White Boots (14 page)

“I shall see Mrs King. I will tell her that I think it is good for Lalla that her friend Harriet should take lessons, and be on the small private rink when Lalla practises her figures. I have watched the little friend, she wastes no time, she is absorbed that one, she will not be able to know how a bracket should be, but she can watch Lalla, and be interested, and then perhaps Lalla will work.”

Miss Goldthorpe was glad that Max could grasp so quickly what she had in mind, and began to think better of his brain. Probably, since he was the skating instructor, Aunt Claudia would pay more attention to what he said than to what she
might say. It would be a good idea that he should be the one to propose that Harriet should work with Lalla. When Max got up to go she asked when he intended seeing Mrs King, and was delighted to find that he not only moved fast on his legs, but evidently moved fast in things that he did.

“I go to Mr Matthews now. By tomorrow it will be arranged.”

Not by tomorrow, but by the day after, it was arranged. Mr Matthews telephoned Aunt Claudia and asked if she would see Max Lindblom, and he explained what it was about. That same evening Uncle David telephoned George and asked if Olivia could come to tea the next day to discuss the whole thing, and told him what it was about. Finally Aunt Claudia told Lalla and Nana, and Olivia told Harriet. Harriet was breathless with pleasure.

“All day! Tea too?”

Olivia kissed her.

“Lalla's aunt wanted you to go to tea every day, but I wasn't having that. We should never see you at all, darling. Sometimes, of course, you can go back with her, but often, I hope, you'll bring Lalla and Nana to tea here.”

Lalla asked the same question.

“And tea, and after tea a bit?”

Aunt Claudia looked annoyed.

“That's the one tiresome thing. For convenience's sake, so that you have someone to play with, I invited Harriet to come back to tea every day, but her mother said that would mean they wouldn't see enough of her. I've had to agree that now and again you may go to tea there as a change. I understand that it's a treat for the Johnson family to have you, which I suppose is natural, they don't know any other celebrities-to-be.”

The night when everything was decided Lalla and Harriet danced their way to bed.

“Mummy,” said Harriet hugging Olivia, “you do know I'll miss being with you all day, but skating lessons! It's probably the most gorgeous thing that'll ever happen to me.”

Olivia put her arms round her.

“Is it, my pet? You are a funny little scrap. Who would have thought that less than six months ago you'd never seen a skate?”

Lalla butted Nana, who was trying to tuck her up, with her head.

“You wait and see my square-turn'd joints and strength of limb after I've had Harriet almost to live with me. They'll grow so square-turn'd and so strong they couldn't be squarer or stronger.”

Nana kissed Lalla goodnight.

“Lie down, and let's have no more foolishness. You don't want to get any squarer than you are or there'll be more of that banting.”

LESSONS FOR BOTH Lalla and Harriet became fun, and Miss Goldthorpe enjoyed them enormously. The two girls were not only almost exactly the same age, but much of a muchness at lessons. Lalla was good at things like grammar, and remembering dates, and geography, and Harriet, which was a great pleasure to Miss Goldthorpe, loved reading. Both girls were bad at, and detested, sums. But it was fun being bad at the same thing. Lalla found even adding money, which she thought the nastiest kind of sums, could be pleasant if it meant she beat Harriet when she got them right. She did not like Harriet's and Miss Goldthorpe's taste for literature, especially not their fondness for Shakespeare's plays.

“I wouldn't have thought it of you, Harriet. You don't look the mimsy-pimsy sort of person who could like hearing about
that silly Viola and that awful Malvolio.”

At eleven the door would open and Nana would come in with glasses of milk for the girls and a cup of tea for Miss Goldthorpe and biscuits for everybody. Sometimes she would bring her own cup as well, and while she drank her tea would give a running commentary on how things were going in the house.

“Your aunt's out for a fitting for her clothes for that Ascot. Cook has a chip on her shoulder this morning. She meant to go out with her sister this evening to the pictures, but now Wilson's brought a message from your aunt to say there'll be two extra for dinner. The sun's coming out beautifully, the gardener says you ought to come down and see his crocuses, proper sight they are on the lawn.”

When Nana mentioned the gardener Lalla and Harriet would exchange looks with Miss Goldthorpe. It was time the boys came over and dug up that bed, and put in their lettuce seed. According to Alec it should have been planted some time before, and the little plants growing under cloches.

Usually Nana would finish with a bit of news for Harriet. She would say she had been going through Lalla's drawers and cupboards and had found this thing or that thing which would be useful to her. The things she found were always worn in the house, they never went back to Harriet's house. Nana had not talked to Miss Goldthorpe about Harriet's clothes; it was no good talking to Miss Goldthorpe about clothes, she never knew
what anyone had on, or cared what she looked like herself, but now and again she had confided in her about the Johnsons.

