White Ice

by Celia Brayfield

  ‘He hates getting wet and cold,’ her sister muttered as they toured the area where an Elizabethan herb garden was planned. It had rained for several days without stopping and the area looked like a World War I battlefield, all mud, holes and duckboards. Bianca found her enthusiasm for horticulture ebbing. Perhaps it was another of those womanly accomplishments she had mastered because everyone approved of her doing so and, she had to admit it, because her mother despised them. Certainly a well-grown erythronium no longer seemed like an achievement.

  Hugh relied upon her more and more, until she was travelling to London almost every day. His interests, she realized, extended beyond the firm itself. He admired and advised the National Art Collections Fund, a charity which made grants to galleries and museums to help them acquire important works for the nation. Now a European foundation with similar aims, and an added interest in harmonizing the EEC legislation on exporting works of art, was being formed. He spent as much of his time travelling, and meeting politicians and civil servants, as he did in his office. It made him feel that his grip on the firm was unsure.

  Berrisford’s headquarters, the saleroom, strongrooms and offices, once strange and forbidding, began to seem like a third home and the people who worked there became friends. Friends – people to whom she was attracted through common interests and values – had been absent from her life for some years; instead she had used the parents of her children’s friends and Lovat’s associates for company.

  When the contracts for the sale of the Manor had been exchanged, Hugh invited her to join the firm. She refused, but the next day one of the directors telephoned her. Martin Pownall was said to be the best business-getter in London; he was a handsome, dark-haired volatile man whom she favoured because Lovat had always dismissed him as ‘smooth’. ‘I do wish you would change your mind, Bianca,’ he began. ‘Hugh promised to give you to me if you said yes.’

  ‘Are we talking about Mayfair in 1980 or the slave market in Algiers?’

  He giggled, being the kind of English public-school casualty who had to laugh at any sexual inference to make embarrassment sound like enjoyment. ‘I admit he drove a hard bargain. Joking apart, I asked him. We’d never have got those Post-Impressionists without you.’ Bianca granted the truth of that; her father, by his diffident manner, had unconsciously offended the young provincial solicitor who found himself, as the executor of a collector’s estate, obliged to deal with the kind of metropolitan sophisticates he had despised all his life. Knowing that he had failed, Hugh left his daughter to take the man to lunch. She chose the Caprice, talked about painting, pointed out Tina Turner at the end table, and, without knowing it, flattered him silly. ‘So are you going to let us sell your paintings or not?’ she asked him, feeling she would not be worth much if she never put the question, and was almost shocked when he stammered, ‘Well, yes, I think so.’

  ‘You couldn’t call it nepotism if you worked for me, could you?’ Martin had accurately identified the main source of her scruples.

  ‘No, not really.’ She made up her mind. ‘All right, tell him you’ve twisted my arm.’

  12. St Petersburg, 1912

  ‘Take The Catastrophe away, Charlotte, and have the maid bring us some tea.’ Lydia picked up her son as if he were some household object in need of cleaning and dumped him in the arms of his governess, whose tranquil face under her smooth black hair showed no surprise at hearing her charge routinely designated a disaster. The child immediately screamed a furious protest, flinging a wooden soldier to the floor. ‘For God’s sake, get rid of him, we’ve got to dance this evening and we need some peace.’

  ‘Here, little one.’ Tata bent to gather up the remaining wooden dolls from the floor and tuck them in the bib of the boy’s sailor suit. ‘You’re adorable but it’s time to play upstairs now.’

  ‘You want him?’ Lydia did not appear to be altogether joking. ‘Have him, darling, he’s all yours, tuck him into your bag and take him away. Just hope he doesn’t ruin your life like he ruined mine. Hurry up and get rid of him, Charlotte, he’ll give us a headache. Then you can join us for tea.’

  Without expression, the girl curtsied briefly and carried out her noisy burden. ‘How calm she is.’ Tata joined Marie by the window and the two women exchanged glances wondering how the servants managed in this lax, chaotic household.

