Hester's Story (15 page)

‘Welcolme to the Attic de Luxe!’ said Dinah, the first time she saw Hester. ‘It’s not much, but it’s home.’

Dinah was a tall, pale-skinned girl with a shock of golden hair; Nell was small and gingery, with freckles. They both looked older than she was, by a couple of years she guessed.

Hester put her suitcase down at the end of her bed and looked around. The floorboards were only partly covered, and the rugs were threadbare.

‘I can see you don’t think much of our decor and who can blame you?’ said Nell. She pointed at the rugs. ‘You have to use those as sort of stepping-stones to get from the door to your bed if you don’t want to risk splinters in your feet.’

Hester smiled. She unpacked her few belongings, marvelling at how little she possessed. Only her clothes and Antoinette, and the tortoiseshell box with
Grandmère’
s gold chain in it. She propped the doll on the bed, leaning against the pillow, and hoped that Dinah and Nell wouldn’t think she was babyish. Neither of them mentioned it.

*

Hester never told anyone how much she loved the Attic de Luxe. The others moaned about it but she settled in quickly, and soon it was as though she’d always lived there. For the first time in her life she had a tiny space that was entirely her own. She didn’t mind the shabbiness of the furnishings and soon grew used to always having tights hanging up over the bath in the chilly bathroom. It took them hours to dry and sometimes she had to put them on while they were still damp. Dinah advised her to squeeze them in a towel after she washed them.

‘Not very absorbent though, are they?’ said Hester.

‘Absorbent? This one’s transparent, more like a veil than a towel.’ Dinah waved one in front of herself and moved her hips suggestively, like a belly dancer. ‘I
could be Salome, couldn’t I? The Dance of the Seven Towels.’

‘When I’m grown-up,’ Hester said, ‘my towels are going to be so fluffy they’ll be practically furry. And I’m going to have deep, deep carpets everywhere.’

‘Of course you will, ducky!’ said Dinah. ‘Now get dressed and let’s go to the Corner House.’

Lyons Corner House near Marble Arch was Hester’s favourite place in the whole of London. The rest of the city was a little disappointing. Never before had she seen a place which was so grey and gloomy. Everyone seemed to be dressed in brown or grey or black and every building was sooty and forbidding. Bomb damage was still visible in many places, and some houses had so much missing that you could look at them and see a wall with the remains of wallpaper still stuck to it, or a mantelpiece sticking out when all around it had vanished.

Dinah and Nell, Hester realised, were the first proper friends she’d ever had. They’d been kind to her from the beginning and Hester never felt at all homesick. There were times when she longed for Madame Olga; longed to walk through the village and through the gates of Wychwood and talk to her about this strange new life. Instead, she wrote to her twice a week, telling her everything – the way Piers’ classes differed from hers, the kindness of most of the others in the company to their youngest dancer, and the plans for future productions. And Madame Olga wrote back on blank postcards, in her complicated, spiky handwriting. She offered advice, sent kisses, and begged for more news, more detail. Every time she wrote, she signed the message in the same way:
I think of you all the time and send you my blessings. Olga R
.

During her early months in London, Hester was nervous about being as good as the other dancers in
the company. She kept up well during the daily lessons they all had to attend, but dancing was the real focus of her life and sometimes she worried that the other members of the company might not think she was good. For her part, Hester thought she had an accurate idea of her own talents. Sometimes she wondered whether perhaps she might be mistaken, but most of the time she recognised her own gift and was grateful for it. She didn’t say so to anyone, but she knew that she would succeed. She had the stamina for the work and the determination to fight, if she needed to, to be acknowledged. She understood that Piers thought highly of her, though he very rarely praised his dancers. It would have been easy for someone with less confidence in their own ability to feel discouraged.

Dinah and Nell showed her the best places to buy ballet shoes and tights and they introduced her to the delights of Lyons, which was exactly the sort of place Hester used to dream about when she thought of leaving Yorkshire. Lining up with Dinah and Nell and paying for whatever she’d eaten or drunk with her own money sent to her directly by her father made her feel grown-up.

The Royalty Theatre was a small island of colour in the middle of all the drabness. The seats in the stalls were blood-red and the curtain a particularly violent shade of crimson, but if you looked carefully, the plush was worn out in places, and there were holes in the curtain near the floor which had been patched and darned more than once.

