Langden. We’ve simply got to see you again very soon,” she couldn’t help being relieved. Not that she really intended to go on seeing Vera Petrovna and her little boy. But it was nice of them to be so friendly and appreciative of the trivial things she had done to help them during their difficult hospital days.
It might have been left like that, a courteous but vague invitation, only for Ivan, who was a very exact young man indeed and liked his plans to be definite. Couldn’t his friend come to tea with them tomorrow, or the next day? he asked, and Vera was most enthusiastic, seizing on this idea, making Joan promise in the end to visit them at their Bloomsbury flat on her very next afternoon off.
It was three days later that Joan set out to fulfil this promise. She was wearing a new autumn costume of rough, blue material, a clear deep blue that made her eyes look like gentian flowers under their warm dark lashes. It was a relief to be out of uniform for a few hours, she told herself, and wouldn’t admit, not even in her inmost mind, that the wearing of the new suit was in some way an armor against the beauty of the girl she was on her way to see.
But in the end she was a little ashamed of her smartness because Vera was so specially shabby that day in a worn and shiny serge skirt and a much washed cotton blouse. She was tired too, her dark eyes ringed with violet shadows, her hair a little lank and rough, as though she had not had the energy to brush it. At the theatre, she confessed, they had had to rehearse after the later performance the previous night because of the sudden illness of one of the stars. She was not the kind of star who could be understudied, and a fresh danseuse altogether had been introduced into the company. It had meant hours of work for the whole corps de ballet , and Vera had not got to bed until the early morning.
“And on top of that,” she went on with her cheerful little shrug, “I’ve been trying to housekeep—seeing to Ivan’s meals and doing the marketing and the washing-up. We’ve got, this flat but no service, you see,” she explained.
“This flat,” Joan discovered, was a euphonious term for the one large barn-like room in the basement where Vera had received her, and where she now served the somewhat ramshackle meal of coffee, cold sausages and bottled beer, which was her interpretation of an English afternoon tea!
There was, in addition, a damp-smelling flagged corridor outside this room, leading to a forlorn and vast kitchen which had once served the needs of the tall Victorian house, and beyond the kitchen a patch of sooty garden in which a few blades of grass and a handful of chrysanthemums struggled to survive. There was also a bathroom and one small bedroom, and it was all much too dark to be healthy, and much too underground. But it was very cheap, Vera said happily, and there was room to swing cats—and swing her own long lovely legs if she felt like practising. She hated with a kind of frenzy the awful little hotel bedrooms she had had to live in so great a part of her existence.
Nibbling at cold sausages and drinking the very excellent and quite un-English coffee Joan listened in amazement. She had imagined the surroundings of the lovely Vera so differently. Soft shaded pastel walls, she had pictured, and long velvet curtains, and divans heaped seductively with fat cushions. She had thought of Vera, if not wealthy, at least comfortable in an artistic kind of way, at least secure. But there was little of either artistic comfort or security about this dreary residence.
“Actually,” Vera was telling with her naive frankness over the rim of her glass of beer, “we do better in London than anywhere else. Our salaries are quite munificent in London. At the moment I’m getting five pounds a week. That’s why I’m able to rent this furnished flat.”
Joan stammered, “Five pounds a week! But I thought ballet dancers got much more than that.”
Vera shook
It might have been left like that, a courteous but vague invitation, only for Ivan, who was a very exact young man indeed and liked his plans to be definite. Couldn’t his friend come to tea with them tomorrow, or the next day? he asked, and Vera was most enthusiastic, seizing on this idea, making Joan promise in the end to visit them at their Bloomsbury flat on her very next afternoon off.
It was three days later that Joan set out to fulfil this promise. She was wearing a new autumn costume of rough, blue material, a clear deep blue that made her eyes look like gentian flowers under their warm dark lashes. It was a relief to be out of uniform for a few hours, she told herself, and wouldn’t admit, not even in her inmost mind, that the wearing of the new suit was in some way an armor against the beauty of the girl she was on her way to see.
But in the end she was a little ashamed of her smartness because Vera was so specially shabby that day in a worn and shiny serge skirt and a much washed cotton blouse. She was tired too, her dark eyes ringed with violet shadows, her hair a little lank and rough, as though she had not had the energy to brush it. At the theatre, she confessed, they had had to rehearse after the later performance the previous night because of the sudden illness of one of the stars. She was not the kind of star who could be understudied, and a fresh danseuse altogether had been introduced into the company. It had meant hours of work for the whole corps de ballet , and Vera had not got to bed until the early morning.
“And on top of that,” she went on with her cheerful little shrug, “I’ve been trying to housekeep—seeing to Ivan’s meals and doing the marketing and the washing-up. We’ve got, this flat but no service, you see,” she explained.
“This flat,” Joan discovered, was a euphonious term for the one large barn-like room in the basement where Vera had received her, and where she now served the somewhat ramshackle meal of coffee, cold sausages and bottled beer, which was her interpretation of an English afternoon tea!
There was, in addition, a damp-smelling flagged corridor outside this room, leading to a forlorn and vast kitchen which had once served the needs of the tall Victorian house, and beyond the kitchen a patch of sooty garden in which a few blades of grass and a handful of chrysanthemums struggled to survive. There was also a bathroom and one small bedroom, and it was all much too dark to be healthy, and much too underground. But it was very cheap, Vera said happily, and there was room to swing cats—and swing her own long lovely legs if she felt like practising. She hated with a kind of frenzy the awful little hotel bedrooms she had had to live in so great a part of her existence.
Nibbling at cold sausages and drinking the very excellent and quite un-English coffee Joan listened in amazement. She had imagined the surroundings of the lovely Vera so differently. Soft shaded pastel walls, she had pictured, and long velvet curtains, and divans heaped seductively with fat cushions. She had thought of Vera, if not wealthy, at least comfortable in an artistic kind of way, at least secure. But there was little of either artistic comfort or security about this dreary residence.
“Actually,” Vera was telling with her naive frankness over the rim of her glass of beer, “we do better in London than anywhere else. Our salaries are quite munificent in London. At the moment I’m getting five pounds a week. That’s why I’m able to rent this furnished flat.”
Joan stammered, “Five pounds a week! But I thought ballet dancers got much more than that.”
Vera shook
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