Hester's Story (10 page)

‘I’m not listening to you. You don’t know
anything
. He’s a friend of Madame Olga’s. He’s not a white slaver or whatever you called him. He’s a respectable gentleman.’

Hester began leaving the room, but then a thought occurred to her. She turned round and shouted at Paula.

‘And don’t you dare
ever
call me Estelle ever again. I’m Hester now. Hester Fielding. So there.’

Paula called something after her, but Hester had managed to slam the door shut behind her as she left the room. She stood in the hall, uncertain where to go. Auntie Rhoda was washing up in the kitchen. She longed to run upstairs and lie on the bed with her face buried in the pillow, but Paula was almost bound to come in and continue tormenting her. It was too cold to go into the garden or for a walk. She sat on the wooden settle in the hall and stared down at her hands, thinking
I have to go. I have to leave this house and I will
.

*

The freezing cold weather continued. Icy days and nights, one after the other, went on and on as though
spring would never come. Hester’s mood reflected the chill outside. She remained in a state of anxiety mixed with gloom for weeks after Madame Olga’s visit to the Wellicks, alternating between short daydreams full of glorious possibility and days and days of complete hopelessness.

She lived entirely for her visits to Madame Olga’s house. Now that the two of them were planning Hester’s future, there were afternoons when they went into the kitchen after class and discussed what would happen for hours. One day, out of the blue, Madame Olga said ‘Come with me, Hester dear. I wish to show you something.’

Hester followed Madame Olga upstairs. In all the years she’d been coming for her lessons, all she’d ever seen of Wychwood House was the front hall, the studio and the kitchen. Now Madame led the way up the wide staircase and along a dark corridor and opened a door.

‘My bedroom,’ she announced. ‘No one has been up here to see this.’

Hester looked around. The sage-green velvet curtains were drawn. It was late afternoon and dark outside. Madame Olga hadn’t been up here since before the ballet lesson, Hester knew, and this meant that they’d been drawn the whole day, as though she’d decided to do without natural light altogether.

‘Sit here,’ she said, and pointed to a small stool near the dressing-table. The scent of violets hung in the air.

‘I love that smell,’ Hester said. ‘My grandmother used to smell just like that.’

‘I am not yet like a grandmother, I hope,’ Madame Olga smiled. ‘Only fifty years old.’

Hester couldn’t think what to say. She had never considered the matter of Madame Olga’s age. ‘You look beautiful,’ she said.

‘You are kind. Never have I been called beautiful before. But always I smell of violets. Now I want to show you this.’

She went to a huge cupboard which reared up like a black cliff against one wall. Panels on each door were carved into a pattern of flowers and leaves, and the handles were made of shiny brass. The doors creaked as Madame Olga opened them and bent to take something from the shadowy darkness within. It was a small leather suitcase, which she put on the bed.

‘Come, come here,’ she said, indicating that Hester should sit on the bed. She thought of how she used to sit on her grandmother’s bed when she was a little girl, and the memory of how they used to play with the contents of the jewellery box brought tears prickling into her eyes. But Hester knew that Madame never wore jewellery. Not even a ring. Nothing. The only time there had ever been a cross word between her and Madame was when Hester, years ago, refused to remove her gold necklace for class. She had threatened to stop coming to ballet lessons altogether if Madame Olga made her take it off.

‘What will you do in a real ballet?’ Madame Olga cried. ‘There is no costume designer, no choreographer in the whole world who will let you wear that around your neck on the stage. Impossible.’

‘I’ll take it off for performances,’ Hester had answered, quite calmly. ‘But I will wear it for the rest of the time. I promised my grandmother. And I’ll wear it to class.’

Madame Olga had gazed at her pupil and seen how determined Hester was. She never mentioned the matter again. Now she said, ‘Open the suitcase.’

Hester opened it, and nearly fell backwards off the bed when she saw what was inside. Her grandmother had jewels, but this was treasure such as only pirates in
storybooks possessed. The interior of the case was a twisted mass of intertwined necklaces, glittering, glowing and catching the light – rubies, amethysts, topazes – strings upon strings of them, tangled up with bracelets and brooches and rings set with pearls and jet and onyx, all just lying there in a jumble. Madame Olga plunged a hand into the suitcase and brought it up with lengths of gemstones dangling from every finger.

‘Do you see this? All these things? They are rubbish.’

