“What sound?” replied Anne.
“I thought I heard someone laughing”.
They all stood still for a moment.
“Listen there it is again,” said Elena. “It’s a strange deep laugh, very faint, but discernable.”
“I think I hear it,” confirmed Yvonne.
“Me too,” said Michael.
“Sssh,” said Connie.
Some heard it, some did not.
“I swear that this place is haunted,” said Anne.
“Wasn’t it Leo who was supposed to always have the last laugh?” Terry asked.
“Yes, I believe it was,” said Claudia.
“Maybe he is laughing at us for being here,” Michael suggested.
“I think it’s just the rustling of the trees,” said Gary.
Chapter Seven
Ice Dance
The next morning as The Bell Tower clock struck nine and the setmates were having breakfast there was a knock at the door. Anne rose to answer it.
“Requisitions delivery to Angel Cottage,” said the stout man holding a box.
“Now we haven’t ordered too much, have we?” Anne asked, tentatively.
“Oh no,” said the man. “You would soon know it if you did. As long as you order whatever you actually need, or think you need, over a reasonable period of time, Non-Capitalist Economics will not be a problem for you. Our Government always trusts its people each according to their needs. You really would have to be excessively wasteful to fall foul of it. Anyway, here are your provisions. The Kammie will be here in half an hour to take you to the rink.”
“Now we’ve got more than just toast and jam and a cup of coffee,” she announced as she brought the items into the kitchen and breakfast area.
The twelve-seater Kammie duly arrived and with their skates and kits the twelve setmates scrambled excitedly into the awaiting vehicle. The driver gave his usual three blasts of his horn before the battery-propelled vehicle quickly accelerated up the road past The Cat and Fiddle and on towards The Triumphal Arch that led to the Japanese garden and beyond.
“What’s that strange looking graveyard?” Elena asked as they passed a group of small tombstones at the far end of the garden.
“It’s a dog’s cemetery,” said the driver of the Kammie. “A little bit unique, no?”
“I have never seen one,” Elena replied. “That’s very thoughtful.”
The Kammie ascended further up a gentle incline before shortly arriving in the small piazza where the regency style ice rink faced the mock Victorian railway station, separated from it by the small Fountain of Peace, for which a glossy marble statue of two ice dancers formed the centrepiece. The Kammie stopped outside the ice rink as a small, thin man of about sixty unbolted the large Medieval-style wooden doors and opened them ready for the setmates to enter. Momentarily the set was distracted by the sound of the stationmaster’s whistle, followed by the chuffing of a steam train as it left on the line which headed north to the hamlets of Sabfelt and Aldebaran, and eventually The Royal Palace.
The set stood briefly in the entrance porch of the rink, pausing briefly to admire the convex ceiling upon which was painted a medley of skating scenes which included the classic Bolero, the Capricchio Espanhol featuring the matador and his cape, the jugglers of Barnum and the magic of Mack and Mabel, the artwork being a testimony to the performers who were its subject.
At the other end of the square entrance hall two plane glass wooden doors led through to the rink itself. The lone figure of a thirty-something fair-haired woman watched from the centre of the rink as the twelve setmates entered. The mixed changing room on one side of the rink was clearly identifiable and the woman pointed toward it. Each of the new recruits quickly changed into the red lycra training suits that had been provided and pressed their feet into the firm boots which they would have to break in over the next few days. They then stepped tentatively onto the ice and approached the centre where Jobine was waiting.
“Greetings,” she spoke in a soft Dutch accent. “So, here we have another new team hoping to join Kamchatskiy Auto. I am Jobine van der Eyck, and during the next twelve months I shall be teaching you to skate as you have never skated before. Then you will be ready to tour on behalf of the company as its representatives at exhibitions and the numerous skating fairs that the corporation organises. As such, each member is expected to attain a standard of skating that would pass for professional in the capitalist world. The responsibility has now fallen to me to ensure that over the next year you reach that standard to the satisfaction of the company executive. You will have to work hard at your skating, there is no doubt, but I am under no illusion that it will be a great experience with a rewarding life ahead.
You will, in the coming years, develop a portfolio of skating routines, which you will be able to reuse as part of your ongoing programme of advertising and demonstrations. You will need to get used to using the Kamchatskiy car as prop. This year for your demonstration it will be the new executive version, The Silver Shadow, but on tour you may get the taxi or minibus Kammies, family saloons, sports cars, dormobiles and jeeps. The prop should be regarded not just as a car, but also as a work of art.
The routines which you will choreograph as a set will be unique to you, but as your trainer I will be endeavouring to ensure that all sets reach a common level before being handed over to the respective company trainers of Kamchatskiy Auto, Kamchatskiy Aerospace, Kamchatskiy Maritime and Kamchatskiy Logistics.
During your time here you will learn to develop complete trust in each other and in this regard skating is such a wonderful aid to development.
