Body Language

By Lucy Floyd

'When a small child ... I thought that success spelled happiness. I was wrong,' said Anna Pavlova, the greatest ballerina of her time. The same proves true for Sophie, Prue and Vera, dancers whose lives are destined to intertwine with fateful and sometimes tragic consequences. Sophie, born into ballet royalty, wants only to emulate the mother she has never known, a rising star who died young. Her unlikely best friend Prue is ruled by her heart, not her head, which propels her onto a disastrous course of professional and emotional self-sabotage. And Vera, hardened by hatred, longs to escape the Bolshoi and her KGB minders for a life of fame and fortune in the West. All three women will achieve their heart's desire, but not the happiness they expected. As their relationships are tested to the limits by rivalry, jealousy and betrayal, they must question their goals and find a truer and even more difficult path to fulfilment, a journey which spans 25 years and takes them from reckless youth to hard-won wisdom.
'She dissects her characters with merciless compassion. Truthful, perceptive and unflinching ' Woman's Journal Magazine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lucy Floyd
• Release date: Feb 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781783018666

Book preview

NINETEEN

CHAPTER ONE

1960

... my mother cried; but then there was a star danced, and under that I was born.

William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing.

Julia knew that it was Philip on the other end of the phone, just by the sound of the ring. Insistent, plaintive, as full of reproach and pathos as a baby’s cry. His baby’s cry. Darling little Sophie, Julia’s pride and joy, never mind that her good-looking charmer of a father was a cheat and a liar, never mind that her mother was a fool.

Sonia, Sophie’s nanny, answered the phone.

‘It’s him again,’ she announced grimly in Russian.

‘You know what to tell him,’ said Julia, in the same language.

Sonia told him with evident relish, her thick accent giving the get-lost message an added menace. But it wouldn’t stop Philip phoning again, and again. His pleas were just a form of arrogance, bullying even. What Philip wanted, Philip got. Or had done until now. Julia would have liked to meet his wife and tell her, look, I honestly didn’t know he was married, however naïve that sounds, let alone that he’d made you pregnant too. And as soon as I found out I broke things off. Not because I don’t still love the bastard, not out of any high-flown principles, but for my own self-respect. If he’d been honest with me from the start, things might have been different. But he deceived me, same as he deceived you. He’s still deceiving you ...

But of course she would say nothing. Let Pamela continue to hate her; it would be easier for her than hating Philip. Allowing her that solace seemed the least Julia could do for a fellow-victim, especially one who had suffered even more than she had. Pamela had miscarried her baby; her philandering husband was all she had left. Whereas Julia’s life had a new love now, thank God. And an old one. Work. Work would give her back her pride.

Giving Sophie a goodnight kiss she slung her tote bag over her shoulder and prepared to leave for the theatre. This was to be her first performance since giving birth, her chance to prove to herself as well as everyone else that she could dance as well as ever. It hadn’t been easy, getting back into shape. She had had to starve the extra pounds off, put in long punishing hours at the barre, learn to cross the daily pain threshold all over again. But it was only physical pain, after all. Nothing compared to a broken heart. How ironic that she should be dancing Giselle tonight, the tale of an innocent peasant girl seduced by an already betrothed nobleman-in-disguise. Perfect type-casting. Except that she, Julia, wouldn’t go mad and die, as her stage counterpart was doomed to do. She would survive, for Sophie’s sake.

Sonia embraced her fiercely with a muttered ‘merde’; it was bad luck to say ‘good luck’. And her little Julia would need good luck tonight, she thought, as she watched and waved from the window. There were plenty of people waiting, even hoping, for her to fail, behind the curtain if not in front of it. Ballet was a wretchedly bitchy business, and Julia’s less gifted fellow-dancers had always been quick to criticise her technical shortcomings and ignore her superb, precocious artistry.

‘She’s tough, like me,’ Olga, her mother, had shrugged. ‘She can take the pressure.’ Sonia, having once been Julia’s nanny, hadn’t disagreed, well aware of how stubborn her erstwhile charge could be. But Julia’s formidable will power had always exceeded the limits of her physical strength, masking the constant struggle against fatigue, the ever-present fear of failure, and the misery of being the boss’s daughter.

The boss was Lady Olga Madison, known to her dancers as Lady O, founder and artistic director of the Heritage Ballet Company, a woman who expected everyone else in the world to be as indestructible as she was, not least her only child. She certainly hadn’t made things any easier for Julia by making such an obvious favourite of her and propelling her into principal roles at the age of seventeen, straight from the company school.

Lady O was feared, loved and hated in roughly equal proportions, often simultaneously. Both her kindness and her ruthlessness were legendary; Sonia could testify to both. She had been a penniless refugee when Olga had given her a job and a home; out of the countless women widowed by Stalin’s purges, Sonia was one of the lucky few who had escaped to freedom. Having herself fled from the Bolsheviks over twenty years before, Olga knew what it was to be an alien; both women still suffered from maudlin bouts of homesickness, when they would compare memories of St Petersburg/Leningrad over a bottle of Stolichnaya, and toast their departed husbands, Sonia’s languishing in an unmarked traitor’s grave, Olga’s resting beneath a lavishly garlanded marble headstone in Hampstead Cemetery.

