Hester's Story (14 page)

Here is a bear who is brown and small

and wants to speak in a small brown voice

so you can hear the tales he tells

of big black bears in caves of stone
.

He whispers gently in your ear:

Look I am here. You are not alone
.

She felt better at once, and put the book away again. If only I wasn’t so hungry, she thought, I’d probably be able to fall asleep. A thought occurred to her. She knew where the kitchen was downstairs. She laid the book aside, got out of bed and put on her dressing-gown. Then she stepped out as quietly as she could into the corridor.

There was a dim light shining in the hall. Alison crept down the stairs and into the kitchen. This was the most modern-looking room she’d seen since they arrived. The rest of Wychwood House looked very old-fashioned, but this was big and square with a high ceiling. Every single fixture and fitting was so modern it was practically space-age. Wherever she looked Alison could see white and palest blue and shiny silver. The cooker was an enormous thing – all oven doors
and gleaming hotplates, with an extractor hood hanging over it like a canopy of burnished copper.

The fridge was gigantic and white as ice, and it didn’t make a loud, humming noise like the fridge in the flat. Alison opened it and nearly let out a yelp of surprise. Someone had taken great care to stock up with every single thing anyone could possibly want. Eggs, bacon, sausages, fruit yoghurts in four different flavours, Greek yoghurt and cream. There were sealed packets of croissants and buns, packets of cold sliced meats, and jars of jam, marmalade, mayonnaise and mustard. There wasn’t any fruit or cheese, so they must be somewhere else, maybe in a larder. Granny used to keep things like that in the larder, so maybe Miss Fielding did as well.

She opened the packet of croissants and took out two. People in the company won’t be rushing to eat those, she thought as she put them on a special rack on top of the toaster to heat up. Too fattening by half. She took the butter out of the fridge and put it on the table and found a knife in one of the drawers. As soon as the croissants were ready, she sat down and began to eat.

That was when she noticed the cat. He was sleeping in a basket in the corner by the cooker, taking up every single bit of the available space. She got up from the table and approached him quietly, so as not to scare him away. ‘You are huge!’ she said, crouching down and stroking his back gently. He lifted his ginger head and gazed at her out of pale green eyes. Then he yawned an enormous pink yawn and rested his head on his front paws again. Alison whispered, ‘You’re a lovely cat. I wonder what your name is?’ Then she heard the sound of someone coming towards the kitchen. She froze, crouching on the floor beside the basket.

‘Oh, it’s you!’ said the person Alison had been told
to call Miss Fielding. Hester Fielding, whose house this was. The famous dancer; even Claudia admired her. ‘You’re Alison, aren’t you? It was all a bit of a rush earlier on, but I think I caught your name. And you must please call me Hester. I can’t bear Miss Fielding. It makes me sound like a Victorian governess. Is anything the matter? Can I help you at all?’

Alison got to her feet in a scramble of confusion, embarrassment and shyness. She was desperate to say everything at once; to reassure Miss Fielding – Hester – that yes, everything was fine, really.

‘No, I’m okay. I just. I couldn’t sleep, you see, because I was so hungry, and I thought no one would … well, I thought everyone else would be asleep. And I would have cleared everything up. Only I couldn’t sleep, that’s all. And then I saw this cat. He’s so big!’

‘Siggy’s a bit of a monster, isn’t he? Don’t you worry, though. You finish your croissant. Midnight food always tastes wonderful, doesn’t it? I’m just going to make myself a cup of tea.’

Hester Fielding’s dressing-gown, Alison thought, looking at her as she set the kettle to boil, was grander than most people’s evening dresses. It was made of velvet, or perhaps it was velour, and it was exactly the colour of blackcurrant yoghurt. It swept the floor and was tied round the waist with a kind of sash. Alison noticed (because she always noticed people’s figures to see how much thinner than her they were) that Hester wasn’t any fatter than Claudia, even though she was older. Claudia had said she was fifty-three, but she didn’t look it.
She dyes her hair, of course
, she remembered hearing her mother remark to Hugo.
And quite right too. I intend to be a redhead till my very last breath
.

