May 2000 The Original
THE ORIGINAL
‘I can’t bring myself to look away,’ Fiona says. ‘In case I forget again.’
‘But how?’ Carolyn hovers her hand over the group photo from Sander’s birthday party in the Kentish Town flat. ‘How did we forget him? All these years.’
‘But he was your partner.’ She looks astonished by her own words. ‘You were inseparable.’
‘The dream team…’ Charlie says, holding the photo we took with Isabel and Jamie when we brought Quartet to Stockholm.
‘But we never found out what happened to him.’ Jamie blinks, unable to decide if he wants to stand or sit down again. ‘Where he went.’
‘Who took him,’ Fiona says, fingers at her temples. ‘Oh, God, now I’m remembering the first time you made us remember, which you then said wasn’t even the first. The critics from the papers. Everything felt like a snow globe someone had given a good old shake.’
‘I remember that feeling, too,’ Carolyn says, running her hands through her hair. ‘I didn’t enjoy it the first time around. Even less now.’
Fiona braces herself on the back of her chair, just as I had when we all gathered in that stuffy meeting room. ‘The world – our ordinary, humdrum world, the one we were in just ten minutes ago – is complicated enough without magic thrown into the mix.’
‘Dark magic,’ Jamie says. ‘Anything that can rewrite memory without even getting near you is not to be fucked with – sorry, sorry, darlings, excuse my language,’ he adds, nodding at the children.
‘Magic?’ Layla repeats, nonplussed. She turns to her mum and moves into the crook of her arm, looking for a grown-up’s logical explanation. When she doesn’t get one, the unease gives way to something else: a spark of wonder. ‘Like… witch and wizard magic?’
‘Witches and wizards aren’t real,’ Freddie says, pleased to remember something he can be certain of.
‘Maybe not. But fairy-tale magic might be,’ I say, stretching across the table to sift through the contents, as if organising the memories will do anything other than throw acid on the burn.
‘There’s a grain of truth to every tale.
I just don’t think we could have imagined a truth like this.
’ I catch tears on my knuckles before they can stain anything, move aside cast sheets with their fading ink until I find it: a little sheaf of notes, held together with a paperclip.
I place the one in his original handwriting next to two of the copies I made. My annotations stare back at me, flourishes of hope and determination that failed to bring him back.
Carolyn rounds the table and taps a finger on the original note.
‘Why is this one in a different order?’
‘A different—?’ I look down again.
Feb 1986 Act II No. 18 Entr’acte – The Sleeping Beauty
Sep 1986 reprise Aug (or Apr?) 1989 – La Sylphide
Feb 1987 Act I Aug (or Apr?) Adage? Albrecht – Giselle
Jan/Jun/Jul 1987 TD – The Dream (?)
Feb 1988 Act II Oct 1 Odette – Swan Lake
B pdd – Bayadère pas de deux (?) (Which one??)
She’s right. When I wrote out the list for a third time, with all my scribbles, I wrote the items in chronological order, not the order in which he’d originally put them.
I find a pen and write a new copy.
S ’6 rep. A ’9
F ’7 I A
F ’8 II O1
F ’6 II No. 18 Entr.
J ’7 TD
B pdd
x x x
‘What about these cassettes?’ Jamie asks, holding up the only things left in the shoebox. ‘Do they mean anything?’
‘I thought they did…’
Then I hear Mariska’s voice, as if we’d been standing in the Markova studio only yesterday: “Don’t forget the meaning behind the music. What is it saying?”
I look at Sander’s note with new eyes, and plunge my arms into the earth of long-buried memory. Old questions, half-answered. Murmurs in the dark. The Great Storm of 1987.
But what’s your first language? What language do you think in?
His voice, an echo of an echo: Dance.
I annotate my newest copy with the name of each ballet, forcing my hand to write slowly, leaving space between the lines, before offering the pen to Layla.
‘Would you be my scribe for a few minutes, please?’
I ask her to read the note aloud, one line at a time, and to record my responses.
S ’6 reprise A ’9
La Sylphide. Fairies.
F ’7 I A
Giselle Act I. Albrecht. A nobleman leading a double life, promised to someone else.
F ’8 II O1
Swan Lake Act II. Odette, kept apart from Siegfried by a curse.
F ’6 II No. 18 Entr.
The Sleeping Beauty. Act II. Entr’acte. Prince Florimund and Lilac Fairy go through the palace gates, frozen in time, Carabosse lurking in the shadows.
J ’7 TD
The Dream. Magical forest. Beware the king of the fairies.
Bayadère pas de deux
x x x
‘What should I write under the last one?’ Layla asks, the word “under” making me pay attention to the “x” written three times. It’s the only line in the original note that isn’t messy. Each “x” is delicate, and evenly spaced.
Tears have softened my voice. ‘I’ve got that one all wrong.’
‘Not Bayadère?’ Fiona says. ‘But there’s no other ballet in the classical repertory beginning with B.’
‘Les Biches,’ Carolyn offers.
‘Trix and Sander never performed in that,’ Jamie counters.
‘Balcony.’ The room goes quiet again. I try to keep my voice steady. ‘Romeo and Juliet.’
Layla blinks, then dutifully crosses out the penultimate item and writes Balcony pas de deux.
The balcony pas de deux unambiguously says one thing, over and over again, in a glorious multitude of steps.
I love you
x x x
‘Well. We finally found the meaning,’ I say. ‘Ten years too late.’
The shadow of despair threatens to turn everything grey again. Kill all the music.
But another memory gives me pause. The blade of a wing by my ear. The first and only time Sander’s steady hands gave way.
I ask Layla for the biro and make a final addendum.
S ’6 reprise A ’9
La Sylphide. Fairies. Hampstead Heath.