It’s true that Thora is sometimes almost inaudible and finds, for instance, passages of description hard to put over. But once she gets into her ‘I said to her … she said to me’ mode she hits her stride. This, after all, had been the structure of her normal discourse for most of her life and it did not fail her now.
Tears, though, were never far away, though it wasn’t always clear what Thora was weeping for. Sometimes it was the character she was playing; sometimes it was for herself playing the character; and sometimes, I’m sure, without it ever being specifically acknowledged, she wept because she knew she had come to the end of her work and was coming to the end of her life.
The play was recorded in the BBC7 Studio at Broadcasting House, the only studio which at that time had proper and indeed somewhat ceremonial wheelchair access. No stranger to chairlifts on this, her last ride, Thora achieved something of an apotheosis. Wheeled onto the upper level of the apparatus, she was then borne slowly and serenely downwards to studio level. Done up to the nines and every inch a star, she looked like Katharine Hepburn descending in the lift in the film of Suddenly Last Summer and as regal and commanding as a woman should whose career had begun ninety years before when she was brought onto stage as a two-month-old baby at the Royalty Theatre, Morecambe.
Her elegance, though, was characteristic. Few actors these days would dress up for a rehearsal, let alone a rehearsal on radio. But Thora belonged to a generation where to be seen at all in public was a performance in itself and part of the job.
I had caught what I thought was the tail end of this tradition in 1978 when working with Jill Bennett and Rachel Roberts who came to rehearsals in competing mink coats. Then in 1982 I went with Coral Browne for a fitting at Nathan’s and saw all the dressers come out and watch in acknowledgement that such unashamed glamour was now almost an anachronism.
Thora was of the same generation even though glamour to her was a white trouser suit and a bright yellow beret, an outfit that she claimed made her look like a poached egg. Still, her smartness was somewhat unexpected, as so thoroughly did she inhabit her roles her public was mildly surprised that she didn’t turn up dressed in her natural rig-out of headscarf and wrap-around pinny.
For all her frailty in gaps in the recording Thora keeps up an unstoppable flow of anecdote about her life in the theatre and her childhood in Morecambe.
The figure that most vividly emerges from these tales is always her father, the manager of the Royalty Theatre and director of many of the shows put on there. Today in the studio she remembers how she was sacked from Brundreth’s, a posh drapers in Morecambe where she worked as an assistant and was sent home having been wrongly accused of stealing sixpence.
Mrs Hird senior embraces her wronged child, playing the scene for all its worth, and when Mr Hird returns home later there is a second performance with him slipping naturally into his role of the stern but righteous father determined to clear his daughter’s name. Thora’s family sound like a scaled-down version of the family of Judith Bliss in Coward’s Hay Fever, reaching for any excuse to play out one of the melodramas they have all in their time acted in and now can get their teeth into in real life.
She said of the second monologue that I wrote for her, Waiting for the Telegram, that she would never have got past the first paragraph if it had-n’t have been mine and that she’d never have said a swear word for anyone else. I took this as the compliment it was meant to be, though this was in 1999 and since the word in question was ‘penis’ the percentage of the population regarding it as a swear word must have been small, but still it seemed so to Thora. She had her audience on Songs of Praise to think about.
It was a delicate issue in the play as Violet, the character she played, didn’t actually have to say the word herself but since this was a monologue she had to report other people – the matron, the social worker – saying it, which they persisted in doing with some relish. But I was the author and she had given me her trust and I count it not the least of my accomplishments that I got Dame Thora Hird, aged eighty-seven, to say penis with pride.
Still, it was one of her strengths that she believed, along with so many of the characters she played, that there were appearances to be kept up, susceptibilities to be considered and a line to be drawn if not in art then certainly in life.
I once saw her on Parkinson when she was the second guest. The first was Jim Davidson. It seemed an unlikely pairing and certainly the conversation between Parky and Davidson was, as Thora would have put it, quite suggestive. When she came on they both looked suitably shamefaced: it was as if an aunt had unexpectedly arrived from Lytham and they hastily put away the stout and brought out the lemonade.
Considerations of taste came up again when I was writing The Last of the Sun. Despite the title I didn’t want this to be yet another heart-rending account of a woman descending into forgetfulness and dementia so I did deliberately endeavour to think the unthinkable and imagine what the public would least expect (or even want) Thora to be doing, with a spot of geriatric heavy petting coming out top.
Even so, the saga of Dolly and Mr Pilling isn’t all that far from some of the scenarios dreamed up for Thora and myself by the genial myth-makers of Dead Ringers. While these always made me laugh I never found the dialogue attributed to me quite as witty as I’d have liked, nor was our association ever as close and continuous as the parody demanded. Spitting Image had once had us tucked up in bed together and in Dead Ringers we were always in one another’s pockets: as the brains behind an international drugs ring was one I particularly liked.
The truth, unsurprisingly, was more ordinary. Thora and I worked together only half a dozen times in thirty years. Though each collaboration was memorable, it never seemed to me that I wrote a great deal for Thora; rather I feel now I didn’t write nearly enough. Nor did we see each other socially. We were always going to have lunch but never did, which is another regret, and though we’d occasionally chat on the phone, if I ever walked over the awkward cobbles to her crowded flat in Leinster Mews it would be to talk about work.
