If taking part in the chapel cantata
is doing anything for me at all, then it is encouraging me to rise and shine in
a rather less angelic way than Uncle Frank does.
Living next door to a school is also doing its bit. Since it has the only building with a proper stage and auditorium in the vicinity, travelling theatre groups invariably fill in gaps in their tours by doing one or two night stands here.
These are announced in the local
paper, and Mama is invariably against my seeing any of it because she has heard
the Noel Coward song ‘Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington’
and taken to heart the advice it proffers. Theatre changing rooms, I am told,
are dens of iniquity not to be frequented by anyone of propriety. Mama claims
to be an expert on such matters, though she has absolutely no experience to
fall back on. Apart from that argument, going there could put silly ideas into
my head.
“But it’s only the school stage,” I
argue vociferously.
“That doesn’t make any difference,”
Mama replies. “Once you get under the influence of those evil people, there’s
no telling where you might end.”
I hate this categorical condemnation
of people she has never set eyes on. After all, she has let me go the cantata
rehearsals, and if the people there aren’t iniquitous, then I’d like to know
who is.
The problem with grownups is that
they only see things from their point of view and only as it will affect them
in the short or long run. If I end up at the bottom of the pit, where all the
other theatre people apparently already are, then that will reflect back on
her. I have to do things that will not take the skin off her nose. Seen from
that aspect, singing in the chapel cantata is definitely more suitable than
mixing with actors and their cronies.
No matter if Mrs Briggs, a former
respected member of the nursing profession and now part-time and freelance
cloakroom lady, secretly picks the pockets of any coats hanging in any
cloakroom she happens to be guarding, only to blame whatever child is anywhere
near if she is observed, saying she has merely confiscated the stolen item.
She’s been doing it for years, and has never lost her respectability. Mama says
it’s better than her continuing to smother elderly patients. As a potential
scapegoat, I don’t share her view. If she smothered elderly patients, why
isn’t she in prison?
No matter that the organist is
carrying on (I believe that’s what it’s called) with Lucy Morton’s mum in the
vestry while we are all in the organ loft practising changing costumes from
being ordinary children to angels and back again. And she’s not the only mum he
carries on with.
Messing around in the vestry or
making children take the blame for your misdemeanours is Christian. Singing and
dancing on a stage in front of a paying audience, some of whom, who are likely
to be calling themselves Christians, but are according to Mama wayward,, is
heathen. You don’t pay to watch people making a spectacle of themselves, Mama
says. Dada, as usual, keeps his own counsel for the sake of a peaceful life, but
he purses his lips and sends me telepathic messages saying not to take any
notice of her.
Then, one day, the imminent arrival
of quite a well-known troop of musical performers is announced on billboards
and in the paper. They are going to perform an operetta called The Desert Song,
and if can’t get to see it by fair means, I’ll do it by foul.
Knowing that Dada is really on my
side but won’t be disloyal to Mama, I have to find a different solution to the
cash-flow problem. My pocket money just isn’t enough to buy a ticket for one of
the three performances on offer. Not being a thrifty person, I am unable to
keep track of where my money goes, but even if I could, it would take me seven
weeks without sweets to save up at sixpence a week and that would depend on my
knowing that much ahead of time what I wanted it for.
I decide to ask Uncle Frank instead.
Uncle Frank knows I am theatrical because always sing and dance for him when I
visit him.
“It’s Mama’s birthday soon,” I
explain, deceitfully. “I’ve seen a scarf I’d like to get her, but I haven’t got
enough money saved up.”
“How much,” he asks, with a twinkle
in his eye.
“Three and six,” I tell him, and the
twinkle seems to get merrier. He isn’t feeling too bad at the moment, and so he
smiles a bit more than usual.
“Well,” he says slowly. “if I didn’t
know for certain that you wouldn’t tell me an untruth, I could swear that you
were trying to wheedle the price of a front row ticket for the operetta tomorrow
night.”
Caught in the act.
My last hope dashed, I turn round to
leave the room so he won’t see my shame.
“Here you are,” he calls after me.
