Birth Marks Read Online Free PDF Page B

wouldn’t she?’ He blew out the smoke in a long thin Noël Cowardish swirl. ‘I mean no one wants to admit that their protegée might have’—he paused—‘how should we put it?—“feet of clay”.’
    â€˜You mean Carolyn isn’t a good dancer?’
    â€˜No. I mean she’s a very good dancer. But this is a tough business.’
    â€˜And what? She didn’t have the ambition?’ Determined, that was the word Miss Patrick had used.
    â€˜Darling, we all have the ambition, otherwise we’d never get up in the morning.’ I think he was waiting for me to laugh, like the girls at Cherubim, but I didn’t. ‘Put it this way, in my experience the ones who make it are as hard as nails, but all you see on stage is the sparkle. And bright though she was, by the time I met her, Carolyn didn’t shine.’
    â€˜And she knew that?’
    â€˜Yeah, she knew it.’ He looked at me with cool grey eyes. ‘Most of us do, you know.’ He smiled mischievously, ‘Lucky boy, aren’t I?’ and blew out another spiral of smoke. ‘Not so much what you are as who you know.’ But I was too busy thinking about all the postcards she must have had to make up to keep an old lady’s illusions intact. That took a determination, of sorts.
    â€˜So what about all the big ballet companies she was supposed to have been with—the Royal and the City? Are you telling me that Miss Patrick made them up?’
    He looked at me for a moment, as if trying to decide how much to tell me. Then he shook his head. ‘Boy, the old girl didn’t give you much to go on, did she?’ He shrugged. ‘Yeah, Carolyn was with the big ones, stretching those lovely limbs to get herself plucked out of the corps de ballet and become the prima ballerina the old lady never was. Who knows, she might even have made it. The way she tells it, it was all there for the taking. Except somewhere along the way she tried too hard. Stayed up on her points a little too long until her ankles started to give out. I don’t expect the battleaxe mentioned that bit, did she? The many and glorious ways in which your body starts turning the dream into a nightmare. Of course at first everyone is all sympathy. Time off for rest, time off for physiotherapy. Even, when it comes down to it, time off for operations. But behind your back you know what they’re saying. ‘Shame about the Hamilton girl—she had such promise.’ When you track down Carolyn take a long look at her ankles. Check out those little white scar veins.’ He waited. I felt there was somewhere I ought to have arrived, but hadn’t. He snorted. ‘Not a ballet lover I see. Tendons, darling. That humble little mesh of tissues that keeps us on our toes. Or off them. And who ever heard of a ballerina on flat feet? Fifteen years of training and then, wham, bam, thank you mam; don’t call us, we’ll call you. She says she left of her own accord. Others say she got the push, but then this is a bitchy business and you shouldn’t believe all that you hear. Either way the only option she had was contemporary.’
    The way he said it, it didn’t sound like a promotion. ‘And was that so bad?’
    He shook his head in mock exasperation. ‘You really don’t have a clue, do you? No, it’s not so bad. If that’s what you want. And a lot of dancers do. For many it’s the only way out of the museum: the companies are smaller so there’s more participation, they’re always hungry for new choreography, and they get audiences still young and radical enough to think that art can change the world. For others, well they make the switch if they have to, just to keep dancing. But then they haven’t grown up being force-fed tales of glory. You know the really sad thing? She could have done worse. Left Feet First wouldn’t have impressed the wicked