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Tales of a Tiller Girl
Irene Holland
A heart-warming nostalgia memoir from a member of the world famous dance troupe, The Tiller Girls. Based in London in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, Irene’s story will transport readers back to a more innocent, simple way of life.This is the story of a little girl who loved to dance. Growing up in London in the 1930s, dancing was so much more to Irene than just a hobby. It was her escape and it took her off into another world away from the harsh realities of life. A fairytale world away from the horrors of WW2, from the grief of losing her father and missing her mother who she didn’t see for three years while she was drafted to help with the war effort. And far away from her cold-hearted grandparents who treated her like an inconvenience.Finally it led to her winning a place as a Tiller Girl; the world’s most famous dance troupe known for their 32-and-a-half high kicks a minute and precise, symmetrical routines. For four years she opened and closed the show at the prestigious London Palladium and performed on stage alongside huge stars such as Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and Judy Garland.It was a strange mixture of glamour and bloody hard work but it was certainly never dull. And being a Tiller Girl also gave Irene the opportunity to see firsthand the devastating effects of WW2, both here and abroad.Heart-warming, enlightening and wonderfully uplifting, Irene’s evocative story will transport readers back to a time when every town and holiday resort had several theatres and when dance troupes like The Tiller Girls were the epitome of glitz and glamour.
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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 (#u02ce837d-352c-57a6-89bf-083e57d78d27)
Title Page (#uc2ff5d5b-5a5e-593e-9fe7-fd2c03e89bf0)
Dedication (#ulink_e4d841be-d458-543a-8c8d-83bcaf4bdde0)
1. On Our Own (#ulink_fa51d34d-548b-5a27-9650-5e349a8f1fe4)
2. Bows and Bombs (#ulink_3c33f68f-c9eb-5ce5-b671-7a351464d8f9)
3. Painful Goodbyes (#ulink_fe45b43b-9498-5860-b840-0b2ab01a1a78)
4. Fairyland (#ulink_b89a0f8e-9740-537a-8956-bb2ade5f5b32)
5. Ballet in the Blitz (#ulink_de58f47a-cf36-5386-bd0a-718f4dfd4cdf)
6. Treading the Boards (#litres_trial_promo)
7. Briefly a Bluebell (#litres_trial_promo)
8. Trying Out (#litres_trial_promo)
9. Bright Lights (#litres_trial_promo)
10. Sisterhood (#litres_trial_promo)
11. Dancing with the Stars (#litres_trial_promo)
12. Disaster Strikes (#litres_trial_promo)
13. Making Mum Proud (#litres_trial_promo)
14. War Wounds (#litres_trial_promo)
15. Horror and High Tea (#litres_trial_promo)
16. Man Trouble (#litres_trial_promo)
17. The Final Curtain (#litres_trial_promo)
18. New Beginnings (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Picture Section (#litres_trial_promo)
Exclusive sample chapters (#litres_trial_promo)
Moving Memoirs eNewsletter (#litres_trial_promo)
Write for Us (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
1
On Our Own (#ucf85a87b-15fc-5e65-a592-3053463e4282)
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.
