The church of the theatre

This last week there was the funeral for my friend Angela, who I wrote about earlier.

It had taken a long time to arrive for a lot of reasons. One of which was that her boys wanted to have the occasion at St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden and there wasn’t a date available for all the activities they were having there. St Paul’s church is in the middle, and I mean the middle, of Covent Garden.

Designed by Inigo Jones in 1631, he meant for it to have an opening onto the cobblestones of the old fruit and flower market. But he seems he hadn’t done his research into Christian laws and since the altar had to be at the east end, at the last minute the doors were bricked up and a Portico without an entrance stands there. It is in under that same portico that George Bernard Shaw had his Eliza Doolittle meet his Henry Higgins as she was hawking her bunches of violets in “Pygmalion.” It is where Barry Foster was chased in the 1972 Hitchcock film “ Frenzy.” But now it is known as the place the magicians, the musicians and the acrobats set up to do their acts for the tourists and visitors on a daily basis. The reason why Rupert and Laurie wanted to have the service there, is because St Paul’s Covent Garden is also known as the Actors Church.

It is where Actors take their last bows, so to speak, and the place is alive with their names. It was closed to the public for Angela’s funeral. Normally the grounds and the gardens are open. I myself, sat there back in July and read the entire Guardian newspaper on a sunny Saturday. There are benches and small lawns. There are shaded areas and sunny areas. there are walkways of old slabs of stone and beds of roses. The church is open, when there isn’t a service, to everyone. There are stairs up from the foyer to the left with a sign saying dressing rooms. To the right there is the office where the vicar, Simon a bright and friendly man, who was in shorts when I went back the following day to retrieve my glasses, and his equally bright and friendly staff, have their office. Simon is quoted that if he isn’t at the church he can be found “at a bar, the theatre or the gym.” The church is square. There are windows without stained glass. It feels very simple and almost puritanical in it’s layout. There isn’t much gold or pictures of Jesus. It is full of light and it is full of wood. The pews are all wood. The walls are paneled in wood. And everywhere there are names. Names on the walls denote someone who has been given some honor by the Queen. Names on the back of the pews denote someone who hasn’t. The benches outside all have dedications to someone who was an actor or who worked with actors and is now declaiming with clarity somewhere else.

Walking round the church on the day I went to collect my glasses was a bit like that. it was a cast list of the finest. Of course Ian Holm is dead. Diana Rigg too. I knew that. And the older legends of Margaret Leighton and Kenneth More. And the odd shocking one like Helen McCrory. But being remembered on the wood of this Actor’s church, feels like the finest of clubs. when the doors are closed and the light is still coming through those windows of a summer evening, do they have one last go at “ Cymbeline” ? Does somebody emerge to sort out that second act of Shaw’s “ Man and Superman”? Do the “Lovies” collect in one corner and call each other Darling and say how good they still look. Do the heavyweights collect in another wearing black turtle necks and smoking as they discuss breath control and John Osborne. Most people who visit the church don’t know who these names are. And as time goes by those numbers will increase. They explain to each other that Helen McCrory was in Harry Potter, that Ian Holm was Bilbo Baggins. That Vivien Leigh was in “ Gone with the Wind.” But who will know John Tydeman’s name unless you worked on BBC Radio? Who will remember Brian Rix and his wife Elspet Gray, who revived stage farce?

And are there maybe a handful of people who would know my friend , Sean Arnold, who I thought was still knocking around in Jersey, but it seems left us in 2020 and is now remembered on a back of a pew. Laurie said they are going to donate money to have one inscribed for Angela along with Peter. I like that the idea of that. I will be back to stand in front of that one. And maybe I’ll sing “ Jerusalem “ to myself if I can find a patch of sunlight. “ and did those feet in ancient times, Walk upon England’s pastures green….”

And Rain Interrupted Play

In England there are weather forecasts after the news broadcasts at 6, 9 and 10. A trained meteorologist gets up there with a moving map behind him or her and talks of low and high pressure belts and there are numbers and often swirls of white and blue indication clouds and the rain within them.

