I also had to sew the elastic straps on my flat satin ballet pumps.
I went home with my head spinning about all the things I had to remember to do. Although I’d been taught needlework at school, I wasn’t much good at it, but I was determined to do it and not have to ask my grandmother for help. So I spent the next few evenings sewing away for hours. God knows what sort of a job I did, but I was so proud that I’d done it all myself.
Soon it was time for my first day and I was filled with excitement as well as a few nerves. Walking through those doors at Italia Conti felt to me like going into fairyland. I wasn’t even disheartened when the first person I saw was Miss Margaret, the drama teacher.
‘Hello,’ I said nervously. ‘I’m here for my first day.’
‘What’s your name, de-arr, and I’ll put you down on the register?’ she asked.
‘Irene,’ I said. ‘Irene Bott.’
Miss Margaret put down her fountain pen and gave me a look of utter disdain.
‘Excuse me?’ she said.
‘Irene Bott,’ I repeated.
She fixed her steely gaze on me.
‘Bott?’ she boomed. ‘You can’t possibly come to Italia Conti with a name like Bott. Come back tomorrow with a new name.’
‘Oh – er, all right then,’ I said.
I’d never thought there was anything particularly wrong with my name. She never said why, but perhaps she thought that Bott was too much like bottom. I wouldn’t have dreamed of saying no to her, but I worried about it all day.
By the time I got home that evening I’d really started to panic. How was I going to come up with this new name? Pluck one out of thin air completely at random?
I went up to my bedroom and was flicking through my favourite comics for inspiration when I noticed the name of one of the characters in the Beano – Sylvia Starr, ace reporter.
‘That’s it!’ I said.
The next day I went back and Miss Margaret was waiting there with the register.
‘So have you got a new name, de-aar?’
‘Yes,’ I said proudly. ‘I want to be called Irene Starr.’
She looked at me in disgust and said, ‘Well, I suppose that will have to do then, won’t it?’
From then on, Irene Bott didn’t exist any more. I was always known as Irene Starr.
A few days later a letter arrived from Mum. I had written to her to tell her all my news but it took weeks for the mail to get through to the troops. It was lovely to see the familiar scrawl of her handwriting.
Dearest Rene,
I was so pleased to hear that you won a place at Italia Conti and I bet you are enjoying doing your beloved dancing all day. Don’t worry about the fees, I have contacted Miss Conti directly and taken care of them from here.
It was clear from her letter that my mother was enjoying travelling and she was really taken with Egypt.
It’s so different to performing in the orchestra of the big London theatres. Our ‘stage’ is four wooden planks of wood resting across oil drums or ammunition boxes. There are a couple of shoddy dancers, a singer (if you can call her that) and I’m one of a quartet of musicians. Some people have cruelly nicknamed ENSA ‘Every Night Something Awful’ but we are doing the best we can to entertain the troops and keep up their morale in difficult circumstances. Despite all the hardships, I am finding it fascinating experiencing another culture so different to ours.
Mum still had her strong principles, though, and she described how one day she had seen a little boy begging in one of the villages. She had gone over and given him some money but the sheikh of the village had seen her.
This man with a long beard wearing a robe came and snatched the money off the poor boy and put it into his own pocket. Well, Rene, you know me. I went berserk. I ran over to him and said: ‘Don’t you dare do that. Give it back.’ I think the fellow was stunned that a woman, and one as tiny as me, would challenge him. I know I could probably have got into all sorts of bother but he did as I asked.
I smiled at the thought of the man’s shocked face as my mother had come marching over to him and given him what for. I bet he hadn’t been expecting that!
Love you and miss you, Rene.
Love always,
Mum xx
She’d sent me a black-and-white photo of her sitting by the Suez Canal. She looked happy, and I noticed that she’d had her hair cut into a shoulder-length bob, which was probably cooler in the oppressive heat of the desert.
‘Oh, Mummy, I miss you,’ I sighed, my eyes filling up with tears.
I felt so lonely sometimes but I knew there was no point in moping. I tried to take all the positives from it – like my freedom, for a start. Unlike most twelve-year-olds I never had to ask permission to do anything.
I also loved every minute of being at Italia Conti, and that eased the pain of being parted from Mum. As soon as I walked in the door and heard the tick of a metronome or the tinkle of a piano I felt secure somehow. It was my sanctuary, my escape from the outside world. The war was raging, my family was thousands of miles away from me, but in there I felt safe and I could spend all day doing what I loved, which was dancing.
Everyone there shared the same love of performing and I soon made close friends. I had been worried that, with the fees so high, the other pupils would be from wealthy families, but there were children from more ordinary homes like mine. One of them was a boy named Anthony Newley, who we all called Tony. I liked him straight away because he was fun and loud, and he was always happy and laughing. He was the son of a single mother and he had four siblings.
‘I’m an East End lad, Irene,’ he told me in his strong cockney accent. ‘I’m only ’ere ’cos they gave me a job as an office boy in return for my fees. I ain’t no rich, pampered prince.’
He was always joking around and getting ticked off in class. Like the time in tap he pulled funny faces behind the teacher’s back as she demonstrated a routine. We all sniggered, but mainly because he hadn’t realised that Miss Gertrude had spotted him in the mirror.
‘Mr Newley,’ she said. ‘You’re as mad as a March hare. Now please stop larking about.’
‘Yes, Miss,’ he said, giving me a wink.
He was quite a character, but he was also very talented and you could tell there was something special about him. He had what we would describe today as the X-factor, and I knew he was going to have a bright future in show business.
Another member of our gang was a girl called Nanette Newman. She was a few years younger than me, and she was pretty but very quiet and shy. One of my best friends at Conti’s was a stunningly beautiful girl called Daphne Grant. She had bright blue eyes, was very glamorous like Rita Heyworth and had a lovely singing voice. She was an only child and her parents, who were quite elderly, spoiled her rotten. They doted on her and had done absolutely everything for her as she’d grown up. Anything that she asked for, she got, whether it was clothes or jewellery or having a shampoo and set every week at the hairdressers.
No one at Italia Conti dared misbehave. We all knew how lucky we were to be there and we knew the rules – don’t be late for class, always be correctly dressed, at the end of a ballet class curtsey to the teacher and the pianist, but clap them after a tap or jazz class.
‘You’re all here because you want to be,’ Miss Conti told us sternly. ‘And while you’re here I expect you to listen and to work hard. If you don’t want to do that, then you’re free to go whenever you want.’
I loved the discipline and the structure. The curriculum was a mixture