Movie Shoes

by Noel Streatfeild

  After they had been working an hour, they heard Aunt Cora’s voice. Again the children exchanged looks. So she had got up at last, had she, the lazy creature! She was calling to Bee.

  “I’m going to market. You care to come?”

  Market! That had a nice sound. That would be where all that gorgeous fruit was bought. If only Peaseblossom were not so strict about lessons, they could go to the market too. Evidently Bee thought it would be fun, because they heard her say something about a hat. Presently the front door shut.

  Almost another hour went by. Then the front doorbell rang. There were voices in the hall. Then Bella’s heavy, soft-shoed feet came shuffling toward the porch. She beamed at Rachel, though she spoke to Peaseblossom.

  “There’s a Miss Fossil asking for Miss Rachel.”

  Peaseblossom could be awfully nice. She said in a delighted voice, “Oh, Rachel, dear, I’m so glad! I think your aunt is out, so you could see her in the living room.”

  Rachel was suddenly shy. “I wonder if I’d better change.” She had on a shirt the color of her eyes and gray shorts. Peaseblossom thought she looked nicely and suitably dressed and said so. Rachel flung her arms around her neck. She only said, “Darling Peaseblossom,” but they all knew that what she meant was she was sorry she had been cross. She dashed out.

  Posy Fossil looked just as Rachel had imagined her. She was little and pretty in a way, but the most noticeable things about her were her hair, which was red-gold and curly, and a sort of eagerness, as if life were so exciting she couldn’t stand still for a minute. She was wearing a green shirt and slacks, which surprised Rachel, who had supposed that somebody as important as Posy Fossil would be a crepe-de-chine and mink sort of person. Rachel wanted to be respectful, so though it was difficult to do in shorts, she curtsied as she did at the academy to Madame.

  Posy Fossil seemed to think the curtsy terribly funny. She laughed and caught hold of Rachel’s hand and asked where they could go to talk. Rachel, feeling shy and self-conscious, led the way into the living room, but once inside with the door shut, she could not feel shy long. Posy, still laughing. She swept a curtsy to the ground and said, “Madame,” in the most reverent voice.

  “Fancy, I’d almost forgotten until I saw you do it.” She curtsied again. “Madame. Mind you, everybody, even I, has to curtsy to Manoff. As we do it, we say ‘Maître,’ only most of them think it’s very silly, so they do it like this.” She curtsied and said “Maître”; only it was not a respectful humble “Maître” but sort of I’ll-do-it-if-I-must-but-1-think-it ridiculous, which made Rachel laugh. Posy ran around the room, examining everything.

  “I spoke to Mrs. Edward P. Beeson on the telephone.”

  “Aunt Cora,” Rachel explained.

  Posy picked up a plant in a copper bowl on the writing table. She came into the middle of the living room. She did a little dance. It was made up of quick steps, but she danced as if she were too tired to lift her feet, and as she danced, she kept opening her mouth in a hungry way at the plant and then jerking her head back.

  Rachel laughed so much she had to sit down. Really, Posy was being very much like Aunt Cora. She even made her feet look whiny, like Aunt Cora’s voice, and you could see she was dieting and wished she weren’t by the way she looked at the plant.

  “How did you know she was like that?” Rachel asked between laughs.

  Posy put the plant back on the writing table.

  “I felt her in my feet when she was telephoning. Go and get your shoes. I want to see where you’ve got to.”

  Aunt Cora’s living room had a parquet floor and was perfect for dancing. Rachel was surprised that she did not feel scared dancing in front of the great Posy Fossil, but she did not. Posy rattled off strings of steps, and Rachel listened and then danced them. Sometimes Posy danced the routine first to show what she wanted. Rachel did not get much right the first time, but Posy kept saying, “Do it again. Do it again,” and toward the end she was making a fair attempt at what Posy wanted. After about ten minutes Posy pulled Rachel down to sit beside her on the sofa.

