Ballet Shoes for Anna

by Noel Streatfeild

  “It’s not just the shoes, is it?” Wally’s mum asked Anna and Francesco. “Wally was telling me you wanted to sell some clothes.”

  “They are ours – given us by S’William, so absolutely nothing to do with The Uncle,” Gussie shouted.

  “You sit still and don’t talk,” said Mr Wall, “or I’ll ’ave a ear off of you.”

  “We have a suitcase each and Anna has another frock and we have shorts and shirts,” Francesco explained. “But we do not know of a teacher so we cannot tell how much it will cost.”

  Wally’s mum looked at Wally.

  “Isn’t there someone the girls go to of a Saturday?”

  Wally nodded.

  “Miss Audrey de Veane. Lovely teacher they say she is.”

  “Puts on shows for charity and that, doesn’t she?” his mother asked.

  “Them as is old enough gets work in pantomimes,” said Wally. “Wouldn’t fancy it meself, but she’s well spoke of.”

  “You know any girl what learns off of ’er?”

  Wally sighed.

  “Well, that Doreen does, you know – her down by the church. Silly sort she is but she does learn the dancing.”

  “You’ll go on your bike first thing tomorrow. Just ask her what this Miss de Veane charges. No need to tell her why – just ask.”

  The children had to go home soon after that. Gussie’s hair was finished, it looked rather peculiar for it was much shorter at the back than at the front, though there was still a lot on the top of his head.

  “Aren’t they lovely people?” Francesco said.

  Gussie skipped on ahead.

  “Wouldn’t it be good if we could live there instead of with The Uncle?”

  Francesco felt the twenty-five pence in his pocket.

  “And what a day! We have more money for the shoes. We have found someone who teaches dancing and Wally’s mum will sell what we need to pay her. Are you pleased, Anna?”

  Anna hesitated.

  “Yes. Of course I am glad if the lady can teach as Jardek did. But until I know that I cannot say if I will learn with her.” She looked anxiously at Francesco. “Will you explain this to Wally’s mum? I would rather die than she should think I am not grateful.”

  Francesco sighed. There was so much he had to do now he was head of the family.

  “Do not worry,” he told Anna. “If you cannot learn from this lady it is I who will explain.”

  THE SHOES ANNA needed would cost £1.40. The children went to a shoe shop to find out. The lady in the shop offered to order the shoes right away but Francesco would not allow that.

  “No, first we will pay then you will order.”

  Outside the shop Gussie and Anna started to argue.

  “I wish you’d have let her order,” Anna said, “because we know how we will get the money, and I do need the shoes.”

  “I thought it was silly,” Gussie agreed, “for we’ll most likely have the money tonight if we give Wally’s mum our things to sell today.”

  Francesco did not answer at once for he was making a plan. It was odd, he thought, how, now he had to be the one to make decisions, he was learning just to make them and did not mind what the other two said.

  That day was a good one for getting the things they had to sell to Wally’s mum, for it was a day when Uncle Cecil had to go to London for a meeting.

  “Today,” said Francesco, “we will only take the suitcases to sell.”

  “Why only suitcases?” asked Gussie. “With The Uncle out we can take everything. Even if The Aunt saw us I don’t think she’d say anything, and anyway they are ours.”

  “No, just the suitcases,” said Francesco. “Those we could not need for we are not going away and, if we did go away, we could use a box, but our clothes we do need. Already The Aunt has washed them, it will be easier if we do not need to sell the clothes.”

  “If we need more money,” Anna suggested, “it may be difficult to take the clothes. Today they could travel in the suitcases.”

  Francesco thought they were being very stupid.

  “But, don’t you see, if we sell the clothes and then do not need the money, The Uncle cannot be given the money so he has to spend his money on our clothes. Well, we do not want this for as soon as S’William is home he will sell our picture, then we can pay.”

  “Oh, very well,” said Gussie. “Come on, let’s get the suitcases.”

