The Girl from the Savoy (4 page)

Her belief in me has only ever been matched by Teddy. He always said I would become someone special, that the little girl who twirled and danced her way through childhood when she should have been sitting still or feeding the chickens would find greater things. It was Teddy who found
The Adventure Book for Girls
in the laneway behind the house all those years ago when we were just children. “It's yours now, Dolly,” he said, brushing the mud off the cover with his elbow and pressing the book into my hands. “Finders keepers.” And then he ran off to chase a butterfly. Teddy was always chasing butterflies. He never kept them though. Said he just liked to admire them close up before he let them go.

The Adventure Book for Girls
was heavy, filled with 236 pages of stories, but it was the inscription inside that intrigued me the most:
Wonderful adventures await for those who dare to find them. With much love, Auntie Gert.
Those words crept into my heart and since nobody knew who the book belonged to, or who Auntie Gert was, I kept it. My sisters squabbled about it, saying it wasn't fair. My taunting response of “Finders keepers, losers weepers” only made things worse. Mam eventually put the book out of reach on top of the grandfather clock and told us it would stay there until we could learn to be nice to one another.

It was a week before that book came down.

My sisters soon lost interest, but I read every page, a dozen times at least. As time passed, the book was discarded by all of us in favor of other things—bicycles and boys mostly. The last time I saw it, it was being used to balance out a wobbly leg at the kitchen table, but I've never forgotten those adventure stories, nor Auntie Gert's words. They whisper to me still, blowing my dreams onward despite everything that has happened, and everyone I have loved and lost in the years between.

Shivering against the cloying damp of my clothes, which now
feel horrible against my skin, I step out of my shoes and strip down to my underwear, draping my brown serge dress, slip, and stockings over a wooden clotheshorse that stands in front of the fire. They hang there like a wilted version of myself in shades of tea and stout as I place my shoes on the hearth, despairing at the dull practicality of them. More than any cap or apron, I've always felt it is a maid's shoes that really distinguishes “Them” from “Us.” I stand in front of the fire, first to the front, then to the back, just like I did as a young girl standing beside my two sisters, our reedy bodies convulsing as we tried to get warm after the weekly bath. I smile at the memory. What would they say if they could see me now, standing half naked in The Savoy hotel in London? I squeeze my eyes shut and say a silent prayer to them.

When I'm a little warmer I take the photograph from my coat pocket and set it on the hearth to dry. “We made it,” I whisper, resting my fingers lightly on the image of his face, my heart contracting and expanding in great waves at the thought of him. Beside the photograph and my shoes, I lay out the pages of music, wishing I could understand the black dots and squiggles dancing across the lines. The heat from the fire lifts the faintest scent of him from the paper: whiskey and cigarettes.

Perry Clements. Peregrine Clements. Mr. Clements.

The name skips through my mind as I picture him staggering to his feet; fox-fur hair, gray puddles for eyes. The thought of our brief encounter sends goose bumps running over my skin and makes me smile, and yet at the same time I am saddened to know that it is someone other than Teddy who occupies my thoughts and sets my heart racing.

I always knew the day would come.

I always knew it would be too soon.

I have to leave, Teddy. For reasons I can't explain, I have to go
away. I will never stop loving you, and if only things were different there is nowhere I would rather be than by your side.

My thoughts are disturbed as the bedroom door flies open and three maids come tumbling in. I shriek and run to my bed, pulling off the counterpane and wrapping it around my shoulders to cover myself. I recognize Sissy from the maids' room. She takes one look at me and bursts out laughing.

“I'd get dressed if I were you,” she says, throwing herself down onto the bed beside mine and putting on a snooty accent. “This isn't one of
those
hotels.
This
,
darling, is The Savoy!”

“Hope is a dangerous thing, darling. It is usually followed by disappointment and too much gin.”

