For my lovely mum Kitty, who inspired me to achieve my dream.

And to my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, in the hope that you all find your passion in life, as I have in dancing.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

1. On Our Own

2. Bows and Bombs

3. Painful Goodbyes

4. Fairyland

5. Ballet in the Blitz

6. Treading the Boards

7. Briefly a Bluebell

8. Trying Out

9. Bright Lights

10. Sisterhood

11. Dancing with the Stars

12. Disaster Strikes

13. Making Mum Proud

14. War Wounds

15. Horror and High Tea

16. Man Trouble

17. The Final Curtain

18. New Beginnings

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Picture Section

Exclusive sample chapters

Moving Memoirs eNewsletter

Write for Us

Copyright

About the Publisher

1
On Our Own

The little girl walked down the hospital ward tightly clutching her mother’s hand. Nurses bustled up and down in their starched white uniforms and capes, and the smell of carbolic soap was overpowering. Finally they got to a bed at the end, which had the curtains drawn around it for privacy.

‘Come here, dear,’ said one of the nurses, lifting up the girl and sitting her on the bed so that she had a better view of the man lying in it.

He looked very thin and frail, and he had a nasty, hacking cough. Her mother passed the man a handkerchief, and as he patted his mouth the girl noticed bright red spots of blood splattered all over the white material.

Although just two years old, the child knew instinctively that it was serious. Maybe it was her mother’s tears that gave it away or the pale, gaunt face of the man lying in the bed. Every breath he took was so laboured and shallow and seemed to require so much effort that it almost sounded like his last.

‘Poor Daddy,’ she sighed.

You see, that little girl was me, and that was my first, last and only memory of my father, Edwin Bott.

I was born in 1930 in a nursing home on the edge of Wandsworth Common in south-west London. My brother, Raymond, was eleven years older than me and, like a lot of children, I think I was what you’d call a bit of a mistake! I was from a very musical background – my father was a cellist and my mother, Kitty, was a professional violinist. They had met in the orchestra pit while they were playing music for the silent films when Mum was seventeen and my dad was seven years older. When they first got married they lived in Oxford, and that’s where my brother was born, but then they moved up to London to play in the theatre orchestras. My father also used to play in a quartet on banana boats that would take passengers to Rio de Janeiro and bring bananas back. He would be away for weeks at a time, and the bananas he was given by the crew would be completely rotten by the time he got back home to London.

My name was Irene but everyone called me Rene. I was named after my father’s half-sister Rene Gibbons. She was a Goldwyn Girl, part of a glamorous company of female dancers employed by the famous Hollywood producer Samuel Goldwyn in the Twenties and Thirties to perform in his films and musicals. Many female stars got their big break in his troupes, including Lucille Ball and Betty Grable. Although I’d never met her, I’d seen from a photograph she once sent us that Rene was an incredibly beautiful woman. She looked like something from a Pre-Raphaelite painting, with her long auburn hair and huge green eyes. Unfortunately she and Mum never got along, I suspect probably due to a little bit of jealousy on my mother’s part, although she never really told me why.

‘I wanted to call you Violet,’ Mum used to say to me as I was growing up. ‘But your sneaky father went off to the town hall one day and registered your birth without me knowing.

‘When he came back and I saw the name Irene on your birth certificate there were a few fireworks, let me tell you.’

I could well imagine. My mother was only tiny but she had a sparky temper, that was for sure.

Sadly I was too young to remember Dad, apart from that one time when I had visited him in hospital. I was only two when he died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-three. He had terrible asthma, so I think it affected him very quickly. It must have been horrible for my mother and Raymond to see him in so much pain as his lungs disintegrated and he constantly coughed up blood. There was no cure in those days and it was highly infectious. My brother and I were tested for it, but thankfully we were clear.

We’d always been comfortably off, but after my father died we were left destitute. My brother had to leave his private boarding school and it was a real struggle. Mum had a small amount from her widow’s pension so she decided to buy a 1920s house in London. But we were there less than a year as she couldn’t keep up with the mortgage payments. Eventually the house was repossessed and she lost her deposit. There were no Social Services then, and my mother couldn’t work because she had me and she’d lost all her income from Dad.

‘We’re going to have to move in with your grandmother and grandfather,’ she told me.

I was three by then and this is where most of my memories start. Her parents, Henry and Kate Livermore, lived in a large, three-storey Victorian terrace in Battersea, south-west London. We called them Gaga and Papa because my brother couldn’t say their names properly when he was little and those nicknames just stuck.

The house seemed huge to me as Raymond and I tore around it. There was a big sitting-room at the front with settees and an open fire and all this lovely antique furniture. A passageway led to a tiny scullery with a big copper pot with a fire underneath where you would boil your washing and a really tired-looking porcelain sink. There were no hot-water taps in those days, of course. Then there was a dining-room with a big range cooker that had a coal fire underneath a couple of hot plates and took hours to heat up. On the second floor there was another living-room, two bedrooms and a bathroom, and on the very top floor was a tiny, dusty attic room.

‘This is where we’ll live, children,’ Mum told me as we climbed up the steep staircase to the attic.

‘Where’s all the furniture, Mummy?’ I asked.

It was very dark and shivery cold, and there was hardly anything in it. But there was a double bed for Mum and me to share, a camp bed for Raymond and a little larder where we could keep our food.

There was only one very dim electric light up there, and one night while we were sitting there it went out. I screamed, as I was so afraid of the dark.

‘I’ll go and find out what’s happened,’ said Mum.

She went downstairs to have a look while I sat there, completely petrified. A few minutes later she came storming up the stairs holding a candle. I could tell by the look on her face that she was fuming.

‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘They’ve cut us off.’

Mum hadn’t been able to afford to pay her share of money for the meter that week, so my grandparents had cut off the electricity supply to the attic. From then on, even though the lights were blazing downstairs, we had to make do with a single candle. Mum was absolutely furious.

I was too young to really understand at the time, but now looking back, no wonder. How awful to do that to their own widowed daughter at a time when she so needed their help and support. I was old enough to know it wasn’t nice, though.

‘Why are Gaga and Papa being horrid to you?’ I asked her.

‘Your grandparents didn’t like it when I married Daddy, as he believed in different things to them,’ she explained.

My grandparents were right-wing Conservatives and extremely religious, which was the norm in those days, while my father was the complete opposite. He was a very left-wing socialist and an atheist. In fact, when he died he insisted that there was no funeral or flowers and he was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in London. He used to speak at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park and was one of the founder members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. When he and my mother had gone off to the register office to get married in secret when she was eighteen, Mum’s family had practically disowned her.

‘But I loved your father and it doesn’t matter what they think,’ said Mum, giving me a kiss on the forehead.

I could see she was holding back the tears but I never once saw her cry in front of me. She was very loving, and was always kissing and cuddling me. I think in a way she needed me as much as I needed her.

My mother was a very proud person, so I could tell it was humiliating for her to have to go cap in hand to her parents and to have absolutely nothing.

One morning she was busy cleaning and tidying up our room.

‘I’m getting everything spick and span as the means test people are coming today,’ she told me.

I wasn’t sure what exactly that meant, but half an hour later a stern-looking woman in a suit came up to the attic. She opened up the larder door and had a good look inside.

‘As you can see there’s nothing in there,’ my mother told her frostily.

I could tell that Mum was very annoyed to have to ask for help.

‘What’s that lady doing?’ I said.

‘She’s checking to see how much food we’ve got,’ she told me. ‘Or should I say how little.’

I was even put out to work to try to help Mum make ends meet. I remember we were walking to the shop one day when a woman stopped my mother in the street.

‘Oh, what a pretty little thing,’ she said to me. ‘Look at those great big brown eyes.’

I was such a show-off, and even as a toddler I knew how to play to a crowd. I opened my eyes even wider, fluttered my eyelashes and flashed her my best and biggest smile.

‘I know a photographer looking for child models,’ she told Mum. ‘I’m sure he would love your daughter to pose for him.’

The photographer in question turned out to be a very famous man called Marcus Adams. He was a renowned children’s photographer who had taken pictures of King George V’s six children and all of the royal family. Although I couldn’t have been more than three, I remember sitting there in his studio in a little woollen hat and jacket. I was paid three guineas a time, which was quite a lot in those days, and Mum was given copies of the shots, which were very beautiful, pale, sepia photographs printed on soft paper.

Things at home continued to be frosty between Mum and my grandparents. She was allowed downstairs to cook, but then she would always bring our food back up to the attic for us to eat at our little table. We’d never have a meal with them.

My mother was a good cook and we always had lots of fresh vegetables to disguise the fact we couldn’t afford much meat. We’d have our main meal of the day at lunchtime and she’d rustle up pies and stews, apple tarts and cakes. I liked having a boiled egg for tea, which she’d bring up to the attic for me on a silver tray.

Looking back, it was a very peculiar situation. Here were two opposing ideas of life – my mother’s and my grandparents’ – and then me in the middle seeing both sides of it. My grandparents were all right to me and Raymond, and I got on with my grandfather quite well. He used to be a French horn player in the Grenadier Guards, and one afternoon he started stomping up and down the hallway.

‘Come on, Rene,’ he bellowed. ‘Let’s pretend we’re in the Grenadier Guards.’

I giggled as he marched up and down pretending that he was blowing his French horn.

‘Come here and I’ll tell you a story about when I was little,’ he said.

He told me how he grew up in Devon with his father. He’d hated his stepmother, so he ran away from home at the age of fourteen and pretended he was sixteen so he could join the army. He’d never fought but had become a very good French horn player and afterwards had played in the pits in London orchestras.

‘I played at Buckingham Palace for Queen Victoria’s birthday, you know,’ he told me.

‘You met the Queen?’ I gasped. ‘What was she like?’

‘Oh, dreadful woman,’ he grumbled.

‘Why’s that, Papa?’

‘She used to come out on the balcony all in black after her husband had died, and even if it was pouring with rain we’d have to stand there and play for hours. Sometimes she wouldn’t even bother coming out and would just have a quick look out of her bedroom window.’

He also described how he’d played for two very famous dancers, Anna Pavlova and Isadora Duncan.

‘Oh, don’t get me started on that silly Duncan woman,’ he told me. ‘Did you know she strangled herself with her own scarf?’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

I listened, wide-eyed, as he recounted the story of how Isadora Duncan was a real lady and used to love wearing these long, floaty scarves.

‘She lived in France, and she was coming over a bridge one day and her long scarf got caught in the axle of the convertible car that she was in and it strangled her. Broke her neck right there on the spot.’

My grandmother was a cold, unemotional woman but she was a fantastic seamstress and dressmaker, and I’d sit there for ages and watch her work. One day she was making a beautiful blue gown that had silk ribbons from the waist down with an underskirt underneath, and at the end of every ribbon there was a silver bell. It was the most beautiful dress that I’d ever seen and I was fascinated.

‘Who’s that dress for, Gaga?’ I asked her.

‘This one is for a Russian princess,’ she said.

It took her hours to sew all the tiny bells on the bottom.

