Chapter Text
In my dream, I was flying. Pointe shoes beating an allegro of seemingly weightless steps, I performed a bour ée towards my partner, waiting in the wings. He joined me, hands firm at my waist as I spun in effortless pirouettes to centre stage. A spotlight obscured the audience beyond the orchestra pit, but I knew they were there, a presence heralded by the absence of noise. Our intricate pas de deux was as good as it had ever been. The sweet madness of the violins, the familiar odour of chalk and sweat, my costume of carnation pink: they all melded together and shot through my veins with a narcotic rush. This was what I was meant for, my calling, my singular gift to the world. I was a prima ballerina, and I could fly.
Higher and higher I soared until Frank’s arms launched me skyward into a grand jeté, our signature movement that graced myriad posters and websites.
Memory is a faithless narrator. Certainly, the music didn’t stop the second Frank’s grip faltered. The audience, genteel in the extreme, probably did not gasp in horror as I transformed from majestic swan to shot dove before their eyes. Any agony I should have felt was twice muted: once by the blunt shock of finding myself earthbound, and again by the omniscient perspective of a dream.
Through the fisheye lens of slumber, I witnessed myself laying in a shocked pile of tulle and nylon while a thousand faces watched on with pity, but also with a kind of mortified fascination.
***
Beyond the lethargic raindrops that smeared my living room window, London was dressed in summer grey. My practice barre faced the view, which on a more hospitable day looked over slate rooftops towards the commons of Richmond Park. As I mindlessly proceeded through my morning routine, over a decade’s worth of muscle memory took my body through a progression of movements while my thoughts wandered elsewhere.
After forty minutes, I acknowledged I was as limber as I was likely to get and made my way to the kitchen window box to harvest some wheatgrass for my morning smoothie. Grabbing The Guardian from my doorstep, I perched on the sofa and sipped at my drink while paging through the Arts section. A half-page ad for The Royal’s upcoming production of Romeo and Juliet halted my semi-conscious flipping. There was Frank, in costume as Romeo, knelt at the foot of his new partner, a Slovenian ingenue with doll-like features. I forced myself to turn the page, the smoothie souring to ash in my mouth.
As the Royal Ballet’s prima ballerina for the past five years, the role of Juliet should have been mine. Would have been mine, were it not for a ruptured Achilles tendon and a painfully slow recovery from surgery.
I rose from the sofa, my eyes trained on the hazy middle distance. Lifting on pointe, I assayed a pirouette on my left leg, but found myself toppling forward, still unable to bear my weight at full extension. Tears of frustration, not to mention pain, blurred my vision. It had been six months, and while my physical therapist urged patience, I knew my days were numbered. My future as a ballet dancer was floating further and further away, while I was trapped, weighted down to earth.
***
“Ye’ve no’ said much about what ye’ve been up to, doll.”
Geillis Duncan was stirring honey into her hibiscus tea, but her jade eyes assessed me with tangible weight. There wasn’t any point trying to hide from her.
“What’s there to say, Geil? I go to physical therapy, I do yoga and some light barre work, and I otherwise just sit around and watch my bank balance plummet while trying not to turn into a hippo.”
My agent scoffed before taking an appreciative sip of her tea.
“Ye’re hardly at risk of becoming fat, Claire,” she commented once she’d swallowed.
“That’s not what Frank said, and he was the one tasked with holding me aloft.”
A task at which he’d failed rather spectacularly, thus landing me in my current predicament, but that only added weight to his argument, as it were.
“Have ye heard from the wanker, then?” Geillis had never been a fan of Frank’s, even before my injury. The fact that we were no longer dancing together gave her all the excuse she needed for open hostility.
“Not since he sent flowers to the hospital after my surgery,” I conceded. Geillis arched an expressive eyebrow but was otherwise atypically silent. She drank her tea methodically, and I realized she was working up the nerve to say something. In all the years we had known each other, Geillis had never once shied away from telling me exactly what she was thinking, even when I didn’t want to hear it. It made her an excellent agent and an even better friend, and the fact that she was hesitating now was cause for nerves to boil in my empty stomach.
“What is it, Geil?” I prompted, crumpling an untouched scone into smaller and smaller crumbs.
“Weeel, there’s a chance I may have found a solution to yer wee financial conundrum,” she began, voice raised over the continued clank of her teaspoon against porcelain.
