My Autobiography (4 page)

Mother had now sold most of her belongings. The last thing to go was her trunk of theatrical costumes. These things she clung to in the hope that she might recover her voice and return to the stage. Occasionally, she would delve into the trunk to find something, and we would see a spangled costume or a wig and would ask her to put them on. I remember her donning a judge’s cap and gown and singing in her weak voice one of her old song successes that she had written herself. The song had a bouncy two-four tempo and went as follows:

I’m a lady judge,

And a good judge too.

Judging cases fairly –

They are so very rarely –

I mean to teach the lawyers

A thing or two,

And show them just exactly

What the girls can do…

With amazing ease she would then break into a graceful dance and forget her dressmaking and regale us with her other song successes and perform the dances that went with them until she was breathless and exhausted. Then she would reminisce and show us some of her old playbills. One read:

ENGAGEMENT EXTRAORDINARY

Of the dainty and talented

Lily Harley,

Serio-comedienne, impersonator and dancer.

She would perform before us, not with only her own vaudeville material, but with imitations of other actresses she had seen in the so-called legitimate theatre.

When narrating a play, she would act the various parts: for instance, in
The Sign of the Cross
, Mercia with divine light in her eyes going into the arena to be fed to the lions. She would imitate the high pontifical voice of Wilson Barrett proclaiming in five-inch elevated shoes – for he was a little man: ‘What this Christianity is I know not. But this I do know, that if it made such women as Mercia, Rome, nay, the whole world would be all the purer for it!’… which she acted with a suspicion of humour, but not without an appreciation of Barrett’s talent.

Her instinct was unfailing in recognizing those that had genuine talent. Whether it was the actress Ellen Terry, or Joe Elvin of the music hall, she would explain their art. She knew technique instinctively and talked of theatre as only one who loved it could.

She would tell anecdotes and act them out, recounting, for instance, an episode in the life of the Emperor Napoleon: tiptoeing in his library to reach for a book and being intercepted by Marshal Ney (Mother playing both characters, but always with humour): ‘Sire, allow me to get it for you. I am higher.’ And Napoleon with an indignant scowl saying: ‘Higher? Taller!’

She would enact Nell Gwyn, vividly describing her leaning over the palace stairs holding her baby, threatening Charles II: ‘Give this child a name, or I’ll dash it to the ground!’ And King Charles hastily concurring: ‘All right! The Duke of St Albans.’

I remember an evening in our one room in the basement at Oakley Street. I lay in bed recovering from a fever. Sydney had gone out to night school and Mother and I were alone. It was late afternoon, and she sat with her back to the window reading, acting and explaining in her inimitable way the New Testament and Christ’s love and pity for the poor and for little children. Perhaps her emotion was due to my illness, but she gave the
most luminous and appealing interpretation of Christ that I have ever heard or seen. She spoke of his tolerant understanding; of the woman who had sinned and was to be stoned by the mob, and of his words to them: ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’

She read into the dusk, stopping only to light the lamp, then told of the faith that Jesus inspired in the sick, that they had only to touch the hem of his garment to be healed.

She told of the hate and jealousy of the High Priests and Pharisees, and described Jesus and his arrest and his calm dignity before Pontius Pilate, who, washing his hands, said (this she acted out histrionically): ‘I find no fault with this man.’ She told how they stripped and scourged him and, placing a crown of thorns on his head, mocked and spat at him, saying: ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’

As she continued tears welled up in her eyes. She told of Simon helping to carry Christ’s cross and the appealing look of gratitude Jesus gave him; she told of the repentant thief, dying with him on a cross and asking forgiveness, and of Jesus saying: ‘Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise.’ And from the cross looking down at his mother, saying: ‘Woman, behold thy son.’ And in his last dying agony crying out: ‘My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ And we both wept.

‘Don’t you see,’ said Mother, ‘how human he was; like all of us, he too suffered doubt.’