In the front room she had a beautiful old mahogany sewing desk with her Singer sewing machine on the top and dozens of small drawers underneath that were filled with ribbons, beads and different coloured silks. I loved rummaging round in them and touching all of the treasures that were inside.

‘Can I help you tidy up your bits and bobs, Gaga?’ I asked her.

‘As long as you’re careful, Rene,’ she told me. ‘Don’t go pricking your fingers on any needles.’

My biggest wish was for her to make me a princess gown all of my very own. On my fourth birthday she made me a beautiful party dress. It was green cotton with a little collar, puff sleeves and a big bow on the back, and it had frills from the waist down. She even made a matching one for my favourite doll Audrey.

My mum was the eldest of seven children, although two of her brothers had died as toddlers – one had got diphtheria and the other had fallen into the Thames and drowned. It used to cause no end of arguments between my grandparents, as my grandfather could never remember the names of the two that had died and my grandmother used to get really annoyed with him about it.

‘Imagine not remembering your own children,’ she used to say to me. ‘How could he forget his own flesh and blood?’

Mum wasn’t close to her surviving sisters Violet and Winnie or her brothers Arthur and Harry, and they didn’t treat her very nicely. They were all very snobby and wealthy, and they looked on her as a failure when she came back to live with her parents, even though she was a widow. That side of it was all kept from me when I was small, but I began to realise it more as I got older. They didn’t like her choice of husband and the way, in their opinion, she had completely changed her views.

Mum and I stuck together, and we were a close little unit. She had a couple of boyfriends when I was very young, although I don’t remember meeting them. It was only when I was much older that she told me about one man she actually got engaged to.

‘But then he turned around and said that he’d only marry me if I’d agree to put you in a children’s home, so I told him to get knotted,’ she said.

It’s only as I grew up that I started to appreciate how hard it must have been to be a single parent in those days. As I got older, I came to realise that I was different because other children had fathers and I didn’t.

‘Why haven’t I got a daddy like everyone else?’ I asked Mum one day. ‘Where is my daddy?’

She got a dusty album out of a drawer and showed me a photograph. It was a sepia picture of a handsome young man with blond hair and big, expressive brown eyes and dark eyebrows.

‘That was Daddy,’ she said gently. ‘Your lovely dark eyes are just like his.’

There was another black-and-white photograph of Dad in a helmet and goggles standing next to a motorbike.

‘That’s him and his beloved motorbike,’ she told me. ‘He used to strap his cello on the back and go whizzing round London from theatre to theatre.’

Because I didn’t remember anything about Dad it was nice to hear stories about him.

‘Your father was a very unusual man,’ Mum told me. ‘He had strong morals about how children should be treated.’

She described how she had been out one day with him and my brother.

‘We were walking down the road and your father saw another man and his son across the street. The boy was only about five and he must have done something naughty so his father gave him a slap around the legs.

‘Well, when your father saw this he was so angry. He crossed over the road and told the man in no uncertain terms to never, ever hit his child again. I think the man was a bit shocked getting reprimanded by a complete stranger, but I was so proud of your dad.’

It was the norm for children to get a good hiding in those days, but Mum said my father was dead against it and he would always intervene if he saw someone hitting or shouting at a child or treating them badly.

‘Your father was a very gentle man and a great champion of children,’ she said. ‘He was a natural with them. You had bad colic when you were a tiny baby and he’d sit there for hours playing music from the ballet The Dying Swan on his cello trying to soothe you to sleep.’

‘He sounds like a lovely daddy,’ I said sadly.

Hearing how wonderful and kind he was made me feel even sadder that he wasn’t around, and even though I couldn’t really remember him I always felt his loss in my life.

The only father figure I had was my brother Raymond. He’d been very close to my father and I don’t think that he ever got over his death. People didn’t show their feelings in those days, though, and if I ever asked him about my dad, he would clam up.

‘I don’t want to talk about it, Rene,’ he would tell me.

My brother was very academic and clever, and he always bought me books. While other children my age were being read Winnie the Pooh or The Wind in the Willows, he brought me home the complete works of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy.

‘Sit down, Rene,’ he said one day. ‘I’m going to teach you to play chess.’

My father had taught Raymond to play chess and so he decided he was going to teach me. He was a chess whizz but I was four years old and had no interest whatsoever.

‘This is so boring,’ I moaned as we sat and stared at the checked board.

‘Oh, Rene, you’re such a fidget, it’s all about skill,’ he said.

But I preferred something much faster moving, and even though I adored Raymond it didn’t interest me in the slightest.

‘Oh, I give up,’ he said, exasperated. ‘One day, Rene, you’ll find something that you love doing.’

Even though I was only four years old I was about to stumble across something that would become my biggest passion for the rest of my life.

2
Bows and Bombs

Through the darkness I saw them. Dancing around with their floaty wings like beautiful butterflies.

‘Fairies!’ I gasped. ‘I can see fairies!’

I felt as if I were in a dream and I had never seen anything like it in my life. I just sat there on the edge of my seat with my mouth gaping open as I watched these mystical creatures flitting around the stage.

‘Mummy, I want to be one of those,’ I whispered. ‘I want to be a fairy.’

I was four years old and my mother had taken me to see my first ever pantomime – Cinderella at the Grand Theatre, Clapham Junction. I had loved the pumpkin coach, but when the gauze curtain came down all lit up with twinkly lights and these fairies danced across the stage I was absolutely mesmerised. This was the first time I had seen anyone dance, and from then on that was it. I was hooked for the rest of my life.

‘Please can I do that, Mummy?’ I asked afterwards. ‘Can I dance like a fairy?’

‘Well, you could do ballet lessons if you wanted,’ she said.

I didn’t forget about it, and Mum kept her promise and I started going to a weekly lesson at a local ballet school in Clapham. It was in a big house, and one room had been converted into a ballet studio with huge mirrors and a barre down one side. Each lesson cost 2s. 6d. (two shillings and sixpence), and it must have been a struggle for Mum to afford it, but I loved every minute of it and I lived for that day of the week. Leotards hadn’t been invented in those days and tutus were only worn for formal occasions like shows and exams, so I wore a loose black cotton tunic that my grandmother had made me, and I had a piece of pink chiffon wound around my head and tied in a big bow at the back to keep my hair off my face.

I hung on to the ballet mistress’s every word, and I memorised each step and practised until it was perfect.

‘I’d like you to be Greek slave girls today,’ she told us one afternoon. ‘I want you to pretend that you’re holding a vase as you promenade.’

It was very sad, melancholy music, and as I paraded around the room pretending to hold a heavy Grecian urn on my shoulder I felt in my heart I really was that unhappy little slave girl. So much so, I even felt tears in my eyes as I danced.

At the end of the class, when Mum came to collect me, my ballet teacher took her to one side.

‘I think Irene has great potential,’ I heard her say. ‘She really seems to feel the music and her timing is spot on.’

That didn’t mean anything to me. All I knew was that dancing was just another way of being a fairy and I loved it. But just a few weeks after starting my lessons I suddenly got very ill. I was burning up, and all this horrible stuff was oozing out of my right ear. I was in absolute agony.

‘We’d better take you to see the doctor,’ said Mum.

I knew it had to be serious for that to happen. These were the days before the National Health Service, and a visit to the doctor’s surgery cost a lot of money.

The doctor examined me as I whimpered in pain.

‘She has an abscess of the middle ear,’ he told my mother. ‘You need to get her to hospital straight away. If it’s not treated quickly it can be highly dangerous and spread to the brain.’

By then I felt so ill I could barely walk, and Mum had to carry me to St George’s Hospital in Tooting. When we got there she passed me to a doctor.

‘Say goodbye to your mother,’ he told me.

Suddenly I was absolutely terrified. I’d never been away from Mum and I didn’t know where they were taking me or what they were going to do to me.

‘No!’ I yelled. ‘I want to stay with Mummy.’

I kicked and screamed and made such a fuss it took three nurses to cart me off. My little body shook with sobs as they held me down on a table while the doctor poured peroxide in my poorly ear. It burned and stung, and I was petrified.

‘We have to be cruel to be kind,’ he told me. ‘This will hopefully kill the infection.’

There was no such thing as antibiotics then. Afterwards my ear was padded up with a big gauze dressing that had to be changed every week.

I was in such a state when they took me back to Mum, who looked really worried.

‘It’s all right, Rene,’ she said, giving me a cuddle. ‘You can come home with me now. It’s all over.’

‘Oh, thank goodness,’ I sighed.

I was exhausted but it was such a relief that they weren’t keeping me in. I had to go back every week for months so they could put more peroxide in my ear and I was in constant pain. Eventually it seemed to work and thankfully they managed to save my hearing, although I’ve still got scar tissue in my ear now.

As soon as I was better, Mum started working again. I was a bit older now, and she needed to try to earn some money to help support us. She would spend hours every day practising her violin, and then go to the theatre and perform in the orchestra at night when I was in bed. While she practised I would be left to my own devices to amuse myself, which wasn’t hard thanks to my vivid imagination.

One day I took myself off to Clapham Common and lay on my front with my nose in the long grass. I watched ants and ladybirds crawl around and worms slither in the soil, but I wasn’t there to look for wildlife.

‘Come out,’ I whispered. ‘I know you’re in there somewhere.’

I was there to find the fairies. I stayed like that for hours with my head buried in the grass, just watching and waiting for my favourite creatures to make an appearance. I believed that they were real and I could see them in my head. I knew that all fairies danced, they lived in flowers and they had very long, floaty wings like butterflies or moths. I used to spend hours lying there on the common waiting for them. I never told anyone, though, as I was frightened that they’d make fun of me.

Even now, at the ripe old age of eighty-four, if anyone asks what my religion is I tell them this: ‘I believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden!’

It often gets me a few funny looks. But I find it quite sad today that children don’t have vivid imaginations any more; they’re told so much.

I always say to my granddaughter Billie, ‘How do you know that I’m not a fairy?’

So she checked my back and found two little nobbles.

‘That’s where your wings will grow, Grandma,’ she told me.

Now, whenever I see her she checks my back to see if my wings have sprouted yet!

I suppose in a way I was a very lonely child as I was left on my own to get on with everything. Nobody asked me what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go, or thought up things to entertain me, so I had to make my own fun. In one sense it worked in my favour because I didn’t have to ask – Mummy, can I do this? I just went and did it. Although Raymond still lived with us, by now he had got a job as an apprentice for a company in central London that manufactured Bakelite, so he was out at work all day.

I knew my mother loved me and she was very affectionate, but all she lived for was her music. Looking back, I’d say she was very unsociable and introverted; she didn’t have friends and never went out. She would practise all day long and go out to work at the theatre at night. She never did anything but play the violin, and spent so many hours practising that I’d get fed up.

‘Mummy, I’m bored,’ I told her one afternoon.

‘Rene, only boring people get bored,’ she said.

So I decided to take myself off on an adventure. I walked down to Clapham and caught the No. 49 bus to the West End. I had a terrific sense of freedom that sadly children don’t have these days. Children were very free and I was always either on Clapham Common or Wandsworth Common, playing with friends, or on a Routemaster going somewhere exciting. I paid my tuppence ha’penny (two and a half old pennies) to the conductor and headed into town.

