Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs (52 page)

No suggestion of meeting, no advice for my future, no message of love. I did not expect them, but still that chilly little note seemed to freeze another layer of ice over our relationship. I intended to throw it away as a gesture of independence, but instead it found its way into my album of press cuttings. The postcards I put in my bedside drawer.

By the end of one week, our days had settled into a pattern of work. Every morning Orlando and I took class for one hour, had a break for refreshments, then worked until lunchtime on
Ilina and the Scarlet Riband
. In the afternoon we did another hour of class then choreographed until tea time. There were some fiendishly difficult
enchaînements
and sometimes I despaired of being able to do them, but Orlando, so capricious
and flighty in ordinary life, was a dedicated teacher and he stuck at it doggedly, never behaving worse than slightly unreasonably.

One of the most taxing sections was the game of
Atrakcheak
. I had to jump from a standing position to kick with both feet a piece of whalebone suspended above my head. I pleaded for a little run at it. What difference, I asked, could a couple of hops and a skip make to the audience who would know nothing of the rules of the game? Orlando informed me gravely that he was making a ballet not a gymnastic display, and that even one hop would ruin the beauty of the line. There was nothing beautiful about my falling flat on my back, I countered, displaying a fine collection of bruises, but Orlando was adamant.

An unexpected turn of events kept Rafe and Isobel in Scotland. Uncle George was found dead in bed one morning of a final stroke. Aunt Billa, after fifty years of revolt against the drunken tyranny of her spouse, was inconsolable. She refused to leave the haunts of her married life, so the old house must be sold and a suitable bungalow found. It would not be easy to find a buyer for a remote mansion with twenty bedrooms, one bathroom, and fireplaces that smoked so badly that all the windows had to be left permanently open so the occupants could breathe. Rafe needed to stay in Scotland to oversee the sale and Isobel was remaining to keep him company.

As the days and weeks went by, the five of us became more and more inward-looking as we concentrated on the making of the opera. Every evening after supper we read or listened to music, too exhausted to talk much. I was getting on famously with
Nicholas Nickleby
and longed to discuss it with Conrad. Every day I hoped for his return but he never came. I usually went to bed quite early and read until my eyelids felt heavy. I got into the habit of putting the feather he had given me carefully in my place before turning to the front page on which he had written
Conrad Wolfgang Lerner
in black ink. I would stare at it long enough to be able to see a ghost image in reverse, white on black, when I closed my eyes. Lying in the dark I tried
to imagine what he might be doing, who he might be with and in what part of the world he might be.

Conrad was the only person who had thought it worthwhile to try to educate me. He was a kind and generous friend and several times he had come to my rescue. That was why I liked to go to sleep thinking of him. I knew that whether he married Isobel or not, his restlessness would soon take him away for good. I expected a letter to arrive any day, instructing Fritz to sell Hindleep and join him in Krakow or Kathmandu. Dancing was the most important thing in my life so I had no pressing need of friends. The growing feeling I had that the future might be a little grey, a little sad, a little hollow was nothing to be afraid of. That was the meaning of sacrificing oneself for one’s art. When poor Smike died I went onto the balcony, pretending to admire the view while I had a thoroughly good howl.

With Fritz looking after us we did very well. Orlando and I struggled to keep off the pounds, not allowing ourselves cakes or puddings. Golly and Mr Stern began to get double chins, and his shirt buttons strained at their buttonholes. Luckily the boiler suit had built-in expansion.

‘It’s so kind of you to cook such lovely things,’ I said to Fritz one morning during our coffee break. We were alone on the balcony. Golly and Mr Stern were drawing up new battle lines in the study. Orlando had taken the Bentley into Gaythwaite to ring up his shoemaker. The day was foggy but warm. ‘I hope Conrad doesn’t mind paying.’

‘I send him bills to check. Really ve spend so little. You and Orlando,’ he blushed as he said his name, ‘eat like little flies and ve haf only ze simple food.’

‘How is he?’

‘Orlando?’

‘Conrad.’ I had seen letters in Conrad’s handwriting, written in German of course, lying about the kitchen. I had glanced sneakily at one or two hoping vainly – in both senses of the word – to see my name. ‘I expect he’s awfully busy.’

