Ballet Shoes for Anna

by Noel Streatfeild

  “No. But I feel she is planning. If once she knew it was hard to find the money I think she would offer lessons, but in return I must do in all things as she says.”

  Francesco was no stranger to such arrangements. Often when they had travelled by caravan they had met children who, in exchange for a bed, clothes and food were somebody’s little slave. Sometimes it had worked well but often it had not. The thought of selling Anna into such a life appalled him.

  “Miss de Veane must never, never know it is hard to find the money. You must let her think if each lesson is costing a whole pound we do not care. There is always plenty of money.”

  Anna took Francesco’s hand and rubbed her face against his sleeve.

  “When you talk so it is as if Olga is back.”

  She could not have said anything nicer.

  But still Francesco had not got fifty pence, not if he used all their pocket money, and the next class was one week away.

  WHAT WITH THE days growing shorter and school taking up much time, and Uncle Cecil’s English lessons, the children were seeing very little of Wally’s family. They did of course see Wally at school but only Francesco saw him to talk to because they were in the same class. There was never a chance that they would walk to school together because Wally rode there on his bicycle, whereas the children got there by walking up The Crescent.

  “I don’t like it,” Wally’s mum would grumble. “They was sent to us like and I’d be much happier in meself if I could keep an eye on them like.”

  Wally’s dad agreed with her for he knew he would be much happier too, but it was hard to figure a way of seeing the children. Then that very Saturday morning, when Wally was looking after the stall, his mum had a piece of luck. She was in the supermarket, her trolley piled high with the week’s shopping. At the place where you pay there was a woman stacking her shopping on the counter.

  “Nice weather for the time of year,” the assistant said to her.

  The woman, sorting out what she had bought, seemed overcome by this casual remark. She puffed and gasped and dropped a packet of breakfast cereal and half a pound of tea on to the floor. Wally’s mum stopped to help her pick the packets up and as she did so something about the woman struck her. What was it the children had said? “The Aunt seems only held together by her apron.” Well, she hadn’t an apron on now but she did look as if she was held together by her coat buttons. The children had also said she had hair which always looked as if it might tumble down. Well, certainly this woman had hair like it was straggling out from under her shapeless felt hat. Then Gussie had said The Aunt was like a mouse – afraid to move unless a cat was coming. “Poor lady,” Wally’s mum thought, “if ever anyone looked scared of a cat, she does.”

  The woman panted out a weak “thank you” and went back to sorting out her shopping, and it was then Wally’s mum decided to take a chance. “Seemed like me duty really,” she told Wally’s dad when she got home.

  “S’cuse me,” she said, “but would you be Mrs Docksay?”

  The assistant and Wally’s mum put out hands to make sure Aunt Mabel did not drop anything more on to the floor. Then Aunt Mabel squeaked:

  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps then you’d ’ave a cuppa tea with me,” said Wally’s mum. “You see, I know the children, in fact your Francesco is in a class with my Wally at the school and they’re pals like.”

  Presently in a nearby tea shop Wally’s mum and Mabel were drinking tea.

  “I know ’ow you’re placed, dear, ”Wally’s mum said. “Your ole man’s not the only one that likes to keep ’imself to ’imself but the children won’t come to any ’arm along of us. I was thinkin’ it would be nice if you could let them come along of a Saturday afternoon, maybe Sundays too.”

  With a tremendous effort Mabel managed to explain Cecil’s outlook.

  “You see, he was brought up to think the children’s father took what did not belong to him: of course he didn’t really, he only borrowed, at least that’s what he thought, but you know how it is, what you are told as a fact sticks. Anyway, he won’t let our children mix with other children in case they should be a bad influence. He doesn’t want them to see television.”

  Wally’s mum laughed.

  “What I always say is what the eye doesn’t see the ’eart doesn’t grieve after. Course the telly’s on in our ’ouse on a Saturday – catch my ole man missing ’is football – but what’s the ’arm in a game of football? Nor Wally wouldn’t miss it either come to that.”

  Mabel had brightened up but she still spoke in jerks.

