Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs

by Clayton, Victoria

  40

  ‘One, two three – turn a little slower.’ Orlando spun round himself to demonstrate. ‘Elbows up, sharper … more abandoned … inside the demure little maid there’s a sensual woman … four, five, six … prepare for a brisé en avant … right arm higher … watch that upstage leg … now astound your lover with an arabesque penchée … perfect, darling … you could drop a plumb line between your heels.’ An arabesque penchée is when you stand on one leg holding the other above your head in the six o’clock position, like doing the splits vertically. ‘Jeté élancé to upper left … then grand jeté développé en avant …’

  I made several low darting leaps across the floor of Conrad’s drawing room, culminating in a great spring into the air, doing the splits horizontally this time.

  ‘Let’s have it again.’ Orlando wound back the tape of Conrad’s playing that Golly had recorded the day before. ‘Turn your head to look back over your right shoulder … coquettish … juicy yet virginal …’

  I did my best, though it was early in the day for that kind of thing. Also Siggy had whiled away the long hours of incarceration in my bedroom at Dumbola Lodge making my practice clothes into a cosy nest, so they were anything but virginal in appearance, being mostly holes. We worked until lunchtime when every muscle in my body felt like perished rubber. Orlando had choreographed several passages in which I had to imitate the way Japanese women traditionally walk, a modest pigeon-toed tripping quite the opposite of the conventional ‘turned out’ position that my hips had been forced into for more than a decade and they were feeling the strain. But I had been dancing on pointe all morning and my left foot felt fine.

  ‘Wonderful, darling!’ Orlando embraced me. ‘I feel one or two teeny ideas are beginning to emerge from the creative fog. I hope that delicious smell is our lunch. My stomach’s roaring like a grumpy old lion.’

  ‘Didn’t you have any breakfast?’

  ‘My dear, I know I ought not to criticize my kind hostess, but promise you won’t repeat. I requested my usual petit repas – warmed goat’s milk with an egg white beaten into it and just a soupçon of nutmeg, but Golly drinks milk from tins and she doesn’t possess a nutmeg. Can you imagine a household without a nutmeg?’

  I easily could, having just moved out of one.

  ‘I explained that one drop of cow’s milk is enough to keep me in bed for a week unable to put a foot to the floor. She was most anxious to be helpful and together we perused the tin, but it was positively Sphinx-like in its refusal to divulge its contents.’

  I could sympathize with Golly’s anxiety about having an invalid Orlando on her hands. Using a chair back as a barre I did a few grand battements en dehors, to cool down.

  ‘I didn’t like to pursue the vexed question of the milk – no one can say that one is not the easiest, most considerate of guests, so instead I applied myself with a will to eat what was on offer. Cold toast the colour of underpants and a terrible black sausage-shaped thing, like a dinosaur’s stool. It was all one could do not to scream. Only one’s strict upbringing enabled one to get down two tiny bites of the prehistoric faeces.’

  ‘It’s called blood pudding. It’s something of a national dish in the North.’

  ‘Blood pudding?’ Orlando paled, clutched his hands to his chest and closed his eyes.

  ‘Vat fettle, Marigold, Orlando?’ Fritz came in with a tray and began to lay the table. ‘I haf a dish prepared called Gefüllte Seezungenfilets. It is fillets of sole stuffed viz lobster and mushrooms. Wery good. I serve it viz Meerrettichkartoffeln and Schmorgurken.’

  In the process of folding the napkins into swans, he paused to steal a glance at Orlando who, as though unconscious of his audience, did three beautifully executed pirouettes en dedans, which caused his naked biceps to ripple and his powerful thigh muscles to pump. Fritz let the napkin fall from his fingers as he gazed open-mouthed. Despite the twenty-year age gap and Orlando’s superior sophistication and experience, I thought it unlikely that Fritz would come to harm. Though an out-and-out sensualist, Orlando was not cynical. Also the strong light from the balcony made apparent the drawn yet crumpled look which smoking, sunbeds and dieting imparts to middle-aged faces. Fritz was young and beautiful, if fat, and the ball was rather in his court.

  I lay on my back and put one leg over my head until I could touch my nose with my knee and the floor with my foot – the splits again, this time upside down.

  ‘I wonder if Degas would have felt inspired to paint you.’