  “Yes. I could tell anywhere you were a pupil of Madame’s. She’s so thorough and so strict about precision and arms. You know about Manoff’s ballet? You must come to a rehearsal; you can’t believe how lovely some of his things are. Well, I can’t teach you often because I rehearse every day for that-I’ll get Manoff to let you come to his Saturday mornings sometimes. He teaches then himself, but for regular work you had better go to a woman called Donna. Madame Donna. She’s good. I’ll write it down for you.”

  Rachel saw Posy was the sort of person who saw no difficulty in doing things. She had evidently forgotten what Aunt Cora had said about not being a chauffeur. Posy was getting a piece of paper and a pencil out of her bag. Rachel gently laid a hand over Posy’s to stop her. Then, red in the face because nobody likes explaining the sort of difficulties she had to explain, she told Posy everything. About Aunt Cora and how good it was of her to have them at all, and John’s accident, and the British government’s rules about money. Posy did not wait for Rachel to finish; she jumped to her feet.

  “Where’s the telephone?”

  Rachel knew that using the telephone in somebody else’s house was a thing you asked permission to do, but Posy Fossil was not a permission-asking person, so she led her to it. Rachel only hoped Aunt Cora and Bee would not come back from their shopping in the middle of the telephoning. Posy looked up a number in the telephone book, talking all the time.

  “You’re like my sister Pauline. When we were at Madame Fidolia’s, we never had any money, and she always thought we couldn’t do things. When Manoff saw me dance and said he would take me as his pupil, Pauline tried to tell me I couldn’t go to Czechoslovakia to learn from him. Imagine. Not learning from Manoff when he’d said he would take me! Of course 1 went.” She got her number and asked for Madame Donna.

  Rachel listened in a mixture of admiration and awe to the conversation that followed.

  Posy explained to Madame Donna about Rachel and that she had no money. There was a pause after that, while Posy listened, looking bored and impatient, and then, unable to listen anymore, she appeared to interrupt. She said that she knew that was how Madame Donna would feel and of course, she could not be expected to teach for nothing a child who would be in the country only six months and no lasting credit to her. That if the lessons were all, it would not matter, as Posy would see to it, but there was transportation as well. What about Pirouette? Wasn’t it true that she was providing most of the dancers? At that, from the other end, there was lot of talk which Posy interrupted with “You can easily arrange it… No harm in letting them see her.... Very pretty indeed.” Finally, still holding the telephone, she began to dance. Then she said, “She’ll be there,” and put the telephone down. Posy turned to Rachel.

  “It’s all fixed. Wait a minute.

  She danced again the steps she had done at the telephone. “I never can remember anything in my head. I have to remember it with my feet. The audition is at three, at the studio, but you are to be there at two so that Madame Donna can test you herself. You’re to wear a tutu, which you probably don’t have, so pack your shoes and tights and I’ll take you with me and fit you into one of mine. Nana, our old nurse who lives with us, will alter it and take you to the audition. She’s used to them.”

  “An audition for what?”

  Posy looked surprised that Rachel didn’t know.

  “That film they’re making. Pirouette. It’s got scenes in a theater where a ballet’s dancing. They ‘ll want the girls they select on and off for three months. If they pick you, and I don’t know why they shouldn’t, you ‘ll earn enough to pay for taxis to your lessons, and you’ll be working at the studios under the man who’s arranging the dances, as well as Madame Donna.”

  Rachel felt as if everything were going around. She in a film! It was too gorgeous to be true. She clasped her hands, her eyes shining.

  “Oh, Miss Fossil!”

>   Posy laughed. “Don’t call me Miss Fossil; nobody does. Now do go and get your tights, and take off the shoes. We haven’t much time.”

  Rachel was just going to dash upstairs when she remembered Peaseblossom and lessons. She raced to the porch. She was so excited that she couldn’t speak clearly. It took Peaseblossom a moment or two to grasp what the excitement was about. When she did, she got up.

  “A film, dear? No wonder you’re excited. Run up, and pack your tights and shoes. I put the tights on that that shelf. I’ll have a word with Miss Fossil. “

  Peaseblossom found Posy by the front door. She was dancing.

