A Company of Swans

17

‘I must say I think they have it all wrong, the people who say that to part is to die a little. It seems to me,’ said Harriet, ‘that to part is to die really quite a lot. I mean, thirty-six hours without you…’

She stood on the terrace wearing the extraordinarily becoming blue dress that Marie-Claude had bought, waiting for Furo to bring round the black car in order to drive her to Manaus. For the Company was leaving the following day, due to embark on the Lafayette on Friday evening ready to sail at dawn, and she was going to say goodbye to Madame Simonova and spend a last night with her friends at the Metropole.

Rom stood beside her, troubled for no reason he could understand. She holds my shadow, he thought, quoting the phrase his Indians used to describe someone who had them in their power. Once it had seemed to him that this country was the ‘incomparable remedy’. Now it was this quiet, unspectacular girl, whose loss would utterly diminish him.

But why should he lose her?

‘Do you want me to go back with the Company?’ Harriet had asked a few days earlier. ‘Would that be… the right thing to do?’

‘Want you to go back? Want you to? God, Harriet, do you have to ask me that?’ Rom had replied. ‘Do you want to go with them?’

‘No, I don’t. I would like to stay… if it is convenient.’

‘Convenient? Sometimes I think you’re a little mad. Perhaps you should come upstairs,’ he had said furiously. ‘I don’t seem to be able to make you understand anything when you’re on your feet.’

Since then she had abandoned herself to a degree of creative loving which exceeded anything he had ever imagined, her passionate physical response balanced by a respect for his work that gave him both rest and stimulus. But for her solitary practice sessions each morning at her makeshift barre, he would have sworn that she was utterly content.

‘I wish I could have gone with you,’ he said yet again. ‘I hate you to go alone.’

He had intended to take Harriet to Manaus himself and make good his promise to Simonova to bring her to say goodbye, but Alvarez — his work at Ombidos completed — was calling at São Gabriel on his way home, and to Alvarez Rom owed a debt that must be paid. There was no question of Harriet being in danger. Edward had been seen standing on the deck of the Gregory as she steamed away from Belem, and it was most unlikely that a man who had made such an idiot of himself once would return to the attack. Moreover de Silva was back in Manaus and well able to control the antics of his men.

Why, then, this unease?

‘You’ve given me too much money,’ protested Harriet. ‘Even if I buy presents for absolutely everybody, I can’t spend it.’

‘It is not for buying presents for absolutely everybody,’ he said sternly. ‘It’s for you.’

She shook her head and reached for his hand, counting the knuckles carefully, checking them off one by one with her fingertips to make sure that everything was as it should be and that she would not forget — in the day and night she was to be away — the configuration of his little fingernail or the exact place where a vein to which she was particularly devoted changed its course.

‘I got to one thousand and forty-three seeds last night,’ she said. ‘In the bath. So it’s absolutely all right.’

‘Of course it’s all right,’ he said roughly. ‘All the passengers have to be on board by eight o’clock, so you’ll be back in time for a splendid supper. I’m putting a bottle of Veuve Clicquot on ice — no doubt you will merely get hiccups again, but we must persevere.’

But now they were back, his Indians. He had shooed them away twice before, explaining that Harriet was only going to Manaus and would be back tomorrow, but here again were old José, Andrelinho with his crippled boy, Manuelo with his wife, his baby… and that old witch, Manuelo’s mother-in-law, who now wore her boa of anaconda skins over Harriet’s brown foulard..

The missionaries had taught them to wave — prolonged goodbyes were one of their accomplishments, but there were too many of them today and Maliki and Rainu were snivelling. And now Lorenzo, who was an educated man and should have known better, came forward with a gift for Harriet which he placed in her hand — and which made Rom turn on him angrily with a few low words in his own dialect.

‘Is there something wrong?’ asked Harriet, troubled, looking up from the tiny, perfectly carved wooden canoe with paddles the size of splintered matchsticks and an intricate pattern of blue and scarlet painted across its bows. ‘Should I not take it?’

Rom shook his head. ‘It’s all right.’ But as Harriet thanked Lorenzo, his sense of wretchedness increased. The gift was one traditionally given to ensure safety for those travelling far away across water — and Harriet wasn’t even going in the Amethyst, Lorenzo knew that perfectly well. What the devil had got into them all?

