Theatre Shoes

by Noel Streatfeild

  “The little girls have, but Mark’s are only a pair of drawers.”

  “Well, with their shorts and shirts and their bathing things, I expect they can manage. The other clothes are more difficult. They must have tunics of some sort for ballet. I find that necessary even to-day. It’s hard for a child to be graceful in a bathing dress. I may be old-fashioned. I was myself a pupil from the age of seven in the Russian Imperial Ballet School, and when I gave up dancing after the first world war, and founded my school over here, I had hoped to run it on the old Imperial Ballet School lines; but it was, of course, impossible, and so I have become the director of a school for general stage training. But dancing, classical dancing, is my life, and it is to turn out dancers that is my great ambition. Any child that shows unusual promise I teach myself; and I still insist, or try to insist, on some dress that will make the children feel in a dancing mood. White tarlatan is not on coupons, but with everybody so busy, Winifred has told me it is impossible for the mothers to keep these dresses laundered; and, instead, we have designed a short tunic with plain knickers underneath, it could be made out of anything. I think that the children’s grandmother must have some old dresses put away that would alter.”

  Hannah was perfectly certain that she was not going to approach grandmother. She did not mean to sound grumpy, but she did rather.

  “I couldn’t say, I’m sure. There wasn’t nothing in the vicarage suitable, I do know.”

  Madame smiled.

  “Never mind, I’ll write to Miss Shaw.”

  The night before Alice had explained to Hannah that actresses were usually known by their stage names; and so, though to Hannah grandmother was Mrs. Warren, she accepted that Madame would call her Miss Shaw.

  “What about these overalls?” she asked, tapping the list. “They’ve got the cotton frocks they had for school.”

  Madame smiled.

  “There we are fortunate. The overalls have always been made of black sateen from a Russian design, and have wide black leather belts. Black-out material is not rationed and these overalls are still made. The belts and the buttons we get from our old pupils. The real difficulty is shoes. The law allows that children at a recognised dancing school may have one pair of ballet shoes a month. Those have block toes, you know, but the children will not want them for a long time yet; it’s the shoes for character dancing and the sandal shoes that are our trouble.”

  “Both the girls have sandal shoes. They had them for their school dancing. And Mark’s got a pair of plimsolls, if that’ll do.”

  Madame shook her head.

  “No, they will not. But I expect we shall manage. Old pupils send us shoes second-hand; and if the girls have sandals, that’s something.” She looked at Hannah with a sweet smile. “You think it all a lot of nonsense, don’t you?”

  Hannah squeezed her bag tightly in her hands.

  “It’s none of what I’m used to. I give respect where respect is due, and I’m sure you mean well, Madame; but all this dancing and that isn’t what was meant. The Reverend took a lot of looking after, what with being busy with his Bible animals and that, and his clothes were a perfect disgrace, with all my trying; but I could see what we were at. He was never a minute late for his services and he never missed a call from the village. Where we’re living now isn’t what I’m used to. No good pretending it is.”

  Madame nodded.

  “I know, but you have to look at their grandmother’s point of view. Nobody knows if the children’s father will ever come back.”

  Hannah’s hand shot up to her mouth.

  “Oh, don’t say that, Madame! Such a nice gentleman! And the gentlemen in the Navy only said missing, and they’ve never said worse.”

  “I certainly shall not say it to the children, and I’m full of hope that we shall hear from him; but meanwhile there are these children to think of. They come from an immensely famous theatrical family, and blood tells. It would be a curious thing indeed if none of these children had any talent. Of course, they will probably never need to earn their living; their uncles and aunts are doing well, and their grandmother has money and …”

  Hannah had to interrupt.

  “I don’t know about uncles and aunts, Madame; we haven’t seen them. But the old lady hasn’t any money. Alice, it’s her that looks after the old lady, she hasn’t known where to turn.”

  Madame leant forward, her voice startled.

