Louisa the Ballerina Read online

  “How did you manage it?” I whispered. “She was so upset.”

  “I did nothing. It is my friend.”

  We walked into the lounge. There was a man with white hair sitting on the sofa. Weezer was sitting next to him, chatting away happily.

  “Hello,” I said. Weezer jumped up and grabbed my hand and pulled me over to the sofa.

  “Annie,” she said. “Oh, Annie, you’ll never guess! This is Alexander Petrov. It really, really is him! It’s fantastic.”

  I was obviously meant to know who this person was, but I’d never heard of him.

  “Hello,” I said, feeling rather shy. He looked just like a king. He was quite old, but his eyes were very blue and twinkly and he wore a beautiful velvet waistcoat and sat up very straight.

  Mrs Posnansky saw that I didn’t know who he was, because she said, “This is Sasha. I call him this from when we were small. It is Russian short name for Alexander. Everyone else has to call him ‘Maestro’ because he is now Big Boss.”

  “Oh,” I said. I still didn’t know who he was.

  Weezer helped me. She said, “Annie, Mr Petrov is the Director of the St Petersburg Ballet Company . . . the ones who are doing Coppélia.

  “And you are Louisa’s sister, Annie,” he said to me. “I am enchanted. Your sister has told me you are trying to come to Coppélia.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “But all the tickets have gone.”

  I looked at Weezer to see how she would react, but she looked perfectly calm so I went on, “We’re very sad about it.”

  “No more need for sadness,” said Mr Petrov, and waved his hand in the air in a very grand way. “You come to the matinée next Saturday as my guests. You and Louisa . . . I will make very big surprise.”

  “Isn’t it brilliant, Annie?” Weezer squeaked. “I can’t wait. I’m so excited I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep.”

  She took my hands and actually began to jump for joy. I’d never seen anyone really do that before, but Weezer was doing it. It was only when Mrs Posnansky brought in a Black Forest gâteau that she quietened down and sat on the sofa again.

  Chapter Six

  “I EXPECT,” WEEZER said, “that this is what princesses must feel like. Don’t you think, Annie?”

  I nodded. Weezer had certainly done her best to dress like a princess. She’d insisted on wearing her very best party dress, even though it was only lunchtime, and she’d made me put on my best clothes as well. My dress wasn’t as frilly and princessy as hers was, but I still felt ridiculous wearing blue velvet just to go to the theatre. I’d said so to Weezer as we got ready. She was changing out of her leotard. The Saturday ballet class had been cancelled, and so my sister had made up for it by dancing in the lounge. She’d put on her Coppélia tape, and I guessed that she was pretending to be Swanilda. She wouldn’t let anyone watch her, which wasn’t a bit like Weezer. By the time she came up to change, I was nearly ready. I said, “I feel a bit stupid wearing this dress.”

  “We have to wear our best things,” Weezer said firmly. “We’re the Maestro’s guests. And it’s a ballet, not a movie or something. And he’s sending a special car for us.”

  “It’s not really for us,” I said. “It’s for Mrs Posnansky. If it was just us going, I’m sure he’d have let us go on the bus.”

  “Still, we get to go with her, don’t we?” said Weezer. “We can pretend it’s our car.”

  “Did you hear him calling her Ninotchka?” I asked Weezer. “I bet he’s in love with her.”

  “You think everyone’s in love with everyone else. It’s just stupid. He hasn’t got time to be in love. He’s the director of a Ballet Company.”

  I had to admit that it was very grand riding through town in a big, shiny black car.

  “Why do you think we have to be there so early?” Weezer asked me. “It’s one o’clock now and the show doesn’t start till half past two. Do you know, Mrs Posnansky?”

  “I know nothing,” said Mrs Posnansky, who was wearing the same sparkly sequinned scarf that she’d worn to Weezer’s Dancing Display. “Only that Sasha says we must go to stage door.”

  If you weren’t looking for it, it would have been easy to miss the stage door completely. It was just a dull brown wooden door down an alley that ran along the side of the theatre.

  “Come,” said Mrs Posnansky and opened it, looking as though she knew exactly where to go and what to do.

  “Imagine,” said Weezer, “if we’d been by ourselves. We’d never have dared to go in like that.”