The car arrived. Furo got out and held open the door and Harriet turned to Rom. ‘Could you be so kind as to remember that I love you absolutely?’ she said quietly, almost matter-of-factly. ‘Could you be so kind as to remember that?’

He bent down then to kiss not her mouth, but her fingers, holding them in a strangely formal gesture to his lips.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I could remember that. Were I to forget it, Harriet, it would go very ill with me.’

Long after the car was out of sight and he had returned to the house, his Indians still stood on the steps, waving and waving and waving…

The theatre was dark and silent, the seats already shrouded. It would be a month before another company made its way to Manaus — a Cossack choir from Georgia.

Would they be the last? Harriet wondered, picking her way across the deserted stage. Was Rom right and would this marvellous and fantastical theatre be given over to the mice? Would bats hang from the chandeliers and moths devour the silken hangings? But if it was so — if Mrs Lehmann’s carriage horses had drunk their last champagne and the grandly dressed audience would no longer sweep across the great mosaic square — it had still been a splendid and worthwhile dream to build a theatre here in this place… and one day, surely, it would open its doors again, music would stream from the pit and men, perhaps still unborn, would wait with bated breath for the gold glimmer of the footlights that meant curtain rise.

Down in the wardrobe she found a lone stage-hand, who at first greeted her with respect, not recognising in the elegantly dressed girl the little dancer in her shabby clothes — and then as she smiled, he asked her to sit on the last of the skips so that he could close it, as he had asked her to do three months ago in the Century Theatre when the adventure began.

Then she went back to the stage-door, where Furo was waiting and was driven to the Metropole, where she went, first of all, to say goodbye to Simonova.

During the fortnight since Harriet had last seen her, Simonova’s thinness had become spectacular: now she lay like a death’s head on the single pillow. Dubrov for once was absent, supervising the loading of the scenery.

‘So,’ said the ballerina as Harriet approached and curtseyed. ‘You are happy. One can see that.’

‘Yes, Madame. Extremely happy. But I wish that you—’

‘Oh, never mind, never mind,’ said Simonova irritably. ‘Let them clap Masha Repin. Myself, I will be thankful if I can even walk again.’

‘But you will, you will! Professor Leblanc is the greatest specialist in the world.’

‘Ach, specialists, what do they know? I believe nothing.’ She turned her head restlessly on the pillow and pierced Harriet with her eyes. ‘It will not last, this love of yours, you know that?’

‘Yes, I know. At least, it will for me but not for him. He is going back to the place in England where he was born and there is a woman there who…’ But this did not seem to be a sentence that one finished.

‘Yes, yes. It is always so. Dancers, singers… we are for pleasure, but it is others who become the châtelaines of great estates. So you must see that you get some jewels and you must work and work. Remember what Grisha always tells you about your shoulders — the left one in particular.’

‘Yes, Madame, I will. And I will never forget your Odette — or your Giselle — not if I live for a hundred years. Never, never will I forget them.’

‘And my Lise?’ came Simonova’s sharp voice from the bed. ‘My Lise in Fille — what was wrong with my Lise?’

‘Your Lise too.’ Harriet was close to tears. ‘To have been in your company even for such a short time has been the greatest privilege in the world.’

‘You are a good girl. Now I must rest for the journey, but first…’ She seemed to be coming to some decision, a frown etching deep lines into the worn forehead. ‘Yes, I will do it. Go over there to that blue suitcase.’

Harriet stepped round the stretcher lying ready to convey Madame to the boat and found the case.

‘Lift the lid. There is a pair of ballet shoes on top — my last pair. The pair I wore when I had my accident. Take them out and bring them here to me.’

Harriet did so and Simonova seized them in her bony hands, stroked the pink silk with one long finger as a mother traces the features of an infant in her arms. ‘See,’ she said tenderly, ‘they are hardly worn; I fell so soon. They should go to a museum perhaps — the last shoes of Galina Simonova — but who goes to museums? Take them. They are for you.’

Harriet, unashamedly crying now, shook her head. ‘No, Madame, I can’t! There must be someone who… matters more.’

‘Masha Repin, perhaps,’ sneered the ballerina. ‘Or that pretty friend of yours who thinks only of restaurants. Take them. Take them quickly. And now go!’

