Ballet Shoes for Anna

by Noel Streatfeild

  “I do take a few special pupils, usually to coach for a public performance. But I suppose I might squeeze you in. Each lesson will cost fifty pence for half an hour.”

  Anna had not been in England long enough to be good at understanding the money. She looked anxiously over her shoulder at Doreen who had taken in every word of the conversation. Doreen got up and joined Anna and Miss de Veane.

  “That means you could have about four lessons private for what it would cost for a whole term,” she explained to Anna.

  Anna did not know what to do. Four lessons was very little, but four like the ten minutes she had just done was better than a class which was not all ballet but was also this something that Madame called tap. Among the many things that Jardek had told Anna in mixed Polish and English was that a dancer must live for nothing but dancing, that anything which came between a dancer and dancing must be forgotten absolutely. Anna saw now what Jardek had meant, that after the four lessons were over how to find the fifty pence each week was a thing she must forget entirely. She must trust in God and it would come.

  “Thank you, Madame,” Anna said firmly. “I think it best I have the private lessons.”

  NOBODY COULD SETTLE down in Dunroamin, it wasn’t that sort of house, but while Anna was with Miss de Veane the boys for the first time since they had arrived had time to look round and see where they had come to live.

  When they first realized that there was nothing they had to do they felt they must have forgotten something. But going over things in their bedroom they found they had not. Anna had got her shoes. At this minute they were on her feet. Enough money had been made when Wally’s mum sold the suitcases for a whole term’s dancing lessons to be paid for.

  “It seemed as if there was a lot to do,” Francesco explained to Gussie, “because everything took so long. I mean, there was four days between taking Anna to the shop to be measured for shoes and them coming.”

  “And what a four days,” Gussie groaned. “With eating all that terrible food and my hair being cut.”

  “I never have known why The Uncle didn’t get angry about your hair. Of course it had to be because we needed the twenty-five pence but, though I know Wally’s dad tried, it certainly does look most peculiar.”

  “A crying scandal,” Gussie agreed. This was an expression of Christopher’s which his family had adopted.

  “Yet The Uncle, though he frowned and made snorting noises, said nothing – nothing at all,” Francesco marvelled.

  Gussie had an idea about this.

  “I think that was because, if he didn’t like it, the only thing he could do was to pay again and this he will not do. I think he is one with a closed purse.”

  “Perhaps he is poor,” Francesco suggested.

  This made Gussie laugh so much that he rolled on his bed.

  “Poor! In India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Ethiopia, Egypt – every place we have seen poor. Poor is to swell in the wrong places, to seek for scraps from the gutter, to beg. It is not to eat three meals a day sitting at a table in a good blue suit with a clean starched shirt and have a motorcar in the garage.”

  “Perhaps there is two kinds of poor,” Francesco suggested. “The Uncle has perhaps enough for him and The Aunt but not for the three of us.”

  Gussie made a rude noise.

  “He has a closed purse and I dislike him very much and he eats terrible food.”

  Francesco sighed.

  “Cabbage – that is a dreadful vegetable.”

  Gussie shuddered.

  “Cooked to taste like dirty water. No garlic, no curry – all food here is as if eating paper. But perhaps, because it is never hot in Britain, I am getting hungry like we were before the earthquake so, however bad the food, I now eat.”

  Francesco had moved to the window.

  “I’m beginning to too and so is Anna. Do you know we have been here five days and never gone into the garden.”

  Gussie joined him and stared admiringly at the gnomes.

  “Those are elegant. I never before saw statues painted red. I wonder what it is for which those little men fish.”

  “We’ll look,” said Francesco. “The Uncle is gone.”

  The boys ran down the stairs and went into the lounge. They had not seen this room before because it was in there that Cecil worked. They were spellbound by the sight of it.

  “Velvet like in a palace,” Francesco gasped. “Imagine sitting every day on green velvet.”

  Gussie examined the ivy climbing up the trellis work on the wallpaper.