I sat on the top deck and looked out of the window as we went past Battersea Park and down the King’s Road. I got off at High Street Kensington and from there headed to Regent Street. I must have walked miles but I knew exactly where I was going – to my favourite place in the whole world, Hamley’s toy store. I wandered from floor to floor gazing in awe at the giant teddy bears, the life-size dolls, sailboats and pedal cars. Things I knew that my mother could never afford.

Afterwards I walked down Oxford Street to Selfridges. I loved the sense of grandeur as I saw the doorman in his top hat.

‘Good morning, Miss,’ he said, and I giggled as he held open the door for me.

In 1938 no one batted an eyelid to see an eight-year-old wandering round the West End on her own, but if it happened today I’d probably get taken into care by Social Services! There were plenty of other children doing the same thing, and often you’d see gangs of youngsters from the East End going up West to pick pockets.

I loved Selfridges and I knew all the departments like the back of my hand. I’d go straight up to the first floor to look at all the fancy ball gowns. I’d walk along the rails, touching the brightly coloured taffeta dresses and admiring the intricate beading. Sometimes I’d get the lift up to the roof, where I’d watch fashionable ladies and gents going for a promenade around the manicured gardens. There was even a café up there and a women’s gun club.

Afterwards I’d saunter along Oxford Street to Hyde Park, where I’d sit by the Serpentine and watch the birds and climb a few trees. Once, I was walking along a secluded path when I noticed a man coming towards me in a mackintosh. Call it a sixth sense, but I could tell straight away that something wasn’t right about him. He looked a bit scruffy and his clothes were all grubby. As he got closer he suddenly held his mac open, and I realised that he had his flies undone and his bits and pieces were hanging out for all and sundry to see!

‘Eurgh, put it away!’ I laughed.

But he just closed his coat, walked past and didn’t say a word.

I wasn’t scared or frightened, I just thought it was hysterically funny. If that was the way that he got his kicks then good luck to him, I thought. Then I caught the No. 49 home, my stomach rumbling with hunger at the thought of a boiled egg for tea.

In a way, even though I was still only eight I was a pretty savvy and streetwise child. Flashers were very common in those days and most of them seemed harmless to my friends and me. I coped with it better than my poor mother. I remember her coming home one night after work absolutely furious.

‘Oh my goodness, Rene,’ she said dramatically. ‘Something dreadful has just happened. I don’t believe it.’

‘What is it, Mum?’ I asked.

She explained how she had been on the Northern line and she’d been in the carriage on her own when a man had got on.

‘I’d just got up as mine was the next stop when he undid his trousers and exposed himself to me.’

‘What did you do?’ I asked her.

‘Well, I marched over to him and said: “How dare you do that to me, you disgusting little man.” I was so angry, do you know what I did, Rene?’

‘No, Mum.’

‘I was so cross, I got my violin case and I slammed it down really hard on his you-know-what. Hopefully that will teach him not to do that in a hurry again.’

My mum was a tiny woman, and she looked very prim with her two long plaits that she tied up on the top of her head. I bet he hadn’t been expecting her reaction.

‘Is your violin all right, Mum?’ I asked with a smirk.

Things were still very strained between Mum and her family, and as I got older I became more aware of the tensions. One day I went to visit my Aunty Vi, who lived in Hendon, north London. My mother never came with me, and I liked going because I could play with my cousin Shirley, who was four years older than me.

‘Violet’s a terrible snob,’ my mother warned me as she walked with me to the Tube station. ‘Just ignore anything she says to you.’

It wasn’t long before Aunty Vi started bragging about my cousin Shirley and how well she was doing at school.

‘She’s so bright there’s no doubt she’ll go to university one day,’ she said.

‘Will I go to university too?’ I asked.

Aunty Vi just laughed.

‘I doubt that very much, dear,’ she said. ‘I don’t think you’re clever enough for university. You’ll have probably left long before it’s time to do matriculation.’

Matriculation was the exam that you took in high school to determine whether you were clever enough to go on to further education.

‘Well, I don’t need to go to university,’ I told her. ‘I’m going to be a ballet dancer.’

‘A ballet dancer?’ said Aunty Vi, aghast. ‘You’ll never make a dancer, Rene. You’re not pretty enough and I seriously doubt that you’ve got the talent, either.’

Hearing that sort of criticism at such a young age from someone should have been a crushing blow. But I’d heard it all before, so I just let it wash over me and refused to get angry about it.

It was always the same criticisms that I’d hear time and time again whenever I went over there – I wasn’t clever enough, pretty enough, slim enough, rich enough. I got so used to it I didn’t even bother answering her back. It didn’t matter to me that I was constantly criticised and put down. I didn’t really care what my aunties and uncles thought. In a way it made me even more determined.

‘I will be a ballet dancer one day,’ I told my cousin Shirley. ‘Just you wait and see.’

I never told Mum what Aunty Violet had said, though. I knew she would be furious and I didn’t want to make the rift between her and her sisters any bigger.

Sometimes it was just as bad at home. I was always very loyal to my mother, and I hated it when my grandparents would criticise her to my face.

One day my grandfather was grumbling about her and saying how she never had enough money. Anyone could say what they liked about me, but when it came to my mother it was a completely different matter. I had a sparky temper and if someone pushed the wrong buttons then I wasn’t frightened of speaking my mind.

‘Don’t you dare run Mummy down like that, Papa,’ I told him.

‘I don’t know why you always stick up for your mother,’ he said. ‘She’s a failure and she should have never married that father of yours.’

‘She’s doing the best she can,’ I shouted.

My grandfather had a typical Victorian attitude to children – he thought they should be seen and not heard – and he was furious that I’d answered him back.

‘Don’t speak to me like that, young lady,’ he bellowed. ‘I’m going to lock you in your room and see if that teaches you a lesson.’

But when he tried to grab hold of me I went berserk. I lashed out at him, kicking and screaming.

‘I won’t have you behave like this, Rene,’ he yelled. ‘You’re a silly little girl who’s never going to make anything of your life, just like your mother.’

‘Yes, I will,’ I yelled. ‘I’m going to be a dancer.’

‘A dancer?’ he scoffed. ‘I doubt that very much.’

When Mum got home and I told her what had happened she didn’t seem surprised. She knew what her father was like.

‘I think it’s time that we tried to find somewhere else to live,’ she told me. ‘We need our own space.’

I knew that she found it a strain living with her parents and a few weeks later we moved out. Mum had found a job as a carer for an old spinster called Miss Higgins, who was paralysed from the chest down after contracting polio as a child and was completely bed-bound. We’d save money on rent because we’d be living with the old lady in her 1920s semi-detached house in Norbury. She had the downstairs, and Raymond, Mum and I had the upstairs. Miss Higgins was obviously wealthy, as the house was nicely decorated and pristine, but it was clear from the start that Mum hated every minute of it.

‘Oh, that woman,’ she said. ‘She just treats me like a dogsbody. It’s no wonder that she never has any visitors.’

She’d gone through several carers before Mum, and it wasn’t hard to see why. Miss Higgins wasn’t very pleasant, and Mum was at her beck and call day and night. She had to give her a bed bath, make her meals, and do her shopping and the cleaning.

Mum had just sat down one night when we heard the familiar tinkle of the bell that Miss Higgins rang when she needed something.

‘Give me strength,’ Mum sighed through gritted teeth. ‘That woman will be the death of me.’

I went down with her.

‘Can the child come and sit with me for a while?’ she said as she saw me lurking in the doorway.

‘I suppose so,’ said Mum. ‘Rene, come and talk to Miss Higgins.’

‘Do I have to?’ I sighed, but just one look at Mum’s stern face and I didn’t dare say another word.

I sat and stared at Miss Higgins. She always looked very straight-laced and she never, ever smiled. She had long white hair, and a white frilly nightie with a high collar and a knitted bed jacket on. Her bed was white, too, and she was half propped up with a pile of pillows. She was a bit like Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, a strange ghostly figure all in white. I wasn’t frightened of her, I just thought she was the most peculiar woman that I’d ever seen.

She stared at me with a very disapproving look on her face.

‘Talk to me child,’ she said. ‘Do you like arithmetic?’

I shook my head.

‘Well, what do you like doing then?’

I shrugged my shoulders.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked. ‘Cat got your tongue?’

‘Rene, don’t be so rude and answer Miss Higgins,’ Mum told me.

‘I like w-w-riting stories,’ I stammered. ‘And d-d-drawing.’

You see, that was the real reason why I didn’t want to chat to her. I didn’t want this strange old woman to know that I had a terrible stammer as I was really embarrassed about it.

My brother Raymond had developed a very bad stammer after our father had died, and when I turned four I had started stammering too.

‘Are you sure you’re not just copying your brother?’ Mum had asked.

But I knew I wasn’t. I just couldn’t stop myself stammering. I was fine with my friends and family and people that I knew, but with strangers it was a different story. I would get nervous and I would hesitate and the words just wouldn’t come out, or I’d be halfway through a sentence and I couldn’t finish it without gasping for breath.

‘I can’t understand what you’re saying to me, dear,’ said Miss Higgins.

‘She just stammers a bit sometimes, that’s all,’ Mum told her.

It was so frustrating sometimes. Like the morning that there was a frantic knocking on the front door.

‘Run and get that, Rene, will you,’ said Mum.

I went downstairs and opened the door to find the coal man standing there. He was in a terrible state.

‘Me ’orse,’ he said in his broad cockney accent. ‘Me bleedin’ ’orse is dead. He had an ’art attack comin’ up the ’ill.’

I looked out and there was the coal man’s huge white horse lying in the middle of the street. Every day the horse would lumber up the hill near us pulling tonnes of coal in his cart, and then the coal man would tip it down the chute outside each house that led to the cellar so we could all light our fires and ranges.

I wanted to say how sorry I was about his horse, but no matter how hard I tried the words just wouldn’t come out.

‘I-I-I-,’ I stammered. ‘S-s-s-.’

‘I don’t understand you, love,’ he said. ‘Is yer old man in? I need some ’elp to try and drag him out of the street.’

It was so frustrating. All I could do was run upstairs to get Mum, sobbing at the thought of the coal man’s beautiful horse lying dead in our road.

There was no help for people with stammers in those days. It wasn’t something that you went to see the doctor about, and there was no such thing as a speech therapist. It was just seen as something you had to live with and hopefully grow out of, which was what Raymond had done as he’d got older.

One weekend Mum took me to the hairdressers as a treat. I had dead straight hair, and since I was little I’d always worn it in long plaits like my mother with two ribbons on the end.

‘Please can I have my hair cut?’ I’d begged her for months.

So we went to the local hairdressers and they chopped it into a bob and pinned a big orange bow on the top.

The next day Mum and I were walking back from the shops to our house and I was proudly showing off my new haircut. I was still wearing the bow that the hairdresser had pinned in it.

I was skipping along, hand in hand with Mum, when suddenly we heard a strange noise above us. I stared up into the sky to see what was making the racket.

‘Look, Mummy!’ I shouted.

There were two planes looping and rolling all over the place, and they were flying so low I could hear the machine-gun fire and see the sparks as the bullets bounced off their wings.