It was a very long time before the three friends slept that night. Marie-Claude had a great deal to tell them, for Vincent had secured his auberge and she was to be married in December. ‘And it’s because of you, ’arriette. You made it possible for Vincent to give the deposit and never, never will I forget what you have done.’

As they talked sleepily in their beds it seemed that Kirstin, too, might soon hang up her dancing shoes, for there was a young man in a village on the Baltic not far from the town were she had been born — a childhood friend who for a long time had been willing to be something more. His father owned a fleet of trawlers which Leif would inherit and he had never been to the ballet in his life, which to Kirstin was very much in his favour. ‘I don’t know,’ she said now. ‘It may not work out, but I think I will go back and see. It’s such a pretty place — the red wooden houses, and the water…’

‘So you see, it is you who must be a great dancer, ’arriette,’ said Marie-Claude, ‘so that we can bring our children to see you and tell them that with this divine prima ballerina assoluta we once shared a horrible room full of cockroaches in the city of Manaus.’ She sighed, seeing Harriet’s face. ‘But of course it is this man you want for always — and no wonder,’ she said, motioning to a froth of pale green muslin on the chair: the dress she had bought at Verney’s insistence when shopping for Harriet.

‘Perhaps this earl’s grand-daughter to whom he goes in England no longer loves him?’ suggested Kirstin. ‘Perhaps she has met someone else?’

‘And then when he has recovered from his broken heart, he can put you into a villa in some suitable district with your own carriage. In Paris it would be somewhere near the Bois… or in St Cloud, perhaps, but in London I don’t know…’

‘St John’s Wood, I think,’ said Harriet, recalling the novels she had dipped into while doing her homework in the public library. ‘Somewhere near the Regent’s Park Canal. A Gothic villa with a wisteria in the garden.’ Her eyes grew bright at the thought that she might after all have a future as a kept woman, awaiting Rom’s visits twice a week in a violet tea-gown. No, that was greedy. Once a week. Once a fortnight, because the trains were dreadful from Stavely and the roads even worse. It was ridiculous of course. Isobel would not have met someone else — no one who had ever loved Rom could possibly stop — and a man married to a woman as beautiful as Isobel would scarcely trouble to travel to London to visit his mistress in St John’s Wood. Moreover, Rom, once he married, would be faithful, Harriet was sure of that. But the daydream had done her good and trying to work out how many days she would see him if he came every other week for, say, five years… wondering if that was what the pomegranate seeds had meant… she fell asleep.

In the morning there was an unexpected development. Grisha and some of the Russian girls, going down before breakfast to meet the Bernadetto as she docked, returned to say that Olga had not been aboard, nor had the crew any idea of her whereabouts.

‘It is extremely strange,’ said Grisha, returning to the Metropole dining-room where the rest of the company sat at breakfast. He turned to Harriet. ‘Monsieur Verney sent some men to fetch her from the Gregory, I think?’

‘Yes, he did,’ said Harriet, and beamed at the ballet master because he had pronounced Rom’s name. ‘I’m sure of it.’

Grisha shrugged. ‘I suppose she has decided to wait for us in Belem,’ he said, and instructed Tatiana to pack Olga’s things and see that they were put on board.

The rest of the day passed in a bustle of last-minute shopping, packing, promises and plans. Harriet bought farewell presents for her friends: a deceptively demure nightgown for Marie-Claude and a blouse for Kirstin. She also bought a record of ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ for the Indians and found for Rom, in a dusty shop full of maps and oleographs, a book with pictures of the tapestry of ‘The Lady and the Unicorn’ — a wonderful stroke of luck, for above the golden-haired virgin and her obedient beast were embroidered the words: Mon seul désir — and these were the words which Rom had whispered to her two nights ago as she lay in his arms.

By the time she returned with her purchases, the preparations for Simonova’s removal were already under way. Two orderlies were coming from the hospital to lift her on to the stretcher and carry her to the ambulance; a nurse had just arrived and was sterilising her instruments in the kitchens prior to giving the ballerina the pain-killing injection which would enable her to endure the unavoidable jolting as they drove to the quay.

