Tender Is The Tyrant

  TENDER IS THE TYRANT

  Violet Winspear

  “I—I sensed something RUTHLESS about him. He moulds people to his tastes, and he makes them submit whether they want to or not,” Lauri described Maxim di Corte to her aunt Pat when, as an inexperienced girl, Lauri first joined Maxim's famous corps de ballet.

  There was no doubt that Maxim de Corte would use these ruthless qualities to make her submit to him

  CHAPTER ONE

  LAURI felt restless rather than tired. The much rehearsed show at the Darnell School of Ballet had been performed that afternoon, and now she was on her way home to tell Aunt Pat all about it.

  Aunt Pat had been in too much pain with her arthritis to be able to attend the performance, but it would please her to hear that all had gone well, and that Madame Darnell had invited a special guest to the show—the important Continental impresario, Signor Maxim di Corte.

  All the pupils at the school knew why he had been invited and why he had come.

  To see Julia Ray, the school’s star performer, dance the role of Odette in the school’s production of Swan Lake. Lauri had danced the role of Odile, the black swan.

  She paused on the bridge beside the old mill, where in the spring there were real swans on the millpond. Today the trees along its banks were bare and stark, for winter still held sway over the countryside. Lauri loved the springtime, with the catkins long and crimson on the alders, golden on the weeping willows.

  She gazed down into the darkening water and listened to the lonely twittering of a few birds. This way home to the cottage took longer, but she needed to unwind after the bustle and tension of the ballet. She had enjoyed dancing the role of Odile, but she knew as well as her fellow pupils that if Signor di Corte was on the lookout for a new dancer for his company, he would be bound to choose Julia. She was way ahead of the other girls in technique, and apart from that rather stunning to look at.

  Lauri knew that she was not stunning. Even Aunt Pat, who had loved her and mothered her from an infant, had to admit that Lauri’s charms were elusive.

  Elusive, and disturbing. A quality that held the glimmers and shadows of beauty ... the creation of it in movement. ‘A reed through which all things blow into music.’ Those words of Swinburne described Lauri, though she wasn’t really aware of the fact.

  In her own seventeen-year-old language, she was gawky as a cat, with the eyes of one.

  Lauri’s eyes were a dark topaz; her hair hung in a black, wind-blown tangle to her shoulder-blades. In the woods of Downhollow, she was at one with the birds and squirrels; by the water running under this old stone bridge she was slim and quick as a fish, or a wind pattern on its surface. She was all spirit and very little substance. A wistful creature, fey with feeling. A wand in the hand of chance.

  She stirred and came out of her daydream. It was growling late and Aunt Pat would begin to worry. So, hands plunged into the pockets of a corduroy jacket worn over trews that hugged her long legs, she turned in the direction of the cottage and began to race the wind.

  Her aunt, Pat Donaldson, was a widow who had danced in a corps de ballet in her younger days, but she had never possessed that special quality that goes to make a ballerina. She had made a fairly good marriage, however, and been left comfortable enough to send Lauri to a first-class ballet school. She was ambitious for her niece, who didn’t quite share those starry ambitions and was at present happy being a pupil of the dance.

  The cottage stood with several others about half a mile from the village, and Lauri was greatly surprised to see a car parked in the kerb, midway between their gate and that of the people next door. She gave the gleaming black body of the car an intent look. Their neighbours had a rather classy visitor from the look of things, she thought, and went running along the path that led to the side door of the cottage.

  ‘I’m home, Aunt Pat,’ she carolled, finding the small kitchen empty.

  ‘That’s my niece now ... Lauri.’ Aunt Pat’s voice lifted, coming from the parlour, a room they rarely used! ‘Darling, come into the parlour!’

  Said the spider to the fly, Lauri mentally tagged on, wondering who on earth Aunt Pat was entertaining in there. She went along the passage, hesitated a moment outside the door, then pushed it open and went in.

  Cigar smoke and hot coffee mingled their aromas in the room. Aunt Pat sat in one armchair, Madame Darnell in another, while the smoker of the cigar rose from the settee as Lauri entered. He was impeccably clad in a dark grey suit, and he looked twenty times more intimidating here in this cottage parlour than he had looked in the hall of the ballet school, watching Madame’s pupils perform Swan Lake.

