CHAPTER ONE
DEC 1953 — JAN 1954

In his tiny cottage near Montreal, Paul came out onto the landing, and stared down. There, on the heating grate in a teal blue overcoat stood a tall, blonde, blue-eyed, and quite striking woman with flawless features, who glanced up. They both froze. The moment stretched on and on, “like a patient etherised upon a table...”

She was among the dozen merrymakers downing rough cider and attacking bread, cold meats, lettuce and tomatoes arranged by his pretty friend, Gloria. An almost doll-like blonde, Gloria’s slim figure gave no hint of the powerful determination that had gotten her a job sewing costumes for the nascent National Ballet of Canada. “Paul, they’re coming to Her Majesty’s Theatre? Why don’t we give them a party after the performance?” Why not? Life out on Mont Saint-Hilaire was actually rather dull, with Gloria visiting only on weekends. She now worked at the CBC weekdays, where Paul had met her.

Twenty-five miles outside Montreal on the slopes of Mont Saint-Hilaire, two miles from the nearest market, Paul’s mother’s cottage had once been a shed to store apples, the area being covered with orchards. Somewhat bowed rafters spanned the low ceiling between walls of rough boards painted a perky yellow. Against the low partition for the open kitchen sat an old sofa draped with Maori shawls from Australia and New Zealand, where his mother and Aunt Hilda had taught dancing. Just the sort of ivory tower a poet needed, Paul had told himself. Here, he could finish his novel and if need be, drive his Aunt’s old Austin in to the CBC or even to Montreal theatres. But his short stories kept coming back, one after another.

Gloria knew that dancers were starving after performances. Of course, none had been warned that his cottage lay forty-five minutes away on a freezing winter night. Now, with music on the radio, their superb bodies lounged happily in front of the flaming fireplace having just danced Coppelia and Dark of the Moon. Myrna Aaron, an exotic-looking dancer with eyebrows that streaked across her brow like Cupid’s arrows was holding forth on the sofa, keeping others in gales of laughter, when Colleen Kenney, a trim dancer with wild and abundant black hair intercepted Paul. “Lovely cottage you have.”

“Was it a terrible drive getting here?”

Colleen hesitated. “Gloria didn’t tell us it was so far out of town. But once we saw this...” She shrugged. “I think it’s cozy.” She eyed him.

“Oh, thanks.” My, she’s pretty! Paul thought. “Tomorrow can you sleep in, maybe?”

She shook her head. “We have class every morning.”

“Philosophy and calculus?” Paul grinned, but thought, how stupid! He still longed to talk to the blonde on the heating grate.

Colleen finished her sandwich. “Every day we have to do class — and you know very well it’s not reading and writing. First we do a barre, mostly leg exercises...”

“Then?”

“Then we move into the centre and do enchaînments — sequences of steps that the ballet mistress gives. Limbers up our bodies for the evening performance. Tomorrow I think class is late, eleven o’clock.”

“So every day, you have to do a class, as well as perform?”

Colleen nodded. “Hour and a half, six days a week.” She gave him a sweet smile. “And no alternate casts or understudies when we’re performing. If you’re dying, you go on anyway!”

Rigorous life, Paul thought. Terrific of Gloria to have gotten so many of them to come.

A scholarly-looking dancer came up, smoking a pipe. Colleen introduced him: “Grant Strate is now doing choreography. He’s one of our character dancers.” Grant began chatting to him as Colleen excused herself to fetch more food. Paul couldn’t keep his eyes from straying to the stunning blonde who had by now moved off the heating grate to crouch by the fireplace. Another dancer, he noticed, had made her a sandwich. As she began to eat, she had the bearing of someone a little older, perhaps more experienced.

“Angela Leigh, from England,” Grant explained. “One of our principal dancers.”

“She’s the lead?”

“No, Lois Smith and Irene Apiné, they’re the ballerinas who lead the company. Then comes principal dancers, soloists, then corps de ballet. I’m corps.” Grant smiled and relit his pipe.

“But Colleen said you’d begun choreographing?”

“We’ll see.”

As soon as he could, Paul went over to Angela by her fire. “Still cold?”

“I’m just getting used to your Canadian winters.”

“So why on earth come?”

“I got carried away by a uniform. My ex-husband, he was in the Royal Canadian Air Force, so handsome then. He’s from Orillia, not far from Toronto.” She paused. “Very dashing back in the Old Country. But in Orillia, I found that a wife’s place is in the home...”

“You are still dancing...”

She shrugged. “I couldn’t give it up. So we separated.”

“Oh?” Paul absorbed that, and then went on, “My mother used to be a dancer. A woman should have her own career. At Oxford, none of the girls I’ve known ever intended to be relegated to a kitchen. In fact, I doubt any even knew how to cook!”

