He began to ponder. He scratched his head.
Then, going to his suitcase, he extracted a smallish piece of machinery, unfolded it, and set it up. It stood on one leg, with a tripod foot.
Rodney pulled out a kind of drawer on one side of this gadget, revealing a bank of lettered keys. On these he typed the message, ‘Hello, Fred.’
The machine clicked, rumbled, let out one or two long experimental rasping chirrs, not at all unlike the nightingales warming up, and then replied in a loud creaking voice, ‘Friday evening June twelve nineteen-seventy, eight-thirty p.m. Good evening, Rodney.’
The door shot open. Mrs Sherborne came boiling in.
‘What’s this?’ she cried indignantly. ‘I let the room to one, no more. Entertaining visitors in bedrooms is strictly against the –’ She stopped, her mouth open. ‘What’s that?’
‘My travelling computer,’ Rodney replied.
Mrs Sherborne gave the computer a long, doubtful, suspicious glare. But at last she retired, saying, ‘Well, all right. But if there’s any noise, or bangs, mind, or if neighbours complain, you’ll have to leave, immediate!’
‘I have problems, Fred,’ Rodney typed rapidly as soon as the door closed. ‘Data up to the present about Rose Collard are as follows’: and he added a summary of all that he had learned, adding, ‘People in the village are unhelpful. What do you advise?’
Fred brooded, digesting the information that had been fed in. ‘You should climb over the garden wall,’ he said at length.
‘I was afraid you’d suggest that,’ Rodney typed resignedly. Then he closed Fred’s drawer and folded his leg, took a length of rope from a small canvas holdall, and went downstairs. Mrs Sherborne poked her head out of the kitchen when she heard Rodney open the front door.
‘I lock up at ten sharp,’ she snapped.
‘I hope you have fun,’ Rodney said amiably, and went out.
He walked a short way, found a narrow alley to his left, and turned down it, finding, as he had hoped, that it circled round behind the walled garden of the rose-covered house. The wall, too, was covered by a climbing rose, very prickly, and although there was a door at the back it was locked, and plainly had not been opened for many years.
Rodney tossed up one end of his rope, which had a grappling-hook attached, and flicked it about until it gripped fast among the gnarled knuckles of the roses.
Inside the wall half a dozen nightingales were singing at the tops of their voices.
‘The place sounds like a clock factory,’ Rodney thought, pulling himself up and getting badly scratched. Squatting on top of the wall, he noticed that all the nightingales had fallen silent. He presumed that they were staring at him but he could not see them; the garden was full of rose-bushes run riot into massive clumps; no doubt the nightingales were sitting in these. But between the rose thickets were stretches of silvery grass; first freeing and winding up his rope, Rodney jumped down and began to wander quietly about. The nightingales started tuning up once more.
Rodney had not gone very far when something tapped him on the shoulder.
He almost fell over, so quickly did he spin round.
He had heard nothing, but there was a person behind him, sitting in a wheelchair. Uncommon sight she was, to be sure, the whole of her bundled up in a shawl, with a great bush of moon-silvered white hair (he could see the drops of mist on it) and a long thin black stick (which was what she had tapped him with), ash-white face, thinner than the prow of a Viking ship, and a pair of eyes as dark as holes, steadily regarding him.
‘And what do you want?’ she said coldly.
‘I – I’m sorry, miss – ma’am,’ Rodney stammered. ‘I did knock, but nobody answered the door. Are you – could you be – Miss Rose Collard?’
‘If I am,’ said she, ‘I don’t see that’s a cause for any ex-Boy Scout with a rope and an extra share of impertinence to come climbing into my garden.’
‘I’m from the BBC. I – we did write – care of Covent Garden. The letter was returned.’
‘Well? I never answer letters. Now you are here, what do you want?’
‘We are making a film about your life. Childhood in Puddle Fratrum. Career. And scenes from the ballet that was written for you.’
‘So?’
‘Well, Miss Collard, it’s this curse you laid on it. I –’ He hesitated, jabbed his foot into a dew-sodden silvery tussock of grass, and at last said persuasively, ‘I don’t suppose you could see your way to take the curse off again?’