‘Yes, I zink zo. I hope Orlando vill manage ze bends. He has not drive ze car before.’

‘Really he’s much more capable than he likes to make out. All his neuroses … really he’s as strong as a horse. I suppose Conrad has lots of friends in Germany?’

‘Oh, many, many. But supposing he miss zem? He is so artistic zat he may be
distrait
.’

‘Conrad?’

‘Orlando.’

I perceived that our minds were travelling in different directions. ‘Please don’t worry. I’ve known Orlando a good few years and I have complete faith in him. You have to be really tough to survive in our world.’

‘Tough, yes. The marvellous muscling. But he is so – how do you say it? – full of great promises.’

‘Talented, you mean?’

‘Yes! I am awed in his presence.’ Fritz screwed up his eyes as the sun broke from the mist and bathed the balcony in strong light. ‘It is difficult for me to haf confidence in love.’

I registered the note of enquiry, but I felt ill-qualified to give anyone advice about matters of the heart. ‘The only thing I know for certain is that nothing that happens to you in life is
ever
anything like you imagine it’s going to be, so there isn’t much point in shivering in the wings. When you get your cue you’d better just get on and do it.’

I thought Fritz looked rather pleased.

The next day I found myself sitting in the same chair on the balcony, only this time it was late afternoon and I was alone with Orlando. The mist had cleared and it was hot. We had already towelled ourselves down so as not to present too revolting a sight, but still our brows glistened and our bodies steamed. Fritz had taken the tea things away to wash them up, refusing all offers of help. I heard a bellow from the study.

‘This is a bit of all right,’ said Orlando, abandoning his character of neurasthenic aesthete. When you work with someone as
closely as we had done, all pretences seem irrelevant. We were now so intimate we might be sharing the same heart, muscles and skin. ‘Wonderful place, scrumptious grub always on tap. Everything done for one, nothing to worry about but work. Reality’s going to hit hard when we move to Newcastle. I shall have withdrawal symptoms going back to apples and yoghurt. Fritz is the most fabulous cook.’

‘Isn’t he?’ I agreed. ‘And a darling. It’s extremely generous of Conrad to let us stay here.’

‘Oh yes.’ Orlando examined his own hands, lean and strong still but with veins like pale blue worms, and sighed. ‘He is, as you say, a darling.’

‘Quite.’ A silence while we both brooded. ‘You always feel when you’re with Conrad,’ I went on, ‘that nothing could ever go too badly wrong. And that seems to have got into the house. I feel so safe here, which is odd really when you remember it’s perched right on the edge of a cliff. Conrad’s so clever that he always seems to be able to look round and through things. Though when you consider that he lost both his parents at such an early age and now he’s lost most of his money, he’s got as much right to be mixed up as anyone.’

‘No, really? Both parents? I hope he wasn’t fond of them.’ Orlando interlaced his fingers and stretched out his arms in front of him. After a brief pause he said, ‘So much of a darling in fact that, do you know, I feel absurdly afraid of spoiling things?’

He fixed me with a beady eye and I gave in gracefully. ‘I think Fritz is ready for a little adventure.’

‘Yes?’ His expression became eager. ‘Do you think he likes me? Just a little bit?’

‘I’m sure of it.’

Orlando’s face lit then clouded immediately. ‘But whenever I try to show him I care about him, he seems to draw away. I get the feeling if I pursued it any further it would be like clomping over a field of virgin snow with muddy boots on. Or smashing a butterfly against a pane of glass.’

‘Are you sure that’s what you’re showing him? That you actually care about him? From what I’ve observed he could be forgiven for thinking that you don’t.’

‘Oh, that’s nonsense. Every day I demonstrate my feelings. If I hired a plane to write “Orlando loves Fritz” in the sky it couldn’t be clearer.’

‘That’s what I mean. Fritz isn’t a show-off like all of
us
. He’s gentle and sensitive.’

‘You think I ought to be more subtle?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m making it too obvious that I want to powder his cheeks, do you mean?’

I frowned. ‘Honestly, Orlando, don’t you see how hopelessly crude your wooing is? If you love Fritz, you ought to tell him so. The cheek-powdering ought to be a result of that.’

