The dangerous gay 二塁打 life of actor Alan Bates

Alan Bates was one of Britain's most charismatic actors - with rugged good looks that made women adore him. But a new 調書をとる／予約する 明らかにする／漏らすs that this witty and warm-hearted man lived a tormented 二塁打 life, hiding a 一連の gay 関係s. This is our second 排除的 抽出する.

When Alan Bates's staunchly middle-class mother heard that he was planning to marry Victoria 区, a hippy artist and poet from the East End of London, she was so shocked that she dropped her sherry glass on to the patio, where it 粉々にするd into countless fragments.

"My mother and father were not happy about it," says Alan's brother ツバメ. "Their instincts told them that Victoria was not 権利 for Alan.

"My parents' background, values and 見通し on 責任／義務 couldn't have been more different from hers."

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They could probably not have guessed, however, just how wrong for their son his new wife would 証明する to be.

Before his marriage the love life of Alan Bates had been a コンビナート／複合体 one, 伴う／関わるing 激しい 性の 関係s with both men and women. His 決定／判定勝ち（する） to marry Victoria, a friend for several years, was made only when they discovered in 1970 that she was 妊娠している with twins.

"The 推論する／理由s for Alan's marriage are not hard to understand," says the 脚本家 Simon Gray.

"I think he 説得するd himself that he was in love with Victoria, and part of him 手配中の，お尋ね者 that 従来の life of marriage and a family. There was certainly no 疑問 that he had very good 意向s."

Alan's good 意向s were 実験（する）d from the very beginning. に引き続いて the birth of their boys, Tristan and Benedick, Victoria made it （疑いを）晴らす that motherhood and domesticity did not 控訴 her.

She also made 明らかな her contempt for Alan's 事実上の／代理 friends and what she saw as his 特権d, middle-class lifestyle.

"She gave Alan a 堅い time about everything in his life - his work, his friends, everything," says his college friend Ian White. "She was just 深く，強烈に, 深く，強烈に unpleasant to him."

When the babies were about a year old, Victoria told a friend: "Alan has to learn that just because he's an actor, he gets no special 特権s.

"He has to learn to change the nappies and care for the babies."

He duly became a familiar sight on the theatrical scene, carrying around his 幼児 sons in a large basket.

A posse of nannies, cleaners and housekeepers was 雇うd to help Victoria when he wasn't 利用できる, but 要点説明 them on what they were supposed to be doing appeared 完全に beyond her.

Then, when the twins were two, she decided it was unacceptably indulgent to 雇う 雇うd help, and 解雇する／砲火／射撃d them all.

She did not, however, 請け負う the きれいにする and cooking herself beyond an almost imperceptible 最小限. Life at the family home in Hampstead started to become somewhat squalid: the laundry piled up, the fridge was 十分な of stale food and leftovers, the bathroom was left untended.

"We women were still in the depths of our hippiedom in the 早期に 1970s, with our long dresses, our 利益／興味 in everything 代案／選択肢, our obsession with astrology, pyramids, 有機の food, macrobiotics and so 前へ／外へ," says Elizabeth 認める, a の近くに friend.

"No one embraced it all more than Vicky. When I visited her, she would be sitting with bowls of dirty 着せる／賦与するs in bucketsful of water - she didn't believe in soap. For やめる a while, she fed the boys nothing but beans, and they were 哀れな, just 哀れな."

Niema Ash, another 隣人, 解任するd: "The house was a mess, and her fads about eating were astonishing. She once went to a food guru, and he said, 'If you eat an onion, you have to eat the 肌s!' More than once, the boys were fed carrots for a week. When they （機の）カム over to our house, they were so happy just for a bowl of soup."

Many of the couple's friends felt that Victoria's strange behaviour stemmed from her own 哀れな childhood. She spent several years in an orphanage when her parents could not afford to 料金d or 着せる／賦与する her, and had also, she confided to Alan, been sexually 乱用d by her father.

The result was irremediable insecurity and a 深い 不信 of affection - which was, of course, 正確に／まさに what she needed. After no more than two years the Bates marriage began to unravel.

Victoria indulged in a 一連の 連絡事務s - with, の中で others, a 作曲家, a 脚本家, an architect and a Scandinavian painter - while in 1973 （機の）カム Alan's first serious extramarital 事件／事情／状勢 with another man.

His new partner was Nickolas Grace, a fellow actor in a 生産／産物 of Shakespeare's The Taming Of The Shrew with the 王室の Shakespeare Company.

