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‘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 (#ucf85a87b-15fc-5e65-a592-3053463e4282)
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.’
