Chapter 52
THE NEW DECADE
‘I have a belated Christmas gift.’
‘The best kind,’ I said, intrigued.
‘It’s a little sneaky of me, because the official cast lists won’t go up until the twenty-third…’
I was on my feet with a small gasp.
‘To quote Kiss Me, Kate, I suggest you “brush up your Shakespeare”.’
Despite our considerable difference in size, I almost squeezed the air out of him, and left a sprinkling of glitter down his jumper.
‘And Sander—?’
‘As if I would cast anyone else.’
He allowed me the honour of delivering the news in person when I eventually made it across town after curtain calls.
‘Could there be a better start to the decade?’ I asked, giddy with post-show energy and a coffee mug of champagne. ‘To my Romeo.’
Sander smiled and pulled me into his waist. ‘To my Juliet.’
We kissed at midnight, not because everyone else had found someone to kiss, and not just because we wanted an excuse, but because of the excitement in the air.
We were coming to the end of a turbulent century and peering out at the horizon of something more hopeful.
The Cold War, whose nuclear spectre had cast a shadow for as long as most of us could remember, was officially over.
It felt like a new world was cracking open.
* * *
On our days off from Manon rehearsals, Sander and I took long midwinter walks everywhere except Hampstead Heath, and talked about everything except his life before the BCBC, or what we were to each other. We went on double dates with other couples, a novelty for both of us.
Fiona’s long-awaited promotion to first soloist and new-found romance with George physically transformed her: she walked into every morning class primed to smile, started wearing more of her handmade jewellery, and, to my astonishment, allowed George to spoon half of his dessert into her mouth at dinner.
‘This is going to sound mad,’ she said as we touched up our lipstick in the powder room at Rules, ‘but I wish I had a time machine so I could go back to being eighteen, beg, borrow, or steal a ticket to the States, and find eighteen-year-old George so that I could have been with him sooner, and watched him become who he is now. But I can’t, and I’m a little bit furious with myself for it, not to mention eager to make up for lost time. Am I making sense?’
‘Perfect sense.’
Things were less clear-cut for Jamie and Lorenzo.
They seemed happy and relaxed as a self-contained unit, safe in the bubbles of the BCBC and their Hammersmith flat.
But the AIDS crisis was still sweeping across cities like a scythe, and the undercurrent of fear that their friends in the wider community would be next had left them both visibly shaken, even if they refused to talk about it with any of us.
‘It was about time we stopped clubbing anyway,’ Jamie joked.
Lorenzo nodded, mixing another martini behind the mini cocktail bar they’d built together. ‘Too many youths these days. They make me feel ancient. Much better I spend our time off teaching this one how to cook properly.’
‘Hey, my cooking is… edible!’ Jamie protested. ‘See, you hit thirty and you realise this is what threatens to end relationships: not infidelity, or an apocalyptic disease. It’s your partner adding obscene amounts of black pepper to everything.’
They were more vocal about how neither of them felt as fulfilled as they’d have liked, career-wise, stuck on a carousel of the same corps and soloist roles without any clear path for progression.
At least Jamie was having better luck with roles in Charlie’s original pieces, which were getting longer, bolder, and garnering more press coverage.
Despite the administrative stress of wedding planning with Isabel, Charlie seemed physically unable to stop himself from devising new choreography, especially when Sander was around.
Isabel and I had to tell them off every time we went out for a meal, or else they’d inevitably get up from the table to start trying out steps they couldn’t put into words.
Then some eagle-eyed ballet fan and their friends would mob us, and we’d have to escape through the service exit.
Dinner dates at Carolyn and Armand’s were decidedly calmer, albeit tinged with sadness. They doted on Layla, who was now capable of animated chatter and always begging her parents for new picture books. But their fading hope for a second baby hung in the air between us.
‘Never mind,’ Carolyn said, slowly swirling her wine. ‘When Layla’s old enough to have a proper bedroom, we can turn the nursery back into a study.’
‘Would it make you happy?’ Sander asked, adopting a stillness that told me he was deep in thought. ‘To have a second child?’
‘We are happy,’ Armand said hastily. ‘But, look, you both grew up without siblings, no?’
I glanced at Sander as he nodded, too. I almost responded that we hadn’t needed them, because we had our friends, but realised that Armand would easily – and justifiably – be able to claim that Fiona, Jamie, Charlie, and Glen were the siblings we’d chosen for ourselves.
‘We both have such good relationships with ours,’ Carolyn said. ‘I want to give that to Layla, too. It’s not exactly something you can buy in a shop.’
As we were leaving their house to start the chilly late-night walk back to Sander’s place, he made the wildly uncharacteristic move of kissing Carolyn and Armand twice on the cheek.
‘Alors, we’ve brought out your French side at last!’ Armand remarked. He actually blushed. Carolyn, too, brought a hand to her skin as if she were burning up.
‘Are you drunk?’ I asked. Sander smiled and shook his head. ‘I think you’re lying.’
‘Impossible.’
A few months later, just after Easter, Carolyn had to take a fortnight off for severe nausea.
* * *
I’d never dated anyone long enough to have the boyfriend/girlfriend chat.
I wasn’t even sure I liked the word “boyfriend”.
It sounded like something teenaged Trix could have had, if she’d let anyone near enough.
What I had with Sander felt more organic, as if we’d skipped that stage already and moved into territory that was both unknown and familiar.
A post-BCBC life was still off the conversational table, but we were both steadily beginning to figure out who we were outside of ballet, a thing I wouldn’t have thought possible only a few years ago.