  Always when Cecil went to London Mabel turned out the house. So when the children ran upstairs to fetch their cases the boys were horrified to find her in their bedroom. She was wearing a big apron and had her hair tied up in a tea cloth. She was polishing the floor with a hairy thing on the end of a long stick. The boys had made their beds and left the room, as they thought, reasonably tidy before they went out, so they saw no need for her presence.

  “Let me do that,” Gussie said, trying to take the polisher from her.

  “We always have helped clean since we were very little,” Francesco explained.

  Mabel looked more like a frightened mouse than usual. When she spoke she seemed terribly out of breath.

  “I haven’t touched anything. I have left the envelope under the paper.”

  Francesco thought he would try and explain.

  “It is only S’William’s address. We thought that was a safe place.”

  “It is safe,” Mabel puffed. “I shall never touch it or say it is there.” She gave a nervous smile. “There is no need to be afraid of me, dears.”

  Mabel looked as if she was going to say more, but at that second Anna came into the room carrying her suitcase.

  It was a horrid moment for nobody knew what to say. Anna stared at Mabel as if she had turned into a dragon. Mabel gazed at the suitcase as if hypnotized. The boys just stood, both trying to think of some reason why Anna was carrying her suitcase.

  “We thought …” Francesco began.

  “Well, it’s always useful to have a case with you,” Gussie said in a rush. “You know, to put things in.”

  Then Mabel surprised them. She leant her polisher against the wall and sat down on Francesco’s bed. She had great difficulty pushing out her words.

  “Your uncle is a fine man but he likes to be alone, he does not want strangers in his house.”

  “I wouldn’t call two nephews and a niece strangers,” said Gussie.

  Mabel went on as if he had not spoken.

  “For me your uncle always comes first, but when I can help you I will. We must work together to keep things peaceful. I do not interfere. If you wish to take out a suitcase that is nothing to me.”

  Francesco thought The Aunt’s candour deserved candour in return.

  “Really we are taking all three. It’s to sell, you see we need money for something.”

  “Much money?” Mabel asked.

  “To us a lot,” said Gussie. “We’ve got forty-five pence but we need one pound and forty pence.”

  Mabel seemed so reasonable Francesco was beginning to wonder if they should tell her more, but evidently that was not what she wanted for suddenly she got up, picked up her polisher and darted out of the room.

  Gussie looked after her in astonishment.

  “Did you see? It was just as if she was a mouse and a cat was after her.”

  Francesco took the suitcases out of the cupboard. He gave Gussie his.

  “Come on, let’s take them to Wally’s mum.”

  “Of course,” said Gussie when they reached the road, “we have never known an aunt. Do you suppose they are all like that?”

  “Perhaps British ones,” Anna suggested.

  Francesco felt somehow better inside because of what Mabel had said.

  “It is not the way it was with us – I mean, before the earthquake, where everybody said everything they thought, but I think for her it was a lot, almost I think she meant she was a friend.”

  Gussie refused to change his view of Mabel.

  “To me she is just a mouse. She’d never be a friend. If The Uncle
is angry, like a mouse she’d run into her hole.”

  Anna had put her hand into Francesco’s.

  “I agree with you. Anyway, for us who have almost no friends, it is nice to have a mouse.”

  Wally was on the lookout for them. He rushed to meet them.

  “I thought you were never coming.” He looked admiringly at the suitcases. “Cor! They’re a bit of all right, aren’t they?”

  Wally’s mum was serving a customer but she gave the children a gorgeous smile.

  “Shan’t be long,” she called out. “Wally’s got something to tell you.”

  “I almost forgot,” said Wally. “That Doreen, her that goes dancing of a Saturday. Well, that Miss de Veane, she charges two pounds and ten pence for a term and there’s extra when you take an exam. The term begins when school does and that’s the week after next, so you did orter take Anna long to see ’er right away.”

  Wally’s mum was thrilled with the suitcases.

  “Now, let’s see ’ow much you need and let’s see if we can get it.”

  Francesco held up three fingers.

  “Ninety-five pence for the shoes and two pounds and ten pence for the lessons, that’s three pounds and five pence altogether.”