T
he soothing lilt of the piano drifts around the Winter Garden at Claridge's. With a pleasing jazz medley the pianist captivates us all, the music mingling with polite chatter and the jangle of silver teaspoons against fine china cups. The sounds of afternoon tea. The sounds of luxury.

I sit alone at my usual table for two, my brother being habitually late. One would think I would be used to his tardiness by now, but I find it irksome and unnecessary. Seated behind a huge date palm, I at least have a little privacy while I wait. A little, but not too much. The spaces between the foliage afford the guests an occasional glimpse, sending whispered speculations racing across the crisp white tablecloths. “Is it her?” “I thought she was in Paris.” “Yes, I'm certain it's her.”

I smile. Let them whisper and wonder. It is, after all, part of the performance.

I sip my cup of Earl Grey as I watch the raindrops slip down the windowpanes. Mother always insists that tea tastes better when it rains, something to do with precipitation and dampness bringing out the flavor in the leaves. She is full of such tedious nonsense. It
is one of the reasons I visit her as infrequently as possible. The fact that she can barely stand to be in the same room as me being another. In any event, despite the inclement weather, my tea tastes peculiar, and there is nothing more unsettling than peculiar-tasting tea, particularly at Claridge's.

I sniff the milk jug as discreetly as it is possible for one to sniff a milk jug in public. It has definitely turned. Mother would be appalled by the very fact that I take milk in Earl Grey at all. I look around for a waiter but think better of it. I don't like to make a fuss. Not at Claridge's. I'm awfully fond of Claridge's, and besides I can't summon the enthusiasm to make a proper fuss about anything recently. I decide to forgive this small oversight, assign the bad taste to too many gin cocktails last night, and reserve my annoyance for my wretched brother.

I'm quite aware that Peregrine tolerates our ritual of afternoon tea simply to humor me. He has complained about it since we first started meeting here when he was a jaded young lawyer and I was a bored society debutante. He thinks it unfair that I only invite him to tea and not our older brother, Aubrey, but as I remind him frequently Aubrey is too busy and too married and too full of his own self-importance to contemplate tea with his little sister and brother. We are better off without him.

“But must we take afternoon tea
every
Wednesday, Etta?”

“Yes, Perry. We must.”

“Might I ask why?”

“Because afternoon tea is predictable and charming—qualities that should be preserved wherever possible. Because it is one of the few things in my life that I can do without a chaperone, and because if we stop meeting for afternoon tea, who knows what we will stop doing next. Eventually we'll stop seeing each other altogether. We'll become distant strangers, like Aubrey, communi
cating only through a few thoughtless lines scribbled on tasteless Christmas cards. One day we'll realize that we miss afternoon tea on a Wednesday terribly, but it will be too late, because one—or both of us—will be dead.”

Perry laughed and called me melodramatic, but he kept showing up nevertheless. In the end it wasn't his lack of enthusiasm that brought an end to our little arrangement, it was war.

Overnight, the carefree privileged life we knew came crashing to a halt as a new and terrifying existence settled upon us all like a suffocating fog. My brothers went to France to serve as officers on the Western Front. I enrolled as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse. Simple pleasures such as afternoon tea became a distant memory until the war ended and my brothers returned. We were all changed irrevocably by the long years between. Now I cling to Perry and afternoon tea at Claridge's like a life raft, holding on with grim determination, even if his habitual tardiness irritates me immensely and gives me a daylong headache.

“Would you care for another pot of Earl Grey while you wait, Miss May?”

I glance up at the waiter. A handsome young chap. All taut-skinned and vibrant-eyed. The treasures of youth. “I suppose another can't do any harm.”

“No, miss. Not on such a dreadful day. And another slice of Battenberg, perhaps?”

I nod. Even the waiters at Claridge's know my preferences and tastes. It makes life extraordinarily dull at times. “And a fresh jug of milk,” I add.

“Very well, Miss May.”

He moves with the precision of a principal ballet dancer, pirouetting behind the great ferns and Oriental screens that segment the room into private nooks and crannies. I almost call after him, tell
him I've changed my mind and to bring Darjeeling and Madeira cake instead, but I don't. Sometimes it is simpler to keep things as they are.

