Vista.
Estelle remembered her own childhood dancing lessons in the library of a private house. She remembered ribbons and glancing sunlight, a piano played with the soft pedal down, Livia on a hard chair, watching. Estelle thought she was giving Mary something of value – a compartment of her own past.
Mary asked if there would be boys as well as girls in the dancing class. Estelle said she thought there might be; they might be taught to dance hornpipes.
But there were no boys. And the girls were rehearsing for a Christmas show Miss Vista had entitled Meadowsweet . The dancers had been divided into three groups; one group were buttercups, another scarlet pimpernels, the third thistledowns. ‘Welcome in, Mary,’ said Miss Vista, ‘you can join the thistledowns. Just follow what they do.’
It was cold in the Girl Guide hut. Miss Vista danced in her overcoat, with coils of knitting round her calves. The children wore only their chillproof vests and knickers and over these their flimsy meadow costumes: scarlet and yellow shifts for the pimpernels and the buttercups, and for the thistledowns skirts of white net that stuck out stiffly like fans. Miss Vista had a fervent mouth, lipsticked orange. Out of it poured her passionate instructions as she moved, squeaking on her blocks, about the room, her arms lifting and swaying under the weight of her coat. ‘ Bend , buttercups! The wind is coming. Yield! Yield to the wind. You can do no other. But you, thistledowns. Up you go! You’re aloft. The wind is carrying you. You’re light, light ! In a bunch, all together at first. Puff, puff! Then off and away singly. That’s right, Mary, off on your own. Riding on the wind. Light, light, light!’
Mary had thought there would be rules to dancing. Miss McRae often said that everything in life had rules, even if sometimes you couldn’t see what they were. ‘In these cases, they’re internal rules, Mary, hidden completely, but present nevertheless, dear.’ Yet in Miss Vista’s class you just skipped about, pretending to be weeds. You were not told what your feet should do or how to make a circle with your arms. Youcould tell from Miss Vista’s legs that she had once learned some rules. She had just decided not to pass them on. If boys had come to the lesson, she would not have taught them how to do a hornpipe.
Mary was repelled. She despised Miss Vista. She wanted to hurl her green tennis ball at her face. She wanted a real wind to come and swoop her up into the black universe.
When she told her parents that Miss Vista was not teaching her how to dance, they said she could learn to ‘move better’. Estelle said: ‘When I was your age, we made beautiful patterns with ribbons.’
They’d spent money on ballet shoes. Wearing them was like wearing gloves on your feet. You could feel every bit of ground underneath you, every stone. Mary looked at her pink legs with these pink shoes on the end of them and pitied them, as if they belonged to some other girl, fooled into believing she could dance. With her thistledown skirt on, she reminded herself of the toilet roll cover doll Judy Weaver had brought to school as her ‘precious thing’. She tore off the shoes and the fan of net and put them out of sight. She lay down on her bed, balancing her tennis ball on her chest. She formed a plan.
As the day of the Christmas show neared, Miss Vista grew more attentive to unity. She urged the buttercups to bend in unison, the pimpernels to crouch down together. Only the thistledowns were allowed to scatter and fly, because this was their nature, this was what they did. But she urged on them the need to become insubstantial, to pretend they had no bodies, no feet on the earth. ‘Light, light, girls!’ Miss Vista implored. ‘Feathers! Dreams! Particles of dust!’ So they tore round the hall squeaking and jumping, sometimes falling over or accidently bumping into the walls.
Miss Vista grew hot in her efforts to alchemise them into
Estelle remembered her own childhood dancing lessons in the library of a private house. She remembered ribbons and glancing sunlight, a piano played with the soft pedal down, Livia on a hard chair, watching. Estelle thought she was giving Mary something of value – a compartment of her own past.
Mary asked if there would be boys as well as girls in the dancing class. Estelle said she thought there might be; they might be taught to dance hornpipes.
But there were no boys. And the girls were rehearsing for a Christmas show Miss Vista had entitled Meadowsweet . The dancers had been divided into three groups; one group were buttercups, another scarlet pimpernels, the third thistledowns. ‘Welcome in, Mary,’ said Miss Vista, ‘you can join the thistledowns. Just follow what they do.’
It was cold in the Girl Guide hut. Miss Vista danced in her overcoat, with coils of knitting round her calves. The children wore only their chillproof vests and knickers and over these their flimsy meadow costumes: scarlet and yellow shifts for the pimpernels and the buttercups, and for the thistledowns skirts of white net that stuck out stiffly like fans. Miss Vista had a fervent mouth, lipsticked orange. Out of it poured her passionate instructions as she moved, squeaking on her blocks, about the room, her arms lifting and swaying under the weight of her coat. ‘ Bend , buttercups! The wind is coming. Yield! Yield to the wind. You can do no other. But you, thistledowns. Up you go! You’re aloft. The wind is carrying you. You’re light, light ! In a bunch, all together at first. Puff, puff! Then off and away singly. That’s right, Mary, off on your own. Riding on the wind. Light, light, light!’
Mary had thought there would be rules to dancing. Miss McRae often said that everything in life had rules, even if sometimes you couldn’t see what they were. ‘In these cases, they’re internal rules, Mary, hidden completely, but present nevertheless, dear.’ Yet in Miss Vista’s class you just skipped about, pretending to be weeds. You were not told what your feet should do or how to make a circle with your arms. Youcould tell from Miss Vista’s legs that she had once learned some rules. She had just decided not to pass them on. If boys had come to the lesson, she would not have taught them how to do a hornpipe.
Mary was repelled. She despised Miss Vista. She wanted to hurl her green tennis ball at her face. She wanted a real wind to come and swoop her up into the black universe.
When she told her parents that Miss Vista was not teaching her how to dance, they said she could learn to ‘move better’. Estelle said: ‘When I was your age, we made beautiful patterns with ribbons.’
They’d spent money on ballet shoes. Wearing them was like wearing gloves on your feet. You could feel every bit of ground underneath you, every stone. Mary looked at her pink legs with these pink shoes on the end of them and pitied them, as if they belonged to some other girl, fooled into believing she could dance. With her thistledown skirt on, she reminded herself of the toilet roll cover doll Judy Weaver had brought to school as her ‘precious thing’. She tore off the shoes and the fan of net and put them out of sight. She lay down on her bed, balancing her tennis ball on her chest. She formed a plan.
As the day of the Christmas show neared, Miss Vista grew more attentive to unity. She urged the buttercups to bend in unison, the pimpernels to crouch down together. Only the thistledowns were allowed to scatter and fly, because this was their nature, this was what they did. But she urged on them the need to become insubstantial, to pretend they had no bodies, no feet on the earth. ‘Light, light, girls!’ Miss Vista implored. ‘Feathers! Dreams! Particles of dust!’ So they tore round the hall squeaking and jumping, sometimes falling over or accidently bumping into the walls.
Miss Vista grew hot in her efforts to alchemise them into
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