A Company of Swans

by Eva Ibbotson

  The transformation scene next. The ornaments dropped from the tree, the councillor’s drawing-room vanished . . . and the snow began to fall. Snow and snow and still more snow, turning the tree into a miracle of white . . . They loved that, the Brazilians, many of whom had never seen this strange substance, and applause ran through the house.

  The snowflake fairies entered and Simonova leaned forward intently to look at the corps.

  ‘She grows strong,’ she whispered. ‘Grisha is right.’

  There was no need for Dubrov to ask of whom she spoke. A strange friendship had grown up between the ageing ballerina and the newest, youngest member of the corps. Harriet never put herself forward, but she could not conceal her avid interest for everything that touched Simonova’s life. To pass on memories and experiences to the young is a great longing – if the young will listen. Harriet listened.

  Act Two now, and Simonova’s hands were gripping the edge of the box like talons. The Kingdom of the Sweets – and there was Masha with her dreaded youth, her smile, her blonde hair and little crown, sitting on her throne . . . descending .. . looking very beautiful. . . executing her little dance en pointe . . .

  Excuting it damnably well and getting a roar of applause from the audience, who were very much taken by this ballet which demanded so little of them and produced such a festive atmosphere. And she was pretty, this Sugar Plum Fairy, in her pale pink tutu covered in delicate, sugar-plum lace, her crown of stars. Here was a heroine much to the Brazilian taste.

  The ensemble nonsense which followed gave Simonova a chance to compose herself. Spanish dances, Arabian dances, dances for marzipan shepherdesses . . . The ‘Valse des Fleurs’ next, the most loved of all Tchaikovsky’s waltzes, and it was Dubrov’s turn to notice how well Harriet was dancing. Whatever happened to her off-stage seemed to send her further into her work.

  But now came the moment of high drama when the Prince leads out the Sugar Plum Fairy for possibly the most sensational and difficult duet in all Tchaikovsky’s works: the grand pas de deux to music that is the apotheosis of ballet.

  Oh, God, thought Dubrov; she’s a bitch, but she can dance – those arabesques, those sweeping attitudes . . . the speed, the dazzle! And Maximov was partnering her well, unselfishly. He too was on his mettle against the usurper, youth.

  Her solo now – and how the audience loved it: the tinkling bells, the sugary music, the pretty ballerina untouched by agony or time.

  Maximov was back, lifting her . . . She soared, smiled. Smiled too much for Dubrov’s taste, but not for the audience.

  And Simonova sat beside him with that unnatural, contained stillness, very upright, watching, watching .. . for mistakes, for human frailty.

  There were no mistakes, no frailty.

  It was only as the dancers came together for the final tableau that Dubrov perceived the danger.

  Stumbling from the box, running down the corridor, choked by his collar, he heard the clapping begin – the stamping, the cries of ‘Bravo!’ and ‘Bis!’ That would be one curtain call already . . . two, three . . . Oh, God damn the fools who could not distinguish between a technically competent dancer and the flawed, true artist Simonova was!

  He had reached the heavy door that led backstage and now pushed against it.

  It did not open.

  All doors between the auditorium and the stage had to be open by law in case of fire, but this door would not move. Someone had locked it.

  Cursing, perspiring, the portly little man ran back again, up the stairs to the next floor . . . And still the applause came undiminished, and the roars.

  The upstairs door was open, but there was a twisting iron staircase to negotiate before he reached the level of the stage.

  A group of people were standing in the wings, among them Harriet with a towel over her shoulder, and her face creased with anxiety as she watched the curtain rise once more.

  ‘How many?’ panted Dubrov.

  ‘Eighteen,’ said Harriet miserably. ‘Grisha tried to stop them, but they wouldn’t listen.’

  She motioned to the stage-hand still turning the winch-handle to let Masha – as loaded with flowers as a hearse – curtsey ecstatically to her audience.

  ‘That’s the nineteenth now,’ said Harriet.

  Nineteen . . . Four more than Simonova. Dubrov shook his weary head. No good intervening now; the damage was done. And still the curtain rose and fell. . . Twenty . . . twenty-one . . . twenty-two . . . Until at last it was over and with a triumphant smile, Masha Repin swept away.

