Haunted by Nigel's memory face to face

''Before our relationship began we each had lived with partners who loved the showbiz of London and all that kind of thing. But neither Nigel nor I was really like that,'' reflects Bentham, who met Hawthorne in 1976 when they were involved in the new Peter Nichols play, Privates on Parade, a bawdy, semi-musical which became an immediate success.

Bentham was the company manager, and Hawthorne's performance as the twitteringly officious Major Flack brought him his first significant reviews in a career which up to that had spanned more than 25 years of largely hapless auditions.

By then, though, he had appeared in Joan Littlewood's seminal Oh What a Lovely War and, despite acrimonious confrontations with the director, Hawthorne came to regard her taxing standards as the most important influence in his life. ''She taught me to be truthful,'' he said. But it was his portrayal of Flack that earned him the first in a haul of

theatrical awards and honours which included a CBE in 1999.

Today, Bentham is still in the raw grip of mourning for the actor who died last Christmas at the age of 72, just two days after he had completed the draft of his autobiography. ''The cancer that had plagued his pancreas for 18 months had recently moved to his lungs and finished the job quickly and with the greatest dignity,'' Bentham recalls. ''No trace of pain, a quiet end in a shaft of winter sunlight.'' At 9.30 on that Boxing Day morning Hawthorne had collapsed in a chair and ''simply ceased to live''.

Initially, out of '' a galloping reluctance'' to talk about himself, Hawthorne had dodged making a decision about whether to accept the publisher's request for a memoir. He was, anyway, about to embark on the role of King Lear, which gave him more than enough reason for stalling. But Bentham remembers that the onset of cancer now provided the catalyst he needed. Suddenly there was a purpose to writing, the desire of a reserved, fastidious man to set things down for peace of mind, but also as a distraction from the physical and mental distress the illness would impose. ''The writing didn't save him, but his doctors were astonished that he lived well beyond the time limit they'd anticipated.''

Bentham and Hawthorne had always discussed their independent work, the actor particularly relying on the company manager for constructive criticism, even if at first he might accept it only under protest. ''For this reason I was determined that I wouldn't read the manuscript until it was finished. I knew that Nigel was very worried that he mightn't write it properly, but I was terrified that if I said something like, 'You need a bit more of this, a little less of that', he would just stop altogether.'' Bentham felt he couldn't risk stirring up any intellectual friction over the book because Hawthorne was so vulnerable at that time. ''And I was desperate for him to keep at it for the sake of therapy.''

Both of them believed that if they managed to bombard the cancer with their own positive mental attitude that would increase the efficacy of the medical treatment, and they would win. But, as Hawthorne ruefully recorded, ''cancer's a great spoilsport,'' and there were many setbacks - jaundice, pneumonia, fluid on the lung. ''I was absolutely determined we were going to beat it,'' says Bentham, ''but there were moments when I felt that the ground was falling away beneath us.''

The tenderness with which he had always looked after Hawthorne is movingly recorded in the book. ''We'll never be rich,'' Hawthorne wrote, ''but we have a watertight relationship which, in a squabbling world, is worth its weight in gold. I didn't ever believe I would have such happiness in life.''

Bentham never doubted Hawthorne's affection and trust but, reticent by nature, the actor rarely articulated his innermost feeling. ''He was very British in that respect, although he must have mentioned his sense of gratitude to other people because they kept telling me about it. But, as he'd never really expressed it in so many words to me, I didn't anticipate that he'd disclose it in the book. And by the time I read the manuscript he was dead, so those passages were tremendously affecting.''

Was Bentham similarly ''British'' in the matter of feelings? ''Less so than Nigel. I'm much more volatile and outgoing. I could sense his affection, there's no question about that, but seeing it in print was overwhelmingly poignant.'' At one point the actor, referring to the death of his former partner, Bruce Palmer, notes that ''there is nothing as lonely as illness'', but one suspects that Bentham, like most carers, came to find his own destiny during Hawthorne's last months lonelier still. ''When Nigel died I offered to help the publishers with the editing because that had always been our intention.

''So this great tome arrived, but, in the circumstances, turning over those pages for the very first time was very surreal, as if I were standing outside my life, suddenly alone and in total silence, looking in on two characters in a play. But I'm terribly proud that he managed to finish it, and one of the things that interests me especially are the memorable things he left out. Nigel did some wonderful work which isn't even mentioned.''

Yet, on reflection, Bentham says this was typical. ''He was never one for the obvious or someone greedy for praise.'' As a result his Straight Face, the title of the autobiography, is not one of those banal trudges through celeb self-

adulation, but the candid journey of an often bruised late-developer whose embedded talent finally broke loose to thumb its nose at all the past rejections.

