I met Vaughan in 1970 at high school in Swindon. He learnt to smoke in my mum’s front room and took me to school and back in a little blue mini. We thought we were really sophisticated: the bee’s knees. Vaughan was a song and dance man, very glamourous and flamboyant. Together we had great fun doing amateur theatrical shows at the Wyvern Theatre.

Growing up’s hard, whatever era you grow up in, but Vaughan always seemed open and comfortable with his sexuality in a way that most straight people I knew weren’t. It was just who he was. I had deep respect for that. Vaughan had a hard time at school, bullied by other students, but he couldn’t give a toss. He’d pull up his shoulders, throw back his lustrous hair and glide on through his day. He was a stoic who always showed great presence, dignity, and strength.

  Vaughan was estranged from his mother, and his father had died when he was young. He adopted other people’s parents and they adopted him. That’s how Vaughan got through his teenage years: he had lots of parents.

I went to Dartington to do a theatre degree and Vaughan went to London. My mother moved, so home wasn’t Swindon anymore and I lost touch with him for a few years. After my degree I was doing teaching practice in Birmingham. The Head of Drama said, ‘Must dash, I’ve got a rehearsal for Little Shop of Horrors and we’re being helped by somebody from Platypus Theatre Company. His name’s Vaughan.’

So, by strange coincidence, we met each other again. He’d blossomed. He’d done community theatre at Rose Bruford and found his feet as a communicator. Vaughan was in a cabaret act called The Insinuendos. As a performer he could manipulate an audience in the best ways. He was outgoing, witty and incredibly charismatic. But he could also be quiet and contemplative. I loved both sides of him. From teaching in Suffolk, I’d go up to London for the weekend. We’d go somewhere rather camp, have an outrageous time, then I’d stagger back by train on Sunday night and be fresh in the classroom on Monday morning. During the glory years before he was ill, it was amazing.

We didn’t talk about HIV. I don’t know if he was terrified at the prospect of becoming positive because he didn’t speak of it. As my best friend, I never thought of saying to him, you are going to be careful aren’t you? He worked in The Vauxhall Tavern, Zipper in Camden, and he must’ve seen it pretty much all day every day. Though he was a very beautiful, sexually active, young gay man, I just assumed it wouldn’t happen to him. Yet he was the first of our friendship group to become positive and die of AIDS.

Spending Christmases together was our routine. One year he came to a cottage we’d rented and clearly had pneumonia. He was shivering in the corner, coughing, couldn’t eat, had lost a load of weight, but was in denial. I said, ‘Have you seen the doctor, Vaughan, you don’t seem very well, mate?’
‘No, I’ll go when I get back to London.’

I thought he was probably positive.

I visited in the spring of 1987. He was dragging himself around the flat and didn’t look well at all. I was talking about daffodils being out when he said, ‘I’ve been to the doctor and I have a positive diagnosis.’

‘Do you know how it happened?’

‘Oh, the obvious way, you know,’ and we laughed.

‘I think it was one night in Berlin,’ he said, and we never spoke of it again.

We looked at each other for a minute and he said, ‘Come on, let’s clean the kitchen.’

So that’s what we did. He was intensely private and didn’t want a fuss, but I suspect he had full blown AIDS at the time he was given his HIV diagnosis.  He had a couple of stays at The Lighthouse before he was hospitalised on Broderip Ward. Three weeks before he died he had a brain infection and ran away from the Middlesex with two chest drains. Raging with infection and in a very altered state, he managed to persuade a taxi driver to get him to Liverpool Street Station where he caught a train to a town in Norfolk near where his brother lived, then rang me. 

‘Gill, Can you come and get me?’

The hospital had been on the phone to me, so I knew he’d run away. I jumped in my little Renault 5 with my husband and made the long journey. I took one look at Vaughan and part of me broke.

His clothes were on inside out. He had bits of wool and string tied in circles around him, and a tape measure. Things to ‘keep him safe’. His mind was disturbed.

He said, ‘Can you take these chest drains out?’

‘No, we need to get you to a hospital.’

We got him into the car and drove to Bury St Edmunds. I started to tell white lies to reassure him.

‘I know people who work here, they’ll help you. They won’t do anything you don’t want them to do.’

He insisted on walking round the hospital building in a complete circle because it was part of his routine to keep himself safe.

Inside, he said, ‘My name is Michael.’

Clearly the most important thing was that we got him into the hospital and started to deal with his acute situation. I knew all his medical records were on Broderip Ward where he was Vaughan but he wouldn’t let me give them any information.

