The uncle & the actress
Two lives remembered*
Last week, within a few hours on the same afternoon, I learned of the deaths of two people who were fixtures of my childhood, whose presence I always enjoyed but took for granted in the way that kids do - unquestioningly, without any great curiosity about who they were as individuals, about the texture or details of the lives they'd lived before I knew them.
Both of them were more than four decades my senior, so at the time I'm thinking of, in the 1980s, they must have been a similar age to the age I am now. Of course they seemed very old to me back then! They were both connected to me through my maternal grandparents – and they died on the same day. But I don't know if they ever met each other.
The Last of the Brothers
One was my Grandad's brother, my Great Uncle Charlie. My Grandad, who himself died earlier this year at the grand age of 90, was one of 7 - 6 brothers & a sister - who were born and grew up in the East End of London in the '20s & '30s. Charles was the last surviving sibling. He died peacefully in a care home in Kent, following a fall and broken hip back in October, surrounded by friends and family.
When his son emailed me to let me know the news, I felt great sadness that 'the brothers', who lit up our family gatherings with their larger than life humour, camaraderie and penchant for a Cockney knees up & sing song, had fallen silent for the last time (their lone sister emigrated to Canada in the '50s so wasn't a feature of these gatherings).
Charles was the family record keeper and historian. A few months ago his son passed onto me some of his writings that he'd found after he moved into the care home – segments from an embryonic unpublished memoir and speeches about his early life from various occasions. Knowing of my own interest in family stories he surmised these might be of value to me – and he was right! Charles had a way with words and vividly conjures up scenes from his East End childhood.
Here he is on the bathroom arrangements in the first home he can remember, a “through lounge”, or single room, on the middle floor of a terraced house, with the landlord, his wife and adult son in the basement and another family with young children on the top floor (meaning a total of 7 adults & 7 children in one small building):
The only toilet was in the back-yard, though I think we had cold water on tap in the room. Night-time conveniences were chamberpots, “gerries” were the usual name, which were tipped into the toilet in the morning. One of the gerries nearly brought our tenancy and the landlord's life to an untimely end when little Georgie hurled it into the back-yard, narrowly missing Mr Grose. Fortunately it was empty.
The Saturday night bath was in a small tin bath in front of the range, the water laboriously heated in saucepans and kettle, being shared and getting progressively grimier as it passed up the line. I think Mum, Dad and perhaps big brother Jim, enjoyed the privacy of the public baths because I do not think any of them could have fitted into such a small bath.
Although the frequency and timing may have varied, even our Manx cat, Tony, did not escape the bathing ritual: Jim used to bathe Tony and then put him on the revolving turntable of his gramophone to dry. It was some time before I realised that a His Majesty's Voice record label, featured a dog, not a tail-less cat, on the turntable.
It was through the aforementioned 'little Georgie' – my Grandad – that Charles was connected to the other subject of this post, British star of stage and screen, Shirley Anne Field, who has died aged 87.
Sixties Starlet
Shirley Anne was a model in London before finding fame in the British New Wave cinema of the 1960s, starring alongside Laurence Oliver in 'The Entertainer', Albert Finney in 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning' and Michael Caine in 'Alfie'. She spent time in Hollywood, including a stint on a glossy US soap opera and appeared in everything from cult horror ('House of the Living Dead') camp comedies ('Doctor in Clover') and acclaimed arthouse films ('My Beautiful Laundrette').
There have been many obituaries and tributes to her life and career published over the past week – here's just a sample:
Shirley Anne Field, Actress in ‘The Entertainer,’ ‘Alfie’ and ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning,’ Dies at 87
Shirley Anne Field, Sixties beauty who starred in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – obituary
Shirley Anne Field: a smart and seductive key player in the British New Wave
Shirley Anne Field: a life in pictures
They dwell of course on her movie roles, her 'noted beauty' (she was apparently dubbed the British Marilyn Monroe and compared to Catherine Deneuve and Bridget Bardot) and her love life, including encounters with Frank Sinatra and JFK and marriage to – and divorce from – an aristocratic racing driver.
But most also mention her early years, many of which she spent at the National Children's Home in Edgworth near Bolton, run by Methodist Sisters.
And it's this experience that connects her to my family, specifically to my grandmother and her sister, who also grew up in the Children's Home, alongside Shirley Anne.
'The Reunion'
I knew and understood little of this as a child, but what I did know was that every year, without fail, we'd drive over from our suburban London home to a modest house in Mitcham, south London, to 'the reunion'.
There we would be warmly welcomed by the small, stout and gravelly-voiced Sister Evelyn, whose house it was and spend a delightful afternoon hanging out with my grandparents, eating cakes and other delicious fare (probably vol-au-vents, it was the 80s after all!) and generally having a thoroughly happy time with a group of former residents of the Home.
Shirley Anne stood out as by far the most glamorous attendee at these events but my memories of her are of a warm, friendly and down to earth lady, albeit one in a very stylish outfit. She was kind and interested in my brother and I – there wasn't a hint of starriness about her.
Above all I remember a genuine feeling of fellowship, of almost-but-not-quite-family at these annual reunions. And yet, I know both from my grandma and from interviews with Shirley Anne that there was great privation at the Home.
My grandma would never eat porridge as she said it reminded her of the thin gruel they were fed at the Home. And she had huge, ping pong ball-sized bunions on her feet, from being forced into shoes that were several sizes too small. Shirley Anne talks of the distress of having her long curly hair shorn into a regulation pudding bowl cut when she arrived at the age of 5.
And in fact neither of them should strictly have even been there. Shirley Anne's mother tried to get her back (she talked about this in her 1993 Desert Island Discs appearance) and my grandma, well that's a story for a whole other day I think...!
The Sisters were by all accounts quite formidable – though it's hard for me to imagine Sister Evelyn ever being anything than warm and loving (maybe it's no coincidence that she was the one creating a space for the grown up children who'd once been in her care to come together again year after year, all those decades later).
And what of all this? I know that in linking these two lives together purely because of the coincidence of them ending on the same day, I'm making a largely arbitrary connection. But it's not entirely random – before she was sent to the Home, Shirley Ann also lived in the East End, and her earliest experiences can't have been all that different to those Uncle Charlie's describes above. I wonder if she ever discussed any of her memories of these days with my Grandad, Charlie’s brother, at those reunions in Mitcham...
It's certainly a reminder of the enormous social changes that occurred for the generation born before the Second World War – not many of them became film stars obviously, but all grew up to enjoy a level of domestic and consumer wealth/comfort that would have been unimaginable to most as children, certainly for those born into working class families anyway.
And a reminder too perhaps, that our oldest contemporaries, those in their 80s, 90s and even older, many of them now in care homes like my Uncle Charlie, were young once. Their memories are precious and when they go, they take their stories with them. So maybe if the opportunity arises this festive season, ask an older person in your life to let you time travel with them back to that foreign country, the past – who knows what you might find out.
As for me, I'll be raising a glass at Christmas in memory of my Uncle Charlie and Shirley Anne (here she is as Doreen in ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’, making quite the first impression on Albert Finney's Arthur). May they both rest in peace.
Shirley Anne talks about wanting to become an actress - using the more old-fashioned, gendered term, as opposed to the now-more-customary ‘actor’ - in this interview with Talking Pictures TV Encore (registration required).
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