August – September 1988 Mary and Rudolf #2
Nudity didn’t bother me any more than it did the other ballerinas – we’d had too many years of shared dressing rooms and quick changes for that to matter.
But that slip just now, and the physical force behind it, had stirred up something from the dark silt of memories I’d worked so hard to leave undisturbed.
I should have known this would happen – not the wardrobe malfunction, but my body remembering things I didn’t want it to.
Eyes closed, I lifted my head and sat still for a while, trying to let the ambient noise of the city wash everything else away.
After however long, the bench creaked.
‘You want to talk?’ Sander asked quietly. ‘Or be alone?’
I didn’t give him an answer. I wanted him to stay, but I did not want to talk.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I pushed too hard. It was my fault.’
‘No, it’s not. It’s fine. I’m sorry.’
‘What? Why are you sorry?’
‘Just, you know… that you had to see that.’
He took sometime to settle on a response. ‘You have nothing to be sorry about. I just… I am sorry it happened when you didn’t want it.’
To my surprise as much as his, I burst into tears. Stuttering, full-body, finger-trembling tears. Sander hovered an arm over my shoulders until I managed to communicate that he hadn’t said anything wrong.
‘You said the right thing,’ I tried to explain. ‘That’s what you should say. Not you, specifically, but… other people.’
That was the first time I told him – the first time I told anyone – exactly what happened between me and Stephen.
‘Do you remember the last time the BCBC performed Mayerling, in ’82? You were still a first soloist then. Unbelievable to imagine that now,’ I said with a weak laugh. ‘I’d just been promoted from first artist to soloist. I performed the role Fiona has now: Princess Louise.’
‘I remember,’ Sander said softly, which surprised me. It’s a small role. Louise dances Rudolf’s first pas de deux, establishing that even on his wedding day, he will always be hungry for other women.
Stephen had been a soloist too, a few years older than me and hopeful that his debut as Bratfisch, the Prince’s closest friend and coachman, would get him promoted.
We’d partnered a few times before, and not only had he been easy to work with, he’d been easy to fall for: tall, witty, suave, with sharp green eyes that made me feel as if I’d won something.
‘We started going for coffee, then for walks in Hyde Park, then out to dinner. At the end of the Mayerling run, he took me to Langan’s – I know, clearly he was keen to impress.
After we were through with the meal, he insisted we order another bottle of wine because it was a Saturday night, and there would be plenty of time to recover before the morning class on Tuesday.
Then he started talking, quite openly, about having been attracted to me ever since we were first paired together in Giselle Act I, which…
was exciting, you know, because it gave me the freedom to admit that was the moment I’d felt attracted to him, too. ’
At last, I’d felt I was being initiated into the coveted club of adults who became “romantically involved” with one another, though I wouldn’t have been able to define what that meant.
‘When he kissed me outside the restaurant, I was over the moon. “Ah, here we go,” I thought. This is what it’s all about.
I was more than happy to let him put his hands all over me, even as we were stumbling down the street where complete strangers could wolf-whistle at us.
It did catch me off guard when he flagged down a cab and gave the driver his address without asking for mine, but the engine was already revving, and I was fizzing like champagne, so I went along with it. ’
I took a sip of tea and turned the cup in my hands, willing them to stop shaking.
‘It was when he pulled me towards his bed that I began to worry. He was acting as if we’d agreed the evening would come to a certain inevitable conclusion, when we hadn’t discussed anything at all.
But it would definitely have killed the mood if I’d pointed that out, and…
well, in case you weren’t already aware, the worst thing a woman can be is a mood-killer. So I kept going along with it.’
I’d let Stephen pull me onto the bed, run his hands through my hair, kiss my neck, and had been pleasantly surprised at how these things felt: thrilling and relaxing at the same time. Maybe I’d been worried about nothing. Maybe it was just first-night nerves, like a new role onstage.
‘He’d already pulled my stockings off and then he, so expertly, unhooked my bra under my dress. It was the cold on my skin, as he pulled the straps down, that brought me back to myself. My head was suddenly clear. I tried to nudge him off, but… it didn’t work.’
I’d said, in a voice that was so small among the shadows of his bedroom, “Perhaps we ought to slow down.”
When his fingertips moved up my inner thigh, I told him to please stop. When he didn’t, my body went rigid with a jolt of electric pain, and something else kicked in. Literally.
‘I kicked him in the chest, and this louder, more primal voice than mine told him to GET OFF.’
Even as I felt my voice getting away from me, Sander didn’t flinch, didn’t shift on the bench or make excuses for why he should leave. I exhaled.
‘There was a scary moment when he didn’t move after hitting the floorboards and I fumbled for the light, thinking I’d concussed him, followed by an even scarier moment when he got up, and stared at me, and said… he said, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
‘I didn’t even put my stockings back on.
I only said how sorry I was, that I should leave.
He put a hand on my arm – not forcefully, just firmly – and pointed out that it was gone midnight.
I think he even offered, reluctantly, to sleep on the sofa.
I told him that wasn’t necessary, just that I didn’t want to do anything more that night. ’
What I left unsaid was “or any other night”.
‘To his credit,’ I began – then paused, imagining if I ever told this to Carolyn or Fiona or, Heaven forfend, my mother.
‘Is credit due? I suppose compared to other men, maybe. To whatever modicum of credit is due, he made no further attempts for the rest of the night, even though we slept under the same sheets. No attempts I was aware of, anyway.’ I nodded to the building below us.
‘Apart from one passing joke in the corridors about the bruise I’d left on his chest, he never brought it up again.
Our chemistry onstage was somehow sufficiently intact for Nick to continue casting us together.
But we didn’t go on any more dates.’ I tried to take another sip of tea before realising I’d already finished it.
‘We hadn’t even been dating long enough to use the word “relationship”.
I wanted to go back to being colleagues and just draw a great big line under the whole thing.
But Fiona and the others wouldn’t stop asking what happened, what went wrong – “Oh, but you’re so good together, that’s such a shame. ”’
‘You never told them what he did?’
‘No. And he didn’t do anything – much. It was just an unfortunate thing that happened.
A fundamental incompatibility. Anyway.’ I crumpled the Styrofoam cup in my hands, suddenly bone-tired.
‘That’s what that was about. I’m afraid Mayerling and I will probably never get on.
I can be Mary Vetsera, but I can’t wait to be done with her.
Sal, Mariska, Nick, they always talk about how this story taps into the things that make us human.
But all these rehearsals have done is remind me that I must be less human than everyone else. A human made wrong.’
‘Trix…’
‘Well, what else am I supposed to think?’
‘You think you are “made wrong” because you did not want to have sex with Stephen?’
‘Because I don’t want to have sex with anyone, not even—’
I didn’t know where to redirect my words, or my eyes. I waited for him to look away, to frown with confusion and pity.
Instead, he reached for my hand and looked at it against his as if for the first time. With his other hand, he formed a protective shell around mine and slowly, cautiously, brought it to his heart. I edged closer to him, startled by how fast it was beating. As if he was bracing himself.
He looked at me.
‘Neither do I.’