Dancing Shoes

by Noel Streatfeild

  Pursey shook her head. “No. Hitting, biting, scratching, and such I’ve never stood for in my nurseries. But if it was my school, with feelings running high as they will, whatever punishment I gave Hilary I would give Dulcie.”

  Mrs. Wintle could not punish her little star, so instead that evening she said to her: “I know Mum’s girlie could not help laughing at Rachel, for she does look terrible in her uniform frock. But some people think you meant to be unkind. Would you be a good generous girl and run in during group three’s tap class tomorrow and give Rachel a kiss and say you’re sorry. It would be a kind thing to do, especially as she was not even considered at the audition.”

  It took time to persuade Dulcie, but she did not want all the Wonders saying she had behaved badly, so in the end she agreed. Then next afternoon a goggle-eyed group three watched Dulcie very prettily kiss an awkward embarrassed Rachel and heard her say: “I’m sorry I said you looked funny.”

  Though the incident seemed to end there it did not quite. Before it happened, Rachel, to Mrs. Wintle, was one sort of person and Hilary quite another. But from now onward they became fixed together in her mind like William and Mary. In fact, from that day onward she frequently spoke of them as one person. “Now about Rachelanhilary.” And the word she used to describe both was “tiresome.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Little-Girl Frock

  Uncle Tom was fond of drawing Rachel’s head. Perhaps because he had drawn it so often he was one of the first to notice that she was wearing more and more often a hang-dog expression. He did not say anything until he was sure it was not a passing mood, then one Sunday when she was in his studio he asked:

  “What’s the matter, old lady?”

  Rachel was sitting on the floor sorting out the contents of what had once been a paintbox but which had become a junk box. “Nothing.”

  “Nonsense,” said Uncle Tom. “Come here.” Rachel got up off the floor and came to his side. “Look at this,” Uncle Tom said, and drew Rachel’s mouth when it smiled. “And now at this.” He drew her mouth pulled down at the corners. “This is the mouth I am seeing every day now. The smiling one is the mouth I used to see. So it’s no good saying nothing is the matter.”

  Rachel hesitated, then she blurted out: “I’m feeling inferior.”

  Uncle Tom thought people talked about private things best when they were not being stared at, so he started drawing again.

  “Why?”

  “It sounds silly, because you know I don’t want to be a Wonder, but you can’t think what it does to you when you go to audition after audition and the most unlikely Wonders are picked, but never you.”

  Uncle Tom tried to understand.

  “I suppose it hurts, but seeing how much you dislike being a Wonder isn’t it a relief to find you don’t have to be one?”

  Rachel nodded. Then she went on:

  “That’s absolutely true, and most of me knows it’s silly to mind. But there’s a bit of me that feels the way a puppy in a shop window must feel when all the other puppies are bought but never him.”

  Uncle Tom stopped painting and gave his whole attention to Rachel.

  “Let’s get to the bottom of this. Why are you never chosen? Can’t you manage the dancing?”

  “Of course I can, every routine and all the audition songs. I’m not a good dancer, but I’m as good as most of group three. I think truly it’s my audition frock.”

  “What’s the matter with it?”

  “Nothing. I mean Hilary looks awfully nice in hers but I look terrible in mine and I know it.”

  “Doesn’t it fit?”

  Rachel sighed at his ignorance.

  “Of course it fits. Our audition dresses have to fit, one inch above the knee and all that. No, it’s me. I wasn’t born for frills. If you could see me in it you’d understand what I mean.”

  Uncle Tom had to accept that however strange he might find it Rachel really was minding wearing this particular frock. “Well, let me see it. Go and put it on.”

  Uncle Tom believed Rachel would be beautiful when she grew up. Already, to him, she was interesting looking, with her expressive dark eyes and sensitive, high-cheekboned face. But hers was a face that easily looked unhappy, and that obviously, he supposed, was the expression that for some reason managers were seeing. It was probably, he guessed, Rachel’s expression and not the frock that kept managers from engaging her as a Wonder. But when Rachel came in dressed for an audition he knew his guess had been wrong, and he used an expression he used only when he was thunderstruck. “Let me swim with my aunt Fanny up the Suez Canal!”

