Chapter 1 The Apple and the Pearl #46
It’s obviously Cecile’s job to say something, except she won’t because the last time she sacked someone it was Charlotte, who was snatched a few days later.
It’s a chink in Cecile’s armour, that day when Charlotte got taken.
Never spoken of anymore, never mentioned, but a small nugget of power the dancers have clawed back from her.
Sometimes Josh catches her watching Greg do an exercise with something like grief twisting her mouth, and when he’s had a couple of beers he fantasises about Cecile telling Greg he has to leave, and then Greg being snatched.
No, the fantasy is not about Greg being snatched, it is about how Josh will behave afterwards.
How he’ll empty out their cabin of Greg’s things and give them to Belinda without a single tear.
How he’ll sit in dignified silence in the dressing room as he gets ready for the show.
How he’ll bow his head in curtain calls, how he’ll go discreetly to bed with anyone he wants: Ritchie, Theo, Solomon, Jack the double bass, Henry the violinist. Unbidden, the memory of Ritchie’s bare torso flashes through his mind.
He was drunk, they were all drunk, it was a pledge renewal and Greg had – unusually for him – peaked early and gone to bed.
The night before a day off and the Grub was a carnival of bacchanalia.
Even Belinda was there, sipping on a G and T, masterminding the gentle hissssss of pressure from the assorted cast and crew, letting just enough desperation escape for them all to be able to get through the next month of shows without mutiny.
It was enough to send him to bed with Ritchie.
The smell, the taste, the difference of him, the way he moved so surprisingly Josh was knocked him off his metaphorical feet again and again.
Greg is saying something. Josh doesn’t bother to listen because it barely matters and he’ll have either heard it before or will hear it again, and Mara and Stuart laugh.
‘All right, that’s me.’ Mara stacks a couple of the dirty plates on her tray and stands up. ‘Going to get an early night.’ She’ll dance the Crow tomorrow and she’s conscientious these days about her sleep and her warm-ups. ‘The privileges of age, gentlemen.’
Josh glances at the clock on the wall. Ten thirty-two.
There was a time when he’d have thought that was early, a party only just started.
Now he’s bone-weary at this time every night, especially after a big show.
Ballet is ageing: it disintegrates your cells until you’re nothing but ash covered in sequins.
He’s twenty-seven and already feeling his ankles freeze and his shoulders seize.
No wonder Greg can hardly move on cold mornings. The privileges of age.
‘Night, Mara,’ he mumbles through his dinner.
Stuart, who only has to do the orchard and wedding dances tomorrow, slaps Josh on the back and follows Mara, stopping briefly to chat to Benji, Zuleika and Romero, who are sharing a plate of the tiny chocolate truffles Gino makes for you whenever you debut a role.
Josh and Greg sit alone at their table while the noise of the dining car swells with alcohol and the sweet, blessed release of another show done on this eternal tour.
There’s a little tap on the table and Josh looks up, fork half to his mouth. It’s the oboe, Jean, smiling at Greg. She looks distracted, clutching her phone in one hand, the grey wisps of her hair breaking free from the old lady barrette she wears.
‘Is tomorrow still okay for our appointment?’ she asks.
Greg’s giving out free massages to anyone who wants them, trying to get his hours in for his qualification.
Josh used to volunteer but now he makes excuses because it is too terrible to lie there with Greg’s hands on him and feel nothing but irritation.
‘Of course! I don’t have any rehearsals, so I’ll see you at three.’ Jean’s phone trills and she glances at it, flushes and hastily excuses herself.
‘There’s a bloke,’ Josh mumbles as he chews a parsnip.
‘What?’
‘Jean. Giddy as a bride. I bet you anything she’s seeing someone.’ So much easier to gossip about others rather than deal with the sterile wreck of his own life.
‘Someone in the outside world?’ Greg sips his beer. ‘I’ve always thought she and Mackie would suit each other.’
Josh shrugs. ‘Could be Mackie. He might be texting her from the Grit, sending her cheeky photos.’
Greg laughs. ‘No! Mackie’s a gentleman. That’s the sort of thing Derek would do.’
‘Maybe Jean’s secret lover is Derek.’
Greg grimaces. ‘Now you’re going too far. Jean is a lovely lady and I absolutely refuse to think of her involved with that gremlin.’
