Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life

22. Comeback

271 22 Comeback I was an idiot, a complete idiot. Like an enormous pink cabbage. —Patricia Neal, New York (1967) As 1965 drew to a close, Patricia still could not communicate clearly, and she continued to wear the metal brace and occasionally the eye patch. But her path to recovery took a new and encouraging turn when she met Valerie Eaton Griffith, who lived about a mile from Gipsy House. Griffith was born in 1924 and had enlisted in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women’s branch of the British army, at the age of seventeen. She was a tennis player and worked as manager of an Elizabeth Arden salon in London before a thyroid operation left her with a limp in her right leg. She had returned to her father’s home and was not working when Patricia Kirwan suggested that it might be of benefit to both Patricia and Valerie to work together.1 Valerie met the Dahls at their home shortly after Lucy’s birth. When Valerie first walked through their door at Gipsy House, Patricia thought, “She is the one.”2 Valerie recalled, “When I first went to work with Pat we had a joke—Pat couldn’t talk and I couldn’t walk.”3 Valerie remembered that one of the first things Patricia ever told her was, “My mind is gone.”4 Valerie knew that was not true. Roald dropped Patricia off at Grimm’s Hill, the Griffith home, as he took the children to school each day. Together the two women devised methods of rehabilitation that helped them both. Sometimes Valerie’s father, Eaton, and sister Daphne would join Valerie, and the three would play card games and do puzzles with Patricia, being careful not to overlap their conversation so that she could follow what was being said and join in. Valerie’s methods of Facing page: Patricia Neal, 1967. From the author’s collection. Shearer฀book.indb฀฀฀271 3/16/2006฀฀฀12:17:16฀PM 272 Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life rehabilitation were truly improvised, yet they seemed to work. Both Patricia and Roald were impressed by her dedication and application, and she and Patricia soon became good friends. Valerie said Dahl told her, “She has got to be stimulated a lot each day and every day. And that is the only way, if there is any.” She added, “I recall Patricia’s enormous interest in other people—she was genuinely interested.” Regarding her initial work with Patricia, Valerie concluded that the hardest thing she had to do was “getting her sad eyes to focus.”5 The villagers of Great Missenden gave occasional interviews to the press regarding Patricia’s improving condition. Mrs. Wilkin, owner of the village’s Fabella Boutique, said, “She began to make fantastic progress. She became— as she is now—amazingly cheerful, quite chatty, and smiling. She began to come into the shop once in a while to buy things for her girls—her maids.”6 The press was told that Patricia developed a habit of picking up trash she found along the streets of the town, and that the villagers called her the “town sweeper” and told her it wasn’t really necessary she do that.7 In January 1966, BBC television broadcast an interview with Roald and Patricia from their home. Roald wanted Patricia to face the camera and regain her confidence. This would be the first time both would talk about Patricia ’s stroke and recovery to the world together via television. Speaking slowly and hesitantly, Patricia said, “It is very good to be alive, I think. But I am not sure. But I am alive, and I must just wait for things to happen to me, and I hope they will happen.”8 Recapping their years of tragedy, the two spoke candidly . Dahl mentioned his work with the development of the Wade-Dahl-Till shunt. They talked about Patricia’s illness and recovery, and as she walked away from the camera in the final shot, the camera lingered on her until she was out of sight. “It was an honest interview with a woman who doesn’t know how to be anything but honest,” wrote one magazine writer.9 Within hours of the broadcast, flowers and cards started arriving at Gipsy House, and the telephone rang continuously as friends, fellow actors, and well-wishers sent their love. One of the many thousands of cards that Patricia received was from Gary...