Hester's Story (5 page)

One particularly awful memory stood out from the rest. After Estelle had been in England for about two years, she and Paula were invited to celebrate the birthday of one of Paula’s classmates. Estelle was in the class below her cousin at school, so she didn’t see much of her there. Nevertheless, Paula’s best friend, Marjorie, invited Estelle to the party and she was happier and more excited at the prospect than she’d been about anything for a long time. She understood that Paula wasn’t too thrilled at the idea, but she didn’t care. She was going to wear her best dress: scarlet velvet, smocked across the bodice, which was a little short. It reminded her of
Grand-mère
, who had done the smocking with her own hands, and Estelle was determined to show it off.

On the afternoon of the party, Paula was even more silent than usual. The girls walked down the village street to Marjorie’s house, which was close enough for them to be allowed to walk there by themselves. Paula glanced at Estelle sideways out of her narrow eyes and smiled nastily.

‘Marjorie didn’t want to invite you really,’ she said. ‘Her mum made her.’

‘How d’you know? You don’t know that.’

‘Yes, I do. Marjorie told me. She said if it was left to her, she’d never have a baby at her birthday party, but her mother feels sorry for you. So she had to.’

Estelle didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for her. She could sense herself blushing with shame and anger.
Part of her wanted to run back to the Wellicks and hide in her bed, but the party! Paula had been speaking for days of cakes iced in pink and violet, balloons and lemonade. Red and green jellies. Estelle longed for everything, so she blinked back the tears and walked along beside her cousin. Then, as they were approaching the gate, Paula turned her gaze on Estelle once again and wrinkled her mouth.

‘You should’ve worn something else. An old dress of mine, or something. You look silly in that. It’s too small for you and the colour’s horrible.’

Estelle answered before she had time to think. The fury that she felt was enormous. It was there, in her chest, like a balloon filling every corner of her body, and when she opened her mouth the balloon exploded and the anger rushed out.

‘You know nothing about it,’ she shouted at Paula. ‘The colour is beautiful and you’re jealous because your dress makes you look exactly like a lemon. Yellow and sour. You think I’m going to run home crying because you don’t like my dress. Well, I’m not. I’m going to the party, so there.’

Paula didn’t answer because they were already at Marjorie’s house. She knocked at the door instead, but glanced at Estelle with pure hatred in her eyes. Estelle stood up as straight as she could and put a smile on her face. To herself she said horrible, horrible Paula! I’m not going to let her spoil the party for me. But the fact was she
had
spoiled it, she’d ruined everything. But Estelle wasn’t going to let anyone know how miserable she was. All through the games and during the party tea, she smiled and pretended not to notice that Paula and Marjorie and some of the other big girls kept gathering in the corners of the room and whispering. They’re whispering about me, Estelle thought. I know they are. I don’t care. I don’t. I’m just as good as any of
them. They’re stupid girls who don’t know anything. I won’t let them make me sad. I won’t. She bit her lip and held her head up so that no one would see how she was feeling. She concentrated on what she would say in her next letter to
Grand-mère
; how she would describe the party.

When Estelle first arrived in England, she received a letter from her grandmother every week, and Auntie Rhoda read each one aloud once. If Estelle asked her to read it again later, or on another day, she did, but with a sigh and an air of being tremendously put out. At first, Estelle couldn’t write more than a couple of letters of the alphabet, but she used to draw pictures on small pieces of paper and Auntie Rhoda folded them up and sent them in buff envelopes to France.

And then the letters arrived less and less often. War was raging everywhere, and everything became more difficult. Paula enjoyed frightening Estelle with stories of bombs falling on buildings and blowing them up, and sometimes in the evening the whole family gathered round the big radio in the parlour to listen to the news, which Estelle couldn’t understand very well and didn’t feel able to ask about. Henri wrote to her explaining that, because of the war, it was hard for him to travel to England and that he hoped she was well and not giving the Wellicks any trouble. He also sent letters addressed to Uncle Bob, which Estelle knew contained some money to help pay for her keep. Every time Estelle opened another envelope, she hoped that her father might have written to say
After the war is over, you must come back to France again. You must come home
but he never did.

