The Girl from the Savoy (24 page)

He speaks first. “It is quite beautiful, don't you think?”

I nod, afraid that if I speak I will burst into tears. I want to run to Perry's apartment and tell him how lovely it is and how beautifully Mr. Somers played it and how silly it was of him to throw it away like that.

Mr. Somers hands the pages back to me. “Do you know this P. Clements chap? He has quite a talent.”

“I'm getting to know him.”

“When you next see him, tell him I know a producer looking for a song just like this for a new production.”

“Really? Oh, yes. I'll tell him. And thank you, Mr. Somers.”

I take the pages from him and turn to leave.

“And, miss.”

“Yes.”

“You might also ask him who the piece was written for.”

“Oh, I don't think it was written
for
anyone. He seemed very unattached to it.”

He laughs and stands up, closing the lid of the piano gently over the keys. “But of course it was written for someone. Every piece of music is written for someone: a lover, a friend, a friend you wish was a lover. Ask him. Whoever he was writing this for, he needs to write for them again. There is life and loss in this music. Real life. Real loss.”

I tell him I will ask and step back behind the curtain. I rush down the corridors and staff stairways to continue my rounds before anyone sees me.

The melody follows me around the hotel for the rest of the day, playing over and over in my mind, and all I can think about is how delighted Perry will be when I tell him.

Yet something nags at me. Who
did
he write it for?

“It's only by trying and failing, by losing something we really love, that we discover how much we want it.”

T
he following Sunday, I rush to the Strand Theatre to give Perry the good news. Mrs. Ambrose beams at me from behind her little window at the ticket office.

“Back again, Miss Dorothy?”

“Yes. Back again.”

She winks and chuckles to herself, setting her chins dancing. “Glad to see it. Go on up. He's in.”

I bound up the three flights of stairs and stop outside flat three, where I press my ear to the door and listen to the now familiar sound of piano keys, the same chord over and over, the lid being slammed shut, the keys reverberating in protest. My hand is raised to knock, but I hesitate. I get the feeling I've come at a bad time.

I jump backward as the door opens. Perry's hand flies to his chest. “Goodness, Miss Lane! You gave me a fright. I'd begun to think you weren't coming today.”

“Sorry. I got delayed.” Our eyes meet. I'm a giddy child beneath his gaze. “You're obviously heading out. I'll go.”

He reaches out, touches the sleeve of my coat. “Don't go. Please. I was only leaving because you weren't here.”

His words dance in the space between us, twisting and turning with the suggestion of so much more. Color rushes to my cheeks as I glance down at my shoes. I try to suppress a smile.

“Well, I'm here now.”

“Yes. Yes, you are.”

He stands to one side and holds the door open. I step into the small apartment and just as I did the first time I came here, I feel instantly at home.

Perry closes the door behind me and dashes about, picking up cushions, pushing teacups and tumblers to one end of a table, and throwing open the curtains. “You must excuse the mess. Mrs. Ambrose hasn't been in today. Take a seat.” He pushes a pile of sheet music off the end of the battered velvet couch. I perch on the edge as he stands in front of the fireplace, hands on hips, as awkward as a schoolboy. “Tea?”

“If you're making some.”

While he clatters about in the small kitchenette, I glance around the room. I'd expected something much grander after seeing his sister's apartment, but Perry's little flat above the theater isn't much bigger than my sleeping quarters at the hotel. It is chaotic and eccentric. Candle wax spills over the edge of empty bottles of whiskey and absinthe. Ashtrays overflow with spent cigarettes. Discarded shoes loiter beneath chair legs. Scrunched-up balls of paper form a drift around the wastepaper bin. A teetering pile of novels leans against the fireplace and a teetering pile of music books rests against the sofa. Rugs are scattered about the floor and draped over chairs. A bizarre collection of art hangs on the wall and small ornaments sit on any available space on the shelves and mantelpiece. The room smells of Scotch and cigarettes, just like his pages of music when I'd placed them on the hearth tiles to dry.

O'Hara's veins would pop out of her neck if she could see this place, but I find something quite lovely about the chaos. It is full of character. Full of a life. In some ways, it makes the suites at The Savoy seem rather bland.

Eventually, Perry emerges with a tea tray, setting it down on a nest of tables beside me. Two generous slices of cherry cake are piled on a plate decorated with roses. The teacup is cracked and the pot dribbles when he pours. It reminds me of Mam's teapot at home, how she'd fussed and apologized as it dribbled over Teddy's trousers the first time he visited.
“It's the flaws that give things character, Mrs. Lane. Everyone talks about the teapot that dribbles. Nobody talks about the teapot that pours perfectly. If I were a teapot, I know which I'd rather be.
”

I take a bite of cherry cake. “It's very good,” I mumble, dropping crumbs into my lap.