  “I’m sure football would be all right. As a matter of fact, I have worried rather about Saturdays and Sundays now the days are drawing in. You see, Mr Docksay likes the house quiet but it’s difficult for the children to be quiet when they’ve nothing much to do and nowhere to go.”

  Wally’s mum decided to get the matter fixed. She got up.

  “Well, I got to go but I’ll expect the children later. Can they stop to tea?”

  Mabel picked her shopping bag up off the floor.

  “Well, they must be home by half past five at the latest or my husband might notice they were out.” She flushed. “You see, I shall let him think they’re having tea in the kitchen.”

  The children were charmed when before lunch their aunt told them they could visit Mrs Wall.

  “Such a nice woman,” she said, “but you must slip out quietly and be back sharp at five-thirty.”

  “They’ve got a farm,” Anna told her. “Hens and a pig called Bessie. It’s lovely, they’re not too tidy and everyone is pleased you are there, almost like …” She broke off.

  Francesco helped Anna out.

  “She’s right. In a sort of British way it is perhaps as little like it was at Jardek and Babka’s.”

  When Wally’s mum saw the children she held out her arms and gave them one gigantic hug.

  “I ’ope you ’ad a word with the ’ens and Bess on the way up. You won’t get out again for the football’s started and Mr Wall thinks, like ’e does most weeks, ’e’s goin’ to win the pools.” She looked questioningly at Anna. “You keen on football, dearie?”

  “We’ve none of us seen it except when we play at school,” Gussie explained.

  “You go and look too, dear,”Wally’s mum told Anna, “but if you don’t fancy it, which I don’t meself, you come in the kitchen and we’ll trim up the cake what I’ve made for tea.”

  Anna watched the TV for a little while but she did not understand football, nor Wally and his dad’s explanations, which the boys seemed to find absorbing, so she slipped away to the kitchen.

  “And I bet not one of ’em knew you’d gone,” said Mrs Wall.

  “No, none of them.”

  Mrs Wall gave Anna some cherries and nuts and told her to trim the cake.

  “Well,” she asked, “how’s the dancin’ goin?”

  Anna trusted Wally’s mum.

  “Sort of well. I mean Miss de Veane teaches well, I think, almost as if it is Jardek, but I do not know how she is thinking.”

  “How d’you mean, dear?”

  Anna made a pattern of nuts and cherries.

  “At Christmas she is giving a show …”

  “Oh, you mean her concert. Does one every year for a charity. That Doreen dances a special piece on her own, so I ’ear.”

  Anna sounded determined.

  “Jardek would never allow this. I do not know but I think Miss de Veane wishes me to dance on the pointes.”

  Anna sounded so appalled that Wally’s mum tried to feel shocked too. Only she had no idea what Anna was talking about.

  “Oh, my word!”

  “Imagine! And I am not yet nine and Jardek said not until I was eleven.”

  “But unless I got thin’s wrong you can’t learn with this Miss de Veane much longer. You only ’ad the money for five lessons, didn’t you?”

  Anna gazed at Wally’s mum with horror-struck eyes.

  “But I must lea
rn with her, that is until S’William is back and we can sell our picture. You see, in this place there is no one else.”

  “But isn’t it fifty pence a week, dear? Where’s that coming from?”

  Over Anna’s face there seemed to fall a curtain. Wally’s mum could not know that Anna was hearing Jardek say in Polish and broken English: “A dancer must live for nothing but dancing. Anything that comes between a dancer and dancing must be absolutely forgotten.” So she must not think where fifty pence was coming from: it would appear. She put a final cherry on the cake. Her voice was calm and confident.

  “This week Francesco pays. Next week it will be Gussie.”

  The football had been a great success. In fact Wally, his dad and the boys could not leave it, so they had their tea sitting round the box.

  “I don’t want to rush anybody,” Wally’s mum said, “but I did promise your auntie you’d be home by five-thirty sharp.”