  “Really! I had no idea! Well, in that case …,” she broke off and held up a finger, for at that moment the children came in.

  The charade was rather fun. Holly was very pleased with herself as the child, and Mark made a really grand bear; but it was Sorrel who surpassed herself. Somehow, seeing Holly off into the wood to look for strawberries, because there was nothing to eat in the house, was so like what was really happening to them that it made her voice full of anxiety, and you could feel that she honestly minded. There was a proper mother’s fussiness about the way she told Holly all the places to look for strawberries and to try very hard and not come back until her basket was full. Then, at the end, when Mark suddenly stood upright, instead of on all fours, and said in a rather disapproving voice that he was now a prince instead of a bear, that he was very rich and they would all live happily ever afterwards, Sorrel was quite overcome, it all sounded so nice, and she said, “Oh, goodness, yes, I’d simply love to marry you, thank you so very much for asking me,” with such fervour that even Hannah smiled and Madame went so far as to clap.

  When the charade was over, Madame went to a cupboard and took out a tin marked “Candies.”

  “These were sent me from America. From that Pauline whose picture you were looking at downstairs. I want to talk to you about those three sisters, so you each take a sweet and listen very carefully. The Fossils were brought to me because their guardian had gone away and not left enough money to look after them. Gum, they called him. It was short for Great-Uncle Matthew. He was not really their great-uncle; he was the uncle of a very nice person called Sylvia, who brought the three little Fossil girls up with the help of someone called Nana.”

  “Was Nana like Hannah?” Holly interrupted.

  “In a lot of ways, very like her. The children did well at my school. Pauline was, and is, lovely; and while she was still quite a child she went to Hollywood and became a very great film star. One day I will take you to see her on the pictures. But to me the most exciting of the three was Posy, the youngest. You see, I am a dancer. All my life I have lived for dancing; and Posy, from a tiny child, had talent; sometimes, I thought, genius. When Posy was eleven she went to Czechoslovakia to study under the greatest living ballet teacher, Manoff. Before the Germans over-ran Czechoslovakia, Monsieur Manoff and most of his pupils, including Posy and Nana, who was with her, escaped to America. There, Posy and Nana joined Pauline and their guardian, Sylvia, in Hollywood. They had, of course, nothing but what they stood up in, and I’m afraid poor Monsieur Manoff went through a bad time, but finally he succeeded in starting a Ballet School of a sort in California; and, of course, Posy attends the classes when she can. Posy, under another name, is dancing on the films.” Madame laughed. “She detests it, the naughty girl. I must read you her letters some time.”

  Sorrel was eating the most beautiful sweet all over nuts. All the sweets in the box were marvellous. Much better than anything to be bought in England, and choosing a sweet each had distracted them a little from what Madame was saying, but they had picked up the main part of the story.

  “What happened to the middle one?”

  “Petrova?” Madame said the word affectionately. “Funny little girl! She is a countrywoman of my own. I am Russian. Petrova went away and lived with Great-Uncle Matthew, and learnt to fly. She is now a pilot. You know, what they call the Air Transport Auxiliary.”

  Sorrel moved her sweet to the side of her mouth.

  “How old are they now?”

  “Pauline will be twenty-two this December. Petrova is just twenty and Posy is eight
een this month. Have another sweet each.” The children bent over the box and chose carefully. Mark a marshmallow thing, Sorrel a toffee in two colours, and Holly a round sticky affair made of nuts. “Now listen carefully because this is where you come in. Pauline and Posy have both felt that they ought to be back in England doing something important, like Petrova. At least, I don’t suppose Posy thinks that, because Posy would dance if there were nothing but smouldering ruins left to dance on; but all the same, they would both like to help, and so they suggested something. They have sent me sums of money for two scholarships, Pauline’s for someone who shows promise in acting, and Posy’s for a dancer. I have not, so far, granted these scholarships; it is still the summer holidays and I was thinking of granting them next term, the money only reached me last month. I have no hesitation at all, Sorrel, in saying that I think Pauline would like her scholarship to go to you. It will pay all your fees and it will provide such clothes as we can manage, and, as well, they were both very particular about this, some pocket-money.” She looked at Holly. “I’m going to start Posy’s scholarship by giving it to you. I shall write and explain to her why. She asked me to find a little girl who was very clever at dancing. I can’t say that about you yet; perhaps if you work hard I shall be able to later on.” She leant forward and picked another sweet out of the box and put it in Mark’s mouth. “As for you, my friend, we shall have to see. But I should not wonder if we found a scholarship for you too.”

