It was coming close to the end of camp, with only a few days left before their performance. They named their dance ‘Narnia’ and they were assigned to this same big studio for their rehearsals because they were a group so they needed more space. These days, the four of them came back every afternoon to rehearse. Mina could see why the instructors were making them work entirely without guidance, and she preferred it that way; but she wished she could hear what Miss Maddinton thought before the performance. Mina had been careful to listen to what Tansy said when she tried to explain how things should be danced. It wasn’t that Mina was worried about their dance. She knew it was wonderful. She just thought she wanted it to be absolutely perfect. Miss Maddinton might catch something they’d missed.
Charlie called Miss Maddinton the ‘White Witch’, from the Narnia books, but Mina didn’t see why. It wasn’t as if Miss Maddinton wore only white, or had white hair, or anything like that. Her hair was dark, inky black – dyed, Charlie said – and long. She wore greys or silvery blues or silvery pinks, her leotard, tights, and wraparound skirt all the same colour. She was a professional dancer who only taught during the summer, only at this camp. Most of the year she was with a ballet company in New York.
Over the summer, Mina had written to her mother about everybody at camp, and what they were all doing. Miss Maddinton had occupied a lot of letter space, because she was a real dancer, a professional. Miss LaValle, Mina’s teacher at home, had studied dance, but she was only a teacher who gave lessons in her converted garage-studio, with a record player for music. Miss LaValle was built like Miss Maddinton, both of them tall, narrow women with muscular legs, but she was older, and she wore her leotard as if it was a uniform, and it was always a plain black uniform too. Miss LaValle had taught Mina well, Mina could tell that. She liked Miss LaValle and was grateful to her. But Miss Maddinton, Miss Fiona Maddinton – she was a real ballerina. Mina wondered what Miss Maddinton would do for her own ten-minute performance, on the night. Because it got so there wasn’t anything happening to write to her mother about, Mina sometimes just wrote down her guesswork about things like that: what Miss Maddinton would do, or whether Charlie’s father would lose his job because he had lost a big account. Her mother wrote back the news from home, that Zandor got a fifty-cent-an-hour raise and had a new girlfriend, that Belle was bored (and boring, Mina’s mother added), messages from Mina’s father and from Louis, and her own opinions about the summer minister’s sermons and his family. It sounded like Mina’s mother liked the minister fine, but wasn’t sure about his wife. ‘We don’t see much of her,’ Momma wrote.
Mina had started off writing to Kat, just silly things and Kat had written back, but after a couple of weeks that had tapered off. Kat couldn’t possibly understand how wonderful it was. Mina couldn’t have explained, for instance, how much she liked learning about music, its history, the names of composers, and listening to their different music, the different forms music could be written in. Mr Tattodine, who liked Mina because she asked so many questions, had white hair that flopped over his forehead, and a way – when the class was listening to a record – of getting entirely engrossed in the music, until his face looked half asleep and his hand would come up to mark the beat, as if he was conducting the piece.
It was Mr Tattodine who had given Tansy the idea for where to find the right Mozart music for Asian. Tansy had been trying movements from symphonies and string quartets, but nothing worked. Nothing made a dance. During the classes on opera, when he was talking about Mozart’s life and the reasons that people thought he was a genius, Mr Tattodine had mentioned The Magic Flute. ‘It was considered at the time that he had written a low piece of work, a popular effort, written for money. Well, he did need money, he always needed money. But it is now taken as one of his richest works, musically speaking,’ Mr Tattodine said. Then he smiled at them and said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m lecturing at you again, I keep forgetting. Let’s have a question. Who can define the differences between opera and ballet? The musical differences, that is, because many operas – like The Magic Flute – do include dance.’ Tansy nudged Mina then.
