Wednesday Morning, Shortly Before Nine “So Doug will be meeting with him again today,” Nessa was listening to Betsy say over the phone, “But we couldn’t schedule anything in for all three of us until tomorrow afternoon.”
“And how much do you trust him now?” Nessa asked.
“Enough to let him have the run of my house, it seems; the time for asking that question is past, I fear. I hope to at least see some of what he does with Doug, but you know how Wednesday afternoons are.”
“Yes, all too well. So I’ll see you at one?”
“Don’t be late.”
“I never am. Good morning.” As Nessa hung up, she contemplated that people never said farewell that way in the 21st century, then glanced around to see if anyone had heard her. To her own eye, she certainly stood out, here on the bus, where she kept perfect posture while everyone around her slouched. But then again, she’d been doing a bit of that for most of her life.
She was headed to her most unusual job, and the one she’d been most anxious about since the events of the previous Saturday. Before then, it was the one she was most fond of. Many ladies may not have liked the idea of posing naked in front of a group of young people(and occasionally not so young people) who would then draw her, but being an ice dancer meant Nessa Ross had never had very many inhibitions. Emma Knightly, on the other hand, had plenty. Nessa could feel her dread of the upcoming morning building.
The Edinburgh College of Art was a school for both prospective artists and architects semi-attached to the University of Edinburgh, located opposite Edinburgh Castle, which charmed Emma a little, at least, when it came into view from the bus windows. They were in fact prestigious enough to be choosy in their models, but Nessa’s high level of physical discipline and awareness had won her a job there. She in fact did many odd modeling jobs, both clothed and otherwise, but this one made her the most money.
It was still early enough in the semester that there was a feeling of newness in the corridors, which was the time Nessa was most often here; this was when the new students had their lessons in drawing anatomy. This was her second semester here, so she knew the place, and with a skater’s efficiency she ducked into the bathroom, took her old dressing gown out of the parcel she carried it in, and changed into it. It was getting a little worn; she would soon need a new one. Even now Emma disliked wearing it, but Nessa did not care about that.
This was her first time sitting for this particular group of students, but a semester of doing this had left her convinced that there wasn’t much difference between them, and here Emma stood in complete agreement with her. When she came in, of course they saw the dressing gown and knew what she was there for. She heard several snickers, most of them from male students. She suspected their drawings would not be the best in the class. She only talked to the students if they tried to talk to her, and even then she didn’t like it much. For some reason someone always made a comment about her Glaswegian accent, which she still had even after three years in Edinburgh. She doubted Emma’s snotty English accent would go over any better.
Thankfully the instructor arrived a minute later. Nessa had posed for his classes the previous semester, and he gave her a happy, “Nessa. Good to see you again.”
“And you, Dr. Strong. It has been far too long.”
“Indeed. How’s your partner? Still having shin problems?”
“No, those are long gone, thankfully. And how about you? How’s your son?”
An account of Dr. Strong’s son, and some questions about her and George’s new programs and upcoming trips to the States, Canada, and Paris, filled up the next few minutes while the remainder of the class filtered in. Then he said, “Looks like I need to start. Why don’t you go ahead and sit down while I take the register?”
In the front of the class he had placed a stool and a curtain of black cloth. Knowing Dr. Strong would want her standing up, a particular quirk of his, Nessa gladly took the opportunity to sit.
Most of the students in the class were Scottish, but they came from all over, and even from other countries. As Nessa sat listening to them respond to their names, her external expression placid, Emma Knightly grew more restless in her head, and snarky thoughts about their accents began popping their way through her brain. The worst was when a student clearly from Birmingham responded, and Emma’s impression of his voice was so cruel Nessa furiously thought, Badly done doesn’t even begin to describe you, bitch, and forced her mind clear. She thought of Diamond’s habit of keeping a journal, which George was now considering, but wasn’t sure she wanted to read what this woman would write.
“This is Nessa Ross,” Dr. Strong was saying, gesturing to her. She stood up, nodded to the scattered greetings. That might confuse some students but it kept her safe from some of the others. “She will take a pose and you will have twenty minutes to draw her. As I have said already, I assume that you are all mature students and will behave like them.”
To Emma Knightly’s mind, the phrase “mature student” was an oxymoron, and inside Nessa, she laughed scornfully. What did you even know about it? Nessa thought at her. Only stereotypes and gossip. What did you ever know of students, or school, or of those who had to work for a living, or those who stand naked in front of a group of strangers in order to earn the money they needed to pursue their dreams? Such people didn’t exist in your world, and yet you presume to judge them by your narrow, ignorant standards-
“Nessa?” Nessa’s angry mental tirade was cut off by the realization she’d missed her cue.
