The Girl from the Savoy (2 page)

LONDON

1923

To the question, “Are stars worthwhile?”

I must give the elusive reply, “There are stars
and
stars.”

—C. B. Cochran, the
Weekly Dispatch,
1924

“That's the fascinating thing about life, Miss Lane.

All its wonderful unpredictability.”

I
t is as simple as this: a person can be unpunctual or untidy, but if they intend to get on in life they certainly cannot be both.” I'll never forget these words, nor the housekeeper who barked them at me as I skulked back to the house—late and disheveled—from my afternoon off. I'd been walking with Teddy in the summer rain and completely lost track of time. It was worth being scolded for. “You, Dorothy Lane, are a prime example of someone who will
never
get on in life.
You
will never become anything.” It was the first time I was told I wasn't good enough. It wasn't the last.

I was in my first position in service at the time. Maid-of-all-work. “Maid-of-all-fingers-and-thumbs, more like,” the housekeeper groused. Peggy Griffin was her name—“Piggy” as I called her in private, on account of her stubby nose and hands like trotters. Piggy didn't take to me, and I didn't take to her. I didn't take to domestic work either for that matter. I suppose it didn't help that my thoughts were usually anywhere else other than the task in hand.

“Dolly Daydream” was the nickname I earned from the maids at Mawdesley Hall. Open windows and doors left ajar are a gift
to a girl with keen ears and a head full of dreams. Music from the gramophone player set my feet itching to dance as I mangled the Monday wash. Snatched fragments of conversations drifted along the corridors as I swept and polished, filling my head with thoughts of the stars of the West End stage, the Ziegfeld Follies, Broadway—all of it a distraction from the dreary routine of work, from war, from my fears of Teddy being called up. I may have lost many things in the years since I first felt those naïve desires, but I held on to my dreams with a stubborn determination worthy of a Lancashire lass. The longing for something more has never left me. I feel it like a fluttering of wings in my heart.

I feel it now, as I shelter from the rain, huddled in the doorway of a watchmaker's shop on the Strand. My attention is drawn to the posters on the passing omnibuses: Tallulah Bankhead, Gertrude Lawrence, Loretta May. The stars whose photographs and first-night notices I cut from newspapers and stick into my scrapbooks; the women I admire from high up in the theater gallery, stamping my feet and shouting my appreciation and wishing I was on the stage with them, dressed in silver chiffon. They call us gallery girls: domestics and shopgirls who buy the cheap tickets and faithfully follow our favorite stars with something like a hysteria. We long for the glamorous life of the chorus girls and principal actresses; for a life that offers more than petticoats to mend and bootlaces to iron and steps to scrub. But I don't just want to escape a life of drudgery. I want to soar. So I care for this restless fluttering in my heart as if it were a bird with a broken wing, in the hope that it will one day heal and fly.

I jump at the sound of a sharp rap on the window beside me. I turn around to see a hard-featured gentleman scowling at me from inside the shop, mean-looking eyes glowering behind black-rimmed spectacles. He says something I can't hear and flaps his
hands, shooing me away as if I were a dog salivating outside the butcher's shop. I stick my tongue out at him and leave the doorway, hurrying along, hopping over puddles, my toes drowning like unwanted kittens inside my sodden stockings.

I pass bicycle shops and tobacconists, wine merchants, drapers and milliners, the rain falling in great curtains around me as I catch my reflection in the shop windows. Straggly curls hang limply beneath my cloche, all my efforts with curling irons and spirit lamps ruined by the rain. My new cotton stockings are splashed with dirt and sag at my ankles like folds of pastry, the rubber bands I've used as makeshift garter rolls clearly not up to the job. My borrowed coat is two sizes too big. My thirdhand shoes squeak an apology for their shabby existence with every step. Piggy Griffin was right. I am an unpunctual untidy girl. A girl who will never get on in life.

I dodge newspaper vendors and sidestep a huddle of gentlemen in bowler hats as tramcars and motorcars rattle along the road beside me, clanging their bells and tooting their horns. Cries of the street sellers and the pounding hooves of a dray horse add to the jumble of noise. My stomach tumbles like a butter churn, excited and terrified by the prospect of my new position as a maid at The Savoy hotel.

The Savoy. I like the sound of it.

