Authors: Anne Nolan
'Oh, Brian,' I said. 'All I've ever loved is you and the kids. I'd never have done anything to further my career, as you put it, if it had meant jeopardising our marriage or upsetting our children.' He didn't reply, but what could he have said? He wouldn't budge, though, and I had little choice but to start getting on with the rest of my life.
I also had to live with the girls trying somehow to get to grips with what my father had done to me. When he was alive, they idolised him. Since his death and this dreadful revelation of his dark side, they've had to rewrite their history, and it's been hard for them. Amy was my parents' first grandchild. They both absolutely doted on her, and later on Alex, too. They loved all their grandchildren and those grandchildren loved them back. Now, their memories have been poisoned for ever.
But there are crumbs of comfort. Amy remembers all the times that her grandfather made disparaging remarks about her grandmother. He'd say how Gran Nolan would nag him all the time, leaving the young Amy with the idea that my mum had been difficult. It's why she always felt that my father was the one she loved more. Now, she's been able to rewrite the past and rehabilitate her grandmother.
I shared my mixed feelings with the girls about telling my story in print for the first time. Was it right, I wondered, to blacken their granddad's name? Neither of them was in any doubt. 'He deserves to have his name blackened,' said Amy. If love is blind, then so is pain, and I was terribly bruised by what had happened, but I wasn't alone. Amy and Alex were suffering too, and their anguish was a mix of anger and hurt and a feeling of betrayal. I think that at first they felt their dad and I hadn't loved them enough to protect them from my father, that we had exposed them to potential danger. And there we were all over again. A bad man does a bad thing to an innocent girl and, four decades and more later, two more innocent girls are caught in the crossfire, two more innocent victims are torn in half as they grapple with the implications of their own grandfather's wickedness. However, Amy says now that I was a victim and that there's no reason to feel guilty that my story will force people who knew and loved him to reassess the man. Not that everyone will be learning the true story for the first time. I quite quickly began to find out what Brian had been saying after he'd left me and was going through his breakdown.
Having told our daughters that he'd found it impossible to deal with the consequences of my father's abuse of me and his own mute acceptance of the same man babysitting them, Brian had nonetheless shared my story with friends. Perhaps he felt it would help with unburdening his guilt. Perhaps he couldn't help himself. Either way, it felt like it was a terrible betrayal of something that was intensely personal to the two of us. If anyone had the right to tell my story, it was me, not Brian.
It got worse. In time, I felt I wanted to tell my closest friends what had gone on all those years ago and yet, when I broached the subject with more than one of them – people who'd been close to both Brian and me – they revealed that he'd told them my story
years
ago. At the time, they hadn't known what to do, what to say, and hadn't felt able to tell me what he'd said. I don't blame them. But I do blame him.
Brian certainly hadn't shared with me the fact that he'd seen fit to tell people my story without first consulting me. He'd had no right to do that. This was my story, my experience, and I was the only person who should and could decide whether what had happened might be shared with anyone else. Another friend, a woman, was once told by Brian to watch out for her daughter if my father was around, but I never knew that at the time.
In his divorce petition, it was clear that Brian believed it was essentially my fault that the girls had been left with my dad. The implication was that I, more than anyone, knew how dangerous the consequences could be of so reckless a decision – and that poor Brian had to struggle with his guilt as a result. He's right. I can never excuse the way I more or less trusted to luck in this regard. But, dear God, I think he should accept some responsibility, too.
Quite soon after Brian moved out, my mother came to stay. It was only going to be for a few days initially but, in the end, she was there for six months. The girls and I could see her retreating into her own little world almost before our eyes. I remember waking up one night and Amy was in my room. She said, 'Listen, Mum. Gran's singing.'
It was four o'clock in the morning. I went to her room and she was sitting on the bed, looking down at the floor.
I said, 'Are you all right, Mum?'
'Oh yes,' she said. 'I've just been to the toilet.'
I knew she hadn't. Amy and I had been listening to her soaring soprano voice filling the house. It was weird and a little scary at that time of the night. So 1 spoke softly to her and calmed her down. She got back into bed and eventually fell asleep.
On another occasion, we took her out to a restaurant. For some reason, she got it into her head that they were trying to poison her, deliberately putting something in her food. She took one taste and hurled it across the restaurant. 'I know they're trying to kill me,' she said. Another time, she caught someone's eye, a perfectly innocent diner. 'What are you looking at?' she snarled and then started swearing, something she'd never done in her whole life. And this was heavy-duty swearing. If she'd been in her right mind, she'd have been horrified at herself. I must confess that it almost made me laugh because those words sounded so bizarre coming from her. We took her for any number of tests at the doctor's. The prognosis quite soon became clear: she was in the grip of Alzheimer's. With hindsight, we can all see that her condition started in Florida, although we misinterpreted it at the time. For instance, she'd go out each day with all her travellers' cheques unsigned in her handbag. We'd try and point out how risky that was, but she wouldn't listen. At the time, I thought she was just being stubborn.