People watch or listen to these newscasts and behave accordingly. There was Michael Fish, who looked more like a physics teacher, but now they are more assured. There are women with shiny hair and men in shiny suits but their message still lacks levity. It is crucial information. DO WE PACK AN UMBRELLA IN OUR BAG TOMORROW? They don’t tell us what to wear, they don’t say “ bring out those cotton frocks tomorrow. “ Or “ long trousers might be too much for the next couple of days.” But everyone knows when that little yellow sun appears and the numbers creep up above 24 Celsius that they can have breakfast in the garden and lunch on a park bench. And then it happens. People get complacent, it is a friday night. Another warm and wonderful week and the weekend beckons with it’s July weddings and rooftop parties. London is awash with restaurants and cafes that have pushed out onto pavements, pubs with tables that have people standing in the evening sun with a pint or whatever sometimes spilling out into the street itself. Everyone knows it is summer, hooray! ties are in pockets, sleeves are rolled, shoulders are bare and umbrellas are a thing to be forgotten. But Saturday comes. This long anticipated day of rest …. The sky is grey and bulbous with dark clouds. It is on the cool side. I meet a friend at The National Theatre. We sit outside for a while, it is lightly drizzling but we stay and chat. Until we both decide we will have our second cup of something inside. After a few hours we part ways as she catches the last train home at 6.30pm. At Waterloo there are big signs with rolling information in orange telling you the time of departure, where it will end up, where it will stop on the way, if it is on time and eventually the platform it will leave from and everyone stands around with their eyes glued on it. Except on Saturday there is only one train on the board. And there is a woman’s voice on the tannoy, apologizing for the strike action but clarifying that this will be the last train that evening. There will be no further trains. My friend got the train, I walked across the river where I had tickets for a play.

And then, ladies and gentlemen, the dark clouds had their vengeance and released their troubled waters upon us all.

Gaggles of people who hadn’t paid attention to the heirs of Michael Fish warning them what Saturday would bring. Astonished by the audacity of a sky that would ruin their clothes and their hopes, battling their way to their meeting place in Piccadilly or their pic-nic in Hyde Park. The streets were full of women in strappy shoes and strappy dresses. Men were in T shirts and shorts. There were flip flops and Birkenstocks, there were evening dresses soaked around the hems. There were newspapers folded over heads in triangles to protect curls from uncurling. Plastic shopping held up like kites. There was a lot of sheltering under doorways and awnings. I had my little white borrowed umbrella in my backpack. I opened it up and picked my way through the streets pushing it in front of me as it threatened to turn inside out with the strong winds.

Some three hours later, when I came out from the theatre, Charing Cross Road was a river. The rain was bucketing down. The puddles underfoot were now ponds. There was a proper problem on the roads around Trafalgar Square. Buses, cars, taxi’s all jammed, coming into town..empty lanes going out. Nobody cared, everyone’s head was down as they looked for shelter. trying to work out how to get home.

So, not only had the heavens opened and released a November storm in July. And the train stations were without trains and there were no buses in sight. But London, at 11 o’clock of an evening, is a city that is putting chairs on tables, turning off lights and closing front doors. The tourists were confused and kept looking for options. The Brits just stood in the rain at the bus stops. Soggy and silent. Resigned to the waiting that comes with years of practice. When the number 88 bus arrived, there were no questions asked. Everyone just shook their umbrellas out and climbed on silently, not questioning the bus driver who was assuredly having a bad time too. Oh and the rain caused England to lose the ashes. I’m not going to try and explain that one.

The following morning was bright and blue. It was as if nothing had ever been other than summer. The End. Until next Time.

