Chapter
Three - Work, Shows, Friends, Birds and Bees
My mother said I must have a bread and butter line of work before I tried to do anything more to further my theatrical ambitions. She always regretted that she had no particular training that would enable her to get a well paid job. She had been a teacher, although without qualifications, she had mended dolls in a dolls' hospital, she had been a door to door saleslady, canvassing for the Automobile Association and when young had worked in a Dance Hall as a sort of 'Ten Cents a Dance' girl for about a week, until my Aunt Emma turned up and removed her, telling her she was breaking her mother's heart!'
At that time, it was thought a very good thing to learn shorthand and typing and work in an office, and so I was duly despatched to the Durban Business College to get the right certificates.
I did not know anyone else there though, but was wiser now and did not attempt to pal up with anyone until I was sure they were all right. It was a lonely time, but I didn't mind, it was so much better than school. One day I was sitting in an empty classroom eating a sandwich and I prayed, really prayed to God, for a nice friend. It was astonishing. A girl walked into the room and said 'Hello' and that was the beginning of a very pleasant friendship with a German girl called Renate who had recently moved down to Durban from the Transvaal. Its the only time I can remember a prayer being answered, although I realise that the answers at other times may have been 'no'.
Nova went away for a long time with her family at this point, I think down to her mother's family in the Cape. She was very touchy about her Afrikaans background on her mother's side and who can blame her? People in Durban were inclined to say things like 'She's Afrikaans, but she's nice' as if that was usually most unlikely. We never stopped writing to each other, and she returned to Durban in early 1956. I saw more of Sue, but she went with her family for an extended holiday to England, as although her father was Irish, her mother's family all lived in Kent. So during 1955, I saw Renate more than anyone else, until Sue and her family returned in the Autumn.
From then on my life took an upturn. I was very good at shorthand, not so good at typing at first, but passed out of the college in October 1955. The college sent people off to interviews and I only went to one, which was the job I stayed in for the next four years until I left South Africa. It was a very respectable old firm of solicitors and I went into it as a junior receptionist and typist.
Going to work after my years at school was like soaking in a warm bath after coming in inadequately dressed from a blizzard. I loved it, and I was getting paid too! The people were all nice to me, both the older ones and the younger. I even volunteered to go in on some Saturdays mornings when it wasn't my turn on the rota to man the office with a skeleton staff! There were two older secretaries who were a lot of fun, two book keepers, a dear older man called Mr Mumford who had been to school with my father and handled the debt collections. The senior partner was a gentleman of the old school and the young partner, his son, who had been a well known cricketer, was very pleasant too. The young articled clerk was a brilliant chap who passed his exams at a very young age and soon became a junior partner after the old man died. His name was David but we called him Davie Boy. He had red hair and was very handsome. He was a prickly sarcastic chap, though this bothered nobody and we girls teased him and ignored it when he tried to be fearsome. I expect later on as his career progressed he would have terrified new young clerks and typists.
There was a girl who I called Ali who was 21 and immediately senior to me, she was a sort of junior secretary and I thought she was very sophisticated. I did not know at first that the boss had taken her on as a favour to a friend of his, and that she was neither conscientious nor bright. One day I was called into the junior partner's office and he told me that he wanted me to swap positions with Ali, so she would become the junior. He said she did not mind and he had spoken to her already. It would also mean a small rise in salary for me. I stammered that I did not mind changing, but wished I could still do the 'Court' work as it was so complicated! This was not quite what I meant but I was naturally rather nervous at being called in to his inner sanctum. The office junior had to go up to the Law Courts every day and file writs, summonses etc and bring back the Returns, calling at many different buildings, depending on whether it was a civil or Supreme Court matter, and I got to know all the various clerks in the different departments. Later my friend Sue married one of them, having met him through me.. Davie Boy had shown me what to do and it was lovely having about an hour every morning to walk along the streets, looking in shop windows, munching a chocolate bar and being free at a time when all my friends were in their respective offices. Also, I could pop in to their offices on the way and say 'hello'. This was often quite legitimate as I also used to deliver letters to various Estate Agents and other Solicitors if any post was ready to go at the time I left.
