Tales of a Tiller Girl. Irene Holland

stayed for the month that the panto was on, but I vowed never to go to Norfolk again!

      I was so naïve in those days, and as for boys, I didn’t have a clue. I wasn’t as glamorous as some of the other girls at Italia Conti. I didn’t wear any make-up, and I was a funny little thing with skinny legs and two long plaits.

      But I did have a bit of a crush on one of the dancers in the King’s Lynn panto, who was tall and blond.

      ‘Isn’t Malcolm lovely?’ I sighed to Ruth. ‘He’s like a Greek god.’

      ‘Oh, don’t waste your time admiring him,’ she said. ‘He’s a queen.’

      ‘What do you mean,’ I gasped. ‘Is he royal?’

      She just rolled her eyes at me and laughed.

      ‘For God’s sake, Irene, where have you come from?’

      ‘I really don’t know what you mean,’ I said.

      For someone so streetwise and independent, I really was quite ignorant when it came to matters of the opposite sex.

      After I’d been at Italia Conti for a couple of years the school moved out of Tavistock Square. Miss Conti had found a permanent home for it in Archer Street, just off Shaftesbury Avenue. The only drawback about this new location was that it was slap-bang in the middle of London’s red-light district. It was directly behind the Windmill Theatre, famous for its nude shows and ‘we never close’ slogan. As I walked down Archer Street on my way to class in the morning, a lot of the doorways would be open and I’d see men disappearing up the carpeted stairways with their bare light bulbs.

      No one had ever sat down and told me about the birds and the bees, but I learned what I could from playground gossip and talking to friends. One day at Italia Conti I could see a big group of pupils gathered round in a corner of the corridor looking at something.

      ‘Come and have a gander at this, Rene,’ shouted Tony Newley.

      Out of curiosity I went to see what they were all so interested in. Much to my horror it was some black-and-white photos of men and women with their clothes off doing all sorts of odd things.

      ‘Eurgh!’ I shrieked. ‘How disgusting.’

      Then I ran away and all the boys laughed.

      A lot of the older girls had boyfriends, but I just wasn’t interested. Daphne, who was a year older than me and was 15 by now, was very beautiful and she was always getting asked out by American soldiers.