Many Lives (10 page)

Soon after John and I separated I made a death dare. It wasn't a suicide attempt. I didn't decide to kill myself; I just didn't care about my life any more. I'd left Phoebe and Chloe with Granny and Gonky – as my father was called – and was driving back to London. They'd seemed so happy there. I thought that they'd be better off and happier if they lived with their grandparents permanently. My husband was already in another relationship and didn't need me. I thought everybody would be better off if I wasn't around. A lorry was driving towards me and I put destiny to the test. I switched to the other side of the road and drove head-on towards it, thinking, ‘I'm not swerving.' It was a monstrously irresponsible thing to do. I am so lucky the driver of the lorry didn't go down the bank at the side of the road. For those seconds of idiocy I wasn't thinking. The lorry swerved and missed me.

For a few moments I stopped thinking, then I started thinking that if I did want to end the mess that was my life, I'd better tidy everything up. I got home and did just that. I tidied and tidied, and threw things away and tidied some more. When I'd finished, I thought, ‘What a very neat house.' Then the children returned and went back to their nursery school, and I carried on. It's only later you realize that the thought of ending it all was not only an act of great selfishness but also an act of enormous foolishness, and totally misguided. Afterwards Mummy said to me, ‘We were just putting on a brave face because we could see you were a bit glum.'

It seems so far away now, I feel as if I'm talking about a character in a novel. At the time, though, it was ghastly. The end
of my marriage rent me apart. I couldn't conceive that this was the way my life was meant to be.

I wanted to brighten my bedroom so I bought some wallpaper decorated with roses. The thing is, I couldn't afford enough wallpaper to cover the whole room. I decided to cut the roses out and stick them on the walls. After I put the girls to bed I started cutting and sticking. Within an hour I'd given up. I felt exhausted – defeated. I started to weep. Suddenly Phoebe and Chloe were standing by me in their red jumpsuits.

‘Why are you crying, Mummy?' Phoebe asked, her voice filled with concern.

‘I'm not, honey,' I replied. ‘I got wallpaper paste in my eyes.'

I pulled myself back to the here and now and, together, we started cutting and pasting. We made a great team: I cut, Phoebe pasted and Chloe slapped into place. We were up most of the night and we did the whole room. My children made me survive. For them, I had to be brave.

My favourite quote about having children is: ‘Your children ruin your life and without them your life would have no purpose whatsoever.' I've always thought that my children were my greatest work of art, though with some of the things that have happened over the course of our lives together, I'm thankful I've also had my craft. Back then, they were my saviours.

Some people say you never get more than God knows you can cope with, and some say you are pushed to the very limit and always you will need help. And help
is
always there; your guardian angels, a higher power you can access. Towards the end of her life, when she was very frail, my mother was in the bath. She'd hit her head and was stuck. She didn't know how to get out. She said a
prayer: ‘Please God, help me to use my intelligence to get out of this bath.' In an instant, she had an answer. She pulled out the plug with her toe and, once the bath had drained, was able to get out. She was far too vain to push the emergency button, my mother.

It was 1980 and a new decade was just beginning. I was having lunch with the great actor John Standing. He told me how he'd suddenly got the thought in his head that he'd like to go to India. He said the more he thought about it, the more appealing the idea of going there got. ‘Then, the most extraordinary thing happened,' he continued. ‘Out the blue I suddenly got a call saying could I possibly go out there – and now I'm going. I had
this thought and then it happened.' I thought that was pretty cool, and wondered what I wanted. John gave me a concept and I flew with it. I don't think about things. I just do things.

I thought about myself in hot sunshine, being supported by the company of women. Maureen called me. The BBC was casting for a new drama series and my name had come up. The series was called
Tenko
. It was about a group of women interned in a Japanese camp in Singapore during the Second World War. There'd be just a couple of men in it. Initially, filming was happening on location in the Far East. Was I interested? I went for an interview with the producer Ken Riddington and the director Pennant Roberts. I let go and let God; visualizing myself glowing golden again, and with a very nice sun tan.

