Golden Earrings (21 page)

My skin prickled. I sensed what was going to happen next: Mademoiselle Louvet had lifted my spirits and now Madame Genet was about say something nasty to dash them. I glanced towards the corridor, wondering if I could make an escape
without appearing rude. But I had to keep the school — and its teachers — onside. I had no choice but to hear her out.

‘You were outstanding in your last examination,’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen a student perform so well under the pressure. And yet, despite the fact that the ballet director had seen you dance dozens of times before, every teacher at this school gave you the highest recommendations and the independent judges accepted you, still you did not make it into the
corps de ballet
!’ Her voice rose in pitch. ‘If Mademoiselle Marineau had enough influence to stop you getting into the
corps
last year, what do you think will have changed this time around? She is still the ballet mistress, and if she says she can’t work with you, they won’t hire you! That’s it!’

Madame Genet stared at me as if she were waiting for an answer. I knew her anger had more to do with her own thwarted career than it did with my fate. And yet, how could I argue? I struggled not to cry. Everything she said was true. Maybe I — along with the director of the ballet school and the well-meaning teachers — was deluding myself that the Opera’s ballet director would override Mademoiselle Marineau’s influence this time. A tear fell down my cheek, followed by another. Soon I was sobbing. But Madame Genet was not inclined to be compassionate.

‘Even if you were successful in getting into the
corps de ballet
,’ she continued, ‘Mademoiselle Marineau would make life hell for you. She hates you with a passion: all those years of playing second fiddle to your mother!’

‘My mother is dead,’ I said, trying to calm myself. ‘Mademoiselle Marineau has not had a private conversation with me once for me to have given her any personal offence. If anything, she should be grateful. It is because of me that my mother retired at twenty-one. Mademoiselle Marineau was promoted to
première danseuse
after that.’

Madame Genet’s eyes narrowed. ‘And even then, your mother found a way to make Marineau second best.’

I didn’t know what she meant. After her ballet career was over, my mother had raised me. She hadn’t even taken up teaching, except to occasionally help Mamie. She had been entirely removed from Arielle Marineau’s life.

‘What are you talking about?’ I asked.

Madame Genet’s chin trembled and she glanced over her shoulder. Her cheeks were blotched, which happened when she was agitated. ‘It’s not my place to tell you,’ she said, perhaps realising she had gone further than she had intended. She glanced in the direction of her office again and moved away from me.

‘Please!’ I grabbed her arm. ‘If there is some reason I don’t know about that will cause Mademoiselle Marineau to always reject me, tell me what it is!’

Madame Genet pushed me away. ‘It’s not my place,’ she repeated. ‘You will have to ask your father.’

‘My father? What has he got to do with anything?’

But she was already rushing down the corridor as if she were trying to escape a dangerous animal. ‘You’ll have to ask him,’ was all she said, before disappearing into her office and locking the door.

After my disturbing conversation with Madame Genet, I doubted a bath and catnap were going to calm me. I stopped at a café near the Métro station and ordered an espresso and a chocolate éclair. I didn’t usually eat creamy things, and the richness of the éclair made me nauseous even though I only finished half of it. I paid the waiter and walked to the nearest telephone booth. The call I was about to make was not one I could place from home.

The telephone rang a number of times before a young man’s voice answered. Pierre? I had never spoken to Audrey’s son, but I guessed it must be he who had answered.

‘I’d like to speak to my father,’ I said. It felt strange to be talking to someone who now had a closer relationship to Papa than I did.

Pierre didn’t answer straight away. Perhaps he was taken aback. I had never called before. ‘I’ll get him,’ he finally said.

My heart thumped in my chest. I had expected that my father would probably be away on tour. It was months since I had spoken to him and I didn’t feel prepared.

My father’s voice came on the line. ‘Paloma? Is everything all right?’

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I’m taking the examination again for the
corps de ballet
. I met Madame Genet at the school today and she was adamant that Arielle Marineau will still be against me. When I asked her why she should hate Mama so after all these years, she said that you would be able to explain.’

My father didn’t answer.

‘Do you know the reason?’ I demanded. ‘I’m about to do six months of intensive training, but Madame Genet says I’m wasting my time.’

