Ballet Shoes

by Noel Streatfeild

Two days later they arrived on the Common. The doctors had arranged to have Sylvia in the cottage, and had got permission from a farmer for the girls to camp in the field of a farm near by. They had fixed that they should come every day for their middle-day meal at the cottage, for which Pauline was to pay a pound a week. For breakfast, tea, and supper they were to cook and cater for themselves.

  Perhaps it was because they were not expecting a holiday at all, or perhaps because it was Pauline’s holiday which she had paid for, but there was not one second which they did not find perfect. They took turns to cook, and it was lovely waking in the mornings to hear the cows mooing, and the cocks crowing, and to turn over and prod the day’s cook to get up and deal with breakfast. The palliasses stuffed with straw they found gloriously comfortable, and it was the height of luxury to lie on them sniffing the first smoke of the fire through the open flap of the tent before jumping up to race down to the stream in a bathing dress for a wash before breakfast.

  The food varied a lot with who was cooking and catering. Eggs were the easiest things for breakfast, because they bought them from the farm; but for supper they had all sorts of things — sausages when Petrova was in charge, and two courses at least from Pauline. When Posy was catering, a great deal of cake got into the menu.

  The weather was not too good, but the farmer lent them a large barn for wet days, in which they practised every morning, wet or fine, as they had, of course, their ballet shoes with them; here, when it rained, they played a new and glorious Hnd of hide-and-seek. It consisted in the hiders burying themselves in the straw, which the nervous seeker had to prod. If the hider could grab any part of the seeker, she won; but if the seeker could see a movement in the hay, and lay a hand on the place, and say ‘One of you is here’, then she won. The game was such a thrilling one that when it was wet Sylvia and the two doctors usually came and played too.

  Just before they were due to go home, Nana sent Sylvia a telegram. Pauline was to be taken to the studio; she was to play Henrietta.

  Pauline’s picture relieved financial worry for the time being. She was engaged at ten pounds a day, with a minimum of ten days’ work. Even allowing for ten pounds of that belonging to the Academy, ninety were for the house and clothes. They planned to start shooting the picture by the end of September or the beginning of October; but Pauline learnt that films were a different matter from plays. For a play they said rehearsals would begin next Monday, and they began next Monday; but with a film, weeks could go by between the day they expected to start and the day they actually began.

  She was called to fittings for clothes throughout September, and very exciting she found it, as they were the most beautiful she had ever had — simple, of course, for a child, but most beautifully made and embroidered. In spite of the fact that her clothes had been finished for weeks, it was not until the last week in October that she was called to the studio.

  Pauline had spent such time as she was free from the Academy and from working for her school certificate, which she was taking in the spring, in studying books on Charles the Second, and reading all she could find about Henrietta. She came to work at the studios with the same strong feeling of being out of herself, and into another person that she had with ‘King Edward’. She had been discouraged by the script the studio had sent her; the speeches were short, and she was confused by the way the scenes were divided into ‘takes’; they seemed to her so short that it would be difficult to sustain the part when everything was broken up.

  When she came on the floor for her first day’s work she grasped that this was a new technique; it was not doing stage acting in front of the camera; it was doing film acting, which was a totally different thing. She loathed it, she loathed the hours of hanging about, the endless rehearsals before a scene was right, and the still more innumerable ‘takes’ before it would pass for cameras and sound.

  One day she was called for a small scene played between herself and Charles the Second. Charles was a film actor known all over the world, an Englishman who had made his name in Hollywood. The scene was before a journey of his to England, in which he begged his little sister to write. She had to say that she would try, and he had to take her chin in his hands and say: ‘Not “I will try”, Minette, but “I will”.’ Then he had to look away and say almost under his breath: ‘Mine is a lonely road, little sister.’ They rehearsed for nearly two hours, and then they began the ‘takes’. Mr Sholsky mopped his forehead. The boy with the board came forward. ‘“Charles the Exile. Director, Mr Sholsky. Camera, Mr Rosenblaum. Sound, Mr Benjamin. Scene 84. Take one”.’ The lights were all on, the cameras whirring. The boy clacked the clappers. ‘Oh, how boring this is!’ thought Pauline. ‘Action,’ said Mr Sholsky. They played the tiny scene. Charles turned away. ‘Mine is a lonely road, little sister.’ She looked at him as directed, and was amazed; after rehearsing so long, and in spite of the scene being so short, his eyes were full of tears. After the ‘take’ Mr Sholsky came over to her.