The myth, of course, is funnier but it did present a real dilemma when I started to think about writing what turned out to be our final fling. Is there any point, I wondered, now that we’re both such a joke? If we bring an indulgent smile so readily to the face of the public why not just leave it there? The sight of Thora helpless in her wheelchair, still very much herself but rusting away for want of employment made these considerations seem trivial and self-serving so I put together this short final piece.
The Last of the Sun could be said to be about the persistence of desire, which isn’t an entirely respectable subject and not something the young or even the middle-aged are prepared to contemplate, let alone acknowledge, still wanting it at eighty the stuff of seaside postcards.
Dignify such longings with the word ‘needs’ and they would these day be more acceptable, ‘sexual needs’ just another earnest box to be ticked off on a social services list. But ‘needs’ hasn’t ever quite made it into my vocabulary and I am happy still to think of them as wants, desires or even cravings.
Maybe all that can be said for Mr Pilling’s fumblings with his old ladies is that they make a change and that, as the shadows lengthen, to be mildly interfered with might occasionally be preferable to Countdown. But that the old ladies should allow such liberties on a weekly (and eventually twice-weekly) basis might stretch credulity. Or it may shock; it may hearten. And at least Mr Pilling has found his niche. The monologue might even be thought to be about tolerance.
Originally I thought of the story concluding with the disgraced Mr Pilling banished from the home and even imprisoned, with Dolly and her friend Blanche left to contemplate what future there was unenlivened by his furtive attentions. Deprived of these ancient heavy pettings what did life have in store for either of these ladies except a straight run to the grave? Another dying fall, in fact.
And that would have been the approved way to end it and – though I’m no
t keen on the phrase (or what it describes) – the politically correct way.
In the meantime I wasn’t sure the plot I was constructing might not be beyond Thora. It hinges on the current law that a house left by a parent to his or her children seven years or more before the parent’s death thereby escapes estate duty.
I need not have worried. Thora had made just such an arrangement herself, as indeed had that other old lady, Thora’s only rival in the public’s affections, the Queen Mother. Neither arrangement had resulted in the bitterness and recrimination that occur in the play where Vera, the daughter, is concerned only that her mother stay alive long enough to save them the tax. It works. Vera (and indeed the Queen) are the lucky ones, their parent having successfully disencumbered themselves (or been disencumbered) of a substantial asset, thus saving the children a packet when death duties have to be paid.
Others less canny face a situation in which the family home the children might justifiably see as their nest egg has to be sold in order to finance the upkeep of the aged parent now living in a home. The parent lives on, the capital from the sale dwindles, the children’s future narrows in consequence. In such circumstances, and particularly when the old person has lost touch with reality and may not even know them, it must be hard for the offspring (themselves in their sixties already) not to long for their parent’s speedy departure.
The law, so sedulous in its protection of children at the beginning of life, in their second childhood abandons them to the harsh disciplines of the market. So much for caring, so called.
‘We would like closure,’ say the children, their language fashionable even when the bedspread is not.
It’s difficult to end a play set in an old people’s home on an upbeat note and, as I say, to begin with I went along with the convention. Mr Pilling was duly disgraced and banned from the premises, and Dolly and Blanche were left to face their shortening days deprived of his attentions. The triumph of Vera, in fact. A candlewick farewell.
But knowing this was likely to be the last work that Thora would do, I wanted her to go out with a bang and certainly with a laugh, even if it was a dirty one. The Veras of this world must not be allowed to get their own way. Dolly should triumph. And so, though it perhaps makes the play more of a fable than a story, I let Mr Pilling off the hook, doubled his fiddling time and installed Dolly and Blanche in a room of their own where they can really enjoy it.
And so at the finish Thora goes down with all her flags flying, game to the last.
The song she then sings was a song she sang when she was in Our Miss Gibbs at the Royalty Theatre, Morecambe. She was sixteen then but more than seventy years later she was still word perfect.
The Last of the Sun
An old lady, Dolly, in bed or possibly lying on the bed in her clothes. There are three other beds in the room but we do not see them. (We don’t see them also because Thora was too frail to do the piece on television but only on radio.)
I love Tuesdays.
We get our hair done in the morning. We have bilberry tart to our dinner and Mr Pilling comes in the afternoon.
I said to Blanche, ‘I wouldn’t care if every day was a Tuesday. It’s grand.’
I didn’t use to like the Bible, only Mr Pilling gives it such feeling. Widower. Retired. Had a little gents’ outfitters over at Rawdon. Blanche’ll put on her lipstick when he comes.
Pause.
Our Vera came this morning and all. Paid us a state visit. Her and… Neville, is it?… the feller she’s married to now. Member of the boating fraternity. Blazer. Little cap. Weighing anchor at Tadcaster so they thought they could pop in en route.
I said, ‘How’s my house?’
She said, ‘We’ve put in a conservatory.’
I said, ‘Am I allowed to die yet?’
She said, ‘Don’t be silly, mother.’
She counts on her fingers.
It’ll be six years now.
End of section. Go to black.
