And who exactly is ‘they’? Luke thinks as he walks into the dressing room. Derek is always going on about ‘them’, muttering as he flips a spanner between his fingers or scratches his arse. Sometimesthemis Belinda and Mackie, an axis of authority Derek feels only exists to give him grief, but oftenthemis the government, or the CIA, or thepharmaceutical companies, or the banks, who are either persecuting or ignoring him because of his phenomenal or dangerous gifts, depending on the day.
Luke peels the dark brown tights from the hunting dance off his legs and down over his shins and pulls the silver tights for the wedding dance from the hanger.
‘You seen the notice? Mackie’s pledge day drinks in the Grub tonight. Should be a good one.’
He looks up, surprised, thinking someone’s actually talking to him but the voice belongs to Solomon, talking to Theo, over his head. Luke is piggy in the middle.
‘You coming?’ Solomon asks, and Luke hears the sly, shy note of hope in his voice and understands that that’s it for Theo, he’s been absorbed into the social organism and by this time next week he and Solomon will be a couple, stepping out, fucking.Courting.Whatever you want to call it.
Luke takes the white jacket festooned with silver sequins from the hanger and shoves each arm inside. It itches like a devil but at his costume fitting on his second day Alina had been unmoved by his discomfort.And what do you want me to do about that, sunshine? Line it with silk?
It’s not surprising Theo has been – is being, before Luke’s very eyes – snapped up. He watches Solomon bossily beckon Theo to stand in front of him so he can do up the buttons on his wedding jacket. Theo is talented. There is a what-do-you-call-it,je ne sais quoiabout his dancing, a clarity to his lines and an easy facility in his body. He’s not quite as magnetic to watch as Matty, but that’s probably tohis advantage because he can slide in anywhere in the show and look good.
Luke does up his own buttons, craning his neck. He should go to the pledge day drinks tonight. He wants to – well, he wants to want to – no – he wants someone to want him to go. He wants to be invited beyond the generic notice on the board, he wants someone to notice as he’s going back to his cabin and say,Oh, aren’t you staying?He hears his grandmother in his head, her voice drifting from the mouth of that creature in the auditorium,Well if you won’t join in, what do you expect?
He thinks about the way at ballet school they’d all be sitting around in someone’s bedroom at the hostel, too young to go out to a club but old enough for the off-licence round the corner to pretend to check their ID as they bought some cans and cheap wine. They’d all be sitting in the common room that stank of stale weed and chips, with all the others passing through, the dancers, the musicians, the backpackers and the kids kicked out of home and someone used to get out their phone and play music, tinny in the crap little speakers they make so they’ll break after six months. People would get up and dance, cans of cider dangling from their fingertips and soon the floor would clear so that everyone could watch the dancers, half admiring, half horny, watching as they took pleasure in moving their bodies just for themselves, not caring for the aesthetic value for once – although they looked good, of course they did, how could they not? They were just loose limbs and easyrhythm and the certainty that the world belonged to them and no one else.
But Luke was always on the outside of it. Like he was rubbing at the condensation on a windowpane, peeking in, trying to look like he was having fun. Pretending that he would get up and dance if he felt like it, that he was appreciating the vibe. But the older he gets – and he knows this is a stupid thought to have at twenty years and three months old – the more he sees that it was stupid to think he’d look stupid. Vain. Delusional, even. Because now he’s realised that no one sees him at all, not on those luminous Saturday nights at ballet school and not here.Which is worse, he wonders,to be perceived only to be ridiculed or not to be perceived at all?
The music for the White Princess’s solo starts and Luke joins the trot of dancers heading out of the dressing rooms and down the two flights of stairs to the stage. Sequins and silver and gold everywhere, spangled headdresses for the girls and itchy, sparkling jackets for the boys. Pointe shoes tap on the concrete and the wooden stage floor as everyone crowds into the stage right wing, ready for the finale of the show.
He is relieved to see Derek’s boots disappearing up the ladder above Charlie at the prompt desk as he arrives in the wings.Thank fuck for that. Luke is gloomy now. He stifles a cough, swallows, feels his throat a little constricted by the beginning of swelling in his tonsils. Bollocks, he’s definitely getting ill. Maybe that’s what he’ll say in the unlikely eventof anyone asking after him tonight. He’ll give a wry smile and shake his head.Think I’m coming down with something. Don’t want to pass it around.
