‘I think you may have something there, my child.’ Orlando blew his nose on my towel. Knowing his mood to be fragile I did not protest. He slung his own towel round his neck and stood up. ‘Anyway, Fritz deserves the best and somewhere inside me there may be something worth his while.’ He put on his Eugene Onegin look – sorrow tempered by newly acquired wisdom – and went thoughtfully away.
He appeared for supper looking decorous in a plain shirt and jeans. He drank much less than usual and tamed his conversation. After supper we continued to sit with glasses of wine on the balcony, as the setting sun turned the sky to rose and the lake to pearl. Even Golly was silenced by the splendour of Nature, so we could hear the twilight song of a thrush from the hillside below the house. After that she became fidgety and she and Mr Stern drove away, leaving the three of us to admire the celestial streaks of salmon and indigo developing above our heads.
‘What beauty!’ sighed Orlando. ‘I feel overawed.’
‘Yes,’ said Fritz. ‘I too am owerowed by ze vonder of Nature. It remind me zo much of Bavaria. I feel a little das Heimweh … how do you say it? A vish for home. Zough I haf no more family zere. Only Conrad is zere to zink kindly of me.’
By a coincidence that was not at all extraordinary, given that we were living in his house, eating his food and sleeping in his beds, I happened to be thinking about Conrad myself just then. So he was in Bavaria. I imagined him wandering over snowy mountains picking edelweiss. Perhaps listening to the melodious tinkle of cow bells or the distant blast of an alpenhorn. I wondered if he was thinking of us. Probably not.
‘Sometimes when we’re touring I feel homesick for London just because it’s familiar,’ said Orlando. ‘And yet there’s no one there who really cares about me.’
‘No?’ Fritz turned his sweet plump face to look at him. ‘But how can zat be?’
‘Oh, I’ve been careless about relationships. I’ve put my art first. Now that I’m getting older and I’m neither so energetic nor so good-looking as I used to be, I wonder if I’ve made an awful mistake. Sometimes … I’m afraid I’m no longer lovable.’
There fell a long silence. Then Fritz said in a low tone, ‘You haf not need to be afraid.’
‘Oh, Fritz, my dear.’ Orlando’s voice throbbed with intensity. ‘If I could only believe that!’
It was then that I slipped away, unnoticed, to bed.
44
I sat in the back of the Bentley clutching a carrier bag full of pointe shoes, my stomach queasy with fright. After six weeks at Hindleep, our remoteness from the modern world unpolluted by so much as a newspaper, Newcastle seemed unnaturally bright and busy. Golly had finished the score of Ilina and the Scarlet Riband and my solos had been refined down to the slightest inclinations of my head and the diameters of each circle made by my feet. Orlando and I had also worked on the choreography for the corps de ballet.
From this moment I was in receipt of a salary, so I had decided to rent a room in Newcastle to save myself three hours travelling each day. Also, though I doted on Fritz and Orlando, I was tired of playing gooseberry. They did their best not to make me feel excluded, but the atmosphere at Hindleep had become sultry with imperfectly suppressed desires interlaced with the euphoria of temporary satisfaction.
Newcastle is a hilly place. My digs were at the top of a long flight of steep steps called Leaping Dog Lane. Orlando said my room was too small even for a Pekinese. My landlady, more of a bulldog with bandy legs and a pugnacious chin, read me a list of prohibitions. No men, alcohol, smoking, drugs, food, pets, musical instruments, radios, record players or muddy shoes were allowed on the premises. The bath must be cleaned after use and no wet towels were to be placed on the bed. Between eleven at night and seven-thirty in the morning, the front door would be bolted, admitting neither ingress nor egress, and the lavatory must not be flushed during this period. I assured her I was ready to abide by the house rules and paid her a week’s rent in advance.
Fritz drove us from Leaping Dog Lane to the rehearsal studio, a disused church near the theatre. Though the rehearsal was scheduled to start at ten, nothing seemed to be happening. This was quite normal for the first morning, but by the time the principal tenor, Giovanni Garacci, showed up I was practically fainting with nerves. Fortunately he had short muscular legs and large beefy arms so he would be able to manage the simple lifts Orlando had devised. Orlando tried to demonstrate them to Giovanni, but he wanted to warm up his voice and wandered off in mid-explanation. It soon became clear that the major flaw of an opera ballet, which perhaps explained why they had gone out of fashion, was the conflict of interests. The singers wanted to stand still and occasionally wave their hands about. If really necessary they would stomp woodenly to stage left or stage right. All that mattered was vocal perfection.
