At around the same time, he became involved with agit-prop theatre, the European movement that disseminated a socialist message through theatre. Often using the back of a lorry for a stage, the young left-wingers acted to as many local audiences as possible.
It was during this period in the 1930s that Ewan started writing, and not surprisingly, songs were included to drive home the message. A later fairly regular source of income was as an actor in Manchester’s BBC radio programme, Children’s Hour.
By the time Joan Littlewood arrived in Manchester from London, Ewan had assembled a group of dedicated and fairly experienced performers. I think that Joan herself had taken on some acting roles at the BBC before meeting him. Together they planned a theatre based on the great popular theatres of the past, where playwrights such as Aristophanes, Shakespeare and Molière produced plays dealing with the dreams and struggles of the people. The new plays would be fast-moving, with singing and dance-movement as an integral part of the action. Lighting and sound would meld into the whole, operated by the very best technicians. The cast would train daily in movement and dance and the company would build their own sets and make the costumes. There would be no ‘stars’ in the cast.
A start was made in Kendal in the Lake District – not exactly ideal for a people’s theatre, but the rehearsal premises were cheap. The company soon disbanded because of the outbreak of war, but immediately peace was declared, Ewan and Joan sent out a rallying call to the company members, while Gerry Raffles looked for a permanent ‘home’. Only one thing was missing: the actors needed movement training, and Joan, hearing that Laban was in Manchester, lost no time in writing to him.
Looking back, it seems a strange coincidence that the three of us had all refused scholarships. Ewan was given the opportunity to study singing in Italy; Joan refused the Slade. Luckily, I was finally able to accept Laban’s offer, which eventually led me to join the Theatre Workshop company.
By 1958 Ewan and I were living in London with our eight-year-old son Hamish, having moved down from Scotland with the company in 1952. It had been a controversial move, but financial problems and continual touring had taken their toll. Then we heard about a derelict theatre in London’s East End available at a peppercorn rent. We were tempted by the sound of it, the Theatre Royal. Some of our company thought we were ‘selling out’ and left. Ewan agreed with them and left the company after the move south, while I stayed on. He worked with Humphrey Lyttleton and Alan Lomax in the BBC’s Ballads and Blues radio series but in order to start a new career using all his previous theatre experience, Ewan needed the help of a trained musician. A young backpacker, Peggy Seeger, arrived from America in 1955 – and immediately fell in love with him. Ewan admitted that he was flattered (he was twice her age) by the trained musician.
After a difficult few years when Ewan was in denial, it was me who made the decision to part. Ewan would not hear of it. We were temporarily reconciled and made plans for our future together. I became pregnant, my baby due in late 1959. In March that year, however, I heard that Peggy herself had given birth. Our marriage ended.
• • •
When Kirsty was about three months old, in early 1960, I went back to work and started rehearsing Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be at the Theatre Royal at Stratford East. It was a long journey from Croydon and back, but Kirsty was an excellent traveller and spent most of the time asleep. She lay in a carry cot in the wings when I was working onstage. By now her hair was beginning to curl and was a lovely russet-gold colour. (She was lucky in later life not to suffer the perennial fate of redheads: her skin tanned, but did not burn.) Someone in the cast – it may have been Victor Spinetti, or else our musical director Lionel Bart – nicknamed her ‘Our Reet’, after that other glamorous redhead Rita Hayworth.
Following his return from the latest tour, Ewan visited us, on average, once a week. From the very first, though, he never made a single mention of his other family: it was as though he were a sailor between ports and whenever he spoke of his work he always did so in the first person singular. This behaviour, which I happily accepted, persisted for several years. Indeed, I only knew that he and Peggy Seeger had another child when noticed a little boy of four or five years old sitting in the passenger seat of Ewan’s car when Kirsty was about nine.
Kirsty was a very sociable child, enjoying her stayovers at Joan’s flat in Blackheath, or visiting my mother in the Midlands. (I still hadn’t told her of my marriage breakup because she was still grieving over the loss of my father.) Nor was there any shortage of babysitters from among the Rapoport family – Wolf’s children Tosh and Judy being in their early teens when Kirsty was born. I remember my brother coming over to see his new niece one day and teasing her by taking her bowl from the high chair and pretending to go away with it – but the joke was on him. Although Kirsty must have been hungry, there were no tears. Instead, she looked at him with a wide-eyed and serious expression which I can only describe as ‘weighing the strange man up’. Suitably ashamed, he returned the bowl, but she continued to observe him with solemn curiosity.
Ewan’s visits were usually at weekends, when I would make Sunday lunch. This arrangement became a routine which seemed to suit him and I went along with it as much for Hamish’s sake as anything. In the summer of 1961 Ewan told me he had some royalties due to him in Poland but that he couldn’t get them out of the country since (according to the powers that be) ‘owing to the exchange rate, it would undermine the economy of the country’. We had both worked in Warsaw in 1955 and had become friendly there with George, an Englishman with a Polish wife. Ewan suggested that I should accept their offer of hospitality and take a holiday with the children, using the Polish royalties as funds. With the money we were able to travel first class by train via Holland and East Germany, stopping over in Berlin and taking the night train from there to Jelenia Góra near the Karkonosze mountains on the Czechoslovak border. Armed with all the necessary visas and passports – or so I thought – we set off from Victoria.
We had a leisurely breakfast in Holland, and Kirsty enjoyed herself greatly. She attracted attention, I think, because she smiled back when people smiled at her, and showed no shyness – sizing them up as she had done my brother. In Berlin we were met by an actress from Bertolt Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble and taken to a flat to await the arrival of other members of the company. As it was such a nice day and there was a park nearby, we were asked if we would like to go for a walk and I took Kirsty in her pushchair. She saw an elderly man pushing an empty wicker pram and leading a child rather older than herself by the hand. Without a word, Kirsty got out of her pushchair, crossed over to the stranger and climbed into the wicker pram. He smiled and pretended to go off with her, but Kirsty remained unfazed as the distance increased and equally unfazed when she was at last returned to her nearest and dearest.
That evening there was quite a celebratory dinner before we had to catch our midnight train to the border town of Görlitz. Kirsty was the centre of attention, as usual, looking on with interest, always smiling and seeming to enjoy the company. When it was time for us to leave, the whole party said they would see us off, and as the train pulled out under a starlit sky their voices rang out, ‘Goodbye, Kirsty! Come again!’, gradually fading into the distance until we could hear them no more.
We had reserved our apartment, but it was no longer first class. An apparently friendly conductor came in to check our tickets, and told me that I needed a transit visa as well as a tourist visa, so I bought one and then settled the children down for the night. This transit visa was to cost me dear on the return journey. The night was freezing cold and I piled clothes over the children and shivered in my summer dress. Just as I was dropping off to sleep the train came to sudden stop and there was George, our host, banging on the window – ‘Only two minutes before it leaves!’ I grabbed children, pram and clothes and lugged our huge suitcase onto the platform just as the whistle announced the train’s departure.
George lived in a spacious farmhouse called Owczy Dwor (or