Slipstream by Elizabeth Jane Howard Page A

and induced violent homesickness at the prospect of going anywhere by myself.
    On the animal-owning front, I eventually achieved not my wildest dream, a dog, but a cat. My aunt Ruth said one day that she would like to take me out to choose a birthday present. We’d
spend the afternoon looking for what I should like to have. One of our first calls was to the pet department of Selfridges, and there was a full-grown tabby cat with a good deal of white fur and a
twisted tail. He cost ten shillings and I wanted him quite desperately. My aunt said she wasn’t sure that my parents would agree to a cat, and we must look elsewhere. Two or three hours
later, I’d foundnothing I wanted and my aunt gave in. We carried the cat home in a carrier-bag with his desperate white paws scrabbling at the handles to get out. I called
him Bill and adored him. He was accident-prone: got run over several times and I carried him to the vet, but he always recovered even though he had used one of his lives when his tail got broken.
He was also given to fishing my goldfish out of their tank, and I’d find them writhing feebly in his basket. He had beautiful eyes and at least pretended to be fond of me although, being a
practical cat, he preferred the cook.
    During these lesson years with Miss Cobham, an aspiration and an activity preoccupied me one way or another almost every day of my life. I wanted to become an actress when I grew up. It had
started when I began to read Shakespeare. Penelope and I continued to invent monologues and enact them to Carol, but we both agreed that what we really wanted was to play parts in complete plays in
real theatres. I wanted to play Shakespeare, but soon realized that all the best parts were written for men. This was initially daunting. However, I conceived the idea of playing Hamlet, never mind
my sex – Sarah Bernhardt had done just that. The way seemed open. The yearning endured for the best part of ten years and was only quelled by marriage and the war – both far into the
future.
    My primary activity never left me. It began when I was eight and, despairing of getting enough books to read, I began to write one. It was an interminable tale about a horse – influenced
by Black Beauty – and I wrote it off and on for six years until it bored even me to a full stop. But I wrote other things too: short stories, cautionary tales about wicked children and
the heartless consequences they provoked, some poetry and eventually plays. The only short story I can remember was written when I was about nine. It was a tale of the birth of Christ written from
the harassed innkeeper’s point of view. Grannia was so impressed by the story, largely because of its religious content, that she read it aloud to her wretched servants on a Sunday afternoon
when they must have been longing to clear luncheon and put their feet up.
    When I was fourteen I wrote my first play, a domestic comedy on the lines of George and Margaret , although I’d never seen any plays of the kind. My play was
called, with a certain sense of proportion, Our Little Life , and Miss Cobham and I laughed at it like anything. All the stage directions were written in Shakespeare’s terms because at
the time I had read no other plays. I also wrote a Jacobean melodrama, which involved a good deal of fighting with fire irons – and ringing doorbells all round Ladbroke Square trying to find
a girl who would play the soppy heroine.
    But through all this I never had the slightest intention of becoming a writer: acting was my aim. To be allowed to go to acting school was my dream, and one of my chief grudges about life was
how seldom I was ever allowed to go to the theatre. Once at Christmas and once for my birthday treat I was taken to the theatre. Peter Pan terrified me. I used to lie in bed gazing at
Felix’s dressing-gown, hung on a hook on the back of the door, as it turned in my imagination into Captain Hook with his hook raised menacingly.