Kitabı oku: «The Yuletide Child»

CHAPTER ONE

ONCE the curtain went up and the music began Dylan lost awareness of everything outside the enchanted circle of light in which she and Michael moved, their bodies in total harmony, gliding sinuously, like snakes, entwining, limb against limb, slithering down each other in erotic invitation, then suddenly breaking apart, whirling away in opposite directions, leaping so high the audience always gasped in disbelief. Not that Dylan heard them.

She heard, saw, nothing but Michael and her own black shadow flying across the white backcloth, the white-painted boards under their feet, until their bodies met once more, writhed in embrace, caressing, imploring, slid to the floor and joined there, rose and fell over and over again, quivering in breathtaking ecstasy.

You could have heard a pin drop in the audience. It was the same every night. The watchers were transfixed and aroused, barely breathing, not moving, until the final second when the two young lovers sank into completed repose.

It wasn’t until they took their curtain calls and the thunder of applause broke over them that she began to come out of the hypnotic trance in which she always experienced ‘Exercises for Lovers’.

Sweat pouring down her body, shuddering with anguished breath, trembling and exhausted, with Michael holding her hand, supporting her, she looked out into the audience for the first time, curtseying, bending her head in recognition of the audience response.

Normally she never noticed anyone out there, but tonight her flickering gaze stopped suddenly as it moved over the rows of faces. She stared into dark eyes in a sort of shock.

He was sitting in the front row of the stalls, leaning forward, his stare glowing and intense, face pale in the shadows, hair black as night. Prince of Darkness, she thought, a little feverish, wildly hyper after the fierce concentration of the dance. That was what he looked like: a creature of the night, a lost soul.

She had never seen him before, yet she felt instantly that she had always known him, that he had haunted her dreams all her life.

Michael felt the shudder which ran through her, and shot her a quick, sideways look.

Turning, lifting her hand to his lips, his lithe body bent in a gesture of adoration, he whispered, ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing, just a ghost walking over my grave,’ she lied, and was surprised that she did, because she and Michael knew each other better than anyone else in the world. She had never hidden anything from him before, but she couldn’t tell him what had just happened to her; she had no words to describe that weird, out-of-this-world sensation.

The flowers came on, as they always did at this point, cellophane-wrapped bouquets from fans. She and Michael accepted them gracefully, cradled them in the crook of their arms, each blowing a kiss to the audience. It was all a ritual, part of the performance, and she went through it in the same well-rehearsed, smiling fashion.

Tonight was different, though. Tonight she kept looking down into the front row of seats, finding those eyes, and feeling her heart beating right through her until her entire body seemed to be one passionate heartbeat.

What is the matter with me? she thought as Michael led her off, their hands still linked, into the wings, followed by the roar of applause which was like waves beating on a rocky shore. They walked past smiling backstage staff who softly clapped.

‘You were wonderful tonight,’ a stagehand said.

She smiled mistily. ‘Thank you.’

‘Beautiful,’ their director told them both. ‘You just keep getting better, both of you.’

At last they escaped into the quiet, narrow, shadowy corridor which led to the dressing rooms. Only then could she begin to wind down from the heights on which they had danced.

Walking into the square, white-painted box of a room with her name on the door, Dylan sat down on the stool in front of her mirror and blankly gazed at her own reflection: a white-painted face, the face of an icon, not of a human being, a make-up created for this performance by a great make-up artist who had taught her how to renew it quite quickly before every show.

A dew of perspiration showed on the white mask, her painted red mouth was trembling, and under the thickly drawn in black brows her blue eyes were dominated by enlarged pupils like glistening black fruit.

‘You sure you’re okay?’ asked Michael from the door, frowning. ‘You aren’t sick, are you?’

She could never talk after a performance. She shook her head, managing a smile.

‘Sure?’

She nodded.

‘Okay, then. See you in twenty minutes?’ Michael said, his grey eyes watchful. He looked after her as if she was a child, but for the moment he let it go, closing the door.

