Hester's Story (11 page)

She burst into tears of rage as soon as she’d finished speaking. Her throat felt raw. Auntie Rhoda sprang to her feet, red in the face and shrieking loudly enough to make the cups rattle on the dresser.

‘
We’re
horrible? And what about you? How d’you think we feel when you make it so obvious that we’re
not fit to lick your boots? You think you’re better than us, that’s your trouble. You always have, too. We take you in when your own father wants rid of you, and what thanks do we get? Not a word, that’s what. Not one word in more than eight years. Good riddance to you, I say. Uncle Bob will take you to the bank tomorrow and you can get your money and go and see how far you’ll get on your own in London. Not very far, I’ll be bound. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got ironing to do.’

She swept out of the kitchen and left Hester there shaking with fury. She wanted to run after Auntie Rhoda and scream
I never thanked you because I’m not grateful for any of the horrible things you’ve given me; horrible food, a cold house, no love at all, not even when I was five years old and crying for my lost home every night. Even then you didn’t come and cuddle me, never. Not once. I’m glad I never thanked you
.

Paula had followed her mother out of the kitchen, pausing just long enough at the door to smirk before she disappeared. It was clear that she was delighted to see Hester being taken down a peg or two. She’d resented her cousin’s interest in ballet from the very first, roaring with unkind laughter if ever she caught Hester practising her foot positions in front of the mirror, or trying to do exercises using the metal bedstead as a
barre
.

I don’t care, Hester thought. I’m going to London. I’m going to live in 24 Moscow Road and be a ballet dancer. Madame Olga will help me. Some of her treasure will be used to pay for things I need. She said so. I’m never coming to this place ever again in my life.

*

For the last two weeks of her stay in the Wellicks’ house, scarcely a word passed between them and
Hester. She refused to have them help her in any way. When the time came to leave, she got into the taxi with Madame Olga and the Wellicks remained by the front gate. To have sulked indoors as she left would have made them the subject of gossip among the neighbours, so they pretended they were saying goodbye as though they were a normal family. Hester shook Uncle Bob by the hand, and forced herself to peck Auntie Rhoda and Paula on the cheek. When it was Auntie Rhoda’s turn, she said, ‘Thank you very much for having me,’ as though the last eight years were no more than a birthday party.

As the taxi drove away, Hester sat facing straight ahead and never looked back. She felt lighter and happier with every yard they travelled, as though someone had let go of ropes that had been holding her tight, reining her in.

Saying goodbye to her beloved teacher at Leeds station was quite a different matter. Hester couldn’t stop crying as she kissed her, and Madame Olga wiped away the tears with a handkerchief that smelled of violets.

‘Do not cry, child,’ she murmured. ‘It is good, what you are doing. You have a great gift. You must always remember this. I will come to see you dance, do not worry. Piers will invite me and I will come. I will sell more jewels and come many times. I will come to applaud the new ballerina. And you will write to me, won’t you? I want to hear every bit of news. Go with God, darling girl.’

‘Thank you, Madame. Thank you for showing me—’

‘There is no need for thanks, Hester. You have given me nothing but pleasure. I will live through your gift as if it was my own.’

Hester burst out crying all over again. ‘But I’ll miss you so much. I feel as though you’re a kind of mother
to me. Better than a mother. How will I thank you?’

‘You will thank me with your hard work. That is all I ask. Do not waste your gift. We will meet again soon when you are a ballerina. I will live for that day. Go, go now and find a seat.’

Hester picked up her suitcase. It was the one she’d brought with her to England; the one her grandmother had packed so carefully. Once again it held her clothes, the photographs she’d brought with her from France and her doll, Antoinette. She knew she was too old for a doll, but she couldn’t leave her behind at the Wellicks.

She peered through the window at Madame Olga, dressed for the occasion in her coat with the fox-fur collar and the hat with a spotted veil. She was waving and smiling, and Hester waved and smiled back and recognised the sadness that filled her: she felt exactly as she had on the day she had left
Grand-mère
. Loving someone meant leaving them and going far away. That, Hester thought, is how life has arranged it, for me at least.

