The Girl from the Savoy (12 page)

“Yes. Cockie isn't happy with the third act. Honestly, he can be such a stubborn brute sometimes. And I promised I would pick up a new suit for Perry.”

“You do mother him! How is he?”

“Same as ever. Melancholy and alone. I've told him to find himself a muse to inspire him. I think it's a marvelous idea.”

“I just wish he could find someone to make him happy.”

I look at her knowingly. “He already has, darling.” She smiles awkwardly. “To be perfectly honest I think he's happiest when he's miserable.”

She laughs as she wraps her arms around me in a wonderful embrace. “Don't let me keep you. And send him my love.”

“I'll do no such thing. He's in a bad enough mood as it is without letting him know I was dashing around Green Park with you. You know he's never forgiven you for breaking his heart that summer at Nine Elms.”

“I was eight years old and he was eleven! Even Romeo and Juliet were a little older than that when they were married!”

“And what if he asked you now? Would you still tell him he's a silly boy and run off to your mother?”

She sighs. “He will never ask, Etta. That is all in the past now.”

I think back over the years to the annual spring ball at Nine Elms, the color draining from Perry's face when it was announced that Bea—the young woman he had quietly loved since he was
a boy—was engaged to Oscar Howard, his childhood friend. I, alone, knew that Perry had planned to ask her that very evening. His hesitation was Oscar's gain, albeit briefly. Before the year was out, Oscar was shot for desertion, the horrors of war too much to bear any longer. Under orders from his superior, Perry was among the firing squad.

As I leave Bea and Green Park, I think about all that we have loved and lost and the new battle I must now face alone. My fingers curl instinctively around the crimson leaf. Childish game or not, the wish in my pocket gives me hope.

“A muse has to be discovered,

darling, not appointed.”

A
utumn season marches on and
HOLD TIGHT!
is settling into its twelve-week run. The forgotten lines and missed cues of early performances are a distant memory, the
HOUSE FULL
sign placed outside for every performance. The critics and gallery girls have already decided on their hits and flops of the season, sealing the fate of us all, such is their influence on the theatergoing public and the city financiers. Thankfully—they adore us. Others are not so fortunate.

The shows with the lowest ticket sales and most scathing reviews have already closed, the producers and theater owners left to count the extent of their financial losses while the cast return to auditions and urgent meetings with agents and directors. Several leading ladies have withdrawn with exhaustion or nerves, unable to cope with the stresses and strains of life at the top. I'm not surprised. The schedule and the demands of my own performance are exhausting. I'm onstage for nearly three hours every night. Some days I can barely tolerate the thought of getting out of bed, but a dangerous cocktail of adrenaline and gin, Veronal for insomnia and morphine when the pain becomes too much, somehow keeps me going.

From the outside, I look no different. Makeup and lighting can mask even the harshest of illnesses. Yet inside I feel myself falling apart faster than a house of cards. The doctors urge me to tell close family members, they say it will help to prepare them—and me. But I cannot. I cannot bring myself to say the words; cannot bear the thought of the pity and sympathy. If this is going to be my final performance, I'm determined to go out with a bang. If I really must die, I will do it with my name on everyone's lips and my face in all the papers. I will die as I have lived: spectacularly.

I
t is Wednesday afternoon and that means Claridge's.

As the driver pulls up outside the hotel entrance, a liveried doorman steps forward and opens the car door. I swing my legs to one side and step elegantly onto the pavement, pulling my hat down over my ears and my lynx collar up around my neck. The press photographers know I come here on Wednesdays and a small crowd is already waiting. A great noise starts up as soon as they recognize me. “Miss May! Miss May! Over here!” All of them clamoring for my attention.

I turn and flash them a well-rehearsed smile and a graceful wave, giving them the perfect picture for their front pages. The magnesium bulbs pop and fizz around me. I blink away the dazzle of the flash as the doorman holds open the door and I step inside the hotel.

The concierge immediately leaps to attention, taking my coat to the cloakroom attendant as a floor waiter shows me to my usual table in the Winter Garden. Sometimes I have an overwhelming urge to brush all these endless assistants aside and tell them I am perfectly capable of opening a door myself, but that would not be the proper order of things, and people would start to talk. There will be time for talking soon enough.

