Hester's Story (20 page)

Alison thought: You’d be brilliant. ‘Yes, ballet is hard work. Lots of people don’t realise.’

Hugo was looking as though he was about to get everyone into line to start the class. Nick smiled at Alison and then out of the blue, stretched his hand out and touched her arm lightly.

‘Smashing to talk to you, Alison. But duty calls, right?’ he said, indicating Hugo and Hester with a movement of his head. He liked her. He seemed to like her. Happy, she thought. I’m feeling happy.

‘Now,’ said Hester, standing in front of the dancers. ‘Is everyone ready? I’m going to begin with the steps which are the basis of everything. This is the routine my first teacher, Olga Rakovska, used to take me through every day, when I was about nine years old. It still works, I think—’

At that moment the door of the rehearsal room opened and Claudia came into the room in a great hurry. Alison knew she was flustered because her hair was still down over her shoulders and she was a little red in the face. It did look as though she’d overslept. She was about to rush over and take off her coat and get ready when Hester stopped speaking and stared at her. ‘I am not in the habit of saying things twice, so I’m afraid you’ve missed the beginning of this class. We
will all have to wait now, while you change into your shoes. It’s a waste of our time.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Claudia began. ‘I overslept.’

‘Please don’t oversleep again. Real professionals don’t oversleep. I’m not prepared to give my time to a company where the principal thinks she can turn up whenever it suits her.’

‘I said I’m sorry,’ said Claudia, in what Alison recognised as her ‘dangerous’ voice, the one which was extra sweet and cloying and which signalled the fact that she might very well lose her temper. ‘I don’t think I’ve missed very much, have I?’

Her mother’s smile would have blistered paint. Alison wondered whether Hester could sense just how furious Claudia was. No, probably if you didn’t know her, you’d never guess.

‘You have missed the beginning of my class. I believe you’ve also missed the talk Hugo’s given to the company. Not very much at all.’

Alison looked at Hester with admiration. She was clearly not going to be bullied by Claudia or by the threat of a temper tantrum. She continued to speak, but to the whole company now.

‘While we wait for Claudia to get ready, I’d like to say this. I expect the highest standards from any dancers who come here to Wychwood. I don’t tolerate second-best. I am impatient with excuses. I believe that real dancers come to class on time, work hard, think of their colleagues and, above all, think of the ballet that they’re going to be putting on. It’s a cooperative venture and that means that everyone has to work together. I hope you all agree.’

Everyone was nodding, and by now Claudia had taken her place right in front of Hester, ready to start the class. Hester smiled at her. ‘Good. Now we can begin. We’ll start with
demi-pliés
, please.’

They went into a routine they must have practised hundreds of times. Alison listened to the instructions –
pliés, entrechats, demi-pliés, jetés
 – but now that her mother was busy doing the exercises with everyone else, she could look at Nick again. She watched him going through the movements, marvelling at how graceful he was. She could still feel the touch of his hand on her arm. He had made it seem as though he really liked her.

*

Bitch
, Claudia thought, watching Hester leave the room after the class. How dare she pull me up in front of the whole company, as though I was some kind of naughty schoolkid? The cheek of it! Doesn’t she know who I am? For God’s sake, what did I miss? Precisely nothing. Hugo’s pep talk (big deal!) and a few clichés from Madam, probably. Bloody living legend! I’m the star now. I’m the one with my face on the cover of
Vogue
, not her. Her days are over and what is she now, when all’s said and done, but a festival director. And that’s it. The ballet could go on perfectly well without her, but it would collapse without me. I should have said something. I should have told her what’s what.

As she thought this, Claudia knew that would have been quite impossible. The whole future of
Sarabande
would have been placed in jeopardy. I might be selfish, but I wouldn’t want to spoil Hugo’s big chance. She congratulated herself on her maturity. She had to admit that part of her reason was her own desire to dance the role of the Princess. She knew that if Hester put pressure on Hugo, he’d have no hesitation in giving the part to someone else. He was always saying it:
Nobody’s indispensable
. The mere idea of being pushed out of the cast made Claudia want to cry. This
was her chance to stop all those who, she knew, were starting to talk about how much longer she would be able to dance, speculating about how old she was, just out of her hearing. No, she would behave herself and all would be well. That cow they all thought was so marvellous would have to admit how good she was. She imagined the scene – Hester presenting her with flowers, Hester saying,
that was wonderful. I couldn’t have done it better myself
.

