When August got home yesterday he was tired and a bit dispirited. It had been a long day and he hadn’t got the prices for the calves that he’d been hoping for.
When I told him Henry had been, he was awfully annoyed.
I probably shouldn’t have said anything, but it’s nice to talk at the end of the day – like a proper family. I always ask him what he’s done and tell him about my day but as they are all so similar – visits from Mil, chats with Mrs Stow, reading and smoking – I thought Henry’s visit might be of interest.
Unfortunately it wasn’t. At least not the sort of interest I had intended.
‘What the devil did that chap want coming down here?’ said August, his eyebrows drawing together as they always do when he’s angry.
His unpleasant tone made me angry and we had the first row we’ve had since being married.
‘Why shouldn’t he come?’ I said. ‘Henry’s my friend and someone I’ve known much longer than any of you lot down here.’
August stood in front of the kitchen table and I stood on the other side, about to get one of Mrs Stow’s pies out of the oven. But August didn’t sit down and I didn’t reach for the oven gloves. We faced each other, both red in the face and with fists clenched.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Wolf and Reg get up and disappear into the hall.
‘I suppose he went on about missing your magnificent performances? And the girls all asking about you? And no doubt hoping that your marriage was proving a disaster and you’d soon be returning to London?’
‘He didn’t, actually. He was very interested in the yard and the animals and he loved the cats,’ I said.
‘Cats!’ August snorted, then dragged his chair back from the table with a horrid scraping sound.
‘And he loved Mrs Stow’s cooking and came back for seconds. I think he really envied me my life on the farm,’ I went on.
This wasn’t entirely true as Henry would probably have been delighted if I’d said my marriage was a mistake and I wanted to return to London. But August had no right to assume something he knew absolutely nothing about.
My husband hadn’t finished.
‘Show him around, did you? Round the house and upstairs to the pink bedroom?’ August sat down with a thud and his eyes were blazing. ‘Did you go into our bedroom? Or did you parade in front of the double bed? Perhaps he suggested giving it a go, for old times’ sake?’
This was too much. August could get his own supper and I’d come down later and get something to eat when he was sleeping. He slept so heavily he wouldn’t know if I was there or not.
I slammed out of the kitchen, trod on Reg’s tail, making him yelp, and stormed up the stairs.
Then I decided to sleep on the double bed for that night. It was far more comfortable than the narrow single bed I lay on beside August, and I needed SPACE.
Why is it that if you’ve been on the stage everyone presumes you have no morals? I don’t believe that theatre folk live and love any differently to anyone else.
When I was doing Mother Goose in Leeds – I was still a student at Miss Griggs’ – there were twelve of us dancers in that panto and eight of us were still virgins. That’s not a bad percentage.
Of course we talked a lot about sex in the dressing room, and were very interested to know who had, and who had not ‘done it’. And what was it like? etc. etc. But the few who had ‘done it’ were not madly enthusiastic, and the girl who sat next to me – Rowena – who was a black-haired beauty with wonderful dark eyes and an amazing bosom (though not particularly good at dancing), said she didn’t know what all the fuss was about.
‘It’s fun for the men,’ she had said, leaning forward to add more mascara to her heavily lashed eyes, ‘but dead boring for us, if you ask me.’
Nobody contradicted her so I believed her.
And I remember Lyn saying that when she worked as a part-time typist before coming to the Windmill, the girls in the office were devils with the men – many of whom were married – and were having affairs with most of them.
They used to boast about their activities during the tea-breaks and Lyn said it made her feel sick.
They thought she was a dark horse because she wouldn’t talk about her boyfriends, and they knew she was a ballet student. But she was a virgin then and still is, to my knowledge, unless the French men have been her undoing.
I had also never been to bed with a man until I married August, but he was an ideal teacher and I quickly realized that Rowena had been quite wrong. August was gentle and patient and our honeymoon was a joyous and exciting time.
Now that we are back on the farm and living properly as man and wife, we do not make love as often as I should like, but he has no right to assume that I am having sex with Henry behind his back.
I slept very well last night in that huge bed and completely forgot that it had once been Mil’s. But I’ll be back with my husband tonight. There’s no point in carrying on bad feelings and we were both very polite with each other this morning. It’s best to try and put all those angry words behind us.
August has gone out again so I’m going to spend this time remembering the good old days then I’ll concentrate on the present.
I first started dancing when Auntie came to the Home. I suppose Jane Eyre would have called her a benefactress.