The situation was becoming untenable. If I was sitting in the lounge at home with Mum and I went off to the toilet, I'd come back and she wouldn't be there. She'd have wandered into the hall, opened the front door and she'd be off down the street. Tommy, on his way to work, came across her at six o'clock one morning wandering though the centre of Blackpool in just her underskirt and a coat, nothing else. He brought her home to me, but we both knew that she needed twenty-four-hour care. She could not go back to the sheltered accommodation. Within the space of five minutes, she'd ask you the same question ten times, just like a small child. She and I were out on one occasion with Denise and her partner Tom, and we pulled into a car park so I could nip out and buy a bit of food in the supermarket. While I was away, Mum suddenly piped up, 'Oh Tom, this traffic's terrible. I don't think we've moved an inch in about an hour.' In the end, it was easier to agree with her. If you argued, she'd get all agitated.
We started taking her round any number of care homes in Blackpool, hoping that she'd like one of them. She hated them all, without exception. It was awful; we'd step over the threshold and she'd immediately start crying, 'I don't want to stay here. I don't like it here. I'm not old. I don't need to go into a home.' Then one day, for absolutely no logical reason, she walked into a home and announced that she really liked it. It was better than some, less good than others. Who knows why this one in particular should speak to her?
So she agreed to move in – but that wasn't the end of it. One of us would come to take her out for the day, but when it was time to return her to the home, something obviously stirred deep in her mind. 'Oh, why can't I come and stay with you?' she'd wail. At that stage, she clearly knew enough to realise that she didn't want to be there.
That phase has now passed. She did make friends with an elderly resident in the same home. His mind was alert but he was physically frail and couldn't have looked after himself on his own. Everything seemed to be fine with their relationship, and then I turned up one day and she was being verbally abusive to him, calling him all sorts of names. Poor man. I tried to explain that she didn't mean it, that she didn't know what she was saying.
She was deteriorating. If we took her anywhere to eat, I had to feed her. She had to drink through the sort of cup with a lid on it that a small child uses. She became incontinent and we'd have to take her to the toilet and clean her up as she screamed, 'I can't believe a daughter of mine is doing this to me.' The whole thing was wretched.
So we moved her home into a home, where she just lay in bed, unable to recognise her own children or watch television or do anything other than exist. We visited her two or three times a week without telling her we were coming, not because she'd have noticed one way or the other but because we waned to see that she was being properly looked after and that the staff were just as kind to her when they didn't know we were about to turn up. And they were. Truly, these people were angels.
She remained there from the beginning of 2006 until her eventual death from bronchial pneumonia on December 30, 2007. She couldn't do anything for herself. The television was left on in her room which I was pleased about: maybe she could hear the music and that brought her some sort of comfort. But how could you tell? What I found hardest to bear was not knowing whether she was in pain. She couldn't communicate at all. I used to think it would have been wonderful if she could have gone to sleep one night and not wake up in the morning.
In the event, that's exactly what happened. I was sad when we got the news but I didn't cry. To be honest, it was a relief and a release. She'd always been very religious and believed – or she did when she was able to articulate it – that she'd be going to a better place when she left this world. I miss her terribly, of course, and will always remember how wonderful she'd been to me all my life. She was the sort of person who'd travel uncomplainingly from Blackpool or London to Paignton at a moment's notice to babysit for me when Amy was little. Any time I was in trouble or finding it hard to cope, she'd be on the next train. She always put us kids before herself.
Looking back now, part of me feels that perhaps it would have been better if my mother had known what my father had done to me because then it could have all been sorted out. Certainly, the whole business of leaving my girls with their grandfather would never have arisen. Perhaps it might even have had a positive effect on my marriage in that Brian couldn't have used it as an excuse to leave me. I'll never know. On the other hand, my mother had already been through a lot with my father and that revelation would have shattered her. I honestly don't see how she would have coped if she'd been told the truth. So part of me is pleased she was spared that.
Quite quickly, Brian stopped paying his half of the mortgage. He wasn't working; he couldn't. He was claiming disability benefit following his breakdown. I assume that went to the new woman in his life as a contribution to his living expenses. If ever I said I was strapped for cash, he'd say he was, too.
I opened a credit card account and struggled the best I could to meet the total mortgage repayment – over £500 a month – while also dealing with all the utility bills and the day-to-day running costs of three adults. Maureen and I were paid £306 between us per gig on the
Reelinandarockin'
tour, which helped on a daily basis, but the shows were sporadic: sometimes there'd be three or four a week, and then we'd go a month with no gigs at all.
There was one day, though, when both Alex and I earned a bit of pocket money and had a laugh into the bargain. The BBC was making a series called
Blackpool,
starring David Morrissey and Sarah Parish. It was a strange amalgam of musical, romance and thriller, a fantasy a bit in the style of Dennis Potter's
Pennies From Heaven.
I played a gypsy fortuneteller who pops out of her tent on North Pier in a dream sequence to tell David Morrissey's character what was going to happen to him, except that I did so in song. In fact, I was miming to somebody else's voice. Alex and her friends were extras, walking along the pier. She got £60 for the day and I got a little more.