‘Wow!’ I gasped.

I thought it was really exciting to have this battle going on right above our heads, but Mum looked terrified. Much to my surprise, she pushed me into a hedge.

‘Get down, Rene,’ she said. ‘Don’t move.’

‘But my bow!’ I said. ‘I don’t want to squash my brand new bow.’

‘Don’t worry about your blessed bow – just stay there and don’t move,’ she hissed.

I could see the fear in her eyes as she crouched down in the dirt with me.

‘What is it, Mum?’ I asked. ‘Why are those two planes shooting at each other?’

‘It’s the war,’ she said. ‘I think it’s started.’

It was Sunday, 3 September 1939 and life as we knew it was about to change beyond all recognition because of a man called Adolf Hitler.

3
Painful Goodbyes

I watched out of the window as my mother dragged the old settee into the garden. Then she got a saw and started sawing the arms and the back off it. It was hard work but she was strong and determined, and even though it took her the best part of an hour she managed it in the end.

‘Rene, come and help me pull it into the shelter so we’ve got something to sleep on tonight,’ she yelled.

As part of the Government issue, an Anderson shelter had been built at the bottom of our garden. It was a little brick hut sunk into the ground, with a corrugated-iron roof and a door at one end.

Now the war had started, the air-raid siren would sound every evening and we’d go in there as it got dark to save us from having to get up in the middle of the night and run outside in the pitch black. It was just Mum and me, as Miss Higgins refused to leave the house.

‘I’m going nowhere,’ she told us defiantly. ‘I’ve not been out of bed for fifty-odd years, and I’m certainly not going to start now just because of the Jerries and some silly war. If the house gets bombed and goes down, then I’m going down with it.’

I think Mum was relieved that she didn’t have to carry her out there every night, and it was fine by me as the shelter wasn’t very big and I didn’t fancy being squashed up with that strange old lady. It was dark and dank, so Mum was determined to make it as cosy as possible for us. I helped her drag the settee in there, and that night it made a comfy bed for us to lie on. Mum had got a little oil heater and a paraffin lamp, and we snuggled down under a big eiderdown.

‘You see,’ she said. ‘It’s nice and snug in here now.’

We had all sorts of woollies on, too, to keep warm – jumpers, socks and even a scarf, and a hot-water bottle each.

‘It’s lovely, Mummy,’ I told her. ‘It’s like we’re on an adventure.’

The war was all a big game to me but I could tell that Mum was scared. She was very nervous and on edge, I could sense it.

By the time the air-raid siren went off we’d already been in the shelter for hours.

‘Here we go again,’ she said, cuddling up to me.

I soon learned to recognise the different sounds of war, and lying there listening I’d hear the familiar drone of German bombers dropping their loads on London as they followed the path of the Thames. The bombs made their own distinctive noise when they fell – a sort of whistling, whooshing sound, and then there would be an ominous second of silence before impact.

Tonight the planes sounded very close and Mum jumped every time a bomb came down. The ground shook and we heard fragments of metal hitting the roofs of nearby houses as the bombs exploded.

‘Shall I have a little peep outside to see what’s going on?’ I asked.

But Mum looked horrified.

‘No, you will not, Rene,’ she told me. ‘You’re staying safely in here.’

I was disappointed, as I’d imagined the sky glowing orange and red from all the fires.

‘I hope Raymond’s all right,’ said Mum.

Instead of coming home, he often spent the night sleeping in one of the Tube stations so he could get up and go straight to work the next day. Hundreds of others did this too, and by 6 p.m. people started setting up for the night, reserving their spot. You’d see them clutching blankets and pillows, and women sat there on the platforms in curlers, putting cold cream on their faces.

It didn’t take long before I was out like a light, lulled to sleep by the sound of the gunfire and the bombs falling all around us. When we woke up in the morning it was freezing as we crawled out of the shelter and back into the house. Mum had to get breakfast for Miss Higgins, and I had to get ready to go to school.

Our area of south London had been quite badly bombed and as I walked to school I saw that one of the houses in a nearby street had been hit. There were soldiers helping to clear up the debris, and the people who lived there were sorting through the rubble, desperately trying to salvage some of their possessions.

During the war years this became a normal sight. The roads were littered with bits of barrage balloon and shrapnel – pieces of bombs and bullets. I stopped to pick up a few nice silvery bits that I knew would get some admiring glances from the other children at school.

Every child was issued with a gas mask that we had to carry around at all times. Well-to-do children kept theirs in leather or plastic boxes, but mine was in a cardboard box with a string handle so I could carry it over my shoulder. It was all a big game to us. Sometimes the air raids would be during the daytime so we’d have practice runs at school. One morning the siren went off and we all trooped down to the cellar. We sat there having an arithmetic lesson with our gas masks on. They were made of rubber, and had goggles and something that was a bit like a coffee filter at the end of the nose – I found them ever so claustrophobic. So to stop me from feeling frightened and take my mind off wearing one, I decided to make it into a bit of a joke.

‘Look, you can make rude noises,’ I said, blowing a raspberry into my mask.

Everyone laughed and thought it was hilarious, and soon every pupil in my class was doing the same thing. Unfortunately the teachers weren’t amused as we didn’t get much work done.

I can’t ever remember anyone being upset or frightened during the air raids at school. It became part of our daily lives and we just accepted that that’s what happened.

A lot of children were evacuated to the countryside, but Mum refused point blank to let me go.

‘You’re staying here with me,’ she said.

I was so grateful for that. She was all I had in the world, and while the bombs didn’t scare me, being away from her would have terrified me.

Thankfully none of our family were injured or killed, although Mum’s brother, my Uncle Harry, had a bit of a close shave. We received a letter from him one morning telling us how an incendiary bomb had landed on his doorstep, and he hadn’t realised and opened the door.

‘Poor Uncle Harry,’ she said. ‘The bomb went off straight in his face.’

‘Is he all right, Mum?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘It gave him a bit of a fright and singed all his eyebrows off, but apart from that he’s fine.’

Even though it was mean, we couldn’t help but have a bit of a chuckle about it.

The war also brought me a new playmate. I became best friends with a pretty little blonde girl called Diana Baracnik, whose family moved into our street after fleeing from Czechoslovakia. We’d climb trees or go to dance classes together, and after school I’d go round to her house and play dollies. I loved my dolls and I had about six of them. Some of them were china and some were papier mâché.

One person who felt very strongly about the war was my brother Raymond. He’d always been a socialist like my father and he shared his strong views.

‘Wars and violence don’t solve anything, Rene,’ he told me. ‘Nobody wins in war.’

He didn’t want any part of it and he was one of those known as conscientious objectors – people who for social or religious reasons refused to go to war.

During the First World War conscientious objectors were seen as criminals and sent to prison. Women would wander round and hand any man who was the right age and not wearing a military uniform a white chicken feather, which was a symbol of cowardice, to shame them into enlisting. Several conscientious objectors killed themselves because they couldn’t cope with the stigma. During the Second World War the punishment wasn’t as severe, but you could still be arrested for refusing to do National Service and you had to appear in front of a tribunal to explain your reasons why. Despite the risks, Mum respected Raymond’s opinion as she shared similar beliefs.

‘Your father would have been so proud of Raymond,’ she told me. ‘I know he would have done exactly the same if he was here now.’

Mum had told me many times that my father was strongly anti-war. Because of his bad asthma he wasn’t called up during the First World War, but his older brother Raymond had been.

‘Raymond was a tail gunner, and the first time he went up he was shot and killed instantly,’ said Mum. ‘Your father was heartbroken. He said his poor brother was just cannon fodder and that only reinforced his anti-war stance.’

It seemed apt that my brother had been named after our late Uncle Raymond.

One morning we were all having our breakfast when there was a loud rap on the front door.

‘Open up,’ shouted a gruff voice. ‘It’s the police.’

Mum looked at Raymond in a panic. I didn’t have a clue what was going on.

‘What shall I do?’ she whispered to him.

‘You’d better go and let them in,’ he said. ‘I’ve got nothing to hide.’

Mum went and opened the door, and two officers came marching up the stairs and into our dining room.

‘Raymond Bott?’ one of them said to my brother.

‘Yes,’ he replied.

‘Young man, I’m afraid we’re going to have to arrest you for failing to register for National Service,’ he said, pulling him up from his chair. ‘Come with us, please.’

‘I’m a conscientious objector,’ he told them. ‘I don’t believe in war.’

‘Well, you will have to appear in front of a tribunal and tell them your reasons for that. Then they will decide what will happen to you,’ the other one said.

Mum burst into tears.

‘You can’t do this,’ she sobbed. ‘You can’t just take him away like this.’

‘I’m afraid we have to,’ one of them said, leading him off down the stairs. ‘We’re just obeying orders.’

My brother didn’t say a word, and he wasn’t allowed to take anything with him. My mother was inconsolable, and I could hear Miss Higgins frantically ringing her bell downstairs, probably trying to find out what all the fuss was about.

I just sat there eating my toast, completely stunned by this drama that was happening over breakfast.

Mum followed the officers downstairs, and I ran to the window and watched as they pushed Raymond into the back of the police car and drove away. A few neighbours had come out of their houses to see what was going on too, and they all stood there staring. Mum came upstairs sobbing.

‘I can’t believe this has happened,’ she cried.

The following evening after school I called at my friend Diana’s house as usual. Her father answered the door.

‘I’m sorry, Irene,’ he said. ‘You won’t be able to play with Diana any more or come round to our house.’

‘But why?’ I asked. ‘She’s my best friend.’

‘You’d better ask your mother,’ he told me.

I went home in floods of tears to Mum.

‘Diana’s dad says I’m not allowed to be her friend any more,’ I sobbed. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘He probably heard about what happened to Raymond,’ she said. ‘A lot of people don’t agree with your brother’s views about the war.’

‘But what do you mean?’ I asked. ‘What’s that got to do with Diana’s dad?’

‘He probably thinks that Raymond’s a coward for not wanting to fight the Nazis,’ she explained. ‘Perhaps his family had a bad time in their country, which is why they came over here.’

I was devastated that I’d lost my best friend. I couldn’t understand what difference the war and my brother’s beliefs made to whom I could and couldn’t play with.

But it wasn’t just a one-off. Word soon spread among our neighbours that Raymond had been taken off by the police, and after that a lot of people wouldn’t talk to Mum or me. They’d see us in the street, put their head down and walk straight past us. There was a huge stigma attached to being a conscientious objector, or a ‘conchie’ as they were nicknamed. A lot of people associated it with being a coward, but in fact most conscientious objectors were motivated by religious reasons.

Raymond had to appear in front of a tribunal that would decide whether to give him an exemption, dismiss his application and send him to fight, or make him do non-combatant work. A week later we received a letter from him.

The tribunal decided that I should be sent to work in the Pioneer Corps where they have given me the task of digging up roads. It’s hard labour and the days are long but at least I have stuck to my principles and I’m not involved in any way with the taking of lives. I’m stationed at a barracks in Lincolnshire and ironically most of my fellow conscientious objectors are extremely religious so they are slightly bemused at being billeted with an atheist like me who is constantly questioning their beliefs.

