This is the original article I wrote about this blog way back in 2014. The Daily Mail published a sensationalised version of it on Monday 12 January 2015 to "fit better" with what they believed their readers "expected".
For anyone interested, this is what I actually wrote...
For anyone interested, this is what I actually wrote...
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| My mother, Sally Blake, with me - Fairhazel Gardens, West Hampstead, 1965 |
Aphorisms
are like aphids. Swarms of them attack Facebook and Twitter daily. Bumper
sticker philosophy, Haikus, inspirational sayings - all invariably set against
a backdrop of a sunset, or a suitably deserted, idyllic beach.
I
usually scroll past them as quickly as possible, yet a few weeks ago, one did
catch my eye:
“Life becomes easier
when you learn to accept an apology you never got.”
(Robert Brault)
(Robert Brault)
It
pulled me up, because as I read it, I realised that in writing my late mother’s
Perfume book for her, this is exactly what I have been doing. At least lately.
In
September this year, I turned 50. I have not married, I have no children, and
I have no property. I have accepted that this is just the way things turned out. I’ll
admit that in times past, I’ve been pretty upset about it. I’ve cried real
tears over it all, but you know what? I’m willing to
take some of the rap. I’m low paid because I’ve chosen to settle in a part of
the UK where jobs are scarce but the countryside is beautiful, and I live in
rented accommodation because I haven’t saved my pennies for my own bricks and
mortar as we’re all told we should. But as to meeting, marrying and mating, the
fact is that during the years I should have been doing those things, I was at
home with a mother who drank, and if a boyfriend braved a trip across our
threshold, I rarely saw him again.
Of
course, now I realise she couldn’t help herself. She was ill. For the worst of
those years, she was actually dying, and nobody realised it.
Born
into “a decayed branch of a once noble tree” (the Wyndhams of Llandaff), my
mother was beautiful, volatile, and headstrong. Against the wishes of her
family, she married a penniless actor, my father, Gerald Blake, in 1955. When
she gave birth to my older brother Adam, my parents were in Panto at The
Theatre Royal, Lincoln. They made up a makeshift cot for him in a drawer at their
digs, and he would sleep peacefully as the after-show drinks and laughter went
on into the night.
By
the time I was born however, my father was on the up at the BBC, directing Doctor Who. He swung a mansion flat for
us in Regent’s Park for a rent of just £12 a week. Our flat was always full of
actors, and there were often parties that went on into the early hours. At one
such, my mother kicked out Trevor Eve and Sharon Maughan for over-enthusiastic
canoodling behind a sofa.
Cut
to 1977 and my father had left us to shack up with actress Jill Gascoine - who
he had directed in The Onedin Line -
and who in turn left him for Alfred Molina.
Cut
again to 1991, and he was dead. A massive heart-attack in the street. Brought
up to park my own emotions when it came to giving a performance, I sang
Puccini’s “Vissi d’Arte” at his
memorial at St Paul’s Covent Garden in front of an audience of celebrities. My
mother had invited Jill to the service via Peter “James Onedin” Gilmore. Jill later
said she was stunned by such immense class and generosity of spirit.
But
the loss of my father hit my mother hard. Over the years, they had fallen into
a routine of coffee and dinners, and their reconciliation had been such they had
even been talking about retiring to Spain together. His sudden, unexpected death was a vicious blow. The fact was, no matter what had
happened, my mother simply did not want to live in a world without him in it. Suicide
was out of the question, so she drank instead. She would open the Scotch for
News at Ten, and still be drinking at 5 in the morning before she finally passed
out.
Miraculously
though, around this time, she had also started to get her immense knowledge of
the glamorous world of designer perfume down on paper. She’d been passionate
about scent all her life, but she had played down her knowledge for fear of
being thought “trivial”. But this was a knowledge that was consulted the world
over. Auction houses, film companies, dealers – all knew that if they needed to
know something about an old forgotten scent, Sally Blake would be able to
provide the answer. She began to plan a book about it all. Escaping into the
unfettered luxury of the world of perfume was her only remaining true joy. I
began to find old exercise books, notepads, backs of envelopes – all covered in
scribbles and anecdotes about scent.
But
as life went on, every day a struggle to keep up with the rent, the scribblings
I would find on the kitchen table in the mornings turned from excited pages on the
magic of scent, to bitter letters to people she felt had let her down, drenched
in whisky and covered in cigarette ash. I destroyed as many of them as I could,
but some got through, and more and more friends deserted her.
Afraid
of the dark, she refused to go to bed before dawn. Sometimes she would make it
to the bedroom, sometimes she would fall into a mirror or over a chair and
split her head open. I would lie awake, listening to see if she was going to
get up again, or if I was going to have to haul myself out of bed and see to
her. More often than not, it was the latter. Then I would either patch her up
and put her to bed, or find a taxi to take us to hospital before I would have
to crawl to whatever job I was doing at the time.
When
I was finally offered the chance to rent a friend’s flat in the East End, I
have to say, I did not hesitate to take it, but I hadn’t been there long when I
got the call from my brother on holiday in Dorset to say he thought that
something was wrong at home.
It
was late and I was ready for bed, but I got dressed, and caught the Number 30
bus from Hackney to Baker Street - to find my mother sitting at the kitchen
table with a gash in her head, dripping blood onto the linoleum, and calmly
doing the Times crossword.
Somehow,
I got her to St Mary’s. They kept her in. The next day, they told me they had
done a scan, and there was nothing they could do. She had a brain tumour. They
showed it to me. It was the size of a satsuma. They told me it would have been
growing for at least 8 years. She had four weeks to live.
Although
she had never been on time for anything in her life, she checked out exactly
four weeks to the day. We tried to keep her death quiet to give us time to make
arrangements, but someone squealed and the landlord’s agent was on my case
before her body was cold. If either my brother or I stayed over whilst we
worked on clearing the ‘property’, they would charge us market rent. Our
sprawling flat comprised two reception rooms, entrance hall, kitchen, pantry,
two bathrooms, servants’ quarters, and 3 further bedrooms. My mother had been a
sitting tenant for years. The weekly ‘market rent’ for it at the time would
have amounted to more than my gross salary per month. So I sprinted from my
temp job to the flat to pack every day, returning to Hackney on the midnight
bus to do it all again the next day. I stuffed the perfume files and notes in several
massive boxes, whilst, unable to house it myself, her famous, extensive, and
magnificent perfume collection went to her friend, the perfumier, Roja Dove.
Three
years later, I suffered a massive nervous breakdown. I was afraid to sleep
because of the nightmares that I was back home and she was on the floor,
covered in blood again, and I didn’t want to wake, because then I would have to
face the fact my home was gone.
So
I drank too for a while. I ruined a promising career as a Jazz singer. Often
drunk and argumentative, promoters simply stopped booking me. I moved from
place to place - some 8 times before I landed up in Hampshire. Each time, I
dragged the sealed boxes of perfume books and notes with me, and just stacked
them wherever I was living.
It
was a near-miss car smash in 2012 that finally focussed me. As my car spun
through the air with me in it, I thought of those boxes landing on a bonfire if
I died, and all her work and her knowledge going up in smoke. I thought: “If I
live, I will write it.”
I’ve
laughed and I’ve cried as I have tapped out the chapters, but as “Through
Smoke” takes shape, the strongest feeling has been of joy. The joy of
forgiveness for someone who was so very special, and who was too ill to know
how to stop herself from hurting those around her.
I’d
love the blog to become a published book. But whatever happens, those boxes
have been the greatest gift my mother ever gave me.
(c) Emma Blake - July 2014
