It was December. Backstage at the Adelphi Theatre the atmosphere fizzed with an almost tangible sensation of overwhelming relief and excitement: <W0I>The Starlight Express<D> was a success. Performers and members of the audience mingled with the lighting crew and scene-shifters whilst the younger students carried round tall fluted glasses of champagne on trays and plates of delicious food for their guests. Mim and Daisy stood together, talking with a rising young choreo- grapher, their expansive gestures and beaming faces indicating their feelings of heartfelt satisfaction. Janna, Kate and Nat were laughing in a group that included Jane West and the Haystack Woman – a very promising young male dancer whose performance had the audience raising the roof with cheers and laughter, and who was still dressed in padded canvas skirts and immense black boots. Bruno was in conversation with the reviewers from The Times and the Evening Standard.
Half hidden in the wings Roly studied the scene with contentment. He and Kate and Bruno had driven up together, staying with Mim in the flat, whilst Nat and Janna had travelled by train and were staying with Daisy. Kate was looking so relaxed as she talked to the pretty Gardener about her performance and watching with amused sympathy whilst the young male dancer showed them the extent of the padding under his Haystack Woman’s skirts. Roly knew just how much Kate was already missing Guy and his small family, although the move to St Meriadoc, and the settling in of Floss, had done much to keep her thoughts occupied.
‘I’m just so lucky to have Giles and Tessa and the babes,’ she’d said to him earlier. ‘They are such a comfort and they love coming over to the north coast. Tessa thinks that Henry’s old enough to do his first sleepover on his own so you can imagine how excited I am about that. I’m getting his room ready. And Bruno and his family are unbelievably kind. I feel I’ve known them for ever. You know we were talking about whether I’d ever find anywhere to buy? Well, I’ve decided to renew the lease on the cottage for another six months. I haven’t seen anything I really like and Floss and I are very happy at St Meriadoc for the time being. It’s rather like being on an extended holiday. And I can’t tell you what comfort it is to have you near at hand.’
Now Roly watched affectionately as Kate slipped an arm through Nat’s and he smiled down at her. Nat too looked happier: less wary and more serene, he had the air of someone who was slowly coming to terms with himself. Janna, bright as a peacock in Indian silks, with her lion hair like a golden aureole about her small face, seemed in her element and utterly at home amongst these people of the stage. Nat and Kate had had great difficulty in persuading her to come – she’d feared that she might be out of her depth – but she looked more in keeping here than Roly had ever seen her in any other setting.
As for Daisy . . . as if she guessed his thoughts she turned and looked at him. With a word to Mim she began to thread her way through the crowds until she reached him. Her face was radiant with joy and Roly grinned at her.
‘Happy?’ he asked.
She closed her eyes, as if in blissful contemplation of her exalted state, drawing a deep contented breath.
‘I don’t think I can put it into words. Happy is inadequate for the way I feel. I was so nervous I was sick with it; somehow, it was even worse than performing. When you’re dancing, on the night you can only give as much as you are, but when it’s your own work on the line, and you’re watching other dancers out there performing it, you feel much more vulnerable to criticism.’ She looked at him, clenching both fists and punching the air. ‘It worked, Roly. I can’t describe to you the feeling of seeing all my visions coming true.’
‘I can understand a bit of it,’ he told her. ‘I am so proud of you.’
She hugged him, holding him tightly for a moment. ‘You were the great unwumbler. Right from the very first moment I saw you, it was you who began the process.’
Mim joined them before he could think of a suitable reply. Elegant in supple soft silky wool of charcoal grey she smiled with tenderness upon them both.
‘What a triumph,’ she said, deftly taking a glass of champagne from a passing tray. ‘We’ve just been talking about it with the choreographer, Daniel Malpass, and he’s been saying some very nice things about Daisy. It all went perfectly.’ She took a little sip, her eyes regarding Roly thoughtfully above the rim of the glass. ‘Whom did it remind you of, Roly?’
He looked at her sharply and they exchanged a long, nostalgic glance of remembrance: a shared and distant past of fun and laughter and loss.
‘It reminded me of Mother,’ he answered. ‘The music and the dancing and especially that last scene; I couldn’t help thinking how much she would have loved it.’
‘I thought that, too,’ agreed Mim. ‘And in an odd way I felt that it was a tribute to her. Don’t you agree? It was the sum of all her parts, the culmination of everything that she bequeathed to us, the echoes of the dance. Daisy gathered it all up and breathed life into it.’ She shook her head, smiling at her foolishness. ‘Take no notice, I’m being fanciful. Mad Madame Mim! Come, Daisy. There’s someone I want you to meet.’
Roly watched them go, thinking about what Mim had said and knowing that she was right. In some strange way The Starlight Express had embodied all the joy and love and faith that their young mother had spilled so generously into their lives. Standing quiet and at peace he remembered how scene had followed magical scene, just as Daisy and Mim had planned through all those long weeks of summer, building inevitably to the final brilliant conclusion: the glorious voices of the Organ-Grinder and the Laugher joining together in the last duet and then that quite unexpected, heart-jumping orchestral slide into the first bars of the carol. And finally, whilst the carillon of bells heralded the rising of the gauzy backdrop, fully revealing the night sky with its shining web of stars, the whole cast had turned to welcome the rising of the most mysterious and wonderful Star of all: the Star of Bethlehem.