  ‘This is Signor di Corte, my child,’ Madame was smiling, but in a rather tight-lipped way. ‘He wishes to talk with you.

  ‘With me?’ Lauri stood dumbfounded before the distinguished Venetian, who was Founder and Director of one of the world’s finest ballet companies. Gods and muses! She felt a little weak as he appraised her from head to foot with dark eyes that seemed to see right through her. Magnetic eyes, deep-set in a lean haughty face dominated by a Roman nose. He was very erect and tall, a man whose force Lauri felt like a blow.

  ‘You seem taken aback, Miss Garner.’ His deep accented voice matched the well-bred assurance of his looks. ‘May I ask the reason for your wide-eyed surprise?’

  ‘Well—I hardly expected to come home and find you here, signor.’ He had captured her gaze and she couldn’t look away from him. She felt certain the drumming of her heart must be audible to him. ‘I—I can’t understand why you should want to talk to me.’

  ‘You are too modest, signorina—please to sit down,’ he gestured imperiously at the settee, and drew forward a chair for himself. He sat down facing her and crossed a long immaculately clad leg over the other. He lifted his cigar and drew on it, and all the time his eyes rested compelling and shrewd on Lauri’s face, with its triangular eyes and high cheekbones. ‘I wish to discuss your dancing,’ he added.

  ‘My dancing?’ Lauri looked amazed. ‘But we all thought at school that you were interested in Julia Ray—she danced so well.’ Lauri glanced appealingly at her aunt, then at Madame. ‘Julia is your star pupil, isn’t she, Madame?’

  ‘Signor di Corte does not seem to be in agreement with my view.’ Madame Darnell shrugged and looked a trifle put out.

  ‘Really?’ Lauri couldn’t help noticing that Aunt Pat was smiling as smugly as a tabby who had filched the cream from another cat’s saucer.

  She glanced back at Signor di Corte, who wasn’t smiling at all. ‘I am not interested in displays and pretty posturings,’ he said curtly. ‘Technical proficiency is not enough—for me. Tell me, Miss Garner, did you enjoy dancing the role of Odile?’

  ‘Yes, signor,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Would you not have preferred the heroine role of Odette?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I think it has less—character.’

  ‘And less passion.’ He regarded her for a long moment with those dark eyes that were so difficult to evade. ‘I think you understand, for one so young, that with her body a dancer can express every emotion. Very possibly this is unconscious in you, but it is there, and it is something of far more value to a dancer than the ability to perform with exactitude the mere mechanics of the dance.’

  Here he inclined his head half mockingly to Madame Darnell, and then he smiled, with such startling charm that Lauri all but caught her breath.

  ‘A dancer is the sheath of a sword, a chalice holding fire and wine—Miss Garner,’ his voice went from velvet to iron in a moment, ‘why on-stage are you suddenly so nervous that you bungle the easiest of steps? Twice this afternoon I saw you falter—as though you trod on heated boards.’

>   Lauri stared at him, then suddenly as white as a sheet she sprang to her feet. ‘Did you come here just to criticize me, signor?’ she demanded.

  ‘Lauri,’ Madame Darnell looked scandalized, ‘that is no way to speak to Signor di Corte. His advice is invaluable to a dance pupil.’

  ‘My dear,’ groaned Aunt Pat, ‘Signor di Corte, you must excuse my niece—she’s a rather highly strung girl—’

  ‘Be composed, signora, I am well used to the tantrums and temperaments of dancers.’ He scanned Lauri’s white face with ice-dark eyes. ‘Che e stato, signorina?’

  She knew he asked her a question, but she didn’t understand Italian.

  ‘I ask you what is the matter?’ he said. ‘I can see that it upsets you to give a poorer performance than you are capable of giving.’

  ‘I—I have a lot more to learn, signor.’ She thrust her hands into her pockets and braved his shrewd, penetrating eyes. ‘Madame will tell you that.’

  ‘Why, Lauri danced almost as soon as she could walk,’ broke in Aunt Pat, proudly. ‘Her parents were adagio dancers of great skill and on the stage themselves—’

  ‘Please,’ Lauri’s eyes had gone dark with pain as she turned them to her aunt. ‘I’m sure Signor di Corte has no interest in all that, and though I’m grateful to him for showing an interest in my dancing, you know, Aunt Pat, how I feel about the stage—’

  ‘Surely you intend to turn professional?’ he rapped out.

