Читать книгу Sun On The Water - The Brilliant Life And Tragic Death Of My Daughter Kirsty Maccoll - Jean MacColl - Страница 13

1959–1963

‘Mummy, was I born in Octember or Noctover?’

KIRSTY MACCOLL TO JEAN MACCOLL, 1963

The glorious Indian summer of 1959 came to an end late in the Saturday afternoon of 10 October, when I remember hearing the rumble of thunder. It heralded the birth of my baby and by early evening I was the proud mother of a beautiful eight-pound baby girl. I had already chosen a name: Kirsty. I asked the nurse to be sure to put the name band on her immediately, but I needn’t have worried: there was no mistaking the soft, reddish down on her head.

That evening our doctor friend Arron dropped in to admire the new arrival and report back to Hamish. Ewan visited the following day. After a difficult few years when he was in denial over his true feelings – wanting to work in the folk-song world after giving up the theatre, but at the same time wanting to save our marriage – he and I had become reconciled. We planned a future together, and I became pregnant. But Ewan had struggled with his conflicted feelings, as became clear when Peggy Seeger gave birth to his son in early 1959. Now committed to an American tour with Peggy and their baby, he made plans to return to the three of us after the tour. I was not optimistic, however, and so it proved. After a brief stay, we separated for good. I knew that events had overtaken him, and I had to get on with my new life.

My next visit was from the three Rapoport families. The three brothers – Wolf, Arron, and Michael Rapoport – were all doctors in the same practice; I sometimes think of them as the Marx Brothers!

Ewan and I had got to know Arron and his wife Sylvia before we moved to Croydon (they had been at parties where Ewan sang, and Sylvia joined a dance class I was running), and Arron was our own GP for a time.

Later, I also became friendly with Arron’s elder brother Wolf and his wife Annie and their children Tosh (short – sort of – for ‘Patricia’), Judy and David. David was Hamish’s age and they went to grammar school together (and he was later Hamish’s best man) and Tosh and Judy babysat for me regularly. Kirsty was a great favourite with all of them. Linda (Arron’s younger brother Michael’s daughter) was Kirsty’s age and they were later at primary school together.

The hospital decided to send me home after three days and Ewan’s mother said she would like to stay with me until he came back from his tour. Hamish, now nine years old, was thrilled to have a little sister and was very helpful fetching and carrying for her. The next morning he sat on my bed covered in spots: chicken pox! Fortunately, the baby was immune, but despite having gone through it myself as a child, I succumbed again a few days later and remained very poorly for several more.

So when visitors arrived to ‘wet the baby’s head’, glasses were raised to my recovery as well, though I couldn’t myself partake. Among the well-wishers was Joan Littlewood, who had rung to say she was hoping to visit with the Irish playwright (and notorious drinker) Brendan Behan. She eventually turned up rather late and somewhat apologetic. It seemed Brendan had celebrated Kirsty’s birth at every hostelry on the way to the station, and she had finally left him at the last one, as she thought I would not be best pleased for him to be breathing boozily over my baby – she was right! The large bottle of champagne she brought was nevertheless shared out among my other visitors and made for a proper party atmosphere.

Joan also told me that my actor friends from the Theatre Workshop, Yootha Joyce, her husband Glynn Edwards and Stella and Howard Goorney, had stayed up all night playing cards to pass the time while waiting to celebrate the baby’s arrival. Yootha rang the hospital several times that evening asking for news on ‘Jean Newlove’ and at last wailed in desperation, ‘Well, she must have had it by now!’ It was only when the hospital thought to ask if ‘Miss’ Newlove might have a married name that the penny dropped.

Hamish and I recovered over the following weeks and life took on a daily routine. When the local nurse called in to see how we were getting on, she took one look at Kirsty and exclaimed, ‘Oh, she’s a redhead!’ then sought to reassure me by adding, ‘Never mind, dear. They’re all nice.’

Ewan had made noises about the two of us getting back together after his trip and while I would have wanted us to put recent traumatic months behind us, I had few expectations of a future together – after all, while I had just given birth to his daughter, he had a child with Peggy. Though part of me felt sorry for him, torn between two young families, I knew that events had overtaken him and I had to get on with my new life. In a single year I had lost the three most important men in my life: my father had died, my husband Ewan had left me and my spiritual mentor, the great choreographer and theorist of dance Rudolf Laban, died in 1958.

• • •

I can’t remember a time when I did not want to dance. At the age of seven, taking my first ballet examination in 1930, I was offered a scholarship by the celebrated international dancer Espinosa. Then retired, he was running his own ballet school in London. However, my parents thought I was too young to leave home and were also concerned about my wider education. I continued with my dance classes in the local area and at the same time started reading all about the subject in the public library. I worked my way through the classical ballet section, where I learned about the great Bolshoi. I decided I should learn Russian with a view to visiting that country one day; I only managed to get as far as mastering the alphabet.

Then I came across a book on ‘modern’ dance and first encountered the name of Rudolf Laban. It seemed that he was the founder of an entirely new dance form that eschewed tutus and block ballet shoes and that his ex-pupil, Kurt Jooss, ran his own modern dance company and had just won an award in Paris for his great piece of anti-war choreography, The Green Table. Laban was also described as a crystallographer, artist, architect, dancer and philosopher. I had to learn more about this man and his type of dance at the earliest opportunity.