Each Christmas, the Wellick family went to the pantomime at the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford. It was the annual treat, when even Auntie Rhoda and Uncle Bob took on an air of almost-celebration. When
Estelle was nine years old, the pantomime was
Red Riding Hood
, which was one of the fairytales she loved best of all.
Grand-mère
had shown her a picture once, in a big, leather-bound book, of Red Riding Hood in bed with the Wolf. He was dressed in a frilly nightcap, and Estelle could still remember how frightened she was. But she loved the story even though it scared her, and couldn’t explain, even to herself, why that should be so. Somewhere near the beginning of the first act a dancer, who was supposed to be some kind of forest fairy, came out on to the stage. Estelle didn’t recognise the music but she knew that she’d never heard anything half so beautiful. She was enchanted. She watched this magical person who seemed lighter and more delicate than any human being could possibly be, twirling to the lovely sounds, and swaying like a flower balanced on pointed toes. And the clothes she wore! Estelle drank in the sight of her. She had a garland of leaves in her hair, and the green, gauzy, filmy stuff of her skirts, scattered with thousands of tiny pink flower petals, floated round her legs like mist.

She danced and danced and when it was over, Estelle felt bereft. She thought about nothing but what she had just seen. Those few minutes on a stage made beautiful by apricot and rose footlights remained in her head and, when she was on her own in the bedroom she shared with Paula, for days and days afterwards she tried to mimic the steps she’d seen the dancer take. It looked as though it might be the easiest thing in the world to do and it turned out to be impossible.

*

The following winter, the big house with the wrought-iron gates at the end of the village had a new owner.
Marjorie announced that a lady from Russia had bought it. Her mother had told her that this Russian person, whose name she couldn’t remember, used to be quite a famous dancer.

‘She won’t have anyone to talk to, will she, if she’s Russian?’ said Paula. ‘I expect she can’t speak English. Why has she come here?’

‘My mum says she’s a friend of the Cranleys. You know, they live in that big white house on the way to Leeds. This Russian lady is a friend of Mrs Cranley’s son, and he’s something to do with the ballet too. I don’t exactly know what, though.’

Estelle was fascinated by this mysterious woman. She discovered, from Betty in the shop who knew everything, that her name was Madame Olga Rakovska. She also learned that the house was called Wychwood House. All sorts of stories circulated about Madame Rakovska. She had run away to Paris during the Russian Revolution, fleeing without a penny piece to her name. She had fled with the contents of many bank deposit boxes sewn into her undergarments. She had nothing in the world. She was a rich miser who had rubies the size of birds’ eggs hidden under the floorboards. She’d committed a crime and was on the run; and on and on.

Estelle began to see her quite often, walking along between the shop and her enormous house, very upright, in a black coat with a fur collar. The hem of this coat swept the ground as she made her graceful progress along the village street with her head held high and her hands showing white through the pattern of her lace gloves. She had black hair, drawn back into a chignon at the nape of her neck and she sometimes wore a hat that was just like one of Estelle’s grandmother’s favourites: a small, black velvet creation with a spotted veil hanging down to cover the top half of
the face. She longed to talk to her, to ask her whether she still danced sometimes but she didn’t dare.

Then, one afternoon when Paula was playing at Marjorie’s house, Estelle’s curiosity grew so strong that she crept out of the house and ran all the way down the village street till she came to the gates of Wychwood House. The light was beginning to fade and the building loomed very dark and forbidding at the top of the curving, overgrown drive. Estelle took a deep breath and pushed open the heavy gate. She looked all around, wondering if anyone might stop her, but there was no one.

I should go home, she thought. Maybe all the stories about ghosts are true. Maybe there’s something hiding among the shrubs. She made her way up the drive and with every step she grew more terrified. Then she glanced up at the house and her fears vanished in an instant.

