Clearing up from breakfast, a few days after Daisy’s arrival, Mim and Roly were discussing her plight.
‘Oh, terrible, terrible love,’ cried Mim, plates clashing in her hands. ‘Poor darling Daisy.’
Roly remembered his conversation with Kate. ‘Should we be saying “poor Daisy”, though? Shouldn’t we be thinking how wonderful it is for her to be in love?’
Mim withered him with a glance. ‘Wonderful? You’ve seen how she is every morning, positively watching for the postman to arrive and then coming over, all bright and brittle while she’s trying to see if there’s a letter for her. Does she strike you as someone who is happy?’
‘No,’ Roly admitted. ‘No, not happy, exactly, but she did tell me that the affair was in its early stages and . . . and here is the postman.’
He went out and Mim forgot Daisy for a moment as she watched him, leaning on the gate and exchanging pleasantries with the postman. She’d seen the difference as soon as he’d got out of the car at the station: some new freedom in his eyes and in the way he walked towards her. She’d stared at him curiously and he’d smiled down at her. Suddenly it was clear to her and hope leaped in her along with a hundred questions: when? To whom?
‘Have you been talking to Nat?’ she’d asked.
He’d shaken his head, knowing that she’d guessed the reason for his light-heartedness.
‘To Kate,’ he’d answered – and she’d nodded, pleased: it would be Kate, of course: non-judgemental, an old friend and someone whom he trusted. Mim had known instinctively that his uncomfortable love for Kate had also been subsumed, along with his confession, into their friendship: he was truly free. Of course, he might miss the passion whose very pain had made him feel alive: freedom carried other burdens, and could bring loneliness in its wake. Nevertheless, she rejoiced to see him look so happy.
‘Why then?’ he’d asked her, bewildered. ‘After all these years? Why should it be possible just then?’
‘Because that was the right moment,’ she’d assured him. ‘Life’s like that, isn’t it? These moments are vouchsafed us and we need to seize them thankfully.’
‘After all,’ he’d needed to explain it to her properly, ‘I knew that you’d forgiven me right from the start and Nat has never reproached me. Yet I clung on to the shame of it for all those years. And why to Kate? I don’t see . . .’
‘But you had to forgive yourself, not only for the accident, but also for the damage that followed it. That’s much harder than forgiving someone else. It’s taken all this time for you to work through it and come to this point. Kate being here was simply the catalyst.’
‘And it was something Daisy’d said just a few minutes earlier on the telephone: “It isn’t good for the soul to hide one’s true feelings and especially with those we really love.” It seemed to strike right into my heart – especially with Kate sitting there. I’d been doing so much hiding of my feelings, with her and with Nat, and all of a sudden I knew I didn’t have to do it any more: I was freed – not from guilt – but from the terrible burden of the need for secrecy. The odd thing is that, once I’d told her the whole story, it was as if my feelings for her had changed too.’
‘It was time,’ she’d answered gently. ‘You fell in love with Kate thirteen years ago and it had become a kind of unhappy habit that you couldn’t break. David dying made it even worse, brought it to a head, and made things miserable between you. You can be happy together now: enjoy being the good friends you really are. Much more sensible.’ She’d grinned at him. ‘And if that makes you feel rather staid and unromantic, well, tough!’
He’d grinned back at her. ‘I’ll settle for staid for the moment.’
The postman was driving away and Roly returned with a handful of letters. Mim took them from him and began to look through the small pile.
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Here we are. A postcard for Daisy. A very nice picture of Salcombe.’ She turned it over and examined the back of it.
‘Mim.’ Roly sounded scandalized. ‘You’re not going to read it?’
She glanced at him briefly. ‘How can I see what’s going on if I don’t read it?’
‘Honestly, Mim . . .’
‘Roly, this is serious. We’ve been through it already. Listening to Daisy’s account of her injury I don’t think she’ll be able to dance properly again. The muscle and the tissue aren’t healing properly and if she tries to dance to her old standard it will simply cause more damage. I can give her a terrific opportunity in London to reinvent her career but I can’t wait too long and I need to know what’s going on.’
‘I know all that but you can’t read people’s private correspondence.’
