by Emma
course came later, when we had to use various kinds of makeup
we had never before thought possible: eye-shadow,
mascara and eye-liner. I had no idea how to apply them. joan
started by telling us, 'First of all, you have to match your
colours. If you're going to wear a green dress, then you want a
green eye-shadow.' It may sound odd, but that had never
occurred to me, and it was a minor revelation. 'Then,' she
went on, 'you have to match your lipstick to your eye-shadow
and dress, and, in the case of a green dress and eye-shadow
you could use a pink shade of lipstick.' I was fascinated.
EVENING CLASSES
95
But the problem still remained: how actually to apply the
eye-shadow?joan came round to each one of us and demonstrated,
and by feeling we learned. She put the eye-shadow
on me, and I realized it could be done by touch, and that the
bone above the eye and at the side is a good guide, while the
eyelash could be felt as a limiting landmark for shadow.
Mascara was a little more difficult, and even with practice
we only partially succeeded. No one found it possible to put
mascara on the lower lashes. Eye-liner was easier because the
line of the top of the lashes could be felt and followed. But
although I say it was easier, it all took a lot of practice and a
lot of care before we got it right, andjoan was endlessly patient
in coming round and telling us how we were getting on. Fairly
frequently we had to take offwhatever we had put on and start
all over again.
Nail-varnish was another beauty aid joan dealt with. Up to
then, I had used nail-varnish, but by the technique of covering
my nails and the surrounding skin. When it was dry, I
would peel off the varnish from the skin. A girl at work had
once watched me doing this, and observed: 'You're getting
varnish all over the skin round your nails. I'd always thought
how beautifully you put it on.' I replied, 'Well, now you know
how I do it.'Butjoan helped me to apply the varnish correctly
and efficiently by touching the outside of the nail first, over the
cuticle, then brushing upwards to the top.
The class was a huge success, and it made me feel marvellous
when I was going out with Don because at last I could make
myself up properly. People we met sometimes asked, 'Who put
your make-up on for you?' I was now able to answer, 'I did,'
and it gave me a terrific feeling of completeness, and of being
equal to everyone else.
The make-up and beauty classes in fact went so well, and
David Selby was so impressed by the results, that it was
decided to hold further evening classes solely for the blind.
The next session, we tackled flower arrangement. Colours, of
course, were an obvious obstacle. Yet some flowers, with so
many differing leaves and petal shapes, can be learnt by
96
touch, and hence the colours can be learnt too. As daffodils
are unmistakable to the fingers, it can be known immediately
that there is a yellow flower. Similarly, chrysanthemums are
easy to identify, and so bronze or deep red or yellow is the
scheme for the arrangement.
In addition, what we had learnt in the make-up and beauty
class about matching colours was useful here. People had told
met that various colours matched, or clashed violently, but it
was not until doing these evening classes that I really fixed
the various possible and impossible combinations in my mind.
Applying all this knowledge, and using the pin-holders we
were taught about, we came up with some quite respectable
displays.
The next course, dressmaking, was an even bigger
adventure. There had been dressmaking classes at my school,
but I had never been allowed near the sewing-machine, and
such attempts as I had made unfailingly turned out badly.
The teachers at school had no technique for teaching a blind
pupil something for which sight seemed an indispensable
asset. But the evening classes under our two teachers, Irene
and Hazel, were very different.
We started with basic techniques. We were all given small
pieces of material, and shown how to tack by making loops,
using wool, or stronger thread, instead of ordinary fine cotton
so we could know what we were doing by touch. Then we were
given skirt patterns. But instead of the ordinary kind of tissue
patterns that are bought in shops, these were made of much
thicker paper, almost the texture of wallpaper. Hazel and
Irene had given this great thought and decided that with a
stiffer paper we would be able to cut out the patterns ourselves.
They had made dots about an inch from the edge all
round, so that once we had cut out the patterns, they could be
folded back and we could feel these dots in order to do the
tacking. They had cut holes in the pattern where the darts
were meant to be, so that we tacked round the darts while we
still had the pattern on the piece of material, and when we
took it off, we could feel where we had tacked. This was a
I ~
EMMA AND I
Sheila aged five
Sunday School
Whitsuntide Walk
Emma at three
weeks (back row,
second from right)
Emma at eight weeks
Leamington Spa-trainer Brian Peel on left
Paddv Wansborough with Emma, Sarah and Miranda
Sponsored ~ alk
through Nottingham
Ming and Ohpas
Em a and Ming
Emma no~,
Emma-retired
I
Ke.r(,iisa Emrna Louise
EVENING CLASSES 97
marvellous innovation for the blind, and Hazel and Irene had
achieved it by themselves wearing blindfolds and, by trial and
error, discovering what a blind person might or might not be
able to accomplish.
