Hester's Story

by Adle Geras

  Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  19 December 1986

  1939

  25 December 1986

  27 December 1986

  1947

  27 December 1986

  1948

  28 December 1986

  1950

  28 December 1986

  29 December 1986

  30 December 1986

  1951

  30 December 1986

  31 December 1986

  1952

  1 January 1987

  1953

  2 January 1987

  3 January 1987

  1966

  4 January 1987

  5 January 1987

  1970

  6 January 1987

  Hester’s Story

  Adèle Geras

  First published in Great Britain in 2004 by Orion

  This ebook edition published in 2013 by

  Quercus Editions Ltd

  55 Baker Street

  7th Floor, South Block

  London

  W1U 8EW

  Copyright © 2004 by Adèle Geras

  The moral right of Adèle Geras to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 78206 614 9

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  You can find this and many other great books at:

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  Adèle Geras is the author of many acclaimed stories for children as well as four adult novels: Facing the Light, Hester’s Story, Made in Heaven and A Hidden Life. She lives in Cambridge.

  www.adelegeras.com

  Also by Adéle Geras and available from Quercus

  Facing the Light

  Made in Heaven

  A Hidden Life

  Critical acclaim for Hester’s Story

  ‘Geras’s many stories for children are wonderful and now she brings her finely observed gifts to adult readers with an extra emotional punch’

  Oxford Times

  ‘One of those exceptional novels that make you want to find a quiet corner and remain there undisturbed until you have finished reading it’

  Historical Novels Review

  ‘Her engaging style keeps the story fresh. The world of international ballet provides colourful characters and is the perfect setting for passion and tragedy in this slick and ultimately likeable novel’

  Bella

  ‘The author’s warm writing style and her skills with her characters will keep you reading with pleasure. Her first novel, Facing the Light, was a deserved bestseller and this will surely join it’

  Choice

  ‘A highly enjoyable read for a night in front of the fire’

  Mslexia magazine

  ‘In an always entertaining and absorbing tale, Geras … captures the erotic character of dance and dancers’

  Jewish Chronicle

  ‘A spellbinding saga’

  Company

  Many thanks (in alphabetical order) to everyone who helped and encouraged me during the time that I was writing this novel.

  Theresa Breslin, Laura Cecil, Broo Doherty, Dian Donnai, Norm Geras, Jenny Geras, Yoram Gorlizki, Jane Gregory, Sophie Hannah, Alex Hippisley-Cox, Erica James, Dan Jones, Ben Jones, Susan Lamb, Judith Mackrell, Linda Newbery, Sally Prue, Marian Robertson, Vera Tolz, Jean Ure and my excellent editor, Jane Wood.

  Special thanks this time round to Andy Barnett and Linda Sargent, who provided the last piece of the plot jigsaw.

  What do I remember? A window. Me, looking down at the street from a high window. I’ve been taught the name of this street in case I’m ever lost and have to ask someone to bring me home. Rue Lavaudan. Snow must have fallen in the night because everything is white, except for the shiny, black top of an enormous car. I know how old I am in this scene, because this is the day my mother is going to be put into the ground. I’ve just had my fifth birthday. I’m not allowed to go to the funeral, but have to stay here with one of the younger maids. Since Maman died, my grandmother has been lying in her bed, sick with grief, and I haven’t been allowed to play in her room for … I have no idea how long it’s been, but it feels like a very long time. On this day, the day I remember, she calls me to her at last, and whispers: ‘Don’t be sad, my darling.’

  She is wearing a choker of shiny black beads, and a black hat with a veil. She’s been crying. I can see how red her eyes are even through the spotted net that hangs down over her face. ‘Your mother will watch over you from heaven.’ She squeezes my hand.

  What do I remember? I remember thinking, Maman might be happy in heaven, but she’s left me behind. She can’t love me properly. No one else’s mother has chosen to leave and go and be with the angels instead. I remember thinking, perhaps I’m not a good enough child to keep her here with me; she’ll be happier somewhere else. This thought makes me sad in a completely new way: one I’ve never felt before, as though my whole body has suddenly been washed in grey and sorrow and cold. Even when this anguish has passed a little, I can still feel bits of the misery in my blood, in my bones and skin and eyes, like tiny pieces of grit, and I know that they won’t ever truly go away.

  The top of the car. The top of my father’s black hat, and Grand-mère’s black hat next to it. The hats disappearing into the car and the car driving away. The rest of that morning has gone from my mind entirely, but thinking about it makes me feel cold.

  Then I am sitting in Grand-mère’s bedroom. I’m perched on a little stool next to her chaise-longue. My stool. I love this place. My grandmother has boxes and boxes of jewels which she takes out and spreads all over the satin counterpane and we play princesses and queens and I’m allowed to wear almost everything. I can’t keep the big rings on my fingers, but ropes of pearls and amber and pendants of crystal and amethyst, and best of all a sparkling tiara that I use for a crown. I can recall them in detail even now. But this afternoon, Grand-mère is serious. Not in a playing mood. She pulls me to her. I can smell her skin like old roses and sunshine.

