Reserved for the Cat

The only question was, how was she to get there?

You must listen to me and do exactly as I say, with no questions, the cat said from his place under her skirt, curled warmly around her ankles. Have I not brought you this far? It will be hard, it will take all your wits, and the beginning of it, at least, will be very uncomfortable for you. Can you do that?

“I don’t see that I have a choice,” she whispered under cover of the orchestra playing.

You could go and be a shop-girl.

“I don’t know how to be a shop-girl. And someone would find out that I don’t belong here.” She thought a moment, and firmed her chin, stubbornly. “And besides, I want to be an etoile. I want to be made much of. I want my own dressing room, and flowers and champagne and chocolates in it. I want young men to send me flowers and old men to send me jewelry. I want a dresser and an apartment and a maid. I want to find a wealthy man who will—”

Then listen to me and you will have all those things, the cat said, interrupting her. Now, study this place. A hall like this will soon be the place of your triumph; study it, study the acts, and above all, study the audience. It is, after all, they you must win.

4

FOR the next four days, Ninette and the cat went out in the morning and returned in the evening. Every moment of those days she spent studying the music hall; on the whole she was rather glad that she was doing that, for the cat was correct, it seemed to rain at least part of the day, every day. First, she watched the acts and as much of the action behind scenes as she could see from the front of the house, and then, by cunningly pretending to have been sent to deliver things, or otherwise slipping in backstage, she studied the acts, and the way that things were run, from backstage. It wasn’t hard; she knew where to go and how not to be noticed backstage in almost any theater. She would bustle about, head down, carrying a bundle of cloth from one place to another. Everyone assumed she was someone else’s dresser. She would sit in a corner and pretend to sew; everyone assumed she was someone else’s costume girl. The one thing that would have made even these pretenses difficult at the Ballet, where everyone knew everyone else and what their business was, made it easy here. No one really knew anything much about any of the other acts. They rotated among the houses, making the music hall circuit, never spending more than a week at any one place. Half the people here were going on together, into London to make the rounds of several music halls called one “Empire” or another, which were all owned by the same man. But the rest were scattering to the four winds, every direction but East. All but the girl who sang “Champagne Charlie”; she was going on to something called the “Panto” as a “Principal Boy,” whatever that was.

Things were run in a very different fashion in this place, where the acts never remained for more than two weeks. The orchestra had to learn new music with each new act; the acts had to rehearse on a new stage with new stagehands every time they migrated to a new booking. It was, Ninette thought, distinctly inferior to what she was used to—a setting where the performances changed, but the players, the supporting members, and the orchestra remained the same. It was even distinctly different from the music halls of Paris, where there was a resident company of dancers who performed pieces that framed the performances of artists who would remain for long bookings, six weeks to even a year or more. The orchestra had no feeling of loyalty to the performers; after all, they would be gone in a week. As a consequence, they also had no particular interest in supporting them past the absolute minimum required. The first morning rehearsals, known as “band calls,” could be terrible things, taking far longer than they needed to. Performers supplied their own sheet music, and this was often a cause for acrimony, as the performers were not inclined to buy new music until they absolutely had to, which meant musicians were often forced to deal with music that was just barely readable. And when the performer was not in their favor, well. . . .

Morning rehearsals could end up in shouting matches, with both sides appealing to the stage manager, and often threatening to escalate to the theater owner.

The only time this did not happen was in the case of the very popular performers, the equivalent of the etoiles. They might supply music fully as old as the most down-at-heels and outdated comic, the most woefully inadequate singer, but the most the musicians dared to do was grumble, and send up the orchestra leader to the performer—or more likely the performer’s assistant—to urge that this time, really, he should buy some new music.

For these very prominent performers did not attend the morning walk-throughs themselves, oh no. They had assistants to do this for them. And they might not put in more than a cursory appearance at the rehearsals just after lunch, unless they were practicing a new “turn.” This baffled Ninette; no matter how lofty the etoile, he or she was there at every rehearsal. Warm-ups might be done in the luxury of one’s little studio in one’s grand flat, but rehearsals? Rehearsals were sacred. You did not go all out in them, of course; that would be absurd, you would exhaust and possibly injure yourself to no purpose. But you came and you practiced, and you had better make sure that the ballet master did not get the impression that you were losing form . . .

But Ninette watched and made mental notes. She could not at all see how the cat was going to make her an etoile at this point. Possibly under the Paris system, yes. If the theater owner, the ballet master, the stage manager could all somehow be persuaded that she was this mysterious dancer she was supposed to impersonate . . . yes. It could be done. Even if she came with nothing but the clothes on her back, it could be done.

But here? She had no assistants, no scenery, no music... and even if she somehow conjured these things up, like Cinderella’s fairy godmother, out of backstage mice, how could she survive the “booking circuit”? She had no agent, she knew no one and nothing, had no idea what the next city was, let alone how to get to it, find a place to stay, and begin all over again.

That cat only said, Wait and see. She counted the money left in her purse, and tried not to think too hard about the number of days it would last.

A barrage of thunder startled her awake, and she sat straight up in bed, her heart pounding. She stared at the window, clutching her blankets up to her throat, seeing the cat sitting there, silhouetted intermittently by the flashes of lightning.

It was a hideous storm. She could not recall ever having seen one this bad in Paris. A violent wind lashed the windowpanes with rain, and thunder grumbled in the distance or crashed near at hand. Perhaps it was that the sea was so near; certainly all the operas and ballets she had been a part of over the years linked dreadful storms with the sea.

This, said the cat, could not be better. Satisfaction permeated every word.

“Why?” she asked.

You’ll see. The cat could be absolutely maddening sometimes. But at the moment . . . silhouetted black against the lightning-filled sky, with that sure tone to his words . . . she felt her irritation slipping away, replaced by a kind of superstitious fear. What was he, anyway? This beast that spoke in her head, that controlled her like a puppeteer, that had taken her away to a strange land? What did he want from her? True, he had been kind so far but—he couldn’t want her body. Could he be after her soul? Les Contes d’Hoffman, in which she had danced the part of one of Guillietta’s attendants, immediately sprang to her mind. Could this cat, this creature, be a servant of the Devil?

Oh, don’t be silly, the cat said, calmly. Whatever would I do with your soul? I don’t want it.

“Then why are you doing all this?” she whispered.

Because I am interested in you. Because I take pleasure in clever tricks. But above all, it might just be only because I am a cat. She could almost hear him laughing. That alone is reason enough. Now go back to sleep. I will be waking you about dawn.

Well that was unlikely to bring her any sleep.

Wake up, Ninette.