Ballet Shoes

by Noel Streatfeild

  They drove to the stage door of the theatre, and went on to the stage, which was crowded with people. Eight were girls with their hair tied just like Winifred’s and Pauline’s, so it was obvious they wanted to be ‘Alice’ too, and there were a troupe of children in practice-dress and ballet shoes, and a lot of grown-up people. Miss Jay asked Nana to comb the two children’s hair, and she told them to change into their ballet-shoes and to take off their coats; she herself disappeared through the iron pass-door which separated the stalls from the stage.

  Pauline tried to see where she was, but there was such a glare from the footlights that it was impossible to see more than the front row of the stalls, and that was empty. Suddenly a voice called out of the blackness of the theatre, ‘Is Mr Marlow there?’ A man stepped out from the crowd on the stage, and came down to the footlights. He held up his hand to shield his eyes from the glare, and talked with somebody the children could not see across the orchestra well. The conversation was all about whether his voice would, or would not, do for the Mock Turtle. In the end he said he thought they had better hear him, and he came to the back of the stage close to Pauline, fetched a piece of music, and gave it to a man sitting on the stool in front of the piano. Pauline supposed he would sing some grand dull song, and was very surprised when he sang ‘The First Friend’ out of the ‘Just So’ book. After he had sung he disappeared through the pass-door just as Miss Jay had done, and for a long time nothing happened at all. The children in the practice-dresses limbered up, and did a few exercises on their points, which Winifred and Pauline decided they did very badly, and the grown-up people smoked; then once more a voice called out from the theatre.

  This time it said, ‘Will all the children whose names I call out step forward, please?’ Winifred’s and Pauline’s names were called, and so were all the other girls with their hair done like ‘Alice’s’. They looked at each other to see what they ought to do, and then came down-stage and stood in a row in front of the footlights. They seemed to be there an enormous time while people whispered, and then a different voice said, ‘Little Fair Girl in black, what’s your name?’ Pauline was just looking to see if anyone else was wearing black as well as herself when Miss Jay replied, ‘That is Pauline Fossil.’ There was a lot more whispering, and then the other children were told to sit down. Pauline felt awful standing by herself being stared at by all the people on the stage, and all those she could not see in the stalls. She would have liked to have wriggled, and stood on one leg, but the Academy training had taught her not to stand just how she felt, so she stood as she did before a class, with her toes turned out, her heels together, and her hands clasped behind her back. After what felt like an hour, and was really only a few minutes, Miss Jay came in front of the stalk where Pauline could see her. She leant across the orchestra well.

  ‘They are going to try you. Will you sing first, or do your speech?’

  Every boy or girl at the Academy, when they were nearing their twelfth birthday, got what was called ‘m’audition’ prepared. They meant really, ‘my audition’, but somehow habit had turned it into one word. ‘M’audition’ was a speech from a play, or a recitation, and a song which had a dance worked to the chorus, or to a repeat of the tune. If a child was being seen for an acting part, or simply as a dancer, of course he or she only acted or danced, but every child had a full ‘m’audition’ ready. Pauline had Puck’s speech from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, and a song called ‘Springtime is Fairy Time’, which had a waltz tune, and so was easy to dance to. She thought a moment, faced with ‘m’audition’ for the first time, and then said she would do ‘Puck’s’ speech, for she knew it would be easier to act than to sing, when her voice was wobbly with fright.

  The moment she started she stopped feeling frightened. She had worked at the speech for hours with Doctor Jakes; together they had discussed exactly how Puck felt, and how he looked, until just saying the words made her feel that she had turned into a queer little creature who did not belong to the mortal world. When she had finished, Miss Jay called out that she was to ask her Nurse for her music. Pauline turned very red, for she felt all the other children were thinking how much too old she was to have a nurse; she wanted to explain to them that Nana was not really a nurse, and anyhow Posy was still young enough to need somebody to look after her. But of course she could not, so she fetched her music feeling shamed. Although she had seen the Mock Turtle person give his music to the man at the piano, she did not quite like to do that with hers, so she looked at him first to see if he seemed to be waiting for it. He made things easy; he held out his hand and said cheerfully, ‘Throw it over.’ He seemed to know exactly what she was going to do, because he turned to the last page, and played a bit and asked her if it was the right time for her dance. Pauline did some little bits of the steps and said it was, then she went to the middle of the stage and sang.

  She was very glad when she got to the end of the second verse, which was all the singing there was, for she had not a very big voice, and it sounded to her, in that large theatre, like a mouse squeaking. She did not mind the dance so much though it was on her points, for there was not much of it, but it felt funny dancing in a velvet frock. The dance finished in a pose on the floor, and when it was over, Pauline got up, feeling rather a fool and wondering what to do next. A set dance like that if done at a charity performance ended in applause, and if done at the Academy ended in criticism; but no dance Pauline had ever seen ended in silence. She looked desperately round to see if any face showed what she ought to be doing, and there was Winifred making tremendous signals at the chair next to her. Thankfully Pauline ran to it, and sat.

  ‘Was I all right?’ she whispered.

