I remember thinking: ‘I must not show that I’m terrified. That would be very rude.’ So I said, ‘Oh, blimey, I am so sorry. It’s been fascinating talking to you, but I’ve got left behind. I’d better hurry up and join the others.’ And I left.
Naturally, at the Freshers’ Fair, I joined the drama societies: the Mummers and the CUADC — the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club, which has its own theatre called the ADC.
It was then that I started to act regularly and, I suppose, determined that I would become an actress. You had to audition to join the ADC, and the piece I chose was Lady Bracknell’s interview with Cecily Cardew. On stage, I wore trousers tucked into hockey socks because it was so cold — perhaps unsuitable garb for Lady B, but I must have made the right choice because Christabel Keith-Roach (bless her) saw my audition and immediately said, ‘We’ll have her. She’s good.’ So, I joined the Amateur Dramatic Club and worked a lot with all the college drama societies, including Queens and Trinity Hall (every college, apart from Newnham, had its own drama group), doing Shakespeare and Marlowe and many obscure modern plays too.
Acting became the focus of my Cambridge world. That, and my crush on my moral tutor, Lesley Cook, on which more below. Oh, and sucking people off.
I didn’t have sexual intercourse at Cambridge. Some did; I didn’t. It was partly because my parents told me that I mustn’t, and also, of course, because I didn’t know then that I was gay. (We called it ‘queer’.) But I had the usual hormones of a young woman, so I was tearing around rather frustrated. It was imperative to have a boyfriend — there was a competitive element in it. Other people were pairing off, kissing and rubbing and ‘necking’ as it was called, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. And so I just sucked people off.
My prowess at oral sex was well known in Cambridge. I felt it was one of my best things — certainly the sexual activity I’d had most experience of performing. It didn’t matter to me whose penis was in my mouth, it was all grist to the mill; I knew I was giving pleasure, which was what delighted me. One day, in my second year, I was cycling along the cobbles and I stopped for the traffic lights. I looked to my right; alongside me there was an open-topped car driven by a handsome American soldier. I cannot explain my impulse but I called over to him, ‘Would you like to follow me to my college and I will suck you off?’ The young man blinked but he followed me; I parked my bike, he parked his car, followed me to my room, and I performed as promised. Afterwards, he seemed pleased and said, ‘What do you say I come back next week and bring some friends?’
I related this at breakfast the following morning, and everyone seemed quite taken aback by my boldness, but I thought I was a good girl — a bad girl would have had full intercourse. I hadn’t let him anywhere near my vagina, after all. He was a pleasant chap, from Texas.
My friends’ favourite story of my misdemeanours happened in the Newnham bike shed. One evening, late after rehearsals, I was in the bike shed sucking someone off. And Lesley Cook, my moral tutor, was parking her bike and she saw me. She didn’t see the bloke as he was in the shadows, but she saw me bending down over something and said, ‘Goodnight, Miriam.’
‘Goo’ ’ight, ’iss ’ook,’ came my polite reply, my usual, clear diction muddied as my mouth was full of cock.
I didn’t just suck off random strangers, however. In fact, I now had a boyfriend. The first was a decent guy in his third year called Ted. One of my Old Hall friends had been asked to bring another girl along on a blind date. I joined her and her chap: Ted was with them. The third-year males really were men, as they had done National Service; this had ended in 1960, so our male contemporaries had come straight from school and seemed boys in comparison. Ted was clearly a man, an engineer — truly, I remember little more than that about him. I didn’t love him but our sexual fumbles were fun and it meant I had a boyfriend. The second was David Bree, also studying engineering; he was the lighting man at the ADC Theatre. He said he fell for me from his lighting box high in the eaves. Once I came on stage, he didn’t look at anyone else. I was in a nursery production of The Sport of My Mad Mother. He didn’t see all the things that I think of when I think of myself: he didn’t think I was fat; he saw someone he really fancied. He thought: ‘That girl’s got oomph.’ He was from Norfolk and he invited me, several times, to stay with his parents. They had boats on the Broads and we went sailing — very Swallows and Amazons. David and I spent a year as an ‘item’. It was easy to meet as we were both at the ADC most of the time, rehearsing: me on the stage, David in the lighting box.
I was cast as the Third Witch in the Marlowe Society’s production of Macbeth, directed by Trevor Nunn. The make-up involved sticking false beards on our faces, but it turned out that I was allergic to the spirit gum and my usually excellent complexion bubbled up into a swollen pus-filled expanse. I kept to my room for fear of running into Lesley Cook. Thankfully, by the first night, the boils had disappeared.
After the Cambridge run, the production travelled to the Theatre Royal, Newcastle. At the first night party, an extremely drunken affair, I met Jack Shepherd. We were to act together ten years later in The Girls of Slender Means and then (less successfully) in The White Devil.
Once in Newcastle, David and I had unfettered time together. We spent hours in bed, enjoying the varieties of positions in our sexual repertoire. David has a remarkable mouth — generous lips — and his kissing technique was excellent. We also had our first major row: when he wouldn’t let me bring fish and chips into the theatre. At the time I couldn’t believe he would come between me and my food, but our fight taught me an unbreakable rule of the theatre.
I had joined the Jewish Society because my parents wanted me to, and I did, in fact, have a Jewish boyfriend too, called Michael. He was studying Law, and in my second year he invited me to the Pitt Club Ball. The Pitt Club was the Cambridge equivalent of the Bullingdon Club in Oxford, full of snotty, ex-public-school boys. Michael had been to public school; he was a tall, chunky Sephardi, belonging to a good family. He spoke well and might have been considered ‘a catch’ from the social point of view. But he also had very bad breath. There was no groin excitement on my part. I knew that my parents would have loved him, but it was never going to happen. The Pitt Club, however, attracted me; I was my mother’s daughter after all. I was curious to see for myself just how snobbish it was. So I accepted his invitation.
That year of 1962, I actually went to three May Balls — the Pitt Club Ball with Michael; the Kings May Ball, the grandest of all, with Saam Dastoor (now Sam Dastor); and then to Caius, with David. That was quite a good tally for a girl who didn’t sleep with any of them. Saam was particularly gorgeous. He read English and wanted to be an actor. He had fine dark eyes, a slender figure and a superb speaking voice. The only drawback from an acting point of view — he looked Indian. He was a Parsee and wore his Nehru suit — white and high-necked. We stayed up all night and went down the river to Grantchester in the early morning for breakfast. Sam is still my friend; he constantly refers to his ‘disastrous career’ and feels English racism deprived him of the roles his talents merited. He’s quite right. He played the Fool opposite Paul Scofield’s Lear, but he should have been Leading Man at the RSC and the National. Even more frustrating was not being cast as Gandhi in the film. He would have acted Sir King Bensley off the screen.