She was a thin, tweedy lady who wore sensible brogues, a sensible felt hat, no make-up and a thin occasional smile. Her eyes were a very light blue and appeared lashless, and her hands were bony and long-fingered. And cold. Same sort as Mrs Dawson, I suppose, but much nicer to me.
It was Auntie who introduced me to Miss Griggs’ School of Dance, and I shall always be grateful to her for opening up my austere little world at the Home.
Auntie seemed to know Matron very well, and she must have had a lot of money because she paid for my classes at Miss Griggs’ until I left and began earning my own living on the stage.
I wonder if Auntie is now benefactress to some other little girl at the Home? She came to my wedding with Miss Griggs but I haven’t seen her since.
Well, why should I? That was another life in London and we never talked much, anyway. She just came and escorted me across Earls Court on that first day and introduced me to Miss Griggs.
As well as paying for my classes, she also forked out for all the leotards and tights and shoes – endless pairs of shoes – flat pumps, point shoes, character shoes, and tap shoes – which changed frequently as my feet grew bigger.
After Auntie was sure I knew my way – I didn’t need a bus; it was just across Earls Court from one end to the other – Matron allowed me to go alone so long as she knew where I was going and what time I’d be back.
Schooling was pathetic. We always longed for the air raids because they wasted lots of time – so my education was only saved by the fact that I loved, and still do, reading. At the Home there was a big room at the rear, on the ground floor, where we sat on wooden chairs at wooden desks and learned the obligatory ‘3 Rs’.
There were only girls in the Home, about twenty on our side and the littlies on the other side with Miss Lamb. We ranged from five years old to Kathryn Jane, who was greatly admired by the rest of us and almost grown up. I wonder if she is still there helping on Miss Lamb’s side? She did love the babies.
Kathryn Jane had very wavy black hair, which she tied back in a ponytail, and big, thickly lashed blue eyes. She was beautiful so maybe a man has caught her now, but she helped Matron a lot and we all adored her during my years there.
Our teacher was called Miss Laycock. She was thin and intense with no make-up, and had pale brown hair wound in a tight roll round her head. She used to come in every morning with her old dog, and teach us tables, spelling, dictation and reading aloud lessons. We also had to do a few adding up and subtracting sums, which I hated.
Two afternoons a week, until I became a full-time student, I used to go to my beloved dancing classes. None of the others came to dancing with me – I suppose they didn’t have a benefactress – but when I was not dancing I had to join the bigger ones with handiwork. Kathryn Jane took the younger ones for a walk.
Handiwork was another thing I hated. We had to knit small garments for the littlies – or the newcomers, as they were called – sometimes really tiny babies came in next door. Unwanted, illegitimate, like me, unloved or orphaned. But at least there was a place for them at the Home.
Miss Lamb took care of them. I don’t know why Matron didn’t have a proper name – nor did Auntie – but Matron was for the bigger girls and Miss Lamb was for the littlies.
Back to the knitting.
I was wrong to say it was tiny garments. It wasn’t. Well, not often. Which was a pity as they would have been quicker to make. Small babies grow and they soon outgrew all the small garments we made. So these were washed and kept for the next arrivals and more, bigger ones, were needed.
We, the older girls, knitted larger pullovers and cardigans and those soon wore out with all the wear and tear and washing and chewing, so more had to be produced. If we had time, we also knitted for ourselves.
Kind folk used to bring old woollen things to the Home which we had to unravel, soak in a bowl of water to get rid of the wrinkles, squeeze out and hang over the fender to dry.
Then we used to sit in pairs, facing each other, one with raised hands and the other winding the wool round and round until a skein was produced. When it was a complete skein, it had to be wound again into a tight ball.
It was all right if you liked the girl opposite and could have a reasonable conversation with her, but I usually had fat Hannah, who wasn’t the least bit interested in dancing, or else Judy.
I wonder where Judy is now? She wasn’t too bad – much nicer than fat Hannah – but she did cry a lot. We had all been told to be especially nice to Judy. She was a latecomer because her mum had been killed in an air raid and her dad was missing.
I really tried. But the trouble was she didn’t like dancing, didn’t like reading and was so miserable all the time it was difficult to know what to say to her.
Luckily, some time after she had arrived, and when it was decided (by Matron) that I should partner her whenever possible, and she had been given the bed shoved up next to mine in our bedroom, which normally slept eight and now had Judy as number nine – I discovered that she quite liked singing.
As singing was my second favourite activity after dancing, we soon drove everyone nearly mad with our renderings of ‘Ten Green Bottles’ and ‘Clementine’ and ‘One and Only You-ooo’. But Matron didn’t stop us too often because she felt sorry for Judy and was glad she was happy doing something.