  Rachel had decided it would be best that Uncle Tom should see her exactly as she looked at an audition. So she had not only changed into her little-girl frock but had unplaited her hair and tied it on either side with small blue bows.

  Rachel had exaggerated when she said that none of the other Wonders found anything wrong with the audition dresses. They had been designed to make the children look younger than they were, so it was not a kind dress to many of them. They were made of seersucker, very full and without a waistline, with frills on the shoulders and around the bottom. To dress Rachel in such a frock was like putting a cloth over a lamp, for it dimmed her until there was no Rachel left. It took away a sort of dignity which was part of her and made her instead look silly.

  “My poor child,” Uncle Tom said, “that certainly is a disaster of a dress.”

  Rachel looked at him searchingly to be sure he was speaking the truth. “Could I be engaged as a Wonder wearing it?”

  Uncle Tom slowly shook his head. “Not unless every other available Wonder had spots and a squint.”

  Rachel felt as if she had been carrying something heavy on her back and it had fallen off.

  “Goodness, I’m glad you said that! It truly is the frock and not me?” Uncle Tom nodded. “Knowing that for certain, I shan’t be humiliated however many auditions I go to without being engaged.”

  Uncle Tom had held back laughing, but now he let it out in a great roar, and as he laughed he hugged Rachel to him.

  “My poor Rachel,” he gasped, “if you could see yourself—what a frock! It is the most horrible dress I ever saw.” Then he took a deep breath and got control of his laughter. “I’m sorry to laugh, but you do look like a comic. But I tell you what we’ll do. I’ll design some frocks for you and we’ll get Pursey to make them. Then when you come back from an audition you can put on one of my frocks to take away the taste of that blue horror. Now run along and change before I’m sick.”

  In early July Dulcie’s musical ended its run. Mrs. Wintle was not pleased, for she wanted any show Dulcie was in to be a success. But, as she told Pursey, coming off when it did had its advantages. “Dulcie needs a holiday. I think this year, after a quick tour of the Wonders, her father and I will take her abroad. If you can bear it you might stay on in the holiday camp with Rachelanhilary.”

  Pursey secretly thought there was nothing she would enjoy more than some Wintle-less weeks in a holiday camp. She could see herself watching whatever was going on while she had a cozy gossip with one of the matrons. As for Rachel and Hilary, bless their hearts, of course she could bear having them, and if they did not enjoy themselves it would not be old Pursey’s fault. But for everybody’s sake it was not a good idea to look too pleased, so she only said in her cozy voice: “That’s the idea, you go off somewhere. Nothing like abroad for a real change, they say. You leave Rachel and Hilary to me; they’ll be all right.”

  It turned out to be a glorious holiday for everybody. The Wintles went to Spain, where Dulcie watched and learned Spanish dancing while Uncle Tom wandered off alone blissfully painting. At the holiday camp the weather was perfect. Pursey spent hours talking happily to the matrons. Hilary lived on the sands, superbly happy playing and working with the Wonders.

  “See if you can wa
lk into the sea on your hands.”

  “Look, I can do this backwards.”

  Rachel, free for the first time in nearly two and a half years from Aunt Cora’s sharp eyes and despising face, enjoyed every second. Each day she bathed with Hilary and the Wonders, but when they started acrobatics she wandered off either to lie behind a rock nearby and read undisturbed or to walk along the sands dreamily, looking into the sea pools and watching the sea birds. When she was out of hearing of everybody she would work at Mrs. Storm’s homework, filling her lungs full of air while she told the sea gulls to “Make me a willow cabin at your gate” or that “The quality of mercy is not strain’d.”

