Lost and Found

by Lynda Bellingham

  I was always vulnerable to being teased or mocked, and I learned to mimic voices to fit in. During these years, several girls would have a go at me for one thing or another, but then give up because I made them laugh. One reason was my voice. I have no idea why but I did sound posh. My parents were not posh at all. My dad had a slight Shropshire lilt to his voice, and my mum spoke quite normally unless we had visitors or she was on the phone, then she did go a bit posh. So where I got my voice from, I don’t know. It was also quite deep and a bit husky, even then.

  I always felt that the girls thought I was a show-off and I never really fitted in, but over the years we have kept in touch and it is great now, because they come and support me. 2009 was the fiftieth anniversary of the high school opening and us all starting out. The gang came to see me in the West End in Calendar Girls, and to the TV studio to see Loose Women. Jenny (my folksinger friend) has always stayed close, even though we came from such different backgrounds. She once came to the farm and remarked how different it was from her council house, but she was not being unkind and bore no malice. She is a very special woman and I am so proud of her; in 2008 she was made mayor of Aylesbury and is now a councillor. But it made me realise that perhaps my circumstances were different from most of the gang and it was better not to rub anyone’s noses in my good fortune. My family was not rich, by any means, but farm houses are big, and farming was still regarded by some as a kind of ‘landed-gentry’ thing, rather than a job of work.

  One afternoon, Jenny and I decided to play truant and go the pictures. This was unusual for us because although we would go to the pub at lunchtime, we always went back to school in the afternoon. Anyway, for some reason or other today was different. When I got home, Mum asked me about my day. I mumbled something and then she said: ‘Did you enjoy the film?’

  The word ‘Yes’ was leaving my mouth when I stopped and, in that crucial nano-second in these situations, made the choice between telling the truth or lying. Stupidly, I chose to lie. It was just like the pink spotted dress all over again! My mother then spent the next two hours trying to get me to tell the truth. She tried yelling and threatening and cajoling; she even cried. To no avail. I was locked into that lie and had to stick with it. It’s a horrible feeling and one that most of us have experienced. And once you’ve been there, you realise it’s so much easier to just tell the bloody truth, isn’t it? Finally, my father came home and the interrogation continued. As a parent myself, now, I know the frustration. You don’t care what your child has done, you just want them to tell the truth. Dad was pacing back and forth, alternating between shouting at me and pleading with me. I just wanted it all to stop – I wanted to tell the truth but my mouth just would not engage with my brain.

  Suddenly, Mum blurted out, ‘The trouble is, Lynda, we just don’t know who you are any more. God knows where you come from. We’ll never know. We’ve dreaded this moment.’

  Everything stopped. Silence. We all looked at each other.

  I was so disappointed in myself. I so wanted to do the right thing, even then, and when I did something I knew was wrong I just felt such disgust with myself. As far as my parents were concerned I just wanted to make them pleased they had adopted me and now, of course, I was so frightened that they would reject me.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I am horrible and I don’t belong. I did go to the pictures. I’m sorry, and I’m sorry you got me.’ I ran from the room, up the stairs, threw myself on my bed and cried my heart out.

  It was a relief, in a way, to get it out in the open. Mum and Dad must have been going mad trying to understand the situation. I was the first child. The first teenager in the family. I was no longer a little girl who did what they wanted. They had to learn with me all the things that kids go through. But there was something else with me. I had started to look completely different from Barbara and Jean: I was turning into someone they could not recognise. The questions hung in the air. Who was I? What had they adopted?

  I HAVE NOT FULLY brought up the subject of my adoption until now because it was never important until that moment.

  I cannot remember exactly when my parents told me I was adopted, but I have a feeling it came out of a conversation I had with my mother after I had heard all that stuff at the convent school, about babies going to Limbo if they had not been baptised. I vaguely recall a conversation about how they had chosen me especially, and that I had flown on a plane from Canada with them to England. I can honestly say it didn’t mean a thing to me; I just accepted it and went on with my life. It was never mentioned because there was no need to mention it. I was part of the family: I had my sisters and Mum and Dad. No one knew any different. At least, until the incident of the cinema, when we all seemed to take a breath and shift position.

  As I was growing up, I had of course become more aware of myself and I noticed differences between me and my sisters. We were all still similar in hair colour and style but I had very olive skin and my nose was very prominent. Oh, my nose! What grief it was going to give me! Of course I would experiment with different looks while the girls were still only quite young. I think they were much more traditional than me though. I went through all kinds of phases like the Cleopatra look when the film with Elizabeth Taylor came out. I was also a token Mod during the early sixties. Barbara and Jean were quite shy so when we were all together I rather took over!

  I think I must have seemed worse than I was to the family not only because I was such an extrovert but also because I was the eldest and had to do everything first. By the time Barbara and Jean were going out Mum and Dad had mellowed somewhat in their attitudes.

  Looking back, I hate to admit it, but I gave my darling parents a hard time. I was beginning to develop my dramatic side and my imagination started to work overtime. I started to ask questions about my real mother and the circumstances of my adoption. But my parents were always incredibly open about everything. They gave me my birth certificate, with my original name, Meredith Lee Hughes, and all the papers relating to my adoption and citizenship of the UK. They really knew very little about my birth mother, as it was a private adoption and they never met her.

