“That’s very kind of you,” said Mrs. Mann solemnly, but her eyes were twinkling with laughter.
The stage manager, having read Mrs. Wintle’s note, gave permission, while Dulcie was on, for Rachel and Hilary to stand with Mrs. Mann on the side of the stage. In spite of finding Dulcie grand and tiresome in the dressing room, Hilary enjoyed watching her. But she enjoyed watching the Wonders even more. She was not allowed to speak to them while they were waiting for their entrances, but by signs she let them see what she thought of sitting in Dulcie’s dressing room and that she and Rachel would be up to tea later.
Rachel had her eyes glued to Dulcie, but her thoughts were miles away. She remembered the day Mrs. Storm had taken her to see a thriller and had brought her back to her house to tea afterwards, where she had met Mr. Storm. She had been allowed to roast chestnuts on the fire, which had made her feel almost as if she were back in Folkestone. It was strange to be in a proper house again, where you could do things for yourself. It was all right at the school, but there was of course no place to do things like roasting chestnuts or making toast.
But life behind the scenes with Dulcie left very little time for daydreaming. Even if she had to go on again in the same dress she needed looking after on the side of the stage. Matron had a comb, a brush, a looking glass, a powder puff, and a wrap in case there was a draught. As she had two extra helpers Dulcie used them.
“Hilary, hold this looking glass,” she whispered, “so I can see if I need any powder. Give Rachel my brush, Mrs. Mann, so your hands are free to comb my hair.”
It did not help either Rachel or Hilary, while being ordered about by Dulcie, that all twelve Wonders watched them with laughter that only the most strenuous efforts held inside them.
When Dulcie had to change her clothes Rachel and Hilary had to go back to the dressing room with her. There they had to obey another stream of orders: “I wear my tap awkward-Adas for this number, Hilary. They’re in the corner.” “Take off these shoes, Rachel, and help Hilary put on my others.”
Dulcie’s changes were easy, for she wore the same frilly underclothes under all her frocks. But somehow she managed to keep Mrs. Mann and Rachel and Hilary in a continual rush, so that when it was time for her next entrance, even Hilary felt flustered.
At the end of the second act of the pantomime every character appeared in the land of flowers. This was ruled over by the Fairy Queen. The previous scene had shown Red Riding Hood being rescued from the wolf in the nick of time by the Fairy Queen. Then all the scenery changed. The wood became the land of flowers, with Dulcie as the Queen’s guest, seated on a throne to watch the ballet. This meant that Dulcie was on the stage for a long time, so Mrs. Mann, Rachel, and Hilary could relax.
Hilary of course watched the dancers, especially the Wonders, with absorbed interest. Mrs. Mann moved quietly upstage to have a whispered gossip with the Wonders’ matron. Rachel, her eyes on the stage, was just about to slide off into another daydream when the Fairy Queen began to dance to Tschaikovsky’s Sugar-Plum Fairy music. Suddenly Rachel found that she was watching, really watching, only it was not the girl who played the Fairy Queen she was looking at, but at Hilary grown taller, older, after a year or two at The Royal Ballet School. So sure was Rachel that it was Hilary she was watching that as the Fairy Queen came off-stage amidst roars of applause, she smiled at her, thinking she was smiling at Hilary.
The principal girl had a song to sing about tulip time while the chorus and the Wonders danced around her, so the Fairy Queen had a few minutes’ rest. She put an arm around Rachel.
“Are you little Dulcie’s cousin?” she asked in a whisper. Rachel nodded. “You aren’t a bit like her. You have a dancer’s face. Can you dance?”
Rachel pointed to Hilary. “No. She can.”
The Fairy Queen looked at Hilary. “She’s a good build for it. Is Mrs. Wintle training her?”
Rachel’s whisper was more fierce than she knew. “Now she is. She means to make a Wonder of her. But I won’t have it. She’s to go to The Royal Ballet School and be a proper dancer like you.”
“Like me!” The Fairy Queen looked half sad, half amused. “I’m afraid that won’t do her much good,” she whispered. “I was there; Sadler’s Wells it was called then. Everybody thought I had talent, but I hadn’t enough. After a time I knew it. I didn’t want to be a might-have-been, so I left to be a Fairy Queen and to dance in musical comedies.”
