when we conversed about the subject. Her lips trembled, and she wove her fingers around each other so nervously and tightly that I thought she might break one. Everyone always said she had bones as thin as a bird’s. It would merely take a brisk wind to crack one.
“From what I’ve read, no one really knows that world, Mummy, here in England or there in America. Most everything depends on a lucky break, but you’ve got to be at it to get that to happen, and if you’re too frightened to try, you’ll always wonder if you could have succeeded. Regret is worse than failure, because failing at least means you had attempted to do something. Not seeking to develop your talent is a sin. I can’t imagine years and years from now staring into the memory of this time and wondering forever about what might have been.”
I explained how I hoped to get into a Broadway show, to be seen by a music producer, and to be contracted to do an album, just as Barbra Streisand had done. My voice was often compared to hers, so I envisioned myself on television shows performing as well.
I loved singing, loved to bask in the expressions on the faces of my audiences and thrill to the way I could touch them. I was able to get people to pause in their busy or troubled lives and travel comfortably with me along the paths of the melodies—some joyful, some wistful, but always taking them to another place, even if only for a few minutes. For as long as I could remember, I was told I had a special gift. Why didn’t my family believe as I did that it was as important to develop and share it? If you were given a gift, surely it was immoral to ignore it.
“Totally ridiculous,” Julia said when she heard my plans. “You’re still just a child full of imagination. You’ve never gone fifty miles from your home without me or our parents or some school chaperone. Be realistic. Grow up, for goodness’ sake.”
Julia was wrong. What I wanted wasn’t some pipe dream a teenage girl grows in a garden of fantasies. My plans were stable and mature. I was especially disappointed that she, who already was working as a teacher, didn’t see this. It was supposed to be in a teacher’s DNA to encourage young people, to push them to try, to experiment, and to be courageous so they could become all they were capable of becoming.
But then again, maybe she did envision all I could do; maybe she was simply jealous that I had the courage to step out of this house alone to try something so big, something she couldn’t do. She knew I was lead singer in the church chorus for years and lead singer in the school chorus as well. She was aware of all the praise I had received from the moment I had sung my first note as a child. She accompanied my parents to every school performance and was always in church whenever they attended and heard me sing. A cloudburst of compliments soaked us all before we walked down the steps to go home.
Most important, she was aware that it hadn’t stopped there. I had earned praise in other ways. On weekends since my sixteenth birthday, I sang in pubs in Guildford and at some social events, even a wedding, but I really felt professional when I sang in taverns and was paid for it. In the U.K., you are considered an adult by the age of sixteen. Not only can you drive, but you are allowed to have beer, wine, or cider with a meal in a pub if you are with an adult, and so singing in one wasn’t unusual for someone my age.
Many people told me that the pubs had better attendance when the word was out that I would be singing in them. I would do all the traditional favorites like “The White Cliffs of Dover,” “Pack up Your Troubles,” and many songs written by Cole Porter, as well as songs sung by Streisand. In particular, the Three Bears tavern did so well that the owner advertised me in the local paper occasionally and on flyers left at store counters.
I avoided joining anyone’s garage band, even though I was constantly invited to do so, and by some of the best-looking boys in our school, too. My interest wasn’t in their kind of music. I