The Chandelier Ballroom (5 page)

Since moving here all that was gone. If she ever did leave Race, she would definitely go back there, pick up the old threads. She might be far happier without him. Or would she? Maybe she was jumping the gun. Maybe Celia was just a flash-in-the-pan thing. Young and vibrant, what would she want with an old fool like him? Sooner or later she’d tire of him, especially when he started to show his temper, which was never a nice experience.

Maybe it would be wise to stick it out, hope he’d see sense or Celia meet some younger man with money? Because it was Race’s money she was after, Millie was certain of that.

Best then to bide her time. She didn’t want any more rows with him. Let dear, darling Celia find out for herself how nasty he could be. At least there was some satisfaction to be got from that thought.

She was getting fair fed up with Race tearing himself inside out making endless arrangements for this fabulous party of his.

‘Honestly, yer’d think he was inviting the blessed king ’imself to come and attend,’ Millie said to Mrs Dunhill, whose services would not be required on that evening, Race hiring professional catering staff and all the trimmings. Mrs Dunhill had been given to understand that her cooking would not be good enough for such a do. Feeling somewhat put out, she could only sympathise with her employer’s wife.

‘Just as well I’m not doing it though,’ she’d said to Millie. ‘All that worry would only have given me more grey hairs than I’ve already got.’

Millie wasn’t particularly interested in Mrs Dunhill’s problems – she had enough of her own.

‘I sometimes wish he’d never come into all this money,’ she said as she sat in the kitchen while her cook worked around her. She enjoyed sitting here. It felt homely, a little closer to what she had been used to in London, though her kitchen had been tiny compared to this one and nowhere near as tidy. But there she’d had nothing to worry herself about, not all that much money, so not many of the problems she had discovered money, or more accurately a man with too much of it for his own good, could bring. And with Mrs Dunhill there was no need to put on the posh talk. Mrs Dunhill was like herself, a plain woman with no time for airs and graces.

‘I think we was ’appier before he came into all this wealth,’ she went on, watching the woman rolling out pastry for the steak and kidney pie for their dinner. She was a plain cook, hence, Millie supposed, the need for fancy catering staff for Race’s grand Guy Fawkes party, him showing off like bloody royalty, the soppy arse, no idea people were probably laughing at him.

Like his damned stupid ballroom. True, it did hold quite a lot of guests, but
ballroom
? Hardly, even though he fancied his luck showing it off to them.

‘I really detest that room,’ she mused as Mrs Dunhill carefully laid the rolled-out pastry over the meat in the pie dish. ‘Ballroom he calls it, ain’t nothing cosy about it, ain’t nothing cosy about this whole blinkin’ house. Did yer know we used to live in a two-up-two-down terrace in London?’

‘Yes, I remember you saying,’ Sarah Dunhill murmured as she began to brush beaten egg on top of the pastry. She felt comfortable with Millie Butterfield, who had no airs and graces and asked her to call her by her first name, and in turn called her Sarah. They were two of a kind; Millie might have been an East End person of modest means, but Sarah too was of modest means for all she lived in a village surrounded by countryside, her home a tiny three-roomed bungalow with a small kitchen, no bathroom and an outside toilet. Having lost her husband to appendicitis that turned to peritonitis, she lived with her daughter Ann who was getting married next year. Her work as a cook to a family who paid quite well helped supplement her widow’s pension.

‘And that damned stupid chandelier he had put up. Thinks it’s the real bee’s knees! I just think it’s out of place. Apparently it used to hang in some great reception room in some big London flat or mansion somewhere around the Kensington area, real posh place by all accounts. Belonged to some single, really wealthy woman so the story goes. According to the antique’s dealer my Race bought it from, she made all her money dabbling in investments, but then it all went wrong and she lost everything and she was so desperate that she apparently committed suicide.’

Sarah Dunhill stopped brushing her pastry with egg mixture to stare at her employer’s wife. ‘She what?’

‘Committed suicide. So the dealer said.’

Quickly she related the tale as told to Race by the dealer, of a lover much younger than the woman who left her after she’d lost all her wealth in the Wall Street Crash in 1929, leaving her broke and devastated at his going.

