‘You mean these?’ I pointed to the lilies, roses and hellebores. ‘My uncle sent them. Wasn’t it kind of him?’
Bruce pursed lips blood-red with rouge. ‘I’m afraid you’ll never get on if you can’t lie better than that, my pet. Only people on the make send expensive flowers. Now the person to whom you represent money at the moment is Sebastian. But he’s already got you signed up professionally and he’s fucking you. We all know he’s too stingy to spend as much as a ha’penny on his spunk-buckets.’
I considered, then abandoned, the idea of taking issue with this graphic description of my status in Sebastian’s life. Scabrous language was Bruce’s only vice. Temperate in all his appetites, he ate only nuts, fruit and sprouting things, drank nothing but tisanes, eschewed sex of any kind and devoted himself, mind and body, to dancing.
‘But of course if Miko Lubikoff is thinking of you as his dear little honey-pot—’
‘Aie! It is true!’ Irina Yzgrouchka pushed past Bruce and went to bury her face in the flowers, breathing in their delicious scent with a moan of pleasure. She was dressed in a dark blue riding habit and a lavishly plumed hat for the non-dancing role of Bathilde, Count Albrecht’s fiancée. Irina’s age … forty-two … and an accumulation of injuries had put paid to her suppleness. ‘How I will miss you, my own sweet Marigold!’ Irina put her arm round my neck and shed a few tears. Emotions are always near the surface in any ballet company, and illusion and reality are inextricably mixed, but I paid us both the compliment of believing that some of the tears were genuine. I was no threat to her now.
‘They’re from an unknown admirer,’ I said, blushing a little beneath the gaze of Bruce and Lizzie.
Irina looked at me from beneath false lashes clotted with mascara. In accordance with the almost universal practice, she had put a red dot in the inner corner of each eye to make them appear more open, but it looked very odd close to. ‘Darlink, the poor little falsehood is stillborn, no pathetic infant cry, not even a gasp. Admirers send red roses or some such gaucherie. Only a queer sends flowers so beautiful as these. Besides, at least ten people read the card before you arrive.’
It was some comfort to know that Sebastian never came backstage before a performance. Afterwards he made a point of doing so, to give the company his opinion of our achievements, which ranged from mediocre (which meant very good) through pretty poor (good) to atrocious (some careless port de bras in the corps). I put on my peasant girl dress – white blouse, green laced bodice and scarlet knee-length skirt for the first act, wondering how I could manage to have a private conversation with Mr Lubikoff afterwards. Human traffic flowed continuously in and out of my dressing room. I could hardly lock myself in with him. That would be the same as hanging a sign on the door saying ‘Marigold Savage is negotiating a new contract with a rival company.’
Annie came in to plait my hair and tie it into coils with scarlet ribbons. Because my hair was such a distinctive colour, I rarely wore a wig. Dancers, particularly dressed in white with their hair fastened into chignons, look very much alike from the back of the auditorium. Though it was tiresome always to invoke the spirit of Moira Shearer in the minds of the critics, it was an advantage to have a physical characteristic that made one instantly recognizable.
‘Is he coming tonight?’ Annie mumbled through a mouthful of Kirby grips. She indicated the flowers with a jerk of her head.
There was no point in pretending not to understand. Many years ago Annie had danced in the corps herself so she knew what was at stake. I don’t know why I felt so guilty. Sebastian would not have hesitated for one solitary second to replace me with a better dancer. Or a more desirable lover.
‘He said he would. But you know …’ I shrugged.
‘I know all right. When my bones ache and I can’t afford a packet of fags, I thank my lucky stars my next month’s salary doesn’t depend on the fancy of some self-obsessed old faggot.’
The first act went as well as anyone could have hoped. When we danced together I forgot about Alex’s resemblance to a French bull terrier. As Loys, my mysterious suitor, he became handsome and charming. I was astonished and elated that he had chosen to love me. I responded with a passion I didn’t know I was capable of feeling because my life until that point as a simple village girl had been so ordinary. When Loys admitted that he was really Count Albrecht in disguise and already betrothed to the beautiful, blue-blooded Bathilde, I could not at first understand it. Surely there had been a terrible mistake? The pitying glances of his courtiers assured me it was true. My love was a poisoned apple. I had been deceived, my dreams were dust and ashes and there was no peace for me in the world but death. And die I did, after a fit of madness that demanded tremendous technical skill.
The part of Giselle is one of the greatest tests for a ballerina. It is not only extremely difficult technically, but it requires a great range of expression. The ghost of the second act must make the strongest possible contrast with the simple red-cheeked village girl of the first. Because every gesture is minutely circumscribed, it tests one’s ability to communicate to the utmost. I barely noticed the applause as I came off the stage in the interval because I immediately began to think myself into a state of ethereal otherworldliness. Pavlova always danced the dead Giselle in burial cerements, but I had been given the more usual romantic tutu. It was only as I was struggling into the basque which holds the costume together that I noticed that my foot was hurting. As soon as I thought about it the pain increased to something that approached but was not quite agony.
Annie came to hook up the bodice of white slipper-satin covering the basque that held the tutu together. A pair of delicate gauzy wings was attached to my shoulders.
‘You danced well, dear. Those ballottés with the jetés en avants straight after are pigs to get on the beat and you were spot on.’ Annie had seen Fonteyn, Markova and Barinova dance, so praise from her was worth having. ‘Lubikoff’ll be pleased.’ Annie bent to smooth out the three layers of snowy tarlatan that finished at mid-calf. ‘You don’t want to let Lenoir bully you into doing just as he likes.’ She fastened a silver girdle round my waist and brought me a new pair of shoes while I removed trickles of sweat and mascara and powdered my face, neck and arms. ‘I know you’ve got to get on, dear, and goodness knows we’ve all done it, but he’s such a cold stick, such a brute of a man. I hate to think of you having to let him … whatever’s wrong with your foot?’
‘It is a bit swollen.’ I flexed it and winced. ‘Be an angel and tie it up for me.’
Annie’s experience with dancer’s feet was second to none. She tsk-tsked volubly when I took off my tights to disclose the hot, reddened flesh of my left foot but, after she had bound my instep and ankle, it felt almost comfortable again. I pulled on my tights, fastened my shoes and kissed her gratefully before running down to the basement, known as ‘hell’, to take up my position on the little platform which at the appropriate moment would shoot me up to the stage as though I had risen from my grave.
I adored the thrilling moment of stepping into the blue starlight and bourréeing towards the centre as though I weighed less than a mote in a moonbeam. Annie’s bandages held my foot in a secure yet flexible grip and at first all went well. Then it came to the moment when Giselle hops en pointe on her left foot, traversing half the stage, which is difficult to do gracefully in the most favourable circumstances. I found it doubly hard when each hop sent a thousand volts from my toe to my knee. An expression of mournful tenderness was called for. The pain forced me to grit my teeth and it was all I could do not to grunt with pain. During the pas de deux with Myrtha, the Queen of the Wilis, the throbbing and stinging was nothing less than excruciating. I seemed to be dancing on white-hot knives. Perhaps something of the agonizing struggle to control
