May 2000 Boxes
BOXES
Such a shame they’re selling up,’ Jamie says, admiring my parents’ sash windows and reading nook across the hall. ‘I’d love to live out my days here.’
‘So would they. Unfortunately, their knees vehemently disagree.’
I’ve never been able to host more than three guests in my one-bed Holland Park flat, but now that my parents are dividing their time between South Kensington and a new ground-floor flat in Crouch End, they’re more than happy for me to make use of the dining room in their absence.
Still energised by the new millennium, I’ve invited Fiona, Jamie, Charlie, and Carolyn over for a late-spring feast, along with the kids, who transform a little more every time I see them.
Layla is, somehow, thirteen years old. The only part of her that hasn’t changed from when she was a baby is her owl-like stare, which travels the room and alights on the stacks of boxes spilling out into the hall.
‘What’s in those?’
‘Oh, just unimaginable quantities of rubbish from the loft.’ I go to one of them and flip up the cardboard lid. ‘My dad’s kept copies of the FT all the way back to 1970. God knows why.’
‘I suspect it’s a post-war thing,’ Charlie says. ‘The rationing years – waste not, want not. You never know when you’ll need a dozen empty margarine tubs.’
Frédéric, who we’ve all called Freddie since he was born, makes a face, his front teeth gappy where the adult ones have yet to grow in. ‘I hate margarine.’
‘So do I.’ In a snap decision, I offer my hand for a high-five, and feel disproportionately relieved when he accepts. You can never be sure if a child thinks you’re cool; the best you can hope for is “not embarrassing”.
While we eat, Layla and Freddie have their own wine glasses of elderflower cordial, and seem to enjoy being treated like adults-in-waiting rather than kids.
Layla and Carolyn even hold their cutlery in the same way.
After the lemon cake and ice cream, though, I notice Freddie fidgeting with his napkin and his sister’s gaze drifting.
She puts an elbow on the table and props her chin on her hand; Carolyn gently but firmly nudges it off.
‘Do you guys fancy having a rummage through the boxes and picking out something interesting to take home?’
‘Really?’ Freddie says, already halfway off his chair.
‘Are you sure?’ Carolyn asks.
‘Most of it’s destined for the skip, so by all means.’
‘Thank you,’ Layla says with a glance at her mum, who nods approvingly.
‘God, they’re so French,’ Jamie says, before clarifying: ‘So well behaved at the dinner table.’
‘I was an absolute nightmare whenever my family went out for meals,’ Charlie says. ‘Ants in my pants. Too much energy, not enough hours in the day to get rid of it.’
‘And then came ballet,’ Fiona says with a smile. Out of habit, she looks at me, checking that the word won’t bruise the way it once did.
I smile back. ‘How so many of our stories began.’
A brief silence, broken only by the sound of cardboard scraping along the hall tiles.
‘I don’t know how busy your September is,’ Charlie says, ‘but there’s a pair of comp tickets for Isabel’s debut as Marguerite with your name on it, if you’d like?’
Another role I never got to try. Perhaps that’s why he’s asking – an olive branch, and a test, to see if my willingness to step back into the Dance Hall was a New Year’s one-off.
‘I’d be honoured. I presume the rest of you have tickets already? I’ll bring my mum if not, she’d be honoured, too.’
‘No gentleman friends to be your plus one?’ Carolyn asks. ‘Someone from the office, perhaps?’
I shake my head and wave the idea away, as women on the cusp of middle age can without being obliged to explain further: Been there, done that, not for me.
Swirling the last of my Chardonnay, I try to imagine myself in Marguerite and Armand, the one-act ballet Ashton created on Fonteyn and Nureyev.
It hadn’t even been on Nick’s radar as a potential revival during my time – the passion with which those two icons delivered their performances as tragic lovers could never be matched.
‘No pressure on Isabel,’ Charlie jokes. ‘She’s got a great partner in Robbie, though. Hands like a gymnast.’
Who would have been my partner? Max would still have been too green in the early nineties, and might not have had the strength to do that jaw-dropping spin lift at the climax.
It would have been Stephen or Ray. Maybe even a guest artist. Not that it matters – never will I get to don Cecil Beaton’s gorgeous costumes and succumb gracefully to Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B minor.
‘Hands like a gymnast?’ Fiona says.
‘Never clammy.’
‘Ah, I see.’
‘Mum?’ Layla re-enters the dining room with a piece of photo paper in hand, holding it out of Freddie’s curious reach. She glances around, wary of having interrupted. ‘Is that…?’
She passes the photograph to Carolyn, who studies it and smiles at me. ‘Why yes, darling, that’s our very own Trix, back in the…’ Her smile disappears. ‘My God.’
‘Mum?’ Layla looks as alarmed as I feel. Carolyn has always been unshockable. ‘What is it?’
Carolyn redirects her stare to me. Looks at the photo. At me. The photo. Something isn’t adding up.
‘Sander,’ she says, as if coming around from a concussion. ‘Aleksander Sylvan.’
The words emerge slowly, a combination of syllables dredged up from somewhere deep. As soon as I hear them, something starts to happen in my brain, too. In my chest. A ring of blue flames.
‘What did you say?’ Charlie reaches for the photo, but Carolyn is already giving it to Fiona, whose eyes go wide, her hand catching a gasp, her other hand passing the photo to me.
‘Were we not supposed to look in that box?’ Layla says in a small voice. ‘It was different from all the other boxes, it just said “Sander” on top, so… we wanted to see what it was.’
It’s one of Armand’s stage shots – he always knows when the lines will look golden, even in black and white.
And these lines are exquisite. I can’t quite comprehend that the person in the white tutu, fingers hovering off the floor, legs curved high above it, is me.
It’s one of the grand pas de deux fish dives from The Sleeping Beauty. My partner, my prince…
My partner. By the time I recognise his face, it’s already blurring through tears.
‘Have I done something wrong?’ Layla retreats behind Carolyn’s chair while her brother looks at the floor. ‘I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.’
‘No,’ I whisper, brushing away the tears.
I am drowning in memories. They cascade from every direction, because memory has no direction, only distance, and I am no longer in my parents’ dining room but onstage, on red-eye flights, in the studio, in a Kentish Town flat with high ceilings.
The rooftop garden, with a Styrofoam cup of tea. ‘No, darling. You did the right thing.’