The outbreak of war in 1939 seemed to put paid to my plans. I was then 16, and my brother Pip was in the British Expeditionary Force in France and soon to be evacuated from Dunkirk. One year later, I heard that Jooss was living in Cambridge. It was too good an opportunity to miss, and I successfully petitioned him for an audition. He invited me to join the company as a student dancer.

It seemed that the company would attempt to go abroad. I spoke to my father, who advised me not to take up the offer for two reasons. One was that the war was going badly for Britain and plans could change without warning; many foreigners were being interned. Secondly, within a year I would have finished my Higher Certificate and could finish school. Hopefully, things might have improved by then. And so I took his advice.

I remembered that my father had himself won an art scholarship as a boy, which he had similarly been unable to take up, through no fault of his own. As a young man he had worked in Paris for many years, spending his spare time watching and learning from the artists there. My mother was also living in Paris, where she was working as a nurse. They used to meet in the Parc Monceau and in due course became engaged and got married before returning to England soon after the start of the First World War.

In the spring of 1941, I heard that Laban himself was staying at Dartington Hall in Devon, the guest of Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst. During his convalescence from one of many bouts of illness, he met FC Lawrence, a trustee of the Dartington estate. Lawrence, a factory consultant and engineer, had become fascinated by Laban’s movement theories, and suggested that Laban should apply his theories of movement to the war effort and increase production in industry. Many women had taken over heavy work from their menfolk. A creative partnership had been formed. I travelled to Dartington, danced for Laban and he asked me to train with him and become his assistant. Third time lucky!

I became a pioneer in helping women improve their skills and increase production. At the end of the war, Laban received a letter from a young woman who said she was a great fan of his work. Her name was Joan Littlewood. She wondered whether he might be able to recommend someone to come and train a company of young actors in movement, someone who would be both a performer and a choreographer. Laban, knowing that my ambition was to work in theatre, recommended me, and suggested I visit them on a part-time basis.

After the dreadful war years, it was a fascinating experience for me to return to dance professionally and work with other artists. I discovered that the company was called Theatre Workshop, and met its founders, Ewan MacColl and Joan Littlewood, the company’s playwright and director respectively. I was soon required full time, and went with Laban’s blessing.

I also made discreet enquiries about the playwright’s availability. It seemed that he and Joan had married when they were both 19, but the marriage had not lasted more than a few months and Joan now had an enduring relationship with Gerry Raffles, the company’s business manager. Ewan was unattached! We married in April 1949.

Ewan was born of Scottish parents in Salford, near Manchester and was their only child. His mother often had to support the family because of his father’s ill health due to asthma. Ewan was greatly influenced by his father’s politics: he was a staunch trade unionist who frequently found himself on strike for better conditions and was consequently a thorn in the flesh of the management. I never got to meet him, but Joan told me that he was a very good singer of traditional Scottish songs and an extremely popular figure with his colleagues. As a child, Ewan learnt much of his father’s repertoire.

Ewan left school at 14 and went through a variety of jobs. I don’t imagine he was cut out for any of them. Like me, he spent hours in the public library catching up on his reading, starting (as he told me) with ‘B’ for Balzac, and gradually working his way through the alphabet. I have no idea if he got to the end (or what happened to the ‘A’s, for that matter) but he was exceptionally well-read.

At around the same time, he became involved with agit-prop theatre, the European movement that disseminated a socialist message through theatre. Often using the back of a lorry for a stage, the young left-wingers acted to as many local audiences as possible.

It was during this period in the 1930s that Ewan started writing, and not surprisingly, songs were included to drive home the message. A later fairly regular source of income was as an actor in Manchester’s BBC radio programme, Children’s Hour.

By the time Joan Littlewood arrived in Manchester from London, Ewan had assembled a group of dedicated and fairly experienced performers. I think that Joan herself had taken on some acting roles at the BBC before meeting him. Together they planned a theatre based on the great popular theatres of the past, where playwrights such as Aristophanes, Shakespeare and Molière produced plays dealing with the dreams and struggles of the people. The new plays would be fast-moving, with singing and dance-movement as an integral part of the action. Lighting and sound would meld into the whole, operated by the very best technicians. The cast would train daily in movement and dance and the company would build their own sets and make the costumes. There would be no ‘stars’ in the cast.

A start was made in Kendal in the Lake District – not exactly ideal for a people’s theatre, but the rehearsal premises were cheap. The company soon disbanded because of the outbreak of war, but immediately peace was declared, Ewan and Joan sent out a rallying call to the company members, while Gerry Raffles looked for a permanent ‘home’. Only one thing was missing: the actors needed movement training, and Joan, hearing that Laban was in Manchester, lost no time in writing to him.

Looking back, it seems a strange coincidence that the three of us had all refused scholarships. Ewan was given the opportunity to study singing in Italy; Joan refused the Slade. Luckily, I was finally able to accept Laban’s offer, which eventually led me to join the Theatre Workshop company.

By 1958 Ewan and I were living in London with our eight-year-old son Hamish, having moved down from Scotland with the company in 1952. It had been a controversial move, but financial problems and continual touring had taken their toll. Then we heard about a derelict theatre in London’s East End available at a peppercorn rent. We were tempted by the sound of it, the Theatre Royal. Some of our company thought we were ‘selling out’ and left. Ewan agreed with them and left the company after the move south, while I stayed on. He worked with Humphrey Lyttleton and Alan Lomax in the BBC’s Ballads and Blues radio series but in order to start a new career using all his previous theatre experience, Ewan needed the help of a trained musician. A young backpacker, Peggy Seeger, arrived from America in 1955 – and immediately fell in love with him. Ewan admitted that he was flattered (he was twice her age) by the trained musician.

