by Evie Blake
Maria’s claim that she is too busy with her dance studies to go out is not, in fact, a lie. Lempert is putting them through their paces. Even Joan’s social life seems to have calmed down in response. The day after her assault by the Englishman, Douglas, Maria had been terrified that Joan wouldn’t turn up for class. Were Douglas and Ralph in league? Would she read of her friend’s rape and murder in the newspapers? Her relief nearly made her legs buckle when she saw Joan in class – granted, with very black shadows under her eyes and stinking of drink. That morning, Lempert had worked them particularly hard – as if he knew they had been out late the night before and this was their punishment.
He was already casting for the end-of-term ballet, Pandora, one of Kurt Jooss’s revolutionary choreographies, and, despite the fact Maria felt she was not nearly good enough to dance in public, Lempert included her in his auditions.
He made the students leap across the floor of the studio, again and again and again – for much longer than usual. Usually, Maria felt effortlessly buoyant, as light as the air around her. She knew she could leap high, but that day she was no longer unencumbered and her body was weighed down by the memory of the attack on her the night before. Joan was in an even worse state: sweat coursed down her face, causing her make-up to streak.
‘I feel a hundred years old,’ she whispered to Maria.
‘Did you get home all right?’
‘Sure I did,’ Joan said. ‘Why do you ask?’
Maria shook her head. ‘I’ll tell you later.’
Joan suddenly looked worried, and grabbed her arm. ‘Nothing bad happened, did it? Are you OK?’
Maria nodded. ‘I’m fine—’
Lempert cornered them. ‘Ladies! This is no time to be having a conversation. I want to see you moving, please.’
‘Slave driver,’ Joan hissed under her breath as she took off, bounding across the studio.
It was only after class that they were able to catch up properly. Instead of taking the bus, Joan suggested they walk together, it being such a fine day. As they strode down Kennington Road, Joan opened up her bag and triumphantly brandished a can of condensed milk.
‘Fancy some?’ she asked Maria. ‘I’ve come prepared.’ She took a can opener out of her bag and pierced the lid of the tin, offering it to Maria first. She drank from the can. The milk was warm, but it was also sweet and gave her some energy.
As they walked, Joan told Maria all about Ralph and what fun they had had. ‘I brought him back to my bedsit – snuck him in. My landlady is a dozy cow, anyway,’ she said, giving Maria a cheeky grin. ‘Oh, it was just wonderful, Maria. It really helped me forget about Stan.’
‘Did you actually sleep with him?’ Maria looked at her friend in awe.
Joan cocked her head on one side. ‘Are you shocked? Do you think I’m cheap?’
‘No . . . it’s just you hardly knew him.’
‘Oh, I knew the measure of him,’ she said, looking gleeful. ‘I knew he was a good-time boy, nothing serious. And that suits me fine.’
‘Don’t you want to meet someone special?’ Maria asked her friend.
‘Of course I do,’ Joan said. ‘But I am not going to live like a nun until I do!’
They passed Lambeth North station and turned on to Westminster Bridge Road.
‘So, what about you? Douglas jumped up and ran after you when you left. He seemed very keen.’
Maria stopped walking and squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to remember that odious man and what he tried to do to her, and yet that was the beginning of the story of how she met Felix.
‘What is it? My God, Maria, you look as white as a ghost,’ Joan said, the smile wiped off her face. ‘What happened?’
Maria opened her eyes, looked straight ahead and continued to walk. ‘He attacked me, Joan . . .’
‘What? Oh, my goodness . . . Did he hurt you?’
‘No; someone rescued me before he actually . . .’ Maria couldn’t say it.
‘Who? What happened? Oh, Maria, I’m so sorry. I should have gone home with you.’ Joan wrung her hands, looking contrite. ‘I didn’t know him at all,’ she continued. ‘I don’t think he is even a friend of Ralph’s. He was just sitting at the table with him.’