“Oh, sorry,” she said quickly, and with one smooth motion, she stood up behind the cloth, pulling off her dressing gown and dropping it neatly on the chair, and assumed the pose she had settled upon before coming. Subdued by her anger, Emma had nothing to say to this, much to Nessa’s relief.
From the time she’d begun posing, Nessa had learned that the embarrassment never lasted long for either artist or subject, so completely did each have to focus their attention of the task at hand. Being a competitive skater, she was very good at focusing, even on staying completely still for twenty full minutes. Yet somehow, that morning, even as her body remained completely still, not even her eyes moving, her mind wandered into a distant memory, of sitting with a group of grown-ups for the first time, and finding it very difficult to sit still. She had not thought it would be such a difficult thing, and yet it there it had been: her chair had felt uncomfortable, her stockings had felt itchy, her hair, which Miss Taylor, as she had been then, had worked so hard on, had felt lopsided and therefore heavy, and she had sat there with her mother, who had still been alive then, and Isabella and her mother’s friends the pride in being there had given way to an anxious wish to stand up, or at least scratch her leg. But Miss Taylor had emphasized that she must not do those things.
It was the first time in the four long days that Nessa found herself sympathizing with the woman she’d allegedly been in a previous life.
But I never had that problem, she told herself. Several memories of her girlhood flashed up, but she dismissed them. True, there had been countless times when a costume has made her feel uncomfortable, or she’d had some difficulty with controlling her body; but she had been a very young ice dancer, which had meant those difficulties were inevitable, and without any complaint or silly feeling sorry for herself she’d worked her way past them. She’d have liked to see Emma Knightly do that.
And with that, she returned her focus to keeping still. Even her eyes didn’t move; she had deliberately chosen a position that allowed her to directly view the clock. Thankfully it was working; in the previous semester the clock in this room had been broken.
The minutes ticked by. Hearing the murmur of the class as they worked brought vague flashes of memory to Nessa, of assemblies and balls and other gatherings, but nothing concrete to breach her concentration. So Emma flickered through her mind, in an effort, perhaps, to ignore what was going on, until much to Nessa’s relief Dr. Strong called time, and she was able to put her dressing gown back on and sit down.
This was a short break between poses, and the students put down their pencils. Some got up to use the bathroom, others just to stretch, but most stayed seated and talked amoung themselves. But one young woman came over to Nessa and held out her hand. “Excuse me,” she said, “but are you the Nessa Ross, the ice dancer?”
“I am her,” said Nessa, feeling very pleased indeed; relatively few people knew who she and George were.
The other girl held out her hand. “My name’s Kate Spence. I saw you on TV last March. You and your partner were doing your free to Rent, which I really loved. I think you should have come in a lot higher than tenth.”
“Thank you,” said Nessa, ignoring Emma’s internal scoffing.
“Seems kind of strange, though,” the girl continued. “To be drawing you in my Life Studies class!”
“Well, I have to furnish my expensive skating habit somehow,” said Nessa. She resisted a sudden urge laugh semi-mockingly.
A moment later she sadly thought she might as well, because the other girl laughed nervously, as if she felt mocked. “So,” she said, “what are you doing this year?”
Nessa hesitated; she and George hadn’t yet publicly revealed their music for the year. Then she decided the situation required something special, and anyway, they’d probably reveal within the next couple of weeks. “We’ve got a new classically-themed free dance,” she said, “very different from last year, but still very fun.” Or at least, she thought, it had felt that way before Saturday. But their particular choice of theme had made things a little more complicated since. “We’re going to be competing in Canada and France in November. I’m afraid they probably won’t show it on TV here, though; you’ll have to look us up on YouTube. We won’t be on TV here until December, maybe even January.”
“Oh, that’s too bad! When exactly are you competing?”
“Skate Canada’s the weekend of November 3rd, and the Trophee Eric Bombard in Paris is the weekend of the 17th, two weeks later.”
“Well, good luck. You know, I used to watch the Sinead and John Kerr before they retired, and I was so happy to find another pair of Scottish ice dancers doing so well. I hope you can do all that they did.”
“As do we, Miss Spence,” said Nessa, but too great a part of her was relieved when Dr. Strong called the end of the break.
There were two more twenty-minute poses to get through, but they went by faster for Nessa than the first, and soon enough she was pulling her dressing gown on again as the students turned in the day’s work, gathered their supplies, and made to leave. But while she had not come to talk to her again during the second break, Kate Spence once again approached before Nessa could leave.
