Behind the Laughter. Sherrie Hewson

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СКАЧАТЬ walking away he turned sharply and flashed his eyes at me, which stopped me in my tracks. During the allotted two hours I’d asked to go to the loo (which was apparently not allowed), I’d asked for a drink of water (also not allowed) and now my keys were permanently stuck in a criss-crossed heap inside the machine. By this time I was hysterical with suppressed laughter and the other girls were trying hard not to join in. ‘Lurch’ was red-faced with anger and the small woman who had shown me in (presumably his wife) hustled me out of the room and sent me home, telling me as she did so that I was disturbing the other girls.

      Five days later I went back for another try. The small woman opened the door and stared at me with anger in her eyes. She then told me that her husband had died due to stress and the lessons were cancelled, as if it was my fault. After that, I gave up the quest to become a secretary.

      It was my one and only attempt to learn a practical skill. Afterwards I told my mother that I wanted to go to drama school and she backed me 100 percent. I’m not sure which of us was more determined that I would make it, but while I gave my all to acting, other distractions threatened to derail my efforts: boys had arrived on the scene.

      I always got on well with boys and seemed to attract them, but until I was 15 I had no romantic interest in them at all. I was a bit of a tomboy and as far as I was concerned boys were pals. They could be fun, sometimes they were noisy and smelly, but mostly I just enjoyed having them around.

      My closest male friend from school was Gordon Lewingdon. We got on really well and often he came round to my house. I thought of him as a mate, so it only dawned on me much later that Gordon loved me. I was horrible to him, thoughtless and mean, flirting with all the other boys from the village who used to congregate at my house, but I adored him too. Oh, the fickleness of youth! We both fooled around and kissed a bit, but nothing more – I’m not sure I knew what ‘more’ was at that stage.

      Years later, when I bumped into Gordon, he agreed that I’d treated him badly. He told me he had a doll that he used to pretend was me and he would stick pins in it! He was, and still is, a lovely man and we will always be friends.

      But Gordon wasn’t my only suitor (I had several) and when I was just 13 he and three other boys actually followed me on holiday to Wales. Gordon had told me that he couldn’t bear to be away from me for a whole week and I was happy for them to come along. They wanted to cycle all the way to Wales from Nottingham but their parents insisted they went part of the journey on the train. They arrived soon after my family and me, setting up tents in a nearby field, but a deluge of rain swamped their camp. Late that night they turned up at our hotel looking like drowned rats. Mum couldn’t leave them with nowhere to sleep, so she paid for a room, but put them on the train home the next day.

      We were a proper gang in Burton Joyce and went everywhere together but mainly hung out at my house because I had the pool. There was Gordon, Chas, Dave, Steve, Ian and John, plus a few others over the years. Every now and then I was asked out by each of them in turn, but I wanted a gang, not a boyfriend. I’d ride my horse and my little entourage would follow on their bikes. I did go on a couple of dates with a boy from school called Dave (because he looked like Paul McCartney) and then there was Rob, whom I adored. Rob had a guitar and was in a band, which was a definite plus. He was a Mod (you were either with the Mods or Rockers and I was a Mod girl), so he was perfect for me, but sadly, young love faded away.

      My first real boyfriend was Robbie Tate. Blond, blue-eyed and gorgeous, we met when we were both 15 and I was immediately smitten. We started seeing each other as much as we could and I would often skip drama or ballet classes to be with him. When my mother found out, she did her best to stop the romance, telling me that I mustn’t see him because classes were more important. Of course that only encouraged me all the more: seeing Robbie in secret was even more fun, although I didn’t dare miss too many classes. He would wait for me outside class and we’d go for a walk, then stop for a kiss and a cuddle.

      I worked for several months backstage at the Nottingham Playhouse, helping out with productions and as an usherette. As well as the joy of earning £3 10s a day, I got to see the stars backstage. And there were real stars there because the artistic director was John Neville, a former leading member of London’s Old Vic, who had played many big classical roles before becoming a director. He had immense pulling power and brought a series of established actors to Nottingham, turning it into one of the finest repertory theatres in the country. Among many others, I got to meet Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, John Huston, Ronald Reagan and Charlton Heston. Young and hungry for success, for me it was magical. I remember sitting on the floor in a discreet corner of the stage completely spellbound while watching Judi Dench rehearse her part as St Joan in Joan of Arc.

      Our junior Theatre Club was also extremely busy, producing a stream of plays and musicals, and I was still involved with Allen Tipton’s drama group. The most successful production of Allen’s that I was in was West Side Story when I was 15. I played Anita, one of the lead roles, when we took it to London in a drama festival, where we beat dozens of other groups to win the Lawrence Olivier Shield.

      Soon afterwards we took the play to the open-air Minack Theatre in Porthcurno, West Cornwall. The theatre is constructed above a gully with a rocky outcrop jutting into the sea, and it’s a truly spectacular location. We arrived in Cornwall during a hot summer and I remember getting very burnt and phoning home to tell Mum the sun had wrinkled my face so much that I looked really old, probably at least 25, and I was thrilled. Considering my later fascination with cosmetic surgery, it seems ironic that I was so desperate to look older.

      All this was immense fun and the perfect backdrop for my budding romance with Robbie, which culminated when I was 16 in me losing my virginity to him in a passionate clinch on the kitchen floor of our house! You have to be 16 for that to seem romantic, but to us it was. After that we’d sleep together whenever we could, though sadly the opportunities were few and far between.

      The only experience of sex that I’d had before was at a late-night party my brother had reluctantly taken me to, where a boy asked me to go upstairs with him. We went into the bathroom and he got out some sort of balloon-type thing, then fumbled around trying to undo my bra while reaching down to release the waiting wriggling worm, at which point I just thought, I don’t want that thing anywhere near me – and made a run for it!

      I thought my romance with Robbie was perfect. He even gave me a ring, which I wore on my engagement finger. Then one day I walked into a bar to see him sitting on a stool, kissing a blonde girl. It wasn’t even a peck on the cheek, this was a full-on snog, and at that moment my heart broke. I stood watching them, consumed with the pain of his betrayal.

      When Robbie turned and saw me, he had the gall to come over and tell me that I had imagined it. But I hadn’t, and for me the romance was over. Loyalty means a great deal to me: I’m a fiercely loyal person and I expect those I love and care about to offer the same loyalty. If I’m betrayed, that’s it: there’s no second chance, a brick wall goes up and then it’s over – I don’t even want to be friends.

      From then on I barely spoke to Robbie. Deep down I still loved him, but I just couldn’t forgive him. One day, a couple of years later when I was at drama school, he turned up. He told me he missed me and asked if we could get back together again, but by that time I had met someone else and I wasn’t interested. He then asked for his ring back, but I told him I’d lost it. I’d actually sold it, for a couple of pounds, when he broke my heart. After that I didn’t see him again.

      There was one other boy I went on a couple of dates with when I was 16. He worked in a shop down the road from Mum’s boutique. I used to help out in the boutique on Saturdays and he would walk past the window and stare in. Like Robbie, he was blond, blue-eyed and handsome, but I found his stare slightly unnerving and would look away or busy myself folding clothes. One day he came into the shop, introduced himself and started chatting to Mum. She liked him and invited him СКАЧАТЬ