  At the sound of Conrad’s voice I sat up quickly. He had been in his office all morning, no doubt trying to salvage the wreck of his empire.

  ‘He’s always been my favourite painter.’

  ‘Ah, yes, because he paints dancers. But he did not care for ballet particularly, only he wished to paint movement and pretty clothes. He painted many nudes also, but did not care much for women. He liked to paint them – his words – without their coquetry, as animals cleaning themselves. He was a misogynist. In his view women think in little packages; they are incapable of extrapolation.’

  ‘In that case I don’t like him nearly so much as I did.’

  ‘When I hear a man claim that the feminine intellect is inferior to the masculine, then I know that he is afraid of women. Degas was a man of strong affections, generous in his evaluation of other artists he admired, a brilliant conversationalist. But he was sensitive and melancholic …’

  Conrad put his hands in his pockets and strolled about the room while giving me a sketch of Degas’ life and artistic theories. Some people, most perhaps, would have resented such a stream, almost a river, of information, but I was hungry for knowledge. While I listened I practised a few pirouettes en dedans myself, faster than Orlando’s, using the half-painted squirrel with the red body and the chalk tail to ‘spot’. This means whipping your head round faster than your body with each turn and focusing your eyes on a particular place, which prevents you getting dizzy. I wondered if the wall painting would ever be completed. The pale outlines of unfinished animals and birds were like ghostly creatures existing in another dimension. But probably Conrad would be bored by the project before he had made enough money to finish it.

  ‘He became too blind to paint any more and this increased his eccentric behaviour … his irritability. He was lonely, yet he could not endure the stupidity of his fellow men.’

  ‘Poor Degas.’ I whipped my leg up into a grand battement. ‘I’d sympathize except I know he’d have thought me as stupid as anyone. Are you ever lonely?’

  Conrad folded his arms and looked towards the window. The sky, speedwell blue moments before, had turned ashen, and plump clouds were piling up like an elaborate pudding. ‘I am not often alone.’ He kept his back to me. ‘But that is not what you are asking. You mean the feeling of isolation when in the company of those with whom one has no idea, no impulse, no enthusiasm in common. And the knowledge that others are quite indifferent to one’s imaginative life. That is wounding because our amour-propre is so fragile and so easily we doubt the … the validity – can one say that? – of one’s being.’

  ‘I know. You start thinking you’re the most boring, contemptible person in the world.’ I saw that he was about to disagree. ‘Well, I do anyway. Do you think that might be love? Wanting to understand another person completely, to see things through their eyes and feel what they’re feeling?’

  ‘It might be as much as one ought to hope for.’

  ‘Dancers aren’t very good at that sort of thing.’ I sprang into an échappé à la seconde. ‘Too self-involved. Dancing absorbs all the energy and thought and time that you ought to give to being in love with someone. You have to choose one or the other. I know that now.’

  Rain began to dash itself against the window, blurring the greens and brown of the far side of the valley, as though we were seeing it through tears.

  ‘Come to the table,’ pleaded Fritz, ‘the fish is colding.’

  Golly burst into the room. She had been composin
g in the kitchen. ‘I’ve decided you were right about the cherry blossom being trite – Madame Butterfly and all that – so I’ve decided to set The Fishcake in Alaska.’

  ‘Alaska!’ Orlando was indignant. ‘But for the last three hours my entire being has been rooted in Hokusai and Miyagi, tea ceremonies, yatsuhashis, haikus, kotos and noodles—’

  ‘Well, you’ll just have to uproot it then. My being has spent all morning in ice-bound tundra, with howling winds, creeping glaciers, cracking floes, honking seals and screeching gulls. Alaska is a completely original setting. As far as I know no Westerner has written an opera about Eskimos.’

  ‘I believe there’s a sung version of Eskimo Nell,’ said Orlando sulkily. ‘Besides aren’t you supposed to call them Inuit?’

  ‘Not if we are talking about West Alaska.’ Conrad took Golly’s arm and led her to the table. ‘They are ethnically different and prefer Eskimo to Inuit, and Yupik to either.’