  ‘My aunt wishes it.’ Lauri gave him a frown and wished to goodness he would go and there could be peace again in the parlour. Right now it was crackling with an element that put her nerves on edge.

  ‘And love is a great persuader, eh?’ There was a hint of amusement in his voice. ‘For love of your aunt you dance, though you dislike it?’

  ‘To say I dislike dancing is putting it a bit strongly,’ she protested. ‘It isn’t that I dislike dancing—’

  ‘It, is that you have a fear of the stage,’ he said quietly. She stiffened, and it flashed through her mind that he was frightening in his shrewdness.

  ‘My parents died in a theatre fire when I was five,’ she flared. ‘Everyone says that children so young don’t remember things, but I remember. I have nightmares about it—or more correctly stage frights. When I dance I remember, and that’s why I don’t want to go into professional ballet.’

  The room fell quiet after her outburst. Aunt Pat’s face was stricken. Madame Darnell looked uncomfortable. Signor di Corte rose to his feet and killed the butt of his cigar in a glass ashtray.

  ‘It would be a great pity, signorina, to let what is past spoil your future,’ he said in his deep voice with its tone of inflexibility. ‘I did not come here this evening to offer criticism or encouragement to a pupil of the dance. I came because I wish you to become a member of my company. I thought I saw poetry and imagination in you. The will to be dedicated to the art, something I demand in all my dancers. Your line is clean and fresh, but if you have not the courage, or the desire to overcome what haunts you, then you are of little use to me.’

  ‘Lauri,’ Aunt Pat struggled to her feet and leant on her walking stick, ‘you can’t refuse such a wonderful offer. I won’t let you!’

  ‘Your niece must make up her own mind, signora. This must be her choice. Hers alone.’ Signor di Corte pulled back his cuff and took a look at his watch. ‘Right now I must be on my way back to London. I accompany my dancers to Wales, and then to Scotland. We will be gone three weeks. At the end of the month we will be back in London for a few days, and I will then contact you again, Miss Garner. In the meantime, will you think over my proposal?’

  Lauri gazed back at him mutely. She felt him to be a man who could compel most people to do just what he wanted. His will was surely as unyielding as that straight back of his, yet in this moment she did not feel that he was compelling her to give in to him. He wished her to make up her own mind—and then again the world was full of promising dancers who lived only to dance.

  He had his choice of the best.

  ‘Don’t ask yourself why I want you to become a member of my company,’ he said, reading her mind. ‘Ask yourself what you want, with courage and honesty. And remember that whatever happens to any of us in this life is not entirely due to chance, and that running away from a problem never helped to solve it.’

  Having said this, he broke into the smile that was so startling. Lauri recalled the intense charm of it long after he and Madame Darnell had left the cottage and driven away in his black car. The man was unforgettable, and in the days that followed he and the things he had said were constantly in her thoughts.

  ‘You can’t turn down his offer,’ Aunt Pat reiterated. ‘My dear, another like it might never come your way again. The di Corte Ballet Company is world renowned. It’s an honour to be asked to join dancers like Lydia Andreya and Michael Lonza.’

  It was evening time, and Lauri was sprawled like a supple young cat on the carpet in front of the kitchen fire. Aunt Pat sat in her favourite chair, a rocker with a cushioned back.

  ‘Lonza,’ Lauri murmured. ‘The Panther. It must be quite an experience to see him dance.’

  ‘You have the chance to work in the same company with him,’ her aunt said explosively. ‘To know him, perhaps to dance with him.’

  Lauri broke into laughter. ‘Darling, I would be a very minor member of the corps de ballet. Lonza is something unique. The best judges of male dancing consider him to be potentially great, a “god of the dance” as they call it. Six years ago Maxim di Corte saw him dancing flamenco among the gipsies of Madrid, sent him to ballet school and then offered him a contract.’

  ‘Just as Signor di Corte is offering you one?’ Aunt Pat gazed down at Lauri with puzzled eyes. ‘It would be a dream come true for most dancers, but you call it a nightmare—to the man’s face!’