By the end of 1955 I seemed to have a wide circle of friends, apart from the Girls High ones, at work there was Clare who started soon after me as a bookkeeper and had been one year behind me at school, Renate of course, some from my Park View days who had gone to other senior schools, and even some from the Convent who I had bumped into in the street and started meeting for lunches and coffees. My old best friend Valerie from Junior School, had moved to another town with her family as the doctor said this might improve the asthma which dogged the whole family. After the way I had been shunned at the beginning of my High School days, you can see how important it was for me to have friends! As most of our group seem to have ended up as shorthand typists and at least two worked in other legal firms, going to Court every day was a real perk for me.
Mr Collins said I could continue to do the Court work, but would no longer have to operate the switchboard or manage the stamp book.
There was one day I did not enjoy, however. Davie Boy came out of his office
and said I must take his clients to meet their barrister because he certainly
was not going to be seen with them! It was a large peasanty family from the
country, all in their Sunday best,
parents, Uncles and Aunts, children and a very pregnant dull looking girl. Also
there was a weedy looking youth who they were saying was the father of the
child. I do not know why both sides in the case were together, but I held the
brief tied up in green ribbon in front of me to show I was there in an official
position and walked at the head of this vociferous and strange looking
procession. And people did stare at us, I was not imagining it!
Ali really didn't seem to mind not going to Court and we were very friendly. She was not very bright intellectually, and I remember once when she was asked how she had got on on a blind date, her reply to 'Did he come up to your expectations?' was 'No, I met him by the garden gate' - and she was not being funny! Her knowledge about the ways of the world, however, impressed me greatly. When even the most innocent of us were at last reaching the world of boyfriends, she gave us sex lessons in the senior partner's office at lunch hours. This was now usually empty, as he hardly ever came in. We were all about 18 and 19 and she certainly was the expert in sexual matters. She kept saying 'Don't tell anyone it was me who told you all this'.
I know this sounds as if we were all rather backward and I suppose we were. Going to a girls only school had not helped. Of course some of the others may have only been pretending not to know, or hoping to find out something new.
Its one thing to know the facts of life, but actual experience is quite different. My mother had told me everything as soon as I asked. I knew about prostitution, homosexuality, lesbians, divorce, adultery, and what happened to girls who got pregnant when they weren't married. I had read my father's library books and these had given me some very strange beliefs. One book said that someone came into her flatmate's room and could see what had been going on 'from the way the cushions were arranged'. For some reason, I visualised this as meaning that one cushion was at each end of the sofa and that bodies met in the middle somehow, but I did not know where one's legs would go. Another book mentioned someone's breast being stroked, and I thought it meant with a paintbrush! After the lessons with Ali, a lot of the dirty jokes I had overheard from the more mature girls at school, began at last to have meaning.
Lyne & Collins was quite a small firm and yet Ali was not the only person there whose knowledge of the English language was less than perfect. People used to bring cakes in on their birthdays to offer round to the staff at tea time and when an older lady, Joey, was offered the plate of cakes, she said joyously 'Oooh, my pet aversion' and delightedly picked out her chosen cake!'
But my main interest at least the beginning of my nineteenth year was still theatre and singing. Even before I had started work, and whilst still at the Business College, I had joined the Durban Operatic Society along with Elsie and Bill South, who said I could come home safely with them after rehearsals in a room at the Town Hall. In South Africa, even in those days, it was not safe for a woman to go about at night by herself, one of the reasons I later found London so wonderful.
The show was 'Maid of the Mountains' and I still have the poster for it near my front door. I sang with the sopranos and really enjoyed the rehearsals, but when we began to stage it, that's when the excitement really began. I loved it and sparkled in the opening chorus of Act II where the ladies come in. I attracted the notice of the producer, who chose me to do a little bit on my own, running across the stage looking nervous, and being followed by the comedian, called Tonio in the show, who was followed by his angry battleaxe wife. My joy was complete. By the time the show opened, I had left the college and was officially grown up. The show ran for over two weeks. In those days amateur theatre was more or less all there was in Durban, so the amateur musicals and plays attracted big audiences.
The female chorus in the 'Maid of the Mountains' do not enter until the second act. The first act is all about the brigands and Baldassare who the leading lady loves. 'Love will find a way' is the main song she sings.