“They haven't any money, poor things, and Mrs Johnson so nice and all. I don't want her knowing, but never knowing when Mrs King will pop in and out of the schoolroom, and knowing how she expects the children to look, I find the easiest thing is to use Lalla's clothes for both. As soon as Harriet comes I say,‘Take that off, dear, we don't want it spoilt,' and I've popped her into something of Lalla's before you can say Jack Robinson.”

Usually Nana's news for Harriet would come just as she was picking up the tray.

“After your dinner, Harriet, I'd like you in Lalla's room. I've an old frock of hers, more than good enough for lessons, it will fit you nicely if I take it in and let it down.”

At twelve o'clock on Mondays and Thursdays Miss Goldthorpe walked the children round to Alonso Vittori's studio for Lalla's dancing class. Alonso Vittori was a leading stage dancer, but as well he took a few private pupils. He had been teaching Lalla for some time. He did not have to give her a strict ballet training, more a good grounding, so that she learned to hold postures and move her body and hands gracefully. As well, of course, ballet exercises were very good for her legs. Alonso was fond of Lalla as a person, but not really fond of teaching her dancing, because, although she liked Alonso, Lalla thought learning dancing a waste of time. “Not that beastly exercise again, Alonso darling. Why should
I have to do it, I'm a skater? On my skates I couldn't do that, so why should I learn it on a floor?”

To begin with, after Harriet had joined Lalla for lessons, she had watched her being taught to dance with the same open-eyed admiration she watched her skating. How extraordinary for legs to do that. How clever of Lalla to have legs that did that. At the end of the third lesson, at which Lalla had been particularly tiresome about barre exercises, Alonso noticed Harriet's admiring face. He had lived all his life in the ballet world, and had met any amount of young Lallas in his day, with admiring mothers and aunts who called them geniuses, and he had known what had happened to Lalla the very first lesson she came to him after the skating gala. Other people might think Harriet too big in the eyes, and too thin in the legs, but Alonso admired her; he liked her thin look, and thought it a pity that now Lalla had Harriet to work with, for of course he had heard about Harriet ever since Lalla had first met her, she should be a devoted admirer instead of an ordinary critical friend. So he went across to her.

“Why don't you join the class next time?”

Harriet blinked at him in astonishment.

“Me! But I couldn't.”

Alonso told her not to be silly.

“Take off your hat and coat, put on Lalla's shoes and go over there.”

Harriet felt rather shy standing all alone in the middle of the room in ordinary school clothes, trying to do what Alonso told
her, while Lalla and Miss Goldthorpe looked on, but Alonso did not think too badly of her. Just before he finished with her he called Lalla over.

“Have a look at that. Harriet's never learned but she's holding her hands better than I've ever succeeded in making you hold yours.”

It was not absolutely true, but it was near enough true for Alonso to think he might say it, and it certainly had the desired effect on Lalla. She had never been jealous but she had never had cause to be. She gave Harriet a push, and told her to take off her shoes, and told Alonso he was only saying that to annoy her. He knew Harriet could not be as good as she was. Alonso laughed, rumpled Lalla's hair, and told her that from now on Harriet was to attend his classes, and he expected she would have to work hard to keep up with her.

Lalla had never needed to be told to work hard at fencing. She liked it, and found it fun, but Monsieur Cordon had often thought it would be good for Lalla to have a child of her own size to fence with. He ran his fencing classes with the aid of his sons, and they had a great many pupils, and it was not always convenient for him to fence with Lalla or to spare one of his sons to give his full attention to her for half an hour. So when he discovered that Harriet was always coming to watch his classes, he decided she should learn to fence too, and he told one of his sons to instruct her. He explained what he was doing to Miss Goldthorpe.

“It is nice that Lalla should have her little friend fencing too. Fencing for her is for the good of her figure, and for quick movement. She will never wish to study it seriously. If her friend fences that will be admirable for all.”

Miss Goldthorpe recited Shakespeare to herself through both ballet and fencing classes. Usually the clash of the foils took her mind to the more fiery scenes. On that day she was in imagination present at the duel between Hamlet and Laertes. She was hearing the king say: “Let all the battlements their ordnance fire”; when Monsieur Cordon spoke. She liked Monsieur Cordon, as she liked the other odd people who instructed Lalla. To her it was past comprehension why an apparently pleasant Frenchman and his two pleasant sons should waste their time playing about with foils, when duelling had gone out of fashion years ago, but she tried never to let him know that she thought he was frittering away his life. She only caught half of what he said, but it was enough for her to understand that he was suggesting teaching Harriet. She began to wonder if she could be misjudging Lalla's teachers; they were all showing more sense than she had anticipated. She smiled at Monsieur Cordon and thanked him, and said nothing could be better for Harriet, whose legs needed strengthening because she had been ill.