‘I’m all right; it’s OK . . . He didn’t hurt me.’
‘If I ever see him again . . .’ Joan’s cheeks were red with fury, but Maria cut her short.
‘Someone rescued me.’
She had felt a bubble of excitement at the memory of what had happened next: Felix Leduc turning up in the nick of time and saving her.
‘What? Who?’
‘This man . . . This beautiful man . . .’
Joan’s pained face broke into a smile. ‘A real knight in shining armour?’
‘Yes. And, Joan, it is quite amazing. He lives in our house. He’s my neighbour!’
‘Well, who is he? Tell me! Spill the beans!’
‘I don’t know much about him, really, apart from the fact that he is French. His name is Felix Leduc and he lives on the second floor, in the flat right below ours.’
‘How romantic,’ Joan sighed. ‘So he can hear you walking around above him. He can imagine you in your little white virginal nightie.’
Maria blushed. ‘Oh, do stop it, Joan!’ She clutched her bag to her chest. She didn’t want to sully any of her ideas about Felix. ‘Really, I have never seen such a man . . . I think I fell in love with him right on the spot.’
Joan looked confused. ‘Are you telling me it was love at first sight?’
Maria nodded, her eyes shining.
‘Well, he must be something special if he has made you forget all about that disgusting Douglas. My God, if I ever see him again—’
‘Please, Joan, let’s not ever mention it. I’ve told no one. Promise me?’
‘All right, as long as you tell me everything about Felix.’ Joan gave her a nudge.
‘Well, that’s it and I don’t know when I will see him next . . .’ Maria told her.
‘You live in the same house. It’s only a matter of time.’
Yet that had been over a month ago and, every day, when Joan had quizzed Maria about whether she had met Felix again, she had told her ‘no’. Now her friend has lost interest, completely taken over with working on the Pandora ballet, since Lempert has cast her in the title role. Maria feels honoured just to be in one of the chorus groups.
Joan has taken to spending extra hours after school rehearsing a particularly challenging duet with Louis, who plays the character of the Go-Getter, so Maria has had to walk down Kennington Road on her own every day, left to her own thoughts. Her imagination is plagued with images of Felix. She tries not to, but she can’t help constructing a whole catalogue of fantasies.
In her first dream, she and Felix travel to Paris together. They are sitting in one of those arty cafés alongside Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Juliette Gréco and Anne-Marie Cazalis, drinking wine and intellectualising. She is dressed all in tight black clothes. She is so incredibly chic and sophisticated. In another fantasy, she is one of the dancers in the Moulin Rouge and Felix is watching her, sitting in the front row and looking up adoringly at her. Other fantasies involve them drifting down the Seine on a boat, kissing underneath the flying buttresses of Notre Dame, or strolling, hand in hand, by an organ grinder in Montmartre, against the backdrop of the Sacré Cœur.
As the weeks pass, she takes her fantasies further. She constructs a family background for Felix. She decides that he is an only child, like her. He grew up in a large apartment in the centre of Paris. His family is very wealthy, but they opposed the Nazis and fled Paris at the time of the occupation. In her head, Maria sees Felix as one of the brave Resistance members, sabotaging the Nazis, risking life and limb to liberate his country. She decides that, since he is so much older than her, he must have been in love once before, yet his true love was brutally murdered by the evil invaders, and Felix joined the Resistance to enact his revenge. He is a good man, but tortur
ed by what he has seen in his native France during the war. That is why he appears bad tempered to people now. He needs a woman, a young fresh-eyed girl, to come into his life and heal him, for that is why he hides from the world in his flat in their house in London: he is waiting for a girl like her. That is why he makes his strange, surreal movies – to express all the horror that he has witnessed. But now they have met. And, just as he saved her from being raped, she will save him from his dark solitude. Maria becomes so wrapped up in her fantasies of Felix that, as the weeks pass, she begins – almost – to not want to meet him again. What if he is different from her dream man? Yet, what if he is the same? What then? In the real world, can she live her dream love?
