Law Phyllida - Dead Now of Course

O ne September, the grown-ups started talking of this thing called War. I was evacuated from Glasgow aged seven. No one liked evacuees. They were dirty, came from Glasgow and had fleas. I was lucky: the eldest daughter in my billet was a superb storyteller. She and I improvised a mystery called The Red and Silver Purse, which lasted for weeks. I spent a lot of time crouched in cupboards, or underneath the gate-legged table. I think her grasp of storyline was educational.

I loved her stories, and played a lot of major characters. The War was a sideline.

At my school, I was the only boarder, and I loved it. The classroom window-seat was heated and the walls were lined with books. I read all of George Eliot he was my favourite writer, until I found a large medical dictionary. At thirteen, I had some very odd symptoms and I researched them in depth. Apparently I was to die young, so I decided to devote my life to the human race a Scottish Mother Teresa, with a stethoscope. I always wanted a stethoscope.

I gave up all the things I loved, like music, painting and drawing in order to pass the required exams for the medical school in Glasgow. I got them all, but the elderly professor, with pince-nez, said I was too young. Go away, he said. Go away for a year. I didnt have the time. In despair, I told my mother I was to die young. She disagreed. So did the doctor, who gave me iron pills.

The lid blew off my life. I decided to be a set designer, without the slightest idea of how one could achieve that ambition. I simply applied to every drama school of which I had heard. The Bristol Old Vic replied, asking for two speeches to be learnt and delivered. I presented myself for the audition in a room above a cabbage wholesaler. Id had the sense not to choose Juliet, and I included a Scottish speech, from David Lyndsays A Satire of the Three Estates . Behold my paps of pulchrytude perfyte, I breathed. I think that was the clincher. They accepted me immediately.

My indomitable granny thought theatre the Gateway to Hell. There was nothing in the family except medicine and the Church. She said she had a degree in Electricity and, of course, she knew Shakespeare. He lived on Sherbrook Avenue.

No one ever asked me for my portfolio, but I understood that the first year was to be with the actors and the second year was backstage. I had such a good time. That first year was hilarious I didnt understand any of it. When asked to relax, I folded myself up and fell onto the floor in a heap. Each morning we did exercises in very little clothing to The Skaters Waltz, and it was frightful. I did mine with Joe, the bridge of whose nose was rather flat because, having told his dad he wanted to be an actor, his dad thumped him. He eventually became a tax inspector.

I was trained to kiss stage left or right of the opposing mouth, leaving the face of the star contender available for the audience. When this years young fling their clothes off and devour each other on screen, I have to leave and put the kettle on. I mean, how do they do that? What if they havent brushed their teeth?

Romance did not flourish in Glasgow. My mother disapproved of people holding hands in the street. Why cant they wait till they get home? shed say. And eating in the street was unthinkable, as bad as smoking in the street, or wearing curlers till teatime. George Bernard Shaw thought that pushing food into a hole in the middle of ones face was revolting. He even considered that sexual activity was less offensive. At least, thats what Ive heard. You may have to Google it.

Ken Tynan would certainly have preferred it. I remember catching him on TV, telling us with firm conviction that we would be seeing the act on stage any day now. He was right. He actually used the word F***, the F word, and it was startling.

My generation was pretty hopeless. We could smoulder a bit on stage, but we were sexually timid, and a bit lumpy. Or was that just me?

My future mother-in-law burst into tears when she heard her son was to marry an actress. Theres still something disturbing, I grant you, about the word actress. If an MP or some other outstanding person plays fast and loose with an actress the world is unsurprised. She is certainly no better than she should be, and probably French.

H aving been accepted at the Bristol Old Vic, I was told I had to look for digs. Why digs? Why are theatrical board-and-lodgings called digs? Its like some archaeological event. It says in my Chambers Dictionary , hiding in a huge paragraph, that it is North American slang. Really? It also means to study hard. Quite.

I loved my first digs, when I was still a student. My landlady was tiny, gentle and profoundly deaf. She couldnt hear thunder, but if there was lightning she covered all the mirrors in the house with towels and retired to a cupboard under the stairs.

Then, on tour, there was the legendary superb cook, highly recommended by Tyrone Guthrie. Mrs Thomas was her name. She worked in a munitions factory and smuggled out sugar and scrubbing brushes. Everyone knew Mrs McKay in Daisy Avenue, Manchester. She had two houses, one for the girls, one for the boys. She liked the boys best, and preferred them to be well known. We all swapped over one night, changing houses. She was rather upset.

We werent allowed callers either. One actor smuggled his boyfriend in by carrying him upstairs in a piggyback. Cripples now, Mr Cardew? Mrs M shouted from below stairs.

We used to rehearse in the local cinema, starting at ten in the morning, when it was dim, dusty and deserted. Then we caught the bus after lunch I dont remember lunch. The bus was a cartoon. It had about ten seats in front and the back was jammed full of our gear. There were rails for costumes and barricaded sections for the set the flats and a large skip for the props. The boys put up the sets, the girls ironed and sorted the costumes sometimes we got to do a bit of nailing and I was particularly brilliant with the French brace Dont ask.

Our gear included rugs, cushions, drinks,
wellies, books, embroidery, and some of us made rag rugs. This was popular and called bodging. Sometimes we ran our lines, but we were young we knew them.

We played everywhere possible, for miles around, even Dartmoor Prison, where I seem to remember I made my entrance ascending from a trapdoor. There were occasions when bits of the set werent used because the set was too big for the stage. I once made an exit which I couldnt complete as the entrance was blocked by actors queuing to enter. I just had to reverse back onto the stage, trying to look intelligent and as if I were meant to be there. A door stuck once, irrevocably. They do, dont they? The actor entered through the fireplace. That was tricky.

We might have been in Sidmouth when nobody could get behind the set at all and had to exit, as one would, from the building itself. You would leave stage left, race round the library to stage right, and enter that way. If it had rained, as it often had, the effect was very comic.

It might have been the following year when we went to the Edinburgh Festival with a play about Mary, Queen of Scots by an Italian. We previewed it in a church hall, halfway up Arthurs Seat, or halfway down, depending on how you looked at it.

One famous night, we were about to give Queen Mary the last rites, when there was an ear
splitting, numbing, extended crash, as if Edinburgh Castle had collapsed and was rolling downhill in our direction. Catherine Lacey, who played Queen Mary, didnt blink. She went to her death, as ever, with great dignity.

Apparently the ceiling had collapsed in our Revue Bar, and we assumed we might have a night off. Not a bit of it. Swept clean, the joists had large bunches of chickweed stuffed into any cracks and blackened old branches were nicked from local trees and fixed to all possible corners, then hung with boots and shoes.