“Sometimes I wish I was ordinary like you. Dead ordinary.”

BASED ON AN INTERVIEW WITH HELEN GROSVENOR (2022)

Why did I not become more involved in the search for my darling Christopher in 1996? To a very large extent that is no-one’s business but my own. Moi tout seul. But I will tell you, nevertheless.

Truly, I became tired of living my life in the public eye. I had to account for myself and my family on so many different occasions – good and bad – ‘paradis et enfer’. And because of my gifts – ‘ma donée’ as Belmondo called it - people have expected me to give them all the answers to the various mysteries of their lives and provide solace in the face of difficult news.

But I’ve had the most miniscule of thanks or praise for my troubles in that regard. Looking back, I sometimes wonder what it was all for. When I was honest and open about my premonition of Peter’s death, the press simply mocked me as ‘Mystic Helen’. “The fake that launched a thousand quips” was one headline. Amusing, but also hurtful. Nobody wanted to take me seriously.

Before that, I had always taken a lot of time out of my busy schedule to help the authorities with events that were mysterious to them in some way, in particular regarding the deaths of men I was familiar with, such as Pasolini and Belovice. No doubt you can dig up any number of statements I made at the time that were intended to be helpful, but instead were met with ridicule. All the good it did for me to talk of the men in my dreams!  There was zero chance of any European funding for my projects after that. Gangsters, all of them.

And, of course, people like to associate me with the first time Christopher went on one of his wanders in 1974.  

All those films and television programmes. All those theatre performances, and they remember me for this.

I did what any mother would have done. I did everything in my power to galvanise the authorities and maintain strong press interest in finding Christopher as quickly as possible.

And it worked – as publicity often works. He was back with us within three days, completely unharmed. Sain et sauf.

But, again, I was painted as a witch. People want to say I was callous because we only delayed filming on ‘Queen of Scots’ for a few days. But that was the business back then. The show had to go on. Important people were in danger of losing money - the kind of people who do not like losing money.

So perhaps you can understand why I have become more muted in recent years. I still do have dreams and visions, but I have decided not to share them ouvertement. Bien sûr, if I felt someone was in danger, I would speak up, naturally. But who would believe me these days?

In the case of Christopher in his last wander I knew very well that there would be no funeral, so I did not fear for him in that regard. And to be very honest, I had become accustomed to Christopher’s disappearances. They were a regular occurrence in our lives.  Every few years he would take off. That was just how he was. A wanderer. You can ascribe something psychological or Freudian to it if you will, but I tend not to look too deep when it comes to people’s behaviour. Peter’s behaviour, for example, has been analysed far too much to my mind – the absurdité of his sleeping and all that junk. He was what he was.

In Christopher’s case I had every confidence his ‘96 disappearance was very much like all the others – his way of coping with stress and rejection. Not unlike Peter’s facility to absent himself whenever the going got tough – there’s an explanation for his sleeping if you want one. He was a coward!

So no, I had no need to speak out. On top of that, I think it was clear to everyone since Peter’s death in 1990 that Isabella was beyond keen to play the leading role in family affairs. While this may have have been a source of difference between us in the past, there came a point where I was more than happy to give up and let her take the lead.

There comes a time of life when the baton has to be passed over to the next generation. And it isn’t a question of whether they’ve developed the necessary competence or charisma to justify taking over. Time marches on and the young just do take over from the old. I have had to accept that.

Nobody really wants to know what I think or feel anymore. Certainly, nobody wants to hear about my dreams, my visions of the future. Least of all my children. Christopher, I believe, is very much still out there and has decided not to make contact with me, not even in my dreams. Isabelle is at an age where she deserves to handle the shocks and ambushes of life in her own way. I try not to look at the future with her anymore. Chiefly because there isn’t one.

I don’t wish to be gloomy. But the end has to be recognised when it shows itself. But don’t expect me to speak about that any more. Ç'est ça. My dreams are at last entirely my own.

Biographer’s note

Helen Grosvenor fails to mention the first time the world came to know of her as a person with second-sight. It was destined to have consequences for how the world would see her from thereon in, and may have played a part in her reticence regarding premonitions in later life.

In the 1966 film ‘Autumn Séance’, she played Myra Stanley, a professional medium who becomes obsessed with helping the police find a missing child, only to find that her husband has come under suspicion for the kidnapping.*

The plotline of the film chimed in powerfully with the big news story of the day, the notorious Manchester Murders.

Three children - Stephen Case (12), Mark McCargill (10) and Susan Begshire (9) - had all gone missing in the months before ‘Autumn Séance was released. The police had failed to arrest anyone for their abduction (or worse), but had connected the cases, citing a series of sightings of a Blue Vauxhall Victor at places where the children were last seen, as well as similarities in the way each child had been spirited away.

It would have been easy for the producers of ‘Autumn Séance’ to let the film speak for itself. Instead, posters and promotions for the movie included references to ‘an evil amongst us’ and ‘the spine-tingling search for a missing child’.  

Grosvenor was actively encouraged in promotional interviews to draw parallels between the film and events in Manchester. Perhaps emboldened by the positive critical reaction to her performance (or had vestiges of Myra, her character, remained fresh within her after an arduous and immersive shooting schedule?), Grosvenor went a lot further than simply commenting on the Manchester Murders. She spoke for the first time in public about her ability to dream about events that would happen in the future, and went as far as to claim she could tune into the life spirit of particular individuals.

“I have had these powers since I was a little girl,” she told the Daily Express. “I’ve never really talked about it before, but this film has given me the confidence to speak out. And now I feel there’s a chance to put my gifts to very good use. I feel sure I might be able to help in locating these poor children. I sense I can perhaps tune into them spiritually and have them tell us where they are and what happened to them.”

“No, I’m not saying they’re alive or dead,” she went on. “I’m just saying I might be able to help the families and the police find out where they are, where they’re being held and exactly who it is who has taken them… if indeed they have been taken.”

The Manchester and Salford Police were understandably sceptical about this statement from Helen but felt obliged to follow it up, in order to keep the case in the news and encourage new witnesses to come forward.

Grosvenor gave at least two interviews to the police, and also met with the families of the missing children. It is said she even conducted a controlled ‘sleep séance’ that led to the identification of two separate locations where Helen believed  the children might be. Both of these were investigated by the police to no avail.

As time went by, Helen’s pronouncements on the Manchester Murders lost favour with the newspapers and the general public. The more she asserted her desire to help and to have received more visions from the beyond, the more people considered her to be ghoulish and cranky, and suspected her of using the tragedy simply to boost her own film work.

When the arrests came of the two people who were eventually charged with three counts of murder, Grosvenor was made to look foolish indeed. None of what she had predicted matched up with the testimony of the killers, and the bodies of the three children were recovered in locations far from where she had predicted.

Some positive press came later in 1966 with the return of Peter Shure from Hollywood, seemingly to play happy families. But this too quickly ended in disaster. Peter walked out in early 1967 when Helen was already pregnant with Christopher. As one particularly acerbic showbiz columnist wrote at that time: “She certainly didn’t see that coming."

*Initially, the role of her hen-pecked husband was to be played by Grosvenor’s real-life spouse Peter Shure, in a vague attempt to mimic, in a low-budget way, the screen chemistry Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Letters written by the director Bryan Ford in 1964, however, make it pretty clear the role was always going to go to Richard Attenborough, much to Shure’s chagrin.