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There were two other single rooms, which were occupied by two of the male students, Paul Scofield and Seth Holt. On the ground floor a room had been appropriated by a Canadian actress who
claimed to be twenty-five, although we all thought she was far older. She must have been a paying student, as her room contained a coal fire and was altogether better furnished than any other. We
ate – when we ate – in the large, old-fashioned kitchen: a stone floor, long pine table and a range. Every morning, we had to catch the bus into Bideford and walk to the theatre, which
was
freezing cold, smelt faintly of leaking gas and had dressing rooms like concrete cells. In one of these, Bertie Scott conducted his voice-training lessons. We were joined at
the theatre by four or five other students who lived in a house nearer Bideford owned by an old lady who presided over it and provided meals for the inmates. We, at Instow, had the impression that
these students lived in far greater comfort, but we infinitely preferred the ramshackle freedom.

Eileen Thorndike must once have been a very pretty woman, but three children, widowhood and constantly uncertain finances had worn her down. She had short, grey-white hair, a weather-beaten face
and blue eyes that blazed with random enthusiasm. It was she who cast us and conducted rehearsals. We broke for lunch, which we provided for ourselves. Every evening when we got home, Phil cooked
dinner. The menu never changed: roast lamb, boiled potatoes and boiled cabbage. We were always hungry, and there was never a scrap left.

Our first production consisted of scenes from
Macbeth
,
The Taming of the Shrew
and
Richard of Bordeaux
. As there were twice as many girls as boys the girls’ parts were
double-cast, which meant we performed our roles half the times that the boys did theirs. My first parts were Katharine in
The Shrew
and Anne in
Richard of Bordeaux
. Paul and Seth were
Petruchio and Richard.

Bertie Scott gave us all individual tuition. He’d been trained as a singer by Harry Plunkett Green ‘whom I expect you have never heard of’. I had: he’d been a great
friend of my grandfather. I’d even heard his light, pleasant voice in my grandfather’s drawing room. This sent my shares up hugely with Bertie. His lessons were sometimes maddening; try
as I might, I couldn’t do what he wanted, and on the very few occasions when I partially succeeded, it took me a long time to understand why. He constantly made me put my hand on his
diaphragm, which expanded – rock hard – to gargantuan proportions as he drew in an enormous breath, then held it before deflating it in slow motion. But he taught me how to
‘follow through’ after finishing a line or a speech, which meant a kind of
split-second freezing, an immobility that lent credence to what had been said. He also
showed me how to use the lower register of my voice without strain. Breathing properly, he repeated endlessly, was the essence of being heard and, more than that, understood. However, as I learned
these things, all my original amateur ease with acting, of which I’d been so confident, deserted me. Rehearsals with Eileen and the others partially restored it.

The Spartan character of our life drew us together. We were permanently hungry; breakfast was almost non-existent as neither the milk nor the bread arrived in time for it. We were also cold and,
with the exception of the Canadian, Honorine, desperately short of money. I remember lunches in the teashop where we split a fried egg in half and counted the chips before sharing them so that
lunch cost sixpence each rather than a shilling. We used to tout for lifts from Instow to the theatre, and I worked out that lying in the middle of the road pretty well guaranteed one.

Near Christmas, a local lady-of-the-manor appeared and said she’d written a pantomime she thought we should do. It was based on
The Rose and the Ring
and was written in rhyming
couplets of such banality that we used to pre-empt each other’s lines with a question mark in order to put each other on the spot. Something like ‘Which she had left beneath the
spreading oak?’ so that the other person was forced into agreement: ‘Well, yes.’

Schools sometimes came to our performances, and sometimes we took plays to neighbouring theatres at Lynton and Ilfracombe. We did a new play every three weeks:
Hay Fever
,
Berkeley
Square
,
Night Must Fall
– Paul scored a tremendous hit in this –
Ladies in Retirement
,
Goodness How Sad
and
Granite
.