‘But they look …’ Hester couldn’t speak. She wanted to say they looked like real jewels; looked as though they were worth more money than she could imagine. Then, a thought struck her.

‘Are they pretend? Did you wear them on stage?’

Madame Olga laughed. ‘No, no they are real jewels. Men gave them to me. They give when they love you; they give when they stop loving you. They give when they say hello, also when they say goodbye. There have been so many men who have loved me.’ She laughed. ‘This is my bank. All I have. It’s a lot, I think, but I never wear it. Never. It lies here, and when I die, it will be yours. There. One day, you will be a rich woman when I am gone. But now, I will take out some necklace or some brooch for you to buy all the things you will need when you go to London, to the Charleroi Company. What use are these jewels to me? No use.’

‘I couldn’t …’ Hester began. ‘And my grandmother left me some money of my own when she died. I’ll use that.’

‘It is good to have more than you need. Do not think of it again. I will give to Piers for you. He will take care of it, I am sure.’

As she spoke, she took out an Easter egg studded with green and red stones, and tiny seed pearls in a pattern which made the initials OR, Madame Olga’s
own initials. She lifted her lorgnette and peered at them more closely.

‘A man,’ she said. ‘He gave this to me when I danced
Firebird
in Paris. After 1917, the Revolution in Russia. A Frenchman. An aristocrat. Very wealthy.’

Madame Olga held the egg gently in her hand. The rubies and emeralds caught the light. ‘This is made by Fabergé, a very famous maker of such things. I have never told anyone what happened. This very rich man falls in love with me. I love him, naturally, or I think I love him, which is the same thing, yes? All is well till I become pregnant. I do not tell him, because I am horrified, and I know if he realises, then he will insist on marrying me. And I am so ambitious. I want so much to be the great, the wonderful prima ballerina. Pregnancy interferes with the dancing. To be a ballerina is not a job, but a way of life. It is for always. I had it taken away.’

‘Taken away? What do you mean? Did someone take your baby away?’

‘I went to the doctor and he removed the baby. It’s called an abortion. Perhaps you are too young to know of such matters?’

Hester didn’t answer, but she felt sick as she listened to Madame Olga. ‘Do not be shocked. Many, many people, they go to the doctor. I was sad, yes, but it is not so dangerous if the doctor is a good one.’

‘But the baby. You’re killing your baby, aren’t you?’

Madame Olga shook her head. ‘It is not a baby when it is so small. So tiny you cannot see or feel it yet as a person. Much better to do what I do, to finish the pregnancy. It is sad not to have a family, but my pupils and my friends, they are the family I have now.’

Hester said nothing, but she wasn’t entirely sure that she agreed with Madame Olga. She still missed and mourned her grandmother, and when she was
younger, she’d often longed for brothers and sisters, imagining them as versions of herself who would adore her and agree with her and to whom she could say anything. If she could have changed a single thing about her life, it would have been that. She would have wished to belong to an ordinary family, instead of having a mother who had died so long ago that she could scarcely remember her, and a father whom she saw so rarely that she practically never thought of him.

‘What happened to the man? The rich man who loved you and was the father of your child?’

‘I did not tell him I was pregnant. I left him afterwards, but he begged me to marry him and sent me, oh, you cannot believe what gifts. Including this egg.’ She tossed it back into the suitcase and it lay among the other jewels as though it were no more than a stage prop.

Madame Olga stood up and smiled at Hester. ‘But when I left him, I said, never again. I devoted myself to the dance. I longed, I cannot tell you how I longed, to be a great dancer. But soon, after a few years, I saw I didn’t have the talent for greatness. So I stopped before my age made me stop, and decided that I would spend the rest of my life teaching other dancers who would be great ballerinas for me. I have never put on one of these things after I said goodbye to the man who gave me that egg. Some has gone of what I had. With some, I bought this house. This is the rest.’

‘What if burglars come and steal it?’

Madame Olga laughed. ‘Who thinks the funny Russian lady who lives in the shabby old house has anything worth stealing? No one. But you are right. This is primitive, to keep it in a suitcase in a cupboard and not even locked. I will take it to the bank, I promise.’

*

A few days later, Hester heard someone knocking frantically at the Wellicks’ front door. She went to open it, but Uncle Bob was on the point of leaving for work and got there before she did. Madame Olga was on the step, waving a small, beige piece of paper. She hadn’t even bothered to button her coat and was wearing her indoor shoes, soaked through by the snow which still lay on the ground.

