Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs (48 page)

‘Marigold! I know you’re there. Say something, for God’s sake!’

‘Goodbye, Isobel.’

‘No, wait a minute! I want to talk—’

I put down the telephone and went into the kitchen. Curls of smoke were rising from the toaster.

‘Why didn’t you tell me it was Evelyn who paid for me to go to ballet school?’

He was hacking at the cracked yellow lump of cheese with the bread knife and did not look up. ‘She made me promise I wouldn’t.’ He appeared calm but I saw the muscles tighten around his mouth.

‘You let me go on feeling guilty as hell, thinking you and Dimpsie and Kate were going without because of me.’ He continued to hack, a model of unconcern. I struggled to contain my fury. He went to the utensil jar, selected the steak tenderizer that Dimpsie had bought years ago in one of her periodical fits of enthusiasm for cooking, and tried to hammer the knife through the cheese rind.

‘I’m not responsible for your thoughts. As for feeling as guilty as hell, I doubt it.’ For the first time he looked directly at me with eyes that were pinpoints of malice. ‘Did you once think of giving it up? Did you even consider missing a performance to come home and see your mother, about whose welfare you say you’re so anxious?’

‘If you weren’t paying for me, why was there never enough money for the boiler to be replaced or the roof to be repaired properly? Or a new car? What about Kate’s riding lessons?’

‘Now you mention her, Kate was not sufficiently on your tormented conscience to make it worth your attending her wedding, I remember.’

‘We were in China! It was my first chance to dance Aurora. Besides, she wrote saying that it would be a waste of time to come back.’

‘What a little hypocrite you are! As though you’d have dreamt
of doing so.’ It was true I had not been altogether sorry that her letter had been a clear instruction to keep away. The return flight would have cost me two months’ salary. ‘You neglected your family because you had more interesting things to do.’

I felt the blood rush to my face. I could not deny it. Don’t get sidetracked, I told myself, and above all don’t give him the satisfaction of seeing how much he’s hurting you. ‘One of the reasons I didn’t come home much was because I’ve always hated the way you’ve treated Dimpsie – going off with other women and breaking her heart each time in the most callous way, putting her down, destroying her self-confidence; you’ve always been absolutely foul to her and I couldn’t bear to watch it.’

‘So you left her to nurse her broken heart – if you must use clichés – alone. That
was
kind!’

‘Well, I admit it wasn’t very.’ I was furious with myself for being unable to control my voice, which despite my best efforts was becoming strained and unnatural. ‘I ought to have looked after her better. But you shouldn’t have broken it in the first place. You’ve slept with every woman who caught your eye without a thought in the world for anything but your own sexual gratification.’

‘Much you know about a man’s feelings. I suppose you don’t like it because Rafe’s an indifferent lover.’ For a moment I thought of telling him what Dimpsie had said about his own less than wonderful lovemaking but, even in my barely controllable rage, this seemed impossibly cruel. ‘The Prestons think they’ve a duty to set an example to the nation. No one must be allowed to know their grubby little secrets. As though anyone cared! You’re an also-ran. Did you know that?’ He laughed, his eyes like slits behind his rimless spectacles. ‘You’d be a fool to marry him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Can’t tell you, I’m afraid. Patient confidentiality. But you’d better take my advice.’

I cursed myself for playing straight into my father’s hands. I had to direct the conversation away from me back to him.

‘You’re the last person entitled to give advice to anyone. I shall do just as I choose.’

‘Good. So shall I.’ He returned his attention to the cheese. ‘Oh bugger!’ He had hit the knife so hard that the head of the meat tenderizer had flown off and knocked over a glass. The red wine it contained flowed across the table like blood.

‘I absolutely hate you,’ I said to my own astonishment, the words coming out of my mouth before I could stop them. Suddenly tears were gushing down my face. ‘I hate you, I hate you, I
hate
you! I wish you were dead!’

My father’s eyes glittered and he bared his teeth with bitter satisfaction. He had achieved his object. I was weeping, vulnerable, an emotional wreck, like all the women with whom he had anything to do. He had abandoned the cheese and advanced slowly towards me, knife in hand. I had turned and fled.