In terms of seniority of age, Jean Anderson came first. She played Jocelyn Holbrook. Jean was one of the greatest people you could ever wish to meet. She couldn't settle in the morning till she'd placed her bet for the 3:30 at Cheltenham that afternoon. That was Jean's thing. She was stalwart. I remember one time we were filming in the jungle and Pennant was doing a close-up of Jean. Her arm was supposedly broken, in a sling with a chair leg as a splint. As they were filming the close-up, with Jean standing, she started to move slowly out of frame, passing out stone-cold on the floor. The chair leg was too heavy, pulling down on the sling and constricting the veins in her neck. She'd fainted – and, of course, without complaining.

Next was Patty Lawrence – also, sadly, no longer with us. Patty played Sister Ulrica and she always had the best magazines – the ones that you wouldn't dare buy. Women's magazines like
Woman's Own
,
Woman's Realm
,
Women's Wear Daily
– they were
heaven. A lot of advice was had from them and a lot of swapping went on. Patty was generous and wise, and she had one of the dearest husbands – Greville Poke.

Then there was Steph Cole. I was terrified of her. Steph played the rather stern Dr Beatrice Mason. It took me a bit of time to get to know her but she became a dear friend, who I still see. Ann Bell, who played Marion Jefferson, was a completely splendid leader of the women's camp with a wickedly wonderful sense of humour. Louise Jameson, who I call ‘Miss Thesp', played Blanche Simmons. When we were filming
Tenko
there was only one thing wrong with Louise – her eyes were too blue. I used to make sure she wasn't wearing her blue contact lenses when we did scenes together. We've worked together since, in Moira Buffini's
Dinner
. She's a fabulous actress.

And then there was Veronica Roberts – someone I love as dearly as anyone on this planet. Ronnie played Dorothy Bennett. Louise pointed out, quite rightly, ‘She's the wisest of us all, Stephie.' Ronnie is the most practical mix of spirituality and usefulness. I've often thought that if mankind was all composed of Ronnie, my sister Didi and my friend Patti Nicolella, I don't know that we'd build Brunel bridges but, my goodness, we'd build happy lives.

I had a dear friend who became celibate. When I asked her why she told me: ‘Because I want to sleep with men I don't even want to have tea with.' As far as men were concerned, I felt that I was equally poor at making good choices. I thought it better I gave them a wide berth for a while. Women have a better facility for expressing their emotions and discussing things. They are grand company. I was so fortunate to land in a programme that was all women, and such quality women at that.

When John left me I was terrified the pain I felt would last forever. Now I know that pain is just a feeling and feelings come and go. They're part of the wonder of being. Being able to feel is one of the wonderful gifts of our embodiment in flesh. Other animals lick their wounds; they rest easy till they're mended. Accepting heartache, sitting with pain, hurts. We have a tendency to run. We try not to feel. We seek distraction and escape. John didn't ruin my life back then. The part of me that didn't feel I'd mucked it up myself allowed his behaviour to make me feel he'd ruined my life. But he hadn't. If I'd accepted that the pain I was feeling was the pain I was meant to be feeling and took responsibility for it, it would have passed far more quickly. But then I wouldn't have had the experience of those desperately bleak years in my life to learn from. For that I'm grateful.

God let Job suffer to test his faith. For a moment, driving home one night from my parents', my faith faltered. I was spared. God also let Job suffer in order to teach him humility. To let him know that none of us is beyond that essential ingredient to our miraculous being – pain. There really is no escaping it. Better to embrace it. Better to love it.

According to the Indian holy man Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, our lives are a river flowing between the banks of pain and pleasure. Desire is the memory of pleasure, and fear the memory of pain. Both make us run, either towards or away. Both are essentially the same thing but wearing a different disguise. And both distract us from the absolute – love. There is no absolute truth other than this, and always so many ways of looking at things, as if through a prism. John had his reasons, and his own lessons to learn.