He counts out the coins into my hand.
“Your mother’s a bit too strict, in
my opinion,” he explains. “Your father was here this morning to ask me to do
something about a ticket for you because he doesn’t want to upset your mother
by doing it himself. I phoned the booking office and they’re saving you one
right in the middle of the front row, and it’s paid for, so you’ll have enough
money to buy the scarf, too.”
I can’t believe my ears.
“I don’t know what bee your mother’s
got in her bonnet,” he adds. “Somehow she’s got the wrong end of the stick.
There’s nothing wrong with travelling theatre groups. It’s their work, just
like being a butcher was mine. You go there and enjoy yourself., but make sure
you come and tell me all about it, young lady.”
“Yes, of course. Thank you, thank
you...” I stammer.
If kissing had been customary in our
family, I would have kissed him.
Do angels like being kissed?
Back in my bedroom, I hide the money
in my pencil case, and walk on air for the rest of the day. If only Dada or
Uncle Frank were well enough to go with me. But Uncle Frank stopped going
anywhere much after Auntie Sylvia died, and Dada doesn’t go anywhere hot and
crowded because of his coughing.
Next day, I ponder on how I can get
out of the house without being seen by Mama. I can’t even risk discussing the
theatre visit with Dada, because walls have ears in our house. I decide to
plead a headache and go to bed very early, hoping Mama won’t get suspicious,
seeing as I don’t usually offer to go to bed before seven, or at any other time
for that matter. If I put a stool outside my window, I can climb out unseen and
get to the school hall via the fence and playing-field. I position a stool from
the garage on the way home and manage to smuggle my good shoes and warm coat
into my room, and am bracing myself for my fictitious early night when Dada
calls me into the sitting room. Mama is busy making the tea in the kitchen and
listening to the news on the Home Service.
“You just go out the front door with
this,” he says in a stage whisper, folding a sheet of paper and putting it into
an envelope together with another three and six for my ticket. “It’s for Uncle
Frank, and it’s a list of all the people who were on the Christmas bonus scheme
last year. He’s waiting for it, so Mama won’t be surprised.”
“But the ticket is paid for, Uncle Frank told me,” I
stammer, feeling quite embarrassed at the sudden windfall.
“That’s all right,” he goes on in a normal
whisper. “He will have phoned the bank and arranged something. Take the money
out, go to school and collect your ticket at the door.” He crosses my palm with
an extra sixpence. I can’t tell him now about the extra money from Uncle Frank,
but I will when I get home.
I can’t disguise my excitement and
relief, either. I won’t have to climb out of the window and run across the
soggy field after all. I won’t have to sit all evening in wet shoes and catch
my death.
“I’ll clear it up with your mother.
There’s not much she can do after the event, now is there?”
“Won’t she come and fetch me out?” I
ask, dreading just that.
“Of course not. You know your mother
Once the deed is done, your mother will be angry but resigned. She’d like to go
herself, but she’s said so many bad things about theatre people that she’s
afraid of losing face.”
I can well understand that. Grownups
cut off their tongues to spite their faces sometimes.
“She wouldn’t want to make a fool of
herself in front of people she knows, and there are bound to be plenty of them
in the audience.”
If Dada had known what a profound
impression this theatre experience was going to make on me, maybe he wouldn’t
have collaborated with Uncle Frank to make it possible.
But he did, and now here I am,
standing in the queue for my reserved ticket.
Presently I am being ushered down the
centre aisle by the lady from the newsagent’s where I buy my sweets on a
Saturday and having my seat pointed out to me. I have only had to pay two
shillings because I am so small, which means I got another one and six back,
making me really rich. I now have one and six and Dada’s sixpence and three and
six to spend on refreshments in the interval plus the three and six from Uncle
Frank. I spend threepence on a programme that has all the words of the songs in
it and a packet of toffees to keep the wolf from the door.
