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by Julie Andrews

  Throughout our childhood, he exposed us to the wonders of nature. One of my earliest memories was his taking me outside to view a large ants’ nest, which he had discovered under a stone while gardening.

  “See, Chick, how the ants carry things from here to there? Look how busy they are.” I saw them working within their little tunnels, hauling whatever they needed—and we pored over this nest for a good hour or more.

  Another time, I remember Dad waking me from sleep. It must have been ten or eleven o’clock at night.

  “I want to show you something, Chick,” he said, and he carried me downstairs. “We found a little hedgehog on the doorstep.”

  He explained how hedgehogs curl themselves into a ball for protection, and I saw this round spiky object that was lying on the floor in the kitchen.

  Dad said, “If I put some milk out, it will eventually uncurl itself and go lap it up…,” which it did. By morning the milk was gone, and the hedgehog was safely returned to the garden.

  Dad was not a religious man, and he once said to me that he didn’t think he would believe in God at all were it not for the existence of two things: trees—and man’s conscience. He said that without trees, we would not survive on this planet, for they feed us, clothe us, shelter us, make oxygen. Without a conscience, man would probably never have developed beyond a primitive state.

  But Dad was fond of church music, and always listened to the Sunday services on the BBC radio. He had a light, “bathroom baritone” voice of which he was somewhat proud. He sang any hymn or song right through to the end, his diction precise, relishing every note and every word. Certain ballads would crop up often in his repertoire: “Has Anyone Seen My Lady as She Went Passing By?” and “Where E’er You Walk” by Handel. He was a good whistler, too.

  More important to him than singing was poetry. All his life he committed poems to memory, reasoning he could then return to them anytime he wished. One of the first books Dad bought me was Palgrave’s Golden Treasury of English Poems.

  My love of water probably stems from my father, because he adored rivers and lakes. Dad enjoyed hiring a skiff and taking my brother and me for a boat ride on the Thames. Before we left the shore, he’d carefully explain, “Now listen, both of you. This can tip very easily, so keep low as you get in or get out. Do not stand up.”

  He would let us take an oar beside him and teach us how to feather it across the top of the water. But mostly Johnny and I would sit side by side on the cane-backed double seat, proudly, in charge of the rope on the rudder, watching as he evenly and easily worked on the oars, dipping them in, pulling them out. Wherever we went, he pointed out the beauty of nature: the majesty of a cliff face; the blossoms, the wildflowers. He knew the name of every tree, whether in bloom or in silhouette.

  He seemed to know a lot about a lot of things. He loved language and grammar and math. He loved to study, and would sit at his desk, one hand to his brow, as he pored over the pages. Study, for him, was essential.

  “If you don’t have a God-given talent,” he said, “it’s your duty to stimulate your brain for as long as possible in life.” At age seventy-four, he enrolled in his local college to study German and sat for the exams.

  Dad was not demonstrative. He rarely pulled me to him or hugged me or sat me on his knee. Yet I never doubted his love for me. He expressed his affection in so many small ways, like sharing the poems, or reading to me, or giving the gift of his companionship, going for walks together.

  “I often wonder, “Dad said to me once, “what the point of my life was. So many children passed through my hands, but I seldom knew the result of my teaching. There was never much closure.”

  He felt that what he did had no significance. Yet many pupils came back in later years and told him what a difference he’d made to them, and every one of us in the family treasured his ability to communicate a sense of wonder and awe. He treated all children the same way: we were young minds to be accorded dignity, to be nurtured. In retrospect it is amazing how clearly he conveyed to me that I was loved.

  Someone once asked me which parent I hated the most. It was a provocative question and an interesting one, because it suddenly became apparent to me which one I loved with all my being…and that was my father. My mother was terribly important to me and I know how much I yearned for her in my youth, but I don’t think I truly trusted her.

  THREE

  WHEN I WAS two and a half, my brother John was born. Mum, Dad, Johnny, and I (with Auntie of course) moved to another rented house called “Kenray” in Thames Ditton—again, not too far from the river.

  Kenray was slightly bigger than Threesome. It had a fair-sized front garden with a big tree in it. I did not like the place. There seemed to be a large number of spiders—pale brown with dark spots—that would weave their webs in autumn between the wilting irises and gladioli along the front path. I remember the dead flowers, sodden and drooping in the rain, and the frost outlining the stalks as winter arrived.

  My first really vivid memory of Johnny is on my fourth birthday. I had been given a beautiful little stuffed doll with a china head and eyes that opened and closed. I’d only had it a few hours, and my brother picked it up and swung it in a haphazard fashion. The next thing I knew, that lovely little china head had been smashed to pieces. My childhood rage was so huge—I wanted him out of my life forever!

  Aunt Joan was still teaching at Miss LeMarchand’s School, and I began attending pre-school there in the mornings and Aunt’s dancing classes in the afternoons. Once a year, Aunt put on shows with her pupils at the local Walton Playhouse. My father built the scenery and my mother supplied the music. Aunt choreographed and designed the costumes. Her beau, Uncle Bill Wilby, helped Daddy backstage.