  ‘I meant West Alaska.’ Golly looked triumphantly at Orlando. ‘There’s an Eskimo game called Aratcheak in which a piece of bone is hung up and the contestants have to do a standing jump to kick it with both feet and land without falling over. My idea is that the shaman, who’s the most important man in the Eskimo settlement, will use the game as a trial to find the most suitable bride for Ata, his son. Ilina – that’s Marigold, the daughter of an outcast – wins the game. The two young people do a celebratory dance and fall in love. That’s where the singing cake comes in, you remember the singing cake …? What’s this?’ She poked a finger into the sauce that covered the sole stuffed with lobster, leaving a little swirl of blue ink. Fritz removed the dish from her reach and carefully spooned out the fingerprint. ‘Naturally the angakok – that’s Eskimo for shaman – is displeased—’

  ‘Angakok? Are you sure this isn’t an operatic version of Eskimo Nell?’ interrupted Orlando.

  ‘Do shut up! – by this turn of events and sets another trial. Most unfair, of course, but that’s the nature of fairy tales. There’s an Eskimo jumping game called Qijumik Akimitaijuk Itigaminak in which the players have to jump as far as they can while holding their toes. Marigold – Ilina, that is – wins again. No acting will be needed for that. Most singers I know can’t get anywhere near their toes or jump, let alone the two in combination. I say, this is excellent! I’ll have some more.’

  She dug her spoon into the delicious pink and whiteness of Fritz’s masterpiece and slopped a bit on the tablecloth, which Fritz had ironed to the smoothness of glass. Usually the best-tempered of men, his face took on a brooding look and he disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

  ‘The angakok measures Ilina’s winning jump with her hair ribbon, her prize possession, snips it in two and ties one half round the neck of a tethered reindeer about to be slaughtered for the pot. He releases the deer and gives it a whack, whereupon it gallops away into the freezing mists.’

  ‘A small point perhaps,’ said Conrad. ‘Reindeer inhabit Eurasia. In Alaska you would find caribou.’

  ‘Well anyway, it’s a big shaggy thing with antlers. Who’s going to know the difference? The music will mimic the reindeer’s … caribou’s … bellow: E, E flat, G sharp, C …’ She took out her pen, drew five lines on the tablecloth and scribbled the notes on the stave.

  Conrad looked mildly displeased. ‘Might I suggest a pencil for your composition?’

  ‘I can’t abide pencils. They always need sharpening and that wastes time. I wish you wouldn’t interrupt.’

  Conrad threw up his eyebrows and forbore to make further comment.

  ‘The call of the reindeer … caribou … will be a leitmotif throughout the rest of the opera. It’ll appear, subtly disguised, in the overture, and be repeated in the last dying chords. The angakok tells Ilina that if she can unite the two pieces of ribbon, he’ll let her marry his son. The chances are of course nil as caribou,’ she flashed a triumphant look at Conrad who was watching the rain clouds build, ‘have vast territories. But after a year of tribulations, just to make things more difficult, the coming of spring breaks up the ice floe on which the little community is built and Alignak, the god of storms, creates an almighty whirlwind. I’ve been writing the music for that this morning and it’s going to be the best thing I’ve ever done. Finally the beast is slaughtered for a feast – all right, it’s a socking great coincidence, but no worse than when Jane Eyre runs away from Mr Rochester and happens to fetch up at the house of that St John bloke who turns out to be her distant cousin. Anyway, the reindeer’s brought to the igloo where Ilina is working as a cook. Triumphantly she shows the ribbon to the shaman and he gives in and lets them marry. What do you think?’ She looked around the table, her eyes bulging with excitement.

  ‘I’m sorry the reindeer got eaten after all,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t believe Eskimos have cooks,’ said Orlando. ‘How many things can you make with no vegetables? Come to that, how is she to make a cake? You have to have eggs and flour. Better have her working as a comfort girl. More balletic. And it ought to be a tent of skins. Igloos are winter houses which would make the sets very boring. Far too much white.’

  ‘That’s the whole point if only you’d bother to use your imagination.’ Golly grew warm in defence of her brain-child. ‘I see it absolutely in the dead of winter. Everything’ll be shades of white, blue, grey and violet. Except the ribbon. That’ll be red. Ilina’ll tie up her hair with it, dance with it, wrap it round trees, etcetera, before it’s cut, and then afterwards she’ll knot the two pieces together and perform a dance of love consummated. Visualize this red ribbon flowing against the white, symbol of passion, life, menstrual blood and all that sort of thing.’

