Chapter 1 The Apple and the Pearl #41
I’m sorry, Granny. I’ll try harder, I promise.
But it had never been in his power to promise anything to her and he had drifted like an abandoned crisp packet through school, and now life.
His grandmother had come to see the end-of-year ballet shows and sat in her best coat, thunderous.
Didn’t I tell you they’re hiring at Boots in the high street?
He’d felt like he was standing in front of his grandmother again this afternoon as Cecile was shouting at him. I’m sorry, Cecile. I’ll try harder, I promise.
He lands from a tour cleanly and with some relief – We are changing it to a single until our new recruits are able to accurately perform the choreography, Cecile had said, bitchily, although he knows his tours aren’t that bad – and sees that the glowing creature is staring at him.
A second of eye contact – Fuck, that’s not good – and then he turns for the final sequence of pirouettes of the dance.
It had only been a moment, just a second of connection but still he could swear he saw his grandmother in the creature’s eyes.
Six months dead and the old woman haunts him, following him here and thrusting her soul inside some supernatural being.
He’d thought there was nothing left she could cling to, the contents of her house gone to the charity shop, the lease back to the council.
Derek’s voice drifts through his mind as he stands in fourth position for the very last pirouette; Happy All Souls. Fucking thrilled indeed, Derek.
He follows Theo as the three of them run off stage with the last blast of the trumpet and before he can get away Derek’s right there in his face, wagging a finger.
‘Tut tut, you naughty boy,’ he says, and there is a leer in his eyes that makes Luke’s palms itch, wanting to shove at him and send him flying into a lighting boom with a crunch of bone.
‘What are you talking about?’ Luke whispers, trying to sidestep him, wishing he hadn’t said anything at all, just ignored him.
He thinks of his grandmother, quietly shutting the door to his bedroom.
When you learn how to speak to people properly you can come out.
He understands that he wants to hurt Derek because he can’t punch Josh or Zuleika or Stuart or – heaven forbid, Cecile – and he understands everyone on The Apple and the Pearl uses Derek this way, as a kind of violence extractor fan. Which hardly makes it right.
But still. Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy? his grandmother used to say, usually after a smack following some minor mischief. And he’d think sullenly, Can’t I be both?
But the existence of Derek seems to prove you can’t, at least not on The Apple and the Pearl.
Really, the man deserves it, even seemed to relish it.
The unwashed stench of him, that manic, high-pitched giggle, the way he has of sneaking up by your side and saying something so foul or so bonkers or so totally irrelevant that it takes you a few long moments to work out what he’s just said, precious moments you could be using to get away from him.
Nothing is off limits to Derek, no subject too delicate, no thought too banal.
The rest of the crew joke that he’s more like a species of gnome than a human – and when he saw him in certain lights, Luke wonders if that might not be so far from the truth.
‘I saw you, having a good old gander at the audience, that’s not recommended, didn’t they tell you that?’
Luke tries to go the other way past him.
‘Seriously now, I’ll stop mucking about. That’s fucking stupid, mate. You don’t look too long or hard, or something will notice you and come for you. Eight years on this show and I’ve seen things to make your hair stand on end.’
‘Thanks, Derek,’ he murmurs, the music for the White pas de deux starting. ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’ He tries to push past again but Derek puts a hand on his shoulder.
‘You’re a human fucking sacrifice, mate, you know that? That’s what this whole thing is. They dangle a little meat in front of them to keep them out of the real world.’
He could punch him, he really could. He really should, if only to put a stop to this nightly barrage of nonsense.
But punching Derek is not likely to win any respect.
In fact – and this would be just his luck – it might create sympathy for him and then, horror of horrors, recast Luke himself in the place Derek currently occupies in the hierarchy of The Apple and the Pearl.
He can imagine Josh’s sneer in the dressing room – Clearly the man’s got a problem, why would you treat him like that?
‘Right,’ Luke says, finally getting past him. ‘Thanks for the heads up, but I’ve got to get changed for the wedding dance or them out there’ll be the least of my problems.’
