by Adle Geras
Colour. Hugo smiled. He looked at the rose-pink velvet curtains and seat covers; the garlands of fat flowers and harps and ribbons all painted gold; the thick carpets in a darker shade of pink and thought it’s a bit like a fin-de-siècle brothel, but very pretty nonetheless.
Time to go back to the house. He edged out of the stalls and left the theatre, wondering whether to return along the covered walkway which Miss Fielding had told him she’d insisted upon. She had apparently told the architect, ‘You can’t have ballet dancers freezing their legs off on the way to class or a performance,’ and that was that. She was obviously the sort of person who was used to getting her own way, but of course she was quite right. Still, Hugo decided to walk back along the outdoor path, even though it was much longer than the indoor route. The rain had held off, but the wind was strong and it was colder than he’d expected. He pulled his cashmere scarf (a Christmas present from Claudia) close around his neck and set off along the ribbon of road that wound up through the garden.
To his right as he walked, the wide lawn, almost white with frost, stretched to the high hedge that separated Wychwood from the road that ran beside the river. He could see the water, sluggish, brown and slow at this time of year, and the moor rising up from the opposite bank. There was not a sign of human habitation anywhere he looked, though there were plenty of sheep dotted around the slopes in the distance.
‘It’s deserted!’ was Hugo’s thought when he’d first arrived at Wychwood. But it was beautiful, and he knew from the full houses that companies always played to during the Festival that no one minded having to travel some distance to get to the Arcadia Theatre. The nearest railway station was five miles away. The taxi firm that served the village consisted of two old Ford Escorts. It really was best to come to Wychwood by car. Hester Fielding had thought of everything. She’d managed to persuade the farmer who was her nearest neighbour to sell one of his fields et voilà … there was a car park tucked away behind the theatre, hidden by a screen of trees and quite out of sight of the house.
There’s such a lot of sky everywhere, he thought. It was like a dome over everything and the patterns of cloud and the play of light turned it into something different whenever you looked. All his professional life, he realised, had been spent in boxes of one kind and another. The stage sets in which his dancers moved pretended to be forests, mountainsides, town squares, fairy kingdoms and so forth, but in truth they were nothing but paint on canvas always, and on every side, flat and confining. From the stalls you had an illusion of limitless space. Designers and lighting men were good at creating the lie, but it was a lie and that was part of the magic. And the theatre was another box, a larger one with the stage set enclosed within it.
He passed a few flowerbeds on his left. He could see the pruned roses that would doubtless flower in profusion during the summer. Bushes lined the drive, camellias and rhododendrons so well established they were practically trees. Someone had told him that gardeners came in from the village to keep the grounds looking at their best all year round.
Hugo felt an unaccustomed surge of pure happiness pass through him. He was here, at Wychwood, and in a matter of days every critic in the country, everyone who was anyone in the world of ballet, would be sitting in the theatre’s pink plush seats, looking at his work; something he’d created, something different from anything they’d ever seen.
He was aware of his reputation. Hugo’s wonderful, people said, but his heart’s not in anything really avant-garde. He’s a romantic when it comes right down to it, yearning for the days of Petipa and Diaghilev. For Carradine (Hugo remembered the whole review by heart. You always remember the bad ones) it’s as though the last fifty years had never happened.
Well, fuck Alasdair Clough, Hugo thought. That bastard’s going to change his tune when he sees Sarabande. He’d have changed it already if only he’d bothered to come and see Silver Girls. Hugo’s reinterpretation of Giselle, with the Wilis transformed into disco dancers in a Seventies style club had been a huge hit. Somehow the pathos and madness of the original had moved with no problem to the modern setting. The contrast between the music and the decor had been sensational.
Thinking of Silver Girls brought Silver into his mind. She was the most exciting talent he’d seen for a long time, though he wondered how far she’d be prepared to push herself. It had struck him during the audition that if she had a fault it was the kind of laziness that goes with great gifts. People who were particularly brilliant often felt they didn’t have to make the same effort as everyone else. Well, he thought, she’ll soon find out that I expect the best – demand it even – and that I’m not afraid to impose my will on the company. He knew very well that he was known as a perfectionist, but what that meant was a possibility at least of achieving perfection. Hugo wasn’t interested in anyone who didn’t share his aspirations and Silver would have to adjust to the customs of the company. She was right at the start of her career. He could help build her growing reputation with the part of the Angel in this ballet. Already he was thinking of new steps, new patterns, that he could fit into his vision of the whole to take advantage of her height, her youth and her famous athleticism. He realised he was looking forward to starting work with her, showing her the set and playing her the music for the first time. How would she react to it?