Mim snorted. ‘Private correspondence? Would you write anything personal on a postcard? Nobody sends a postcard if he wants the contents to remain private. Why doesn’t he write her a letter? Or why not put the card in an envelope, if he wants it to be private? Anyway, there’s nothing here that I wouldn’t write to you. Nothing at all. Oh, poor darling Daisy.’
‘Mim, you are the absolute limit.’
The sheer inadequacy of his words amused her and she grinned at him, reminded of long-ago years when once she’d borrowed his new white cricket jersey with the school colours and got jam all over it and, on another occasion, had inadvertently sat on his favourite LP and smashed it to pieces.
She mocked him, making a prim face and mimicking him: ‘“Mim, you are the absolute limit,”’ so that he laughed too and then cried, ‘Watch out, Daisy’s coming.’
She was crossing the yard, pausing to talk to Bevis and Floss, not hurrying, and by the time she arrived in the kitchen, Roly was loading the dishwasher whilst Mim cleared the table.
‘Good morning,’ Daisy said, smiling to see Uncle Bernard curled up so comfortably and neatly in his drawer. ‘I’ve decided that I’d better stock up a bit today and I was wondering whether you wanted anything.’ Her eyes went hungrily to the small pile of letters. ‘I might go to Camelford.’
Mim took pity on her, passing Roly the last of the plates and then picking up the envelopes.
‘That might be a good idea. We could go together. One for you, Roly.’ She passed him a letter. ‘Oh, we have a postcard from Salcombe.’ Out of the corner of her eye she saw Daisy tense with expectation. ‘Oh, sorry, Daisy. It’s for you.’
She passed it across to her at once, pretending to peruse the remaining letters whilst seeing Daisy’s shoulders droop a little as her eyes devoured the meagre message. So brief was it that Mim could remember it: ‘Very beautiful here and the weather’s being kind. Hope all is well in Cornwall. P.’
Her eyes met Roly’s briefly across Daisy’s bent head: he looked as if he were suffering equally with Daisy. Mim raised her eyebrows, signalling: ‘So what now?’ and he responded with a tiny shrug of his shoulders and a brief shake of the head. He saw Mim close her eyes, her face stilled and quiet for a moment, as though she were drawing strength from some unseen source.
‘Come, Daisy,’ she said. ‘Sit down.’
Holding her card, Daisy sat obediently at the table across from Mim. Watching Daisy, it occurred to Roly that during those ten years of training at the stage school she’d responded to Mim’s authority so naturally that, even seven years later, the old habit held good. He relaxed a little: perhaps this was Daisy’s moment for coming to terms with the truth.
‘We’ve talked quite a bit about your injury,’ Mim was saying, ‘but we haven’t really faced the fact that you might never dance with a top professional company again.’
Daisy dropped her eyes before such a brutal truth, fingering her postcard, and Roly winced at Mim’s straight speaking.
‘I think I can only say these things because I’ve been there myself.’ Mim’s eyes were fixed on Daisy’s face. ‘I don’t think we can pretend that your career can just be picked up where it left off and so the best thing is to look at the alternatives.’
Daisy swallowed, licking dry lips. ‘It’s not that I want to kid myself,’ she said, ‘but it’s as if I can’t seem to think straight at all at the moment. Nothing seems . . . real.’
‘But that’s because you’re in love, my darling, isn’t it? Everything dissolves in the face of terrible, terrible love.’
‘Is love terrible?’ Daisy stared at Mim with such anxiety that Roly longed to defend her in some way from the answer he knew Mim would give.
‘Being in love is nearly always terrible,’ she answered truthfully, ‘unless both lovers are always giving to each other – not pulling in opposite directions – so that the love flows freely between them. That way there is no anxiety or fear, no need to score points, each is equal. Generally, this is not the case. You know the saying “There is one who kisses and one who extends the cheek”? That’s much more the norm, wouldn’t you say? I have known cases where people actually confuse the pain of rejection or betrayal with love. You only have to listen to Ella Fitzgerald singing those blues to begin to believe that suffering is sexy. It isn’t.’
‘I know that,’ protested Daisy. ‘I don’t do that. It’s just . . . I just can’t help it. I want to be with him.’