  ‘Estelle,’ she says, ‘I have to tell you something. It’s important that you understand me, even though I know you’re too young really …’ Her voice fades away and she takes a hankie from somewhere in her sleeve and wipes a tear away. Since my mother went to be with the angels, she cries a lot and so do I – every day when I wake up and realise that Maman will not be coming into my room ever again.

  ‘I will understand you, Grand-mère. I’m a big girl, really,’ I say.

  ‘I know. And you are a clever girl, too. Then look at this.’ She opens a drawer and takes out a red leather box. She opens it. Inside is what looks like a pile of gold. It glitters in the light as she pulls at it and it turns out to be a chain: links of filigree like the tiniest of leaves, all joined together.

  ‘When I was very young, my father gave me this fine necklace,’ she says. ‘When my son, your father, married your mother, I had a jeweller cut it into two pieces. Look.’ She undoes the chain from around her own neck. It’s often hidden by her blouse but now she takes it off and places it next to the one on the dressing-table. The two strands of gold
lie side by side on the dark wood. ‘I gave your mother the second piece, because she became a daughter and more than a daughter to me. She wore it every day. Now that she is gone, her chain belongs to you.’

  She looks at me, and holds my face between her hands. There is something I have never seen before in her eyes, a sort of desperate urgency. She says, ‘I’m going to give you your mother’s half of the chain, my darling, and I want you to promise me something. I want you to promise to wear it forever. Never to take it off. Even when you want to wear other jewels. Will you promise that?’

  I nod. I don’t mind promising a bit. I think it will be wonderful always to have tiny gold leaves sparkling round my neck, and I say, ‘I’ll always wear it, I promise.’

  ‘Good girl,’ my grandmother says. ‘But there’s something else I want you to know. When I die, the chain I always wear, this one here, will come to you. I’ll arrange for it to be sent to you, wherever you are. And when you get it, you must keep it safe. Really, really safe. I’ll send it in a special box and you must keep it there and look after it as though it’s the most precious treasure in the world. Will you do that?’

  I nod again. The chain isn’t like a treasure at all. There’s a diamond and ruby brooch my grandmother wears that seems to me much more like something a pirate might hide. This chain is pretty, and I’m happy to have it round my neck – it feels grown-up and important in some way – but secretly I’d rather have something a little more … impressive. More eyecatching. Perhaps my grandmother sees this in my face, because she says, ‘And I want you to promise something else: that you’ll give my part of the chain to your daughter, when you have one. Or if you have a son, to his wife, just as I did. This is not just a necklace, my love. Do you understand? It is a way of showing that we’re all joined together – you, your mother, and me. And the daughter you will have one day. It’s a way of showing we’ll always love one another. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, and I do in a way, though loving my mother is getting harder and harder. She’s only been dead for a short while and already I’ve nearly forgotten her smell and how she felt. There are photographs to remind me of what she looked like but, in some of them, she isn’t a bit like the person I remember. She’s dressed in white with gauzy skirts and she has feathers and flowers and ribbons in her hair and she’s pretending to be someone else on a stage. I know these pictures come from a time when she was very young; when she used to dance in the ballet in front of hundreds and hundreds of people. It makes me unhappy to look at them, because although I know that this was not how she was when she was my Maman, I have already lost the image of how she used to be when she was with me. I know better than to say so to my grandmother, but I can’t be sure any longer if the feelings that I have for her can properly be called love. I say, ‘I love you, Grand-mère, and when I wear the chain that’ll remind me of you.’

  ‘Quite right. And when you’re a grown-up lady and have a daughter of your own, you can give her my piece of the chain and …’ She shakes her head. ‘Give her the chain. Pass on the love, chèrie. Do you promise?’

  ‘I promise,’ I say. ‘But …’ A dreadful thought has come to me.

  ‘What, Estelle? What’s the matter?’

  ‘Will you die soon?’ The words are out of my mouth before I can find a softer way of expressing my terror. Grand-mère smiles.

  ‘I have no intention of dying for a very long time. Not until you are quite grown-up.’

  I am a little reassured, though I would prefer a definite no, never, I’m never going to die, but my grandmother’s smile convinces me that I don’t have to worry for the moment.

  ‘Don’t lose it,’ she says. ‘And don’t tell anyone what I’ve told you. About my part of the chain. Keep it a secret.’

  ‘Yes, Grand-mère. I won’t say anything to anyone.’

  I mean my father. I won’t tell my father. I know that’s what she means: don’t tell him. And I keep my promise and say nothing.

  *

  I remember my father sending me away. Telling me that it would be better for me if I left his house and went over the sea in a boat to another country where someone else would look after me. Telling me my grandmother found it too much for her (a lie, a lie. I knew it even then but my mouth was stiff and I couldn’t find a word to say) and he had to work and, much as he loved me, he couldn’t look after me properly and I’d be far happier with another child of my own age to play with, wouldn’t I?

