A Tiger's Wedding

by Isla Blair

  At 7.00 he came in, saw our faces and poured my mother and himself a whisky, and some lime juice for me, and asked to be filled in. I told him what I’d told my mother, only in the repeated version I made it darker and exaggerated so that the only conclusion he could possibly come to was that I should never go back. Dad listened in silence and his eyes never left my face. He drew long and hard on his pipe, sipped his whisky, drew on his pipe again. “Is this what you want Isla, to give up?”

  I nodded that it was. There was another silence.

  “Well, I’m disappointed in you and surprised at you. You were never a quitter. You have always been strong and determined, wilful even, and adamant about this ambition of yours. And I’ve gone along with you, because I believe you could one day be a talented actress. I know nothing about the theatre world, but it seems to me that people who do have given you a chance, and that it is you who is not allowing yourself to take it. You deserve more from yourself than this. Do you imagine all the other students feel as confident and clever as they let you believe? They are all probably just as nervous and frightened as you are. But they are able to hide it better. I don’t know if you will have success as an actress; I don’t even know how good you are, but I do know one thing: if you give up now you will never forgive yourself for the rest of your life because you will never know. You won’t have given it your best shot. You won’t have given it any sort of shot, and when you are a disappointed old lady you will look back at this moment and wish you hadn’t thrown everything away by being afraid. It will take courage to go back, but I think you have got that. I think you should go back and do two more terms, finish the year. If you then feel the same, maybe the life isn’t for you, but you will know for certain. I think next term it will be different.”

  And so it was. I was moved from class A to class B. The year’s intake was split into streams of A and B. In stream A I had been with Tony Hopkins, Victor Henry and an older group of students, who scared me, not just with their drinking and their ferocity, but because of their talent. The students in stream B were probably just as talented, but I felt more like one of them. I started to laugh and become less inhibited, I wore fishnet tights and a grey pinafore dress with a black polo neck sweater, it didn’t matter that I didn’t wear eye liner. I was not copying anyone; I was starting to be me.

  There was one teacher at RADA who knew I was young, but didn’t call me a baby. He said my voice sounded velvety, not high and girly. He said I had a quality that was engaging and if I trusted myself to be still, I was watchable. He taught a class called “Technique” and although he made me nervous, he gave me confidence too. His name was Peter Barkworth. It was ironic that a teacher who taught “Technique” was the person to liberate me from my self-consciousness, my inhibitions. Peter (or Mr Barkworth as we called him) was a very distinguished actor, who spoke in a quiet voice, nearly always with a smile. He was a dapper man; he always wore a suit and polished shoes and a clean shirt every day. He had an air of quiet authority and gave structure to what we were trying to do. I knew nothing about technique, none of us did; indeed, some students started by scorning it. The “Method” was what they spoke about. Stanislavsky, Lee Strasberg. “Acting should not be technical; it should be natural, immediate, from the heart.” Of course, that’s what we all aspired to; how come, then, we were so wooden, awkward? It wasn’t long before we all started to look forward to his classes.

  Isla, Simon Ward and Charlotte Howard in “The Two Bouquets” RADA

  Peter suggested ways of bringing an immediate past on stage with you. What had you been doing before the scene began? Peeling potatoes? Reading a letter? Crying? Then maybe you could be wiping your hands, putting the letter in a pocket, wiping your nose as you entered. You didn’t just arrive in a room – you brought what you were just doing in with you. He would suggest a displaced activity while talking, arranging flowers, putting photos in a book, sharpening a pencil, folding clothes. People don’t just speak at each other – sometimes they look away, don’t meet your eyes at all – it’s up to you to discover the secret life of the character. You could counterpoint a scene by saying something while doing something else. He taught us about sub-text too, and having an internal life, while acting out the life the playwright had given you. LOOK, MOVE, SPEAK became a mantra. LOOK at a character on stage – MOVE to the piano, pick up a sheet of music and SPEAK the question. LOOK at the door, MOVE to it, SPEAK “Goodnight” and leave.