Julia had never known her father, Sir Alfred Madison, who had died when she was two. She wouldn’t have had to work this hard to please him, thought Sonia, returning to the crib where Sophie now slept in luxurious infant indolence. He would have spoiled his darling daughter, just as he had spoiled his wife. In his absence, Sonia had tried to do it for him, to moderate the strict regime Olga had imposed on Julia out of a different, more demanding kind of love. A selfish love, perhaps, but at least she had the grace not to resent a talent far superior to her own.

Olga Barisova had never been a dancer of the first rank. A junior soloist at the Maryinsky in St Petersburg, she had left by ship for New York with her mother shortly before the October Revolution, at the age of nineteen, their passage having been arranged in haste by one of her mother’s admirers. Although Barisova mère had posed as a widow, she had never been married to Olga’s father, who had been unable to acknowledge his low-class mistress without risking the loss of his inheritance. In the event he had predeceased his wealthy father, leaving her to find a new protector to support her and her child.

On arrival in America, this resourceful woman had lost no time in bewitching and marrying a wealthy if uncultured tradesman, much to the disgust of her fastidious daughter. Rather than be kept by him in luxury, Olga had joined Anna Pavlova’s touring company, there being no native American ballet, and remained with her for the next ten years, until a bout of diphtheria had forced her to remain behind in London, with all her medical expenses met by the besotted impresario who was to become her husband. Sir Alfred Madison, a childless widower knighted for his services to the theatre, had been glad to set her up as principal of her own ballet school, and to finance the launch of a small company five years later. Both were well established by the time Olga fell belatedly pregnant, at the age of forty.

‘I am a very busy woman,’ she had told a haggard, destitute Sonia. ‘I need someone reliable to look after my daughter while I work, someone who will speak to her in Russian.’ A requirement which had given Sonia the edge over the starched English nannies Olga had already rejected, thereby supporting her benefactor’s claim to be taking her in out of self-interest, not compassion.

‘I’m not the charitable type,’ she had barked. ‘So don’t think you’ve found a soft touch. You’ll have to work hard for your living, as I do. Just because I married a rich man doesn’t mean I’m one of those stupid, lazy women who make a vocation out of being bored or patronising the poor. A three-month trial, and if you don’t give satisfaction you’ll have to find another place.’

This was Olga’s way of relieving her of the need to be grateful. But Sonia was grateful nonetheless. One look at that beautiful, gurgling baby and she was glad to be alive, something she had never thought to be again. While she cuddled Julia, Olga had confined herself to taking hold of one perfect little foot and commenting, ‘The child has good legs, at least.’

‘And so do you, my sweet,’ sighed Sonia, not without regret, planting a kiss on Sophie’s forehead. ‘So do you.’

*

Olga, who had been at the theatre all day, was waiting in Julia’s dressing room, surrounded by flowers from well-wishers, among them a huge bunch of red roses wrapped in cellophane. Julia extracted the card, already knowing who had sent them. Giselle forgave Albrecht, won’t you forgive me? P.

Over my dead body, thought Julia, with a brave stab at black humour. Giselle had forgiven her betrayer in the after-life, not this one. She tore the card in two and tossed it in the waste-paper bin, together with the bouquet. Olga, needing no explanation, grunted in approval. Julia glared.

‘I expect you already steamed open the envelope,’ she said, an accusation which Olga didn’t deign to deny. She had always policed her daughter’s love life, or lack of it, determined that no man should get in the way of the brilliant career she had planned for her. As Julia had only ever met men within the company, who had all been warned off her, she had never encountered temptation until her visit to the TV studios to perform extracts from The Nutcracker for a Christmas cultural slot.

Philip Clancy, the producer, was one of the few people in Julia’s world didn’t owe his job to her mother. On the contrary, her mother had badly needed the revenue from the television project to plug the latest hole in the company’s finances. Philip was not easily intimidated, in fact he soon had Olga eating out of his hand, demonstrating his instinctive gift for seduction.

If Julia had led a less sheltered life, she might have stopped to question the fairy tale come true. As it was she had lapped it up as eagerly as the hapless heroine she would portray tonight. It must have suited Philip very well to keep their affair secret from her mother, and incidentally from his wife as well.

‘I should have protected you better,’ mused Olga, as Julia spread a towel on the dressing table and laid out her brushes, make-up, hairpins and lacquer. It wasn’t an apology — her mother never apologised for anything — more like a threat to curtail her freedom even more in future.

‘You protected me too much.’

‘The end result was the same. Still, all artists must suffer. It will be for the best.’

All artists must suffer. It was a creed Julia had grown up with. One she would not pass on to her daughter. She didn’t want Sophie to be an artist. She wanted her to be happy.

‘But there’s no reason for Sophie to suffer too,’ continued Olga, as if reading Julia’s mind, but of course she meant something quite different. ‘You ought to allow the child’s father to pay something towards her keep. God knows he can afford it.’