To begin with I shall be taking you for three two-hour sessions each week, although this will increase later as we approach Carnival and you become more proficient. Sometimes I will be training you in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, or occasionally in the evenings. On some days I will be training just your set. On others you may be working jointly with one or more others. On the remaining days you will be attending seminars and practicals in the Training Centre, as you learn more about work at Kamchatskiy or else undertaking special assignments under the direction of Joanie Carmichael, The Prime Minister, so that you will know all of the essentials regarding our society, how it functions and how you will be expected to integrate into it.
I know you can all skate and have all demonstrated the fact that you are prepared to work hard and unsupervised. My challenge is to change you from working as individuals to working together as a team. You must be able to do much more than perform moves by rote. They must be synchronised and in time.
For Carnival, all sets will be expected to perform a four-minute routine that is innovative and impressive. You will also be expected to learn your company’s dance and one set from each company will be selected to demonstrate it. The steps of the company dance are different for each company, and change every year, but the music is always the same.
I am a great believer in ensuring that all of my skaters master their school figures well so that they not only perform the figures, but also perform them in unison. That means that you all turn at the same time, your free legs swing through at the same time and your arm and head movements are coordinated.
Other essential skills such as use of the harness we will deal with later.
If I require your attention I will give one single blast on my whistle to summon your attention like this.”
Jobine blew her whistle and then resumed.
“Now, I am sure you are all eager to get started and to break these new boots in. To make it easier for you I will start with basic forward and backwards skating and simple turns with the emphasis on technique.”
The setmates were thus directed to perform first forward runs in a circle.
“Try and keep a fixed distance apart,” Jobine urged. “And try to synchronise your rise and fall. When I clap my hands you should all rise and I should see your heads being drawn up towards the ceiling. Try to gain momentum on the
rise.”
Gradually the skaters became more synchronised and when she was satisfied that the exercise had been productive Jobine summoned the setmates together and moved on to the back crossovers.
“The same applies,” she said. “You should all be crossing in front at the same time, not at random.”
Again she continued with these for about ten minutes before moving on to some more specialised adaptations.
“You will often be required to skate in chains of three,” she explained. “That is, either two girls and one man or vice versa. These formations with their associated partner changes are a favourite with the Kamchatskiy Auto trainers. You won’t need them for Carnival, but the Kamchatskiy trainers will expect you to be familiar with the style. As with the forward runs you will need to all rise and fall together. Normally the left arm is in front and you hold the person behind by the right. The third person in each chain will have the right arm free. These are skated in serpentine fashion with the front person leading the chain randomly around the rink.”
This type of skating, although basic by Kamchatskiy standards, was new to the setmates, having its roots in historical dancing, but the style lent itself easily to transposition onto the ice. Jobine watched as the setmates grappled with the style.
“Now try it with closed chasses in place of the runs,” she ordered, smiling as her recruits became more confident.
This sorted them out. Now the movement suddenly became much more difficult as the cross behind element made it far more difficult to maintain the hold and gain speed.
“This needs much more polish,” she concluded. “You should gain speed on the cross behind not lose it. And tuck your hips underneath you as you cross behind, Gary. Your head is tilting far too much. And Anne you are prone to the same. Keep your heads raised and your free legs straight as you cross behind. Lars and Graca you are bending your knees to bring the free leg behind and it is spoiling the movement.”
She watched for a few minutes as the chains meandered around the rink out of time and straining to stay to stay together.
“Enough,” she said as she blew her whistle. “This will get better. Now I would like to see what your variation is with regard to turns. Carl, can you show us an inside closed Mohawk?”
Carl duly performed the turn from a forward inside edge to a backward inside edge.
“Quite a clean turn. Well done. Now, Yvonne, let’s have one from you.”
One by one Jobine examined the setmates’ Mohawk turns until they had all demonstrated the move.
“I see you all perform the move slightly differently, and it does not come naturally to any of you. The Mohawk can be used to give character to a routine. It’s primarily a linking step that can be performed in many ways. Most importantly it should flow and look elegant. I will now show you a flowing Mohawk turn.”
Jobine presently demonstrated the turn, which she embellished with arm movements, taking care to present it rather than simply execute it.
“Can you see a difference?” she asked the setmates.
They nodded.
“Make your skating flow,” she said, as she unexpectedly took hold of Gary and whirled him around the ice, a look of partial terror appearing on his face.
“Too much tension in the arms, though I accept you were not ready for that. And, yes, occasionally at Kamchatskiy the girls do perform lifts, even if they are only small ones, and the turning Mohawk is often used in these shoulder height lifts. So, guys and girls, you all have to be able to lift and be lifted, and when you are lifting or being lifted your arms need to flex to give you control and you need to be expressive. Gary’s look of fear was not a good example here. It’s got to look effortless and it will. Now, let’s see some jumps and spins. You will be pleased to know that as dancers your jumps need only be small, and your spins need only be of five or six revolutions, but the jumps do have to be landed cleanly and the spins do have to be correctly centred, every time that they are performed. Kamchatskiy doesn’t like inconsistency.”