Trevor, the director, also seemed to think the ballet was subordinate to the singing. Giovanni complained that his dressing room was dark and full of dusty old bibles. Also there was no ‘ot wartair’. He demanded a constant supply of iced pineapple juice or he could not answer for his ‘tonzeels’. In the ballet world, Giovanni would have been given short shrift, but Trevor treated him like a royal lunatic whose most outrageous requests must be pandered to. We stood around for another half an hour, watching the stage hands sticking masking tape onto the floor to mark the lines and shapes of the stage and sets, while the pineapple juice, an ice dispenser and an electric kettle were sought. When Orlando asked for a changing room for the dancers, Trevor stared at him as though he had asked for a suite at the Savoy with river views. All this time more people were arriving – the other soloists, the conductor, the répétiteur, the stage manager, the chorus and the chorus master and the office staff. The din as everyone exercised their vocal chords was nearly unbearable. Finally Trevor returned and clapped his hands for silence.
‘All right, ladies and gentlemen, thank you. Dame Gloria Beauwhistle will be arriving any minute to give you a little talk about her new work and then we’ll begin at the beginning with Act One. So what we want is the chorus for the seal hunt, Giovanni, Luigi and Stefano, plus the lead dancer –’ he glanced at his notes – ‘Marilyn.’
‘Marigold,’ corrected Orlando.
‘Oh, yes,’ Trevor waved an arm. ‘Everybody, this is Orlando Silverbridge, our distinguished choreographer. It’s going to be very interesting for us to work with dancers for a change. I have complete faith in Dame Gloria’s judgement. The dancing is there because it’s an integral part of the work, not an entertaining interval.’ Trevor gave an unmeaning smile. It was obvious he was repeating what he had been told and did not believe a word of it. ‘Let’s do all we can to persuade the audience of that.’
There was a bustle at the back of the hall as Golly arrived. She swept through the crowd, greeting those she knew with a kiss or a wave. ‘What ho, you lot!’ she called above the applause. ‘Hope you’re all full of vim. We’re going to need it. You singers all know your parts by now, I hope. The dancers are going to have to start from scratch, but Orlando tells me they’re a talented bunch and he assures me they’ll bring it off. Where are the dancers, by the way?’
‘Not here yet,’ said Trevor. ‘Their coach is caught in a jam on the A1.’
Everyone groaned, as though the dancers had deliberately chosen to be stationary in a hot bus amid smells of exhaust from surrounding traffic.
Golly caught sight of me. ‘Never mind. We’ve got Marigold, the lynchpin of our drama. Come here, dear, and let me introduce you.’
I made my way to the front, hearing mutterings of ‘Marigold Who?’ ‘Is she Trevor’s new mistress?’ ‘If that little girl’s really the lynchpin we may as well give up now.’
‘Now, everyone, listen.’ Golly waved a paw for silence and got it. ‘Marigold’s dancing the dumb heroine.’ Sniggers, but no one dared to laugh out loud. ‘And you can take it from me that whatever may be the fate of Ilina and the Scarlet Riband, I guarantee that by the end of this first run, the name of Marigold Savage will b
e known the length and breadth of Europe.’
This was kind of Golly. People looked a little less disbelieving, which was a measure of the respect in which Golly’s music was held. Of course she hadn’t actually said whether I’d be known for triumphant success or humiliating failure …
‘Now, just in case it’s passed anyone by, let me outline the themes.’
Golly talked for ten minutes about cross-cultural analysis, mythology, folklore and spiritual verities, nothing of which was comprehensible to me. Then she told us to get on with it. She had one or two little ideas to incorporate in the score but she’d be back after lunch. Trevor took over, clearing the central space to begin blocking the first scene. This means teaching everyone how they are to move about the stage, where they’re going to stand, fall, sit, lie, scream and die. The stage manager, who was called Bill, had a large clipboard on which he recorded each move.