It came in useful, but I was slowly sliding downwards, deeper into debt. So I did the only thing I could think of: I opened another credit card account to help pay off the first one, and so the problem snowballed. I kept all of this from my daughters and sisters at this stage, I'd just got to the upper limit of the second card when the tour promoters asked us to take a cut in wages. That always seems to happen: tour costs rise from one year to the next, but not ticket prices, and the artists are expected to subsidise the difference. It simply wasn't worth our while to go out on the road for what they were offering.
However, I got a summer season in Torquay in 2004 with Maureen, Amy and Julia. I'll always have happy memories of the town, and it was good to be earning regular money for eight weeks. I took Amy back to Torbay Hospital where she was born, and the same nurse who'd looked after me was still there twenty-three years later. Sadly, the surgeon, Mr McPherson, who'd almost certainly saved my life had since died, although there was a photograph of him in a frame hanging on the wall and I took a picture of Amy standing next to it.
After the summer season, and out of the blue, I was offered a tour with Bobby Davro. Perhaps this would get me back in the black. The signs certainly looked good. The promoter didn't exactly inspire confidence, though. He was unkempt, he reeked of alcohol and he smelt. I was to be the principal female singer with four dancers, four backing singers and a seven-piece band. He would pay for all the equipment – the lights, the sound and so on – as well as all the transport and accommodation. I remember having a meeting with Bobby Davro and we were both worried. Tours on that scale just don't happen unless they're backed by big organisations with big money.
I was pretty nervous, not least because this was a solo outing for me – I wouldn't have Maureen standing next to me – but I was really excited about the prospect or working with Bobby on a major, twelve-week tour, and at the thought of making serious inroads into my debts. I was to be paid £500 for each show, but no expenses. This could be a real turning point. So I forked out a thousand pounds on clothes and jewellery and make-up, even Estee Lauder make-up brushes. I bought two long, beaded evening dresses from a shop on Bond Street in Blackpool and two pairs of smart shoes, one in silver, one in gold. I knew I had to look and give of my best.
After three gigs, however, we hadn't been paid a penny – and that's when the whole tour fell apart and the promoter went bankrupt. Maureen meanwhile had been cast in the role of Mrs Johnstone in the West End musical
Blood Brothers,
Naturally, I was delighted for her, but I had no bookings myself, and Amy and Alex were relying on me. Amy of course had been bringing some money into the household since she left school at sixteen via various jobs. For instance, she once worked as a guide at Sea Life, a local attraction, and then she was personal assistant to a company director. Alex was still at college although she did have a part-time job in a shoe shop that helped finance her own toiletries and so on.
Amy and I got jobs with a man who ran a company that helped people get compensation for personal injuries. The ethics were highly questionable. Its critics call this practice ambulance chasing and I was the ambulance chaser. I'd drive round the country, distributing leaflets and badges, keyrings and beer mats, advertising our services. I'd walk into A&E departments and leave them around, in the hope that people would then contact us and we'd get them a lump sum from which we'd deduct a percentage. It wasn't a particularly edifying way to make money, but I was desperate. I had two girls to support and a father who could not contribute. I got paid £200 a week for about six months. Then Amy and I both got a pantomime together in York, after which neither of us could face the idea of returning to our dodgy jobs, so I worked briefly for the local paper, promoting it in supermarkets, handing out free gifts. People would come up to me and say, 'Aren't you one of the Nolans?' And I'd say, 'Yeah, but I'm between jobs and a bit bored just sitting at home.' I kept a fixed smile pinned permanently to my face.
After that, I sold David Essex merchandise at the Opera House in Blackpool during his summer season. I'd met him years earlier because Linda and her Brian had been good friends of his manager. It was through her Brian that I got the merchandising job. I'd have jumped at the chance of anything. The money was good: £400 a week which certainly helped keep the wolf from the door, even if it didn't make serious inroads into my mountain of debt. Again, people would pass me when I was standing in the foyer of the theatre trying to sell my wares, do a double-take when they spotted my face and then come and ask if I once sang with the Nolans. When I told them they were right, they'd ask how come I was doing this. I didn't tell them the truth, which was that I was prepared to do what I was doing for one simple reason: to put food on the table for me and my two children.
I've always regarded my time in show business as a gift. No one can take it away from me and I have all my memories. I've always been someone who lives in the present and, at the time – what with the cancer, the disintegration of my marriage, the winding down of my career and my spiralling debts – I was bumping along the bottom, so there wasn't much point being too proud to turn my hand to something else. I never felt that selling David Essex merchandise was beneath me. I saw it as a great opportunity to earn some much-needed cash.
In November 2005, I signed on for Job Seekers' allowance; that was just £52 a week. I went to a typists' agency, but I was never going to get a job for the very good reason that I couldn't type. I did a test once, but I was blagging it from start to finish, which they must have spotted a mile off. I made no secret of the fact that I'd been one of the Nolans, which interested some people, but it was clear that all I knew about was show business. I'd had no other experience.
I had to sign on once a fortnight. I'd apply for jobs as a dentist's receptionist or a doctor's receptionist, working in a shop – a bridal shop, a furniture shop, a department store, you name it – but they all of them, every last one, told me that they'd put me on their books and that, if anything came up, they'd be in touch. I heard nothing from any of them. No one wanted a woman in her mid-fifties who'd spent her life as a singer.