Hester's Story (29 page)

‘If you want to know the truth, Adam, mostly I’m crying because I’m so angry. I’m angry with
you
.’

‘Me?’ Adam sounded genuinely shocked. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ve arranged for us to go out to dinner after the first night of
Red Riding Hood
. Me and you and Edmund, and your wife. How
could
you? Don’t you know that every second sitting at that table will be torture for me? How can I look her in the face? Didn’t you think for one moment how it would feel to me, to be sitting there with her? You obviously didn’t or you couldn’t have fixed up such a nightmare. And after the first night, too. How am I supposed to dance when I know that’s waiting for me afterwards?’

She flung herself back against the pillows and covered her face with one arm. Adam put out his hand and turned her towards him, so that they were lying with their faces almost touching. She could feel his breath on her skin.

‘Hester, my darling, I had to do it. I couldn’t get out of it. Virginia asked particularly to meet you when she heard you were dancing the name part in
Red Riding Hood
and it was she who insisted it would make a wonderful Christmas treat for us on Boxing Day, and wouldn’t it be fun to eat together afterwards and ask Edmund too. Now how could I possibly say no? Wouldn’t that have given the whole game away? “No, sorry, darling, we can’t go out afterwards because the ballerina you’re so keen on is my mistress.’”

‘Yes, I understand,’ Hester said coldly, turning away from Adam in one swift movement and flinging herself out of bed. ‘I should have thought of that. You’d have been quite powerless in that situation. I do see, of course.’

‘You
are
angry, Hester. Oh God, don’t be angry.
Forgive me. Please, Hester, my love. How could I possibly—’

‘I know. You couldn’t. You couldn’t let
darling
Virginia suspect anything.’ She bit back a remark she was just on the point of making, about how he’d promised to tell his wife about them; promised to ask for a divorce. I won’t, she told herself. I won’t do that. I’ll never mention it again and let’s see if he does. And
mistress
. Hester supposed it was true, but how wounded she’d felt when he said it. She had foolishly imagined that she, Hester Fielding, was more than that. Special. Different. Not like all those ordinary people who were sleeping with someone else’s husband. How naïve! How stupid! Dinah would say
I told you so
or
what did you expect?

She sat on the side of the bed, pulling on her stockings, trying not to start crying again, wanting only to be out of Adam’s house and in the street, going home to Dinah and Nell and then getting up tomorrow and concentrating on getting herself ready for the first night. On what she was meant to care about: the ballet. Everything she’d been working so hard for over the last few weeks.

‘Stop it, Adam,’ she said. He’d crossed over to her side of the bed, and put his arms around her waist as she sat there, and then he began to kiss her naked back, and touch her breasts gently, and pull her towards him, murmuring into her skin words she couldn’t hear but which sounded like her name, and
please
, and
love
and all the things that made her weak when she heard them. She leaned into his body, loving how his lips were moving over the skin of her back to her neck and then her ear.

‘Come to bed again, Hester,’ he whispered. ‘You don’t have to go yet. I’ll drive you home later. I can’t
bear it if you leave now. Please, darling Hester. Come here.’

She let herself be drawn into the bed again, into forgetting everything but their bodies. As he began to kiss her everywhere, everywhere, she thought fleetingly of how often they seemed to use sex in order not to have to think; not to have to confront reality or consider what their situation was, or was going to be, but then her thoughts began to unravel and soon she forgot everything; every last word that had been in her mind to speak melted away and disappeared.

*

‘I’ve got a present for you,’ Adam said later. ‘For Christmas.’

‘And I shall try and find one for you that won’t give anything away if your wife comes across it.’ Hester laughed, to show that she was no longer sulking about the first night dinner; that she was going to be a good sport and pretend like mad for the sake of – what? She wasn’t quite sure, maybe the
status quo
, that she was no more to Adam than someone who’d just danced the main part in one of Edmund’s ballets. ‘What’s this? May I open it now?’

‘Yes, I want you to. I want to look at your face when you see what it is. And I want to think of you when you use it.’

She undid the wrapping carefully. The gold paper was slippery under her hands. Inside was a robe made of black satin with the image of a golden dragon embroidered on the back. The dragon’s head was near the shoulder and a shimmering, scaly tail twisted and wound down towards the hem. It was the most beautiful garment Hester had ever seen that wasn’t a costume to be worn on stage. The black and gold seemed to slip and glitter and shine in her hands.