  “And such beautiful paper on the walls. It is good we cannot come in here unless The Uncle is out. It would be terrible if we made a dirty mark on such a wall.”

  There were French windows through to the garden so the boys stepped out and at once saw what a strange garden it was. Not that they had ever owned a garden themselves but they had seen the gardens of others, so they knew what to expect.

  “Nothing is real,” Gussie exclaimed. “Feel this rose, it is made of stuff like clothes.”

  Francesco was stroking a plastic spray of orange-coloured climbing nasturtiums.

  “Do you remember that Christopher said there were no gardens in the world so beautiful as the gardens of England? This must be what he meant.”

  Gussie was for once almost speechless he was so full of admiration.

  “Such an ideal! No flower ever dies.”

  “No earth anywhere at all,” Francesco marvelled. “You could be all day in such a garden and be as clean as when you started.”

  “Hi!” said two voices. The boys spun round, and over the wall they saw two faces looking at them – a boy and a girl. Both had blue eyes and straight fair hair.

  “Hi!” they replied.

  “We are twins,” the boy said. “We’re Jonathan and Priscilla Allan.”

  “We are Francesco and Gussie Docksay.”

  “We know,” said Priscilla. “We read about you in the paper. My father asked your uncle if you could come to tea with us.”

  “I am sorry, we did not know,” Francesco apologized. “The Uncle does not talk much.”

  “Is he better when you know him?” Priscilla asked. “We think he’s horrible.”

  “That’s what I think,” said Gussie. “We may not speak at meals unless it is important or uplifting.”

  Jonathan giggled.

  “If we had a rule like that in our house nobody would ever speak at all.”

  “That is how it is with us,” Gussie agreed. “Nobody does speak at all. It is not nice. Before we came here everyone talked mostly all at once.”

  “Could you come to tea today?” Priscilla asked.

  Francesco shook his head.

  “Today our sister Anna goes to Miss de Veane to see if she wishes to learn from her, then we go to tell Wally’s mum what has happened as she sold our suitcases to pay for her lessons. She always gives us tea when we go there.”

  “Miss de Veane’s all right,” said Priscilla. “I go to her on Saturdays. Why did you have to sell your suitcases? Wouldn’t your uncle pay for your sister to learn?”

  “He thinks to dance is sinful,” Francesco explained.

  “And I think he does not like to spend money,” Gussie added.

  “Well, he’ll have to spend some soon,” said Jonathan. “I suppose you’re going to school, aren’t you?”

  “In the week after this,” Francesco agreed.

  “Then you’ll need uniform,” Priscilla told them. “Grey skirts for us girls and shorts for the boys and purple blazers. You’ve got the shorts but you’ll need blazers.”

  Francesco and Gussie looked at each other.

  “There has been no talk of clothes,” said Gussie. “Do all have to wear this?”

  “I don’t think they can make you,” said Priscilla. “But you’ll look pretty odd if you don’t for everyone does.”

  “I think this we should tell The Aunt,” Francesco told Gussie, then he remembered his manners. “Thank you for asking us t
o tea, but we do not know if it is possible. The Uncle does not seem to know people.”

  “Then come tomorrow,” said Priscilla, “and we’ll get the gang along, there’s lots of us in The Crescent.”

  Cecil was still out so the boys rushed into the kitchen where Mabel was making a cottage pie for lunch.

  “Next door,” said Gussie, “there are twins called Jonathan and Priscilla and they say we have to have uniform for the school.”

  “The grey shorts we have,” said Francesco, “but we have to wear something purple, I do not know what.”

  “And Anna will need a grey skirt.”

  Mabel left the pie and sank on to a chair.

  “Uniform?” she panted. “Yes, all the children here wear it. Grey with purple blazers. Oh dear, I suppose I should speak to your uncle.”

  Francesco felt sorry for Mabel for she was so obviously scared.