Again she observed the setmates performing one by one and again she same the same level of variation in both the three jump and the upright spin.
“The good news is you can all do it. I don’t have to waste time going back to square one, but it’s no good having a free leg that is only sometimes straight or a spin that is only sometimes centred,” she commented after they had all demonstrated. “But I know, because you are who you are, that you will all practise religiously over the next year so that you can show me and the Kamchatskiy trainers that you can perform all of these basic moves not only consistently, but also consistently between each other so that everything matches. Good show. Now there is one more basic type of skating style that you will not have come across and that is the Quadrille style, which derives from the figures that were popular in the Victorian era. The Kamchatskiy trainers, and especially the Kamchatskiy Auto trainers, often like to incorporate these figures into their routines. Again, you don’t need it for Carnival, but you do need to know of it.
Basically, the Quadrilles are danced in squares with four couples facing one another. They consist of five figures separated by a chorus figure. The skating style, however, is totally different to all of the others, as I will now show. Michael, let me take your hand, arm nice and straight.”
Michael duly assumed the starting position.
“Now, I am going to ask you to do something that a skating instructor would otherwise never ask you to do, and that is to skate forward onto a flat with the skating leg straight. That’s because the Quadrille figures are skated almost entirely on flats rather than edges, and the steps are very small. You may glide but the glide is slow and short, such that there is hardly any requirement to perform a stopping action. The glide uses only friction between the blade and the ice in order to come to a halt. So, Terry and Yvonne, I want you to stand as we are opposite us, and when I blow my whistle I want you to skate exactly as we do on four small flats, almost as if you were just stepping, so that we meet half way, that’s a distance of about three metres.”
She blew her whistle and Terry and Yvonne did their best to copy Jobine and Michael. They met in the middle, but not without a small collision.
“Not as easy as it looks is it?” she said, half expecting the newcomers to gain a surplus of momentum as a consequence of automatically skating forward as they had been taught as opposed to adapting to the alien compact style that was to apply here. “Never mind. You will get used to it. The most difficult thing about these figures is remembering them. They do contain some quite intricate turns and controlling your speed is a challenge. Usually the Quadrille figures require another set to practise because we need three squares for a demonstration, and as that requires two sets we will leave the Quadrille for now. Great to watch, though, Quadrilles on ice, and a speciality of Kamchatskiy. You won’t tend to see them in any conventional skating shows.
I will now turn lastly to your demonstration dance, which you will be performing here on this rink at our annual Mardi Gras Carnival.
For the demonstration dance all sets are required to compile an original routine to a theme. The idea is that you create a four-minute long routine that tells a story or represents something, like you may have seen on the ceiling of our entrance hall. This is what our training sessions will be working towards so that you can all be true celebrities. As Ken once said ‘today’s innovation should be tomorrow’s standard’. So, you must all learn to be inventive on the ice.
For this you will need an ability to choreograph skating routines and develop an original centrepiece that will show that you can cope with a high degree of difficulty that will distinguish your skills from those of the others. Each set will have its own centrepiece. In your case it will be a complex lift as opposed to an advanced proficiency with the harness. Study the archive material from past years and you should soon get an idea of the standard that is required.
Kamchatskiy skaters have a reputation for not only acquiring excepti
onal skating ability, but also for being good all-rounders when it comes to academic and managerial skills. I will leave it to my friends in the Training Centre to teach you the other half of what it takes to be a Kamchatskiy employee. All work and no pay, but it’s a great life. You will travel the world and have fun and be celebrities in your own right with five or six years on the world tour before you become managers.
I will now leave you to practise for the last half hour. Help each other. See how much more quickly you improve when you do. On Friday I will see you all again and we can begin work on our school figures.”
Jobine then performed a quick twizzle and whizzed off the ice leaving the set to practise. The six couples then practised for a while, mixing and matching, each helping the others to improve. Unlike in their previous environments, it was possible for each member of the set to assist each other member to maximise the standard that was achievable collectively. With this approach, along with collaboration with the other sets, they would all in time be able to take their skating into a new dimension as a matter of course.
The practice continued until a hooter sounded and the base of the barrier rose. When they had cleared the ice a single ice scraper and resurfacer emerged from one end of the rink and made its way to the other in twenty seconds, leaving behind a smooth glassy surface. “That beats the old Zamboni,” said Gary.
Chapter Eight
A Question of Quality
The set lunched in The Training Centre along with the four other sets who had also been invited to attend the first afternoon lecture from the training school of the Kamchatskiy Auto Company. These sets had also been selected to train for work at the Petropavlovsk Kamchatskiy factory and had an itinerary that was similar to that of Gary’s set. Their skating and training programmes had different timings, although there would be times when a lecture or skating period may overlap so that more than one set could be taught at a time, for example as Jobine had stated. This lecture, however, was an introductory lecture that was common to all of the Kamchatskiy Auto sets.
The Island of Dreams Page 8