was a strange atmosphere in Granny’s room, as if time were standing still.
It was only later that I found out she was dead.
I knew from the age of six, when I dressed myself up in Mum’s wedding veil, that I was going to be an actor.
‘Do you know what you want to be when you grow up, Derek?’ I remember Mum asking me one day when I was older.
‘Oh yes, Mum, I know – I’ve always known. An actor.’
Would Mum and Dad mind, would they oppose me? It was a world they knew nothing about, nor did I.
‘Don’t you worry, dear, we’ll see you right. I’m sure you’ll land on your feet whatever you do.’
‘Oh well, it will be something different from your Dad and Uncle Henry – less boring perhaps – although as a chef Henry always fancies he’s a bit different from the run of the mill, don’t he?’
Henry was short and stocky, sandy-haired and freckled. He had a great sense of fun, and sometimes took risks, putting big money on horses and dogs. Later he’d take me with him to Walthamstow dog stadium, which was very exciting.
For a short time I joined the cubs and scouts, and once went to an annual camp. I remember with no affection sleeping in a tent in a famous scout park, being endlessly soaking wet, and loathing the communal life when we lived off things called ‘twists’ and ‘dampers’. We ate a sort of soup, which I suppose was chicken soup with barley, and which we made ourselves.
In the evening we sat around the campfire singing the usual ‘Ging Gang Goolie’ – ‘Ging gang goolie, goolie goolie goolie, watcha!’ – and being very silly. We played awful games like ‘British Bulldog’, when ten boys would be pitted against one, which was an excuse for a roughhouse. I am physically not very brave, so it didn’t suit me at all.
When I acted in plays as a child, I was always dressed up in all the ‘best frocks’, because Mum made or provided the costumes. It soon became apparent that, with Mum’s involvement, school was an extension of home and home an extension of school. She was outgoing, gregarious, chatty and quite extrovert, sometimes even flamboyant, and would speak her mind without inhibition. She could be very demonstrative. I was quite shocked later on when she met the famous actress Diana Wynyard in a car park opposite the Old Vic. She threw herself at her, and kissed her.
But there were other times when I heard her crying out in pain and anguish – though never directly in front of me, for she didn’t want me to know she was suffering from an illness I wasn’t supposed to be aware of. She would never complain how terrible the pain was. She tried to hide it, and sometimes she’d just go upstairs to be on her own. I was never taken up to see her.
Dad would ring up the doctor at once. Mum was careering round the room like a wounded animal, trying not to show pain, bumping into furniture, and never able to find relief, while Dad would prevail on her to sit down.
She’d had a mastoid operation before I was born, and the middle ear problems she suffered were recurrent. Our doctor visited us every week to examine her. He came every Wednesday and would give her medicine for them. During these terrible attacks she couldn’t stand, couldn’t lie down and lost all sense of balance. It was agonising for Dad to see and hear her when she was undergoing one of these attacks. I always feared she would die, for basically she was my rock, my comfort.
These problems became a nightmare: I couldn’t stand the idea of her attacks, nor could I help them. I had a complete lack of wanting to confront anything, and also a lack of responsibility, which was possibly a sign of how I was protected by Mum and Dad from some of the harsher realities of survival. It was all too evident with my childhood pets.
My first was a rabbit called Floppy; its cage was never cleaned unless my grandfather did it; likewise with my tropical fish aquarium. Then there was the tortoise which hibernated and never woke up. Finding this was horrible, for with a girl friend I went out into the garden to search, and when we did find it, its body had decomposed. The girl laughed, grabbed it and pushed it in my face to tease me – and that hurt me very much.
Dad grew vegetables and kept chickens, about a dozen. I loved to climb through the hatch into the dark henhouse, and savour being there all on my own, finding it oddly comforting to rest among the clucking of the hens. Certain aspects of life were quite rustic, but I was no good at looking after anything.
I have often since wondered why this was so, and I think it was because I was never very good at making decisions. For I was already the Boy with the Veil – this is what I fancied I was. The actor. And it remained so.
Actors have to keep one foot in the cradle. We must be open, like a child, and retain naïveté. I have plenty of the latter – or so my friends tell me – and have kept some of it, I think, from those early years.
I was born on the cusp of Libra, and as a result I am apparently a ‘triple Libran’. On the one hand I’m very well balanced, but on the other hand, hopeless at making up my mind. I tend to see both sides of everything and weigh everything equally, so choosing is difficult – and making my mind up is damn hard.
This means I dither, I’m always uncertain.
As a child, I don’t believe I thought about anything very much, and never philosophised, so some might say I was just shallow. Or you could say, which I suppose is truer, that I have always set more store by my intuition and imagination than by analytical thinking.
The only creative avenue I have ever walked down is acting.
One day I went back to Aunt Hilda’s house after school. Quite often I would go there for lunch in Poplars Road while both of my parents were still out at work. I was a bit ruffled by what I’d heard, for I had just been told something at school and was deeply intrigued.
Hilda was out, and I was met by Grandpa who was downstairs with Grandma.
‘Make the boy a cup of tea, girl,’ he said. He always called Grandma ‘girl’. They were devoted to one another and she used to call him ‘mate’.
‘Don’t do that, mate.’
‘All right, girl.’
He, like Dad, was undemonstrative and very mild mannered.
‘Grandpa, a boy in my class came up to me in the playground and said, “My Dad says you’ve got a Jewish name.”’
Grandpa’s face grew stern, creased and angry. I had never seen him like this before. ‘What? What does he know about it?’ He became very upset, and it was an ugly moment. ‘Let’s not mention it again, boy!’
I had recovered by now. ‘But it’s only a name, Grandpa. It’s