Bindra’s just been round with the air freshener when Mr Pilling arrives. Raincoat always neatly folded. Puts it down on the bed. Holds up the Bible. Lovely fingernails. I complimented him on them once and he said ‘Well, it’s not something I would want broadcasting, Mrs Walker, but I have them manicured. Kelly does them at Salon Snippets and I count it money well spent.’ Never looks at you when he’s doing it. Just concentrates on the words of the New Testament.
Down goes the raincoat, up comes the Bible and away we go.
There’s four of us in the room and he’ll generally kick off with Annie or Lois because they’re both confused. Then Blanche, then me. ‘My two princesses’ is what he calls us.
And this afternoon he’s just got started down at the daft end when who should turn up again but our Vera.
I thought, ‘Oh stink.’
I said, ‘I know why you’ve come. You’re bothered I might peg out. It’s that fiddle you did over my house.’
I reckoned to give it to her to save tax, but I had to last another seven years and it must be coming up to the seven now.
She said, ‘Oh, is it? I haven’t been counting. Only it’s not a fiddle. The Queen Mother did it so it must be all right.’
I said, ‘Yes, only her daughter didn’t put her in a home.’
By this time, Mr Pilling’s on with Blanche.
I said to Vera, ‘I’m next, so you’d better be off or he’ll be reading the Bible to you.’
That does the trick and she suddenly remembers she’s got a stint at Age Concern.
And I said, ‘There’s no need to keep coming. I’m not going to die out of spite.’
Only she doesn’t hear and I see she’s watching Mr Pilling.
I said, ‘My daughter’s going now, Mr Pilling.’
He just nods but doesn’t stop reading, then (she mimes withdrawing movement) waves his other hand.
When it’s my turn, Mr Pilling says, ‘A grand-looking woman, your daughter.’
I said, ‘You’re not alone in that opinion.’
‘Why,’ he says, ‘who else thinks so?’
I said, ‘She does.’
He smiled.
‘I’m going to read from St Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians.’
And he pats my leg.
End of section.
You wouldn’t credit it, but on the following Tuesday our Vera’s here again.
I thought, ‘If you want to see me that badly, why did you put me in a home in the first place?’
Mr Pilling’s already reading to Annie, who’s banging her tray most of the time but it doesn’t bother him, just reads.
Vera enthrones herself by my bed but she’s naught to say and I must have dozed off because when I come round she’s gone.
I said to Blanche, ‘Did our Vera go?’
‘No, mother,’ she whispers, ‘I’m here.’ And for some reason she’s hiding behind the bed.
I said, ‘What are you doing there? Come sit down.’
Meanwhile, Mr Pilling’s come over to Blanche.
Our Vera’s sat with her back to him and she still hasn’t got much to say.
I said, ‘How’s the navy?’
She said, ‘What?’
I said, ‘The round-the-world yachtsman? Neville?’
She doesn’t say anything and when I look I see it’s because she’s glued to my washbasin mirror.
I call out to Blanche.
‘Our Vera can see you in the mirror, Blanche. Give her a wave, Mr Pilling. There you are, Vera, he’s waving.’
Vera looks right mad.
‘Funny name, Blanche, for somebody that age. What’s his name?’
I said, ‘Arthur.’ Only we never call him that. We’re not on such familiar terms.
Mr Pilling comes over in a bit and says ‘I’m afraid, Mrs Walker, I’m going to have to curtail my visit. Rain wasn’t forecast and I foolishly ventured out without my umbrella.’
He folds his scarf, puts his little gloves on. ‘A bientôt. Don’t the daffodils look a
picture?’
When he’s gone, Vera says, ‘Presumably they’re all confused except you.’
I said, ‘Who?’
She said, ‘The other women.’
I said, ‘Blanche isn’t confused. They took her on a trip to Harewood House.’
Vera said, ‘What’s she doing blonde? At her age? Does she dye it?’
I said, ‘Well, they dye it for her.’
She said, ‘Yes, but she must give them the green light. A name like Blanche. Anybody’d know they were on an easy wicket. No wonder he gets his hands under the bedclothes. He knows he’s assured of a warm welcome.’
She takes both my hands.
‘Oh, mother, mother. You’ve had such a narrow escape.’
I said, ‘Have I?’
End of section.
Lovely ears this lad had. He kept asking me these questions and blushing, and his ears blushed as well. I’ve never seen that before.
He said did I know what the word ‘traumatised’ meant, and had a list of things I might feel.
Did I feel: annoyed
angry
injured
assaulted
damaged
polluted
violated?
I said, ‘No.’
He said, ‘What then?’
So I told him.
He wasn’t the police. I don’t think it’s got that far. I think he’s just a lad from the solicitors.
It’s all our Vera.
She said to me, ‘Oh, mother. To think, mother, if you’d been that bit younger he might have tried it on with you.’
I said, ‘Yes, I’m lucky.’
She said, ‘Little glasses, raincoat. The Bible was just a smokescreen. He was an animal.
‘Anyway, it’s over.
‘You won’t be wanting to stay here, I can understand that. And I don’t blame you. I don’t want you living in a place where they turn a blind eye to sexual molestation.