‘One, two three – turn a little slower.’ Orlando spun round himself to demonstrate. ‘Elbows up, sharper … more abandoned … inside the demure little maid there’s a sensual woman … four, five, six … prepare for a
brisé en avant
… right arm higher … watch that upstage leg … now astound your lover with an arabesque
penchée
…
perfect
, darling … you could drop a plumb line between your heels.’ An arabesque
penchée
is when you stand on one leg holding the other above your head in the six o’clock position, like doing the splits vertically. ‘
Jeté élancé
to upper left … then
grand jeté développé en avant
…’

I made several low darting leaps across the floor of Conrad’s drawing room, culminating in a great spring into the air, doing the splits horizontally this time.

‘Let’s have it again.’ Orlando wound back the tape of Conrad’s playing that Golly had recorded the day before. ‘Turn your head to look back over your right shoulder … coquettish … juicy yet virginal …’

I did my best, though it was early in the day for that kind of thing. Also Siggy had whiled away the long hours of incarceration in my bedroom at Dumbola Lodge making my practice clothes into a cosy nest, so they were anything but virginal in appearance, being mostly holes. We worked until lunchtime when
every muscle in my body felt like perished rubber. Orlando had choreographed several passages in which I had to imitate the way Japanese women traditionally walk, a modest pigeon-toed tripping quite the opposite of the conventional ‘turned out’ position that my hips had been forced into for more than a decade and they were feeling the strain. But I had been dancing on pointe all morning and my left foot felt fine.

‘Wonderful, darling!’ Orlando embraced me. ‘I feel one or two teeny ideas are beginning to emerge from the creative fog. I hope that delicious smell is our lunch. My stomach’s roaring like a grumpy old lion.’

‘Didn’t you have any breakfast?’

‘My dear, I know I ought not to criticize my kind hostess, but
promise
you won’t repeat. I requested my usual
petit repas
– warmed goat’s milk with an egg white beaten into it and just a soupçon of nutmeg, but Golly drinks milk from tins and she doesn’t possess a nutmeg. Can you
imagine
a household without a nutmeg?’

I easily could, having just moved out of one.

‘I explained that one drop of cow’s milk is enough to keep me in bed for a week unable to put a foot to the floor. She was most anxious to be helpful and together we perused the tin, but it was positively Sphinx-like in its refusal to divulge its contents.’

I could sympathize with Golly’s anxiety about having an invalid Orlando on her hands. Using a chair back as a barre I did a few
grand battements en dehors
, to cool down.

‘I didn’t like to pursue the vexed question of the milk – no one can say that
one
is not the easiest, most considerate of guests, so instead I applied myself with a will to eat what was on offer. Cold toast the colour of underpants and a terrible black sausage-shaped thing, like a dinosaur’s stool. It was all one could do not to scream. Only one’s strict upbringing enabled one to get down two tiny bites of the prehistoric faeces.’

‘It’s called blood pudding. It’s something of a national dish in the North.’

‘
Blood
pudding?’ Orlando paled, clutched his hands to his chest and closed his eyes.

‘Vat fettle, Marigold, Orlando?’ Fritz came in with a tray and began to lay the table. ‘I haf a dish prepared called
Gefüllte
Seezungenfilets
. It is fillets of sole stuffed viz lobster and mushrooms. Wery good. I serve it viz
Meerrettichkartoffeln
and
Schmorgurken
.’

In the process of folding the napkins into swans, he paused to steal a glance at Orlando who, as though unconscious of his audience, did three beautifully executed pirouettes
en dedans
, which caused his naked biceps to ripple and his powerful thigh muscles to pump. Fritz let the napkin fall from his fingers as he gazed open-mouthed. Despite the twenty-year age gap and Orlando’s superior sophistication and experience, I thought it unlikely that Fritz would come to harm. Though an out-and-out sensualist, Orlando was not cynical. Also the strong light from the balcony made apparent the drawn yet crumpled look which smoking, sunbeds and dieting imparts to middle-aged faces. Fritz was young and beautiful, if fat, and the ball was rather in his court.

I lay on my back and put one leg over my head until I could touch my nose with my knee and the floor with my foot – the splits again, this time upside down.

‘I wonder if Degas would have felt inspired to paint you.’

At the sound of Conrad’s voice I sat up quickly. He had been in his office all morning, no doubt trying to salvage the wreck of his empire.

‘He’s always been my favourite painter.’