‘Love him? But of
course
I do. I
wor
ship his youth and beauty and his intelligence. He’s a princeling, a saint, a sage. By comparison with him I know I’m an old ham. A show-off, as you say, soiled by pan stick and fake glitter and too much sex with all the wrong people. But what can I do but stay on the merry-goround until I’m flung off? I don’t know about anything much but dancing, and dancing’s such a fickle beast she’ll bugger off and leave me old and lonely and flabby …’ Orlando’s eyes swam. ‘No one will love me because all my friends are just like me, selfish and ambitious and jealous and vain …’

A tear ran down his cheek. I would have put my arms around him but we were still so sweaty it would have been unpleasant for both of us.

‘You’re at the peak of your profession as a choreographer. You’re handsome and virile and glamorous and Fritz is hugely attracted to you, I’m certain.’ Orlando stopped crying. ‘You know what?’ I continued my homily. ‘I think you ought to be truthful. Tell him how you love him and worship him but tell him you’re sometimes afraid. How can he love you if you don’t let him see the real you? All that other stuff you and the boys
get up to, that’s just bravado, really, isn’t it? Like peacocks spreading their tails. If you want to be really loved you have to take risks and let yourself be vulnerable to hurt.’

I don’t know how I knew this. In fact I hadn’t properly known it until that moment, but the minute I said it I was certain it was true.

‘I think you may have something there, my child.’ Orlando blew his nose on my towel. Knowing his mood to be fragile I did not protest. He slung his own towel round his neck and stood up. ‘Anyway, Fritz deserves the best and somewhere inside me there
may
be something worth his while.’ He put on his Eugene Onegin look – sorrow tempered by newly acquired wisdom – and went thoughtfully away.

He appeared for supper looking decorous in a plain shirt and jeans. He drank much less than usual and tamed his conversation. After supper we continued to sit with glasses of wine on the balcony, as the setting sun turned the sky to rose and the lake to pearl. Even Golly was silenced by the splendour of Nature, so we could hear the twilight song of a thrush from the hillside below the house. After that she became fidgety and she and Mr Stern drove away, leaving the three of us to admire the celestial streaks of salmon and indigo developing above our heads.

‘What beauty!’ sighed Orlando. ‘I feel overawed.’

‘Yes,’ said Fritz. ‘I too am owerowed by ze vonder of Nature. It remind me zo much of Bavaria. I feel a little
das
Heimweh
… how do you say it? A vish for home. Zough I haf no more family zere. Only Conrad is zere to zink kindly of me.’

By a coincidence that was not at all extraordinary, given that we were living in his house, eating his food and sleeping in his beds, I happened to be thinking about Conrad myself just then. So he was in Bavaria. I imagined him wandering over snowy mountains picking edelweiss. Perhaps listening to the melodious tinkle of cow bells or the distant blast of an alpenhorn. I wondered if he was thinking of us. Probably not.

‘Sometimes when we’re touring I feel homesick for London just because it’s familiar,’ said Orlando. ‘And yet there’s no one there who really cares about me.’

‘No?’ Fritz turned his sweet plump face to look at him. ‘But how can zat be?’

‘Oh, I’ve been careless about relationships. I’ve put my art first. Now that I’m getting older and I’m neither so energetic nor so good-looking as I used to be, I wonder if I’ve made an awful mistake. Sometimes … I’m afraid I’m no longer lovable.’

There fell a long silence. Then Fritz said in a low tone, ‘You haf not need to be afraid.’

‘Oh, Fritz, my dear.’ Orlando’s voice throbbed with intensity. ‘If I could only believe that!’

It was then that I slipped away, unnoticed, to bed.

I sat in the back of the Bentley clutching a carrier bag full of pointe shoes, my stomach queasy with fright. After six weeks at Hindleep, our remoteness from the modern world unpolluted by so much as a newspaper, Newcastle seemed unnaturally bright and busy. Golly had finished the score of
Ilina and the Scarlet
Riband
and my solos had been refined down to the slightest inclinations of my head and the diameters of each circle made by my feet. Orlando and I had also worked on the choreography for the corps de ballet.