  Then it was the autumn term again, and to everybody’s amazement, especially Mrs. Wintle’s, Mr. Al Purk’s, and, of course, Dulcie’s own, the little star was out of work. There was not a nibble. No television, no film, no theater. Then one day, just as the auditions for the Christmas shows were about to start, the telephone rang. It was Dulcie’s producer on the line. “I’m doing a new children’s show this Christmas, Mrs. Wintle.”

  Mrs. Wintle tried not to sound eager. “And you want Dulcie?”

  “No. The child I have my eye on is your niece Hilary.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Rose-Colored Glasses

  The play in which Hilary was to dance was not the sort of play in which the Wonders ordinarily appeared. It was an unusual children’s play called Rose-Colored Glasses, written by a well-known poet. Hilary did not care who had written Rose-Colored Glasses for she did not want a part in any play. She told the producer so when she was taken to see him. “What d’you want me for? I won’t be any good.”

  The producer was thoroughly amused. “I’m sorry if I’ve inconvenienced you. But there’s a comic robin in this new children’s play which I thought would suit you.”

  “Has he anything to say?”

  “No, it’s all mime with a little dancing.”

  Hilary gave in grudgingly. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to be him.”

  The producer laughed. “Don’t you want to? Most children would jump at the chance. I thought I was doing you a good turn.”

  “Well, you aren’t. All I want to be is just an ordinary Wonder, and look what happens to me. My first engagement is to understudy Dulcie, which nobody could like, and now I’ve got to be a robin. Wouldn’t you rather have somebody else? There are heaps of Wonders who’d be better than me.”

  The producer gave Hilary’s hair an affectionate rub. “You’re a card. But no, thank you. I’m sticking to you.”

  Mrs. Storm had read in the papers about Rose-Colored Glasses and was delighted that Hilary was to dance in it. “I hope we can see it. It ought to be a lovely production.”

  “I hope, as she’s a robin, Hilary will do real proper dancing,” Rachel said. “I expect she will. You couldn’t really do acrobatics or tap as a bird, could you? They don’t.”

  Mrs. Storm had no views about the sort of dancing robins would do, so Rachel daydreamed of Hilary with fluttering wings dancing on her pointes. She went further, she imagined someone from The Royal Ballet School seeing her and insisting that she leave Mrs. Wintle and go there to learn. So it was a nasty shock when Hilary came back from her first rehearsal and she heard what dancing she really had to do.

  It was a Saturday afternoon and classes were over, so the canteen was full of Wonders drinking tea and eating buns. Hilary sat on a table and told everybody, including Rachel, about her rehearsal.

  “The story’s about some children who come from where the sun always shines to live in London. They loathe it because they think it’s always wet and gray. Actually they’re rather soppy types.”

  Questions rang out.

  “How many children?”

  “Who plays them?”

  “What school trains them?”

  “They seem like amateurs to me,” Hilary said. “There are two boys and one girl. I think they’re relations of the author’s, or something like that.”

  “What happens next, Hilary?” one of the Wonders asked.

  “A spirit thing turns up. I heard someone say he was going to be dressed like a beefeater, but I shouldn’t think he is, because he has wings, which beefeaters couldn’t have. Anyway, he tells the children that he will lend them magic spectacles so they can see properly.”

  “Where do you come in?” Rachel asked.

  “When the spirit thing has lent the children invisible spectacles, which are pink, he sends for me to be their guide and take them back into historical times.”

  “But you dance, don’t you?” said Rachel.

  Hilary climbed off the table. “If you call it dancing. Clear a space and I’ll show you.”

  Hilary, of course, could not help making fun of herself being a robin, but even allowing for the fact that she was exaggerating it was clear to Rachel that there were no fluttering wings and no dancing on her pointes.

  “It’s a pity,” Rachel thought, “but one good thing, Hilary doesn’t really want to be the robin. It would be much worse if she liked doing that sort of dancing.” But even as she was thinking this a little nagging voice was whispering: “Hilary doesn’t want to be the robin because she’s lazy, it’s not because she isn’t dancing real ballet. And you know it.” Rachel could not silence the little nagging voice, for the seed planted by the Fairy Queen had taken firm root. Besides, deep inside her, she knew the voice was speaking the truth.

