Hester's Story (52 page)

‘Full of kind remarks as usual, Mother dear.’

‘Oh, don’t be so teenagery, for Heaven’s sake. As if we haven’t got enough on our plates. I only came to ask you not to forget about my costume. You do know it’s got to be ironed before this afternoon, don’t you? I told Ruby, only she’s been in such a state that I thought I’d better ask you to check up on her.’

‘Ruby’s fine. She had a migraine, but she’s better now.’

Alison was only half-listening to her mother. She wanted to finish this bit before it was time to go over to the theatre. Everything had to be ready today because they weren’t going to be allowed in here tomorrow. The caterers would be doing their thing, George said.

‘I’m not altogether sure about this look, you know,’ Claudia said.

‘What’s the matter with it?’

‘Well, it looks … it looks a bit strange, that’s all.
Perhaps there’s time for someone to drive into Keighley and get some last-minute flowers or something. What do you think?’

Alison thought that if she’d been on ground level and had the scissors in her hands she would have stabbed her mother with them. She opened her mouth and closed it again. I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to give her the satisfaction. ‘What you know about decorations,’ she amazed herself by sounding almost normal, although she felt like that person in the fairytale who had toads and snakes coming out of her mouth, ‘could be put in a walnut shell and there’d be room left over for the walnut. You’re ignorant.’

‘How dare you? How dare you call me ignorant? You’re nothing but a terminally untalented brat.’

Alison wanted to say
and you’re a has-been. Everyone knows that, even Hugo, but they’re too kind to tell you
. But she kept her mouth shut and went on putting up the branches. Instead she said, ‘Do you love him? Hugo?’

‘Hugo? Well, I wasn’t going to tell you but since you’ve brought it up. He’s leaving me, Alison. He’s had enough. Can’t say I’m surprised, really and to tell you the truth, I think I’m ready to move on myself, but …’

Alison looked at her mother. ‘Are you going to be okay for the dress rehearsal? You’re not upset?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Claudia, getting up. ‘I’ll be more than all right, believe me. I’m going to show the whole lot of them what I’m capable of. They think, Hugo thinks, I’m past my best and he’s besotted with Silver with her legs and that technique, but I’ll give him something to watch this afternoon. Something that’ll make him think twice about me as a dancer, even if he’s given up on me as a woman. Oh, God, I’m not going to cry, am I?’

‘No, of course you’re not,’ said Alison. She was used to cheering Claudia up when she felt neglected or ill-used by the critics and now she went through the routine once again. ‘You’re still Claudia Drake. You’re a huge star. Your face is in all the magazines. You’re miles more famous than Silver. You know you are.’

‘How long for, though? I’m well over thirty. I can’t go on for ever. That’s the trouble with ballet. What’s to become of me when no one wants me as a dancer any longer?’

‘I expect you could be a model or something, couldn’t you?’

Claudia smiled. ‘They like their models even younger than their dancers, but it’s true that some photographers have been after me to do what they call “celebrity shoots”. They’ve said I have the bones for it. It’s certainly worth thinking about. Thank you, darling! You’ve made me feel a little better.’

She walked to the door and looked back at Alison, who had started to climb up the stepladder again.

‘Maybe I was wrong about those,’ she said casually. ‘They are quite effective, actually. On second thoughts.’

When she’d gone, Alison went on working on the decorations. She’d be finished before lunch. Everyone was having sandwiches in the Arcadia bar to save time, and she didn’t want to miss that. How typical of Mum to change her mind, she reflected. She can’t even stick to an opinion for more than two seconds. But this room is going to look fantastic and it was all my idea. She continued to cut and tie, cut and tie, until the carrier bag she’d placed carefully on the mantelpiece was quite empty.

*

‘I’m sure we’ll get used to it.’ Hester smiled at Hugo.
‘We have so much in common, after all, don’t we? I’m sure there are lots of mothers who find it difficult to talk to their children.’

‘I’ve never found it hard to talk to you. Don’t you remember? On New Year’s Eve I have a memory of wanting to lay my head on your shoulder and tell you all my troubles.’

