Mara, in the dressing room before ballet class the next morning:I’m fucking sick of it, it’s gone beyond sexual incontinence, now he’s just being a dick because no one will stop him.She’d pointed at Bella with a mascara wand.You seem like a smart girl so let me tell you this for free – you’ll be happier here if you find someone other than Casanova with his cornet to get your kicks with.
But Alina is right, there is no one else to get your kicks with. Henry the second violin looks like an underwear model but he doesn’t seem to take an interest in anyone but Michael, which is a shame because Michael definitely plays for the other team. Luke the new boy has the sex appeal of a slice of cucumber. Alex had been lovely but firmly Anita’s and now he’s gone she can’t even talk about him, let alone move on. Zach the lighting guy is kind but sort of shambling and awkward. Max the second violin has some mysterious girlfriend out in the real world and the new harp David is old. Like, at least forty. And then there’s Derek. Last week he caught her at the noticeboard by the stage with the back of her Pearl waltz costume undone and whistled.That’s a good show for a fairy prince.Bella had cringed helplessly. Jessica said she should report him to Belinda, but Bella hasthe feeling even Belinda’s powers are limited when it comes to Derek.
So it’s surprising that there hasn’t been more of a stampede for Kavi. He’s not exactly handsome, but there’s nothing offensive about his face. A slim build, clean, no indication of being a dickhead. What is she missing?
It’s been two months now since they first locked gazes in the dining car after the show and there’ve since been: seven long looks accompanied by shy smiles; elevenhello-how-are-yous; three occasions where they’ve been sitting with a larger group in the Grub, swapping stories about when Belinda’s told them off; and one time when he happened to be leaving the Grit at the same time as her after ballet class and they walked along a windy clifftop and talked about the sea. And now. The two of them, alone in the semi-darkness, with Cecile’s increasingly furious counting echoing out into the auditorium and a silence elongating into a cringe. She doesn’t know if she actually finds him attractive or if he’s the only chance for her to get laid this decade and she doesn’t care anymore. She wants to get there before any of the others, and right now he’s standing in front of her and her orange legwarmers, and she needs to say something intelligent before he walks away thinking she’s a moron.
‘Are ballet mistresses always like this?’ he asks, gesturing to the stage.
Oh thank God, he spoke first. The table is digging into her hip so she pulls herself up to sit on it. ‘Mostly. Some ofthem pretend to be nice, but actually they play favourites and smack you down behind your back.’
She swings her legs. She’s trying to look insouciant and flirtatious but maybe she just looks like a kid. ‘Cecile doesn’t do that, she’s a bitch to everyone. I appreciate that about her.’
Kavi laughs. ‘I don’t think Cecile knows who I am and I’m fine with that.’
‘Oh, she knows who you are; she knows everything. She just doesn’t care.’
He hooks his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans and leans back on the table.
‘Have you worked in ballet before?’ she asks. It’s a stupid, small-talky thing to say but it follows on from what he said.
‘I’ve done two other ballets,’ he says. ‘Both were like this, set in a kind of mythical past, with kings and queens and magic and fake medieval costumes. I like it. I get to watch the show from the flies, and it’s really beautiful.’
She thinks about him watching her dance from above, her spinning, leaping, darting head moving around the stage.
‘I guess Cecile might be a dragon and kind of old-fashioned in her methods,’ he continues, ‘but she keeps the show spick and span.’
From the stage comes a stream of French swear words, the bang of a stool falling over and a particularly Gallic sound of disgust.
Kavi smirks and she holds back a snort of laughter.
‘Fair enough. The show would be a mess without Cecile keeping us in line. And she’s also a great teacher, you know. Her classes are excellent.’
He nods a little. ‘That’s important in ballet, isn’t it.’
‘Oh yeah. Ballet is all about lineage, you can’t learn it from a book. You have to show up in front of a teacher who apprenticed themselves to someone else and to the art itself, and yes, that’s elitist and unfair but that’s how it is. There’s no democracy in ballet, no negotiation; there’s only the form. And then you’ve got to kind of kneel in front of this ideal, like, you sacrifice yourself on the altar of what ballet is even though you’ll never attain it. No one will. It doesn’t live in this realm.’
She waves her arm vaguely in the direction of the as yet empty auditorium. ‘That’s whytheycome to the show, you know? Because they’re drawn to the beauty of human bodies striving and yearning for that ideal. They feed on that space in between the dancer and the dance.’
She takes a breath and shoves her hands under her thighs to sit on them. He’s frowning, but in a go-on-tell-me-more way, so she keeps going.
‘So when you do anarabesque,’ she says, ‘you’re doing your own version of anarabesque, a version which aims for the ur-arabesquebut will inevitably fall short. Your leg will be a little too low, or a little turned in, or your back will fall too far forwards and spoil the line. Maybe it’ll be your foot spoiling the line with a sickle at the ankle. You’ll place your arm just as the choreography says, one arm draped behindyou and the other guiding your gaze forwards, with your chin lifted to match but something about the picture will not be quite good enough. Cecile will correct you, and after you do what she says yourarabesquewill be better, but there’ll still be something in the pose that’ll fall from the ideal in some way and you’ll hardly ever be able to say what it is.’
What a wanker she sounds. What made her say all that? She’s gabbing on like bloody Derek the follow spot. Watch him excuse himself now, mumble something about how he must be going, doesn’t want to get her in trouble with Cecile. Soon she’ll see him in the Grub with Jessica, or Anita and the next time a young, half-decent straight man pledges here Kavi will take him aside and sayyeah, she’s fit you know but she’s kind of intense.
‘That’s nothing like poetry,’ he says.
‘How do you mean?’ she says, and her stomach does a one-two bounce-then-dive. Of course he’s a poet. That’s the way this place works. The Crow hates her. Who else would it give her as a boyfriend?
‘Well, when you write a poem you’ve got nothing but the words in your head, right? And you don’t know if it’s good or not and that becomes an obsession. How can you know if it’s good? Why do some people think it’s good and some think it’s bad and some are totally indifferent to it?’
He’s looking at her like he wants her to answer, but she’s still trying to figure out if she is more or less interested in sleeping with him now, so she shrugs apologetically and he carries on.
‘That’s because there’s no such thing as an ur-poem, no ideal poem that all the other poems are trying to live up to. It’s just a jumble of words that have to be persuaded into poem shape after they’ve done their day job in lists and love letters and lullabies.’
She smiles. ‘Words have day jobs?’
‘Of course.’ He leans in to her, conspiratorially. She knows they’ve been noticed by now. One of the girls waiting in the other wing will have seen their heads drawing together in the darkness as Cecile’s counting drones on and the news will be drifting among the rest of the dancers by the half-hour call tonight.