Alan and Nickolas, who was 25, became in the latter's words "very の近くに and very loving, in an 激しい 事件／事情／状勢 that was one of the most important 関係s of my life".

So の近くに were they that Nickolas even became a good friend to Victoria and the children.

But for Alan, the 関係 brought to the surface all his 恐れるs that the secret 味方する of his life would be discovered and made public - an 苦悩 that had tormented him during the ten years he had lived with the actor Peter Wyngarde in the Sixties.

As he had with previous male lovers, he 否定するd to Nickolas that he was truly homosexual.

"In a sense there were two Alans," says Nickolas. "One was 解放する／自由な and happy, and at such times he took me to 会合，会う his family in Derby, where we had lovely 週末s. But at other times he was reserved and 脅すd, whispering to me, 'Don't say this...don't say that...'"

If they travelled by car together, "he made me 嘘（をつく） 負かす／撃墜する in the 支援する - he didn' t want me to be seen with him. That was an 指示，表示する物 of the 恐れる that he had".

It was the 全世界の／万国共通の opinion of those who knew him that Alan was a 会社／堅い, loyal and unwavering friend to a remarkable array of men and women. But he was not made for marriage - nor perhaps for any 永久の intimacy.

"The minute someone got too の近くに to him, he ran and the 関係 ended," said Arthur Laurents, a long-standing friend.

When the 必然的な 分裂（する） with Nickolas （機の）カム, it was 残虐な. "It's been very nice to have known you," Alan told him with astonishing coolness one day, "and I'm sure I'll see you around in London."

He spoke as if they had been polite 同僚s on a 事業／計画（する）, or fellow travellers on a train 旅行. It took Nickolas months to 回復する.

一方／合間, Victoria's behaviour was becoming ますます bizarre. Nickolas tells the story of how, when he was once 招待するd to join her and Alan for supper with a group of theatre friends, she はうd beneath the dining （米）棚上げする／（英）提議する and remained there for the 残り／休憩（する） of the evening.

To 対処する with this, everyone's 事実上の／代理 abilities were 実験（する）d to the 最大の. Alan confided to another friend, the comedian Marty Feldman, that Victoria was "運動ing him mad".

The couple's son Benedick 解任するs: "When my mother was happy, life was 承認する. But then there began a long, slow 悪化／低下 and even her physical 外見 拒絶する／低下するd."

It is impossible to 非難する the 崩壊（する） of the marriage on one 味方する or the other - either to fault Victoria's pathetic self-absorption, which was certainly neurotic, or to criticise Alan's 拒絶 to 直面する the consequences of his other かかわり合いs, both professional and romantic.

"I felt sorry for Victoria," said Arthur Laurents. "I feel that gay men who marry are terribly 不公平な to women. I loved Alan dearly, and our friendship lasted 40 years, but いつかs he didn't think what he was doing. It was really very 不公平な."

But other frie nds believe that Alan's 治療 of Victoria could not have been kinder. "He was really one of the finest, most gentle and generous people I've ever met," says Niema Ash.

"I often marvelled at the 患者 way he dealt with Victoria's unbridled unconventionality, her wild roughshod manner, her 不信 of his fellow actors, her disdain for what she considered their indulged, egoinflated lives, her exasperating 原則s, her loathing of what she considered middle-class pampering."

By 1976, Victoria's unhappiness had 設立する a new 表現: she was tormenting and teasing Alan mercilessly. Instead of 反対するing her attacks with その上の 小競り合いs, he chose 退却／保養地 and decided to move 支援する to a house in St John's 支持を得ようと努めるd where he had lived some years 以前. For the boys, life took a 際立った turn for the worse.

"It was a very mean and frugal life for my brother and me," says Benedick. "We were put on bizarre diets and she wouldn't have a working television.

"The house 悪化するd - things were broken and never mended, she didn't wash our 着せる／賦与するs. She wouldn't have central heating, and I remember having to go to bed in a sleeping 捕らえる、獲得する, my fingers shaking with 冷淡な in the winter. It was a very strange way to live."

When Alan was not travelling the twins spent 週末s with him, （警察の）手入れ，急襲ing his fridge out of sheer ravenous hunger.

"From the time Tristan and I were about nine," said Benedick, "life with our mother became a constant, 大規模な 当惑 that we kept like some 肉親，親類d of shameful secret. My brother and I often asked one another, 'Has Mum spoken to you this week?' It was that bad.

