Chapter 1 The Apple and the Pearl #22
From where she’s lying she can hear Michael’s soft, weary sigh as he plays the opening notes of the hunting dance again.
Most of the dancers have been spared the agony of watching Luke rehearse this role very slowly and very publicly, but Cecile has said they’re going to run through the Pearl waltz next and so she has to wait, ready to jump up at a moment’s notice, for however long it takes for Cecile to get bored of poking and prodding at that poor boy and decide to move on.
She checks her watch – four seventeen, there’s still over an hour to go until Cecile is obliged by the union to let them go – and pushes the needle through the canvas lining of the pointe shoe.
She could do without rehearsing the bloody Pearl waltz again – she knows four parts inside out and could do the other four with a quick walk through – but she’d rather die than grumble.
You’ve got to show willing. You’ve got to be up Cecile’s arse and keep in her favour so when it’s time for someone new to learn a principal role you’re right there, smiling and reliable.
You’ve also got to know what you’re doing and do it well, something that’s a little far from poor Luke right now.
Mind you, she’s been a model member of The Apple and the Pearl for two and a half years now and there’s not been so much as a sniff of her learning a principal role.
Some days she thinks she’s close, when Cecile walks past her during a frappé exercise and pauses before walking by without a word.
She imagines explaining her pride in that to anyone else, can picture their baffled pity.
No, you don’t understand, she’d say. Silence is praise, usually.
At night she lies in her cabin massaging out her calves, daydreaming about the day when Cecile will beckon to her during that caesura in ballet class between the last grands battements at the barre and the first adage in the centre.
When, instead of changing her pointe shoes from the hard ones she’s breaking in to the softer ones, she’ll obediently trot to the front of the stage, skin prickling with the curious eyes of the other dancers as they wonder if she is in favour or disgrace.
Cecile will quietly tell her to make sure she’s watching one of the Princesses – she thinks it will be the White Princess, because the solo is full of quick little jumps and tricky beats and she’s got the power and stamina for it.
The daydream skips a couple of months, past all the costume fittings, the well-meaning advice from Mara and Stephanie and Stuart, past Josh’s inevitable sneers, past Cecile’s theatrical screeching during the interminable rehearsals to the moment when the curtain goes up on the first act on her first show, the dazzle in her face, the audience hungry for her and she for them, her first chance to be truly—
A shadow falls across her, blocking the light to see her sewing by. She bends her leg back into her chest and rolls out from under the props table to see Kavi the fly operator looking down at her with a half-smile playing about his mouth.
‘I thought it was you,’ he says. ‘You’re the only one with those orange leggings.’
Well now, isn’t that interesting. He’s been noticing her legs.
She is kneeling at his feet, her fingertips almost touching his steel-capped black boots and there is a flutter low in her belly.
She stands, kicks the half-sewn pointe shoe back under the props table and leans against the edge.
She fights the urge to brush the dust from her hair.
She is attempting a seduction, and aren’t you supposed to pretend like you don’t care?
Like if they can’t or won’t just take you as you are, a pale-faced, orange legwarmer-clad, dusty-haired idiot, then it’s nothing to you.
‘I just came to check something for Charlie,’ he says, but he doesn’t move, just keeps staring at her with that smile like he knows a secret.
The silence between them stretches like strings of glue, ensnaring any clever thoughts she might have had.
The truth is she’s out of practice. Alina the wardrobe mistress, warming to her favourite theme: Yes I use the word CLOISTERED ladies because although there are technically men employed here I see NO relationship material and NO ONE I would willingly fuck.
And although all the girls in the dressing room giggle when she gets going on this topic, there is something of the maiden aunt in the titter, something desperate that none of them will acknowledge.
Jessica, a bit drunk at pledge party: I just want to feel a man’s hands on me, you know?
On my actual skin, not on the bodice of my sodding costume.
Bella did know. It’s been literally years since she’s been to bed with anyone and this is the first time there’s been even a hint that someone wants her.