  Dubrov had expected Simonova to rage and stamp and make a scene, but it was worse than that. She came backstage to congratulate her rival; she insisted that they drink champagne.

  ‘She is good, Sashka,’ said Simonova quietly when they were back at the Metropole. ‘She is young and she is good, and the public loved her.’

  ‘Idiots!’ raged Dubrov. ‘She’s a balletic clothes-horse, all tricks and glitter.’

  ‘No. She is inexperienced, but the feeling will come.’

  Dubrov was silent, wondering if the door had been locked on purpose and waiting – praying – for the abuse, the tantrums, the talk of retirement and Cremorra with which he knew so well how to deal.

  But she was quiet, almost docile, and remained so for the rest of Nutcracker’s initial run, and knowing her as he did, he was afraid that something had been damaged inside her in a way that he could not soothe or talk away.

  And he was right, for three days later, at the première of Giselle, Simonova hurt her back.

  It was an inexplicable injury. The Act One pas de deux in which it occurred was as familiar to her as breathing and Maximov, as everyone agreed, was blameless. Yet as he came up behind her to lift her, turn her and set her down in arabesque her body sagged, she gave a despairing cry – and fell, to lie prone and unmoving on the floor.

  The orchestra stuttered into silence; the audience hissed their consternation and as Maximov bent over the ballerina in anguish and Dubrov ran in from the wings, the curtain came down on a great dancer – and a great career.

  An hour later, Simonova lay very white and very still in her bed at the Metropole.

  ‘Well, Sashka, it’s over,’ she whispered to the man who had loved her for twenty years. ‘But it was good while it lasted, wasn’t it?’

  There had been three doctors in the audience and though their diagnoses had differed, there was one thing on which they had all agreed, and in the injured woman’s presence – that she would never dance again.

  ‘It was very good, doushenka. It was the best,’ he said, and sat holding her hand until she fell into a chloral-induced sleep.

  But Dubrov did not sleep. Instead, he surveyed the future. There was no question now of going on to Caracas or Lima. As soon as she was well enough to travel, she must be taken back to Europe – to Leblanc in Paris, the most famous orthopaedic surgeon in the world. If it really was a haemorrhage into the spinal canal, as one of the doctors had suggested, there was probably little that could be done, but she must have every chance. Which left the rest of their time in Manaus . . . He couldn’t run Nutcracker for a whole fortnight, nor could he afford to shut the theatre and lose all the takings. So Masha Repin must have Giselle . . .

  In the small hours, in the still stifling heat, Simonova woke in pain and her mind turned to the past – to Russia and the snow.

  ‘Do you remember those drives from the theatre in your sledge?’ she whispered. ‘Sitting all wrapped up in my sables, squashing the poor violets on my muff?’

  ‘Yes, I remember. The frost made your eyelashes longer. You were so vain about that.’

  ‘And the street-lamps making that lilac mist . . . There is nowhere else in the world where they do that – only in Petersburg.’

  ‘We could go back,’ he said with sudden hope. ‘I still have the apartment.’

  Ill as she was, she fought him. ‘No! Not after the way they treated me at the Maryinsky. Never!’

  It will be Cr
emorra, then, thought Dubrov; there is no escape – and half in jest, mocking his own misery, he moved over to a pile of books on the bureau and pulled out a brightly coloured volume which he had hoped never actually to read.

  ‘Yes!’ said Simonova eagerly. ‘Read it aloud to me. I can’t sleep anyway, and I must learn. I must prepare myself. At first of course I’ll only be able to watch from the verandah, but when my back is better, ah, you’ll see! We’ll be so happy!’

  The book was in English, as books on vegetable gardening are apt to be, and as the humid oppressive night wore on Dubrov read to her about the fan training of espalier plums, about the successive trench sowing of broad beans and the preparation of decayed vegetable matter to make a mulch.

  ‘What is it, this mulch?’ came Simonova’s hoarse voice from the bed.

  Dubrov consulted the book. ‘It is something to put on the roots to stop them drying out. There is also a verb: to mulch . . .’

  He looked up. Simonova, who had not cried out once when they lifted her battered body on to the stretcher, who had not shed one tear when the doctors pronounced their implacable verdict, was weeping.