From this moment I was in receipt of a salary, so I had decided to rent a room in Newcastle to save myself three hours travelling each day. Also, though I doted on Fritz and Orlando, I was tired of playing gooseberry. They did their best not to make me feel excluded, but the atmosphere at Hindleep had become sultry with imperfectly suppressed desires interlaced with the euphoria of temporary satisfaction.

Newcastle is a hilly place. My digs were at the top of a long flight of steep steps called Leaping Dog Lane. Orlando said my room was too small even for a Pekinese. My landlady, more of a bulldog with bandy legs and a pugnacious chin, read me a list of prohibitions. No men, alcohol, smoking, drugs, food, pets, musical instruments, radios, record players or muddy shoes
were allowed on the premises. The bath must be cleaned after use and no wet towels were to be placed on the bed. Between eleven at night and seven-thirty in the morning, the front door would be bolted, admitting neither ingress nor egress, and the lavatory must not be flushed during this period. I assured her I was ready to abide by the house rules and paid her a week’s rent in advance.

Fritz drove us from Leaping Dog Lane to the rehearsal studio, a disused church near the theatre. Though the rehearsal was scheduled to start at ten, nothing seemed to be happening. This was quite normal for the first morning, but by the time the principal tenor, Giovanni Garacci, showed up I was practically fainting with nerves. Fortunately he had short muscular legs and large beefy arms so he would be able to manage the simple lifts Orlando had devised. Orlando tried to demonstrate them to Giovanni, but he wanted to warm up his voice and wandered off in mid-explanation. It soon became clear that the major flaw of an opera ballet, which perhaps explained why they had gone out of fashion, was the conflict of interests. The singers wanted to stand still and occasionally wave their hands about. If really necessary they would stomp woodenly to stage left or stage right. All that mattered was vocal perfection.

Trevor, the director, also seemed to think the ballet was subordinate to the singing. Giovanni complained that his dressing room was dark and full of dusty old bibles. Also there was no ‘ot wartair’. He demanded a constant supply of iced pineapple juice or he could not answer for his ‘tonzeels’. In the ballet world, Giovanni would have been given short shrift, but Trevor treated him like a royal lunatic whose most outrageous requests must be pandered to. We stood around for another half an hour, watching the stage hands sticking masking tape onto the floor to mark the lines and shapes of the stage and sets, while the pineapple juice, an ice dispenser and an electric kettle were sought. When Orlando asked for a changing room for the dancers, Trevor stared at him as though he had asked
for a suite at the Savoy with river views. All this time more people were arriving – the other soloists, the conductor, the
répétiteur
, the stage manager, the chorus and the chorus master and the office staff. The din as everyone exercised their vocal chords was nearly unbearable. Finally Trevor returned and clapped his hands for silence.

‘All right, ladies and gentlemen, thank you. Dame Gloria Beauwhistle will be arriving any minute to give you a little talk about her new work and then we’ll begin at the beginning with Act One. So what we want is the chorus for the seal hunt, Giovanni, Luigi and Stefano, plus the lead dancer –’ he glanced at his notes – ‘Marilyn.’

‘Marigold,’ corrected Orlando.

‘Oh, yes,’ Trevor waved an arm. ‘Everybody, this is Orlando Silverbridge, our distinguished choreographer. It’s going to be very interesting for us to work with dancers for a change. I have complete faith in Dame Gloria’s judgement. The dancing is there because it’s an integral part of the work, not an entertaining interval.’ Trevor gave an unmeaning smile. It was obvious he was repeating what he had been told and did not believe a word of it. ‘Let’s do all we can to persuade the audience of that.’

There was a bustle at the back of the hall as Golly arrived. She swept through the crowd, greeting those she knew with a kiss or a wave. ‘What ho, you lot!’ she called above the applause. ‘Hope you’re all full of vim. We’re going to need it. You singers all know your parts by now, I hope. The dancers are going to have to start from scratch, but Orlando tells me they’re a talented bunch and he assures me they’ll bring it off. Where
are
the dancers, by the way?’

‘Not here yet,’ said Trevor. ‘Their coach is caught in a jam on the A1.’