I walk slowly through the room, a well-rehearsed sway of the hips, just enough to make sure that the guests catch a glimpse of me. I stand tall, lift my chin, throw the end of my fox-fur stole around my neck, and walk with poise and grace, just as I was taught to do by my ballet teacher when I was a little girl with an imaginary pile of books balanced on my head. I glance occasionally toward the tables, smiling warmly, moving like an angel through the whispers and gasps that gather around me like an autumn mist. I'm glad of the extra waves in my hair; pleased with the work of the gentlemen in the salon. That I don't feel so much as a wing beat in my stomach is of no surprise. I have long ago stopped feeling the excitement of fame and adoration. It is my job to be seen and admired and talked about, and like anything one is required to do for one's profession, there is, quite often, a sulky reluctance within me to do any of it at all.

“Mr. Clements arrived early, Miss May. I hope you don't mind, but he insisted that I show him to your usual table.”

I stop walking and turn to the waiter. “Did you say Mr. Clements arrived early?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Well, I never. How extraordinary.”

Perry stands to greet me as I reach the table, the most idiotic grin on his face.

“I am astonished,” I say, removing my gloves. “For the first time in ten years of taking afternoon tea, you are actually on time.”

“Early, in fact. What is seldom is wonderful, sister dear.”

“It most certainly is.”

He kisses me lightly on both cheeks. I detect Scotch, as usual, but am pleased to note that he has at least shaved. His skin is smooth and his hair neatly combed. I settle into the chair and wait while the maître d' fusses with my napkin and pours a cup of Earl Grey from the pot Perry has ordered in advance.

“And to what do we owe this rare pleasure of punctuality?” I ask as I place a cigarette in my holder and lean forward for a light.

He slaps an envelope down onto the table, sending the sugar tongs toppling off the edge of the bowl. “This!”

“What is it?”

“A reply.”

“To what?” Clearly he is in the mood for a guessing game. I feign interest as I take a sip of my tea.

“To my advertisement for a muse.”

“An
advertisement
?”

“Yes. In
The
Stage
. Your idea, I believe.”

I swallow my tea the wrong way and start coughing dramatically. In seconds, several waiters are around me, passing me water and flapping at my face with napkins. The commotion sends a ripple of concern across the room, so that everyone stops what they are doing and turns to look. Even the pianist stops playing. Perry jumps up and sharply pats my back until I recover. I take a sip of iced water and dab at the makeup streaming from my eyes.

“Thank you, gentlemen. I am quite well.” I turn to the gawping audience. “You can carry on.”

I am dreadfully embarrassed at causing such a scene and relieved to hear the pianist resume his playing and the hum of conversation start up again. The attention soon moves away from Perry and me and back to the gossip and declarations of love that were being exchanged at the neat little tables dotted around the room.

Taking a long drag of my cigarette, I study my brother intently. “You were saying?”

“I took your advice. To find a muse. I put a small notice in
The
Stage
. Didn't really expect anything to come of it—but it did. This arrived a few days ago.” He pushes the envelope across the linen tablecloth. “Read it.”

I take the page from him and read it aloud. “‘Dear Struggling Musical Composer.'” I raise an eyebrow at that. “‘I read your recent notice in
The
Stage
and am interested in the position of Muse. I have a keen sense of humor and know most of the numbers from
The Shop Girl, The Cabaret Girl,
and
Sally
(“Look for the Silver Lining” is one of my favorites). I love jazz and I like cherry cake. I get Wednesday afternoons off and alternate Sundays. Please send word to the attention of Clover Parker, Poste Restante, Cambridge Circus.'”

I fold the letter and carefully place it back into the envelope. I sip my tea and cut a small corner from a slice of Madeira cake.

“Well?” Perry leans back casually in his chair, his good leg crossed over his bad. There is a hint of curiosity in his eyes that I haven't seen for a long time. “What do you think?”

“Cherry cake? Really?”

“That was just a detail to make it sound friendly. What do you think in general?”

“I think it was a preposterous thing to do.”

He laughs and snatches the envelope from the table, slipping it into the inside pocket of his jacket. “This is what you wanted, isn't it? For me to take risks and chances and find something—someone—to inspire me.”

“Yes. I did. But I didn't actually think you would place a notice in
The
Stage
. Finding a muse isn't the same as finding a knitting pattern for winter gloves or a new position for a picture-house pianist. A muse has to be discovered, darling, not appointed. A muse is a rare bewitching sort of person whom one meets unexpectedly and feels strangely drawn to, like salt on ink, absorbing their very essence. I'm sorry, darling, but you don't know anything about this Clover Parker, or anyone else who might reply.” I sit back in my chair. “My guess is that she's seen an opportunity to get a ring on her finger. That's all any young single girl wants these days. Reply
ing to a notice in
The
Stage
might be the only chance she has of finding a husband.”