‘The dealer said she was in ’er thirties but very striking and beautiful and dressed like someone in ’er twenties, and she was proper deep in love with this man, much younger than she was, and who made the most of it while she ’ad money. I suppose she was what they call a cradle snatcher.’

‘I know what that is,’ Sarah said, all ears now, pastry brush poised idly.

‘So in love, so the dealer said, that when she was left with no lover an’ no money, she must have gone funny and hung herself.’

Again she related what Race had told her about the suicide, or the woman’s attempt of it which ended up with her being killed. Seeing her cook listening intently, she even began to embroider it a little.

‘The man told my Race that the chandelier itself could be haunted. I mean to say, something like that ’appening, it could very well be.’

‘How do you mean?’ asked Sarah, her eyes now wide in something near to horror, she having something of a superstitious nature.

‘Well, she could of thought that by committing suicide she’d make the man what left her feel guilty. Maybe she intended only to pretend to do it, or if she did, to come back and haunt him, or anyone else she fancied, to warn off being sucked into believing people were loyal when they’re not, you know …’ Millie broke off, aware of the other woman’s horrified expression. She gave a laugh. ‘Fer goodness sake, love, it’s only a tale the dealer told my husband and he’d swallow anything. But it got him to buy it, him being ’appy wiv a bit of drama to pass on to his posh friends about the thing.’

‘So it’s not true.’

‘Oh, I’m sure it is. My husband said the dealer was really upset when he was telling him and he was sure it was genuine. He said he had tears in his eyes and the way he spoke really shook him. He said the dealer was a foreign bloke, and of course they’re really religious and believe in … what’s it called? Things like purgatory, something about suicides made to go there forever and never being let into paradise and instead doomed to wander the world or something. I’m not religious but who knows, maybe it’s true, who’s to say. I don’t know. I suppose that’s why I don’t like the thing much, even though I’ve never really been a superstitious person.’

But Sarah Dunhill was. At home that day after work she told her daughter the story and then her neighbour and some of those at the WI she attended at the village hall. Soon it began to go round the village, a juicy tale like this, that the big room where the chandelier hung was possibly haunted.

Sarah Dunhill even contemplated giving in her notice, but the money was a great boost to her pension and she couldn’t afford to and the work was easy enough. Anywhere else she might be asked to slave, and so she stayed on but kept well out of the room her employer loved to call his chandelier ballroom.

The buffet looked sumptuous, though the party wasn’t as large as he had hoped for. Of all those he had invited, only thirty-five or so turned up, the rest apparently feeling the need to be with family on this busy night.

It didn’t seem to worry Race, despite having spent a good deal on a decent dance band and a mound of fireworks. All he seemed interested in was that blasted Celia, she flirting with him like mad, he taking it seriously, silly old fool! Millie seethed as she came downstairs to join the gathering.

She was determined not to let Celia’s presence get her down. Taking special care, she wore one of the wonderful evening gowns Race had bought her on the cruise. Having had her hair and make-up and her nails done that afternoon at the local hairdressers, she felt that she looked, if not pretty, at least well turned out.

She might as well not have bothered for all the notice Race took of her. Still hardly speaking, these last few days he’d even taken himself off to sleep in another room. It hurt, but she said nothing except to tell herself good riddance. It was a change not to have him snoring beside her, hearing him humph each time he turned over in his sleep, jerking her out of hers.

The music was already in full swing as she came down, most of the guests already dancing. It made her fingers curl having to endure watching him and Celia enjoying one dance after another as if she wasn’t there or was completely invisible.

During the interval she couldn’t touch any of the wonderful buffet, apart from picking at it, and when the dancing resumed she again found herself totally ignored. Was he doing it just to spite her, or was there more to it than that?

There couldn’t be, she told herself, quenching a desire to hurry back up to her room. Instead she made an effort to strike up a conversation with Marjory Henrey, the wife of a councillor Race was friendly with. Trying her best to speak nicely, she was sure it jarred on the other woman’s ears. They had nothing in common and with her mind more on Race’s antics, she knew she was talking a lot of nonsense and finally moved away, probably to the woman’s relief.

