Diva in the Kitchen

That night the whole company of principal dancers come to our house for dinner. Margot is standing in front of our Westinghouse fridge. Elegant, wearing a white blouse and calf length black skirt and high heels, her hair swept up in a bun, she is surveying the contents of the refrigerator while my mother, embarrassed at the bulging contents within, explains how you use a refrigerator to Margot. It is 1949. The war has been over for four years, but the famous ballet comrades are still on rationing. No eggs, no butter, no meat. There is no meat in London, and certainly no refrigerators to keep it in. But since her recent rise to fame, her brilliant smash success in New York, Margot has allowed herself the luxury of purchasing a fridge exactly like ours, but not yet taken delivery. It will be there when she gets home. I look up at her in wonder. What a splendid, regal woman she is. It is as if the Queen has come to call and she wants to know about the real world of the commoners. I forget that my own mother only recently went from a wringer washer to an automatic.

The dinner conversation revolves entirely around the subject of the longed for meat. Though we have salad, and mashed potatoes, what these comrades who have endured the long years of war really love and crave is the roast beef! My father tells Margot that he will arrange to have meat sent to her from Canada by Eaton's. Everyone seems delighted by this act of practical generosity. Since this is their first trip to North America, following Margot's brilliant triumph in New York, everyone seems very anxious to go to Niagara Falls. As a good host my father numbly offers to drive them all to Niagara Falls. They are thrilled.

After dinner my sister and I are sent upstairs to get ready for bed. We get our "sleepers" on, the kind with feet, and a button down behind. In this gear we are invited downstairs to dance for Margot and the rest of the dancers before bedtime. Afterwards she gives each of us a signed ballet shoe that she had worn that night. She used a pair for each act. It exactly fits me now. It holds the place of honour next to a photo of my father next to Margot.

I have an album of photos and telegrams that my father made about Margot. It contains the telegrams he sent her to tell her the meat was arriving, and a photo of them on a trip when he drove her to Chicago. She is leaning her head on his shoulder shyly, her back turned discreetly to the camera. This is the beginning of her fame in North America. My father, jacketless revealing his suspenders, has one arm around her protectively, looking at her smiling, shy face gazing coyly at the camera. Leslie Edwards is taking the picture. My father looks absolutely dazzled by her beauty and grace, and astounded by his good fortune. There was a sense of magic and specialness about this elegant woman; so beautiful, like an angel, charming and gracious. She radiated beauty and joy. As a little girl I recognized that she was loved by multitudes, and especially by my father.

Every two years the Sadlers Wells, soon renamed the Royal Ballet, came to North America. The next time they came it was to Maple Leaf Gardens, because there were so many people that wanted to see Margot dance. And every time she came to the "Fitzes" house. Whenever she was coming to town, mother and father would invite their most interesting friends, Celia Franca and her boyfriend Burt Anderson, Mr and Mrs. Atwood, (Peggy's mother) Thea Shulman, who lived next door to the Atwoods, the Daly's, etc. It was the crowd that appreciated the Arts. Conspicuoulsy absent were the Russells, of Russell Steele, who lived across the street in a tudor mansion.They were not my parents sort. After dinner, and our dance performance for the dancers, we would be sent to bed. My mother would roll up the carpet, and, while I listened from upstairs through a glass held to the floor, there would be waves of laughter and dancing to Italian Taranetellas.

Margot's Christmas card held the place of honour in our living room. I felt blessed. Her presence in my kitchen inspired me for the rest of my life. I followed her life story, reading in the paper that she had married the love of her life who had left her to earn a fortune so he would be able to afford her. She was always in furs and jewels, but it never seemed to affect her natural charm. After she became Dame Margot, I went to visit her backstage at Covent Garden in London when I was seventeen, and had just been chosen to attend the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal. She met me with a towel around her neck, covered in sweat, following the afternoon rehearsal I had just been allowed to watch. What an honour to have known her. My life was filled with wonder and magic. I was blessed, and I certainly knew what I wanted in my life from that day forward. I wanted to see that look in my father's eyes when I was on stage, a famous dancer/actress like Margot.

The fact that my father knew such luminaries gave him a mysterious and special glow in my imagination.When my parents would get dressed up to go out to the symphony or the theater, my mother in her fur coat, wearing her black dress with black lace at the throat, she would come in to tuck us in, smelling of perfume, her long dark hair swept up in the nineteen forties style. She was like Margot to me, and beautiful and romantic figure. She would come home with the autograph of many famous people in my marble leather covered autograoh book, Artur Rubenstein, Dame Myra Hesse. My father would take us into the radio studio to watch his friend Jan Rubes do his show, His wife was a star on the Guiding Light. He brought me her autograph when he went off to New York to see Margot.