Chapter Eight

Meanwhile, the man was gazing at her in silence

Genesis 24:20-22

The weeks until Sarah's debut passed quickly. She began making acquaintances with some of the girls she danced with. They were nice enough and obviously from quite common origins. Genteel classes did not feed ballet companies in Victorian times.

Sarah worked hard in her rooms each night, stretching the reach of her extension and strengthening individual muscle groups in order to improve her technique. She did all of her old advanced syllabus every night so that she didn't forget the modern standards she had been taught. She knew it was her advantage and it might allow her to make a name for herself and a more comfortable living.

The Artistic Director was pleased with Sarah's dancing. He would often watch her rehearse in silence, not yelling chastisements the way he did to the corps de ballet girls (who generally deserved it for their sloppy, lazy dancing).

He asked Sarah over the weeks to show him the full range of her repertoire, including the more modern choreography that she knew which was not always easy to perform in the long skirts. The first time he saw Sarah perform a full-length modern virtuoso piece, Sarah was sure he had dollar signs in his eyes. She had already figured out by that time that she was bringing a completely new level of ballet to London. Pointe shoes were still a very new invention, so the fact that she could dance en pointe with such relative strength and agility (even in the poorly made ones available in London) was a huge advantage for her dancing career. The Artistic Director was anticipating a sensation. Sarah hoped he was correct.

Over these few weeks, Sarah had visited Mrs Laidley each weekend for an hour or two. Sarah didn't like to impose but it was always lovely to see her. Mrs Laidley always welcomed Sarah with eagerness and some relief as well. She perceived London to be a dangerous place and Victorian London was but Sarah moved in such small circles and knew so few people that she was unlikely to run into trouble.

Other dancers lived in Soho too and they all walked home from the theatre together after dark in a pack, so they were unlikely to be bothered although they always received catcalls from the men hanging around who knew they were the 'ballet girls' of rather less than respectable reputation. The girls in the ballet set their standards rather high in some respects, however. A man who was not a gentleman of some kind or at least in a well-paid situation was unlikely to gain any attention from one of these attractive creatures. Sarah had been chosen for her dancing but most of the girls had been chosen for their looks, a fact they fully appreciated and exploited to the hilt.

They were practical girls, not at all romantic. They did not want to work any harder for a living than they had to and only got into the ballet world to gain the attention of the 'right' sort of man. The glory and advancement of the arts was the last thing on their minds. It would take the genius of the likes of Pavlova and Karsarvina and Fokine and Njinsky to light the fire of artistry in this glamorous profession and give it more credibility. These great lights were still to come.

It struck Sarah suddenly that she could still be alive and living in Victorian England when these great events in the ballet world would come about. Fokine's choreography on Pavlova of the Dying Swan was less than fifteen years away in time. The Ballet Russe's Paris debut would be less than twenty years from now. The great ballets were being choreographed by Petipa in Russia at this very moment. To Sarah all of a sudden, the life of a ballet girl in London seemed better than an office drudge in London over 100 years into the future.

The night of Sarah's debut was cool and rainy – not unexpected weather in London. She had been hesitant to invite either Watson or Holmes to her debut, assuming they would not be interested in the antics of a mere acquaintance and a ballet girl to boot, particularly after their last meeting. The Director had sent a cab to Sarah's rooms as she was expected to rest in her apartments that afternoon rather than rehearse so she would have enough strength to perform a full principal role that night. Sarah thought it a very quaint notion as modern dancers were expected to put in a full day of class and rehearsals before performing at night. They were also expected to do full-length performances five or six days out of seven each week. The dancers who were not principals could do up to ten full length performances a week. Victorian principal dancers were only expected to do two or three full length performances a week. It seemed Victorian dancers were pampered creatures compared to their modern counterparts.

Sarah went to the theatre in her practice dress so she could finish off her warm up before changing into the costume that had been created for her by the wardrobe mistress. As Sarah was not known, there was no-one waiting for her at the stage door as there would have been if a known star was performing that evening. However, there would be a full house. There always was for any London show. Without television or even radio to amuse Victorian Londoners, the concert halls and theatres and music halls and revues were always fully booked each night. Music lovers could only indulge their passion through live music as gramophones still had very poor sound reproduction. Many people went to the ballet more for the live orchestra than for the dancing in Victorian days, Sarah knew.