  ‘Charlotte? She’s an absolute treasure, my life would be madness without her. Of course I was a fool to engage a governess for a baby, but nobody told me. I decided to keep her anyway, she’s cataloguing the Prince’s books for him,’ The pug dog, now a wheezing sphere of black fur, squeezed out of his sanctuary under the sofa and scrambled up on it. ‘Charlotte sees him more than I do, alas. But I don’t worry on that score, she’s quite immune to romance. They say all the English are. At least some good may come out of this disaster.’

  The older dancer’s Byzantine brown eyes enlarged still further with sympathy. ‘Oh don’t talk like that, Lydia, not about your son. What have you lost that could possibly compare to such a lovely child?’

  ‘His father for a start.’ Lydia threw herself on the chaise in an attitude of despair. ‘I’m sure I’ve lost half a dozen ballets, I could have been a prima by now. My youth, my beauty, my strength – what have I got left, Tata? And all because of The Catastrophe.’

  Carillons of laughter echoed around the salon. ‘Youth and beauty! I won’t hear a word more, come here at once.’ Marie seized Lydia by both arms and dragged her to the mirror. ‘Now look at yourself and if you don’t admit you’re lovelier than you’ve ever been I’ll pinch you.’

  The face in the mirror – the same Venetian glass which had almost sunk a gondola on their honeymoon trip – portrayed a thunderous sulk. Lydia had been in a bad temper with life for two years. It suited her, with the added edge of malevolence her looks departed from prettiness and became compelling. The depth of her eyes was deadly, the bow of her lips cruel and her most mundane movements seemed on the border of savagery. This dramatic beauty was lost on its owner, who mourned her old flower-like charm. ‘You’d better pinch me then,’ she shrugged, trying to straighten the bow of black and white chequered ribbon at the bosom of her afternoon dress. ‘I look like an old crow. No wonder he’s straying, who would want me looking like this?’

  ‘He’s coming tonight, isn’t he?’ inquired Tata in her most reasonable tone.

  ‘Later, he told Charlotte. You know what that means, later or never. Tata, what am I to do? He must have found another woman, somebody married or at least not so cursedly revoltingly fertile …’ Tears began to collect in the corners of her eyes. ‘And it was the baby, it was! As soon as I was well enough I knew it had all gone wrong. He was like a stranger, I hardly knew him. I tried to be sweet, but it wasn’t the same, how could it be? And we’d been in paradise, Tata, I swear, I didn’t know it was possible to be as happy as we were and now …’ She could hold them back no longer and the tears began to pour down her white cheeks. ‘Now I can’t even remember what it was like, not really, not the real feeling of happiness. All I know is that I was happy, but it’s gone, I can’t feel it any more.’

  Marie, who had at last chivvied a proposal out of Basil Nikonov, gave Lydia a handkerchief. Her blue eyes seemed full of sympathetic tears; she was feeling sorry for herself, since marriage now threatened to be a terrible ordeal.

  The real purpose of the afternoon was to distract Tata with the child and help her relax before she made her debut in Giselle. Instead the warm-hearted Tamara Platonova set her own anxieties aside to comfort Lydia. Surely, she argued, it was natural for love to mature, for an affair to grow, deepen and, inevitably, change? Surely a child was a bond which no man, let alone a man of Orlov’s character, would ignore?

  ‘And he is a good man, Lydia, I know that, a fine man, serious, intellectual…’

  ‘But I’m not and so he’s bored and he’s run off to some fat old bluestocking who can talk about poetry …’

  The maid brought in the tea
and slunk quickly away when she sensed the atmosphere in the room. Madame could throw things when she was upset. The pug, catching the ominous mood, decided that it would be prudent to retreat beneath the sofa once more. Charlotte appeared silently a few moments later and seated herself a respectful distance from her tearful mistress.

  Tata embraced her, now almost moved to tears herself. ‘Oh don’t cry, darling Lydia, you can’t do the peasant pas de deux with eyes like beetroots …’ Lydia was also to appear in Giselle, partnered by Leo, in a minor part in the first act.

  ‘I could do the peasants blind if I had to! I’ve being doing the bloody peasants for four bloody years! Why aren’t I getting anything better, Tata? I’ve only been given two ballets since I was promoted. Tell me truly, you are a good judge and you wouldn’t lie, am I really finished?’

  ‘Of course not! You’re dancing better than ever.’