“You really do make Scotland proud, Miss Ross,” she said to her. “Thank you. Tell George Fiddleson thanks too.”
“I shall certainly do so, Miss Spence,” Nessa managed, though now she could feel Emma’s contempt rise thick enough to nearly choke her.
She convey the girl’s gratitude to George over the phone back on the bus, but this too was marred by Emma, for now Nessa had much to complain about. “If it wasn’t for her snide attitude,” she lamented to him, “that encounter would have made my week; you know how rarely we get such precious gratitude. I hate this woman. I hate everything she stands for.”
“You really should try keeping a journal,” said George. “I just made my first entry, and it really does do good.”
As the bus made its way through Edinburgh’s streets, the first drops of another rain shower hitting its windows, Nessa checked her watch, a lingering nervous habit from years of hurrying to practice after school back when she’d been younger. An elderly woman sitting behind her leaned over and said, “No need to do that so often, lass. It won’t make the bus run any faster.”
This worsened Nessa’s already ill humour, and she retorted, “No, but some of us have more reason to be concerned about that than others.” At her sharp tone the other woman retreated, and thankfully the rest of the ride was uneventful. Though naturally just as they approached Nessa’s stop it truly began to pour.
She had not even started reading until the previous day. Her life had no time for it on most days. She spent as much time training on the ice as she manage, much of the rest of her time engaged training off the ice, and most of the rest of her time working to help pay for the training.
She had never been much of a reading girl. It had not been encouraged by either of her parents, who had urged her focus onto her skating, which had been just fine by her. She had never even finished secondary school, having dropped out when her anorexia had forced her to go away for treatment and then never returned. Were it not for the memories of the more learned Elinor, Austen's prose would have been beyond her. As it was, it made the reading of Sense and Sensibility an intensely painful process, for she had to read as Elinor, and so she was unable to detach herself and retreat into being Sheila to shield herself from the memories, which she might not have been able to do anyway, as she could not view Sheila and Elinor as separate people the way she knew Diamond had detached himself from Marianne.
She would have time, she thought, to at least read a couple of pages, but if there was more mention of her half-brother's negligence to raise her anger, it might not be the most prudent thing just before practice.
“How far have you read?” Sheila glanced up, startled, to see Kate Mosley had come in.
“Only the first two chapters,” she said. “I have not had much time.” She looked down at the first sentence, which also happened to be first paragraph: Mrs. Dashwood remained at Norland several months; not from any disinclination to move when the sight of every well-known spot ceased to raise the violent emotion which it produced for a while; for when her spirits began to revive, and her mind became capable of some other exertion than that of heightening its affliction by melancholy remembrances, she was impatient to be gone and indefatigable in her inquiries for a suitable dwelling in the neighborhood of Norland; she could hear of no situation that at once answered her notions of comfort and ease, and suited the prudence f her eldest daughter, whose steadier judgment rejected several houses as too large for their income, which her mother would have approved. She promptly put the book back down; shying away; as generous as the sentence had been, it did not truly convey the level of pain Sheila remembered all too well-not just her mother’s pain, which it paid more attention to, but her own, at her mother’s behavior.
As if her mind was not unsettled enough, the next person to arrive was Sergei, coming in alone, holding his own copy of Sense and Sensibility. He had a bookmark in it, but Sheila was not close enough to try to evaluate how much of it he had read.
“Mr. Rubinstein.” Mrs. Mosley’s greeting was very polite. “Are things well with you today?”
“Well, thank you,” said Sergei quickly, and went into his stretches, which easily put a stop to all further conversation. Sheila glanced around anxiously for Diamond.
He arrived after another minute, and then Sheila rose to her feet. They wasted no time, falling into their warm-up together even as they exchanged greetings. The memories fell away easily now; she became aware of little beyond her own body and his moving, perfectly in time. Only when they were done did she see that Natalia and Vitali Prokofiev had also arrived.
The zamboni was finishing up when the Russians joined them by the barrier. “Just in time,” Diamond observed. “I anticipate the day when the two of you prove late to take the ice.”
“You can not talk,” scoffed Natalia. “You steal our warm-ups.” She grinned widely; this sort of friendly taunting had been common enough between the other three, but in the past her weak English had left her unable to participate. Though one had to wonder what her coach thought, hearing her with her complete lack of accent, even with the deliberate tense mistake.
“And we do them better than you do,” Sheila retorted, and then the zamboni was gone and the four skaters were off and out onto the ice, their coaches following, Mrs. Mosley a little more slowly, as her feet could no longer fit into skates and she had to go on foot.
