London

I found myself back in London, no particular place in London, just ‘in London’. I wandered the streets of London. I distinctly remember coming up from the ‘underground’ at Piccadilly Circus, spat out from a hole in the ground, into a teeming mass of people. A moving crowd, I was part of the whole crowd, but not knowing a single person, I was completely alone. I might as well have been in the middle of the Sahara Desert. I moved about unseen, I could do anything, and yet I could do nothing. I had nothing. Why was I here with nothing? In the middle of this teeming mass of humanity, completely alone. I had a loving family, I had a beautiful home and yet I was here with nothing.

I bought the Evening Standard newspaper. I found a room in Nothing Hill Gate for £2 10 shillings a week. It was a brown room, up four flights of brown stairs, in a brown house, owned by a thin, old, bent stick of a landlady. She had iron grey hair pulled tightly back into a bun and wore the same faded floral apron all the time I was there. At the end of each week I padded down the brown stairs into a half-lit brown basement and knocked at a brown door. I paid my faded, bent, little old stick of a landlady, her rent. I could hardly distinguish her from her surroundings. Her tight sallow, parchment cheeks, slowly pulled back her thin lips into a half smile and she said softly, ‘Thank you.’

My grandfather was a very, very wealthy, self-made Australian, who built the first sugar refinery in ‘Black Africa’. I never met him, and my father never referred to him in any way. My father’s nickname, to his seven brothers and four sisters, was Squib. Although he never so much as raised his voice to us, his close family, I had cause to witness his explosive temper on some occasions. I think his temper had a lot to do with the relationship he had with his father.

Later, my father had asked Lord Lyle, of Tate and Lyle, to give his son a job, in the head offices of Tate and Lyle, in the city of London. The order to employ me had filtered down from on-high to the manager of lump sugar sales. I was welcomed with open arms, the prodigal son. I was given my own desk, £10 a week and an account at Lloyds bank in the city. I had ‘made it. Well, perhaps I might have ‘made it’ had I ever discovered what on earth I was supposed to do at my beautiful desk, with its green leather top, drawers each side, and my own telephone. There were nine other desks in the room, with a row of four busy tapping secretaries at the front. Everyone was so industrious, If they weren’t scribbling in huge manuals they were talking earnestly on their telephones, or they were walking about quickly from desk to desk. In and out of the office, speaking into dictaphones, pieces of paper flying from in-tray to out tray, the whole office thrummed. I was a fly on the wall, I can see the whole scene as clearly now as I felt it then. I was part of a machine, in the same way, I was of the crowd at Piccadilly Circus, but a spare-part waiting to be used. All the other cogs were in good working order. Lunchtime thankfully arrived. A delicious lunch was provided in a canteen for all office staff, and the managers of all departments had their own restaurant. I met a chap there who’d been working for Tate and Lyle for more than ten years and was relieved to hear he didn’t seem to know what he was doing either. He was perfectly happy with his situation and intended to go on working for the company until he retired in 35 years. Could I actually go on doing this for the next 40 years? The thought was terrifying. I persevered for eighteen months.

A few months before I handed in my gratefully received notice, by a relieved departmental manager, I’d turned desperately to the Evening Standard’s classified ads looking for anything that might catch my eye. I’d no idea what I was looking for, but suddenly a little two-liner jumped out of the page. Drama classes. Auditions held at 23 Berwick St. W1. 6pm. I knew Berwick St. was well known for its material shops, but I was yet to find out the nature of the other trade for which it was better known. I climbed the stairs up to another brown door. I knocked. The door swung back and in front of me stood, a short, fat middle-aged woman with a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth and wearing a flimsy, frilly see-through nightdress. She said, in a broad cockney accent, ‘Wanna short time love?’ I didn’t then know what ‘a short-time’ was and said, ‘No I’ve come about the drama classes.’ The door slammed shut. I eventually found myself sitting opposite a pretty little, round-faced girl, with white, clear skin and large doe-like brown eyes and long dark straight brown hair. She asked me to do my audition piece. I can’t remember what I did, but with my fiver on the table I was accepted.

I didn’t know then, but do know now, this little meeting, held in such a different place to anywhere I had ever been or experienced, was to have a profound effect on the direction of my life. Not only did I find a group of open-minded friends, from such diverse backgrounds, I’d broken myself free from the chains to which I had willingly tied myself, those of my own background.

My father didn’t want me to have anything to do with farming, but I wondered what he’d think of my present choice.

There were about eight of us altogether. At first we met once a week in the back of the little material shop in Berwick Street. But we found we enjoyed each other’s company so much, we booked another room in Holborn to meet more often. The classes were taken by the little white-faced, dark-haired girl called Zoe and a Scottish actor called Jeremy Ure. Quite quickly it became apparent who could act, and who just found it liberating to mix with others of open, friendly diversity.

Surprisingly, very surprisingly, I found myself drawn to the whole notion of the theatre. Not necessarily acting in itself, but the whole thing. I’d stumbled upon something where everyone concerned had the same enthusiasm, a sense of envelopment. Only in retrospect can I equate that sense, as equivalent to belonging to my home. A warmth, satisfaction, a calmness. No one could honestly recommend it as a profession, and I can truthfully say the idea of acting at all, let alone a profession was never even a spark. But all those to whom we were introduced by Jeremy Ure and little doe-eyed Zoe, loved doing what they did.

It wasn’t long before I was given my first job. A six-month contract as an ASM, assistant stage manager, in the repertory theatre at Northampton. I received the princely sum of six pounds a week. The room in which I lodged nearby cost thirty shillings a week with use of the kitchen. That left me four pounds ten shillings for everything else. Even then a struggle. I don’t know how I managed, but I loved it.