  My father created some marvelous sets, like a complete airplane, which took up the entire width of the proscenium—twenty children could stand on it, ten on each wing—with a pilot in the cockpit, fronted by a whirling propeller. Another time he made a mock-up of the ocean liner Queen Mary, using false perspective to great effect. This time sailors waved through the portholes and the captain stood aloft on the bridge. His pièce de résistance was a complete carousel seating eight children on wooden horses, which revolved to the tune of “Come to the Fair.”

  My very first stage appearance was in one of these shows. I performed “Wynken, Blynken and Nod” when I was three and a half, with two other girls. One, named Patricia (“Trish”) Waters, has remained a friend to this day. When we danced a polka together onstage, Trish’s hat fell over her eyes—and apparently I continued to guide her around the stage so that she wouldn’t fall. It seems I already knew that the show must go on!

  Once, Aunt staged “A Day at the Races,” with herself as the front legs and me the back of the winning horse. We did a ridiculous dance, performed blindly on my part since my head was buried against Aunt’s posterior. The papier-mâché head was held together with strong-smelling glue, and there was no air circulating in that confined space. We muddled through the dance, but upon stepping out of the contraption, Auntie completely passed out.

  MY MOTHER AND my father’s mother did not get on. Granny Elizabeth was apparently a fine mathematician and had been a good teacher, but she had precious little tenderness or grace about her. She was bone thin, her face was lined, and she could be sharp of tongue. She once told my mother that she would never conceive children, that she’d be barren. There was no love lost between them.

  Granny lived alone when I knew her. Her sons visited her from time to time, and Dad would occasionally take me along with him.

  Deldene, the house her husband and sons had built for her, smelled of mice, urine, dust and dirt, and that acrid smell of people who don’t wash often. I remember her bed was behind a drawn curtain in the living room. She lived in the one room and didn’t bother about the upstairs. The lavatory, in a little concrete-roofed enclosure connected to the back door, was primitive and filthy.

  Dad would take me outside into the garden at s
ome point, which was laid out like an allotment, with rows of runner beans, peas, and potatoes. He did it, I think, to get me away from the stench and acrimony.

  On one of my first visits to the house, Dad’s sad, demented sister, Betty, was there. I don’t know what precipitated it, but she suddenly had a terrible fit. I remember my father and his mother and someone else arm-wrestling this shrieking, drooling creature through the living room, up the stairs, and into her bedroom, locking the door after her because she was so out of control. Her screams, her rage, her inability to convey her dilemma were terrifying to me—and I was quickly taken home.

  Though I only saw her the once, I dwelled on the incident for many years.

  MY MOTHER STARTED going away for periods of time, working more regularly, mostly playing at concert parties. A concert party was much like a vaudeville show, usually performed in an open-air theater on a seaside pier, or sometimes on the beach itself. Performance times would be posted on a big sign stuck in the sand, with the caveat: “weather and tide permitting.”

  In the summer of 1939, Mum played a series of concert parties for the Dazzle Company in the seaside town of Bognor Regis. It was there that she became an accompanist for a young Canadian tenor by the name of Ted Andrews, who had just arrived in England.

  Apparently this tenor rather foolishly—perhaps teasingly—mentioned that Mum played the piano “like a virgin.” My mother was outraged—she was, in fact, proud that her playing strength was comparable to a man’s. She had great technique, could transpose anything, and was highly skilled.

  When she returned home from rehearsals that fateful day, she told my aunt what Ted Andrews had said to her.

  “Can you believe the gall of that man?” she railed. “How dare he!”

  My aunt later said she felt her skin prickle, and knew instantly that this was more than plain rage—that my mother was attracted to the singer, and the incident was much bigger than she was revealing.

  THAT SEPTEMBER, World War II broke out.

  Hitler concentrated his forces on invading Poland and then, in the spring of 1940, Norway and Denmark. This period was known as “The Phony War.” Although Germany and the European allies had officially declared war on one another, neither side had launched a significant attack. This gave England a very slight margin of time in which to build up its defenses. America had not yet entered the conflict, so little England attempted to prepare for the German advance on its own.

  The national spirit rose to the fore. Every able-bodied person was mobilized to help, and the populace worked incredibly hard. Uncle Bill joined the air force, but my father, because of his engineering skills, was considered necessary to the defense effort at home, and was refused for combat. Instead, he joined the Home Guard.

  “If the Germans do invade,” he explained to me, “we’re the ones who’ll be in the trenches, the last to fight to the death for our country.”

  He was issued a helmet, a khaki uniform, a gas mask, a gun, and six rounds of ammunition. The Home Guard was small in number and made up mostly of older men. I’ve often wondered how long they could have held out—and what would have happened if the Germans’ vast army had, in fact, landed on British soil.

  My father came home one day with gas masks for the whole family. After World War I, mustard gas had become the great threat. Dad showed us what we had to do and made us try them on.

  Made of heavy rubber, the gas masks were the strangest, ugliest things. They had a snout, two goggle-like eyes much like an alien’s, and one had to pull the whole thing over one’s face. There was no fresh air inside; it smelled awful and I wanted to rip it off my face immediately. I doubt I would ever have been able to keep it on for more than a few seconds.