With my head bent down against the slanting rain, I take the final turn down Carting Lane, where I collide spectacularly with a gentleman hurrying in the opposite direction. I stagger backward, dropping my travel bag as he takes a dramatic tumble to the ground. It reminds me of a scene from a Buster Keaton picture. I clap my hand over my mouth to stop myself laughing.

“I'm so sorry! Are you all right?” I raise my voice above the noise of the rain and the hiss of motorcar tires through puddles. “My fault. I wasn't looking where I was going.”

Dozens of sheets of paper are scattered around him, plastered to the sodden street like a child's hopscotch markings. He attempts to stand up, slipping and sliding on the wet paving stones. I offer my hand and an arm for him to balance on. He grasps hold of both and I pull him upright. He is surprisingly tall when he's vertical. And handsome. Rusted stubble peppers his chin. His lips are crowned with a slim sandy mustache, a shade lighter than his russet hair; the color of fox fur. I really want to touch it, and clench my fists to make sure I don't.

“Are you hurt?” I ask, bending down to pick up his pages.

“I don't think so.” He shakes water from his coat like a dog just out of the sea and stoops to join me, scrabbling at the edges of the papers stuck to the pavement. “Feel like a damned fool, though. Are
you
hurt? That was quite a collision!” He speaks like the man from the Pathé newsreels at the picture palace, all lah-de-dah and lovely.

I check myself over. “I've a ladder in my stocking, but nothing that a needle and thread won't fix. At least I managed to stay on my feet. Should've been looking where I was going.”

“Me too. It was completely unavoidable.” He looks at me, the hint of a smile dancing at the edge of his lips, his eyes deep puddles of gray that match the weather perfectly. “Or perhaps it was necessary.”

We grin at each other like the greatest fools, as if we are stuck and neither of us is capable of pulling away, or doesn't want to. London fades into the background as the rain becomes a gentle hush and the cries of the street vendors blend into a waltz in three-four time. For a perfect rain-soaked moment there is nothing to do, nowhere to be, nobody to worry about. Just the melody of a rainy London afternoon, and this stranger. I catch my reflection in his eyes. It is like looking into my future.

A ribbon of rainwater slips off the edge of the peppermint-striped awning of the florist's shop beside us, pooling in the crown of his hat. Grabbing the last of the papers, he ducks beneath the awning and the moment drifts away from us like a child's lost balloon and all I can do is watch it disappear over the rooftops. I join him beneath the awning as he pats at his elbows with a white handkerchief and inspects a small tear in the knee of his trousers.

“Damned new shoes,” he mutters. “Treacherous in weather like this.”

His shoes are smart two-tone navy-and-tan wingtips. I glance at my black lace-ups, hand-me-downs from Clover, as battered and worn as old Mrs. Spencer at the fish shop. I place one foot over the other, self-consciously. “That's why I don't bother with them,” I say. “Old shoes are more reliable. Same with men.”

My Lancashire accent sounds common beside him and I regret giving up the elocution lessons I'd started last year. Couldn't stand the stuck-up woman who taught me. In the end I told her to get knotted with her how-nows and brown cows. Now I can't help feeling I might have been a bit hasty.

I watch as he fusses and fidgets to set himself right, adjusting his coat and replacing his trilby: nut-brown felt with a chocolate-ribbon trim. Ever so smart. Dark shadows beneath his eyes suggest a late night. He smells of whiskey and cigarettes, brilliantine and rain. I can't take my eyes off him.

“If you don't mind me saying, you look knackered.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Are you always this complimentary to strangers?” That smile again, tugging at the edge of his mouth as if pulled by an invisible string. “It was a late night, if you must know.”

“Hope she was worth it.”

He laughs. “Well, aren't you the little comedienne! I needed some amusement today. Thank you.”

As I hand him the sodden pages that I've rescued from the pavement, I notice the lines of musical notes. “Do you play?”

“Yes.” He takes a page from me. “I write it actually.”

“A composer? Blimey! Blues or jazz?”

“Blues, mainly.”

“Oh.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“Prefer jazz.”

“Doesn't everybody?”

I hand him another page. “Is it any good then, your music?”

He looks a little embarrassed. “I'm afraid not. Not at the moment, anyway.”

