I miss having a man but only if he has a toolkit says Julia Sawalha
March 28th, 2008, 4:14 pm Hobbies Ideas
Wendy was hardly a name at all before the publication of Peter Pan, and Darren
pretty much unheard of in Britain until the American sitcom Bewitched
introduced us to the husband of the nose-wiggling Samantha. Maybe we should
now brace ourselves for a generation of girls named Dorcas. It may not be
the prettiest of names, but Julia Sawalha’s portrayal of Dorcas Lane has
surely won many hearts among the six million people who have been watching
Lark Rise to Candleford over the past 11 weeks. Easter Day sees the final
instalment when - if something so gentle permits such a crude summary - it
is crunch time for the postmistress. Will Dorcas sell up and flee Candleford
for Mr Delafield, her schoolmaster suitor? Or will she stick around and
continue mooning after the local squire, Sir Timothy? It’s not a cliffhanger
in the way that 24 does cliffhangers, but I really want to find out.
I tell Sawalha that although at first I found the series slow, I have become
fascinated by the Timothy-Dorcas relationship. Sawalha, who believes in some
unlikely things but not the sincerity of journalists, looks sceptical. Do
you think? It’s the same old thing, though. I’ve seen it so many times in so
many programmes, that will they, won’t they? But the dilemma is so much of
its (the Victorian) age: Dorcas wasting her life, as women used to, on a man
she will never possess. But she doesn’t have to waste her life! I kind of
had a bit of trouble with it. Being a modern woman, you look at the pros and
cons and I don’t think I’ve ever been so deeply in love where I would rather
be desperate and alone. I couldn’t relate to that at all. It was really
hard. It sounds as if the one person not in love with Dorcas is the actor
who plays her.
Did she want to shake Dorcas by the shoulders and tell her to wake up? Well,
no, but there were times I worried that I’d come across too sickly sweet and
too perfect. So there were some scenes where I said to the director, %26lsquo;I’ve
decided Dorcas is premenstrual in this scene’. The women must have had
premenstrual tension, you know.
Whatever Sawalha’s reservations, Dorcas has laid to rest the ghost of Saffy,
Edina Monsoon’s bossy daughter, whom she first played 15 years ago. People
come up to her to say they love Dorcas without even mentioning Absolutely
Fabulous. But if Edina’s plain, puritanical daughter was nothing like the
much-lusted-after twentysomething Sawalha, nor does Dorcas Lane much
resemble her today. With Sawalha now living in the West Country, you could
say that they both prefer rural to city life, but there all similarity ends.
Dorcas dresses with Civil Service propriety; Sawalha, sharing afternoon
coffee with me in a hotel in Bath, is curvaceous in a Cath Kidston tea
dress. Dorcas enunciates like an alumnus of Cheltenham Ladies’ College;
Sawalha even larfs in sarf Londonese. And while Dorcas is single by
circumstance, Sawalha, at 39, appears to have given up on men and children.
I think I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that it’s not going to
happen. I’m single and I think that by the time I met someone - if I were
ever to meet the right person, which I don’t think I will, because I’m too
fussy - my biological clock means that it will be too late. There are times
when I think, %26lsquo;Oh, what a shame’, but I don’t think that’s my path in this
life. I don’t know what my path is, but I’m happy being an auntie.
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