  Life was entirely focused around the war. It was ever-threatening, ever-present. All Hitler had to do was to cross the English Channel…Our air force was smaller than the Luftwaffe, but we had a fine Royal Navy, which protected our coastline for the time being. However, the seas were patrolled by German U-boats, and they were so effective that convoys bringing vital supplies to Britain were often sunk. In January of 1940, food rationing began.

  “You cannot imagine what it was like to live in prewar days,” my mother once said. “The world seemed so carefree.”

  In order to keep the Royal Air Force supplied with new planes, all kinds of unlikely buildings were turned into factories. Pots and pans were donated by housewives for the metal they contained; railings and gates from London’s famous parks and squares were removed and melted down.

  The Esher Filling Station, a local garage not too far from where we lived, had several work sheds, and they were soon made ready for the war effort. Equipment was brought in to manufacture parts for Spitfire fighter aircraft, and Dad was hired as the shop manager because of his knowledge of tools and lathes.

  He worked day and night. Sometimes he would go home and crash for an hour, or he’d catnap at work on a narrow bench and then get up and continue on, because continuing, no matter what, was so vitally important.

  Once in a rare while, he would take me down to the riverside pub at Thames Ditton. Being underage, I couldn’t go inside, but he would get his beer and bring me out a lemonade and some crisps, and we would sit together. I didn’t understand why people liked to congregate just to drink, but I sensed that for my dad it was a welcome break.

  My mother was now often away with Ted Andrews. They were billed as “The Canadian Troubadour, with Barbara at the Piano.” Johnny and I remained with Dad and Aunt Joan.

  Early in 1940, my mother signed on for ENSA, or the Entertainments National Service Association—jokingly referred to as “Every Night Something Awful.” This was an organization set up to provide recreation for British armed forces personnel during the war. She went off with Ted to entertain the troops in France. There were two children at home who needed her, but I think the compulsion to go with Ted was overwhelming.

  One particular day before she left is seared upon my memory.

  Mum took me out for a walk, which was unusual since she never had time to take walks with me. We strolled through the village, hand in hand, past the shops—and I saw a child’s dress in a window. It was over-the-top, fluffy and pink, but I thought it the prettiest I had ever seen. A day or so later, I came home from some outing and as I entered the house, I realized it was empty and that she had gone. She had not said good-bye. Though she had been away before, I sensed, the way that children can, that she was not coming back.

  Feeling terribly sad, I went upstairs to my bedroom and discovered the pink fluffy dress spread out on the bed with a note. Nothing special—just “With love, from Mummy” or some such thing. My heart full to bursting, I ached for her, loved her, missed her, knew that she had thought of me as she left—and I wept.

  It occurs to me now that she may have wanted to say something during our walk together. Did she not say anything because I was babbling on too happily, glad to be skipping along beside her, just the two of us? Perhaps her heart told her she could not hurt me at that moment. I can only wonder at the strength of my mother’s passion, and what it must have cost her to go. I think she felt guilty about her decision for the rest of her life.

  Soon after that, I had my first nightmare. I dreamed that an ugly goblin walked through the open door of my bedroom and stood in front of me. At first I thought he might be a friend, or a new toy, but then he took out a knife and I knew he intended to cut me.

  I woke in the dark, terrified, convinced of his presence. I had to find my father, and summoning a desperate courage, I made a panicked dash for his room, sure that on the way I would be attacked.

  My father was asleep, with Johnny curled beside him in the big bed. He instantly understood my wailing terror and folded me into warm covers and the safety of his arms. But even then I could not communicate the dread that seemed rooted in my soul.

  FOUR

  ON MAY 10, 1940, the same day that Winston Churchill became our prime minister, Germany invaded France,
Belgium, and Holland in what was known as the “Blitzkrieg.” Hitler pushed through France, encountering resistance all the way, and he eventually succeeded in reaching Paris. On June 23, he paraded his victorious troops down the Champs Elysées, marching them through the Arc de Triomphe. He had been expecting to find all the treasures of the Louvre Museum waiting for him but, in a brief space of time, they had all been removed, spirited away and hidden in chateaux and caves across France. The fact that Hitler never found them is miraculous.

  The might of the German Army was such that the British troops (and some of their French allies) were forced to retreat to the English Channel beaches of Dunkirk, where they were constantly strafed by the Luftwaffe and a great many died. But some 340,000 men were rescued from the beaches by every civilian yacht, fishing vessel, barge, and motorized boat that could sail across the Channel from England, all of whom had been called to action by Churchill.

  Some years later, my mother mentioned that she and Ted had been entertaining the troops in France when Hitler invaded, and they had been lucky to catch one of the last ferries to England before the borders closed; if they hadn’t, they would have been interned. I realized that had things been different, I might not have had a mother at all, and I felt a deeper sense of appreciation for her.

  Finally, Hitler turned his attention to Britain and began to prepare for an invasion. In order to be successful, he needed to achieve air superiority—so he charged his Luftwaffe with destroying the British air and coastal defenses first. The result was the Battle of Britain, which lasted from July to October of 1940, and was the first battle to be fought solely in the air.