Everyone groaned, as though the dancers had deliberately chosen to be stationary in a hot bus amid smells of exhaust from surrounding traffic.

Golly caught sight of me. ‘Never mind. We’ve got Marigold,
the lynchpin of our drama. Come here, dear, and let me introduce you.’

I made my way to the front, hearing mutterings of ‘Marigold Who?’ ‘Is she Trevor’s new mistress?’ ‘If that little girl’s really the lynchpin we may as well give up now.’

‘Now, everyone, listen.’ Golly waved a paw for silence and got it. ‘Marigold’s dancing the dumb heroine.’ Sniggers, but no one dared to laugh out loud. ‘And you can take it from me that whatever may be the fate of
Ilina and the Scarlet Riband
, I guarantee that by the end of this first run, the name of Marigold Savage will be known the length and breadth of Europe.’

This was kind of Golly. People looked a little less disbelieving, which was a measure of the respect in which Golly’s music was held. Of course she hadn’t actually said whether I’d be known for triumphant success or humiliating failure …

‘Now, just in case it’s passed anyone by, let me outline the themes.’

Golly talked for ten minutes about cross-cultural analysis, mythology, folklore and spiritual verities, nothing of which was comprehensible to me. Then she told us to get on with it. She had one or two little ideas to incorporate in the score but she’d be back after lunch. Trevor took over, clearing the central space to begin blocking the first scene. This means teaching everyone how they are to move about the stage, where they’re going to stand, fall, sit, lie, scream and die. The stage manager, who was called Bill, had a large clipboard on which he recorded each move.

The soloists were staged first. The pianist struck up the first chords and Giovanni and I entered from opposite sides. Our eyes met across what would be the Eskimo equivalent of a village square – a few igloos and a pot of simmering caribou hoofs. He sang the opening aria, telling of love at first sight. To save his voice, Giovanni marked the role, which means he sang softly and dropped an octave in the high bits. As there had been no opportunity to warm up, I did the balletic equivalent, walking
through my opening sequence. It was impossible, therefore, to tell how effective it was going to be, but by now I was thoroughly familiar with the music and had come to love it.

Quite quickly I forgot to be nervous and the morning sped by. Lunch was brought in, corned beef sandwiches and tea. In the afternoon the chorus was blocked for Scene One, the soloists waiting at the back of the hall in case they were needed. There is always a lot of hanging around at rehearsals, and old hands know to provide themselves with books or knitting or mending. In the scramble to get ready I had forgotten to bring anything with me to help pass the time. Orlando had not yet returned from lunch in the Bentley which was parked in a side street. He had pressed me to join them, but I was afraid of being a damper on the release of urges that had been bottled up for a whole morning. The singers smiled politely if I caught anyone’s eye, but they seemed to be avoiding me. Perhaps because of Golly’s championship, they didn’t want to be seen to be sucking up. I sat a little apart, reading the
Newcastle
Gazette
. Loneliness was inevitably a part of a dancer’s life. As I had chosen to turn my back on marriage and companionship I had better not mind it.

I gave a little scream as a pair of arms stole round my neck.

‘Hello, old darling!’ Lizzie’s dimpled face surrounded by blonde corkscrew curls grinned at me, enjoying my surprise.

‘Lizzie! I’d no idea you were coming! Oh, how wonderful!’ We kissed and hugged. It had been several months since we’d seen each other, the longest separation for twelve years. The other eleven members of the company who were to dance in
Ilina and the Scarlet Riband
had to be welcomed and kissed too. It was thrilling to see so many familiar faces. I noticed immediately that some invisible threshold had been crossed. As I had left the LBC I was no longer in direct competition with the other dancers, and my leading role in
Ilina
had exalted my status to potential international stardom. Deference was of course better than hostility, but I would have preferred
something cosier. I knew the score. One of Evelyn’s oft-repeated precepts when we were children was that privileges always had to be paid for.

Also the unpopularity of the current principal dancer, Sylvia Starkey, worked in my favour. Apparently, when she had been briefly elevated to the position of Sebastian’s mistress, she had become arrogant and boastful. In hindsight my ingratiating style redounded to my credit. Sylvia was in Bristol with Freddy, Alex, Dicky and the rest of the corps dancing
The Lilac Garden
, so everybody took advantage of her absence to be thoroughly catty about her.

