The Yuletide Child

‘Oh, yes, it is, for a dancer! You’ll lose muscle tone and be unable to dance professionally if you stop training and put on weight.’

‘Michael, I’ve left the ballet! And I have no intention of coming back!’

His face hardened into a determined mask. ‘We’ll see about that.’

He was refusing to let her go. She should have known he would. Michael had always been obstinate, set on getting his own way, denying any possibility of failure.

She broke away, flustered. ‘Look, if we’re going to drive to Hadrian’s Wall and then Carlisle, we’d better drink that coffee and get on our way! Are you going to drive back to London today?’

While they drank their black coffee she wrote a quick note for Ross, explaining where she had gone and assuring him she would be back late that afternoon, and placed it where he couldn’t fail to see it, in the centre of the kitchen table. He wasn’t going to be too happy about it—but maybe she would get back before he did?

As they drove northwards Michael started a tape he had put into the car tape player. ‘Like this?’

She listened to the sweet, high pipes with pleasure. ‘Very much. It’s very unusual. What is it?’

‘Music from the Andes. Traditional, played on local pipes, but arranged by a young musician I met in London—he has his own group, formed while they were all at music college. He’s part-Peruvian. Solo, he calls himself. His wife and his brother are the other two in the group. I’m setting a ballet to their music.’

‘A new ballet?’

‘It’s going to be exciting, Dylan. Perfect for us—very original, mysterious, haunting...the dance of mountain spirits...all in white, I think...very modern in look...’ His voice was passionate. ‘I can’t do it without you, though. I need you.’

So that was why he had come. ‘Michael. . .I can’t,’ she said sadly. ‘I made my choice when I married Ross. I can’t be his wife and a professional dancer. It wouldn’t work. You’ll have to find someone else to dance with. I told you.’

‘One last ballet,’ he coaxed. ‘Surely he can’t refuse to let you dance one last ballet with me.’

‘It’s not Ross, it’s me. I don’t want to dance any more.’

‘You don’t expect me to believe that, do you? You were born to dance. You can’t turn your back on it.’

She was silent, listening to the high, lilting music, sensing just how the ballet would look, imagining the two bodies moving across the stage. She knew how Michael’s mind worked, the movements he loved, the images he found exciting.

One last ballet... she thought, then thought, No. No. It was over. All that was the past. She was moving into a future Michael could not even understand.

When they reached Hadrian’s Wall it was nearly noon; they visited the sites of several Roman forts, walked around the rough grey stone foundations in the long grass. There were few other people around; there was an eerie silence broken only by the whistle of the wind and the cry of curlews. At one o’clock they had lunch at a pub. The bar was crowded and noisy so they ate in the garden. Michael had poached salmon and salad; she ordered lasagne and salad.

‘Not at all bad,’ Michael conceded. ‘For such a remote place.’

While they ate, they gazed down over a breathtaking landscape. The south-facing views seemed to run on for ever green fields and grey drystone walls, white stone farmhouses hidden by thorn trees blown into tormented positions by the prevailing winds, a sparrowhawk with pinioned wing and white rump swooping over the hay field beside the pub, the blue sky flowing overhead.

‘I have to admit it is beautiful countryside,’ Michael said, and she laughed.

‘First the food isn’t at all bad, now you concede that the countryside is lovely—at this rate you’ll be admitting Ross is the right man for me!’

Michael’s face froze, grey eyes icy, every bone rigid with rejection of that idea.

‘But he isn’t, Dylan,’ he said fiercely. ‘And he never could be. You don’t belong with him, or up here. You belong with me, in London, dancing. Turning your back on everything you are and could be is a crime against your own nature. God gave you a great gift and you’ve deliberately chucked it away. I’ll never forgive you—or him.’

She was silent, shaken by his passion. They drank some coffee, not speaking, then drove on to Carlisle where they parted at the offices of the hire car company.

‘Good luck with your new ballet,’ she said, and Michael gave her a grim, unsmiling stare.

‘If you won’t dance it, I’ll need more than luck. I’ll need a miracle. If you change your mind ring me. I shall have to choose a new partner in the next month. God knows who! I want to go into rehearsal with the new ballet some time in the autumn, and the company goes on summer tour to the States in July, remember.’

Her mind washed with memories of other summer tours: humid New York, noisy Chicago, Kansas City, Missouri’s wonderful Spanish architecture, long nights of trying to sleep with the wail of police cars and ambulances outside in city streets.

Up early to rehearse on bare stages, the temptations of hot dogs and burgers from street sellers, the buzz of excitement on first nights, the passionate applause of audiences who had never seen them before but who were heartwarmingly generous—it had all been wonderful and exhausting.

Oh, she couldn’t deny she would miss it in some ways, but she had done that, been ther