There is an air of relief in the wings. The bright smiles are beginning to sag and the mascara starting to smudge.One more push and we’re through until tomorrow, say the wriggles inside the too-tight costumes.Looking forward to my dinner, say the rolled necks and massaged shoulders. There they gather, all the dancers ofThe Apple and the Pearl, everyone watching Stephanie as she steps intoarabesqueand the last few notes echo around the Grit.
The finale is no one’s favourite part of the show, except in the sense that it’s all almost over, with showers, hot food, cold beers and soft beds awaiting them all in the Grub. The music is brassy, a little bit vaudeville or Hollywood musical for most people’s tastes, but there’s an undeniable sense of joy that comes from the pit as the tune goespom-pa, pom-pa, pom-pa-POMand they all surge onto stage together, sequins spangling, catching the light, letting all that trombone blast through them as they surge onto the stage to surround Stephanie, kneeling centre stage with her eyes on the floor.
Romero’s advice:Travel theassemblésand then you’ll be right in front of the Kingmingles with Cecile’s voice in his ear:Keep the spacing, hold thecoupéfor a count of two and watch Ritchie if you’re too stupid to count for yourself. Watch the line of the chin, you’re not a woodpecker.He follows the circle as it swirls, then spins out to the stage left corner –Feet tight in thechainé,Luke! I could get a bus through there!– andthrows his arms out in what he hopes is a nobly celebratory manner towards where Greg and Mara stand at the back of the stage.
He watches the wave of bows and curtseys as Greg sweeps Mara past everyone, trying not to dip his own head too early or too late –This is the climax of the show, I am begging you not to fuck it up.Snot drips out of his nostril and into the groove under his nose and resignedly he stands, arms aloft, waiting for it to curl over his top lip and into his mouth. So undignified but that’s ballet for you. A shiny parcel bedecked with ribbons and gilt with nothing but humiliation and pain inside.
He is facing upstage and glad of it, because the temptation to stare into the stalls for another glimpse of that creature is strong, but his fear of Cecile shouting at him if he faces the wrong way is stronger. This must be what Belinda warns you about.Stronger and stranger than you can imagine. Do not think you will be able to dally, you will not.
The Princesses are dancing in unison with their Suitors and this is it, they are wed and they will live happily ever after, and there are only a couple more steps to be danced tonight and he performs them,chassé pas de bouree, glissade–Sharp second foot please, I don’t care if it’s late in the evening, I don’t want to see sloppy footwork –and then he melts towards the wings with all the rest of the dancers, but before he goes he contrives to turn to face downstage towards the audience for one last glimpse – and he will defend himself if he must, but he has to see that creature again – but it’s too late, he isalready in the wings and the creature is out of his sight, on the other side of the proscenium. His disappointment is a warning to him. That creature is not his grandmother, it’s a fairy creature from another world. And it’s not like he particularly wants to see his grandmother again, but the hollow feeling in his stomach is another warning. He must be lonely if he’s missing her.
The timpani starts for the Crow’s solo and Luke stands in the wings, shoulder to shoulder with the full cast ofThe Apple and the Pearland all their accompanying sweat. Benji is sitting on the floor behind Charlie, looking slightly green, Romero grinning and rubbing his shoulders. Harriet stands in a gaggle of silent well-wishers in sparkly silver dresses, and from here they look like they’re in a kind of cult doing some type of spiritual healing, laying their hands on her to absorb some of the adrenaline coursing through her. That’s an unkind thought. They’re just congratulating her for a good show, just telling her she did well. So easy to be a dick, or at least have dickish thoughts, when you’re on the outside of things.
Luke would like to say something to Harriet or Benji, or even both of them,Well doneorHope you had a good showorI thought you did great, but he has no idea if it would be welcome. Is it too familiar, an assumption of some kind of connection they definitely don’t have? Or is it rude not to say anything at all? Does everyone know these kind of things, or do they just bet and win more often than not? Is everyone just pretending? He imagines a stage full ofwooden marionettes, their puppet masters and mistresses sending out their stiff simulacra into the world to keep their own meat safe. Only idiots like him and Derek didn’t get the memo, wandering about the world all soft and squirmy and squishable.It’s legerdemain, mate, he imagines Derek drawling, wiggling his fingers and waggling his eyebrows like a drunken pier-end conjurer.It’s all an illusion.