‘That’s a strange name, Siggy,’ she said, more for
something to say than because she really thought it strange. ‘For a cat, I mean.’

Miss Fielding – Hester – turned and smiled at her, and Alison immediately felt happier. You couldn’t call her beautiful, she thought. Not in the way Mum’s beautiful, but it’s hard to stop looking at her, and when she smiles, her eyes shine and … Alison couldn’t express properly what it was exactly, but Hester had a kind of glow about her.

‘Siggy’s called after Siegfried. He’s the prince in
Swan Lake
, you know. We all thought he might be princely when he was a kitten, but now he’s so large and lumbering. Not a bit like a prince, at least not a ballet prince. They leap about much more than Siggy’s ever done.’

She poured the boiling water into the teapot and waited for a moment before making her cup of tea.

‘I hope you enjoy it here at Wychwood,’ she said. ‘You won’t be bored, will you?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Alison, although for days now she’d been moaning to Claudia that bored stiff would be her permanent state till school started. ‘No, I’m sure I’ll find lots to do. And I’m going to bed now. I know I’ll sleep well.’

‘I’m going to write a few letters I think,’ said Hester. ‘And then try to sleep. It’s going to be a busy day tomorrow.’

‘Yes,’ said Alison. ‘Good night.’

The croissants were delicious. She picked up the plate she’d been using and washed it at the sink. Which is more, she thought, than my mum will do when she has her breakfast. One of the more irritating things about Claudia was how messy she was. She hardly ever washed up properly either, which made Alison grind her teeth with fury. She always offered to do the dishes when she was at home. You’d think that might please
a mother, but oh no. Claudia was forever telling people how domesticated Alison was, only she made it sound like an insult, as though only truly dull people ever bothered with things like housework. That sort of thing, her voice seemed to say, is not for artistic people like me.

‘Night night, Siggy!’ she whispered as she left the kitchen. Siggy was snoring in his basket and took no notice whatsoever.

*

Hester lay in bed and thought about Alison Drake. No one would have guessed, to look at her, that she was her mother’s daughter, so Mr Drake, whoever he was, must have been dark and stocky. A beautiful mother can be a problem, she thought, and wondered how much her ideas of her own identity, her desire to become a dancer, were bound up in her memories of Helen Prévert. By the time she came to live with the Wellicks, her memories of her mother had already begun to fade, and after that all she had was the photograph she’d brought with her. Hester had had to live up to a vision of beauty and grace caught forever behind glass in a silver frame. Alison, on the other hand, had Claudia in front of her every day and her looks would make almost anyone feel inadequate.

I think of Alison as a child, Hester thought, but she’s fourteen. That was how old I was when I started in the Charleroi Company and I considered myself quite grown-up and ready to start work.

1948

London was enormous. The cars, the crowds of people on the pavements, the huge, grey buildings – Hester looked out of the taxi window and recognised some of them from newsreels she’d seen. A thin rain was falling and street lamps made the puddles glitter and shine. Mr Cranley had been at King’s Cross station to meet her. She caught sight of him standing at the barrier as soon as she started walking up the platform, and waved to attract his attention. He smiled at her, and the nervousness she’d been feeling as the train steamed south (nervousness mixed with excitement, breathlessness at the idea of all the possibilities that lay ahead of her) evaporated at once. Everything was going to be all right.

They didn’t pass any theatres on the taxi ride from the station to Bayswater.

‘You’ll see them all soon enough,’ Mr Cranley said. ‘Especially the dear old Royalty, our theatre, in Craven Road. Royalty that’s rather fallen on hard times, is what I say, but it’s a splendid place all the same.’

Hester wanted to say that anywhere would be wonderful after the Wellicks, but didn’t quite dare. Mr Cranley peered at her in the half-light of the taxi’s interior.

‘I hope you’re not going to be homesick, are you?’

Hester laughed. ‘No, not a bit,’ she said. ‘Madame Olga is the one person I’ll miss and she says she’ll come
down and see me dance when I’m ready. And I want to say thank you for … for everything. I’ll work really, really hard, I promise.’