‘Why?’ she asked with interest. ‘Is it working?’
‘Working! We’ve had one electrician’s strike, two musicians’, three studio fires, two cameras exploded, five dancers sprained their ankles. It’s getting to be almost impossible to find anyone to take the part now.’
‘My part? Who have you got at present?’
‘A young dancer called Tessa Porutska. She’s pretty inexperienced but – well, no one else would volunteer.’
Rose Collard smiled.
‘So – well – couldn’t you take the curse off? It’s such a long time since it all happened.’
‘Why should I take it off? What do I care about your studio fires or your sprained ankles?’
‘If I brought Tess to see you? She’s so keen to dance the part.’
‘So was I keen once,’ Rose Collard said, and she quoted dreamily, ‘“One red rose is all I want,” cried the Nightingale.’
‘It’s such a beautiful ballet,’ pleaded Rodney, ‘or at least it would be, if only the stage didn’t keep collapsing, and the props going astray, and the clarinettist getting hiccups –’
‘Really? Did all those things happen? I never thought it would work half so well,’ Rose Collard said wistfully, as if she rather hoped he would ask her to a rehearsal.
‘What exactly were the terms of the curse?’
‘Oh, just that some doom or misfortune should prevent the ballet ever being performed right through till Puddle church clock ran backwards, and the man who dropped the banana-peel said he was sorry, and somebody put on the ballet with a company of one-legged dancers.’
Rodney, who had looked moderately hopeful at the beginning of this sentence, let out a yelp of despair.
‘We could probably fix the church clock. And surely we could get the chap to say he was sorry – where is he now, by the way?’
‘How should I know?’
‘But one-legged dancers! Have a heart, Miss Collard!’
‘I’ve only got one leg!’ she snapped. ‘And I get along. Anyway it’s not so simple to take off a curse.’
‘But wouldn’t you like to?’ he urged her. ‘Wouldn’t you enjoy seeing the ballet? Doesn’t it get a bit boring, sitting in this garden year after year, listening to all those jabbering nightingales?’
There was an indignant silence for a moment, then a chorus of loud, rude jug-jugs.
‘Well –’ she said at last, looking half convinced, ‘I’ll think about it. Won’t promise anything. At least – I tell you what, I’ll make a bargain. You fix about the church clock and the apology, I’ll see what I can do about remitting the last bit of the curse.’
‘Miss Collard,’ said Rodney, ‘you’re a prime gun!’ and he was so pleased that he gave her a hug. The wheelchair shot backwards, Miss Collard looked very much surprised, and the nightingales all exclaimed,
‘Phyooo – jug-jug-jug, tereu, tereu!’
Rodney climbed back over the wall with the aid of his rope. Mrs Sherborne had locked him out, so he spent the night more comfortably than he would have in her guest room, curled up on a bed of hassocks in the church. The clock woke him by striking every quarter, so he rose at 6.45 and spent an hour and a half tinkering with the works, which hung down like a sporran inside the bell tower and could be reached by means of his rope.
‘No breakfasts served after 8.15!’ snapped Mrs Sherborne, when Rodney appeared in her chilly parlour. Outside the windows mist lay thick as oldman’s-beard.
‘It’s
only quarter to,’ he pointed out mildly. ‘Hark!’
‘That’s funny,’ she said, listening to the church clock chime. ‘Has that thing gone bewitched, or have I?’
Rodney sat down quietly and ate his dollop of cold porridge, bantam’s egg, shred of marmalade and thimbleful of tea. Then he went off to the public call-box to telephone his fianceé Miss Tessa Prout (Porutska for professional purposes) who was staying at the White Lion Hotel in Bridport along with some other dancers and a camera team.
‘Things aren’t going too badly, love,’ he told her. ‘I think it might be worth your while to come over to Puddle. Tell the others.’
So presently in the Puddle High Street, where the natives were all scratching their heads and wondering what ailed their church clock, two large trucks pulled up and let loose a company of cameramen, prop hands, ballet chorus, and four dancers who were respectively to take the parts of the Student, the Girl, the Nightingale, and the Rose. Miss Tessa Porutska (née Prout), who was dancing the Nightingale, left her friends doing battements against the church wall and strolled along to Mrs Sherborne’s, where she found Rodney having a conversation with Fred.