Next came work on the electric sewing-machine. On all the
controls of the machine there were braille instructions, and
Hazel and Irene had also had a needle-guard fitted, as well as
a guide-in the shape of a long metal strip-to ensure that we
put the material through straight.
Yet much as I admired all this, and felt I would be able to
handle the machine properly, I was rather reluctant to make
my first attempt. I heard everyone else using the machine,
and it whirred away busily. Then Hazel came over and said,
'Come on, your turn Sheila.' 'Is it?' I said, 'Surely there's
someone else before me.' 'No,' said Hazel, 'everyone else has
been. Come on, it won't bite you.'
I went over to the machine and felt it gingerly all over,
and said, ~What if I get my hand under the needle and
stitch my fingers?' 'You won't,' said Hazel, 'there's a needle
guard.'
So I had to start, and once I had got my piece of material
in the machine all went reasonably well. I found I had to be
careful about the speed, which was controlled by a foot pedal.
I chose a slow speed so I could feel what I was
doing in time
to avoid mistakes. At first I could feel the material slipping
through my fingers and didn't know what was happening to
it. So I went a little crooked on the sewing but Hazel was
beside me to help, and eventually I mastered the technique,
although that still didn't prevent me from making some
blunders that would have instantly earned me the sack in a
commercial rag-trade establishment.
I was making, for instance, a pair of trousers, and was left
to machine them up myself. But when I felt the result of all
MY work I could not understand what had happened. Instead
of a pair of trousers I had produced a very long skirt! I had
sewn all the wrong seams together. On another occasion, I
produced a dress with one sleeve inside, and one outside.
D
98 EMMA AND I
Nevertheless, if I knew I would never work for Hardy Amics,
I still had a marvellous time, as did everyone else in the class.
Some of them had far more ability than I, and made really
pretty clothes, and while-despite aids such as braille tape
measures-we all needed some sighted help for dressmaking
(Don used to come to the rescue when taking up hems and
getting measurements right), we all felt, when the course
was over, we had achieved something really valuable for
ourselves.
I suppose that the great thing about the evening classes
was that they widened our confidence in our own capabilities.
So much so that several of us got together and decided we
should like to start a drama group for the blind in Nottingham.
We knew there were similar groups in other places. In London,
for example, there was one at the Jewish Blind Centre. So we
went ahead. We obtained permission from our own local
Blind Institution to hold rehearsals on their premises and
found two drama teachers to help us.
At the first meeting, several problems presented themselves.
We chose two short one-act plays: Companion to a Lady by
Stanley Houghton, and The Dear Departed by Mabel Constanduros
and Howard Agg, but we had to decide how we were
going to learn our parts. One of the teachers suggested that a
recording could be made of the plays, and so we would be
able to learn our lines from tape. This was fine; the next task
was to work out how we were going to get about the stage.
Fairly obviously we could not take our dogs with us. In the
end it was decided that the stage would be exactly measured
out for us, as well as the distances between each prop and
piece of furniture, and a strip of carpet would be put at the
front of the stage just before the footlights, to prevent us
striding off the stage into Row A. This worked, though it
meant that in addition to learning the lines, we had to learn
each movement, whether it was seven paces upstage and turn
to the right, five paces from the wings and face outwards, or
two paces to the left and exit stage right.
We had great fun at rehearsals until, at last, the night of otir
EVENING CLASSES 9
first dress-rehearsal arrived. It was the night before the actua
show. We had been booked for two nights at a local amateu
theatre, and all the tickets had been sold out. I had to run on to
the stage because someone had attempted to murder my
aunt, rush forward, reach the carpet-strip (and so know I was
next to the bed my aunt was sitting on), sit down beside her
and put my arm round her to comfort her, then go over to the
telephone in the left-hand corner of the stage and dial the
police. During rehearsals we had no telephone, and simply
pretended there was one. By the time of the dress rehearsal
most of the props were in place, but I had been told a few
days before that there would not be a t I
the first night.