  Mark looked up. He spoke very indistinctly because of the sweet in his mouth.

  “What, from the one who flies?”

  Madame got up to show them that the interview was over.

  “I should not wonder. There was a very noticeable thing about the Fossil family, and that was the way they all stood together.”

  CHAPTER VII

  THE FIRST DAY

  The children started at the Academy the very next day. Before they got home, Madame had telephoned Grandmother. Alice told them all about it when she brought up their lunch to the nursery.

  “So you’re in, and scholarships too. We pretend we aren’t pleased, but are we? ‘Alice,’ we said, ‘look through my clothes and find something of soft satin, that’ll cut up into tunics for the little girls.’ ‘Half a cock linnet,’ I said, my mind running through our clothes; and then, all of a sudden, it came to me, our pink that we wore in the first act of that funny little play translated from French. Just as good as new it is. You won’t half look ducks in it.” She put a stew in front of Hannah. “When you take them to the Academy to-morrow, you’re to bring back the pattern and we’re to get down to it right away.”

  Hannah took the lid off the stew and sniffed it with a pleased smile.

  “I must say it’s a treat to eat something I haven’t cooked myself.”

  “Mostly vegetables,” said Alice. “We’ll do better when you’ve got your meat coupons. Fancy,” she gave a luxurious sigh, “a scholarship from Pauline Fossil; that really is something, that is.”

  “Have you seen her on the pictures?” Sorrel asked.

  “Have I! I should say I have; lovely, she is. She was in that picture all about the Civil War the Americans had. You should have seen her at the beginning in a crinoline, and a big hat. Made your heart stand still. I don’t think I’ve ever missed her in anything yet.”

  Holly, who considered Posy her property, was jealous of all this talk about Pauline.

  “Have you seen Posy Fossil?”

  Alice looked surprised.

  “What, a sister of Pauline? No, I never knew she had one.”

  Holly was furious.

  “But she’s every bit as important, more important I should think. Madame said so.”

  Alice gave a tolerant smile.

  “Oh well, Madame’s got a bee in her bonnet. I expect this Posy dances.”

  “She does,” said Sorrel. “I think she’s a star like Judy Garland in ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ only she mostly dances.”

  Alice laughed good-temperedly.

  “No harm in thinking, but I don’t mind telling you that a film star that old Alice hasn’t heard about isn’t shooting very far.”

  That night, and on the way to the Academy the next morning, the children talked a lot about the Fossil sisters. It seemed so extraordinary to think that they had once been just ordinary children like themselves, and the most comforting part of it was that it did seem that the Fossil sisters had been no more anxious to be trained for the stage than they were. They, too, had only taken it up at first because of money. Of course, the Fossils had not really been like they were. Posy must always have been able to dance, because, even if Alice had never heard of her, they trusted Madame when she said that she was a very great dancer indeed. Each of them adopted their own Fossil, as it were, and talked about them as if they were close friends.

  “I bet Pauline would be sorry for me,” said Sorrel, “having to go on my first day to the Academy in just shorts and a blouse. I bet she started with all the proper things.”

  Holly ran her fingers through her hair.

  “It’s funny, Posy and me both having curls. It makes us alike, somehow.”

  Mark was rather grand about Petrova.

  “She’s the only sensible one. Pretty good for a girl to be a pilot. She’s the only one I’d like to know.”