  ‘I do not want to mulch!’ cried the ballerina – and burst into uncontrollable sobs.

  Cedric Fitzackerly, anxious to get rid of the tiresome old Professor for whom he no longer had the slightest use, duly sent a cable to Manaus requesting that Edward Finch-Dutton be given every assistance in securing the return of Harriet Morton, a fugitive and a minor, to her native land.

  The telegram carrying an awesome Foreign Office signature duly arrived on the desk of the Prefect of Police, where young Captain Carlos put it into the ‘In’ tray and hoped it would go away.

  To have been left in charge of the police station was an honour, but it was one which put the Captain – scarcely out of his teens – under considerable strain. De Silva had taken three-quarters of the city’s military police along with him on his mission; they had been gone nearly a week, no one knew where, and young Carlos (whose title of Captain was a courtesy one borrowed for the occasion) lived in dread of an occurrence with which he would find it impossible to deal.

  ‘Here he comes again,’ said Sergeant Barra – a huge muscular cabaclo with a broken nose – looking up from the children’s comic he had been laboriously trying to read.

  Captain Carlos put down the mirror in which he had been studying the progress of his incipient moustache and sighed.

  ‘I suppose we’d better let him in.’

  Edward Finch-Dutton, still clutching his butterfly net, was admitted as he had been yesterday and the day before and the day before that. Though his Portuguese had not reached even the phrase-book stage which would enable him to complain that there was a fly in his soup, he had – by endless repetition of Harriet’s name, the word ‘England’ and what he believed to be Morse code noises – managed to make the Captain understand that he was enquiring whether a cable had arrived for him from his native land.

  ‘Nao,’ said Carlos, shaking his head as he had done on all the previous days. ‘Nada. Nothing. No.’

  This had always been enough to send the Englishman away with a disconsolate air, but today it failed. Edward, still suffering from the shock of Harriet’s depravity, and from a touch of fever as he tottered from the Sports Club into the jungle on collecting forays and back again, suddenly lost control. There was no one to whom he could turn; Verney was still away, the consul was in São Paulo and he had not dared to mention his connection with Harriet to Harry Parker. Now his frustration boiled over and he began to shout and bang his fist on the table.

  ‘I don’t believe you. You’re lying! It must have come! Have a look, damn you – go through those papers there and look!’

  He pointed at the pile of documents in the tray. Reluctantly the Captain pulled it towards him and shuffled a few of the envelopes.

  ‘Go on! Go right through the lot. Let me see for myself.’

  Half-way down the pile Nemesis overtook poor Captain Carlos.

  ‘There! That one in the yellow envelope. Read it!’

  The Captain picked up the cable and stared at it. ‘Eenglish,’ he said gloomily.

  ‘Then give it to me,’ said Edward, reaching across the desk.

  This the Captain was naturally reluctant to do. At the same time it was clear that this irritating foreigner would now have to be dealt with, and even before de Silva’s return. He compromised.

  ‘Get Leo up from the cells,’ he said to the Sergeant.

  Leo, when he appeared clanking his bunch of keys, turned out to be the gaoler, a retired Negro boxer who had once worked for Pinkerton’s detective agency in New York, spoke English and could even read.

  ‘It’s the real thing, all right,’ he said to Captain Carlos when he had perused the contents of the cable. ‘The British Foreign Office sent it, no mistake. They want the girl back in England and they want you to help this gentleman get her there.’ And he nodded without irony at Edward before depositing a gob of tobacco spittle at his feet.

  ‘You see!’ said Edward triumphantly. ‘I told you.’ He turned to Leo. ‘Now listen carefully. Tell them I want at least two men, strong ones. I want them outside the theatre on Friday evening just before the performance ends, and I want a closed cab waiting too. They’re to seize the girl as she comes off stage – without hurting her, mind you – bundle her into the cab and take her down to the docks. The Gregory sails at dawn – there will be a cabin waiting for her. She must be locked in – I have spoken to the stewardess, but she will want to see your authorisation – and I’ll let her out myself when we’re safely down-river. Got it?’