Perry listens and looks at me through narrowed eyes. “Perhaps. And yet, perhaps not. She might be looking for something to add a little color to her day. Perhaps she's already married and can't stand the sight of her husband, or the sound of her children bawling all day long, and longs to listen to music and escape from it all for a while. She might very well be bewitching. We can't know, can we? Not until I meet her.”

I sigh and take my compact from my purse. I dab at my nose with the powder puff, angling my face toward the better light. My skin is dull and tired-looking, lacking the dewy luster I was once renowned for as the face of Pears soap. Age is such a dreadful thing.

“So, what are you going to do?” I ask. Perry looks at me, and smiles. “You've already replied, haven't you?”

“I've invited her to meet me. What's the worst that can happen?”

I laugh. “The worst that can happen is that you realize she's an ordinary dowdy girl who couldn't inspire a flea. You'll send her back to wherever she came from and she'll feel that her life is even worse than it was before. You'll break the poor girl's heart. That's the worst than can happen.”

He shuffles in his seat. “It would make a change from mine being the broken heart, wouldn't it?”

I feel myself soften a little. Perry really has been desperately unlucky in love. “Yes. I suppose it would.” I rub a little rouge onto my cheeks. “So, when are you meeting her?”

“In two weeks, hopefully. At the Lyons' Corner House on Coventry Street. She gets Wednesday afternoons off. I thought I should give her a little advance notice.”

“Wednesday afternoons?”

“Yes.”

“But you meet
me
on Wednesday afternoons.” I snap my compact shut. “You can't go. You'll have to reschedule.”

“I can't reschedule. I've already sent my reply.” He drains his coffee. “I'm sorry, Etta. It will only be this once, and if we agree to continue the arrangement I'll make sure we meet later in the day, or on a Sunday.”

So this is how it starts. This is how my life begins to unravel and fall apart. This simple little ritual I have grasped hold of for so long is finally slipping away from me. I should be angry with him, but when I look at Perry his eyes sparkle and I see my own reflection in them. He hasn't looked this alive for months.

“Very well. Go. Meet her. But don't say I didn't warn you if she turns out to be your undoing.”

He laughs. “Let her do her worst. There isn't much left of me to undo.” He takes a long drag on his cigarette. “And what if she turns out to be the perfect muse. What then?”

“Then you can thank me for giving you the idea in the first place.”

We talk for a while about mutual friends and who might be going to the Mitfords' New Year's Eve party. We share snippets of news, pleasantries, niceties, and all the time the letter in my purse and the doctors' voices nag at me.
Tell him, Etta. Tell him
. But it gives me such joy that we can spend time together like this and I can't bear to spoil it. If I can just get through the autumn and winter months, I'm sure I'll feel better. So I say nothing. I keep my secret locked away like the flowers beneath the frozen ground, and enjoy whatever time I have left with the brother I hadn't really known for much of my life, but who I can now call my friend.

W
e were never especially close as children, Perry and I, and I was even more distant from Aubrey, whose purpose in life, even from
when he was in short trousers, was to prepare himself to become heir to the Clementses' title and estate. Our childhood was a strict routine that didn't provide for emotion or affection. At best, we were brought down from the nursery to the drawing room at four o'clock, paraded like dolls to be dandled on our parents' knees until the warmth of fat little legs set unsightly creases in skirts and flattened carefully pressed creases in trousers. We were like little shadows in that great house, unsure of the loud vivacious people we called Mother and Father. Watching my brothers go to war stirred new emotions within me. I knew Aubrey would be all right, he always was, always will be. But Perry, I worried about.

He had never quite fit within our family. Like a shoe half a size too small, one always sensed a kind of niggling discomfort around him, and I didn't pay him much attention. He was just Perry, the shy young boy who preferred music to trains and dancing to cricket, the second brother sent off to boarding school and brought home for the holidays, the gawky adolescent who shied away from my giggling friends and sought the company of the ivories on the piano above the company of others. As had always been expected, he studied law at Oxford and entered the legal profession, just like his father and Aubrey before him. Yet where they had excelled, Perry hated every minute of it.

He couldn't wait to get to the front, away from the pressures Father exerted on him and the stifling constraints of a profession he despised. Yet even in war, Perry was unconventional. Father scoffed at the letters he sent from France, proudly telling us how he had become involved in the divisional concert parties and was a firm favorite, composing songs and comedy skits for the privates and other officers. “Not even a real soldier,” he sneered. “Can't even go to war properly. Always has to be a damned disappointment.”