‘Piers never spends enough money on the building,’ said Dinah, when she and Hester and Nell were sitting at their usual table in Lyons. ‘He’d rather get better costumes for the dancers, or take us all abroad on tour. He says no one minds about worn-out plush if the ballet’s good enough.’

She put out her long spoon and helped herself to a bit of Hester’s ice-cream. The girls always had the same thing, a triple scoop of ice-cream in three flavours – chocolate, vanilla and strawberry.

‘But they might stop coming to the theatre if the seats are too uncomfortable,’ said Nell.

‘They’re not, though,’ said Dinah. ‘They’re not in the least uncomfortable. Just a little shabby. The place isn’t dirty or flea-ridden or anything.’

Hester didn’t answer, but went on eating her ice-cream. She’d stood in the stalls on the day Piers first showed her round and dreamed of a time when the curtain would open and there she would be, up on the stage, dancing. Nell and Dinah had moved on to talk about the prima ballerina of the company; the same Estelle whose presence had meant that her own name had been changed. This Estelle’s surname was Delamere but no one called her anything but Madame P when she was out of earshot.

‘What’s the P for?’ Hester asked Dinah, wondering why she’d never thought of asking before. They’d all had so many other things to talk about that this question had only just occurred to her.

‘You can take your pick really,’ Dinah answered. ‘Pompous, Poisonous, Posh. Any and all of those will do. She’s awful and we all hate her.’

‘Piers too?’

‘Probably. Only he won’t tell her so as long as she’s dancing up to standard. She
is
rather good, actually, but I don’t like her style. Cold, I think she is. You can admire her but never love her, d’you know what I mean?’

Hester nodded, though she wasn’t quite sure if she did.

‘I think she’s ridiculous,’ said Nell. ‘She’s over thirty, for heaven’s sake! She must know that there’s going to
be a time when she can’t perform as anything more than a character dancer. Surely she can see her days as a prima ballerina are numbered?’

‘No, she can’t,’ Dinah said. ‘You never do know things like that when it’s you. You kid yourself that everything’s just the same as it always was. It’s only the rest of us who can hear the creaking joints during class.’

They laughed, and then left the golden light and warmth of Lyons and made their way to the Underground with their arms linked.

‘Another deliciously comfortable night in the Attic de Luxe awaits us!’ said Nell.

‘Can’t wait,’ Dinah added, ‘to sink into my feather bed.’

*

Hester, Dinah and Nell didn’t really mind how shabby the Attic de Luxe was because they were hardly ever there. They spent most of their time in the rehearsal room round the corner from the theatre, in a dusty hall attached to a church. The room was draughty, high-ceilinged and chilly even in the warmest weather and freezing cold in winter. But Hester hardly noticed the temperature because she worked so hard there, month after month. Piers was not a bit like Father Christmas when he was taking class or going through routines during a rehearsal period.

‘I’d appreciate your full attention, Hester,’ he’d almost shouted at her once when she’d been daydreaming. She blushed. It wasn’t like her to lose concentration, but Piers missed nothing and was often quite fierce with dancers whom he suspected of not attending properly to his instructions. When he was cross with anyone, his face became bright red and he looked as though he might begin to breathe out fire,
just like a dragon. One cold morning, when they’d all overslept, Dinah looked at Nell and shook her head.

‘You can’t go to rehearsal, you know.’ She was dragging a brush through her long, fair hair and twisting it up into a knot, anchored with pins. ‘You’re sick. You’ve got an awful cough and all you’ll do by coming to rehearsal is spread your ghastly cold through the whole company. Piers’ll be hopping mad.
Nutcracker
opens next Thursday, remember? At this rate, all the mice and all the flowers will be hacking away in the wings so that you won’t be able to hear the music.’

‘Shut up, Dinah,’ said Nell. ‘I’m going. All I need is for Piers to give my part to Simone. She’s been eyeing it from the start. This is my very first solo and I’m certainly not going to let a little cough stop me. I’ve got some lozenges somewhere.’

Nell reminded Hester of a deer, her head often tilted to one side as she looked at you. She wasn’t exactly pretty, but her face was very expressive. She laughed a lot, but today, Hester noticed, she had dark shadows under her eyes, her skin was pale and there was a sheen of sweat on her forehead. Hester felt for her. She looked dreadfully ill.

