with their memory, their odour, and little scraps on the floor of their costumes’ straw and feather. He said: ‘We’d best follow them down and see.’
We reached the wings in near darkness, and saw the company sitting on the stage in an oval, staring up at a woman standing in their midst who slowly revolved, talking to one and then the other, like the axis of each one of their destinies. ‘That heavy piece,’ said Larry, in a whisper, ‘is Isabel Cornwallis herself in person.’
Miss Cornwallis was saying to her audience:
‘I want you to understand. All I want is just that you understand me. Why I bring you dancers here to Europe is for a purpose. You think it’s for the money I may make: well, if you think that, will you speak to my accountant, please, or else my lawyer? They’ll tell you, no. It’s for my art and for my people that I bring you here. The dance is an old, old art, since the days of pre-anthropology and those things. It’s not just shaking your asses round like you children seem to imagine that it is. It’s uplifting, and an honour to participate. It’s also a source of advancement to our people. White folk imagine all we can do is jungle numbers, and ritual dances, and such. That’s why I’ve choreographed our African and Caribbean dances in with classical European and other sources. It shows them we’re up to the highest tones of their endeavour – Norbert, will you stop scratching there in your armpits?’
‘It’s an itch, Miss Cornwallis.’
‘I don’t want no itches in my company. I thought you understood what I’m telling to you, Norbert. You and Moscow and Jupiter here and Huntley are some of my older performers, my stars. It seems like I’m superfluous if you scratch your armpits during my conversation. Which reminds me to tell you what I’ve often said before. Dancers are desiring in their thousands to join the Isabel Cornwallis company. So I don’t have to stay with you, and you don’t have to stay with me, unless each party feels we want to. We’re not obligated to each other in any way. But so long as I have my company, I’m going to keep up my standards of achievement.’
On and on she went, like a playback from a tape recorder. It was clear they had heard all this a million or so times before; yet were none the less fascinated by her flow.
The boy called Jupiter, a creature of breathtaking dignity and beauty, who sat in serene repose like a work of art more than one of Nature, said, in a high, squealing, petulant voice, ‘Miss Cornwallis, some of the younger performers smell so bad of their perspiring it’s unbearable.’
‘They should use perfume, Jupiter, like you do, and I do, and all self-regarding human beings do.’
‘I wish you’d tell them, Miss Cornwallis. They just stink.’
‘I am telling them, Jupiter, as you can hear.’
Now it was the turn of the boy called Huntley: a slender, graceful light-skinned youth with a Roman rather than a Negro profile.
‘Some of the young performers, Miss Cornwallis,’ he said, in weary, spiteful, yet mellifluous tones, ‘are saying I’m impolite to them when I take class. Now am I the ballet master here, or am I not? That’s what I want to know.’
‘You are, Huntley, since it’s there in your contract that you are, but the man who’s master never need be unpolite. And that reminds me, too, Huntley. You’re getting so pale in this land of sunshine you look almost like a white boy now. You must have some sun-lamp treatment, Huntley, or else use a colouration lotion on your body. This is a coloured company, remember, with all that it implies.’
Larry the GI nudged me. ‘The crazy old bitch,’ he said in dangerous sotto voce. ‘How does she get away with it? If it was me, I’d slap her down. And do you know, man? She’s getting so fat only two boys of the whole company can catch her when she flies through the air like a ton of frozen meat. The others, she knocks them flat.’
Miss Isabel Cornwallis was off again. ‘Just one more thing,’ she said. ‘These parties you’ve been going to, that I’ve heard about. I understand the gay folk, and the rich folk that you meet, and I approve of this association – it’s good for the reputation of the company you should move in high society. But you, Norbert,