  Looking at the boys’ faces as she brought round the food Wally’s mum decided Francesco did not look as well as she would like, he had those same dark smudges under his eyes all three children had had when they arrived. And he didn’t eat nearly as well as Gussie, who wolfed three sandwiches with pickled onions before he started on the cake.

  After tea when the children had left and Wally and she had gone out to shut up the hens, Wally’s mum said:

  “I don’t think young Francesco’s lookin’ good. No trouble at the school, is there?”

  Wally shoved the last of the hens into the run.

  “No, not there, ’e does well at school. I think it’s money, ’e’s always on at me to find a way ’e can earn.”

  “And ’ave you ’elped ’im?”

  “I don’t see a way,”Wally confessed. “You see, ’e’s only ten. And there’s no gardenin’ this late in the year.”

  Mrs Wall fastened the door of the chicken run.

  “Tell you what, when the kids come along tomorrow get out of ’im what ’is trouble is. Shouldn’t wonder if it’s Anna’s dancin’ lesson. But whatever it is let ’im talk it over with you. For troubles shared is troubles ’alved, and ’e is your friend.”

  AS SUNDAY TURNED out it was easy for Wally to get Francesco alone, for Wally’s dad decided to give Gussie’s hair another cut.

  “Your uncle will be creatin’ about it again any day now,” he said. “Give us the basin and a towel, Wally.”

  “But if we wait until he says something,” Gussie argued, “he’ll give me twenty-five pence like he did before. And we need it extra bad because we spent the end of the suitcase money on Anna’s last lesson.”

  “Because I let you take your uncle’s money the once it don’t mean I’m makin’ a habit of it. Now sit down and don’t wriggle or I’ll ’ave a ear off of you.”

  “You come into the kitchen, Anna,” said Wally’s mum. “And ’ave a look at what I’ve got. Next week I gets me Christmas puddin’s started. You ever ate a Christmas puddin’?”

  Anna never had nor did she know what it was. Unwillingly she pulled her mind to look at past Christmases. Christopher had always driven the caravan to Jardek and Babka’s little house for Christmas. Anna could almost see them arrive, perhaps as late as the morning on Christmas Eve, with bells tied on Togo’s harness and red ribbons plaited in his tail.

  “I do not know a Christmas pudding but always there was cakes, piles of cakes. Babka made them.”

  Wally’s mum saw it was hurting Anna to talk about Christmas. For everybody who has someone to miss, Christmas is the worst time for missing them. But Christmas would come just the same, so it was best the children should face it. She had an easy chair by the window. Now she sat down in it and held out her arms to Anna.

  “Come and sit on my knee and tell me all about your Christmas, then I’ll tell you how we keep it ’ere.”

  Anna climbed on to Wally’s mum’s cosy lap.

  “Christmas Eve was as Babka and Jardek knew it when they were little and lived in Poland. Christmas Day was for Christopher but not very much except for presents, for he said there should be a turkey but often it was not possible to buy one.”

  “What happened on Christmas Eve?” Wally’s mum asked.

  Anna tried to remember it all.

  “You eat fish. That is because it is a fast. When Jardek and Babka were little always after the fish were many, many more dishes but of course we did not eat like that. The first thing for the Christmas Eve dinner was when we covered the table with straw.”

  “Straw!” said Wally’s mum. “What would you put straw on the table for?”

  Anna screwed up her face trying to remember.

  “It was sort of holy straw. After we had eaten Babka took it out to Togo. She did not let Christopher see because he would laugh and it is not good to laugh at what is holy, but Babka told us such straw, if eaten by Togo, would keep him in health for a whole year.”

  “Well, that was nice,” said Wally’s mum. “Maybe I better put some straw on the table for Bess and the hens. Do you put the cloth over it?”

  Anna was remembering better.

  “Oh yes, the best tablecloth. Then when all were sitting Babka brought in the soup. This was always made with almonds and was beautiful. Then came the fish with so many different sauces you could not count.”

  “My goodness!” said Wally’s mum. “I’m glad we don’t do that here on Christmas Eve or I’d never get up of a Christmas morning.”

  Anna was almost tasting things now.