‘Oh!’ she said, as she turned it over and over, stroking the fabric, loving it, loving the opulence of it, the luxury and splendour. ‘Oh, how lovely! I shan’t want to wear it at all, it’s so beautiful. But I will. I won’t even wait until Christmas. I’ll wear it tonight and it’ll remind me of you every time I put it on. It’s … I can’t describe what it makes me feel. Where did you find it?’

‘There’s a shop near the British Museum. I saw it in the window and knew it was made for you. Do you like it? Really?’

‘I love it, Adam. I’ll treasure it for ever, I promise you.’

‘I love you, Hester. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘Of course I do.’

Even as she said it, she wondered whether she believed her own words.

*

Red Riding Hood
opened on Boxing Day. The theatre was full of children and parents and everyone seemed pleased to be there, but Hester was too worried about what would happen after the show to be anxious about the ballet itself. She took off the gold chain, wrapped it in a handkerchief and hid it carefully, as usual, in the cigar-box where she kept all her make-up. Her costume (a peasant outfit
à la Giselle
with a silk hooded cape over the top) was pretty and Edmund’s music was a joy to dance to. She thought about her first entrance, with the forest painted on flats on each side of the stage and the backdrop showing a path through the trees with a little house in the background. During rehearsals, she’d occasionally imagined
Grand-mère
as the person she was going to visit, but this was impossible once she’d seen Miles as the wolf. Both in
his dress suit in the forest and later in the grandmother’s dress, the effect was comical.

‘We do not want droves of mothers fleeing the theatre with their screaming tots terrified of the Wolf,’ Piers said.

Hester stood up and left the dressing room. What would happen after the ballet was over, she wondered for the hundredth time, but she pushed this to the back of her mind and set out for the wings to make her entrance stage left.

*

Dinah was helping Hester to dress for the dinner she had been dreading, and was right in the middle of putting up her hair. She had pushed Piers, and all the others who’d been congratulating Hester on her performance, out of the dressing room a few moments before. Adam and Virginia were waiting in the theatre bar. Edmund was coming to fetch Hester.

‘Stop twitching and sit still,’ Dinah said. ‘I’m going to make your hair into a sophisticated upswept whatsit but I can’t if you keep turning this way and that.’

Hester was sitting on the stool in front of the mirror, wearing her dragon robe.

‘I’m just checking my eyes, and my lips. Are they okay? You don’t think I’ve got too much make-up on?’

‘No such thing, I don’t think.’

‘Of course there is! I don’t want to look brassy and artificial.’ Hester peered at her image in the mirror and grimaced.

Dinah laughed. ‘You don’t. You look dewy and virginal.’

‘I don’t! Do I really?’

‘Yep. An accident of your features and colouring, I suppose. Also elegant and cool. All the good things
you’re supposed to be according to the best magazines.’

Hester’s eyes met Dinah’s in the mirror. ‘I’m terrified, Dinah. What am I going to say to her?’

‘You’ll be fine. Edmund will talk a mile a minute and you don’t have to speak much if you don’t feel like it. Just blush winsomely and tuck in to your smoked salmon or steak or whatever you’re having.’

‘Hester? Are you decent?’ Edmund stuck his head around the dressing-room door. ‘Oh golly, you look fantastic. We ought to go now. Are you nearly ready?’

She nodded. She had put on a hyacinth-blue silk blouse with long, full sleeves and a black pencil skirt. On her feet, she wore black satin court shoes. She’d borrowed a black velvet cape from Wardrobe. She pulled it around her and joined Edmund at the door.

‘Are you okay, Hester?’ They were in the corridor leading down to the stage door.

‘I think so. I hope so.’

‘I’ll be there, you know. You can talk to me, whenever you’re feeling … well, whenever you like.’

Hester flung her arms round Edmund’s neck and kissed him on the cheek.

‘You’re so good to me! I don’t know how I’d manage anything without you. I’m dreading this evening so much, you can’t begin to imagine.’

Edmund smiled. ‘Well, if your dread has this effect, I might wish you’d be scared more often. But nothing bad will happen. It’ll be perfectly all right, you’ll see. I know how hard it’ll be for you, but take my advice and pretend. It’s easy when you’re used to it. Pretend you’re just another ballerina who hardly knows Adam. Pretend you’ve only just met. Okay?’

