Free The Varnished Untruth by Pamela Stephenson

parents took up their sabbatical posts at the Chester Beatty Research Institute in London, and my sisters were placed in a local school. But it had been decided that, since I was so ahead of my age group academically, I should take a year off; then I’d be closer to my classmates’ age when I entered a Sydney high school. Perhaps my parents finally understood how socially difficult it had been for me? It’s more likely their chosen grammar school would not take me until I turned twelve. Anyway, my parents very kindly placed me in a school where they thought I could take it a bit easy, learn some French, and indulge my passion for ballet. Little did they know just one year of that programme at the Arts Educational Trust at 144 Piccadilly (it’s not there any more) would entirely rev up my desire to perform and render me disinterested in academic achievement for the next three decades! It was a school that provided regular lessons in the morning and theatre arts in the afternoon, and it unleashed in me a fully fledged, performing monster.
    Again I was a misfit, a curiosity from Australia. The school was run in a highly formal manner. We had to curtsey to teachers whenever we passed them – ‘Good morning, Miss Gracie!’ – and there were strict uniform rules – for ballet we wore white tunics with a royal blue belt, white socks and pink ballet shoes. For ‘character’ dance classes we had black embroidered skirts over a black leotard and black character shoes with a little heel. The regular school uniform was a blue-and-white check gingham dress with a blazer, white gloves and straw hat. It was quite a culture shock for me, coming from a relaxed Australian primary school. In fact, I felt similar to the other girls purely in my adoration of our dashing French teacher, who had a thrillingly seductive accent and resembled the actor Alain Delon.
    But I could hold my own when it came to ballet. Edna Mann had taught me well. I had a nice turn-out, good posture and excellent extension in my legs and arms. Ballet hurt, especially pointe work, but it was a ‘good’ hurt. Blisters, calluses, bunions, bleeding toes, pulled muscles – it’s weird how that’s all acceptable in the ballet world, even for children. The puritan ethic ‘suffering’s good for the soul’ is very close to the raison d’être of ballet; yet I would never quibble about the value of the discipline it teaches young people.
    It may also have seemed to fit with your obssessive compulsive nature . . .
    That’s true . . .
    And all that physical exercise must have helped to reduce your anxiety . . .
    Yeah. And the challenge of it excited me. The other forms of dance on the Arts Educational curriculum, including ‘character’, ‘modern’ and a bit of child-level ballroom, were new to me. The latter was very simple, with girls dancing with girls, and it bored me. For our end-of-year exam we had to bring in a party dress and I remember how hurt I was when I entered the girls’ dressing room and caught everyone sniggering at my home-made ensemble – a rose pink, empire-line number trimmed with white lace, worn with a cummerbund and bolero jacket. My mother had made it from a McCall’s pattern and, despite my ambivalence about my mother, I really do appreciate that she tried so hard to turn us out nicely. I just wish we three sisters hadn’t all been dressed exactly alike; that was hell. No wonder I was delighted to be so gorgeously dressed by incredibly clever people for
Strictly
. It was the ultimate soothing of that early humiliation. Anyway, what I really came to love in my London year was tap dancing, and I was very proud to achieve a silver medal level. More importantly, I was also introduced to acting, which was a revelation. The notion of expressing one’s self with the whole body – including the voice – was not just novel, it seemed . . . easy and natural for me. My world had changed.
    17th March 1961
    Dear Nanna,
    We have not had snow