Under these circumstances Harriet would not have attempted to seek out Dubrov, to whom she had not yet said goodbye, but as she made her way across the hall she was waylaid by the harassed stage manager. ‘If you’re going past his door, could you give this to the boss? It’s just arrived at the theatre, sent on by the London office, and looks as though it might be important,’ he said, handing Harriet a letter with a Russian stamp and a massive and elaborate seal.

Dubrov was not in his own room, but Harriet’s quiet knock brought him at once to Simonova’s door.

‘I came to bring this letter, Monsieur, it’s just arrived. And to say goodbye — and thank you.’

He put up a hand to pat her cheek. ‘There’s no need to thank me. You have worked hard and could have been—’ He paused, the blue eyes suddenly sharp, took the letter and quickly broke the seal. ‘Wait!’ he threw over his shoulder at Harriet, and carried the heavy embossed paper over to the window.

‘Well, what is it?’ came Simonova’s fretful voice from the bed.

Dubrov, however, was unable to answer. It was necessary for him to mop his eyes with his handkerchief several times before he could trust his voice. Then: ‘It is from St Petersburg,’ he said. ‘From the Maryinsky.’ Another sniff, another dab at his watering eyes… ‘From the director, the man who dismissed you.’

‘And?’

‘He asks… he invites you… to dance at a gala for the Romanov Tercentenary! To dance Giselle before the Tsar!’ Dubrov abandoned the effort to check his tears, which now ran unhampered down his cheeks. ‘The honour! The incredible honour! Now, at the end of your career! We will keep it always, this letter. We will frame it in gold and hang it on the wall and when we sit in our armchairs in Cremorra—’

‘Armchairs? Cremorra?’ Simonova’s voice pierced like a gimlet. ‘What are you talking about? Give the letter to me!’ And to Harriet, tactfully edging her way out of the door: ‘You will remain!’

The letter which caused Dubrov to weep, overcome by pride and the tragedy of its timing, had an entirely different effect on Simonova.

‘Let me see,’ she murmured in a businesslike manner. ‘March the fifteenth… Nine months. Ha! Only two other ballerinas are invited — that will teach Pavlova to desert her native land. Think of it — all Russia will be en fête for the Tercentenary! The Grand Duke Andrei asked for me specially — he remembered!’

‘Ah, dousha, the honour! The distinction of having been asked!’ Dubrov was still awash with emotion. ‘We shall never forget that you were invited… that you could have—’

‘What do you mean, could have? Why are you always so pessimistic? Just because I have wrenched my back a little — I have done it a hundred times — and I have told you already that I will not mulch! Now let me see, we will go to Paris, yes, but not to that idiot specialist — to buy clothes! There will be a reception at the Winter Palace without a doubt and several balls. Then straight on to Petersburg to work with Gerdt. No performances, just work, work, work!’

‘Galina, I beg of you, be reasonable.’ Dubrov was aghast at this new turn of events. ‘You are severely injured. The doctors—’

‘The doctors? Do you think I care about the doctors?’ This woman who had not lifted her head from the pillow since her fall had now propped herself up on her elbow and was — incredibly — sitting up! ‘Send Grisha to me at once, and the masseuse. Chort! I’m as weak as a kitten and no wonder, lying here for two weeks. After Gerdt I shall work with Cecchetti on my port de bras, and if he’s with Diaghilev he must leave him and come to me.’ She had pushed back the sheet, put her long, pale legs to the ground. ‘Ah, to see Masha Repin’s face when she hears of this!’

‘Your back!’ cried Dubrov in desperation, rushing forward, for she was pulling herself up on the arms of the chair, was actually standing!

‘We will no longer discuss my back,’ said Simonova regally. Still needing the support of the chair she showed, however, no signs of serious discomfort. ‘For heaven’s sake, stop fussing, Sasha, and take that stupid stretcher away. How the devil am I supposed to move with it lying there? Now listen, you must immediately send a cable to the Maryinsky to say we accept. And then come back here quickly, because I have had a new idea about the Mad Scene. You know where I bourrée forward and pretend to pick up the flower? Well, I think it would be better if—’ She broke off, her charcoal eyes now focused on Harriet. ‘Ha!’ she said. ‘Those shoes I gave you yesterday — there is a lot of wear in them still and they are perfectly broken in. Go and get them, please. At once!’

