Nights at the Ballet

By Anne Dunhill

Nights at the Ballet tells the story of a beautiful woman and her treatment at the hands of two unscrupulous men, both vying for supremacy at the pinnacle of the Arts World.
Rupert Seymour, Touring Director of the Royal Ballet, astonishes his friends and colleagues by falling in love with another man and abandoning his family after twenty years of marriage. His wife Catherine, deeply shocked, turns for comfort to Rupert's boss, Timothy Jacobs, the rough diamond from television, brought in over Rupert's head to shake up the effete image of the Royal Opera House and make it more accessible to the general public.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookPartnership
• Release date: Apr 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781783017201

Book preview

12

CHAPTER 1

THAILAND 1988

It was hard leaving paradise. Catherine Seymour leaned on the balustrade of her private terrace at the Phuket Yacht Club staring wistfully out to sea while her husband Rupert finished labelling the suitcases inside their suite. They were flying to Bangkok that evening, spending the night at the Airport Hilton and catching the long flight back to London at 7.30 the following morning.

She heard the telephone ring in the bedroom. It was probably the desk to enquire whether their suitcases were ready for the airport bus, or one of their daughters calling from the next door suite. What would happen when they got back? Could the blissful amnesty she and Rupert had been sharing for the past seven weeks continue, or would it be back to the edgy hostility of the last few years of their marriage?

Catherine sighed. Rupert was the newly appointed Touring Director of the Royal Ballet. He had been so cock-a-hoop at finding a thrusting, ambitious young travel agent who had recently set up his own agency and managed to undercut all the giants in flying the entire company to Australia for a mainly triumphant five week tour. But the agent had omitted to inform them that August was the rainy season in Thailand. It had been hard on the children. Rowena and Imogen aged eleven and eight, tired from the frantic shop-till-you-drop days in Hong Kong and the frenetic sightseeing they had crammed in during their two days in Bangkok would have loved to spend all day and every day alternating between the Club beach and pool rather than huddled in their room watching TV or catching up on the travel diary their headmistress had insisted on as a condition for letting them off school two weeks early to accompany their parents on tour. So why, today of all days, did the sun have to shine?

Rupert emerged through the French windows, his face puffy with shock. ‘Ben’s dead,’ he said.

‘Oh no!’ Catherine went to him swiftly and put her arms round him. She felt a curious unreality, as if she were a character in a play. Ben, Rupert’s uncle, the famous choreographer Sir Benjamin Weston OM, CH, CBE, founder, as had often been said in the press, of British ballet, and a man of such universal charm and modesty that no one who met him, from queens to charwomen, had ever failed to fall under his spell. ‘Oh darling, I’m so sorry. How?’

‘I don’t know.’ Rupert’s tone was flat and abrupt. ‘A telegram came from Timothy Jacobs. They read it to me, but I didn’t take it in. I think I’d better go to the desk and get it.’

‘Shall I come?’

‘No. Stay here in case the girls want you. I’ll bring it up.’

‘OK.’ Catherine hugged him and they clung to each other briefly. They made a strikingly good-looking couple. Rupert tall, dark and slim looked much younger than his thirty-eight years in the tight jeans Catherine had persuaded him to buy in Stanley Market, even though he complained about them madly because he said they crushed his balls. Catherine, blonde, beautiful and elegant, still maintained her supple dancer’s body which was clearly evident even through the baggy, black tracksuit she had adopted as her long haul flight uniform. It felt so good, she thought, just for once, to be united in a sincere emotion rather than wary and watchful, afraid to show any weakness in case he took advantage of it. Rupert, she knew, had genuinely loved his uncle, just as she had, and when they’d last spoken to him Ben had seemed glowingly fit and well.

Catherine lit a cigarette. It was her first today. She’d been very good about cutting down since they came on the trip. She sat down on the luxurious sunbed with its blue and white striped cushion where she’d been eating her breakfast in blissful solitude each morning while Rupert and the girls slept, and catching up on her university reading.

