The Prime Minister's Secret Agent(29)
Her feet, usually in thick wool socks and boots, hurt. They weren’t used to stockings and pumps anymore. And her head, accustomed to a knit cap, was cold in her feather-festooned pinwheel. Why don’t ladies’ hats cover ears? Maggie thought as she sidestepped several puddles. Around her, she could hear the clang of a trolley and the clip-clop of horses’ hooves.
She walked through the streets past soot-stained buildings with fan windows and glossy black-painted doors to the Royal Lyceum Theatre on Grindlay Street. She was just in time for the curtain, sliding into her velvet seat just before the cleft-chinned conductor made his entrance, bowed to the audience, and raised his baton. Herman Severin Løvenskiold’s delicate, wistful overture began.
The Vic-Wells, Britain’s fledgling ballet company under the direction of Ninette de Valois, was dancing La Sylphide. A Romantic ballet in two acts, choreographed by August Bournonville, it was, fittingly, set in the Scottish Highlands. There was polite applause, and then the heavy curtains parted.
The spotlight centered on the dancer playing James Ruben, in traditional Highland dress, sleeping in an oversized velvet wing chair in a Scottish great house. A sylph entered, lit in blue, dancing in an unearthly, weightless way. She wasn’t Sarah. Wait, I thought she was dancing the lead?
Maggie looked down at her program, squinting to read it in the dim light. The role of the lead sylph was being danced by Estelle Crawford, a new company member, who looked every inch a fairy queen. Still, Maggie thought, if the idiots in charge of casting had any sense, Sarah would dance it.
The blond ballerina danced with delicate flourishes of phrasing, costumed as the ideal fairy: gossamer wings, a long white tutu, and a crown of pale pink roses. She kissed James. When he woke, she magically disappeared.
In the next scene, Maggie watched raven-haired Sarah, radiant as ever, enter as one of the friends of James’s fiancée Effie. Sarah jumped and twirled in her red velvet bodice and tartan skirt, as beautiful as the woman playing the sylph, but stronger, and glowing with passion.
The crone, Old Madge, entered the farmhouse, with more than a touch of the sinister about her. She pantomimed to James: Let’s see if you’re truly in love. Maggie looked down at her program again. Madge was being played by a dancer named Mildred Petrie. Maggie remembered meeting Mildred, back in London. Sarah had always loathed her, and Maggie could see why. Mildred was an aging dancer—still in the corps, left behind as generation after generation of dancers had been promoted over her. And as she’d aged, she’d grown increasingly bitter.
Nature gives you the face you have at twenty. Life shapes the face you have at thirty. But at fifty you get the face you deserve. Mildred, who must have been close to fifty, certainly had the face she deserved: pale and puffy, with small eyes like tiny black currants in white batter, her thin lips pursed and cynical. Or it might just have been her facial expression, a perpetual sneer of disgust at life for daring to pass her by. Although, Maggie noted, she does make a decent witch. Perhaps it’s her true calling?
During intermission, Maggie went to use the ladies’ loo. The lounge’s walls were covered in ivory silk. There, the grande dames of Edinburgh touched up their vibrant lipstick at the mirrors. Most were older ballet aficionados and society matrons. As Maggie washed her hands, she studied her reflection, then shook her head. She seemed more wax figure than flesh and blood.
Next to her, a fat woman drew a matte red bow on her lips. “Mildred Petrie would have done anything to play the Sylph, you know. It must be killing her to dance character roles now.”
“Well, darling, I heard she has even more reason to hate Estelle,” a tall thin woman said, smoothing flyaway hairs from her gray chignon. “I heard that Mildred’s been in love with the company’s orchestra conductor for years, and he’s never paid her any attention. But when Estelle joined the company, she and the conductor began a mad love affair. People say his wife is devastated. And Mildred is, too.”
“I remember when dear Diana was still Diana Angius. Such a beauty she was, back in the day. And from a respected family in Whitshire.”
Hmmm, Maggie thought as she returned to her seat. Mr. Cleft Chin’s quite popular. After living with Sarah in London, and hearing daily reports, she knew quite well how the goings-on in a dance company could sometimes be far more dramatic than anything onstage.
The lights dimmed and the conductor once again strode out. He was indeed handsome in his black tie and jacket, she had to admit, with his winning smile and shaggy hair. An electricity crackled from him, and Maggie could see how the dancers would fall under his spell. Idly, she wondered if he really was having an affair with Estelle, and if he’d really broken Mildred’s heart. Oh stop it, Hope, she chided herself. No gossip! Don’t let yourself be dragged in, too. She looked down at the program—the conductor’s name was Richard Atholl.