Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
“Ballet is about forward movement, even when you are standing still,” Madame Petrov said. “More of your weight should always be on the balls of your feet, not your heels. And lift your chest.”
Astrid moved through each position with port de bras and épaulement. There was so much to think about besides her feet—her entire body needed her attention all at once.
“It’s not just the position that matters but how you get there,” Madame Petrov said. “Do it again. And again.”
Astrid watched the girls in the center of the room, the ones practicing pirouettes and pas de bourrées, their toes skimming across the floorboards. She was tired of gripping the barre, of doing pliés and tendus.
“These are too easy,” she complained to Madame Petrov. “I’ve been bending my knees since I was a child. Look. I’m ready for the floor.”
“If it’s easy, then you are not doing it right,” Madame Petrov had said. “Here we are building your foundation. The plié is the origin of every jump, every turn. If there is an imperfection in the foundation now, later the building will crumble.”
Now, Astrid joined the girls when they transitioned to the floor.
Mary played the piano, and Astrid moved along with the others, practicing her entrechats, her glissades.
When the others rose to their toes in their pointe shoes, she stayed on the floor on her canvas soles.
Finally, when they moved exclusively into pointe work, she headed toward the dressing room.
“You will tell me when I’m ready?” she said to Madame Petrov, who was standing next to the piano. She asked this every day.
“I will tell you about Marie Taglioni,” Madame Petrov said.
“Marie Taglioni—an ugly girl, by all accounts: hunchbacked, with long arms. Everyone told her to do something else, but she wouldn’t.
She loved ballet. Her father trained her, choreographed a ballet for her, La Sylphide, the first full-length ballet on pointe.
She performed it—she rose onto the tips of her toes, and she flew across the stage.
Before, dancers had needed wires and pulleys backstage to do that, but she did it all by herself. She flew.
“Taglioni was a star,” Madame Petrov went on.
“Her flaws became a thing of beauty. When she danced, her arms were always bent at the elbows or folded across her chest—designed that way by her father, of course, to hide their unattractive length. But they became classic Romantic poses. After her last performance, a group of young dancers cooked her pointe shoes and ate them. All this after they said she could never make it as a dancer—they loved her so much they ate her shoes.”
At dinner that night, Astrid told RJ about her upcoming recital.
“A recital?” RJ asked. “You’re going to perform in public?”
“Well, yes,” Astrid said. “That is sort of the point.”
“I thought this was just a hobby,” RJ said. “Something to occupy your time.”
“I hope it can be more than that,” Astrid said. “I know I’ve gotten a bit of a late start—”
“A late start? You’re a grown woman,” RJ said. “You cannot be serious.”
“Yes, I assure you, I’m quite serious.”
“I don’t want you going there anymore,” RJ said, returning his attention to his steak.
“Where? The studio?”
“Yes,” RJ said, taking a bite. “Look how thin you’ve gotten. You don’t fill out your clothes anymore the way you used to. Where have your hips gone, your breasts? You’ve turned into a wisp of a woman.”
“I rather think a slender silhouette is becoming more fashionable these days,” Astrid said in her own defense. “Look at the sheath dresses in the storefronts at Harrods. They’re not at all flattering if you have any sort of curves.”
“I do not care for sheath dresses, nor the type of woman that they flatter,” RJ said.
“And what of your social obligations? You never come out anymore or call on any of your friends. It’s as if I’m married to an eccentric recluse.
Cressida just remarked to me the other day that you hadn’t called on her in over a fortnight. ”
“I rather think Cressida prefers your company to mine,” Astrid said, and RJ didn’t even have the decency to color or look ashamed at the barely concealed accusation.
“Besides, all those women—they’re a bunch of bores.
I admit, if I’m half drunk, they’re almost tolerable, but nothing like the girls at the studio.
Or Madame Petrov. Now, there’s someone worth knowing.
We should have her over for dinner one night.
The stories she has, the life she’s lived. Oh, I can only imagine.”
“We are not having that woman over to this house,” RJ said.
“I’ve been more than patient. I thought this .
. . thing . . . you do was a passing fancy, something you’d grow bored of.
But every day you fall more and more into it, grow more and more delusional.
I now see that I’ve indulged this far too long. ”
“Come now, RJ—” Astrid said.
“I did not marry a ballerina!” RJ said, slamming his fist down on the table.
Both Astrid and Florence jumped in their seats.
Florence dropped her fork on the floor, and the butler rushed to the kitchen to fetch her a clean one.
Astrid took a sip of her drink and stared down at the table, but Florence could see the way the color had drained from her face, the way her hand shook as she set down her glass.
The next morning, they did not go to the studio.
Astrid greeted her husband at the breakfast table with a kiss on the cheek, dressed in a blue Chanel scoop-neck tea-length swing dress that brought out her eyes.
The dress was belted at the waist, accentuating the hourglass figure that RJ had claimed was diminishing the night before.
“You look chipper this morning,” RJ said over the top of his newspaper.
“I thought I’d do some shopping,” Astrid said. “Givenchy’s fall line just came out. And then I was thinking of calling on Gemma. It’s been too long since I’ve seen her.”
“That sounds like a marvelous day,” RJ said.
“It does,” Astrid agreed, taking a sip of her coffee.
RJ helped Astrid and Florence into a cab as he headed off to work. They took a left off the street, and as soon as the house disappeared behind them, Astrid redirected the driver to Notting Hill.
“Harrods isn’t in Notting Hill,” Florence said.
“No, it isn’t,” Astrid said with a smile.
At the dance shop, Astrid asked for her first pair of pointe shoes. She sat in an upholstered chair by the window as the salesgirl measured her feet and examined her arches. She brought out an armful of boxes from the back.
“Stop looking so dour,” Astrid told Florence. “You’re dampening the mood.”
Florence bit her lip. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . last night, RJ seemed really serious.”
“I’m sure he was,” Astrid said. “But so am I.”
“What if he finds out?”
Astrid shrugged. “He’s not going to find out. I’ll eat some cake, put on a couple pounds. This bra and crinoline are doing a lot of the heavy lifting right now, which is fine, but I won’t always be wearing them when I’m with him.”
“But what about your feet?” Florence asked. She glanced down at Astrid’s bare feet—the toes that were bruised and bandaged, the rough calluses on her heels. “Won’t they give you away?”
“I’ll soak them,” Astrid said. “And powder them if I have to. If there’s one thing RJ’s not going to be looking at when I’m naked, it’s my feet.”
The shop attendant slipped a pink satin slipper onto Astrid’s foot. “How does that feel?” she asked.
Astrid flexed and relaxed her ankle. “It’s so delicate, so intimate,” Astrid said. “Almost like wearing lingerie on your feet.” Astrid turned to Florence. “What do you think?” she asked.
For a moment, Florence didn’t answer. It was one thing for Astrid to defy Scarlet.
Scarlet would burn her cigarette pants in the fireplace and chastise her at the breakfast table.
But RJ was a different story. Florence thought back to that night in Italy when they had merely had a laugh at his expense.
She shuddered to think what he might do if he found out that Astrid had openly defied him.
“They’re lovely,” Florence said.
They left the store with two pairs and some ribbons and elastics that Florence would sew into the shoes herself.