‘Oh, my darling, of course you do. We all do. We want to cook them delicious food and have their babies. Clever old Mother Nature has got us well under her thumb, you see. She plays hell with our hormones and makes us blind and insensate to anything but the beloved. I was just the same with Alistair. Oh, how I adored him.’
‘Alistair?’ Daisy was distracted momentarily from the shock of Mim’s blunt observations. ‘Who is Alistair?’
‘He is my ex-husband. Oh God, how I loved that man.’
‘Your ex-husband? I had no idea that you’d been married. Nobody ever said anything about it.’
‘Probably nobody actually noticed,’ said Roly drily. ‘It didn’t last long. The poor fellow hadn’t realized that he was marrying an entire stage school.’
Mim grinned. ‘The poor darling. The trouble was that I didn’t concentrate on him properly. The sex was terrific but there were other more important things in my life than bed. It was wrong of me to marry him but he was so persistent and I thought I could have it all.’
‘But what happened?’ Daisy’s eyes were round with disbelief. ‘When did it start to go wrong?’
‘Halfway through the honeymoon,’ said Roly, ‘when he was told that it would have to be cut short because Mim was going to Bristol to preside over the examination session at the local ballet schools. She didn’t break it to him until the day before because she didn’t want to upset him.’
‘Oh dear.’ Mim was laughing guiltily. ‘I used to be on the RAD’s board of examiners in those days, you see, and I simply couldn’t have let them down. He didn’t understand at all and I wasn’t terribly sympathetic. My work was always so important to me and I wasn’t clever about managing him.’
‘But what happened?’
‘He was very attractive and there were always other women who wanted to comfort him. He liked that: feeling a little sorry for himself and casting me as a heartless career woman. Well, I was. I had so many people to love. My staff and all the children were my family, I suppose, and poor Alistair simply couldn’t cope. He went off with an older woman who adored him and made him feel all the things I didn’t. He postured about for a while, smirking insufferably and implying that she could appreciate him properly. I was only too grateful to her. Such a relief, I can’t tell you!’
‘But that doesn’t mean that love can’t work for other people.’
‘No, darling, it doesn’t, but it does mean that you need to think about it very carefully.’
‘But if I can’t have a dancing career . . . ?’
‘Perhaps not the one you had, no, but have you ever thought of choreography?’
Daisy frowned, considering the idea, clearly taken aback. ‘No.’ She shook her head but her eyes were thoughtful.
‘From one or two things you’ve told me when you were working with Tony, I’ve been thinking about it quite a lot. Do you remember, in class, you often found it difficult to follow the enchaînement? You often got into trouble over it. Once you said to me, “I thought that something else ought to go after the pas de chat” – a pas de bourrée or a glissade, I can’t remember – and I realized that you were making up your own sequence of steps in your head and not concentrating on what your teachers were asking you to do.’
‘I did that with Tony,’ Daisy agreed, ‘but then choreography works like that, doesn’t it? Bouncing ideas off one another?’
‘Of course it does but, listening to you, I had the impression that you often had very clear ideas of your own.’
‘Yes, that’s true, but even so . . .’
‘You know Andy’s leaving us? Why don’t you come back to us for a while? You could help us in a thousand ways, you’d be so wonderful with the children, and you could choreograph something special for the Charity Matinée. We’d all assist you, of course, but I’d leave it entirely to you to come up with something new.’
Silence: then Daisy began to laugh disbelievingly. ‘The Charity Matinée? But that’s incredibly prestigious. I . . . I couldn’t begin to . . . You can’t mean it?’
‘It demonstrates my trust and absolute faith in you, darling Daisy. Will you think about it? I need to know soon.’
Daisy stared at her with dazed eyes. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘Then don’t speak now.’ Mim got up. ‘We’ll go to Camelford to get some shopping but I have to do a few things first. Can you give me half an hour?’
She went away from them, up the stairs, and presently Roly put his hand on Daisy’s shoulder.
‘I have it on good authority that, at moments like these, communication with the Great Outdoors is therapeutic,’ he said. ‘Shall we take the dogs up on the hill?’