Mother had so carried me away that I wanted to die that very night and meet Jesus. But Mother was not so enthusiastic. ‘Jesus wants you to live first and fulfil your destiny here,’ she said. In that dark room in the basement at Oakley Street, Mother illuminated to me the kindliest light this world has ever known, which has endowed literature and the theatre with their greatest and richest themes: love, pity and humanity.

*

Living as we did in the lower strata, it was very easy to fall into the habit of not caring about our diction. But Mother always stood outside her environment and kept an alert ear on the way we talked, correcting our grammar and making us feel that we were distinguished.

As we sank further into poverty I would, in my childish ignorance, reproach her for not going back to the stage. She would smile and say that that life was false and artificial, and that in such a world one could so easily forget God. Yet whenever she talked of the theatre she would forget herself and again get carried away with enthusiasm. Some days, after reminiscing, she would fall into a long silence as she bent over her needlework, and I would grow moody because we were no longer a part of that glamorous life. And Mother would look up and see me forlorn and would cheerfully console me.

Winter was approaching and Sydney ran out of clothes; so Mother made him a coat from her old velvet jacket. It had red and black striped sleeves, pleated at the shoulders, which Mother did her best to get rid of, but with little success. Sydney wept when he was made to wear it: ‘What will the boys at school think?’

‘Who cares what people think?’ she said. ‘Besides, it looks very distinguished.’ Mother had such a persuasive way that Sydney to this day has never understood why he ever submitted to wearing it. But he did, and the coat and a pair of Mother’s cut-down high-heeled shoes got him into many a fight at school. The boys called him ‘Joseph and his coat of many colours’. And I, with a pair of Mother’s red tights cut down for stockings (which looked as though they were pleated), was called ‘Sir Francis Drake’.

At the depth of this dolorous period, Mother began to develop migraine headaches and was forced to give up her needlework, and for days was obliged to lie in a dark room with tea-leaf bandages over her eyes. Picasso had a blue period. We had a grey one, in which we lived on parochial charity, soup tickets and relief parcels. Nevertheless, Sydney sold newspapers between school hours, and though his contribution was less than a drop in the bucket, it did give a modicum of aid. But in every crisis there is always a climax – in our case this crisis was a happy one.

One day while Mother was recovering, with a bandage still over her eyes, Sydney came bursting into the darkened room, throwing his newspapers on the bed and exclaiming: ‘I’ve found a purse!’ He handed it to Mother. When she opened it she saw
a pile of silver and copper coins. Quickly she closed it, then fell back on the bed from excitement.

Sydney had been mounting buses to sell his newspapers. On top of one bus he saw a purse on an empty seat. Quickly he dropped a newspaper over it as if by accident, then picked it up and the purse with it, and hurried off the bus. Behind a bill-board, on an empty lot, he opened the purse and saw a pile of silver and copper coins. He told us that his heart leapt, and without counting the money he closed the purse and ran home.

When Mother recovered, she emptied its contents on the bed. But the purse was still heavy. There was a middle pocket! Mother opened it and saw seven golden sovereigns. Our joy was hysterical. The purse contained no address, thank God, so Mother’s religious scruples were little exercised. Although a pale cast of thought was given to the owner’s misfortune, it was, however, quickly dispelled by Mother’s belief that God had sent it as a blessing from Heaven.

Whether Mother’s illness was physical or psychological I do not know. But she recovered within a week. As soon as she was well, we went to Southend-on-Sea for a holiday, Mother outfitting us completely with new clothes.

My first sight of the sea was hypnotic. As I approached it in bright sunlight from a hilly street, it looked suspended, a live quivering monster about to fall on me. The three of us took off our shoes and paddled. The tepid sea unfurling over my insteps and around my ankles and the soft yielding sand under my feet were a revelation of delight.

What a day that was – the saffron beach, with its pink and blue pails and wooden spades, its coloured tents and umbrellas, and sailing boats hurtling gaily over laughing little waves, and up on the beach other boats resting idly on their sides, smelling of seaweed and tar – the memory of it still lingers with enchantment.