After a difficult few years when Ewan was in denial, it was me who made the decision to part. Ewan would not hear of it. We were temporarily reconciled and made plans for our future together. I became pregnant, my baby due in late 1959. In March that year, however, I heard that Peggy herself had given birth. Our marriage ended.

• • •

When Kirsty was about three months old, in early 1960, I went back to work and started rehearsing Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be at the Theatre Royal at Stratford East. It was a long journey from Croydon and back, but Kirsty was an excellent traveller and spent most of the time asleep. She lay in a carry cot in the wings when I was working onstage. By now her hair was beginning to curl and was a lovely russet-gold colour. (She was lucky in later life not to suffer the perennial fate of redheads: her skin tanned, but did not burn.) Someone in the cast – it may have been Victor Spinetti, or else our musical director Lionel Bart – nicknamed her ‘Our Reet’, after that other glamorous redhead Rita Hayworth.

Following his return from the latest tour, Ewan visited us, on average, once a week. From the very first, though, he never made a single mention of his other family: it was as though he were a sailor between ports and whenever he spoke of his work he always did so in the first person singular. This behaviour, which I happily accepted, persisted for several years. Indeed, I only knew that he and Peggy Seeger had another child when noticed a little boy of four or five years old sitting in the passenger seat of Ewan’s car when Kirsty was about nine.

Kirsty was a very sociable child, enjoying her stayovers at Joan’s flat in Blackheath, or visiting my mother in the Midlands. (I still hadn’t told her of my marriage breakup because she was still grieving over the loss of my father.) Nor was there any shortage of babysitters from among the Rapoport family – Wolf’s children Tosh and Judy being in their early teens when Kirsty was born. I remember my brother coming over to see his new niece one day and teasing her by taking her bowl from the high chair and pretending to go away with it – but the joke was on him. Although Kirsty must have been hungry, there were no tears. Instead, she looked at him with a wide-eyed and serious expression which I can only describe as ‘weighing the strange man up’. Suitably ashamed, he returned the bowl, but she continued to observe him with solemn curiosity.

Ewan’s visits were usually at weekends, when I would make Sunday lunch. This arrangement became a routine which seemed to suit him and I went along with it as much for Hamish’s sake as anything. In the summer of 1961 Ewan told me he had some royalties due to him in Poland but that he couldn’t get them out of the country since (according to the powers that be) ‘owing to the exchange rate, it would undermine the economy of the country’. We had both worked in Warsaw in 1955 and had become friendly there with George, an Englishman with a Polish wife. Ewan suggested that I should accept their offer of hospitality and take a holiday with the children, using the Polish royalties as funds. With the money we were able to travel first class by train via Holland and East Germany, stopping over in Berlin and taking the night train from there to Jelenia Góra near the Karkonosze mountains on the Czechoslovak border. Armed with all the necessary visas and passports – or so I thought – we set off from Victoria.

We had a leisurely breakfast in Holland, and Kirsty enjoyed herself greatly. She attracted attention, I think, because she smiled back when people smiled at her, and showed no shyness – sizing them up as she had done my brother. In Berlin we were met by an actress from Bertolt Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble and taken to a flat to await the arrival of other members of the company. As it was such a nice day and there was a park nearby, we were asked if we would like to go for a walk and I took Kirsty in her pushchair. She saw an elderly man pushing an empty wicker pram and leading a child rather older than herself by the hand. Without a word, Kirsty got out of her pushchair, crossed over to the stranger and climbed into the wicker pram. He smiled and pretended to go off with her, but Kirsty remained unfazed as the distance increased and equally unfazed when she was at last returned to her nearest and dearest.

That evening there was quite a celebratory dinner before we had to catch our midnight train to the border town of Görlitz. Kirsty was the centre of attention, as usual, looking on with interest, always smiling and seeming to enjoy the company. When it was time for us to leave, the whole party said they would see us off, and as the train pulled out under a starlit sky their voices rang out, ‘Goodbye, Kirsty! Come again!’, gradually fading into the distance until we could hear them no more.

We had reserved our apartment, but it was no longer first class. An apparently friendly conductor came in to check our tickets, and told me that I needed a transit visa as well as a tourist visa, so I bought one and then settled the children down for the night. This transit visa was to cost me dear on the return journey. The night was freezing cold and I piled clothes over the children and shivered in my summer dress. Just as I was dropping off to sleep the train came to sudden stop and there was George, our host, banging on the window – ‘Only two minutes before it leaves!’ I grabbed children, pram and clothes and lugged our huge suitcase onto the platform just as the whistle announced the train’s departure.

George lived in a spacious farmhouse called Owczy Dwor (or ‘The Sheep-House’). As well as being a writer, he kept chickens and sheep. He wrote during the day and his wife translated his work into Polish. Most of his publications were about English history. Hamish loved his library and soon found a copy of Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons to keep him happy. George and his wife Anna had two daughters, Sybill and Cricky. Cricky was more or less the same age as Hamish, Sybill about three years older. As George’s Polish was poor, both children were brought up bilingual and spoke perfect English. Summoned to breakfast on our first morning, the three of us went into the dining room where I put Kirsty into a high chair. She noticed two visitors, a young married couple called Bronka and Gidek. For some reason bursting out laughing at Gidek, she pointed to him and said, ‘Oh boy!’ None of us could explain this but from then on, and for many years, Gidek was known to us all as ‘Oh Boy’.