It’s easy to forget that this is our
school hall, because it now has dimmed house-lights, and the red velvet
curtain, which is usually tied back with string, has been pulled across the
stage, behind which there is the audible activity of final preparations for
curtain up. Between me in the first row and the school platform stage there are
music stands and chairs for the orchestra, and very soon they all come in
carrying their instruments and start making a terrible row getting their music
started. Nobody has warned me about this. Let’s hope they play a bit better
when they’ve been going for a bit.
The performance is indescribably
magical and enthralling, being way beyond my wildest dreams of what happens on
theatre stages. The orchestra plays tunefully after all, and the actors dance,
sing and orate their way through the epic, which takes place somewhere very hot
with a lot of red floodlights, the heat and light of which stretch out to me in
the front row. I cannot take my eyes off the leading man, who is called Red
Skelton, and wears a flowing scarlet cloak that he swishes around as he marches
across the stage, now singing to the lady of his heart, now fighting the enemy,
now facing me eye to eye and assuring me that all will be well.
To be honest, I don’t really catch
the story, because everyone bursts into song at critical moments, when they
should probably have been doing something more practical, and I have a little
difficulty in believing that you can tap-dance like they do on desert sand. But
that doesn’t matter. My first real theatrical experience at first hand is
filled with a magic that I have never experienced before or since. This is the
place I want to be, riding against all odds through the makeshift desert with
Red Skelton in his scarlet cloak, singing about love and happiness, then bowing
modestly to the ovations and mouthing ‘thank you, thank you’ and beating my
heart to the first row. I, too, want to give pleasure to thousands, but most of
all I want to lose myself, exchange my ordinary self for someone with alluring
qualities such as beauty, charm and courage.
The stage lights are so bright that
they dazzle me and make it difficult to see into the dark of the auditorium
behind me. But I hear a familiar little cough and know that Mama is at the back
somewhere, making sure I can’t see her. That is one of the many moments when I
wish she would share my love of magic and make-believe. But she never does, not
to her dying day.
I have to be asked
to leave at the end. Mama has long since taken flight, of course. The magic of
the evening has overwhelmed me. I am transported into Red Skelton land and am
reluctant to return to reality. Nearly everyone else has gone home. A cleaner
is collecting sweet papers and giving the floor a hasty going over with a damp
mop, ready for school assembly next morning. I walk the few yards home in a
reverie. Life will never be the same again. I have been elevated to a place
pretty near to where the angels dwell.
Dada opens the door. Mama has gone to
bed with a migraine, he explains. That means she will be out of action for at
least 24 hours. It is her way of coping with insurmountable problems and
not having to face the truth. Her programme lies on the hat shelf. It is sort
of hidden from view, but I can see it through the wooden slats making up the
shelf. I don’t comment, not even to Dada.
Next day Dada has to get me and my brother
up for school. He makes us something to eat when we get home again. Still in a
state of enchantment, I venture to ask him if I can play theatre in the garage.
Mama isn’t able to frown and forbid, so Dada says I can. Straight after tea we
go into the garage and fasten an old washing line from one side to the other.
Then we hang a long curtain from the black-out during the war over it, thus
dividing off the back of the garage as a stage. Next day, I get some school
chums to come home with me and we start where Red Skelton left off, eventually
drawing our audience from willing onlookers who pay in sweets and conkers for
the privilege of watching our antics.
Whatever Mama may think of my theatre
project, she never mentions it, and never asks about The Desert Song. It is her
way of pretending it never happened. Maybe it is not her intention, but she
makes me feel guilty and sad. Not guilty and sad enough to give up the idea of
theatre as a way of life, mind you.
As far as Mama is concerned, nothing
has changed. She never confessed to being at the musical performance and she doesn’t
notice the excitement growing in me as I think of all the wonderful
performances I will give one day.
But then, being the daughter of Mama
is hardly what you’d call straightforward.
A few days later I sneak down to
Woolworth’s and buy her a woolly scarf from the money left over from the Red
Skelton, and being a reformed character after my conversion to the professional
theatre, I confess to Uncle Frank that I have spent his money on a scarf for Mama,
but I want to pay him back a penny a week. That will leave me enough for a
sweet or two.
Mama wears the scarf every day.
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