The Dancing Bear (2 page)

Roxanne said nothing. She didn’t need to. The anger in her eyes said it all.

Later that evening, we all discovered what sort of a film it was going to be. I was a little disappointed. I had had visions of some great and glamorous epic in period costume, with a battle or two; or perhaps a musical extravaganza where world-famous stars would caper through meadows and up mountainsides –
our
meadows and our mountainsides.

The Director, who turned out to be the one with the purple fedora hat, was quick to dispel such hopes. They were making a short video to accompany Niki’s latest pop song, which was to be called, “Follow Me”. This was greeted with screams of delight by the children (who were becoming wilder by the minute).

And, the Director went on, they would need actors – all the children he could find.

And they wanted rats.

“Rats!” Madame D’Arblay protested indignantly. “We do
not
have any rats here.”

“You soon will,” the Director laughed. “You soon will.”

I rather liked him, or maybe it was just his wonderful hat.

“Auditions will be held in the morning. We’ll be needing grown-ups for the Mayor and Corporation. Nine o’clock in the square.”

Madame D’Arblay went off home at once, swearing that no child of hers would be playing a rat. Not for Niki, not for all the tea in China.

It didn’t take a genius to work out that with a Mayor, Corporation and all those rats, the film was going to be something to do with the Pied Piper of Hamelin. As I lay in my bed that night, I dared to hope that I wasn’t too old to play the Piper himself. I could play the flute a little, or maybe they’d even let me play my horn.

In the cold light of the following morning, the children lined up for auditions in the square. Every child in the village had volunteered. I was proud of that. I hoped Madame D’Arblay’s boy would be chosen as a rat: I loved to see Madame D’Arblay angry. She had several chins and they all wobbled when she was cross.

Bruno sat and watched from his cage. I could see he was agitated.

Most of the children, including Roxanne, wanted to be rats. The whiskered costumes looked wonderful.

Niki and the Director (who brandished that purple fedora hat rather too flamboyantly for my liking) inspected the line of children, stopping to consider each one closely. Then, after a brief whispered discussion, the Director passed along the line again, picking out his chosen rats as he went: “You’re a rat. A rat. Rat. Rat. Rat.”

Young or old, they all wanted to be rats. Roxanne was not among those chosen nor, unfortunately, was Madame D’Arblay’s boy, and neither was Tiny. They didn’t hide their disappointment.

The lucky ones were hustled away into the café, which had been taken over by the Wardrobe Mistress. Here they were to be transformed into rats of all shapes and sizes. Soon after, they emerged, “ratted-up” and giggling. The Director hushed them with a wave of his hat saying he would have no noisy rats in Niki’s film. Instantly, they were silent.

The Director turned to Roxanne and the others, who were still waiting miserably. “The rest of you will be the children,” he declared.

“We already are,” said Tiny.

Niki laughed, and when Niki laughed, everyone laughed.

“Can any of you sing?” asked the Director.

I was about to speak up, but Tiny did it for me.

“Roxy can,” he said. “You should hear her. You can, can’t you, Roxy?”

“A bit,” said Roxanne. “We all can.”

“Good, good,” the Director went on. “Now I need someone to limp…”

A few heads turned towards me and smiled sheepishly. I smiled too. The Director pointed at Tiny. “Can you limp?”

“I think so,” said tiny, and he walked up and down, limping first on one foot and then on the other.

“I’ll teach Tiny,” I said. “I do it quite well.”

The smiles turned to laughter.

“Magic, magic!” said the Director, a bit flustered now. “This boy can be the little one who gets left behind.”

It was indeed to be the story of the Pied Piper!

“Eva!” The Director shouted to the Wardrobe Mistress, a handsome woman with a mass of red hair – too red to be real – “Eva, this one will be the waif. You can get him kitted out. You can get them all kitted out. Now, I need a Mayor.”

Of course, everyone looked at Monsieur D’Arblay.

“Hmmm,” said the Director, looking him up and down. Clearly
our
Mayor wasn’t exactly what he had in mind. “I suppose you’ll do. A bit of make-up here, and a bit of padding there. We’ll make a proper Mayor of you.”

The Mayor didn’t look too happy at this, but he accepted the part eagerly enough.