“That's a shame. I love music. The good type, that is. Especially jazz.”

He smiles again. “Then perhaps I should write some.”

“Perhaps you should.”

And here we are again, grinning at each other. There is something about this fox-haired stranger that makes me smile all the way from my sodden toes to the top of my cloche. Nobody has made me feel like this since I was eight years old and first met Teddy Cooper. I didn't think anybody would ever make me feel that way again. Part of me has always hoped nobody ever would.

“And what is it you do?” he asks. “Other than knock unsuspecting gentlemen down in the street?”

I hate telling people my job. My best friend, Clover, pretends she's a shopgirl or a clerk if anybody asks. “Nobody wants to marry a domestic,” she says. “Best to tell a white lie if you're ever going to find a husband.” I want to tell him I'm a chorus girl, or an actress in revue at the Pavilion. I want to tell him I'm
somebody
, but those gray eyes demand the truth.

“I'm just a maid,” I say, as Big Ben strikes the hour.

“
Just
a maid?”

“Yes. For now. I start a new position today. At The Savoy.” The chimes are a reminder. “Now, actually.”

“A maid with ambition. A rare and wonderful thing.” A grin spreads across his face as he chuckles to himself. I'm not sure whether he is teasing me. “Well, I mustn't keep you.” He rolls the damp papers up and bundles them under his arm like a bathing towel. “Perry,” he says, offering his hand. “Perry Clements. Delighted to meet you.”

His hand is warm against the fabric of my glove. The sensation makes the skin prickle on my palm. “Perry? That's an unusual name.”

“Short for Peregrine. Frightful, isn't it?”

“I think it's rather lovely.” I think
you
are rather lovely. “Dorothy Lane,” I say. “Dolly, for short. Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Clements.” I gesture to the paper bathing towel under his arm. “I hope it's not completely ruined.”

“You've done me a favor, to be honest, Miss Lane. Possibly the most dismal piece I've ever written.”

And then he does something extraordinary and shoves the papers into a litter bin beside me, as casually as if they were the empty wrappings of a fish supper.

I gasp. “You can't do that!”

“Why not?”

“Well. Because. You just can't!”

“But apparently I just did. That's the fascinating thing about life, Miss Lane. All its wonderful unpredictability.” He slides his hands into his coat pockets and turns to walk away. “It was terribly nice to meet you.” He is shouting above the din of traffic and rain. “You're really quite charming. Good luck with the new position. I'm sure you'll be marvelous!”

I watch as he runs tentatively down the street, slipping and skidding as he goes. I notice that he carries a limp and hope it is an old war wound and not the result of our collision. He tips his hat as he jumps onto the back of an omnibus and I wave back. It feels more like an enthusiastic hello to an old friend than a polite good-bye to a stranger.

When he is completely out of sight I grab the bundle of papers from the litter bin. I'm not sure why, but it feels like the right thing to do. Something about these sodden pages speaks to me of adventure and, as Teddy said when we watched the first group of men head off to France, you should never ignore adventure when it comes knocking. Little did any of us know that the experience of war would be far from the great adventure they imagined as they waved their farewells.

Pushing the papers into my coat pocket, I run on down Carting Lane, being careful not to slip on the cobbles that slope steadily down toward the Embankment and the river. It is pleasantly quiet after the chaos of the Strand, even with the steady stream of delivery vans and carts that rumble past. I head for the service entrance, sheltered by an archway, and turn to walk down a flight of steep steps that lead down to a black door. A maid is stooped over, rubbing a great lump of hearthstone against the middle step. It seems to me a fool's errand with the rain spilling down and dirty boots and shoes everywhere, but as I well know, it is not a maid's place to question the sense of the chores she is given.

She looks up and wipes her hands on her sacking-cloth apron. “Beg pardon, miss.”

I smile at her. “Don't let me stop you.”

Her cheeks are flushed from her efforts. She is young. Probably in her first position. I was that girl not so long ago, scrubbing steps, polishing awkward brass door handles, hefting heavy
buckets of coal, constantly terrified to put a foot wrong in case the housekeeper or the mistress gave me my marching orders. The girl looks blankly at me and drags her pail noisily to one side so that I can pass. I go on tiptoe so as not to spoil her work.