  A fat, bald man was sitting just inside the door.

  “We are guests of Mr Petrov,” said Mrs Posnansky. “He expects, I think.”

  The fat man looked at a list on a clipboard. “Mrs Posnansky, Miss Louisa Blair and Miss Anna Blair.”

  “Anne,” I said, “or Annie,” but no one heard me, and I didn’t really mind. I quite like Anna.

  “We’re on a list!” Weezer whispered. “In a real theatre. I feel like one of the dancers.”

  “This corridor isn’t what I imagined a theatre would look like,” I said.

  “Why? What did you expect?”

  “I don’t know. Something smarter, more glamorous. A bit more like the front. I thought there would be carpets.”

  While Weezer and I were talking, the fat man was speaking into a sort of telephone. He looked up at Mrs Posnansky and said, “Maestro is waiting in Dressing Room 3. That’s along the corridor, down some steps, and then turn right. You can’t miss it.”

  The corridor was very narrow. We had to press ourselves against the wall to let some people pass us. They were all wearing jeans and sweaters and trainers, but Weezer said, “Those are dancers. I can tell, just by the way they walk.”

  “How can you tell?” I said.

  She never had time to answer, because Mrs Posnansky was knocking on the door of Dressing Room 3. The Maestro himself opened it and beamed at all of us.

  “Ah, it is you, Ninotchka, my dear, and the two young ladies. Come in, come in. This is the dressing room of Sergei, who is dancing Doctor Coppélius. See, he is already partly in costume and looks like half an old man!”

  Weezer’s mouth was open, and her eyes were wide. Sergei stood up and bowed to us, and we could see that he was in the middle of doing his make-up and had drawn frown lines on his forehead and big black rings under his eyes.

  “I am the Doctor,” he said. “At your service. See!” He picked up a wig of white hair with a plastic bald patch in the middle, and pulled it on over his own hair, which was reddish-brown. “A magical transformation.”

  Weezer still hadn’t said anything. She was gazing at the costumes, hanging on a rail; at the mirror with light bulbs all around it; at the sticks of make-up lying on the table; at the many pairs of ballet shoes piled up beside the armchair.

  “We let him dress now,” said the Maestro. “There is much for us to see. Sergei will meet us on the stage.”

  “Are we going on the stage?” Weezer asked. “Is it allowed?”

  The Maestro laughed. “If I allow it, it is allowed. But first, we meet the ladies.”

  We went into a huge dressing room in which about ten dancers were putting on make-up, sitting at a dressing table that took up a whole wall. Their pale mauve tutus were hanging up, ready for them to put on.

  “This young lady,” said the Maestro, pointing at Weezer, “wishes to be ballerina.”

  All the dancers smiled at us, and one of them pulled Weezer to her side. She put some blusher on her cheeks, and a little lipstick on her mouth.

  “Thank you!” Weezer was breathless. “How lovely! I can’t wait to see you in the show. Your tutus are so beautiful!”

  “Take!” said the dancer who’d put on Weezer’s make-up. “Take a flower, please!”

  She took three yellow roses from a vase on the dressing-table and gave one each to Weezer and me and Mrs Posnansky. Weezer flung her arms around the dancer’s neck and hugged her.

  “Thank you! I wish I c
ould be exactly like you when I grow up. Please tell me what your name is.”

  “Is Galina. You have heard of famous prima ballerina, Galina Ulanova?”

  “Oh yes,” said Weezer. “Of course I have.”

  “My parents, they call me Galina after her.”

  “My name,” said Weezer, “is Louisa.”

  “That is very good name for ballerina,” said Galina. “Very romantic.”

  Weezer was practically walking on air when we left. “See?” she said. “See what Galina said? I knew Louisa was a good name.”

  “Come,” said Mrs Posnansky. “I take the roses to look after them till we are at home.”

  We made our way behind the backcloth, stepping carefully over cables and ropes and making sure not to bump into the backs of bits of scenery.

  “This,” said the Maestro, showing us a big cupboard made of painted cardboard, “is the place where the Doctor hides his doll, his Coppélia. And this,” he led us on to the stage, “is the Village Square. There,” he pointed, “is the balcony of the Doctor’s house.”