  When I think about it now, the whole process was just so lucky. For me, anyway. Mum and Dad had only been married a few months when Dad had got the chance to go to Canada and train pilots for BOAC. What young couple wouldn’t have embraced the gift of exploring another country and having a good time? After all, they had just been through a war and rationing, and here they were in a wonderful city with the world at their finger tips.

  The one cloud on the horizon was the fact that nearly a year later they were still trying to start a family, something they wanted badly to do. So much, in fact, that they went to see a Dr Gordon in Montreal to ask his opinion. It was he who suggested adoption, as he knew about my case. He sent my mum to visit me. I was in a big house, on the outskirts of town, run by a lovely lady from Yorkshire. Mum fell in love with me and took my dad back the next time for a second opinion. Apparently, I had looked up at him and given a big smile and that had sealed the deal. They came back to the UK with their new baby and everyone assumed Mum had had me out in Canada. I became a Bellingham. It was only now, as I was growing up and developing a personality, that questions were starting to hang in the air. But we talked it through and we all moved on as a family, and life took over again.

  I took my ‘O’ levels at the end of the fifth form year. I failed maths. Well, there’s a surprise, but I did not do too badly in other subjects. I was beginning to form a plan to go to drama school. My parents were not overly delighted by my career choice but, as ever, they were supportive and tried to help. In order to go to drama school, though, I was going to need to get a council grant, as my parents could not afford to support me financially. This meant I had to get some ‘A’ levels, as the Central School of Speech and Drama (where I had chosen to go) was regarded as a university in terms of funding. So whether I liked it or not – and I didn’t like it – I was going to have to
stay on at school for another two years. My parents must have breathed a sigh of relief and prayed the whole idea would die a death.

  I would love to tell you I worked hard to achieve the grades I needed, but it would be untrue. I worked very hard in my drama club and I won several competitions in the county for drama, and a couple for public speaking, but they were never mentioned in assembly at the end of term. I don’t know why anything theatrical was regarded by the school as the lowest of the low: whenever a pupil won a hurdle race or did well in netball their names were read out to the school.

  I don’t know whether it was as a result of this lack of encouragement, but I did as little study at school as possible and instead continued to frequent the Dark Lantern in my quest for local knowledge. I made some wonderful friends there, from all walks of life. I suppose the actor in me just loved to study human beings. As far as the villains were concerned I was a scatty, upper-class bird who was good for a round of drinks and a laugh. I was like their mascot. Occasionally, one or other of the group would disappear for a while and then return and it took me ages to realise that these absences were due to prison sentences. In the main, they were a fun bunch of guys. I was still saving myself for Karel, who was showing scant signs of interest, and on the odd occasion I did bring a bloke home, often late at night, my dad would greet us, waving his shotgun from his open bedroom window: he was always concerned about burglars. Years later, he confessed that he was quite grateful for my dodgy friends because when all the other farms in the area were broken into, ours was left alone due in part to my association with the criminal fraternity!

  My time spent in the pub was a different kind of social life from the one I had at school. It is strange, looking back, how I divided my social life into compartments and dipped in and out of each. I still do now. Maybe it is the gypsy in the actor that makes him flit from scene to scene. The gang at school were all now established in their love lives. Jenny was with Rod, and some of the other girls had regular boyfriends. And then there were the parties. I dreaded them because I felt so out of place. I just wasn’t into the whole going-off-to-the-bedroom-for-a-grope business. At one party I found myself on a bed with a bloke from the boys’ grammar school. Every time he made a lunge for me, I either fell off the bed or told a joke. That was my defence: I fended off unwanted advances with a steady stream of banter. He gave up in the end, and word went round the boys’ school not to bother trying to pull Lynda Bellingham because she never stopped talking! One evening, at another gathering with the group, they decided to play Postman’s Knock. For the uninitiated, this is a game where you take turns to be the postman. You have to go outside and wait while everyone else is left in the room and given a number from one to ten. Then the ‘postman’ knocks on the door and is let in and calls out a number. Whoever it is had to go outside with the postman and snog them! I prayed not to be chosen. But, horror of horrors, I got a bloke, Kevin. It was obviously a disappointment to him as well, because he was very offhand with me. We stood in the hall and because he was so tall and I was so short I had to stand on the stairs. We had a very wet, soggy snog and as he went back into the front room he very obviously wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. I was so upset; we never spoke to each other again. This may have been the defining moment in my life where I vowed I would not only be a star but the best kisser in the universe.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AN ACTOR’S LIFE FOR ME?

  MY PASSION FOR acting had increased in leaps and bounds. There was a lovely man called Alan Garrard who worked for the Bucks County Council and organised my drama group to visit Germany. He was a great encouragement to my dreams of a theatrical career and I was chosen to make the speech in each town we visited on our tour.