"いつかs we 設立する the telephone wrapped in a duvet or a carpet, because she said she didn't feel like 審理，公聴会 it （犯罪の）一味. And there was no food in the fridge - we were living like feral children in an attic.

"When our school friends （機の）カム 一連の会議、交渉／完成する, she embarrassed us in 前線 of them - she made fun of us and 侮辱d them. Wh en she dropped in at Alan's when we were there, she was dressed like a homeless person, and she sat at the （米）棚上げする／（英）提議する in total silence and started 令状ing in a notebook.

"If someone 演説（する）／住所d her and said something nice, she looked at them and said nothing. Or she might say, 'Oh, shut up - you are such a bore, just shut up!'"

In 1982, when the boys were 12, 事柄s （機の）カム to a 長，率いる when they knocked at Alan's door and asked to live with him. "Finally, he went into the house and saw how bad everything was," says Benedick. "Whether he had decided earlier to turn a blind 注目する，もくろむ to our neglect, I don't know."

With a handsome income from a film 役割 that year, Alan bought the coach house next to his home and 変えるd it for the boys. He arranged for staff to cook and clean for them, and 受託するd only 申し込む／申し出s of work that did not take him far from home.

"At last we could 招待する friends home from school without 存在 embarrassed," says Benedick.

As a welcome 救済 from his 国内の 騒動, Alan was now in the 中央 of an 激しい, two-year romance with the British 人物／姿／数字 スケートをする人 John Curry.

Celebrated for 連合させるing ballet and modern dance with intricate 運動競技のs on ice, Curry had won the Olympic and World 選手権s in 1976 and had 設立するd a 小旅行するing company that thrilled audiences in Europe and America.

A German newspaper 原因（となる）d a 簡潔な／要約する スキャンダル by 明らかにする／漏らすing Curry's homosexuality in 1976, but he ignored the publicity and 追求するd his career and his lovers with joyful abandon.

"It was one of Alan's most serious 関係s," 解任するd the actor's friend Conrad 修道士, "but there was a moment when John 公然と 明らかにする／漏らすd that he had really fallen for Alan.

"With that, it was over: 布告するing yourself was the one thing you could not do with him. Alan couldn't 支える emotional 社債s with lovers: he always saw them as unwelcome entanglements."

And there was another 複雑化 that overlapped the Curr y 事件／事情／状勢 - a new love that Alan could neither ignore nor blithely 終結させる, and one that 結局 耐えるd longer than any other.

In 1982 he had been introduced at a party to a young artist 26 years his junior 指名するd Gerard Hastings, at that time just 22. The attraction was 即座の.

At first Alan and Gerard met only 断続的に. "He （機の）カム to my flat and always brought a 瓶／封じ込める of シャンペン酒 and some cheesecake, which he loved," says Gerard. "I made lunch, and we spent the afternoon together."

They continued to 会合，会う in a rented room 近づく Alan's home until finally Gerard moved in. But it was a constant source of 悔いる to Gerard that Alan never felt able to tell his sons the truth about the 関係, even though they had guessed it.

As the months passed, Gerard became, says Ben, a member of the family, helping the twins with their homework, playing games with them - and even 結局 giving them his old car. His 激しい romance with their father would 耐える for five years.

Gerard learned that although Alan had dear women friends, they were not 反対するs of his 性の 願望（する）. "He 高く評価する／（相場などが）上がるd women for companionship and men for 性の fulfilment," says Gerard. "His erotic fantasies おもに 伴う／関わるd men - he called attractive young men 'haunches of venison', for example.

"Yet いつかs, oddly, he seemed to feel very uncomfortable about his sexuality, and felt it necessary to 再確認する his masculinity, or his idea of masculinity. He 現実に turned to me one day and said, 'Of course, you know I'm not gay.'

"By this, I don't think he meant that he was bisexual, but that he did not consider his homosexual 傾向s as homosexual per se, just as 性の escapades. He hated 存在 categorised - hated it. As a result, Alan could be very hypocritical about his sexuality, and 結局 this didn't help us."

And what of the boys' reaction to Gerard? "At first we never thought much about Alan's intimate life," said Ben. "When I was very young, I 否定するd it - it was too much for me to 吸収する.

"But then, one of my first girlfriends asked me how long my Dad had been with this one man. I replied that I had never talked to anyone about it before.

