Page 18 - My Story

of course, made no comment and the English teacher, Miss English, assumed I would go on to become
the next Sybil Thorndike. I still remember bits of the script, especially the audition speech,

And why, I pray you? Who might be your mother
That you insult, exult and all at once,
Over the wretched? What tho’ you have no beauty,
As by my faith, I see no more in you
Than without candle may go dark to bed,
Must you be, therefore, proud and pitiless?

House captains and school plays were done in the lower Vth because we had School Certificate in
the Upper Fifth. This was a national exam which has been replaced with GCSE’s. I took seven subjects, I
think. English, English Literature, Maths – three separate papers for arithmetic, geometry and algebra -
French, History, Art and Religious Knowledge – I loved reading the Bible! The results came out in August
and were posted at the school. Jackie had scraped through the year before and I managed to scrape
through everything with a couple of credits here and there – not bad when you consider how little effort
I’d put into it! Those Whine girls might have been talented but academically we left a lot to be desired!

Earlier that year my Uncle Bunny, my father’s youngest brother, had introduced me to the Cameo
Players. This was an amateur theatre group and as I entered, they were casting for a play, “Some are Born
Great” on a biblical subject to be entered in a competition. The director was Robert Rietty, a somewhat
known radio actor – Italian and handsome. Of course I was cast as someone’s younger sister and the main
character was played by Gabriel Wolf, then a student at RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) and very
tall and slender (one of my uncles after seeing the play described him as a human hairpin which really
hurt my feelings as I had a crush on him and thought he was wonderful). We played the competition in
the Scala Theatre, of Peter Pan fame and I think we must have won. Anyway, the adjudicator was very
nice about me and I continued to be a member of the Cameo Players. We met two or three evenings a
week in a room over a pub in Soho and I, at 15 was supposed to leave in time to be home at 10. Mostly I
managed it and could always blame it on a delay on the tube if I were late home.

I should probably make a few comments on religious matters. My mother would have liked to
belong to a synagogue and been a part of some Jewish community. She never felt quite at home with
non-Jewish people (until I married one) and if she found a kindred spirit who belonged to some other faith
would make excuses for her such as, of course, her grandmother was Jewish! She was embarrassingly
racist, and Jackie remembers her going into hospital at age 90 when she broke a hip and commenting on
all the “English” people” in the ward – don’t Jews break their hips? I managed to broaden her horizons
somewhat by marrying a non-Jew and later being really friendly with a German who had been a member
of the Hitler youth. But more of that later.

My father, on the other hand, came out of the air force an atheist, not believing in God or wanting
to practice any religion. For my mother’s sake he went to the synagogue on the high, holy days and prayed
along with the other men. Jackie and I had to go, too although my mother usually had a headache and
didn’t, and we’d sit up in the women’s gallery where everyone chatted and showed off their fine, new
clothes. We all fasted on Yom Kippur and attended a Seder at Granny’s on Passover. This was pretty
boring, but I never minded, as the youngest present, jumping up and asking my four questions – mah nish
tanoh – why is this night different from all other nights? – and we liked the food we had helped my mother
prepare all day.

My father’s eldest sister, Debbie, who lived in New Cavendish Street in the West End with her
daughter Freda (much older than us) and Uncle Nat had joined a Liberal Jewish congregation in St. John’s
Wood and she persuaded my mother to let Jackie and I go along to those services. I quite liked it although
Jackie faded out pretty quickly and I was sometimes picked out to read at the services, which were
conducted mainly in English. These services were taken by a woman rabbi (unknown in those days and
never quite accepted by my mother) called The Reverend Lily H. Montagu who was part of a very old and
privileged English/Jewish family. I enjoyed these services which were without the mumbo jumbo of a
regular synagogue and got myself into the Sunday school class in preparation for confirmation.

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