by Adle Geras
‘Hester?’
‘Edmund! How lovely to hear from you! What a surprise …’
In the second between hearing Edmund’s voice and speaking herself, before she had time to adjust what she was saying, Hester knew that bad news was coming. Edmund never phoned. He hated the idea of speaking without being able to see the person at the other end. Telephones were, in his opinion, for emergencies only. She imagined a warning vibration on the line, and the moment between dreading and actually knowing spun itself out, stretched and lengthened for second after second, as though the whole world were slowing to near-stillness. But the words came at last, and as soon as she heard them, Hester wished she’d never answered the phone, never admitted that, yes, she was there and ready to hear whatever was coming.
‘Hester, darling, I’m sorry,’ said Edmund. ‘I’m in Vienna. I’ve just spoken to Virginia. She phoned me from New York. I knew I had to tell you at once. It’s Adam.’
‘Something’s happened to him?’ Part of her wanted to say what business is that of mine? Adam Lennister has been nothing to me for over thirty years … why should I care what’s happened to him? but Edmund, as he always seemed to do, guessed what was in her mind.
‘I know you haven’t been in touch and so forth, but still. I do feel you must know. You might have seen it in the papers tomorrow anyway, and I couldn’t bear the thought of you happening on it, just like that. He’s dead, Hester. Adam died yesterday from a heart attack. He didn’t suffer any pain, apparently. He was working. In the library of the New York house, because they’re always over there for Thanksgiving and Christmas, aren’t they? I’m so sorry, darling Hester. So sorry …’
‘Yes,’ said Hester. What else could she say? She felt as though all the words she used to know had flown out of her head. Edmund sounded on the verge of tears himself. It reminded Hester of how upset he’d been on the one occasion when they’d really quarrelled. She found that she was clutching the receiver so hard that her wrist and her fingers hurt. Breathing had suddenly become almost impossible, a matter for the utmost concentration. I must say something to Edmund, she thought. He was Adam’s best friend.
‘Edmund, I don’t know what to say. I’m so, I’m so …’ she managed to stammer, after an effort to move her mouth into the right shape. ‘You must be very sad. Would you like to come up here?’
‘I’d have adored that, Hester, but I’ve got to stay here for a couple of days … they’re doing one of my symphonies and I can’t miss it … and then of course there’s the funeral. I have to go to that. But I’ll come straight to Wychwood afterwards. Is that all right? I could get there on the second of January. How does that sound?’
‘Oh, Edmund, do come as soon as you possibly can. I can’t talk now, because I’ve got some wretched journalist coming to interview me about this year’s Festival.’ She laughed, but with no mirth in the sound. ‘It’s the last thing I feel like doing now.’
‘I’ll be there soon, Hester. Will you be all right? I’ll be thinking of you.’
‘I’ll be fine. The show must go on, right? I’ll see you soon. Goodbye.’
Is this me, uttering such clichés, Hester wondered. The show must go on. I don’t care, she thought. This cliché is particularly comforting and also true. She believed it. What would become of her if the show didn’t go on was too dreadful to think about.
The funeral. Virginia would be seeing to it now. Death made a horrifying amount of work. There were so many arrangements, so much to see to – perhaps, she reflected, precisely in order to occupy people who otherwise would want to do nothing but crawl under their blankets and howl and howl like wounded animals.
She tried to recall Adam as he used to be, long ago in the days when he was her lover, but so many images flickered through her mind that a kind of nausea washed over her. Other pictures came and went but the one she kept returning to was that of his dead body. All she could bring to mind was closed eyes and pale skin and white limbs stiff under a cold sheet – not the man whose body she used to know as well as she knew her own.
Hester put the phone down and walked to the window. She pressed her forehead against the glass, and looked out at a garden that was nothing but frost-whitened lawn and shrubs, and leafless trees making strange shapes against the grey sky. Dying isn’t the worst thing, she thought, and found that she was trembling. Being buried, that’s worse. The idea of burial, the notion that there he would be, real flesh, real bone, gone and underground forever was, as it always had been, an unbearable thought. Hester took a deep breath. It had been years since Adam was anything to do with her. She’d been sure that she’d left him and all the love she used to feel for him far behind, but now that he was dead she wanted to call his name, cry it out aloud, and found that she couldn’t.
