Me and Ted Hughes

October 21, 1983. Toronto. At 644 Church Street, just off Bloor.

Fall settles in. A crisp, chilly, windy day. Leaves whirl, scatter in circles. I am  living in a tiny two bedroom apartment on Church Street in Toronto, just off Bloor, with my lover, Gord Halloran, for whom I have left my first marriage, my friends, my family and my country. I am so full with pregnancy, so ready to give birth to our love child. No  work permit here in Canada where I’m still becoming more aware of myopic American-ness. In the meantime, I am a fitness instructor at a trendy workout studio in Yorkville.

Here I am introduced to Canadian legend, Karen Kain, who becomes an occassional student in my classes while she recoveres from an injury. I teach daily, waiting for legal status and the freedom to work and get paid. My lover’s divorce — from a fourteen year marriage in Canada — has yet to come through from California. That’s where we met and fell in love – San Francisco.

And he’s working on an oil painting of the Toronto Stock Exchange and directing a show we are producing at the Adelaide Court Theatre: the Canadian premiere of “Letters Home”. It’s a two-hander which chronicles, in letters, the relationships between American poet Sylvia Plath,and her mother, Aurelia. The playwright is Rose Leiman Goldemberg.

We had decided to do the show as my Toronto debut. Since we were producers, I didn’t need a work permit to be hired, and I’d be quite pregnant when the show opened. I wasn’t very big, maybe I could pull it off: Sylvia Plath is pregnant in some parts of the play.

Letters Home enjoyed a three week run, healthy audiences and reviews in The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star,  Now Magazine,

U of Ts’ The Newspaper and York University’s Excalibur. The Newspaper’s headline: Letters Home offers more than a biography, The Excalibur: Plath’s Letters Read Well.

 

 

Unfortunately, Gina Mallet, of The Toronto Star saw the opening. We did an exhausting rehearsal that day. Due to lack of experience, I didn’t estimate how my pregnancy would affect my energy requirements. By the evening’s performance, I hadhit the wall, and walked through opening night without an ounce o emotion. My co-star, Patty Carole Brown, had trouble remembering her lines. This wasa major frustration throughout the run of the show because in her mistaking one line for another, it was difficult to know how to salvage the scene. Gina Mallet put it in writing, it hurt to agree with her. The most basic of an actor’s responsibilities is to learn your lines!  By association, I  looked inept. I was so humiliated by her review that I clipped out the headline, and only saved the good parts.

We had another chance the second night: Ray Conologue reviewed for The Globe and Mail. My energy rallied but we weren’t to be blessed:  Ray Conologue spent more time scribbling clever notes to himself than watching the show. The headline to his review,  complete with several photos, was published across the entire country: Tribute to Plath Too Reverential to be Credible. He used the word feminist anthem in the first paragraph, then  proceeded to throw stones at it. I still recall one paragraph from his review: “Hicks’ Plath was quite offputting at first, both because of the gushy preppy tone of her college letters and because of Hicks’ rather gratutitous bopping around, as if the budding poet combined aerobics with iambics. .  .”  Apparently Conologue hadn’t noticed my very obvious physical condition. Well, maybe it was the aerobics classes I was still teaching!

My fascination with the Plath/Hughes legend  was by this time, huge. I had every poem Sylvia Plath wrote, and many editions of Ted’s work.

I owned Sylvia Plath by the play’s closing performance, and her tragic suicide weighed heavily on me. I felt her angst upon learning that her husband was having an affair with another woman. At the time of her death in February 1963, Ted Hughes’ career was firmly established, Sylvia’s was just beginning to take off.

What could she have seen in the world before THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE was published? What happened to make this intelligent, passionate woman with a child under 3 and another just a year old,  during one of England’s coldest winters on record, put a towel in the space under her kitchen door, put her head in the oven and turn the gas on?

In my journal, it says that on October 21st, Gord went down to City Hall to get our marriage license as his divorce papers had finally arrived the day before.

