An Iron Girl in a Velvet Glove (eBook)

1

STRONG STUFF

This book begins with a love story. Not the boy-meets-girl kind, but an instinctive platonic love that can exist despite age differences between two people. As is so often the way with these important life events, it seemed to come out of the blue. My husband – who was working as a locum GP in Hampstead at the time – had been roped in to visit an old lady who just wanted someone to listen to her tales. I happened to be researching a book on what I regarded as ‘real women’, rather than the maddening chick-lit variety who infested the media. I’d been forced out of my job as a BBC correspondent and presenter due to the horribly debilitating autoimmune condition lupus, so I had been writing books instead. He realised that Joan was exactly the kind of woman I was looking for and asked her if she would be happy to talk to me. That was how I found myself at Joan Rhodes’s door on a wet autumn day in 2003.

I don’t really know what I was expecting as I rang the bell to the scruffy-looking garden flat in Belsize Park, north London. I was meeting a woman in her early eighties who’d once been internationally famous for her beauty and physical strength, but I knew little else other than my husband’s keenness for us to come together. I should have spotted that I was in for a rollercoaster of a ride by the clues that inhabited the dingy area around her door. The rather abrupt handwritten note by the bellpush instructed me to be patient: ‘please wait it takes me time to answer the door.’ Discarded giant stretcher bars, used for artist’s canvases, and broken bits of once-functional detritus littered the alleyway that led to the garden.

The author and Joan, 2003.

Certainly nothing told me I was about to encounter someone who would soon become so significant to me personally, a woman I would quickly come to love and adore. Ringing that bell was a life-changing moment. Once I entered that flat, a part of me never left.

I could hear huffing and puffing coming from the other side of the door, the odd grumble, a faint complaint of pain and a gripe of discomfort. Then the commanding call for me to hang on: ‘I’m coming.’

When the door eventually opened, after another interval which was filled with the jiggling of bolts, I was confronted with a bulky figure draped in a riotously colourful ensemble that would not have been out of place in the Caribbean. The visual noise was so great that it jumped out of the darkness from the depths of this intriguing home.

Two big blue eyes gave me the once-over. They were accentuated by expertly pencilled eyebrows. Joan was larger than life, both in appearance and behaviour. Her mid-length curly hair was white, but the ghost of heyday blonde still lingered. My 5ft 0in and 9st were dwarfed by her 5ft 7in and 15st. With years of practice, she hid the extra weight well, sparkling in all her finery. The showy fabric was shaped like a kaftan, held together with a huge blue paste brooch in the shape of a butterfly. It was only later that I noticed there were holes where some of the fake stones once sat. This sense of faded theatrical grandeur permeated every aspect of Joan’s life.

She wasn’t like any old lady I had ever met. She had the vibrancy of youth, barely contained in an ageing body. You know how you can see a much older woman and think, ‘Gosh, she must have been beautiful when she was young’? Well, Joan was still beautiful. Her facial skin belied her age. Later she told me it was because she had slathered her body and face with olive oil straight out of the cooking bottle all her life. The walking frame that she clung to didn’t diminish her; if anything, she used it like a podium from which to hold forth. Age had certainly not withered Joan. She had adjusted and learnt how to make it work for her.

I had managed to arrange this interview after writing a formal letter to Joan, explaining I was an ex-BBC news presenter and correspondent who wanted to write about her. An invite to lunch came by return of post. As I was ushered in, I was showered with a warm flood of welcomes and fripperies. I followed her into the depths of 37A Belsize Park Gardens and noticed how slowly she shuffled along, each step an act of willpower. She cursed her legs but laughed off the discomfort. Once again, I would come to learn that laughing in the face of pain and misery was her way of dealing with it, a lifelong trademark.

I want to say that the flat was an Aladdin’s cave, or like an old curiosity shop, but neither description is adequate for the crazy jumble of oddities and dusty treasures that met my eyes. There were just too many objects to see them all at once. It was a kind of theatrical mayhem, a storyboard of a life in showbusiness. I noticed that the prized objects weren’t crammed in randomly; they all had been strategically placed, having a home of their own – and from that setting none of them strayed in the coming years.

