I'll Take Manhattan (7 page)

When she had completed the Upper School Lily’s teachers agreed that she had so much promise that she should study for yet another year at the school run by Sir Charles Forsythe, a great dancer and teacher who had been formed by Anthony Tudor and Frederick Aston. This additional year of training would give her the final polish that would enable her to audition most successfully for one of the great ballet companies of the world.

Lily Adamsfield had grown into a girl of exceptional beauty, with gray-blue-green eyes as changeable as opals; lunar eyes that she never stopped in front of a mirror to admire. They were there merely to be enlarged by the stylized black makeup that she wore on stage. Her lovely hands, her long fingers, existed only to extend those gestures of languor and fragility that require the strength of a stevedore to look effortless. She had tiny breasts, broad, well-defined shoulders, arms and legs that were almost too elongated in comparison to her torso but perfect for the demands of the ballet; no heaviness or extra flesh anywhere, a flat back and a neck of exceptional grace; a body that had no other function than to dance. Her naked feet, without toe shoes, looked a thousand years old.

It never occurred to Lily that she was missing the pleasures of being admired by young men, for the only males whom she thought about were her partners in class; the only criteria by which she judged them were their elevations, the number of their leaps, the security with which they gripped her waist when they lifted her. She came into occasional contact with boys of her own social world and she had difficulty in finding anything to say to them. Outside of the cloister of the world of dance she had a speaking voice that, for all its silver sweetness, was tremulous, even slightly timid.

When Lily wasn’t dressed in her rehearsal clothes, the
beloved, well-worn tights, leg warmers, leotards, and sweaters that turned her into a bundle of moving rags, she had no idea what to wear. Viscountess Adamsfield, a woman of taste, chose all her clothes for her. Lily had no conversational ability, no practice at banter, nothing to say about the world of sports, of films, of new cars or horses. Any boy of her own age who was attracted by her new-moon loveliness soon gave up trying to get her to respond, or at least to pay some attention to him, and wandered off in search of a girl with more animation.

However, her parents and Lily’s many cousins had no concern about this strange swan they had nurtured. She was wonderfully different, what did it matter that she wouldn’t have any quick, worldly success as an adolescent? She would, as a matter of course, be presented at Court. It would be simply
too
odd for her not to make that necessary curtsy, not to have her photograph taken by Lenare, not to enter the grown-up world, but Lily drew the line at a debut, a party, a season. She had no time for any of those rituals for she was destined for glory. Indeed all their world knew that the Adamsfields’ youngest girl was going to become another Margot Fonteyn. Her devoted family was as convinced of Lily’s future as Lily was herself.

She took no credit for the conformation of the body with which she had been born but she knew that without her unquestioning, willing slavery to the almost unendurably hard work of ballet, without her unswerving determination, the mere possession of a dancer’s body would mean nothing. Her muscles and sinews and the articulations of her joints, the length of her limbs, were a lucky accident of birth. But the career of a prima ballerina was not made by a body alone, it depended on something else, something even more than talent, something in the spirit, and whatever that something was, she knew absolutely that she had it.

No one who observed the shy girl who used no makeup, who wore her long, fair hair falling carelessly around her face, who hesitated on entering a room, who avoided conversation, who walked with an unstudied, felicitous grace but kept her eyes fixed in the middle distance, could have guessed at the thirsty ambition that never was
far from her thoughts. She was violently proud, viciously proud, and she carried this strong plant of pride within her as well concealed as if it were a newly conceived child.

“She’s an exceptionally accomplished performer,” the familiar voice said. “There’s no doubt that they’ll accept her at the Royal.”

Lily, on her way out of the school building, and already late for dinner, hesitated in the corridor. Sir Charles was talking to someone behind his half-closed door. Who else, she asked herself in anguish, which other girl among her classmates, her competition, would have such an easy time getting into the Royal Ballet? She had been given the lion’s share of leading female roles this past year, but evidently she must have a rival. Jane Broadhurst? Anita Hamilton? Were they good enough for Covent Garden? Both strong dancers, but
that
good? She stood perfectly still, waiting to hear more.