‘Ah, yes, because he paints dancers. But he did not care for ballet particularly, only he wished to paint movement and pretty clothes. He painted many nudes also, but did not care much for women. He liked to paint them – his words – without their coquetry, as animals cleaning themselves. He was a misogynist. In his view women think in little packages; they are incapable of extrapolation.’

‘In that case I don’t like him nearly so much as I did.’

‘When I hear a man claim that the feminine intellect is inferior to the masculine, then I know that he is afraid of women. Degas was a man of strong affections, generous in his evaluation of other artists he admired, a brilliant conversationalist. But he was sensitive and melancholic …’

Conrad put his hands in his pockets and strolled about the room while giving me a sketch of Degas’ life and artistic theories. Some people, most perhaps, would have resented such a stream, almost a river, of information, but I was hungry for knowledge. While I listened I practised a few pirouettes
en dedans
myself, faster than Orlando’s, using the half-painted squirrel with the red body and the chalk tail to ‘spot’. This means whipping your head round faster than your body with each turn and focusing your eyes on a particular place, which prevents you getting dizzy. I wondered if the wall painting would ever be completed. The pale outlines of unfinished animals and birds were like ghostly creatures existing in another dimension. But probably Conrad would be bored by the project before he had made enough money to finish it.

‘He became too blind to paint any more and this increased his eccentric behaviour … his irritability. He was lonely, yet he could not endure the stupidity of his fellow men.’

‘Poor Degas.’ I whipped my leg up into a
grand battement
. ‘I’d sympathize except I know he’d have thought me as stupid as anyone. Are you ever lonely?’

Conrad folded his arms and looked towards the window. The sky, speedwell blue moments before, had turned ashen, and plump clouds were piling up like an elaborate pudding. ‘I am not often alone.’ He kept his back to me. ‘But that is not what you are asking. You mean the feeling of isolation when in the company of those with whom one has no idea, no impulse, no enthusiasm in common. And the knowledge that others are quite indifferent to one’s imaginative life. That is wounding because our amour-propre is so fragile and so easily we doubt the … the validity – can one say that? – of one’s being.’

‘I know. You start thinking you’re the most boring, contemptible person in the world.’ I saw that he was about to disagree. ‘Well,
I
do anyway. Do you think that might be love? Wanting to understand another person completely, to see things through their eyes and feel what they’re feeling?’

‘It might be as much as one ought to hope for.’

‘Dancers aren’t very good at that sort of thing.’ I sprang into an
échappé à la seconde
. ‘Too self-involved. Dancing absorbs all the energy and thought and time that you ought to give to being in love with someone. You have to choose one or the other. I know that now.’

Rain began to dash itself against the window, blurring the greens and brown of the far side of the valley, as though we were seeing it through tears.

‘Come to the table,’ pleaded Fritz, ‘the fish is colding.’

Golly burst into the room. She had been composing in the kitchen. ‘I’ve decided you were right about the cherry blossom being trite – Madame Butterfly and all that – so I’ve decided to set
The Fishcake
in Alaska.’

‘Alaska!’ Orlando was indignant. ‘But for the last three hours my entire
being
has been rooted in Hokusai and Miyagi, tea ceremonies,
yatsuhashis
, haikus, kotos and noodles—’

‘Well, you’ll just have to uproot it then.
My
being has spent all morning in ice-bound tundra, with howling winds, creeping glaciers, cracking floes, honking seals and screeching gulls. Alaska is a completely original setting. As far as I know no Westerner has written an opera about Eskimos.’

‘I believe there’s a sung version of Eskimo Nell,’ said Orlando sulkily. ‘Besides aren’t you supposed to call them Inuit?’

‘Not if we are talking about West Alaska.’ Conrad took Golly’s arm and led her to the table. ‘They are ethnically different and prefer Eskimo to Inuit, and Yupik to either.’