She shut her eyes and just sat there, breathing. The relief of being alone was wonderful. Dancing in a spotlight with hundreds of eyes watching you was an ordeal to her, even though she had been doing it now for years. Oh, of course she loved to dance, and the audience response always lifted her, but she always had the fear of making a mistake, stumbling, missing a cue. The tension wound up and up until you thought you would die, and it took time to unwind afterwards.

She slowly began to remove her make-up; underneath it her skin was red and prickly with heat, so she used a handful of gel to soothe as well as cleanse her skin. She had no dresser; she didn’t need one. Her costume was very simple, just a flesh-coloured, skintight body-stocking which covered her from her neck to her feet. Seen from the auditorium, it looked as if she was dancing in the nude, which was exactly how Michael wanted it to look.

Dylan slowly and carefully unpeeled the costume, like a snake shedding a slippery skin, then dropped it into a wicker basket. Tomorrow morning it would be put into a washing machine by the wardrobe mistress, spin-dried and hung up ready for tomorrow night’s performance.

She always had to dust it inside with talc before she dressed; it was not easy to wriggle into the costume and she had never enjoyed wearing it.

Naked, she walked into her en suite bathroom, used the lavatory, which she was never able to do from the moment she put on her costume until she took it off, then had a long, cooling, relaxing shower, taking her time, dried herself and put on clean white panties and a matching bra.

The new dance ate up energy. It was physically demanding; every night she felt limp and drained afterwards. She was shivering now as if she had flu. For some reason tonight was worse than usual.

Because of those eyes, she thought, seeing them again: primitive, disturbing, the glittering eyes of a wolf in the forest, watching, stalking you before it leapt.

Oh, stop being melodramatic! she told herself, laughing at her own imagination as she went back into the dressing room. He was just another fan staring, and wasn’t that what Michael wanted from the audience—that fixed intensity of attention on what the dancers on stage were doing?

He was a brilliant choreographer and ‘Exercises for Lovers’ was the best thing he had created so far. She was very lucky to have met him at ballet school, to have formed a close partnership with him so young that had formed their careers. Their audiences thought of them together...Adams and Carossi...nobody spoke of one without the other. Dylan was a dancer, pure and simple, she had no other ambition—but Michael Carossi had always dreamt of becoming a choreographer, of being the best in the world. Dancing was not enough for him any more, he needed to invent his own steps, create the ballets they danced.

His choreography was intensely physical. Every day they had to rehearse for hours, bending, stretching, doing those incredible leaps, warming muscles to keep their bodies supple during the performance that evening. This was an exhausting ballet; she would be glad when they changed the programme to something less demanding.

The door into the corridor wasn’t locked. It was un unwritten rule backstage that if a door was closed you did not open it without knocking first and waiting to be invited in, so she never bothered to lock the door before getting undressed.

Hearing the door opening, she called out, ‘I’m getting dressed!’ looked into her mirror and felt her heart kick against her ribs.

He stood in the doorway, his dark eyes piercing her like a laser, moving over her slender, pale-skinned, almost naked body, leaving heat everywhere it touched.

Breathlessly, she managed to say, ‘Didn’t you hear me say I’m getting dressed?’

‘No, I didn’t. Sorry.’ The door shut again.

She was disturbed to find that her hands were trembling as she slid a filmy white slip over her head, smoothing down the delicate straps over her creamy shoulders, a flurry of lace over her breasts. Over that she added a gossamer-fine yellow chiffon dress, tight-waisted, low-necked, full-skirted, which made satisfying swishing noises around her thighs.

She blow-dried her damp hair, brushing the short brown curls into a semblance of order. Michael said the hairstyle made her look like a boy, especially as she had such a skinny, flat, athlete’s body.

Outside her door she heard loud, angry voices, and stiffened. What on earth was going on out there?

The door snapped open; Michael appeared in the doorway, his thin, fine-boned face flushed in anger. ‘This guy says he’s a friend of yours—is that right?’

Over his bony shoulder she met the dark eyes; they pleaded, urged.

‘Yes,’ she heard herself say, and couldn’t believe she had said it, almost contradicted herself, took it back. What on earth was the matter with her, pretending she knew this total stranger?