  I had also made friends with another future student of Central, Penny Casdagli. She was at the Arts Educational School in Tring, in Hertfordshire, and was everything one imagined an actress should be. Beautifully spoken and tiny boned, with long dark hair and gorgeous features, she was everything I longed to be. I first saw her playing Desdemona in Othello at a Shakespeare festival, held every year at Pendley Manor, in Tring. It was run, strangely enough, by the well-known commentator, Dorian Williams, who was famous for his television commentaries at the Horse of the Year Show and at Badminton. Now here he was running an outdoor theatre company in a beautiful country manor house. After seeing Penny that year I vowed I would join her the next. I only had a small part in Macbeth with the classic one line ‘They are, my Lord, without the palace gate’. I loved every minute of it. The whole experience was heaven to me.

  The following year, in 1966, I landed the part of Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. At one point in the play, I was required to run like the wind down to centre stage through a wooded glade. A local critic remarked that if I didn’t make it as an actress I could always apply to run the 100 metres! I was well and truly struck by the bug.

  As the end of school was nearing, everybody was very busy going to see the careers officer, except me. Nobody could help me. I applied for the Central School of Speech and Drama because that was where everyone else I knew had gone.

  I went to see them in 1965, towards the end of my first year in the sixth form. I prepared a speech with the help of Mrs Maclaughlan, a wonderful geography teacher who was my only champion, and was thrilled to be asked back. In my interview, the staff asked me what I was doing. I explained I was doing my ‘A’ levels. That was fine by them, and they suggested that I return the following January and they would consider me for the 1966 year, which would start in the following September. I was over the moon, and told everyone that I was going to Central when I left school. My parents suggested it might be a good idea if I took a secretarial course that summer, as acting was such a notoriously precarious profession. I queued up at the local college to enrol and then suddenly, just as I got to the head of the line, I walked away. I decided if I couldn’t work as an actress then I would just do anything to fill in the time. But I was going to make it, so there would be no problem.

  I was used to doing rubbish jobs anyway. Every holiday I worked as a cleaner at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. In fact, it became rather an interesting job because as they were so short-staffed, I often ended up working on the wards a good deal of the time, performing tasks that should really have been done by the nurses. My other job was working in Moorhouse’s jam factory. My friend Jenny and I got jobs there, as did Stephanie Daniel (Cleopatra) and, I think, at one point, so did Penny Casdagli. It was while we were all bottling marmalade that Stephanie filled me in on life at Central, and she was the one who made me audition.

  That factory was something else. The tedium of sitting staring at rows and rows of jam jars, for hours on end, made me realise I had to succeed as an actress, because I wasn’t fit for anything else, and I certainly wasn’t going to spend my life in the jam factory. It got so boring sometimes that we used to tip the jars upside down so all the marmalade or jam spilled down the sides from the machine. Then the alarm would sound, the conveyor belt would stop, and we would have a few minutes for a fag or a short break while someone cleared up the mess. One day, the manageress came to me and suggested that as I spoke nicely, she was going to put me in charge of bottling the Queen’s gooseberries. I was by Royal Appointment! So, there I was, bottling away, when I noticed one of my fellow workers spitting into the jars. I asked her what on earth did she think she was doing as, for goodness’ sake, these gooseberries were going to Buckingham Palace.

  ‘I hate Royalty,’ came the reply. ‘I spit on Royalty.’

  Well. She had to be reported, and she was, and she left. There’s nowt so queer as folk.

  On my second visit to Central after Christmas, as requested, I was full of confidence as I climbed the steps to the entrance. After all, this was just a formality. They had already said yes.

  I did my speeches and the teachers asked what I was up to now. I explained that I was taking my exams in June and, hopefully, I would make the grades to get my grant to c
ome to Central in September, as they had told me. There was an ominous silence. Then the principal, George Hall, delivered the rather unnerving verdict that they would like me to come back and do a workshop, with other students, before they could give me a final answer on my suitability for the course.

  I was so disappointed, but I had no choice.

  The college invited me to the workshop in April. There were quite a few of us and we all huddled in the corner like sheep. It was a very long day. We had to do movement and voice and improvisation. God, how I hated it. I still hate improvising now. I just felt so stiff and self-conscious, and my body felt heavy and cumbersome. I made friends with another girl and we went to lunch together. We tried to understand what it was they were looking for in us as actors. It was all very foreign to us.

  I came home feeling very despondent. My ‘A’ levels were looming and the future was not looking quite so bright. Then I got a letter explaining that the staff at The Central School of Speech and Drama were very sorry but they did not feel I was right for the September intake of students. If I wished to ring them at the beginning of September, before the term started, they would review the situation, and there may possibly be a chance of a place.

  My whole world seemed to cave in. It just had not occurred to me that I would not have a place. I hadn’t even bothered to apply anywhere else. Now I was facing the prospect of a summer in the jam factory, and possibly the rest of my life. No. No, this was not going to happen.

  I rang the girl who had been at the audition with me. I dreaded hearing that she had got in. But she was inconsolable as well, as she had had a refusal She read me the letter over the phone. Basically, it was very similar to mine but, and this was a big but, she had not been invited to call back in September. There was a glimmer of hope! I was going to do this. I began to form a plan. There was a small chance and I was going to grasp it with both hands. I decided I needed a second opinion about whether I had any talent or not, and I decided to talk to the lovely Mrs Maclaughlan about it.