Jacqueline’s husband, the pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim had left her; he had a new relationship in Paris and had a child and had more or less abandoned her. I think he just couldn’t bear to see what had happened to Jacqueline; how the disease had transformed the beautiful, gifted young woman he had married into someone crippled, shaking and helpless.
Margaret told me, ‘Jacqueline said, «I’ve given my staff the day off. I want you to come over.» I went to her house as she asked — I had a key, and I took along a syringe and the liquid. I let myself into the house. I went up to her room where she was in bed and we talked for a bit. Then I said, «Are you absolutely sure that you want me to do this?» And Jacqueline said, «Yes. I am. And I can only trust you to do it for me.» I was a trained nurse during the war, I knew what to do… If you want to help someone to die, or to murder someone, without a trace,’ Margaret said, ‘you inject them above their hairline.’ I always remember her saying that. She continued, ‘So, of course, I kissed her, and I injected her. Then I looked around, checked that there was no trace of my presence, and I let myself out of the house. Just hours later, of course, Jacqueline’s close friends sat with her as she died, and nobody ever knew it was me.’
I felt honoured that Margaret should tell me, but I found it shocking; the most sobering thing I’ve ever heard. I suppose she felt that she didn’t want that knowledge to go with her to her grave without anybody knowing what Jacqueline had asked of her. And yet, although she was obviously deeply affected by it, Margaret related it to me entirely matter-of-factly. She believed that it was the highest mark of love for Jacqueline that she could show, to release her from the horrors of her illness. Perhaps telling me was the ultimate proof of our friendship, because, obviously, if she had been found out, she could have been charged with murder. I hope by telling this now, I have kept my promise to Margaret.
Margaret told me that she had known Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Paris but she decided not to attend my show at the Hampstead Theatre Club. ‘I wish I’d gone. I should have gone but I thought you’d never get them right.’ She always regretted it.
I am forever grateful for her wisdom, her insight and her friendship. The prospect of losing Heather nearly broke me. When I came to Margaret I was in bits, but she put me back together again. I am quite sure I would have lost Heather if I hadn’t gone into therapy. I realised then that I can’t live without her and I never gambled with my happiness again. Sometimes I jokingly say that I think I’m perfect. Well, I’m not, but for a talented twelve-year-old, I’m not far off.
Only Connect
One morning, at the beginning of term at Oxford High School, I saw a strange, new girl in the playground. She had a quality of deep solitariness. She had blonde hair and a long, pale face like a Viking and was standing there all alone, her arms by her sides. Nobody was talking to her, so I went up to her and I said, ‘Will you be my friend?’ She looked at me, somewhat nervously — with reason — and said, ‘Yes.’
My offer of friendship was borne out of two things: a genuine sense of compassion because she was on her own, and a violent curiosity to know who she was. To this day these remain my two motivating factors, and they have served me well. From that moment on, Katerina (Katy) Clark and I were friends. It was through her I found Heather: my friends have enriched and deepened my life immeasurably and in so many ways. Daddy, on the other hand, was somewhat caustic about friendship. When I asked him why he didn’t have any friends he snorted, ‘Friends?! Friends are people who drag you down.’ How wrong he was.
I was popular at school. But I was also frightened of not being popular. I would always ask people if they liked me. A sign of insecurity, and yet at home with my parents I was surrounded with love, so I don’t know why I was so anxious about it. Perhaps it’s because I was an only child that, all my life, my friendships have been my lifeline. From the age of eleven I had four lists: ‘Love and Hate’, ‘Sometimes Love’, ‘Sometimes Hate’, and ‘Sometimes Love and Sometimes Hate’. It was a moveable thing, because my relationships were volatile.
Liz Hodgkin, Katy Clark, Catherine Pasternak Slater and Anna Truelove are just a few of the many strong friends that I’ve kept from school. Seventy years on, I can name every single girl in a form photograph taken at Oxford High. There’s nothing more valuable than friends who really know you and still like you. I take friendship seriously: there are responsibilities and commitments involved. For this reason, I’m the driving force in our school reunion group: I feel responsible for keeping us all in touch, sending updates and information about our get-togethers. When one of our number dies, I tell everyone the funeral details.
I’ve always wanted to get close to people and understand them — at times, perhaps, to extremes. I remember at Cambridge, my friend, the late Susan Andrews, once shouting at me, ‘For God’s sake, Miriam, just give me some space!’ Initially, I thought she meant that I was standing too close to her, but she explained that I crowded her soul. I got in the way, I now see that. I was always asking questions: ‘Why do you like that piece of music? What makes it important to you?’ I’ve always wanted to know people. It’s curiosity partly, because I can’t imagine that people are different from me, and yet I can’t imagine anyone being the same. This paradox is at the heart of all our intercommunication: ‘Are you like me?’ ‘Why are you not like me?’ ‘Could you be like me?’
I usually pick up a new friend or two on a production, which is why my phone contains a list of 11,833 names. Take Patricia Hodge, for example. Hodge has an icy, aristocratic hauteur about her, but she loves filthy jokes. We met in 1974, when we were both in The Girls of Slender Means for the BBC. The cast of the show, together with the director, Moira Armstrong, became a team. We behaved like schoolgirls from St Trinian’s. There’s a scene where we girls had to escape through a narrow window and the only way to get through was to take off all our clothes. I complained to the camera crew that it wasn’t fair that we didn’t even know their names while they had seen every last bit of us. They rose to the challenge. They arranged for Don Smith to snap them all naked, bits covered by large placards with their names on. Each girl was presented with their own copy of this revealing photo in a brown envelope. We had to have the last laugh. I asked Don to quickly take a nude picture of us for Camera Crew 14. It was 13 February so we made it their Valentine. The picture is in this book.
We have always met for reunions over the years and, at ninety years old, Moira is still very much part of all our lives. She is a cherished phenomenon of the golden days of television. And when our beloved Mary Tamm died in 2012, thirty-eight years after we first met, all the ‘Girls’ attended her funeral. I write this two days after our latest reunion which was held at my house. Everyone brought something wonderful to eat as they know I can’t cook. As we talked and laughed for hours, the years fell away.
Hodge has been there when I’ve needed her, particularly when I’ve got into scrapes. A confidence shared with Hodge would never go any further. She’s much more private than I am — I’d trust her with my life. When I had my disastrous affair in America and Heather left me, it was she who suggested therapy, which, in turn, led to meeting Margaret Branch.
And the best thing is that friendship is contagious. Once someone is your friend, they bring new friends into your life. In Bali in 1983 I got close to my guest-house cleaner, Mahardiker. He was a temple dancer when not looking after guests. He had a natural physical grace; carrying up my breakfast on a tray, he would check his appearance in the mirror on the stairs — just a quick look to ensure his ‘line’ was clean. One day he said, ‘Sister, [he always called me Sister] what is your religion?’ Somewhat surprised, I said, ‘Well, I’m Jewish, but I don’t really believe in God.’ He smiled and said, ‘We have another Jewis [this was how he spoke] in the guest house. You must meet.’ And so he introduced me to a young, shy, Australian, Robert Green. He became my greatest chum and eventually my lawyer; his family in Australia became my family; his mother Beryl became my close friend and through her I met Robin Amadio who then introduced me to Andrew McKinnon, who brought Dickens’ Women to Australia and changed my life. Mahardiker died of AIDS some years ago. He was a beautiful (if naughty) man.