I used to walk around the upper floors of the town hall once in costume and
ready, to watch the first act from the lighting box. It never palled, I saw it
every night and then at interval returned backstage ready for our entrance.
There were a lot of young men acting as sceneshifters milling about in the
wings in the dark, but I never even noticed them.
Elsie South and I got on to the Social Committee and I had to do the Minutes of
meetings as I could do shorthand. It was about this time that I had confided in
Elsie that I wished I could have a boy friend and wondered if anyone would ever
like me. Sue had not found a boy friend yet either, but Nova was very beautiful
and was beginning to collect several admirers. Elsie said she was sure I would
soon find someone and I must not worry about it. Then one day she came
excitedly to me and said 'I must tell you something, but you must promise not
to show you know or say I told you'. We went and sat in a quiet corner of the
dressing room, and she said that the Wardrobe Mistress, Colleen, had told her
that her brother who was helping out with the
sceneshifting in the wings, had a crush on me and always watched me from the
wings because I looked so happy and sparkling. He wanted to meet me and Colleen
wanted to help him and make it appear a natural happening, so he was coming to
a committee meeting arranged for the final Saturday of the run between the matinee
and the evening show. I was naturally very excited and it was extremely
difficult to pretend and act naturally, and try not to look at this tall
muscular young man with a moustache.
At the end of the meeting, Colleen arranged how we would all get back to the Town Hall and said 'Keith can take Beryl' and then proceeded to sort all the rest of the committee members out. I had never been alone with a man before. He was 21 and I was 18½. All the way in the car, I babbled about Billy the Kid, another of my folk heroes, and told Keith how The Kid had shot 21 people and been shot himself by Pat Garrett when he was only 21 himself. I can't imagine why Keith bothered with me any more after that, but he did! He took me home after the final evening performance, to the hotel front door, and I had a large box of chocolates in my arms which my parents had sent me as it was the closing night of the show. He tried to kiss me and it was very awkward as I didn't know what to do with the chocolates, let alone what to do with my mouth! I told my mother all about it, and she said it would all get easier and I would soon be able to manage!
Christmas that year was only about two weeks after the show closed. Keith sent me a card saying 'Tonio has not caught you yet, but I am faster than he!', referring to the little bit in the show where I was chased by the comedian. I was very pleased and thought this was very romantic (and extremely grammatical too).
Actually, Keith was not really a romantic type at all, he was a popular member of a group of friends who all played rugby and were fairly typical South Africans of that period. They took girls out on a Saturday night to a dance, maybe at the Roadhouse or Athlone Gardens Hotel at Durban North. It was different from the English way where girls could go to a dance hall and meet boys. In Durban you went as a couple and the ticket was for a couple and if no boy asked you, you did not go! He never phoned me during the week, I just became his girl that he took out on Saturdays The boys had about 3 cars between them, but sometimes 14 of us would be squashed in one car, with the girls on the chaps' laps. Once I had to put my legs out of the side window to fit in. Keith never usually bothered to make the arrangements until the last moment, so sometimes I did not even know if I was going out. This was a terrible thing, it was so important to go out on a Saturday night. If he did not ask me at all, it was often too late to do the next best thing and go to the pictures with my parents! My father did not like Keith's behaviour and said it did not show respect. But I think it was just the way they were. It was necessary for there to be girls somewhere but they were not ready to settle down and the camaraderie of their friends and of course, rugby, were the important things in their lives.
I introduced my beautiful friend Nova to the group, who had recently returned with her family from the Cape and lived in a block of flats very near to Hertford Hotel, and a friend of Keith's called Ian started pairing off with her for a while. She was mad about him, but I think strangely enough he was not particularly interested in her, and really only sometimes needed a partner at dances. My mother thought he must be slightly homosexual of course! And maybe he was. But he was only one of her admirers.