I used to think middle-aged people were so flaccid. I rather preferred the monstrous certainty of teenagers. People of middle-age and older seemed so noncommittal: ‘Well, I really don't know.'

‘What?! Why not? You should do – you're old enough.'

So many different ways of looking at it all, and no absolute truth apart from the fact that we really ought to be a little gentler with ourselves and with other people. Isn't that love shining through?

Burt Kwouk played Major Yamauchi, the man in
Tenko
in charge of the internment camp. He'd come in each day and bid us ‘Good morning, ladies,' then walk over to his desk and stay out of our way till he was on set. We'd have little chats with him now and again during the day, but he let us decide when, and never tried to join the gang. He played the situation with sensitivity and tact.

I used Burt Kwouk's example when I was left last woman standing during
Celebrity Big Brother
in 2010.

Twenty minutes before I was due to go into the house, I felt so underwhelmed and my spirits were low. I guessed it was fearfulness. Then I thought, ‘I probably have every right to be afraid – I was about to enter car crash television.' Then I thought, ‘OK, sweet girl, I dare you.'

Several days before, when I was making up my mind about whether or not to do it, I'd phoned a dear friend who's ex-SAS. You're not meant to say if you're SAS, and he hadn't, but I knew he was. He'd served in Ireland and the Gulf. I phoned him and just said, ‘Hostage situation – give me a lecture on survival.'
And he did. Absolutely straight off, with no hesitation: ‘Never volunteer and always support a weaker member of the group – it will empower you and it'll empower the group. Leave 20 seconds before you respond to anything and never respond with your first emotion. Find humour in everything; they're going to try to humiliate you and beat you down with whatever they can. If you find everything they do funny you can't be beaten and your spirit will stay intact.'

I couldn't have had more useful information. Especially when a cake descended on my head and I went and had a bath and cleaned up; only to be called back to have another cake descend on my head when I was clean, ready for bed and in my only pair of pyjamas. I managed to find it funny, when what they really wanted was for me to get completely furious because they'd just humiliated me. My friend's advice was invaluable.

The really fascinating thing about
Big Brother
was that it was very much like being in a convent. There was poverty, obedience and chastity. Well… chastity up to a point. When two members of the house decided to have sex in the bed opposite me, I took sleeping pills – which I had taken in on prescription. You had to make sure everything you thought you might need was on prescription; otherwise it wouldn't be allowed. I'd taken in prescription sunglasses to deal with the heavy lights, which were always on, and I was very thankful to have the sleeping pills. They meant I could avoid looking at, hearing or being annoyed with my two housemates for their sad tryst.

I snored that night, very loudly. The next morning, rather than being woken by the Joker's laugh, I heard what at first sounded like a whale, but turned out to be a magnified soundtrack
of my own snoring. I laughed, apologized to everyone, and said, ‘I'm so sorry. If you expel me from the house tomorrow, I will so understand.' But I didn't get expelled and ended up being the last woman standing. That snore became a ring tone you could download from eBay!

During that experience I discovered, under very difficult communal circumstances, that I was very happy being me; which was honestly, truly surprising. But I'd lived in a commune before; I knew all about sharing, and I have no problem with monastic existence. The whole thing was strangely spiritual. There was no reading allowed, but Stephen Baldwin, who's a deeply committed Christian, was allowed to have the Bible for an hour a day. We'd gather around and have Bible readings. They were fabulous. He was such a bad reader, though, I used to grab it from him and read out loud. Nicky, one of the girls, would say, ‘Can we have something a bit nicer and not so preachy?' I'd say, ‘I'm sure we can.' I read the Song of Solomon and the Book of Ruth; such fun and lovely chapters. I'd always known there are some fabulous things in the Bible. When Stephen left and the Bible was taken away, I cried. Some people put that down to a religious conversion, but I didn't need converting. I'd always known the Good Book was good.