  As Christmas came nearer troupe after troupe of Wonders left London for provincial theaters, and most of those remaining in London were called to rehearsals. The school could not help gloating.

  “Dulcie’s almost the only child not working, except of course Rachel,” the Wonders whispered to one another. “I bet she feels awful with Hilary having a part while she’s out of work.”

  Dulcie did not mind Hilary’s having a part as much as the Wonders supposed, for she had heard what the part of the robin was like and knew it would not have suited her. But after Mr. Al Purk’s promises, and all that her mother had said about future contracts, she certainly was disappointed that no work was offered her.

  Mrs. Storm felt a kind of admiration for Dulcie at that time. Any other conceited child who had been praised and made a fuss of would, she thought, have felt a bit subdued when no engagement turned up after all the talk about a glittering future. But not Dulcie. Whatever she felt inside, there was not a sign of it outside her, for she was just as bouncy and grand as if she were still playing a lead in the musical.

  Rose-Colored Glasses opened for matinées only, three days before Christmas. Because it had been her intention that Hilary should start her career that Christmas as an ordinary Wonder, Mrs. Wintle had to pretend that being the robin in Rose-Colored Glasses was not important. And from a money viewpoint it was not important, for Hilary earned very little more than she had earned as Dulcie’s understudy. But from the critics’ point of view Rose-Colored Glasses was an important play, partly because of the author and partly because it was a long time since there had been a good new children’s entertainment. Because she had let it be understood that she did not think anything of Hilary’s part Mrs. Wintle did not go to the first performance.

  “Will you take Rachel to see that little play Hilary’s in?” she said to Mrs. Storm. “It’s my busiest time, as you know. I’ll pop in and see it one day after Christmas.”

  It was Mrs. Wintle’s busiest time, though she could have managed the matinée if she had wanted to, and it was also everybody else’s busy time. Pat and Ena were rushing from theater to theater, and Wanda and Yolanta were serving meals at all hours. Dulcie, though bursting to know how good Hilary was, had no intention of admitting it, so instead of going to watch her performance she went with her mother to a dress rehearsal of Cinderella. So it happened that Mrs. Storm and Rachel were the only two people from the school in the theater at the first perf
ormance. And because their interest was in the acting and neither knew anything about the sort of modern dancing Hilary had to do they did not realize how good she was. After the performance there was a tea party at the author’s house for the children in the show, so Hilary did not go back to the school with Rachel.

  Rachel was having tea in the canteen when Mrs. Wintle and Dulcie came home from Cinderella.

  “How did Hilary get on?” Aunt Cora called out.

  Rachel jumped nervously and wondered what was the right answer. It would take too long to explain that it was mostly an acting play and Hilary had nothing to say. “All right, I think. People clapped.”

  “Mostly kids in the audience, I suppose,” said Dulcie.

  Rachel had spent the two intervals discussing the play and the acting with Mrs. Storm and had not noticed who was in the theater.

  “Grownups too, I think,” she said doubtfully.

  Mrs. Wintle carried her tray of tea to a table as far from Rachel as possible. Aggravating child, why did she have to look as if she were about to be beaten every time she spoke to her?

  “Oh well,” she said, biting back her thoughts, “I’m glad Hilary didn’t disgrace the school even if she didn’t shine. Come and have your tea, Dulcie, Mum’s girl must be tired.”

  The next day the papers were full of Rose-Colored Glasses, and nearly all of them had something nice to say about Hilary as the cheeky little robin. Some of the reviewers wrote just as good things about her as the best things they had written about Dulcie.

  Mrs. Wintle read the reviews with mounting anger. It was nonsense, Hilary was not as clever as that. It was probably a showy little part. She hated Hilary’s reviews so much she had to be angry with somebody. The person she chose was Rachel. It was intolerable, she told herself, how Rachel behaved to Hilary. Why couldn’t she be honest and admit Hilary was a success. “She was all right, I think,” and now look at the reviews.