Rachel was horrified. “Don’t tell Hilary about you. At the moment she wants to be a Wonder and it’s only me who means her to go to The Royal Ballet School.”
The Fairy Queen was getting herself in position for her next entrance. “Why do you want her to?”
“My mother wanted her to. She’s dead, you see.”
The Fairy Queen gave Rachel a thinking look. “Will you take a word of advice? Don’t build your hopes too high. It’s hard enough for those who want to succeed in the ballet world to get anywhere, so it’s my bet that someone who would rather be one of Mrs. Wintle’s Wonders wouldn’t have a chance.”
Rachel watched the Fairy Queen rise on her pointes, lift her arms, and glide onto the stage. Puzzled, she stared at her. She danced so beautifully, yet she had left The Royal Ballet School because she knew she had not enough talent. “It’s hard enough for those who want to succeed to get anywhere. It’s my bet someone who would rather be a Wonder wouldn’t have a chance!”
Rachel looked at Hilary. The Wonders, their golden buttercup-colored net skirts flying, were pirouetting around the Fairy Queen. Hilary unconsciously was holding out her pleated skirt and had one foot raised as if she was longing to join them. At that moment, though she did not know it, the first tiny seed of doubt about Hilary’s future was sown in Rachel’s mind.
The next day what Rachel most dreaded happened. The troupe of Wonders playing in Mother Goose on the outskirts of London had a case of chicken pox.
Actually, except for Dulcie’s success it was an unlucky Christmas for Mrs. Wintle. In the north there was gastric flu, and five Wonders were hurried up there as replacements. In London one of the children dancing in Alice in Wonderland had handed around crab sandwiches which the matron said afterwards must have been “off.” As a result, all the Wonders taking part in Alice were away for nearly a week. Not that they were ill the whole time, but, as the matron said: “They couldn’t fancy dancing as oysters feeling queasy.” Also, there were isolated illnesses in troupes all over the country: an appendix to come out here, tonsils there, and, it seemed to Mrs. Wintle, toothache everywhere. So the chicken pox was really the last straw.
The first case was reported on Rachel’s twelfth birthday. She and Hilary had spent a lovely day with Uncle Tom and came home after a visit to the circus to be met with the chicken pox news. It was bedtime anyway, so Uncle Tom did not notice that Rachel’s spirits dropped as if down a well. But of course Hilary noticed. As soon as they were in their bedroom she said: “I wouldn’t fuss. The understudy will go on, and that girl Wendy in your group who has just got her license will be made understudy.”
Rachel gloomily took off her coat. “Don’t try and cheer me up. I shouldn’t wonder if half of them catch chicken pox. Then the barrel will have to be scraped, and I’ll find myself a gosling.”
“Perhaps all the Mother Goose Wonders have had chicken pox,” Hilary suggested.
“They won’t have. I feel it in my bones. And another thing I feel in my bones is that tomorrow there’ll be an appointment made for me to be examined for my license.”
Rachel’s bones were quite right. Two days later she was taken by Mrs. Storm to the County Hall to apply for a license. Before she was examined she had a faint hope the license might be refused, but it quickly died. The doctor who examined her said he wished all the children he saw were as healthy as she was. And the education man, knowing Mrs. Storm because she had brought Dulcie for examination, seemed to
think that learning with her was proof a child’s education was up to standard.
On her return to the school Rachel said sadly to Hilary: “In front of you you see a licensed Wonder.”
Rachel was right too about the chicken pox. Those Mother Goose Wonders who had not had it went down with it like nine-pins, and only Wonders who had already had chicken pox could replace them. (Rachel and Hilary had shared chicken pox when they were in Hollywood.) The understudy took the place of the first case, and the child called Wendy became understudy. Then Wendy had to go on and a girl called Ruth understudied.
“The day Ruth goes on I must be understudy,” said Rachel, “there’s no one left who’s had chicken pox in my group who knows the dances. Who’ll understudy if I go on I can’t imagine.”
Two days later the blow fell.
“Another Mother Goose Wonder has chicken pox, so you’ll be understudy from tonight, Rachel,” Pat said as if it were good news. “I’ll run through the routines with you this morning.”
