comfortable and warm for my family,
something I didn't really
have as a child. For example,
I light fires. Perhaps they
don't even need that, but I
feel I want to try and make
everything warm and cosy
for them. Pehaps it is more
important that I need to be
giving it to them."
Petula, who fights this
inner battle between being
attracted to music and singing- it is a real turn-on,
something quite sexual and
sensual"-and repelled by
the business itself, says she
would not be appalled if her
children wanted to be entertainers. But she would not
let them start now. There
will be no more child stars inher life as far as Petula Clark
is concerned.
"I'd like them -to finish
their education for one thing.
I have never known anything
else and never done anything
else. I have no memory of
anything except being a
singer."
She talked about her
daughters. "Barbara is very
beautiful and at the moment
just concerned with being
beautiful. She has got to that
adolescent thing where she
cares a lot about her clothes
and is beginning to care
about boys, although it is
not very serious yet.
"She speaks English and
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French perfectly, is studying
Spanish, and not thinking of
anything mote ambitious
than being an air hostess,
and that's fine.
"Kate looks quite a bit
like me. Both girls dance
very well, with a great sense
of music and rhythm, Kate
is a wonderful dancer, in
fact, and says she would like
to dance for fun and live on
a farm the rest of the time to
be with animals. It sounds
pretty good but I try to tell
her that, sadly, it doesn't
usually work out that way."
Petula knows the difficulties better than most. "To
be really at the top, to be
terrific at my job and get
everything out of myself I
know is there, I should go
at my career 100 per cent. I
should be living in the
States, working with writers
and searching all the time,
but, of course, I don't do
that..."
Pet turns down 90 percent of the work offered to
her. Or, to be more precise,
Claude turns it down for her.
"He will reject something
financially interesting if it
means we are not going to
be around on one of the
children's birthdays. He
knows that would be a
problem for me.
The husband/business
manager relationship has
worked well, though there are things even
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Claude cannot understand completely.
"I need a couple of hours
to unwind after a show.
Instead of being very tired,
you are really very exhilar-
ated. Claude may have been
sitting backstage playing
cards, and when the show is
finished he is ready to go
home, but I would like to
go out and dance, or sit
around with the musicians
talking and singing.
"Claude is aware of all
this, but he is not really part
of it because lie hasn't been
on stage. He hasn't felt this
thing, this heat, coming back
from the audience. But that
is really the only difficulty
between us, although it can
be quite heavy at times."
There is another thing, of
course. Petula would still
like to one back to England.
"I would like to live in
London and for the children
to be educated there and
taste everything London has
to offer. Claude wou1dn't
mind, but there is the tax
problem. Since he is also my
business manager, he has to
think about that."
Claude looked out of the
window, at the snow-decked
Mont Blanc range, and
thought about it. Petula went
back to the piano, while
Patrick put one of his his cars
in for repairs.
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