She would like to believe that. It would make it easier. Easier to stay, easier to leave, easier to think back fondly on this time in her life when she’s out in the world doing something else, something boring, something more necessary.She closes her feet into a neat fifth position, rises onto the balls of her feet and turns to the other side.
The piano roars as she draws her left foot up her shin, and the stage starts to smell damp like the graveyard outside, like the lichen in the stone, like the mist dripping off the yews. There’s a commotion in the right downstage corner, near the piano. Growing in ripples from the vinyl dance floor are tiny mushrooms, slick and shiny, the colour of bleached bone. All the dancers have stopped now, gazing at their feet, trying to avoid stepping on them as they sprout under the soles of their shoes. Mara glances at Stephanie, who shakes her head with tears welling, murmuring, ‘That poor man.’ Stephanie has always approved of Michael but now he’s tragic and lost she nurses an enormous crush on him.
‘Maestro!’ Cecile shouts over the music, the only sign that she’s at all perturbed the wrinkling of her nose. But Michael can’t hear her. On he plays, letting the piano swell and roar and Cecile walks quickly to the front of the stage where he sways on his stool, eyes shut, humming along with his music. She lays a hand on his shoulder.
‘Michael.’ He stops mid-phrase and looks up at her. With a small flick of her hand she gestures behind her, and as he sees the tiny pale globes all over the stage his face reddens. But before he can say anything Cecile claps her hands.
‘Okay, we start this side again!’ Cecile calls. At her voice the mushrooms instantly shrink and the dank smell is gone. There are quiet mutters and groans. ‘You may thank him later for giving you a few seconds’ rest.’
Mara keeps her legs low, conserving her energy on the other side of theadageexercise, and yes, it’s a privilege of seniority but she didn’t make the rules. She remembers Michael’s ex-girlfriend vaguely – red hair, harp, seemed all right – but it would be fair to say the woman is having more of an impact on the daily life ofThe Apple and the Pearlin her absence than she did in her presence. Mara imagines there are already meetings between Belinda, AJ, Cecile and Mackie. She can almost hear their aggravated conversations.
Cecile:I cannot put up with it any longer, he is making a misery of act two for everyone.
AJ:Yes, I can see it is upsetting but I think he deserves a little understanding.
Belinda:I’ve offered her a pay rise, but she’s determined not to come back.
Mackie:I just feel sorry for the man.
‘Grands battements!’ Cecile calls from her chair at the front of the stage. ‘You know it!’ All around her are Lycra-clad legs flying past shoulder height, but Mara keeps her legs low again. It’s only the Queen tonight. She remembers her first rehearsals for the Queen a couple of years ago.Do not raise your legs above knee height, you are not doing the can-can!Cecile spat.You are a sovereign!
She had laughed about that with Greg and Stuart in the Grub that night because what the fuck did Cecile know about historical queens, but really it was typical of what she definitely wouldn’t miss about this place and the show.The fake medieval shit, the artifice of it. The storyline that doesn’t make a bit of sense, the pretence that you can even tell anything approaching a story with ballet.Why the fuck does the Crow care about the Princesses?She and Annie used to laugh at the ridiculousness of the show.Where do the Suitors come from? What if they don’t fancy the Princesses when they wake up?
Greg used to shrug, a small smile playing on his lips.Just another one of those old stories. They never make sense. Doesn’t matter to me.
And then Stephanie would lean in and start talking very earnestly about Jung and matriarchal societies and Stuart would roll his eyes, pat her arm and sayI’m going to get you another drink.
‘Alors!’ calls Cecile, clapping her hands. ‘We come to the centre.’
The men take away the ballet barres, lining them up neatly at the back of the stage where Mackie and Charlie will dismantle them later. Mara, along with the other women, disappears into the wings where she left her bag filled with pointe shoes in varying stages of newness and comfort. She changes from flat shoes into pointe shoes, quickly wrapping the rubber pad around her toes, stuffing her feet in and lacing up the ribbons. Soon there’ll be no more pointe shoes and it won’t be a moment too soon. No more blisters and ingrown toenails and corns. No more squashed and sweaty feet.
A tap on her shoulder.
‘Do you have a pair of scissors?’ Zuleika asks. Mara roots in her bag and hands her sewing kit to Zuleika who is sitting on the floor with one pointe shoe on and the other in her hand. A long thread dangles from the ribbon.
‘Thanks,’ Zuleika says. ‘I’ll put them in your bag when I’m done.’
Zuleika will be someone who will benefit from her leaving. Like she’s an old mother beech falling in the forest, making light for the saplings beneath her to thrive. Zuleika’s a good dancer, but anxious. With Mara gone she’ll learn the Red Princess, and probably the Queen too, and that will give her some confidence.
Cecile marks through the first exercise in the centre and Mara steps onto pointe, pushing her arches into her shoes which are a little too soft to perform any of the Princesses but comfortable for class. She watches Bella manipulating the toes of her pointe shoes with her hands. She’s another who will thrive without Mara’s shade. White or Blue Princess for her, probably starting rehearsals in the next couple of weeks. She’s reliable, strong and has a lovely quality in the upper body.
The men go first and Mara stands in the wings, half watching the exercise to know it well enough to do it in a minute or two.Find your balance now, girls, Mrs Jeffers used to say when they’d leave the safety of the old, splintered pews at the side of the room and stand facing the mirrors streaked with rust.Allow your pelvis to settle in gravity and support the spine with the tummy muscles.All this nonsenseballet teachers tell you, lodged in your brain like toffee in a tooth.
‘Four bars for the women to come in,’ Cecile calls over the music and the men leave the stage.
Mara starts the exercise herself, moving through thetendus en croixand ineffacé, thinking of Mrs Jeffers. She should find that lady, if she’s still alive.You’ll never guess where I spent the last decade of my life, she’ll say, though how on earth will she be able to describe the reality – the unreality – ofThe Apple and the Pearlto anyone?And you know what, I heard your voice almost every single day.
‘We repeat theadagefrom yesterday,’ Cecile says, quickly marking it through. ‘Because I did not see a single one of you perform it correctly.’
Cecile looks at Michael with an uncharacteristically nervous eye, and she indicates to him to start. He plays the adage fromThe Two Pigeons, another ballet class pianist staple, but this time he keeps his eyes open, fixed on the keys, alert with no possibility of allowing the Grit to take him over.
The men finish and the women replace them on the stage. Mara stands on her left leg as she draws her right toe up her shin and extends it to the side. She intends to keep her legs low, but the music gives her muscles a little push. Where else will she get this feeling? In nightclubs? In a group exercise class at the local leisure centre? Perhaps she should look for another dancing job. One last heist before she hangs up her shoes forever.
And now it’spirouettesfrom the corner, the part of class that starts to feel like really dancing rather than just training and sculpting the body. She watches Benji moving across the space, eating it up with joy. He’s good at that. Even in class he covers the floor like a panther, his heart beaming out into the empty auditorium. A nice lad. A considerate partner. Making his debut tonight as the Red Suitor. She’s written him a card with a few words of encouragement he’ll never get from Cecile and the traditional lines from the rhyme –three clangs for the Suitors who lie in a dream. She’ll give it to him at the half.
She steps out of the wings just as Romero shuffles his feet into fifth position to start the exercise. He gestures to her to step in front of him, and she hops forward in the final bar of the last phrase before the exercise starts.
Chassé pas de bourreé, doublepirouette, finish cleanly in fourth. Nothing revolutionary about the combination, it’s as staid and stolid as a roast dinner with overcooked cabbage. But every day it is subtly different on her body, every day she needs to greet the steps again, try them on, adjust the fit.