Mina knew four of the seven differences that were given and realized once again how glad she was to be at camp. Mr Tattodine said the way she learned was like a sponge or a vacuum cleaner; ‘But not in the bad sense,’ he said. Mina wasn’t worried about bad or good senses; she knew she could remember almost everything she was told, and she learned that she could hear not only musical phrases and forms, not only harmony and counterpoint, but also the several individual instruments that played together. She loved the whole range of strings, the variety of percussions, the winds and the reeds. Mr Tattodine had them try playing every instrument, just to get the sound out of it. Mina’s favourites were the reeds, because to play them you needed to hold the reed properly, which took discipline; but it was also a matter of your breath going through the wooden tube. The reeds seemed the most complicated and natural.
The brasses were her next favourite. When she had the French horn in her hands, in class, she got a clear note out of it, without any trouble, a round winding sound that made you sit up at attention and called out to you. ‘I’ve just got a lot of hot air,’ Mina said laughing and passed the horn to Isadora. ‘That’s why I’m not having any trouble with it.’
Once Tansy had listened to The Magic Flute and found passages of music that she wanted in it, passages that would be like counterpoint to Tarkaan’s Bartok, they moved ahead with their dance. It took work, hours of practising to get the steps right, to get each individual performance right, to get everything put together right so that the dance worked the way Tansy wanted it to. But hours of work were no trouble. Charlie and Isadora complained, sometimes, but Mina never even felt like it.
‘What are you, some goody-goody?’ Charlie demanded during their second-to-last rehearsal.
‘It’s because her daddy’s a minister,’ Isadora, stretched out on the floor beside Charlie, said. Tansy had been called out to the phone, which was odd because parents usually called during the hour the girls had free before lights out. Mina was trying to get Charlie to go over the part where Tarkaan was trying to win over the human girl. Charlie didn’t see the point of doing it without having Tansy there to watch, because they’d just have to do it all over again for Tansy.
‘I think she’s just stronger than we are,’ Charlie said. ‘You don’t get as tired, Mina; you can’t argue that.’
Mina didn’t know what it was, except that she liked what she was doing so much that she never got tired doing it. She decided to listen to the Bartok again.
Mr Tattodine had explained to her the way the rhythm worked and the reasons for the notes being what they were and the different scale Bartok was using. She didn’t really understand, but she could hear the dance in the music now. Mr Tattodine was an immigrant, from Hungary, which was Bartok’s homeland. He said maybe that was why the music made sense to him. Mina listened to the fragmented chords of the Bartok, standing still but feeling as if her body was moving to the dance.
Tansy came back through the big door at the end of the room. ‘Everything OK?’ Isadora asked.
‘My grandfather died.’
‘Oh. That’s too bad,’ Isadora said.
‘Were you close?’ Charlie asked.
Tansy shook her head. ‘I’ve barely seen him since he went into the nursing home.’
‘Was he sick?’ Mina asked.
‘Maybe we ought to stop the rehearsal,’ Charlie suggested.
‘The performance is the day after tomorrow,’ Tansy said. ‘We don’t have enough time as it is. I’m sort of sad, but it’s not as if . . . He wasn’t sick, he just got too old to take care of himself, so he went into a home.’
Charlie and Isadora started telling stories about old relatives of their parents who had gone into nursing homes, or retired to places where there were a lot of old people gathered together. Mina didn’t say anything, because her one set of living grandparents lived with her
mother’s brother in Georgia, and the grandparents who had died when she was still a baby had lived just around the corner. She thought of Miz Hunter, but didn’t mention her either. After a while, Tansy said it was time to get back to work, ‘If that’s OK?’
They were the last of the youngest class to give their performance. By the time they moved on stage, Mina had been so nervous for so long she was too tired to be tense. Mr Tattodine played the tape they had put together. Mina listened to the first bars of music and watched the curtain draw apart. She wore her black leotard and a mask over her eyes, a black Halloween mask that she had edged with red and gold glitter; Isadora, with her long hair loose, like Asian’s golden mane, wore a golden leotard and tights; Charlie wore white, with a skirt wrapped around it, and Tansy wore green. The other three had to buy new leotards, but Mina just had to buy the mask, which was lucky. Tansy had thought everything out. Mina’s part required angular steps and positions, while Isadora, as Asian, moved in arcs and circles. Isadora never came into Mina’s part of the stage, until the end; Mina sometimes moved a little into Isadora’s part, like the tip of a triangle, but she danced out quickly. The two children in Narnia went back and forth.
