Robert Hardy’s last performance
Even on his deathbed, Robert Hardy used all the tricks of the acting trade, remembers his daughter Justine Hardy. He wittily teased his doctor, and narrowed his eyes just as he did on stage and screen
When death is allowed to move at its own natural pace, it grants us one final privilege — to decide how we hope to die. And yet the shrill noise of fear can be so loud in the face of death that it is easy for this final, magnanimous gesture to slip past, unnoticed.
Timothy Sydney Robert Hardy, who died last August aged 91, did not miss it. He had a very sharp eye.
He may have been known to most people as an actor, but the richer blood that pumped through him was fuelled by his love of history. He was a master of medieval warfare, most particularly of the longbow. This weapon that created English battle-mastery over the French gave him a juicy reason to enjoy flicking a V. He was, after all, an archer, who delighted in the myth of the V-sign. Before the battle of Agincourt in 1415, there was a supposed rumour that the French would cut off the arrow fingers of any captured English longbowmen, rendering them useless. The V-sign was said to have been flicked at the French by the still lethal and victorious archers.
My father trained his sharp archer’s eye on his own battle with death – his Agincourt – with one lid half-closed to focus on his destiny. He was not pleased to find himself up against a foe that he could no longer outshoot, particularly as he had flung darts so successfully at death’s herald, the ageing process. He had always seemed years younger than his age, fooling us all that he had made some immortal pact with time. When time’s arrows took the high ground, my father knew he had been outmanoeuvred. Yet still he managed to charm the Dark Angel, even at the very end.
As he had learnt from so many of his military heroes, my father devised a strategy of dying entirely on his own terms. If you want to maintain control over your own treatment up to the very end, you have to prove to your doctor
that you are still of sound mind. Dr Goodman was our gatekeeper of the mind. He came to make one of these sound-mind checks the day before my father died. Hearing the good doctor’s voice, my father swam back up from the quiet place where he had been for several hours. His pale blue eyes opened, assessing who had come to disturb him.
There it was again, that slight narrowing of the archer’s eye. It is an expression wholly familiar to the cast, crew and viewers of my father’s films and TV programmes – from Siegfried Farnon in the TV series All Creatures Great and Small (1978-90) to Cornelius Fudge in the Harry Potter films. That minute narrowing of the eyes communicated an entire lexicon, ranging from an unspoken expletive to a schoolmasterly ‘Are you absolutely sure that you want to say what you are about to say?’
The words were written in only the flicker of a lid. It was an expression as known to us, his family, as it has been to the millions who have watched him across the seven decades of his career. The doctor put his head to one side. ‘How are you?’ he asked. ‘How do you think I am?’ It was hard to hear words that could barely surf on the thinning thread of air.
‘Do you understand why I have to ask the questions that I am about to ask you?’ Dr Goodman continued.
My father’s nostrils flickered. The first few questions were as expected: name, date of birth, the date that day. Each was met with a whispered reply. They were basic questions assessing basic function. Then came the test for complex thinking — the indirect question.
‘What’s your favourite university?’ the doctor asked. My father pressed his lips together. ‘Durham!’ The word shot out, stronger than anything that had gone before.
‘I thought you went to Oxford?’ the doctor continued.
‘Magdalen,’ came another clarion answer. The pale eyes were wide now. One hand came from under the sheet to lift the other, the fingers still elegant, even though his hands were made huge by the frailty of his arms; translucent, as though too much light from the summer garden beyond the window might shine right through them. One hand placed the other on the well-known chin.
‘You asked which was my favourite university,’ he said; the words were precise. ‘Which of my doctorates should I choose? Durham!’
It was sharp. Once more, he gave Dr Goodman the archer’s eye. ‘Wonderful city,’ he added. We hovered around the bed, every sense shuddering.
‘Does irony count for mental clarity?’ I asked the doctor. ‘I think so,’ he smiled. ‘Quite right,’ came my father’s fading voice, eyelids lowering, his face softening back into rest.
It was his last performance. It had all the power, wit, intolerance for perceived foolishness, and command that my father had ever given in every other performance. He underlined his legacy that one last time, at the absolute end of his fully lived life.