Page 54 of Tendu: Dancing in the Castle

“Malphia,” he said in a low voice. “What you are saying upstairs is very, very wrong. I love you. There is nothing going on with Simone. I was angry to have the door shut in my face on the night of the Ceilidh. I was offended to have it assumed I kissed her, that I would do that. So, I played a game of ‘Really? This is what you think I am doing? Look, and see what nonsense that is.’ It was sarcastic and stupid, and I am truly sorry. I thought you and I would make up after, and that it would be spectacular.”

“Is that what usually happened? With your sophisticated girlfriends? After these games?”

He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, then looked straight at me. “There is nothing usual happening between you and me.”

“I’ll take that as a yes, then.”

He shook his head. “And now, you are to teach me a lesson by not taking my class?”

“No.” I peered at him in the half-light of the corridor. “I love contemporary. I don’t want to do only ballet here.”

“I want you to—”

“You say that a lot: ‘I want.’ You’re like a spoiled boy who thinks he can do anything and still have everything just how he likes it.” I leant back against the cold wall, feeling sort of hot and dreamy. “Your behaviour demeans you, Aleks. Old ways won’t work in new times.”

The words echoed along the narrow passageway sounding strange and like they weren’t really mine. I looked at Aleks and saw him so clearly. He was good, so good at heart, so strong, and open to all that life could be. But something was wrong. He stood small and closed and frightened because...

“You saw me,” I said, cringing in the onslaught of emotion I felt from him and pressing myself back against the wall. Maybe that way no one would see, no one would know… “You were embarrassed. Ashamed.” I felt disoriented and sick. “You saw me arrive, and you couldn’t bear it.”

“No, angel,” he answered too quickly. “But I was very aware that you were my student. I have started this new career in so unprofessional a manner. Irresponsible and negligent. I was worried I was doing wrong by you.”

“So you thought you’d just go with that? Do as wrong as you could?” Giggly feelings appeared momentarily.

Aleks seemed to shrink further as I regarded him.

“This,” he said. “In here, today at breakfast. The flirting is all Simone. Is not my fault.”

Fact: “It is all your fault. You’ve led her to believe that you want to have sex with her.”

He flinched. “No.”

“That’s what flirting is, isn’t it?”

“No,” he said again. “Is just a funny, light thing.”

“I didn’t see it like that, and I don’t think Simone did either. And you can’t expect her to suddenly adjust her behaviour because you’ve bored of your game.”

Poor Simone. Looked at from this side of the charade, she seemed such a silly, deluded creature. But then, what had I been? Aleks took my hand and said my name, and I was back in the passage, feet firmly on the ground, and clearer than ever.

“You have to pull yourself together,” I told him. “Much could be ruined because of you. Threads crossing at the wrong time cause shifts in the pattern.” Everything was fading and making less sense. I felt feverish and sweaty. Was I actually just burbling about the ancient-looking tapestry that hung on the wall beside us? The unicorns it depicted were made up of many threads. I touched a feathery thistle and blurted out: “You have to own the responsibility. And be who you really are.”

A shadow crossed us. “Treadwell, you coming or what? We’re gonna be well late; we’re not even changed.”

“Will.” I turned in delight, for there was much of great import to be said to him too. “You…” But as I walked towards him, it was gone.

“Looping, babe?”

“Yes.” It was cooler in the foyer and I shivered. “Maybe I did get chilled. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“It’s not her fault the timetable’s messed up,” he told Aleks.

“It’s fine, Will,” I said. “Everything’s good.” And those words became the philosophy of the morning, carried into class, beautiful class.

Moving to the music was sublime, stretching to the full, a body expressing life. Ah, the wonder of life. Aleks didn’t understand. And oddly, wonderfully, Michelle did. She was happy like me, and with me, and we smiled at each other in her lesson with the strange little brain monitors. She wanted to see some pas de deux, and that was beautiful too, as dancing with Will always was. We were so in tune, instinctively sensing the slightest change or movement in the other.

Aleks asked Simone to stay back and speak to him, calling to mind the day he’d asked me to dinner. In London. At college. A chink appeared in the loveliness, accompanied by a disturbing recollection of things said in the passageway. I had likened him to a spoilt child and waffled nonsensical rubbish. I’d sensed that something about me embarrassed him. And I was sure that I had intuited that correctly.

“You can’t speak to her now,” Michelle told Aleks. “It’s lunchtime. And I have something to show Miss Treadwell and Mr. Hearst.”

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