‘I’m quite capable of supporting her without his help. That’s why I’m here tonight. Not to please you, not out of loyalty to the company, but for her. And for myself.’ She winced as a sudden cramp in her ribcage robbed her momentarily of breath.

‘Are you in pain?’ An unusual question from Olga, not to say a fatuous one.

‘When am I not in pain?’ Julia removed her street shoes, revealing a mess of blisters, bunions, corns and deformed, gnarled toes. ‘As you just said, suffering’s good for the soul.’ And then, reverting from Russian to English, by way of a dismissal, ‘Do go away, Mama, you’re ruining my concentration.’

Olga complied, suppressing another wave of anxiety. Perhaps she had been wrong to allow Julia to come back so soon, especially in such a demanding role. But with two female principals recently defecting to lusher pastures, Olga had pressed her daughter to fill the breach, knowing that her return would generate useful publicity — scandal had its fringe benefits — and even more useful box office takings. Watching her rehearse, however, she had noticed the absence of her usual attack, although her line was as beautiful and as instinctive as ever, her dramatic powers vastly increased. While audiences made allowances for an ageing ballerina, who might be past her physical peak but remained a mistress of interpretation, they would accord no such leeway to a dancer of twenty-two, even one who had recently given birth. And nor would the critics. Ballet enthusiasts had a lot in common with spectators at a bullfight. Every so often they liked to see someone gored to death.

Julia sighed with relief as the nervous spasm in her chest eased, almost as soon as her mother was out of the way; despite her defiant speech she dreaded letting her down. She fell to anxious perusal of twenty pairs of point shoes, their blocked toes ready hammered out against a concrete floor to render them soundless on stage. She had already sewn on all the ribbons with meticulous care, scraped the soles with a knife to give them a better grip, even unpicked and taken in the backs to give a snugger fit. Shoes were almost as important as what was inside them, they could make or mar a performance. Despite being hand-made to individual measurements, every pair felt different and the joy of finding a ‘good’ shoe was marred by the knowledge that its life would be as short as a butterfly’s.

Julia finally selected a newish left foot, to give better support for her pirouettes, and a well broken-in right one to allow closer contact with the floor. Both would be reduced to pulp by the end of Act One. There were still two hours till the half was called, the minimum she needed to get dressed and warm up and think herself into the rôle. Thinking herself into the rôle was one thing that should be easier now that she had real life experience to draw on. Her neat oval face stared back wanly from the other side of the mirror, her dark hair seeming darker than usual tonight against the increased pallor of her skin. She had inherited Olga’s high oriental cheekbones and her almost-black almond-shaped eyes, but been spared her prominent jaw and hooked nose. She wondered if Sophie’s baby-blonde hair and blue eyes would stay that way, like her father’s. She hoped not. She didn’t want Sophie reminding her of Philip.

Soon Edith, her dresser, came in with a cup of lemon tea with honey, closely followed by Felix Bradshaw, her partner, with a welcome-back first-night gift, an exquisite little broken heart on a silver chain.

‘I had it made specially,’ he said.

‘How apt,’ she said, returning his hug.

‘You’re better off without him, darling. I’ve fallen for swine like him myself, so I know.’ He fastened the heart round her neck like a talisman against the real thing. ‘Full house tonight. Did you see the queue for returns?’

Julia nodded, shuddering. It was all right to admit she was scared in front of Felix, her father confessor, the only person who had been party to her affair and who had helped her cover it up, affecting chagrin all the while that Julia had got to Philip first, he was gorgeous. Thirty-six years old and nearing the end of his stage career, Felix claimed to be looking forward to a cushy life strutting round in non-dancing character roles and drilling the corps de ballet with sadistic glee.

‘They’re all waiting to see me fall flat on my face, you realise,’ said Julia.

‘Not while I’m around to hold you up they won’t.’

She had seemed strangely heavy at the dress rehearsal, thought Felix, even though the poor kid was even thinner now that before she had had the baby. He would have preferred to blame himself for failing muscle power, but it wasn’t that. The old Julia’s apparent weightlessness had little to do with pounds and ounces or her partner’s strength. She had been born with wings, and suddenly they had stopped working.

They went to warm up together and run through the Act One lifts one last time. Felix began to relax. She had started to fly again. She had just been holding back in rehearsal, to save her strength. Once there was an audience watching, she would be as good as new. He wondered if Philip Clancy would be out there, and where his poor mug of a wife thought he was tonight ...

*

Philip Clancy was out there, in Row D, shifting from buttock to buttock in a clapped-out seat. The Heritage Theatre was a dump, he thought sourly, long overdue for repairs and renovations, and an unworthy showcase for a talent like Julia’s. A thousand-seater, it had been the only one of Sir Alfred Madison’s stable of West End theatres of which he had owned the freehold; it had passed to his wife on his death and been the HBC’s permanent home ever since, a luxury the company could ill afford, despite the revenue which came from hiring it out when the Heritage was on tour.