Of course, if she denied knowing him Michael would have him thrown out at once—and to her surprise she recognised that she didn’t want that to happen. She wanted to get to know this man.

Angrily pushing back a lock of damp, fair hair from his forehead, Michael demanded, ‘Who is he?’

Before she could think of a reply the other man answered for her. ‘None of your business.’ He pushed his way past Michael, closing the door in his face with a cool arrogance that took Dylan’s breath away. She had never seen anyone treat Michael Carossi as if he was just any other man. Michael was used to admiration, respect, the heady fumes of hero-worship from the whole company as well as their audiences. Michael was the god of their little world; the whole company revolved around him, including her.

The stranger stood, staring at her, and suddenly the room seemed far too small, she could hardly breathe.

‘You look...’ he began huskily, then stopped, swallowing; she saw his throat move. ‘Beautiful,’ he finished.

‘Thank you,’ she said, dry-mouthed, and forced a pretence of laugher. ‘I’m not, though—it’s an illusion, especially on stage. It’s just the make-up and clothes. I’m really very ordinary.’ Her eyes glanced sideways into the dressing table mirror at the slender girl reflected there. Brown hair, a small, heart-shaped face, slightly built—there was nothing special about her. There never had been.

‘Ordinary?’ he repeated. ‘Is that really how you feel? All this glamour, the show business stuff, the fans, the fuss people make over you! Do you wish you were just an ordinary girl?’

‘But that’s what I am! An ordinary girl who happens to be able to dance.’

‘You must have wanted to be a dancer!’

‘It just happened to me. I started when I was four years old, taking dancing lessons once a week. All my mother’s idea, actually. I don’t remember ever wanting to; it was all so long ago. I had no idea where it would all end. Nobody warns you that if you go on with it you’ll spend endless days in punishing, gruelling work. They don’t tell you about the muscle strain, the agony of sore feet, the aching back...’ She broke off, surprised by what she was telling him, flushed and worried. If he turned out to be a journalist and published what she had just said Michael would be furious with her! Hurriedly, she asked, ‘Look, who are you? How did you get in here?’

‘Walked in,’ he calmly said.

‘The stage doorkeeper should have stopped you!’ As if poor old George would have had much chance of keeping him out!

Nearly sixty, a cheerful, grey-haired man who had been a dancer once, George had broken a leg when he was thirty and never danced again. He had been given a job backstage and had graduated through various jobs to doorkeeper. Wiry, with a faint limp even now, George was practical and kind-hearted, a father-figure to the young dancers, but he would never be able to deal with a man like this.

The tough mouth curled up at one edge. ‘He was busy on the phone; he didn’t see me!’

Preferred not to, no doubt! thought Dylan. George had a strong sense of self-preservation; he wouldn’t risk getting his head knocked off!

Her blue eyes absorbed everything about the stranger, starting with that mouth. Wide, passionate, beautifully moulded, it had an erotic power that made her quiver. The very idea of being kissed by him made her head swim.

How tall was he? A foot taller than her; her head just came up to his wide shoulders. Now that he was under the raw glare of her dressing room lights she could see that he was not pale at all; no doubt it had been the contrast of his black hair and paler skin in shadows. In fact he was deeply tanned, brown as a berry, and very fit. A lean man, with a lot of muscles under that white shirt. Those stark, angular cheekbones, that strong jaw-line, made him a man any woman would find compelling and any man would find a threat.

‘What’s your name?’

He smiled and her ears beat with a hot pulse. ‘Ross Jefferson. Is Dylan Adams your real name?’

She nodded. ‘What do you do? You aren’t in the theatre, are you?’ He looked as if he spent all his time out of doors, but then she, of all people, knew how deceptive appearances could be!

‘No, I am not,’ he said, grimacing. ‘I’m a forester—I work in a commercially managed forest, way up north—all conifers, of course.’

She gave a sigh of relief—at least he wasn’t a journalist looking for a gossip story!