He said, ‘Don’t speak, don’t speak.’

Eventually they made him clean and comfortable, took bloods. Meanwhile. I crawled on my hands and knees with a piece of paper that read: This man is Vaughan Michael Williams and he’s run away from the Middlesex. Ring them.

It was secretive and awful, but these were exceptional circumstances.

They explained that they couldn’t treat him here because it was a communicable disease and no isolation unit was available. ‘You’re going to have to go to Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge.’ There was no ambulance because of the strikes.

He was furious with me because he suspected I’d given his name away, and getting a little bit violent. But I couldn’t not take him. We got into my car and drove along the A14, Vaughan behaving unpredictably while my husband was in the back learning forward to make sure he didn’t grab the steering wheel.

It’s one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever had to do.

When Addenbrooke’s admitted him, we were given a room overnight to be nearby.

The next morning he seemed calm.

‘I’m really pleased that you’re looking better. Your fever has gone down.’ I held his hand.

Suddenly, he ripped the drip needle out of his arm and tried to stab me with it.

‘I’ve got a health virus and I love you. I want you to have the health virus too.’ I managed to get out of the room, slam the door, and shout, ‘Help!’

The nursing team put me in the sister’s office. But Vaughan had managed to get himself out of the room, and was running up and down the corridor trying to find me. They had to lock me in.

I realised I couldn’t help him without putting myself in danger. It was hellish.

They managed to get a car for him back to London.

He never spoke again, he stopped talking entirely. We don’t know whether he chose not to talk, elective mutism, or whether he had thrush in his throat and couldn’t, but it lasted until he died. If the Angel Gabriel had walked in the room and asked him to talk he wouldn’t have. He was very stubborn. That’s what kept him going I think, for as long as he did.

I returned to Suffolk, but quickly made the decision that I needed to be with him. He was ill. He had no choice. The last thing he would want to do is push me away. I forgave him, of course. He was so depleted by the time they got him back. It was clearly end-stage time. He was no longer trying to hurt me.

I don’t know who it was contacted his mum but a week before he died, she came. I guess her other sons had prepared her for what they would see when they arrived. He just moved over in the bed and she lay down next to him, holding him. It seemed the most natural thing in the world, like they hadn’t been apart. Things didn’t need to be said. She was his mum. It was heart-wrenchingly beautiful and poignant. We left the room and left them to their time together.

He let us look after him for the last few days but it was a traumatic, awful experience. It wasn’t a beautiful and gentle decline into passing away: it was an ugly, tortured and desperate battle. If you think about that being replicated in hospitals round the country, what people went through to in order to support their loved ones in those times, it’s quite extraordinary. But I’m glad we had that time to reunite.

On his last night he made it clear to us that he’d like a party of some kind, albeit a very sedate and docile one. We legged it down to the chapel and stole candles. I’m an atheist so I don’t think I’ll get punished but my Christian friends might get it on the day of judgement. We took them into his room and set them up. It was lovely. We arranged a rolling programme of visitors to come while making sure that he wasn’t overloaded. People would wait outside, go to the pub, come back. I went home to get some sleep.

He died the next morning. I got there in time. His final hour was very calm and peaceful. Broderip Ward were fantastic, many years ahead of their time in terms of end-stage care. Hi passing was well-managed and he didn’t struggle in the last 24 hours. He got weaker and sleepier, less aware of his surroundings, and slipped away.
We decided we’d make a quilt panel for him, something a lot of people did at the time. We had to find things that we could use as stimulus and inspiration. It felt like quite a natural thing to do and we had a great time; we got together and drank wine and made the quilt. There was his name, some of a jumper he’d knitted which was part of his Insinuendos costume, a representation of his distinctive Victorian teapot, an appliquéd plant, beautifully made. The border was made out of two of his shirts; that was my job. Two contrasting shirts, ying and yang, something flamboyant, something very quiet. We were pleased with the end result, the elements of him that we celebrated. I hadn’t seen since the quilt since 1991, but was reunited with it in November at St Paul’s Cathedral. It was incredibly moving. 

I was so lucky to have known him. I wish it hadn’t happened. I wish that he’d been around to see me have a son and be an uncle. I try not to let myself think about that because it’s too sad. I think it’s important that we record people’s experiences of loved ones who died of AIDS because it’s part of our culture’s social history at a time when the gay world wasn’t visible in the way it is now. It’s a social responsibility to make art that records the magnitude of grief. It should never be lost.