Peter wrote to me at irregular intervals and I wrote back, each of us filling the pages with accounts of our doings. Several of the girls had men they wrote to, but it was all very innocent.
Honorine dubbed us a bunch of bloody virgins or lesbians – we were unsure what the latter were – and she told us at length about her many affairs. We didn’t like her: she had
exceedingly long nails that she
painted a bright white, and her clothes always made the rest of us feel shabby. She also belted on about what a great actress she was going to be,
but while, naturally, we all thought that that was our future too, we didn’t go on about it.

After
Richard of Bordeaux
I got to know Seth. He was probably the most sophisticated member of the company; he was blond and was a wonderful raconteur with a soft, pedantic voice. When he
began to show an interest in me, I was flattered. He seemed widely read, and took to lying on my bed beside me, alternately reading poems aloud, and making – very mild – love to me. I
have to say here that we resorted to our beds because of the extreme cold. There was no heating in the house except Honorine’s luxurious coal fire, to which we had virtually no access, and
the range in the kitchen whose temperature was in no way consistent. It was cosy to lie with Seth under the slippery eiderdown having my breast stroked while he read me pieces from
A Farewell to
Arms
and the poems of Louis MacNeice, W. H. Auden and Dylan Thomas. Both experiences were new to me, and I felt a kind of respectful affection for him. I knew little about him – none of
us ever made more than a passing reference to our lives elsewhere, our families or anything that we’d done before the Mask Theatre. I knew that he had a sister called Joan, married to a film
director working at Ealing, but that was about all. He never asked me anything about myself; we were content to live, entirely untrammelled, in the present. I didn’t even know Seth’s
age, although I realized that he was older.

When winter was at its height, or depth, of bitter cold, the entire company at Instow became infested with nits. This, it transpired, came about because the charlady’s child had them and
used to sit close to Donny, Eileen’s youngest daughter, while she was reading. Eileen didn’t notice, and we brought the situation to her attention. I think by then that we were all
infected, even poor Tansy, who reacted in horror. Nit combs were bought from the chemist in Bideford, but he soon ran out of them and we had to share.
We were also prescribed
some evil-smelling shampoo that we had to use every few days. With one bathroom and very limited hot water, and the fact that nearly all the girls had long hair and no means other than threadbare
bath towels for drying it, life became more austere even than usual. We all got colds, sore throats and bronchitis.

Rehearsals and performances ploughed steadily on through this, though, as Eileen maintained a blithe indifference to ailments, or what she called ‘drawbacks’, of any kind. But I
think – with the exception of Tansy – that we were all absorbed and happy and didn’t notice or care much about anything else. Tansy, a refugee left high and dry without her love
or the practice of her profession, must have been intensely lonely. She used to spend hours walking backwards over the sands of the estuary because she said it was good for the body. Her obsession
with hygiene had limitless scope in the cold and steadily dirtier house.

At some point during this winter, Peter wrote that he was getting some leave: could I join him at Fritton? I wasn’t in a play and was allowed to go. As soon as it was known that I was
going – and to see the man who’d been writing to me – Honorine became interested. She said it was high time I stopped being a fucking virgin, and to this end made me borrow two of
her nightdresses, one cyclamen-coloured and the other black, both diaphanous. I thought they were horrible and would look silly on me, but I was too weak to refuse, so they were packed and remained
unworn.

After two long cold train journeys, I was met at Great Yarmouth by Comber, the family chauffeur, and in no time was sitting around a civilized dining-table with silver, glass, white napkins and
three courses. At once I was under the spell of the family – the feeling that everyone was the best at everything they did, that even I was funnier and cleverer and prettier than anyone had
ever thought me at home and, last but by no means least, Peter’s charm and attentions. I began to feel that I must be in love with him as he said he was with me. We went for winter walks and
he kissed me – I
enjoyed the idea of it more than the practice. It did seem a kind of landmark towards being in love, although what that would be like I’d no idea. He
took me wildfowling very early one freezing morning and I couldn’t see the point.

