Hester's Story (27 page)

‘No, it’s quite all right, really. I hadn’t – haven’t – seen him for years and years. And the funeral’s in America so it’s out of the question. But Edmund, Edmund Norland, that is, will be there. He can tell me about it when he gets here after New Year.’

‘I can’t wait to meet him. I really hope he’s happy with what I’m doing to his music. I’ll leave you now.’ He stood up. Siggy slid his body into the seat Hugo had just left and curled up with a low purr of satisfaction.

*

Ruby came in almost as soon as Hugo left and stood leaning against the desk.

‘I’m glad you’re not the sort of person who’d turn a cat out of his chair,’ Hester said. ‘Hugo thought he was being honoured when Siggy jumped on his lap. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that was his way of asking to sit in the armchair. He’s been telling me about the costumes. Are you going to be able to manage?’

‘I’m sure I will. Some of the costumes are fine and I’m sure I can fix the damaged ones. There’s not much we haven’t got, but I’ll go into Leeds and buy a few things I still need. I might take Alison with me. I came to see how you are, Hester.’

‘Oh, Ruby, how kind you are! I’m fine. Truly. I go hours and hours without thinking about it at all. But with the funeral tomorrow, of course my mind does go back …’

‘You shouldn’t let it,’ Ruby said gently. ‘You should look forward to seeing Edmund very soon.’

‘Yes, I know. I am. I do think of that, but all sorts of other thoughts spring up. Then I have to make a real effort to concentrate on the future. There’s lots to occupy me here at the moment, but still … What about you, Ruby? Are you managing?’

‘Me? Why, of course!’ Ruby spoke as though her mental state, her inner composure, were not in the least relevant.

‘You look a bit pale, that’s all. Are you sure you’re not getting one of your headaches?’

‘No.’ Ruby looked towards the door. She’s going to leave soon, Hester thought. The conversation is edging towards territory she doesn’t like. Sure enough, when Ruby spoke again, it was to say goodbye.

‘I must go, Hester. If that’s all right with you. I only popped in for a moment. George’ll be wanting his tea.’

‘Yes, do go, of course. I’ll see you later. Don’t worry about me.’

Ruby glanced back as she left the room and Hester saw something in her eyes, a kind of sorrow or fear, or perhaps a mixture of the two. She’d picked up on this many times in the years they’d been together, but hadn’t been able to bring herself to ask Ruby about it. What would she have said? She knew that confession wasn’t something Ruby approved of. She believed in people keeping their emotions under control.

Hester sighed. Maybe it’s nothing, she thought. Maybe she’s just sad, like me, to think of Adam with earth piled up and covering him. She shivered. She wouldn’t cry. She absolutely refused to cry for Adam.

30 December 1986

Thick snow had fallen overnight, and Alison wondered whether she and Ruby would still be able to get into Leeds today. She’d been looking forward to the trip, but the snow was exciting too. Alison noticed the first flakes drifting down yesterday as she was drawing the curtains before she went to bed. She made the same wish she always made when she saw it coming down: please let it lie. Please let the world be transformed when I wake up. Now, everywhere she looked, there was nothing but white and more white outlining the branches on every tree; covering the grass and the paths, and blanketing the curve of the moor. It’s lovely, she thought. If I started making a snowman, would anyone else join in? They’d probably be too busy with rehearsals to do anything that was just for fun.

The snow had changed everything. The lawns, the paths, the trees, and the moors in the distance didn’t really look white, but had shadows on them that were blue and mauve and grey and there was a silence surrounding her that was more than just quiet. It felt as though a muffling blanket had been thrown over everything. Siggy had obviously been out, at least for a while. There were his paw prints leading to one of the flowerbeds and then back again to the house but, as far as she could see, she was the first human to step out after breakfast.

Waking up and finding the whole garden draped in snow was brilliant. She looked at the footprints she was making in the white expanse, and then she looked at the moors behind the house, melting into a mass of greyish-purple clouds. It won’t turn to slush here under thousands of feet and wheels and artificial lights, she thought. I must remember all the colours and try and put them down on paper later so that I don’t forget. Would it be better in watercolour? Probably, but crayons were what she had available and she would have to make do.