We had a marvellously relaxing time collecting wild strawberries, swimming in a little pool and enjoying the company of the other guests. When the time came for Bronka and Gidek (alias Oh Boy) to leave, he gave me a note with a telephone number on it and told me if I ever came to Warsaw to ring them. I thanked them but couldn’t imagine an occasion when I would use it. I put the scrap of paper in my blouse pocket.

Finally, with all the other guests gone, it was our turn to leave, but George had a surprise in store for us. Instead of the long train journey to Poznań we had expected, he now offered to drive us there himself, promising a picnic on the way. I put some paper napkins, together with a glass bottle of Ribena in a small bag which George, in holiday mood, slung into the car rather too forcefully. Imagining the worst, my heart sank, but there was no time to waste – the picnic basket was put in the boot, Anna rushed out issuing final instructions to her children, got into the car, and we were off. The countryside was at its best and we sat under the shade of some trees at the edge of a vast forest to have our lunch – a splendiferous affair indeed!

We arrived in Poznań barely ahead of the Moscow to Hook of Holland train, and Anna insisted that we took the remainder of the picnic with us. Our train departed as quickly as it had arrived. The sleeper compartment was spacious and extremely comfortable. I prepared the top bed and tidied up our cases before relaxing with Kirsty. Hamish meanwhile discovered that the restaurant car sold chocolate. With almost our last Polish coins, he bought a cheap bar, returning in triumph at having negotiated the transaction. I was looking forward to a glass of hot tea later served by an attendant from the samovar – a kind of Russian hot drink urn – installed at the end of the carriage.

We arrived at the East German frontier amid a lot of noise and banging of doors as the guards came on board demanding to see our passports, visas and other documents. George had heard on the radio that the Cold War had suddenly heated up but he was sure that I would not be affected. He was wrong.

Unlike the Poles, the German guards and police were curt and officious. Although my German wasn’t perfect, I understood that I was somehow missing an important piece of paper. The passports and tourist visas were in order, but ‘Where are your transit visas?’ I showed him the document I had bought on the incoming journey but this turned out to be only a one-way visa. Without a return visa, I would have to get off immediately.

I said I was willing to buy the necessary visa, as I had done before, but this was apparently impossible: they were only issued on entering the Eastern section. The guard tried to intimidate me, ordering me to leave the train then and there. Annoyed at his manner, I protested that we weren’t going to set foot on East German soil since we were merely travelling through his country. Even though my German was poor, there was no mistaking his determination to get us off. A fine was incurred for every minute the train was delayed. He demanded I left the compartment immediately; my luggage would be seen to ‘later’. And have it disappear along the German–Polish border? No thank you!

Hamish was meanwhile being very helpful, hauling a rucksack onto his back as I refused point blank to leave the train until they allowed us to take our luggage. No help was forthcoming from the guards, who looked on impassively as we struggled to collect our things and install ourselves on the platform. I was taken aback to see my fellow passengers pressing against the windows of their compartments – perhaps they thought some spies had been caught.

I rather hoped that Kirsty would be so upset and look so forlorn and unhappy that the senior guard would change his mind – but there she was, smiling happily and waving from her pushchair to all the passengers, who now even started to wave back at her. Had the question been put to the popular vote, Kirsty would certainly have won our case hands down – but then free elections were scarcely an East German speciality.

The train slowly started to move on, leaving us stranded with our luggage on the platform. We were taken to a large and hastily erected tent on another platform, with a Red Cross over the entrance – presumably prepared for refugees like ourselves. Obviously, more ‘truants’ were expected. I asked if I might phone my friends in East Berlin, or indeed anyone in authority, for help. This request was met with a blunt refusal. The tent already had one guest: a kindly Polish farmer. I gathered he had been on a group passport, hoping to visit relatives in Holland but had also fallen foul of the transit visa problem. We sat there for several hours until we were told to collect our things and board a train for Warsaw – argument proved futile.

Hamish’s eyes were by now a little watery, and so I smiled at him encouragingly, gave him a hug and said, ‘This is a real adventure.’ Luckily, he didn’t know how far east we were going. We found the first-class carriages where I invited our Polish friend to join us. Then it seemed time for a banquet. I spread out the picnic food, Hamish’s chocolate, and some other delicacies. Looking for Kirsty’s Ribena I realised my earlier fears had been justified, but at least the paper napkins had soaked up all the spilt juice. The Polish gentleman offered me his cigarettes. It was actually quite a happy occasion, despite there now being no sleeper accommodation.

At some point in the early hours of the morning a Polish ticket collector arrived on his rounds. I knew very well what he was telling me – that I was going in the wrong direction with the wrong tickets and that the fine alone would be double the cost of the ticket. But apart from two little coins, I didn’t have any zlotys and so smiled in blind incomprehension. After a time he gave up.

I suddenly remembered Oh Boy’s note and realised I was still wearing the same blouse. I felt inside the breast pocket and there was the telephone number.

