The Adventures of Emily A.

2006-06-21T23:02:00.000+13:00

A memoir

Emily Abercrombie

“Smile happily on everyone

And love your little life”

Poem age 5.

There were other jobs – ASM and walk on at the Hampstead Theatre Club and the International Theatre Club – and one strange day, I found myself auditioning for Sir John Gielgud for two understudy roles and ASM at the Queen’s Theatre. It was a strange day, because earlier on I had heard that my beloved singing teacher, Elizabeth Scrivener had died. She had fallen off a cliff whilst photographing her companions and broken her neck. I was doubled up with grief. Consequently, when I got to the Queen’s Theatre for the audition, I didn’t give a fuck about it – though I was awed by Sir John Gielgud – and stared rather impudently at his face, saying to myself: “Well if I don’t get it, at least I will have seen Sir John”.

I got the job. Sir John said to me “You seem to have seen this play before”. The Play was “Halfway Up The Tree” by Peter Ustinov.

There was the glorious fortnight that I actually played on the West End stage, when the actress, Pinkie Johnstone, was ill. It started gloriously and ended disastrously.

I loved the bright lights, the glory, the flowers, the telegrams (Pinkie sent me a telegram from her sick bed, which said: “When in doubt smile,” (which I did all the time), my mother coming up to my dressing room saying: “You‘re a professional.” (My mother had heard one woman saying to another: “You wouldn’t think she was the understudy, would you?”) After the first performance, Ambrosine Phillpots, the leading lady, called me into her dressing room. “You’re acting is fine” She said, “But you need more voice”. So then I did voice exercises every evening before going on and you could hear every word distinctly at the back of the stalls.

But unfortunately for me, I had made an enemy of the Star, Robert Morley. I thought he was a bully and he frightened me. I made no secret of my dislike for him. Morley said to his dresser: “Why doesn’t Emily like me?”

Also, I played the part straight like Pinkie (and Morley didn’t like the way she had played it), but with my own personality and warmth. Morley wanted more comedy in the role. So he told the management he wanted me out. The Star has to be kept happy. Gielgud said: “He’s a strange man.”

I it was cruel how I found out that I had got the sack. Coming in to do my ASM duties, I heard other actresses being auditioned for my part. I had not been told. And the same night, I had to go on again. Through my grief I did my best – the best I could do, and instructed the new actress on her moves, through my tears, in rehearsal. Morley watched this first tearful rehearsal from the front row; a gleeful smile on his face; gloating in my misery.

In any case, I’d been unlucky. If I had played the second part, a character part, Bridget, the Swedish Au Pair, for which I had an original interpretation, I might have been allowed to keep that part. But Judy was an “Oh Daddy!” part – not my scene at all.

The Yom Kippur War came, and I went crazy. I couldn’t bear the thought of the soldiers dying. In fact, in the end, we lost two boys, Ditza’s boyfriend Mical, son of Mical, and Benji. And Use was badly wounded in the stomach.

I watched Use in the dining room when war had been declared. He had taken up his tray for supper in a routine way, but then he put it back again. He couldn’t eat.

All the time that I was going crazy, I was working, and in the dining room, the kibbutzniks would say “Nothing greasy please”. War does something to your stomach. They were concerned about me. They knew I was going crazy. Our nurse showed me a telegram, which said THERE WILL BE VICTORY FOR ISRAEL – but it was the soldiers dying that I couldn’t stand.

I ran around the kibbutz at night, from one children’s house to another, guarding them. I returned all the things I had borrowed off the kibbutzniks in a frenzy of guilt.

“You have a golden soul” Mr. Lampel told me in Halliwick Hospital. These were the only words that kept me going.

I thought in the kitchen, I am ashamed to be a Christian. I am not fit to eat with the Jews. But I knew I had to be sensible and eat something, so I decided to eat breakfast only. (The best meal of the day!)

As well as being so afraid of the soldiers dying (especially Use) – I had just decided that one of the bachelors on the kibbutz would do for me. Chanor his name is. And I was terrified that would die too. He was a fighter pilot. I didn’t love him, but I was sick of being alone and I thought he would do.