Mum was relieved that he was all right, although she was annoyed by the type of work Raymond was doing.

‘What a waste of his talents,’ she sighed. ‘He’s far too clever to be digging up roads.’

His superiors must have realised that too, as soon Raymond wrote to us again to say that he had been transferred to the Army Service Corps, where he was given the job of drawing maps. Part of his role eventually involved helping to plan the D-Day landings, which he justified by saying it was about saving lives rather than taking them.

Despite the war, daily life at home went on as normally as possible. By the time I was ten, however, Mum had run out of patience with Miss Higgins.

‘I can’t look after that woman for a second longer or I swear I will kill her,’ she told me.

But work in the orchestras was in short supply during the war as some theatres had been badly bombed and were forced to close. Things were going to be tight financially again, so we were forced to move back in with my grandparents.

The day before we left the house in Norbury, a government inspector came out to check all the Anderson shelters in the street. Mum and I watched as he tapped the mortar between the bricks. To our horror, it crumbled instantly and his finger went straight through it.

‘Shoddy workmanship,’ he sighed, shaking his head. ‘If a bomb had dropped on that thing it would have been curtains for you two.’

Mum and I stared at each other in shock.

‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘To think we’ve been sleeping in there every night for nearly two years thinking that we were safe.’

By this time my grandparents had rented out their attic room to a ninety-year-old spinster called Miss Smythe, so Mum and I had to live on the much bigger and lighter second floor of the house. It felt like a palace compared with the poky, cramped attic. We had two bedrooms, and our own living-room and bathroom. Moving back to Battersea meant that I had to change schools to Honeywell Road Primary, but I still did my ballet lessons, which I absolutely loved.

One day Mum sat me down.

‘What you want to do when you grow up, Rene?’ she asked.

I knew my answer straight away, because since I was a little girl I’d only ever wanted to do one thing.

‘I want to be a ballet dancer,’ I said. ‘I want to be on the stage.’

A lot of other parents at that time might have just laughed or told me I would have to go out and get a proper job, be a teacher or a secretary, but Mum didn’t flinch.

‘All right, then,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to go to stage school if you’re really serious about doing that. Where would you like to go?’

‘Italia Conti,’ I said without hesitation.

It was the world’s oldest and most prestigious theatre arts training school, the one that the older girls at dance class always talked about. I didn’t ever think in a million years that Mum would be able to afford to send me to stage school, but to my surprise she didn’t question it.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘I’ll contact Italia Conti and get some more information.’

Mum kept her promise and a few days later she told me what they had said.

‘It’s £20 a term,’ she told me.

My heart sank. That was a heck of a lot of money in those days, and I knew it was the end of my big dream. As a single mother who went from one job to the next as a violinist, there was no way she could afford expensive stage-school fees like that.

But in 1942 Mum made the biggest sacrifice of her life for me. She sat me down one day and took hold of my hands.

‘There’s something I need to tell you, Rene,’ she said. ‘I think I’ve found a solution to our problems. I’ve decided to join ENSA.’

ENSA stood for the Entertainments National Service Association, a group of performers who travelled around the world during the Second World War to entertain British troops and keep up morale. They had everything from singers, dancers and musicians to comedians, bird impersonators, contortionists and even roller skaters.

‘The pay is good, and having a regular wage is the only way that I can afford to put you through stage school,’ she said. ‘It means that I’ll be away from home for a while, but you can stay here with Papa and Gaga. They’re going to post me to Egypt, where I’ll perform as part of a quartet.’

It was a huge shock, and I couldn’t believe she was prepared to do that to help me achieve my dream.

Things moved so quickly. A week later I sat on my mother’s bed watching her put on her new ENSA uniform, which consisted of a khaki shirt and belted jacket, an A-line skirt with a pleat up the middle, and a peaked hat. It hadn’t really sunk in yet that she was going thousands of miles away and I wouldn’t see her for years.

‘Come on, then,’ she said, holding out one hand to me while in the other one she clutched her beloved violin. ‘It’s time to go.’

We caught the Tube to the Coliseum, the theatre from where the new recruits were departing. As we walked towards the entrance I could see a big fleet of three-tiered coaches waiting outside. It was pandemonium as hundreds of performers in ENSA uniforms said tearful goodbyes to their families. Mum handed someone her violin to load into the bottom section that was filled with an array of musical instruments. Then she turned to me and gave me a cuddle and a kiss.

‘Oh, Rene, I really don’t want to leave you,’ she said, tears welling up in her eyes.

‘Oh, don’t worry, I’ll be all right,’ I said, as I hated to see her upset.

‘I love you very much,’ she told me.

Then she turned and walked away. I could see her dabbing her eyes with her hankie as she climbed onto the coach. I watched her take her jacket off, and as she sat down and waved to me through the window that’s when it finally hit me.

This was really happening. She was really going.

The only person in the world besides my brother that I loved with all my heart was leaving me.

I was in such a state of shock I couldn’t even cry.

As I watched her coach drive away I felt completely and utterly alone in the world.

I got the Tube home in a daze. I was used to being on my own and I was fiercely independent, but it felt very frightening at the age of twelve not having anyone looking out for me. With Mum and Raymond both away, there was literally nobody in my life that I could go to. No one to give me a kiss or a cuddle, or who would make sure that I was all right and put me first in the world. My grandparents weren’t interested, that was for sure.

When I got in that evening they didn’t ask me anything about Mum or whether she had got off OK or if I was all right. But as I walked through the door I couldn’t hold back my emotion any longer and I burst into tears.

‘Whatever’s the matter?’ my grandmother asked.

‘I’m just really sad about Mum going away,’ I sobbed.

‘Oh, don’t be so selfish,’ she said.

I knew that was the way it was going to be and I just had to get used to it. Nobody was going to say what I so desperately wanted to hear right now, things like ‘Oh, come here and give me a cuddle, Rene, I know you’re missing Mummy. Sit down and let’s write to her together.’

Nope, I was by myself now. Raymond was still in his barracks up north and Mum was on her way to Africa.

That night it was hard going to sleep on my own. For all of my life I’d had Mum there beside me, but I knew I had to pull myself together and get on with it.

She had done this for me because she wanted me to achieve my dream of going to performing arts school. I had an interview with Italia Conti coming up, and I knew that I had to pass it. I had to get in. For Mum’s sake and for mine.

4
Fairyland

Walking towards the heavy black door, I swallowed the lump in my throat. Today was the day that I’d been waiting for. It was my audition at Italia Conti, the country’s most prestigious theatre arts school.

As usual I was here on my own. My grandparents hadn’t said a word when I’d told them about the audition. No ‘Good luck, dear’ or ‘I hope it goes well.’ Not that I’d expected them to say anything or take any interest in what I was doing, as I knew by now that wasn’t going to happen. I knew that it was down to me to do this. Mum had sacrificed everything and gone away so that I could achieve my dream, and I had to get in.

My tummy was churning with a strange mixture of nerves and excitement as I walked up to the front door of Tavistock Little Theatre in Tavistock Square where the school was based. It was an old Victorian building and nothing fancy, but as soon as I pushed open that black door I entered a hive of activity.

Like a Tardis, it opened up inside to reveal several huge rehearsal rooms. There were girls running past in their black dance tunic uniforms, and every time a door opened I could hear the faint tinkle of a piano, the clatter of tap shoes or someone singing scales. I instantly felt at home and I knew this was where I wanted to be, singing and dancing all day long.

I stopped one of the girls going past.

‘Hello, I’m here for an audition,’ I told her, thankful that I hadn’t stammered.

‘I’ll go and get Miss Conti for you,’ she said.

A few minutes later one of the doors opened and a middle-aged lady with short, dark hair came out.

‘Hello, I’m Rene … I mean Irene Bott,’ I said. ‘I’m here for an audition.’

‘Wonderful to meet you, Irene,’ she said. ‘I’m Ruth Conti, Italia’s niece.’

Before she left, Mum had told me that Italia Conti, or old Mrs Conti as everyone called her, was still around but she was in her seventies now and so her niece Ruth had come over from Australia to help run the school.

‘You’ll have to excuse us,’ she said. ‘Our old school in Lamb Conduit Street was bombed out by the Germans last year, so the theatre have kindly lent us their rehearsal rooms until we can find some new premises.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I hope no one was hurt.’

She shook her head.

‘Thankfully all of the staff and pupils were on tour at the time with one of our shows. It was our poor building that took the brunt of the Nazis but we’re managing to muddle through.

‘I see you’ve bought your dance bag,’ she said. ‘Get yourself changed and then you can join in a ballet class first.’

‘Thank you, Miss Conti,’ I said.

Even though she seemed friendly, I could tell by the steely look in her eyes that she wouldn’t take any nonsense. As I got dressed into my dance tunic I started to feel very nervous and overwhelmed.

You can do this, Rene, I told myself.

I followed Miss Conti into an old, draughty rehearsal room, where lots of girls and a few boys were waiting. There was a ballet barre running down one side and big mirrors. The windows were all blacked out because of the war, so the room was lit by dim electric light. Miss Conti led me over to the front of the room where two women were talking. One was very tall and masculine looking. She had bobbed straight hair and was wearing trousers, and I couldn’t help but notice the big stick in her hand.

‘Hello, dear,’ she said. ‘Come in and join us. Have you done much ballet before?’

‘I’ve been going to classes since I was four,’ I said.

The other teacher couldn’t have been more different. She was small and feminine and had her hair pulled up in a bun, a floaty skirt on and a face full of make-up.

‘I’m Toni Shanley,’ said the tall, fearsome lady. ‘And this is my sister Moira Shanley.

‘Take your place and let’s begin. Just do what you can.’

‘Yes, Miss Toni,’ I said.

A grey-haired lady in a flowery dress was sitting at a piano in the corner with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. Miss Toni gave her a nod and she starting playing, puffing away on her cigarette with a bored look on her face.

‘Ready, girls,’ said Miss Toni. ‘Heads up, straight backs.’

As we stretched, she walked down the length of the barre correcting people by giving them a sharp rap with her stick.

‘Bottoms in, shoulders down,’ she yelled, coming down the row towards me.

‘Chin up, chest up,’ she said, lifting up my head with her finger and pressing in my rib cage. ‘Carry on, dear.’

I was nervous, as I knew both Miss Shanleys were watching me closely, but I was also very determined. I managed to follow every step and carry on until the end, but I didn’t have a clue how it had gone.

‘Well done, Irene,’ said Miss Moira after class. ‘You’re a good little dancer. I think Miss Ruth wants you to go to drama and elocution now.’

She seemed very sweet and gentle compared with her fearsome sister.

I hoped it had gone well but I was terrified that I wasn’t good enough. I knew I could do ballet, but I’d only been to my little local class and I’d only briefly had a few tap lessons.

If Miss Toni was scary, the drama teacher was the most terrifying woman that I’d ever seen in my life. She was wearing a long fur coat that dragged on the ground behind her and a huge Russian fur hat.

‘Don’t mind Miss Margaret,’ one of the boys whispered to me. ‘She’s a bit of a dragon.’

