by Adle Geras
*
Hester lay in bed, looked up at the sloping ceiling of Edmund’s spare room and listened to the sound of the sea. Fortunately, Edmund and Marisa’s room was on the other side of the cottage, through the sitting room and up a short flight of steps. At least she wouldn’t be disturbed by the noise of their lovemaking.
The sea. Hester loved it and was frightened by it. The sight of it from the window earlier in the day, twinkling and sparkling in the spring sunshine, was the kind of image you’d expect to find on the front of a tourist brochure. But she’d seen it when the wind was blowing. When gales lifted the waves and whipped them towards the coast, it wasn’t hard to see in your mind’s eye ships broken on black rocks and drowned men; what you heard was a wailing and shrieking in the air quite different from the gentle murmuring swish she was listening to now. Tomorrow, they’d be off along the cliff path. Maybe she’d make some excuse. Let the lovebirds go off into the distance together without her. Well, perhaps she’d go with them. She fell asleep before she’d made up her mind.
She did go with them. Edmund parked the car at the beginning of the cliff path and they set off on a slow walk towards the pub about two miles further up the coast. She had made an attempt, out of tact, to stay behind at the cottage but Edmund was having none of it.
‘Nonsense, Hester. We won’t hear of it. It’s a lovely day and I know you’re a great walker. And look at the sea. How can you resist? Turquoise stripes all the way to the horizon.’
She was following Edmund and Marisa now. The path was too narrow for three of them to walk abreast, but it was good to be alone with her thoughts for a short while. The sea was just as beautiful as Edmund had promised and she made up her mind to try and buy a postcard to send to Dinah that would show her what she was missing by living so far away from England.
Every so often, Edmund looked over his shoulder at her and called out, ‘Hester? You okay?’ and she would nod and wave at him and Marisa to show that yes, she was fine, and they mustn’t wait for her. She kicked some pebbles along the path with the toe of her walking shoe and thought how different they were from her ballet shoes. She’d be back in those soon enough.
Edmund and Marisa were ahead of her now and waiting for her to catch up with them. The wind was blowing a little more strongly, whipping Marisa’s long hair over her face. Hester began to walk a little faster to catch up with them.
Her eyes were on the horizon and not on the ground ahead of her. She didn’t see it. A rabbit hole on the edge of the path, hidden by a clump of grass. A rabbit hole just at the top of a small slope. Her left foot caught in the hole and she twisted herself to free it and fell a little way – only a very short distance – but she fell on the same foot and her twisting and falling ended in an explosion of agony. She had no breath in her body left to scream with, but she could hear a shrieking in her head. Her last thought was: Sylphides. How will I dance Sylphides?
*
‘Oh, you’re such a lucky lady,’ the nurse squeaked. She couldn’t have been more than twenty. ‘Look at all these flowers. I don’t think I’ve ever looked after anyone who’s had so many flowers. Well, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? You being famous and everything. My mum couldn’t believe it. When I told her, she said now be sure and get her autograph, Noreen, because she’s famous. A ballet dancer! Fancy!’
Was she going to stop now? No, Hester thought. Not yet. The words kept on coming.
‘You can’t imagine the fuss there’s been. Press and photographers in the car park there were, till they were sent packing. Well, it’s such a story, isn’t it? How that nice Mr Norland carried you in his arms all the way to his car and then drove you to hospital and came with you when you were brought here. Ambulance brought you all the way from Cornwall; I didn’t know they did long distances. And you were on the news. They said you were – I can’t remember, but something very good, anyway. Oh yes, a legend in her own lifetime, that was it. I’ve kept all the papers for you. They’re in a pile over there. Every single one had you on the front page, you know.’
Hester looked at her. She was carrying a vase of flowers. More flowers. The whole of the little room was full of them, like some funeral parlour.
‘Are you feeling all right?’ The nurse was still holding the vase in one hand. She put it down on Hester’s bedside table. How can I possibly feel all right, Hester thought. That has to be one of the stupidest questions I’ve ever been asked. I’m a dancer and I’ve been told I’ll never dance again. I want to kill myself. I want to take every single bloody flower that I’m so lucky to have and burn it in a huge fire. I don’t want to read about myself in the bloody papers. They can go on the fire as well.