  “Then comes the cakes. The best is called pirogi. This looks like a little loaf of bread but inside it is all almond paste and poppy seeds. Always Gussie had to be stopped eating them or he was sick. As well there are other cakes and fruits dried in sugar.”

  Wally’s mum was getting confused.

  “But what did you do on Christmas Day? Didn’t you hang up a sock or stocking?”

  Anna shook her head.

  “None of us had socks or stockings till S’William bought them. And why should we hang them up?”

  “Children get presents in them.”

  Anna leant back against Wally’s mum’s warm shoulder.

  “But we did have presents – things Christopher had bought, but best was the outside for on each one he painted a picture, sometimes …”

  Anna’s voice had faded away. It was too much. Those parcels of Christopher’s, so beautiful and often so funny. Never, never to have one again.

  Wally’s mum lifted Anna off her knee.

  “You come over here and I’ll show you what I put in me Christmas puddin’.”

  Wally was not used to making excuses to talk to people. Whatever he had to say just came straight out. Still, his mum had said he was to let Francesco talk so he knew he had to do it.

  “I got to oil me bike,” he said to Francesco. “You comin’?”

  The bike was kept in a lean-to which was just a piece of corrugated iron leaning against the hen house. Because Wally’s bike was there, and an upturned wooden box made a kind of work bench, it had always seemed to Francesco and Gussie a most desirable place to own.

  “All his very own,” Gussie had said enviously, “and to have a bicycle too!”

  Wally started to oil his bicycle. He hoped his mum was right, she usually was, but it seemed to him like poking his nose in where it was not wanted to ask Francesco questions. At last he said:

  “What’s ’appenin’? I mean about fifty pence for Anna’s next lesson? Can you do it out of that pocket money?”

  Francesco did not answer at once, so Wally looked up at him and saw he was swallowing as if he was trying not to cry. At last Francesco said in a voice which sounded not as if he was talking to Wally, but to anyone anywhere:

  “Always things was easy. Christopher thought of nothing but pictures, but if something had to be decided then Olga took away his canvas and perhaps his paints and he could not have them back until the decision is made. Now there is nobody, only me, and I do not know what is right to do. We could perhaps with t
he pocket money find enough for one more lesson but one is not enough, it is each week this great sum we must have. This Wednesday I should pay and the next Gussie, but for this Wednesday, except the pocket money, I have nothing – nothing at all.”

  Wally tried to find the right words to ask a question.

  “Will it be so shockin’ bad if Anna doesn’t ’ave a lesson until S’William comes ’ome and you can sell your picture?”

  Francesco choked back a sob.

  “But will he come? He gave us his address and I have written with the right stamp.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I didn’t know how to spell S’William so I just said ‘Please to come and see us, it is urgent that we sell our picture with many felicitations love Francesco.’ ”

  “I wouldn’t worry, ’e’ll come.”

  “But suppose he never does? You do not understand, Wally. Anna must learn, for her not to learn is a very, very bad sin.”

  Wally wiped down his bicycle with a rag.

  “What I don’t see is why you ’ave to get in a state about it. It isn’t as though you could do anythin’.”

  Francesco looked at Wally and there were tears in his eyes.

  “I had never known how it is to be the eldest. All is now in my care. There is nobody else. Nobody at all.”

  “Come on,” said Wally, “race you to the ’ouse, we’ve ’ot toast with relish for tea.”

  The next morning in the playground at break Wally drew Francesco into a corner. There he took an envelope out of his pocket, and in it was £1.50.

  “Go on, take it,” he said to Francesco. “It’s for you. It’ll pay for three lessons and with the three Gussie’s payin’ for that’s six weeks, and I reckon S’William’ll be ’ome by then.”

  Francesco had turned first white, and then red.

  “One pound and fifty pence! Where did you get such money?”

  Wally made a face at him.

  “No need to look suspicious. I come by it honest.” He struggled to sound casual. “If you want to know, I sold me bike.”

  Francesco was horrified. The bike, though old and clattery, was, as all knew, the pride of Wally’s life.