The door into the corridor is heavy and cool on his sweaty hands and he can feel Derek’s eyes on him, that vile smirk, that goblin-like pleasure in causing discomfort.
A human sacrifice, he thinks as he walks up the stairs, unbuttoning his jacket.
Of course we are, and you and me more than most, mate.
We’re the first they’d offer up if the audience were ever to rush at the stage, Belinda would be there saying, No!
Take Luke and Derek, we shan’t miss them!
and he’d find himself trapped for all eternity with that blasted man and wouldn’t that be the best way to end this entirely unpromising start in life.
And who exactly is ‘they’? Luke thinks as he walks into the dressing room.
Derek is always going on about ‘them’, muttering as he flips a spanner between his fingers or scratches his arse.
Sometimes them is Belinda and Mackie, an axis of authority Derek feels only exists to give him grief, but often them is the government, or the CIA, or the pharmaceutical companies, or the banks, who are either persecuting or ignoring him because of his phenomenal or dangerous gifts, depending on the day.
Luke peels the dark brown tights from the hunting dance off his legs and down over his shins and pulls the silver tights for the wedding dance from the hanger.
‘You seen the notice? Mackie’s pledge day drinks in the Grub tonight. Should be a good one.’
He looks up, surprised, thinking someone’s actually talking to him but the voice belongs to Solomon, talking to Theo, over his head. Luke is piggy in the middle.
‘You coming?’ Solomon asks, and Luke hears the sly, shy note of hope in his voice and understands that that’s it for Theo, he’s been absorbed into the social organism and by this time next week he and Solomon will be a couple, stepping out, fucking. Courting. Whatever you want to call it.
Luke takes the white jacket festooned with silver sequins from the hanger and shoves each arm inside. It itches like a devil but at his costume fitting on his second day Alina had been unmoved by his discomfort. And what do you want me to do about that, sunshine? Line it with silk?
It’s not surprising Theo has been – is being, before Luke’s very eyes – snapped up.
He watches Solomon bossily beckon Theo to stand in front of him so he can do up the buttons on his wedding jacket.
Theo is talented. There is a what-do-you-call-it, je ne sais quoi about his dancing, a clarity to his lines and an easy facility in his body.
He’s not quite as magnetic to watch as Matty, but that’s probably to his advantage because he can slide in anywhere in the show and look good.
Luke does up his own buttons, craning his neck.
He should go to the pledge day drinks tonight.
He wants to – well, he wants to want to – no – he wants someone to want him to go.
He wants to be invited beyond the generic notice on the board, he wants someone to notice as he’s going back to his cabin and say, Oh, aren’t you staying?
He hears his grandmother in his head, her voice drifting from the mouth of that creature in the auditorium, Well if you won’t join in, what do you expect?
He thinks about the way at ballet school they’d all be sitting around in someone’s bedroom at the hostel, too young to go out to a club but old enough for the off-licence round the corner to pretend to check their ID as they bought some cans and cheap wine.
They’d all be sitting in the common room that stank of stale weed and chips, with all the others passing through, the dancers, the musicians, the backpackers and the kids kicked out of home and someone used to get out their phone and play music, tinny in the crap little speakers they make so they’ll break after six months.
People would get up and dance, cans of cider dangling from their fingertips and soon the floor would clear so that everyone could watch the dancers, half admiring, half horny, watching as they took pleasure in moving their bodies just for themselves, not caring for the aesthetic value for once – although they looked good, of course they did, how could they not?
They were just loose limbs and easy rhythm and the certainty that the world belonged to them and no one else.
But Luke was always on the outside of it.
Like he was rubbing at the condensation on a windowpane, peeking in, trying to look like he was having fun.
Pretending that he would get up and dance if he felt like it, that he was appreciating the vibe.
But the older he gets – and he knows this is a stupid thought to have at twenty years and three months old – the more he sees that it was stupid to think he’d look stupid.
Vain. Delusional, even. Because now he’s realised that no one sees him at all, not on those luminous Saturday nights at ballet school and not here.
Which is worse, he wonders, to be perceived only to be ridiculed or not to be perceived at all?