Sladen, Elisabeth - Elisabeth Sladen - The Autobiography

Months later, when I spoke to Barry, he said, ‘You haven’t been in touch with Jon – I think he’s quite hurt.’

You know my number, Jon – pick up the damn phone! I thought.

When you’ve given birth, been ill, and you’re operating on no sleep and trying to spend some time with your daughter, the last thing on your mind is getting the house ready for a dinner party. But Jon had obviously taken offence – he always liked to be thought of as the leader of the pack – and we didn’t speak for quite a while after that. (Once again it would be Who which brought us together again.)

If Jon had been so bothered about seeing Sadie he could have popped round – like Ian Marter did. It was about eight o’clock when the bell rang one night. Sadie had just gone down, Brian was working at the Bristol Old Vic and I was shattered. Oh God, who’s that? I thought.

And it was Ian. It says a lot for how much I loved him that he didn’t get the door slammed in his face. He was as happy and bubbly as ever but he’d changed quite a bit during my pregnancy. He’d bulked up a lot at the gym, which I didn’t think was very healthy for an acute diabetic, but he wasn’t there to talk about himself – he was just desperate to get a peep at Sadie.

‘Oh, Ian, she’s just gone down!’

‘Let me pop up, Lis, I’d love to see her.’

You’ve never seen such a big man creep so silently. He was up there for quite a few minutes, just watching Sadie sleep – I loved him for that.

That was the last time Ian came to our house. In fact, I only saw him one more time. Then in 1986 I took a horrible call saying he’d died. Heart trouble. I was devastated. So was Brian – they’d been such tight friends for a while. The funeral was an incredibly sad affair but his sons were amazing, really strong for their mother. Louise Jameson leant over from the row behind me and said, ‘My God, aren’t they wonderful?’

Ian would have been so proud.

* * *

Ian’s death put a lot of things into perspective. When I ‘retired’, Barry said to me, ‘Don’t walk too far away.’ At the time I didn’t think too much about what that meant.

Until I tried to get back …

Chapter Fifteen

Count Me In

WHEN SADIE started school at four-and-a-half, I went along to work as a teacher’s helper, as you were called then. I would look after the little ones. Best of all, I got to see my daughter in the playground, on all her sports days, in all her plays. I really spent as much time as I could with her. It’s not how everyone chooses to live, of course, but it suited me.

Rarely did I think of work. My agent Todd Joseph had died shortly after Ian. Had he still been around, I think I might have felt more pressure to get back into the business. Left to my own devices, I was happy to drift along outside of it, though.

We were still part of the acting community, however, and every so often a job invite would come my way. Getting a new agent helped. The problem was, casting directors expect you to jump when they say so – they didn’t want to hear about my school work or having to pick Sadie up from here and take her there. I think I shut as many doors in my own face as my new agent, Claire, opened.

But the odd thing did work out. I got a part in The Bill – often said to be the lowest rung of any actor’s professional life. If I couldn’t get on there, I couldn’t get on anywhere! At the time, though, the main thing was that it fitted in with my domestic life. Barely a couple of days’ work in total, but at least I’d put a toe back in the water. Generally, though, I began to realise the industry can be pretty cold to women of a certain age. So, after the next door swung closed, I thought, You know what? I’m fine without it.

It’s fair to say even Sadie had more luck than me. In fact, there was a time when she was the only Miller working! We were at Claire’s agency’s Christmas party and she must have been watching Sadie because she said, ‘Have you ever thought of letting Sadie do something?’

I dismissed this with a laugh but of course Little Miss Big Ears heard. ‘What was that, Mummy? What was that? What? What ?’

So I said to Claire, ‘I don’t mind anything that involves a lot of other children. Something small – I don’t want any pressure on her.’

Then Dear Mr God, It Is Anna turned up and Claire sent us along. Sadie got through the audition but then I bought the book and discovered it was about a little girl dying. That wasn’t what I had in mind for her so we pulled out. The longer I could protect my daughter from the concept of tragedy, the better. That might have been the end of a glittering career, but when the same director was casting for Royal Celebration – a television play about a party to celebrate Charles and Diana’s wedding – a few years later, he remembered Sadie. She went along and the next thing we knew she was playing Minnie Driver’s daughter alongside Peter Howarth, Leslie Phillips (who sat Sadie on his knee and told her stories about life as a child actor), Kenneth Cranham (who’d been in A Midsummer Night’s Dream with me all those years ago) and Rupert Graves. She needed a chaperone, of course, and I took her once, but mainly it was Brian. So, you see, she was the only one of us working.

The Daily Mail actually gave her the best review and soon Claire was back with another offer, this time to play Rik Mayall’s daughter in something for Granada. Sadie was desperate to do it but I looked at the hours and the travel and thought, No, education has to come first . She was furious, of course, but now she’s been to college, she has four A-levels and she’s been to university: she still has her acting career ahead of her.

* * *

While my television career appeared to have hit the buffers, my radio career was about to spring to life – and with it an old relationship.

The last I’d heard of Jon was Barry’s message that he was upset at not being invited round to dinner after Sadie was born. However, having managed to miss each other on the convention circuit for eight years, we both now agreed to take part in a Doctor Who radio serial for the BBC. I knew it was time to clear the air and was genuinely pleased to see him; I wondered if he’d forgotten. Then he said, ‘Ingeborg is very upset with you.’

I thought, Jon, don’t play that card . So I said, ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, you know, we never got the invite to see Sadie.’

I wasn’t in the mood to pull punches.

‘Look, number one – you were invited to the christening and you couldn’t come. Number two – after that Brian was working in Bristol, I was alone and I didn’t have grandparents around to help: Brian’s mother is disabled and in Birmingham, bless her, my dad was very old. I had no one down here to say, “Have a day out, Lis.” Do you really think I had time to worry about dinner parties?’

He looked suitably sheepish at that.

‘Get Ingeborg on the phone – now .’

Ten minutes later we’d had a chat, our first in almost a decade, and it was all sorted. In fact, we were giggling about how the last time we’d met she’d been appalled by me saying I was going to give birth on a bucket – apparently gravity really helps! Everything was fine. How silly to have wasted so much negative energy over the years, though.

Of course, once the seal had been broken, Jon was like an uncle to Sadie. We started bumping into each other at conventions or parties and he was so good with her. Once we were at Manchester town hall doing an event and he said to her, ‘Come and help me with my signings’, so she sat there drawing or colouring while he scribbled his name. Some people reading this book might actually have my daughter’s first autographs! But he was such a terrible tease, too. I always think children should dress their age, not in something out of Victoria’s Secret. So she’d stand there in her frocks with her little lace-trimmed socks and Jon would turn his nose up and say, ‘Oh Sadie, your knickers are falling down.’ Bless her, she always looked!