“Mrs. Ambrose makes it. Secret recipe. Says she'll take it to her grave just to annoy her sisters.”

He sits down and stands up again, pacing about the room, unable to sit still. He's always the same. I found it distracting at first. Now I find it quite charming.

“I have a confession to make,” I say. Even the words make me blush. I shuffle in my seat.

He sits in the seat at the large bay window. “Oh?”

“Do you remember the first time we met, when we bumped into each other in the rain?”

“Yes. You knocked me down.”

I sigh. “I helped you up.”

He smiles. “Of course. How could I forget?”

“Do you remember putting your pages of music into a litter bin?”

“Ah. Yes. Miserable piece of rot.”

“Well, that's the thing. I took those pages out of the bin. I kept them.”

“You did what? Why on earth would you do that?”

“I'm not sure. It just seemed such a shame to throw them away. Anyway, that doesn't matter now. What I wanted to tell you is that I asked somebody to play the music.”

Now he's intrigued. He walks toward the fire and sits in his favorite threadbare old chair. “Who?”

“Debroy Somers. He's the pianist and leader of the hotel band.”

“Somers? Of the Savoy Orpheans?”

“Yes.”

“I know him. Decent sort of chap.”

“Well, the thing is, he played your music. In the Grand Ballroom.”

“He did?”

“Yes. And he liked it. He liked it very much.”

“Really?”

“Yes. And so did I! I thought it was lovely. Really lovely.”

For a moment neither of us speaks. Perry pokes at the fire as I sip my tea. I hope he isn't cross with me.

He runs his fingers through his hair. “I can't believe you took them out of the litter bin! And that you kept them all this time.”

“Well, I did. Here.” I take the crumpled pages from my purse and pass them to him.

He unfolds them, smooths them out on his lap. “Well, I never. You really did.”

“But that's not all. Mr. Somers said he knows a producer looking for a piece of music just like it. He thinks it could be perfect for a scene the producer has been struggling to find a number for.” Perry stands up and walks to the piano as I speak, setting the crumpled pages onto the music stand. “And he asked if you'd writ
ten any lyrics to accompany the melody. Oh, and he also said that whoever the song was written for, you should write for them again because they clearly bring out the best in you.”

I'm babbling. I take another bite of cherry cake to make myself stop talking.

Perry says nothing. He seems distracted.

“Would you play it for me?” I ask.

He hesitates for a moment before settling himself at the stool. “It would be my pleasure, Miss Lane.”

He plays beautifully. The song sounds even better in his tiny little apartment than it did in the splendor of The Savoy ballroom. As he plays, I walk to the window. I can see Waterloo Bridge and the OXO Tower. I watch people and clouds scurry past.

When he finishes I turn around and clap. “See! It's lovely.”

“I suppose it's not bad. Not as bad as I seem to remember, anyhow.”

He joins me at the window, standing so close that our shoulders almost touch. My heart quickens as we stare at the moody sky together. “What do you see when you look at the clouds, Mr. Clements?”

He thinks for a moment. He's getting used to my strange questions. “Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“You won't laugh?”

“I won't laugh.”

“I see a piano.”

I laugh. “A piano?”

“Yes. It's always music with me. I can't help it. I see sharps and flats. I see unwritten music, notes and melodies. Have you ever seen the starlings gathering on the telegraph wires on a summer's evening?”

“Can't say I've noticed them.”

“Well, I don't see starlings. I see a stave of music, each bird a note for me to play.” He blows warm breaths onto the windowpanes and draws musical notes with his fingertip. “Sharps. Flats. Crotchets. Minims. My head is full of music when I'm standing here looking at the sky. But when I settle at the stool and try to write, to play, I feel suffocated by expectation. The notes disappear. They drift away like clouds and I can never find them again.” He rests his forehead against the glass. “The others make it seem so easy: Coward and Berlin and Novello. They produce hit after hit and all the while here I am, scratching away with nothing to show for my work. Why is it so hard, Miss Lane?” He turns to look at me. “Why?”

“Because that's when we really learn, isn't it? When things are difficult. When it's a struggle and we're not sure. That's when we find out whether we care at all.” I blow a breath onto the window and draw a butterfly with my fingertip. “It's only by trying and failing, by losing something we really love, that we discover how much we want it.”