  “If there is no money for the uniform I do not think it matters. Priscilla did not think we must wear it only we would look” – he turned to Gussie – “how did she say?”

  “Pretty odd,” said Gussie, “if we didn’t, but we don’t mind looking odd if there is no money.”

  Mabel made several efforts to get her words out.

  “It’s not that there’s no money,” she explained at last, “but your uncle feels it should be used for promoting special causes, you know he has special causes? He’s very generous to them.”

  To the boys nothing could matter less than what clothes they wore. Francesco, feeling Mabel was still looking fussed, gave her arm a friendly pat.

  “Forget the uniform. It is not nice for The Uncle to have us when he does not want us. It is better we do not aggravate.”

  Mabel seemed as if from somewhere she was getting courage. There was pink in her cheeks and her voice was stronger than usual.

  “Your uncle doesn’t know about this so you mustn’t say anything, but I have some savings and there is money from the State. It’s very wrong of me to have savings without telling him, but there it is – I have them. So leave it to me, by the time school starts you’ll all be wearing uniforms.”

  THE BOYS SAW Anna coming home and went to the gate to meet her. Her news was not what they wanted to hear. It had been almost like old times to wander where they fancied, talking to whom they fancied without having Anna’s dancing lessons or dancing shoes or the ribbon for the shoes to worry about. So when she came home and told them what she had arranged Gussie couldn’t control his disgust.

  “All that money for just four lessons! Then fifty pence wanted each week!” He slid to the ground and lay flat on his back. “Just thinking of it exhausts me.”

  Francesco pulled Gussie to his feet.

  “Will you never learn? In Britain nobody lies down in the street. And outside the house of The Uncle!” Then he turned to Anna. Where dancing was concerned he trusted her absolutely so if she had said she must have private lessons, private lessons – bad news though it was – it had to be. “We must talk to Wally and his father and mother, they will know how a child earns money in England.”

  “Could it not be,” Anna suggested, “that after four weeks S’William is home? Then he will sell the picture.”

  “We will of course write,” Francesco agreed, “but we must make plans in case he does not arrive.”

  That afternoon they went as arranged to what they called Wally’s farm. By now they were on patting terms with Bess, the pig, but they were making no headway with the hens and the cock.

  “I wish they would like us,” Anna said. “When you have few friends even a hen can be a comfort.”

  Wally’s mum heard them coming.

  “Come along in, dears. Well, Anna, will Miss de Veane ’ave you?”

  The family were sitting round the table on which were the tea things and a cake. There were three empty chairs waiting for the children. Gussie drew one to the table and sat down.

  “She would have,” he said, “but Anna thinks it better she should have private lessons.”

  Wally and his mum and dad gazed at Anna as if she were the Loch Ness monster. Each was thinking of what trouble everyone had taken to get the shoes and raise the money for the term’s classes, and here was Anna saying she needed private lessons.

  “Private lessons!” said Wally’s mum. “Won’t they be pricey?”

  Gussie accepted a slice of cake from Wally’s dad. He nodded.

  “Fifty new pence for one half-hour each Wednesday after school.”

  “This means,” Francesco explained, “we have money enough for five lessons so Gussie and I we must earn this money each week.”

  Gussie took the cup of tea Wally’s mum passed to him.

  “In Britain no one has a donkey to load or a camel to lead, nor a store to mind while they sleep.”

  Wally, Wally’s dad and Wally’s mum were all shocked that a child of Anna’s age should think she needed private dancing lessons at the terrible price of fifty pence for half an hour each week. But they knew the boys were fussing about Anna learning to dance so they spoke cautiously.

  “I suppose,” Wally’s mum suggested, “you couldn’t try the Saturday morning class for just one term, could you, Anna?”

  Anna turned her big dark eyes to Wally’s mum.

