Elegance and Innocence (26 page)

‘Although we’re a great British institution, we’re also one of the world’s leading international houses, Ms Canova.’ (He rolls my surname out with such zealous attention to what he imagines is the authentic pronunciation that I barely recognize it.) ‘And I feel that it’s about time we reflected that in our personnel.’ He pumps my hand vigorously. ‘I’m certain we’ll be seeing you again.’

I exit the building as quickly as I can, before he has time to recall another secluded art collection or remote café in Florence I really must be familiar with.

Having made my escape, I stand panting with relief on the front steps, when a handsome young man stops me.

‘Excuse me, do you have a light?’

I’m so shell shocked that I just stare at him. ‘A light?’ I repeat, as if he’s speaking in code.

‘Yes, you know, for a cigarette?’ he prompts.

‘Oh!’ My mind kicks into gear. ‘Yes, of course! Let me have a look.’ And I rummage around in the bottom of my bag until I find a battered box of matches, bizarrely enough, some I’d pinched from the Ritz. I fumble to strike one and notice, to my embarrassment, that my hands are shaking violently.

I strike one and my hand wobbles dangerously towards his face. ‘Pardon me,’ he intervenes, gently steadying my wrist before leaning in. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

‘No, no. I’m sorry. I’ve just come out of an interview and I’m still a little shaky,’ I confess.

He smiles. ‘Please, allow me to return the favour.’ He offers me one of his cigarettes. ‘You look like maybe you could use one.’

I hesitate. ‘I’m not really a smoker.’

‘Quite right,’ he nods. ‘Filthy habit. Absolutely disgusting.’

I watch as he takes a long, luxurious drag.

‘Well, maybe just one wouldn’t hurt.’

He lights it for me and we stand a moment, smoking. It’s only 12:30, but it’s already been quite a long day.

‘So, how’d it go?’ he asks, leaning casually against a poster for
Swan Lake
. And suddenly, as he smiles in the warm sunlight, it strikes me that he’s easily the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. Slim and not terribly tall, he’s graced with a mass of wild, dark hair and even darker, enormous black eyes. When he smiles, his full lips relax into a sanguine grin that’s both mischievous and completely benign.

I realize I’ve been staring at him. ‘I’m sorry,’ I apologize, coming to. ‘You were asking?’

‘The job … do you think you got it?’

I shake my head. ‘I have no idea. Impossible to say. Do you work here?’

‘Only for the summer. I’m a classical pianist. My sister works here and she managed to wangle me a job playing for the Royal Ballet rehearsals. I’m studying in Paris this autumn and the money’s really quite good.’

‘Gosh, the Royal Ballet, Paris. You must be wonderful!’

He grins, suddenly shy. ‘I’m lucky,’ he confesses. ‘Have you been to Paris?’ He quickly changes the subject. ‘It’s my favourite city in the world! You haven’t lived unless you’ve idled away an entire afternoon sipping champagne and smoking cigarettes in a café on the Boulevard St Germain!’

I laugh. ‘I’ve been to Paris but somehow I never got around to that.’

‘Then you must go again,’ he says softly.

I look up and catch his eye. He smiles again and I feel myself blushing.

‘Do you like the ballet?’ he asks.

‘I love it. Or at least, I used to love it, many years ago. I haven’t been in a very long time.’

‘Here.’ He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a ticket. ‘I don’t know what you’re doing for the rest of the afternoon, but there’s a dress rehearsal for
Swan Lake
going on at the moment. They give me these tickets and I always forget about them until it’s too late. Speaking of which,’ he checks his watch, ‘I was due in rehearsal five minutes ago.’

‘That’s so kind of you …’ I falter, caught off guard by his generosity.

He stubs his cigarette out under his heel and turns to go. ‘Enjoy! And you never know, maybe you will get the job and I’ll get to see more of you!’

A moment later, he’s gone.

I take another drag. This is certainly turning out to be an unusual day, especially for one that had started off so disastrously.

I had planned to go straight home and hide for the rest of the afternoon. I look again at the ticket in my hand.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been to the ballet. Eighteen years, in fact. That was the summer I stopped dancing. The same summer my mother tried to commit suicide.

I’d been asked to audition for the local ballet company that year. But when the day came, I never showed up. I blamed my mother; told myself I had too much to think about, that I needed to look after her.