It was time for the firework display, the guests trooping out to watch it. Millie stayed indoors, listening to the appreciative oohs and aahs at each series of sharp explosions, but resisted the urge to escape upstairs and be on her own. Race must not be left alone with that woman. She needed to be around, needed to watch him.

With the guests returning, the dancing restarting, she helped herself to another glass of champagne. She’d had quite a few already, but holding a glass was in a way a form of support, though by now this present one tasted of nothing.

As she sipped she heard Celia’s tinkling laugh ring out across the room at something Race had whispered in her ear. The action was almost intimate and the girl’s light laugh seemed to go right through her. Draining her glass in one gulp she plonked it back on the waiter’s tray, making the rest clink alarmingly enough to turn several heads in her direction. Again came the temptation to run. But to leave now would only make her look an even bigger fool than she already felt, and make guests aware of what was going on. Her hands shook as she fumbled in her evening bag for the little silver cigarette case Race had given her on her last birthday. Quickly she lit the cigarette, puffing agitatedly at it.

The number finished. Race escorted his partner towards a small group of guests near the end door, his guiding hand placed lightly on the curve of her slim back. Millie was certain he knew she was watching and was doing it deliberately to pay her out for the row they’d had over Celia.

Having reached the group, Celia said something that made them laugh over the quiet chatter in the room, and she turned briefly to glance in Millie’s direction, a wide smile on her lips. They were making fun of her.

A wave of sick anger flowing through her, Millie turned and took yet another flute of champagne from the waiter’s tray. Her hand shook. She felt slightly dizzy and knew she was becoming a little drunk, but she didn’t care. The band had struck up with a tango, a dance she and Race had often done together in earlier days. It was the first dance she’d ever had with him. He’d asked if he could take her to see a show up West. A year later they were married. He’d been into petty crime even then but she hadn’t minded; people where she’d lived were into much the same things and he’d made enough from it to give them a moderate living. But he’d always been loyal to her.

Now he was in the money he was playing a totally different game, fancying himself with a woman less than half his age, and it took all her willpower to control her rapidly mounting fury, those two in each other’s arms, he having lost none of his dancing skills, his partner following him with ease, lithe and supple as Millie had once been.

Emptying her glass, she reached for another, missed, tipping it over, the waiter’s instant reaction being to move swiftly back from the spillage, even apologising for the mishap. She heard herself let out a ripe epithet followed by a somewhat hysterical giggle.

People were looking at her. The giggle died as she became aware of what she was doing. The two dancers having swept towards her, Celia looked straight at her as they passed.

‘Are you all right, dear?’

How dare she call her dear! It was like a sarcastic dig, and on impulse Millie grabbed another full glass off the tray and aimed its contents straight at the enemy. The girl was already clear of the erratic aim but someone else gave a short scream of shock as the liquid splashed an expensive gown. Several dancers hesitated in their stride. Someone made a grasp at Millie’s arm, but she swerved and tottered across the floor, yelling abuse at Race as she went, almost falling through the door to stumble up the wide stairs to safety.

It wasn’t as safe as she’d expected. Minutes later Race barged into her room. Striding to the dressing table where she’d sat in an effort to calm her jangling nerves, he pulled her to her feet.

‘What the bloody hell d’you think you’re playing at?’ he yelled at her.

‘What the ’ell d’yer think
you’re
playing at?’ she yelled back, yanking her arm free of his grip.

He made another grab at her but she evaded it, gracelessly tottering over to her bed, keeping it between her and him, all the time yelling at him, her speech deteriorating by the second.

‘I’ve bin watching yer making eyes at that bitch, whispering in ’er ear and ’er giggling and stroking yer shoulder and you with yer arm around ’er waist, touchin’ ’er up. I got eyes. I can see what’s going on.’

‘Nothing’s going on! You’re just being bloody silly.’

‘Don’t give me that, yer dirty old sod!’ she raged, voice rising to a shriek. ‘You ain’t slept in this bed since she arrived three days ago. No, yer’ve bin in ’er room, ’aving it off with ’er and ’er no more than a tart, and you, you filthy old …’