Summer birthdays

I have a summer birthday. I have always rather relished having a birthday away from specific festivities. For I find birthdays are days that always contain emotional nuggets whether you want them or not. A sense of time passing. A glance back at what can seem to be a crumpled life. With way high expectations unreached. A reminder of people whom you can no longer offer a slice of your cake. A chance for better. A feeling you could fly. As a child, my birthday came as school was breaking up for the summer. There is a cine film of a birthday party when I was about ten in the back garden of our brilliant house in Moss Lane. I wasn’t a popular girl at school but I managed to get quite a few friends over to a party with promises of a rounders games on the back lawn and a slap up tea. The cine film is evidence of why I wasn’t a popular girl because I apparently spent the entire party in a ballet tutu and I think I refused to play rounders. Around this time, my parents bought a tiny flat in the north of Spain, an economical way of spending holidays and giving us exposure to another culture. All sounds promising, except as I said my birthday fell as school broke up, so we would wave good bye to school at lunchtime and by that evening our famiy would be on the south coast waiting for the ferry to take us over the channel where we would drive for 14 hours straight until we could unpack our cheddar cheese and tea bags at our postage stamp of a holiday home in Calella de Palafrugell. To clarify, My entire birthday would be in the back seat of the car, chasing some audacious Citroen down the autoroute. Parent “ Don’t worry, we’ll just celebrate your birthday tomorrow.” Child “ But it won’t be my birthday.” Parent “ we can pretend it’s your birthday.” Child “ ( with a gold medal for sulking) but it won’t be…” As I moved on in life I found Birthdays to be a reminder of what I hadn’t achieved. I was embarrassed by people celebrating me for just having been born, when all I could see was the procrastination or apathy that had filled the previous twelve months. When I was working on location on a film in Texas, the catering crew would always make something special for a birthday. Candles, a cake, the whole crew singing… they found out about mine and made me a huge English trifle as a surprise at lunchtime. I was just about to enter the tent, I knew what was in store and I literally turned round at the door and ran away. Ran away… good lord… Not my finest hour. For years I didn’t let anyone sing that rather silly and repetitive song. I didn’t allow cake or candles. We could do tea or supper on my birthday but no one was allowed to mention it. That wasn’t my finest hour either. But that’s behind me now. Nothing like making a loud noise as a way to not be noticed. I read that in certain cultures you don’t celebrate birthdays when someone is young. You wait until they are older, and then every year is a marked as a marvel of survival. So on my birthdays, I try to do something I had never done before. Like take a flying lesson. Kayak across a bay.

I always have a breakfast of grilled tomatoes on toast and there are raspberries and cream at some point in the day. This year I went to supper at a Polish Club and caught the BBC proms at The Royal Albert Hall.

I wore a new dress that I now think looks like a French tablecloth but hey! And down which I managed to spill something oily. But I was with dear friends and them wanting to be there turned out to be enough.

I think birthdays are little pockets which gently remind you of how far you have come. And how lucky you are to have had the life you had with those people who make you see that the life you have is a good and worthwhile one. Well done my friends and my family, that is what I say now. For persevering with me over the years. Thank you for your good wishes. For the ribbons and the cards and the flowers. For the outings and the reassurance and yes, even the cakes.

I am thrilled to be in your company, I am happy to be who you believe me to be, Even though I have my suspicions you are misguided.

But I have enough raspberries today to make my birthday last another day. I just have to get more cream Hip Hip Hooray! For us summer birthday people.

And it is of Hollyhocks I now must speak….

My parents were not great gardeners. But we inherited houses that came with gardens that had been designed with some care. There were hydrangeas that skirted the entire house and deep red geraniums in window boxes. Long stretches of daffodils under the weeping willows. Rockeries with small tufts of flowers all down the right side of the lawn. And then the garden devolved into raspberry canes and gooseberry bushes. Curved greenhouses for tomatoes and glass boxes for cucumbers. Then across the stream there was the fiefdom of my welsh grandfather. Who made rows and rows of neat shallow trenches laid out with string in military precision that held broad beans and potatoes and wigwam structures for runner beans and peas.

But truly, flowers were never the opera stars in our gardens. Everything of beauty survived by luck, the daffodils just kept coming back. The hydrangeas just flowered despite being driven over a few times by my first boyfriend who was not a great driver. Sorry Paul. The roses bloomed and bloomed again, but there was no grafting or specific pruning, they just kept giving these fragrant teacups of colour despite how much they were ignored.

We didn’t have cut flowers in vases. I don’t remember any house plants. There were books and Buddha’s and lamps made by my father in woodwork classes. There were bowls of oranges ( for our breakfast juice) and apples fallen from trees for our anytime. Living now in Santa Monica, I always have flowers on my kitchen table, in my living room and upstairs in the bedrooms and bathroom because for me now it is the fastest way to feel I am celebrating the luck in my life. But it wasn’t always so. I remember living in London and having this sense that cutting flowers was not allowing them to grow their full life. It went hand in hand with my not eating Granny Smith apples with the cape symbol on them because my not buying a pound of apples was really going to have a difference on apartheid. It was my friend Geoff, who drapes flowers like an artist into any vase, who looked at me scathingly as I spouted my concern for the rights of the flowers. That look was enough.