Angela smiled. “So you were at Oxford?”

“I guess so. But I sure didn’t learn anything. PPE. You know, those female students did nothing to catch a man — even a comb might have helped!” She smiled. “Every one of them so focussed on brain work...” Now, with all these gorgeous creatures surrounding him, accomplished, attractive, pursuing careers that involved bodies, not minds, Paul felt on top of the world.

“So what do you do now?” Angela asked.

“I’m a writer.” Then Paul realized he had absolutely no basis for saying that. “Well, I’m trying,” he added. “In fact, I’m getting nowhere.” An admission he was not used to making. But somehow, he knew Angela’s sharp mind would puncture any bravado. His innate confidence had momentarily deserted him.

“You’ll have to come and watch us dance,” she said. “Saturday matinee, I’m taking over Black Swan in Swan Lake because Lois Smith is dancing the role that night.”

“I’d love to!” Oh yes, would he not! If his mother got them tickets, he and Gloria would go. But he didn’t say that — his modesty didn’t go quite that far.

***

Sunday, Paul drove Angela Leigh out in his Aunt’s little Austin. Imagine! Taking a principal dancer of Canada’s National Ballet for Sunday lunch at his cottage and a walk on the slopes of Mont Saint-Hilaire.

“Wonderful performance at yesterday’s matinee, Angela. Mother couldn’t stop talking about it. She and Auntie Hilda made Gloria and me a nice little dinner afterwards at her apartment on Chomedey Street near the Forum.”

“So where is Gloria this afternoon?”

Paul turned to glance at her. She was watching the snow-covered farms of Mont St. Bruno on their way to Beloeil, and thence to Mont Saint-Hilaire. “Friends invited her for skiing up in the Laurentians, so she left early. But she loved your performance.”

“Your mother mentioned that she had been a dancer, but I had no idea that she ran her own school in Australia. She’s even danced with the great Pavlova. She gave me useful tips.”

Paul glowed with delight. He had been mesmerized at the matinee. So proud of his new friend! And of her extraordinary physique, trained over the years to be effortlessly graceful. “You’re a terrific actress in your dancing, Angela. We were all impressed.”

“Thanks, old bean.” She flashed a smile.

“We didn’t have enough time to talk at the party,” Paul said. “Grant told me you’d trained at Sadler’s Wells?

“Under Ninette de Valois, yes. When I came here with Buzz, my husband, I even opened a small school of dancing in Orillia, where we lived. But I didn’t like teaching.”

“You’re older than most of the corps?” Paul asked

She looked quickly at him. “Yes. Does it matter?”

“No, of course not. And you’ve been married. So much more mature than the others. I find that rather compelling.”

Angela said nothing.

“I have some beans soaking, so we can whip up a bit of a chili. I bought some ground beef.” He didn’t say that it was the cheapest meat he could find.

“I meant to ask you last night,” Angela persisted, “why do I hear a bit of an English accent? Surely it’s not just Oxford. Your British mother, perhaps? Or were you over there for a longer time?”

“Well, I was at Balliol for three years. Then I stayed in Europe. I played professional hockey.” Why had he said that, dummy? Hoping to impress her? But he noticed her eyes flash with momentary admiration. “And then, well, I worked on a farm and things...”

“Oxford scholar AND athlete?” She seemed duly impressed.

“Hardly. But anyway, when my father passed on, Mother wanted me home. I’m just as glad. So many opportunities here. Though when I arrived, I found no professional theatre in Montreal, hardly much of anything, actually.” What could he add? That he wanted to get work but found none? That he wanted to be a poet, a writer, but every story rejected? On he went, regardless: “I’ve heard that last July a pretty good theatre opened in Stratford, Ontario, with Richard III and All’s Well That Ends Well.”

“Oh yes, Tony Guthrie started it — he’s a terrific director. Scottish.”

Paul nodded. “Yes, I’ve seen his productions in the West End. I used to go down to London every couple of weeks. I loved the Sadler’s Wells, and I went to the Edinburgh Festival every year and watched ballets there.” Why hadn’t he added that he’d brought his own theatre company there himself, twice? For some reason, he wasn’t able to blow his own horn in her presence.

She looked at him. “An accomplished young man!”

Paul shrugged. “No, no... I just keep trying.”

They arrived at the little cottage and Angela, cold as usual, headed for the fireplace, which Paul hastily lit. He poured them both a sherry, then went round into the kitchen. Angela came beside. “Let me help.”

“Help? You’re a principal dancer.”

“Paul! I’m also a woman... I hope.”

He let that sit. As Uncle Earle would say: “Some woman, fer shore!”