‘Yes, I do remember. I was touched.’ She was sitting behind her writing table in the Office and Hugo was on the
chaise-longue
, Siggy on his lap. ‘Siggy seems to think you’re a member of the family, so I suppose you must be. It’ll be a while before I absorb it fully, but he’s a very wise old cat.’

‘I feel a bit like Cinderella just after the slipper’s been put on her foot. After our talk this morning, I’m a bit less confused. Everything’s fallen into place. This all …’ he waved a hand to include Hester and the room and the house beyond the room, ‘seems somehow right. I’ve always admired you from afar. I liked you from the very first time I met you and actually I’ve even thought that we were a little alike and then decided I was flattering myself.’

‘Perhaps we are alike. Imagine if someone else had been given the commission this year. Imagine that.’

‘I can’t. I can’t imagine it. What would have happened?’

‘Nothing. Nothing dramatic. We’d each have gone on with our separate lives, that’s all. I would have mourned my dead baby every day for the rest of my life.’

‘And I’d never have known you were my mother. Which would have been sad, though nothing like as sad as your situation. I had a mother, after all, who loved me and brought me up and I loved her too.’

‘I’m grateful to her. You can’t begin to understand
how grateful. She must have been a wonderful person too, because you’re a credit to her.’

‘And to you and my father …’

‘Your father, yes.’ Hester looked searchingly at Hugo. ‘Are you prepared to do what I asked you when we discussed it earlier? Not to say a word about Adam? Not ever? You know my reasons. I can’t do that to Adam’s wife, suddenly appear in public with his son. It would hurt her so badly. I hope you agree that I’m right. I don’t know about Claudia. Do you feel you have to tell her?’

Hugo shook his head. ‘We’re not going to be together very much longer.’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry. Is it going to be hard for you? Or for her?’

‘No, I think we agree that we’re not – our relationship isn’t what it was. I won’t tell her.’

‘But if you get married, of course your wife will need to know everything.’

‘I’ll tell you before I confide in anyone, I promise.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘This situation must be hard for you. I’m glad you felt that you could tell me about my father. Do I look like him?’

‘You have his smile. He was tall, like you, but broader shouldered. Ever since I met you, you’ve reminded me of someone and now I see that it’s actually two people. One of them is my father. He had your build, but when I was a child, he seemed to be so stiff. I used to think he looked like a scarecrow, but you don’t. Not a bit.’

‘I hope I don’t. Who’s the other person?’

‘Me. I think you look like me. I’ve watched you in rehearsal and class and you move in just the same way. Your
port de bras
 – everything.’

‘D’you know something? I can’t think of anyone I’d rather look like.’

He got to his feet gently and Siggy took his place on the
chaise-longue
, looking only slightly put out.

*

Hester was just about to set off down the covered corridor to the Arcadia for the dress rehearsal when she remembered that Alison must have finished decorating the dining room. Not much time, she thought, but I’ll just go and see.

She opened the door and stood for a long moment on the threshold, taking it in. The room had never looked like this, not in all the years since the Festival was first launched. All around the dado-rails, piled on the mantelpiece and on the mirror above it, along the front of the raised platform at the end of the room were more branches than she’d ever seen in her life. Ruby and George must have been out in the countryside collecting them for weeks. They’d been sprayed with silver paint and all along each one, someone – Alison, she was sure – had tied elaborate bows of satin ribbon. Such colours! Red and black and pink; blue and violet and yellow; pale green and silver and gold. It took Hester a little while to understand what the ribbons were. She realised it when she noticed the ballet shoes, dotted here and there. The ribbons came from Ruby’s box in Wardrobe which was always stocked with every possible colour visiting ballerinas might require. Alison had stuffed the toe of every shoe and balanced them all so that it seemed as though an invisible creature had left them there, poised and ready to move into a dance.

Beautiful. It was so beautiful that Hester found herself blinking away tears. I must thank her properly, she thought, for this magical idea. She hadn’t thought the house was capable of such beauty when she’d first inherited it from Madame Olga.