The old girl, unlike Philip himself, had never had a head for finance. But thanks to the size of her husband’s estate, it had taken a good fifteen years for the well to run dry, fifteen years of being answerable to no-one but herself. By that time the leases on the other theatres had run out, depriving her of a regular source of income, and although the Heritage school continued to make a profit, this had proved insufficient to cover the company’s losses.

With the HBC under threat of closure, Olga had had to cede her autonomy as the price of survival. Having achieved charitable status and submitted itself to a board of trustees, the company now depended on the Arts Council, as well as legacies and donations, to shore up its box office receipts, which would never, even with a hundred per cent occupancy and improved housekeeping, be enough to meet its outgoings.

To do Olga justice, she had learned to wield her begging bowl with considerable panache; it took a brave man — or woman — to turn her down. But the HBC remained perennially strapped for cash, vulnerable to its best people being poached by richer companies and unable to afford seat-filling guest performers. It was all very well for Olga to brag, justifiably, about the company’s high artistic standards, but poverty alone was enough to give it a second-rate image. By staying small and independent for so many years to retain sole control she had allowed Sadlers Wells, now the Royal Ballet, to establish a prior claim to state subsidy and expand to become the country’s premier ballet company. It was a bit late to catch up now, not that she would have stooped to admitting there was a race, let alone one she had already lost. Olga might have to cow-tow to the Board these days, and curb her previous free-spending habits, but she was still a law unto herself.

Philip had never liked the bossy old bag, despite the Eton-and-Balliol charm he had lavished upon her. It was thanks to her, he was sure, that Julia was being so unreasonable, returning his letters unopened and refusing to answer his phone calls — proof, to his mind, that she didn’t trust herself not to weaken. If it wasn’t for her mother breathing down her neck they would have sorted everything out by now. He would wear her down eventually, prove to her that it hadn’t just been sex, that he really and truly loved her, and Sophie too.

As the overture began he cast his mind back to the first time he had seen her, in 1958. It had been soon after his return from Canada, where he had been working for five years, missing her meteoric rise to fame. She had danced an exquisite Princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty, her infinitely pure, infinitely sensual arabesques keeping a goggle-eyed Philip in a state of painfully acute frustration, tormented by the thought of burying himself between those tantalisingly open legs. Brandishing his BBC credentials, he had presented himself backstage, only to find her even more ravishing close to. It was her obvious innocence which had beguiled him. For a seasoned if jaded womaniser, the sight of so much virgin flesh had presented him with a cleansing vision of redemption; he had approached his seduction of her with all the humility of a pilgrim.

Which was why he had known better than to show his interest in front of her eagle-eyed mother, who would have vetted him within an inch of his life and no doubt found out that he was married. As it was, his talk of televising a Heritage ballet had kept Olga nicely under his thumb. Meanwhile he had got busy installing Pamela in a Queen Anne house in Suffolk where she could breed her beloved pedigree dogs, child substitutes every one. The care she lavished on them left her with neither the time nor the inclination to visit the London pied-à-terre where Philip lived from Monday to Friday, or to complain when he had to work weekends.

He had intended to confess to his wife first, then to Julia, softening the impact with a large settlement for the former, and a large engagement ring for the latter. But not until he had made Julia fall in love with him. If he’d come clean with her from the start he wouldn’t have stood a chance, not with an old-fashioned Nice Girl like that. He had planned everything with meticulous, some would say cold-blooded care, but only out of consideration for all concerned, not least himself.

His wife’s pregnancy had been the most fiendish piece of bad luck. They’d been trying for years without success, drifting further and further apart in the process, and then poor Pammie had been so over the moon when it finally happened that he hadn’t had the heart to tell her he was leaving her, especially with the doctor muttering about her blood pressure and recommending complete bed rest. But he would have left her once the baby was safely born. He was still ready to leave her. But surely Julia didn’t expect him to walk out this minute, on a wife who had just lost a child? And didn’t he, the bereaved father, deserve a little sympathy too? In a few more weeks, once their respective hormones had settled down, Pammie would be over her depression and Julia would realise how petty she had been.

The curtain rose and Count Albrecht, alias Felix Bradshaw, made his entrance. Time they pensioned that old queen off, thought Philip, envying him his right to touch and hold her. Still, he was a safe pair of hands, if not exactly a crowd-puller like the company’s former premier danseur, Martin Pringle, a home-grown star who had been lured to Covent Garden, and who could blame him? Covent Garden was where Julia should be dancing, instead of in a flea-pit like this. Philip cared passionately about Julia’s talent. He didn’t just want to marry her, but to be her mentor and manager, to mastermind her career, to watch her perform in prestigious opera houses all over the world. As it was, her mother would never let go of her biggest asset, she would keep her here for the rest of her dancing life, and a dancer’s life was pitifully short ...

*

Everything came right once Julia was on stage. It always had done. Her nerves faded, fresh energy flooded into her, and all her aches and pains disappeared. She knew that she was dancing better than ever, the sheer joy of it transporting her to new heights. Part of her was lost inside the role, but another part of her remained detached, in control, observing herself critically, aware of every step, every breath ...

