Cry to Dream Again Page 3

  She had made no secret of her opinion at home in English, but had simply been advised by her mother that this was the way things were, and always had been, so it would be better to keep quiet for fear of offending her grandparents, especially because Mémé tried so hard to keep everywhere indoors so spotlessly clean, in spite of all the mud outside and the cows in the adjacent barn. In any case, Maman reminded her that, as far as they were concerned, the arrangement was temporary, only for the duration of the holidays.

  Maman’s calm good sense set Shirley’s imagination racing. She envisaged her small, neat mother with her heart-shaped face and deep brown eyes, as a princess who had been captured by wicked sorcerers, a witch and a magician, and trapped in a spooky, remote farm where no one ever spoke and where no music or dancing was allowed, and where she was made to scrub floors, cook meals and wash dishes. Only when a handsome, fair-haired foreign prince, that is to say Pa, came searching for the lost princess, did she escape and fly away with him to a new life. None of this was true, quite the contrary in fact: Mémé was no witch and, though anxious and tearful from time to time, was the sweetest person you could wish to meet, so unlike troublesome Granny Marlow back in London, and Pépé, though taciturn and gruff, was at heart honest and generous. To be fair, neither of them would have subjected their daughter to such a horrendous existence. But still, it made a good story and would make an even better ballet. Undoubtedly the plot owed some of its elements to Cinderella.

  Despite her subservience, Mémé was not silent for long: waiting at table had given her time for reflection. When her granddaughter appeared in the doorway, pink-faced from her brisk walk home, she observed sadly: “Ah, te voici! Here you are, Chérie! I was just thinking, it will be such a long time till we see you all again, and I shall miss you so much!” Then, brightening up, she announced her latest culinary idea. “I think we should kill a goose for your farewell dinner and make a party of it! They’re not properly fattened up yet, but there’ll be enough to go round. You’ll catch one for us, won’t you, Édouard?”

  “Of course I will,” her grandson replied, unperturbed at the prospect. Shirley could not fathom how her brother could bear to go into the meadow, let alone catch one of those honking, hissing creatures. Nevertheless, it would be bound to taste good, especially with some early apples and cider.

  The two men left the table together and went out to continue their work in the deluge that Shirley had avoided by running the last fifty yards up the incline to the farm when drops had started to fall out of a leaden sky. Water poured off the roof, held at bay from the walls by the wide overhanging eaves. Although the house was kept dry, the lack of guttering caused a muddy puddle to fill the yard in no time at all. “There, I said it was going to rain,” Maman observed. “What are you going to do this afternoon, Chérie?” she asked as she cleared the table.

  “Oh, I don’t know, maybe I’ll do some pliés. I hope there’ll be some news about that audition when we get home,” Shirley replied with a rueful sigh. She went into the bedroom that she shared with her mother. At least in there, as a special concession to the two of them, the floor was level and boarded, unlike the kitchen with its cold, uneven flagstones.

  On the way she paused in the small salon next to the kitchen to look at the strange photo, draped in black gauze, on top of the piano that was never opened. It was such a shame that it was permanently closed, because Ted was a natural pianist. From an early age he had taught himself to play by ear, not here in France, but in England at the home of his other grandparents, Grandpa and Granny Marlow. While interminable, tedious English family gatherings took place around the table in the dining room, he would withdraw to the living room after Sunday lunch and tap out tunes, initially simple and by degrees increasingly complex, on the upright piano. At first the family would listen in amazement, but gradually their attention lapsed and they returned to whatever topic of conversation was uppermost in their thoughts. Maman, who could never quite keep up with the gist and the twists and turns of English gossip – for that was what passed for conversation at these gatherings – would slip away to the living room, quickly followed by Shirley, and together they would play draughts or halma while listening in admiration to Ted’s performances of popular songs and dance tunes. Since Grandpa Bill died, visits to the Marlow house were rarer, because Granny complained that she found family parties too tiring, although she really meant that they were too expensive, and whenever they did call on Granny in passing, Ted usually went out to Grandpa Bill’s workshop to repair old bikes rather than seat himself at the piano.

  Both Shirley and her mother were saddened that this evident talent no longer had an outlet, either in England or in France, but Ted himself did not seem too upset at its untimely end, because, he said, he preferred to spend his time in Trémaincourt out in the fields. Maman had gently remonstrated with her mother several times in an attempt to persuade her to allow the piano to resume its rightful role, but the latter was so distraught at the mere mention of it that the subject had to be dropped. Her reaction was always the same: “Oh, my darling son!” she would cry tearfully. “If I heard that piano being played, I would expect to see him seated there, running his beautiful hands up and down the keyboard!”

  Shirley was drawn to the photo standing on the piano, and could not pass it without stopping to peer at the young man in the picture. There were other similar photos that stood on the old sideboard; they, like the piano, were draped in black and showed a very young man in army uniform. He slightly resembled Maman, fine-featured with dark eyes; Maman used to stand solemnly gazing at him, and years ago had whispered to Shirley and Ted that the young man was her older brother Georges, who used to play the piano, but the children should not ask their grandparents about him because he had been killed in the War, at Verdun, and it would be too upsetting for them to be reminded of all that.