He bought guidebooks for destinations all around the world, asking me which I’d like to visit someday, and laughed when, after New Zealand and the rainforest, I added Kansas.
I was appalled to realise that he’d never seen The Wizard of Oz, which I remedied as soon as possible.
He showed me hidden architectural gems all around London that I never would have noticed, like the lost River Fleet, which still rushed beneath the pavement if you listened closely enough.
He could name the trees that lined any given street, and showed me how to nurture my window boxes back to vibrant health.
When another storm blew in at the end of February, hurricane-force winds out for blood, Sander turned up on my doorstep with an overnight bag.
He gave no indication of being nervous until I handed him a cup of tea and he asked, very quickly, as if he’d been practising on the way over: ‘What would you say if I told you I wanted to be your boyfriend?’
Suddenly I quite liked the word after all.
* * *
We began our learning calls for Romeo and Juliet with Ben, who had danced Romeo with Vic-Wells ten years earlier. He had a glut of debuts to rehearse in the lead roles: me and Sander, Akihiko and Stephen, Violeta and George, and, still basking in the glow of her promotion to principal, Isabel.
‘Oh my God,’ she said at the end of our first learning call, looking around at the other Juliets. ‘We’re the veterans now.’
‘Are you trying to make me feel ancient?’
‘You know what I mean: Fonteyn and Seymour and Sibley. Amelia, Carolyn, Blanca. We’re dancing their steps now. But we get to make them ours.’
‘Are you crying?’
‘No! My eyes are sweating.’
I put an arm around her. ‘We should be crying. Shakespeare demands it and, more importantly, so does MacMillan.’
The easiest way to tell a MacMillan ballet from an Ashton or a Petipa, a Fokine or an Ivanov, is not from a signature step, but from the way the characters walk.
Whether in pointes, slippers, or low-heeled character shoes, no one in Romeo and Juliet walks with their feet turned out.
Ben had to remind me and Sander of this constantly in our rehearsals for the balcony pas de deux and death scenes: ‘No ballet running!’
Despite everything that was to come, my memories of rehearsing Act I remain some of the happiest I will ever know.
As soon as the piano chords filled the floor, the studio disappeared.
Sander and I were in Verona after dark, under Juliet’s balcony.
I launched myself over his back as if about to dive into water, only to be stopped by his hands fastened around my shin, my hands balanced precariously on the back of his knee.
We were suspended in a breath, daring gravity to steal this moment from us.
I leaned back, and he unfurled me across his shoulders, our hands clasped tight while he tilted me up and down in cresting waves.
On his knees, Sander had to go against the classical grain and lift me from the elbows, his face tilted up while I reached high, so emboldened by new-found love that I could pluck a star out of the night.
That pas de deux is MacMillan at his most magisterial. Swift and shallow-breathed, it also luxuriates in extension, taking the time to bask in everything the lovers are, and everything the dancers can do.
‘I should hope so,’ Ben said when I mentioned that it was my favourite pas de deux in the entire BCBC repertory.
He gestured to the empty landscape of the studio floor.
‘The balcony’s the only setting in the entire story where they’re truly safe.
They belong to the space between other spaces: neither fully indoor nor fully outdoor; on neither of their families’ properties.
Outside of time, even as they appreciate how soon those after-midnight hours will be over. ’
At the very end of the “Love Dance” section of the pas de deux, when the notes began to taper off, Sander and I stood face to face, lungs recovering, skin glowing.
He gently pulled me up onto my pointes so that we were evenly matched in height – all the better to close the distance.
It’s Juliet’s first kiss, but she’s tentative only for a second, the disbelief at her good luck burning off as quickly as it arrives.
His right hand grasped my left, lifted it, caressing the small bones of my fingers.
No matter how many times we ran it, the moment was always over too quickly.
I had to pull away, my hand against the rising blush in my cheeks, as if etiquette and decorum mattered anymore.
In the absence of an actual balcony, I paused a few feet from Sander, then looked back and extended my hand in longing.
He stopped short of grabbing it again, our fingers achingly close. Thus ended Act I.
Ben gave each of us a warm smile. ‘Marvellous.’
* * *
‘That pas de deux is why MacMillan’s version will always outshine the play,’ I said en route to Holborn. ‘No disrespect to the Bard, of course, but the love story feels so much more immediate and… and…’ My fingers hovered at the edge of the word.
‘Real?’
‘Real! Yes, exactly. The words are gorgeous, but the English language is so very different from what it was four hundred years ago – it dates itself, puts distance between the modern audience and the characters. But every time I watch MacMillan’s ballet, whether from the seats or the wings, I feel as though I’m watching these long-dead people come back to life. ’
‘The dance is the language.’
‘The most transcendental, universal language.’
‘Music is like the key.’
‘The key? To where?’
‘Anywhere. Everywhere.’ He nudged my shoulder with his and half-sang, half-murmured the refrain from Fleetwood Mac’s “Everywhere”. His voice so close to my ear always made me shiver, no matter the temperature.
‘That balcony pas de deux is so pure, so joyful – God, sorry, I’m getting teary just talking about it.’
Unfazed, Sander reached across and brushed the corner of my eye.
We were fast becoming used to each other’s tears during MacMillan ballets.
Old-school coaches and directors demanded the sweat of hard technical work; MacMillan wanted the tears of dancers pushing themselves to feel their characters’ emotions, instead of just acting them.
‘It makes you believe, even after four hundred years, that the tragedy won’t get them in the end. It seems too good not to be true.’
‘The future matters not,’ Sander said, holding my hand. ‘It will never come. There is only… balcony.’
I grinned. ‘You’ve summed it up perfectly: there is only balcony.’