“She could try for other companies, too … even the New York City Center.” Lily clenched her fists. The second voice was that of her ballet mistress, Alma Grey. “Or perhaps Copenhagen—they need new dancers there since Laura and the other two were lured away to New York.”

The Royal Danish? Lily repeated to herself, unbelievingly. It simply was not possible. There was no one to whom such prizes should fall but her.

“Yes, Alma my dear,” she heard Sir Charles say with finality, “there really isn’t a first-rate company in the world that wouldn’t jump at Lily. Fifteen years ago, even ten, I would have said she might be too tall, at five feet and seven inches, but now that’s not a serious problem if she’s stopped growing. My regret is that she should be as good as she is …”

“Ah,” sighed the ballet mistress, “it’s heartbreaking … to come so close, so very, very close. This year she almost … yes, Charles, yes … she almost crossed that barrier. I promise you that there were moments when I prayed for her, as I watched, and then … no, I said to myself, no, it just isn’t going to happen. She has such beauty, and technically nothing is missing. Yet … somehow
 … that
other
thing, that thing we can’t put a name to, that thing that the public recognizes immediately, that lifts them out of their seats, that something just is
not
there.”

“I have often thought that it is a question, in some way, of personality,” Sir Charles mused.

“As for me, I don’t try to dissect it. I prefer to call it magic,” Alma Grey replied.

She can dance all the second roles, in any first-rate international company,” Charles Forsythe said judiciously, “and principal roles in lesser companies.”

“Prima ballerina? I disagree. Lily will never be a prima ballerina. My dear Charles, you have to admit that there are no
almost
prima ballerinas,” Alma Grey said sharply.

“There are indisputable prima ballerinas and there are greater prima ballerinas who sometimes are given the ‘Assoluta’ to console them as they age, but I suppose that was wishful thinking.… There are no ‘almost’ prima ballerinas … with that I must reluctantly agree.”

“A strange metier, Charles, when you get right down to it, an unnatural sort of thing, and desperately unfair, I often think. As hard as we teach, as hard as they work, no one can really be sure until they have
already
devoted their youth … oh, of course there are those exceptions, the ones you know about immediately, but Lily never was one of them.”

“And just how many have you seen in your lifetime, my dear?”

“Only four, Charles, as you know perfectly well. I’m waiting for the fifth. There will always be another, one of these days.”

“Perhaps next year? Or the year after?”

“One can hope.”

Envious
, Lily thought, fleeing into the street so blindly that she was almost hit by a taxi. Old, disgustingly old, dried out, vile, pitiful, ignorant and above all
envious
, pure pig envy of her youth, her talent, a talent neither of them had ever had, those two old people raving on about something they admitted they couldn’t even find words to explain, faking crocodile tears, gloating to each other, presuming
to judge her, only too thrilled to be able to say she wasn’t good enough at the same time they had to admit, were literally forced to admit that any ballet company in the world would want her.

Envy. She’d known about envy since she started dancing, Lily raged as she walked home as quickly as possible. She knew well the envy of her classmates each time she was singled out, praised, given a principal role. Envy meant that she was the best, the infallible sign, the one emotion no one could conceal, the one tribute that reassured her absolutely. Envy was her ally. But it made her sick to find out that even Sir Charles and Alma Grey weren’t immune … they were supposed to be teachers, guiding and caring, not competitive; beyond envy, but obviously that was too much to expect from human nature. They would go to their graves envying her, shriveled, wasted, wizened with
envy
, for what else could it be? They nauseated her, she could almost feel sorry for them if they weren’t so completely revolting. She walked faster, almost running, trying to put the words she had overheard out of her mind. Why should she waste another minute thinking about something that couldn’t possibly be true? She walked with her head high, her shoulders back, with the
portée
of a prima ballerina, the finest way a human body can move.

“Lily, you’re so late. Is everything all right?” Lady Maxime called from the drawing room.

“Of course it is, Mother. I’m sorry if I’ve kept you waiting … I won’t be a minute.”