27 December 1986

Silver McConnell opened her eyes and got out of bed, immediately wide awake. It always surprised her to learn that other people took time to come to life in the morning; that they didn’t spring instantly to life. She’d never been what her mum called ‘a sleepyhead’. Quite the reverse. Her body managed just fine with a minimum of sleep, and she felt ready for action within seconds of waking up. She was good at catnaps too, and ten minutes with her eyes shut in the dressing room before a performance gave her enough energy to keep her going late into the night.

This morning she was particularly excited, so it was even easier than usual to get out of bed and get started. She was on her way to Yorkshire in a few hours, to join the members of the Carradine Company at Wychwood House. The idea of a big house with a theatre in its grounds appealed to her. The Arcadia was famous in ballet circles. She’d first read about it in a magazine, and had decided there and then that one day she’d dance on that stage, in the place that Hester Fielding, who was one of her all time greatest heroines in ballet, had created after she stopped dancing.

Silver wasn’t falsely modest. I’m good, she told herself, whenever she compared her achievements with those of her contemporaries. She felt properly alive only when she was involved in dancing, whether rehearsing, in class, or performing. She was aware of a
harmony in every part of her, and it would have been strange if the pleasure she took from the things her body was capable of didn’t somehow communicate itself to others. That the critics agreed with her assessment, that her fellow-dancers regarded her with awe and envy, that choreographers were forever asking her to do this or that ballet with them – those were external signs of her success, but her own opinion counted more than anything the world said. From the first day she started in her dancing class as a small girl, everything had come to her with the minimum of effort. She seemed to be able to do whatever was asked of her then, and she still could. But Silver was certain of one thing: she would stop dancing the second she thought that this or that aspect of her work was getting ragged at the edges. Ballet’s about perfection, she’d told a television presenter only last month, and she believed that. When she was about fourteen, she’d read a magazine interview with Hester Fielding in which she said that exactly, and Silver had felt more than ever that here was a dancer she could admire unreservedly. They agreed about the important things, and Silver couldn’t wait to meet her.

She couldn’t understand how someone like Claudia Drake, who’d been so good, could let herself go on dancing when she wasn’t really up to it any longer. She was too old. That was the truth, and it was brutal, but far more bruising than giving up forever must surely be trying to regain her youthful glory and failing.

The trouble is, Silver thought, stepping into the shower and turning it on as hard as it would go, she believes her own publicity. That’s dangerous. If the papers tell you you’re a star and a beauty and can do no wrong loud enough and long enough, it must be easy to believe it. Not me, though, she thought, wrapping herself in a towel and going back into the
bedroom. I try to make a point of not believing anything except the evidence of my own eyes, my own body, where the work is concerned.

She’d been uncharacteristically nervous during the audition she did for Hugo Carradine. She didn’t normally pin her hopes on things. Roles were frequently offered to her without her seeking them, but this was different, she had thought as she stepped out on to the stage and looked into the darkened stalls. She could just make out the pale oval of Hugo’s face.

‘I’m going to do the first act solo from
The Bells of Paradise
, which I’ve just finished dancing at the Sadler’s Wells.’

‘That’ll be fine,’ Hugo’s disembodied voice answered her. And it was fine, because he’d offered her the part of the Angel, but she’d had the distinct impression that he was a little underwhelmed by her performance. It wasn’t anything he said, but Silver couldn’t help thinking that he was not one hundred percent bowled over by her dancing, and that irritated her.

The small flat she shared with Gina wasn’t the most luxurious place in the world, but Silver was fond of it. It was a vast improvement on the two-up, two-down in the grotty suburb of South London where she’d lived as a child. That was only a couple of steps up from a slum. The streets she’d grown up in were dingy and unattractive, with not a tree to be seen. There was a small park nearby, but the trees and shrubs there had an air of exhaustion about them, as though producing every leaf and flower had been a huge effort. Silver’s dad worked as a lorry-driver and was often away. When he did come home he was worse than useless, sitting around in front of the telly for the most part, and hardly taking any notice of her. He loved her well enough, but rather in the way you’d love an exotic pet, a cockatoo or something. He treated her gingerly, as
though she might bite, or behave suddenly in ways he didn’t understand.