My garden doesn’t have many flowers, I am always surprised when the occasional dahlia pops up or the amaryllis I had forgotten was in that pot at the bottom by the mermaid, shoots forth another exotic bloom, I am thrilled however by the quince blossoms, that couldn’t be more delicate, the passion flower which only lasts a day or so and is so complicated it needs an engineer to dissect it. And the various kinds of scented geranium that cover the ground, peppermint, chocolate, rose. The purple rose that survives despite getting in the way, the French lavender and the brilliant African blue basil, that provides a playground for the bees. Gardens here in England are not all beautiful. Some are over tailored. Some are full of weeds. Some have pavers and couple of deck chairs. Lots of privet and boxwood. There are books published, massive flowers shows in Chelsea and Hampton Court. I would not dream of adding my naive comments on those.

But I can talk of the glorious and slightly insane Hollyhock. “Alcea Rosea” it seems from the Mallow family of plants. And it is everywhere here in this summer month. Native to Europe and Asia. it shoots up so tall and leggy like a wayward teenager, so it is often found propped up against walls and fences.

But sometimes it will emerge in a solo performance waving around some three or four foot tall it’s bright flowers demanding your attention. There is no smell. The blooms shrivel on the stem and drop off. Madame Hollyhock, she is blowsy and big like an opera singer with only a few high notes…but Lordy, are they high. And Lordy , do they give me pleasure in these July days…..

Graveyards

I have always had a fondness for graveyards. Growing up in England where every village had a church and beside the church would be a graveyard where those who had been baptized in the Christian faith were buried. From my avid teenage reading of Thomas Hardy I knew that children born out of wedlock or to pregnant unmarried women were not allowed to rest in consecrated ground. Graveyards are collections of the best names, the saddest stories, the hope for rest at the end of a tired life. Gravestones are often made large enough to carry the family as they die one by one. Bertha, the dearly missed wife of Henry, then Henry the loving husband and beloved father to Harry and Jemima. Then Harry and Jemima, much missed by their children Polly and Bertie. I am not good at counting. I am not going to grace my lack of skill by calling it maths. I count on my fingers. And in graveyards my fingers are busy working out old Martha was when she died in 1859. Or how many years baby Samuel had before he was spirited away with colic or TB. In New Zealand there were many born in Ireland or Scotland, who traveled the length of the world and would die in their adopted country.

In Glenorchy, the head of the Routeburn Track, the jumping on point for the River Dart a remote 50 miles from Queenstown the outdoor activity capital of the South Island, there is one general store. One hotel. Two cafes. A rugby pitch inside of a grass racetrack, a school, tractors in driveways. I went to Glenorchy in the Spring, but the hundred or so houses are set up for Winter snow with metal pitched roofs and double doors.

In the graveyard, there are about sixty or so headstones. Grouped in families. Most of them coming from Scotland, Dunfermline, Fife. Named Stuart or MacKenzie. Leaving a hard life for a hard life. Schoolteachers, miners, dying in their sixties. Explorers, adventurers, dying in the late twenties drowning in the Dart or tumbling down a mountain. Leaving behind their parents and sometimes their young families. In Britain the graveyards surround the old stone churches. To get into the church you walk though grass pathways inbetween the old headstones. The new ones are either in an area at one side or all now allocated to a place across the road somewhere. Which feels a little unsatisfactory. Like parking at Tesco’s when you have a card in your name at Harvey Nichols. The new stones are often smaller, made from a darker, more glossy stone. They will have potted plants in front of them. A chrysanthemum perhaps. Needing to be deadheaded. Or a bunch of silk flowers, beaten to colourless by the weather. In America families sometimes buy plots with room for a generation or two. I haven’t really looked at those. Maybe that kind of forward planning is too practical to hold any romance for me. I do remember a sweet woman from Central America who cleaned houses for a living whose sister died and she used all of the money that she was left to have her buried. I remember that not making any sense to me, but realizing in that moment, we spoke different languages. Graveyards show me the grip and the unraveling of small societies. Grandmas who lived into their nineties. Husbands who left widows to live on for decades past them. Wives, so much younger than their husbands, who clearly died in childbirth. Young men who left holes where support should have been. Children upon children who lived just long enough to be christened or managed to make it through a few sweet years before being called up to their maker. ( the words carved in stone, not mine.) The weather beaten stones, curved now at the edges, with their dedications and remembrances, dotted with moss and an occasional flower pushing up through the grass. Different to unmarked photograph albums that end up in antique shops, full of posed wedding shots, or young soldiers in uniforms, or young things sitting on the grass in tennis whites, or children in ill fitting clothes standing in doorways. But unclaimed in the same way. Maybe that is why I stop in graveyards and read the names and dates and dedications out loud. To put their names once more out in the air.

