Free The Two of Us by Sheila Hancock Page A

and potions.
    I did my damnedest in classes to knock off my rough edges. I toiled at ballet and movement to control my ungainly height.
     A ginger-wigged man, Mr Harcourt-Davis, who taught makeup, regarded me as a challenge. He decided to go for an orchidaceous
     look, all slanting black eyeliner, white base and deep red lips. Startling but on the whole an improvement. I enjoyed Mr Froeschlen’s
     fencing lessons. His cry of ‘Down, down lower, and sit ’ to get us into the right stance is often repeated by RADA students of the period, especially in erotic situations. He praised
     my thrusts and parries and I knew I looked good in tights. During one lesson I noticed two of the dishiest ex-service students,
     Charles Ross and Peter Yates, who later became a film director, eyeing me intently. In the canteen they solemnly told me that
     after dedicated research they deemed my legs, from the knees up, the best at the Academy. That was probably the single most
     beneficial thing I learned at RADA – confidence in my thighs.
    I had little in my voice after being subjected to the scrutiny of Miss King. Her cool, beautifully manicured hands stroked
     my jaw, rigid with effort, and gently lowered my shoulders from under my ears. She ignored the giggles of my fellow students
     as she tried to make me hear the difference between ‘door’ and ‘dawer’. She enlisted the help of the great Clifford Turner,
     head of Voice Production. He suggested a tooth prop. This was an evil instrument shaped like a tiny dog’s bone, that was held
     between the teeth in the centre of your mouth, with the object of opening up the vowels. I had it in my mouth for most of
     my time at RADA.
    16 June
    Not a good start. I mix up the pills and give him an overdose of one. The clinic reassured me on the phone but John was pretty scathing about Sheila Nightingale.
    My struggles with ‘the tongue, the teeth and the lips’, not to mention the ribs, the neck, the arms and the legs, did not
     make me an easy person to share digs with. There were four of us in the room at the Young Women’s Christian Association in
     Archway. My RADA friend Stella sympathised with my cater-waulings but the two other girls, not being actors, were less happy,
     although they were content to share their clothes and food parcels from home. The rules were very strict. Doors were locked
     after nine o’clock. In the evenings I was in a cabaret show written by an American fellow student, Dick Vosburgh – clever
     material as befits the man who went on to be gag writer for many great comics including Groucho Marx and Bob Hope. I enjoyed
     doing it. I also needed the money to augment my scholarship. I got in after hours through a window left open by my room-mates.
     When I was caught there were no second chances. Christian women were not expected to stay out late.
    Stella left with me, and the two of us found a room in St John’s Wood, which we shared with another RADA student called Gaynor.
     We took it in turns to sleep on the camp bed, the floor or the sofa. We cooked in a black frying pan that festered over the
     single gas ring. The landlord was a dodgy cove who employed us to sell his diamonds. We had to go into jewellery shops and
     pretend we had broken off an engagement and needed to sell our rings. I was his star turn. I shamelessly wove a tale of physical
     abuse and unwanted pregnancy that wrung tears out of jewellers from Hammersmith to Hackney. It was the best bit of acting
     I did while at RADA and provided a lot of our rancid chips.
    Necessity drove me into many jobs, which usually ended in the sack. I worked at a milk bar in Edgware Road, but Tony took
     to inviting hordes of people to see me struggling with the froth machine in my large red-check hair bow that drooped over
     my face in the steam. The owner did not appreciate them filling the place and only buying one Banana Heaven with eight straws.
     Every Saturday I worked at the Archway Woolworth’s. At