Maria doesn’t understand Joan and her casual attitude to the sexual act. But she doesn’t judge her, either. She is truly fond of her friend and her open, warm manner – so different from most of the other girls in the dance school, who are stand-offish and competitive. Yet she can’t help wishing that Joan respected herself a little more. She has read it in magazines: if you are too easy, no man will ever want to marry you. And isn’t that what Joan wants, at the end of the day? To be a wife, have babies, settle down? Isn’t that what every single girl wants?
Maria has been raised amongst women. All men, including her father, have been figments of her imagination. Despite her liberal upbringing, the daughter of two women in love, Maria secretly wants to be one man’s princess. She wants a summer wedding; she wants the happy ever after.
It is mid-summer. London is warming up. It is nowhere near as hot as it can get in Venice, but, even so, Maria makes two summer dresses out of fabric her mother has sent over from Italy. Jacqueline and she have pored over pictures of Christian Dior’s ‘New Look’ in Harper’s Bazaar. Clothes rationing still restricts them in London, so her mother’s package of materials made both of them cry, as if they had been sent the crown jewels. How on earth had Belle found such beautiful textiles in Italy?
Maria is a talented seamstress, taught by Pina to sew when she was a little girl. She promises Jacqueline that they will both be ‘New Look’ girls before the summer is out. How well Belle knows her colouring! With her dark, curly hair, pale skin and blue eyes, Maria looks best in jewel colours. And so Maria makes two dresses for herself, but, instead of the pastels favoured by other girls, she makes one in ruby red, with the Dior fuller skirt, and one – a little more girly – in sapphire blue with tiny pink buds, a pleat and tuck on the back of the skirt to accentuate her bottom, and a bolero jacket to emphasise her waist.
Wearing her new summer dresses, Maria feels a spring in her step, and knows by the admiring glances of the Londoners that she looks good. Her English has improved immensely and she is really beginning to feel like she fits in here. Now that the Olympics are almost upon them, there is a festive feeling in the city: an excitement and pride.
In dance school they have been rehearsing Pandora relentlessly. Today in class, Joan collapsed, sobbing on the floor of the studio after Lempert had made her repeat the same phrase what seemed to be a hundred times. Maria is glad she is only part of the chorus. She wouldn’t be able to cope with such pressure at the moment. Yet, although Lempert is a hard taskmaster, there is something about him that makes you want to do your best for him. You want to work hard. You want to shine and do this provocative ballet justice.
It has now been two months since Felix rescued her and, for Maria, he has become a fictional character. She has lost hope that she will ever see him again.
It is a Friday, and the girls are packing up their dance things after life drawing class. Joan grabs Maria’s sketchbook and flicks through it. ‘Oh, these are great, Maria; you really are good at picking up each pose.’
‘To be honest, Joan, I don’t understand why we have to do life drawing when we are dancers.’
‘It’s about looking at the body, studying another dancer in a pose and seeing the line through them,’ Joan says. ‘Were you not listening to Lempert when he explained?’
‘Yes, of course. I would just rather be dancing . . .’
The changing room has cleared and it is just the two of them left. Maria notices her friend is still in her black leotard and tights. ‘Are you not coming with me?’
Joan sighs. ‘No. I have to rehearse some more, with Louis.’
In these final few weeks before the show, Louis and Joan have been doing even more extra work on their duet in the evenings.
‘OK. Well, don’t overdo it.’ Maria checks her face in her compact. ‘See you on Monday.’
She is several streets away and in a shop buying cigarettes when she realises she has left her purse behind on the bench in the girls’ changing rooms. She supposes that, since Joan and Louis are still at the studio rehearsing, the door will be open. She needs to get her money. She had all of her allowance for this month inside the purse, as well as her ration cards.
Maria walks briskly back up the street. She is in her blue dress with the pink flowers. She feels delicate in it, like an oriental bloom.