‘I can see that,’ I said.

She was very theatrical and what people might call a bit of a ‘luvvie’.

‘Come in, de-arr,’ she said in a big, booming voice when she saw me lurking by the door. ‘I’d like you to recite some Shakespeare for the class today.’

My heart started to pound with nerves.

‘Up on the stage?’ I said. ‘In front of everyone?’

‘Yes, de-arr,’ she said. ‘Is that a problem?

‘N-no,’ I said.

I didn’t normally get nervous but suddenly I was the most frightened that I’d ever been in my life. It wasn’t the fact that I’d never done drama before that was bothering me; it was my stutter that I was worried about. Would they give me a place at stage school if they knew that I stammered?

My legs felt like jelly as I stood on the stage and Miss Margaret passed me the play. It was one of Macbeth’s well-known speeches.

The whole room was deadly silent and all eyes were on me. My hands were shaking as I scanned the words.

Is this a dagger which I see before me?

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.

You can do this, Rene, I told myself.

I took a deep breath.

‘I-is th-this a d-d-d- …’

B’s and d’s were particularly tricky for me to say, and no matter how hard I tried, the words just wouldn’t come out. I completely panicked and started gasping for breath.

I seemed to be up there for ever, but finally Miss Margaret waved her hand to stop me.

‘I see you have a stammer, dear,’ she boomed.

‘Y-yes,’ I said, ashamed and completely mortified that I’d shown myself up in front of the whole class

‘Let’s leave it there, then,’ she said.

I felt sick afterwards. She didn’t say anything else, but I was so worried that I had blown my chances.

Next up was a tap class, where the teacher was a tiny woman with jet-black hair and bright red lipstick. I much preferred ballet to tap, but I’d done a little bit before and managed to follow all the steps.

At the end of the morning, Miss Conti called me in to see her.

‘Well, Irene, I’ve had a chat to the teachers,’ she said.

I could feel my heart thumping out of my chest. I didn’t know what I’d do if they didn’t want me. How would I tell Mum that I’d failed?

‘By all reports you’re a lovely little dancer,’ she said. ‘A few other areas need a bit of work but we’ll take you.’

‘Pardon?’ I gasped. ‘Really?’

‘Yes, dear,’ she smiled. ‘I’ll give you a list of what you’ll need to bring with you to class. You can start next week.’

I couldn’t believe it, I was on cloud nine. I’m going to be a dancer, I thought, triumphantly. I’d done it! I couldn’t wait to write to Mum and tell her the news when I had an address for her. It really was a dream come true. I was going to spend every day doing what I loved and was so passionate about.

‘Gaga, Papa, I got into Italia Conti!’ I told them excitedly when I got home.

‘Very good, Rene,’ said my grandmother, not even bothering to look up from her needlework. I didn’t expect to get glowing accolades, but it would have been nice for them to acknowledge it. After all, they always seemed so proud of their other grandchildren who were all very academic and had gone off to good schools and universities.

The only downside of starting at Italia Conti was that I would have to leave Honeywell Road Primary, where I was very happy. I had a wonderful teacher there called Mrs Ritchie, and I couldn’t wait to tell her my news.

‘Mrs Ritchie, I got into Italia Conti,’ I told her with a big grin. ‘I start next week.’

‘Well, that is excellent news,’ she said.

At the end of the day, she called me over to her and pulled out a chair from under the table.

‘Stand up there, Rene,’ she said in a loud voice. ‘Now tell the rest of the class what you’re going to be.’

‘I’m going to stage school and I’m going to be a ballet dancer,’ I said proudly.

The whole class clapped and gave me three cheers. She was the only person to recognise my achievement and it felt lovely to have someone making a fuss of me. It made me feel really special and I’ve never forgotten that.

Even though I was sad to leave school I couldn’t wait to start at Italia Conti. I spent the next week getting all of the things that I needed for class. Thankfully Mum had left me some money for any extras that I might need. My grandmother made my uniform, which was a black sleeveless satin tunic with two slits up the side and tied in a bow at the back, and black cotton gym knickers.

One afternoon I got the bus up to Covent Garden and went to Frederick Freed’s in St Martin’s Lane, which I’d heard was the place for professional dancers to get their shoes.

‘I’d like some dance shoes, please,’ I told the shop assistant. ‘I need some bright red tap shoes with bows, pink ballet shoes and pink satin pointe shoes.’

‘Well, that’s quite a list, Miss,’ she said. ‘Are you here with your mother?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m here on my own.’

Thankfully she knew what she was doing and fitted them for me. There’s something special about dance shoes when they’re brand new, and I loved every minute of it. The shop assistants made such a fuss of me and brought out about a dozen pairs of ballet shoes all in different shades of pink satin. I loved the pointe shoes the most, as I’d never done pointe work before and that was what prima ballerinas wore. They were stuffed with papier mâché in the toes.

‘They’re beautiful,’ I sighed. ‘I can’t wait to learn to dance on those.’

‘You’ll have to get your mother to sew the ribbons on,’ the shop assistant told me.

‘Oh, my mother’s not around at the minute,’ I told her. ‘I can do it myself.’

It was special pink ribbon that was satin on one side and cotton on the other, so they didn’t slip when you tied them around your ankles.

‘It’s important to get them just right,’ the woman at Freed’s told me. ‘Not too tight, not too loose.

‘You also need to darn the ends with embroidery cotton so they don’t wear out and place a lamb’s wool pad on your toes to protect them.’

I also had to sew the elastic straps on my flat satin ballet pumps.

I went home with my head spinning about all the things I had to remember to do. Although I’d been taught needlework at school, I wasn’t much good at it, but I was determined to do it and not have to ask my grandmother for help. So I spent the next few evenings sewing away for hours. God knows what sort of a job I did, but I was so proud that I’d done it all myself.

Soon it was time for my first day and I was filled with excitement as well as a few nerves. Walking through those doors at Italia Conti felt to me like going into fairyland. I wasn’t even disheartened when the first person I saw was Miss Margaret, the drama teacher.

‘Hello,’ I said nervously. ‘I’m here for my first day.’

‘What’s your name, de-arr, and I’ll put you down on the register?’ she asked.

‘Irene,’ I said. ‘Irene Bott.’

Miss Margaret put down her fountain pen and gave me a look of utter disdain.

‘Excuse me?’ she said.

‘Irene Bott,’ I repeated.

She fixed her steely gaze on me.

‘Bott?’ she boomed. ‘You can’t possibly come to Italia Conti with a name like Bott. Come back tomorrow with a new name.’

‘Oh – er, all right then,’ I said.

I’d never thought there was anything particularly wrong with my name. She never said why, but perhaps she thought that Bott was too much like bottom. I wouldn’t have dreamed of saying no to her, but I worried about it all day.

By the time I got home that evening I’d really started to panic. How was I going to come up with this new name? Pluck one out of thin air completely at random?

I went up to my bedroom and was flicking through my favourite comics for inspiration when I noticed the name of one of the characters in the Beano – Sylvia Starr, ace reporter.

‘That’s it!’ I said.

The next day I went back and Miss Margaret was waiting there with the register.

‘So have you got a new name, de-aar?’

‘Yes,’ I said proudly. ‘I want to be called Irene Starr.’

She looked at me in disgust and said, ‘Well, I suppose that will have to do then, won’t it?’

From then on, Irene Bott didn’t exist any more. I was always known as Irene Starr.

A few days later a letter arrived from Mum. I had written to her to tell her all my news but it took weeks for the mail to get through to the troops. It was lovely to see the familiar scrawl of her handwriting.

Dearest Rene,

I was so pleased to hear that you won a place at Italia Conti and I bet you are enjoying doing your beloved dancing all day. Don’t worry about the fees, I have contacted Miss Conti directly and taken care of them from here.

It was clear from her letter that my mother was enjoying travelling and she was really taken with Egypt.

It’s so different to performing in the orchestra of the big London theatres. Our ‘stage’ is four wooden planks of wood resting across oil drums or ammunition boxes. There are a couple of shoddy dancers, a singer (if you can call her that) and I’m one of a quartet of musicians. Some people have cruelly nicknamed ENSA ‘Every Night Something Awful’ but we are doing the best we can to entertain the troops and keep up their morale in difficult circumstances. Despite all the hardships, I am finding it fascinating experiencing another culture so different to ours.

Mum still had her strong principles, though, and she described how one day she had seen a little boy begging in one of the villages. She had gone over and given him some money but the sheikh of the village had seen her.

This man with a long beard wearing a robe came and snatched the money off the poor boy and put it into his own pocket. Well, Rene, you know me. I went berserk. I ran over to him and said: ‘Don’t you dare do that. Give it back.’ I think the fellow was stunned that a woman, and one as tiny as me, would challenge him. I know I could probably have got into all sorts of bother but he did as I asked.

I smiled at the thought of the man’s shocked face as my mother had come marching over to him and given him what for. I bet he hadn’t been expecting that!

Love you and miss you, Rene.

Love always,

Mum xx

She’d sent me a black-and-white photo of her sitting by the Suez Canal. She looked happy, and I noticed that she’d had her hair cut into a shoulder-length bob, which was probably cooler in the oppressive heat of the desert.

‘Oh, Mummy, I miss you,’ I sighed, my eyes filling up with tears.

I felt so lonely sometimes but I knew there was no point in moping. I tried to take all the positives from it – like my freedom, for a start. Unlike most twelve-year-olds I never had to ask permission to do anything.

I also loved every minute of being at Italia Conti, and that eased the pain of being parted from Mum. As soon as I walked in the door and heard the tick of a metronome or the tinkle of a piano I felt secure somehow. It was my sanctuary, my escape from the outside world. The war was raging, my family was thousands of miles away from me, but in there I felt safe and I could spend all day doing what I loved, which was dancing.

Everyone there shared the same love of performing and I soon made close friends. I had been worried that, with the fees so high, the other pupils would be from wealthy families, but there were children from more ordinary homes like mine. One of them was a boy named Anthony Newley, who we all called Tony. I liked him straight away because he was fun and loud, and he was always happy and laughing. He was the son of a single mother and he had four siblings.

‘I’m an East End lad, Irene,’ he told me in his strong cockney accent. ‘I’m only ’ere ’cos they gave me a job as an office boy in return for my fees. I ain’t no rich, pampered prince.’

He was always joking around and getting ticked off in class. Like the time in tap he pulled funny faces behind the teacher’s back as she demonstrated a routine. We all sniggered, but mainly because he hadn’t realised that Miss Gertrude had spotted him in the mirror.

‘Mr Newley,’ she said. ‘You’re as mad as a March hare. Now please stop larking about.’

‘Yes, Miss,’ he said, giving me a wink.

He was quite a character, but he was also very talented and you could tell there was something special about him. He had what we would describe today as the X-factor, and I knew he was going to have a bright future in show business.