Edmund Norland’s piece was perfect, just what he needed. It’d knock everyone’s socks off. So far only Claudia had heard it. Lovely, darling, she’d said, but she said that about so much that it was hard to know what she really thought of it. She hadn’t been in Silver Girls because she’d committed to a tour of France with Nutcracker, dancing the Sugar Plum Fairy, and although Hugo told her he was devastated not to be able to cast her, secretly he was relieved. Giselle had to be terribly vulnerable and young, sixteen or so, and he’d been lucky to find Ilene to do it. Claudia was thirty-six and, whichever way you sliced it, that was too old for an awful lot of parts these days. Sarabande would be okay, he hoped. The Princess in that could be more than a girl. He’d made a point of creating a ballet that would suit Claudia’s style; choreographing something that wouldn’t be too athletic or taxing where her role was concerned, and he wondered if she was aware that he was, in effect, working round her. Certainly Silver and Nick would have more obviously eyecatching solos and pas de deux. All Claudia had to do, for the most part, was react to them. She’d be fine, he was sure of it. The Princess was on stage from beginning to end and that, to Claudia, would mean she was the star. Hugo sometimes wondered about his lover’s intelligence, and then immediately chided himself for disloyalty. She was beautiful, she was sexy, and she said she loved him. What more can I ask for, he thought, and then smiled. Just thinking like this meant that in some way he felt justified in asking for more.
He sighed, and resolved to stop worrying about these things until he had to. He had never wanted to do anything else but what he was doing now – making one ballet after another, finding patterns for bodies to move in, urging dancers to leap and turn and be everything they could possibly be. Now he’d been chosen by the great Hester Fielding herself from among dozens of other choreographers and he knew that he had a chance to consolidate his already excellent reputation.
His career had happened almost by accident. As a boy, he’d been keen enough on ballet to start in classes, but by the time he was seventeen he was six foot two and much too tall to become a professional dancer. In any case, he was beginning to read more and more and had started to wonder whether he might not be a writer of some kind, a journalist perhaps. He went up to Queen’s College, Oxford, to read English and came back to ballet when a friend of his, who was directing a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, needed a short dance for the fairies to perform. He’d asked Hugo to help him. Hugo enjoyed the experience so much; was so delighted to be back in the world of movement and music, and so pleased to find himself in charge of everything that happened, that he made up his mind to pursue choreography as a career.
When h
e came down from Oxford, he’d managed to find a job as assistant to Julian Flannard in the Flannard Ballet Company, and had done nothing else ever since. Choreography suited him perfectly, and when Julian retired Hugo took over his company and renamed it after himself.
He knew that when he stood in front of a company of dancers he became a different person from the one who walked about in the non-ballet world. He liked his own way and wasn’t afraid of putting people’s backs up to get it. He’d been known to reduce young dancers to tears in class and at rehearsal, but was so kind and pleasant to them afterwards that no one bore grudges for very long, mainly because Hugo was able to demonstrate how much better this or that dancer was performing now that they were obeying his orders. He was intensely musical, imaginative, and intelligent, and while he never showed off about it, he made a point of being honest with himself. So okay, he had a reputation for strictness, but his dancers always said he was a good listener.
He looked at his watch. Claudia would soon be here and with her what he was beginning to think of as the Claudia Problem. This was complicated, and Hugo hated complications. Frequently, they sorted themselves out if you left them alone, one way or another, but Claudia was a special case. He had begun to wonder lately whether he really loved her. Things she did, ways in which she spoke to poor Alison, had begun to get to him. If ever he dared to chide her, she froze him out or made a scene, spitting at him that Alison was her daughter and none of his business. There had been times over the last few months when he had seriously considered telling her it was all over between them. He had almost convinced himself that this was the best thing to do when the Wychwood competition happened, and then he’d had to cast Sarabande and she was perfect as the Princess, and that was how things were.
Claudia never admitted her age in any of the many interviews she gave, and it was quite true that she did look stunning most of the time. But for how much longer would she still be credible as a principal, still be able to dance the roles that required real physical strength and flexibility? It was only a matter of time before she’d have to lower her sights and take on character parts. He didn’t want to have to be the one to break that news to her. Hugo sighed. I’ll deal with it when I have to, he thought. It’s time to go and find something to eat. On his way to the kitchen, he thought about Hester Fielding and how nervous he’d been when he came to the audition. He’d waited for some time in her office before she came in to interview him, fascinated by the photographs that showed her in her youth. In some of the pictures she couldn’t have been much more than Alison’s age, and when he met her he could still see something of the girl she used to be.
1947
Ballet classes had been cancelled because of the weather. Snow was piled high at the side of the village street and the roads were icy and dangerous. Madame Olga thought it best to declare that the Christmas holidays would last a little longer. Estelle, though, was specially privileged. Because she lived so near Wychwood House, she was allowed to wrap up warm and walk through the village and up the drive to continue practising every day.
Estelle loved these visits, when she had Madame Olga entirely to herself. She would pretend that Wychwood House was her home, and that she didn’t live with the Wellicks but here in this place which was still a little mysterious to her. Even though she’d been coming to dancing lessons since she was nine – four years – it was only recently that Madame Olga had started talking to her as though she were more important to her than the other girls who came to Wychwood to learn to dance. During the freezing weather, Estelle had felt herself growing closer and closer to her teacher.
‘This is what we do in Russia,’ Madame Olga said, sitting down at the kitchen table and smiling at her as she poured the tea. ‘I do not have a samovar, but I have my mother’s tea glasses.’