  ‘You got a look in your face when you looked up at Charles, that was the first sign you’ve given me that you aren’t made of wood.’

  ‘That was him,’ Pauline explained. ‘When I looked at him, he was almost crying.’

  Mr Sholsky caught both her hands in his.

  ‘That man can act for the pictures. You’ve been holding out on me since the shooting began because a lot of cockeyed critics gave you a write-up as the Prince in the Tower. Well, forget it. You’ve everything to learn in motion pictures; today watching Charles you saw something real. Well, you can do that too; let’s have it from you.’

  Pauline told nobody what Mr Sholsky had said. When Sylvia, who came down to the studio with her every day, asked her what he had been saying, she answered vaguely it was about the part; but from that moment she found the work far less tedious, and sometimes, for a moment or two, she was able to feel not Pauline, but Princess Henrietta.

  Sylvia sold the house; it was to be part of an hotel, and the purchaser would take it over on the June quarter day of next year. Petrova, knowing how often she had cried at the thought of the house going, was very sorry for the others; but she wasted her sympathy, for neither of them cared as she did. Pauline was too busy at the studio, and Posy too wrapped up in her dancing.

  That Christmas, Pauline was engaged for the Fairy-God-mother in a pantomime of ‘Cinderella’, and Petrova was one of twenty-four jumping beans, who were to do speciality dances in ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ in a theatre in the suburbs.

  Pauline’s film was finished, and there was no suggestion of using her for another, so she was glad to get the Fairy Godmother, though she found the words she had to say terrible rubbish. Petrova and Posy thought her part an awful joke. They quoted it endlessly: ‘“Oh Cinders, Cinders, do not fear. Your Fairy Godmother is here”,’ Posy said on bursting into the bathroom while Pauline was in the bath. Or Petrova recited when she saw her start off to her rehearsal:’“If after twelve you should delay, Your glories all will pass away”.’ Pauline did not care how much they laughed, she had the most lovely fairy dress for the transformation scene, and rather a nice solo dance to do. Nana was entranced by her dress.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ she said, ‘white and silver tissue, and nice wings and a wand — nothing could be prettier. That’s better than those high-brow combinations.’

  Sylvia or Nana took her to her rehearsals, and fetched her again for lunch, and after work was over for the day; she was just fifteen, and they thought they could trust her to look after herself. It made her feel very grown-up, and she enjoyed it.

  Petrova thought being a jumping bean the worst thing that had happened to her. The twenty-four beans were taken to rehearsals by a matron, Mrs Brick. She was a nice woman, but strict. She made all the children walk two and two, and she expected them to be very quiet on the underground, and she liked them to get into their shoes and practice-rompers the second they reached the theatre, and if she could, would have marched them on to the stage as though they w
ere soldiers. When they were not wanted on the stage she liked them to work at their exercises, as she said ‘Satan found…’

  They were too far away to get back to the Academy for tea, so they had it in the dressing-room before they went home, and just before the production, after the school holidays had started, they had a sandwich lunch there as well, with what Mrs Brick called ‘a nice brisk walk’ afterwards. A nice brisk walk meant that they all had to change back into their outdoor things and, two and two, walk rapidly four times round the big square outside. She thought that it was dull for children to hang about with nothing to do when they were neither wanted nor practising, so she brought games for them to play, and books which she read out loud to them. The other twenty-three girls loved Mrs Brick, and enjoyed being read to, and playing Happy Families; but Petrova had one of her mechanical handbooks always with her, and she longed for any corner where she could get away in peace and quiet to study it. Actually, if she had explained what she wanted to Mrs Brick, it would have been arranged for her; but she never did, and so she spent her free time during rehearsals, and in between the matinée and evening performances, after the run had started, listening to books being read out loud which she did not like, and playing games she did not want to play. Mr Simpson was the person who appreciated how she must feel.