Perhaps I couldn’t bear to try and fail. Or perhaps I just wanted to be a normal teenager for once, without the pressure of establishing a whole career before the age of sixteen. It was her dream that I become a dancer. But after that summer, there seemed no point.

I’d failed.

Taking a deep breath, I exhale slowly and close my eyes. Long rows of girls stretch their legs in impossible positions on the barre. Rosin crunches beneath my feet. The air is thick with sweat and concentration. And there’s music. Always music.

I flick my eyes open again.

Eighteen years is a long time to feel like a failure.

I take one last drag on my cigarette before throwing it away. Then I turn and walk inside.

‘I’m afraid you’re too late to take your seat,’ the young girl ushering informs me. ‘However you are allowed to stand at the back of the dress circle until the end of the first act.’

As I follow her up the grand central staircase, I notice how her jacket is just that bit too big, the way mine was when I used to usher at the Phoenix.

‘Are you a student?’ I ask, as we reach the top.

She nods. ‘A singer at the Royal Academy. Only one year left.’

I think about all the plays I’ve watched, standing at the back of the stalls in my ill-fitting jacket.

‘Good luck!’ I whisper as she opens the door and I slip inside.

And there, tucked into the warm, black curve of the circle, surrounded by the overwhelming music of Tchaikovsky, another, equally unexpected thing happens.

As I stand there in the darkness, watching some of the finest dancers in the world, it gradually occurs to me that it’s OK that I’m not one of them.

I could never have changed my mother anyway. No matter how hard I danced.

Darcy Bussell leaps across the stage, defying gravity – defying all the laws of nature – and a soaring, light-headed joy overwhelms me.

I haven’t failed anyone. Least of all myself.

Two days later, I’m called in for a second interview. And that afternoon, I become the first orange person to be hired by the Royal Opera House.

U
Uniformity

Thanks to the high standard of living in the Occident and the perfection of mass-produced Western fashions, an untrained observer must have the impression that every woman is dressed exactly alike. I do not know the origin of this modern form of modesty, which has swept through the feminine population from San Francisco to Paris, and which seems to cause all women to want to resemble each other – even though at the same time they are spending more and more on clothes, cosmetics, and hair dressers! But if you really enjoy being dressed exactly like everybody else, then your future is rosy. Uniformity is the natural by-product of an automized society, and – who knows?– perhaps one day individuality will be considered a crime. In the meantime, you can always join the Army
.

We don’t dress for who we are, so much as who we would like to be.

In London, different streets and different parts of town have different uniforms. Soho has a dress code just as much as the City or the Kings Road. And then there are places where these worlds collide. The theatre is one of them.

A really hot production will have an audience as mixed as they come – conservative business men, ageing Sloane rangers, hippie chic students, Notting Hill bohos, Prada and Armani-clad minimalists, gay, straight, young, old, all mashed in together and yet as clearly defined as if they’re wearing big-labelled tee-shirts.

It’s a Friday night in early June. I’m sipping lukewarm white wine, being jostled to and fro in the bar of the Royal Court in residence at the Ambassadors Theatre and chatting to my friend Sandy, who, in a Cassandra-like fit of foresight, managed to book these tickets ages ago. It’s a full house and the bar is heaving when the bells start to go and Sandy decides, the way certain women must, that two minutes before curtain up is the ideal time for a trip to the loo. The throng oozes its way slowly towards the auditorium and suddenly I catch a glimpse of a profile that seems familiar. It belongs to a smartly dressed man. He’s leaning forward, listening with great intensity to what another, younger man is saying to him.

My mind is strangely blank. Yes, I
do
know him but from
where
?

And then that thing happens that sometimes occurs in great and dreadful moments where everything falls away – the crowd, the noise, the bells, and there is only the horrific, curious detail of the moment.

I do know that man.

It’s my ex-husband.

I stare, mesmerized, as he turns around and laughs, slapping his friend on the shoulder.

I wouldn’t have recognized him.

Couldn’t have recognized him.