Hester reached out and swept her arm over the surface of the bedside table in a wide arc and knocked the vase to the floor. Water spread over the linoleum. Flowers scattered under the bed. She burst into tears. The nurse stood in the middle of the whirlwind blinking, not knowing what to do.
‘Hester?’ Edmund had pushed open the door and was looking in at her. ‘What on earth’s been going on? Oh, Hester, darling … poor darling!’
Hester couldn’t speak. There were sounds in her head, a kind of keening. Were those noises coming from her? Edmund came and sat on the bed and put his arms around her.
‘I’ll look after you, Hester. You know I will. And Piers and Madame Olga. We all will. You must get better. You have to.’
‘Why do I have to?’ Hester’s voice, muffled against Edmund’s shoulder, broke through her sobs. ‘What for? What use am I to anyone if I can’t dance? That’s all I’m good for. Don’t tell me it could have been worse. I don’t want to have platitudes pushed at me. I won’t. I … oh, Edmund, I don’t want to go on living like this! Save me, Edmund. You always save me. Get me some pills. Lots and lots of pills so that I can take them and sleep and never have to wake up ever again.’
Hester waited for Edmund to object. She waited for him to cajole her, to comfort her, to say something, anything, that he thought might make her feel better, but he didn’t. He just sat on the bed and held her, in silence, for a long time. He stroked her hair and rocked her backwards and forwards, as if she were a small child. The tears kept falling and falling. There was no end to them. Hester felt, madly, that she was nothing but a vase herself, a thin, fragile vessel of glass filled with tears.
*
She calmed down in the end. It had been clear from the beginning that the compound fractures of both tibia and fibula in her lower leg meant she would never dance on stage as a professional ballerina again. Having the protection of the ballet suddenly removed was too much for her to bear. She became like a sea creature suddenly pulled wriggling out of her shell and left open to everything. She felt vulnerable and raw, as though her skin had been stripped away. Her career was over. What was to become of her? There was, she could feel it, a crust of ice around her heart. She couldn’t bear talking to anyone except Madame Olga and Edmund. She would have spoken to Piers too, but he’d taken the company to America. Because the show must go on, mustn’t it? Thinking of them dancing without her; thinking of her understudy, Patricia Blake, being partnered by Kaspar, taking her part, wearing her shoes, and the costume that had been designed for her, was a form of torture.
Hester stayed in hospital for two weeks, and then returned to Wychwood to recuperate. For a long time there was nothing anyone could say to her or do for her that made things better. The weather didn’t help. It was supposed to be spring, but there was rain always slanting across every window and the moors were grey and cold. The trees were late with their leaves that year and what she saw through them was a grid fashioned out of black branches. The chilliness of everything froze her up and she longed for the sun. Then, one morning, Madame Olga came to tell her that she was expecting a visitor.
‘Look,’ said Madame Olga, plumping the cushions behind her back, ‘here is sun. Today will be a good day.’
Hester looked out of the window and saw that the weather was making an ef
fort. It wasn’t sunshine, exactly, that was pouring into her room, but a kind of diluted glow. The next best thing to real warmth.
‘What visitor?’
‘You’ll see. I will help you to dress. Take the crutches and come here. We will make you very pretty today.’
This was a ritual they went through every day. Hester saw that Madame Olga had laid out the blue dress. She’d worn it last just before the accident, on the afternoon of the press conference announcing the American tour. They’re in San Francisco now, Hester thought. The whole company but not me. Never me again. Thinking about this made the tears rise to her eyes. She blinked them away and put the dress on as quickly as she could. Madame Olga handed her a powder puff, a lipstick and a hairbrush and she went through the motions.
Someone who wasn’t really her was staring out of the mirror. This was a person with dark shadows under her eyes. There was a greenish pallor to her skin. I’m like something that’s lived under a stone for a very long time, she thought. Which is just about right. Something – a tiny impulse of determination or anger or disgust rising within her – was perhaps the first sign of recovery. I can’t be like this, Hester thought. I must become myself again.