  This silence had never made sense to Shirley: why stand the photos on the piano if the memory of Georges was too upsetting to talk about? She promised herself that when she grew up she would not brush things under the carpet but would be completely open about everything that mattered to her. It was such a pity, because she sensed that Ted would have liked to play, despite his denials. Although he was obviously talented, he refused to play the sort of beautiful, flowing ballet music she liked to dance to, saying that it was too difficult, and limited himself to popular dance tunes, so she left him alone and did not badger him further.

  She pulled her canvas practice shoes out of her suitcase and put them on. Humming one of her many melodies from the ballet, she stretched her arms above her head and bent double to touch the floor before using the ledge of the small, square window for want of a barre, though it was not wide enough for her foot to rest on it properly: she felt stiff and clumsy, unable to touch her nose to her knee or extend her leg higher than about forty-five degrees, which was worrying, because her turnout – the rotation of the leg from the hips to the toes – had evidently worsened through lack of practice. Next, she worked with more success through pliés, tendus, frappés and fouettés, and then moved away from the window ledge to practise the trickier steps and routines in the centre of the room. For those, she discarded her canvas shoes and donned her satin point shoes, the ones she was particularly proud of. After two and a half weeks with little practice, however, the pirouettes did not come easily, and, what’s more, her balance en pointe was less steady than it should have been. Dispirited, she tried a petit allegro of sautés, échappés and relevés, but quickly ran out of breath. She was annoyed with herself, wondering where all that technique that had enabled her to pass that high-graded exam, the Advanced Two, only weeks before leaving London, had gone.

  Even worse than the breathlessness, she discovered that she had been eating too much and had put on a layer of fat around her middle in those idle weeks. That layer would have been imperceptible to anyone other than herself, but she well knew that it was there. It was hardly surpr
ising, because her grandmother’s meals were so delicious: her coq à la bière, lapin aux pruneaux, carbonnade à la cassonade, even her chou farci, all usually accompanied by that warm bread from her oven, when it worked properly, with fresh salads from her garden, and followed by a rich, creamy dessert or tarte à la rhubarbe or aux poires, were mouth-watering, the more so because one had to wait for one’s turn at the table. That was probably the cause of the problem: watching Ted and Pépé eat gave one such a ravenous appetite.

  Why, oh why, she asked herself, had she not done more practice, especially with such a crucial audition coming up in the wake of the Advanced Two? There was no excuse for, apart from the day in Paris, a couple of day excursions by train to a resort on the coast – where they had met their grandfather’s gaunt, unsmiling sister Suzanne, and her genial husband François, a fisherman – and frequent trips by bus to the markets in Saint-Pierre and Freslan-la-Tour, there was not a lot else to do, except for taking walks with Maman or giving Mémé a hand in the garden.

  On the other hand, it had to be said, the trips to the markets were all so entertaining that they always took longer than expected. There was, of course, the shopping for the more exotic goods that Louise did not stock, such as lemons, oranges and bananas, and Mémé always insisted on buying double quantities of fish for Friday’s meals, remarking that Grandfather needed much more fish than meat because he was forever complaining that a single portion of fish was never enough to fill him up. Not only did they linger over lengths of more colourful material for new clothes or curtains than were available in Louise’s shop, but they also bought knitting wool and needles for winter cardigans and pullovers, gloves and scarves. Often they would treat themselves to coffee in one of the cafés around the main squares in those small towns, but, come what may, Pépé – and Ted too – would be expecting a cooked meal to be on the table by midday, so there was always a rush to catch the bus back.

  Although Mémé baulked at going to Paris, Saint-Pierre and Freslan-la-Tour were within easy reach of home. In one or other of the market towns, she would chat with acquaintances whom she used to meet in the days when she ran a market stall, selling her own produce of vegetables, fruit, eggs and cheese, which she transported to market in a big covered wagon, now rotting and unused down in a corner of the meadow. Sometimes the colour would come back into her faded complexion when she came across old friends from her past, which, Shirley supposed, must have been in the dim and distant days of the nineteenth century.

  Mémé admitted that she was glad of the chance to get out and meet people, because winter would soon be drawing in, so she did not expect to be coming to market very often, and then only if the weather were fine and mild. Moreover, after half an hour on the bus on the way home, the walk up the lane from the stop on the main road was quite a struggle for her with full shopping bags. How she regretted no longer using the old wagon pulled by the shire horses, or the little pony and trap, but the pony was too frisky for her to control nowadays.

  Shirley delighted in these visits to the markets, even if they took her away from her daily practice. Here the variety of colour and the constant activity were like an open-air ballet, where shoppers holding their wicker baskets under their arms milled across and around the stage, nodding to each other and pausing to exchange news, while stallholders held up their wares with extravagant gestures to attract attention. Leading characters would come to the fore, the blind accordion player, for instance, or a passing troupe of acrobats, or the man selling puppies that everyone wanted to stroke, or the fruit seller juggling oranges and lemons, or the flower seller who would offer the audience bouquet after bouquet of bright summer blooms. Shirley saw herself in the role of the principal dancer, a young girl standing at the side of the stage witnessing the spectacle and finally joining in an extravagant tarantella with all the participants.