  Marie agreed. ‘Everyone says so, you’re always improving.’

  ‘I just don’t trust myself any more. I don’t feel the same – in my body, I mean.’ Lydia struggled for the right words. She felt for her body the implacable hatred reserved for a friend who had committed an act of treachery. Although she had regained fitness almost immediately after the baby’s birth, she could not forgive the instrument on which she had counted for every benefit in life for first betraying her with sensuality and then, through pregnancy and the birth itself, disobediently changing all its properties while she, the rightful inhabitant, was powerless to control it. The memory of the uncanny flexibility of her joints in the first few weeks after she returned to classes still made her shudder inwardly.

  ‘I promise you, you are as strong as ever. You haven’t lost anything. And think what you’ve gained …’ Tata argued the point with an earnestness which prevailed on Lydia far more effectively than the sympathetic outpourings of other friends. ‘You are magnificent, you’re a marvel, a wonder and – now, forgive me for this cruel point but it is the sad truth of our lives as artists – wonderful as you are, you will be so much better because you are suffering now. It is only when you have felt terrible emotions yourself – pain and rage and grief to the degree of madness – that you have the depth in your own soul to reach into and pull out that feeling in your dancing. Trust in Providence, Lydia. Everything is for good in the end.’

  Lydia kissed her friend and thanked her for her wisdom, biting her tongue on the observation that since Tamara Platonova’s destiny seemed to be to be loved by many and moved by none the discussion was hypocritical on her side. Marie silently brooded on the tragedy of an artist’s life. The governess quietly refilled the tea glasses, and Tata pursued her argument.

  ‘You’re not being overlooked, I assure you, and if there is a conspiracy against you – more than the usual bitchery, I mean – I haven’t heard of it. You’re only twenty-three. Why, when I was your age I hadn’t even been made a ballerina. Have patience, everything will come in good time. The critics praise you, the gallery is in an uproar every time you dance. And you have some very distinguished admirers, you know.’

  Lydia rubbed her nose with her handkerchief. ‘Like who?’

  ‘Sergei Pavlovich admires you, he told me so. He said you danced like a living flame, isn’t that a beautiful compliment? In fact …’ Here she paused and her warm olive skin turned almost brown with blushing. Duplicity was not Tata’s forte. ‘He asked me to ask you if you would consider joining his company.’

  ‘Chinchilla? What company?’ Irritated, Lydia struggled upright from her attitude of despair on the chaise-longue. Was this whole pretence of sympathy and interest in her son just to gain her confidence before passing on Diaghilev’s proposition?

  ‘You know we’ve done two summers as the Ballets Russes in Paris now? And it has been a stupendous success.’ Seeing Lydia’s sceptical expression, she emphasized her words with a grave face. ‘I know people say he’s still in debt, but Lydia – I was there, I saw the audiences, I know … the Paris seasons have been an absolute sensation. Sergei Pavlovich has had offers from all over Europe – Germany, England, Austria, Italy, Sweden. Monte Carlo, everywhere.’

  ‘My parents wrote to me from London that people adored the Russian Ballet,’ the governess confirmed in a quiet voice. ‘People were desperate to get tickets – there was almost a black market.’

  ‘Sergei Pavlovich has decided he can’t possibly tour everywhere we’ve been asked in our break from the Maryinsky in the summer, and he’s tired of having to rely on the Court’s favour to get the dancers, the scenery and the costumes for the classics. So he’s forming his own company, with Mikhail Mikhailovich as choreographer. I will dance as a guest artist in the summer break – it’s all been properly arranged, with contracts. He says Anna Pavlova and Kchessinskaya are signing up too. And you could do the same.’

  ‘Mikhail Mikhailovich is leaving?’ Marie pulled the pug dog up on to her lap. ‘So he can put on his silly barefoot ballets, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes, he’s already resigned. And so have a couple of others.’ Tata mentioned their names, two young women and Adolph Bolm, who partnered her often but was close to the end of his career. Lydia made a disparaging grimace.

  ‘I can see some advantage to Adolph, he’ll get better roles in a smaller company. But the man’s mad, he’ll lose his pension and then what? Apart from you, Chinchilla won’t set the world on fire with that selection.’ Lydia dismissed the new company with a sniff of complacency. ‘What about Vaslav?’