‘Lozenges aren’t going to help you,’ Dinah continued. ‘You just wait. Piers will be on to you at once.’

*

Hester watched anxiously to see what Piers would say when he saw Nell. The girls were standing in rows and Nell was right at the front. Hester couldn’t see her face, but Piers had begun to frown and sigh a little, always a bad sign. When Piers sighed you knew that meant trouble. Nell started coughing and spluttering and Piers waved a hand to stop the session.

‘Nell Osborne, come here,’ he said. Nell stepped
forward and hung her head. Hester thought with relief for a moment that he was going to be kind to her. He was going to ask her if she was all right, and maybe tell her to go and get a drink and sit down till she felt better. When he started to speak, his words at first seemed quite quiet. It was only as he went on that the terrifying crescendo crept into his voice:

‘You’re not well, Nell, are you? No, you’re not. I can see it.’ He put his hand out and touched her on the forehead. ‘You’ve got a temperature. It’s obvious to anyone looking at you that you should have stayed in bed.’ His voice grew louder, crosser. ‘Not, however, obvious to you, you silly child. Don’t you understand that by coming here into this rehearsal room you’re endangering all the rest of us – your friends, the production, me, everything we’ve worked for for weeks. Your stupidity beggars belief. You must go. Now! Go to bed and stay there.’

By the time he’d finished, Nell had tears rolling down her cheeks.

‘Stop crying this instant!’ said Piers. ‘Can’t you see I’m worried about you?’ He glanced around the room. ‘Dinah, Hester, take this shivering wreck and put her to bed at once. Then go to my house … do you know where it is? Good. Go and tell my housekeeper to take some food and comfort to this poor invalid and then come straight back here. Ruby’ll know what to do. She’s used to looking after sick kids. On second thoughts, go to my house on the way to Moscow Road. That’s more sensible. Off you go.’

The girls walked through the wintry streets in the freezing wind, and round the corner to Piers’ house.

‘God, what ghastly weather,’ Dinah said. ‘We’ll all get pneumonia, I bet. Thank heavens Piers lives within spitting distance of the theatre.’ She and Hester were
on either side of the still weeping Nell, helping her along.

‘I’m not going to be well for the show,’ she wailed. ‘And I might have spoiled the whole thing for everyone. Piers’ll never forgive me.’

‘Of course he will,’ Dinah said. ‘He huffs and puffs but he’s got a good heart under it all. You can see that. He’s going to send his own housekeeper to look after you. It’s just that when he’s being a choreographer, he sort of becomes someone else. Like a Jekyll and Hyde sort of thing.’

‘Here it is,’ Hester said. She left Nell leaning entirely on Dinah and went up to the front door to ring the bell.

‘What if this Ruby person is out?’ Dinah asked. ‘What do we do then?’

‘You can go back to rehearsal and I’ll stay and look after Nell.’

The door opened and a tall young woman stood there, dressed in a tweed skirt and a white blouse. She looked to be in her mid-twenties and Hester was struck by something in her eyes that immediately made her feel better – a sense of calm and kindness, as though she were ready to face anything.

‘Can I help you?’ she began, and then caught sight of Nell. ‘Oh, my goodness, bring that poor child in here.’

‘Are you Ruby?’ Dinah asked.

‘That’s right,’ the young woman said. ‘I’m Mr Cranley’s housekeeper.’

‘Piers asked us to take our friend home. To 24 Moscow Road. But he said would you please bring round some food and stay with her till she’s better.’

‘Of course, of course. Come in. Put her down on the sofa in the front room and wait with her. I’ll get my things.’ She turned to Hester. ‘Perhaps we could all go
together? Then you can help me carry some food, if you would. I’ll get a basket ready.’

Dinah and Hester went into the front room and helped Nell lie down on the sofa. It was the first time since Hester had left France and the warmth of her grandmother’s sitting room that she’d been in a room that could have been called properly comfortable. Even Madame Olga’s rooms in Wychwood House were frequently cold and the furnishings had seen better days. In Piers’ sitting room the walls were papered with a trailing pattern of leaves and berries; the curtains were coppery-red brocade. The lamp standing on a table beside the sofa had a shade made out of stained glass. Hester stared at it, entranced – she thought it was one of the most beautiful things she’d ever seen.