We arrived in Warsaw at around 7am. Porters rushed to help me but quickly disappeared when the ticket collector told them I had no funds. Hamish shouldered the big rucksack and between us we managed the suitcase. I rang the number and someone answered in Polish. All I said was, ‘Oh Boy!’ and like a password it solved our dilemma. He promised to be there as soon as he could. His famous last words were: ‘Don’t go away.’ With a bag full of nappies, a pushchair, luggage and two small children, I wasn’t going anywhere.

We stayed with Gidek and Bronka for three days while we waited to find out what to do and had time to go around the restored Jewish ghetto and see some of the sights I remembered from my previous visit a few years before. Kirsty was on baby-reins some of the time, much to the amusement of the Poles, who had never before seen such a thing. While we enjoyed our enforced tourism, Oh Boy arranged for us to go to the German Embassy to procure the required documents.

There was one man in the room for our interview, sprawling back in his chair with his feet on his desk. I disliked his superior attitude and his apparent enjoyment of my predicament. Oh Boy addressed the man politely, but whatever it was that he replied, it immediately changed the atmosphere. Oh Boy suddenly became every inch the aristocratic Polish officer, drawing himself upright and making a curt remark that seemed to drive home a point. When we got outside I asked him what had happened. He told me not to worry: he had merely reminded the gentleman that he was a guest in his country (with an emphasis on the word ‘guest’). All the Poles I met treated such Teutonic precision about transit visas with equal disdain and humour, saying that if they had been so rigid, I might have ended up, through no fault of my own, a stateless person.

Oh Boy saw us off from Warsaw station. It was a comfortable compartment and the seats slid down to form a bed. Hamish and I studiously ignored those getting on the train, hoping to keep our compartment to ourselves, but we underestimated Kirsty’s charm as she smiled at a young man waving to her through the glass door. He entered apologetically, saying he had simply fallen for my daughter. He told me he was a school teacher and after amusing Kirsty for several hours, he got off the train, leaving me his address.

This time round, the German and Dutch borders were passed safely and we pulled into Rotterdam with time in hand to make the Channel ferry. The rest of our journey thankfully passed uneventfully (except for both children throwing up into the Channel during the crossing).

Autumn came all too quickly in 1961. Hamish started grammar school, we celebrated Kirsty’s second birthday in October and I returned part-time to the theatre as a choreographer. Wolf Mankowitz’s play Make Me an Offer was in production, with Daniel Massey and Dilys Laye in the cast. When it transferred to the New Theatre, Frank Norman’s Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be followed, and then William Saroyan’s Sam the Highest Jumper of Them All.

Kirsty was meanwhile developing something of a free spirit. My middle-aged baby minder, Suzanne, was very concerned when she took Kirsty to the park and the child ran off such a long way that she had been afraid of losing her. I took Kirsty to the same park, telling her not to run away. When she saw a young priest sitting on a nearby bench with a book on his lap, she toddled over to him, climbed companionably onto the seat beside him and politely asked him what he was reading. Whether he was shy, preoccupied, or simply absorbed in his studies, I just don’t know, but he scrupulously ignored her and his eyes remained glued to the book. I went over to take her away.

‘Mummy,’ she said loudly, looking at his book with great interest, ‘this man won’t tell me what he is reading.’ It wasn’t that she was upset at being ignored so thoroughly: she was just curious to know, at the age of two or three, what was interesting him so much in the book.

After being quite poorly with measles, Kirsty developed a chest infection and I rushed her to hospital. I was not prepared to wait and told the probationer she had to fetch the doctor immediately. She picked up the phone, slightly tentatively since she knew that she would be interrupting the doctor’s lunch. In a few moments a young doctor came hurrying towards me, wiping his mouth with his hand. He gave Kirsty a quick examination, and then turned to me.

‘You have a very sick little girl here,’ he said. It was clear what he was trying to tell me, but I refused to acknowledge the implications. I just stood there silently, willing him to do something.

Kirsty was put in an oxygen tent and the nurse kindly found a camp-bed for me in another part of the hospital. I made the short trip to and from Kirsty’s bed throughout the night, on one occasion asking her how she felt.

‘Fine,’ she replied, though I’m not sure she was. But the infection cleared up in due course and she returned home.

I read to Kirsty most days before I left her in the morning and usually left the story at a particularly exciting part, promising to finish it when I got back. When I returned one day and said I would finish reading her the story, Kirsty looked at me with some slight annoyance. ‘Well, I’ve read it now, haven’t I?’ she said. She was well aware of my ruse, but I don’t remember her ever actually being taught to read.

Kirsty’s lifelong friend Sasha, the daughter of my friend Denise, would also come over and read to her as she was still confined to bed. She was only four years older than Kirsty and had a wonderful bedside manner, picking up the book and saying ‘Well now, where have we got to?’ I would arrange a bedside tray of delicacies – little sandwiches, and perhaps a small chocolate cake decorated on the top with crystallised violets. This was to thank Sasha, but I also hoped that Kirsty would eat something, though her appetite was poor and I was lucky if she ate a sandwich.

As I came to collect the tray one afternoon, I overheard the following conversation.

‘What does your Daddy do?’ asked Sasha.

‘He’s a folk singer,’ replied Kirsty. ‘What does yours do?’

‘Oh! He’s at university,’ said Sasha, in a rather lordly manner.

‘Yes, I know,’said Kirsty, ‘but what will he do when he grows up?’