"It was a big 救済 to speak with her, and to laugh off my 苦悩 and realise that of course my father could do whatever he 手配中の，お尋ね者. The fact is that Gerard was a good friend to Tris and me."

By their late teens both boys, having 相続するd their parents' good looks, had been approached by a modelling 機関 and were 交渉するing lucrative work in the fashion 産業. It was then that 悲劇 struck.

After he'd left school Tristan had entered a わずかに wild 段階, drinking to 超過 and 落ちるing in with a （人が）群がる that routinely indulged in hard 麻薬s; Ben, on the other 手渡す, preferred a few 静かな drinks in the evening with friends.

During the end of the summer in 1989, the modelling 機関 sent the twins to Tokyo for some fashion shoots, setting them up in flats where they made new friends easily.

Six months later, on the morning of Friday, January 12, 1990, Tristan went for inoculations in the Japanese 資本／首都 against malaria, コレラ and other 熱帯の 病気s in 前進する of some modelling work in South-East Asia.

That evening he and Ben met others at a 妨げる／法廷，弁護士業, where word went 一連の会議、交渉／完成する that ヘロイン was 利用できる. Tristan slipped away, while Ben returned to his apartment.

"Tristan's room-mate rang me on Saturday morning, the 13th, to say he had not come home on Friday night," Ben 解任するd. "That was very unusual for him, but we told ourselves that Tris was probably with a new girlfriend. By Sunday morning there was still no word, and we knew something was definitely wrong."

The Tokyo police then 知らせるd Ben that they had 設立する the 団体／死体 of a young Caucasian male in a public lavatory. It was Tristan.

In London, Alan and Gerard were watching ビデオテープs of one of his TV series, The 市長 Of Casterbridge, when the telephone rang. Gerard answered and 手渡すd the receiver to Alan.

"A moment later," Gerard 解任するd, "Alan just seemed to go mad - he became hysterical." Ben, at the other end of the line, "could hear him going to pieces".

Alan broke the news to Victoria and together they travelled to Tokyo to retrieve the 団体／死体. "It was 一般に known at the time", said Alan's friend Michael Linnit, "that Tristan's death was 原因（となる）d by 麻薬 乱用.

"Alan never verbalised it and his way of 対処するing was to 封鎖する it. We 手配中の，お尋ね者 only to bring him 慰安 - and if silence on the 原因（となる） of death helped him, then that was 罰金 with the 残り／休憩（する） of us.

"During those 早期に months of 1990 he was like a pendulum - breaking out in heart-wrenching sobs, then 申し込む／申し出ing strength and 慰安 to others, then swinging 支援する into 広大な／多数の／重要な depths of 悲惨."

"When Alan （機の）カム 支援する from Tokyo," said Felicity Kendal, "he seemed to have 老年の 20 years." Victoria, for her part, stepped even その上の 支援する from reality than usual.

"Everything's going to be all 権利," she told Alan, as they 用意が出来ている for the 記念の service. "All we have to do is get him home, keep his 団体／死体 warm, and he'll 結局 come 一連の会議、交渉／完成する - he'll come 権利 支援する to life."

Alan could find no 返答 to this chillingly heartbreaking 声明.

"Tristan's death was the most hideous form of 爆撃する-shock I can imagine,2 Alan said later. "I suppose I was lucky - I had him for 20 years. He was my gift. . . The 苦痛 of his loss will never leave me."

It is no exaggeration to 明言する／公表する that something died for ever in Alan Bates that January of 1990. "I don't 推定する／予想する to get over it," he said. "I don't even want to. People ask, 'How do you 対処する?' All I can say is that you do."

From that day until his death in 2003 Alan had to 対処する with an enormous 重荷（を負わせる） of 犯罪 for the 運命／宿命 of his son, which he felt was the result of his failed marriage, his devotion to his career, and his 拒絶 to 認める the long period of the boys' wretched 存在 with their mother.

As ever, he 設立する 避難 in 事実上の／代理. "After Tristan died," 解任するd Alan's brother ツバメ, "Alan became obsessed with working 絶えず. He tried to lose himself in work as a way of 対処するing with the 悲劇."

It would take every ounce of his personal courage, and the love of a beautiful actress who had herself lost an adored son, to help him 再構築する his 粉々にするd life.

? Abridged 抽出する from さもなければ Engaged: The Life Of Alan Bates by Donald Spoto published by Hutchinson on June 7 at £18.99. To order a copy for £17.10 (含むing postage and 一括ing) call 0870 161 0870.