Another member of our gang was a girl called Nanette Newman. She was a few years younger than me, and she was pretty but very quiet and shy. One of my best friends at Conti’s was a stunningly beautiful girl called Daphne Grant. She had bright blue eyes, was very glamorous like Rita Heyworth and had a lovely singing voice. She was an only child and her parents, who were quite elderly, spoiled her rotten. They doted on her and had done absolutely everything for her as she’d grown up. Anything that she asked for, she got, whether it was clothes or jewellery or having a shampoo and set every week at the hairdressers.

No one at Italia Conti dared misbehave. We all knew how lucky we were to be there and we knew the rules – don’t be late for class, always be correctly dressed, at the end of a ballet class curtsey to the teacher and the pianist, but clap them after a tap or jazz class.

‘You’re all here because you want to be,’ Miss Conti told us sternly. ‘And while you’re here I expect you to listen and to work hard. If you don’t want to do that, then you’re free to go whenever you want.’

I loved the discipline and the structure. The curriculum was a mixture of ballet, tap, contemporary dance, singing, drama and acrobatics. I liked everything except acrobatics, where I struggled to do the forward and backward stopovers, which were like somersaults that you did from a standing position.

Much to my surprise, during my first week at Italia Conti I discovered that I had a good singing voice. Miss Polly, the singing teacher, was an absolute darling. She was potty about Ivor Novello, and she would sit at the piano and go off into some sort of a trance as she played his songs.

‘That’s wonderful, dear,’ she said after I’d sung for her for the first time. ‘Absolutely marvellous. You make a lovely mezzo soprano.’

‘Do I?’ I said.

Singing also had one other bonus.

‘My stammer’s gone,’ I said proudly.

‘Of course it has,’ she said. ‘Have you ever heard a stammering singer?’

I didn’t stutter at all when I sang, and after two weeks at Italia Conti my stutter had practically disappeared.

Even though I loved it, they were long days and we worked hard. I’d leave the house at 7 a.m. and it would be after 7 p.m. when I’d get the Tube home. A few weeks after I started there I was allowed to move on to pointe work, which I’d never done before. We were told to rub our feet with surgical spirit every night and then put cold cream on them to try to soften the skin, but I still got blisters from my toes pressing on the pointes. When they split and bled I was in absolute agony.

‘What’s wrong, Irene?’ said Toni Shanley, seeing me wince in class one day.

‘My feet are bleeding,’ I told her.

I could see the blood seeping through the pink satin on my shoes.

‘So?’ she said. ‘Carry on and put a plaster on them later. You and your feet need to toughen up.’

I knew there was no option but to carry on dancing. You wouldn’t dare put a foot wrong in Miss Toni’s class, and if you did you’d get a sharp rap from her dreaded stick.

One afternoon we were doing a ballet class with her when suddenly there was an almighty explosion. The walls literally shook, and it felt like the whole building had been lifted up into the air and put back down again.

We all looked at each other, our eyes wide with terror.

‘What the heck was that?’ Daphne whispered to me.

I didn’t know, but I was worried that the whole theatre was about to fall down and collapse on top of us. Miss Toni didn’t even flinch, however, and just carried on as if nothing had happened.

‘Demi-pliés,’ she said. ‘Bottoms in, long necks, strong legs.’

I think we were all in a daze, but in a way we were more frightened of Miss Toni and her stick than a German bomb, so we just carried on dancing.

It was only after class that we all gathered round in a huddle.

‘Did you hear that?’ I said. ‘What the heck was it?’

‘I think the Jerries just dropped a big one on us,’ said Tony Newley.

We all ran to the front door, and as we opened it and walked down the steps I felt glass crunching beneath my feet. Outside we were greeted by a scene that I can only describe as utter devastation.

‘Good grief!’ I gasped.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Practically the whole of Tavistock Square apart from our little corner had been totally destroyed in the blast.

‘The church is completely gone,’ someone said.

It was now just a pile of rubble, and all the windows of the few buildings that were still standing had been blown out.

Looking around at the carnage, I knew we had been very lucky. It was a miracle that the windows in our rehearsal room had remained intact.

‘It must have missed us by a whisker,’ said Daphne.

It was scary to think how close we had all just come to being blown to smithereens and that we had just danced our way through it.

5
Ballet in the Blitz

Every night it was the same routine. As soon as it got dark the air-raid siren would go off as regular as clockwork. While I was at Italia Conti there were nightly bombings in London.

‘Action stations, Rene,’ boomed my grandfather’s voice from downstairs as the loud, familiar wailing rang through the streets. ‘Go and help Miss Smythe down from the attic.’

‘All right, Papa,’ I sighed.

Miss Smythe was the tiniest woman that I’d ever seen in my life; she was like a little bird with fluffy white hair that stuck up in a fuzzy halo around her head.

Instead of an Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden like the one we’d had at our old house, my grandparents had a Morrison shelter in the dining-room. It was a big steel cage with a solid top that you could use as a table during the day and then climb underneath into the cage part during the bombings. It was a huge, ugly thing that almost took up the whole room, but at least it was warm and dry inside, and it was safer than being out in the garden in a rickety Anderson shelter.

By the time I’d helped the frail spinster down three flights of stairs we could have been bombed to high heaven. But finally we made it down to the dining-room.

‘In you go,’ I said as I gave her her a helpful push into the shelter.

‘Thank you, dear,’ she replied.

It was a bit of a squash with four of us all laid out in a row, and it wasn’t very comfy. When the air-raid siren sounded really early on like tonight I got so bored cooped up in that metal cage with three old people. But suddenly I had a great idea.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ll do a performance to cheer you all up.’

‘Rene, I really don’t think that’s necessary,’ sighed my grandmother wearily.

But I was all fired up after a day of singing and dancing at Italia Conti, and once I’d got a bee in my bonnet there was no stopping me. Every woman at that time wanted to look like the film star Jane Russell, and even though I was only twelve I was no exception. Much to my grandmother’s disgust I took off my nightie, whipped off the scarf that she had around her neck, wrapped it round my non-existent boobies and started flouncing around like a Forties risqué glamour girl in just my vest and knickers.

‘I know a fabulous Betty Grable number,’ I said, before launching into an enthusiastic rendition of ‘I Heard the Birdies Sing’.

‘I took one look at you and Cupid took a good swing,’ I sang, failing to notice that the three OAPs who formed my audience were sitting there with a look of complete horror on their faces.

‘Rene, I really don’t think this is appropriate,’ said my grandmother.

‘Oh, Gaga, you’re such a spoilsport,’ I said. ‘I’ve got another song I could do if you don’t like that one.’

‘Rene, that’s enough,’ said my grandfather sternly. ‘You’ll give poor Miss Smythe a heart attack.’

It was only then that I glanced over at the old woman and saw the shocked look on her face. I’m surprised she didn’t have a stroke on the spot.

‘I only wanted to try and cheer you all up while the bombs were coming down,’ I grumbled.

As usual we spent all night in the shelter under the table, and then at 7 a.m. I climbed out and went and got myself ready. I pulled my hair into a bun, made sure that my dance bag was packed, and then stepped over the rubble of the previous night’s bombings and headed to the Tube station. By now the war had just become part and parcel of my daily life.

My grandparents never showed any interest in my dancing and they never asked me anything about Italia Conti. There was no ‘How was your day?’ or ‘What did you have for lunch?’ I was left to get on with it, and that was what I got used to.

My grandmother would make an evening meal for me, although she was a dreadful cook. The pastry on her steak and kidney puddings was always as heavy as lead, and the filling was just as unappetising, with grey meat floating in a watery gravy. My grandfather would make himself useful around the house, and he’d boil up my washing in the big copper in the scullery and do the shopping every day.

In many ways he was a nicer, more approachable person that my grandmother, so it was him whom I asked to get me some sanitary towels when I started my periods.

‘Papa, when you’re out doing the shopping today, please could you bring me some sanitary towels from the chemist?’ I said, my cheeks turning red.

Even though he was very Victorian in some of his attitudes, he wasn’t the least bit embarrassed.

‘Yes, all right, dear,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you your women’s things.’

I think the reason he was always so keen to do the shopping was that it was an excuse to stop in every pub on the way home and have a few pints of ale. That day, when I came home from Italia Conti, there was no sign of my grandfather.

‘Where’s Papa?’ I asked my grandmother.

‘No idea,’ she sighed. ‘He went off to do the shopping and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since.’

By 10 p.m. I was starting to get worried. But Grandmother went to the front door before going to bed, and suddenly I heard the door open and then a terrible thud.

‘Good grief, Henry!’ I heard her yell.

I ran out into the hallway and there was Papa sprawled out face down on the tiled floor.

‘Look who I found asleep on the doorstep worse for wear,’ she tutted. ‘He must have nodded off stood up with his head resting on the door, because when I opened it he fell straight in.’

Gaga was certainly not amused.

‘Are you all right, Papa?’ I asked, trying to pull him up.

‘I’m fine, Rene. And don’t you worry, I’ve got your women’s things,’ he beamed, handing me a large packet of sanitary towels.

But for the most part I dealt with things on my own, and there were only a few times that it bothered me. One of those was at the end of my first year at Italia Conti when the school put on its annual production of Where the Rainbow Ends. It was a very famous play about a group of children who have to rescue their parents and face lots of dangers on the way. In the end they’re helped by St George, and it’s all very English and patriotic.

‘It’s going to be at the Coliseum,’ said Tony excitedly. ‘’Ere, imagine that, Rene. Us lot prancing round on one of the West End’s biggest stages.’

‘And in front of the King,’ said Daphne.

I couldn’t believe that we would be doing a Royal Command Performance for King George and Queen Elizabeth. I was even more thrilled when I was given a brief solo to perform.

‘Irene, I’d like you to be the evil blue fairy,’ Miss Moira the ballet teacher told me. ‘It’s your job to flit from one side of the stage to the other. Do you think you can do that, dear?’

‘Yes, Miss Moira,’ I said.

I was even more chuffed when I saw my costume – a blue dress with a boned bodice and a skirt with floaty bits of fabric coming off it.

But my heart was in my mouth as I turned up to rehearsals. With over 2,300 seats, the Coliseum was the biggest theatre in the West End and I was completely overwhelmed.

‘This place is huge,’ I sighed as I stood on the eighty-foot stage and stared out at all the seats. ‘It’s going to take me all day to dance across this stage.’

It seemed to go on for ever, and there was a huge, ornate domed roof and marble pillars.

We were thrown in at the deep end, as we were expected to learn the routine in half a day and we only had a week of rehearsals.

‘At the end of the performance the whole cast will come back on stage, and you must all turn stage right and curtsey to the royal box,’ Toni Shanley told us. ‘But there must be no staring, and under no circumstances must you look directly at the King and Queen, as that would be a breach of royal protocol. Please cast your eyes downward.

‘Is that clear?’

‘Yes, Miss Toni,’ we all replied.

I was fascinated by the whole idea of the royal family.

‘Do you think they’ll just use the normal theatre toilets like everyone else?’ I asked Tony Newley.

‘Oh, Irene, don’t be silly,’ he said. ‘They’re royalty. They don’t go to the lav.’

I was so naïve that I didn’t realise he was joking, and for many years afterwards I still believed that the royal family were too posh to go to the toilet!

Soon it was the night of the big performance. As I waited in the wings for my turn to dance on stage I just felt tremendously excited rather than nervous.