Olga, a traditionalist, insisted on keeping in the long mime passages, which were often left out by other companies as holding up the action and being incomprehensible to the lay observer. But if you bothered to read the programme notes, you would understand that Giselle’s mother, Berthe, was warning her against the perils of dancing too much, because of her weak heart. Which didn’t stop her dancing with Count Albrecht, unaware of his prior attachment, endangering her heart in a quite different way.

The libretto might seem absurd to modern eyes, but it was supposed to resound with all sorts of eternal truths, truths which had only recently come home to Julia. She could identify almost too readily with Giselle’s guileless trust of Albrecht, understand the blind joy of first love, and feel her despair when she discovered his deception. But there the outward resemblance stopped. Unlike Giselle, Julia hadn’t gone to pieces. She had been strong, dignified, proud. No one except Sonia and Felix had seen her cry, least of all Philip himself. On stage, however, she had permission to rage and rave, to give glorious, melodramatic vent to her feelings. And then, in Act Two, she would have the catharsis of forgiving Albrecht from beyond the grave, of saving his life from the vengeful spirits of other betrayed women.

But Act One wasn’t over yet. What a relief it would be, at the pinnacle of her madness, to plunge Albrecht’s sword into her broken heart! Not that Julia had contemplated killing herself for an instant, not with a new life growing inside her. But now, at the crucial moment, locked inside Giselle’s simple brain, she embraced death as a saviour. Clutching the papier-mâché weapon to her chest, she sank gracefully to the ground. Only then did she understand, dimly, briefly, how much her efforts had cost her, and what bliss it would be just to lie there and rest, for ever.

*

The Act One curtain came down to rapturous applause. Julia didn’t move.

‘Time to rise from the dead,’ said Felix, taking hold of her hand. ‘You were brilliant, darling.’

He tried to pull her to her feet but she didn’t respond. The stage manager was making impatient signals, telling them to for God’s sake get on with it.

‘She’s passed out,’ called Felix, crouching down beside her. It happened sometimes, he had fainted himself, once, from sheer exhaustion. He lifted her dead weight with an effort and carried her into the wings, while the audience continued to clap.

*

The interval had been longer than usual, giving Philip time for some extra Scotch courage prior to waylaying Julia at the stage door.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please. Due to the indisposition of Miss Julia Madison, Miss Clara Bentley will take over the part of Giselle for the remainder of the performance.’

There were murmurs and groans from the audience, groans of annoyance rather than concern. They had come to see Madison, dammit, and now they were being short-changed. Philip wasn’t the only one to leave his seat rather than sit through an inferior Act Two, except that Philip didn’t follow the other malcontents out into the street. Emboldened by two doubles, he made his way through the pass-door leading backstage, and just let anybody try to stop him. Julia wouldn’t have dropped out of her comeback performance unless she was seriously injured, not that she had given any sign of injury, but dancers were well known for their ability to soldier on regardless, defying all the laws of physics.

She would have pushed herself too hard even without that battleaxe of a mother standing over her with a whip. Masochism had been bred into her from birth. She should have been allowed more time to ease herself back in, instead of being subjected to a crash course in time for the new London season. An exhausted, overstressed body was far more vulnerable to damage, Olga ought to know that. Her precious company had always been more important to her than her daughter. And Olga had accused him of exploitation!

Nobody intercepted him. It seemed unnaturally quiet backstage, despite the sound of the second act coming over the tannoy. He made his way towards Julia’s dressing room. Inside he could hear someone crying.

He tapped on the door and opened it unbidden, to find a couple of uniformed nurses from the St John’s ambulance brigade, one of whom was trying to coax Edith, Julia’s dresser and the source of the sobs, to swallow some water. Damn. The ambulance must have been and gone before they made the announcement.

‘Where have they taken her?’ he demanded. ‘The Middlesex?’ Nobody answered. ‘I’m her fiancé,’ he added, hoping that Edith was too distraught to gainsay him. Taking his arm, one of the nurses shepherded him out into the corridor.

‘Lady Olga didn’t want anyone else to know until after the performance,’ she said in a hushed voice. ‘She’s gone to the hospital with her.’

‘Why all the secrecy?’ said Philip, impatient now. ‘Is it serious?’ Serve Olga right if Julia was out for the rest of the season, thereby robbing the HBC of its star attraction and plunging it further into crisis.

‘The company doctor was in the audience,’ said the nurse. ‘He did his best to revive her, he tried heart massage and an injection, but it was no good. I’m so sorry.’

Philip stared at her stupidly.

‘He said it would have been instant,’ she added, seeking to console him. What the hell was the stupid woman talking about? thought Philip, refusing to understand. Young, healthy women didn’t die of heart failure. No-one with a weak heart would have survived five minutes of ballet training, let alone fifteen years. It was Giselle who was dead, not Julia. He must have fallen asleep, out there in the stalls, this was just a hideous dream ...

He heard his own voice yelling ‘No!’ in a futile attempt to wake himself up, but it didn’t work, his guilty conscience holding him captive. ‘No!’ he yelled, louder now. ‘No!’