The rehearsal proper had begun now. She was waiting for Hugo to call her, and was only half-attending to the routines he was going over with Ilene and Andy. Nick was right on the other side of the room and looked deep in thought. Probably an act, Claudia reckoned, like most things he did. But he was undoubtedly gorgeous. She looked at his long legs and wondered about him. She’d heard that he was gay, but he seemed always to have an eye for any pretty girl who happened to cross his path. She began to feel, as she looked at him, the first stirrings of an all too familiar sensation: new desire. She sat up straighter, wondering whether there was anything else in the whole world as thrilling as the possibility it presented. It was like having tiny little thrills uncurling green roots all through her veins. She could feel them. Pull yourself together, she told herself. Concentrate on the rehearsal.

The music droned on. It was a bit too modern for Claudia’s taste. Tchaikovsky was her very favourite and almost everything after Rimsky-Korsakov and the divine
Schéhérazade
too tuneless in her opinion. She never said so to Hugo because he loved anything where the melody was completely unhummable. Where, in fact, there was no melody. You couldn’t say that about the
Sarabande
music but it wasn’t exactly
Swan Lake
and it took some concentration fitting the steps to the notes.

‘Let’s do your entrance now, Claudia,’ Hugo said, turning to her. She went to stand in front of him and he turned the music on for her first entrance.

‘No, Claudia. No, no and again no. We’ve been through this, haven’t we? Three steps and then a pause. Listen to the music. It’s all there. Do it again, please.’

Claudia went through the entrance again, but her mind wasn’t on it. She would have to have a word with Hugo. For a moment there, he’d nearly lost his patience with her and if she’d said it once she’d said it a thousand times to more choreographers than you could count on the fingers of both hands:
I don’t do conflict situations in the rehearsal rooms. I don’t respond to bullying, so you can forget it or I walk
. Most of them got the picture immediately and fell over themselves to be nice to her. Hugo was sometimes just plain bossy and there was no need for it. You got better results from being kind, she thought, and she’d have to tell Hugo about it before it became a problem.

He wasn’t one to lose his temper. He was cleverer than that. He was rather obviously exasperated with some of the things she was doing. And okay, perhaps she hadn’t been working as hard as she could have, but it was early days on this ballet. Tons of time yet to get it right, and who’d arrived at dead of night yesterday and had overslept and not managed to get breakfast before bloody class started? Now she came to think about it, it was Hugo’s fault she was late. He could have woken her, couldn’t he? She did have a memory of someone shaking her shoulder, but that had been too early altogether and she’d gone back to sleep. She’d be more focused tomorrow.

After Hugo had finished with her, she went to sit
down again. For a wonder, Alison was here. She was gazing at Nick like a mesmerised sheep, but at least she was in the rehearsal room and behaving herself quite well. That’s thanks to me, Claudia told herself. It sorted her out forever, true enough, but I was pretty savage that day. How old was she? Maybe nine or ten. She’d been getting on my nerves all afternoon.
What is there to do, Mummy? I don’t want to play with my dolls. I don’t want to go and see what Joanie upstairs is doing. I don’t want to watch TV
and on and on till Claudia thought she was going mad. She’d lost it completely: yelled at the poor kid with the full force of her lungs and her face red and twisted up with anger. She could remember how it had felt even now, her mouth tight and her hands clenched to stop herself from actually hitting Alison as she shrieked at her.

There’s nothing to do, and I don’t care if you do think you’re hard done by. Bloody well find a book or something and shut up. Just shut up. Above all, I don’t want to hear that voice of yours droning on and on as if it’s my fault you can’t find ways of keeping yourself occupied. God, your father doesn’t know how lucky he is sometimes to have left all this behind him. Maybe I should pack you off to them, him and the Jeanette person, and see how you like it there, eh?