Rachel had been sent before Christmas to watch a couple of rehearsals of Mother Goose, and, since the chicken pox started, she had been twice to the theater to watch the show. Both Pat and Ena had taught her the dances and the specialty in case she should be needed, so there was no real cause for her to be nervous. But she was.
“Although I’m only understudying,” she said to Hilary as she put on her new Wonder’s uniform, “I feel as I did before I was sick on the Queen Elizabeth coming back from Hollywood.”
Hilary tried to answer her, but she laughed so much she choked.
“I don’t know why,” she gasped, “but somehow, got up as a Wonder, you look like a dog dressed up as a kitten.”
Ordinarily, being an understudy meant just sitting about, but there was no sitting about for Rachel. There was still one Wonder in the troupe who had not had chicken pox, so Rachel knew that at any moment she might have to go on. And there was a great deal besides the routines to memorize.
“Please God,” Rachel prayed fervently, “don’t let Gwen get chicken pox, because truly I’ll make a terrible Wonder.”
But her prayer was not answered. Three days after she had started understudying the telephone rang. It was Gwen’s mother on the line. “I’m sorry but Gwen’s got it all right. You couldn’t put a grain of rice between the spots.”
“There’s still hope,” Rachel said to Hilary. “I’m so very bottom of the barrel that perhaps Aunt Cora will find somebody else and let me go on being understudy.”
But the hope did not last long.
“You’ll go on as of tonight,” Pat said.
To Rachel’s amazement she made no noticeable mistakes in Mother Goose, but she always felt she was going to and this, try as she would, made smiling very difficult.
“Funny kiddie, that last replacement,” the stage manager said to the matron. “Doesn’t look Mrs. Wintle’s style somehow.”
The matron made an agreeing face. “She isn’t. Dreams in the dressing room, or reads a book. I can’t get her to play games. But the first chicken pox will be back next week, and then she can go back to being understudy.”
Rachel was the first Wonder in the history of Mrs. Wintle’s school who was delighted to switch from being part of a troupe to being understudy. But her great day came when a second Wonder recovered from chicken pox and she was not even the understudy.
“I feel as if I’d been traveling for years through a coal-black tunnel,” she told Mrs. Storm, “and now I’d come out into the sun.”
CHAPTER 21
Mrs. Storm
Because Dulcie was such a success neither Rachel nor Hilary supposed Aunt Cora had time to think of anybody else. But they were wrong. Two days before the holidays ended Pursey, looking pink and flustered-hen-ish, came into the canteen. “As soon as you’ve finished you’re to go to your auntie, Rachel my lambkin. She’s in the schoolroom.”
Rachel, who had been feeling gay, at once felt scared and rather cold. “What’s she want me for? No one else is ill, are they?”
Pursey patted her shoulder. “It’s nothing to do with the theater. Now don’t worry, it’ll be all right.” Then she hurried out of the room.
Rachel and Hilary looked at each other. Hilary said: “It can’t be as awful as Pursey made it sound.”
Rachel put down the piece of bread and honey she had been going to eat. “Whatever it is I better get it over, I couldn’t eat any more with seeing her hanging over me.”
Aunt Cora was sitting at the schoolroom table looking at both Rachel’s and Duclie’s exercise books.
“Hullo, childie,” she said, “sit down.”
Rachel sat and tried hard to smile, but she did not feel at all like smiling, for Aunt Cora had never called her “childie” before and she thought the sudden use of so odd a word sinister. Even odder, Aunt Cora sounded as if she were trying to sound pleased to see her. What could she be going to say? Rachel soon found out.
“You appreciate, of course, what a success Dulcie has made. I have put her in the hands of a theatrical agent. He expects a quite dazzling future for her.”
The whole school expected a dazzling future for Dulcie, so Rachel was not surprised. “I expect she will have.”
“But of course,” Aunt Cora went on, “she is only a little girl, and if, as the agent expects, she will be working in films and on television as well as in stage shows, we must not strain her too hard in other ways. Must we?”
Rachel tried to be helpful. “Perhaps she could miss her first dancing lesson, and have breakfast in bed, and…”
Aunt Cora spoke sharply. “Thank you. I am quite capable of arranging Dulcie’s timetable. No, it is her lessons I’m thinking about. I hear from Mrs. Storm that you are advanced in your work, and indeed a study of your exercise books bears that out….”