Hearing his cries, the other nurse appeared and together they hushed him back into the dressing room, sat him down on Julia’s day-bed, offered him water when what he needed was a stiff drink. He covered his face with his hands, willing himself to stay calm, not to panic. She was just trying to frighten him, to punish him. If he sat here long enough, she would come back. It stood to reason. A trouper like Julia would have waited for the final curtain, not died in the middle of a performance.

He clung to this precarious logic by his fingernails. Of course she was coming back. Her white tutu was waiting for her on its hanger, and beneath it the shoes she had chosen for Act Two. An untouched glass of lemon tea was cooling on the dressing table, along with an opened packet of glucose tablets. He breathed deeply, slowly, greedily, gulping down the smell of her dressing room, a place he had never visited since that first encounter, given the need for subterfuge. But the scent was all the more evocative for that, a mixture of perfume and talc and embrocation and first night flowers. All that was missing was the fresh, salty post-performance sweat, sweat he longed to lick off her ...

It was then that he noticed his fifty red roses, heads down, in the wastepaper bin. Numbly, he bent and retrieved the card, tearing a finger on the thorns. He had written the message himself, gone into the florists’ specially, so that she would touch something he had touched. Giselle forgave Albrecht, won’t you forgive me? A drop of fresh blood smudged the blue ink, making it run purple.

The comforting fog of shock dispersed, leaving him blinking at the hideous truth. He had lost her, for ever this time. She had gone without forgiving him. She would never forgive him now ...

But perhaps Sophie would. Sophie was all he had left of her. Sophie was his only hope of salvation.

CHAPTER TWO

1969

It is only rarely that one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman.

Alexandre Dumas, fils.

Saturday, thought Sophie, stretching her arms above her head in anticipation. As an infant she had called it Dadaday, which it still was, the highlight of her week, when her father would collect her in time for lunch and not bring her home till bedtime.

Jumping out of bed, she opened her big, old-fashioned wardrobe, exposing the long mirror on the inside of its door, and excavated the pair of ballet shoes hidden in its inner depths. She put them on, tied the pink ribbons with care, added a pair of footless woolly knee socks as extempore leg warmers, shucked off her nightie and took up her position before the glass in her Aertex vest and navy blue knickers. One hand resting on the bedstead, she went solemnly through her private morning barre, a much more rigorous affair than the babyish version taught at the Peabody Dance Academy in Highgate where Daddy would deliver her this afternoon, unbeknown to her grandmother. Babushka would be told they had been to the cinema, the zoo, or trailed round some dreary museum. Sophie found Miss Peabody’s lessons dispiritingly easy, but they were better than no lessons at all.

‘Not a word to the old girl,’ Daddy had warned her. ‘Let’s see how things go, and then I’ll pick a good time to talk to her.’

There was never a good time to talk to her on that particular subject. Sophie had wheedled, thrown tantrums and sulked in vain. Babushka would simply repeat that she wasn’t strong enough to dance. Sophie had been labelled ‘delicate’ from the day she was born, or rather from the day her mother had died. Not only was she not strong enough (never mind that she was bursting with surplus energy) but her feet were the wrong shape, her neck was too short, her head was too large, and she was already much too tall for her age, if she carried on growing at this rate she would hit the ceiling. The only benefit of her supposed frailty was that Sophie was excused games at school, which suited her very well, as sports, apart from swimming, could damage your feet, and develop the wrong muscles.

‘It’s pointless to deny the child like this,’ Sophie had overheard Sonia saying. Sonia could always be relied upon to stick up for her, if never in Sophie’s presence. ‘You’ll only make her want it all the more. And besides, the doctors say she is healthy.’

‘They also said the condition is hereditary.’

‘Might be hereditary.’

‘Might is enough. I’m not taking any chances with the little one, losing her mother was bad enough ...’

As she went through her illicit morning routine Sophie got a certain morbid thrill in imagining herself dropping lifeless on the carpet, a human sacrifice to her art. She found the story of her mother’s death wonderfully noble and tragic, and if she had any say in the manner of her own demise, that was precisely how she would choose to go. She liked to think that Mama was looking down on her puny efforts from heaven, sanctifying her enforced sin.

Humming her own accompaniment, Sophie took herself through her pliés, watching herself in the long mirror, imagining herself not in her bedroom, not at Miss Peabody’s, but in the company studio next door, or better still warming up before she went on, the prelude to a brilliant performance and umpteen curtain calls, with flowers cascading onto the stage and the audience yelling bravo. She could see herself now, ethereal in her tutu, plucking a rose from her bouquet to hand to her partner, who would kneel humbly at her feet and kiss her hand, joining in the communal worship of the greatest prima ballerina assoluta of all time ...

Sophie always imagined such scenarios against the backdrop of the Heritage Theatre, though in fact she had rarely been there, given that evening performances didn’t start till after her bedtime, which was still humiliatingly early, and midweek matinées clashed with school. When Daddy took her to the ballet on a Saturday afternoon, it was always to Covent Garden. The Heritage seats were too damned uncomfortable, he said. Occasionally, on birthdays or as a special treat, Babushka would allow her to stay up late to see a first act before being bundled ignominiously home to bed, but generally she discouraged her interest. Babushka had a low opinion of ballet-mad little girls. Even those accepted into the company school were viewed with a certain malice. ‘So you want to be dancers, do you?’ Babushka would snarl, sergeant-major-like, at the dewy-eyed first years. ‘We’ll soon see about that...’