  Hannah had implored Alice to think of some other way by which they could get to Russell Square, except on the escalator, but Alice only laughed and refused to treat Hannah’s fears seriously.

  “May as well learn first as last. You can’t live in London and never get on a moving staircase.”

  “It’s not Christian,” Hannah said stubbornly. “We were meant to move our feet for ourselves, not have them dragged down the stairs for us.”

  Alice giggled.

  “If my plates of meat,” she winked at the children, “feet to you, had to carry the weight yours do, I’d thank my stars for anything that would move me along, without my having to trouble myself.” Then her face grew serious. “All the same, we can’t have you going every morning with the children. Sorrel’s gone eleven; she’s old enough to lead the troops, and you and I will find plenty to do here. Half my morning’s gone getting us up, and I’ll be glad of an extra pair of hands, I don’t mind telling you.”

  Sorrel was a little startled to hear they were going about alone in London, but there was so much that was startling going on that it did not make the big sensation that it once would have. After she and Mark had dragged Hannah on to the escalator for the second morning, she and Mark agreed that it was really a very good thing that Hannah was not going to do it every day, for after she had been on it she did look terribly like a large pale-green jelly that had forgotten to set.

  The first day in any new school is confusing. Everybody else knows where to be, and what they ought to be doing, and new children feel as if they are running very fast and never being quite sure they are in the right place at the right time. At the Academy there were such a lot of things that the children could not take part in properly, because they did not know any of the work that the other children did merely as a matter of routine.

  Their great prop and stay was Winifred; she was an explaining sort of person and seemed very anxious that they should none of them feel worried. She told them that the term proper did not begin until next Monday, and that what was going on now were holiday classes. She told them that she herself had not been the right sort to make a success on the stage as a dancer, she had been too tall, and had not had the looks. She had done a certain amount of work as a child, including understudying Pauline Fossil when she played “Alice in Wonderland,” and one afternoon she had gone on for her, and she had danced in various pantomimes. But, by the time she was fifteen, her family had decided there was not going to be a secure enough living in it for her, and so had her trained to teach. She had gone to a grammar school, and then to the London School of Economics, and then she had taken on teaching at a day school in this square.

  “
It was Madame’s idea really, she knew we should be glad of the money at home, and so she suggested me to the headmistress because I could teach there all day and then make extra money teaching ballet here after tea.”

  When the war came, Winifred explained, the pupils of the school she taught in had mostly been evacuated to the country, and then when the bombing started the school had a direct hit. It happened at night and nobody had been in the building, but it had been the end of Winifred’s job. She had thought then that she should join the A.T.S., but Madame had felt that teaching was valuable war work because it was important in a war that children’s education should not be neglected, and so she had suggested that Winifred and two of the other teachers should set up a school in the Academy for the Academy pupils.

  “In term-time you do ordinary school lessons, in school hours, just like you would anywhere else, except that sometimes you have a special dancing or acting class in the afternoon, and then you make up your lesson time after tea. There’s a Madame Moulin, who’s always taught French acting, and she takes you for French. There’s a Miss Jones for mathematics, and there’s me for everything else. We’ve got about seventy children here this term, so you’ll be about fifteen or twenty in a class. This afternoon I’m going to set you a little examination paper to see how much you all know, but this morning you’ll come to my dancing class. And then you’ll go on to an acting class, then you’ll do a little bit of tap work before lunch. We all have lunch together, sent in from the British Restaurant over the road.”

  There was never one second in that morning when Sorrel felt she was learning anything. She was in a different dancing class to Mark and Holly, and she found herself doing what they called bar work, with a lot of girls rather younger than herself. All the girls had on silk or satin tunics, split up at the sides, and she felt an awful mess in her shorts and blouse. Besides which, although she watched very carefully what her next-door neighbour was doing, it was impossible for her feet to keep pace with the feet of the rest of the class. Winifred, in her practice dress, stood in the middle of the room and rattled off instructions.