It was decided that Kirsty should go into hospital for a series of tests, and on one of my visits I was told she could come home the next day. The results would be sent to my GP. As I left a cheerful-sounding Kirsty, I noticed an open window behind her bed and my instinct was to close it for fear of draughts. Not wishing to appear a paranoid parent, though, I did nothing. Next day, as I was parking my car, I saw Judy Rapoport coming down the hospital steps from the ward, tears streaming down her face. She told me she had never seen Kirsty so depressed. It seems she had caught cold and would not now be leaving. She had also been given a grey skirt to wear which made her feel, she said, ‘like a grey elephant’. She at last came home a couple of days later, but I did feel guilty about that open window.

Ewan visited as usual during these difficult months, but was unable to offer any practical help. I was pleased that he took Hamish out on trips, but to Kirsty, at this age, he remained a stranger. When he came one day, she even asked, ‘Who is this man?’

On my birthday Hamish came home and banged on the front door as he couldn’t open it himself: he was carrying a huge bunch of flowers, and a package which seemed to be caught up in his schoolbag. Both were for me. I unwrapped the package, and discovered that it contained a half-bottle of gin. He had gone into the off-licence and said that it was his mother’s birthday and the manager recommended the gin. I sometimes wonder if he thought his mother was an alcoholic.

In 1963 I was working on Joan Littlewood’s Oh What a Lovely War and teaching movement at the East 15 Acting School. Although the journey between Croydon and Stratford East was long, I generally managed to get home in the early afternoon. My mother had moved to live nearby and she and Kirsty got on very well. But there was still a great deal to do. Hamish had out-of-school activities and homework. I would prepare an early evening meal and then get on with the daily domestic chores, washing, ironing and so on.

Hamish would often get hungry again later so I taught him how to cook simple meals for himself. This seemed to work perfectly, and our evenings were frequently filled with the aroma of some new delicacy the chef had cooked up. And when I came into the kitchen in the morning there wasn’t even any washing up to do. After a few days of this perfect arrangement, however, I began to notice I was running short of pots and pans – they were nowhere to be found. Then I had the bright idea of looking under Hamish’s bed and the mystery was solved!

One day at around this time Joan treated Kirsty and me to the ballet to see Cinderella: it was Kirsty’s first visit to the theatre. We sat in the front row of the dress circle. Kirsty was very quiet until the interval, and as the lights came up she looked around her with interest. At the start of the second half, when Cinderella was distraught at the thought of losing her prince, a small clear voice pronounced clearly, ‘Hamish is a naughty boy.’ It had broken the silence in the auditorium and then everybody in the dress circle tried to suppress their laughter. I was about to suggest she might like to leave, but she was happily absorbed in the ballet again.

Joan’s birthday was very close to Kirsty’s and the three of us were usually together during Joan’s celebrations at her house in Blackheath. The singer Alma Cogan was at one of these parties, I remember, which she had attended with Lionel Bart. She was wearing a glittering dress, very tight-fitting at the waist and with a voluminous skirt: Kirsty was most impressed by that dress.

Summer came, and Ewan said there were still further royalties due to him in Poland and suggested we once again take advantage of George and Anna’s hospitality. They were looking forward to our visit. Anna had a cook and apart from anything else, I knew it would be a real holiday for all of us, with country walks, collecting wild strawberries – and a huge library with many English books for Hamish to enjoy. He had been disappointed when the new form library in his school opened because he had already read every book in it, so each week he was given money by his teacher to buy an addition on approval. We had all enjoyed our last visit and, politically, things had eased in the last two years – at least as far as travelling was concerned.

When the woman sitting next to Kirsty in our compartment asked her what her name was, she answered, ‘Kirsty Anna Louisa MacColl,’ and asked the woman’s name in return. The reply seemed to be double-barrelled, a mixture of German and Polish, and was quite incomprehensible to our English ears. Giving her a direct look, Kirsty said, rather severely, ‘I don’t believe you,’ leaving the woman in tears of laughter.

This time the journey passed uneventfully and in due course we were once more in Poland, piling out of the train quickly before it moved on. Hamish had his old job back, collecting the eggs each morning and Kirsty picked the cherries and wild strawberries. To Anna’s delight, I had brought her two stone-removers for the cherries. Chilled cherry soup was promised for the following day.

That evening we went to bed early, but during the night I was woken by the sound of Kirsty fighting for breath. She looked dreadful and could hardly speak. I sat her up in her cot and alerted Anna and George. We agreed that a doctor was needed urgently but would take quite some time from the hospital in Poznań.

After a long and anxious wait, the doctor examined Kirsty and then asked me if she was allergic to any medication. I didn’t know for certain, but thought not. To be on the safe side, she said she would give Kirsty an injection and we would need to wait a few hours. If everything was all right, she would then administer a much larger dose.

She went downstairs for some food and – as I only subsequently learned – told Anna that it was a severe case of asthma, and that I would have many difficult years ahead of me. I had never seen anyone with asthma before, though I knew that Ewan’s father had suffered severely from the affliction and had died at 60.

I wondered what I could do to amuse Kirsty. She asked for a story. This was when ‘Horatio’ was born: a story that was only told when things were really desperate. Later, I secretly came to hate Horatio, knowing that Kirsty only ever asked for him when she was feeling very poorly indeed.

Making it up as I went along, I told her about Horatio, a handsome white horse who lived in the mansion house of a beautiful village and drove a Rolls-Royce. Horatio was the village squire, and his best friend was French, Penelope Poodle. She enjoyed visiting him, and always wore the most beautiful Parisienne hats with flowing veils when she drove out with him. (I gave all the characters their appropriate voices.) Horatio had a cherry tree in his garden and every year the local villagers would come to his open day to pick the fruit and enjoy a wonderful party. The story grew, and in later years she drew pictures of him, and of the other animals in the village (there were no humans), all of whom had names, families and personalities.