By the time they got down to business, they were on opposite sides of the rink, though all six knew they would not be able to stay that way. First up for Sheila and Diamond, Mrs. Mosley informed them, was another run-through of their spiral sequence, and that took up the entire rink.
Diamond had been doing better with the timing during their morning practice, but Sheila had since decided to count it off. As they got into the first position with their legs behind them, she softly whispered, “One Mississippi....two Mississippi...”
It worked very well. Five times they did it, Natalia and Sergei swerving around them a couple of times and each time Diamond held out the final spiral the proper length of time. Sheila was sure he would have what Kate called the final time as well, if Sergei hadn’t bumped into her.
It was a good thing he’d been going relatively slowly at that moment; she thought he’d been trying to do a three-turn step with extreme precision. Even so all three of them went reeling, and it was only by some very quick maneuvering that Sheila and Diamond avoided colliding into Natalia, Mr. Prokofiev, or the barrier, and they instead ended up skidding to a halt on their knees. Sergei too tumbled down to his hands and knees, and for a fleeting moment, Sheila felt all too stricken. Natalia hastened to help him up, while Sheila found her arm taken by their coach, and heard him ask brusquely, “You two good?”
She glanced at Diamond and nodded. Then she looked at Sergei, who looked at her, and asked in confusion, “Mississippi?”
“Didn't you live in the States for nearly ten years? How soon they forget!” sighed Sheila, though she was in fact relieved; that was indication enough he was all right. Of course, most Americans couldn’t name all fifty states either, but Sergei did not need to know that Mississippi was a state if he could not remember it himself.
“Short program run-through,” Mrs. Mosley cut in before the conversation could continue.
“One run-through,” Mr. Prokofiev said immediately, “then ve do run-through.”
They were doing run-throughs with the jump elements now, which made them a little rougher, since at this point Sheila and Diamond still had to think to remember the program, which meant they fell more often. They fell on the throw triple loop, which was particularly frustrating when they wanted to be able to replace it with a harder throw triple lutz by the end of the season. Diamond fell on the side-by-side triple salchows, which at least were the most difficult side-by-side jumps they were aiming for that season. They got way out of sync in the side-by-side spins as well, but the rest of the program was fine.
Or so they thought until they heard Mrs. Mosley say, “I want to see that lift again; you might need to pay a little more attention to your timing on the landing.”
Working on the lift occupied most of their attention for quite some time, but they took notice, as they always could not help but do, of the superiority of Natalia and Sergei’s performance. They skated with more speed and fluidity than Sheila and Diamond, and they did elements with more difficulty. That they both fell on their side by side triple loops seemed to scarcely make a difference to significance of the thing. Their music for the short program was from Phantom of the Opera, which was all too commonly used, but they skated like they owned it. Sheila and Diamond were just coming down from their lift when they saw Natalia and Sergei go into theirs, and the smoothness, the technical difficulty, the speed were all impeccable, not to mention the landing.
Sheila and Diamond had discussed the matter, and found themselves to be of the same opinion: as far as they were concerned, there were no better pairs skaters in the world than their Russian training mates. The day they beat them was the day they were finally ready to battle at the top. It was a day that was very far off yet.
For now, however, they worked on lifts and jumps and throws, Mrs. Mosley measuring and criticizing their positions by the millimeter. Mr. Prokofiev must have been very displeased indeed that Mrs. Mosley had claimed the first run-through for Sheila and Diamond, for he monopolized the rink’s music system for most of the rest of the session, working on Natalia and Sergei’s long program, which they were now running through large parts of at a time, at least when he wasn’t stopping them to spend long periods of time on the more microscopic details of their skating. At least the music for it was very pretty, and not at all cliche; a piece by a New Age music group that Lauren MacAddie had originally introduced all the skaters to the previous spring. Diamond could call them on owing him for that.
Towards the end of the practice session, Mrs. Mosley finally demanded use of the music system again. “That was the first full run-through they’ve had since this week,” she said. “They need another one. Now.”
Mr. Prokofiev reluctantly nodded. Then he skated close to his students and whispered something to them in Russian.
This by itself Sheila and Diamond saw without really paying attention to; there was one more thing they were trying to do before the run-through. It wasn’t the best time in the practice for it, perhaps; nearly two hours on the ice had left them very tired indeed. But this, if they could ever gain any consistency on it, was not just a big point-getter but a point of pride for them. This was something Natalia and Sergei had skipped over in favour of the more difficult throw quadruple salchow. Ignoring the Russians’ eyes on them, Sheila and Diamond skated together into their set-up for the sixth attempt of the day at the throw triple axel.