On Wednesdays and Saturdays, when there were no special classes, Lalla and Miss Goldthorpe were supposed to go for walks or visit places of educational interest. But Wednesday and
Saturday mornings when there was nothing to do were few. There were fittings for all Lalla's clothes that were not knitted by Nana. There were walking shoes to be made, and gloves to be bought. Shopping was a loathing that Miss Goldthorpe and Lalla shared.

“Goldie darling,” Lalla would say hopefully, “the sun's shining. When lessons are over do you think we could go and look at the lock? I think seeing how a lock works is an educational subject, don't you?”

Miss Goldthorpe usually agreed that anything Lalla wanted to look at was an educational subject, because she thought that for Lalla anything that used her eyes and head instead of her feet was educational. But they seldom did the things they planned to do. Presently there would be a tap on the door and Wilson would be there to say that when Lalla had finished her lessons, she and Miss Goldthorpe and Harriet were to go out with her for a fitting for a skating dress, or Nana would say apologetically, “I don't know what was planned, but I'm afraid you'll have to call in at the shoemakers, they've telephoned to say that Lalla's shoes are ready for fitting.”

On Saturdays, to make up for the hours when she should have been doing lessons and spent at the rink, Lalla was supposed to work in the mornings, but Miss Goldthorpe interpreted the word “lessons”, as they referred to Saturday mornings, in the widest possible way. She tried to make Saturday mornings adventure mornings, when they learned things out of
doors. Some days it had been trees and flowers, and some days old buildings, and some days following a map, but whatever it was it was a nice thing to do, and there was always a good alternative for indoors in case it rained; special things to look at in museums, pictures to see in a gallery, the under-cover animals to visit at the zoo, or they would go to Madame Tussaud's.

Aunt Claudia had always known in a vague way about Lalla's Saturday mornings, and had not minded provided they were educational and would help to get Lalla through proper examinations at the proper time. But after Harriet joined Lalla for lessons, Aunt Claudia began to steal Saturday mornings. They suited her. On Saturday mornings she could have Lalla for much longer than the odd hour on Wednesday mornings, and she would drive her to Garrick Street, which was the theatrical part of London, where Lalla's skating dresses were made. She did not as a rule take Harriet and Miss Goldthorpe with her, and Lalla found Saturday morning fittings an awful bore. It was not so bad while her frocks were being fitted, and the designer and fitter were looking at her and deciding whether there should be a little bit of silver here or whether she should stick out more there, but it was afterwards she got bored. She would stare out of the window at the London traffic, while the designer and Aunt Claudia discussed spangles, and tu-tus, and pleated chiffon. At luncheon she would describe these talks to Nana and Harriet.

“Goodness, you can't think how awful it was. Talk, talk, talk,
jabber, jabber, jabber. I can't think why grown-up people like talking about stuff. The man who makes my frocks showed me some pale blue silky stuff, and asked if I liked it, and I said ‘yes'. But, do you know, Aunt Claudia and him talked for hours and hours about it after that.”

Miss Goldthorpe went home to lunch on Saturdays, and officially had her Saturday afternoons to herself, though sometimes she stayed on for the rink and took Lalla there to save Nana, when Nana had what she called “trouble with her knees”. Miss Goldthorpe looked forward to her Saturdays. Often she would go to see one of Shakespeare's plays. There was not always a play in the West End, but there were usually performances that could be reached by bus or train in some outlying part of London. When there was no Shakespeare for her to see she would either go to a concert or stay at home reading. She cherished her Saturdays just as anyone treasures a Saturday, when they work hard all the week, but when she saw Lalla's Saturday mornings being sneaked by Aunt Claudia she was sad, and decided that she must make a sacrifice. She would give her Saturday afternoons to Lalla. After all, she told herself, I'll have my Sundays left, and that ought to be enough for anyone. So one day when she had taken Lalla and Harriet to the rink because of Nana's knees, she caught Max Lindblom's eye to show she wanted to speak to him.

“You remember when we planned you should teach Harriet as well as Lalla it was because it was good for her. Now I want
you to plan something else which will be good for her.” She lowered her voice for, though there was no one near her, she felt like a conspirator in one of Shakespeare's plays playing a dark deed. “I want you to arrange to teach Lalla on Saturday mornings instead of Saturday afternoons.”