She had no idea how she would make that happen, but felt, for the first time in weeks and weeks that she wanted to change herself. Also, she noticed that she was curious. She wanted to know what the surprise was, and had started to experience something other than despair. It was the first time she’d cared about anything since before the accident. This, she felt, was a mark of progress. She finished brushing her hair with something like a lift in her heart.
Edmund was in the drawing room, waiting for her. She stood at the door on her crutches as he came towards her.
‘Hester, Hester.’ He held her upper arms. ‘How lovely to see you looking so good. So, so much better. And you’re on your feet. How long will you be on those things?’
She leaned against him. ‘Just one more week. Oh, Edmund, it’s so wonderful to see you.’
‘And you.’ The gaze he turned on her was full of tenderness. Had she ever seen that in his eyes before?
‘I have to sit down, Edmund. And I’m glad to hear I look okay. It’s nothing but a show, I’m afraid. You know how good I am at pretending. I feel … well, I feel empty inside. As though there’s a long black road stretching out in front of me and I have no idea where it’s leading or what’s at the end of it. Oh, God, you don’t want to hear this. It’s boring. It’s depressing. Cheer me up, Edmund. You’re always so good at that. How I’ve missed talking to you!’
‘Glad to hear it.’ Edmund grinned. ‘I’d have been here days ago. I’ve been begging poor Madame Olga to let me come, but no go. She judged that you were ready for a visit now, so here I am. I don’t know if I can cheer you up, but I’ll certainly try.’
‘Do you honestly think there’s a life for me outside ballet?’
‘Of course there is! I’ve been thinking about that. You’ll be a wonderful teacher. You could lecture all over the world. Earn a lot of money while you’re at it. And there’s another thing, Hester. You’re thirty-three. You can’t … you couldn’t … have gone on dancing forever. It’s a brutal thing to say I know, but your career as a prima ballerina wouldn’t have lasted much longer anyway. That may sound cruel, but it’s true.’
‘But a few years. I could have managed a few more years. I wasn’t completely decrepit, was I? I’d have known. Someone would have told me.’
‘You might have known, but no one would have dared tell you. The great Hester Fielding? Your name alone means a full house. Not even Piers would have been in a hurry to stop you if you’d had a mind to continue.’
‘What you’re saying is, I’ve had a narrow escape. I should thank my lucky stars that I managed to break my leg so thoroughly otherwise I might have been tempted to go on until I was a real old crock. Do you think I’m an idiot, Edmund? I’d know. I’d have known the minute I couldn’t do the work any longer.’
‘You’re angry, Hester.’ Edmund took her hand. ‘That’s good. That shows that you’re still in there somewhere, the old Hester, buried under all that silence and misery you’ve been in for the last few weeks. And yes, fair enough, of course you’d have known. What I’m saying is, you won’t have to agonise over the decision now. It’s been made for you, and you should come out. Join in the world again. I’ll help you. Lots of people will help you. You have many friends, you know.’
Hester tried to smile at him. ‘You’re right. I will try. I’ll try and get back to some sort of something. I’m not sure what. But I will make an effort, I promise you.’
‘Let’s change the subject then. I’ve brought you a present.’
‘You didn’t need to bring anything, but how lovely!’
‘No, but I have and it’s fantastic, though I say so myself.’ He went over to the piano and opened it. ‘I’ve written something for you. Listen. All the sumptuous laziness of the East. It’ll make you feel better just to hear it. No more Northern gloom for you from now on.’
Hester leaned against the cushions and closed her eyes. Edmund began to play and the melody poured into the room like liquid gold. She saw turquoise water and slender towers; cool shadows and fountains, and lemon trees heavy with fruit. She saw scarlet flowers and balconies and perfumed oils on newly bathed skin; moonlight and the black silhouettes of small boats rocking on water; lovers lying on silk cushions, roses, fragrant cream roses. She opened her eyes in the end. The mind-pictures were becoming too strong, too vivid.
‘It’s quite beautiful, Edmund,’ she said, when the piece was finished.
