anglesey

Many, many years ago. When Doctor Who was middle aged and wore a knitted scarf; I spent a year playing Miss Caswell in the Mousetrap. She was, I was told, a lesbian.  So they put me in a tweed suit and asked me to speak as if I was teaching a group of dimwits to play field hockey.  I must have been effective because my only note was to dye my hair because it was the same colour as the scenery.

I got a few things from that year at the St Martin’s Theatre. I got a fold up bicycle because I got fed up of people telling me they’d catch the last bus home with me if I came for just the one drink. I got proper money, because this was my first brush with earning more than you needed to fill your fridge with your weekly wage; enough to buy a ‘round-the-world’ plane ticket. And I got two friends. Peter Penry-Jones, a welsh man of intelligence, eloquence, and power, playing Giles who was the owner of Monkswell Manor Hotel. And David McAlister who was the policeman who climbed in the hotel window at the end of the first act. Who turned out to be Miss Caswell’s brother and the killer. I apologise if you haven’t seen it. But I promise you I am saving you from one of the most illogical and stupid pieces of theatre you would ever have seen. David was an actor who loved not only acting but the business of acting, which is rare.

red wharf bay. 1870

After a year, David and I could not look at each other for fear of laughing. Not helped by the day I came onstage with my leg in plaster from a bad sprain and because, as I said, he came to the play late, he just turned round and left the stage in giggles leaving us all to interrogate ourselves. David toured and toured and sang and toured until he died last year, way too early. Peter took care of me. He talked to me like I was grown up until I dared to think I might be. He filtered the world I was walking into through his intelligence and his logic and his Welsh sense of poetic resignation.

Peter or PPJ as I called him, had a wife who was an actress of talent and success and two young sons; so finding the whole business a bit distasteful; he handed over the pursuit of work to his wife and he gave his sons all the attention possible.

I lived with Peter and his family when my flat was being gutted. I visited Peter up in Anglesey in the stone cottage he had inherited from his parents. I drove Laurie, the youngest around in my father’s  sports car

(He remembers this, not me)  I went to a not very religious church with them on a Sunday morning, because Peter thought the vicar had a good mind and voice. When I came to America, I would always go and visit them in their large house in West Norwood. “ I want to live in Marble Arch.” Angie would say. “ Sigh” is what Peter would say.  And take the dog out for a walk. Rupert the elder became an actor. Laurie the younger did too. Peter feared for them both.

Rupert met his wife doing a production of “ Dangerous Corner.” He came out to LA with Dervla after the run ended and they lived next door to me. Laurie met his wife doing a production of “Liaisons Dangereuses”. He and Polly came out to live in LA for a few years.

peter and Rupert

Rupert and Dervla, Florence and Peter

Laurie and Polly

laurie and Angie

I visited Peter in that stone cottage a number of times. Once when we went mackerel fishing from the rocks. Once when Rupert and Dervla’s new baby was born and they asked me to be godmother as we were all walking across the mile long beach. Once when Peter was ill and I gave him a foot massage, which still has Angela in a state of incredulity. 

And now, some seven years after Peter has gone, to stay with Angela in the house that is full of him. From stone terraces he built with his father. To rose bushes that he planted. To the blue summer house he built high up in the orchard. To the steps he made so that Angela could climb through the stone wall to the driveway. The views from all the windows are the greatest of cinema. The desk was his father’s. the jugs were collected by his mother. The Aga was Angela’s idea. The garden was theirs.

the aga and the kitchen

peter's mother's bedroom

The sitting room

Gertrude's jugs

Although Angela wanted to live in the middle of London, when Peter died, she spent more and more time in the stone cottage on the edge of Red Wharf Bay. In Ty Mawr Llan. In the village of Llandonna.

the grocery store in Beaumaris

that grocery store again

macaroni cheese and flowers from the garden

Rupert and Dervla are coming up with their two children in a couple of weeks. Laurie and Polly will be up later.

angela

This morning, a wonderful elderly couple brought by the Sunday Telegraph as they always do on a Sunday and they stop for coffee.

David told Angela that he had sat with Peter when he wasn’t well and had asked what his one wish would be. Peter had said, “ To see my family walking along this beach.”