Eva Ibbotson: A Company of Swans

‘I got to one thousand and forty-three seeds last night,’ she said. ‘In the bath. So it’s absolutely all right.’

‘Of course it’s all right,’ he said roughly. ‘All the passengers have to be on board by eight o’clock, so you’ll be back in time for a splendid supper. I’m putting a bottle of Veuve Clicquot on ice — no doubt you will merely get hiccups again, but we must persevere.’

But now they were back, his Indians. He had shooed them away twice before, explaining that Harriet was only going to Manaus and would be back tomorrow, but here again were old José, Andrelinho with his crippled boy, Manuelo with his wife, his baby… and that old witch, Manuelo’s mother-in-law, who now wore her boa of anaconda skins over Harriet’s brown foulard..

The missionaries had taught them to wave — prolonged goodbyes were one of their accomplishments, but there were too many of them today and Maliki and Rainu were snivelling. And now Lorenzo, who was an educated man and should have known better, came forward with a gift for Harriet which he placed in her hand — and which made Rom turn on him angrily with a few low words in his own dialect.

‘Is there something wrong?’ asked Harriet, troubled, looking up from the tiny, perfectly carved wooden canoe with paddles the size of splintered matchsticks and an intricate pattern of blue and scarlet painted across its bows. ‘Should I not take it?’

Rom shook his head. ‘It’s all right.’ But as Harriet thanked Lorenzo, his sense of wretchedness increased. The gift was one traditionally given to ensure safety for those travelling far away across water — and Harriet wasn’t even going in the Amethyst , Lorenzo knew that perfectly well. What the devil had got into them all?

The car arrived. Furo got out and held open the door and Harriet turned to Rom. ‘Could you be so kind as to remember that I love you absolutely?’ she said quietly, almost matter-of-factly. ‘Could you be so kind as to remember that?’

He bent down then to kiss not her mouth, but her fingers, holding them in a strangely formal gesture to his lips.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I could remember that. Were I to forget it, Harriet, it would go very ill with me.’

Long after the car was out of sight and he had returned to the house, his Indians still stood on the steps, waving and waving and waving…

The theatre was dark and silent, the seats already shrouded. It would be a month before another company made its way to Manaus — a Cossack choir from Georgia.

Would they be the last? Harriet wondered, picking her way across the deserted stage. Was Rom right and would this marvellous and fantastical theatre be given over to the mice? Would bats hang from the chandeliers and moths devour the silken hangings? But if it was so — if Mrs Lehmann’s carriage horses had drunk their last champagne and the grandly dressed audience would no longer sweep across the great mosaic square — it had still been a splendid and worthwhile dream to build a theatre here in this place… and one day, surely, it would open its doors again, music would stream from the pit and men, perhaps still unborn, would wait with bated breath for the gold glimmer of the footlights that meant curtain rise.

Down in the wardrobe she found a lone stage-hand, who at first greeted her with respect, not recognising in the elegantly dressed girl the little dancer in her shabby clothes — and then as she smiled, he asked her to sit on the last of the skips so that he could close it, as he had asked her to do three months ago in the Century Theatre when the adventure began.

Then she went back to the stage-door, where Furo was waiting and was driven to the Metropole, where she went, first of all, to say goodbye to Simonova.

During the fortnight since Harriet had last seen her, Simonova’s thinness had become spectacular: now she lay like a death’s head on the single pillow. Dubrov for once was absent, supervising the loading of the scenery.

‘So,’ said the ballerina as Harriet approached and curtseyed. ‘You are happy. One can see that.’

‘Yes, Madame. Extremely happy. But I wish that you—’

‘Oh, never mind, never mind,’ said Simonova irritably. ‘Let them clap Masha Repin. Myself, I will be thankful if I can even walk again.’

‘But you will, you will! Professor Leblanc is the greatest specialist in the world.’

‘Ach, specialists, what do they know? I believe nothing.’ She turned her head restlessly on the pillow and pierced Harriet with her eyes. ‘It will not last, this love of yours, you know that?’

‘Yes, I know. At least, it will for me but not for him. He is going back to the place in England where he was born and there is a woman there who…’ But this did not seem to be a sentence that one finished.

‘Yes, yes. It is always so. Dancers, singers… we are for pleasure, but it is others who become the châtelaines of great estates. So you must see that you get some jewels and you must work and work. Remember what Grisha always tells you about your shoulders — the left one in particular.’

‘Yes, Madame, I will. And I will never forget your Odette — or your Giselle — not if I live for a hundred years. Never, never will I forget them.’

‘And my Lise?’ came Simonova’s sharp voice from the bed. ‘My Lise in Fille — what was wrong with my Lise?’

‘Your Lise too.’ Harriet was close to tears. ‘To have been in your company even for such a short time has been the greatest privilege in the world.’

‘You are a good girl. Now I must rest for the journey, but first…’ She seemed to be coming to some decision, a frown etching deep lines into the worn forehead. ‘Yes, I will do it. Go over there to that blue suitcase.’

Harriet stepped round the stretcher lying ready to convey Madame to the boat and found the case.

‘Lift the lid. There is a pair of ballet shoes on top — my last pair. The pair I wore when I had my accident. Take them out and bring them here to me.’

Harriet did so and Simonova seized them in her bony hands, stroked the pink silk with one long finger as a mother traces the features of an infant in her arms. ‘See,’ she said tenderly, ‘they are hardly worn; I fell so soon. They should go to a museum perhaps — the last shoes of Galina Simonova — but who goes to museums? Take them. They are for you.’

Harriet, unashamedly crying now, shook her head. ‘No, Madame, I can’t! There must be someone who… matters more.’

‘Masha Repin, perhaps,’ sneered the ballerina. ‘Or that pretty friend of yours who thinks only of restaurants. Take them. Take them quickly. And now go!’

It was a very long time before the three friends slept that night. Marie-Claude had a great deal to tell them, for Vincent had secured his auberge and she was to be married in December. ‘And it’s because of you, ’arriette. You made it possible for Vincent to give the deposit and never, never will I forget what you have done.’

As they talked sleepily in their beds it seemed that Kirstin, too, might soon hang up her dancing shoes, for there was a young man in a village on the Baltic not far from the town were she had been born — a childhood friend who for a long time had been willing to be something more. His father owned a fleet of trawlers which Leif would inherit and he had never been to the ballet in his life, which to Kirstin was very much in his favour. ‘I don’t know,’ she said now. ‘It may not work out, but I think I will go back and see. It’s such a pretty place — the red wooden houses, and the water…’

‘So you see, it is you who must be a great dancer, ’arriette,’ said Marie-Claude, ‘so that we can bring our children to see you and tell them that with this divine prima ballerina assoluta we once shared a horrible room full of cockroaches in the city of Manaus.’ She sighed, seeing Harriet’s face. ‘But of course it is this man you want for always — and no wonder,’ she said, motioning to a froth of pale green muslin on the chair: the dress she had bought at Verney’s insistence when shopping for Harriet.