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Ballet in the Underground. When she was four, Audrey began spending her winters at school in England. In 1939, after her mother's divorce and Britain's declaration of war on Germany, she went to stay at Arnhem, where the Van Heemstra family had their home. There, one day in 1940, she was taken to see a performance of Britain's Sadler's Wells ballet company. She went home entranced and determined to be a ballet dancer herself.
Next day the Nazis invaded The Netherlands. It was a weird, unreal world in which Audrey, the gay-grave dreamer of fairy tales, found herself: a world where terror lurked in every shadow and neighbors could disappear overnight. Audrey's own uncle, a prominent lawyer in Arnhem, was one of the first victims of Nazi "discipline." He was shot as one of six hostages in retaliation for a plot to blow up a German train. Audrey's cousin, an adjutant at the royal court, was also executed.
A British subject who spoke both French and English much too fluently for comfort in the streets of Arnhem, Audrey was sent to school to learn the language of her mother's people. In the afternoons she took drawing lessons, and once a week she went to the local conservatory of music to learn ballet. Sometimes, on her way to school, she would carry messages for the underground in her shoes. Later, when her dancing had become fairly proficient, she and a friend who played the piano gave dance recitals in private houses to collect money for the resistance. It was against
Nazi regulations for more than a handful of people to gather in any one place, but the 100 or more who dropped in to watch Audrey were circumspect, and the Nazis never found out.
As time and the war went on, money and food became scarcer. At one time Audrey's family had nothing to eat for days but endive. "I swore I'd never eat it again as long as I lived," she says. The hungry days in Holland gave her a taste for rich pastries and chocolate that is still unsatisfied.
When British troops finally reached Arnhem, Audrey recalls, "I stood there night & day just watching. The joy of hearing English, the incredible relief of being free. It's something you just can't fathom."
Poise & Motion. After the war, Audrey went back to ballet school. She spent three years studying in Amsterdam and then moved on to London to continue her studies under Ballet Director Marie Rambert. "She was a wonderful learner," said Madame Rambert last week. "If she had wanted to persevere, she might have become an outstanding ballerina." But impatience and a feeling that she had lost too much time was already clawing at Audrey. Money was short for the Van Heemstras, and what little there was could not be sent out of Holland. Audrey had to make her own way in London. Starting the rounds of West End auditions, she got a job as a chorus girl in the London production of High Button Shoes.