Hester's Story (45 page)

*

It was coming together, Hester knew. This was the stage, just before the dress rehearsal, when it became possible to see what the production would be like. Everyone had grown into their parts. They knew the other dancers well, but hadn’t been together long enough to become cross and irritated with one another. She went to the window and looked out at the garden. The curtains should have been drawn ages ago, and she hurried to do it before Edmund arrived. He’d be here soon, for a cup of coffee with her, and how good it felt to know that!

She sat down at her desk because Siggy had taken up most of the
chaise-longue
and he looked so peaceful that she was reluctant to disturb him. On the walls, the photographs of herself and others in costume looked like the portraits of so many ghosts. She closed her eyes. That’s what I miss, she thought. I’ll always miss it. The way you feel just before a ballet opens. The thrill that’s like nothing else in the world. Hester knew that, however successful she’d been in many ways since she stopped dancing, that was what had gone – the magic. She had lost that forever.

1966

They’d be here soon. The press, coming to interview her about the forthcoming American tour. Piers was going to talk to them about the company’s visit to New York, Chicago and San Francisco. The ballet was a new production of
Les Sylphides
. Hester, as the
prima ballerina assoluta
of the Charleroi Company, was going to be there at his side to answer any questions the reporters cared to ask and, more importantly, to pose for the photographers. Kaspar Beilin, her blond dancing partner, had flown out early to visit his mother in Canada before the tour began.

‘No one is interested in a fat old man,’ said Piers. ‘They want beauty, so I’m afraid you’ll have to help me.’

His smile as he said this made Hester smile in return.

‘I’m very flattered. But you’re not an old man. I’ll never think of you as that.’

‘Fat then,’ said Piers. ‘All by itself. Though I’m no spring chicken as you know. Don’t think I care for fat on its own. Not a bit.’

When Hester had come to London as a young girl, Piers had promised to look after her, and he’d been as good as his word. He’d been like a father to her. He’d made sure, along with Madame Olga, that as soon as she had recovered from the birth of her child, she began to train again. It was Piers who started to drop hints of her return, and who headed off any awkward
questions anyone in the company might have had. Hester had been ill; that was the only thing anyone needed to know. His brisk manner silenced most people but Hester knew how they’d have been gossiping while she was away. Never mind, she’d told herself. They’ll stop when I’m back. They’ll stop when they see that I’m the dancer I always was. Maybe even better.

Madame Olga undertook to return her in a matter of weeks to the standard she’d reached when she stopped dancing. They worked every day in the studio at Wychwood. For hour after hour, Madame took her old pupil through everything that Hester thought she’d forgotten. As soon as she came out of the fever that followed the birth of her child, as soon as they left Scotland and were back in Yorkshire again, Hester vowed that nothing would stop her. She would dance again, and as soon as she possibly could.

Every day, she did little but practise. When she was moving her body, when she was bending and twisting and spinning, she felt nothing – thought of nothing – but the steps. She could feel the pain in her muscles, in her sinews, and that dulled the agony in her heart. With every day that passed, it was as though she were putting a wall up, brick by brick. She thought that if she built it strongly enough, made it high enough, then she would be protected forever. Safe. The sorrowful weeping Hester would be on one side of the wall and on the other would be the dancer, bathed in the light of stage lamps, receiving the adoration of the audience, a magical being, light as air, weightless, scarcely human at all.

Dancing was, for Hester, a way of stilling thought. It had been so from the day when Madame Olga showed her how to put her feet into the first position. From the very first time she started to go to class, she used the
movement to keep the real world at a distance. Now, she understood that it was the discipline of the dance that had stopped her from yearning too much for her lost childhood. What else was there that could have blotted out the longing to go home, to see her grandmother before she died? What else could have anaesthetised her – yes, that was the exact word – against pain of every sort? In those days, when she danced Hester was unaware of the barrier she was building between herself and all kinds of events, but it was there. It had been there throughout her life, a kind of moat around her emotions, but now she was aware of it, and used the knowledge to help her return to the dance.