The pianist plays ragtime as the rain thrums in time against the window. All is a colorless gray smudge outside, weather for reading a racy novel, or for playing backgammon by the fire if one isn't easily enthralled by the notion of illicit love affairs. Bored and restless, I drape my arm casually over the back of the chair beside me, the creamy white of my skin visible where my sleeve rides up over my wrist. A gentleman at the table to my right can't take his eyes off me. I stretch out a little farther, languishing like a cat. I am still beautiful on the outside, despite the cracks that are appearing beneath the surface.

The waiter returns and pours the tea as I shuffle in my chair, fussing with the pleats and folds in my skirt, checking my reflection in the silver teapot: perfect golden waves, crimson lips, penciled eyebrows over hooded eyes, green paste earrings that swing pleasingly as I tilt my head from side to side to catch the best of the light from the chandeliers. Claridge's has always had flattering light. It is one of the reasons I insist on coming here.

I check my watch. Where the devil can Peregrine have got to?

I fiddle with the menu card, tapping it against the edge of the rose-patterned saucer. Lines of script whirl through my mind like circus acrobats as carefully choreographed steps play out on my feet beneath the linen tablecloth. I cannot sit still. My nerves rattle like the bracelets that knock together on my arm.

It is always the same. Always at three o'clock on the afternoon before opening night when the butterflies start dancing and the jitters set in. Tomorrow is opening night of a new musical comedy at the Shaftesbury, a full-length piece, the female lead written especially for me. The Fleet Street hacks and society-magazine gossip
columnists are waiting for me to fail, desperate to type their sniping first-night notices:
Miss May's acting talents are obviously limited to revue and the lighter productions that made her a star
.
She would be well advised to leave the more challenging roles to accomplished actresses, such as the wonderful Diana Manners and the incomparable Alice Delysia.
I feel nauseous at the thought.

The new production,
HOLD TIGHT!,
is a huge personal and professional risk. I don't know how I ever let Charles Cochran talk me into it. Presumably it had a lot to do with the wonderful Parisian dresses he promised, and the large volume of champagne we drank on the night the contracts were signed—not to mention the fact that I cannot deny darling Cockie anything. But it isn't just opening night that has my nerves on edge. There are other matters troubling me, matters far more important than forgotten lines and missed cues. Matters that I do not wish to dwell on.

My only small comfort is in knowing that I'm not the only one feeling anxious today. It is early in the autumn season. New productions open nightly across the city and everyone in the business is skittish. Final dress rehearsals are grueling fourteen-hour-long marathons. Tempers and nerves are as frayed as the hems on unfinished costumes. The precariously balanced reputations of writers, composers, producers, actors, and actresses are all at stake. Everybody wants
their
show,
their
leading lady, to be the big sensation. For established stars such as myself, there is the added threat of the new girls—ambitious beautiful young things who will inevitably emerge from the chorus to become the darling of the season. That dreadful Tallulah Bankhead has already gone some way to shaking things up with Cockie engaging her in the lead role of
The Dancers
. The gallery girls find everything about her so exotic: her name, her beauty, her quick wit and overt sexuality. Under the glare of such bright young things, is it any wonder I feel dull and
worn? It wasn't so long ago when ambition and beauty were synonymous with the name Loretta May, when I wore my carefree attitude as easily as my Vionnet dresses. I was the darling of the set, wild and free, outdazzling the diamonds at my neck. But things move quickly in this business. What shines today glares horribly tomorrow. We all lose our luster in the end.