  “And here I am,” said Sergei, and hobbled out on to the dimly-lit stage.

  “Oh!” said Weezer. “You look so old.”

  “Come,” said Sergei. “We will dance together.”

  “Me?” Weezer looked at me, then at Mrs Posnansky, then at the Maestro.

  “Of course you,” said Sergei. “The Maestro has told me you are dancer.”

  Weezer said, “I’m learning. But I know Swanilda’s dance from Coppélia.”

  “Really? This you have learned already? Is very advanced.”

  “No,” said Weezer. “I haven’t learned it in class, but I’ve watched the video so many times. I can’t do it properly, of course. I’m not allowed up on points yet.”

  “Let me see, please,” said Sergei.

  Weezer began to dance. She was never shy about dancing. You only had to ask her once and she’d begin. She didn’t even need music. It was true that she did spend ages and ages watching her ballet videos, but I never realized that she was learning the steps as she watched. Now she was a doll, bending her head to one side, moving her arms and legs stiffly but gracefully, bowing from the waist, turning like a clockwork toy. I remembered all over again how I felt when I saw Weezer being a Little Swan: amazed that my sister (who could be so annoying sometimes) could turn herself into all these different and wonderful shapes. It was like watching a sort of magic.

  “Bravo!” said Sergei and the Maestro, and Mrs Posnansky’s eyes were all glittery. Ballet always made her cry, she said, because it was so beautiful.

  “We do pas de deux now,” said Sergei, and he took Weezer’s hand and they did a little dance together, with Weezer still pretending to be a doll and Sergei being Doctor Coppélius.

  “Enough!” said the Maestro after a few minutes. “You, Sergei, must rest till your entrance, and ladies, you must come with me. I have to show you to your seats. Oh, very special seats I have for you today. And come, please, to my office in the interval. I have ordered ice cream, naturally.

  “Goodbye, ladies, goodbye, little ballerina,” said Sergei. “It was for me a great pleasure to meet you.”

  We all said goodbye, and Weezer stared after him as he left. Mrs Posnansky and I followed the Maestro off the stage, and it wasn’t till we were in the wings that I noticed that Weezer wasn’t with us. She was still standing in the middle of the stage.

  “Hey!” I whispered. “Come on! You’re not supposed to be on stage now.”

  “I’m coming,” she said. “I’m coming now.”

  She blew a kiss to an imaginary audience and then made a very low curtsey. I knew she was hearing applause in her head. She clutched an invisible bunch of flowers to her as she ran off stage.

  “Wasn’t it marvellous?” she whispered to me. “I’ll never forget it. Never. And listen, the orchestra is tuning up. Oh, Annie, it’s just like a dream, isn’t it?”

  “Please to sit, Louisa,” said the Maestro. “And Annie, and you, my dear Ninotchka. It is not the most comfortable chair, but you see everything.”

  We took our places on three small stools in the wings, hidden behind the red velvet curtains.

  “We’re in the wings, Annie,” Weezer said just before the curtain went up. “Actually on the stage. It’s almost as if we’re part of the company. Ssh! It’s going to start.”

  The stage was suddenly bright, and a line of dancers came running into the yellow light. I noticed Galina, and turned to see if Weezer had spotted her, but my sister was sitting so still and watching so carefully that I didn’t dare to break the spell.

  At the end of the first act, we made our way to the Maestro’s office.

  “I was in the wings, Annie,” Weezer said to me, “but soon I’m going to be out there on the stage. Wait and see.”

  “I know you will,” I said, and I did know it. That was where Weezer belonged: in the spotlight. “Let’s go and get that ice cream.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Adèle Geras has written more than eighty books for children and young adults. These include Troy (Highly Commended for the Carnegie Medal) and the Egerton Hall Trilogy. She lives in Manchester with her husband and they have two daughters and a granddaughter.

  www.adelegeras.com

  LOUISA THE BALLERINA

  AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 446 40326 6

  Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK

  A Random House Group Company

  This ebook edition published 2013

  Text copyright © Adèle Geras, 2013

  Illustrations copyright © Karen Popham, 2013

  First Published in Great Britain

  Red Fox 9780099482123 2013

  The right of Adèle Geras to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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