Catherine was thirty-five - a highly symbolic age according to the Italian literature she’d been cramming in since beginning her BA in European Studies at London University two years before. It was the age in which Dante had found himself in the dark wood with the true path obscured, the approximate age in which Giacomo Leopardi had composed Il tramonto della luna, his terrifyingly bitter tirade against the passing of youth.

Which way would she go? Certainly bitterness, decline and early death held no appeal. In many ways her life had never been better. The stimulus she had gained from being occupied all day by something she really wanted to do had given her a renewed burst of energy and made her feel that all life’s options were still open to her. But she mustn’t think about that now, she must think about comforting Rupert, even though he richly deserved punishment over the Misha affair.

Misha was the company ballet master and a former principal dancer. At forty he was too old to dance princes any more, but he still made frequent stage appearances, mainly as malcontents – Capulet in Romeo and Juliet, Franz Joseph in Mayerling and the sadistic captain in Manon. He also did class every day and was in remarkably good shape. It must have been Misha’s physique that had attracted Rupert to him, because he was too sinister looking to be conventionally handsome. That or the fact that he wanted Rupert so badly that he was even prepared to include his wife in the ménage. Because of their busy performance schedule and long foreign tours it was difficult for dancers to meet people outside the company, and since the discovery of the HIV virus, homosexuality had fallen into disrepute among the younger dancers. Most of the heterosexual men in the company had at least two women on the go at any one time and Rupert, ostensibly straight with a beautiful wife, must have represented quite a challenge.

Misha had propositioned Rupert during the forced proximity of the annual tour, which was when most of the romances in the company started. Somehow, over a period of several months, Rupert had managed to persuade Catherine that a menage a trois would not only be sexually exciting for her, but would allow him to explore his homosexual tendencies without damaging their relationship. She had capitulated eventually, but the relationship had made her deeply unhappy and distrustful of Rupert’s job, although previously she had adored everything about it and felt a great affinity with the dancers, many of whom were around her own age. It almost made her regret having given up her own career so young.

At fifteen Catherine had defied her teachers and left school in order to train full time as a ballet dancer. At seventeen, having grown to 5’ 8", too tall, in those days, for classical ballet, she auditioned and was accepted for a job as a Bluebell Girl at the Lido in Paris. For two years she turned night into day, dancing till 3 am, sleeping till noon and attending class and rehearsals during the afternoon. In her spare time she modelled for artists and photographers Finally she was spotted by the choreographer of a popular variety show on Italian television and offered a fabulously well paid contract as one of his team of foreign dancers.

She moved to Milan, where she was promptly annexed by Claudio, the producer of the show, a man of thirty-eight to whom she turned gratefully at first because of his reliability and kindness in helping her adjust to a strange new world and language. Soon she began to feel imprisoned by his possessiveness and inability to understand why she wanted to continue with her career when he was willing to support her. An injury to her Achilles tendon sent her back to England where she met Rupert, then aged twenty-five and unhappily employed in a merchant bank.

Rupert was dazzled by Catherine’s cosmopolitan life and theatrical background, and she by his Englishness and conventionality. They quickly started an affair, during which he confided his secret ambition to throw up his well-paid job in order to work in the theatre, and she humoured him fondly, convinced that he wasn’t in the slightest bit serious.

She was astonished when she learned that he had given notice at the Bank and accepted a job as Assistant Stage Manager at Glyndebourne earning £20 per week. Such recklessness seemed to exclude the possibility of a serious relationship, but Rupert showered her with devotion and red roses and begged her to go and live with him at Glyndebourne. To test him she said she would only go if they were married, and to her astonishment he agreed immediately.