The soloists were staged first. The pianist struck up the first chords and Giovanni and I entered from opposite sides. Our eyes met across what would be the Eskimo equivalent of a village square – a few igloos and a pot of simmering caribou hoofs. He sang the opening aria, telling of love at first sight. To save his voice, Giovanni marked the role, which means he sang softly and dropped an octave in the high bits. As there had been no opportunity to warm up, I did the balletic equivalent, walking through my opening sequence. It was impossible, therefore, to tell how effective it was going to be, but by now I was thoroughly familiar with the music and had come to love it.
Quite quickly I forgot to be nervous and the morning sped by. Lunch was brought in, corned beef sandwiches and tea. In the afternoon the chorus was blocked for Scene One, the soloists waiting at the back of the hall in case they were needed. There is always a lot of hanging around at rehearsals, and old hands know to provide themselves with books or knitting or mending. In the scramble to get ready I had forgotten to bring anything with me to help pass the time. Orlando had not yet returned from lunch in the Bentley which was parked in a side street. He had pressed me to join them, but I was afraid of being a damper on the release of urges that had been bottled up for a whole morning. The singers smiled politely if I caught anyone’s eye, but they seemed to be avoiding me. Perhaps because of Golly’s championship, they didn’t want to be seen to be sucking up. I sat a little apart, reading the Newcastle Gazette. Loneliness was inevitably a part of a dancer’s life. As I had chosen to turn my back on marriage and companionship I had better not mind it.
I gave a little scream as a pair of arms stole round my neck.
‘Hello, old darling!’ Lizzie’s dimpled face surrounded by blonde corkscrew curls grinned at me, enjoying my surprise.
‘Lizzie! I’d no idea you were coming! Oh, how wonderful!’ We kissed and hugged. It had been several months since we’d seen each other, the longest separation for twelve years. The other eleven members of the company who were to dance in Ilina and the Scarlet Riband had to be welcomed and kissed too. It was thrilling to see so many familiar faces. I noticed immediately that some invisible threshold had been crossed. As I had left the LBC I was no longer in direct competition with the other dancers, and my leading role in Ilina had exalted my status to potential international stardom. Deference was of course better than hostility, but I would have preferred something cosier. I knew the score. One of Evelyn’s oft-repeated precepts when we were children was that privileges always had to be paid for.
Also the unpopularity of the current principal dancer, Sylvia Starkey, worked in my favour. Apparently, when she had been briefly elevated to the position of Sebastian’s mistress, she had become arrogant and boastful. In hindsight my ingratiating style redounded to my credit. Sylvia was in Bristol with Freddy, Alex, Dicky and the rest of the corps dancing The Lilac Garden, so everybody took advantage of her absence to be thoroughly catty about her.
Several hours of imprisonment in a coach on a motorway had made the dancers noisy and excitable. Trevor told us to go up into the gallery because we were distracting the singers. The gallery, which was to become the LBC’s nesting place for the next two weeks, afforded seclusion combined with an excellent view of everything that was going on. It was rapidly strewn with shoes, legwarmers, wraps, bandages, aspirin ointment, antibiotic cream, sticking plasters, magazines, books, paper cups, hairbrushes, hairpins, make-up bags, sandwich crusts and bottles of diet Coke.
‘I hope the dancing isn’t going to be too difficult?’ said Lizzie when we found a corner to ourselves.
‘The only hard bit is the games. But you’re not supposed to do them well anyway so I can win. You’ll be fine.’
‘Good. Because this’ll be my last outing in the limelight. I only came to see you. I’m giving up ballet for good.’
‘Lizzie! You can’t!’
‘I can and I have. I told Sebastian yesterday.’
‘After all that hard work for all those years? Oh, Lizzie, how sad!’
‘Not for me. Nor for anyone else really. When I told Sebastian he thanked me for saving him the distasteful task of booting me out. According to him, when I’m doing fouettés I look like a fat old woman running for a bus on a windy day.’
‘Nonsense! And you aren’t fat.’ Though I had noticed she’d put on a few pounds. It really suited her. ‘He only said that because he didn’t want you to think he minded.’