  He taught us the technique of kissing (oh! the embarrassment). How to cry if you are saying “Goodbye” – no, not by staring at a light for a long time, but how to be moved by something tiny about the person you are saying goodbye to, focusing on it – a speck of food on their tie, a little mole above their mouth, something that makes them vulnerable and the moment of parting poignant and unbearable. He taught us how to react and how to listen. He made us improvise and discover our own spontaneous explorations into character by creating an atmosphere where we all started trusting each other.

  I began to be able to work on a role, not just learning lines, but thinking about the character’s background, parentage, accent, clothes, shoes she’d wear. By giving things a structure, rules if you like, suddenly I became less awkward, less wooden, less theatrical and more natural. I began to be truthful. Slowly my shoulders opened, and I stopped being fearful of making a fool of myself. Much later, not at RADA, someone taught me the rules of Shakespearian verse speaking (Julian, my husband, actually). There are rules and they should be followed and ditched later, once you have learnt to speak in Iambic pentameter (five beats to the line), not breaking it up but observing the line endings; it sounds more natural than a lot of prose. It flows and sounds as if you are making it up on the spot, just invented the lines, it sounds immediate and easy on the ear.

  The RADA course was two years in those days (it’s now three) and for the first two terms, I commuted daily from Horsham to Victoria where I would catch a bus to Tottenham Court Road. The days were long and unpunctuality was noticed, frowned on, and continued lateness merited a discussion with the Principal as to whether or not you were serious about the course. Sergeant policed the entrance hall and clocked you running in breathless with seconds to spare. There was no excuse accepted for being late unless it was very serious. Buses and trains’ haphazard timetables, leaves or people on the line, accidents, even illness, would not do. It became exhausting. I’d catch the 7.28 train which meant rising at 6.00 to allow for the 20 minute walk to the station and I’d often get back at 9.30 in the evening when my father would pick me up from the station and I’d have soup and toast and fall into bed to start all over again the next day. My parents could see me growing grey and thin and started to fret about my health. So when I mentioned that a girl in my class was looking for a room-mate, they chatted it through with me and reluctantly but sensibly agreed it was the only option, as in my second year the hours would become longer still, with shows to rehearse and productions to be in.

  I shared with a girl called Heather who was in stream B and we found a bleak little basement room in Torrington Place, a three minute stumble from RADA. We had to share a kitchen and a bathroom, the floor was covered in linoleum that curled up as it got to the walls and there was a smell of damp and decaying food. The floor of the communal kitchen was always greasy and you couldn’t see the bottom of the loo, as it was stained a dark brown and in need of a good soak in bleach. Of course I didn’t eat properly. I ate white bread and butter and Mars bars and so it was not surprising that I got constant colds and a boil on my bum (agonisingly painful) and once I got flu. This was during a public performance of “Prison Without Bars” – it was an all-women play and not very good, but my mother came to see a matinee with Aunt Hazel and was shocked that I should be performing with a temperature and the sweats. I told her I had to, I was sharing the role with Lynne Ashcroft and it would be just my luck if agents and prospective employers came when Lynne was on because I was off. No, I could not be off.

&nb
sp; She was even more shocked when she came to my room and witnessed the squalor her little girl was living in. I think it was the lack of a pillowcase and the soiled pillow from heads other than mine, with just the striped ticking covering the soggy contents, that made her suggest that I move. And so I did with Heather again, to a flat in Earls Court.

  It can’t have been easy for my parents to watch their daughter enter a world of which they had no comprehension, a world that to them seemed threatening, immoral and possibly dangerous. And their daughter was young and vulnerable, for all her lofty protestations that she could look after herself.

  I tried to be bohemian. I walked to and from home barefoot on many occasions, or with just my fishnet tights which were starting to become very hole-y. I’d visit Fiona in her nurses’ home and she would be embarrassed by my appearance, although she never scolded me. Once I appeared with a pink rubber elephant under my arm. I even started to smoke a pipe. It made me feel sick, but I liked the image. I thought I looked eccentric, but cool – I must, in fact, have looked quite idiotic.