Breaking into our story, the doctor now returned, and after an examination decided to give Kirsty the full injection. When I saw the needle I was shocked, the syringe being far larger than any I had seen at home. Kirsty protested at the size, so I suggested we went on with the story and we would both look away. I was told that this injection would keep her well until she got home. She was given vitamins in the shape of crispy little chocolate-flavoured bits which were much appreciated by the patient. She had another day-and-a-half to recover before getting up and we spent the time happily drawing and reading books.

Hamish took Kirsty up the hill to visit some children he had met in a neighbouring house. But within 20 minutes they were back – both white as sheets and spattered with blood. Hamish carried Kirsty into the house. He told me she had fallen and hit her head on a rusty iron gate. I bathed the cut with Dettol and hoped for the best. Shaken though I was by these setbacks, most of all by Kirsty’s asthma attack, the rest of our holiday was enjoyable. We toured the countryside around Zakopane, the winter ski resort, where we visited a retired writer and priest. He lived in a beautiful, secluded area close to a large forest and offered to take us all on a day’s trek but I quietly declined, indicating Kirsty and saying there was ‘a problem’ with this plan. She overheard me and immediately spoke up: ‘I’m not a problem, I’m a little girl.’

When the time came for us to leave for home, George said he had arranged for us to travel overnight by train instead of the long car journey we had previously made to Poznań. Much as we had all enjoyed it, he thought it would be a safer bet. So midnight saw us in a second-class berth on a Polish sleeper. Cramped though the space was, we slept cosily enough and by morning we were pulling into Frankfurt-an-der-Oder – only to see our connecting train pull out from another platform. We caught another one a couple of hours later to East Berlin, and I was assured we could still make our train in West Berlin. They didn’t reckon on the German guards at the entrance to the U-Bahn: the Berlin Wall had gone up in 1961 and the deliberately slow investigation of each traveller meant that even the short journey by tube to West Berlin wasn’t fast enough and once again we missed our connection.

Both children were fine after a good night’s sleep, but we still had a lot of luggage and Berlin was experiencing a heat wave. I deposited everything but the pushchair and my handbag in left luggage. Impressing on the kindly official that I must be on the platform in time for the trans-European express train that evening, I was reassured that everything would be ready.

I had a little ‘emergency money’ and thought this was as good a time as any to enjoy it. We were in a smart part of Berlin, near the zoo in the Kurfürstendamm district. We came across a very smart, newly renovated hotel for the day. The room seemed palatial: single and double beds, chaises longues, a table and easy chairs. The en suite bathroom was brand new, with white fleecy towels, shower-caps, shampoo and sachets of bath foam. Being the youngest, Kirsty was the first to enjoy these luxuries. Wearing a shower-cap she almost disappeared under the foam. I rang room-service and ordered four Coca Colas and two lagers. They came beautifully chilled.

After our bath we relaxed on our beds with our drinks – but this had to be a day to remember, so Kirsty got a toy tiger which she called ‘Benji from Berlin’. (I still have it.) Hamish, our resident DIY expert, chose a Scalextric model to build. We went back to our room and while Hamish worked on the model, Kirsty and I amused one another with stories.

At about five or six in the evening, we all began to feel very hungry. Reluctantly leaving our room for the last time, we went down to the dining room and were shown to our table for three. The children ordered fish and chips and I was delighted to see Kirsty display a healthy appetite and finish her meal. She and I chose ice cream for dessert; Hamish chose crêpe suzette. The trolley rolled its way past the diners, the waiter settling it by Hamish’s chair. With a full house of spectators looking on, the waiter played to the gallery. As the flames rose high from the pan, he turned to face his audience, shaking a bottle of liqueur around his head before taking out the cork and liberally splashing it into the pan. A murmur of approval met his antics and he smiled, supplying an encore with another bottle, and finally a third, before placing the plate, by now swimming in alcohol, before my son. I hoped Hamish wouldn’t like it; he assured me it was excellent. I asked him only to eat a small portion as I needed him to help with the baggage and I didn’t want him to be worse for wear. Regretfully he agreed, but Kirsty had listened in on the conversation: she volunteered to finish the crêpe and swallowed a spoonful before I could stop her. She pronounced it ‘very nice’. In desperation, I finished it. They were both right – it was the best I ever tasted.

After settling our bill, we went into the well-lit streets. Passing the famous Gedächtniskirche, recently rebuilt after the Allied bombing, we saw crowds waiting outside, the doors opening every ten minutes to let another lot of visitors come in as the others went out. Before I knew it, Kirsty had gone in with the waiting group and we were just too late. We followed with the next crowd and met up with her inside, standing in front of a new piece of artwork. There was no doubt even then of her independent spirit: unafraid, affectionate and interested in everything.

Once at the station, my kindly official in the left-luggage department waved to me and said that he would bring our luggage to us himself when the time came. He had also asked his wife to escort us to the right platform. We were duly introduced to an elderly smiling woman, walking painfully on swollen feet, whose shoes were distorted by her bunions. My protests were politely turned down and she walked over the bridge with us to our platform. I was slightly concerned not to see my luggage following but she told me ‘her man’ would bring it in time.