Several hours of imprisonment in a coach on a motorway had made the dancers noisy and excitable. Trevor told us to go up into the gallery because we were distracting the singers. The gallery, which was to become the LBC’s nesting place for the next two weeks, afforded seclusion combined with an excellent view of everything that was going on. It was rapidly strewn with shoes, legwarmers, wraps, bandages, aspirin ointment, antibiotic cream, sticking plasters, magazines, books, paper cups, hairbrushes, hairpins, make-up bags, sandwich crusts and bottles of diet Coke.

‘I hope the dancing isn’t going to be too difficult?’ said Lizzie when we found a corner to ourselves.

‘The only hard bit is the games. But you’re not supposed to do them well anyway so I can win. You’ll be fine.’

‘Good. Because this’ll be my last outing in the limelight. I only came to see you. I’m giving up ballet for good.’

‘Lizzie! You can’t!’

‘I can and I have. I told Sebastian yesterday.’

‘After all that hard work for all those years? Oh, Lizzie, how sad!’

‘Not for me. Nor for anyone else really. When I told Sebastian he thanked me for saving him the distasteful task of booting me out. According to him, when I’m doing
fouettés
I look like a fat old woman running for a bus on a windy day.’

‘Nonsense! And you aren’t fat.’ Though I had noticed she’d put on a few pounds. It really suited her. ‘He only said that because he didn’t want you to think he minded.’

‘I know. But anyway, I don’t care. I’m so happy, Marigold! I’m in love!’

‘
No!
Who with?’

Conrad’s voice in my imagination corrected this to ‘with whom?’ but I took no notice. One evening at Hindleep, Fritz had read aloud those parts of Conrad’s letters that might be of interest to us, about the people he had met and the parties he had been to, the museums he had visited and the concerts he had attended. Conrad seemed to have become someone quite unfamiliar, part of a large and cosmopolitan circle of strangers. After three weeks in Germany he had flown directly to the United States. He had no plans to return to Hindleep. Obviously our friendship had been of little consequence for, though he always sent good wishes to everyone connected with the opera, he never mentioned me by name. Had it not been for the little posy of wild flowers I had pressed, the paper bird and the parrot’s feather which I kept in my copy of
Nicholas
Nickleby
, I might have imagined those conversations when we had talked so freely about what concerned us most. Or I had, anyway.

Dimples appeared on Lizzie’s chin as well as her cheeks, a sign that she was much moved. ‘You remember I told you about the lumberjack who took over Nancy’s room at forty-four Maxwell Street?’

‘The one with the city girlfriend?’

‘Yes. Nils, that’s his name, asked her up to the flat one evening to meet us, only Sorel had to go out at the last minute so we were a threesome. Fiona was rather superior and made snide comments about what she called the “outré” decorations, and she was rude about my cabbage curry. I admit my cooking isn’t very good but Nils said it was absolutely delicious and food for the gods.’

I remembered the cabbage curry and concluded that Nils must already have been head over heels in love with Lizzie.

‘So they had an almighty row which began in whispers when I was out of the room and ended in a shouting match halfway down the stairs. Nils came back full of apologies and I said I was sorry the food had been so awful and he said I was an angel to be so sweet about it and really he didn’t think he could go on seeing Fiona because she was so mean and anyway he’d discovered that his fancy lay in quite another direction.’ Lizzie put her head on one side so her curls bounced and I nodded to show I was fully abreast of their conversation. ‘So what with one thing and another he ended up in my bed that night and he’s been there ever since. I don’t mean he’s literally been in it ever since without getting out of it, but we always sleep in the same bed.’

‘I understand. So you’re giving up dancing to spend more time with him. I suppose there isn’t much call for lumberjacks in England. Is he going to get another job?’

‘Actually, his father owns a vast logging company in Sweden and Nils is learning the business to take it over eventually. He’s going back to Sweden for good as soon as I finish here and I’m going with him. We’re getting married in Stockholm in October.’