Things I Couldn't Tell My Mother: My Autobiography

241 Pages·2011·3.36 MB·English

by  Sue Johnston

Contents

Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One

Epilogue
Picture Section
Acknowledgements
Copyright
About the Book

‘There was a lot that we kept from my mother. My dad would say to me as
a teenager “Don’t tell your mother.” We couldn’t face the disapproval.’
Sue Johnston always seemed to be disappointing her mother. As a girl she
never stayed clean and tidy like her cousins. As she grew older, she spent all her
piano lesson money on drinks for her mates down the pub, and when she
discovered the Cavern she was never at home. The final straw was when Sue left
her steady job at a St Helens factory to try her hand at that unsteadiest of jobs:
acting.
Yet when Sue was bringing up her own child alone, her mother was always
there to help. And playing her much-loved characters Sheila Grant and Barbara
Royle – although her mum wouldn’t say she was proud as such, she certainly
seemed to approve. And in her mother’s final months, it was Sue she needed by
her side.
The relationship with your mother is perhaps the most precious and fraught
of any woman’s life. When she began writing, Sue set out to record ‘all the big
things, and all the small things. Everything I wanted to tell my mother but felt I
never could.’ The result is a warm, poignant and often very funny memoir by
one of Britain’s favourite actresses.
About the Author

Sue Johnston’s many much-loved roles include Sheila Grant in Brookside,
Barbara in The Royle Family, Sal Vine in Jam & Jerusalem and Dr Grace Foley
in Waking the Dead. Born in 1943 in Warrington near Liverpool, Sue has stayed
true to her Northern roots – she has been no stranger to picket lines and is a
staunch supporter of her beloved Liverpool Football Club. Sue has a son, Joel,
and in 2009 she was awarded an OBE.

To my mum and dad.
And my son Joel – who will never read it!
And Gemma – who will.

This book is a work of non-fiction based on the life, experiences and
recollections of the author. The names of some people, places, dates and
sequences, or the details of the events, have been changed to protect the privacy
of others.
Prologue

ENA SHARPLES ONCE famously said of her mother’s death, ‘She just sat
up, broke wind and died.’ My mother would have definitely considered herself to
be a cut above the fictitious Mrs Sharples and her mother. But as she lay in her
bed, in the home where she’d been living for the past year, she did make one last
Herculean effort to sit up, reaching out to be helped. Then she sneezed, lay back
in bed, and I felt the life leave her, like someone had flicked off a switch.
She was ninety-two. I was sixty-three. These were her final moments, but
the preceding weeks and even months had been long and exhausting.
As I reflect now, nearly four years after her death, I miss her. This may
seem unsurprising; of course I should miss my mother. But things were far from
plain sailing between her and me; our relationship was often difficult and
fraught.
*
My mother began to sharply decline when I was filming Waking the Dead.
Any time that I wasn’t filming I would be making my way up the M6 to be with
her. Then I received a call early in September 2007 saying she had taken a turn
for the worse and that I should get there as soon as I could.
When I arrived in Warrington my mother had rallied and was sitting up in
bed, alert and ready for me. She looked me up and down in my on-screen make-
up and asked scathingly, ‘What have you come as? You look like a bus
conductress.’
This used to be quite a common insult when I was younger, as bus
conductresses were known to wear thick pan-stick make-up. That I’d arrived to
see my mum for what I thought would be the last time, only to be greeted with
this, really makes me smile now. It was so typical of her. I stayed with her for a
while and then reluctantly returned to filming in London.
A few days later I had another call. The nurses said they were sure this time
that this was it. On the way, I got a flat tyre but I didn’t stop. I think that I knew
this really was the last time I would be making the journey. Everything and
nothing was going through my mind. I was very emotional – racked with anxiety
and upset, tired yet wired.
When I arrived at the home my mother was lying in bed, looking tiny and
frail. There was no caustic put down this time. She just looked helpless and
fragile. She was awake and aware that I was there but quiet and restful, slipping
in and out of consciousness. I took her hand and vowed to stay by her side. I
would remain there for the next four days.
This time to be with my mother was a privilege that I know many people
aren’t afforded. And as fraught, surreal and sad as it was, I was mindful that I
had the opportunity to say things to her that I might not have normally said. Over
the years I have had more than one occasion to want to tell my mother exactly
what I thought of her, and not all of it complimentary or pleasant. She had
always been a difficult person to deal with – someone who, I’m sad to say, found
it very difficult to show affection or warmth towards me. It seems strange to
admit this and yet at the same time she was my mother and I still loved her. As
close relationships in life often are, ours was complicated.
My mother was obsessed with the notion of people getting ideas above their
station. Having a daughter who was educated and followed her own path in life
definitely fit into this category. There were many times when I just wanted her to
be proud of me, but it seemed she never was.
But in these, her final days, as she lay in bed and I sat in the chair next to
her, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that none of the things that made me angry
about her didn’t matter, but they certainly didn’t need airing now. It seemed to
me to be a time for peaceful acceptance. As she became more vulnerable I felt
things soften between us. I suppose it was because she needed me and I was very
happy to be needed and to help.
With all of this time to think, with nursing staff and relatives coming and
going, but me as a constant in the room with my mother, I felt I needed to say
something to her – for her to hear something from me that was from my heart.
Something I could say with absolute honesty.
I took her hand and said, ‘Mum, I had the best childhood I could ever have
had.’
Tears sprang to her eyes. I held her hand, which was gnarled with arthritis
but she had enough strength for me to feel that she was holding on to me. Things
changed as I got older, but it was true I really did have the best childhood and I
needed her to know that.
*
Since her death, I have realised that whatever age we are, we all feel like
children at times, even when there may be no one there to be a child for. Only
last week I found myself hovering near the phone: I had found a recipe that I
knew my mother would have liked and I wanted to tell her about it. Grief
seemed to hit me all over again when I knew I couldn’t have that conversation. It
was only a small thing but she would have been interested in my discovery and it
made me very sad that I couldn’t share it with her.
My aim with this book is to look back over my life and explore what it was
I couldn’t tell my mother, and why that was. But also – and more importantly
perhaps – I want to set down a record of all the love and life, loss and laughs: all
the big things, and the small things. Everything I wanted to tell my mother but
felt I never could.
Chapter One