Damn Miss Briny, Zachary Amberville thought, he should either have brought her along or not listened to her sartorial jitters. He stood, jacketless, in front of a heavy wooden table on which were piled, in constantly sliding heaps, bolt after bolt of the finest silks and cottons in the world, solids, checks, stripes, plaids, a bewilderment of shirtings. The Bespoke Department of Turnbull and Asser was no place for a man who hated to shop and didn’t have a clear idea of what he was looking for in the first place. The polite young salesman had finally left him alone, to meditate on a choice, after an hour of making fruitless suggestions
and draping various lengths of fabric over Zachary’s shoulder. He had brought over smaller swatches in little booklets, dozens of them, but the more choice there was, the more difficult it was to decide on anything.

Pale blue? That seemed to be the only sensible and safe idea but Zachary refused to be reduced to ordering custom-made shirts in the same solid color he’d been buying for years. Nor could he just leave quietly, not after having taken up so much of the salesman’s time. Resolutely he started to eliminate the materials he couldn’t imagine himself wearing, putting those bolts to one side. One thing he had learned about the British this Saturday morning, he reflected, was that loud shirtings were highly considered. Never had he seen so many perfectly outrageous candy-ass contrasts in stripes, bold checks and plaids so aggressive that only a gangster could even consider them.

Engrossed, determined, he finally picked out four possible fabrics and, as the salesman had shown him, released them from the bolts, in long lengths, and swathed himself in them. He studied himself in the mirror and shook his head in dismay. There was almost no light, either electric or natural, in the small room, and all the quiet stripes he had picked out seemed almost identical. He looked as if he were wearing a Bedouin tent.

“Excuse me, but would you mind giving me some advice?” he said, in the direction of a female figure he had vaguely noticed sitting for some time on a little couch, while an older man with whom she had entered the shop was deep in conference with his salesman.

“Forgive me?” she said, startled, as if aroused from a dream.

“Advice. I’ve got to have a woman’s advice. Would you mind getting up and taking a look? Tell me what you think about these stripes. Don’t be polite … if you don’t like them, say so. I’d come over, but if I do these bolts will unwind all over the floor. I’m anchored to this table and I’ve lost my salesman’s attention.”

“I’ll fetch him for you.”

“Don’t bother, he’s given up on me. I need a fresh eye.”

Reluctantly, Lily Adamsfield rose and approached
him. Odd manners, but what could you expect of an American?

Hell, she’s awfully young. Well, that just isn’t going to matter, Zachary thought in a flash of absolute certainty that left no room for doubt. In one glance at Lily he fell in love, in love with her oval face framed with thick, straight sheaths of fair hair, in love with her eyes, their gray depths holding glints of the misty sea, with her mouth, vividly sweet in form, with a trace of delicious sadness, meant to be kissed away. He fell in love forever. She was his girl. And so vulnerable. If he’d known that the girl of his dreams really existed he would have come for her long ago. Zachary let the shirtings fall from his shoulders and took Lily’s hand in his.

“We’ll go now and have lunch,” he told her.

The Honorable Lily Davina Adamsfield, just eighteen, a queen of the nymphs in her Norman Hartnell dress of priceless lace, and Zachary Anderson Amberville were married a month later, in January of 1952, with the bewildered blessings of Viscount and Viscountess Adamsfield, at St. Margaret’s Westminster, in front of four hundred and fifty people, including the recently crowned Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, Miss Briny, Pavka Mayer, the entire Landauer family and Sarah Amberville. Only Cutter, who was in the middle of exams, was missing. Lily had seated Sir Charles, Alma Grey and all her fellow ballet students in the second row, directly behind the Queen and her parents.

Let them have a good look, a really good, long look, she mused as she carefully arranged their placement, at how happy she was, even as she sacrificed her career, her never-to-be-questioned future as a prima ballerina. She would always dance. Dance was essential but she wouldn’t perform.
The
difficult, dedicated, single-minded existence demanded of a prima ballerina couldn’t be included in the triumphant life that lay so radiantly, so securely before her as the wife of this amazingly forceful American, a man who worshipped her, who believed in her absolutely.