Footfall

There is a sound and a sense when your foot hits the ground. It can be first thing in the morning when you get out of bed and wander in a wobbly line towards to bathroom to see what damage your dreams have left on your face. That first wander for me is as if my left foot has been in a plaster cast for a year and is unfamiliar with it’s job as a foot and has to be taught how to behave before the world requires it to take half my weight and get things done. It can be on sand. Sinking in, pulling out. The miracle of all those tiny pieces of silica, the shavings at the edge of the solid world, that right themselves smooth whatever words or holes or castles we make with them. Beaches sometimes ring of summer holidays, but because I have lived so much of my life by a beach it is often in the winter that I love walking on the sand so much. Because then it is often just me and a few other hardy ones and the beach is free of man made detritus and your footprints feel like they are the only ones on the moon. There is cement. There is always cement. In England the pavements, or sidewalks, are often made of paving stones. These slabs of rectangular stone that are in the older streets were still brought in from the quarries of Purbeck and in newer streets from the concrete shop.

I fell on one of those a few months ago. Marching along the pavement, off to the bus stop, avoiding the shoppers with their shopping bags on wheels, scanning the ground for the pavers that didn’t fit so neatly together and whoop de do.. the classic phrase, “the ground coming up to meet you,” did exactly that. It was so fast. Flat on my face. Felled in my pride of over familiarity. Some young man came to my aid. “ No, I’m fine” I said, gracelessly picking myself up from the ground. I was embarrassed at being careless. Not wanting to be one at odds with the ground on which I walked. Not wanting to be a stranger.

I know I have written before about old churches. Not always the big ones, but the smaller ones in villages now consisting of a farm and a scout hut. Where you walk through the grass churchyard with gravestones almost illegible with moss and hundreds of years of weather.

And you open this wooden door into a stone vestibule where benches line the sides. Maybe for people to shake off the rain or the mud of where they had walked through, before making their way through the second door into the church itself. No fancy stained glass windows, no high vaulted ceilings.

Wooden pews, warm to the touch. These are the everyday of ancient stones. The working man’s path of pilgrimage. Many lifetimes worth of sunday devotions have made worn patterns into the uneven stones. Pressing indentations into the steps to the altar. will give you smooth and shiny stone, worn curves in the steps to the altar. Once bright and tight, now pressed down by so many centuries of feet, that you feel the echo as you walk on them and step where they once did

Footpaths and bridleways. These are not hiking trails. They don’t end up at “ Inspiration Point.” They don’t tell you how many miles you will have achieved if you do the whole loop. They may start with a wooden stile off a small road. They might start at the far end of a churchyard. They often cross fields of wheat or grazing cows. This is also where you pay attention to those grazing cows for the bullocks or bulls among them who can charge and have you running literally for your life to that stile on the far side of that field over which you throw yourself to safety. Sometimes you skim past a grand stately home. If you are lucky they pass by a pub where you can sit on a bench and grab a libation and a packet of crisps. These are the footpaths and bridleways of Great Britain. Criss crossing the countryside. Decreed by law. Drawn in the Ordnance Survey Maps. There is a swishing as your feet move through the cut grass, or the stubble path at the side of a field. There is a give as you walk through the wood that is under a canopy of trees. Not grass here but soft earth with the occasional tree root fighting its way though. This is the world of bluebells and stinging nettles, where tiny birds hop around inside bushes and gnats swarm in late afternoon.