  ‘Pretty boring that jumping bean stuff, isn’t it?’ he said.

  Petrova made a face.

  ‘Simply disgusting.’

  ‘Must be. I’ve fixed up for us to go up from Stag Lane on Sunday.’

  The worst of it was that the nicer, and more understanding, Mr Simpson was, the worse it seemed that after June he would be living somewhere else.

  ‘I don’t see how I’ll bear it after you’ve gone,’ she told him.

  ‘Cheer up,’ he said. We’ll still be able to have our Sundays. Besides, time’s getting on; in three and a half years you can learn to be a chauffeur.’

  It had been hoped that both pantomimes would run over February, but the death of King George the Fifth in January cut the audiences down to about a quarter for the week following his death, and they never really pulled up again. Nobody felt in the mood for pantomimes. Pauline’s did run to the end of February, but Petrova’s came off at the end of January; she tried to feel sorry because of the money, but she was earning very little, and simply could not help being glad really.

  In the middle of March Posy came home from the Academy with her face swollen from crying. Madame had been taken suddenly ill; she had to go to Switzerland for a cure and it might be months before she was back.

  ‘Oh, poor Madame!’ said Sylvia.

  Posy turned on her.

  ‘Madame! I’m not thinking of her; it’s my training, it ought not to be broken off now.’

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Posy

  POSY was in disgrace. Sylvia and Nana were horrified to find her, as they considered, selfish and hard-hearted. It was all very well to be ambitious, but ambition should not kill the nice qualities in you.

  Pauline and Petrova discussed Posy together. It was a Sunday, and they were walking to church.

  ‘You know,’ Pauline said, ‘everybody at home and at the Academy is shocked at Posy; but I think I know why she’s being awful about Madame.’

  Petrova looked surprised.

  ‘But of course it’s because of her being twelve in September. Madame has left the dancing school in charge of Theo. Theo’s nice, but she’s not a dancer in the way Posy thinks of dancing.’

  ‘Do you suppose’ — Pauline lowered her voice, for Sylvia and Posy were catching up with them — ‘that Madame hasn’t said what’s to happen when Posy’s twelve? She wouldn’t want her to go into a dancing troupe or anything like that.’

  Petrova looked round to see that Posy was out of whisper-shot.

  ‘Madame was very ill when she went — much iller than people know, Theo told me — but you mustn’t tell anybody else. She’s going to get quite all right, but it will take months. They didn’t want to fuss Posy saying how bad she was, and so they made her sound only a little ill; that’s why Posy’s so cross — she can’t understand Madame, after all she has said, going off without a word, leaving no directions for what’s to happen to her.’

  ‘It is awful for her,’ Pauline said sympathetically.

  The Academy lost patience with Posy. It was bad enough to have Madame away ill, without her making things worse by being difficult. Sylvia and Nana had decided that it would be good for her to go to the ordinary dancing classes with the rest of the school, that a child of her age was not to be allowed to dictate what she would, or would not, do.

  ‘It’s no good sending me to the Academy half the day,’ Posy explained. ‘There’s nothing for me to do except have a French lesson, and practise, and I can do both those at home.‘

  But at home special lessons were being given to Pauline, as she was sitting for her school certificate that summer, and whoever was not attending to her taught Petrova; it was not a good moment to change the plans and put Posy’s full education back on the doctors. Sylvia taught her for a bit in the afternoon to make up for the hours in which she had learnt Spanish and Russian with Madame — not that she had ever seemed to learn either language, but she had studied them.

  Sylvia had a talk with Theo about her; it was planned that she should do four and a half hours’ lessons at home, and her half-hour of French with Madame Moulin at the Academy; but that after that she was to join the senior ballet class for an hour whether she liked it or not, and then she should practise on her own in Madame’s room until Pauline and Petrova were ready to go home. Posy was furious, protesting that an hour’s ballet class with the seniors was the most ridiculous waste of time, as she had been doing more advanced work than they did for over a year. But Sylvia was firm.