‘It’s called Sarabande. That’s a stately Spanish dance in triple time, for your information. It’s also a Persian rug with a pattern of leaves and pears. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a thing.’
‘I’m honoured, Edmund. And it has cheered me up, I think. I’m going to make a new start tomorrow. I promise.’
He left his seat at the piano and came to sit beside her on the sofa.
‘There! Lazy and pleasure-loving is how you’re supposed to feel when you hear that.’
‘I do,’ said Hester. ‘I feel as though I never want to do anything energetic ever again.’
‘I’d do anything for you, Hester. I’ll help however I can to get you back to something like normal. Just ask me, if there’s anything you want.’
He smiled at her and she smiled back. Suddenly, he leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the mouth and she felt a small shiver of warmth running through her and then the kiss was over.
4 January 1987
‘I love it out here,’ Hester said. ‘I try and walk for an hour every day before breakfast. It’s good to have you with me.’
She and Edmund were walking through the village on their way to the moors behind the house. ‘I almost never come past here, you know. That’s the Wellick house. I’ve pointed it out to you before, haven’t I?’
Edmund nodded. ‘Yes, you have, and quite honestly, from what you’ve told me, I’m not a bit surprised that you avoid it. Such an ugly little house!’
‘I think the poor old Wellicks did their best, you know. I can’t have been the easiest person in the world to look after. But the place looks much better now. The present owners have put a sort of garden in at least. The Wellicks weren’t interested in plants. They were too messy for Auntie Rhoda. It was nothing but a square of grass in front here, when I was a girl.’
She shivered, and saw that Edmund had noticed.
‘Are you cold, Hester?’
‘Not really. Just makes me feel funny sometimes, thinking about those days.’
They walked along in silence till the village was left behind and the moorland path rose up in front of them. Most of the snow had melted away, but a little still lay on the ground. The sky was like a stage backcloth of palest blue with streaks of white cloud painted on it. The wintry sun had just come up and every word they spoke turned into a plume of white.
‘The
snow may have melted, but it’s still freezing,’ Edmund said.
‘I’m used to the weather up here. And I’m used to getting up early from years and years of going to class. And I feel … I feel as though something that’s squeezed me and stifled me has been opened.’
‘Like taking off a corset?’
‘In a way, yes. I think this is the first day for years and years that I’ve woken up and thought of Adam as someone in the past. Before today …’
‘I know. You don’t have to tell me, Hester. You felt that he still had to be considered, you thought he was part of your life. Or could be one day?’
‘No. No, I knew he’d never be that. But I did take him into account. I thought of him often, had nightmares about him, too, and I used to wonder whether I still loved him. Surely the fact that I did that means that I must have, in a way? That I couldn’t let him go?’
‘You never allowed yourself to love anyone else, did you?’
She laughed. ‘It’s not as though I’ve been besieged by a thousand suitors! I haven’t been sweeping them away, you know.’
Hester was talking with such animation that she wasn’t concentrating on where her feet were. Suddenly, she stumbled over a tussock of grass. She put out a hand to catch at Edmund’s arm and he leaned forward quickly and took hold of her round the waist. For a moment, Hester was somewhere else, dragged back in memory to another fall on a sunny headland with Edmund and Marisa waiting for her on the cliff path. But this wasn’t like that. Not in the least. She blinked to dispel the memory, straightened up, and made circles with her foot to make sure she’d done no real damage, trying to hide the shock she was feeling. Her heart was thumping and she could feel her legs trembling, not under her control.
‘Hester?’ Edmund put his hand gently on her chin and turned her face so that she was looking straight into his eyes. She was about to say something, about to reassure him that no, she hadn’t hurt herself when she saw that his gaze was full of love. His eyes shone with it. Its warmth, its intensity fell on her like the beam of a spotlight. She was aware of the weight of his hand on her shoulder through the fabric of her coat. He said her name again and then closed his eyes and brought his mouth down to meet hers. In the cold air, his lips were burning. She let herself be drawn into his arms and opened her mouth in response, and had the sensation of falling. Of spinning down into a softness and sweetness that she’d forgotten could exist. Edmund. This was Edmund.