My Judy Garland Life, Only Human, The Last Hope of Girls, The Characters of Love, The Normal Man

Over the past few years of my five-year-old daughter's life, something that began as an untoward, fledgling hope in me has hardened into a full-blown, iron-held desire; but I can barely speak of it. In the circles in which I move it would provoke scorn and alarm. As a result, I play a complex game of bluff and double bluff, biding time, censoring and indulging myself by turn, each rally countered by a rebuke, each forward step accompanied by guilt and stealth and sabotage and all for what? The blank truth is that in my heart of hearts, where I am most deeply myself, what I really want more than anything is for my daughter to go on the stage.

I fall asleep picturing the moment (well, it happens in Noel Streatfeild novels) when the severe ballet teacher takes me to one side: "There's something I need to tell you," she'll say. "Mary has Promise." I long for the day when Simon, the highly enthusiastic gent who runs the Perform workshop we sometimes sign up for tips me that special wink that can only mean one thing. I yearn for the school music teacher to flag me down one day at the bus stop and give me a serious talking to: "You ignore a talent like that at your peril," he declares. "You need to live differently now."

Of course I keep all this firmly under my hat. I am not a pushy mother and do not wish to be seen as one. The people I know think having any sort of ambitions for your child beyond a hazy desire for their happiness is obscene. If I even hinted I was drawn to a school because it had excellent results they would close ranks against me, thinking I had latched on to some low, conventional version of success at the expense of my child's natural verve and vitality. So how can I possibly confess to my friends that I have vivid dreams about Sylvia Young? Her theatre school is not far from where we live (there's acoincidence) and I linger beneath its windows sometimes, listening to a thousand step-ball-change-pick-up-toe-hops. To me it's poetry.

Throughout my own childhood I rather assumed I was in training for a future stage career. I did five dancing classes a week and an acting workshop, allowing the lure of show business to overtake all other girlish hankerings. I practised like crazy and got very good value, because of my sheer enthusiasm, from the limited talent I had. I liked everything about my training, from the silver top hats to the morality of the theatre, which suited my personality. Jiminy Cricket once asked, "What does an actor want with a conscience, anyway?" but I cherished the values of musical theatre folk: Be cheery! Make the public happy! Don't let anyone ever see you down! As a child, I was so entrenched in this world that I used to look back on my stage career, romantically, from the perspective of old age, recalling my lily-scented dressing room, letting a scrap of vivid silk velvet and a yellowed programme missing half its pages remind me of days gone by.

When you are a dancer aged five or six, merely remembering the steps marks you out as something a bit special. But by the time you are 10 or 11 everyone can do this and the stakes are violently raised. At 13, unless you have some natural ability you simply can't learn anything more and you have to walk away, at least until you are an adult and can reconvene with other failed dancers in a cheery, amateurish way. The disappointment in all of this, my realisation that a theatrical life was not to be, was gradual and not particularly painful because other, stronger talents came into play at exactly the same time. The teachers at school made a huge fuss about a series of poems I wrote and no fuss at all about my portrayal of Dame Crammer in School and Crossbones or the diamond-counting dowager Lady Lucre in Temptation Sordid or Virtue Rewarded. The parts I was given said it all: the battleaxes, the grandmas, the mother superiors.

Had I only possessed about 100% more talent at singing and dancing something modest could have come of my love affair with the stage. How can I not wonder about my daughter in this regard? Yet we have such different temperaments. As a child I was a glutton for self-improvement, practising endlessly, listening to odd records of Fred Astaire's elaborate, lengthy tap routines for clues.
All the songs we sang at dancing were about making others happy. This seemed to me my life's work. My daughter has no such silly ideas. She is a cheery soul, quick and high-spirited whose heart does not go out to all and sundry at the drop of a hat, including ants. She is determined in all she does but she does not crave the approval of others. Even in her baby snaps she brims with self-belief. Do people who aren't particularly needy even become performers? Could a person in her right mind countenance a ballet dancer's permanent injuries (and penury) or an actor's long catalogue of rejection? Hav e I done my daughter a terrible disservice by providing her with a reasonably stable base?

Of course, I am more vulnerable in these foolish dreams than anyone else is. When the school nativity play was cast I held my breath. My daughter sings sweetly and in tune, she is not at all shy, she looks wonderful in blue, has a good memory and doesn't mind being told what to do. The part of Mary, I felt, was within our grasp. (Her name is even Mary.) When she came home delighted that she was to be Angel number four, I was so disappointed I had to chop a lot of onions as a decoy.

In Noel Coward's pithy anthem to this phenomenon, Don't Put Your Daughter on the Stage, Mrs Worthington, a key line proclaims, "Admitting the fact, she's burning to act, that isn't quite enough". Well, my daughter isn't even burning to act. She quite enjoys her occasional acting workshops and her twice-weekly ballet lessons, but it is for the bacon sandwiches afterwards as much as for the battement tendus. She does hero-worship her ballet teacher, Miss Angelina - but once that poignant notice: "After the summer holidays, no more fairy wings please" went up, ballet really wasn't quite so much fun any more.

Mary and I chat occasionally about the hallowed lives of actors and film stars, ballet dancers and clowns. I allow myself, when I can't sleep, the pleasure of picturing her on a draughty, oak stage among faded, red plush and chipped gilt. There are the sounds of the seaside in the background, perhaps, some sirens or a bus's diesel roar. (I wouldn't want her in Hollywood - much too far
away.) I see something intelligent and moving in all her performances every time, but I'm not going to push for this. If it happens, it happens. We know all the songs and dances from Oklahoma and Carousel, The Sound of Music and You Were Never Lovelier but I suppose the rest is up to her.

"I'd hate to be an actor, Mum, because of the pain of smiling all the time," she tells me, completely out of the blue, one night. My heart sinks in large, agonising thuds. "Shhhhh darling," I say. "Did you practise your plies?"

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