IN MEMORIAM

It seems impossible that it is 30 years since my dear friend John MacKendrick killed himself, on 16 January 1979, shortly before his 33rd birthday.

In his wonderful, and fascinating, book Down Among the Dead Men, Bernard van Dieren makes the point that every young person wants to meet someone “who knows” and once the young person meets that someone they never let go of them. For me, John MacKendrick “knew” and I have never really let him go, for there is not a day which passes when I don’t have some thought of him.

I was not long out of college when we met in 1976. I had returned to the family home in Keighley, half way up the side of the Pennines, in Yorkshire, and was really at a loose end, wondering what to do and where my life was going. John had just bought, and moved into, a cottage in Pickles Hill, a hamlet near the top of the Pennines, and one night my parents returned from the pub telling me that they had met this young ‘un who was a writer and perhaps we should meet. We met the next night and hit it off immediately. I went and stayed with him, helping him to decorate his home and talking, always talking, about writing – him poetry (he was a superb poet) and plays and me music – I had aspirations at that time to be England’s greatest composer. I once asked him how he could write words when he had the spectre of Shakespeare standing behind him and he shrugged it off by saying, “well, I’ve only got Shakespeare, you musical buggars have got Bach and Beethoven!”

Like me John was adopted, but unlike me he didn’t have a good childhood – or so he told me, and this scepticism is important for John was what my Father called “a romancer” meaning he didn’t really lie but he was, perhaps, slightly economical with the truth. Indeed, he would often tell stories about things which he’d supposedly done which were actually scenes from his plays! I always assumed that his work was so real to him that the events he wrote about became the fabric of his own life, and his “romancing” was never malicious, just a free–wheeling imagination.

John loved music and in the summer of 1976 he bought a piano and we put on a series of concerts at his home, which overlooked the valley across to Haworth, with musician friends of mine – who performed a bewildering variety of works from Bach to my own pieces – and poet friends of his who read their own works. Après concert was always spent in the pub, followed by one of his killer home made curries, which once caused severe intestinal distress to Mike Patterson’s dog!, and a repeat of the concert for our own entertainment and amusement. Like all music lovers John had his favourites but he was always willing to try something new. Once, as we listened to a BBC radio broadcast of Schönberg’s Erwartung he listened intently to the announcer explaining that the work was about a woman waiting for her lover who doesn’t turn up and as she runs through the forest she stumbles upon his dead body. After listening to about ten minutes of the singer negotiating her way through Schönberg’s atonal vocal line he made one of the most astute comments I’ve ever heard about this piece: “it’s no bloody wonder he didn’t bother to turn up!” Many a true word is spoken in jest.

In 1977 he became one of the first writers–in–residence at the recently opened National Theatre in London and his play Lavender Blue, concerning a child murder – the murderer was played by Derek Thompson who later found fame playing Charlie Fairhead in BBC TV’s Casualty – was produced causing a wave of controversy. John said that the production was poor and forbade his friends to attend the performance. It was, he said, the only play, to that date, to be taken off before the end of its run.

He bolted for Bristol and set up home there. Discovering the music of Gesualdo, and a few details about his life, he wrote the play Canticle, which I am proud to say I named, a powerful piece about the composer and his murderous inclinations. It’s not meant as a literal telling of Gesualdo’s life, more a poetic musing on the man and the times in which he lived.

By now John had had a volume of poetry – Pickles Hill Music – published by the University of Sheffield, his one act play Who’ll be Next and Who’ll be Lucky? – an hilarious two–hander about Australian itinerants working on a fairground – was published in Faber and Faber’s new writers series Introduction (this was no.6) in a volume which also included the first publication, in book form, of anything by Jim Crace. Methuen published Lavender Blue, with Noli Me Tangere, in a paperback edition. Then came a version of Büchner’s Woyzeck, based on a translation by Dixie Patterson. This was the first version of the play to have the ending based on sketches Büchner left at his death. However, when John started work on his edition this information wasn’t known to him or his translator so he wrote an original ending which is unusual, to say the least – I have a copy of John’s typescript of this earlier version and can attest to its strangeness. Methuen published Woyzeck after John’s death and BBC Radio 3 mounted a production of the play from Northern Ireland.

Whilst in Bristol John wrote an amount of poetry – especially a long series called Prophets, where he re–interpreted the lives and actions of famous prophets. At this time it wasn’t unusual for him to finish one of these long poems and then drive to London, where I was now living, read the poem to me a couple of times, then drive home to Bristol. If he didn’t drive over he would telephone, no matter what the time of day or night, and perform the poem over the ‘phone. I wasn’t the only person he did this to, and although it could be very annoying it was impossible to be too angry with him for that was John and we loved him for being him.

John was starting to be noticed but he wasn’t happy. The fact that he had been adopted played on his mind and he hoped that he could trace his birth mother and try and find out how, and perhaps why, he had become a writer. Somehow he discovered that his birth mother’s surname was Rhys and he became convinced that his mother was the novelist Jean Rhys. By now he appeared to be out of control and the friends who shared his house tried hard never to leave him alone. But this proved to be impossible and that Monday he managed to get everybody to go out and leave him alone. He took a large overdose of pills and continued working at his typewriter until he became too tired to continue. Then he went into the attic, climbed a step ladder, put a noose round his neck – he had somehow managed to smuggle the newly acquired rope into the house a few days earlier – and when he passed out he fell off the ladder and killed himself. When he was found a letter was discovered in his pocket, which had been delivered that morning, which gave the name and last known address of his birth mother. It was not Jean Rhys.

I know that some of his close friends have never quite got over John’s death. He was one of those people who made things happen. Who got people together whom he knew would understand each other. Those people are now all over the world, in many different walks of life, many of us will never meet again, but we will always be linked because of our friendship with this magical man.

In his diary entry for 17 January 1979 Peter Hall wrote:

“John Mackendrick that mad unhappy talented writer, whose play Lavender Blue was staged not long ago, committed suicide last night. I am appalled. He was hooked on unhappiness. I never heard him content about anything.”

It is true that John was seldom happy about so many things – most notably his relationships with women – and what he saw as the failure of his play, the theatre’s fault in his opinion, didn’t help matters, but with friends he was the best company. Hall knew one side of John – I can well believe that the two of them never went out on the razzle together – and he was right to be appalled by the news.

Yes, John “knew” and he “knew” for all of us, but he was too fragile a flower and we didn’t know enough to realise this at the time. John Donne wrote, “…No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind…” John was involved with mankind and his death diminished not only me but many others. However, his friendship lives on in my heart and soul.