The entrance hall would have been gloomy if it weren’t for the plethora of decorations. Secret spaces were guarded by floor-to-ceiling turquoise velvet curtains that were adorned with giant red swags and bows. There were lots of pots full of whatnots, plastic flowers that were disintegrating in a way that would please environmentalists and a half-mannequin decked out in a sequined basque and a straw hat with feathers sitting where a head should have been. I was glad we made slow progress as it gave me time to take it all in.

It was the same story in the living room, which would have been spacious if it hadn’t been so heavily populated with fascinating memorabilia. The walls were crowded with artworks from every ‘ism’ you could imagine, as well as a few you couldn’t because they didn’t exist yet. Framed pictures of stars from yesteryear posing with Joan jostled for position on the side tables. On one long wall there were rows of old vinyl albums in their bright artistic covers sitting on tiny wooden shelves, with thousands of books on larger shelves below. It struck me that the overall effect was that of a stage set, with me as the audience, about to witness a performance about the life of a woman who had been a celebrity of her day and was still someone to be reckoned with.

All the while Joan was chattering away, giving me the guided tour of her shadow-world. I quickly became overwhelmed by the task of trying to understand this interior landscape. Acceptance was my only choice.

We sat near the French windows, facing each other across a reproduction refectory table, one end of which was obscured by grubby stacks of papers, old photographs and ancient newspaper cuttings. She had cleared a space at the other end and carefully set the scene for our lunch. There were unpleasantly crispy cotton napkins and the ‘best’ china cups for tea. I was left in no doubt that I was being honoured. Despite her mobility problems, Joan had painstakingly put together an open smoked salmon sandwich for each of us, decorated with lettuce and cucumber. The faux luxury was completely appropriate for this occasion. I was in my element.

Looking back, I think we were both a bit nervous. We were on our best behaviour. Me, the journalist-cum-author, and Joan, acting the cautiously willing performer preparing to tell all. As it turned out, Joan distrusted reporters; like most celebrities, she had been badly mistreated and misquoted by them over the years. She was also surprisingly shy, in her own way. Letting a stranger, an investigative journalist no less, into her precious home must have taken some courage. I was at pains to put her at her ease. I was not from the red-top tabloids and had no intention of forcing skeletons from cupboards. I was proud to have been a BBC girl for twenty years, someone who had never done the ‘dirty vicar’ tales. For my book, which would not, strictly speaking, be a feminist treatise but would celebrate certain forgotten women, I wanted to get to know the essence of her, her true self. I got rather more than I bargained for.

Joan had a remarkable life story that spanned almost the whole of the twentieth century. It placed her at the heart of historically significant people and places. I had thought of including her as one of a number of women in my book, but – as she warmed to telling her tales – I realised her life could not be squeezed into a chapter or two. Here was a woman who deserved to be celebrated as an icon of the female struggles of the last eighty years. She was a rebel who had subverted the male status quo of the world she inhabited. Encapsulated in this mercurial woman was a synopsis of how history had treated women and clues on how to cheat the system successfully. As the encounter progressed, we both began to relax and Joan was happily occupying centre stage, her favourite place. I made the perfect onlooker, smiling and reacting at the correct moments of the performance.

Things had gone so well that after we finished our posh luncheon, she began singing songs to me such as ‘My Old Man’s a Dustman’ and ‘The Lambeth Walk’. This was accompanied by classic theatrical movements involving arms, hands and face. (Her disobedient legs were no longer part of the act.) Her ebullience was infectious. I found myself laughing and clapping like some starstruck stalker at a stage door. I think that was when I fell in love. When Joan put on the charm, she was irresistible.

Joan regaled me with tales about some of the celebrities I had grown up knowing only from afar. She often performed with Bob Hope but didn’t find him at all funny, and she wasn’t that impressed by Peter...