‘Hello!’ Alison turned round at once to see who was calling her. Hester was striding towards her, as though she wanted to say something to her. She was dressed in a dark blue coat and a woollen hat knitted in shades of red and pink. When she spoke, streamers of white vapour came from her mouth.

‘I saw you as I was coming back from my walk. Isn’t the snow wonderful? I love Wychwood when it looks like this. Mind if I join you?’

‘No, of course not,’ Alison answered and immediately wondered what they were going to talk about. Hester fell into step beside her and they walked down the drive in the direction of the theatre. The sun had just risen and pale rays were lighting up the moorside. The sky wasn’t really blue, more a sort of very pale grey, but the snow glittered where the sunlight caught it and some of the trees had branches that were tipped with gold. The crunching of their boots on the path was the only sound in the landscape.

‘I’ve always liked the snow,’ Hester said. ‘Maybe you could make a snowman near the house. Has anyone suggested it?’

‘They’re going to be busy rehearsing, I expect. They’re always rehearsing. If they’re not at class.’

‘It must be most peculiar to anyone who isn’t
involved, I know. The thing is, they haven’t got long and Hugo seems to be a perfectionist.’

‘My mum is too. She’s never happy with what she does. She’s always moaning about not having enough time to do things. It’s okay. I’m used to her rehearsing all the time.’

‘Are you bored, Alison?’

‘Oh, no, not at all. It’s lovely here. I thought I might be bored, but I’m not.’

They walked together through the gate and down the village street.

‘I used to live there when I was a little girl.’ Hester pointed at a very ordinary house, set back from the road. ‘With my mother’s cousins. The Wellicks, they were called. I wonder where they are now.’

‘Don’t you know?’ Alison burst out, and then wondered whether she sounded a little rude.

‘We’ve lost touch, I’m afraid. I wasn’t very nice to them when I was a girl, I think. They did their best to look after me. I see that now, but at the time, well, I didn’t want to leave my grandmother and everything I knew and Yorkshire was very different from what I’d been used to in France. I couldn’t have been the easiest child in the world to look after.’ She smiled. ‘I went to London when I was fourteen to study ballet and only came back here long after they’d left.’

Alison thought about this. She’d never really considered the possibility of simply leaving someone you didn’t like. What would it be like to leave Claudia? She shivered. I wouldn’t know where to go, or what to do on my own. Dad would most likely look after me so I’d be okay, and maybe I should do it, she told herself. Mum and I are always fighting. Would I miss her if I lived somewhere else?

‘I don’t think I’d be brave enough to leave home,’ she said finally.

‘It’s different for you,’ Hester said. ‘You have your mother. Mine died when I was five and the Wellicks couldn’t really take her place, however hard they tried.’

‘That’s awful,’ Alison said, and stopped in the middle of the road to look at Hester. She seemed so glamorous, so self-possessed. It was hard to imagine her as a small child, with no mother to take care of her. Just thinking about it made her want to cry.

Hester nodded and went on walking, looking down at her feet. ‘I was lucky, though. My first ballet teacher became a sort of mother to me. She was Russian. Olga Rakovska was her name and Wychwood was her house. She left it to me when she died.’

‘Did you have a father?’ As soon as she spoke, Alison realised both what a stupid question it was (
of course she had a father, you idiot
) and also that it was probably cheeky to ask someone she hardly knew about such things. Hester didn’t seem to mind, though.

‘I didn’t get on very well with my father. I hardly saw him after I was five. I suppose he must have loved me in his way, but I can’t remember him ever showing me that he did.’

‘How horrible for you! My dad loves me, but he’s in America so I don’t see him very often. I wrote to him and told him we were here. He usually writes back.’

‘Don’t worry. The post’s always delayed around Christmas. I expect he’s written back and the letter’s been held up.’

Alison nodded. ‘Maybe.’ She changed the subject because she didn’t want to say anything nasty about her mother to Hester, who was probably like everyone else and filled with admiration for Claudia. ‘I’m going to help Ruby with the costumes and things. We were supposed to be going into Leeds this afternoon, but maybe we won’t be able to with this snow. I like
working with my hands, which is lucky, because I couldn’t ever be a ballet dancer.’