Josh grins, but he wishes Mara and Stuart were still here. They would get a lot of comic mileage out of the idea of Derek’s romantic relations.
Silence again, filled only with Josh’s sticky mouthfuls and Greg slurping at a beer.
He is jealous of Jean, he realises, jealous of that secret blush on her neck, jealous of a passion that he is now not sure he has ever had with Greg.
Just break up with me already, Josh thinks, let this thing rot.
Because of course it is rotten. They planted something years ago and it had all the potential of a seed tucked up tight in the warm, damp soil, but nothing ever germinated, no shoot or roots ever troubled it.
Yet still they’re here. Sharing a cabin, sharing a stage, sharing a life.
Greg takes a breath ready to say something and although he loathes himself for it, the long force of habit makes Josh look up from his plate.
‘Yeah?’
‘What?’
‘You looked like you were going to say something.’
Greg smiles, that faraway expression still on his face.
‘No. I don’t think so. No. Just that I think I’m going to get in the shower.
’ He puts his empty bottle on his tray, screws up a paper napkin between his palms and Josh has the terrifying, elating thought that his partner has a secret from him.
Perhaps he really does know who Jean’s screwing.
Maybe he wants to tell him that Michael finally gave in to Henry the hot violinist’s relentless pursuit and that business with the mushrooms in class was actually a sex thing. Maybe he’s had sex with Henry himself!
But he says none of that. Habit wins. ‘You’ll have a clear run,’ Josh mumbles. ‘Everyone’s in here by now.’ The mundanity of it, the sheer idiocy of their conversations.
He slides out from the booth to let Greg past and gets a pecking, chaste kiss.
‘I’ll be reading, okay, so don’t worry about disturbing me when you come.’ Josh nods, munching on his rice, deliberately not turning to see Greg leave the dining car.
It’s difficult to imagine now, but when he first joined he was desperate to get Greg into bed.
He can’t remember what it was that did it for him.
If he’s honest with himself – which he might as well be now – it was that Greg was the only one of the cast or crew who reminded him of the world he came from.
Ballet is filled with posh people and bohemians, or quirky individuals who were some mixture of the two, and by the time he joined The Apple and the Pearl he’d sat silently through enough conversations about skipping family skiing trips for fear of breaking a limb, flute lessons, holidays in Tuscany and birthday treats at the opera.
Greg’s dad was a postman, his mum a dinner lady at the local primary school and his accent – as well as the fact he didn’t even seem to be trying to hide it – made something inside Josh unclench.
Even before they got together, Greg’s mere presence quietened that insidious inferiority in him.
He could be all of himself with Greg, the gay man, the dancer, the scholarship lad from Preston.
He still can. He mops up some curry with a hunk of bread and chews on it.
If nothing else, he should remember that.
He seduced Greg with facts about crows and ravens and jackdaws.
Greg’s Crow rehearsals started a couple of months after Josh’s first pledge and Cecile was vocal in her disappointment.
You are a boy in a stupid costume! she’d shout at him during run-throughs.
Be a bird, dammit! It did not help that Cecile was, as usual, right.
Did you know crows can recognise human faces?
he’d said one day after class, when he looked up from the noticeboard and found Greg beside him.
He’d blurted it out before he could change his mind and regretted it instantly.
What sort of fucked up come-on was that?
But Greg had looked interested. Really? That’s cool.
Emboldened, Josh continued. And they hold funerals for their dead.
Greg had given him a wry smile before climbing the stairs to the dressing room. Don’t give Cecile any ideas.
Four months ago, when Cecile beckoned Josh over at the end of class and told him to start learning the Crow, Greg had reminded him of those first awkward conversations.
He’d gone rifling through an old box and pulled out the card Josh had written him for the first time he performed the Crow.
He’d read it aloud, the earnest, hopeful message and the silly rhyme written out in its entirety in his best handwriting.
They’d laughed and curled up in bed together from something more than just habit.
That was the last time he’d felt anything more than quiet contempt for Greg. He can’t remember the time before that.
Josh swallows the last of his dinner with a heartburn-inducing gulp and picks up his tray as he’s chewing. He’s got a job to do, the last obligation of the day.
He slides his tray across the kitchen hatch, where Romero takes it with a nod – he should be getting paid for this extra kitchen skivvying, or maybe he does it for love, the thought of it is unimaginable – then he hangs around the serving hatch, trying to catch Gino’s eye.