Nova and I used to talk incessantly about our sexual forays, even demonstrating to each other what exactly had been touched and wondering if it was 'all right'. We were both creatures of the fifties, trying to be like Doris Day, perpetual virgin girls next door, and were terribly worried about things going too far and what was and was not proper. I was not far into the sex lessons with Ali at first, and was bewildered by the feelings I had. Once when Keith held my hand, I could hardly walk properly and felt all strange and twisted inside. What I knew from the first was that I was not in love with him. We had no interests in common; he was just not really my type. He loved the countryside and wanted to live in the wilds and I loved towns and museums, libraries, theatres and people. In love or not, I did not want to lose him, but I was becoming annoyed at the way he left it so late to ask me out. At the rink, I met an uninteresting boy called Freddie, who was younger than me. He asked me out on the following Saturday and I said 'yes', thinking it would show Keith he had to treat me better. Then comes the stupid part.
When Keith finally got round to asking me out, I said I couldn't go but he could take Nova instead!! Of course it was one of the maddest things I have ever done. The poor fellow only tried to kiss her at the end of the evening, but she told me immediately on the Sunday and said she wanted to warn me that he 'wasn't nice' and I felt as if my world had collapsed. He was mine, I thought, how could he, I had not kissed Freddie. Nova said he had told her she was 'the sort of girl who knows how to make a man chase her'. This hurt me deeply and perhaps Nova should not have repeated it to me.
However, Nova seemed as genuinely fed up with him as I was and we both talked constantly about it to anyone who would listen, for several weeks. Even his sister Colleen came to hear of it. He was quite annoyed naturally and phoned me up and asked me what we had been saying about him. The older women at work tried to take all this seriously but just couldn't. I could see them trying to hide their obvious amusement. I felt bitter and hardened and thought I'd never trust anyone again. My mother said 'But you weren't in love with him, you didn't want to marry him, so what does it matter?' But it did, so much. I hoped he would think I didn't care which was pointless as half of Durban knew about it anyway! Its not that big a town and I made sure I looked my best when out in the street in case he passed by, held my head up high, and looked happy.
After a few months I was invited to a birthday party in someone's house and I went alone to it. Keith was there and it started all over again. He even said to me 'Those girls who know how to make men chase them are ok but you are the one I care about, etc etc.' It was never the same though, my pride had been hurt and I would never respond warmly to him. I wanted to show him I did not care and even laughed when he said one day we might marry. Our kissing was getting very passionate one evening and he said 'Don't you ever find it hard to have to say goodbye?' I knew exactly what he meant, but just said 'No' in an indifferent voice. This was of course not at all true. I think he believed me and thought I was cold and disinterested and so for the second time he disappeared from my life. He found another girl friend, Monica, who was a dancer in some of the shows. I knew all about it on the grapevine. I should not have been, but I was, hurt all over again. I became obsessed with Monica, walked up and down past her house, knowing it would hurt if I saw them together. Why? I just don't know. If I didn't want him forever, how could it matter?
While all this was going on in my emotional life, we were all constantly rehearsing for various musical groups. We used to try to belong to all of them and hope that rehearsal dates would not clash. Obviously, if the actual show dates clashed, a decision had to be made. There was a middle aged lady called Mrs Scorgie, who had a talented husband called Cliff, who had obviously missed his vocation as a comedian and perhaps she wanted to help him have a chance to shine. I never really knew if she had any other motives for forming an amateur musical society, as she had no particular ability in that direction, but she arranged to put on shows at the Y Club which was linked to the YMCA. There was a small hall and a stage there. Apparently she wanted to use unknown young people to form the largest part of the group. Names were recommended to her and Sue, Dawn and her sister Pam, Hillary and I were all telephoned.
We went along to the first rehearsal of the show she planned - 'No No
Nanette'. There we found several other people we all knew from various schools,
including Faith, who had been a year ahead of us at Girls High. Faith was a
talented vivacious girl who I knew from the dancing school. She had a belting
voice and I had been envious of her when we were little and she was chosen to
sing solos at the dancing revues, lively numbers like 'Be a Clown'. She was
good at comedy and very full of personality. She had a boy friend
who was from one of the posh families on the Sugar
Estates in Northern Natal. I think his family felt he was too good for her and
they sent him on the Grand Tour of Europe. Luckily for Faith, this made no
difference and he came back to her - still smitten. At the time of this show, I
think they were engaged.