‘I know. But anyway, I don’t care. I’m so happy, Marigold! I’m in love!’
‘No! Who with?’
Conrad’s voice in my imagination corrected this to ‘with whom?’ but I took no notice. One evening at Hindleep, Fritz had read aloud those parts of Conrad’s letters that might be of interest to us, about the people he had met and the parties he had been to, the museums he had visited and the concerts he had attended. Conrad seemed to have become someone quite unfamiliar, part of a large and cosmopolitan circle of strangers. After three weeks in Germany he had flown directly to the United States. He had no plans to return to Hindleep. Obviously our friendship had been of little consequence for, though he always sent good wishes to everyone connected with the opera, he never mentioned me by name. Had it not been for the little posy of wild flowers I had pressed, the paper bird and the parrot’s feather which I kept in my copy of Nicholas Nickleby, I might have imagined those conversations when we had talked so freely about what concerned us most. Or I had, anyway.
Dimples appeared on Lizzie’s chin as well as her cheeks, a sign that she was much moved. ‘You remember I told you about the lumberjack who took over Nancy’s room at forty-four Maxwell Street?’
‘The one with the city girlfriend?’
‘Yes. Nils, that’s his name, asked her up to the flat one evening to meet us, only Sorel had to go out at the last minute so we were a threesome. Fiona was rather superior and made snide comments about what she called the “outré” decorations, and she was rude about my cabbage curry. I admit my cooking isn’t very good but Nils said it was absolutely delicious and food for the gods.’
I remembered the cabbage curry and concluded that Nils must already have been head over heels in love with Lizzie.
‘So they had an almighty row which began in whispers when I was out of the room and ended in a shouting match halfway down the stairs. Nils came back full of apologies and I said I was sorry the food had been so awful and he said I was an angel to be so sweet about it and really he didn’t think he could go on seeing Fiona because she was so mean and anyway he’d discovered that his fancy lay in quite another direction.’ Lizzie put her head on one side so her curls bounced and I nodded to show I was fully abreast of their conversation. ‘So what with one thing and another he ended up in my bed that night and he’s been there ever since. I don’t mean he’s literally been in it ever since without getting out of it, but we always sleep in the same bed.’
‘I understand. So you’re giving up dancing to spend more time with him. I suppose there isn’t much call for lumberjacks in England. Is he going to get another job?’
‘Actually, his
father owns a vast logging company in Sweden and Nils is learning the business to take it over eventually. He’s going back to Sweden for good as soon as I finish here and I’m going with him. We’re getting married in Stockholm in October.’
‘Oh, dearest Lizzie! How marvellous!’ I put my arms round her and held her in a long embrace until I could be certain that I had control of my face. ‘I hope you’ll always adore each other and have everything you’ve ever wanted.’
‘We will.’ I rejoiced at the note of certainty in her voice, even while I tried to crush an illogical feeling of being abandoned. ‘So we’ll soon be two old married ladies. Pity we can’t have a joint wedding but we might be able to synchronize our first babies—’
‘I’m not marrying Rafe.’
‘What?’
‘It’s all off. Oh damn!’ I felt the customary clutch of guilt whenever I thought of Rafe. ‘I promised to keep it a secret until he’s told his mother.’
To my great relief Rafe and Isobel were still in Scotland, disposing of their aunt’s livestock and chattels and unravelling the complicated laws of Scottish land tenure. His letters were frequent and affectionate and sometimes it seemed he had forgotten we were no longer engaged. He always said how much he was missing me. The very idea of him made me feel anxious, as though I had in some way behaved badly despite my best efforts to be helpful. I had no way of knowing whether Evelyn knew that the wedding was off. She and Rex had spent only one night at Shottestone between returning from Austria and departing for Canada. I worried terribly whenever I thought of Madam Merle stitching away at the exquisite lace dress. The chances that Rafe would find another bride of my dimensions were slim.
I groaned. ‘I’ve made a muff of things, as usual. You won’t tell a soul will you?’
‘No, of course not – but what a shame! I thought he was the love of your life. What’s happened?’
‘It wasn’t his fault. But I don’t think it was mine either. We aren’t the same kind of people … and though we wanted to, we didn’t really love each other. It was all a dream.’
Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs Page 54