Fiona Harper - The Summer We Danced

No, nothing much had changed about Miss Mimi at all, except her hair was totally white and there were more wrinkles on her peaches-and-cream complexion. She wore pink seamed dance tights, those little heeled ballet shoes that only dance teachers ever wear, a hot-pink leg warmer over each ankle and a leotard with a crossover skirt that folded over like a tulip in front but dipped as low as the backs of her knees behind. The whole outfit was topped off with a silky kimono with bright, gypsy colours on a black background, edged with a long black fringe. Despite her age, I could imagine her throwing her wrap off, jumping on to the small stage at the end of the hall and showing the class how she’d high-kicked her way through two seasons in Paris and one in Las Vegas.

‘It’s so good to see you again,’ I said, smiling at her. I hadn’t realised how up in the air my life had felt, how it had seemed as if everything was shifting underneath my feet, until I’d come across something—some one —dear to me, who’d remained stubborn and rock-like against the rapids of change. And if there was anyone in this world who could do that, it was this woman.

‘Now, now, Philippa …’ Miss Mimi chided, but I could hear the affection in her tone. ‘You always were a bit of an emotional girl.’

I looked at her, surprised. Had I been?

I frowned, trying to think back to those days. I really couldn’t remember. And it seemed like a lifetime ago, anyway, almost as if that time had been lived by another person. During my marriage to Ed I hadn’t had the luxury of being the emotional one. One diva in the household was enough.

My role as his wife had been to stay calm, stay grounded, to keep things smooth and organised. So much so that I’d actually ended up working as Ed’s assistant, doing admin for him and the band. It wasn’t a job I’d ever planned on doing, but I’d enjoyed it. I’d been part PA, part PR person, part roadie. I’d liaised with venues about bookings, sweet-talked anyone Ed had cheesed off (which happened a lot) and generally did anything that needed to be done.

In my mind, I’d been part of the family business, like a wife doing accounts for her builder husband. The only thing I hadn’t anticipated was that the family—and the business—would move on quite happily without me, leaving me with skills that weren’t easily quantifiable in the job market. I’d discovered that when you turned up at an interview and announced your previous career was ‘rock musician’s dogsbody’, people didn’t really know what to do with you.

My current job was about as soul-destroying as they got. When I’d moved back I’d just got the first job I could find, filling shelves in a big supermarket on the outskirts of Swanham. They’d been looking for seasonal workers in the run-up to Christmas, and it served a need while I worked out what to do next.

Miss Mimi began to make her way over to a cassette player that was so old it could have auditioned for a part in Ashes to Ashes.

‘What happened to Peter?’ I asked. He’d been a shy little man who taught piano lessons at Pippa’s school and had accompanied most of Miss Mimi’s classes back in the nineties. My friend Nancy and I had always speculated about him being desperately in love with Miss Mimi, and we’d giggled uncontrollably when we’d seen his eyes following her as she taught, never needing to look at the piano keys. I didn’t want to think of an empty cold space at the piano stool. Or a new grave in the churchyard.

‘Oh, I let him off the adult classes,’ Miss Mimi said airily. ‘He likes to get home in time to watch Coronation Street on a Friday.’

‘Oh. Good.’ I breathed out a sigh of relief. ‘Miss Mimi?’

‘Yes?’

‘I was meaning to ask … Do you think I’ll be okay in this class? I mean, it is a beginners’ one, isn’t it? I haven’t done any tap before.’

‘My darling,’ Miss Mimi said, in that theatrical voice that I remembered and loved, ‘you will be absolutely fine. It’s not exactly a beginners’ class, more intermediate, but very beginner-friendly. You’ll do wonderfully with your dance background. It’s like speaking another language, you see? Once you’ve learned one, it’s easier to pick up another.’

The sound of a car door slamming outside made me jump. I looked nervously at the entrance. It had been okay when it had just been me and Miss Mimi, but now it became very real that Other People were coming. Other people who were going to see me dance. My stomach went cold and my hands began to shake.

I scuttled off to the back of the hall, where some chairs were laid out in a row and proceeded to busy myself taking off my layers and slowly putting on my tap shoes. I stayed at the back of the hall until the lesson began, hardly daring to look up to see who else was here. When I did, I caught a glimpse of an older lady, a few more women around my own age and two younger girls who looked as if they’d only just graduated from the under-eighteens classes.

I had planned to stay in the shadows at the back of the hall and slip into the last row once everyone had got going and my scheme was working well until I stood up and walked to where the group of five women were standing. I’d dashed to the dance store in Swanham that afternoon and bought the cheapest pair of tap shoes I could find. Apart from trying them on in the shop, it was the first time I’d actually worn them and certainly the first time I’d ever walked in them on a hard surface. The metal plates under the toes made moving in them feel odd, and they made a hell of a lot of noise. Everyone turned round to look at me.

‘We have a new member tonight,’ Miss Mimi said loudly. ‘Philippa used to be one of my pupils long ago, but she’s never done tap before, so we’re going to have to go easy on her.’

If anyone turned round to give me an encouraging smile, I didn’t see them; I was too busy staring at the floor and I kept my head down until Miss Mimi snapped her fingers, regaining everyone’s attention and went straight into a warm-up.

We all shuffled into two lines facing the full-length mirrors that were fixed to the walls down one side of the hall, below the high windows. I was standing so my reflection was split and distorted, cut in half where one mirror met the next. I didn’t know if it made me look fatter or thinner, because I refused to look at anything but my feet and I only looked at them if I absolutely had to.

The warm-up started easily enough, tapping with the toe of one foot a number of times and then the heel, before switching to the other, and then they started doing shuffles. I might not have done any tap before, but I at least knew what a shuffle was—pretty much what I’d done as a child when I’d tried my own version of tap dancing with my mother’s cloppiest shoes on. I struck the ball of my foot lightly on the floor on an out movement, then again as I picked it back up again.

After we’d repeated it a few times, the dancer in me, the one that was slowly awakening, noticed that the rest of the class put a very slight emphasis on the second tap, so I started to do the same. Okay … I was starting to get the hang of this!

And so it continued through the warm-up of short, simple exercises. I didn’t always get everything right, and I was frequently half a count behind everyone else, but I started to relax. Not perfect yet, but that didn’t matter. It would be no fun if it wasn’t a challenge. I might very well be outside of my comfort zone but I was camped on the fringes, not on an entirely different continent.

However, once we started to get into the class proper, it wasn’t just my shins and calves that started to hurt, but my brain. Too much information too fast! Everyone else was stringing the simple steps they’d done in the warm-up into more complicated sequences, and I discovered that, while I could envisage the steps in my head, the messages my brain was sending to my feet were just too slow. It was most frustrating, especially as once upon a time I’d been able to hold whole strings of complex movements in my head, regurgitating them effortlessly when needed. Whole dances. Whole shows, even.