‘I meant West Alaska.’ Golly looked triumphantly at Orlando. ‘There’s an Eskimo game called
Aratcheak
in which a piece of bone is hung up and the contestants have to do a standing jump
to kick it with both feet and land without falling over. My idea is that the shaman, who’s the most important man in the Eskimo settlement, will use the game as a trial to find the most suitable bride for Ata, his son. Ilina – that’s Marigold, the daughter of an outcast – wins the game. The two young people do a celebratory dance and fall in love. That’s where the singing cake comes in, you remember the singing cake …? What’s this?’ She poked a finger into the sauce that covered the sole stuffed with lobster, leaving a little swirl of blue ink. Fritz removed the dish from her reach and carefully spooned out the fingerprint. ‘Naturally the angakok – that’s Eskimo for shaman – is displeased—’

‘Anga
kok?
Are you
sure
this isn’t an operatic version of Eskimo Nell?’ interrupted Orlando.

‘Do shut up! – by this turn of events and sets another trial. Most unfair, of course, but that’s the nature of fairy tales. There’s an Eskimo jumping game called
Qijumik Akimitaijuk Itigaminak
in which the players have to jump as far as they can while holding their toes. Marigold – Ilina, that is – wins again. No acting will be needed for that. Most singers I know can’t get anywhere near their toes or jump, let alone the two in combination. I say, this is excellent! I’ll have some more.’

She dug her spoon into the delicious pink and whiteness of Fritz’s masterpiece and slopped a bit on the tablecloth, which Fritz had ironed to the smoothness of glass. Usually the best-tempered of men, his face took on a brooding look and he disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

‘The angakok measures Ilina’s winning jump with her hair ribbon, her prize possession, snips it in two and ties one half round the neck of a tethered reindeer about to be slaughtered for the pot. He releases the deer and gives it a whack, whereupon it gallops away into the freezing mists.’

‘A small point perhaps,’ said Conrad. ‘Reindeer inhabit Eurasia. In Alaska you would find caribou.’

‘Well anyway, it’s a big shaggy thing with antlers. Who’s
going to know the difference? The music will mimic the reindeer’s … caribou’s … bellow: E, E flat, G sharp, C …’ She took out her pen, drew five lines on the tablecloth and scribbled the notes on the stave.

Conrad looked mildly displeased. ‘Might I suggest a pencil for your composition?’

‘I can’t abide pencils. They always need sharpening and that wastes time. I wish you wouldn’t interrupt.’

Conrad threw up his eyebrows and forbore to make further comment.

‘The call of the reindeer … caribou … will be a leitmotif throughout the rest of the opera. It’ll appear, subtly disguised, in the overture, and be repeated in the last dying chords. The angakok tells Ilina that if she can unite the two pieces of ribbon, he’ll let her marry his son. The chances are of course nil as caribou,’ she flashed a triumphant look at Conrad who was watching the rain clouds build, ‘have vast territories. But after a year of tribulations, just to make things more difficult, the coming of spring breaks up the ice floe on which the little community is built and Alignak, the god of storms, creates an almighty whirlwind. I’ve been writing the music for that this morning and it’s going to be the best thing I’ve ever done. Finally the beast is slaughtered for a feast – all right, it’s a socking great coincidence, but no worse than when Jane Eyre runs away from Mr Rochester and happens to fetch up at the house of that St John bloke who turns out to be her distant cousin. Anyway, the reindeer’s brought to the igloo where Ilina is working as a cook. Triumphantly she shows the ribbon to the shaman and he gives in and lets them marry. What do you think?’ She looked around the table, her eyes bulging with excitement.

‘I’m sorry the reindeer got eaten after all,’ I said.

‘I don’t believe Eskimos have cooks,’ said Orlando. ‘How many things can you make with no vegetables? Come to that, how is she to make a cake? You have to have eggs and flour. Better have her working as a comfort girl. More balletic. And
it ought to be a tent of skins. Igloos are winter houses which would make the sets very boring. Far too much white.’

‘That’s the whole point if only you’d bother to use your imagination.’ Golly grew warm in defence of her brain-child. ‘I see it abso
lut
ely in the dead of winter. Everything’ll be shades of white, blue, grey and violet. Except the ribbon. That’ll be red. Ilina’ll tie up her hair with it, dance with it, wrap it round trees, etcetera, before it’s cut, and then afterwards she’ll knot the two pieces together and perform a dance of love consummated. Visualize this red ribbon flowing against the white, symbol of passion, life, menstrual blood and all that sort of thing.’

Orlando looked pained and put down his knife and fork. Fritz returned at that moment with a damp sponge. When he saw the music scrawled on the tablecloth, he withdrew to the balcony and walked up and down in the rain for several minutes.