Sophie moved on to her battements tendus, extending her leg to the front, side and rear, toes pointed, free arm held achingly in second position. She had watched company class often enough on Saturday mornings to know the sequence of exercises off by heart. There was a spot on the staircase which overlooked the studio, giving a good view through the high glass panel which ran the length of the wall. At ten-thirty she would sneak off to her vantage point, and sit there quietly observing, unobserved, able to disappear quickly, if need be, through the door on the landing which led to the other side of the building.

The HBC’s rehearsal rooms, offices and senior school were housed, appropriately enough, in a former convent in a quiet road off Haverstock Hill. Little remained of the original structure except the grey stone, ivy-clad walls and the gothic-shaped leaded windows, the interior having been gutted and refurbished in the early days of the company when money was no problem.

The Madison flat, where Sophie had lived all her life, occupied several large high-ceilinged rooms on the ground floor, among them Lady Olga’s private suite, replete with heavy old-fashioned furniture and a vast collection of memorabilia — a pair of Pavlova’s shoes in a glass case, the bronze medal the young Barisova had won at Varna in 1915, old playbills from the Maryinsky Theatre, sundry souvenirs of overseas tours presented by foreign dignitaries, and innumerable framed photographs — of landmark company productions, of its founder shaking hands with Princess Margaret, and, much to Sophie’s mortification, of herself as a horribly fat baby, complete with gummy grin.

It was here that Lady O entertained patrons, prospective patrons, favoured members of the HBC and visiting luminaries of the ballet world, and here that those who had displeased her were subjected to her fearsome tirades, with an insatiably curious Sophie avidly watching the comings and goings and eavesdropping at every opportunity. She was used to nobody noticing her, which she accepted as a kind of freedom, her grandmother being fully occupied with her work and Sonia doubling up, now that Sophie was at school, as the company’s general factotum.

Her humming slightly breathless now, Sophie proceeded patiently through her glissés, ronds de jambe, frappés and fondus, changing hands half way through each exercise and making do with a truncated view of her body in the dressing table mirror. Then, forsaking her makeshift barre, she invented an adage in the middle of the room, barking instructions at herself, trying to sound as bad-tempered as Babushka did when she took class. Miss Peabody wasn’t nearly bad-tempered enough to inspire any confidence in Sophie, who came in for an embarrassing amount of praise, and was often required to demonstrate steps for the benefit of her less able classmates. Knowing Sophie by her father’s surname of Clancy, Peabody had no idea that her promising new pupil was the granddaughter of one of the doyennes of British ballet — thank goodness, otherwise she might have bragged about it and word got back to Babushka.

Half an hour later, bathed and dressed, with her long dark hair neatly braided, Sophie was sitting demurely at table with Sonia, her grandmother, and uncle Claude, who often joined them for breakfast. A thin, balding man in his fifties with wire spectacles and a lisp, Claude was Olga’s nephew by marriage, the son of her late husband’s elder brother who had perished in the battle of the Somme. For the last ten years Claude had also been the company’s accountant and chief administrator, a rôle which Olga, who had no head for figures, had no choice but to delegate. Her interest in finance was confined to extracting money out of wealthy balletomanes and penny-pinching bureaucrats, and then spending it. Not that any of it went on herself. As director of the company she drew only a nominal salary, not because she had a private income any longer but because the allowance Sophie’s father paid for her keep, in exchange for visitation rights, effectively kept the whole household in comfort.

Sophie knew that her father had tried to win custody of her through the courts when she was a baby. He had told her so himself, to reassure her that he had loved and wanted her every bit as much as her grandmother. His plea had failed because he hadn’t been married to her mother, in fact he had still been married to someone else at the time, a woman who had divorced him not long after Mama had died.

Rather than wait for her to hear it from someone else, Babushka had explained to Sophie that she was ‘illegitimate’, adding that she had been illegitimate too, there was no shame in it, not from the child’s point of view at any rate, although Daddy seemed to think there was; Sophie had heard them arguing about his wish to adopt her, or at least change her name to Clancy by deed poll.

‘It was her mother’s choice not to name you on the birth certificate,’ Babushka had responded icily. ‘You think I would betray her by ignoring her wishes?’

‘Is that why make me pay through the nose for the right to see my own child once a week? So as not to betray Julia’s refusal to take a penny from me?’

‘So you begrudge the money for Sophie’s keep, do you?’

‘Stop twisting my words, you evil old bat ... ’

Sophie, who wallowed in any kind of drama, thoroughly enjoyed such quarrels. She had learned at an early age to play Daddy and Babushka off against each other. Better to have them at each other’s throats than ganging up against her. As for the circumstances of her birth, she took a pride in being different, having grown up absorbing bohemian rather than bourgeois values. What had shocked her, however, was finding out that the scandal caused by her birth had led, however indirectly and unofficially, to the reduction of the HBC’s Arts Council grant, a decision which had almost resulted in its closure. Babushka had often said that she didn’t expect to be included in any Honours Lists unless a lot of old hypocrites fell off the twig before she did. Such injustice filled Sophie with passionate campaigning outrage, and not a little guilt. One day, she vowed, she would make it all up to her, and lead the company towards a glorious future.