Madame Olga had forgotten to draw the curtains in one of the big front rooms. Estelle could see right in and what she saw was a huge space with no carpet on a polished, wooden floor the colour of honeycomb, an upright piano in the far corner and a mirror taking up the whole of one wall. A black rail was fixed to the wall opposite the mirror and, standing with her back to the window, was Madame Olga herself, wearing a long black dress. She was resting the fingers of her left hand on the rail and bending forward at the waist. On her feet she was wearing pink ballet shoes.

From her first glimpse of that room, Estelle knew that her future was there, in that house, with that person. She felt as though she were standing on the edge of a precipice with nothing but blue beneath her, dizzy and longing to jump, but also breathless with dread of something that might be snatched away before she could enjoy it.

She asked Auntie Rhoda about Wychwood House the next day at breakfast, testing out what she felt about Madame Olga. Her aunt was unusually forthcoming.

‘I believe that the Russian lady who’s bought it is a ballet teacher. I can’t think why she’s chosen to come and settle here. You’d think a town would suit her better.’ There was a spoonful of porridge halfway to her mouth. ‘Still, she knows the Cranleys and that must be a help to her. The Cranleys know everyone important round here. That house has been empty for years, and of course it’s good to have it lived in again, but still. I don’t know whether a ballet teacher is the kind of person we want in this area.’ She sighed. ‘It’s the war, that’s what it is. You never got all sorts of foreigners moving in before the war. I don’t know how many pupils she’ll get, what with the petrol rationing and everything, but some people will still manage to bring their daughters to class, I shouldn’t wonder.’

Estelle didn’t say a word, but her heart began to beat very fast. She
had
to go there. She had to talk to Madame Olga. She had to meet this ballet teacher, who would teach her how to do all the movements she’d admired on the stage at the pantomime last year. Somehow she knew that asking the Wellicks’ permission was pointless. They would refuse, she was sure of it. She vowed to find a way of getting into Wychwood House without telling them. It would be her secret.

Getting to meet Madame Olga was easier than she had dared to hope. There were hours and hours when Auntie Rhoda wasn’t really paying any attention to where Estelle was. Go
out and play, dear
was a refrain she heard often.

The following day, terrified at what the strange Russian lady might say to her, she walked again through the black gates, which stood half open. In the
bright daylight it was easier to see everything clearly. Overgrown trees loomed up behind the house; all the shrubs needed pruning and the grass was long and ragged. When she reached the porch, she noticed that it was adrift with leaves left over from autumn. She plucked up courage and knocked at the wooden door.

She had to wait quite a long time for Madame Olga to open it.

‘Yes?’ she said, peering down at the girl standing in front of her. Estelle thought that she didn’t look like an ordinary person at all, but like someone who’d just stepped out of a play. Her complexion was perfect, as though she were made of something other than flesh, with her skin pale and smooth and her lips painted perfectly in a shade of red that Estelle later learned she had sent to her from Paris. It was darker than most lipsticks worn by the women she saw every day. Madame Olga had plucked eyebrows, like a film star, and her nose was narrow and slightly curved which, together with her wide-set eyes, gave her the look of a beautiful bird. Her clothes were black, but you couldn’t see much of them because she had a shawl or huge scarf or some piece of beautiful fabric in shades of orange and red with a pattern picked out in gold thrown round her shoulders. On her feet she wore ballet slippers of black leather and round her neck there was something Estelle had never seen before – a lorgnette, spectacles on a kind of stick, which she flicked open and then raised to her eyes, looking through them as though she wanted to see right inside you. Through the lenses, her very dark eyes stared at Estelle as if she were reading her thoughts.

‘Please, I want to dance. Are you going to be giving lessons? Will you teach me how to dance?’ Estelle asked.

‘You wish to come for lessons? Classes start in three
weeks. Return then, please, and I will enrol you with other girls in beginners’ class. There are not so many pupils now. It is the war.’

Estelle was sure, quite sure, that the lessons would start at once and the shock of disappointment was unbearable and made her feel almost nauseous. Madame Olga noticed her dismay and took her hand. ‘Come inside, child. Come with me. And please tell me your name.’

‘Estelle Prévert.’

Madame Olga nodded and they walked into the house together.