Mrs Scorgie was a kindly lady but she had no idea what producing a show meant. She confused the role of producer with that of prompt. She would sit laughing at the jokes and following the script in her lap. She seldom corrected anything (except mistakes regarding the dialogue) and did not even tell us from which side we had to enter. There were no auditions, she simply gave certain people parts and I was given the small part of Winnie, who sings the reprise of 'I want to be happy' to the comedian. This idea of not having auditions was most unfair and must have upset several of the chorus members, I suppose, but the atmosphere was however very friendly and it was a happy show. The part of Nanette was given to an older lady, perhaps about 33, who must have been a friend of Mrs. Scorgie. She was pretty and vivacious, but had a strong Belfast accent and a rather harsh singing voice. I can still remember how she sang the title song 'Sometoymes perharps Oil have my wair, when Oi am auld and torning grair, but jarst as yet, Its orlwees Naw Naw Naw Naw Naw Naw Naw Narnette!'
Everything about the show was very poor. The scenery was dull, we used our
own clothes and tried to make them look as 1920s as possible, with long beads
and feathers.
The programme was shiny and quite well done. We all had photographs taken for
the programme and for front-of-house so it was like being a big fish in a very
little pond, whereas being in the big shows at the Town Hall and later at the
new Alhambra Theatre meant being an insignificant member of the cast but in
something really good. The latter is actually much better, though Mrs Scorgie
did give us a chance to feel what it was like to be centre stage.
Then it was decided that 'No No Nanette' should go on tour to another town. A coach was hired and we all set off happily as meals were going to be provided and it promised to be great fun. We all sang songs from the show on the coach trip. It was in that coach that I met Douglas for the first time. He was Dawn's uncle. He was about 37, an older man, and I knew he was married as Dawn had often spoken about Uncle Douglas and Auntie Ursula. He was interested in photography and had come to take photos of our so- called 'Tour' for the local papers. I thought he was funny and charming and attractive.
He seemed to get a real kick out of mixing with all us young girls and he wrote a poem about the cast, not leaving anyone out. About Sue he wrote 'Sue steps up and takes her bow, she's cuddly as a kitten, But take good care for I allow, You won't get kissed but bitten'. About me he wrote 'Who's next, oh yes, there's Beryl Ford, that tall and shapely siren, The type of dame who causes wars and epic odes by Byron'. This was of course patently inaccurate, I was never a femme fatale, but it thrilled and flattered me. There followed a few months of my first secret well, what I thought of as a secret romance! He told me he was unhappily married (of course). He also said that on the coach where we had met, I had been the only one he had noticed out of that horde of young girls.
When he moved out of his wife's home and went into a flat of his own, he no longer had anyone to cook for him and so he had breakfast in a cafe near where we both worked. I started meeting him for breakfast. Of course I had already eaten at the hotel, but I had a coca cola and watched him eat. Then after work, as I finished first, I would go and hide in the entrance of his office building and wait for him and then we would go on the bus together until the routes separated. Then I would get off and walk home via the back entrance of Hertford Hotel. This all sounds so tame now, but I felt I had a wonderful secret.
At rehearsals I was very circumspect and showed him no particular favour. We sometimes wrote letters to each other. My mother knew all about it, but strangely enough she was not particularly concerned. She sensed, quite accurately, that he was no real danger, and also that he was afraid of her. I think he was a gentleman and was simply as flattered as I was. He did come and see me at the hotel a few times, and he did kiss me quite a lot as the romance progressed but never went any further than that. It was an infatuation on my part, I used to dream about running away with him into the blue, but somehow always knew it was only a dream.
The most romantic thing he ever did was to kiss my corn! It was dark on the front verandah of the hotel when I said 'good night' to him, so I stood up on a bench in my bare feet as I was always afraid of standing still on the floor in case there were cockroaches about that I couldn't see in the dark. He said something about kissing my feet and I said, jokingly, 'you could kiss my corn' and he did!!