‘What’s a samovar?’ Estelle asked.
‘It’s for the tea. Like, what do you call it, an urn? Yes, an urn. And we will also eat something delicious.’
The chocolates were kept in a drawer of the kitchen dresser. Estelle had no idea where Madame bought them, but she knew that they must have used up lots and lots of sweet rations. They were called langues du chat, cats’ tongues: long, thin strips of pleasure which they shared while Madame told stories about the good old days when she was still a dancer.
‘I wish I could be like you,’ Estelle said. She had looked carefully at every photograph on the sitting-room wall, poring over the detail of every costume, every headdress, every pair of shoes. She could recite the names of every ballet and the character Madame Olga had danced in them: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Coppélia, Ondine, Firebird. Especially Firebird. Ever since Madame had told the story of the magic golden bird who helped Prince Ivan defeat a wicked enchanter, Estelle knew that the part must have suited Madame Olga better than any other because she looked so bird-like, and because she wore shawls in fire colours – reds and browns and golds.
‘You will be a better dancer than me. This I promise you, my child.’ Madame Olga took a long sip of her tea and looked sternly at Estelle. ‘You do not let them stop you, do you understand? Soon, you will be ready to move on. You must go to London to study and to work. Perhaps very soon.’
‘But I don’t want to leave you. I want you to be my teacher for always.’ Estelle felt a black sorrow weighing on her. Was Madame Olga also going to send her away?
‘This would be a pleasure for me, too, but you are a dancer, and you must develop your gift in the best possible way. Next week, you will meet my good friend, Piers Cranley. I have told you about him many times and he is a fine man. His family have been my friends since I came to England. Without them, I would have no friends, I think. They have always helped me. And Piers, he is the best of the family. I have asked him to come and look at you. If he likes you, if he is willing to take you into his company, then you must go. It is the best way.’
‘I won’t be allowed.’
‘You speak of your father? He will prevent you?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t write to him very often. I could ask him, but I think he’d like me to have an ordinary job. To be a teacher, perhaps. Or a nurse.’
‘You want to be a nurse? Never!’ Madame Olga looked quite shocked.
‘No, of course I don’t. I want to dance. Just like you.’
‘Then we will wait for Piers to come. Everything depends on him. If he thinks as well of you as I do, then you will be in his company. I will arrange everything. You leave such matters to me.’
Estelle spent the next week in a dream. Sometimes she could imagine herself in London in a proper company with other dancers, working hard in class in the morning, rehearsing in the afternoon, performing in the evening. She knew about the life from Madame Olga. Were there parts for girls of nearly fourteen? Clara in Nutcracker was one. And perhaps she could also be one of the cygnets in Swan Lake, dancing to that music, the music that went round and round in her head.
While Paula slept, Estelle would lie awake in her bed thinking about the costumes she would wear: jewelled and feathered and silky; organza and tulle. Her ballet slippers would be made of satin and she wouldn’t have just one pair, but dozens and dozens. She’d need black and white and pink and blue and red. She’d curtsey in front of the apricot and blue footlights and people in the audience would throw flowers at her feet.
Those were the good dreams. At other times, when she was feeling less cheerful, Estelle had visions of Madame Olga asking permission from her father and being turned away at the door. Or getting a letter from him … yes, that was how it would be, because Papa was in France … a letter saying, I will most certainly never give permission for my daughter to become a ballet dancer. She is far too young to leave the Wellick household and live in London at her age. I sent her to England to be properly educated and properly educated she will be. You are wasting your time, Madame.
By the time the day of Piers Cranley’s visit arrived, Estelle had persuaded herself that joining a proper ballet company in L
ondon would never happen. She’d be condemned to remain in the life she’d been leading, stuck in the depths of the countryside in the dismal Wellick house until she was twenty-one and could do exactly what she wanted to do. But, of course, by then it would be much too late for her to become a ballerina. She could reduce herself to tears simply by thinking about it.
She didn’t tell anyone else what she was feeling. Her friends – Pam and Betty at dancing class and Felicity at school – knew nothing of her ambitions. They’d have thought she was ‘showing off’. Wanting to perform on a public stage was the most obvious kind of showing off there could possibly be. They wouldn’t have understood it. Estelle knew what they thought of her.
She was shy and rather quiet in class and she never ventured an opinion unless someone called on her specifically. But her answers when she did give them were usually correct and Miss Wilcox noticed this.
‘You’re a dark horse, Estelle dear. I’m sure you’re capable of much more than you’re giving, especially in English,’ she said.
Estelle just smiled at her. She’d been cultivating an enigmatic, mysterious smile for a long time. Sometimes, as a special treat, Auntie Rhoda took the girls to the cinema in Leeds and Estelle read the film magazines greedily. She used to study the faces – Garbo, Dietrich, Vivien Leigh, Merle Oberon – and notice how they looked when they were smiling. Then she imitated them, and she was good at it. She regarded this as part of her ballet training because Madame Olga had often said how very important acting was for a dancer.