Deborah Orr: Dying opera star's agonising decision

COMMENT

LONDON - Susan Chilcott, the celebrated opera soprano, died last week of breast cancer at the age of 40. She is survived by her husband, her 4-year-old-son and her parents, both in their 70s.

The death of someone so young is always tragic. When that person is not only the parent of a young child, but also beautiful, talented, successful and feted, the loss seems all the greater.

The initial obituaries spoke of Chilcott's modest background, her triumphant career, and the grief those close to her succumbed to after her fight against her terminal illness.

They were respectful and celebratory, concentrating on the professional achievements of a remarkable woman.

Which is just as it should be. People who knew little of opera, and nothing of Chilcott, were moved by her death nonetheless. The death of a mother of young children is especially touching and sad.

But the human-interest aspects of the story of Susan Chilcott's death have not ended there. Media interest in the singer is perhaps greater than when she was alive.

Now, though, the emphasis is on her private life, with prurient speculation dressed up as human interest. Chilcott's private arrangements have become public property, touted as some kind of comment on the times we live in.

The interest is on Chilcott's arrangements for the upbringing of her son, Hughie. It hardly bears noting that the greatest agony Chilcott faced as she died was the parting from her child, knowing she was missing out on sharing and guiding his life and watching him turn into a man.

But she faced an added complication. Her husband, David Sigall, was not the father of her son, and their marriage had lasted only a short time.



Sigall, therefore, though legally Hughie's stepfather, was a parent only via a technicality. No father is named on Hughie's birth certificate, and his biological father has never figured in the boy's life.

Chilcott's own parents are too frail to commit themselves to taking over the care of Hughie.

Luckily, though, while neither Hughie's grandparents nor his stepfather were entirely suitable to become his legal guardian, another person was.

This person was the pianist and radio presenter Iain Burnside, Chilcott's closest friend and, say the gossips, gay.

This has been pointed out as the eyebrow-raising, newsworthy aspect of Chilcott's unconventional deathbed arrangement.

But, far from being unconventional, Chilcott's plan for the parenting of her child is perfectly straightforward. Burnside is Hughie's godfather.

My understanding is that one of the most solemn duties of a godparent is taking over the upbringing of a godchild who has been orphaned.

Therefore it is perfectly correct that Burnside is now Hughie's legal guardian and he is expected to start adoption proceedings soon.

Not only is this correct behaviour, it is also admirable. In selecting Burnside as a godfather for her son, Chilcott clearly made a wise and prescient choice. Many godparents do not take their role very seriously nowadays.

My own son has two godfathers, both gay, and although they are charming peripheral figures in my son's life, they would probably die themselves if their duties were stretched any further than responsibility-free social enjoyment.

Hughie may be an unlucky child in that he does not know his biological father and has been cruelly robbed of his mother. But he is lucky that one of the adult carers in his life seems happy to move centre-stage.

For while Chilcott's plans for her son are presented as odd or bohemian, they are really quite Victorian.

When mortality rates were higher, and deaths in childbirth much more common, children were orphaned at an early age much more often and childless friends or relatives, often godparents, had to step into the breach.

The reasons for this childlessness remained unspoken, as Burnside probably wishes they had remained in his case. It is quite an extra challenge, at the start of his challenging new role, to have his sexuality speculated about so openly, as if it were relevant to his ability to bring up a child.

Which brings us to the reason why Chilcott's highly traditional arrangement for her son should be marked out as so rakishly modern.

In the past, Chilcott might have felt compelled to cover up her single parenthood, perhaps by passing Sigall off as her son's biological father. This used to happen all the time.

In the past, Burnside would have been under pressure to marry himself, just to satisfy the demands of convention.

Whether such subterfuges would have been better for a child in Hughie's situation is a moot point.

Hughie, even at his early age, has been told of his parental legacy.

Children brought up in the secretive households created by the demands of convention say they always knew something was wrong, even though they had little idea what it was. We understand now that children can thrive in all kinds of family configurations.

Oddly, while we are wiser now about what makes an adopted child happy - simply love and truthfulness - we are more sentimental about biological parenthood than ever.

Today, with the overblown promises of in vitro fertilisation or surrogacy, people find it harder to accept that they may not be able to have their own biological children.

Part of the wonder at Chilcott's plans for her child is that a single man is willing to take on someone else's boy.

It is a small comfort to realise that Chilcott would not have worried about the magic parenting abilities of the biological progenitor, because she herself was adopted.

Much has been made of the fact that although her adoptive parents were not musical, they recognised and nurtured their daughter's talent at an early age.

Chilcott won her first prize for singing at the age of 3, and despite their lack of knowledge of the world Chilcott would enter into so spectacularly, her parents guided her education with good judgment.

The fact that she had herself such a positive experience of an adoptive upbringing must surely have helped as she made her agonising decision. There is nothing outrageous, or even new, about the way in which young Hughie is going to be brought up.

The only modern twist to the tale is that convention no longer demands that the backgrounds of the adults involved no longer need to be cloaked in shame and secrecy. Chilcott has done exactly the right thing for her son.

Her message, that there is no prescription, of gender, sexuality, biology or family convention, for what sort of person makes a parent to be trusted, is one we should all be celebrating.

- INDEPENDENT