On October 22nd, 1983, just a week after Letters Home closed, The Fifth Annual International Festival of Authors hosted 25 writers from all over the world at Toronto’s Harbourfront. On Sunday, the last day of the festival. Ted Hughes, England’s Poet Laureate, Sylvia’s ex-husband and lover, was the featured guest.

We were down to our last pennies. Gord’s savings had been seriously depleted with the production of this play. Reluctantly, his red Mustang convertible and a clunky old blue truck were put up for sale in the want ads, and Gord arranged to sell his cherished Kathe Kollewitz print to a dealer in San Francisco. But, on October 22nd, there had been no sales, no income from our sacrifices. We were going to be parents, and we had no money for diapers.

I weighed the cost of the tickets. But I had just spent five months of my life studying both Ted and Sylvia, gazing at photos of them in love, reading their poetry, Sylvia’s novel, The Bell Jar, wondering. Speaking to an Author’s Festival organizer, I heard that Hughes had been dogged by overeager Plath fans, who blamed Ted for Sylvia’s suicide. Sometimes they showed up at the airport with placards, shouting at him. Everyone was hoping for all of us in Canada to recognize his legend-ness and behave appropriately.  How could I miss this?

There would be people in the audience who had seen me in Letters Home, but I just wanted to be a fly on the wall, free to gape and wonder.  I wanted to know the answers I could only discover by meeting him: what could possibly have been so charming about him? Sylvia was a smart, creative woman. How could he have won her heart, then tossed it aside so carelessly?

Sitting at the back of the stuffed-to-capacity auditorium, I listened with show-me arms folded to the accented, apologetic voice of this man reading absolutely spellbinding poems about a sheep farmer! Astonished and thoroughly charmed, I was also cautious: the room was breathing with his every pause and I was vehemently Anti-Idol, in spite of my obsession. Afterwards, queues wound around the room for his autograph. I  immediately attracted and repelled. I lingered — as a voyeur.

In one of my American moments,  I went right up to the front of autograph the line, and asked him if he wanted a beer. Why hadn’t anyone thought of that? He looked at me gratefully. Of course he wanted a beer! Gord made his way through the absolutely stuffed bar to buy it, and when we delivered it, I pulled up a chair and sat next to Ted Hughes, as he signed books into the night.

A photographer from the Kingston Standard, who knew I had played the part of Sylvia in Letters Home, snapped our photograph together and it was published the next day. We talked. Ted Hughes wrote a poem to me on the back of my ticket.

Then, we all went home. Gord and I got married the following Saturday.

Later, I wrote the poem below, which I sent to Ted Hughes  with a copy of the newspaper article which bore our photograph, in care of his publisher.

I also sent the poem to Rose Leiman Goldemberg, the playwright who had written LETTERS HOME, and who had a close relationship with Sylvia’s mother. I never heard from Ted Hughes, but Rose later told me that Sylvia’s mother, Aurelia had read the poem and quite liked it. The poem:

So,

this is

Ted Hughes

“A large, hulking, healthy Adam”

she said

Ha!

A stoop-shouldered shuffler

a baggy panted Down-looker:

chin crooked in his neck

pointed nose cocked sideways.

That hair! Straight grey, greasy fronds

spring from his forehead

into those wide eyes

softly laughing at the wrinkled edges;

set against a wiskery grey-bearded

chin.

He’s not that Big,

Hulking, Huge Whatever

She described:

he’s in his Fifties!

“With a voice like the thunder of God,”

she said

I hear Soft, apologizing

warm-accented timbre

rumbling, rising and bellowing

in the passionate heat

of his Wild Word poems

A singer, story-teller

Weaving magnets

before gullible,

gaping faces

We sit on seat’s edge

In the crowded stillness

a pin drop

We, gasping for air

forget to clap

His head hangs

like Christ on the cross

He ends the rushing, bleeding images

Tricks us,

starts again!

Like a prayer!

So this

is Mellowed

This

Ted Hughes.

Humble, clumsy-gaited

embarassed and amused

by the adulating bodies

A sea washes Him

to a table to sit.

Dry, condemned man

up-glances sideways

Mischief darts

under the ferns

He’s a  rascal!

He taunts his captors

gleefully signing his punishment

His name, Ted Hughes.