  “This is very exciting news for Rachel,” Peaseblossom said. “I don’t suppose her parents will object to her being in a film if she gets the opportunity; but her mother’s out, and I can’t speak for her. I could ask her father; but he’s been ill and has only just started working again, and it will be a mistake to interrupt him. I suppose attending the audition doesn’t mean she has to take part in the film if her parents don’t want her to.”

  Posy stopped dancing and said, “I wouldn’t blame her mother for not wanting her to take part; I hate dancing in films myself; it hardly ever comes off, and the director usually wants the most ghastly things done which never could happen in a ballet. But I don’t think she need worry about this one. I believe it’s real stuff, barre practice and that sort of thing. I’ve only suggested it as a way around the money difficulty. She’d have enough for taxis and things.”

  Peaseblossom saw that Posy was not the sort of person to understand it was necessary to get permission to do things. It would be easier to trust to Rachel’s sense. She took down Posy’s address and telephone number, saying, “We knew we were going to hear from you, of course. Rachel’s talked of little else since Madame Fidolia promised to write to you. But I should like just to know where she is so that her mother could telephone to you if she wanted to.”

  Posy was looking at Peaseblossom in a very interested way. Rachel would have guessed her feet were twitching to dance her.

  “You’ll have to meet my guardian and Nana,” Posy said. “You three will agree about everything. It’ll be especially lovely for Nana, as she doesn’t often find people in America who think the same way as she does.”

  Rachel changed into her blue cotton frock and put on clean socks; she came flying down the stairs with her tights in one hand and her ballet shoes in the other. Peaseblossom felt disgraced.

  “Rachel! No paper! No string! You’re letting the side down.”

  Posy took the tights. “Nana will pack them properly with a tutu of mine. So don’t worry. Good-bye.”

  Jane and Tim were listening to the excitement in the hall. This was a most extraordinary country they were in, a country where anything might happen. At one moment there was Rachel doing housework and lessons, with nothing but a rest and walk to follow, and the next somebody rushed up in a car and took her to an audition for a film. Tim’s annoyance about the piano disappeared. In his mind Rachel was already a film star.

  “She’ll be able to rent me a music teacher as well as a piano,” Tim told Jane.

  Jane was stabbing angrily with her pencil at the sum she was supposed to be doing. She did not begrudge Rachel her luck, but she wished that just once luck would come to her. If only just once everybody-Mom, Dad, Rachel, Tim, and Peaseblossom- could look at her with proud faces and say, “It’s Jane we have to think of. She’s the one who’s important.” She frowned at Tim severely.

  “If you’re going to use American words, you should use them right. You rent pianos but not music teachers.” Then, because she was not at all sure that her statement was true, she hurried on. “And if Rachel does get into a film, she’ll have to spend all she earns on furs and diamonds, like the rest of them.”

  Tim could not be crushed. “It won’t matter. I can do without her help. As a matter of fact, I’m already making arrangements.”

  Peaseblossom came back. Inside, she was feeling a little anxious. She did hope it was all right letting Rachel go off that little Miss Fossil like that, but nothing showed in her face. She smiled at Jane and Tim.

  “Our side’s doing splendidly. Fancy, only here one day and Rachel at an audition! It’ll be you next Tim, and then we must arrange something special for you Jane. Now, how are those sums going?”

  Jane bit her pencil and scowled worse than usual.

  “Arrange something for Jane.” That was how they all thought. But wait. Someday she’d show them.

  10

  A Piano and a Dog

  Lunch was over. The children were supposed to read for half an hour on their beds. Tim was reading Treasure Island for the third time. He had just got to the place where blind Pew’s stick is heard tapping outside the inn when the door softly opened and Bella walked in; in view of where Tim’s mind was, she made him jump. Bella put her finger to her lips and nodded at the other door, which led to John and Bee’s bedroom, from behind which came the sound of John’s typewriter. She creaked down on the bed, which made it sag over to one side. She spoke in a whisper.

  “I have a friend who works in a drugstore...”

  It was a long story as Bella told it. Her friend from the drugstore had been around that morning, delivering bottles. He had told Bella that she was right in thinking there was a piano in the drugstore. He also said his boss was a kind man, and he guessed if Tim asked him, he would let him practice on the piano at a time when customers weren’t eating; then Bella held up a warning finger.