They prepared a simple lunch and, with Paul’s prodding, Angela talked more about herself. “I was born, in Kampala, Uganda, where my father was a British bank manager.”

“Ah, that’s why you’re always cold!”

“I was lucky in my childhood, with black nurses and cooks. Mother loved being a white settler’s wife. But when I was six, back we came to England.”

“And you always wanted to dance?”

“Oh yes. We had a water tower at the foot of the garden, and I believed that fairies lived up there. One used to come down to our garden and lead me in dance steps . ‘Hightop’ I called her. We’d dance all afternoon together, me on the tips of my toes trying to get up into the sky with Hightop.”

“Have you been back since?”

“Oh no. But I’d love to one day...” If he got going somehow, he’d take her. That would be a coup!

They sat opposite each other at the rustic table with its two benches. Paul was growing more and more attracted to this rather imperious, but at the same time curiously vulnerable, British dancer with her tiny hands, tall sapling-like body, magnificent legs he hadn’t failed to notice, and her dry wit.

For his part, he told her about the poets he’d known, and eventually the poetry he was writing, and his beloved Shigawake where he’d just been giving recitals, careful of course, not to be too specific about the numbers attending.

“And now you’re here in Montreal?” she asked. “To stay?”

“Well, maybe, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of work.” That’s putting it mildly, he thought. “I’m wondering about New York. From what I’ve heard, that’s where I might have a chance.”

“No, Toronto first!” Angela announced. “We need new young writers and creators like you.”

Paul looked up.

“Ten hours by bus. Not expensive.” Was that the hint of an invitation?

He suggested a walk on the mountain. “It’s not too cold today.”

Angela agreed, and they both set off through the orchard on a track Paul had beaten down during his daily forays into wolf country — local papers spoke of a wolf pack down from the north. With lots of small animals, even a muskrat or two in the lake, they seemed to be staying. But he didn’t mention that.

The whole mountain had been bought by Brig. Hamilton Gault, founder of the Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry Regiment. He had equipped his regiment with uniforms and rifles for WWI, when the Canadian Armed Forces were developing as a separate entity from the British. Paul had first gone with his mother to tea with Mrs. Gault, a striking white-haired lady who loved poetry. Hammy, as he was known, was an old school gentleman, tremendously polite, hale and hearty despite having lost a leg in the war. Paul often dropped in, and they’d discuss the most famous French-Canadian artist, Ozias Leduc, who lived by the Richelieu River in Saint Hilaire, as did his renowned pupil, Paul-Emile Borduas. But much as Paul wanted to impress Hammy with this new ballet friend, he thought it a bit early to do that.

“This mountain is an untouched haven: they’ve found fauna from the ice age,” Paul began, as they entered the mountain road between stone pillars. “I’ve seen lots of tracks here, snowshoe hares, fox and even porcupine. I saw one the other day.”

Angela seemed suitably impressed. “Go on...”

“Well, it emerged from a melting ice sheet some twelve thousand or more years ago. It was once an island in the Champlain Sea. This road I live on was built around 1770.”

“Do you have nice neighbours?”

Paul assented. “Back there across the orchard, the Guerins live in an old stone house, once the seigneurial mill of Hertel de Rouville. Two lovely daughters.”

Angela glanced sharply at him, and he realized he’d forgotten himself. Did that mean she was getting interested?

During the walk, which ended at the mountain lake in front of the Gault house, they talked on and on, becoming closer.

Finally, back to warm themselves by the fire, Paul realized he had to take Angela back to a Montreal reception before the troupe left on tour: eighteen cities and sixty-four performances, all over the United States and Canada. Angela made him promise to write. He quickly agreed. Was he actually falling in love?

***

On with the writing. On with the dreaming. On with forays into Montreal to meet the important radio producer Rupert Caplan, who had given occasional roles to Paul’s mother.

Before too long, he heard that Guthrie’s new Stratford Theatre begun by Tom Patterson was holding auditions. Full of excitement, Paul decided to go. Perhaps he’d play Hamlet, or some other major role — the whole summer taken care of! On weekends he could come from Stratford to see Angela in Toronto. Yes, a great idea.

He made his way to the suite in the Queen Elizabeth Hotel — only to find it packed with a dozen other would-be actors, sprawled about.

When Guthrie’s assistant arrived, everyone quickened. From his clipboard, he read out their names and went around, making a pretense, Paul saw, of talking to each one. Nonetheless, Paul still did his best, outlining the many things he had done at Oxford. But the assistant spent most of his time talking to another young actor Paul had known at McGill: Bill Shatner. In fact, he spent more time on Bill than on everyone else. When it was over, Paul headed in his little Austin back to the lonely cottage, reflecting that if they chose anyone, it would not be him. It would be William Shatner.

And choose William they did.