Hester's Story (44 page)

She looked at Claudia and saw that she was staring at Hugo and that Hugo was staring at Silver. Silver looked gorgeous. That wasn’t surprising really. She always did. Today, she was wearing a grey cardigan that crossed over at the front and her skin looked pearly. Most people would have thought she had no make-up on, but Alison knew better. Silver said she always wore make-up and when Alison remarked that it didn’t look as though she did, the answer came at once.
That’s the whole point of the exercise. You want them to think it’s your natural face
.

Alison considered taking another bit of apple pie because it was obvious to her that no one else was going to, but then she decided she wouldn’t after all.

3 January 1987

The house lights were off. Alison was sitting in the stalls, two rows behind Andy and Nick, who wasn’t aware she was there. She could stare at the back of Nick’s head to her heart’s content. The whole company was in the theatre for the technical dress rehearsal and to admire the set, which had just been put up. A large van had arrived early this morning and since then, George and the three young men from the village who usually did the gardening had assembled it.

Now George was in the lighting box and Hugo was on stage signalling him and speaking to him through a kind of walkie-talkie. Ilene and Claudia were also sitting in the stalls and Silver was in the front row, ready to go up on stage and walk through her moves. In a minute, the other dancers would follow her, taking turns to see if the cues were right. Lights kept going on and off. Blue, then orange, then pink. Hugo walked about a bit, and then made a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down sign and then everything changed again. Ruby was getting the props ready on the table in the wings, and soon, Alison would have to go and help her give the basket of fruit to Ilene, the ribbons and dolls to Andy and the flowers to Silver.

The set was brilliant. Later on, maybe tomorrow morning, she would go and examine all the detail, but it looked fantastic. There was a folding screen upstage right and another downstage left and these could be
moved about between scenes very easily. The colours were so vibrant that they seemed to shimmer: purple and gold, moss-green and coral, chocolate brown and ocean blue and turquoise, bronze and black and scarlet. You couldn’t follow one colour without it merging and blending into the next. Every part of the pattern seemed to curve and stream and flow into the next. Was the pattern nothing more than a pattern? Were there faces in the design? Trees? Landscapes? It was hard to tell, but you couldn’t stop trying to find them. There were no hard lines anywhere. As George went through his cues, everything on the screen seemed to change, and there were times when they were in shadow and all you could see was the gold and bronze bits catching what light there was.

Andy was whispering, but some of what he was saying reached Alison and when she heard her mother’s name, she paid more attention. She wondered whether she could creep a little closer and decided that was too risky, so she tried to block out the sounds that were coming from the stage and leaned forward to hear more.

She wondered whether Claudia was really keen on Nick or whether she flirted with him all the time in order to annoy Hugo. She’d overheard the two of them yesterday on the way back from rehearsal, and her mother was saying something about Hugo being obsessed with Silver. Hugo had just laughed and said
I’m trying to make her into a ballet dancer, darling
, but Alison wondered whether her mother might really have some reason to be jealous. Hugo did seem to be spending a lot of time instructing Silver. Her mother quite often behaved badly. She didn’t seem to be able to stop herself.

Alison looked at the back of Nick’s head again. I’m not stupid, she told herself. I know that he’d never be
interested in me in that way. She felt like crying, but at the same time she knew that the adoration she felt for Nick had just grown a tiny bit weaker. He was like everyone else after all – Claudia had only to bat her eyelashes and he went with her wherever she wanted to take him. She’d seen her mother in action many times before and could recognise the signs. Hugo might be on his way out, she thought. I wonder if he knows? I wonder if I should tell him?

Claudia slipped into the seat beside her.

‘I wish you wouldn’t sneak up like that, Mum. You made me jump.’

‘Hmmh. Fine welcome for your mother, I must say. God, I’m so late. Hugo’ll kill me. Give us a kiss, darling. I never seem to see you these days, to talk to. Are you having fun?’

Not as much fun as you are, was what Alison nearly said, but controlled herself. ‘Yeah, not bad. I like Ruby. It’s okay here.’