  ‘The acting was,’ said Winifred. ‘You were out of tune in the song, though, and your ankle shook awfully in the arabesque.’

  Pauline made a face.

  ‘I knew it did. I couldn’t hold it; I got my posture wrong. I didn’t know I sang out of tune. Was it very bad?’

  ‘No, only to me, because I know the song.’

  Miss Jay’s voice called out for Winifred, and she got up in an awful flutter, almost snatching her music from Nana.

  ‘Hold your thumbs for me,’ she gasped at Pauline. ‘I did for you.’

  All the children at the Academy believed that holding your thumbs brought luck. The Fossils did not really, because everybody at Cromwell Road, except Cook and Clara, thought it silly; but they had to hold them if anybody asked them to, so Pauline gripped hers. But Winifred did not seem to need any help; she recited ‘You are Old, Father William’, and then sang ‘Come unto these yellow sands’, and then did a most difficult dance. Pauline released her thumbs, and looked at Nana, who shook her head. Neither of them said anything, but they both felt sure that Winifred would get ‘Alice’. Winifred herself did not seem a bit sure when she sat down; she said that being able to do things well did not mean you got on best, and that looks and personality were more important. Miss Jay came back through the iron door, and told them they had finished, and she was taking them home. She said nothing as they went up the stairs to the stage door; but when they were in the taxi she said gently to Winifred that she thought she would be engaged as under-study; they were going to try the other children, but she thought it would be all right. Then she smiled at Pauline.

  ‘They are engaging you as “Alice”, Pauline. It’s a wonderful chance.’

  Pauline was so surprised that she could only gasp, but Nana said:

  ‘But Winifred did the better.’

  Miss Jay nodded.

  ‘Winifred is the best all-round student the Academy has ever had, but Pauline looks right for “Alice”.’

  Suddenly Winifred put her head in her hands and burst into tears.

  ‘She looks right for everything, she always will. Oh, I did so want to get “Alice”! We do need the money so dreadfully.’

  Everybody tried to comfort her, but they could not, because there was the fact that Pauline was engaged for the pa
rt, and she was not. Pauline stopped being pleased, and felt miserable; she thought of Winifred’s father, and her five brothers and sisters, and even being able to buy back the necklaces stopped being important.

  Before Sylvia could sign a contract for Pauline she had to have a licence for her from the London County Council, permitting her to appear on the stage. The first step to acquiring a licence for children is to get their birth certificate, which is a quite simple thing to do; but Pauline had no ordinary birth certificate, for, of course, she had not got it on her when Gum found her floating on a lifebuoy, and since nobody knew whose baby she was, they had not been able to get it for her. Fortunately, Gum was a man who believed in things belonging to him being kept in order, and a baby without a birth certificate was not a baby in good order, so he had rectified matters by going to Somerset House, and having her entered as an adopted child. After that she had a birthday, and her birth could be properly certified. It was a mercy he had; for without proof that she was twelve, she could not have been granted a licence.

  Sylvia obtained from the Education Officer’s department of the County Hall a copy of the London County Council’s rules for children employed in the entertainment industries. They were all good, and framed to look after the employed child’s health and well-being. She filled in the application for a licence, and sent it down to the Princess Theatre, and somebody for the Princess Theatre signed those bits that concerned them. A week later, Sylvia got a letter telling her to bring Pauline to the County Hall on the following Wednesday, with her certificate of birth, both to be examined by the medical officer and interviewed by somebody in the Education Department.

  Various people were nervous over this letter. There could be no doubt that Pauline was in the most bounding health, and rather ahead of her age from an educational point of view; but Doctor Jakes and Doctor Smith fussed inside themselves in case she should not be up to the required standard, and miss playing ‘Alice’ through their faults. Nana knew that Pauline ate well, and slept well, and had as well-behaved an inside as any inside could be; but she was haunted by thoughts of the medical officer of health saying: ‘Who has had charge of this child? She has been very badly looked after.’ Sylvia could not eat for fear the representative of the Education Office should look at her with scorn as one trying to make money out of an adopted child. On the day of the interview, Nana cleaned Pauline’s reefer coat, and blue beret, and laid out her newly-washed jumper and some well-mended gloves, and when she was dressed said with a sigh,

  ‘You may not look smart; but you do look neat.’

  Mr Simpson drove Sylvia and Pauline to the County Hall. He tried very hard to cheer them up, but they were both silent with fright. They did not feel any better when they got to Westminster Bridge and saw the County Hall ahead of them. Really, going into it looked very like going into Buckingham Palace, it was so large and magnificent. Mr Simpson did not care a bit how grand it looked; he swept in at the front entrance, passed the policeman, and stopped his car right against the flight of stone steps leading into the main door.

  ‘Do you think,’ Sylvia asked in a trembling voice, ‘that we ought to have come to this door?’

  Mr Simpson gave a proud look at the door, and said that in a way it was his, it belonged to the rate-payers, and he was one of them. This made Pauline feel a bit better, and she was not as crushed as she might have been by the enormous hall surrounded by commissionaires that they walked into. The commissionaire they spoke to, however, proved to be a friendly man; he looked at Sylvia’s letter, and seemed to know at once where she ought to be, and sent them to the lift. The liftman was as nice as the commissionaire, and took a lot of trouble to get them to the right room; but in spite of all this niceness both Sylvia and Pauline wished they need not knock on the door.