Hester stopped walking and looked at Alison. ‘There’s nothing wrong with
not
being a ballet dancer, you know. It’s very easy for those of us who do it to forget that there’s a whole world of normal people out there …’ She waved a gloved hand in the air ‘… who eat normally, are all sorts of different shapes and sizes and don’t spend their nights flying through the air dressed in chiffon and satin.’

‘I suppose so. But I always feel fat and clumsy next to Mum.’

‘You’re not fat and clumsy. You must know that. Just a normal person. And if you don’t have ambitions to dance, I don’t see that it matters what size you are. D’you know what you want to be when you leave school?’

‘I’m going to be a midwife.’

‘Really? That would be … interesting.’

Alison thought she could hear a change in Hester’s voice, but perhaps she’d imagined it.

They’d reached the end of the village street and Hester turned in the direction of Wychwood House.

‘I think we should go back now,’ she said, and Alison nodded. They talked a little on the way back, about
Sarabande
and how she’d known the person who composed the music since she was a young girl, but Alison had the impression, she wasn’t quite sure why, that something had changed. Did I say anything to upset her, she wondered, but couldn’t think of what it might have been.

1951

Hester lived for Sundays. That was the only day of the week when there were no rehearsals, no classes, no dancing of any kind to take her mind away from Adam and how much she loved him. For the rest of the week, she had to survive without him for the most part, though he sometimes came to the evening performance and waited till everyone had left the theatre before taking her to dinner somewhere far from the Royalty. They tried to be discreet, but Hester had begun to think that Piers had his suspicions. Once, during class, he remarked on Adam’s new-found love of ballet. He spoke casually, but she felt that he was looking at her searchingly, trying to find out what was going on.

’You girls who danced at Virginia Lennister’s party made a convert, didn’t you? Adam’s here almost every night. But then I suppose he might be coming to keep Edmund company.’

Sundays were theirs; hers and Adam’s. That was the day that Dinah and Nell spent with their parents, and both of them left the Attic de Luxe early in the morning. Hester waited till they’d gone and then she bathed and dressed as though she were getting ready for a performance and at ten o’clock she walked to the end of Moscow Road, where Adam always waited for her in his black car.

They hardly spoke as they drove to the flat in Chelsea. But as soon as the door had closed behind
them they relaxed, and Hester pretended, as she did every time she was with him, that they were a married couple. That this was their home, and that they were spending Sunday together as man and wife. She never mentioned this dream to Adam, but apart from that, there was nothing they didn’t speak about.

‘I wasn’t very good at being a kid,’ he said, tracing the veins on the back of her hand with his fingers. ‘My parents sent me away to boarding school when I was about ten and somehow, every time I went home for the holidays, they seemed more and more distant, as though they had nothing to do with me. They were killed in a car accident when I was thirteen. I was terribly shocked, then sad, but in a disembodied way. I liked school, or heaven knows what would have become of me. Edmund helped. He’s younger than me, so he didn’t have that much to do with me at school, but his parents were friendly with mine so after they died I spent holidays with his family. We’re more like brothers than friends, in some ways. I tell him everything, normally. I suppose one day I’ll have to …’

‘He knows about us already. I told him,’ Hester said, turning in the bed and leaning on her elbow and looking down at Adam. ‘Are you angry? I wanted to talk to someone who knows you.’

‘How could I ever be angry with you? Kiss me. Edmund won’t say a word. He’s fond of you, you know.’

She concentrated on the kiss. Should I tell him about what Edmund said about everyone finding out in the end, she wondered. She was finding it hard to think, with Adam’s mouth on hers, with his body pressed against hers.

As they lay in the wide double bed, peaceful after lovemaking, she said, ‘I sometimes think I’ve never
really talked to anyone before. I used to tell my grandmother everything, but that was when I was such a tiny child. Just babbling, really, I suppose. And then Madame Olga, of course. I spoke to her, but that was mostly about the ballet.
She
was the one who used to tell
me
things. Well, she’d had so many adventures. Lovers, and so forth. I had nothing to tell her in exchange.’