Her hands were icy cold in the warm room. I must call Ruby. I can’t be alone. But I can’t … I can’t tell her. The journalist is coming any minute now. I must pull myself together.
She was brought out of her confusion by Siggy. An enormous ginger and white tom, with gooseberry coloured eyes, he’d chosen this moment to leave the window sill and jump on to Hester’s writing table, treading delicately over her papers. He settled himself against a small pile of copies of the last Wychwood Newsletter, the one that had gone out to Friends of the Festival a few weeks ago. Hester picked up the top copy and glanced at it, happy to be distracted:
As we move into winter, attention always turns to the upcoming Festival and Friends are eager to know who will present the 1987 ballet. This year’s competition has been won by Hugo Carradine, the 34-year-old founder and choreographer of the Carradine Ballet, who made such a sensation last year with his Silver Girls. The projected work for the Festival is called Sarabande. Hugo says, ‘It’s based on an ancient Persian fairytale, but we’ve built a series of almost abstract variations round the story. It’ll be sensual and passionate with lavish decor and costumes in the Bakst tradition. We’re very fortunate that Claudia Drake has agreed to dance the principal role of the Princess.’
Wychwood House welcomes the company from 27 December for the customary rehearsal period at the Arcadia, and the first night will take place on 6 January as always and run for ten performances. The Box Office opens on 25 November 1986.
George Stott (Secretary, Friends of the Wychwood Festival and Arcadia Theatre Manager)
‘You’re getting in the way, Siggy,’ Hester said, sweeping her hand gently over his back and putting the Newsletter down. Her table was under the window so that there would always be something interesting to look at if she tired of whatever she was doing: the monkey-puzzle tree and, criss-crossed by its spiky branches, the roof of the Arcadia Theatre, built in a small dip in the landscape a little way away from the house. Every time she looked at it, she felt proud. It had been her idea, her brainchild, and it was now the home of the annual Wychwood Festival which, over the ten years it had been in existence, had become a highlight of the ballet calendar. The countryside beyond the garden changed colour with changes in the weather, and today it was how Hester liked it best, with the moors almost purple behind the house and disappearing into clouds in the distance. A flurry of sleet almost obscured her view of the tall, intricately patterned wrought-iron gates.
There was a knock at the door. ‘Come in.’
Ruby entered with Jemima close behind her.
‘Are you ready, Hester?’ Ruby asked. ‘This is Jemima Entwhistle …’ She paused, and Hester knew that she’d noticed that something was not quite right. Ruby always knew when something was troubling her. ‘Yes thanks, Ruby. I’m quite ready.’
Then she smiled at the young woman who was hovering near a chair. ‘Hello, Jemima, it’s nice to meet you. Please sit down.’
*
Hester’s face was still streaked with tears when Ruby came in with coffee and biscuits. She put the tray down and said ‘I’ve brought a drink for you both … but what’s wrong, Hester? I knew you weren’t looking yourself. Where’s Miss Entwhistle?’
>
‘I had a call from Edmund,’ Hester said. ‘Just before you brought her in. He told me that Adam died yesterday. Of a heart attack.’
Ruby knelt down beside Hester and put a hand on her knee. ‘Oh, my dear! My poor Hester. How dreadful! How could you think of giving an interview when you’d just been told something like that? You should have cancelled; Miss Entwhistle would have rescheduled it, I’m sure.’
‘I didn’t want to. I wanted all interviews over with before the company arrives for rehearsals. And I was doing very well. I felt quite proud of myself. She had no idea anything was wrong, but—’
‘What happened?’ Ruby took the chair opposite her and began pouring the coffee. ‘What did she say?’
‘She asked me about Christmas, why we don’t celebrate it. I changed the subject, of course. Then she asked me why I hadn’t married and I just lost my temper and sent her away. Awful of me, really.’
