June: Tempered Steel, the second volume of author June Holroyd's memoirs, continues where the first volume, Roots of Steel, finished. This volume picks up in the 1950s, including recollections of her career and her family life over the years. Holroyd describes her intriguing life in intimate and amusing detail, tracing her path through the present day.
June
Tempered SteelBy June Whitham HolroydiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 June Whitham Holroyd
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4620-5342-1Chapter One
Starting again with life in England—August 1954
Our sail home from New York to England was pretty uneventful. We were on the new. SS United States; the ship was definitely more modern and comfortable than the old, Europa, and of course it was a pleasant way to travel to recover from all our crazy days, before we left New York. We changed the clocks one hour every night, so the jet lag problem, which you get when you fly, never existed. We only had to recover from the rocking sensation when we got off the boat in Southampton.
Mummy and Daddy and my little sister Elizabeth, had driven down to meet us, which was lovely. I remember I had a bright red, very full skirt on and was standing high up on the top deck, waving my skirt so that they were able to see us, and wave back. When we came alongside the dock we thought we must have a film star or royalty on board, as there were hordes of press waiting with cameras. Anyway we found out it was a Swedish chap who had gone to the States to have his sex changed into a woman. I don't know if he was the first ever, but there was certainly a huge crowd to meet him / her.
To go from Southampton to Sheffield in those days was a very cross-country drive, no fast roads or anything direct. Daddy had planned a picturesque route through the Cotswolds, we stayed in one of the prettiest Cotswold villages, Burford for the night. The road was so curvy with high hedges and narrow roads, and of course Daddy drove so fast, that it made Geoff feel ill again. He got out and walked for a while to get some fresh air. We hadn't been on anything but straight roads in the States.
We went up to my parents house on Dobcroft Road in Sheffield and stayed there for a while visiting Geoff's family and all our friends. We picked up our little new Morris minor with an open top, that I had ordered for us, while we were in Chicago, which was very exciting—to get our first car. Then we set out for the Lake District to stay with John and Kim Satchell in Kendal. They are our old friends from University days. After a few days John decided he would like to come with us to Scotland to the Edinburgh Festival. We had a lovely trip and saw some great plays, concerts and small late night reviews. They were putting on a Tattoo each night in Edinburgh Castle, which was all floodlit and looked great, with bagpipes echoing off the castle walls. Unfortunately the weather was very cold and the little hotel we stayed in was not centrally heated. After two years long stay in the heat in the US we really felt the change. The other odd thing was that when we came out of the plays at night, the whole town was closed; there was nowhere open to have a hot drink or snack. It was early days for the Festival, I am sure by now it will have places open after the shows. We took John back to the Lake District, and then went south to my parents.
We had asked our old friends Felix and Anthea, who were living on Chancery Lane, in London, if they could keep their ears open for a flat for us. Felix had been in the army with Geoff so we were very old friends. Here is a picture of Geoff in the Army Engineers.
When we were back in Sheffield we heard from them that Paul and Sylvia Poulsen, who had a lovely Georgian flat at 5 Great James Street, were leaving to move further out, as Sylvia was expecting her first baby.
Moving Back to London
We went quickly down to London, flats were very hard to find, as so much housing had been bombed and was still not rebuilt. Anyway we were lucky and got Paul and Sylvia's place. It consisted of a very large living room, with 3 huge Georgian windows, onto Great James Street, that went across the full front of the house, on the first floor, (second floor in the US.) The ground floor was offices for a perfume importer from Grasse in France. They imported all the aromatic flowers and herbs etc., to make the essences. It gave the building a lovely smell, especially when a new shipment arrived from Provence, and stood in the entry hall.
We painted our very big paneled living room in white and we put an anthracite stove in the fireplace, so we could keep it continually burning, as there was no central heating. We had a lovely gray carpet and some very thick black velvet curtains that Mummy gave us, over the whole window wall so it was always cosy. Next to the living room was the bedroom, and then the bathroom and kitchen beyond. It was perfect just what we needed. Our friends Peter and Alison Smithson, who were fellow architects from the North, (Alison was from Sheffield, but had gone to Newcastle to study architecture and met Peter there) lived on the next street to us, Doughty Street. Alison was expecting her first baby, Simon. Once he was born I was very near to do some babysitting for them.
It was lovely unpacking all our household things from our wedding presents and our Chester Square days, where we lived before we left for America. Chester Square was by then very expensive, George Weidenfeld had moved into Eaton Square and his parents Mr and Mrs Weidenfeld, who owned the house at 12 Chester Square, where we had had a flat, had no empty place. George moved them a little later to a house he bought on Sloane Street.
When we had arrived at my parents house I had written to the shipping people in New York to tell them that as it was entirely their fault, that our crates had been left behind in New York, as we had paid their bill in full, we expected them to send the crates by the next boat. Of course by then we had storage fees added, plus the items were no longer traveling with us, so we would owe shipping charges across the Atlantic. When we landed in Southampton I had gone to see the British Rail office, to tell them when our crates arrived to send them up to my parents address, I was expecting them to arrive on the next ship. Anyway I got a sheaf of correspondence back and forth and was about to get legal help on it, as on principle I refused to pay for someone else's error. (This was first apparent when we got onto the United States Liner, in New York to return to England, and found a letter from the shipping company in our cabin, after we had sailed, saying none of our shipment was on the boat, because when they had them crated, they were a little more weight than they had told me, and that I had paid for. This is at the end of my first book.)
One day a little British Rail truck arrived in London, and the funny little man had all our things! I couldn't believe it! We got bills for ages from the US but once we had everything I just ignored the bills, and for quite a long time they wrote in their letters that they would not release anything from the New York storage unless I paid them. I never found out how the things were released. I was able to write to them and tell them everything had arrived already and I had no intention of paying them.
It was great fun to be back in London, with all its bustle, and lively activities.
We were very near to Felix and Anthea, so we saw them a lot. Felix was working for the Evening News; he did all their theatre reviews and also wrote articles for them. He was always very amusing and witty. Anthea had her little boy Kent, who was born while we were in Chicago. We used to go down to Watermill House in Benenden in Kent with them. Felix's father, who had been an architect, had bought some old houses, years before, as he knew that...
