Shirley (33 page)

Afterwards she wrote to Bernard, telling him how much she had loved Paris and the charming Parisians. She added that she and Sergio were starting a tour of Japan in October, followed by a European tour in November to Holland and Belgium and then Paris again. The following week she was off to record in London, before taking a trip to Sardinia.

While the Villa Capricorn was being built on the Via Campione at Lake Lugano, Shirley and Sergio had bought another summer holiday villa at Sardinia. Sardinia was suddenly the place to be, full of beautiful people and splendid yachts.

Bernard read between the lines of Shirley’s postcard and knew that it wasn’t as easy as she made it look. The type of touring that Shirley was undertaking was often soul destroying, completely exhausting. For someone of her slim physique it played havoc with her health. Tempers grew short, rows blew up. Whatever happened, there was always the pressure of the next performance in the next major city, where she must yet again appear relaxed and completely in control.

And Sergio, too, could be having a hard time.

When Shirley returned to Paris – this time for a week at the Theâtre des Champs-Elysées – Bernard thought it might be a good opportunity to introduce her, at long last, to Marlene Dietrich. They’d always been interested in each other’s careers, although Marlene was forty years older than Shirley. Marlene lived opposite the Hôtel Plaza Athenée, and the theatre where Shirley was to appear was just around the corner from there. A meeting could not be left much longer for Marlene was deteriorating fast; she’d soon be in a wheelchair and then she would allow nobody to see her.

All the parties agreed and a time was set for tea at the Plaza before Shirley’s evening performance. She and Sergio arrived at the arranged time, Sergio dashing in a new raincoat he had just purchased at Pierre Cardin. Shirley admired the elegant garment and said airily, ‘I’ll give it to you for your birthday.’ Bernard sensed that all was not too well with them. There was a slight feeling of one partner reminding the other who held the purse strings.

Then came a telephone call for Bernard. Dietrich had decided she didn’t have the strength to put on her make-up, without it she could not come. ‘Give my apologies to your Shirley.’ She had chickened out, probably, thought Bernard, because of an older woman’s jealousy of the young and successful one.

Disappointed, the three of them had tea and ate English scones until it was time for Shirley to go to the theatre. Whether it was because she was annoyed with Marlene and Bernard, or just annoyed with her husband, she said to Sergio, ‘Get me a vodka first.’ Bernard watched Shirley knock back the alcohol and was worried that she felt she
needed a drink before a performance. He knew it wasn’t a good idea even though he did it himself. In the old days Shirley would have scoffed at drinking before a performance, but in the old days Shirley did not have a husband at her elbow.

The marriage between Shirley and Sergio had started so well. On the face of it, all was still well between them but there was conflict now. Sergio could be jealous, and Shirley was usually exhausted after each tour. The child that might have kept them together had not arrived, and the pattern of Shirley’s life remained essentially the same as before, work and travel, travel and work. Often happy, often just like old times, but tempers were increasingly frayed as tensions rose more frequently to the surface.

It was always a pleasure to come home to Lugano. Thelma was no longer there, but there was a housekeeper, and the two youngest children, Mark and Samantha, were at day school. It was peaceful and quiet and the family was left alone to live as Mr and Mrs Novak and their children. Every time Shirley and Sergio came back from a tour a bit more had been added to the Villa Capricorn, and one of these days it would certainly be finished.

Sergio finally masterminded the completion of the Villa Capricorn. It faced the lake, with one special glass wall outside Shirley’s bedroom so that she could see out but no one could see in. Her dressing room, the same size as her beautifully fitted bedroom, was lined with walk-in closets. Over the years she had built up an extensive wardrobe of furs and coats and gowns that she could not bear to part with. Shirley’s bedroom, as in all the homes she owned, was
the most magnificently positioned and luxuriously decorated room in the house.

Shirley’s children were growing up. Sharon, now twenty, had already left home. She had quit her Swiss boarding school when she was eighteen and gone back to London. Her first job was selling couture dresses to the wealthy, but she soon found that this kind of life was not for her; she preferred caring for others which was more worthwhile.