  “Miss de Veane said things right. Six demi-pliés in each position. But my shoes are new so in the fifth position my shoe slipped so my foot is not turned out right. And at once the Madame said: ‘Watch that back foot.’ That is how Jardek would speak but not of course in English words. In a big class the Madame cannot watch every foot so it is better one half hour alone, then I work in my bedroom on the other days. Then if faults come she will see at my next lesson.”

  As far as Wally and his mum and dad were concerned Anna might have been speaking in a foreign language. But evidently Francesco and Gussie understood.

  “So you see,” Gussie said, “these private lessons is how it must be.”

  “And they cannot stop after five lessons,” Francesco added, “so we must always earn the money.”

  Gussie turned to Francesco.

  “I have an idea. If we could borrow some old, very poor clothes we could beg.” He held up both hands and whined: “Alms for the love of Allah.”

  Wally’s dad laughed.

  “You do that, son, and you’ll find the police after you. Nobody can’t beg in this country.”

  “Not real beggin’,” Wally’s mum explained. “There’s some way of getting a licence to sell matches and such like.”

  “But you wouldn’t get a licence,” said Wally. “You’re too young.”

  Gussie sighed.

  “It is a pity. I have seen many beg so I know how this is done.”

  To Wally the children were still something out of a fairy tale. So if Anna had to have fifty new pence every week – scandalous waste of money though it seemed to him – she had to have it.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll ’ave a word with some of the boys, maybe they’ll know of a way.”

  Wally’s dad, during his years as a lorry driver, had known of many methods by which money was made – sometimes by children – which he thought odd if not downright dishonest. These children who had lived such a strange roving life ought to have an eye kept on them, especially young Gussie who was, he thought, less sensible than the other two.

  “Tell you what, if Wally can hear of anything you could do decent, like weeding a garden or cleanin’ a car then it’s OK, but anythin’ out of the ordinary you come to me. We don’t want you gettin’ into any trouble, do we?”

  The journey to London seemed to have given Uncle Cecil time to think, or perhaps at his meeting he had met a stodgy friend who had encouraged him by thinking the same as he did, for that night after supper he said:

  “I wish to talk to you three. Come into the lounge.”

  Even Gussie quailed. Clearly The Uncle had found out they had sold the suitcases and what he would do was past imagining. To add to Gussie’s trouble
s the food that night seemed to them all particularly revolting. A reddish sort of meat with yellow fat served with balls made of what the children thought was a form of blanket. There was also cabbage. Gussie, after a few mouthfuls, had leant towards Mabel.

  “Always I am eating,” he whispered to Mabel, “what I do not like, but this is impossible.”

  Mabel, gasping and puffing, had whispered back:

  “It’s boiled silverside and dumplings, dear. It is a great favourite of your uncle’s.”

  Gussie, who believed he would be poisoned if he ate what was on his plate, turned thankfully to his uncle and pushed his plate towards him.

  “You like it. You have it. For me, if it is possible, I would like bread and butter and olives.”

  From the way the uncle and aunt stared at Gussie he might have asked him for some extravagant dainty instead of for the simplest food of which he knew.

  At last, after a terrible pause, Uncle Cecil said in a voice like the inside of a refrigerator:

  “Take away his plate, Mabel. Augustus will eat nothing tonight.”

  So it was with their hearts in their mouths that the three children followed Uncle Cecil into the lounge and sat down facing him on the sofa. Anna, scared though she was, had to smile when she felt the sofa.

  “At what are you smiling, Anna?” her uncle demanded.

  Anna stopped smiling.

  “It is this so beautiful sofa,” she whispered. “I do not think I have sat on velvet before.”

  Uncle Cecil did not seem interested.

  “I shall pass over your ill-behaviour, Augustus, in not eating your dinner,” he said. “Your punishment is that you will go to bed hungry. What I wish to talk to you about is my neighbours. When we first settled here we decided, your aunt and I, to keep ourselves to ourselves. We had no wish to waste time on idle gossip. So the same rule will apply to you. You will meet the local children at school but your friendship will finish there. You will not go inside their homes and of course you will never invite any of them here.”