‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘Please don’t feel hurt. He bites everybody but me.’
‘It’s all right. I like animals – even savage ones.’ Bobbie really was an exemplary guest. She sucked the wound, then examined it. ‘It’s all right. Just a tiny puncture. He’s certainly a very good-looking rabbit.’
Most people were insulting about Siggy after he had bitten them. Though I deplored his character, I could not help feeling proud of him. He had lovely orange eyes, neat little ears and a beautiful fluffy coat of thundercloud grey.
‘I’ve had him a year now. I found some children trying to push a sack down the culvert at the end of the street. I asked them what was in it and they said it was a rabbit which bit them all the time so they’d decided to drown it. Of course I took the sack away from them. Immediately they all ran off so I was lumbered, really. He’s never once bitten me. It’s as if he knows I rescued him from a horrible fate and he’s grateful.’
‘A very intelligent rabbit.’ Bobbie looked kindly at Siggy. I felt the sort of glow parents of an infant prodigy must enjoy. ‘Marigold, do listen to me a minute.’ Bobbie offered her camembert crust to Siggy who chomped it down, making a mess of his whiskers. ‘I don’t think it’s good for you to stay here. You’re lonely, freezing and semi-starving. People who are recovering from operations need warmth and good food and fresh air.’ She looked apologetic. ‘I can smell the stairs a tiny bit in here. You mentioned someone called Sebastian. Who is he and why is it up to him whether you go into a nursing home or not?’
‘He’s the director of the Lenoir Ballet Company. And my lover … sort of.’
‘Sort of?’
‘Well, strictly in the physical sense. Not in the sense of loving each other. Though we might be engaged to be married. I’m not really sure.’
Bobbie took away our plates and refilled our glasses. Then she lay on the bed next to me and rearranged the blankets to cover both of us. ‘That’s better. I can feel the blood returning to my feet. Now, tell me all.’
I was entirely frank and did not bother to garb the relationship with spurious romance. Bobbie listened intently, putting in the occasional question which I answered truthfully.
When I had told everything there was to tell she said, ‘I see. Now I feel more strongly than ever that you ought, for a time at least, to have … a little holiday. If you could contemplate the journey to Ireland, Finn and I will be absolutely delighted to have you to stay. You never saw such wonderful countryside and you’d love Patience, his sister who lives with us and … why are you shaking your head?’
‘Thank you so much, darling Bobbie, for asking me, but I should be conscious the whole time that I was yet another person requiring attention and taking up your time. You said it yourself. It’s paradise when you can be alone with Finn. It’s enormously kind of you to offer and perhaps when you’ve become used to him and are content just to rest your eyes on him across a crowded room, I’ll come willingly.’
Bobbie laughed. ‘I’d love to have you. Truthfully.’
‘Thanks. But I’d be a martyr to guilt the whole time.’
‘Well, then, the alternative is—’
‘All right! I know whither this is tending. You want me to go home.’
‘Just for a few weeks.’ Bobbie looked at me pleadingly. ‘Dimpsie’s such an angel and she’d love to have you. Think of the scenery and the clean air. Proper food, relaxation, new horizons. You might even enjoy it.’
‘I might,’ I replied rather glumly.
Less than twenty-four hours later I was standing on the platform at King’s Cross with Siggy in a travelling basket and a one-way ticket to Northumberland.
‘Safe journey, darling.’ Bobbie had been saintly, getting me and my suitcase downstairs and into a taxi, coming to the station with me, helping me on to the train and stowing my suitcase behind my seat. We kissed each other. ‘Give Dimpsie my love. Goodbye Siggy.’ She tapped the door at one end of the wicker cage that she had kindly bought that morning from a pet shop. We had draped it with a shawl, leaving the door uncovered so he could breathe. Siggy launched himself at the bars with snapping teeth. ‘I hope they won’t make you put him in the luggage van. Perhaps you’d better put the coat over him as well when the ticket inspector comes round.’
‘Not your beautiful coat,’ I protested. ‘I’d never ever forgive myself if he chewed it.’ When Bobbie had seen the state of my fur cloak which had once lapped the shoulders of the Snow Queen and in which Siggy had bitten a hole in just where my tail would have come through if I’d had one, she had insisted on lending me her own pale-honey-coloured cashmere coat to travel in. The arrangement was that I would return it when next she came to London.
‘It really isn’t that precious. I’m going straight to Heathrow and I’m being met by Finn the other end. I shan’t miss it.’
‘You’ve been angelic.’ I hugged her again.
‘Write when you get the chance and let me know how things are. There’s the whistle. I must go. Goodbye, darling.’
She put a carrier bag on the seat beside me and rushed to get off. She waited on the platform until the train drew away. I saw her smiling figure recede with a sharp pang of parting. To console myself I opened the carrier bag. Bobbie was a friend in a million. Paper parcels contained slices of ham and salami, lettuce, poppy-seed rolls and a bar of hazelnut chocolate. There was also a bottle of apple juice and a copy of this month’s Vogue. Including the change at Newcastle, the journey was going to take five hours. I burrowed in my knapsack to find The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan, which was second on the list of required reading for the intelligent conversationalist. Gibbon and I had gone far enough together for the time being.
It was a second-hand copy from the bargain box of a local bookshop. The binding was an attractive blue but the book smelt as though it had been macerated for a hundred years in a leaky coffin in a subfluvial vault. And Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, I read, dipping into the middle. This was the stuff all right, I thought to myself, and prepared to be enlightened. But Little-faith was of another temper. His mind was on things divine …
I woke, absolutely starving, as we were drawing into Grantham station. I blessed Bobbie’s forethought. Getting to the restaurant car would have been quite as difficult as anything Christian could possibly have undergone. I ate much of the picnic and surreptitiously fed bits of ham and salami through the bars of Siggy’s prison-house, then wiped my fingers and took up the magazine. I was enjoying The Pilgrim’s Progress, of course, but Vogue might be a better digestif.
I studied the models with interest. We dancers feel acute anxiety about our bodies, not surprisingly as we spend most of our time staring into mirrors. We observe people’s body shapes before faces, voices, cleverness, niceness. This probably seems terribly superficial, but how a dancer looks is extremely important. A small head, long neck, short torso and long, long slender legs are the ideal. The models were clearly giants, with large thigh bones, huge feet and big jaws, quite the wrong conformation for a dancer and the opposite of everything I had been taught to admire. They stood pigeon-toed with their hips and knees thrust forward and heads drooping and all their weight on the back of their feet.
Dancers spend a great deal of effort in perfecting ‘turnout’ with not just our feet but our knees and hips at a quarter to three. This is the most fundamental aspect of classical ballet technique. Some dancers have perfect turnout naturally, but I had really had to work at it. I had drilled myself to make it second nature to turn out my legs during