‘All the newshounds are sitting in the stalls like good children at a matinée. Are you ready for them, Hester?’ Piers had come into the dressing room, breaking into Hester’s reverie. She shook her head. Those days were gone. It was now thirteen years since she had returned to the company, in the summer of 1953. She remembered what it had felt like to be that young dancer coming back. How she’d fought to recover not only her dancing, but her mental balance, and how she had taken on each role that Piers gave her as though it were a lifeline.

‘Ready for anything.’

As Piers led her on to the stage of the recently refurbished Royalty Theatre, Hester believed her own words. America! It was almost her favourite audience in the world, and she knew that her fans would be longing for the tour to begin. Tonight, after this press conference was over, she would be getting on a train and going down to Edmund’s cottage in Cornwall for the weekend. When she’d announced her intention to Piers, he’d frowned and said, ‘Goodness me, Hester, that’s a very long way to go just for a rest. You do
deserve a short break after your hard work on
Sylphides
but I was thinking more in terms of a walk in Hyde Park. Cornwall does seem so distant, somehow.’

‘Not much further than Wychwood, really. And I do want to see Edmund before we go on tour.’

The questions from the press were what Hester expected. She could have written down a list of them beforehand. She smiled, and talked through what was different about this production, where they would be going, what she thought of the design, what she felt about the mini-skirt, and did she consider the Beatles to be the new Schubert? Then, after some remarks from Piers, and as Hester was preparing to leave the stage, a young woman spoke up from the darkness of the auditorium.

‘Miss Fielding, may I ask you, is there any truth about the rumour that you and Hans Werner have split up?’

‘You should know me better by now,’ said Hester, standing up and coming to the front of the stage. She knew, even as she was speaking, that it would have been more diplomatic to smile and say nothing, but she was sick, sick, sick of prying reporters. ‘I never, ever talk about my private life. Now if you’ll forgive me, I’ve a train to catch.’

She swept offstage without a backward glance. When Piers came to the dressing room, Hester smiled ruefully and said, ‘I’ve done it again, haven’t I? Chewed out a poor reporter who meant no harm. But honestly, Piers, I’m not prepared for my life to be picked over. I’m sorry if I didn’t give the right impression.’

Piers chuckled. ‘On the contrary, I think you’ve given exactly the right impression. The public adore it when their idols behave temperamentally. They almost
expect it. You wouldn’t have half the following you’ve got if you were a milk and water sort of person. Still, you can’t stop them speculating. The mere fact that you don’t discuss it makes them think that there’s something thrilling going on. They’d love an affair between you and Kaspar. But a bit of fire never comes amiss, though I have to confess I don’t enjoy it when you turn prima ballerina-ish on me.’

Hester stood up and kissed Piers on the forehead. ‘That’s because you’re the only one allowed to be temperamental in this company.’

‘Quite right. Well, I shall wish you
bon voyage
. See you again on Monday.’

Sitting on the train heading west, Hester looked out of the window at the sun, which was just beginning to spread gold and red into the sky as the afternoon turned into evening. Edmund always said he lived so far west that the sun practically bumped into the roof of his cottage as it set. Hester smiled. I’m going to forget about the press conference, she thought, but she wondered what the answer was to the young reporter’s question about Hans. Had she split up with him? On the whole she thought she had. She sighed. She’d long ago come to the conclusion that she wasn’t very good at love. She’d lost the gift for it when she left Adam.

In the last few years, there had been no shortage of men doing everything that men in love traditionally did. They sent her presents and came to see her dance and wrote her letters and took her out to dinners where they stared into her eyes and declared her the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the one they couldn’t live without, and sometimes Hester felt a spark of something – desire, affection, friendship. When she did, she began a relationship which seemed to follow an increasingly predictable pattern.

For a few months, she could become quite caught
up. Sometimes, especially if she was attracted to the man, she became half of a couple. They would be photographed smiling at one another at parties and spend nights together that almost convinced Hester that this was it, this was a man with whom she might find happiness. But then, boredom always crept in. She caught herself wanting to relate conversations to Edmund to see whether he found them as ridiculous as she did. When this happened, Hester always told her lover at once that this was the end of the affair. I don’t let them go on hoping, she thought. Surely no man would choose to go on living with a woman who wasn’t a hundred percent committed to him?