Her two brothers, both older than she was, petted and spoiled her but they didn’t understand her either. Her name was her own invention. She’d been called Sylvia at birth, but
Silver
was how she always said it, from when she was tiny, and the word had suited her so well that she’d never felt the need to change it. No one could resist the urge to muck about with it. She tolerated Lone Ranger jokes, and was almost used to ‘Silly’ – the name that the younger of her brothers always called her.

When she’d insisted on going to a local ballet class, she’d had to put up with a hell of a lot of teasing. Her brothers started it, mimicking her first tentative steps and chortling at their own daring and originality, leaping about in football boots and making what they thought of as ballet movements with their hands. Mum used to shoo them out of the room sometimes, to protect her.

Her mother had been delighted that she had at least one child for whom she could buy ballet shoes and other pretty paraphernalia. Even though the money had been tight, she somehow seemed to find the best bargains from the most unlikely places – market stalls, catalogues, charity shops. Whatever she had to go without (and looking back Silver could see that she probably
had
had to make sacrifices – you never noticed such things when you were a kid) Mum was determined that Silver would be properly kitted out. And, Silver thought, she loved having to knit crossover cardigans in sugary colours like pink or lilac. She even enjoyed sitting in on the class in the draughty church hall where Miss Valerie tried her best. Now her mother was the one who cut out all the bits from newspapers and magazines; who came to watch her dance, who
took pride in what she’d achieved. Thank God for Mum, Silver thought. And Miss Valerie too. She hadn’t been much of a teacher, but she did realise that I was different, and it’s thanks to her that I ended up at the Royal Ballet School.

From White Lodge in Richmond, Silver had gone on to dance small parts and then more important ones, and meanwhile she had grown away from her family. It wasn’t that she didn’t love them, but she felt that she had less and less in common with them. This made her feel a little guilty whenever she thought about them. She didn’t visit them often enough and, although her mother came to see everything, Silver knew she didn’t spend time with her when she did, but treated her only as a rather privileged member of the audience. Thoughts that she should make more effort came to her regularly, and she vowed to do better soon, but somehow there was always the next ballet to be rehearsed, and then the next, and the schedules were punishing. But she could phone. Or write. She sat down at the dressing-table and said aloud, ‘I will. It’ll be my New Year’s resolution. To be a better daughter. A better sister.’

She sighed, and turned her attention to putting her make-up on. It was a process she relished, because it meant creating a public face, a mask for the world to look at. No one would have believed her if she’d told them, but Silver was unconvinced of her own beauty, and felt she needed to create it. I’m different from what they think I am, she told herself, smoothing on foundation.

She loved the names given to all the shades of makeup. This cream was
Porcelaine
and, as well as blending in perfectly with her skin, it conveyed the right image – delicate, pale and unblemished. From the first time she’d appeared on a stage, she knew that this was how
you escaped from yourself. In exactly the same way that she put on a face to dance in, Silver invented a person to be: a smooth, well-groomed, elegant, silvery sort of person to go with her name.

The transformation happened when she was eighteen. At the time, she was living in a pokey room above a launderette, but she had started to buy her own clothes for the first time. Her mother watched, horrified, as she went through everything that was still hanging up in the cupboard in her old room and threw everything on to the bed as though it were so much rubbish.

‘What’s got into you, madam?’ said her mum. ‘One minute in that fancy ballet school and living away from home and all this gear’s not good enough for you, that it?’

‘No,’ said Silver mildly. The more her mother spluttered and fumed, the quieter she became. She’d been doing this since she was a little kid, saying nothing or nearly nothing, which always calmed Mum down. It was quite hard to keep up a heated argument if the other person wasn’t joining in. ‘I’ve just decided that I don’t wear colours any longer.’