“Now,” said the Director, “I want to see all the ladies. I’ll need ladies who can scream – about half a dozen will do. And you’ve got to be able to pick up your skirts and run.”

It turned out they could all scream and run well enough, so they were all chosen except Madam D’Arblay, and
she
was cast as the Mayor’s wife so she was happy.

After that, the Corporation chose itself, for there were only a few of us willing to be dressed up in long flowing robes trimmed with fur. I was one – and so was Roxanne’s grandfather. It was better than nothing. Of course, Niki was to be the Pied Piper so any hopes of stardom were dashed.

Most of the children were prettied and preened to look like dolls. But Tiny, who was usually so tidy, was transformed into a grubby beggar, complete with crutch. His mother kept trying to smarten him up, so the Wardrobe
Mistress had to be very firm with her. “I want him to be mucky,” she insisted. “He has to be mucky.”

Tiny was clearly delighted to be mucky, and together we practised his limping for hours. In the end, he was limping well. Not as well as me, but well enough.

Roxanne had never much bothered about what she looked like. Now she emerged from the café in a light-blue chiffon dress with a garland of eglantine roses in her hair. For a few moments everyone stopped and stared. She was a princess – a country girl turned into a princess in ten minutes! Yet she seemed so sad and preoccupied. She wandered over towards Bruno’s cage.

I was about to go over to her when her grandfather came scurrying out of the café.

“Roxanne,” he called, “they want the bear spruced up. You’ve got to brush him, comb him out.”

She looked up at him with open dislike.

“I won’t make him dance. I won’t,” she said. “You know I never make him do anything he doesn’t want to. You know he hates being laughed at.”

“What’s a little dance here and a little dance there?” said the old man, with a shrug of his shoulders. “Puts money in the bank, doesn’t it? That’s what counts in this life and don’t you forget it.”

Roxanne opened the cage and stepped inside.

“Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know,” her grandfather went on. “Mind you have him looking his best.”

And the next day, Bruno was indeed looking his best for rehearsals. We all were. But from the start, things went wrong. The carnival mood of the auditions and costuming had gone.

One by one, difficulties became problems and problems became arguments. Bruno was the worst problem of all. For some reason yet unknown to me, the Pied Piper had to have a dancing bear. Someone put a chain around Bruno’s neck so that Niki could lead him into the village square. Bruno had never been chained in all his life. He would not move, and when they jerked on his chain, he reared up threateningly. Roxanne told them, we all did, that you couldn’t treat Bruno like that; but they wouldn’t listen.

Niki sang his song but Bruno sat stock still and looked the other way, scratching himself. They wanted him to dance and kept waving their arms at him to encourage him, but Bruno didn’t even look interested. And this was just the beginning of the Director’s troubles.

The children learned Niki’s song and sang it well enough but they would not behave as he wanted them to. They would keep looking at the camera and giggling. The rats were no better,

falling over each other because they couldn’t see properly through the eye-holes in their costumes. Tiny’s limping went to pieces. He
would
limp on different legs. And the more the Mayor and the Corporation rehearsed, the more self-conscious and stiff we all became.

The Director blamed everyone: the cameraman, the sound man, the weather – even, at one point, Niki. By late afternoon he was talking of abandoning the whole project, packing up and going home. Eva, the red-headed Wardrobe Mistress, was in tears because he shouted at her once too often.

We rehearsed for five minutes and stood around for five hours waiting. Filming, I decided, was hard on the feet, mostly boring and definitely bad on the nerves. We all went home thoroughly fed up and dreading doing it all again the next day.

After supper, I was just going out for my evening stroll when I heard someone singing. It could only be Roxanne. No one sang like she did. She often sang to Bruno in the evenings before she said goodnight to him. The sound of her singing drew me down towards the village square. Roxanne was sitting in the cage with Bruno standing beside her, and she was singing Niki’s song. I looked across the square. Niki was
listening outside the café, the Director behind him. The entire film crew was there too. Roxanne saw none of them. As I watched, Bruno began to sway from side to side. Then Roxanne was on her feet and dancing too.

When it was over, Niki started to clap loudly, and then everyone did. I did too – I couldn’t help myself. Roxanne was caught quite unawares. She was embarrassed, even a little afraid, I thought.