Claude was droning on about the budget for the forthcoming company tour and querying the number of point shoes allowed per member of the corps de ballet.

‘Ten pairs a month!’ he was complaining in his high-pitched whine. ‘We simply can’t afford it any longer, with the price going up year by year. If you allocated eight pairs, we could make an annual saving of — ’

‘A ballet company marches on its feet,’ interrupted Olga, spreading blackcurrant jam on a slice of rye bread. ‘And the corps are on them all the time, poor wretches. It’s all very well for you, Claude, sitting on your piles all day.’

Sophie stifled a giggle, eliciting a warning look from Sonia over the top of her teacup; remarks unfit for childish ears — and Olga’s language was often colourful, not to say crude — were routinely made in Sophie’s presence, but only on the strict understanding that she pretended not to hear them. Scowling, Claude retreated into his bowl of All-Bran. Sophie felt rather sorry for him; it must be awful to be so boring. The only vaguely interesting thing about him was that he had a young boyfriend with whom he lived in sin in Maida Vale, but even that was a fairly ordinary state of affairs, by Sophie’s standards, and did little to redeem his total lack of a sense of humour.

‘What has your father planned for you today, child?’ demanded Olga, transferring her attention to Sophie. As usual her grey hair was hidden under a black silk turban, which matched her belted tunic, calf-length skirt and kohl-ringed eyes. Sophie had never seen her wear any other colour. Her face, by contrast, was powdered almost white, her lips painted a vivid red.

Having never mastered the art of lying, Sophie blushed and said, ‘Oh, we might go to the pictures. Or for a row on the Serpentine. It depends on the weather.’

‘You might ask him to buy you some new shoes. I never knew a child whose feet grew at such a rate. Already they’re like boats.’

Sophie hung her head miserably. It was true, her feet were huge. And they weren’t the only thing that was growing. She had shot up another inch in the last month. Mama had been so dainty, only five foot three with lovely little feet to match. But Daddy was six foot two and his feet were absolutely enormous. Suppose her feet ended up as big as his? Suppose she grew as tall as him?

‘Can I have black patent leather ones, with a bow?’ asked Sophie, trying to look on the bright side.

‘Not unless he buys you some new school shoes as well. You’d better take your old ones with you today, so you can get the same kind.’

Sophie thought of her horrible round-toed lace-ups with disgust. She had always hated everything about school, a fiercely regimented private establishment, paid for by Daddy, of course, and dedicated to the production of well-mannered young ladies. Sophie had missed the first two weeks of her first term, due to a cough which was promptly labelled bronchitis — Babushka confined her to bed at the slightest sneeze — and by the time she turned up everyone had already paired up into ‘best friends’. Not a natural mixer, having had little contact with other children, she had been the odd one out ever since. But dread of being sent somewhere even worse had muzzled her complaints. There was only one school where she would be happy and they didn’t accept pupils under the age of eleven, which was two whole years away. If Babushka wouldn’t relent and accept her into the company school, Sophie planned to throw herself in front of a train like Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes.

Breakfast over, Olga went off to take class, Sonia started sorting through that day’s post, and Sophie disappeared ‘into the garden’ to await her father’s arrival. Thanks to its neglected state, disappear was an appropriate word, its nether reaches being invisible from the house. Trellises once occupied by the nuns’ runner beans had been colonised by ivy and bindweed, bushes of elder ran rampant, obscuring the moss-encrusted paths and encroaching onto lawns whose grass had been overrun by dandelion and clover. As soon as Sophie heard Daddy’s distinctive ring on the doorbell, she would desert her post on the stairs and run outside, ready for Sonia to call her in.

Class began at ten-thirty; Daddy usually arrived soon after eleven. Sophie made her way to her usual station, her grandmother’s voice resounding through the building above the piano accompaniment; the jerky, erratic rendition indicated that it was Mrs Dummer, who came in two days a week, at the keyboard. A mad-as-a-hatter war widow, she was one of Olga’s collection of hard luck cases which gave the lie to her reputation for ruthlessness. Voluminous in a variety of shapeless home-knitted cardigans of startling hue, Dummer smelt of cats and whisky-laced tea and was never seen without an untipped Woodbine hanging out of the corner of her mouth; she had a habit of shaking her head, concert-pianist-style, over her cigarette-scarred instrument, sending hot ash and hairpins flying in all directions. Dancers muttered mutinously over her precarious grasp of tempo, which ranged from lugubrious slow-motion to manic high speed, according to her mood of the moment — excellent practice, Lady O would claim blithely, for adapting to the vagaries of foreign orchestras on tour.

Sophie’s position gave her a restricted view of one side of the long mirrored room, showing her not only the dancers but their reflected images. Everyone always stood in the same