Eva Ibbotson - A Company of Swans

There was everything to learn: how to put on makeup, how to allow space at rehearsal between herself and the others which later the costumes would fill… How to anoint and darn and squeeze and thump the ballet shoes, which seemed to be as often on the girls’ hands as on their feet.

But it was class that made Harriet into a dancer. Class, that unfailing daily torture to which dancers come on every morning of their lives. Class in freezing rehearsal rooms, in foyers, on board ocean liners carrying them across the sea. Class with streaming colds, class after their lovers have jilted them, on days when women would give anything to be spared… Class for the prima ballerina assoluta as for the youngest member of the corps.

It was in class that Harriet saw what it cost Lubotsky, the ageing character dancer, to get his muscles to warm up — yet saw too the marvellous authority he still carried. It was in class that she saw Maximov — the darling of the gallery — sweating, exhausted, crying out with the pain of a wrenched muscle… saw the grace and spirituality emanating from little Olga Narukov who ten minutes earlier had pinched a boy from the corps so as to draw blood.

And if Harriet watched the others, there were those who watched her. For even in class there are those who dance the notes and those who dance the music and, ‘A pity, yes, definitely a pity,’ said Grisha with increasing emphasis when Dubrov enquired after his latest swan.

It was not until two days before they sailed that Harriet saw the prima ballerina of the Company, for Simonova had been attending class privately with an old Russian émigré in Pimlico. She arrived for her first rehearsal with the corps on a grey drizzly morning, sweeping on to the stage in a ragged practice tutu set off by purple leg-warmers with holes in them. Her cheek was swollen from the ministrations of her dentist, her complexion was sallow; a muffler of the kind that old gentlemen wear when running along tow-paths during boat-races concealed her throat. Beneath her widow’s peak, with the centre parting that is the hallmark of the ballerina, her black eyes with their pouches of exhaustion, her high-bridged nose and thin mouth gave her the look of a distempered bird of prey.

To Harriet, all this was quite irrelevant. ‘She is a true artiste ,’ Madame Lavarre had said and Harriet’s eyes shone with veneration.

Simonova raked the assembled girls and her eyes fell on Harriet.

Who is that?’ she demanded in her guttural and alarming voice.

Dubrov, who knew that she knew perfectly well who it was, introduced Harriet, who curtseyed deeply. For a moment they gazed at each other — the ardent, worshipping girl and the weary, autocratic woman. Then, ‘There is nothing in the least unusual about her ears,’ pronounced Simonova in Russian, to the mystification of those who spoke the language.

She went over to the piano, unwound her muffler, handed her medallion of St Demetrius to the accompanist — and raised her eyebrows at Grisha.

‘Act One, Giselle,’ he confirmed. ‘From the entry of the hunting party…’

Everyone had expected Simonova simply to mark her steps. This was a routine rehearsal to give the corps their positions in relation to hers; she would rehearse seriously with Maximov later.

But she did not. Simonova, on that grey and drizzly morning in a draughty tumbledown London theatre, danced. She danced fully, absolutely — danced as if she were back on the stage of the Maryinsky and the Tsar was in his blue and golden box. No, better than that — she danced as if she were alone in the world and had only this gift to pour into the heartbreaking emptiness.

And in the theatre for the first time there was real excitement; the mottled hands of grumpy old Irina Petrovna coaxed from the tinny piano some approximation to the delicious score, and Dubrov — who alone knew why she had done it — remembered not only that he loved this ageing, difficult woman, but why…

By midnight on Thursday the last of the props had been packed up and piled into the carts to go to Euston Station. The following morning, the sleepy girls followed the principals on to the train and late that afternoon, Harriet walked with unforgettable excitement up the gangway of the RMS Cardinal with her slim dark funnel and snow-white decks.

‘Come, let’s find our cabins,’ said Marie-Claude.

But Harriet could not tear herself away from the movement and bustle of the docks, from the tangle of cranes and masts, the cries of men loading the freight and hung, huge-eyed and entranced, over the side. Here, now swinging high over the deck and dropping into the hold, was the wicker skip that she had sat on the night before so that the stage-hands could fasten the straps… and here the tarpaulin they had tied round the Act Two flats for Fille.

It was fortunate that she did not observe another, impressively strapped wicker basket waiting on the quay — a basket which had been unloaded earlier and contained three dozen silk shirts bound for Truscott and Musgrave in Piccadilly. For of gentlemen who sent back their shirts to Britain to be laundered, Harriet did not and could not approve.

A man with a megaphone came by, instructing visitors to leave the ship; a single hoot from the slender funnel announced their imminent departure.

It was only when she saw the ever-widening strip of grey and dirty water between herself and the shore that Harriet realised she had done it. She was safe.

A soft breeze rustled the palm trees in front of the Palace of Justice; the flock of parakeets which had roosted on the equestrian statue of Pedro II flew noisily towards the river — and day broke across the Golden City. The cathedral bell tolled for Mass; the first tram clanked out of the depot. Maids in coloured bandannas emerged from the great houses in the Avenida Eduardo Ribero, bound for the arcaded fish-market. A procession of tiny orphans in black overalls crossed a cobbled square. One by one the shutters went up on the shops with their exotic, crazily priced wares from Europe: milliners and jewellers; delicatessens and patisseries…

Down by the docks the men arrived and began to load the balls of black rubber which were piled on the quayside. The fast-dying breeze sent a gentle oriental music through the rigging of the luxurious yachts crowded along the floating landing-stage; from the crazily patched and painted dug-outs of the Indians on the harbour’s fringe came the smell of hot cooking-oil and coffee. A uniformed official unlocked the ornate gates of the yellow customs house and on RMS Cardinal , at rest after her five-week voyage from Liverpool, sailors were scrubbing the already immaculate white decks.

But though this day began like all others, it was no ordinary day. Tonight the Opera House which presided over Manaus like a great benevolent dowager would blaze with light. Tonight carriages and automobiles would sweep across the dizzying mosaic square in front of the theatre and disgorge brilliantly dressed women and bemedalled men beneath the floodlit pink and white facade. Tonight there would be receptions and dinners; every café would be full to overflowing; every hotel room had been secured months ago. For tonight the Dubrov Ballet Company was opening in Swan Lake , and for the homesick Europeans and the culture-hungry Brazilians there would be moonlit glades and Tchaikovsky’s immortal music and Simonova’s celebrated interpretation of Odette.

In the turreted stucco villa which she had christened ‘The Retreat’, young Mrs Bennett surveyed the blue silk gown which she had laid out on the bed, the matching shoes. The blue was right with her eyes, but should she wear the pearls or the sapphires? The sapphires would seem to be the obvious choice, but Mrs Lehmann’s sapphires were so much bigger and better and the Lehmanns had the box next to theirs. ‘The pearls, I think, Concepcion,’ she said to her maid, a cabacla — half-Indian, half-Portuguese — with caring eyes. And her husband Jock, coming to kiss her goodbye, smiled with relief for today at least he would not come home to find her weeping over Peter’s photograph or staring with red-rimmed eyes at a letter with its childish scrawl. Of course the boy was homesick, of course seven was young to be sent so far away. But what could one do? A British boy had to go to a decent school — and anyway, you couldn’t bring up a child in this climate.