‘I know that. I don’t take on girls who are frivolous about their dancing and Olga assured me of your determination. Mine is a small company, but a good one. Sadler’s Wells and the Festival Ballet often invite my principals to take on roles there, you know.’

He leaned forward as though what he was about to say was particularly important. Hester thought he looked exactly like someone who had just taken off a Father Christmas costume. His hair was white and his small beard much too neatly trimmed for the part, but his eyes were blue and bright and he had rosy cheeks.

‘I noticed something about you, Hester. Something that you may not even realise. Apart from Madame Olga, of course, you’re alone. She tells me that you’ve been alone for a very long time, ever since your father sent you to England and perhaps even longer, for I understand your mother died when you were very young, and who’s to tell what that does to a child, eh? We’ll never know.’

Hester frowned. What was Mr Cranley going to say? Was he right? The strangest sensation was creeping over her as he spoke, a sense of recognition. Alone. That was exactly what she had been until Madame Olga took an interest in her. All by herself in the world. Suddenly chilly, she rubbed one gloved hand against the other, and shivered. Mr Cranley went on speaking.

‘Your father, although he was polite and thank God not a philistine – he did understand about the ballet at least – didn’t strike me as a very
warm
person, I must say, and his wife – well, you’ll forgive me, but the milk of human kindness is in very short supply there, I fear.’

‘I’ve never met her. I’ve never been back to France
since I left. My father visited the Wellicks three times while I was there.’

‘It makes what I’m going to say a little easier then. I hate to speak ill of a person’s relations, Hester, but you do seem to have drawn the most impoverished hand in that particular game, don’t you?’

Hester nodded. ‘But my grandmother was the best grandmother in the world. I remember her.’

‘That’s something I suppose, but of course she’s dead. I don’t mean to sound harsh and of course it’s not her fault that she couldn’t survive to love you, but I know that Madame Olga feels that you’re in need of … of someone. Olga’s an old friend of mine and she’s asked me to look after you, and I shall. I mean it. I want you to understand that you can tell me anything, ask me for any help or advice and I’ll do my very best to help.’

Hester hesitated. Was it too much? What was Mr Cranley really saying? Could Paula possibly have been right about his intentions? Or was he a father to all his dancers?

‘Thank you,’ she said at last, ‘but …’

Mr Cranley laughed. ‘I can read your thoughts as plainly as if they were written on your face. You have a very expressive face, which is a great gift for any performer. You’re thinking I’ll be wanting something in return, and God knows what ghastly ideas might be flitting through your mind! You can forget them. I require no more from you than hard work. I’m a sort of father-figure to the whole company, as they’ll doubtless tell you, but you – well, all the rest have perfectly decent parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and whole coachloads of brothers and sisters. You, not to put too fine a point on it, have not.’

‘Thank you, Mr Cranley. I feel … I feel as though—’

‘Don’t bother to say it, Hester. It’s not important. And please call me Piers. They all do in the company. Here we are, then. This is it.’

Hester waited on the pavement with her suitcase beside her as Mr Cranley, Piers, paid the taxi driver. She glanced up at the lighted windows of 24 Moscow Road and realised that she hadn’t felt as comfortable as this since she’d been a little girl in France. I’ve been stiff, she thought, as though I’ve been braced against a storm of some kind. I could be myself at Madame Olga’s but that was the only place. But I feel different here.

‘You’ll be sharing with Dinah and Nell, I believe,’ Piers said. ‘Lively girls, both of them. Do you the world of good.’

He picked up the case and used the brass knocker in the shape of a lion to bang loudly on the door.

Number 24 Moscow Road looked very grand from the outside. There were three steps up to the front door and a porch with pillars around it. Inside, the hall was rather dark and very far from splendid. Hester found it a little disappointing. A table with a mirror above it took up half of its width. A lounge and a dining room opened off the hall. Later, she was to learn that the lounge was known as the Green Room, which was the name given to sitting rooms in theatres. There were bedrooms on three floors. The principals of the company were on the first and second floors, and the younger members shared rooms on the third floor and also in the attic. Hester found that she had been allocated a bed right at the top of the house, sharing with Dinah Rowland and Nell Osborne.

*