Everything about him is utterly, completely different. His hair is cropped short. Not cut, mind you, as in, I popped down to the barber’s but
cropped
, as in I just nipped into Nicky Clarke’s. And dyed; pale, honey-coloured highlights. He’s wearing a pair of fitted dark brown velvet jeans and a Hugo Boss pale blue roll-neck jumper with the neck worn slouchy and high, as if he’s just this moment pulled it on over his head. Slung casually over his arm is a softly tailored black leather jacket and his feet are adorned with a pair of Camper bowling shoes.

He isn’t just dressed; he’s groomed, styled.

Here is the man whose wardrobe consisted of shirts his mother had bought him from Marks and Spencer for Christmas, worn without being pressed, cuffs frayed and tattered until they literally fell off his body. Who found it physically painful to buy a new pair of shoes. And now he’s transformed, floating butterfly-like over to the crowded bar to
leave his glass, and wearing this season’s hot item – the bowling shoes – without so much as a glimmer of discomfort or a trace of irony.

He’s a changed man but one I recognize.

It’s the uniform. I know it. I’ve seen it before.

My head is a vacuum, imploding. If I don’t move, he won’t see me. So I freeze, standing so rigidly that even the tables and chairs look animated in my presence. And I watch, holding my breath, as they press their way into the auditorium, chatting easily, completely unaware of my existence. He moves with unexpected fluidity, almost gliding up the stairs. I’m sick and fascinated at the same time.

Suddenly Sandy is by my side again, searching for the tickets in her wallet, panicking that she doesn’t have change for the programme seller, wondering out loud if she should fold her coat and put it under her seat or if she should pop it into the coat check. And before I know it, we’re sitting, crammed next to a couple of German tourists clutching their knapsacks on their knees. The lights are dimming when I realize I’m still holding my glass of warm wine.

I can’t remember anything about the first act. Intent on locating the silhouette of my ex-husband’s head, I spend the whole of it looking through the audience, trying to discern his distinctive new haircut from the haircuts around him. I think I see him and then I don’t. And I want to see him. To stare at him. I cannot – or rather won’t – believe
my eyes. So I stare into the blackness of the auditorium rather than at the brightly-lit stage. The audience leans forward in fascination, laughs in all the right places, gasps during the climax, but still I can’t find him.

Finally the first act ends and the lights come up.

‘That was amazing!’ Sandy gushes, completely enthralled. ‘Don’t you think that was absolutely amazing?’

I spot them. There they are, walking up the centre aisle. Laughing.

‘Incredible,’ I murmer.

Sandy’s standing up, brushing off her skirt. ‘Shall we?’

It’s his friend I’m looking at now; same cropped haircut, same Camper bowling shoes, but young, younger than I’d realized. His face has that hyper neatness. Does he pluck his eyebrows? And he’s wearing a pair of Diesel jeans and a tight black tee-shirt. They’re walking past now. I hold my breath. Sandy’s pushing me towards the end of our row and we slot in behind them. The cologne the young one’s wearing wafts around me, clean and light, and then I watch as he reaches up and places his hand briefly against the back of my ex-husband’s neck.

It’s a small gesture: quick, casual. But it stops me dead in my tracks. A kind of slow motion close-up shot of the thing I never wanted to see. I’m staring, not at the hand, but at my ex-husband’s reaction.

There is none. It’s apparently normal for him to be touched this way.

I cannot make my feet move forward any more. The crowd is clogging up on the steps behind me.

‘Are you all right?’ Sandy asks, giving me a gentle shove. But I’m glued to the spot.

‘I forgot my programme,’ I croak, turning back against the tide, away from the bar. ‘I just want to grab my programme.’

And I stumble down the steps, past my row, to the front of the stage, where I lean, heart pounding, against the front of the orchestra pit.

I know. I know now.

I always knew, but now I really know.

You can’t tell a book by its cover, but you can learn a lot about a person from their shoes.

V
Veils

Somewhat out of fashion at the moment (and I cannot imagine why), veils are one of the most flattering feminine adornments. If you wish to appear at once seductive, mysterious, and incredibly sophisticated, a veil will serve your purposes admirably. The unique charm of this accessory is that it allows even the most plain, uninspiring creature to look as if she’s Anna Karenina, or at the very least, Garbo. And the very fact that part of the face is hidden from view creates a certain frisson that is both exciting and intriguing. Whether you choose a large, coarse veil, or a fine, delicate wisp of tulle, makes no difference. Women who wear veils are creatures with a past, a secret. And what could be more elegant than that?