Ruby didn’t comment. It would be hard for her, Hester realised, to say anything without mentioning the longest night, 21 December, which was the anniversary that neither of them ever referred to. They managed very well for the most part and the past remained the past, but the dreams were something over which Hester had no control.
For night after night, her sleep would be untroubled, but then, prompted by who knew what, the nightmares would come back; the ones from which she woke with tears still wet on her face. Could you cry in your sleep? Evidently you could. Whatever effort you made to put a terrible experience behind you, however hard you sealed it off in a compartment labelled do not talk about, ever; do not acknowledge existence of ever, what you were trying to forget was still there. She had arranged to hold the Festival at this time of year precisely so that she could have all her waking thoughts taken up with that, and now here came the news of Adam’s death to throw her plans into confusion. He had been in New York. Hester had no proof of course, but she was quite sure that he spent every year from November till January in the States precisely so as to be somewhere far away when the anniversary occurred, and thus less likely to think of her.
Hester shook her head. ‘Let’s not dwell on it, Ruby. There’s work to be done. It’s going to be a good season, I think. We’ve got a wonderful company coming.’
She stood up and reached for a list which had been half-hidden behind Siggy’s curved back and read aloud to Ruby. ‘Carradine Ballet Company: Hugo Carradine, Claudia Drake, Silver McConnell, Andy French, Nick Neary, Ilene Evans, and Alison Drake (Ms Drake’s daughter).’
When she’d read the names out, Hester smiled at Ruby, doing her best to appear normal, wanting more than anything for things to go back to where they were. She had no desire to mention her feelings. If I talk about the Festival, she thought, then Ruby will humour me. She’ll know I don’t want to talk about Adam. She took a deep breath.
‘It’s going to be interesting,’ she said, ‘to see how Claudia Drake will react to being in the same company as Silver McConnell. Claudia’s very temperamental, they say, and she’s forever in the newspapers. The photographers adore her. But Silver is by all accounts the new sensation. She’s just done Odette/Odile – the best for years, the critics said. They compared her to me. My Swan Lake in 1959. Do you remember that?’
‘Of course,’ said Ruby. ‘How could I forget the most famous Swan Lake of the last fifty years?’
‘You’re biased, Ruby! But thank you. In any case, Hugo Carradine was lucky to get Silver McConnell. As I told Jemima Whatsit, it’s probably only because we have such a short run that she was able to accept the part. We’ve got a very starry lot all round this time. Nick Neary’s the one who made such a sensation in La Bayadère last year, do you remember?’
‘The beautiful creature? Yes, I remember him. Too pretty for his own good. He’ll be conceited, I shouldn’t wonder. They don’t have to work so hard if they’re handsome.’
‘He’s a good dancer, though. Very energetic, and technically excellent too.’
‘It’s going to be a tremendous success, this year, I’m sure. There’s quite a lot to get ready in Wardrobe before their costumes arrive. I’d better go and make a start on it, if you’re sure you’re all right.’
‘You go on, Ruby. I’m perfectly all right. I’ll stay here for a while.’
Ruby was at her happiest when she was up in Wardrobe. She’d always had what Hester thought of as magic hands. She could take a piece of fabric and turn it, at will it seemed, into almost anything. She could mend a tear completely invisibly. Stains disappeared from garments as though they’d never existed, and her iron nosed its way into ruffles, flounces, and the most difficult of shirts and left nothing but perfection in its wake. Now she organised the wardrobe for every visiting company and looked after the smooth running of the house as well, with Joan and Emmie coming in every day to do the cooking and cleaning.