  Fiona and I met up at the weekends when she was not working. We were starting to inhabit such different worlds, but we were always glad to see each other. We were following our dreamed of careers. Perhaps it was no surprise that she became a nurse. She had spent so many years caring for me, it must have become a habit and she was good at it. School had been her security when our parents were abroad, which was why it was such a blow when St. Maray’s was closed. And now, her security became another institution – the nurses’ home, the structure of the ward with the Sister in charge, timetables and rules.

  Our parents had been back from India for two years, Fiona was safely at the Middlesex Hospital and here was their youngest girl, little more than a child, in an alien and frightening landscape that they had no control over. But they let me find my own way and supported me through it. I am reminded of C. Day-Lewis’ poem where he states, “Selfhood begins with a walking away, and love is proved in the letting go.” And they loved me enough to let me go. Not long after we had been re-acquainted they let me go.

  Because they let me go, of course I went back. Every weekend, when we weren’t working, I’d go home to my bed in my room and I’d tell my parents of the week’s antics; lessons, humiliations and little triumphs. I’d eat properly and sleep twelve or thirteen hours and on Sunday night we’d watch Roger Moore in “The Saint” on TV as we sipped chicken noodle soup and munched on toast. A little flutter would start in my tummy as I knew it would soon be time to go to bed to be ready for the 6.00 start next morning and the train to Victoria to begin another week.

  For all the nervous tension I expressed, the undoubtedly long hours and hard work, there was something exciting, even glamorous about the life I was starting to lead, in my parents’ eyes anyway. My horizon was expanding and theirs was somehow reduced – no polo matches, no cocktail or tennis parties, no gymkhanas or soirees at the Club. Instead there was the daily commute, the washing and cooking, with the occasional weekend away staying with friends from India and reminiscing about days that were already being bleached out in their memory, friends with whom they had less and less to talk about.

  One Friday evening I was going home to my parents for the weekend when I passed Mr Lazlow on the stairs. He had a tiny room in Earls Court next to ours that he shared with a canary.

  “Bye, Mr Lazlow, have a nice weekend,” I called as I went down the stairs.

  “I’ll spend it in bed, as I always do. It makes the time pass quicker.”

  I was stopped in my tracks. Here was a middle-aged man (in truth he was probably about forty) and he was so lonely he was wishing, sleeping his life away.

  Mr Lazlow’s ghost has hovered over me throughout my adult life – perhaps because loneliness is the one thing I fear and the one thing I will doubtless have to endure like countless others, like most of us, in fact. It is hardly profound to say that we are all really alone – if we are lucky, we’ve enjoyed closeness, love, companionship, but our own company is usually the company we end up keeping.

  To my surprise and delight I got several letters from agents (it was “Prison without Bars” and a musical, “The Two Bouquets”, they had seen) – I hadn’t heard of any of them, but John Fernald, the Principal, picked out the good, reputable ones and I made appointments to see them.

  I found myself in the offices of Plunkett Green, Eagle House, Jermyn Street. Terry Plunkett Green came in wearing a green velvet jacket and asked me to join him in the office of his colleague, Julian Belfrage.

  Julian was pencil slim with thinning hair, a cigarette in his hand and the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen, fringed by the longest lashes on anyone since Bambi.

  SIXTEEN

  A Long Way to Fall

  Julian was the hot-shot agent of the time and remained so until his untimely death aged 60 on 28th December 1994.

  The other RADA students were amazed and envious, “Julian Belfrage wants you? Good heavens! He’s the best.” He was and I grew incredibly fond of him (but that’s another story.).

  He put me up for various jobs and the last few weeks of my RADA term were spent auditioning. He made it a rule that as soon as you had finished your audition you had to call him to report how it went. “Always have four pennies ready and look out for phone boxes.”

  I went to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, to audition for “The Boys from Syracuse” and afterwards I made the call to Julian from Covent Garden (which was still a vegetable and fruit market like the scenes from Pygmalion/My Fair Lady) to report in.

