Chapter 77
THE BORDER
We meet at the foot of Parliament Hill, the sky still dark blue, the witching hour lingering.
‘Two attempts down,’ I announce. ‘One to go.’
Charlie hands me the portable CD player he uses to mark and rehearse new dance pieces. ‘What makes you so certain?’
‘I’m not certain about any of this.’ The fact that he, Jamie, and Fiona are here regardless, hiking up a steep hill while the rest of London sleeps, makes me glow. ‘But the power of three goes a long way in fairy tales. I need this third pursuit to get me a long way indeed.’
We crest the hill, heads ducked, even though the only people around are the ones approaching us from Primrose Hill via South End Green: Carolyn, Armand, Layla, and Freddie.
‘Not your typical family outing, is it?’ Charlie says by way of hello.
‘These two barely slept, they were so keen to meet you here for… whatever’s about to happen,’ Armand says, ruffling Freddie’s hair as the boy hides a yawn behind his sleeve.
Layla puts a small disc in my hand – a Scout’s compass. There’s excitement in her voice, and reverence for all the unknowns that surround us. ‘Just in case, I don’t know, you need it… wherever you end up.’
The thought of “wherever” makes us turn away from the London skyline, away from the tower blocks and St Paul’s and the Millennium Wheel, towards the forbidding, misty dark of the grove.
Carolyn insists on holding Layla’s and Freddie’s hands as we walk down the slope, wary of unsavoury lurkers; the battle to talk her kids out of joining this secret escapade was lost before it even began.
‘If I can’t manage it, then anyone who wants to can have a go,’ I say, looping the CD player’s headphones around my neck.
From my shoulder bag I dig out two bundles of rosemary twigs.
I orientate myself to face the same direction Glen went in on the two other occasions I witnessed him passing through.
The distant, dark sky is slowly turning nectarine.
Fiona touches my shoulder. ‘And if you do manage it? Should we… come after you? Try to copy whatever it is you’re about to do?’
‘No. No, you need to stay here.’ My eyes flicker to the kids and I lower my voice. ‘If I’m not back in an hour, then…’ Phone the police? Ask a firefighter to throw a ladder across to the other side of God knows where?
‘Then we’ll be right behind you.’
What I’m about to do still doesn’t feel real. I need to cast off the last, stubborn layers of scepticism and self-doubt. ‘Okay. Okay. Thank you, Fee.’
She nods, ushering the others to step back. I’m glad I’m not alone, but I need to imagine that I am.
‘Remember what I used to tell you on promotional shoots, chérie,’ Armand says. ‘Relax. There is no audience now. There is only your story, as you live it. As you dance it. So, dance.’
Night is handing over to the first hour of day. This is my best chance. I’ve got to do it now.
While the shadows still outnumber the sunbeams, while the wall between worlds is as thin as it will ever be on a summer’s day, I press play on The Sleeping Beauty, second disc: No. 18 Entr’acte.
It takes a few counts to forget my friends’ view of me: a middle-aged woman doing tai chi with herbs in beaten-up trainers. These woods have seen stranger things.
I need a few more counts to get past the dissonance of listening to one ballet while wielding the tools of another.
Giselle’s Myrtha uses her rosemary branches to create a space between her realm of ghosts and the realm of ordinary, weak humans, a space where the two can meet.
The Lilac Fairy guides a human prince through the forest where Aurora has shimmered, neither living nor dead.
Aurora and Myrtha: a human being and a supernatural one, reaching through the dark.
Both dance on mist, the significance of which I finally remembered on a night when sleep was just out of reach: it thins the walls between worlds.
On demi-pointe, I cross my arms before me, a twig in each hand, and bourrée as delicately as I can manage, first one way and then the other. Then I take gentle leaps. Assemblé. Glissade. Open arabesque in third.
I never got the chance to finish my Myrtha rehearsals, but I embrace the missing steps, fill the gaps with what feels right for my body now, rather than my body then.
Softer arms. Softer hips. Silver strands.
Sun freckles. Crow’s feet. Surgery scars.
I close my eyes and picture the darkness of a stage, then the mists of enchanted forests: The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, The Nutcracker, The Firebird, The Dream, and La Sylphide brought together.
Walls between worlds, thinned by storms and snow and sunrises, and my own force of nature, this little nudge.
Just enough to push the door into a new realm.
Tchaikovsky’s music travels through time and into my bones.
The oboes and flutes amplify, invoking the Lilac Fairy as she banishes Carabosse’s sentries from the overgrown palace gates.
I leap a little higher, imagining the borderline under my feet, and land in fourth position.
As the wind section gives way to taut, suspenseful strings, I realise I have yet to bump into a tree, or trip over a root.
The floor feels softer under my trainers. Mossier.
The horns start up, staccato, signalling a change of pace as the Lilac Fairy and Prince Florimund hurry through the palace grounds and find their way to Aurora’s perfectly preserved bedroom.
Eyes shut, I stride forward, front foot turned out, back leg in tendu, and still have yet to walk into a tree.
The ground should have begun to slope downhill by now.
The music has ratcheted up to its crescendo, until all the sections of the orchestra meld together in golden harmony. Horns. Strings. The shiver of a gong.
I find the shape of the plastic pause button and open my eyes.
The grove has multiplied like a hall of mirrors, trees spilling in all directions. The mist skirting my feet has thickened to fog. From what little sky I can see, it is still dawn.
Without headphones, the air is all echoes: birdsong, river-song, the rustle of branches even though these trees aren’t moving. It’s all far away, happening somewhere else.
When I take Layla’s compass out of my pocket, the needle spins back and forth like a pendulum that will never settle.
No one is behind me.