I WAS BORN in my aunty Millie’s house in Warrington during the Second
World War. My mother Margaret was staying at Millie’s while my dad was away
with his regiment. It is fitting that I was born in the thick of my extended family
because although I was an only child I always felt part of a large clan.
My mother and her sisters would take turns to stay at each other’s houses.
The reason they gave was ‘to keep the houses aired’. It seemed that everything
needed ‘airing’ in those days. ‘No wonder you’ve got a cold,’ my mother would
say, ‘that top’s not even aired!’ So the houses were occupied in rotation in order
to keep them aired, but I’m sure the real reason was the reassurance of safety in
numbers.
My father, Fred, was in the Royal Engineers and was stationed in
Portsmouth. At around the same time that my mother found out she was
pregnant with me, Dad came down with an illness. He was throwing up every
morning and eventually they took him into the field hospital to have him
checked over. They couldn’t find anything wrong with him, but then he
happened to mention that my mother was pregnant. The doctor told him he knew
exactly what he was suffering from: psychological morning sickness. Apparently
it was quite common! While my dad was hospitalised his unit flew to Syria,
where they were targeted and many of his regiment killed. Dad always used to
say, ‘Our Sue saved me.’ When I was younger this was just a story but thinking
about it now, it must have been quite harrowing for Dad, knowing how close he
had come to death and to have lost so many of his comrades.
My mother would tell another story of a time my father was preparing to go
back to Portsmouth. He turned to wave goodbye to her through the window, not
looking where he was going, and as he did he walloped his head on a lamppost.
He staggered back into the house, a great gash oozing blood from his head. My
mum and her sisters had no time to be sympathetic, they were too busy doubled
over laughing. Poor Dad needed stitches and ended up having to stay off for
another couple of days. So my dad could say that he was hospitalised twice
during the war – once for morning sickness and once for walking into a
lamppost!
I often think about those years when I was first in the world and what it
must have been like for ordinary people living through this extraordinary time.
They were living on the edge in a very real sense. No one knew how events
would unfold; all that they could do was pull together and hope for a positive
outcome. My aunty Millie would always say about the war, ‘Well, we just had to
get on with it,’ and she was right, what choice did people have? It seems to me
that the only stories that were ever told about the war were as jokes or broad
brushstrokes, never detail. The horror of war simply wasn’t mentioned, except
with gallows humour. It was as if that entire generation had accepted their lot –
whatever happened during the six years between 1939 to 1945 stayed in those
years.
They were an extraordinary generation, they were never indulgent or self-
pitying about what they’d had to face. It does make me think that we’re so very
nannied now. I don’t know how people would survive if they had to face the
same thing. When the war ended, everyone was, of course, thrilled, but I can’t
help thinking that after all that time living on their wits, the return to everyday
life must have been a difficult adjustment, even if it meant they might get the
chance to actually clap eyes on a banana!
During the war, Liverpool and Warrington were a target for the German
bombers. Liverpool, because it was a port and hub for industry and Warrington
because after Pearl Harbor, when the Americans entered the war, it became an
American air base. The place was swarming with GIs and my mum and her
sisters would talk later about getting stockings and chocolates from the
American soldiers. They spoke very highly of them, saying they were extremely
courteous and generous. They used to go to the dances, but as far as they were
concerned it was all very innocent. Other women did have relationships with the
GIs that landed in Warrington and there was the common saying that they were
Overpaid, Oversexed and Over Here. But I think as far as my mother and her
sisters were concerned they were just Over Here, and they were glad of the
stockings.
I arrived in the world on 7 December 1943. At that time women were
expected to stay ‘in confinement’, they had to rest up in bed for several days and
get their strength back after giving birth. While Mum was lying there a few
hours after having me, looking at her new baby and minding her own business,
the air-raid sirens began to wail. My aunties Millie and Ena came charging in
and took me out of my cot, wrapped in my blanket.
‘Where are you going?’ my mother asked.
‘To the shelter, of course,’ Millie said, swaddling me and holding me tight.