A Girl’s Guide to Kissing Frogs. Victoria Clayton
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The winter of 1982 was the coldest on record. I read in the newspaper Lizzie had brought the fish and chips in that they were restoring the hothouses at Kew and one of the rarest plants, a Chilean palm, had been wrapped in a polythene tower through which warm air was pumped to keep it alive. I envied it. Shortly after Lizzie left, the boiler that provided hot water for the bathroom and heated the tiny radiator in my bedroom broke down. In the morning there were frost patterns all over the window and my breath curled up like a whale spout into the crimson canopy.
The hours went by at the pace of an old woman crawling on arthritic hands and knees. My spirits drooped but I told myself not to be so self-indulgent, hopped over to the bookcase and found the first volume of Gibbon. I managed to read for ten minutes before sleep overwhelmed me. I awoke with a dry throat and a feeling of loneliness so acute that even Siggy in all his transcendent beauty could not console me. I read more Gibbon. Gibbon-lovers I had met always held forth in a lofty way about the elegant simplicity of his prose. Probably you have to be in a cheerful mood for it to do you any good. After three-quarters of an hour I was ready to throw myself out of the window.
I had a jolly good cry for about five minutes which made me feel marginally better. I mopped my swollen lids with a hanky soaked in cold water and stared through the grimy window at the darkening sky bisected by pigeons and starlings. If I could not show more strength of mind than this I deserved to fail. Emotional resilience is not the least of the requirements for a dancer. From the moment training starts at the age of ten or eleven, there is a high possibility of failure. At the end of each summer term, weeping girls are driven away, never to return. If you are one of the lucky ones chosen to go up to the next level, your elation is moderated by the knowledge that the following summer it could easily be you packing your suitcase in tears because you are too tall, too fat, too heavy-footed or not strong enough. Or you might lack the right temperament, be unable to take instruction fast enough, have a muted personality, be unmusical or simply not please the eye. After six years of gruelling work, if you meet the requirements of the selection board, you graduate into the upper school and become a student. But this is not a guarantee that you will get a place in a company. Even those who attend ballet schools that feed specific companies have only a small chance of a contract. Perhaps half a dozen a year are taken into the corps.
When I showed an aptitude for ballet my parents sent me to Brackenbury House in Manchester. The teaching was excellent but we girls always felt ourselves to be provincials. At the age of sixteen, five of us, considered the best dancers in the school, were determined to come to London to audition for the Lenoir Ballet Company. We chose the LBC because it had no feeder school of its own. Bella, Lizzie and I got in. The other two, good though they were, had to face the fact that their careers in ballet were effectively over. One went into musicals and the other became a PE teacher. That’s how hard it is to get anywhere.
I had to convince myself that this injury was a temporary blip on the upward trajectory of my career. The gods had been with me so far. I would earn their respect by maintaining a positive cheerfulness in the face of this minor disaster.
I put on a hat and gloves and tried to read more Gibbon with nothing but my watering eyes over the bedclothes before giving in and shivering with Siggy in the darkness beneath the blankets, popping our heads out at intervals for oxygen. I had never thought about it before because I had been too busy, but now I realized that happiness, my happiness anyway, depended on structure and order. From the age of ten almost every minute of my life had been organized. A dancer’s body is like a fine instrument that needs delicate tuning. After even a few days’ rest, one’s muscles become stiff and uncooperative. However tired we were, however bad our headaches or colds, six days out of seven we went to at least one class a day. On Sundays, Nancy, Sorel and I exercised for several hours in our sitting room, which had a barre and a large mirror that we had fixed to the wall ourselves. Now the hours stretched ahead of me, blank, frighteningly empty.
I was roused from a state of semiconsciousness by a knock on the front door. I looked at my clock. Half-past seven in the evening of the longest day of my life. The knock came again. Pulling the eiderdown round me, I limped into the hall. I lifted the letterbox flap. A delicious and reassuring scent drifted through the draughty rectangle. I opened the door.
‘Marigold! Thank … goodness!’
‘Bobbie! How wonderful! But you’re almost the last person in the world I expected to see! I thought you were in Ireland.’
‘I am … usually. Can … come in? … as … phyxiating out here.’
‘Of course!’ I embraced her enthusiastically. ‘Oh, sorry, I probably stink to high heaven. I haven’t been able to have a bath today and you smell gorgeous.’
‘Luckily … bottle of scent to … drown myself … might not … made it … top.’ Bobbie was puffing like one of those little funicular trains that run up cliffs. ‘… going to see … Giselle … last night but you … not dancing … rang the company … at home … broken leg.’ She hugged me again then held me at arm’s length. ‘… look at you.’ Her eyes took in my cap, my gloves, my cast and my shivering state. ‘Marigold! … mauve … cold! Bed … at once!’
I was too weak to do other than obey. Bobbie brought a chair up to the bed and sat panting for a while, holding my hand and chafing my back.
‘All right, I’ve got my breath now. Why is this place colder than a polar cap?’
I explained about the boiler. She went away and came back with the blankets from the other two beds. She piled them on my recumbent form, keeping one to wrap round herself. ‘That’s better. Now tell me about your poor leg.’
‘Foot actually. It’s a comminuted fracture but the surgeon thinks it’ll mend all right. I’m starting to feel warmer already. I don’t know why I didn’t think about Nancy and Sorel’s bedclothes.’
‘I expect you’ve got mild hypothermia. The mind is the first thing that goes, apparently.’
‘Oh, Bobbie!’ I looked at her with pleasure. Even had she been as ugly as a warty old crone I would have been thrilled to see a fellow human being, but she happened to be remarkably beautiful. ‘I hope you aren’t a dream. I couldn’t bear it if you vanished now.’
‘I’m here, darling, and I’m not going to leave you until I know you’re all right. Why aren’t you being properly looked after?’
‘Sebastian told the clinic I was going to a nursing home so they’d let me out early, but it would have been too expensive. And everyone in the company’s either away or too busy.’ I brought Bobbie up to date with the events of the past week, feeling warmth return to my extremities and optimism to my powers of reasoning. ‘I don’t need looking after, really. I can hobble about. It’s just that it’s so difficult to get up and down the stairs.’
‘I’ll find something for us to eat and then we’ll think what’s the best thing to do.’
‘There’s a tin of frankfurters.’ I pulled a face. ‘Otherwise it’s brawn, I’m afraid.’
Bobbie picked up a pale green carrier bag with ‘Fortnum and Mason’ written on it. ‘I stopped on my way to pick up a few bits and pieces. I won’t be a minute.’
She returned with a tray piled with good things.
‘Smoked salmon!’ I cried. ‘Oh, the luxury! A whole camembert! Tomatoes and olives! Cold chicken!’ I felt my mouth fill with saliva. ‘And little fruit tarts! You angel!’ I winked away tears of gratitude.
She had also brought a bottle of claret that tasted deliciously of raspberries and liquorice. While we ate and drank we talked as easily as though we had met yesterday, though in fact it had been two years since we had last seen each other.
I had known Bobbie all my life. Our mothers had been at the same boarding school. As a homesick new girl, my mother, who was much given to hero-worship, had developed a crush on Bobbie’s mother, who was several years her senior. She had run errands for her and written her passionate notes and