Hester closed her eyes as Ruby leaned over and kissed her cheek. She wasn’t a demonstrative woman and whenever she made an affectionate gesture, Hester was pleasantly surprised and pleased. There aren’t very many people I love in the world, she reflected. There’s Dinah, who’s been such a loyal and lovely friend for so long, and Edmund and Ruby. They love me too, I think. Whenever she brought them to mind, Hester felt as though she’d found a small patch of warmth in a world that seemed to her increasingly chilly. Such a pity that Dinah lived in New Zealand and that their relationship had to be conducted mostly by letter. She chided herself for not including Kaspar Beilin among her nearest and dearest. Darling Kaspar, with his white-blond hair and extravagantly camp style had been her dancing partner for years. Fielding and Beilin were a pair always spoken of together. Since his retirement, a few years after her own, he’d taken up residence in San Francisco and Hester couldn’t help dreading what so many of her acquaintances were fearful of these days: AIDS. She shivered and closed her eyes. Make an effort, she told herself. You can’t worry about Kaspar now. There is too much to do here with the Festival about to begin. And now there’s Adam’s death as well. Hester was used to his not being a part of her life, but dead? It was as though a cold hand had gripped her heart.
Ruby smiled at Hester as she was about to leave the room, saying, ‘I’ll be back in time for dinner. With George, if I can get him to stop what he’s doing in the lighting box. Will we see you then? Are you quite sure you won’t …’ Ruby paused to find the right word. ‘Brood on things?’
‘No, I won’t. I’ll be fine. I’ll just lie down on the chaise-longue for a while before dinner. Gather my thoughts.’
Ruby closed the door behind her. Once she was alone, Hester reflected for the thousandth time on how lucky she was to have Ruby here with her, just as she had been for the past thirty-four years. Ruby understood her. She knew better than to jolly Hester along. She knew how important it was for someone to have time to think about things. Ruby was part of the family. What had she said to the journalist? The Wychwood family.
*
The members of the Carradine Company would be here in a few days. Hugo Carradine was an attractive young man, and Hester knew he was overjoyed at the commission. He was talented and successful and well-thought of, with a reputation, even at his age, as a bit of a perfectionist. Dancers, it seemed, were rather in awe of him and he was reputed not to take any nonsense from anyone. Well, there was nothing wrong with that. Hester admitted that she was a perfectionist herself and couldn’t really understand anyone who was satisfied with second best. Still, winning in an open competition hinges on such small things. She would never tell anyone that what gave Hugo her casting vote on a panel that was divided between him and another was his choice of music: Sarabande in F minor by Edmund Norland. Of course, he may have known that Hester and the composer had been good friends for many years. That wasn’t a secret, and if he’d done his research, he’d have found it out. What he couldn’t possibly have known, Hester thought, is what that piece means to me, or the circumstances in which it was written.
She remembered the day Edmund had playe
d her the opening melody, how he’d sat at the piano and said I’ve written something for you. Listen, Hester. All the sumptuous laziness of the East. Doesn’t it make you feel better just to hear it? No more Northern gloom for you from now on. She smiled.
But it wasn’t only that, she told herself. Hugo was the best choreographer we saw. And I liked him better than any of the others, even without that private reason. I liked him at once, from the first moment I saw him. His smile was so open, and his warmth and love of the dance so evident in everything he said that I knew he was the sort of person I would enjoy welcoming to Wychwood House. There must be something wrong with me, Hester thought. Even after the shock I’ve had, I’m still looking forward to all of them arriving. The house is too quiet. It will be good to have it full of dancers again. Full of music and laughter.
Wychwood House had once belonged to a Victorian mill-owner. It was a handsome, square building of grey stone with magnificent wrought-iron gates set into solid stone gateposts; a house with a confident façade and an air of being rooted firmly in the landscape, almost a part of nature. It hadn’t always looked like that. When Hester had first seen it, as a very young girl, it was shabby and neglected and the local children used to call it the Witch’s House.
It’s different now, she thought. Between March and November, three young men from the village came in twice a week to keep the garden looking perfect. Flowerbeds filled with roses bordered the path from the house to the theatre. George loved old-fashioned roses and he was the person who oversaw all the work that went on in the grounds. Hester herself had mixed feelings about flowers of all kinds and roses in particular, though she would never have admitted it. Each individual bloom was pretty of course, but only for a little while before it became overblown and brown around the edges of the petals. Flowers had such a short life and were so quickly less than perfect. Hester preferred shrubs and evergreen trees, and often thought the flowerbeds looked best in winter when the plants had been pruned and nothing but sharp little twigs stuck up out of the black earth.