  “ ’Ark at you!” said Wally’s mum. “Proper adder you are, I was always shockin’ at sums and this decimal money drives me up the wall. Give me back the old ’alf crown, that’s what I say.”

  Gussie was not going to allow Francesco to get all the praise.

  “We can all add. Olga taught us.”

  Wally’s mum examined the suitcases.

  “We did ought to work for a bit over for there may be postage on the shoes and ribbons and that. Suppose I was to try for one pound twenty-five for each? It would give us a nice bit in ’and.”

  “But we gotta sell ’em, Mum,” Wally reminded her. “I mean, Anna can’t wait about, that Doreen said she orter see the dancin’ teacher right away, and she can’t do that not without she’s got some shoes.”

  Wally’s mum opened her purse and took out a pound note.

  “Go an’ order them,” she said. “When I says I can sell somethin’ I can sell it.”

  Gussie and Wally took Anna to the shoe shop to order her shoes. Francesco stayed behind to explain to Wally’s mum that Anna would not learn from Audrey de Veane if she was not as good as Jardek.

  “It could be,” he said, “that this Miss de Veane is not what Anna is needing. You see, Jardek was a wonderful teacher.”

  Wally’s mum was making room for the suitcases on her stall.

  “Who was this Jardek?”

  “The father of our mother.”

  “Oh, your grandpa. Well, I never knew a grandpa in the dancing line, but I wouldn’t suppose ’e’d be better than a lady brought up to it like, would you?”

  Francesco screwed up his face, trying to find a way to explain.

  “Only Anna will know. So if Anna says she cannot learn from this lady you will not think she is not grateful?”

  Wally’s mum put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Look, son, there’s things you’ve got to understand. This Audrey de Veane is the only one that teaches here.”

  “But there could be others in some other place.”

  Wally’s mum turned Francesco so that he faced her.

  “Not in Fyton there isn’t, so Anna, as thin’s are, has to learn in Fyton.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s where the school is. I know you ain’t lived in England and so don’t know what’s what. But you can take it from me that not you, nor Anna, nor Gussie – not even the Queen ’erself, can alter the school laws. Come the week after next you ’ave to go to school. So it’s Miss de Veane of a Saturday for Anna or no dancin’ and that’s flat.”

  SIR WILLIAM, WHEN he was a child, had been a keen stamp collector, so he decided the children probably were too, so he wrote to them on the aeroplane. It never crossed his mind there was any urgency. He thought the chances were that there was an established dancing teacher near Fyton and quite possibly Anna’s lessons were already arranged. So he wrote the children a friendly letter telling them that he would not be away long, and that when he came back he would ask permission from their uncle to take them out. At the end of the letter he said:

  If, Anna, you are not fixed up with a suitable dancing teacher I hear very good accounts of a Madame Scarletti. I looked her up in the telephone book. She has a studio at 45 Bemberton Street, Chelsea, London. I gather she is very old but still one of the best teachers in the world.

  Then Sir William licked up the letter, put it in his pocket to post on arrival and forgot all about it for the next six weeks, when by chance he wore that coat again and found the letter in a pocket.

  Wally’s mum got £1.25 for each suitcase and Wally arranged that Doreen, who lived by the church, should take Anna to Miss de Veane’s studio.

  “She’s a right silly type, that Doreen,” he told the children. “Giggles at nothin’, but she’s been with Miss de Veane since she was ever so small, so she’s in with her like so could get her to see Anna.”

  This was not at all what Anna wanted.

  “But it’s I who wish to see Miss de Veane. Until I see how she teaches I do not know if it is with her I wish to learn.”

  “But, Anna,” Francesco pleaded, “if she is the only one could you not learn from her just until S’William comes home?”

  “I think it is what Jardek would have wished,” said Gussie. “Great harm cannot come from one lesson each Saturday.”

  Anna stamped her foot she was so cross.

  “Great harm can come. Wrong positions, wrong use of muscles and my legs may be ruined for ever and ever.”

  Gussie shrugged and turned to Francesco.

