Death Comes to the Ballets Russes by David Dickinson Page B

banks. They’re pretty formidable fellows and they claim they intimidated the revolutionaries so much that they didn’t dare go inside.’
    ‘Revolutionaries be damned!’ The General was in full boom now. ‘England is safe from the Communist International and all the other crackpot bodies these fellows belong to! It’s as if the sans-culottes and the rest of the Paris mob took one look at the Bastille and simply ran away. It’s unthinkable. Just imagine French history without the storming of the Bastille – they’d probably still have a bloody monarchy, for God’s sake. This is the best news I’ve heard for a month, Captain. Are they regrouping, the Bolsheviks from Bethnal Green? Planning another assault by running away from the Bank of England with those pink-coated porters guarding the doors and the gold?’
    ‘I understand there is a plan to try again, sir. They’re going to go into a lot of smaller banks with very small deposits or to open accounts for themselves.’
    ‘Sounds to me like they’re joining the capitalist system, Captain. Any word in London about the ghastly Lenin with that bloody beard, in his Polish exile?’
    ‘Not as yet, sir. I think they’re not going to tell Lenin and his people for a while, if they tell him at all. Oneof the revolutionaries pointed out to his fellows that Lenin wasn’t doing much for the revolution just now, holed up in that café in Cracow reading newspapers and writing pamphlets. That’s hardly the first wave of the proletarian vanguard is it?’

    ‘“The opening scene, a green forest glade of tall willows and beeches, joined by a rocky bridge, and in the distance the red glow of the setting sun. In the semi-darkness, a strange band of wood sprites, with olive-green bodies and large pointed ears emerged from the shadows, some hopping half upright, some gliding on all fours.”’
    It was breakfast time in Markham Square. Powerscourt was reading from the arts pages of his newspaper.
    ‘What on earth is that, Francis?’ asked Lady Lucy Powerscourt, who knew precisely what it was. She had been dreading this moment for days now.
    ‘There’s more,’ said her husband, ‘loads more . . . “Karsavina was dressed in a violet pleated peplum, decorated with silver leaves, her long hair loose and hanging down her back. There was one inimitable gesture, which made the whole ballet worth while: the burying of her face in the crook of her arm, a moving demonstration of her grief when Narcissus disdained her love. Nijinsky wore a fair Grecian wig, a white
chlamys
with one shoulder bare, and green and gold sandals with the legs cross-gartered.”
    ‘We know somebody else who was cross-gartered, Lucy, do we not? And his dress made clear that Malvolio had lost his wits at the end of
Twelfth Night
.Has London lost its wits over these Russian dancers, Lucy?’
    The dancers of the Ballets Russes had conquered Covent Garden and Lady Ripon’s little theatre at Coombe. Now they were laying siege to Markham Square and Lord Francis Powerscourt – a reluctant convert, if, indeed, convert he was.
    ‘I think that must be
Narcissus
, Francis, that ballet you were reading about. Your sister Burke and her daughters were raving to me about it only yesterday.’
    ‘
Narcissus
be damned,’ said her husband. ‘I said I didn’t care for it before they arrived. I still don’t care for it now it’s here, with all this fuss.’
    Lady Lucy did not tell her Francis, but she had tickets for a box that very evening at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, entry despatched only yesterday by Natasha Shaporova, who seemed to have access to innumerable tickets, most of them, it had to be admitted, in the more expensive parts of the theatre. Lady Lucy had not yet worked out how to lure her husband into the building, but she was sure she could think of something.

    The blinds were drawn in the back room of Messrs Neeskens and Sons, diamond and fine jewellers of Antwerp. Mathias Neeskens was an