Corpse de Ballet by Ellen Pall Read Free Book Online

they—”
    He cut himself off abruptly as Ruth reentered, clapping as she came. The studio sprang to attention. Waves of chatter stopped abruptly; laughter died mid-giggle. Several of the ballerinas went to the low wooden box and dipped their feet in as Mohr had done.
    â€œWhat is that b—?” Juliet began.
    But Hart Hayden, she found, had left her and was already on his way to the middle of the room, where he took a place facing Ruth and stood quite still, clearly composing himself both physically and mentally. Juliet felt better for her conversation with him; it was nice to feel she had a friend (or at least a friendly face to seek out) in the room.
    With one notable exception, the rest of the session was lackluster, devoted to a few measures of transitional music that tied the recapture of Magwitch to the pas de deux (now a pas de trois) in which Miss Havisham instructed Estella. All the dancers except Pip had to be gotten off the stage, and Miss Havisham and Estella brought on, a bit of mechanical work akin to what Juliet, when she was writing, thought of as furniture-moving. She did not see what good her presence could possibly be doing for Ruth, and the welcome exoticness of the studio had already begun to wear off. Finally, her head filling unbidden with voices, she brought out the little notebook she always carried and began to write snippets of dialogue for Lord Suffield and Lady Porter. She realized, as she looked up between sentences, that those dancers who thought her a reporter now considered their hypothesis confirmed. Several of them allowed themselves to look sidelong at her for a moment or two, and she read even in their well-trained faces the yearning to be singled out.
    The session’s one note of excitement came shortly after two-thirty, when Ruth decided she wanted to see the “Peeping Pip” pas de trois (as it soon came to be called) performed by Lily, Kirsten, and Anton. The corps sat down to rest as the three principals assembled at the front of the room. Luis Fortunato struck the now familiar first notes and Lily and Kirsten, coached by Patrick, repeated as best they could the steps Ruth had devised earlier that day. Ruth watched the sequence from under lowered eyebrows, making furious notes on index cards and signaling her skepticism about various moments to Patrick. Juliet thought she was concerned only to see her own handiwork, not about the quality of the performances. So she was startled when Ruth suddenly clapped twice in manifest displeasure.
    The music came to a halt at once, as did the dancers. The heads of the entire ensemble swiveled to face front.
    â€œNot like that,” Ruth muttered fiercely, walking around behind Lily Bediant and seizing her by the waist. She laid her own front flat along Lily’s back, took one hand of the ballerina’s in each of her own and began to perform a sort of warding-off gesture in which Miss Havisham’s head bent low and her hands and arms stretched before her. “You are middle-aged, ” she said, forcing Lily’s body to twist crookedly under her own. “Middle-aged. Remember it. You are dancing much too fluidly.” She added, with vehemence, “Stop being a ballerina.”
    When she let go, Lily straightened immediately, anger radiating from her rigid spine, her almost trembling shoulders. “Miss Renswick—” she began.
    â€œLily!”
    Victorine Vaillancourt had come forward in her chair and her low voice thrilled with warning. Juliet saw her protégée’s eyes meet hers, hold their defiance an instant longer, then drop in automatic deference. All the same, Juliet would not have liked to be near Lily Bediant just at that moment. Fury told in her limbs and her narrow, stiffly held torso. Her slender, white hands were clenched into fists. When she raised her violet eyes and trained them again on Ruth, her face was set, her gaze burning. Victorine got carefully to her feet and