''He'd been a cleaner, a stage manager, an understudy, a skivvie really, doing the downtrodden jobs the theatre throws at those it doesn't rate. It's probably true that this experience in his early years made him a bit of a plain, dull nerd. As it happened, he became one of those people who curiously gets better looking as they grow older.''

In fact, by the time Hawthorne was entrancing us with the comic brilliance and urbane duplicity of Sir Humphrey Appleby in Yes Minister, the critics regarded him as close to glamorous. It was that role which, on four occasions, would win him the industry's award for best light entertainment performer.

He remembered the 1982 ceremony especially because before the announcement was made a fellow nominee, the virtuoso comedian Stanley Baxter, passed him on the staircase at the Talk of the Town and said: ''I hope you win.'' Hawthorne considered the comment ''the kindest and most generous thing anybody had ever said to me''.

He had been educated in Cape Town at a school run by the Christian Brothers, masters at inducing guilt, and maybe this contributed to his early troubled self-esteem? ''Perhaps,'' muses Bentham, ''but when he came back to Britain people looked on him as South African and at the time the horrors of apartheid were very much in the news, so he felt an outsider here, not part of the club.''

In extreme loneliness Hawthorne embarked on a relationship with Bruce Palmer, an intermittent scenic designer. Emotionally it was disastrous for the actor, but Palmer was possessive and Hawthorne was trapped in this often rancorous liaison for 24 years. In the opinion of many friends his personal and professional luck only changed on meeting Bentham. ''Well, I would like to think it was entirely down to me, but to be honest, I believe it was just a matter of timing, although I did know how to advise in a way that Bruce didn't because he was too wrapped up in himself. Also, I was smack in the middle of theatre management. Getting the best out of people was my whole life.''

Bentham, from a family of lawyers, and Hawthorne, the son of an English doctor who had emigrated with his young family to South Africa, had always relished the quiet, ungaudy life far away from media attention. Shunning London, except for work, they opted for the pastoral serenity of Hertfordshire, Bentham's native county, and spent many years restoring Radwell Grange, a glorious old house, and then establishing a fine garden there from scratch. But the idyll was ruptured with the go-ahead for a motorway service area 300 yards from the demesne. Events took a not unfamiliar course: the village failed in its battle to

oppose the plan, and Bentham and Hawthorne, by now (pounds) 32,000 down in legal fees which they could ill afford, were also obliged to take a financial dive on the sale of the house.

''Even though everyone around was fighting the decision like mad the oil company involved wheeled in their big guns with the backing of the Tory government of the day. So when we knew it was hopeless Nigel and I decided to move to somewhere much more secluded.'' That ''somewhere'' - Bentham is reluctant to publicise the actual location - is still in Hertfordshire and consists of a fifteenth-century house called Fabdens, surrounded by fields and hills, and including in its grounds a small, medieval chapel where Hawthorne would rehearse. But in 1994, about the same time as all that traumatic upheaval, the excitement of Hawthorne's Oscar nomination for the lead role in The Madness of King George was almost destroyed by an ''outing'' rampage conducted by the tabloid press.

With the flagrant disclosure of their relationship Hawthorne and Bentham worried that the world would now look at them with disgust. It didn't. Instead their lives irrevocably changed for the better. Although the press treatment had been crude and invasive, it had liberated them and they no longer felt the need to pretend.

Bentham, gently spoken, modest, and reflective, likes to think of his companion as having the barmy heart of Monsieur Hulot. ''Listening to Nigel trying to open a container of Nurofen would produce tears of joy, as did the sight of a beach umbrella slowly closing around him without his noticing.''

But when it came to editing that manuscript did Bentham feel a fussy, Sir Humphreyish presence hovering over his shoulder? ''I deliberately sat in his chair and I said to myself: 'If anybody can help me now it's got to be you, Nigel'. I didn't rewrite any of it, but I rearranged pieces and cut out the repetition, and because I knew his thinking so well I don't feel he'd be displeased.''

Does he believe in ghosts? Trevor Bentham pauses. ''That's a difficult one but, in a way, yes.'' After all, he has only to glance at any one of the 328 pages in Straight Face to know that Nigel Hawthorne is now enjoying a bit of haunting.

Straight Face, by Nigel Hawthorne. Hodder &

Stoughton, (pounds) 18.99.

the life and times of trevor bentham

l Born: Hertforshire, 1943.

l Education: Merchant Taylor's School, Rickmansworth;

Central School of Speech and Drama, London.

l Career: Major productions worked on include Inadmissable Evidence, Privates on Parade, and a musical version of Anne of Green Gables. Currently working on two commissioned screenplays.

l Highs: meeting Nigel Hawthorne, his partner for

22 years.

l Lows: ''Oh God, right now there seem to be hundreds.''