My financial woes were anything but wee, but I only nodded, encouraging her to continue.
“Ye canna dance, obviously, so I’ve been exploring some, shall we say, less conventional options.”
“What is it, Geil? Commercial work? You know I don’t give a rat’s ass so long as it pays the rent. Dress me up as a French mime or have me do the splits over a pit of alligators for all I care.”
The fact that Geillis still looked wary after my outburst should have worried me, but the possibility of finding both employment and a distraction from the monotony of my recovery made me reckless.
Taking one last gulp of her tea, Geillis finally met my gaze head on.
“Jes promise me ye’ll keep an open mind…”
***
“Ye wanted to see me, Mr. Marylebone?”
The office was crowded with bookshelves holding numerous awards, a potted palm and oversized furniture, leaving Jamie very little space in which to stand. This had the fortunate side effect of giving him a plausible excuse for leaving the door ajar. It had been a while since the florid artistic director had made a play for his virtue, but it never hurt to be prepared.
“Jamie, Jamie, Jamie. What has it been? Four years? I’ve asked you a hundred times – call me Clarence.”
He nodded his head in seeming acceptance, although he had no intention of taking up the offer. In addition to creating some much-needed distance between the wee hedonist and himself, the man was also his superior. He held a tremendous amount of sway at Cirque des Etoiles, and Jamie knew that the more he left the man wanting, the greater leverage he wielded while negotiating his own terms.
“Good,” the director exclaimed, as though they had come to some sort of agreement, “now, I need to speak with you about our latest project…”
Without pausing to let Jamie get a word in edgewise, Clarence Marylebone proceeded to describe the Cirque’s newest artistic endeavour. As he spoke, he drew imaginary scenes in the air with his heavily-ringed hands, his face growing flushed with emotion. Despite everything, Jamie couldn’t help but admire the man’s unrelenting passion for his work.
“The show will be called Tropico, and it will be our most daring, sensual production yet. Of course, we want you for the principal male aerial role – a Tarzan for the digital age, half-savage, half-Ubermensch. It’s going to be absolutely delicious, just you wait and see.”
While he was obliquely flattered, this announcement was hardly a surprise. Since joining the Cirque straight out of circus school, Jamie had been cast in seven different principal male roles. He was a rare combination of ridiculously strong and remarkably flexible, in addition to being fearless. It had stopped feeling like an accomplishment when Jamie realized that he owed his success to nothing more than a genetic fluke. These days, his ambition was to bargain his way off the Cirque’s hallowed roster of performers, not onto it.
And to that end…
“Aye, it sounds very interesting, Mr. Marylebone,” he interrupted when there was a brief pause in the onslaught for breath. “I should very much like to learn more about what goes inta creating the show. Tae learn from a master such as yerself.”
Jamie wasn’t above using flattery to obtain his ends. When he saw the man’s cheeks grow even more crimson with pleasure, he couldn’t help pressing his advantage.
“Have ye had a chance tae look at the portfolio I left wi’ ye?”
Over the past two years, any time he had a moment to spare from his grueling schedule, Jamie had been working on an idea for his own show. Set in Scotland and inspired by the myths and legends he recalled hearing in childhood, The Lady of Balnain was Jamie’s lovechild, and his best chance to retire from circus performance and move into a creative role.
“Not yet, my boy. When would I find the time?” Marylebone blithely dismissed. “Now, we only have four months to prepare the show, so I want to start auditioning for your female counterpart immediately. She needs to be something truly special. Delicate refinement to contrast with your brute masculinity.”
“Excuse me, sir, but wouldna Anna-Louise be the obvious choice?”
For the first time since entering his office, the artistic director appeared at a loss for words.
“Yes, err, well… I rather thought she’d already have told you. What with your, err, personal relationship and whatnot…” He spent an inordinate amount of time fiddling with some papers on his desk and clearing his throat.
“Tell me what, sir?” Jamie asked, already predicting the answer.
“Well, you see, Anna-Louise has accepted an offer to join the international touring company of Allegro. I needn’t tell you what an amazing opportunity it is for her.”
It was strange, Jamie mused as he made the long walk back from Marylebone’s office to the training facility. Between the news that his girlfriend of several years was leaving him for a better professional opportunity and the news that Marylebone still hadn’t reviewed his artistic proposal, it was the latter that he found harder to bear.