‘But Fred,’ he was typing, ‘I have passed on to you every fact in my possession. Surely from what you have had you ought to be able to locate this banana-peel dropper?’
‘Very sorry,’ creaked Fred, ‘the programming is inadequate,’ and he retired into an affronted silence.
‘What’s all this about banana-peel?’ asked Tess, who was a very pretty girl, thin as a ribbon, with her brown hair tied in a knot.
Rodney explained that they needed to find a stagehand who had dropped a banana-peel on the stage at Covent Garden thirty years before.
‘We’ll have to advertise,’ he said gloomily, ‘and it may take months. It’s not going to be as simple as I’d hoped.’
‘Simple as pie,’ corrected Tess. ‘That’ll be my Great-Uncle Toby. It was on account of him going on all the time about ballet when I was little that I took to a dancer’s career.’
‘Where does your Uncle Toby live?’
‘Just up the street.’
Grabbing Rodney’s hand she whisked him along the street to the forge where the surly Mr Prout, ignoring the ballet chorus who were rehearsing a Dorset schottische in the road just outside his forge and holding up the traffic to an uncommon degree, was fettling a set of shoes the size of barrel-hoops for a great grey brewer’s drayhorse.
‘Uncle Toby!’ she said, and planted a kiss among his white whiskers.
‘Well, Tess? What brings you back to Puddle, so grand and upstage as you are these days?’
‘Uncle Toby, weren’t you sorry about the banana-peel you dropped that was the cause of poor Rose Collard breaking her leg?’
‘Sorry?’ he growled. ‘Sorry? Dang it, o’ course I was sorry. Sorrier about that than anything else I did in my whole life! Followed her up to London parts, I did, seeing she was sot to be a dancer; got a job shifting scenery so’s to be near her; ate nowt but a banana for me dinner every day, so’s not to miss watching her rehearse; and then the drabbited peel had to goo and fall out through a strent in me britches pocket when we was unloading all they unket rose-leaves on the stage, and the poor mawther had to goo and tread on it and bust her leg. Worst day’s job I ever did, that were. Never had the heart to get wed, on account o’ that gal, I didn’t.’
‘Well, but, Uncle Toby, did you ever tell her how sorry you were?’
‘How could I, when she shut herself up a-grieving and a-laying curses right, left, and rat’s ramble?’
‘You could have written her a note?’
‘Can’t write. Never got no schooling,’ said Mr Prout, and slammed down with his hammer on the horseshoe, scattering sparks all over.
‘Here, leave that shoe, Uncle Toby, do, for goodness’ sake, and come next door.’
Very unwilling and suspicious, Mr Prout allowed himself to be dragged, hammer and all, to the back of Rose Collard’s garden wall. Here he flatly refused to climb over on Rodney’s rope.
‘Dang me if I goo over that willocky way,’ he objected. ‘I’ll goo through the door, fittingly, or not at all.’
‘But the door’s stuck fast; hasn’t been opened for thirty years.’
‘Hammer’ll soon take care of that,’ said Uncle Toby, and burst it open with one powerful thump.
Inside the garden the nightingales were all asleep; sea-mist and silence lay among the thickets. But Uncle Toby soon broke the silence.
‘Rose!’ he bawled. ‘Rosie! I be come to say I’m sorry.’
No answer.
‘Rose! Are you in here, gal?’
Rodney and Tess looked at one another doubtfully. She held up a hand. Not far off, among the thickets, they heard a faint sound; it could have been somebody crying.
‘Rosie? Confound it, gal, where are you?’ And Uncle Toby stumped purposefully among the thickets.
‘Suppose we go and wait at the pub?’ suggested Tess. ‘Look, the sun’s coming out.’
An hour later Mr Prout came pushing Miss Collard’s wheelchair along Puddle Fratrum’s main street.
‘We’re a-going to get wed,’ he told Rodney and Tess, who were drinking cider in the little front garden of the Haymakers’ Arms. (It was not yet opening hours, but since the church clock now registered 5 a.m. and nobody could be sure of the correct time there had been a general agreement to waive all such fiddling rules for the moment.) ‘A-going to get wed we are, Saturday’s a fortnight. And now we’re a-going to celebrate in cowslip wine and huckle-my-buff, and then my intended would like to watch a rehearsal.’