‘It’s a telegram!’ Uncle Bob shouted, and Auntie Rhoda and Paula came running out of the kitchen. Uncle Bob had taken it from Madame Olga who spoke to Hester directly and ignored the others. ‘He said yes! Your papa, he said yes. You can go to London and live in Moscow Road … oh, I’m so happy. So happy. Now you will be ballerina. Piers is so kind to send telegraph.’

‘I would like,’ said Auntie Rhoda, ‘to read the message, if you don’t mind.’

‘Certainly! Read it please. I know it by heart and I will tell Hester what my friend says. He says:
Your young pupil’s father agreeable stop She should come to London soonest stop Expecting her 24 Moscow Road. Tel. Bayswater 1551. Fond regards Piers.’

‘I can’t believe it!’ Hester held on to the banister, feeling a little weak. ‘He said yes. My father. He’s allowing me to go to London …’

Hester was so happy that she did a series of
entrechats
in the hall. She could sense that Auntie Rhoda, Uncle Bob and Paula were all staring at her as though she’d taken leave of her senses.

‘All will be well now,’ Madame Olga said. ‘I am going. Please come and see me later, Hester. We have much to talk about. Goodbye, goodbye. Such a happy day.’

She left as swiftly as she’d come. Auntie Rhoda watched her going down the path and then collected herself. ‘Well, there’s nothing to be done, I suppose, but we have to talk about arrangements. Where, for example, does Mr Cranley think the money’s going to come from to pay for all this travelling lark?’

‘There’s
Grand-mère’
s money,’ Hester answered. ‘The money she left me. I’ll take it out of the bank. It’s a lot of money, isn’t it? Five hundred pounds. And the money Papa sends – I could have that if I lived in London.’

‘Well,’ Uncle Bob began, but Auntie Rhoda pushed him out of the door. ‘You go off to work, Bob,’ she muttered, ‘and leave this to me.’

‘Leave what?’ Hester knew the signs, and felt suddenly faint.

‘Come into the kitchen, Estelle,’ Auntie Rhoda said, and her mouth had tightened till it was no more than a thin line in her face.

‘Hester,’ Hester said automatically, though her mind wasn’t on her name, but on the
thing
, whatever it was, that Auntie Rhoda was about to tell her. She knew, she was convinced, that whatever it was, it would be bad and worse than bad.

‘Sit down there, dear,’ said Auntie Rhoda, ‘and listen to me. You’re not going to like what I’ve got to tell you, but needs must.’

Hester stared hard at her, saying nothing. Auntie Rhoda looked straight back.

‘Some of your grandmother’s money has been spent. That’s what you need to know. We had to do it. No one could possibly blame us. After all, we spent it on you. You had to have clothes, things for school, shoes, and not to mention all the ballet equipment. Ballet slippers and goodness knows what all else.’

‘You spent my legacy? On school uniform? And
ballet shoes?’ Hester could feel herself growing ice-cold, and for the first time since she’d arrived in England, she was filled with hatred,
real
hatred, for this person who was supposed to have been like a mother to her.

‘How much is left?’ Breathing in and out was hard. Hester felt as though her chest was filled with rocks.

‘About a hundred and fifty pounds. Quite enough to set you up nicely in London, I’d have thought.’

A note of syrupy, false friendliness had crept into her aunt’s voice. Hester did the sum. They, she and Uncle Bob, had stolen more than three hundred pounds. How did Auntie Rhoda
dare
to sit there simpering and pretending that all along she’d had nothing but Hester’s ballet future in her mind as she spent that money, her money? All at once Hester was quite sure that ballet shoes and school cardigans had nothing to do with it. The money her father sent the Wellicks each month would have paid for those. The money, her grandmother’s legacy, had been spent on other things. She stood up.

‘It’s not true! None of it’s true. You’ve not spent that money on me! It’s a lie. You bought a car. It’s the car. You used some of my money to help you buy your stupid Austin and you’re no better than thieves, both of you, and I’m not spending a minute longer under this roof than I have to. As soon as I get what’s left of my money out of the bank, I’m going and I don’t care if I never see you ever again. You’re horrible and I’ll never forgive you as long as I live.’