Catherine knew that she should mistrust such impetuosity, but she had always allowed her heart to rule her head. She was afraid that if he spent a season at Glyndebourne without her he would meet someone else and it was this, rather than any rational decision about their compatibility that led her to say yes. To supplement their income she sold a flat her mother had bought her in Rutland Gate, and joyfully handed the money over to Rupert. She decided that to occupy herself while they were at Glyndebourne she would study for French and Italian A levels with a view to getting a job later as an interpreter.

She had been totally unprepared for the loneliness she would feel at Glyndebourne. The days were all right, occupied as she was by her studies, but the evenings, when Rupert was working, were terrible. They were still officially on their honeymoon and she didn’t want to nag him, so they spent all their rare moments together making love. Rowena was conceived during one of Rupert’s few days off and Catherine found that the presence of the child inside her renewed her strength and made her less emotionally dependent on her husband.

When the season ended Rupert found himself temporarily unemployed, though he had the promise of more work at Glyndebourne the following season. Through Ben he had met Sir John Thomas, the General Director of the Royal Opera House, and when the job as his assistant fell vacant Rupert applied and was accepted. Sir John had started his career as personal assistant to the previous Chief Executive, and both Rupert and Catherine had reason to hope that if the old order continued, Rupert’s eventual succession would be assured.

Once Rupert started working at the Opera House, his hours were almost as bad as at Glyndebourne and Catherine threw herself into full time motherhood with a passion, as if trying to compensate her daughters for the fact that she was virtually a single parent. This satisfied her until Imogen started school at five, and then, with time on her hands, Catherine took the A levels she had abandoned when she first became pregnant and applied and was accepted for University.

On the surface Rupert was extremely supportive of this new move, but on comparing notes with the other married women in her group Catherine came to identify a subtle and seemingly non-deliberate pattern of sabotage. Was it coincidence, for example, that Rupert had ordered a new kitchen to be fitted in the middle of Catherine’s A levels, or begun the affair with Misha just before Catherine’s first year exams? Deliberate or not, Catherine had emerged triumphantly top of her year in Italian and among the first four in French. Her future career as an interpreter seemed assured. It was a blow therefore that Rupert’s should have been so set back by the appointment of a complete outsider, Timothy Jacobs, the mega successful television producer, as John’s successor.

Catherine jumped. Rupert had returned without her hearing him, and flung himself down on the sunbed next to her. He handed her the telegram in silence. It read simply:

‘Benjamin Weston died in his sleep last night. Regrets Timothy Jacobs.’

‘In his sleep?’ Catherine, ever the optimist, latched immediately on to the one grain of comfort offered. ‘Oh darling, it’s awful for you, I know, but wonderful for him. D’you remember how much he used to dread having a stroke like Mabel?’

Mabel, Rupert’s mother and Ben’s sister, had died the year before after a decade of semi paralysis in a series of infinitely depressing nursing homes.

‘I remember when Mabel died,’ she went on, ‘Ben asking me to promise I’d make sure the same thing didn’t happen to him, and I did, of course. But think how awful it would have been if I’d had to carry out his wishes. I’d have had the whole ballet world up in arms against me. But I’d have done it anyway. We couldn’t have allowed it to happen to Ben, could we? Not after he’d made us promise?’

‘You couldn’t,’ Rupert replied with the curly little grin he always employed when putting her down. ‘But you’re tough.’

Catherine suppressed an angry retort. They couldn’t possibly quarrel now. After the Misha affair ended she had insisted they go for counselling. They mostly attended joint sessions, but occasionally had separate ones as well. At one of these she had confided in Barry, their counsellor, that Rupert was always accusing her of toughness when she knew perfectly well that she was as soft as a marshmallow inside. He had suggested that Rupert was doing it in order to make her feel guilty and therefore easier to manipulate.

She forced a laugh. ‘Well anyway I didn’t have to. I’ve been desperately trying to remember the last time I saw him. I think it must have been at that dreadful gala where we all went on to the Savoy afterwards and there weren’t enough tables. Ben came up to me in the interval and said My dear, I’ve finally arrived. I’ve met Joan Collins.’ They smiled at each other.