Once we had several balls of wool ready, we could begin knitting our garments. It didn’t matter about colours so there were numerous Joseph’s coats of many colours worn in the Home – mainly of faded browns and blues and greys.
Side to middle sheets was another chore and needed lots of singing to see us through. All our sheets became worn in the middle and as money was scarce it was a matter of ‘mend and make do’.
On Matron’s orders and only when she said – we stripped the bed/beds she told us about, cut down the middle of each sheet very carefully, they tore if you looked at them, then made a neat hem joining the two sides in the middle and hemmed the cut sides with equal care.
It was laborious and boring work even with the singing, and I longed to be away at my dancing. But if we wanted sheets under our rough blankets we had to persevere. Fortunately there were always Tuesdays and Thursdays to look forward to. Those were magical words – Tuesdays and Thursdays were DANCING DAYS!
Rationing for clothes didn’t end until last year, when I had already left the Home, but the war years weren’t too bad for us. I remember the excitement of sleeping down in the Underground, which was fun because I could make sure who I lay next to – not fat Hannah!
But then Matron decided it was an awful nuisance having to race down to Earls Court station every time the sirens sounded the alert – carrying babies, bottles, gas masks, etc. So she told us we should just congregate in the kitchen and classroom, and hope. Which we did, crouching under the tables and desks and praying. Luckily our street was never hit like poor Miss Griggs’ first studio.
It was at one of Miss Griggs’ classes in her new studio that I first met Lyn Goddard. She was older than me by a year and was tall and striking with long blonde hair and amazing legs. We quickly became friends because we got changed next to each other, and stood next to each other at the barre. We also giggled at the same things.
When Miss Griggs called out, ‘You’ve lost your balance, Annie Brown, hurry up and find it!’ I’d wobble even more and especially when I heard Lyn sniggering behind me. And when Miss Griggs told Lyn she stuck her chin out like a chicken: ‘No hens in here, if you please, Miss Goddard!’ we’d double up with laughter, particularly when nobody else seemed to find her words amusing.
Luckily Miss Griggs had a good sense of humour and accepted our hilarity just so long as it didn’t go on for too long and disrupt the rest of the class. Which it didn’t, because we loved dancing and Miss Griggs was a jolly good teacher so we passed all our exams with ease.
Lyn’s home was in a large flat in South Ken and, once the war was almost over and we were winning because the Yanks had come to help us, I was allowed to go with her after class and have tea with her mother.
I suppose Mrs Goddard telephoned Matron. I don’t know about that. But I do remember Lyn saying, ‘Would you like to come home with me? Mum has asked Matron and it’s all right by her.’
I was thrilled. It was another adventure away from the Home. We went on the Underground from Earls Court to South Ken and Lyn paid for our tickets with money from her little cloth purse. Then it was a five-minute walk from the station to the huge Victorian building where she lived.
I remember climbing lots of stairs before she opened her front door with her own key, and we entered a spacious flat.
Lyn had told me that she and her mum had moved back to London in 1943. They had been staying in Somerset with her gran after her dad was killed during the Battle of Britain. He was a pilot.
I didn’t know what to say to that but Lyn said it was all right, they were fine about it now, and as her gran didn’t have much room it was good to get back to London and thank goodness their flat hadn’t been bombed. She also said she and her mum were much closer since Mr Goddard had died.
I liked Mrs Goddard. She was all mauve twinset and pearls and wore her fair hair in a roll like Miss Laycock. She had a lovely tea all ready for us, laid out on a table with a lace cloth. Very posh. And little lace table napkins. I’d never seen anything like that before and was very impressed.
All the china was floral and edged with gold, and we had watercress sandwiches, and meat paste sandwiches, and little currant buns, and cups of tea out of elegant floral cups with gold rims.
I remember thinking it was the best tea party I had ever had.
At the Home we had great thick earthenware mugs and thick slices of bread with margarine, and we sat on wooden benches on both sides of the long table and ate as fast as we could before the bell went. The tea was always very hot and that was our last meal until we were given warm milk and two biscuits at bedtime.
Tea at the Goddards was very special and I went there many times whilst I was at Miss Griggs.
As well as looking fantastic, Lyn was a very good ballet dancer, but unfortunately her height stopped her from auditioning for a ballet company.
‘Aren’t there any tall men doing ballet?’ I asked her once. Miss Griggs, like the Home, only had female pupils.