Sure enough, the front door of the dance school is still unlocked. She pushes it open and walks as quietly as she can down the corridor. She doesn’t want to bump into Lempert, or disturb Joan and Louis. All the girls adore Louis. He is from the Caribbean, with such beautiful skin that Maria is constantly tempted to reach out and stroke him. He is built like a pure powerhouse. It is hard not to be bewitched by him when he is dancing. His synergy can be blinding. Joan had been nervous about her duet with him. He seems to be one of the few men that she has ever been tongue-tied around. Yet it appears to Maria that their partnership is going well. When they dance together, they look so good.
Maria rushes down the corridor, glancing at her watch. She has promised Jacqueline she will go to the butcher and get into the tripe queue before it is too late. She is hoping that her dress might inspire the butcher to give them something other than tripe – maybe a paltry chop or two. As she approaches the studio, she is surprised not to hear the pianist. Maybe he has gone home already. Passing the door, she hears a strange noise. She is not sure what it is but, without thinking, she pushes open the door. The studio is deserted, yet she can still hear the same sound: a cry, or something more like a mew. It is coming from the gallery above the piano. She slips off her shoes and tiptoes across the wooden floor. She is not really thinking about what she has heard; she is just curious. Maybe a cat is trapped inside the studio and needs to be let out? She climbs up the stairs and peers around the corner. What she sees makes her jaw drop.
Her friend, Joan, is lying on the table that, less than one hour ago, they were all sitting around and drawing at. She is lying on her back, facing Maria, but she cannot see her because tied around Joan’s eyes are a pair of black dance stockings. Her bare legs are up in the air, so that she is an L shape, and, pressing against her, with his back to Maria, is Louis. Both of them are naked. Joan’s skin is cream to Louis’s rich colour. Maria cannot take her eyes off his buttocks. She has seen his body every day in his leotard, and yet, to see those buttocks naked and moving, thrusting forwards . . . Louis has Joan’s little feet balanced on his shoulders and he has pulled her right to the edge of the table. He is pushing in and out of her, and the mewing is Joan herself, as he goes further and further.
Maria brings her hand to her mouth in shock. So this is it: the sexual act. She has seen pictures of it, of course. She has imagined it, but never like this – never as primal, urgent and raw. She looks up at the back of Louis’s head and hears him panting as he bangs his body harder and harder into her friend. What should she do? Should she stop them? Run away? Maria does neither. She crouches down at the top of the stairs and she watches. She cannot help it. She is an eighteen-year-old virgin in love with a fantasy man and she wants to see what this act is that Joan refers to all the time. She wants to see what pleasure is. She feels a mixture of emotions: shock, wonder, disgust and yet stronger than all of these is a throbbing between her legs, the way her limbs feel liquid and the stran
ge palpitations deep within her.
Louis speeds up and their lovemaking becomes more ferocious. It is a dance – the first dance of all, Maria thinks, as she watches him cry out with one final thrust and then collapse on to the bare chest of her friend. Maria quickly ducks and slides down the stairs. Joan must never know she saw this. She slips out of the studio and runs to the changing room, quickly retrieving her purse from where it has fallen beneath the bench. It would be a disaster if she bumped into Joan – especially after she has seen her so exposed.
Back outside, she hurries down Kennington Road. All looks normal. It is just another sunny afternoon in London. The sunlight streaks her face as she rushes away, but she feels damp beneath her clothes and her breath is short. She realises there is a whole world that she is not part of. Do husbands and wives make love like that? she wonders. Or is it just for lovers – illicit love?
Afterwards, Maria always felt that what she witnessed that day cracked the perfect mirage of her princess dream. It changed her fate. She believed it was no coincidence that, when she turned the corner of her street, carrying her parcel of tripe in one hand, the powerful aroma of raw meat filling her nostrils, its bloody smell mixing with the June roses in the gardens she passed by, he would be walking towards her in the other direction.