‘I feel so awful now,’ she went on, ‘that I wasn’t there when he came round to lunch. Can you bear to tell me about it again, darling? He did like the house, didn’t he?’

Catherine and Rupert had moved three months before to Catherine’s dream home, a nineteenth century, four-storey, terraced house in Chelsea, on a short, enfranchisable lease, within walking distance of the children’s school. Prior to that they had lived in Notting Hill Gate in the house Rupert had owned before their marriage. This worked very well until Rowena was eight because there were excellent schools in the area, but then she transferred to a private girls’ school near Sloane Square and Catherine was forced to spend hours in the car each day ferrying her to and fro because none of the other children in her class lived in their area.

Rupert hadn’t wanted to move. It had taken a year of pleading by Catherine until he finally capitulated. Fortunately the move had also benefitted him since it now took him only ten minutes to drive to the Royal Opera House, so Catherine was sure that any lingering resentment on his part had been eradicated.

‘Tell me again what he said about it,’ she pleaded.

‘I gave him the tour. I took him right up and showed him the girls’ bedrooms which weren’t quite as unspeakable as usual - ’

‘I got them to tidy up specially because he was coming,’ Catherine said. ‘Go on.’

‘Then I showed him our floor, and he looked at everything in silence and we went downstairs again and through the conservatory and into the garden. After we’d walked round that and examined the roses and the magnolia he said he’d like a large Scotch, so we went back into the dining room and he sat down while I poured it for him. Then he took a long drink, put his glass down in front of him and said: Tell Catherine she’s done very well. I like it. I’ve decided to leave Buckstead to you, so you can sell it in a few years if you want and buy your freehold, or do whatever you like with it.’

Buckstead was Ben’s enchanting eighteenth century manor house in Sussex to which he escaped in order to find inspiration for whichever ballet he was in the process of composing. He seldom entertained there, and then only the closest of friends. Rupert and Catherine usually went about once a year for lunch with the children.

‘Did he really say that?’ Catherine’s eyes filled with tears. ‘God how generous. So many people would have insisted we hang on to it come what may.’

‘But I want to hang on to it,’ Rupert said pleasantly.

Catherine felt a stab of fear. One of the great sources of conflict throughout their marriage had been Rupert’s desire to continue living the banker’s lifestyle while earning an arts salary. Rupert’s mother had given him the lease of her cottage near Chichester, about half an hour’s drive from Buckstead, and Rupert had been able to buy the freehold very cheaply using part of the money from the sale of Catherine’s flat. Catherine questioned at the time whether they could afford two houses on Rupert’s newly reduced income, but he became very emotional, saying he would never sell the cottage, and Catherine backed away, frightened by the depth of feeling she had stirred up. Over the years their debts mounted alarmingly, but whenever Catherine suggested selling the cottage Rupert burst into tears and accused her of hating the country. If she argued that she didn’t hate the country, but that they couldn’t afford to run two homes on his income, he flew into a rage and told her she was belittling his job. Gradually Catherine almost came to believe in Rupert’s picture of her as an unsupportive wife who had no appreciation of nature.

‘Do you mean we should sell Italy then?’ Catherine asked tentatively.

During the Misha affair, seeing how much Catherine was suffering, Rupert suddenly and inexplicably offered to sell his mother’s cottage. Catherine accepted warily, convinced he would change his mind, and they agreed to go to Italy that summer and look around to see if they could eventually afford to buy a small house there - something cheaper than the cottage so they could pay off their debts, which they could rent out when they weren’t there to cover costs.

In the event, Rupert had invited Misha on holiday with them, and they had all gone house hunting together. Contracts had been exchanged on the Chichester cottage, and Rupert proceeded to make an offer on the third house they were shown in Italy partly, as Catherine was convinced, to show off to Misha. The cottage was in Rupert’s name only, the money from it was his, and there was nothing Catherine could do. Inevitably the costs had been much higher than Rupert anticipated and they had ended up worse off financially than ever.