Unfortunately, things did not go as smoothly as we had
hoped. My piece, in fact, was a disaster from beginning to end.
I whisked on to the stage, shouting'Aunty, I'm here, I'm here',
and dashed over to her. I felt the carpet-strip, turned round
to sit on the bed, missed it completely, dragged her on to the
stage with me, and we both sat in a heap, dying with laughter.
To my horror, I heard more laughter-from out front-and it
was only then that I realized an audience had been invited to
watch the dress rehearsal. I was so embarrassed. When I had
recovered and dusted myself down, I rushed over to where the
phone was meant to be, pretended to pick it up and dial the
police, and then made my exit to some rather puzzling
murmurings from the audience.
I walked straight into the arms of the director backstage,
and she immediately hissed at me,'Whatwere you playing at?
What about the phone, thc,.i?'
'Well, I did that bit, T did that bit,' I said.
'No, the phone was there,' she said, 'you fool. You were
about an inch away from it, pr-~tending to pick it up, and it
was there all the time. The audience couldn't make out what
you were playing at.'
But that was not the end of the evening's misfortunes. We
all went on to take a curtain call, and the girl who had played
my aunt had lost one of her slippers. When we were all nn
- "~ ua teiepiione untii
I
ioo EMMA AND I
stage, she said, 'Quick, I've lost one of my slippers, help me
find it.' So when the curtain went up, there we were, on our
hands and knees. I suppose stranger things have happened in
the history of British drama but I cannot imagine what they
might be.
It was about this time in my life that I became an Avon
representative. One evening Don and I were discussing my
finances (never very healthy) and I asked him if he thought
there was anything I could do to earn a little over and above
my wages from my daily job at the garage. I was well aware
that not being able to see narrowed the field of opportunities,
but I thought there must be something I could do. As it
happened, an Avon representative had called on Don that
evening, and he suggested I could do that.
At first thought, I was dubious. 'Oh, Don,' I said, 'I really
couldn't go round to people's houses and flats trying to sell
them things, and there's a lot of form-filling entailed, you
know, which I couldn't do.'
'Yes, you could,' said Don, 'and if there was much formfilling,
I could do it for you. Why don't you ring them up and
get one of their area representatives to call?'
In the end I was persuaded, particularly since I could take
a small tape recorder round with me and talk all the sales
details into the microphone. I rang up the local Avon representative
and she came round to tell me all about their selling
scheme, and how to process the orders, and so I was in
business. I decided that I would limit myself, to begin with at
least, to the three hundred flats in my block and the adjoining
ones; I knew how to get round them without much difficulty.
So we set off. Emma
, I think, did not know what to make of it,
since we stopped at every door and knocked. But things
worked out well. The numbers on the doors were raised and
I could feel where I was, and if people happened to be out
when I knocked, I simply recorded their number on tal)e so I
could call again the following evening.
The response was far better than I could have thought
possible. I found a lot of people interested in the beauty
*0
I
EVENING CLASSES ioi
products I was selling, and, very often, I was invited in for a
cup of tea. But my success was due in no small part to Emma.
Most of the people in the flats had seen her out with me, and,
apart from being interested in the Avon scheme, they also
welcomed the opportunity to say hello to Emma. Quite
possibly she sat in mute appeal: 'Please buy something, or
she won't be able to feed me tomorrow.' Whether or not this
was the case, I have no idea, but the orders came in very well.
About once a week we would translate them off the tape, and
Don would spend hours filhng the forms in.
It was a rewarding extension to my life, and not only
financially. Through the scheme I got to know a whole new
circle of friends. In addition, I used to meet people who quite
obviously rarely went out except to do the shopping, and
hardly had anyone to visit them. There were a lot of lonely
people in those flats, and I think they liked me calling, and
seeing someone they could talk to. It was astonishing, too,
how I found myself able to help in other ways. Because I had
done the make-up and beauty class, I was able to give advice.
A surprising number of women used to want guidance about
what kind of shades they should wear. I used to ask, 'What
colour hair have you got? What colour eyes? What sort of
tone would you say your skin is?' And as a result I would say
what shades I thought best.
This really was marvellous, and gave me great confidence.