1970

Six months after her accident, Hester took on the most demanding role of her career. After she’d made up her mind that she was no longer a dancer, she threw herself into teaching with an energy that surprised everyone, herself most of all. She found that there was an enormous satisfaction from creating a ballerina out of someone who up till then was only an awkward child. She acquired, very quickly, a reputation for strictness and not suffering fools gladly. Liking her own way, and seeing that she got it, which had brought her into conflict with more than one choreographer, was exactly the quality that seemed
de rigueur
if you were a teacher. Hester played up to the part, and even though she stopped short of copying Madame Olga’s dress and manner, she adopted a uniform and a style of her own, dressing always in very well-cut black trousers and a variety of silk shirts in jewel colours. Her hair, which she’d worn long throughout her dancing career, had been cut into a chin-length bob.

Hester also began to travel all over the world, amazed that there were people from Australia to Moscow longing to hear about her career, to listen to her views on the latest developments in modern dance, and on a whole variety of subjects about which she was magically supposed to know everything simply by virtue of who she’d once been. The legendary Hester Fielding, that’s what they called her now. Dinah, who
had been living in New Zealand since her marriage ten years ago, was overjoyed that they could meet again. ‘It means you can come and see me and we can talk properly for the first time in years,’ she wrote. ‘Letters are all very well, but I can’t wait to see you.’

It was in the spring of 1970, while Hester was staying with Dinah in Christchurch, that a phone call came from Piers. The line was crackly and difficult and he sounded as though he were talking underwater, but Hester heard him. Madame Olga had suffered a stroke. Hester returned to England at once. While she was on her way home, Piers had arranged for Madame Olga to be moved from Wychwood House to St Thomas’s Hospital in London so that they could visit her every day. They expected her to make a complete recovery and convalesce in the luxury of Piers’ house. What illness would dare lay Madame Olga low?

‘She’ll tell those doctor chappies what’s what,’ Piers said, in the hearty voice and bluff manner he reserved for particularly sad occasions when he thought people needed cheering up. Hester believed him. It was impossible to think of Madame Olga, who was so self-possessed and elegant and in charge of everything, lying in bed like a sick person; like an old woman. She’s only seventy-two, Hester told herself. That’s not really old. She was strong, too. Hester had never known her to suffer from anything worse than a cold in all the years she’d known her. She would definitely be fine.

Then the second stroke came and Hester and Piers rushed through the streets of London in the dark to visit her. They took a taxi from the theatre after watching the first night of a production of
Swan Lake
in which one of Hester’s own pupils was appearing. Piers was waiting at the stage door at the end of the performance, ready to take her to the hospital.

Something was different. Hester knew it at once. Madame Olga had been moved to a small side-room near the entrance to the ward. They only did that for patients who were very ill indeed. Hester began to sweat, in spite of feeling cold all over.

‘Madame?’ she whispered, going to sit on the chair drawn up beside the bed. ‘Madame, it’s me. Hester. Please open your eyes.’

She’d shrunk. She was a little old lady lying in a bed. Her thinning hair had been plaited by one of the nursing staff and she wore a white nightgown with lace at the neck. Her hands looked like pieces of bleached wood, gnarled and swollen at the joints, but still arranged in a graceful way on the blanket, as though she had decided on this particular position for them. Her eyes were closed and her skin, which had always been smooth and pale and unblemished was dark under her eyes and saggy and loose near her chin. She had lost something of herself, and Hester began weeping because her Madame Olga had gone and this poor, sick woman, this old and feeble person had replaced her.

Hester took her hand and held it. ‘The ballet was good tonight. Dulcie’s very promising, I think.’

‘You are now like me,’ Madame Olga spoke so quietly that Hester had to lean forward to catch her words. Every one of them was an effort. ‘The dancers become the teachers, yes?’

Hester nodded and tried not to cry. ‘It doesn’t seem so long ago that you came down to the Royalty to see me in
Sleeping Beauty
, when I did the Bluebird. Do you remember?’

‘Everything. I forget nothing. This is the curse of old age. All remains and you cannot clean your head. But listen to me, child.’

She seized Hester’s wrist then and her hand was like
a bird’s claw. She tried to sit up a little but that was too much for her and she fell back against the pillows. Hester said, ‘Don’t distress yourself, Madame. I’m here. I can hear you. Speak to me.’