  ‘He’s thinking about it. He’ll tell me tonight. I’m sure he’ll join. They just worship him in Paris. They adore us all, but Vaslav really is next to God as far as the French are concerned.’

  ‘And Chinchilla worships Vaslav everywhere.’ Marie rolled her eyes and sighed. ‘That man’s such a degenerate, Tata. It doesn’t seem like you to be part of his circus.’

  The ballerina put down her tea glass with a prim compression of her lips. ‘I think it’s a cruel misjudgement to give an ugly name to a condition which is just an oddity of nature. People’s private lives are their own to live in peace, I believe. When I think of his genius – and Lydia, he truly is a genius, even though he isn’t an artist himself, he is a man of such culture, so much energy, so many ideas and such a vision of what Russian art can be – when I think of that then everything else is irrelevant. He has done so much for me, Lydia. He has such intuition, he just says, “Let’s talk things over a while”, and then you begin to find that in your own mind you know the answer to all your problems.’ She saw that her enthusiasm was falling on deaf ears. Lydia had slipped off two of her rings and was trying their effect on different fingers. ‘Well, that’s all, I’ve done what I promised, I’ve asked you to join. Now let’s not argue, let’s take a nap ready for tonight.’

  Lydia admired the new arrangement of her jewellery at arm’s length as she rose. ‘I like to rest in the winter garden, the flowers are always so pretty. Charlotte, bring me my cashmere shawl and see that The Catastrophe doesn’t disturb us. Take him out for a walk or something.’

  From the moment they arrived at the theatre Lydia was aware of

  a peculiar atmosphere in the dressing rooms. The normal hum of anticipation seemed muffled. The scene-shifters and the dressers hurried about their work without cracking jokes. Even Mischa Alexandrov had no gossip to exchange and stood silently in the wings with his huntsman’s cloak wrapped closely around him, casting oblique glances to either side.

  Leo, who was to partner Lydia, appeared at the last moment with an agitated expression. ‘Where’s Vaslav?’ she whispered as the overture began and there was still no sign of Nijinsky.

  ‘There’s been an argument about his costume – now shut up,’ was the stern reply.

  He appeared very quietly a few moments before his entrance, wearing a short velvet jacket and tights, and stole to the wings with his eyes fixed on the ground, like a child pretending that if he looked at no one then no one would see him. The Renaissance trunk hose of slashed velvet which normally
completed the costume were missing, and the thin tights revealed his lower body in embarrassing detail.

  ‘The fool – he’s forgotten the hose. Trust a dumb Pole to do something like that,’ Lydia whispered again, with a giggle. ‘Go and tell him, Leo.’

  ‘No, he hasn’t forgotten. That’s the costume they designed for Paris.’

  ‘But it’s disgusting, it shows … well, everything. You can even see the seams in his jockstrap.’

  ‘I know. He says it gives a better line. Everyone’s been arguing with him.’

  ‘He’s right, though, the line is better without the hose, much more esthétique.’ This opinion was conveyed in a patronizing hiss by Inna, who stood close by with the other five dancers who portrayed the heroine’s friends. Having fallen out with Vaslav over her admiration for Isadora Duncan, Inna had taken up with Leo. They had married while Lydia had been travelling with Orlov, and she had been so uninterested that she had never even got around to congratulating them. In the past year, however, she had noticed that Inna never allowed Leo to have two words alone with her.

  ‘Vaslav can’t possibly dance like that!’ she murmured, ignoring the interruption. ‘It’s offensive – and the Empress is here tonight, too!’

  ‘He won’t listen.’

  The stage manager glared at them and they fell silent, knowing that a pause in the music was imminent and they would certainly be heard.

  Nijinsky was never communicative; he was by nature shy, but his gifts and his Paris success had brought him precocious advancement at the Maryinsky. Few men could have attempted the demanding debut in Giselle when barely twenty-one. Before a performance he was always so withdrawn as to seem half conscious, and then the miracle took place, and this unprepossessing, thick-set youth with slitty eyes flew into the light and was transformed into a god. That night he seemed to be more than ever in a world of his own, biting his nails as he waited to make his entrance.