Sarah warmed up behind the curtain with the other dancers and went to change an hour before the curtain went up. She carefully applied heavy rouge to her lips and black kohl to her eyes. She found the false eyelashes murderous to get on and the white powder she had to cover herself with (white skin being the fashion) got all over everything she touched.

Finally the orchestra was tuning up and it was time to make her way to the wings. Sarah's debut had begun.

After the exertion of the evening, covered with sweat from the hot gas lighting despite the cool night and with her feet a mess from the dreadful, stiff, narrow pointe shoes, Sarah was glad when it was all over. The audience had reacted strangely to her dancing. When the curtain first went up, there were the usual rustlings of a bored audience except worse because the audience was so much closer to the small stage. It was strangely intimate to someone like Sarah who had done amateur performances on vast stages with the audience comparatively far away. By half an hour in, the rustlings and whisperings and restlessness had stopped. Every time Sarah turned on pointe or did a large leap or lifted her leg higher than ninety degrees, the audience audibly gasped. It was a bit off-putting until she got used to it. After her first solo, there was a long silence as Sarah took her curtsey and ran off-stage. The dancers in the wings looked apprehensive and even the orchestra didn't know what to do. Then, slowly there was a building crescendo of sound. Not just clapping but cheering, whistling, stamping and calls of "bravo". It went on for so long and the dancers pushed Sarah onto the stage so many times to take bows that the manager eventually had to go out and quieten them down so the performance could proceed.

By the second act, the audience was quiet immediately the lights went down and so it went through all four acts. The other dancers looked at Sarah oddly in the wings, as though she was suddenly an alien amongst them once more. At the end of the fourth act, the audience applauded and cheered and stamped for so long that Sarah thought she would never get home. Sarah kept smiling and slipping away backstage hoping they would let her go home but they would keep applauding. Modern audiences were never so effusive, Sarah thought, jaded by the over-abundance of easy-to-access entertainment. Sarah was given the customary dozen red roses and she gave one to her leading man who was both lovely and obviously gay. He had been a considerate partner that night and it was not always the case. Later, Sarah would find out that he was particularly supportive of her as most of the other dancers treated him as an outcast due to his sexuality. In many ways, Sarah observed, he was a lonely man despite his lovers.

Finally, the audience let Sarah go and she was able to retire to her dressing room. Sarah's dressing room was as she had left it. The flowers sent to established stars did not embellish the dressing room of an unknown like Sarah, but she was happy enough. The Artistic Director was so pleased that his face practically shone, so Sarah was guaranteed to keep her place as a principal dancer. That was all she cared about.

As she was removing her make-up, a knock on her door brought in a harried looking porter.

"There's an awful lot of people wanting to make your acquaintance now, miss. I've been keeping them at bay," he said ruefully, shaking his head, "There was two gentlemen and a lady says they know you. Here're their cards. Shall I show them in?"

The cards were for Watson and Holmes. Sarah felt quite shocked. She had no idea why they were paying a social call. It was with trepidation that she told the porter to show them in. She did not want a repeat performance of her last interview with them both, particularly when she was so tired. Sarah hurriedly removed the last of her make-up but she didn't have time to change and so threw a dressing gown over her costume.

Mrs Laidley came in first with a kind, beaming smile and hugged her. Sarah thought how lovely it was to see her. Dr Watson came next with a huge smile of his own and hearty handshakes of congratulation. Mr Holmes was much cooler which did not surprise Sarah, but he congratulated her generously enough, offering his thin cold hand to shake in a gentlemanly fashion.

Sarah noticed that Holmes had a bruised face. It was not the same black eye as he had earned the night that they had all visited Mrs Laidley, but the bruises had been administered by the same young boxer. Holmes had gone back a few times to spar and although he was getting better at dodging the boxer's jabs, he still got caught occasionally.

Sarah examined his face with a ghost of a smile. She remembered from Watson's accounts that Holmes liked certain sports.

"Boxing?" she asked, her fine brows raised questioningly.

Holmes was surprised into momentary speechlessness. How did she know what he did during his free evenings?

"Ha! You should see the other fellow!" Watson exclaimed enthusiastically, having witnessed a couple of recent bouts, "He keeps getting dragged out of the ring," he added proudly.

Sarah glanced at Watson with a conspirator's smile.