‘Blue fairy, on you go,’ whispered Moira Shanley.

Right on cue I ran onto the stage. The bright lights dazzled me and I could only make out the first row of the audience as the rest of the auditorium just looked very black. I took a deep breath and forced myself to remember Miss Toni’s words:

‘Focus on the front row of the dress circle. That way you’ll lift your head up, and the audience will see your eyes and the whole of your face. And smile, girls. Smile.’

As I danced across that stage I made sure that I had the biggest, broadest smile on my face. But the strange thing was, it wasn’t forced or fake. I was genuinely happy, as I suddenly realised in that moment that my dream really had come true. Here I was, nearly ten years later, dancing like one of those fairies I’d seen in the pantomime at the Clapham Grand. Not only that, it was on the stage of the biggest theatre in the West End. Performing in front of that huge crowd gave me such a thrill.

‘If only Mum were here to see me,’ I thought to myself.

But there was no time to be sad, and soon I was curtseying to the King and Queen and basking in the audience’s applause. Everyone was on a high and even strict Miss Toni seemed pleased with our performance.

‘That was a job well done, everyone,’ she said, although her face still didn’t crack a smile.

I was still buzzing afterwards, and I didn’t want to take off my fairy costume and get changed back into my ordinary clothes, as that would mean it was all over. As I got ready to go home I watched the rest of my classmates being greeted in the dressing-room by their proud parents, who had all come to watch the show.

‘Oh, Daphne darling, you were absolutely wonderful,’ said her mother, handing her a red rose and a huge box of chocolates.

Others were being lavished with hugs and kisses and praise for their performance. I knew there was no one in the audience who was there for me, but I hadn’t expected there to be. As I squeezed my way out and headed to the Tube I refused to feel sorry for myself or let it get to me.

As part of your training at Italia Conti you were also sent off to appear in other productions during the school holidays. In the early Forties there were little variety theatres in every town and suburb, so there were endless opportunities to perform in summer seasons and pantomimes. I did a short tour with the Sadler’s Wells Opera in which I played a gingerbread child in Hansel and Gretel, and I appeared in a variety show in Brighton. There were no such things as chaperones in those days. We just got on a train on our own and got on with it. A lot of the time we had to find our own places to stay.

When I was thirteen we were sent to work at a pantomime at the Theatre Royal in King’s Lynn. Normally you wrote to the theatre where you were performing and they organised your digs, but our train was late into Norwich and by the time we got there that evening to speak to the stage manager it was all closed up.

‘What are we going to do?’ said my friend Ruth, who had been sent to perform in the show with me.

‘Don’t worry,’ I told her. ‘We’ll just find somewhere ourselves.’

So we ended up walking up and down the streets, knocking on doors to see if we could find a bed for the night. But nobody had any room for the two of us, and as it got later and later we were getting more and more desperate. Then we knocked on the door of a terraced house and an old man opened it.

‘We’re dancers working at the local theatre and we’re looking for somewhere to stay,’ I told him. ‘Do you think you might be so kind as to put us up for the night?’

‘Well, I’m sure I could sort summink out for a couple of lovely young ’uns like you,’ he said in his broad Norfolk accent.

He seemed like a nice, kindly man so we followed him into the house and he showed us his bedroom.

‘You ladies can ’ave this room and I’ll have forty winks downstairs,’ he said, giving us a toothless grin.

Ruth and I looked at each other in horror. The place was absolutely filthy and everything was covered in a sheet of dust. His bedroom had a strange musty smell and the sheets looked like they hadn’t been boiled up in the copper for years.

‘What shall we do?’ whispered Ruth when he went back downstairs. ‘This place is revolting.’

‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ I said. ‘It’s getting late, and I don’t fancy wandering up and down for hours in the dark.’

Even though his house was filthy he seemed like a nice old fellow, and he was letting us stay for free. But neither Ruth nor I got much sleep that night. We both slept fully dressed on top of the bedclothes and we even left our coats on. Bed bugs were very common in those days and I spent most of the night scratching. Neither of us could wait to leave in the morning.

‘I feel so grubby,’ said Ruth. ‘Before we go to the theatre shall we go to the baths?’

Most towns and cities in the Forties had what were known as public baths. Sometimes our lodgings didn’t have much hot water to go round or even a proper bath, so they were a godsend when we were working away from home doing a show.

When we walked in there was a woman sitting at a little kiosk.

‘Ninepence for a first-class ticket or sixpence for second,’ she told us.

The only difference was that with the first-class ones you got two towels and a scoop of bath salts, and with the second-class ones you only got one towel.

‘Second will be fine,’ I said.

It was expensive enough for us as it was.

She handed us both a meagre piece of soap that had been cut from a big block. Soap was rationed during the war and you couldn’t get any nice, sweet-smelling ones, just this rock-hard green stuff that didn’t lather up no matter how hard you scrubbed. Shampoo wasn’t available either, so you had to use the same soap if you wanted to give your hair a wash, but I’d stopped doing that after I’d discovered how badly it stung my eyes.

‘I can’t wait to feel clean again,’ said Ruth as we went upstairs and sat on the second-class bench until the numbers on our tickets were called.

‘I know what you mean,’ I replied. ‘I still feel all itchy and I’m sure I heard rats scurrying around last night.’

I didn’t mind waiting in the public baths as it was all steamy and warm in there, and you could hear the sound of people singing echoing around the tiled walls. Finally it was our turn and an attendant showed me to my cubicle. It had a stone floor and a huge iron roll-top bath with copper taps but no plug in it.

‘Give me a shout when you’ve finished, love, and I’ll empty out the water for you,’ the attendant told me.

I suppose it was like that to stop anyone from running endless baths. It felt wonderful sinking into the piping hot water after spending the night in that filthy bed. After I’d got out I washed my clothes and underwear in the bathwater, and then got changed into some clean things. Whenever I went to the public baths I would always bring my dirty washing with me.

‘Thank you,’ I said to the attendant.

She went in and opened the tap to let the water out. It was also her job to collect any leftover pieces of soap. These would be melted down and made into a new block, although the thought of that always made me cringe a bit.

‘Ahh, that’s better,’ sighed Ruth. ‘I feel clean again.’

‘Now we’d better go and report in with the theatre,’ I said.

The stage manager was very apologetic about the mix-up with our lodgings.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We’ve got you somewhere to stay. You won’t have to go wandering the streets again tonight.’

After morning rehearsals were over we went to get some lunch at the local British Restaurant. These were communal kitchens set up in towns and cities during the war to feed people who’d been bombed out of their houses or had run out of ration coupons, or just people like us who needed a cheap feed. For ninepence you could get a basic meal, such as a bowl of soup or a steaming plate of stew. Afterwards we traipsed round to our new digs, which was a big Victorian terrace house.

‘This looks a bit better,’ said Ruth.

We knocked on the door and a middle-aged woman and a girl in her twenties who I assumed was her daughter answered it. They were both wearing pink satin dressing-gowns, which I thought was a bit odd as it was the middle of the afternoon.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘The theatre sent us. They said you could put us up while we’re doing the panto.’

‘Oh, er, yes, dear,’ she said. ‘You’re the theatricals, are you? Come on in.’

An American army officer in uniform was standing in the hallway.

‘Hi, gals,’ he grinned. ‘Are you the new recruits?’

‘Oi, you, keep yer mouth shut,’ the woman said in a hushed voice, ushering him away. ‘They’re two nice young ladies from the theatre. You keep yer ’ands off.’

She took us up to our room on the first floor. It was a six-bedroom house but, looking through the doors as we walked past, we noticed that all of the bedrooms seemed to have been split into two.

‘Why do two women need a twelve-bedroom house?’ I asked Ruth.

We soon found out. Every fifteen minutes or so the front doorbell would ring and we’d hear the sound of people traipsing up and down the stairs. They were up and down all afternoon and into the evening.

‘Who are all these callers and what are they doing?’ I said, puzzled.

Ruth and I peeped through the keyhole, and every once in a while an American soldier would walk past arm in arm with a pretty woman wearing nothing but a lacy dressing-gown.

‘Oh, my giddy aunt,’ said Ruth. ‘I think I know what this place is, Irene. It’s a knocking shop.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘It’s a brothel,’ she replied. ‘For the Yanks.’

I was very shocked when she explained what that meant. I might have been streetwise, but I was still very green in some respects. I’d heard that these places existed but I was completely terrified.

‘Give me that chair, Ruth, and I’ll barricade the door,’ I said. ‘I don’t want any of those GIs losing their way and wandering into our bedroom by mistake.’

‘Perish the thought,’ she said.

We were both absolutely petrified. Ruth and I slept in the same bed, and we spent all night clinging on to each other. We couldn’t get out of there quickly enough the next morning.

‘You sent us to a brothel,’ Ruth told the stage manager when we got to the theatre. ‘We can’t stay there.’

Once again he was full of apologies.

‘I’m dreadfully sorry, there’s obviously been another mix-up,’ he said. ‘We didn’t realise what type of place it was.’

Thankfully at last we were sent to a proper boarding house, where we stayed for the month that the panto was on, but I vowed never to go to Norfolk again!

I was so naïve in those days, and as for boys, I didn’t have a clue. I wasn’t as glamorous as some of the other girls at Italia Conti. I didn’t wear any make-up, and I was a funny little thing with skinny legs and two long plaits.

But I did have a bit of a crush on one of the dancers in the King’s Lynn panto, who was tall and blond.

‘Isn’t Malcolm lovely?’ I sighed to Ruth. ‘He’s like a Greek god.’

‘Oh, don’t waste your time admiring him,’ she said. ‘He’s a queen.’

‘What do you mean,’ I gasped. ‘Is he royal?’

She just rolled her eyes at me and laughed.

‘For God’s sake, Irene, where have you come from?’

‘I really don’t know what you mean,’ I said.

For someone so streetwise and independent, I really was quite ignorant when it came to matters of the opposite sex.

After I’d been at Italia Conti for a couple of years the school moved out of Tavistock Square. Miss Conti had found a permanent home for it in Archer Street, just off Shaftesbury Avenue. The only drawback about this new location was that it was slap-bang in the middle of London’s red-light district. It was directly behind the Windmill Theatre, famous for its nude shows and ‘we never close’ slogan. As I walked down Archer Street on my way to class in the morning, a lot of the doorways would be open and I’d see men disappearing up the carpeted stairways with their bare light bulbs.

No one had ever sat down and told me about the birds and the bees, but I learned what I could from playground gossip and talking to friends. One day at Italia Conti I could see a big group of pupils gathered round in a corner of the corridor looking at something.

‘Come and have a gander at this, Rene,’ shouted Tony Newley.

Out of curiosity I went to see what they were all so interested in. Much to my horror it was some black-and-white photos of men and women with their clothes off doing all sorts of odd things.

‘Eurgh!’ I shrieked. ‘How disgusting.’

Then I ran away and all the boys laughed.

A lot of the older girls had boyfriends, but I just wasn’t interested. Daphne, who was a year older than me and was 15 by now, was very beautiful and she was always getting asked out by American soldiers.

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