There was a pause, during which Rachel felt an answer was expected. “I like lessons.”
“I’m sure you do. That being so, I’ve decided that since I don’t want Dulcie forced forward, nor of course you held back, you won’t learn with Mrs. Storm this term…”
Rachel could not believe what she heard. “Not learn with Mrs. Storm?”
Aunt Cora sounded cross. “Don’t repeat what I say in that stupid way. You would think I had told you the world was coming to an end, instead of merely informing you that in future you will attend the local school.”
To Rachel a large part of her world was coming to an end. She had not realized until that minute how much she looked forward to Mrs. Storm’s coming each morning. How exciting Mrs. Storm made the time before lessons began, giving words wings so that they flew round the schoolroom. Teaching her how to feel inside somebody else, whether it was Alice in Wonderland, a person in a play of Shakespeare’s, someone in a fairy tale or in a modern play. Mrs. Storm did not know anything about proper dancing, but she was the only person except Hilary who could understand that everybody did not want to be a Wonder. Without meaning to Rachel found herself again repeating Aunt Cora’s last words: “The local school.”
That made Aunt Cora really cross. “My dear child, do try and show a grain of intelligence. Yes, the local school. I expect you will enjoy it, for several of my Wonders attend there when they are in London.”
Rachel licked her lips. “And Hilary?” The question came out haltingly.
“She will go on working with Mrs. Storm. I think it’s more fun for Dulcie to have someone to work with.”
That made Rachel angry. “If I go to school then Hilary goes too. Why should she work with Dulcie…”
Rachel was going on to say “just because you think it will be fun for Dulcie,” but before she got the words out Aunt Cora stopped her, misunderstanding what she was thinking. “Really, Rachel! I had hoped you had outgrown that jealous nonsense. The way you are always trying to stand in Hilary’s light appalls me and convinces me, if
I needed convincing, that you are a bad influence in the schoolroom.”
Rachel, to her disgust, started to cry, which hindered her saying what she wanted to say. “I’m not jealous, and it’s hateful of you to say I am…you’ve no right to separate us, we’re sisters….”
Aunt Cora thought Rachel was being maddening. She did her best to give her a nice home, and now, just because she had decided that she was rather too advanced in lessons to learn with Dulcie, she was making this scene. There was no thought of separating her and Hilary out of school hours, they would still share a bedroom, so why this fuss if it was not jealousy? Of course the poor child had every reason to feel jealous, Hilary having not only better looks but talent as well. “There’s nothing to cry about, Rachel. Dry your eyes, and try and be sensible. Hilary is not your sister…”
Rachel struggled to find her handkerchief, which was lost in her knicker leg. “She is…I mean, she’s always been one, Daddy chose her…Mummie called her my sister…”
Aunt Cora looked at Rachel and felt sorry for herself, for at that moment Rachel did not look like a niece who was a Wonder. Her face was greenish-yellow, her nose was pink, and, as always when she was trying not to cry, she was scowling. “I’m not stopping you from seeing her. You’ll be together at meals, and you share a bedroom. Run along now and don’t be a little goose.”
Rachel ran. She went to her bedroom and lay on her bed and cried and cried and cried. “I’m not jealous,” she sobbed, “I’m not, but I won’t have her talking as if Hilary was Dulcie’s slave. Oh goodness, how will I bear being alive with no Mrs. Storm, and probably a summer engagement as a Wonder?”
As soon as Rachel had left the room Aunt Cora wrote to Mrs. Storm and told her what was arranged. “I’ll send this by hand,” she thought as she sealed the letter. “Jenkins can drop it after he has taken Dulcie to the theater. I want the matter settled today.”
Mrs. Storm was out when the letter arrived, but she found it when she came in to tea. An hour later Mr. Storm came home; he found Mrs. Storm raging up and down their sitting room like a lioness in a cage. She was so angry that it took him quite a long time to find out what the trouble was. But when he did he was very sensible. “My dear girl, don’t get all worked up about it. Go and see Mrs. Wintle, tell her what you think.”
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