One Sunday, on the way to the beach, Dawn took us in to visit her Auntie Ursula and the children. Douglas and Ursula had 3 children, and when I got to know her better and realised what life had been like for her with the children, the scales started to fall from my eyes. She said he brought young girls in to photograph, and made her sit in the kitchen while they were there, and that sort of thing. The absolute end of my infatuation came when Sue told me that Douglas had told her that she was the only one he had noticed on the 'No No Nanette' coach. Sue did not know how I felt about him, I had only ever confided in my mother. I did tell Douglas obliquely that I was no longer mad about him. I don't know if I ever told him exactly why. I said I had found he had feet of clay. I think he was quite annoyed about this. That Christmas I received a card from 'Old Clay Feet', but he was never friendly to me again, and ignored me if we met in a group.
This was a very busy time for shows.
We all joined the chorus of 'Bless the Bride' the big Durban Operatic
Society presentation, where we would be lowly members of a really grand
production. Elsie and Bill South were doing 'Zip Goes a Million' at the smaller
Durban Jewish Club. Apparently extra singers were needed there, so Sue and I
joined that as well. I was one of the dancers and this show helped to fulfil
some of my early dreams of being a Hollywood star as there was one number where
a few of us danced in fishnet tights with
canes and hats and skimpy costumes. The day after seeing a performance of this
show, the catty Mrs De Courcy at Hertford Hotel said 'You looked so different,
I didn't recognise you, you looked nice'. I didn't know
whether to thank her or not! Mrs De Courcy often made the most wonderfully
dubious remarks. She once said to my mother, regarding my father, 'I like Mr
Ford, he doesn't care what people say'. Another time she was in a group of
ladies including my mother. I was the only child who lived at Hertford at the
time. And she said 'Sometimes I'm glad I didn't have children. When I look
around ...' And she tailed off!
Soon Mrs. Scorgie began to produce her second show 'Wild Violets'.
In the end, Sue and I realised we could not be in all three shows, so we dropped out of 'Bless the Bride' leaving Nova alone of our friends remaining in it. When we went to see the actual show and saw Nova looking devastatingly beautiful in a black and white striped Edwardian dress with matching parasol in the 'Table for Two' number, we both cried our eyes out and wished we were up there with her.
The Durban Ice Rink had opened fairly recently, in fact Keith had taken me the first time I went. Skating became the in thing, and although I was not very good at it, I was better at it than at other sporting activities. I got my own skates and so did Nova and Sue. Wherever we went, Sue and I tried desperately to look cool, elegant and dreamy like Nova At that time, everyone had little baskets they held on their arms, rather than handbags, and we tried to copy her walk and the gracious way she held her basket. At the ice rink, when there the Pairs Skating Session began, about five boys would all ask Nova to partner them. She would get up gracefully and join one of them and walk down to the ice. Then after a bit of conferring, two would turn to us and say 'Well, will you go with us then?' Sometimes pride would make us refuse, and at other times, we would just accept and be grateful for the opportunity to go on the ice. So Sue and I stayed always in the shadow of Nova's beauty. My mother said we were fools and should drop her, but of course we didn't. Sue once said brightly 'We are just like knitting, two plain, one pearl' which was very apt, although in fact neither of us were plain, and it was yet again a matter of comparison.
The years 1956 to 1958 were so packed with shows, episodes, romantic interludes that its difficult now to understand why there were so many occasions when I felt sad and worried, mainly due to there being a Saturday when no admirer took me out. I once wrote a poem to the lovely Nova, a parody on 'Tea for Two' from 'No No Nanette'.
When I see Nova and boys falling over
With eagerness when she draws near,
With resignation, I accept my station
Is that I'm the type fellows fear.
Nova just sits looking tranquil,
Tom, Dick and Hank will
All go for her,
I used to try it,
Sat peaceful and quiet
I never created a stir.
'Oh, Nova, Two for you and none for me
I think that I a nun will be
It would be sort of fun to have no one
Then I wouldn't worry or get in a flurry
I'd always be calm and not in a hurry
I'd just have the joys of the stars and the rising sun, dear
It would pay at break of day
To leap right up and start to pray
For boys and girls who still were young and gay
Giving up hope for the sake of the Pope
Saying 'I can't cope so I won't be a dope',
Who will run and be a nun with me?'
Mary, the older Catholic lady at the office disapproved of this ditty and said that no one gave up hope for the sake of the Pope and it was the exact opposite. I apologised but pointed out that it rhymed!