It had already been dark for some time when Harriet made her way quietly up the avenue of jacaranda trees towards the house.

Saying goodbye to her friends had been hard, but she was home and had been really brave living without Rom for nearly two whole days, but now needed to be brave no longer. For as she walked past the acacia with the flycatcher’s nest which Rom had shown her on that first day, crossed the bridge over the igarape, she felt not only the intense joy of the coming reunion but for the first time some confidence in the future. Rom had been so certain that he did not want her to return with the Company, and there had been no further talk of Stavely. There were probably weeks still to be with him, even months — and perhaps the journey back to England. Surely one did not say, ‘Mon seul désir’ in quite that way to a person one intended to part from soon.

What’s more, she had saved at least two extra hours to be with him. Dubrov had insisted on getting the Company aboard early to avoid Simonova exciting herself any further and — coming off the ship after her farewells — Harriet found herself hailed by the Raimondo brothers aboard their rackety launch and offered a lift to São Gabriel. She knew the brothers, knew the speed of the Santa Domingo. It had taken her only a few minutes to scribble a note to Furo, due to meet her at the Casa Branca at eight, and despatch it by a seraphic-looking urchin. Then she had been aboard.

She was approaching the first of the terraces. Light streamed from the downstairs windows of the house and from one window which she had not seen lit up before. Moving quietly, but hurrying now — already in her imagination stretching out her hands to Rom — she began to climb the steps.

Something was standing by the balustrade: a small white shape half-hidden by a stone urn filled with tobacco flowers. Not one of Rom’s tame creatures… A little wraith? A ghost?

Then the wraith gave a squeak of purest joy and ran down the steps into her arms.

‘Henry! Oh, Henry — I don’t believe it!’

‘It’s honestly me, though!’

They clung to each other, as overjoyed to be together as if they had been lifelong companions instead of having met once in an English garden.

‘I knew you would come before I went to sleep; I just knew,’ said Henry, his arms tightening around her neck. ‘I wanted to see you so much!’

‘And I you, Henry!’ She had been right to love him; there was nothing else to do with this child. ‘Only how did you get here? I had no idea—’ They had moved a little, so that the light of the terrace lantern was on his face. ‘Are you all right, Henry?’ she asked, startled. ‘You haven’t been ill?’

‘I had the measles, but I’m all right now. We came this morning and a nice man called Miguel brought us here in a little boat and I saw an alligator right close to, truly I did, and everything is absolutely marvellous, Harriet, and it’s all because of you.’

‘Why me, Henry?’ She drank in his soapy smell, put a hand on his ruffled hair. Soon it would come, the next bit, but she had a few moments still to relish his presence and his happiness.

‘Because you found him — the “secret boy” — you told him about us and that we needed him. He knew all about Stavely and it was because of you, he told me. And Harriet, he’s bought it — bought Stavely, did you know?’

‘No.’

‘You can do that,’ explained Henry. ‘You can buy places without being there. You send a cable and it goes snaking out along a tube at the bottom of the sea — and then the bank gives people money and you buy their houses. He did it just as soon as you told him about us, and it’s because of you that someone else didn’t buy it first. I told Mummy you’d find him; I told her!’

‘She’s here then, your mother?’ asked Harriet, noting her own idiocy. Where else would she be, the mother of such a child? The pain was beginning now — not unendurable yet… just mustering.

‘Yes! And she’s so happy! She hasn’t been cross all day — well, only when I asked Uncle Rom a lot of questions, but he said I had a refreshing mind.’ Henry paused and beamed up at her. The discovery that he had a refreshing mind had set the seal on this joyous and successful day. ‘He’s so nice, isn’t he — Uncle Rom? He’s just right for a “secret boy”, even though he’s grownup. I thought uncles might be… well, you know, uncles… but he isn’t. He showed me the manatees and some poisoned arrows he got from an Indian and the coati took a nut from my hand.’ His attention caught by something in her expression, he said anxiously, ‘You do like him too, don’t you, Harriet?’

‘Yes, Henry. I like him very much.’