Sharon was the only one of Shirley’s children who always returned to her roots with the Bassey family. There was a strong bond between Sharon and her former foster parents, Shirley’s sister Iris and her husband Bill, and she would regularly visit them in Cardiff. Naturally she would also spend time with Eliza Mendi, her grandmother, who was especially proud of her and the work she had chosen. Sharon loved being with small children and had started training as a nursery nurse in Bristol, working in a school. The following year she would take a college course in order to get a full qualification.

Samantha was now at an expensive Swiss boarding school, but she was having difficulty settling down. Like her mother, she was something of a rebel and didn’t adjust well to school. To a school friend Samantha once confided something about her life. She said that with a famous mother you’ve failed before you’ve even begun because you can never live up to the glamorous image. A lot of people envy you, but what they don’t realise is that you want a Mum and Dad to go home to, a normal easygoing family. Samantha, in fact, wanted and needed something her mother could never give her.

Mark was also at a Swiss boarding school. He too, was finding that life was not always easy.

Shirley’s three children did, however, get on well with Sergio. They all called him Dad, and were very fond of him. It was the way of life, the touring and the concerts, the tempers that flared unexpectedly, that didn’t always make for a peaceful home life. Now that the children were all at school, Thelma had gone. Shirley later readily admitted that she failed as a mother; show business still remains number one and she knows she’ll go on and on until she’s too old to move.

Thelma had always known that when Samantha and then Mark went off to school her job would be over. She returned to London and found getting another job harder than she thought. When she was getting desperate she asked Bo Mills, Shirley’s friend, if he could help her find a position. Bo, a generous-hearted man, offered Thelma a job as his housekeeper. Some time later Bernard Hall, who was also a friend of Bo’s, was delighted when Bo asked him to dinner cooked by the new housekeeper, Thelma. The surprise guest of honour that evening turned out to be Shirley, and she thoroughly enjoyed herself. She had three good-looking men to entertain her: Bo, Bernard and Yves, who was Bo’s partner in the business. They were all making a great fuss of her, hanging on her every word and laughing uproariously at her jokes. It did cross Bernard’s mind that they appeared to him to be behaving rather like three court jesters, whose only wish was to make Shirley, the Queen of Hearts, happy.

But jokes aside, Shirley was going through a difficult time; she was drinking too much and she knew it. Bo Mills
and Bernard both worried about her, but Shirley didn’t tend to welcome advice.

Eight or nine years after Shirley had made Sergio her manager their marriage had begun to falter. Their son Mark knew this tempestuous marriage was breaking up the day the arguments ended. He thought that all married people fought because his adopted father and mother had fought for as long as he could remember. ‘They seemed to live in a boxing ring,’ he recalled, ‘and when they stopped fighting, that was it, their marriage was over.’

Mark hadn’t got it quite right, the marriage didn’t collapse as suddenly as all that, but it was going wrong and it was only a matter of time before Shirley decided enough was enough. One of the reasons the marriage was failing was because these two people did not understand each other. Shirley and Sergio came from very different backgrounds and they had widely divergent perspectives on life. Poverty had scarred Shirley, who was still vulnerable under the bravado and feared that one day she might lose all she had worked for.

The Italian personality is not at all like the Welsh. There is sometimes an undercurrent of pessimism in those born near the Welsh hills. From the beginning of her career Shirley had been suspicious of men who looked after her earnings. She has said, ‘Moneywise, I’ve looked after all the men in my life.’ She was probably right about the first two. Michael Sullivan always acted as if he was doing Shirley a favour, and Kenneth Hume, although he taught Shirley a good deal about finance, did gamble away portions of Shirley’s hard-earned money.

‘No man has ever taken care of me and my children,’ said Shirley. ‘I have paid the bills with my money and it has always been like that.’ Both Samantha and Mark could relate to this, they had known Dads who were kind to them but not their real fathers. Only Sharon had been lucky enough to have a permanent foster father and mother in Bill and Iris.