Up in the air Sheila propelled herself, Diamond’s arms adding to the force of her take-off and sending her higher above the ice. Three and a half times she went around, then unwrapped her legs, and the blade of her right skate hit the ice a little hard, a little quick, and above it her body flailed, coming close to the ice, her hand flying on a centimeter or so above it but making no contact, and then as she skated out of the ride-out it hit Sheila that she and Diamond had actually landed it cleanly. She and Diamond exchanged crazy smiles.
Then, right in front of them, Natalia and Sergei performed a textbook throw quad salchow, which they had never yet even tried in competition. They followed them up with very pointed looks.
It didn’t really affect them very much. The thrill of having landed the jump renewed their energy, and the second run-through at the end of the practice sessions suddenly seemed far less daunting. Instead Diamond easily tossed Sheila into the air above him for their split double twist. Though catch two rotations later was a little shaky, and then they both fell on the side by sides. But the throw triple loop was perfect.
Sheila counted off again during the spiral sequence, but the exhaustion was starting to hit, and while she managed it it probably made her spirals more wobbly. Still Diamond moved so precisely she started to hope he had it drilled back into his head now, at least for this particular spiral sequence.
The most jarring moment of the run-through was actually on the lift. After spending so much time on the landing earlier, Diamond fumbled the take-off a bit, and wasn’t able to keep her up in the air for more than three seconds. His putting her down wasn’t the prettiest of sights either. After that Sheila was determined to get the final element-the pairs spin-perfect. Getting into the positions was straightforward enough, but she nearly missed a change of edge. Still they came out of it and into the final position, and Sheila reminded herself that it was still only early September.
It might not have been the best of programs, yet there was applause coming from the stands. Thinking some of the students for Betsy’s class, which Diamond would be sustituting for today, had arrived early Sheila and Diamond turned to acknowledge them, but instead she saw Betsy herself, standing next to and whispering quietly to a clapping Michelle Kwan.
The sight of one of her two childhood idols, the one whom she had never met, was enough to freeze Sheila for a moment, but then Diamond tugged at her hand and she realized that she ought to bow. “Betsy!” she called. “I thought you’d still be at the airport for another hour!”
“Miss Kwan’s plane arrived early,” Betsy explained. “Could you be so good as to perform the entrance into that final spin again? I don’t think that’s quite what I choreographed.”
“I thought it wise to change it a little bit,” said Mrs. Mosley. “You know they’ve changed the requirements again this year, and I had a talk with Lorie Peckarovski last week through instant messaging, who gave me some advice about it.” Lorie Peckarovski may have been a former rival of Mrs. Mosley both on the ice and off, but nowadays, as a technical specialist, she had often worked with Mrs. Mosley’s students while she’d still be living in the States, and the two women had come to be on good terms with each other. Sheila saw Natalia and Sergei take notice of her name as well; they were assigned to Skate Canada, and word was she was going to be on the technical panel there.
“Still, let me see it again,” Betsy urged. Mrs. Mosley nodded and Sheila and Diamond repeated the final part of their program. This time Sheila missed the change of edge, which Mrs. Mosley observed out loud, before checking her watch and shaking her head.
“If you think it’s a good idea,” said Betsy, though she clearly wasn’t happy. “Still, are you sure it’s not just something Peckatovski thinks?”
“She quoted several other specialists as thinking along similar lines. Hopefully if all the entrances start looking the same they’ll change it again in two years or so.”
This remark made Michelle Kwan laugh very softly, a tiny sound that nonetheless drew the attention of all of the other seven. Natalia and Sergei had to come out of their side by side spins but then they too stopped to look. Then Mr. Prokofiev snapped something in Russian to them and they quickly focused back for the last minutes of the practice session.
Which they themselves really ought to do as well, and Betsy asked to see the entire section in between the lift and spin. When Sheila and Diamond had done that as well, she nodded. The Russians were getting off the ice; time was up.
Kwan shook hands with the Russians when they got off the ice. She even greeted them in Russian. When Sheila and Diamond got off, she shook their hands too. “That was a good program I saw the two of you do,” she said. “Okay, not your best run-through ever, but you two have what it takes, don’t you? You just need to keep on working at it, right?”
Some very vague part of Sheila could not help but remember that this was nothing she had not been told already by countless people. But ultimately, that fact did not stop Michelle Kwan saying it to her leaving Sheila Russo at the pinnacle of happiness for the rest of the day.