister put her hand on Michael’s shoulder and wished him good luck.

  At 6.30 the porters were pushing me through the automatic doors. All Michael could see was a hive of activity the other side. As I disappeared, and the doors slowly closed, he was completely alone in the corridor. The silence was terrible and he just burst into tears. He could not remember what he had been told about where to go to wait for the operation to be over, but he managed to find his way back to main reception. Someone then got through to the operating theatre and Richard came on the line and told Michael to wait in the family room next door to the crucial care unit.

  So he made his way up to the third floor and found the room chock-a-block with relatives. They made a space for him to sit down, but within two minutes he was up on his feet again, pacing the corridor outside. He spoke to several of our friends and they all offered to come and join him with support. Their kind offers were so lovely but Michael told me afterwards that he suddenly realised that even though you feel alone and need comfort, you also need to stay in the zone. I suppose I felt the same in some ways with the pain, there are no words or even thoughts just an instinct to stick with the moment and get through it. Finally at about ten o’clock the room had emptied and Michael was alone. A few minutes later the lift doors opened and out stepped Richard Cohen still in his scrubs. He joined Michael in the family room.

  ‘Is she OK?’ asked Michael.

  ‘She is doing fine,’ replied Richard Cohen. ‘I have taken out a huge tumour and I could see all the secondaries in the liver. I have had to add an ileostomy which is like a colostomy bag but for different functions.’

  Here we go! In the shit again! The tumour was knocking at the wall of the colon and, just in time, Mr Cohen arrived to remove the tumour as it was literally perforating my colon. It was also in an awkward place. In fact they all agreed that not only did I have colon or bowel cancer, I had the most difficult one. I never do things by half! I’ve never been entirely clear on all the details, one of the reasons I never ask the questions is because the answers can be even more long and involved . . .

  ‘She will be up in the crucial care unit in about an hour. So don’t you worry,’ Richard Cohen told my husband.

  Michael said he burst into tears again and gave the surgeon a big hug. He was just so relieved. />
  ‘How long do you think she has got?’ asked my dear hubbie.

  ‘Two probably, that is about the norm.’

  ‘Is that days, or months, or what?’ said Michael.

  ‘No, years,’ replied Richard.

  ‘Oh right,’ Michael nodded. ‘Right I can live with that. Thank you so much, Richard.’ And he gave the man another hug.

  When Richard had left, Michael went into the family room and sat down. Once again relief flooded through him that I had made it through the operation, but this new prognosis had shortened my life somewhat as originally it was two to five years. The problem now was whether the chemo would keep it all at bay.

  Suddenly, sat there alone in the family room that December evening, it occurred to Michael that he was starving. He hadn’t eaten all day and now it was eleven o’clock at night. He looked around but there was nothing. No vending machine or drinks machine. However, there was a large Selfridges carrier bag on the seat opposite with what looked distinctly like a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate sticking out of the top. He went and investigated. There were several empty sandwich wrappers, and obviously the owner had either decided they had had enough, or they would be back for the chocolate later. Taking a quick look round first, my naughty husband then scoffed the lot and stuffed the bag into the bin. So if anyone who mislaid a large bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk on the night of Friday, 13 December 2013 happens to be reading this, please accept our humble apologies. We owe you one!