My father sighed. ‘Paloma, I’m leaving in an hour for the airport. I have some concerts in New York. But I will be back in a week. Will you come and see me then? This is not something I can explain over the telephone.’

A sick feeling churned in my stomach. So there was some reason beyond the Ballet for Mademoiselle Marineau to still hate Mama. But I had no choice except to wait a week before finding out the truth.

‘All right, I will call you then,’ I told him, and hung up the telephone. I didn’t want to get into a discussion with my father about anything else. I certainly didn’t want him to ask if I was coming to his birthday party.

I wasn’t in a good mood when I met Jaime on rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis in Montmartre. I spotted him as soon as I’d parked Mamie’s car. In a grey pea coat, floral shirt and flared tailored pants, he was an appealing mix of snappy dresser and Bohemian musician. His glossy hair glinting in the streetlights
turned the heads of several women who walked past him. The idea that such a coveted guy was about to take me out to dinner should have been enough to pull me out of my ill humour, but I found it difficult to be optimistic when the dream of my lifetime was about to be thwarted for reasons I couldn’t yet fathom.

‘Wow! You look like you’ve had a bad day!’ said Jaime, kissing me on the cheeks. ‘Why the long face?’

I did my best to change my scowl into a smile. ‘Is it that obvious?’

‘Is it something you want to talk about?’

I shook my head. The last thing I wanted to do was bore Jaime with my problems. ‘It’s something I want to forget.’

He nodded and guided me towards rue Cail. ‘Well, hopefully you’ll like the restaurant I’ve chosen,’ he said with a smile. ‘I couldn’t decide whether we should eat at a Catalan restaurant, an Andalusian one or a French one — so I booked a table at an Indian restaurant. I hope you like curry?’

‘I do,’ I said, trying to forget that the last time I’d been to an Indian restaurant was with my father in London. My mother would only eat French or Catalan food, and hated touring if it meant she’d have to exist on foreign foods for weeks. But my father was adventurous for a Frenchman.

The cocoon-like atmosphere of the restaurant Jaime had chosen, with its candlelight, vegetable-dyed tablecloths and embroidered mirror-work cushions, helped me relax. The music playing in the background reminded me that the gypsies were supposed to have originally come from India, and that was why there were similarities between Indian music and gypsy singing and dancing.

When we sat down at our table and the waiter handed us our menus, the scents of basmati rice and coriander wafting from the kitchen stirred an appetite in me that I hadn’t had earlier. We ordered some dips, samosas and pakoras to start.

‘So did you like my family?’ Jaime asked. ‘They certainly liked you.’

It pleased me to think that I hadn’t alienated them with my usual awkwardness. ‘I liked them very much,’ I told him. ‘I have the impression that you would do anything for each other.’

‘Pretty much,’ he agreed. ‘And that’s not the whole lot of them. Most of my relatives are still in Spain.’

‘That must be hard … to be so divided.’

‘I miss my sisters especially,’ said Jaime, tearing a piece of naan bread. ‘They are younger than me and every time I see them they have grown several inches.’ He pushed the mint and yoghurt dip towards me. ‘This is good, try it.’

I scooped the creamy mixture onto a piece of bread. ‘Mmm,’ I said, taking a bite. ‘Garlic, ginger and coriander.’

We chuckled as we remembered how Carmen had tested her Andalusian food on me at dinner.

‘Your grandmother is from Barcelona? She must have been a supporter of the Republic?’ Jaime asked me.

‘Yes,’ I said, picking up my serviette to dab my mouth. ‘She’s only started talking about her life in Spain now that Franco is dead.’

‘It’s still too painful for many of them … tía Carmen rarely talks about my uncle.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘He died in gaol. He was arrested for protesting against the Franco regime. That’s when Carmen and Isabel left the country.’

‘How have you been able to come and go so freely?’ I asked. ‘If your uncle was a political prisoner, I thought they wouldn’t let you go anywhere.’

‘My father is an important surgeon in Granada,’ he said. ‘He hates the system, but he stayed because he saw his main purpose as saving people’s lives. His position gives him special privileges but he thought I’d get a superior music education in France. The
arts are tightly controlled in Spain, although that might change now.’