The express was now due, and as it noisily came in, I heard the rattle of a trolley and there was our friend – and our luggage. We packed it all into our sleeping quarters which, like those of our first visit two years before, were spacious and clean. We all stood around on the platform for a while, like some family group. I thanked them profusely for their help. They were all smiles as we shook hands and then embraced one another.

We waved until the train turned a corner and our brief friendship was gone for ever. The beds in our compartment had already been made up and looked very inviting. An attendant came by and asked me for our passports and documents which I was happy to give him, knowing that we would be in Holland by morning. We all slept well – perhaps the crêpe suzette had something to do with it. By the following evening we were back home in Croydon.

A friend of mine recently told me that he had once read Kirsty’s contribution to an article about celebrities and their earliest experiences of foreign holidays. In typically forthright fashion, she had said that I had taken her and Hamish to Poland by train because I was afraid of flying. I’m not sure that statement is quite true; or if it is, I might have wanted to modify or qualify it.

I suppose I was, at that time, slightly anxious about the whole business of flying, but that was because of something of a lucky escape earlier in my life when Ewan and I had been offered a flight back from Moscow after I took part in a dance competition. We had refused, since I preferred (or perhaps simply thought it was better form) to travel back with the others in the company by train. By the time we arrived at the Channel port, however, I noticed that many people in the British contingent had bought the newspapers and were crying over what they were reading. It seems that the Aeroflot flight that we would have taken had been due to land in Copenhagen, but had overshot the runway and plunged into the sea, with the loss of the Russian crew and their passengers.

• • •

Safely back home in England with my children, I brought up my concerns over Kirsty’s health with our GP, who referred her to a chest specialist. Over the next few months she had a number of further attacks and was monitored regularly by our doctor and the specialist. It was only after several months, however, that she was formally diagnosed as asthmatic. This was surprising for all of us, as none of my family had ever suffered from the disease. It was then that I remembered Ewan’s father.

We nevertheless wondered whether the condition might be psychosomatic: could there be a link with her high IQ and the frustrations this caused her? The consultant found us a psychiatrist and Kirsty took her black-and-white Dalmatian pyjama case to the first appointment. ‘That’s a nice Dalmatian,’ said the psychiatrist to her. ‘What do you call it, Kirsty?’ Kirsty’s voice rang out quite clearly: ‘His name is Alfrige Hitcock.’ The other patients, who had been silent up till now, began to titter. The psychiatrist was taken aback, and so was I. I had no idea where she had heard that name and she certainly hadn’t seen any of ‘Alfrige Hitcock’s’ films. There were a few further visits, each of which ended with Kirsty going to sleep. Later she told me that she had only pretended to go to sleep since that was what seemed to be required. She had really only wanted to get on with other, more important things.

The results of Kirsty’s tests were no real surprise to me. I was told she was very bright, which I already knew, and when I pressed them for more information about her asthma attacks, was told that they might ease by the time she was seven years old. (In fact it was much longer.) I would meanwhile simply have to grit my teeth.

Over the next few years she became a regular patient under the care of Mr Norman, head of the asthma clinic at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. Kirsty started primary school, but she was only able to attend for three days before once again becoming ill and being rushed to hospital. She didn’t return that school year. Indeed, her total attendance during the second year amounted to only three weeks and in the third year three months.

This time, the oxygen tent in the hospital distressed her. A Nigerian couple who had been standing by the cot next to Kirsty’s, looking at their beautiful little boy, left silently. This waiting period is so hard; one never gets used to it. I sat next to Kirsty, improvising more adventures for Horatio and his friends until dusk. The little boy with the black curly hair quietly died, the sudden flurry of urgent activity all to no avail.

I moved my chair to a position where Kirsty would only be able to see me and I continued with the story while the dead child in the next cot was laid out. Later, leaving to go home to collect some essential belongings for Kirsty, I saw the little boy’s parents dragging themselves so wearily up the stairs to the ward that I wanted to say something, anything. I said nothing, however, afraid of intruding on them; I didn’t even know if they had been informed of the news.

That evening, a telephone operator at the hospital gave me a sort of priority on incoming calls. At midnight there was ‘no change’. The following morning, Ewan joined me at the hospital and the doctor told us that Kirsty was suffering from asthma and pneumonia: it was ‘early days yet’. Both our cars had collected parking tickets. Ewan and I said our farewells and went our separate ways. I sent off an explanation to the car parking authority for both of us; Ewan would never have remembered.

Kirsty’s condition slowly improved, and in time she came home. It was clear to me that my theatre work and movement classes at the East 15 Acting School would have to take second place from now on. The children got on very well with my mother, who had recently moved down to Croydon. She was a reliable babysitter but there were occasions when I would ring home on my way to work, learn Kirsty wasn’t well and turn round and come home to spend the day trying to amuse her. My mother also had some good ideas, like buying a bag of coloured wooden beads and getting Kirsty to make necklaces and bracelets.

One Christmas many years later, when Kirsty was healthy, successful and herself a mother, I wrote to Mr Norman, a lovely caring man, to thank him for all his help and support during those difficult years. A letter came back in a spidery hand: now semi-retired, he thanked me for my letter, said it was probably one of the nicest presents he could hope to receive and that he remembered Kirsty very well. Rejoicing in her recovery, he also reflected on his less successful cases, adding sadly, ‘It’s the failures you know that haunt one.’