  Children have to let things happen to them. I remember a new coat with a velvet collar. I remember a suitcase with my clothes folded in it, and one of my dolls lying on top of them. Antoinette. I haven’t forgotten her name. Grand-mère coming into my bedroom on my last night at home and sitting at the end of my bed weeping; that hasn’t left me. I dream about it to this day. She thought I was asleep and I was too frightened of her tears to tell her I was pretending.

  Driving away. That’s what’s stayed in my mind for nearly fifty years. Turning round in the taxi and looking out of the little window at the back and seeing Grand-mère standing on the pavement getting smaller and smaller. The lime trees starting to put out new leaves. Everything blurred because of the tears that keep on falling and falling in spite of my best efforts to be brave. My father sitting beside me, staring straight ahead, his mouth pressed into a line. Stiff. Cold. Not crying a single tear. Everything I’d ever known getting further and further away. Disappearing. Yes. I remember that. I remember leaving home.

  19 December 1986

  I will not cry, Hester thought. But the phone call had ended only moments ago and she still felt anguished, stiff with pain. She’d been drawn back, too, to thinking about the distant past, which only made things worse. She told herself: I will answer this young woman’s questions about the Wychwood Festival, my childhood and my past life as a ballet dancer and I will not on any account cry. She closed her eyes for a moment and breathed in and out slowly, collecting herself in the way she’d learned to do before any performance. Find something – anything – in front of you, she told herself, and fix your gaze on it and you’ll keep steady however many times you spin around. The old trick might work for interviews as well as it once did for pirouettes.

  ‘This is the Wychwood Festival’s tenth year,’ she said. ‘Quite an important anniversary, really, and we’ve got a fascinating ballet premiering here in a few weeks … on the sixth of January. It’s called Sarabande and the music is by my old friend, Edmund Norland. It’s being put on by the Carradine Company. There’s a competition every year to see who’s going to choreograph the ballet and Hugo Carradine is a worthy winner. I’m sure it will be an enormous success.’

  ‘There’s a rumour,’ said the interviewer, whose name Hester had forgotten (Jenny? Julia? Jean? Something beginning with J. Never mind) ‘that Silver McConnell’s going to be in it. Is that right? I thought she was going to dance in Paris or Berlin …’

  Hester suddenly remembered her name as she was flicking through her notebook. Jemima. ‘I believe she’s going to Paris, but it’s a Festival tradition to have only ten performances up here at the Arcadia Theatre, so she can fit this in before she leaves. The company arrives on December 27th. It is quite an intensive rehearsal period, but everyone seems to enjoy the challenge.’

  She forced her lips into a smile. Oh, please, please, she thought, let her stop. Let her close her notebook and leave. Please let there be no more questions.

  ‘I should think that rather cuts into your Christmas celebrations, doesn’t it?’

  ‘We don’t celebrate Christmas at Wychwood,’ said Hester, and realised her mistake even as the words were leaving her mouth. If she didn’t move on immediately, Jemima would ask why not, and then … Hester couldn’t talk about it. Not now and not ever. She found that she was speaking rather more quickly than she normally did, to block any further discussion of Christmas or anything to do with the festivities surrounding it.

  ‘Has George shown you round the Arcadia?’ she asked
. ‘You’ve met Ruby and George Stott, haven’t you? They’re such an important part of the Wychwood family. Ruby used to be my dresser, you know, while I was still dancing. I don’t know how the Festival would function without them.’

  ‘May I ask you something else, Miss Fielding?’ Jemima smiled at Hester, gathering her bag on to her lap as she spoke. Thank God, Hester thought, she’s going. She’s getting her bag ready. Not long now and then I can be alone again to think. I need to think.

  ‘Yes, of course. Please do.’

  ‘I was wondering … I hope you’ll forgive me asking, only it’s something every one of my readers will be longing to know. Can you say something about why you’ve never married?’

  Hester saw red. It wasn’t, she realised with alarm, a figure of speech but something that was literally true. The whole room swam in front of her eyes, as though it had suddenly been flooded with scarlet light.

  ‘Go,’ she said, barely able to get the words out at first and then letting them fly from her mouth with an anger she did nothing to disguise. ‘Go at once, please. I have never, not through the whole of my career, answered a question like that and I don’t propose to start now. This interview is over.’

  By the end of this outburst, Hester found she was standing up and pointing at the door. She had a sense of Jemima hurriedly stuffing her notebook into her handbag and backing out of the room, bent nearly double under the blast of Hester’s fury.

  As soon as she’d gone, Hester sank into the chair and covered her face with her hands. Oh God, here they come. The tears. If I start crying now, she thought, how will I ever be able to stop?

  *

  Edmund had phoned her only minutes before her interview with Jemima was supposed to begin.

  ‘Wychwood House,’ she had said, picking up the phone as soon as it began to ring. Why was it that people always rang you at a time when you couldn’t possibly talk? Hester never gave her name out, just in case the caller turned out to be some sort of a nuisance.