The bells across the city chime the half hour. We stand, side by side, watching our childish scribbles fade on the glass.

“Thank you, Miss Lane.”

“For what.”

“For reminding me.” He sits down in the window seat. I sit beside him. “During the war I was always waiting for tomorrow or thinking about yesterday. I was always somewhere in my future or pining for my past. It's hard to shake that off. Loretta says I need to live for the moment. She says I shouldn't spend the rest of my life waiting for my life to start. Does that make any sense to you?”

He raises his head to look at me and for a moment, everything else fades away. For a few seconds, a minute, an hour—who knows
how long we sit there?—there is no Teddy, no war, no Edward, no shattered dreams. Just the two of us and a moment we can either grasp hold of or allow to pass us by.

I see a flicker in his eyes. A hesitation.

The vibration of an underground train sets the glass rattling in the windowpanes.

He stands up and the moment is gone. Like a fairground balloon tugged easily from a distracted hand, it drifts away to some distant place.

We didn't hold tight.

We didn't hold on.

Perhaps we didn't want it badly enough.

O
ver supper that evening, I'm interrogated by Sissy.

“So, where did you take yourself off to today?” she asks. “You missed a great picture at the Alhambra. Louise Brooks was fabulous in it.”

I stir my cocoa, take a sip, and put the cup down onto the saucer. “I was out.”

Sissy sighs and leans back in her chair. “Well now, that's never going to do, is it?
Where
were you out exactly?”

“Can't a girl do some things in private?”

“No.” Sissy folds her arms and stares at me, waiting for an answer. “No, she can't. Not if she sleeps in a bed beside mine and shares my makeup.”

I'm too weary to keep my secrets any longer, and the look in Sissy's eyes tells me she won't give in until I tell her. “All right. I went to meet a composer, if you must know.”

“A composer?”

“Yes. It's a long story. A very long story.” I tell her everything. I tell her about the notice in
The
Stage
and my abandonment in the
tearooms and my meeting with Loretta May and Mr. Clements's apartment and the music that I'd kept beneath my pillow. She sits and listens quietly, completely engrossed in my life over the past few months.

“So, what does he want you to do?” she asks. “What exactly does a muse do?”

“He doesn't really want me to do anything. He just wants me to keep him company. Talk. Tell him about my day.”

“That's it?”

“Yes. That's it.”

“And what do you get in return?”

“That's the best part. Miss May is going to help me with dance lessons and etiquette. You know, how to hold myself properly, and walk like a lady, and how to dine in fancy restaurants and what not.”

“Ooo, lah-di-dah.” Sissy laughs and sips her tea. “And what good is that going to do
?
I mean, it all sounds very nice, but what's the point?”

“The point is to make something of myself. Don't you want that, Sissy?” I look around the Maids' Hall, at the rows and rows of tables and chairs, exhausted girls hunched over their supper. “Don't you want more than this? Even if I spend the rest of my life here, at least I'll know I tried to improve myself, that I didn't just sit back and accept it. That I tried to walk in different shoes.”

She shrugs. She's so like Clover. I know she doesn't really understand.

“I like it here, Sissy, and I care for you and Gladys like my own sisters, but I want more. Working here, seeing how the other half live, it's like having a taste of the most delicious cake and wanting a whole slice and then the whole bloody thing. Maybe Mr. Clements can help me taste a slice of the good life. That's not such a bad thing to want, is it?”

Sissy looks at me and sighs. “No, Dolly. I suppose it isn't. But be careful. Sometimes our eyes are bigger than our bellies. Just don't get too greedy.”

O
nce in bed, I can't settle. I'm restless with hope and confused by my feelings for Perry. One minute I think of him like a brother; the next I find my heart racing as he stands beside me. It is hard to imagine myself loving someone else when I had always assumed it would be Teddy my heart galloped for.

I toss and turn and clutch little Edward's photograph beneath the bedcovers as I listen to the distant strains of Mr. Somers's band. My feet twitch and dance beneath the covers until I can't bear it any longer. I jump out of bed and push the window up. Mildred and Gladys are fast asleep, but Sissy is still awake.

“What are you doing?” she hisses.

“Listen,” I whisper. “Can you hear it?”

She clambers from her bed and sticks her head out into the black night. The thump of jazz dances through the air.

“It's all I think about, Sissy,” I whisper. “Music and dancing. If only we had a gramophone player in here.” We lean out farther as the pace of the music hots up. “When was the last time you danced?” I ask.