  Orlando looked pained and put down his knife and fork. Fritz returned at that moment with a damp sponge. When he saw the music scrawled on the tablecloth, he withdrew to the balcony and walked up and down in the rain for several minutes.

  ‘What do you think, Conrad?’ asked Golly.

  Conrad withdrew his eyes from the clouds ‘You’ll have to do something interesting with the lighting. For three months in winter the Alaskan landscape is lit only by the moon.’

  ‘Really?’ Golly sounded annoyed. ‘You know you could hire yourself out as a continuity advisor. There is such a thing as poetic licence. All right, we’ll have the aurora borealis. Shifting curtains of coloured light. Yes, that’ll be gorgeous. We’ll make a virtue out of a necessity.’ She looked at Conrad, almost beseechingly. ‘Don’t you think it’s got tremendous dramatic possibilities? It’s got to be better than the plot of Così fan Tutte.’

  ‘I can see that it gives you the chance to write some interesting music. But won’t your librettist have something to say when you tell him the action has moved halfway round the world?’

  Golly’s expression became defiant. ‘No one said art was easy. He’ll have to square up to it like a man.’

  ‘At least it’ll have a cheerful ending,’ said Orlando. ‘The last opera I saw was Peter Grimes. Not one ray of hope or hint of redemption. I cried for a week afterwards.’

  ‘Ah! Well, actually I’ve thought of a jolly good tune for a funeral march, so I think Ilina’s going to have to pop her clogs at the altar.’

  ‘The audience will be hysterical after so many changes of mood,’ complained Orlando. ‘Besides, at this rate it’ll be ten hours long. My poor dancers’ feet will be blancmange. You can’t put things in just because you want to write the music for them.’

  ‘Why can’t you?’ Golly glared at him. ‘The music’s the only thing that really matters. We can, if you like, make the dancing more of a sideline …’

  ‘And what will you call it?’ asked Conrad when Golly and Orlando had finished arguing. ‘Rings and fishes seem to have gone quite out of the window.’

  ‘Mm …’ Golly flicked her upper row of false teeth in and out with the tip of her tongue as she thought. ‘The title’s always the hardest part. Let’s make a list of possibilities. All suggestions welcome. What about The Ic
e Maiden?’ She wrote it on the cloth.

  ‘Zat I zink is charming,’ said Fritz, perhaps with the idea of preserving the cloth from further harm.

  ‘Too much like Cinderella on Ice,’ said Orlando.

  Golly shut her teeth together with a snap and glowered before saying, ‘Oh, all right, yes perhaps … what about The Alaskan Chronicle? Shades of Hrolf and Beowulf.’

  ‘Zat is wery nice,’ said Fritz. ‘It has dignity.’

  ‘Sounds deadly dull to me,’ objected Orlando. ‘Who hasn’t been bored half to death by Beowulf at school?’

  ‘I haven’t,’ I said. ‘I’ve never even heard of him.’

  A three-cornered argument broke out, Orlando and Golly making suggestions which the other pooh-poohed roundly, while Fritz tried to keep the peace. Golly called Orlando a muscle-bound moron and he called her a pseudo enfant terrible.

  ‘Oh, shut up, you pea-brained caperer!’ yelled Golly. ‘Snowdrift and Seal Blubber has no resonance whatsoever. Let’s keep it simple. The Red Ribbon! I like that.’

  ‘Simple, certainly,’ complained Orlando. ‘It makes me think of the haberdashery department in John Lewis. What about Twenty Things You Didn’t Know About Eskimos?’

  ‘Why not call it Ilina and the Scarlet Riband?’ suggested Conrad.

  ‘First rate!’ cried Golly. ‘Easy and catchy with a dash of poetry.’

  ‘Not bad,’ said Orlando.

  And so an important piece of history in the annals of twentieth-century opera was made.

  41

  ‘Oh, good, Evelyn’s car’s here,’ I said as Fritz pulled up outside Shottestone’s front door. ‘I won’t be more than half an hour.’

  ‘As you like it, dear voman. I haf much shopping to do.’

  Fritz drove away. I went round to the stable yard to make sure that Rafe’s elderly Mercedes was not there, then I let myself into the house by the side door. Mrs Capstick was slumbering by the Aga, a dark brown bottle wedged between her thighs. She opened her eyes as I tiptoed past. Her pupils were like pinpricks.