Alison, to give her credit, had given nearly as good as she got and screamed right back.
Okay, okay I’m going and I’ll never ask you what to do ever again. I’ll please myself and I shan’t care whether you like it or not and if you’re horrible to me just once more I’ll go to the papers and tell them their precious ballerina is a witch who’s cruel to her only daughter and then see how many of them will want to take your picture. I hate you!

Claudia smiled. That had been intelligent of Alison. A trump card. She’d hugged her and kissed her
immediately, of course, even summoning up some tears, and gone into an over-the-top routine of love and devotion and pretended stress over something or other, apologising, promising never to say anything like that ever again, and it had worked. Sort of. Alison never did have to go to the press, but Claudia knew she wasn’t taken in for a moment. Still, she never bothers me with demands for entertainment, Claudia thought, so it worked out rather well.

She often wondered whether she really loved her daughter. Or whether she loved her properly, in the way that other people seemed to adore their offspring. When she was pregnant, she longed for the birth of the baby. She spent hours imagining how wonderful she’d look in photographs, with a pretty little child at her side. No one had told her how much sheer hard work babies were and, of course, it was just her luck to have given birth to the most difficult baby in the world. Claudia recalled so many battles to get the baby to eat, so many nights broken by her crying, that it was a wonder, quite frankly, that she’d come out of it feeling anything remotely resembling affection for her daughter.

She sighed, and consoled herself with the thought that of course she must love Alison. Of course she did. It was just that the love was so often overlaid with irritation that it was hard to know sometimes exactly what she felt. At least here at Wychwood there was no need to worry about her. She had a huge garden to wander about in, an enormous house to explore (even if there were bits of it which were private rooms and therefore out of bounds) and a cat to keep her amused. And now, it seemed, she might even be developing a crush on Nick. She’d be okay.

Having decided that, Claudia put Alison out of her mind entirely and considered Nick again. I could look
at him for hours, she thought, and bent down to take off her ballet shoes to hide the blush that was suffusing her face at the thought of that body pressed close to hers. Being a redhead had its disadvantages.

*

The man who had just come into the kitchen to join the company for lunch looked like someone’s idea of a nice granddad. Or an elderly uncle, Alison thought. He was too old to be any kind of dancer, though he was certainly thin enough. Hugo stood up and pushed his chair back and went over to shake hands with the new arrival. They came to Hugo’s end of the table and sat down there. Where did the extra chair appear from? It seemed to have materialised out of thin air. No, Andy had simply moved down a place and left a space between him and Nick.

‘Okay, everyone,’ said Hugo, ‘here’s someone I want you to meet. This is George Stott, who’s the lighting manager, the front of house manager and also secretary of the Friends of the Wychwood Festival. A very important person as you can see. He’s Ruby’s husband, for those of you who’ve already met Ruby.’

George smiled and said, ‘Good afternoon, everyone. It’s good to have you here and I hope you all enjoy the time you spend at Wychwood. Hugo’s been very kind about me, but what I’m really good at is making things run smoothly, so if you’ve any problems, don’t hesitate for a second. I’ll be happy to help in any way I can.’

He sat down and poured himself a drink from the jug of orange juice in the middle of the kitchen table. Then he began to help himself to cold meats and salads, and turned to Alison.

‘I don’t think I’ve met this young lady. Is no one going to introduce us?’

‘Alison is my daughter,’ said Claudia, in a way
which made it sound, Alison thought, as though she was anything but pleased about this.

‘Delighted, I’m sure,’ said George and smiled at her. Alison smiled weakly back. The conversation went on around her. Ilene and Andy were discussing Hester.

‘Incredibly chic,’ said Ilene. ‘How old is she? Fifty?’

‘Fifty-three,’ said Andy. ‘I looked it up. She used to go about with Edmund Norland, who wrote the music for
Sarabande
. Bet you didn’t know that.’

‘By “go about” do you mean “sleep with”?’ Ilene asked.

‘Don’t think so. Don’t really know. She never married, I know that much. And her partner, Kaspar Beilin, who’s in San Francisco now with his own company, never made a secret about being gay. Don’t forget, the press were a whole lot more discreet in those days. You could do all sorts of stuff in private that would end up on the front page of the tabloids if you did it today.’