‘I suppose there are a few,’ said Lyn, ‘ballerinas have to have male partners for the pas de deux and for lifts. But when I’m on point it adds inches to my height and I’ll be miles higher than my partner and just look silly.’
‘What’ll you do, then?’ I asked, knowing that she loved to dance as much as I did.
‘Mother says I have to finish my shorthand and typing course just in case I don’t get a dancing job, or for when I’m in between stage jobs. Then I’ll have to try for pantos and summer shows.’
I couldn’t imagine anything worse than sitting on my bottom all day bashing away at a typewriter, and I prayed that Auntie wouldn’t insist on me taking a Pitman course. Luckily she didn’t. But once I was allowed to leave the Home, aged fifteen, I went to live with her.
She gave me the tiniest slip of a room across the hall from her huge cluttered one, and we shared the minute kitchen and lav, which was under the stairs at the back of the hall. The bath was in the kitchen, but only used once a week, and covered with a wooden board, which made an excellent surface to put things on.
Auntie’s flat was in Stanhope Gardens, very close to Gloucester Road Underground, and I did Mother Goose panto at that time, then continued with my full-time studies at Miss Griggs’. But more and more I longed to have a proper job and earn my own money. Apart from the few weeks when I had been away in Leeds for the panto, and had been able to pay for my own digs and meals, I was still living on Auntie’s generosity and felt both guilty and restless.
I wanted my own little room, and my own gas ring on which I could cook my own meals. Well, a boiled egg or a tin of soup hotted up, with loads and loads of toast by the gas fire. That all seemed like bliss to me then. And I felt sure poor Auntie would be extremely relieved to have me out of our very tight, and shared living space.
I think Miss Griggs must have sensed my unease, or maybe Auntie had a word with her, but one day to my joy, Miss Griggs suggested that I audition for the Windmill Theatre. I was good at both modern dance and tap and, in fact, enjoyed them more than classical ballet.
‘You will be worked very hard at the Mill,’ said Miss Griggs, who was an old Millerette and remembered the glorious days when Mrs Henderson owned the theatre and her manager, Mr Van Damm, first introduced his non-stop variety shows to London.
I didn’t care about hard work. If I was accepted it would mean a job in London and the money to pay for my own bedsit.
When I told Auntie, she wasn’t sure if she liked the idea of nude ladies cavorting about on stage (nor did I at first) but Miss Griggs had the knowledge we lacked, and we trusted her judgement.
She was able to reassure us that none of the girls had to appear naked if she did not want to, and those that did were not allowed to move, and the lighting had to be subdued and artistic. The Lord Chamberlain saw to that.
‘Go and see a show,’ said Miss Griggs. ‘Go and see for yourselves. Then, if Annie fancies working there, I’ll apply for an audition for her with Mr Van Damm.’
We must have appeared an odd couple sitting there in the fourth row of the stalls, surrounded by gentlemen in City suits. Me, very young and apprehensive, accompanied by Auntie, a thin, tweedy lady with a stern face.
The theatre was only half full at that early afternoon performance, I remember, and many of the gentlemen were dozing during the conjuring and slapstick acts. The one next to me was even snoring, no doubt after his boozy lunch. But as soon as the music quickened and the girls came on, everyone woke up and took notice.
The first number was a high-kicking routine with all the girls clad – though briefly, so far as I was concerned – in tight blue leotards of satin, fishnet tights and very high heels, with nodding ostrich plumes on their heads.
The routine was very quick, very slick and very exhausting I learnt later, when every leg had to be raised at exactly the same moment, and at exactly the same height! But the audience always loved it.
After that opening number I had to admit that Miss Griggs had been right, and all the other dances in the programme we saw were artistically and beautifully presented. There was only one nude and I almost missed her as I was so busy watching the six dancers, who were dressed in little straw skirts and performed in a flower-filled garden.
The girls carried floral garlands in hoops which they held above their heads and swung from side to side. They also had garlands of flowers around their necks, and I only realized their breasts were bare when the flowers moved in time with the music.
Very clever and very tasteful, I thought, and by Auntie’s slight smile I knew she thought so, too.
The one real nude was posed as a statue at one end of the garden, and remained so still I imagined she was made of marble. But just as the dance ended and the other girls left the stage, a spotlight lit her up for a moment and the applause thundered out, making me realize she was a live girl. Then the curtain fell.
There – now I feel better for having put all that down – but my hand is aching and my eyes are feeling scratchy, so I’m going to stop. Anyway, I can hear August taking off his boots so I’ll pop the kettle on and look attentive and pleased to see him. This is my life now so I must try to make him happy and be a better farmer’s wife from now on….