  All their fuss was for nothing. The medical officer was just like their own doctor, and after examining Pauline, he laughed and said if he looked at her for a year he did not think he would find anything wrong. Pauline was a bit insulted by this, and told him that she had had measles once, and influenza twice. He laughed more than ever at that, and told Sylvia that he wished all mothers could produce as good a specimen as her ward. The Education representative was just as nice. He was very interested, when shown Pauline’s certificate of birth, in her story, and so Pauline told him about Posy and Petrova, and he said he would be looking forward to meeting them when their time came for licences. He asked Pauline questions about her work, and she told him about Doctor Jakes and Doctor Smith. He read the letter they had sent, and then said she was a most highly educated person, which was a good thing for somebody who was going to play ‘Alice in Wonderland’, whom he had always thought a most well-informed child; what other child, he asked, who fell through a rabbit-hole would remember that she was likely to end up in New Zealand or Australia? He asked Sylvia what arrangements were being made for Pauline to go to and from the theatre, and she explained that though there would be a matron in the theatre, she could not let Pauline be alone, and that Nana was going with her to every performance, unless she went herself. The only part of the interview Pauline did not like was the part concerned with money. As ‘Alice’ she was to earn four pounds a week, just as Winifred had said she would. The rule of the County Council was that at least one third of a child’s earnings must be banked each week in the child’s name in the post office, and the post-office book must be shown to prove that that much had been banked, before another licence could be granted, which, as a licence only lasted three months, was a safe way of seeing it was done.

  Pauline, who had read the rules, had worked out that twenty-six shillings and eightpence would go into the post office each week. Eight shillings a week would go to the Academy, who got ten per cent of her earnings for five years because they had trained her for nothing. That left two pounds five shillings and fourpence a week for Sylvia, and for paying back the necklace money. Pauline had decided that Sylvia ought to have thirty shillings a week to help with the house, and that would leave fifteen shillings and fourpence for the necklaces, which would buy back Posy’s and Petrova’s and pay six shillings and eightpence towards her own, which was very good indeed. But when the County Council gentleman asked Sylvia about Pauline’s bank account, Sylvia said that she would always bank two pounds, perhaps more. Pauline gasped.

  ‘Two pounds, Garnie! Why? You only need to put in twenty-six shillings and eightpence.’

  Sylvia laughed, and so did the London County Council gentleman, who said her arithmetic was admirable.

  ‘But, darling,’ Sylvia pointed out, ‘I want you to have a nice lot of money saved by the time you are grown-up.’

  Pauline did not know what to answer, not being able to explain about the necklaces, so all the time Sylvia and the London County Council man were talking about lessons during rehearsals, and after the Christmas holidays had finished, she was doing sums in her brain. Two pounds a week in the post office, eight shillings for the Academy, and thirty shillings for Garnie would only leave two shillings for the necklaces. It was most worrying, she could not get home quick enough to discuss matters with the other two and Nana.

  Nana disapproved of getting into a fuss before you need.

  ‘There’s no need to get into such a state, Pauline,’ she said firmly when she heard the story. ‘To begin with, you don’t know that Miss Brown will take thirty shillings a week, and second there’s a way round every corner if you look for it. Now you leave things to me.’

  That night, after the children were in bed, Nana drew a chair up to the nursery table and took a pencil and paper, and did a sum. It took her over an hour, because she was bad at sums, but in the end it was finished, and she took the result down to Sylvia. She knocked on the drawing-room door. Sylvia was very pleased to see her, and told her to sit down. Nana smoothed her apron.

  ‘Pauline will be earning four pounds a week in this “Alice in Wonderland”.’

  Sylvia nodded.

  ‘I’m saving half of it for her
, and I thought with the rest, which is one pound twelve shillings, for eight go to the Academy, we would get her some clothes.’

  Nana shook her head.

  ‘That’s all wrong, if you’ll excuse me speaking plain, Miss Brown; and it’s not fair on Pauline. Those children look forward to being able to help with their keep while the Professor’s away.’ She sniffed to show what she thought of Gum. ‘Pauline will want a pound to go to the housekeeping.‘

  Sylvia turned red.

  ‘Nana, I couldn’t. I’m managing. The money the boarders pay just keeps us and pays Cook and Clara, and you won’t take any money….’

  ‘Time enough to pay me when the Professor’s back.’ It was two years since Nana had let Sylvia give her any wages. ‘But because you can just manage, that’s no reason to hurt Pauline’s feelings. She wants to help. Now, what’s right is’ — Nana looked at her sum — ‘one pound for you for the house. Ten shillings for clothes, and two shillings a week pocket money for the children. One shilling for Pauline, because it’s her earnings, and sixpence each for the others. It’s over a year now since you were able to give them anything for themselves.’ Nana got up. ‘That ten shillings a week can be paid to me, because there’s a bit owing on a dress that I got Pauline for her audition, and it’s up to me to see it’s paid back. Good-night, Miss.’