“That girl’s magic!” exclaimed the Director as he hurried past me. “Pure magic.” He liked that word.

“Did you see? He was dancing!” said Niki. “The bear, he was dancing!” Niki grasped the Director’s arm and they stopped close by me. “I have an idea,” he whispered.

“So have I,” said the Director. “And if your idea’s the same as my idea, then it’s brilliant.”

“We sing it together, right? Her and me,” said Niki.

“Her and you together,” said the Director. “We’ll hardly need to change a thing. You come to the village, just like we planned – a wandering minstrel with your bear – but you’ve got a girl with you, your girl. You do the song together. The bear dances. The children come
out and dance, then the rats too. They’ve got to dance. They can’t stop. The Mayor and Corporation see what’s happening and ask you to rid them of their rats. You and the girl, with the bear behind you, you lead the rats out of the village and drown them. And then the beggars won’t pay you. So you and the girl start singing again and the bear starts dancing and the children dance and they follow you both out of town and up into the mountains.”

“Do you think she’ll do it?” said Niki.

The Director laughed. “Do it? Of course she will. What girl wouldn’t, eh? The chance to sing with Niki. And think of the publicity! Niki and his shepherdess fresh from the mountains and a bear that dances. I’m telling you, it’s a winner, Niki, a winner. Sell millions. Go on, you go and ask her; and don’t take no for an answer. I’ll see to the grandfather. He’s a tight-fisted old goat, but I’ll make him an offer he won’t refuse.”

I stood and watched from the shadows as Niki walked over to the cage. Roxanne was just closing the door behind her. She turned and saw him. “You startled me,” she said.

“With a voice like that,” said Niki, “you shouldn’t be stuck away up here.”

“What do you mean?”

He reached out and took her hands in his. “I want to ask you a favour,” he said, his voice silky soft. “I want you to sing with me – you know, in the video.”

“Me?” said Roxanne.

“When you sing,” Niki went on, “everyone listens. When you sing the bear dances. I must have a dancing bear, and he only dances for you, doesn’t he? I need you to sing with me, Roxanne. I need you.”

“I don’t know,” she said shaking her head.

“It’s easy,” Niki went on. “You sing it like you did just now, but with me.” He lifted her chin so that she could look him in the eyes. “You could be a star, Roxanne. You could be big, the biggest. Look what it’s done for me. Everyone knows me. I’ve got houses all over the world: Paris, California, south of France. I’ve got four cars. I’ve got a plane. I can have anything I want. I can go anywhere I please. You could be the same. You could leave all this behind.”

“No,” she said turning away from him. “I can’t leave Bruno; I won’t.”

“Of course you can,” he said. “Someone else could look after him. You can’t live your life for a bear. There’s a whole big wide world out there waiting to hear your voice. They’ll love you. I’m telling you, Roxanne, they’ll love you.”

“Love me?” she said. “Will they really love me?”

Bruno was pacing up and down frantically in his cage behind them. He understood every word, I knew he did.

She smiled nervously at Niki. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I live here. I belong here.”

“No one belongs anywhere,” said Niki. “And who wants a little place like this when you can have the whole world? I tell you what. You come with us when we leave, and if you like you can always come back. But I’m telling you, you won’t want to. There’re things out there you never even dreamed of and they’ll all be yours. What do you say?”

“And I can have all I’ve ever dreamed of?” said Roxanne.

“All of it,” said Niki.

If there was a moment I should have spoken up, it was then, but I hadn’t the courage to do it.

I lay awake all that night telling myself I had to warn her – I
had
to stop her from going. I had to tell her. She mustn’t leave. She couldn’t leave. She’d be like a fish out of water. I made up my mind: I would not let her leave.

But when I arrived at dawn in the square, wearing my Corporation cloak, and still fully determined to say my piece, Roxanne was already rehearsing with Niki and, much to everyone’s delight, Bruno was swaying and dancing as she sang.

It was too late. There was nothing I could do. At least, that was what I told myself.

Now rehearsals went like clockwork. By lunchtime they were already filming. The ladies screamed as they should, the rats ran in packs
along the streets and didn’t trip over, the children sang and danced just as children do, and the Mayor and the Corporation looked suitably scheming and smug. (Madame D’Arblay’s chins wobbled wonderfully.)