‘Grudging, but I think that’s a thumbs-up, right darling? Coming from you.’ Alison didn’t bother to answer. ‘You’ll be pleased about this, though. I’ve got a letter for you from your dad.’

‘Really? Where is it? Give it to me.’

‘It’s here somewhere.’ Claudia plunged her hand into the depths of her handbag and rummaged round like someone at a bran tub. ‘Is this it?’ She pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper. ‘No. Hang on …’

Alison wanted to hit her, but didn’t because that would hold things up even more.

‘Did it come today? I’ve been waiting for a letter for ages.’

‘Can’t honestly remember when it came. A few days ago. I know I picked it up and put it in here and then forgot completely about it.’

‘You
what
?’

‘Don’t make that face at me, young lady. It’s not as though there’s anything important or urgent about it. It’s a bloody Christmas card or something, for God’s sake! What difference does it make when you get it? I forgot, that’s all. I have a lot of things on my mind. Anyway, here’s your precious letter. Take it and welcome.’

At that moment, Hugo called out into the stalls. ‘Claudia? Can you come up here a moment, please?’

‘Got to go, darling. Sorry about your letter, really. Forgive me?’

No, Alison said to herself. I don’t forgive you. ‘You’d better go. Hugo’s waiting.’

Claudia hurried on to the stage and Alison opened the envelope. There was a card in it, but also a sheet of folded paper.

Hello, darling. Thanks so much for your letter. I’m sure that by the time you get this, you’ll have settled in to the routine at Wychwood. Hope so anyway. I’m going to try and phone you when I get back from staying with Jeannette’s parents at Christmas. Looking forward to speaking to you. I hate writing as you know. Lots of love as always, Dad.

Under his signature, he’d drawn a little snowman in ballet shoes, with his arms in the air, and scribbled a verse:

Here is a snowman

Wearing a hat

And dancing a ballet

On feet that are flat
.

Arabesques, pirouettes

Whirling and twirling

Too busy to chat
.

Alison smiled. He did love her. He hadn’t forgotten the book he’d made for her. This proved it. And he was going to phone her. She wished he’d been a bit more specific about when exactly. What would happen if the phone rang when she was in Wardrobe with Ruby? Would whoever took the call come and get her? She decided not to worry about this for the moment, but just thinking about her mother walking around with this lovely letter in her grotty handbag for days made her want to spit with rage.

‘Alison?’ Ruby was peering down at the auditorium now. ‘Are you there?’

‘Yes, Ruby. Coming.’

She ran up on to the stage, still carrying the letter. ‘I’ve got a letter from my dad. Can I just run back to my bedroom and put it away? I don’t want to lose it.’

‘How lovely. Of course you can,’ said Ruby. ‘But be quick.’

‘I’ll be back in five minutes, I promise.’

When she returned after putting her father’s letter away in the atlas, next to the lullaby book, she went to find Ruby in the wings.

‘Hello again. You
were
quick. I’ll be calling on you in a moment to go through the props with me, but could you go and put these on the table on the other side of the stage? Thank you.’

Alison picked up two baskets full of the roses she had helped to make and crossed the stage. The wings were nearly in darkness at the moment. George in the lighting box was obviously having a break. Hugo was on stage, ready to see the next pair of dancers through their routine. She’d almost reached the props table when she saw them. Nick and her mother, standing very close to one another, almost hidden behind a fold of the curtain. Alison put the baskets down on the props table and
out of the corner of her eye, she felt more than saw a slight movement. She turned her head. Nick had his left hand around Claudia’s waist and she was leaning slightly sideways, away from him. It looked as though she was practising a step from one of the dances. Then her right hand came up and stroked the side of Nick’s face from his hair down to his chin and she was bending the other way now, coming closer and closer to him until their bodies were so close you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. He’s kissing her, Alison thought, he must be. They’ve managed to slip even further behind the curtain. Just then, George must have flicked a switch and the whole stage area was suddenly bright with pinkish light.

‘Right,’ said Hugo, looking into the stalls. ‘Let’s get on, shall we? Ilene, Andy, can you get up here, please? Claudia and Nick? Ah, here you are.’