  “I do not know why we sold the suitcases. Wally’s mum says all must go to school or The Uncle may go to prison. This would I think be a good idea but he will not wish to go. So Anna can only dance when there is no school and there is only one to teach. What more can we do? In London perhaps there are many who teach well but how can Anna go to London? The Uncle will not take her in his car for he thinks to dance is a sin.”

  Francesco agreed.

  “He’s quite right, Anna, it’s Miss de Veane or nobody at all. Go and see the lady and if she will teach you then try how it goes.”

  “But if it goes wrong?” said Anna. “She will have all the money for our suitcases, and we have no more money.”

  “If we must we will get more,” Gussie promised, “but go in hope that this lady is such a one as Jardek would approve.”

  So two days later the boys took Anna, with her shoes in a paper bag – which Mabel gave her without asking why she wanted it – to the house by the church where Doreen lived.

  Wally was quite right. Doreen was a very giggling girl, but she was kind-hearted so took complete charge of Anna.

  “Now you don’t want to be nervous like, she’s ever so kind really.” Then Doreen giggled. “Course it’s different for me, I been with her ever so long so I dance solos and that for her shows.”

  Doreen was a plump little girl with brown ringlets. She did not, Anna thought, look a dancer, at least she did not look like the girls Jardek had taught of whom he had shown her photographs.

  “Which solos do you dance?”

  Doreen giggled again.

  “All sorts, ever so pretty the costumes I’ve worn. Once I was a fairy and another time a butterfly and another time the spirit of winter. I wore a big white bonnet for that with a robin on it. Of course mostly it’s musical comedy or tap that I do.”

  Anna had no idea what Doreen was talking about, but it didn’t sound the sort of dancing Jardek taught.

  The studio door was opened by Miss de Veane. She was a long thin woman with orange-coloured hair which at the roots showed it was really dark. She wore a very tight-fitting black dress and white boots. Anna, as she had been taught to do by Olga to any grown-up, dropped a polite little curtsey.


  This made Doreen giggle.

  “She’s part foreign. That’s why she does that, she does it to everyone.”

  Miss de Veane, perhaps because she had called out orders at dancing classes for so long, had an oddly hoarse voice.

  “Very nice, too, I wish you’d all curtsey. I had to when I was a student. Come into the studio. Sit down, Doreen, and try not to giggle. Come here, child. Now put on your shoes.”

  “Yes, Madame,” said Anna.

  She sat on the floor and put on her pink canvas shoes on to which Wally’s mum had sewn pink ribbons.

  “I have a gramophone,” Miss de Veane said. “Could you dance to some little thing to show me what you can do?”

  Anna looked shocked.

  “I was not allowed to do anything but exercises, Madame.”

  Miss de Veane looked at Anna’s tightly plaited hair, her pale heart-shaped face, at the plain but well-cut blue cotton frock she was wearing – an unusual child and, remembering the curtsey, she wondered. Surely in this Fyton into which she had drifted she had not been sent a dancer? Well, even if she had it was too late now, she had lost interest.

  “All right,” she agreed, “go to the barre. We will start with six demi-pliés.”

  For ten minutes Miss de Veane rapped out orders, some for exercises at the barre, some to be done in the middle of the room. They were simple enough, such as she taught to those of her girls who wanted to enter for exams. But Anna was younger. When she had finished with her she asked:

  “How old are you?”

  “Eight, Madame.”

  Miss de Veane noticed the “Madame” and the foreign accent.

  “And your name?”

  “Anna Docksay.”

  “Well, Anna, I will take you as a pupil. My class is at ten on Saturday mornings, that is, tap and ballet. I teach musical comedy to the juniors on Thursday evenings but that’s extra.”

  Anna had not properly understood.

  “I only wish for a class for ballet exercises. So I do not make faults which could remain.”

  Audrey de Veane thought back to her childhood when she had been a promising child dancer. Goodness knows where she might have risen to if she had been carefully trained. But she had been forced through every type of dancing until at twelve she was old enough to join a troupe. Why should this child be picked out for special attention? She had never been. Then something stirred in her, a flicker of the old ambition, even if she herself was past dancing she could at least train a good dancer.