I looked at my plate thoughtfully. My life had changed significantly in a couple of weeks. There was a whole Spanish side of me that was coming to light. I saw that Jaime and I had much in common in regard to our displaced family backgrounds.

‘Now, tell me more about your ballet,’ he said, picking up his glass of water. ‘When am I going to see you on stage?’

I winced without meaning to. Ballet was my great passion in life, but it also caused me a lot of pain.

Jaime sensed my discomfort. ‘Is that what was worrying you earlier?’

I liked the way he looked at me, as if what I said and felt was of great interest to him. I had a sudden urge to tell him everything — about my father, about my failure to get into the
corps de ballet
, maybe even about the ‘visit’ from la Rusa. But the waiter arrived with our palak paneer and korma curry. As he placed everything on the table and refilled our water glasses, I decided to limit my confidences to the non-supernatural.

I told Jaime that my mother had been a star with the Ballet, and about my class with Mademoiselle Louvet and my encounter with Madame Genet. ‘My father is away on tour, so I have to wait until he gets back for an explanation of why Madame Genet is so convinced the Opera’s ballet mistress will have me rejected again.’

‘Maybe your mother can explain what happened?’ suggested Jaime.

I shook my head. ‘She died a year and a half ago. Cancer.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and I could see from the sympathetic expression on his face that he was. We were silent for a few moments.

I thought of the beautiful stage of the Paris Opera House and how every day of my life had been devoted to the dream of dancing on it. I recalled Madame Genet dashing my hopes that
it would ever happen. The idea of that made me want to cry out. But I was used to keeping my feelings under control, and I’d probably burdened Jaime with enough already.

I glanced at my watch. ‘Should we get going?’

Jaime nodded and signalled to the waiter for the bill.

The flamenco bar Jaime took me to was a former cellar, with panelled walls and long wooden benches. The entrance was down a steep flight of stairs. Manolo, whom we had come to see, was already playing. The musician’s black bushy eyebrows contrasted with his white hair. The air was laden with cigar smoke and the fruity smell of sangria. The waiter, who appeared to know Jaime, brought us two seats so we could have a front-row view. Manolo was playing a fast rhythm. I was mesmerised by his nimble fingers.

‘It’s a
bulería
,’ Jaime explained.

‘
Burlar
’ in Spanish meant ‘to mock’. Because the rhythm seemed to change so dramatically from one moment to the next, it did fool the listener about where the piece was going.

‘It is one of the most difficult
palos
in flamenco,’ Jaime whispered to me. ‘It takes years to master it.’

I watched the enraptured faces of the audience and felt as if I were waking from a long sleep. So there was another world outside of ballet. Normally on a Friday night, I would be at home reading a book or listening to music after a full day of ballet classes. I wondered what it would be like not to feel the constant pressure to excel — to have a normal life and a normal job and be able to come out with Jaime like this whenever I wanted. I thought of what Mademoiselle Louvet had said: ‘I don’t know at what point ballerinas became elite athletes with no room for a life outside rehearsals.’

After the performance, Manolo greeted Jaime and came to sit with us. Jaime ordered a bottle of wine.

‘This is my friend Paloma,’ he said, pouring the wine into three glasses. ‘She’s a dancer and is interested in knowing more about la Rusa.’

‘Ah, la Rusa,’ Manolo said, a dreamy look coming to his eyes. ‘I toured with her. I was only a young man then and she was a star. The crowds gathered to see her wherever she went. In South America, they had to turn the fire hoses on people to keep them under control. I don’t believe there will ever be another
bailaora
like her. She was a phenomenon.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘She was certainly a shock to refined audiences who were used to dancers like Anna Pavlova and la Argentina. Even Isadora Duncan was tame by comparison. But la Rusa … she was the opposite of “civilised”. When you watched her perform, the building could have caved in and you wouldn’t have noticed. She bewitched her audiences. She was magnificent!’

‘And what was she like as a person as opposed to a performer?’ I asked him.

Manolo sat back and took a sip of wine. ‘She was famous but she was never a snob. After a show, she liked nothing better than to kick off her shoes and cook us all a pot of stew. She was also generous. When my wife and daughter were sick one year, I arrived at the hospital to find all the medical bills had been paid by la Rusa.’