  ‘I expect there’s a lot you can learn; you’ve too good an opinion of yourself.’

  Madame Moulin, at her French lesson, heard her grumbles about waste of time, and told her the story of the old French actress that she had told Pauline. Posy was not impressed as Pauline had been.

  ‘It’s all very well,’ she said, ‘for an actress to n’oubliez jamais that she can continue à apprendre jusqu’à son dernier jour. But it’s silly for a dancer. She’d much better n’oubliez jamais that you can’t be a first-class dancer for very many years, and that all her apprendre-ing would have to be done while she was still young.’

  Madame Moulin laughed and patted her cheek, and said she was an enfant terrible. ‘Mais tu me fais rire.’

  For two or three days Posy attended her dancing class and did what she was told; but with so little energy that none of the exercises were any good to her. Then one day she bounded into the class looking radiant. She took her place at the bar. Theo came to the middle of the room.

  ‘Place your left hands on the bar,’ she directed. ‘Battement serr, fifty times; then right hands on the bar, fifty more on the other foot.’

  She gave a nod at the pianist, and the class rose on their left points and began work.

  Theo walked to the far end of the room, and closely studied each girl. Then she was distracted by giggles, and went to see what was wrong. As soon as she arrived the girls tried to straighten their faces, but they were not all able to. Theo looked round for the cause of the joke, but she could see nothing; all those who were laughing were on the bar immediately behind Posy, but she had not a glimmer of a smile on her face, and was working beautifully. Theo turned away, and as she did so, the first fifty Battements finished, and all the class reversed, and held the bar with their right hands, and stood on their right points. Once more there came smothered laughter, but this time it was from a different lot of girls. Theo made no comment; but she knew that the culprit must be Posy, from the fact that each time the laughter came from the girls immediately behind her, whether she faced left or right. Theo could see nothing wrong; nobody in the class was working harder than Posy, and the expression on her face was positively angelic.


  From that moment the senior class went to pieces; they were always laughing and watching Posy. After a day or two Theo realized why. Posy, though she did what she was told, never did the exercises as herself, but in imitation of some well-known figure in the Academy. It was incredible how, with nothing in the way of properties, she managed to give such realistic impersonations. One day she was Madame Moulin, with all her French mannerisms incorporated into the exercises, and another time she was Smithy, the cook-housekeeper in charge of the refectory. Smithy had great trouble with corns, and a habit of smoothing her apron over her hips. Posy doing Fouett6 as though she had corns would have made anyone laugh. In the end there was nobody in the Academy who had peculiarities, whom Posy did not imitate.

  Theo bore with her for a bit; she did not want to worry Sylvia, who she knew was up to her eyes with work to do with selling the house. In the end she went to Pauline, and told her how naughty Posy was being, and how it was impossible to teach a class with her in it, and asked her if she would try having a talk with her.

  Pauline knew it was no good having a talk with Posy, who had always said the senior ballet class was a waste of time for her, and who would consider, if she was made to attend it in spite of what she said, that she had a right to do what she liked during it. Pauline also knew what fun it must be for Posy to pass the time doing imitations; she always loved doing them, and the sort of audience she would get at the senior ballet class would be just the sort she would adore.

  Posy was having her bath as Pauline came in.

  ‘The Marmaro Ballet is coming over in May, did you know?’

  Posy’s face lit up.

  ‘Of course I did. Manoff is coming here for the first time since he danced here in the Diaghileff ballets before that war in 1914.’

  ‘Is he good?’

  ‘Good!’ Posy looked scornful, ‘He’s much more than good. Ever since nineteen-twenty, when he founded his school in Czechoslovakia, he has worked and worked. People go in hundreds to see him over there, but this is the first year he has thought his ballet fit to show the world. Imagine it! Some of his students who are now dancing for him came to him as little as we were when we went to the Academy.’