They were now outside the stage door and she couldn’t say what she was thinking, but it occurred to
her that Edmund wasn’t going to feel exactly comfortable either. Hester didn’t know whether Adam had confided in him, but she had, and he would be aware of the hidden meanings in everything. Hester was grateful for his affection and support and realised suddenly how much she relied on him. All through the rehearsals for
Red Riding Hood
, during raucous meals at Gino’s with the rest of the cast, and on the rare occasions when they were alone, he directed a strong, steady warmth of friendship at her which never wavered and never altered. She tried out her happy smile, and kept it fixed on her face as she stepped out of the stage door to meet Adam and his wife, while her heart thumped painfully in her throat. It’ll soon be over, she thought. It’ll be all right.

*

Edmund and Hester were on one side of the table and Adam and Virginia on the other. The restaurant was the sort of place which Hester would have enjoyed describing to Dinah and Nell once she got home, but she wasn’t paying the surroundings the attention they deserved. She vaguely took in walls covered in something like dark red velvet, pink-shaded lamps everywhere and white china that sparkled and shone on pink linen tablecloths. I’ll have to tell Madame Olga something about it, Hester thought. She knew how infuriated her old teacher was to have been prevented from coming to the first night by a bad attack of flu. A good description of this restaurant would cheer her up. The food was probably delicious as well, though it could have been
papier-máché
as far as she was concerned. Virginia, on the other hand, she could have described to her friends in detail because, while everyone was talking, Hester looked at Adam’s wife and saw how pretty she was: fair, with blue eyes that
were lighter than she remembered and long, curly blonde hair twisted up on top of her head with tendrils falling elegantly down on to her shoulders. She was wearing a plain white dress in heavy silk and her arms and throat were bare; her fur stole hung over the back of her chair.

Hester found the sight of her a kind of torture. She couldn’t help it. When she looked at Virginia, all she could see was her naked body in the throes of making love with Adam. There was the high bed she remembered from Orchard House and Virginia spreadeagled on it, and then her and Adam together hot, panting, sweating, writhing. She began to feel weak and slightly nauseous.

‘I’m sorry, I’ll be back in a moment,’ she said. ‘I must just …’ She picked up her handbag and stumbled towards the Ladies’ Room. When she got there, she locked herself into a cubicle and sat on the seat for a long time, trying to bring her breathing under control. In and out, in and out. Gradually, she began to feel more like herself. Someone was knocking on the cubicle door.

‘Hester? Are you in there? Are you all right? It’s Virginia.’

Oh, God, no, she thought. What shall I say? What shall I do? She called out, ‘Fine, thanks. I’ll be out in a minute.’

‘I’ll wait for you,’ Virginia spoke with an American accent. I’ll have to go out and face her, she thought. Face all of them. She stood up and opened the door and went to wash her hands.

‘I expect I’m tired,’ she ventured, trying hard to smile.

‘Don’t look so anxious, Hester, really. It’s quite understandable after your performance. Which was
great, by the way. I’m so jealous of your talent. It must be wonderful to be able to dance like that. You’re like … like a flower, or thistledown or something. Light and beautiful. But of course I know what hard work it is. You make it seem so easy.’

‘Thank you,’ Hester said. ‘It does take it out of you a bit, especially on the first night.’

‘We’ll be going home soon, I’m sure. It’s quite a long drive down to Orchard House.’

She nearly asked her why they weren’t staying at the flat, and then caught herself in time. She was perfectly sure that she wasn’t supposed to know of its existence. Virginia was applying lipstick in the mirror and rattling on in a way that surprised her, because she remembered her as being rather quiet. They’d been drinking wine. Maybe it had gone to Virginia’s head.

‘We could stay in the flat, of course,’ she went on. ‘Adam has a place in Chelsea he uses when he’s working late and so on, but I only really feel comfortable in the country. And it’s important I should feel comfortable because, well, I shouldn’t say this to you, I don’t suppose, and you’ll think I’m brash and vulgar and running off at the mouth, as we say in the States, but the thing is, we’ve been trying for a baby for the longest time and tonight – well, tonight is a good night for it, let’s just say that. So I really want to get Adam home as soon as possible and in the mood, if you know what I mean.’ She giggled and led the way out back to the table. Hester went after her, trembling. Virginia Lennister half-drunk and giggling. A good night to
try for a baby
. They’d been trying
for the longest time
. It took all her self-control to sit down again and go through coffee and the paying of the bill with something like an ordinary expression on her face.