‘Because he likes you a lot. He said we had a… mutual friend and that was you. And, Harriet, he told me all the things he’s going to do at Stavely. He’s going to make a tree-house, only not in the Wellingtonia because it’s too high; not that I’d be frightened, but it’s not convenient for it to be so high. And he’s going to get a huge dog — a wolfhound — and show me how to train him — and he’s going to get rid of awful Mr Grunthorpe and let old Nannie come and live in the house again. He told me all that while Mummy was resting, and it’s all because of you, Harriet — otherwise someone else might have bought Stavely first, but you found him and you made everything come right.’

‘I’m glad, Henry.’ The pain could definitely be said to be limbering up. She had imagined it often, but there seemed to be aspects that one could not in fact anticipate and the physical part was beginning to be a nuisance: the nausea, the trembling that assailed her limbs — and needing cover, she moved away a little so as to be out of the brightest rays of the lamp.

‘Mummy said I could stay awake and tell you all about it as long as I didn’t bother Uncle Rom.’ Henry paused, remembering his mother’s unaccustomed gentleness as she put him to bed. ‘She said I could watch out for you and tell you everything because you’ve been so kind to us.’ He moved closer to Harriet because there was still one anxiety that he needed to share with this best of friends. ‘When she was saying good night, Mummy told me that she had to marry my father when she was young because he made such a dreadful fuss when she said she wouldn’t, but now he’s dead she can marry Uncle Rom. Only Harriet, when she marries him he’ll be my stepfather, won’t he? Like Mr Murdstone in David Copperfield and all those cruel step-people in fairy stories. And Mr Murdstone was nice to David before he married his mother, but then he was awful. Only I don’t see how Uncle Rom could be awful, do you?’

One last effort and then she could let go… crawl away, be sick, howl like Hecuba…

‘Henry, if you don’t mind my saying so you’re being a little bit silly,’ said Harriet, managing to make her voice matter-of-fact — almost reproving. ‘Surely you have read The Jungle Book?’

‘Yes. Yes, I have.’ She made no attempt to prompt him, but waited quietly until understanding came. ‘You mean Mowgli!’ cried Henry. ‘Mowgli had a stepfather!’

‘Exactly.’

‘Yes, he did, didn’t he? An absolutely marvellous stepfather! A proper wolf!’ Henry was radiant. ‘Oh yes — and Uncle Rom’s a bit like a wolf, isn’t he — sort of brave and wild?’ As he smiled up at her she noticed that the gaps in his teeth were almost filled; it was three months since they had met in the maze. ‘Would you like to come and see Mummy?’ he went on. ‘She was in the sitting-room just now, hugging Uncle Rom and everything, but I expect they’ve stopped now.’ He broke off, his russet head tilted in concern. ‘Are you all right, Harriet? You’re not getting the measles?’

‘No, Henry. I’m… perfectly all right.’

‘I’d better go back to bed then or Mummy will be cross.’ He put up his arms and she kissed him for the last time. ‘You’re sure you’re not getting the measles?’ And as she nodded, ‘I’ll see you in the morning. You’re my best friend in the whole world, Harriet.’

‘And you are mine.’

At the top of the terrace he turned. ‘Do you know what I’m sleeping in, Harriet? A hammock! Uncle Rom said I could — honestly!’ said Henry and pattered away towards the house.

He had gone, but she wasn’t sick and the trembling had stopped. Because of course it couldn’t be true, what Henry had said — it couldn’t be over so suddenly, so completely, without the journey back still to be with Rom. Henry wouldn’t lie, but he must be mistaken. He was so intelligent that it was easy to forget that he was just a little child.

She went quietly up the last of the steps, made her way towards the windows of the salon. The curtains were open and light streamed out on to the terrace.

Inside, two figures, unaware of her… absorbed.

(‘I know what it’s like… I know how it is to be at a window… outside… and to look in on a lighted room and not be able to make anyone hear.’

‘How do you know? You have not experienced it.’

‘Perhaps I am going to one day. There is a man in England who says that time is curved…’)

Rom stood with his back to her, the dark head bent, one arm resting on a bookcase. Isobel faced him, almost as tall as he, and for a moment it seemed to Harriet that she looked straight at her, but of course she could not have seen her in the darkness — that was absurd. She had loosened the beautiful red hair which flowed like a river over her black gown and as she leaned towards Rom, smiling, putting a hand on his arm, their sense of kinship came across to Harriet as clearly as if she had proclaimed, ‘We belong, this man and I! We inhabit the same world!’