‘What’s huckle-my-buff?’
Huckle-my-buff, it seemed was beer, eggs, and brandy, all beaten together; Tess helped Mr Donn (who was another uncle) to prepare it.
The rehearsal was not so easily managed. When the chorus of village maidens and haymakers were halfway through their schottische, a runaway hay-truck, suffering from brake-fade, came careering down the steep hill from Puddle Porcorum and ran slap against the post office, spilling its load all the way up the village street. The dancers only escaped being buried in hay because of their uncommon agility, leaping out of the way in a variety of jetés, caprioles, and pas de chamois, and it was plain that no filming was going to be possible until the hay had somehow been swept, dusted, or vacuumed away from the cobbles, front gardens, doorsteps, and window-sills.
‘Perhaps we could do a bit of filming in your garden, Miss Collard?’ Rodney suggested hopefully. ‘That would make a wonderful setting for the scene where the Nightingale sings all night with the thorn against her heart while Rose slowly becomes crimson.’
‘I don’t wish to seem disobliging,’ said Miss Collard (who had watched the episode of the hay-truck with considerable interest and not a little pride; ‘Well,’ she had murmured to her fiancé, ‘just fancy my curse working as well as that, after all this time!’), ‘but I should be really upset if anything – well, troublesome, was to happen in my garden.’
‘But surely in that case – couldn’t you just be so kind as to remove the curse?’
‘Oh,’ said Rose Collard, ‘I’m afraid there’s a bit of a difficulty there.’
‘What’s that, Auntie Rose?’ said Tess.
‘As soon as you get engaged to be married you stop being a witch. Soon as you stop being a witch you lose the power to lift the curse.’
They gawped at her.
‘That’s awkward,’ said Rodney at length. He turned to Tess. ‘I don’t suppose you have any talents in the witchcraft line, have you, lovey, by any chance?’
‘Well, I did just have the rudiments,’ she said sadly, ‘but of course I lost them the minute I got engaged to you. How about Mrs Sherborne?’
‘The curse has to be taken off by the one who put it on,’ said Rose.
‘Oh.’ There was another long silence. ‘Well,’ said Rodney at length, ‘maybe Fred will have some suggestion as to what’s the best way to put on a ballet with a compan
y of one-legged dancers.’
They drank down the last of their huckle-my-buff and went along to Mrs Sherborne’s.
‘Hello, Fred? Are you paying attention? We have a little problem for you.’
And that is why The Nightingale and the Rose was revived last year; it ran for a very successful season at Covent Garden danced by a company of one-legged computers, with Fred taking the part of the Nightingale.
One Foot on the Ground
by Jean Richardson
For years Moth Graham has lived and dreamed ballet and has wanted nothing more than to become a professional ballet dancer. Now she has reached a crucial stage in her training – an audition for a coveted place at the Royal Ballet School is looming . . .
‘. . . AND SHE WAS so busy fussing over Tom’s chest that she forgot to ask about the party, so we didn’t have to tell any lies after all.’
‘But you’d told quite a lot in the first place,’ Moth pointed out. ‘Honestly, Libby, fancy saying that Gam knew all about the party and had said we could go. If I’d got back earlier and had to speak to Mrs B-S, it would all have come out, and I’d have been dragged in, and she’d be bound to have told Mummy.’
‘Life is a risk,’ said Libby, unimpressed. ‘You don’t achieve anything by staying at home and I’m glad I went. It was worth it just to see Hyde –’
‘He sounds like some kind of tearaway. I don’t know what you can see in someone like that.’
‘Tastes differ. Some people can see things in precious stuck-up pianists –’
‘Dan’s not –’ Moth, quick to come to Daniel’s defence, blushed as she realized that Libby had noticed her interest.
Libby helped herself to another biscuit – there was only one left. ‘Your turn to get the fish and chips, and then I suppose we’d better do some washing-up.’
Darcey Bussell Favourite Ballet Stories Page 15