In 1957 I went back to Southend and looked in vain for the narrow, hilly street from which I had seen the sea for the first time, but there were no traces of it. At the end of the town were the remnants of what seemed a familiar fishing village with old-fashioned shop-fronts. This had vague whisperings of the past – perhaps it was the odour of seaweed and tar.

Like sand in an hour-glass our finances ran out. and hard times again pursued us. Mother sought other employment, but there was little to be found. Problems began mounting. Instalment payments were behind; consequently Mother’s sewing machine was taken away. And Father’s payments of ten shillings a week had completely stopped.

In desperation she sought a new solicitor, who, seeing little remuneration in the case, advised her to throw herself and her children on the support of the Lambeth Borough authorities in order to make Father pay for our support.

There was no alternative: she was burdened with two children, and in poor health; and so she decided that the three of us should enter the Lambeth workhouse.

A
LTHOUGH
we were aware of the shame of going to the workhouse, when Mother told us about it both Sydney and I thought it adventurous and a change from living in one stuffy room. But on that doleful day I didn’t realize what was happening until we actually entered the workhouse gate. Then the forlorn bewilderment of it struck me; for there we were made to separate, Mother going in one direction to the women’s ward and we in another to the children’s.

How well I remember the poignant sadness of that first visiting day: the shock of seeing Mother enter the visiting-room garbed in workhouse clothes. How forlorn and embarrassed she looked! In one week she had aged and grown thin, but her face lit up when she saw us. Sydney and I began to weep which made Mother weep, and large tears began to run down her cheeks. Eventually she regained her composure and we sat together on a rough bench, our hands in her lap while she gently patted them. She smiled at our cropped heads and stroked them consolingly, telling us that we would soon all be together again. From her apron she produced a bag of coconut candy which she had bought at the workhouse store with her earnings from crocheting lace cuffs for one of the nurses. After we parted, Sydney kept dolefully repeating how she had aged.

*

Sydney and I quickly adapted ourselves to workhouse life, but in an overcast sadness. I remember little of incident, but the midday meal at a long table with other children was a warm and expectant affair. It was presided over by an inmate of the workhouse, an old gentleman of about seventy-five, with a dignified
countenance, a thin beard and sad eyes. He elected me to sit next to him because I was the youngest and, until they cropped my head, had the curliest hair. He called me his ‘tiger’ and said that when I grew bigger I would wear a top hat with a cockade and would sit at the back of his carriage with my arms folded. This honour made me very fond of him. But a day or so later a younger boy appeared on the scene with curlier hair than I had and took my place beside the old gentleman, because, as he whimsically explained, a younger and curlier-headed boy always took precedence.

After three weeks we were transferred from Lambeth Workhouse to the Hanwell Schools for Orphans and Destitute Children about twelve miles out of London. It was an adventurous drive in a horse-drawn bakery van, and rather a happy one under the circumstances, for the country surrounding Hanwell was beautiful in those days, with lanes of horse-chestnut trees, ripening wheat-fields and heavy-laden orchards, and ever since the rich, aromatic smell after rain in the country has always reminded me of Hanwell.

On arriving we were delivered to the approbation ward and put under medical and mental observation before entering the school proper; the reason was that amongst three to four hundred boys a subnormal child or a sick one would be unhealthy for the school as well as being in an unhappy situation himself.

The first few days I was lost and miserable, for at the workhouse I always felt that Mother was near, which was comforting, but at Hanwell we seemed miles apart. Sydney and I graduated from the approbation ward to the school proper, where we were separated, Sydney going with the big boys and I with the infants. We slept in different ward blocks, so we seldom saw each other. I was a little over six years old and alone, which made me feel quite abject; especially on a summer’s evening at bed-time during prayers, when, kneeling with twenty other little boys in the centre of the ward in our night-shirts, I would look out of the oblong windows at the deepening sunset and the undulating hills, and feel alien to it all as we sang in throaty off-key voices:

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;

The darkness deepens: Lord, with me abide;

When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,