Angela

It was my first job outside of the provinces. My first job in London Town. I knew it wasn’t classy. But it seemed like a step, a diagonal step. if not forward, then a diagonal. I was going to spend a year in “ The Mousetrap.” At the St. Martin’s Theatre. The east end of the West End. One. Nobody said Miss Casewell wasn’t written as a lesbian. I simply chose to play her as someone who had spent far too long on a hockey pitch, Two. The Policeman did it. Three. My career in Agatha Christie plays may now be over. In this year I learned never to rely on anyone for lifts home and I bought an orange Peugeot bike. the extra money I earned bought me a trip round the world when I was done and I met a dear and wonderful man called Peter. Peter Penry Jones was this big polar bear of a Welshman. handsome with a mass of wonderful grey hair that he constantly pushed away from his face with his hand. He had a voice that should be bottled. He wanted to do this job about as much as he wanted to shop in Harrods, but he was pulling his weight for his family. Peter decided to invest in me. I had no idea why. He had no interest in developing his social circle. But to a couple of people every so often, he opened his massive arms and invited in. I don’t know when I started going round to house in Chestnut Road, West Norwood. I don’t remember when it was I started joining them going to the this free form church service down the road on a sunday. I know that a couple of years later I moved in with them for about four months when my flat, that I had bought, was being gutted and rebuilt. I went up to Wales and spent time with Peter, mowing the fields, sitting in that little hut up on the hill at the end of the afternoon, going fishing with his wife’s brother for mackerel off the rocks. And then there was Peter’s wife. Angela. Angela Thorne. Peter was demanding of your intelligence, Angela was demanding of everything else. You could easily get it wrong with Angela. Read the moment incorrectly, say one word too many, Smile when it wasn’t funny, and you were toast. She made me observant of being accurate with my speech, my information. She smacked me down if I repeated unsubstantiated gossip. Her temper was fast and short-lived. Her sense of humour was explosive. Her language was sometimes unexpectedly blue. her loyalty and love were enormous.

She and Peter had met when they were both young actors. She was in Ralph Richardson’s company. The brilliant and beautiful young ingenue. He was in Olivier’s company. The youth brilliant and handsome . He was Welsh from the bones out. She was English with stories of going out to India as a child. Coming back on a boat to go to school. A family that changed shape in a way that must have been challenging as a young girl. She loved her two boys. She didn’t always like the everyday bits of being a housewife. But she adored those boys. She was always keeping track of the life that she wanted. The flat in Marble Arch was one of them. “ if I am going to live in London, I want to live in the centre.” Her career was a prestigious one. I caught the middle and latter part of it. With Alec Guinness, with Stephanie Beacham. In Ayckbourn plays, Playing Maggie Thatcher. In Television dramas, in television comedies.She kept track of her friends. And she had great friendships. She moved fast; in the street, round the house, in her little car. She wasted no time. Had good books on the go. Watched good television. Went to plays worth her while. She wasn’t unkind. She didn’t mean to choose the words she did, but out they came anyway. She had a critical eye and it traveled to her mouth without passing the pause button. One of the times we had tea, she said ,” shall we have biscuits? Or maybe you shouldn’t.” Her Peter left her when he was 70. It was a sad, sad time. For her sons. She said she was very lucky with the people they had married. She had a hoot with her grandchildren, one of whom came to spend the last year living with her whilst she attended a London college. A younger brother and sister, and older brother… nieces, friends ; professional and from way back when. They all had a place. When I last talked to her she said she couldn’t wait for summer so she could attack her garden in Battersea. “ Tidy it up.” She asked me if I knew where I was going to stay when I came back in the summer. “ Darling you know you can come and stay here, if you’re desperate. You know you can, if you’re desperate.” She had the loveliest face, the best hair, she wore fantastic clothes. She adored animals. Her family. The people she chose as friends. she was hilarious intentionally and not. She missed Pete, her Welsh champion, every day. His ashes are under an apple tree in Anglesey. That is where she is going to be too. A sad sort of perfect.