When Mina changed into Tash himself, all she did was take the mask off. They had painted her eyebrows dark and her mouth red and larger than it was. The music’s sharp lines of melody, broken off, matched her steps. As Tansy had explained it to them, Tash made triangles and Asian circles. All the dancing showed that, just as the music clashed and couldn’t ever be made to play together. So Isadora moved in circles, leaping, turning, golden, while Mina moved dark and strong and cruel to the points of triangles. At the end, Asian’s circles wound all around Tash, and he was driven from the stage. Then the two children and Asian danced together, to Mozart.
When they took their bows at the end, everybody in the audience stood up to clap. They held hands and bowed and bowed, still breathing heavily, smiling at one another and at the audience. At the reception afterwards, punch and cookies served in the dormitory living room, just about everybody in the camp came up to tell Mina what a good job she’d done.
‘Thanks.’ She smiled. She couldn’t stop smiling. She wished – that they hadn’t performed yet and that it was something she could do again, right away.
Miss Maddinton came up, with another instructor, while Mina was getting another cup of punch. ‘It was very good, Mina,’ Miss Maddinton said. ‘You’ve learned a lot this summer, haven’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Mina knew she had.
‘I envy you that class, Fiona,’ the other instructor said. ‘And you, young lady, you were absolutely frightening. I was on the edge of my chair.’
‘It’s Tansy, really,’ Mina said. ‘It was her dance, her idea, and all.’
‘You don’t have to be so modest,’ Miss Maddinton corrected her.
Mina smiled. She felt goofy smiling so much, but she couldn’t stop. ‘Thank you. But it really was Tansy.’
‘I know that; do you think I don’t know that?’ Miss Maddinton said.
Mr Tattodine came up to the four of them. ‘You’ve had the success of the evening, and I’m very proud of you. It was good theatre,’ he said to Tansy.
Tansy lowered her head, embarrassed and pleased. Mina smiled.
‘And well danced all of you. You have shown me that ballet is still a living art. Oh, I’ve enjoyed your performance.’
They all had trouble going to sleep that night. They all sat around in Mina’s room, in the dark, talking in low voices. It was the last night of camp, and Mina suddenly felt as if she couldn’t bear to wait the whole school year before she came back.
‘It’s not that we were the best,’ Tansy was saying, trying to put their feelings into words.
‘Except that we were awfully good for our age,’ Isadora said.
‘I hate that for-your-age stuff, don’t you?’ Charlie protested.
‘We were the only really original ones,’ Mina said. ‘Everybody else, except the instructor for the oldest class, danced the usual dances and even hers – she danced to jazz but it was still traditional. Ours wasn’t like anybody else’s.’ She smiled.
‘It was worth all that work, Tansy, I’ll admit it,’ Charlie said.
‘Yeah, thanks,’ Isadora agreed. ‘And to Mina too – did you hear the way somebody gasped when you took off your mask, Mina? I don’t know what they expected to see. It was like a horror show.’
Mina smiled. ‘Thanks a lot,’ she joked.
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I’m already wondering what Tansy’s going to ask us to do next year, aren’t you?’ Mina asked them. She had got so much better in just the weeks here. She could work every day, practically, if she got organized, and by next summer – ‘Oh, I’m looking forward to next summer,’ she said.
‘Mina! We’ve still got two weeks of vacation. What’s wrong with you?’ Charlie demanded. ‘Don’t wish away my only vacation time.’
Mina thought that camp was her vacation, but she didn’t say so. They heard the college bell chime two in the morning before they finally were sleepy enough to go to bed.
Miss Maddinton was the one who greeted Mina’s father when he drove up. She made her report as he loaded Mina’s suitcase into the back seat of the dusty car. ‘She’s learned a lot about discipline this summer.’