‘I had a holiday in Norway once, when I was at school. There were forests of fir trees everywhere we went.’ They were making polite conversation on the surface but underneath something very different was happening. She barely knew what she was saying, she was so intent on what she was feeling: a sensuality which was entirely new to her and left her in a state of shock.

She had had a few boyfriends in the past, but her career took first place in her life: there wasn’t time to get seriously involved with anyone. Except Michael, of course; he was always there. They saw each other every day, most of their waking hours, but their relationship was not a sexual one. They were more than friends, less than lovers. Partners, necessary to each other on stage and off, working together, eating together, spending their spare time together. How could she ever have fallen in love with anyone else? Michael left no room for any other man.

At that instant, right on cue, Michael tapped on the door. ‘Are you coming, Dylan? I’m not waiting much longer; I’m starving. Come on!’

‘Will you have supper with me?’ Ross Jefferson quickly asked.

‘I always eat with Michael after a performance.’

His eyes focused on hers intently, his face hard, set. ‘Are you two lovers?’

The direct, flat question made her flush.

‘No, just very good friends.’ Yet more than that; the answer was too simplistic. What else could she say, though? There were no words to describe how close she and Michael were.

‘Then eat with me tonight!’ Ross said urgently, moving closer to her, but not touching her. ‘I want to get to know you. I’m only in London for a week. I’m here on holiday and have to get back to work by next Monday, at the other end of the country. God knows when I shall be able to come to London again. I’ve no time to waste.’

‘Dylan!’ Michael shouted again. ‘Our table is booked for eleven! Come on!’

Still staring into the dark, hypnotic eyes, Dylan called out, ‘You go on without me, Michael. See you tomorrow at rehearsal.’

A silence, then the door was pulled open and Michael stared in at her, at both of them. There was incredulity, alarm, wariness in his elegant face. This had never happened before. She had never shown any sign of preferring another man’s company to his. Something new had entered their magic circle, something dangerous to Michael, and he immediately sensed it. He had powerful intuitions, especially where his own security was involved.

‘I need to talk over tonight’s performance. It won’t wait.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, meaning far more than that she was sorry she couldn’t eat supper with him. She was saying she was sorry she wouldn’t be able to talk through the way they had danced, analyse any mistakes, discuss the audience reaction to this movement or that, the way they always did after each performance, while it was fresh in their minds. Each night was so different, each audience responded differently; you learnt so much from studying them. Added to all that, they had to talk themselves down from the fierce excitement of the night.

And tonight Dylan was changing all that. Tonight Michael was no longer the centre of her universe. A new element had entered the equasion.

‘I’m having supper with Ross,’ she said.

Michael stood there, very still, intensely concentrated on her, staring into her eyes and reading everything in them.

They knew each other so well. She couldn’t hide anything from him. She didn’t even try.

‘I’ll talk to you tomorrow,’ he said at last. The door slammed again; he was gone but she was trembling.

Ross stared at the door, then down at her; she stiffened, waiting for him to question her again about Michael. His eyes were hard and narrowed, dark with thought, but all he said was, ‘Shall we get away before he comes back to argue some more? My car’s parked in the next street.’

The fans were outside the stage door, clustered around Michael, who was signing autographs. Ross took her hand and hurried her away, around the corner, before they were noticed. The crowds had all gone now. The streets were silent; their footsteps rang out in the stillness. This part of London did not have as much traffic at night as the busier parts of town. It was mostly city offices, very few people worked at night around here, and the shops and restaurants were all closed. The air was warm, a faint breeze blew her silky skirts around her legs.

‘Where are we going to eat?’

‘You suggest somewhere.’

‘I know an Italian trattoria not far from here—they stay open until midnight. Do you like Italian food?’

‘Love it.’ He stopped walking, looked down at her. ‘I don’t believe this,’ he said abruptly, still holding her hand. Raising it to his chest, he splayed it over his shirt-front. ‘Can you feel my heart beating?’

Her palm flattened, she stood still, the heavy thudding right under her warm skin, and nodded, unable to speak.

Ross looked at her with a passion that made her quiver. ‘Do you feel it, too? It’s as if I’ve been struck by lightning. I think I’ve fallen in love with you at first sight, and I never even believed in such a thing.’