All right, yes there was Lance the trumpet player who’d sidled up to her in the dining car in her third week to compliment her hair, and of course she’d been flattered at first, then aroused, even though she had already heard that Lance was that kind of guy.
But then she’d caught sight of Mara’s stony face over Lance’s shoulder and skittered away, feeling queasy at the thought of causing romantic uproar in her very first month.
Mara, in the dressing room before ballet class the next morning: I’m fucking sick of it, it’s gone beyond sexual incontinence, now he’s just being a dick because no one will stop him.
She’d pointed at Bella with a mascara wand.
You seem like a smart girl so let me tell you this for free – you’ll be happier here if you find someone other than Casanova with his cornet to get your kicks with.
But Alina is right, there is no one else to get your kicks with.
Henry the second violin looks like an underwear model but he doesn’t seem to take an interest in anyone but Michael, which is a shame because Michael definitely plays for the other team.
Luke the new boy has the sex appeal of a slice of cucumber.
Alex had been lovely but firmly Anita’s and now he’s gone she can’t even talk about him, let alone move on.
Zach the lighting guy is kind but sort of shambling and awkward.
Max the second violin has some mysterious girlfriend out in the real world and the new harp David is old.
Like, at least forty. And then there’s Derek.
Last week he caught her at the noticeboard by the stage with the back of her Pearl waltz costume undone and whistled.
That’s a good show for a fairy prince. Bella had cringed helplessly.
Jessica said she should report him to Belinda, but Bella has the feeling even Belinda’s powers are limited when it comes to Derek.
So it’s surprising that there hasn’t been more of a stampede for Kavi. He’s not exactly handsome, but there’s nothing offensive about his face. A slim build, clean, no indication of being a dickhead. What is she missing?
It’s been two months now since they first locked gazes in the dining car after the show and there’ve since been: seven long looks accompanied by shy smiles; eleven hello-how-are-yous; three occasions where they’ve been sitting with a larger group in the Grub, swapping stories about when Belinda’s told them off; and one time when he happened to be leaving the Grit at the same time as her after ballet class and they walked along a windy clifftop and talked about the sea.
And now. The two of them, alone in the semi-darkness, with Cecile’s increasingly furious counting echoing out into the auditorium and a silence elongating into a cringe.
She doesn’t know if she actually finds him attractive or if he’s the only chance for her to get laid this decade and she doesn’t care anymore.
She wants to get there before any of the others, and right now he’s standing in front of her and her orange legwarmers, and she needs to say something intelligent before he walks away thinking she’s a moron.
‘Are ballet mistresses always like this?’ he asks, gesturing to the stage.
Oh thank God, he spoke first. The table is digging into her hip so she pulls herself up to sit on it. ‘Mostly. Some of them pretend to be nice, but actually they play favourites and smack you down behind your back.’
She swings her legs. She’s trying to look insouciant and flirtatious but maybe she just looks like a kid. ‘Cecile doesn’t do that, she’s a bitch to everyone. I appreciate that about her.’
Kavi laughs. ‘I don’t think Cecile knows who I am and I’m fine with that.’
‘Oh, she knows who you are; she knows everything. She just doesn’t care.’
He hooks his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans and leans back on the table.
‘Have you worked in ballet before?’ she asks. It’s a stupid, small-talky thing to say but it follows on from what he said.
‘I’ve done two other ballets,’ he says. ‘Both were like this, set in a kind of mythical past, with kings and queens and magic and fake medieval costumes. I like it. I get to watch the show from the flies, and it’s really beautiful.’
She thinks about him watching her dance from above, her spinning, leaping, darting head moving around the stage.
‘I guess Cecile might be a dragon and kind of old-fashioned in her methods,’ he continues, ‘but she keeps the show spick and span.’
From the stage comes a stream of French swear words, the bang of a stool falling over and a particularly Gallic sound of disgust.
Kavi smirks and she holds back a snort of laughter.
‘Fair enough. The show would be a mess without Cecile keeping us in line. And she’s also a great teacher, you know. Her classes are excellent.’
He nods a little. ‘That’s important in ballet, isn’t it.’