  ‘He didn’t like that, did he?’ Lauri cradled her knees and gazed into the fire. ‘His eyes burned like anthracite. Aunt Pat, his standards are as high as the stars! Where would someone like me fit in? What would I be—a bondmaid?’

  ‘You do say the oddest things, my dear? Aunt Pat studied the face of her niece-child in the fire glow; sensitive, angular, the unawakened lips touched by pain. ‘In my youthful days I would have given my front teeth for a quarter of your talent—yes, pull a face and look scornful, but do you think a man like Maxim di Corte would have put himself out to come here and talk to you if he hadn’t seen something special in you? It put Madame Darnell’s nose out of joint. He obviously didn’t want her dancing Ray of sunshine.’

  Lauri smiled a little. ‘They all know at the school that he came here. They all think he must be round the bend to want me in preference to Julia. Look how pretty she is!’

  ‘You, my gawky little cat, have the talent,’ Aunt Pat said with relish. ‘Signor di Corte called it poetry and imagination, and to be able to convey those in motion is the true essence of ballet dancing. Otherwise, as he said, the dancer performs a mere succession of pretty posturings. Oh, come on, Lauri, you know he’s right! The ability to dance is in your bones—it’s your morbid fear of theatres and dancing on a stage that is making you hold back.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lauri admitted with a shudder. ‘I like being a pupil of the dance, I could never face up to being a professional performer. I’m sorry, Aunt Pat. I know how much you want it, but when I get on to a stage I do make silly blunders. I—I lose confidence.’

  ‘You’re a funny one.’ Aunt Pat stroked the dark head near her knees. ‘Do you think your parents would want you to go on like this? They were real professionals. The show came first.’

  ‘And it killed them,’ Lauri said huskily. ‘I heard the fire bells—our lodgings were just across the road from the theatre, and those bells, dozens of them, have never, stopped clamouring in my head.’

  ‘They’ll stop clamouring the first time a real audience storms you with applause. Don’t you want that, Lauri? Achievement, heaven’s second most elusive star.’

  �
��What is the first?’ Lauri asked with a smile.

  ‘The happiness brought by love, my dear.’

  ‘Is it so elusive?’ Lauri raised her dusky-gold eyes to her aunt’s face. ‘You found it, didn’t you?’

  ‘I found security,’ her aunt said quietly. ‘I was over thirty when I married Stanley, and by then I knew I should never get beyond the ranks of the corps de ballet. He was kind to me. It was nice to be cosy and cared for.’

  Nice and cosy, Lauri thought, A steady warmth, but never a flame that burned up and up, over your whole body—she shuddered at the way those flames crept into all her thinking.

  ‘Dear Aunt Pat,’ she said, ‘how could I leave you, anyway? How could I go away?’

  ‘To let you go, my little winged cat, would be a wrench for me, but I wouldn’t dream of stopping you. Think how it will develop you as a dancer and a person to travel abroad. Lauri, you must accept Signor di Corte’s offer. He said he’d get in contact with you again at the end of the month.’

  ‘He’ll probably forget,’ Lauri said half-hopefully.

  ‘Lauri, you brat!’ Aunt Pat shook her niece’s shoulder. ‘He isn’t a man who changes his mind once he has made it up. Didn’t you notice his chin?’

  ‘Yes, solid obstinacy.’ Lauri laughed. With a dent right in the centre of it, she remembered vividly, as she leant forward and threw another piece of wood on the fire.

  She was at the barre next day at ballet school when Julia Ray came up to her. Julia was a pretty girl, but her mouth at the moment was sulky. ‘Even if Signor di Corte had asked me to join his company,’ she said, ‘my father wouldn’t have let me. He says I’m to join an English company. Margot Fonteyn is English, after all.’

  ‘She’s marvellous,’ Lauri smiled. ‘Anyway, I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do. Nothing is definitely fixed up.’

  ‘I see,’ Julia ran her blue eyes over Lauri’s thin, sensitive face. ‘I should imagine you’d feel out of place among all those exotic foreign dancers. They stay in an old palace in Venice when their ballet season is over, and you can bet it’s terribly run down and damp.’