  He leaned back, extremely pleased with himself. The plan, masterful and simple, had occurred to him as soon as the Gregory arrived – a white oasis of British calm and hygiene in the turmoil of the docks – and two cabins for the return journey had unexpectedly become available.

  Leo spoke to the Captain, who nodded. It might have been worse – he had been afraid he would be expected to hold the girl in his gaol. And at least the Englishman was going with her. Not to see Edward Finch-Dutton’s long, equine face ever again had become the Captain’s most passionate desire.

  He turned to Leo. ‘Ask him how we’re to know which girl to grab?’

  ‘I shall of course come with you to identify her,’ said Edward. ‘Naturally . . .’

  14

  The disaster that Simonova’s accident represented struck the Company afresh on Friday as they rehearsed with Masha Repin for the evening performance of Giselle. The Polish girl, having plotted and schemed for just this chance, was nervous and hysterical, abused the conductor for his tempi, complained of Maximov’s lifts and threw her costume at the wardrobe mistress. Simonova’s rages had been no less violent, but in a curious way they concerned – in the end – the performance as a whole. Masha’s panic was for herself.

  For Harriet, Simonova’s injury had been a personal blow. As long as she lived she would never forget the moment when the proud, arched body crumpled and fell – and if she hated any human beings it was those doctors who, uncaring of the injured woman’s presence, had pronounced their horrendous verdict.

  The tragedy had entirely put out of her mind her own danger. She had not seen Edward at the banquet and if she thought of him at all, it was to assume that he was still away on his collecting trip. Of Rom she did think, and incessantly. He had said he would be absent for two days, but had been away for almost a week and the city was rife with rumours of some cloak-and-dagger affair up-river in which he was said to be involved. Knowing what she would feel if anything happened to him made it impossible for her to remain in ignorance of her emotions, and she could only be glad of the incessant rehearsals which filled the day.

  Not so Marie-Claude.

  ‘Oh God, those dreary Wilis,’ she complained, jamming a myrtle wreath on her golden curls.

  ‘They’re not dreary, Marie-Claude. They’re sort of vengeful and icy and implacable, but they’re not dreary,’ sa
id Harriet.

  But Marie-Claude, who had danced her first Wili at the age of sixteen, had scant patience with those spectres of betrayed maidenhood who endeavour to dance to death any gentlemen foolish enough to cross their path – and two hours before the start of the evening performance, she announced her intention of going to look at the shops.

  Neither of her friends went with her. Kirstin had joined the group of girls comforting Maximov – who needed to be told some twenty times an hour that he was not to blame for Simonova’s accident – and Harriet had decided to hurry back to the Metropole to see if the new doctor expected that afternoon held out any more hope.

  The city was golden in the late afternoon sun. People sat in cafés on the mosaic pavements; children splashed in the fountains. Marie-Claude walked with pleasure, enjoying the full delights of window-shopping as experienced by those untroubled by any intention to buy.

  Rejecting a pink and white striped silk suit, approving a blue organdie, she wandered along the Rua Quintana, crossed a busy square and paused by a kiosk at the edge of a small park overlooking the harbour where she bought a bottle of lemonade.

  She was just selecting a bench on which to sit and drink it when she saw, coming down the steps of the porticoed police station, the gangling figure of Dr Finch-Dutton. He was carrying a small wooden box and apparently dressed for travelling.

  So he wasn’t away in the jungle as Harriet had thought. Strange . . . why had he made no contact? And what did he want with the police?

  Repressing the natural instinct of flight so common in people acquainted with the Englishman, Marie-Claude studied him. He had entered the park by the other gate, sat down in a chair by the bandstand and now proceeded to take out of the wooden box something at which he stared with great intensity.

  ‘Bon jour, Monsieur.’

  Edward looked up, blushed, jumped to his feet. He had avoided all truck with the ballet company – complete surprise was the essence of his plan to snatch Harriet away – and he no longer felt capable of trusting anyone. But the sight of Marie-Claude, her face gilded by the rays of the westering sun, entirely overset him. Whoever had been responsible for Harriet’s eruption, it could hardly be this enchanting girl with her staggering facility in oral French. And lifting his hat, he held out the glass specimen bottle he had been studying and said simply, ‘Look!’