Victoria Clayton - A Girl’s Guide to Kissing Frogs

Alex’s face obediently mirrored these emotions while Madame talked. I tried not to think about my foot and instead envisaged the apple, cheese and yoghurt that awaited me. I was absolutely starving. After Madame had decided to her own satisfaction how our limbs should be disposed during this pregnant moment of eye-acting, we were free to go.

‘Fancy coming down the Pink Parrot after the performance tonight?’ asked Alex as we made our way down the corridor towards the canteen. ‘It’s Dicky’s birthday and he’s promised to stand us drinks for as long as his grandmother’s cheque holds out.’

‘How kind of him. Yes, I’d love to if—’

A hand gripped my shoulder. ‘Sorry, Alex, but I’ve already made plans for Marigold.’ Sebastian Lenoir slipped his arm through mine so that he was walking between us. ‘And I’m in a hurry.’

Alex slid away up the stairs to the canteen.

Sebastian was the director of the Lenoir Ballet Company, or the LBC as it was generally called. What he decreed, no one even thought of contradicting. Madame was the only person who from time to time stood up to him, but she always had to admit defeat in the end. Sebastian never raised his voice, but he saw no reason to make concessions to anyone. He would wait patiently, impassive faced, while Madame argued, pleaded and occasionally raved, before lifting and dropping his shoulders – a gesture which seemed to say ‘tiresomely a ballet company must have people in it’ – and replying, ‘All right. Now we do as I say.’

In many ways Sebastian was an ideal director. He had trained as a dancer, then worked for ten years as a choreographer, so he had a thorough knowledge of the business. It was largely thanks to Sebastian that we were, in the opinions of those who counted, the third most successful company in England. It was not impossible that we might one day improve our rating. His hair, black with a silver streak, was swept straight back from a high brow that looked noble until you came to know him better. Often people suspected him of dyeing it in emulation of the great Diaghilev but, having had frequent opportunities to examine it close to, I thought it was probably natural, since it never showed signs of growing out. On his handsome sardonic face was usually an expression that could scare you half to death. He certainly frightened me, even though I was beginning to know him quite well. For the last twelve months we had been lovers.

‘Come into my office.’ He steered me through a door into a room that was as elegantly shabby as the rest of the building. The LBC was housed in a row of unrestored Georgian houses in Blackheath. It lacked central heating, but the dancers warmed themselves by their exertions, and in Sebastian’s office there was a grate where logs burned through the winter. He had hung drawings by Gainsborough, Lawrence and other eighteenth-century luminaries, lent him by an art-dealer friend, on the flaking walls. Curtains of faded green silk hung at the windows. There was about his quarters a rich beauty which was reflected in all his tastes.

Money was the end to which all Sebastian’s efforts were directed. He needed it to entice gifted dancers, choreographers, designers and costumiers. He had to find money for travelling expenses for the touring part of the company, for publicity, for bribes, for paying people off. The acquisition of money was germane to all his decisions. I imagined that he thought of little else by day and probably dreamed about it at night. Yet no one could have accused him of personal extravagance. He wore his father’s old Savile Row suits and ate sparingly unless someone else was paying for it. As he seated himself languidly behind his desk and picked up the mother-of-pearl penknife he used to open letters, he had the negligent air of a country gentleman with comfortable estates and an agent to see to the horrid necessities. He tapped on the mahogany surface before him with the closed knife.

‘I hear Miko Lubikoff is coming to the workshop tonight.’

‘Is he?’ I aimed for something between mild interest and surprise in my tone to disguise the apprehension that seized my innermost parts. Miko Lubikoff was director of the English Ballet, the company whose reputation stood higher than the LBC’s and lower than the Royal Ballet’s. ‘Goodness!’

‘You didn’t know? Everyone else in the company seems well acquainted with the fact. Why should you be an exception, I wonder?’

‘Now I think of it, perhaps Alex did mention …’ I sort of hummed the rest of the sentence away.

‘Alex?’ A slight frown appeared between dark symmetrical brows. ‘Don’t pretend you think Miko is interested in him .’

‘Oh, no! ’ In my eagerness to exonerate Alex I was perhaps too emphatic. ‘I-I mean, perhaps Miko just wants to see what we’re doing – there hasn’t been a new production of Giselle for ages … I expect he gets awfully bored with seeing the same old dancers—’

‘Miko does not allow himself to be bored. Nor –’ he sent me a glance that was distinctly unfriendly – ‘do I.’

I folded my hands in my lap and tried to look insouciant, though I was certain that the rapid pulse in the hollow of my throat must be visible from a hundred yards.

He stroked the smooth handle of the knife with long fingers. ‘I suspect he’s coming,’ he put his thumbnail into the slot provided for the purpose and brought out the blade, ‘because of you.’

‘ Me? I don’t suppose he even knows who I am. I’ve never actually spoken to him.’

‘Oh? Yet Etta tells me that last week there was a letter from Miko in your pigeonhole.’

Damn and blast and hell! It was well-known that Madame, who would have allowed herself to be chopped to atoms for the good of the company, had extraordinary powers of divination and could detect a disloyal thought the moment it sprang newborn, damp with amniotic fluid, into a person’s mind. But presumably she did not have X-ray eyes that could penetrate layers of Basildon Bond.

‘Oh, no! That’s impossible.’

Sebastian speared a paper polo – one those little rings for reinforcing punch holes – with the blade of his knife. ‘Miko’s hand is distinctive. And the green ink, regrettably jejune, is a trademark.’

‘I remember now,’ I blurted out. ‘It was a letter from my aunt!’

I realized at once this was a mistake.

‘Oh? Your aunt?’ He did not bother to hide his scepticism.

I was thoroughly rattled. ‘Yes … she’s a terrific correspondent … she writes every week, sometimes twice … she lives in the Highlands of Scotland and is awfully lonely, poor old thing … no one to talk to but her old blind collie … you see, she’s in a wheelchair and can’t get out …’ I was supplying too much detail, the common mistake of liars.

‘In that case her letters are unlikely to be franked with an NW3 postmark.’

I felt myself grow cold. Everyone knew the English Ballet had their headquarters in Belsize Park. He smiled, much as a torturer might smile on hearing a bone crack. My entire body tensed in a silent scream, but acting is an important part of a dancer’s bag of tricks, so outwardly I smiled back. He continued to watch my face. The effort required to look innocent and unconcerned was agony. I was on the point of confessing everything and throwing myself on his mercy, if he had any, when he said, ‘Lock the door.’

I leaped up to do his bidding. I had been so distracted by the latent menace in the interview that I was unprepared for the pain that shot from the sole of my foot to my knee. The door fastened with an old-fashioned brass rim lock. It took a little while to persuade the key to turn, which gave me a chance to compose my face. As I walked back to the desk I was relieved to see that a lightning change had taken place. His eyes had lost their coldness, his smile was almost affectionate.