Diary
Remember me when I am gone away,' wrote someone or other, and only Yesterday, in my own street, one of those blue plaques went up on the front of the house opposite mine. The first I knew of it was the sound of voices raised in song, the Chorus of which, endlessly repeated, con- sisted of the refrain: 'Oh, we belong to the family of Man.' I didn't know the tune but it seemed to cry out from the rattle of tambourines. Judging by the size of her necklace the Mistress of Ceremonies had strayed in from Dynasty, or else she was the Mayoress of Camden; she stood on the top step outside the tatty front door con- ducting a choir of over a hundred. I have On my walls some very gloomy pictures torn from a bo* of photographs of the same name (The Family of Man, that is) depicting share-croppers in the Deep South, and I supposed that the birthplace of an ecologist, a Salvation Army general or even a wandering share-cropper made good had been tracked down, only to be told that it was the one-time home of Peggy Duffy, the Socialist, that was being given the blue treatment. This set me thinking about the memories housed in buildings, and in particular of a visit to Stalin's birth- place in Gori. It was a mud hut arrange- ment comprising one room and a cellar, the whole obviously reinforced with some- thing stronger than mud because they'd built a Greek temple on top of it. There was a stove pipe coming out of the roof, and a photograph of Stalin, when young, looking like Omar Sharif without the moustache. `You must know,' the curator told us, speaking with a curious Australian accent, 'that it was here that the young Child was born to poor but honest parents. As a boy he was called Zo-Zo. Notice the cleanliness of the bed linen. Notice the floor.' We weren't allowed into the cellar; instead we were shown Zo-Zo's school re- ports. Outside the door stood a statue of Lenin with a marble cap on his head. 'You must know,' the curator informed us, 'that Stalin was revolting from 1898 onwards.' Since then I've become very interested in houses, old ones I mean, and have given some thought to the invention of a machine, similar to the wireless, capable of Picking up conversations left trapped in rooms and hallways. Just think of it — all those lost words clustered like flies on the ceiling; all those sentences spoken in anger and in love, those whispered threats mag- nified and repeated; all those home truths Shouted back across the years. I haven't got far with it yet; the unscrambling device IS very complicated.
I'm a bit bothered by words at the mo- ment, mostly those to be spoken by characters on stage, because recently I've been helping to judge the winner of the Susan Blackburn memorial prize. I had thought I'd agreed to read some short stor- ies, but the entries turned out to be plays and very long ones at that. Still, it was well worth doing, though the gap between seeing a play on the boards as opposed to on the page is fairly wide. Some of the plays were by American writers; one in particular I thought excellent. It was about the killing of the gay Mayor of San Francis- co by a fireman. Benedict Nightingale tells me it was known as the Fast Food murder because the defence tried to prove that a diet of Kentucky fried chicken could turn you potty. It was easy to spot the American plays — the characters all said `Aw shit' at the drop of a hat. In the end we chose a sad and dramatic play by an English writer cal- led Shirley Gee; it-deals with Northern Ire- land and though it's already had a limited run it deserves to be seen by a wider audi- ence. The prize was $3,000, I think, or maybe £3,000, which come to think of it is the same thing these days. I Myself have been struggling with a television play for weeks. It's about a modern vicar in a mod- ern bungalow who takes in delinquent lads — into his bungalow that is. At the end someone will clout someone else over the head with a cricket bat. I find writing for television inhibiting as I've never reco- vered from seeing my version of Annie Besant's life set up in the studio. The Eng- lish interiors surely cost an arm and a leg, but the Indian ones must have broken the bank. In this present play I'm very careful with my directions, e.g. 'The vicar is disco- vered bleeding in his church. We do not need to see the church. The odd bit of stained glass will do.'
In case you're wondering what my qual- ifications are for judging a play competi- tion, I began a theatrical career very early in life. I tap-danced for the troops at the Garrick Theatre in Southport when I was five, and I trod the boards, for money, when I was 12. On that occasion there was an orchestra in the pit and I have never forgotten the experience. My mother had put me in a boarding school for ballet dan- cers and one weekend I was invited home by a dormitory chum. Arriving at the sta- tion in Bullwell we saw a poster advertising a talent contest at the Variety Theatre. We entered and won. Our opening number was based on a song made popular by Billy Cotton, 'Hang on the Bell, Nellie'. We swung onto the stage on ropes. Next came a joint rendering of 'Abdul A' Bul-Bul Ameer', followed by the umbrella routine from Singing in the Rain. On the bill we came between the comedian Dave King and Monty and his Talking Wonder Dogs. , Twice nightly I teetered on a wooden crate, heart thudding, my ankle held by a ' prop man lest I should lunge forward be- fore my time and form a double act with Mr King. When the comedian bounded into the wings and the lights dimmed and the circus roll of drums began in the orchestra pit, I swung out over the stage, spotlight swooping in pursuit, flashing across the backcloth like Tinkerbell in Never-Never-Land, and descended with a thud into the very centre of an illusion. It's not that I found the applause gratifying or the experience ever less than terrifying, but there was a moment when fear and embar- rassment lifted and I was no longer trapped within myself. For that one moment I floa- ted as free and as aimless as the specks of dust that shimmered like fireflies in the footlights. Life has never been the same since.
I've just popped over the road to look again at that blue plaque, and I'm wondering if Bessie Braddock has one on her house in Liverpool. Mrs Braddock was built like a tank; in the Sixties she had her portrait painted by my then husband, Aus- tin Davies. She was greatly admired as a , formidable political opponent, and only la- ter was rumoured to be corrupt, bigoted etc, all of which I refuse to believe, and even if proven take to be no more than the hazards of the job, the equivalent of the publican's big belly. It was a nice painting, though she didn't buy it. Instead she gave Aussie a copy of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist, on the flyleaf of which she wrote: 'Look at the words beneath the title and don't ever forget.' They read as fol- lows: 'Being the story of twelve months in hell, told by one of the damned and written down by Robert Tressell.' In Tressell's day the working man could die of hunger;
those who think that Arthur Scargill should be imprisoned or hanged should remember that it was only through the efforts of men as determined as he that alteration came. I could go on, but words fail me.
Beryl Bainbridge
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