‘Me, too,’ she whispered, and then he bent his head, his warm mouth moving against hers, sending the world whirling crazily around them.

They spent the next two hours talking in a corner of the trattoria, eating their way through melon and prosciutto, the swordfish cooked in tomatoes, olives and garlic, with a green salad, followed by green figs.

‘Are you dieting?’ he asked her, and she laughed.

‘I don’t need to—I use up so much energy every day. I’m underweight for my height. But I love swordfish, don’t you?’

‘I’ve never eaten it before, but it’s good. Tell me about your usual day. When do you get up? Can we have breakfast together?’

‘You’re going too fast!’

‘I have to—there isn’t time to take it slowly. I live hundreds of miles away and I don’t get much time off.’

He told her about his forest, talking passionately about his trees, how he worked among them, the life he led in the northern area between England and Scotland which was his home.

She told him how hard and fiercely she had to work each day, how much she loved to dance, but how tired she often was.

He asked her again about Michael. ‘Has he ever been your lover? Is he in love with you?’

‘No,’ she said to both questions.

‘Don’t tell me you’re just good friends! He’s far too possessive for that to be true!’

‘We’re partners. It’s hard to explain. We need each other. It isn’t love.’ Nothing so easy to define, nothing so simple. Michael threatened the back of her mind like a bruise, darkening her skin, worrying her. How would he reaact to what was happening to her?

‘Never has been?’ insisted Ross, and she shook her head.

‘No. Michael has girlfriends but I was never one of them.’

‘Were there other men in your life?’

‘Nobody special. There was never enough time. I had to work too hard and I was always tired.’

Ross drove her back to her flat in Islington, just a mile away from the theatre.

‘I won’t ask you in; it’s gone one o’clock, and I have to get some sleep,’ she said, sitting in his car outside the building.

‘Breakfast... when?’ He was very close. She knew he was going to kiss her; she was dying for the touch of his mouth. She couldn’t think about anything else. ‘Eight o’clock?’

‘Nine! I’ve got rehearsals at eleven,’ she thought aloud, knowing that tomorrow she was going to regret losing so much sleep. She needed a solid eight hours every night to restore her energy levels, so that she could keep up with her demanding schedule.

‘Skip them and spend the day with me.’

‘I can’t, Michael would kill me. We have to work at the barre every day to keep supple; muscles stiffen up so quickly if you don’t.’

‘When can you get away, then?’

‘Lunchtime. One o’clock. Then I’m supposed to have a rest, a nap before the evening performance. I don’t get much free time.’

‘Breakfast and then lunch,’ he said, framing her face between his hands and bending.

Their mouths clung; she felt heat deep inside her body. It was the first time in her entire life that she had ever wanted a man like that.

A week later they got engaged. The wedding was fixed for a month after that, although her father almost had kittens when she said she was planning to marry so quickly. Her mother would have been dead for two years that spring; it seemed longer. Dylan still missed her and wished she could talk to her about Ross, about getting married. Ingrid Adams had been fifty the year she’d died of cancer, after a mercifully short illness. Dylan’s father, Joe Adams, still hadn’t quite got over it, and was unable to cope with organising a wedding.

‘There isn’t time! You can’t arrange a wedding this soon!’ he said to her helplessly. ‘Why not wait a few months, give yourself time to think, time for us to organise everything?’

‘We don’t want to wait. We just want to get married!’

He looked at her sister, Jenny, throwing up his hands in despair. Jenny tried to argue her out of being in such a hurry, too, but gave up when she realized Dylan simply was not listening.

Michael was worse. Michael went crazy, white and shaking, his eyes black holes in his head. ‘You can’t do this to me—you can’t chuck everything away. For pity’s sake, Dylan, it’s just infatuation. Sleep with him, but don’t marry him. How can you go on with your career if you live at the back of beyond? You have to be in London to dance.’

‘I’m sorry, Michael,’ was all she could say, almost in tears herself, because she hated quarrelling with him. She felt guilty because what he had said was true. She wasn’t just getting married. She was giving up her career. She was walking away from Michael and everything they had built up together.