Nobody, she thought, seems to notice how flushed Nick and Claudia are. What would happen if she told Hugo what she’d seen? Would they have a row? Would he send her mother packing? No, that would put an end to
Sarabande
. She couldn’t say a word. Not until after the first night anyway. The one thing she didn’t want to do, both for Hester’s sake and Ruby’s, and also for her own, was to spoil the ballet in any way. It was silly, really, but she’d worked on the props and the costumes and that made her feel as though
Sarabande
was hers in a funny way.

Later, Alison watched her mother taking off her costume in the dressing room. Silver and Ilene had both been much quicker, but then they didn’t seem to have to go through all the rituals that Claudia always insisted on: cream, then toner, then the application of a quite different foundation and blusher and eyeliner, which seemed stupid to Alison. If you were going to put on a whole lot of different make-up, why bother
taking off what you had on in the first place? She knew the answer, which was that the stage make-up was much stronger, much more obvious, but what Claudia had on now looked much the same to her.

‘I need something,’ said Claudia, peering into the mirror and putting her hand into the V made by the lapels of the silk dressing-gown she always wore backstage. ‘Just to lift the costume a bit. To catch the light onstage. Some kind of necklace or something. I don’t feel like a princess without jewellery. But not beads. That would be too much, don’t you think?’

Alison knew her mother was only consulting her about such things because there was no one else in the dressing room she could talk to. ‘There’s that chain Hugo sometimes wears. Ask him if you can borrow that,’ she suggested.

‘Not a bad idea, darling. How clever you are sometimes! I will, only I don’t know if he’s brought it with him. It’s probably in a drawer at his flat. Just my luck. Come in!’

Claudia was answering a knock on the door.

‘I heard that. What’s just your luck?’ said Hugo, coming in and sitting down on the only armchair, looking, Alison thought, completely exhausted.

‘I was wondering if I could borrow your chain. To lift the costume a bit and make me look a little more like a princess. Did you bring it? It’d be perfect.’

‘Yes, it’s upstairs. Good idea. It’ll go very well with your costume.’ He sighed. ‘I was so relieved to see that the others looked more or less okay that I didn’t really pay proper attention to you, Claudia. I’m sorry, but you’re always so good with your costumes. I know I can leave it to you.’

‘Hmm,’ said Claudia, unsure, Alison could see, whether to be pleased about being thought clever enough to deal with her own outfit or insulted that
Hugo hadn’t been looking at her properly. On balance, the annoyance she felt about that would probably win.

*

Hugo had just finished talking to Hester about the technical dress rehearsal, or tech, as it was generally called. She was looking at him, he thought, rather more carefully and sharply than usual.

‘I’m pleased it went well, Hugo. And I knew that Silver would do it in the end. She’s very gifted and also very determined.’

Silver was the last thing he wanted to talk about. He’d tried to put her out of his mind, at least during the run-up to the first night, but it was hard to ignore what he was feeling. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. Last night he’d dreamed about her and shadows of the dream had been replaying themselves in his head all day, along with his other worry – what, if anything, to say to Claudia. More and more, he was sensing a kind of apartness in their relationship, as though they were yoked into it without necessarily wanting to be together. Was it just her silly flirting with Nick that had made him think that? Or the fact that his interest in Claudia, his desire to be in her company, was shrinking with every passing hour? Should he confess his doubts to Hester? Probably wiser at this point to say nothing to Claudia. He noticed that Hester seemed more relaxed than at any time since he’d been at Wychwood. He said, ‘You’re looking well, Hester.’ He wanted to say she was looking happy, but that seemed too familiar.

‘I feel as though one part of my life is over and something new is starting. Do you know what I mean?’

‘I know exactly what you mean. I’m so pleased for
you. I might be about to start a new phase in my life myself, but I can’t say anything about it. Not yet.’

‘No need to say a word, Hugo. I’m just delighted that the ballet is going to be what you want it to be.’

‘So far, so good. But fingers are permanently crossed, it goes without saying.’