I realize now that, although I had a certain precocity, I was lamentably young for my age at a time when girls were, in any case, far less clued-up than they are now. Sex was still a mystery,
something of which I had only a wary, dawning curiosity. But like the young at any age, I wished to seem older than I felt so I responded to Pete’s attention and kisses with what I hoped was
appropriate ardour. I was secretly amazed that someone so old and glamorous should notice me – more than amazed, fascinated, and I
wanted
to be in love with him. The attitude of the
family reinforced this. K often told me how attractive Pete was, and that numerous hearts had been broken on his account. Also K was kind to me, even affectionate, apart from disapproving of my
smoking and drinking wine. When the leave came to an end, Pete went back to the rigours of his destroyer and the North Atlantic and I returned to Instow. Honorine immediately asked me whether
I’d lost my virginity, and was disgusted when I admitted I hadn’t.

I also returned to find difficulties with Seth, who intimated that stroking me and reading poetry were no longer what he had in mind. One evening when Phoebe, Barbara and, indeed, everyone was
out, he came to my room and flung himself on my bed, and talked of how stubborn I was, how unfeeling. ‘You know, of course, I can make you do whatever I want?’

‘No, you couldn’t,’ I said, but I was beginning to feel frightened. I tried to get up, but he pinned me down with one hand round my neck; with the other – he was smoking
– he suddenly pressed the lighted stub on the back of my hand, saying ‘You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?’

Some moments are so short that any attempt at description distorts their duration. I saw his pale green eyes fixed with an enquiring malice on my face. I knew that he was waiting for me to
scream or cry, and I was determined to do neither. I jerked my hand towards him and he removed the stub. A split second sufficed for his challenge and my response. I tried again
to shift him, or at least to get into a less vulnerable position, but he was very much stronger, and he was angry. He tried once more with the cigarette, just under my left breast – the mark
remained for years afterwards – and now the pain was too much for me. He threw it away, but before I could feel relief he put his other hand round my neck and began – slowly – to
tighten his grip. I remember thinking that he was going to kill me, and this sharpened my mind. I stared at him – willing myself to look calm – and, when he loosened his grip slightly,
I managed to say, ‘Don’t do that, it’s silly.’

Just then there were sounds of the company returning. He heard them, and his attention faltered – just enough for me to make a sudden lunge to escape. I ran out down the passage and into
someone else’s room, where I hid. I stayed there for what seemed like hours waiting to hear him leave my room and walk down the passage to the stairs. I heard him in the passage, calling my
name very quietly, and when he reached the door of the room where I hid he began to turn the handle. Then there were other people in the passage – I heard them talking; they spoke to him and
he answered – quite normally. The occupants of the room came in and turned on the light. I put my finger to my lips, and they shut up at once. One came up to me. ‘What’s
up?’

‘Are Phoebe and Barbara back?’ They didn’t know. ‘Please go and see.’ They did. They were. ‘Will you come with me?’

One did. ‘What’s
up
?’

‘It was Seth. I think he’s mad. He tried to kill me.’ They took this for the dramatic language then current in the house.

Phoebe and Barbara were undressing. They were already pretty sick of Seth turning up and reading to me, and they said, ‘He won’t come any more.’ I crept into bed, teeth
chattering from cold, my heart still thudding. The burns had really started to hurt and I felt sick. I also felt completely out of my depth. Frightful things could
happen
suddenly, and I could neither predict nor understand them.

After that, I had a sort of breakdown. Perhaps it was just flu, I really don’t know. I lay in bed for at least two weeks with a fever that alternately burned and soaked me, and had awful
nightmares of being powerless in menacing situations that each time threatened to engulf me. Days and nights went by. Honorine took up with Seth. I felt nothing but a kind of watery relief.
Sometimes Phil brought me a cup of tea; otherwise nobody seemed to take much notice of me.

Eventually, one evening, Eileen paid me a visit. ‘Time you got up,’ she said. ‘You’re supposed to be an actress. You can’t lie there for ever. There is a part for
you in the next play.’

I got up. When I was dressed, I realized I was famished. Going down to the kitchen was an ordeal: I dreaded meeting Seth. But one of the unspoken edicts of the house was that we were all
tremendously sophisticated. I decided that the most sophisticated thing to do would be to greet him as though nothing had happened. Perhaps, after all, nothing very much
had
happened. But as
I sat down at the long kitchen table, I knew that it had because Honorine, sitting next to Seth, shot me a triumphantly malicious glance. It soon transpired that he was sleeping with her in her
room; I felt safer.