One of the reasons Shirley fell in love with Sergio was, no doubt, because she was always attracted by mature men who represented a protective father figure. Not that Sergio was much older than she, but he was certainly more wise and sophisticated in the ways of the world. Once he became her manager, however, there had been too much close contact. A star and her manager should live apart. Better still, a star’s manager should go home each night to another woman who will soothe his nerves which have been pulverised by his close involvement with the star and her demands.

Shirley admitted, ‘When Sergio became my manager it did not work.’

Few men could understand the physical strain Shirley was under when she toured. As she put it, ‘I need strength. For instance, when I’ve got a bad cold and I have to go on singing, it’s tough. And if it’s two shows a night, it’s murder. I hate two shows a night anyway because you get yourself all charged up for your first performance and the adrenalin’s going and then you need something like two hours to calm down, and just as you’re starting to relax, you have to gear yourself up for another performance. It’s hell.’

The only man who worked for Shirley and understood what she went through was another performer, Bernard
Hall, and he was a six-foot tall muscular dancer, not a medium-height slim girl. Sergio didn’t always have an easy time; not only had he never been a performer himself, but show business was foreign territory for him, and it was impossible for him to understand what Shirley went through.

Shirley always loved going back to Cardiff to see her mother. She had bought her another house, this time a bungalow because her mother was nearing eighty. It was in the same outer suburb of Cardiff called Llanrumney. Eliza hated leaving her little garden with all the bulbs she had planted each year, but she was philosophical in accepting that this happened to everyone when they grew old. As long as Shirley found the time to come and visit her and the rest of the family were still living around her, she was happy.

Shirley arranged that Ella, her older sister who had once lived in Islington, should, with her husband, also move into the bungalow to make sure that Mrs Mendi was well looked after. Towards the late ’70s there came a time when Shirley went down to see her mother with a heavy heart. She knew she had to tell her that her marriage to Sergio was on the rocks and she and Sergio were soon to separate permanently. But she knew she had to tell her soon, before she made the formal announcement.

In 1979 Shirley called a press conference at the Dorchester Hotel to announce that she and Sergio were divorcing. The press were, as usual, good-tempered. Shirley agreed with them that she’d made mistakes but, ‘I won’t make the same mistake again,’ she declared defiantly, ‘because I shan’t get married again.’

One of the journalists at this conference asked Shirley whether, since she was now divorcing Sergio Novak, Kenneth Carter was her new manager.

‘Kenneth Carter is my road manager,’ explained Shirley. A road manager’s job is to keep the show on the road and look after the comfort and well-being of the star. Bernard Hall was once Shirley’s road manager and he could have added that the job also entailed being at her beck and call and ducking when the exasperated star throws her shoes at you. The pitfall of becoming too closely entangled with a star is that the road manager often loses his freedom.

Shirley’s new road manager, Kenneth Carter, was an Australian who was said to be a strong and silent type. In a picture of the two taken at that time, Shirley looks beautiful and happy and Kenneth towers above her. He had none of the suave good looks of Peter Finch or Sergio Novak. His hair, in the fashion of the time, was longish and his eyebrows were bushy. According to Hilary Levy, who was then Shirley’s secretary, he was Shirley’s boyfriend.

Now that Sergio was no longer travelling with her, Shirley liked employing people as companions: she referred to them as her family. Kenneth Carter was one and Hilary Levy, another. Touring is an isolated business and according to Shirley the more successful one becomes the worse it gets – and as you grow older it gets even harder.

Hilary Levy met Shirley in 1978 when she was working as PA to a concert promoter. Sergio and Shirley were still together, and Sergio asked Hilary if she would like to accompany Shirley on her winter tour of Britain and Scandinavia. Hilary accepted at once. She was twenty-nine
years old, her marriage was over, and she was free to travel wherever she pleased.

By the time the Novaks divorced, Hilary had become a fixture in Shirley’s life, as had Kenneth Carter, who quickly learned the ropes as road manager. Every time Shirley came to London for a concert or a recording, her friends, like Soraya Khashoggi, who had a house in Belgravia, arranged parties and social events for her. One of them, unfortunately went disastrously wrong.