‘Oh no,’ Rupert said airily now. ‘Selling Italy wouldn’t buy our freehold. I think we should keep all three.’

Catherine gripped the arms of her sunbed. ‘Careful,’ she said to herself. ‘Don’t say anything now, or he’ll always say what a bitch you were to him when Ben died. There’s nothing you can do at the moment. You can’t buy the freehold until you’ve lived in the house for three years, anyway. Wait. He’ll have to see sense when the time comes.’

‘That would be lovely of course if we could afford it,’ she said mildly. ‘Buckstead is so beautiful. D’you imagine Ben died there?’

‘I suppose so,’ Rupert frowned. ‘He’s usually there through July and August. But then how did Timothy Jacobs get the news? I tried to call him from the desk but there was no reply from his office so I just sent a telegram back to say we’d be home tomorrow evening and could he deal with the press until then.’

‘I hope he’s not going to be a bird of ill omen.’ Catherine shivered. ‘It’s so odd this should happen the moment he takes over.’

‘I know. I can’t say I’m looking forward to working with him. You didn’t like him, did you?’

‘Well he was so rude to me. It was that Sleeping Beauty Gala wasn’t it? I remember asking him if he liked ballet and he said he didn’t know anything about it and walked off and left me standing there.’ She hesitated. ‘But to be fair I don’t think he meant to be rude,’ she went on slowly, ‘it was more a sort of gaucheness - as if he was completely out of his depth

‘I wonder why they went for a complete outsider like Timothy Jacobs,’ she went on. ‘After all John had been at the Opera House since he left school hadn’t he, and he’s always so charming and charismatic.’

‘Whereas Jacobs charges around like a bull in a china shop offending everyone. I think,’ Rupert said somewhat bitterly, ‘that it’s just politically correct at the moment to use people from television. Something to do with shaking up the Opera House’s effete image and making it more accessible to the general public.’

‘Well, they’ll soon discover their mistake,’ Catherine said loyally. ‘And then next time they’ll go for someone who really knows the theatre. You really would have been too young for it this time anyway, darling.’

And you might have given a better interview if you hadn’t been so busy screwing your brains out with Misha, she thought to herself.

‘Maybe. D’you remember how angry you got with me that night?’ Rupert’s smile could not have been more charming.

‘Oh, I know,’ Catherine wished he wouldn’t remind her, but he always waited till she was in a conciliatory mood before inserting the slim stiletto of reproach. If she was sometimes tough with him, she reflected, it was only in order to ward off these surprise attacks. She remembered with shame now that she had actually walked out of the Gala in the interval and gone home and put the chain on the door. It had taken Rupert twenty minutes of pleading through the letter box before she would let him in. ‘It was partly that I was angry with you for going off and leaving me with Jacobs, but I think what really upset me was seeing Misha. It was the first time since it all ended, and he came up and kissed me and I wanted to cry.’

‘You used to like him kissing you,’ Rupert was looking sideways at her with the little boy grin that women and homosexuals found so irresistible and which he still used on Catherine whenever he wanted to cajole her into doing something she didn’t want.

‘Oh please don’t. We’ve been through all this -’

‘But you did enjoy the sex didn’t you?’ he persisted.

‘You know I did. It was probably the most exciting sex I’ve ever had in my life.’ How fiendishly clever of Rupert, she thought now, to insist she joined in rather than just going off and having an affair like any other man would have done. That way he could ensure that she would never be able to reproach him, and would be too ashamed to confide in any of their friends.

‘After all, you do like threesomes.’

She sighed. How was she to have known when she’d confessed to a couple of escapades as a teenager in Paris that he’d insist on lurid verbal reenactments of them every time they made love?

‘So you keep telling me,’ she said shortly.