Was it just the memory of Adam and what she still felt for him that stopped her falling properly in love with anyone else? Edmund always avoided talking about Adam, but Hester knew that the two of them were in touch. Adam and Virginia lived part-time in America now. That was one piece of information Edmund had let slip. Hester routinely avoided bookshops for fear of seeing Adam’s photograph on a dustjacket, but sometimes she’d come across a review in a newspaper and when that happened she had to throw the newspaper out at once. If she’d left it lying about, she’d have been tempted to go back and read the words that someone else had written about Adam.

Did that mean she was still in love with him? The dreams she had from time to time, the pain that prolonged thinking about him made her feel, the fact that she and Edmund never talked about him: all those things led Hester to admit that, yes, a part of her still yearned for Adam. It was only a tiny part, and she tried not to bring him to mind. She had determined to concentrate on other things, and she was good at that. She could, however, do nothing whatsoever about the
core of sadness that refused to be moved from the very heart of her.

Edmund made her feel happy. Or as happy as she was ever going to be. He was very, very dear to her. He was so affectionate and cheerful that it was impossible to be gloomy in his presence. He loved her. There had been more than enough proof of that, but Hester was sure that it was the friendship kind of love. He looked after her. He shared his secrets with her. He wrote to her all the time, funny postcards and letters from wherever he was. He sought out her company. But he had never shown the least interest in her as a woman, and when he kissed her, it was in a brotherly kind of way. He’s not interested in me as a lover and that’s all there is to it. He’s always got some woman in tow, though. He’s never shown the least sign of pining over anyone. A woman would appear at his side and then, after a few months, she was replaced and Edmund sailed through from one to the other with a smile. Even more surprisingly, everyone he split up from seemed delighted to go on being friendly with him.

*

‘Hester! How lovely!’ Edmund was bounding down the platform towards her, his voice raised so that everyone around turned to look at him. In her last letter, Dinah had called him ‘puppyish’ and even though he was now practically middle-aged, it was true. His face and bearing made him look much younger than his years.

‘Edmund, super to see you too,’ Hester said, submitting to a hug that nearly squeezed the breath out of her. He was so tall that her face was squashed into the fabric of his jacket. She stepped back. Edmund was talking and talking.

‘You don’t know Marisa, do you?’ he said. ‘There
she is, by the barrier. She’s such a sweetie, really. I’m sure you’ll get on.’

Hester felt a plummeting sensation in her chest. She hated to be caught unawares and Edmund knew that.

‘I wish you’d told me,’ she said, as they walked towards the waiting Marisa. ‘I’d have come another time.’

‘That’s why I didn’t,’ Edmund grinned at her. ‘I wanted you to come now. You’re off to the States for months and months and I won’t see you for such ages. I couldn’t bear that, you know.’

‘Don’t talk nonsense, Edmund.’ Hester wasn’t mollified, but knew that she had to make the best of this situation. They were standing in front of Marisa and the introductions had begun.

‘Marisa is an oboe player, Hester. Very talented.’ Edmund presented her to Hester for approval. Marisa was tall and brown: tanned face, long brown hair, and long brown legs under a very short skirt indeed. She couldn’t be more than twenty-five, Hester judged. I’ll have to have a word with Edmund about cradle-snatching. She shook Marisa’s hand and smiled. It’s not this poor woman’s fault that Edmund has no tact, she thought. And then something occurred to her. What did Marisa think of having an old friend of Edmund’s turning up in the middle of their romantic Cornish idyll? She must have been more than a little put out. She decided to forgive Edmund, and got into the passenger seat of the car next to him almost before Marisa herself suggested it.

*

Hester lay in bed, looked up at the sloping ceiling of Edmund’s spare room and listened to the sound of the sea. Fortunately, Edmund and Marisa’s room was on the other side of the cottage, through the sitting room
and up a short flight of steps. At least she wouldn’t be disturbed by the noise of their lovemaking.