“Wear colourful clothes” I thought. “To cheer people up”. So I went to work wearing my best black blouse, covered in red, yellow, and blue embroidery.

Mical came up to me in the kitchen and said: “If two Arabs came to the door asking for coffee, would you give them coffee?” “Certainly not!” I answered firmly.

Two teenage kibbutznik girls came up to me, and one said: “Use has been badly wounded in the stomach. “Don’t tell me such news when I am cooking!” I shrieked, my nerves raw with fatigue. (I hadn’t slept for eight nights.) “What if that had been Chanor” I thought. “I’d be done for”.

“Those volunteers are working too slowly!” (Washing up) I complained, tense to Ditza. “No” “They are working at their own pace”. Later she admitted to me that these volunteers irritated her enormously, (mitnaveem nora atsbanit).

One morning I crossed paths with Dora, young wife and mother, in her nightie and red dressing gown, a pillow clutched tightly to he bosom, head held high and face proud; face red from crying, looking for a place to sleep away her anxiety for her

husband. Later I thought I heard his voice talking to her, that he had returned – but not so.

Another woman, with a lover and husband in the war, said “Bogertov” (Good Morning) to me in a voice full of shit. She was confused about her divided loyalties.

During the war, we lay, the teenagers, and myself on the grass in the evening and Amos was there. He said to me “And how is Emily in the war? Are you frightened?” I said “It’s not me I am frightened for” and I looked up at the sky, thinking of Chanor, and Amos rolled over in a sort of agony, thinking – “If only I was older”. I think he loved me.

One evening I joined Svi on guard duty. He took my hand and said “When I try to make love to you, you don’t respond.” “I don’t feel anything”. I answered. I asked him why the women didn’t fight too. He replied, “War is a dirty game played by men. Pray God we don’t fall so low”.

I went crazier and crazier – I heard voices – saw delusions – (I saw a kettle boiling without any electricity). Eventually, they strapped me down. That was terrifying. I thought, “Now they are going to cut off one of my breasts”. They had injected me with Largactil, but I was very frightened. After laying the dark, for what seemed like three or four days, they took me off in an ambulance to an Israeli mental hospital. Svi went with me in the ambulance. He looked sad and a bit disgusted but he went with me.

Molly was a part of everything around her. She wasn’t Cornish but seemed born for Cornwall. She absorbed Cornwall through her skin. I never knew another person to have such an affinity with a place. She had friends in the village but was most often alone with us. I don’t know if children are company. We entertained her with home made plays, dressing up as kings and queens and improvising in the stone paved parlour. On Carnival Day she dressed Bridget as a Tahitian Princess, and I went as “The Happy Wanderer” in a rust-coloured sweater and unbecoming shorts, dripping with pots and pans. I thought this a clever idea but envied how beautiful Bridget looked in her pareo. She won a Prize.

Molly knew all the beaches and would go with us along windy twisty paths over cliffs, up hills to beaches where there were stranded whales. She heard the news about the whales in the village and took us to where the whales were beached-up. A storm had washed them in, in the night. They were smelly, landed things, not as big as I’d imagined. We chose pebbles and looked for mother-of-pearl washed in with the whales.

Molly knew a family in Mevagissey: a sister and three handsome brothers. Each year they were all more handsome. The middle brother, Mark, took me mackerel fishing on a choppy, grey day. If you decide to go mackerel fishing it always rains and I had to wear an oilskin. I felt seasick, but it was very exciting to be alone with Mark in a boat, waiting for fish.

When I was fourteen I fell in love with boys and didn’t go back to Cornwall. Janet and Bridget wrote me a passionate letter begging me to come but still I wouldn’t. I felt my childhood was over.

I never saw Molly or the girls again. Many years have passed. Perhaps there are new children at Heligan now, to walk across the fields with and sing to. I still have Molly’s poem in my autograph book:-

“Emily Abercrombie was getting on for ten,

She could nearly swim in the deep blue sea,

She wrote lovely poems for you and me,

And what else she did I’ll tell you anon,

But she really was a Jellibombie.”

The Adventures of Emily A.

2006-06-21T21:56:00.000+13:00

Please send me your comments and any other feedback to: c.collett@virgin.net