‘My contract ends this month; I’m not signing up again.’ Their season ended, too, at the same time; they would have gone into rehearsal for a month, then gone on a protracted tour of the States before returning in the autumn to open a new season here in London. Now Michael would be doing all that without her.

Michael grabbed her shoulders and shook her, hoarsely shouting. ‘I won’t let you do it! What about me? What am I supposed to do? I can’t dance without you.’

He made her nervous, but she lifted her chin to stare back at him defiantly. ‘I’m sorry, Michael. Don’t be so angry. I know it’s going to be a problem, but it will be a challenge, too—can’t you see that? You’ll find a new partner; they’ll queue up for the chance to dance with you, you know that. I’m not unique. You’ll find someone else, just as good, probably even better, and go on to even greater heights.’

His face was stormy, full of bitterness. ‘What’s the matter with you? You’re a great dancer, arguably the best of our generation...you can’t throw it all away on this stupid, ordinary, boring guy. My God, Dylan—he’s nobody. He doesn’t even understand what you are, how wonderful you are. He knows nothing about ballet. He is destroying a great dancer without even knowing what a great dancer is!’

Helplessly she pleaded for him to understand, her voice shaking ‘Michael, try to see it from our side—he loves me: we love each other.’

‘Stop saying that—I just told you, it won’t last for ever, it never does. Use your brain, Dylan. What the hell is wrong with you? You’re possessed...out of your mind, crazy.’

She laughed nervously. ‘Maybe I am, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I am being driven, Michael. I can’t think of anything else but Ross. If I stayed on in the ballet I’d be worse than useless. It doesn’t seem important any more. I no longer want to dance.’

He looked as shocked as if she had hit him in the face. ‘You can’t be serious. I’d rather see you dead at my feet than let you stop dancing. The idea is unthinkable. You were born to dance, and I won’t let you stop, do you hear me? You aren’t going to do it!’

‘Yes, I am, Michael.’

It went on day after day, all the same arguments, the same pleas and angry protests, until her wedding day.

Michael’s bitterness and rage made life impossible in the theatre during that month but Dylan rode the storm somehow, her mind entirely set on the moment when she would become Ross’s wife. Michael was right—she was possessed, nothing else mattered to her, she was being carried away by an instinct older than time. She wanted to sleep in Ross’s bed every night, bear his children, spend her life with him. The life force had her in its grip and her career no longer mattered a damn. She found rehearsing tiring; the nightly performances passed in a vague dream. She was no longer part of the company. In her own mind she had already left, although her body went on performing.

She hadn’t believed Michael would come to the wedding, but he did, glowering darkly from his seat in the church. His friends, the company, all the dancers they had been to school with, were on his side, their eyes accusing her of treachery, betrayal. How could she do this to him? they silently asked, those eyes.

Afterwards, at the reception, he walked up to Dylan in her white dress and veil. She stiffened, afraid of what he might do next, but all he did was take her hands and kiss them lingeringly, the backs and then the pale pink palms.

‘I’m not saying goodbye. You’ll be back. You can’t exist away from us. When the madness passes, you’ll come back to me.’

‘Don’t hold your breath, Carossi!’ Ross snapped, tense as a drawn bow beside her, putting his arm around her waist and pulling her close to him.

Michael ignored him as if he was invisible. Dylan watched him walk away, sadness welling up inside her. Ever since they’d first met at ballet school they had been so close, almost one person instead of two; it was hard to say goodbye, harder to think of life without him.

She and Ross left for their honeymoon a few minutes later. They flew to Italy and spent two weeks at a small hotel in the Tuscan hills, making love day and night with a passion that excluded everyone and everything else, although they managed to spend a day at Venice and another at Florence. Dylan remembered both days like waking dreams: she and Ross wandered together, entranced, through the cities, looking at each other, not the beautiful buildings, the River Arno, the Grand Canal, the famous paintings, the statues in the narrow, old streets of both those ancient and exquisite cities. They were merely the background of the happiness Dylan and Ross shared, like painted designs on a stage backcloth.