Well, that’s just great, I thought, annoyed at my own instincts.
I remember arriving home early a few nights later while Mum was still cooking dinner. I just walked in and said, ‘I’ve met the man I’m going to marry.’
I don’t think she even looked up.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re far too young.’
And maybe I was. But when it strikes, it strikes and I knew instantly. After everything Chris Bullock had warned, despite all my best intentions, this guy walks into the room and – bang – that’s it.
It’s a fact of theatre that you’re thrown together for long periods at a time. That’s why Chris had said to be careful – convenience and proximity can be confused for love. But Brian and I found ourselves chatting for longer and longer. One of my jobs was to wash the tea things, and I noticed he started coming for a cuppa every time I filled the sink. One day he said, very casually, ‘By the way, do you want to go for a drink tonight?’
‘No,’ I said. I’m sure I should have dressed it up a bit, made an excuse. ‘I can’t tonight’ – something like that. But if Brian was daunted, he didn’t let it show.
‘Oh well,’ he breezed, perfectly nonchalantly. ‘Another night then.’
And that’s sort of how we left it. I wasn’t really sure if he was just sniffing around the fresh faces or whether he was thinking what I was thinking. But the next time he asked I said, ‘Yes.’ We didn’t really do any formal dating as such – we didn’t have the time. There were plenty of lunches together and lots of conversations at work and snatched moments in the pub with the rest of the team, but for a while that was it.
I really liked the way Brian went about things. He was quite diffident, off-hand I suppose, but so cheeky when he could get away with it – very funny and charming. Yet he wouldn’t suffer fools. Nobody tried to mess with him. He drew a line, which I liked.
But I wasn’t sure where we stood and when the whole cast of The Long and the Short and the Tall went out to perform the play at a festival in Florence for a week (the Playhouse booked The Seekers to fill the gap) I thought, Well, I’m sure he’ll find some nice Italian while he is there. Then I’ll know if I’m wasting my time.
It turned out Brian had spent most of his spare time away from everyone else in museums, galleries and cinemas. And he’d brought me a present! At first I thought it was just a bag of nice sweets. I was staggered to discover it was a beautiful bracelet.
Ah, I thought, I’ve got you now!
I was so excited I rushed off to show Sally, the other ASM. She happened to be looking for me so we virtually bumped into each other.
‘There you are, Lis!’ she said. ‘Look what Brian Miller has bought me!’
It was the same bloody bracelet.
I was in a bit of a foul mood for a while after that, mainly annoyed at myself for being so naïve, so when Warren Clarke – famous to modern generations from Dalziel and Pascoe – who had joined the company, asked me out we went to the cinema together, which was nice. It was a John Wayne film, I think. (The details you remember as you get older!) But then I heard from one of the other girls that a chap had asked Brian if he was serious about me and he’d said, ‘Yes.’
Well, he’s got a funny way of showing it, I thought. But gradually we spent more and more time together and, without either of us really saying anything, soon we were a couple. There weren’t any bold gestures, no dramatic speeches. It just happened.
To be honest, I don’t think we would have had time for anything more flashily romantic. Those early weeks of being smitten coincided with my busiest time as ASM, so if I wasn’t at the theatre, I was either on my way there or back.
The problem was that, because we were a company, each new play was put on by us. You didn’t have a completely different crew coming in when the production finished. So, no sooner had The Long and the Short and the Tall got up and running than rehearsals started on the next one, and it wasn’t just the actors who suffered. Every night, after The Long and the Short and the Tall closed, it was my job to sweep the sand from the stage – it was set in the jungle – strip all the markings and set it out for the following afternoon’s run-through. Then as soon as that was finished, and I’d done all the notes for the book, it was up with those marks and on with the evening performance. Incredibly tiring but I was still having the time of my life, in a job I loved and watching a man who I was beginning to feel the same way about every day.
Although Tony had hired Brian for The Long and the Short and the Tall, it was actually the next production, Twelfth Night, that he had really wanted him for. Brian was already an incredible actor, even then. He was five years older than me, had had his place at the Birmingham School of Drama paid for by the local council and had been working successfully as a full-time actor for a few years. In fact, he had worked with Tony at the Playhouse two years before, while I was still at drama school, in a Beckett production. Bernard Hepton was director of productions and, coincidentally, Jon Pertwee told me that Hepton was the best actor he’d ever seen on stage. However it was Brian who had caught our director’s eye. He was only in his early twenties but already he had that ability to play any age. In the ‘Scottish Play’ at Watford he once doubled as Seaward, the young lad, and the 70-year-old porter at the gate. With versatility like that Tony thought he would be the perfect Malvolio, traditionally an older man’s role.
More importantly for me, I was given a part as well. Me! Walking out onto the Liverpool Playhouse stage with Brian, Lynda Marchal, Warren Clarke and the rest. Marjorie Yates was playing Viola, Lynda was Olivia and I played her maid – I’m not even sure there’s normally a part for a maid, I think it’s usually a male attendant, but Tony wanted to give me a chance. Such a thoughtful man and he directed it so intelligently. It’s the only production I’ve ever known where the scene taunting Malvolio doesn’t have the actors bobbing up and down behind a hedge as usual. Instead they were part of the audience so everyone could see what was going on. You connected; you could see everything. I think Dickie Marks, the set designer, had to take a lot of the credit for that.
Despite my years with Shelagh Elliott-Clarke, and even appearing on television and in a film, nothing prepared me for the opening of Twelfth Night. Once again Mum and Dad were in the audience and I know they were proud as punch. I didn’t have many lines but even so, they went clean out of my head the second the curtain was up and I could see from the side the packed auditorium, with its deep stalls, circle and upper tier. It was a familiar view but usually I stayed at my post, watching everything from the ASM’s desk. Tonight, though, I would be stepping out there.
It was all over in a blur, of course, word perfect in the end, and soon enough we were celebrating at one of the nearby pubs that used to stay open and cook for us. I couldn’t have been happier.
Brian was just as fabulous as Tony had hoped, but he was a monster to share a stage with. I had to come on and say something to Olivia, while Malvolio was in the room. It was only our second performance and just as I entered the stage I heard him say, under his breath, ‘Here she comes, Sarah Heartburn.’
It was so naughty!
He would do things like that to me all the time. Every night it was something else, just to see if I would start giggling. So, what did he say when I told him to stop?
‘It’s for your own good – you should learn some control!’