All around them, girls were greeting their families, saying goodbye to their friends, getting into cars, driving away. Mina waved and waved to Tansy, going off in a red sports car with her father, who looked as small and mousy as Tansy.
‘I’ve enjoyed having her in class. It seems to have been a good experience for everybody.’
‘I know she’s had a good time here,’ Mina’s father said. ‘We thank you.’
‘See you next summer, Mina,’ Miss Maddinton answered. ‘Keep practising.’
‘Oh I will,’ Mina promised.
She got into the car. Her father got into the car. She turned her head to look at him. ‘You better belt in,’ he said. Then he reached out a big arm to hug her, and she hugged him back. There hadn’t been any hugging or hand-holding or putting arms around all summer long. Mina thought, for a minute, that she thought there should have been, but then she dismissed the idea. It wouldn’t have been right for a dance camp; it wouldn’t have suited.
‘We’ve got a long drive ahead,’ her father said. He drove down the road beside the river, then along the ramp and out into the speeding traffic. He didn’t talk. Her father didn’t like these crowded throughways, Mina remembered. He was concentrating hard. She didn’t like them much either, once it stopped being exciting to be hurtling along, rushing, once the sad feelings started coming up again inside her, at leaving and having to be gone from camp for so long. The truck motors roared in her ears, the hot air smelled of gasoline and oil, and the scenery at the roadside was mostly the backs of houses, backs of shopping centres, backs of factories. Mina sat quiet, remembering, feeling sad.
‘Mina?’ her father asked.
Mina turned her head to look at him. She had forgotten how rich the sound of his voice was.
‘Were you the only little black girl there at camp?’
‘I guess so,’ Mina said.
‘Why was that?’
‘I was the only one good enough, I guess,’ Mina said.
The Mysterious Miss Minning
by Harriet Castor
CRUMBLEWOOD COLLEGE WAS not like other schools. It was not even like other ballet schools (which, let’s face it, are a curious set of places at the best of times).
From the outside, it looked like a large, rather saggy old house, the kind that a Duke or Duchess might once have lived in. The drive was a whole mile long, and when you got to the end of it, you found yourself at a massive wooden front door, with rows of windows stretching off on either side, and a square tower looming above.
On this particular day, the tower was bathed in rosy morning sunshine. The flag on the flagpole at the tower’s top was flutter
ing in a warm breeze, showing the Crumblewood College crest – crossed tutus with Swan Queens rampant – to anyone who cared to look.
No one did care to look. The birds were too busy tumbling about in the trees, and everyone else was in Assembly.
‘. . . which pains me greatly,’ the headteacher, Mrs Lavington, was saying, ‘because running in the corridors is such a totally unnecessary and foolish activity, leading all too often to injury.’
In some ways, Crumblewood College was just like other schools.
In the third row from the back, Melanie Gristwood whispered out of the corner of her mouth, ‘Are you telling me she’s a normal woman? Seriously? Look at those eyes – look at that hair! She’s spooky all over . . .’
It wasn’t Mrs Lavington she was talking about. No one could call Mrs Lavington – all egg-stained cardigan and sensible lace-ups – spooky. No, the person Mel was referring to was sitting behind Mrs Lavington, partly in shadow, straight-backed and inscrutable as a Zen master.
The black clothes seemed to melt into one another. The sleek hair – darker than a moonless midnight sky – was scraped back into a tight knot. Beneath it a pale disc floated in the dim light: a face, with eyes curiously pale, like a cat’s. Curiously pale and curiously bright.
Beside Mel, her best friend Alice Thonkleton whispered back, ‘OK, so if she’s a weirdy with spooky powers, how come she can’t hear us talking about her?’
At that exact moment Miss Minning – deputy head, and subject of this speculation – chose to turn and look directly at Mel and Alice.
Mel jumped. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled to attention. She heard Alice gulp. Neither of them said another word.
‘And now for some jollier news,’ said Mrs Lavington, shuffling her papers. ‘I am proud and privileged to announce that Erik Zveginzov will be the outside examiner for our Assessments this year.’
Darcey Bussell Favourite Ballet Stories Page 13