Big, black

sloppy fountain of ink

eagerly spoils

white parchment

virgin book

He hardly sees their faces

but smiles

seductive, shy

sly

charming

disarming

Ted Hughes.

My rabbit heartbeat

Adrenalin drugged

insane!

I plot, full of courage

Book toting, ticket-toting,

program-toting ants

inch line behind him

I blurt forward

squashing a knat-sychopant

at His side

“Do you want a drink?”

I gasp, hoping

He nods,”Yes!”

Triumphant! I paw the crowd

Tingling thrilled

The squirming insects

clutch forward

a mass of thirsty limbs

Gord! co-conspirator

lover, director, psst!

“He wants a beer!”

A wink, and tumbling

fumbling for the sparkling fizzy

my lover pays and gets.

Cunning spiders, we

tiptoe, web and circle our prey

Beer. Here!

Jailbird smiles, grateful.

And we, full-cheeked

Cheshire cats

share the mouse

we chew

A buzzing bumblee bee

spies me

the pretend Sylvia

as Prisoner spoils another book

“You, bzzzzzz! Your last production . . .

bzzzzz! wonderful!”

Big bellied arachnid Recoils.

“Don’t! I’m not her!”

I scramble away safely

lest he discover me for the fraud

I am

Ted Ted scribble scribbles

more play comments

from a tall grasshopper

and someone is pointing at me

from across the room

my stomach knots

I spin the web

Mingle in the milling crowd

“Please?” I ask, “ A photograph?”

“Me and He? Forgot my flash!

Photographer frowns, I beg

Me The actress, He The Legend . . .

Camera bearer scoots

to smug fat Event Official beetle.

Barrel belly Panic here!

remembering our phone chat

to him I was a Plath-fly

“Don’t!  I’m not!”

Finally!

WE: Me and He

exactly

are a picture

The Legend leans to me

those crinkling conspirators

lurking impishly at the edges

of His eyes,  His mouth

Kingston photo-man poises

his lens

and in that moment

HE, the famous English poet

my fantasy husband

shrinks away from Me

the pretend the secret Sylvia

He stiffens, somber:

carefully protecting

His Offspring Image

Ted Hughes.

Flash! It’s over.

The hulking Adam glows again.

Night thins, crowd wearys

A full-mouth fat lipped blonde

thrusts a well-worn lipstick pen

into His hand

We Bask in embarassment as

The Captured rapes

another creamy page

drawing a heart

above undying words to her

She waves, twitters,

breathes on Him, touches his hand

totters

Listening, uncomfortable

we all laugh.

So finally it’s tired, we’re late,

The witching hour

I shrink, Becoming ant

Empty handed

I fumble pleas

ardent Catholics pray to Jesus

Prisoner smiles at me

yet another insect

his broad wedding-ringed hand

scribbling quick in wet ink

on my tickets

a poem  to me:

For Caitlin who brought

me a beer when everybody

else only wanted

a signature here

We (1) Ted Hughes (2) Ted Hughes

(3) Ted Hughes

(4) His other

self Ted Hughes

(5) His subsidiary

Ted Hughes

(6) Id, Ego, Superego

Ted, Ed Edward

Hughes.

I am an actress

too young, at age nine

to have saved her

and I left my husband

for another lover

so I am like Him, too

I Became her

these last three weeks

I learned two, lived two

hours of their lives

and one-sided at that

but my fantasy

makes me feel

I hold them in my hand

as all no doubt do

who read His words

Her life

and wonder:

Who suffered most?

________________________________________________________________

In 1998, Gord and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary. We had just finished a tour of my play SINGING THE BONES to England and Sweden. We’d received many standing ovations from audiences in five countries. Our last production took place in the southwest of England, the beautiful county of Devon, where Ted Hughes made his home. While we were there, just down the road in North Tawton, unknown to us, England’s poet laureate was fighting his last against cancer. He had recently published a tribute to Sylvia Plath.  On October 28th, 1998 almost 15 years to the day after I met him, and a little more than week after our show closed in Devon, we read the news of Ted Hughes’ death in the Herald Tribune.

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