  “Isla, don’t get on the tube home. Don’t go anywhere. Walk down to the Strand Theatre. Go to the stage door; they are waiting for you.”

  “What? Now?”

  “Yes, now, do whatever you did at the audition you have just been to.” It transpired that “The Boys from Syracuse” producers had called their opposite numbers at the Strand Theatre and my agent to say I was far too young for their show, but seemed perfect for the understudy in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”

  I trotted down the road (I was wearing Fiona’s black stilettos) – it was no more than fifty yards – and checked in at the stage door.

  “Go down to the stage Miss,” said the stage doorkeeper. I sang “I Have a Love” from West Side Story. They asked me how old I was, “Eighteen, but I’ll be nineteen in September,” feeling as I had always felt that my youth was somehow a handicap. And that was it.

  I made the second phone call to Julian. “Put the four pennies in and press A when someone answers,” and Julian said, “They want to see you again tomorrow, but I want you to wear a pretty dress and get your hair done. The audition is at 4.00 pm, so you will have time for that in the morning. Have you any money?”

  “No, Julian, I have no money at all.”

  “You can borrow some from me and we will set it against your first paycheque if you get the part. Get on a tube to Piccadilly Circus. My offices are closed now, but there’s a bar further up Jermyn Street, called Jules Bar. I’ll meet you there in 20 minutes.”

  I met Julian, declined a drink, and stuffing the ten pound notes into my bag, completely unaware of how shady it could have looked, I made my way back to my flat in Holland Park that I was now sharing with three girls. I bought the dress (far too old for me, a sheath graded blue, light blue at the top which darkened into midnight as it reached the hem) and I had my hair cut and set at a hairdresser Julian had recommended in Bond Street.

  At the audition there were rows of us sitting on chairs in the wings, and waiting on the stairs by the stage door. My turn came.

  I finished and they asked me to read a bit of the script with the stage manager, enquired what my age was again, and thanked me for coming.

  It was two days before Julian called me to say the role of the understudy was mine if I wanted it.

  Rehearsals began at the Strand Theatre. The director was the great and legendary George Abbott. Mr Abbott, as we all had to address him, was born in 18
87 and died aged 107 in 1995, but he seemed pretty ancient to me when he was only 76 in 1963 – he seemed very formidable.

  I was thrown in at the deep end, because the actress I was understudying, Sally Smith, was delayed on a film she was making, so I had to stand in for her for the first five days. I don’t think I was very good, but I enjoyed singing the song “Lovely” with John Rye, and the cast of comedians were rather remarkable, starting with Frankie Howerd, Jon Pertwee, Kenneth Connor, “Monsewer” Eddie Gray and Robertson Hare. The girls playing the courtesans were beautiful, leggy and busty, wonderful dancers and they were kind and patient with me.

  Half way through the second week, I was told I needn’t come in to rehearsal. I assumed they were not doing the Virgin’s scenes that day. Julian rang me. “Isla, apparently Sally Smith’s film has to reshoot some stuff with her, and she will not be available to play the part of the Virgin. Mr Abbott and the producers want you to play it. Do you think you are up to it?”

  I was silent.

  “Isla, are you still there? The producers want you to go to the Savoy Hotel tonight at 7.00 to talk to them about it.”

  I found my voice. “Really? Me play the part? You mean, open in the show? To do the whole run?”

  “The whole run. Your salary will go up from the £10 a week you are getting as understudy, to £40 a week to play Philia. They want you to sign for the run of the play. Go to the Savoy tonight. I will ring your parents and speak to them about it.”

  I borrowed a pink and white gingham dress from my friend and flatmate Suzi and found my way to the Savoy Hotel. Mr Abbott was there to greet me, Vicky Brinton, Hal Prince, Mr Sondheim and the two writers. They asked me how I felt. “Are you alright about this, Isla?” I said that I thought I was and that I would try to do my very best. With that Mr Abbott ordered champagne and I had the first glass of it I had ever tasted.