Eva Ibbotson: A Company of Swans

The change in her momentarily deflected Henry from his purpose. She looked so pretty all at once that he wondered if it might be possible, by achieving a sudden spurt in growth, to marry her. But more urgent than his matrimonial plans was the request he was about to make, and slipping down from the bench he came up to her and lifted his small hand to pluck gently at her sleeve.

‘Harriet, I think he’s there. “The Boy”… in the Amazon. I’m sure he is. Nannie says he was always talking about it. Will you find him and tell him to come back? Will you, Harriet? Please?’

And Harriet, now, did not say one of the things that came into her head. She did not say, ‘Henry, the Amazon basin is a million square miles — how can I find someone whose name I do not even know? And even if I found him, he would probably be a pompous empire-builder with a big moustache and refuse even to talk to me.’

She said none of these things; she said only, ‘I will try, Henry. I promise you that if I get there, I will really and truly try.’

But now the ladies, searching the grounds, had received some dreadful news. Questioning the surly gardener, they had elicited the information that Harriet was secreted in the maze with a young man. ‘Young Mr Henry,’ the gardener had admitted.

Here was disaster! After all their care and chaperonage, the salacious girl had eluded them!

‘Millicent! Eugenia! Go and deflect Edward,’ ordered Hermione Belper. ‘We don’t want a fight. The rest of us will get her out. Come, Louisa!’

And to a woman the ladies of Trumpington, with ancient Mrs Transom by no means in the rear, plunged into the maze.

What Marcus Aurelius had begun by causing Harriet to question the meaning of the word ‘good’, Henry with his trust and optimism completed. She determined to escape and to do so competently, and casting about for ways and means she remembered a girl called Betsy Fairfield who had been briefly at school with her in Cambridge, but now lived in London.

Betsy was pretty and a little silly and exceedingly good-natured. Harriet had written some essays for her and lent her some history notes and a friendship had developed. Now Betsy, who was a few months older than Harriet, was ‘doing the season’; she was already going to balls and was to be presented at court. Her mother was an easygoing, kindly society lady who had been kind to Harriet.

The afternoon after the visit to Stavely, accordingly, Harriet — finding herself alone — unhooked what Aunt Louisa still referred to as ‘the instrument’ from the dark brown wall of the hallway, asked for Betsy’s number and was eventually put through to her friend.

‘Betsy, this is Harriet.’

‘Harriet? How lovely!’ Shrieks of perfectly genuine if transient enthusiasm emitted from the cheerful Betsy. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m all right. Listen, Betsy, I want you to do me a very great favour. Will you?’

‘Yes, of course I will. Goodness, I always remember that essay you wrote for me about the Corn Laws. And the one about the “bedchamber question”. I got an “A” in both — the only time ever!’

‘Well, listen; I want you to get your mother to write a note to my Aunt Louisa, asking me to stay. I’d like her to write it straight away and I want her to ask me for three weeks. Do you think she would?’

‘Of course she would! Will you really come? That would be absolutely marvellous! You can help me with my court curtsey; you were always so good at dancing. Poor Hetty’s got water on the knee and we don’t know whether—’

It was a while before Harriet could interrupt the spate of words in order to say, ‘And Betsy, when your mother’s written the note could you telephone me yourself to arrange the journey? Ask for me personally? Would you do that? I promise not to be a nuisance.’

‘Goodness, you won’t be a nuisance. Mother really likes you; she’s often said—’ But at this point Betsy recollected what her mother had said about Professor Morton’s treatment of his daughter and the conversation was terminated.

Betsy was as good as her word and her mother wrote a charming note to Louisa requesting Harriet’s presence in London. That Mrs Fairfield’s uncle was a viscount helped to determine the issue; that and the fact that since the night of the unfortunate dinner-party, Harriet had not really been herself. Betsy rang up the day after the note arrived and when they had spoken, Harriet informed Aunt Louisa that the Fairfields would meet the 10.37 from Cambridge on Thursday morning. She packed her own suitcase and her aunt, reflecting on the fact that they would be saving on Harriet’s food for three weeks, actually suggested to the Professor that he might care to give his daughter a guinea, so that she would not be entirely dependent on her friend — and this he did. And so, at a quarter-past ten on Thursday morning, Harriet was assisted into a ‘Ladies Only’ carriage at Cambridge Station and put in charge of the guard.

That there was no one to meet her at King’s Cross was not surprising, since she had told Betsy that she would be arriving on the following day. Harriet gave up her ticket and posted two letters she had written in the privacy of her bedroom. One was to her aunt announcing her safe arrival at the Fairfields’; the other was to the Fairfields and was full of apologies and regrets. Her father’s cousin had been taken seriously ill in Harrogate and they were all leaving immediately for the north… She hoped so much to be able to join them later but at the moment, as they would understand, her aunt did not feel that she could spare her… She would post this letter on her way through London and remained their disappointed but affectionate Harriet.

This done, she stood bravely in line for a cab and when her turn came, gave the driver the address of the Century Theatre in Bloomsbury.

There were seventeen swans, an uneven number and a pity, but the mother of a girl Dubrov had engaged from the Lumley School of Dance in Regent Street had gone to Dr Mudie’s Library and looked up the Amazon in Chambers’ Encyclopaedia — and that had been that.

Now, in the dirty, draughty and near-derelict theatre in Bloomsbury he had hired for the last week prior to the Company’s departure, Dubrov was watching his maître de ballet rehearsing the corps in Act Two of Swan Lake. The moonlit act… the white act… the act in which the ravishing Swan Queen, Odette, is discovered by Prince Siegfried among her protecting and encircling swans…

The Swan Queen, however, was at the dentist and the premier danseur , Maximov, who played the Prince, was not on call until four o’clock. It was the swans that were at issue and here all was far from well. For from the swans in Swan Lake the choreographer demands not individuality or self-expression but a relentless and perfect unison. Above all, these doomed and feathered creatures are supposed to move as one.

‘Again!’ said Grisha wearily, turning his white Picasso clown’s face up to the heavens. ‘From the second entry. Remember heads down on the échappés and when you take hands it is to the front that you must face.’ He hummed, demonstrated, became — this comical wizened little man — for an instant a graceful swan. ‘Can you give me five bars before section 12?’ He nodded to Irina Petrova and the ancient accompanist stubbed out her cigarette in the discarded pointe shoe she had been using as an ashtray and lowered her mottled hands on to the piano keys.

And there’s still Act Three of Fille , thought Dubrov, watching out front — and Giselle and we’ve scarcely touched The Nutcracker , with five days to go. I must be mad, taking out four full-length ballets. But he hated the chopping and dismemberment that was so fashionable — plucking out an act here, a divertissement there… And his principals were good: not just Simonova and Maximov, but Lobotsky, his character dancer, and the young Polish girl whom Simonova feared but to whom she had ceded the Sugar Plum Fairy…