The discordant cello and clarinet fall off and now it’s just the timpani, beating out the last notes as Josh walks slowly upstage, the cloak dangling from his cruel, broad shoulders. Luke licks away a drip of mucus from his nose that’s half the impending cold and half the impending tears.Not yet, he tells himself.Get back to the Grub first.
Charlie says ‘tabs’ and from the corner of his eye, Luke can see the curtain start to fall, the drum slowing as it descends along the line of the proscenium. When it hits the stage it makes a clinking sound, bounces a little, and a moment later Luke surges with the rest of the dancers onto the stage and stands on the end of the back row, back straight, eyes determinedly on the swirl of Anita’s hair directly in front of him. The voice of his grandmother in his ear,I know you’ll peek, Lukey, you’re a naughty little boy at heart and you never do as you’re told.
Charlie’s voice from the wings, ‘Tabs up’, the creaking of the fly ropes and the scarlet tide of the curtain begins to lift.
***
There is no applause, there never is, but still, some of the company miss it.Don’t you think a theatre needs that sound?Evelyn used to say to Michael as they lay in his bed together.Don’t you think the very bricks are soothed by it?
The dancers are arranged on stage with the King, Queen and Crow in the front line in the centre. On either side stand the three Princesses and their Suitors, slick hand in slick hand. Behind them are two rows of corps de ballet, a neatly poised back foot for the women, a dignified bent knee for the men.
In the flies, Kavi holds on to the ropes that haul the curtain. It won’t fall, the tension is perfectly weighted, but he likes to keep his fingers touching the rough weave of the hemp so he can feel every quiver. Mackie stands in the stage left wing with an iron rod warming in his palm – an old tip from Juliet, just in case. In the stage right wing, Cecile, fingering her necklace of polished pink rock salt, plans heradageexercise for tomorrow’s ballet class as she watches Greg take his bow. Belinda stands next to her, rubbing the salt in her pocket between her forefinger and thumb, leaning to one side to peer into the auditorium. In the pit, AJ stands still on his podium with his baton resting on the music stand and his hands clasped together. His orchestra are on their feet before him, heads bowed towards the scores on their music stands so they don’t have to look out into the auditorium and see what’s coming next. All except Henry, who looks out into the auditorium as he does every curtain call, desperately trying to catch the eye of something, anything that will take him away.
And then bells ring out into that silence that never fills with applause like in an ordinary theatre, an unholy clanging that comes from nowhere but echoes inside each mortal soul’s heart like a bassline, somewhere above Kavi and below Jasper’s timpani at the back of the pit. This is what sends the fair folk reeling into a frenzy, that rolling roaring sound, the arpeggios of bells played as if they are harp strings. They start to sing and shout and stamp their feet and the sound is like all your nightmares jumbled and minced for a pie. This is their applause. Maybe. Perhaps the sounds of their displeasure would be the same. Perhaps they are singing in their own ancient language. Perhaps the show is a kind of call and response and this is the bit where they sing back at the mortals, how they tell the story of the curse and the quest and the Crow in her nest, the story of the show they’ve just danced, a story the creatures of the auditorium probably consider they’ve told wrong, in the way you always think other people tell the old tales you love wrong. Perhaps there is a kind of harmony underneath it all, based on a scale unknown to mortal ears, made of notes no mortal throat could make.
Up in the lighting box, Derek starts to unplug the follow spot, warm to the touch and humming a little, satisfied with its night’s work. Beside him, Zach watches Lara’s mouth fall open in a perfectO, something Zach thought only happened in books.
A haze starts to drift upwards from the seats, filling the auditorium with tiny speckles of glittering light. They swirl a little, as if shunted about by brisk winds and thehaze starts to separate into individual forms. A curly haired child clutching a battered ukulele; an elderly man carrying a severed arm over his shoulder; a woman winding a long braid of hair around her head.