  Mémé was not as lonely at home as might at first appear. She would doze after lunch and then reminisce, either to herself or to a willing audience, about the visitors who used to appear in the afternoons. In days gone by, at least one pedlar or hawker would come to the farm to sell his or her wares every day and, over a cup of coffee, recount news from neighbouring villages. Having packed her precious ballet shoes away, Shirley almost thought that she could detect the unmistakable aroma that used to herald the arrival of old Gilles, one of those travelling salesmen from the past. He walked leaning on his stick beside the little home-made cart that his faithful hound pulled along the country lanes. According to Mémé, they could cover vast distances each day in all weathers, because the cart was well protected by a lid and covered with a tarpaulin. It contained a set of scales and vats of shining dark coffee beans, the aroma of which made the wares so enticing that old Gilles would be sure of a sale in every house along his route. Today would have been no exception. His dripping mackintosh would be hanging up to dry over the stove, and Shirley expected to see him seated in the kitchen, but was always disappointed; instead she had to persuade Mémé to tell her more stories from the past.

  Apparently a man with a similar small cart containing a grindstone used to arrive every six months or so to sharpen knives, and with a long rough stone he sharpened shears and scissors as well. Nowadays he came only occasionally, perhaps once a year. Other traders, or colporteurs as Mémé called them, brought needles, pins and sewing notions to the door, and the basket weaver came to repair shopping baskets and trugs for use in the garden and orchard, always with an eye to a quick sale if the old items were beyond repair. Mémé said she had hoped that the man who repaired chair seats might come again, because the seats of two of the best chairs were so badly frayed and worn that she feared they might give way, but for some time he had been working only from his market stall and it was too great an effort for her to take chairs down to Freslan-la-Tour or Saint-Pierre. She had not been so keen to receive visits from tinkers, however, because they had a bad reputation and were suspected of setting fire to a barn on a neighbouring farm from where they had been turned away. She clearly enjoyed telling these tales of the motley collection of travelling salesmen, some on foot, some in carts, some on horseback, and if she dozed off in the middle of one of her stories, Shirley would go back to her room and there invent little dances in which she tried to capture the personalities of the tradesmen. The only problem was the lack of music to accompany her choreography.

  In the bedroom, after the hundredth repetition of the story of the coffee merchant, she was intending to make up a dance that would incorporate his elegant, sinuous gestures and the exotic nature of his goods, without slavishly copying the Arabian dance in The Nutcracker ballet that she and Maman had seen two years earlier, but, in ballet mode once more, her thoughts turned from the distant past to the immediate future. In a few days’ time she, Maman and Ted would be on their way back to England, and that letter of such significance, informing her of the date for the longed-for audition with the new, much trumpeted Sadler’s Wells Ballet, might already be lying on the mat at home in London, which meant that the audition could be only weeks or even days away.

  What would she do if she failed? She could not bear to go back to school, because she was quite certain that she had learnt all she needed to know there. She had scraped through the School Certificate before her seventeenth birthday; her French was excellent; of course she could speak and write English and she knew where to find most of the important countries on the globe. The problem was that she wasn’t at all good at maths. Nonetheless, she must have managed to do her sums well enough to pass. What else was there to learn that could possibly be more important than the ballet? And in her heart of hearts she really did want to be a ballerina more than anything else in the world. Musicals were another option, but they would definitely be second best. She worried whether her pa had, in fact, picked up the audition letter off the mat, and hoped he had not lost it.

  Poor Pa! There alone in London. Well, he wasn’t completely alone because according to his let
ters, Granny had come to stay with him and keep house, which she had done every summer since Grandfather Bill died. Whenever she remembered that she hadn’t given Pa much thought in the weeks they had been away, apart from sending him a postcard from the seaside, Shirley felt a pang of guilt. Once, long ago, she had innocently asked why he didn’t come with them on their annual visits to Trémaincourt, only to be shocked at the uncharacteristic vehemence of his response.

  Normally, if she asked a question, he would pull her gently towards him and say very seriously, “Now, my pretty little poppet, we shall have to think carefully about this one.” And then he would clear his throat, apparently considering his answer extremely carefully, never laughing at her question but making it seem the most important thing he had had to do all day. So, for instance, when she asked, “Why do I have to go to school?” he had made a show of thinking for some time before giving his reply: “Well, first of all, what would you do all day at home while Maman and I are out?” Then, without waiting for an answer to that, he would continue: “In school they have very clever teachers who can teach you a lot about all sorts of interesting things, so that when you grow up you will be able to read all the maps and the signs and travel about, even perhaps go to see your French grandparents on your own. Then you will be able to look after yourself and your money, and make sure that you are given the right amount of change when you buy something – a new dress or shoes, perhaps.” He had observed at her slyly out of the corner of his eye. “You would have to do all that, you know, and you would need to be able to read and do sums and write postcards to Maman and me.” She accepted his explanation without a murmur and went off to school every day, persuaded that it was the best thing to do.