"Of course, I'm sure Mr Holmes knocked him out completely each time and only got away with this little scratch," she said calmly, putting one finger teasingly on the bruise on his face before turning and going back to her chair.

Holmes recoiled from Sarah's finger like it was a red hot poker, but she had already turned away. Feeling deeply unsettled, he sat down on one of the chairs in the room and lit his pipe.

Sarah told them how pleased she was that they had come to the opening night. "I would have got you tickets if I had known you wanted to attend," she said shyly.

"Mrs Laidley wanted to surprise you," Dr Watson said with an affectionate look at his old landlady.

Mrs Laidley smiled and put her hand on mine. "We would not have missed it for the world and my dear, you certainly are an extraordinary dancer. I am not terribly familiar with ballet, I must admit but I am sure I have never witnessed such a brilliant performance. You will be the talk of London for a long time."

"There is no doubt about that," Holmes said in his dry voice. "I hardly expect London audiences are used to going to the ballet to watch the dancing, as such," he added, his voice heavy with irony.

"They will now," Dr Watson said with a smile at Sarah and a half bow.

"I hope so. I think ballet will change a great deal in the next few decades," Sarah said truthfully.

"Well, it was a pleasant change to see a dancer who does not over-act abominably," Holmes observed acerbically but with a stiff nod in Sarah's direction. "I have often sat through appalling ballets just to hear the music and it was a relief not to have my artistic sensibilities offended for once," he added rather irritably.

Sarah thought this was quite funny and to her surprise, she laughed. "Well, you're honest at least" she replied.

As they talked, Sarah found herself studying Holmes once more. Was he thinner than when they had first met? Watson had described him as tall and thin. Thin would be an exaggeration. Tall and slender was closer to the truth. He could not have been the sportsman Watson described if he had truly been thin. Still, it appeared he had lost weight and there were purple marks under his eyes that had not been there before. Had he been abusing cocaine more than usual? Had he been on a big case? He was still quite young, so his face was not as fleshless as it would become in middle age, at least according to Paget's drawings. Despite Holmes' recent icy attitude toward her, Sarah couldn't help worrying that Holmes was being self-destructive and wondering why. Then Sarah wondered why she was worrying about him. He was not her concern and he was certainly not concerned about her.

"You realise there is an army of young men out there waiting to escort you home," Dr Watson said, a trifle anxiously.

This immediately broke Sarah's private reverie. "There is?" she asked anxiously.

"It is the custom for a new ballet star to be the centre of a great deal of male attention," Mr Holmes said wryly, a sharp glance from his cool grey eyes meeting the worried look of Dr Watson.

"You may have some trouble getting through the crowd unnoticed," Mrs Laidley said gently.

Sarah glanced around at their faces. "Would you help me get home?" she asked worriedly. "I can make arrangements in future in case this happens again but honestly, I didn't think anything like this would happen tonight."

"Why not?" Mr Holmes asked sharply.

"Because a few hours ago, I was completely unknown," Sarah replied, a prickly edge creeping into her voice.

"You must have known with that technique of yours that you would be an instant success," Mr Holmes replied shrewdly, examining Sarah with narrowed eyes once again.

"Where I come from stage stars are not made much of a fuss of. They would certainly have no problems getting home without being mobbed," Sarah replied truthfully.

Mr Holmes' perceptive grey eyes scrutinised Sarah minutely as he digested this piece of information but he didn't comment further. He was obviously trying to imagine a world where stage stars were not instantly recognised and feted and fussed over, and he was clearly failing.

"Why aren't they fussed over?" he demanded.

"Because there are so many forms of easy-to-access and cheap entertainment. Like iPods, for instance," Sarah explained.

Holmes' face became shuttered as he considered this but he didn't say anything further.

In the end, Dr Watson and Mr Holmes stood on both sides of Sarah to push back the crowd with Mrs Laidley safely bringing up the rear. They had waited outside while Sarah quickly got changed and then they pushed their way through what seemed like hundreds of people (but was probably only a few dozen) to get Sarah into a cab. All the time, young men in evening dress were trying to talk to Sarah and introduce themselves or press gifts into her hands. With smiling thanks, Sarah refused all offers as she was frog-marched into a cab nearby.

A/N – Sherlock Holmes is such a small fandom, I really had doubts that anyone would read along with my story, so I am really surprised and appreciative of the reviews and encouragement so far. Thank you.