  “Miss Cora mustn’t ever know. She’ll figure a drugstore is a trashy, no-account place.”

  Tim thanked Bella and watched her leave the room and closed the door. He shut his book and sat up. He did not want a fuss, and there would be a fuss if he went out alone when he was supposed to be taken for a nature walk. Tim did not want anybody with him; this was a matter between himself and the drugstore boss. There was only one person who could help, as Rachel was away at her audition. He slipped out of his room and moved along the passage to the girls’ room. He listened outside the door. There was no talking, so it sounded as if Jane were alone. He opened the door a crack and peered in.

  Jane was alone. She was lying face downward on her bed, drawing. She was drawing an exceedingly fancy picture of herself in a circus ring, with Chewing-gum and six other dogs doing amazing feats around her. She hated being interrupted, so she gave Tim one of her most disobliging frowns and said, “You’re supposed to be resting, my boy.”

  Tim came in and closed the door and in a whisper told what Bella had said, adding, “Aunt Cora’s not to know because she’ll think drugstores trashy, no-account places.”

  Jane got off her bed; she thought better of walking about. She had never heard the expressions trashy or no-account before, but she liked both.

  “Which is just what I think of Aunt Cora. You go. I’ll do delaying action. I’ll probably have to tell Peaseblossom in the end, but with any luck not till you’ve finished arranging about the piano with the drugstore man.

  Peaseblossom and Bee were lying on a blanket on the sand. It was so lovely and hot that at first Bee was too contented to speak. Then she murmured, “I feel too lucky to be real. In my wildest dreams I never thought of John starting to write the moment we got here.”

  Peaseblossom would have liked to go on lying in the sun and doing nothing, but she had gone to the beach not to enjoy herself but to talk about Rachel.

  “I couldn’t tell you before, as Cora was there but Rachel has not only has gone to lunch with Miss Fossil but is having an audition for a film.”

  Bee sat up. “Good gracious! For a film! But she can’t act!”

  “It’s a dancing film; I gather.”

  “Bless the child! Is she excited?”

  Of course. Who wouldn’t be? But I wasn’t sure what, Cora would think.”

  Bee thought about Cora. “I think she’ll approve. Oh, dear, I wish something like that would happen. The only thing that’s wrong with this lovely
place is our being poor relations. I don’t believe even a saint could be a poor relation nicely.”

  Peaseblossom glanced at her watch. “I ought to go in and get Jane and Tim ready for their walk, but it’s so lovely here I’ll give myself another five minutes.”

  Bee lay down again and gazed through her half-closed eyes for a while at the blue, blue sky. Then it suddenly struck her that Peaseblossom was very quiet. She sat up. Peaseblossom was asleep. “Dear Peaseblossom. How good for her.” she thought “I’ll go up and call the children; they can play on the sand instead of going for a walk.”

  It was so easy. Jane had nothing to do. Bee came to her first and told her she was going to fetch Tim, so all Jane had to say was “Don’t bother, I’ll fetch him.” Bee saw nothing queer in that and went back again to the beach and lay down on the blanket beside Peaseblossom. When Jane came down the steps to the beach, Bee was half asleep. She did mutter, “Where’s Tim?” but all Jane had to do was to jerk her thumb at the house and Bee asked no more questions. “And not even a lie,” thought Jane, “for my thumb might just as well have been pointing at the drugstore as anywhere.”

  Jane ran up the beach to see how the poor tied-up spaniel was doing. This time the people who belonged to the house, or at least what seemed to be the people belonging to the house, were at home. Two men were sitting smoking on the porch. Even before she got to the gate, Jane heard the rumble of their voices. Evidently, when the people were home, their dog sat with them, for though his kennel was there, the dog was not. Jane was glad for the dog that he was having a nice time, but she was disappointed not to see him. Besides, she had plans about that spaniel. If Aunt Cora was right and it was usual for children in America to earn their pocket money, why couldn’t she earn some taking that dog for a walk? She wondered what was the first step to becoming a professional dog walker. Did you go to the back door and ask to be hired, or did you write a letter to the dog’s owner?