‘But you know you do. That was the only reason I suggested Misha. And you’ve just admitted how much you enjoyed it.’

‘Physically yes, but it made me desperately unhappy mentally. Don’t you remember how ill I kept getting?’ She stopped herself. They had been over this again and again, both alone and in therapy. ‘I think I deserve another man just for me,’ she said flatly.

Rupert looked shocked for a moment, and then smiled at her flirtatiously, ‘Well, you could start with Timothy Jacobs.’ he suggested, ‘Find out what his plans are for the ballet.’

‘Oh, please.’ Jacobs was in his late fifties, shorter than she was, and distinctly tubby. Catherine had always been a sucker for good looks. ‘Is he married?’ she asked idly.

‘He’s a widower.’

‘What did his wife die of?’

‘I don’t know. They say he’s going to marry Susan Honeycombe.’

‘No!’ Catherine was electrified. Susan Honeycombe presented classical music programmes on television, but was far more celebrated for her private life which had earned her the nickname of ‘the Venus fly-trap’ in the tabloid press. ‘D’you think he doesn’t know?’

‘About her past, you mean? He must do, surely. It’s not exactly a secret.’

‘I wonder what the Board will say.’

‘I expect they’ll be highly embarrassed. She’s probably screwed at least half of them.’

‘But do you realise, darling, that it doesn’t matter any more? Thanks to Ben you’ll be able to afford to walk out if you don’t like working for him.’

‘Well, we don’t know how much money there’s going to be. Anyway I don’t want to walk out.’

‘Of course you don’t want to, and I don’t want you to either, although I know I said I did after Misha. It’s all so much better now. Misha’s got a new man and we’re all friends again. You’ve got the touring job so you can fix the tours during the school holidays, and I get my lovely free ticket from the Company each year so I can afford to travel with you. If I do well in my finals next year and qualify as an interpreter I may even be able to work for the Company on the next European tour.’

If she had been looking at him, Catherine would have seen the shuttered expression that immediately appeared on Rupert’s face. Instead she stood up and went over to his sunbed, cupping his face in her hands. ‘I can’t feel too sad for Ben,’ she said softly. ‘It was such a perfect death, and I’m absolutely certain he’s gone straight to heaven.’

Rupert kissed her. They’d had very exciting sex together that morning during which Rupert had begged her to tell him exactly how she’d like the little Thai boy in the massage parlour downstairs to make love to her, and she, grateful for the supreme cunnilinguistic skill he had demonstrated, had complied with a show of enthusiasm. But there was nothing sexual in this kiss. For once it seemed to contain pure love. He pulled her down gently on top of him and she rested her head for a moment in the hollow of his shoulder.

With their eyes closed they didn’t notice the lightning, but the clap of thunder which followed made them jump apart and rush inside together, laughing, to escape the fury of the storm.

CHAPTER 2

WASHINGTON DC 1994

The banging on the bathroom door became so persistent that it eventually penetrated above the whine of the high speed hair drier. Catherine rushed to open the door to Imogen who stood outside barefoot and dressed only in an oversized white T shirt. She had dark circles under her eyes.

‘What’s the matter, darling?’ Catherine asked anxiously. ‘Do you need to be sick again?’

Rupert, Catherine and the two girls had flown to Washington the day before for the World Premiere of Tristram Blake, the Director of the Royal Ballet’s, new production of Swan Lake, which he had updated to the 1930s and set in Nazi Germany. The four of them were staying in a small suite at the State Plaza Hotel. Rupert and Catherine had the bedroom, and Rowena and Imogen the sofa bed in the living room, which also contained a small kitchen area and bar. There was only one bathroom, so it had been painfully obvious to all of them when poor Imogen had rushed in at 3 am and been violently sick. She had done commendably well to get there at all, but after soothing and comforting her and tucking her back into bed, Catherine had still had to spend half an hour mopping vomit off the side of the bath.

‘I think so.’ Imogen was very pale, and swayed