Eva Ibbotson - A Glove Shop In Vienna

It could not be — surely to God it could not be — that to share these duties he proposed to install a dancing girl, probably of low birth, whom he had glimpsed for five minutes in a strange barbaric land.

For as the months passed, the memory of that extraordinary encounter became more and more blurred and dreamlike. He could remember Vanni’s posture at the barre but her face increasingly eluded him. So when his stately widowed mother told him that the Stanton-Darcys were coming for the weekend and bringing Diana, Alex was pleased. He had attended Diana’s coming-out ball, sat next to her at Hunt dinners. She was twenty-one, sweet, with curls as yellow as butter, large blue eyes and a soft voice.

Diana came. The weekend was a great success. She went with Alex round the farms, the tenants took to her, his factor presented her with an adorable bulldog puppy. She was already a little in love with him — being in love with the handsome foxy-haired Captain Hamilton had been the fashion among the debutantes of her year. Yet somehow it happened that three months later she became engaged to the Earl of Farlington’s youngest son, for girls with blonde curls and big blue eyes do not lie about unclaimed for long.

Alex’s mother swallowed her disappointment and tried again. Selena Fordington was an heiress — unnecessary in view of Alex’s considerable wealth — but agreeable none the less: a quiet, intelligent girl whose plainness vanished as soon as she became animated. Alex liked her enormously, took her to Ascot and Henley — and introduced her to his best friend who promptly married her.

A year had passed since his visit to Russia and his longing to be ordinary, not to be singled out in this bizarre way, grew steadily. Yet the following winter he stood aside and let Pippa Latham go. Pippa, his childhood love, a tomboy with the lightest hands in the hunting field and a wild sense of humour, who returned from India a raven-haired beauty with a figure to send men mad…

It was time to return to Russia and lay his ghosts. His and hers, for Vanni, if she remembered him at all, was probably living under the protection of a wealthy balletomane or even married to a dancer with hamstrings like hawsers and long hair. He would take her out for a meal, buy her a keepsake… They would laugh together about what had seemed to happen in that high bare room in Theatre Street, wish each other luck… And he would return to his country a free and normal man.

Thus at the end of May 1914, having arranged to take the long leave owing to him, Alex set off again for Russia.

His host, the hospitable Count Zinov, was overjoyed to see him, but apologetic.

‘It is the last night of the Maryinsky season — a gala performance of Swan Lake . It would be hard for my wife and me to miss it, but if you did not feel like joining us we could arrange for you to dine with friends. I know you do not care for ballet.’

Alex bowed. ‘I would be honoured to accompany you,’ he said.

The Maryinsky is a blue and golden theatre, sumptuous beyond belief. The chandeliers, all fire and dew, drew sparks from the tiaras of the women, the medals of the men. The Tsar was in his box with his wife and two eldest daughters. The Grand Duchess Olga had put up her hair.

In the Zinovs’ loge , Alex joined in the applause for the conductor. Tchaikovsky’s luscious soaring music began… The curtain rose.

Act One: A courtyard in Prince Siegfried’s Palace… The courtiers parade in cloth of gold. The peasantry arrive with gifts for the Prince. They dance. They dance, it seems to Alex, for a remarkably long time. The King and Queen approach their son. It is his birthday, they inform him in elaborate mime; it is time to choose a bride.

But the Prince — the great Vassilov in suitably straining tights — does not wish to marry. He grows pensive…

The music changes, becomes dark and tragic. Swans, seemingly, are flying overhead. The Prince is excited. He will go and hunt them. His courtiers follow.

The curtain falls.

An interval… champagne… a French Countess in the next box flirting outrageously with Alex.

And now, Act Two. This of course is the act that is the ballet. A moonlit glade… a lake… a romantic ruin, some equally romantic trees. To the world’s best loved ballet music, the doomed Swan Queen enters on her pointes. She is in a white tutu with a tiny crown on her lovely head, and on the night in question is greeted by sighs of adoration for she is danced by the fabled Kschessinskaya, once mistress of the Tsar.

The crown on her head is useful, for were she to be danced by anyone less exquisite it might not be easy at once to distinguish her from her encircling and protective swans.

Just how many swans there are in Swan Lake depends of course on the finances and traditions of the company, but there are a remarkable number and the discipline and precision with which they conduct themselves can make or mar this masterpiece. Perfect unity, the ability to act as one is what the Russians demand and get from their corps . Identical in calf-length tutus, their hair hidden by circlets of feathers, their arms and faces blanched by powder, these relentlessly drilled girls would have made peas in a pod look idiosyncratic.

So now, despairing at her fate (for she is, of course, an enchanted princess) Odette glides forward. A row of fifteen swans jete from stage left towards her, so far away on the vast stage that their faces are nothing but a blur. Fifteen more come from stage right. Ten swans enter diagonally from both the upstage corners. And from the centre, as if from the lake itself, the last row of girls, their fluttering arms crossed at the wrists, doing their battements …

The first swan, the second, the third…

At which point, the voice in Alex’ head which had been silent for two years said, ‘ That one’ .

Two hours later he waited at the stage door among a crowd of students and admirers. The orchestra came out first: tired men in shabby overcoats carrying their instruments. Then the first group of girls, chattering like starlings, excited at the long summer break ahead… and another…

And now three girls: a curly red-head, a dark Circassian beauty and in the middle…

‘Come on, Vannoushka,’ begged the curly-haired Olga.

‘No… you go on.’ Vanni had stopped, hesitant and bewildered, like a fawn at the edge of an unfamiliar clearing. ‘I feel… so strange.’

Alex had been hidden at the back of the crowd. Now he came forward, walked up to her, bared his head.

‘We met two years ago, in Theatre Street. I said I would return. Do you remember?’

And she said, ‘Yes.’

They went to Paris, the Mecca of all Russians. When they arrived, he booked two rooms at the luxurious Hotel Achilles in the Rue St Honore. They dined in its magnificant restaurant, strolled in the Tuileries Gardens. Then he took her upstairs, let her into her room and went on into his own room next door.

An hour later, leaning out of the window, he heard one of the most heart-rending sounds in the world: that of someone trying not to cry.

‘What is it, Vanni?’ he said, throwing open her door. ‘For God’s sake, my darling, what’s the matter?’

She was sitting in her white nightdress on the edge of a four-poster bed. Her long brown hair was loose about her shoulders and the tears were rolling silently, steadily down her face.

‘Why did you bring me, then?’ she managed to say. ‘If… I do not please you. You knew I was not pretty… You knew…’

Appalled, he began to babble… about marriage… about respect… he was going to the Embassy tomorrow to arrange

‘But it is not tomorrow,’ she said, bewildered. ‘It is now. It is today.’