Mr.Churchill's Secretary(31)

The man walked over, and Maggie held out her hand to shake his. Instead, he drew it to his lips and kissed it. “Enchanté, Miss Hope. Frederick Ashton. Perhaps Sarah’s mentioned me.”

Had she? “Yes, well, of course.”

He cleared his throat and glared at Sarah for her faux pas. “I am a choreographer,” he said with a deep bow. “Choreography is my raison d’être.”

“Too bad you can’t make a living from it,” one of the men called from the barre, and the rest of the dancers giggled.

“Silence!” Ashton shouted. The dancers all went back to stretching. “Today, Miss Hope, you will see art as it unfurls. What I do is first familiarize myself with the music—in this case, our own Constant Lambert’s score. Then I break down the dramatic incidents and dances in relation to the music; I call it scaffolding.”

“We like to call it Chinese water torture,” Sarah muttered.

Ashton turned to her with just a hint of a smile. “Well, Miss Sanderson, since you have so much energy, why don’t you demonstrate the choreographic process for your friend?” Sarah shrugged and walked back to the center of the room. The rest of the dancers put on leg warmers and sweaters, draping themselves languidly over the barre. “What I usually do is play the music for the dancer and then ask her to show me something.”

As the pianist played a melody, Sarah began to move, trying out different steps. “I may indicate something, an image perhaps, such as a fountain, or a bird in flight.” Sarah’s steps took on a new dimension as she incorporated his words into her movements. He walked over to her and adjusted her arms, molding the dance on her in time to the music, as if he were a sculptor.

Although Sarah had begun the demonstration with an amused expression on her face, Maggie could tell she was now completely immersed. When the music was done, the dance might not have been finished, but something had definitely happened, something Ashton could draw from and refine. “It’s not what you put into the dance, it’s what you take out,” he said, and called over a few of the other girls and had them repeat the steps with Sarah, editing as they went. The next thing she knew, not only had a dance been created but an entire hour had passed. Ashton clapped his hands. “All right, that’s enough for today, girls. I’ll work with Michael and Margot now.”

Maggie had brought a camera with her, wanting to take some shots of Sarah during rehearsal. But as she observed Ashton work, she was too self-conscious to use it.

Sarah came over to Maggie when they were through, looking exhausted but happy. “I’ll just be a minute,” she said, and went to change. Maggie walked to the lobby and looked around, admiring captioned photographs of the dancers in costume—Alicia Markova partnered with a younger-looking Ashton, Margot Fonteyn dressed in a beautiful tutu and held aloft by Michael Somes.

Sarah emerged from the changing room looking like Katharine Hepburn in her gray flannel trousers and red cashmere sweater, dance bag thrown over her shoulder. “Want to walk through the park instead of taking the Tube home?”

“Sure.” They made their way past King’s Cross and St. Pancras to Regent’s Park. The day was hot and clear, and the air smelled of fresh clover and rich earth. A slight breeze whispered its way through the green oak and elm leaves, causing them to flutter, showing their delicate silvery undersides.

There were a few people out strolling, an older couple with clasped hands, a man in a black bowler hat. As most of the dogs in London had been sent to the country or chloroformed—the barking of the dogs was considered too great a risk in case of invasion—even the usual walkers weren’t around. The London Zoo’s snakes and reptiles had also been killed, while the elephants and lions had been moved to a safer location. Now, with war declared, the park felt so open, so exposed.

“Unbelievable, isn’t it?” Sarah said, as they made their way over the bright green-and-gold fields. “It’s such a gorgeous day. It should be raining, with a howling wind and thunderstorms, but no—it’s the most ravishing summer on record. It’s just too much to take in.”

Maggie pulled out the camera to take some photos. “Pathetic fallacy,” she said, trying to focus the camera on a silvery weeping willow alone in the field, holding back her hair to keep any stray strands from blowing into the shot.

“Sorry?”

“According to John Ruskin, pathetic fallacy describes when the weather corresponds to the emotions of the characters. You know, ‘it was a dark and stormy night.’ ” Maggie snapped the picture, then walked closer to try for a better angle.