Then, perhaps responding to something Rom had said, she moved forward, stumbled a little… seemed as if she might fall — and as he moved quickly towards her, her arms went round him and her head came to rest against his shoulder. And as she stood thus in sanctuary, staring past the place where Harriet stood, her face was transfigured by pride and happiness and love.

‘It is only necessary to do the steps,’ Marie-Claude had said.

But there were no steps for this: no piteous undulations of the arms, no bourrées backwards. Just a slow turning to stone… a nothingness… a death.

Then she turned and walked away — moving, this lightest of dancers, like an old, old woman — and vanished into the dark.

‘No! No! No!’ yelled Grisha, whacking at Harriet’s shins with his cane. ‘You are a durak — an idiot! Why do you bend your knees like a carthorse? The line must be smooth, smooth…’ He demonstrated, flicked his fingers at the old accompanist — and in the cleared Palm Lounge of the Lafayette, Harriet resumed her assemblés.

She had been working for two hours and before that there had been class and Grisha, formerly so kind, had bullied and shouted and despaired of her as he had done each day of their journey across the calm Atlantic. For Harriet was no longer just a girl in the corps — Simonova was taking her to Russia; she was to be a serious dancer and for a girl thus singled out there could be no mercy and no rest.

Nor did Harriet want rest. Every muscle ached, the perspiration ran down her back, but she dreaded the moment when Grisha would dismiss her. She would have liked to collapse with exhaustion, to weep like Taglioni and faint like Taglioni. To faint particularly, and thus find the oblivion that sleep did not bring as in her dreams she tore through bramble thickets, clawed at stone walls, searching in vain for Rom.

‘Sixteen grandes battements — then twelve ronds de jambe en l’air,’ said Grisha viciously as Simonova swept in to study the progress of her future pupil. It had been a brilliant idea to take Harriet along. For Cremorra no longer figured in Simonova’s itinerary. A triumph at the Maryinsky and then a return to Paris to open a school and become, as she had been the world’s greatest ballerina, its greatest teacher of the dance — this was what she now intended. And who was better suited to be a show pupil than this work-hungry English girl?

‘You may go,’ said Grisha. ‘Return at two.’ Even before Harriet had risen from her curtsey it had seized her again, the pain, tearing and clawing — and embarrassed by the unseemliness of an agony so unremitting, she stole off to her favourite hiding place between the life-boat and the railing of the deck.

At least she had caught the boat, she told herself for the hundredth time. Stumbling away from Follina, still numb with shock, she had found the Raimondo brothers fishing with flares in the bay off São Gabriel and given them the last of Rom’s money to take her to the Lafayette before it sailed. Because of that she had this chance. Many people had nothing to do with grief like hers, whereas she could turn it into art. Dubrov had explained this when he had told her that they would take her to Russia. He had been quite confident about it all; the Russian girls had travelled on a group ticket and there had been no sign of Olga at Belem. No one would ask for names if the numbers were right — and aghast at Harriet’s state, he had found for her the only consolation she could accept.

Only now, standing with her hands folded across her chest so that what was happening inside her could not escape and make people recoil from her, she wondered if it could be done. If this beast tearing at her entrails could be transformed into those moments of high art when Odette lets her fingertips run lightly down the Prince’s arm before she vanishes for ever into the lake. How many years would have to pass? How many aeons?

‘’ariette, you must eat!’ scolded Marie-Claude, coming to find her as she always did and taking her down to the dining-room — and at two she was back with Grisha, welcoming the ache in her limbs, the soreness, which people who did not understand were stupid enough to confuse with pain.

So the ship steamed eastwards and Harriet worked and pledged herself to make it come at last: the day when, contained in the iron framework of a flawless technique, she could reveal to those who watched her the heartbreak and the glory of an immutable love.

Four weeks after they left Brazil, punctual to the hour, the Lafayette steamed into Cherbourg. Harriet had scarcely thought of Cambridge or her home and she walked unthinkingly off the ship with her friends, bound for the custom sheds and the train to Paris.

Waiting at the bottom of the gangway — black-clad, menacing, flanked by two gendarmes with truncheons — stood her father and her aunt.