As the pianist plays “Parisian Pierrot,” a popular number from André Charlot's new revue
London Calling!,
I spot Perry crossing the road. I urge the pianist to play faster and finish the piece. Perry is fragile enough without hearing the most popular number of the season so far, written by one of his friends. While Perry struggles to write anything at all, Noël Coward could write an address on an envelope and it would be a hit. Thankfully the final chords fade as he is shown to our table, limping toward me like a shot hare, apologizing all the way. He is as sodden as a bath sponge and has a tear in the knee of his trousers. Disapproving stares follow him.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry.” He leans forward to kiss me, his stubble scratching my skin. He smells of Scotch and cigarettes. I tell him to sit down. Quickly.

“You're an absolute fright, Perry Clements. You look like a stray dog that has been out all night. Where on earth have you been to get into such a state?”

“In the rain mostly. I bumped into someone near The Savoy. Quite literally. She sent me skittering across the pavement like a newborn foal.”

“Anyone interesting?” I ask.

“No. Just some girl.” He takes a tin of Gold Flake from his breast pocket, lights a cigarette, and takes a couple of long, satisfying drags. “Damned nuisance really. And then the omnibus got a flat, so I decided to walk the rest of the way. Anyway, I'm here now, and while I know you're desperate to lecture me on appearance and
send me straight off to Jermyn Street for some smart new clothes, I'd rather like it if we didn't squabble. Not today. I have an outrageous headache.”

“Scotch?”

“And absinthe. Rotten stuff. Don't know why anybody drinks it.”

“Because the Green Fairy is wicked, and everybody else does. I have no sympathy for you, darling. None whatsoever.”

Much as I'd like to, I can't be cross with him. I don't have the energy. I take a Turkish cigarette from my case and lean forward for a light, studying Perry through the circles of smoke I blow so expertly. He isn't unpleasant to look at. A little shoddy around the edges perhaps, but nothing that couldn't be improved with a little more care. I'm sure he could find a perfectly decent wife if he tried a little harder. There are plenty of young girls in need of a husband, after all. The divine Bea Balfour, for one. But that is a romance I fear I will never see flourish, despite my best efforts to get the two of them to realize they are perfectly matched and to get on with it.

“So who was this girl anyway?” I ask.

“Hmm? Which girl?” Perry inspects the delicate finger sandwiches and miniature cakes on the stand, lifting each one up as though it were a specimen in the British Museum. He takes a bite from a strawberry tart, curls his lip, and replaces it. I smack the back of his hand.

“The girl you bumped into. Who was she? Anyone we know?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because you paused after you mentioned her. I know you too well, darling. Whoever it was left a mark on you as clear as that unsightly tear in your trouser knee.”

He smiles. “You've been reading Agatha Christie novels again, haven't you? We'll make a detective of you yet!” I glare at him. I am in no mood for jokes. “Oh, all right. She's a maid. Not the
daughter of an earl, or a beautiful American heiress. I know what you're thinking and she was most definitely not marriage material. Pretty young thing, though. Eyes to make you wonder. She made me laugh, that's all.”

“Goodness! Well, I hope you invited her to dinner. Perhaps she could make you laugh more often and we could all be cheered up.”

He pours milk into his tea. “I'm not that bad. Am I?”

“Yes, you are. Honestly, darling, sometimes it's like spending time with a dead trout. And you used to be such tremendous fun.” I stop myself from saying
before the war,
and take a sip of my tea. The milk is fresher, and the tea tastes better. Perhaps Mother is right about the rain.

Perry relents a little. “Well, perhaps I have been more serious of late. But the way the others carry on is ridiculous. Fancy-dress parties and all-night treasure hunts. Did you see the photographs of them dancing in the fountains in Trafalgar Square? Were you there?”

I laugh. “Sadly not. It looked like terrific fun, though. The society columnists can't get enough of them. Bright Young People, they're calling them. You shouldn't be so serious, darling. They're just shaking off the past. Living. You do remember what
that
feels like?”

“Running around like bored children, more like. Did you hear they had one of the clues baked into a loaf of bread in the Hovis factory?”

“I did. And they had to take one of Miss Bankhead's shoes from her dressing room in a scavenger hunt last month. Of course, she adores the attention. I suppose I'd be part of it if I were ten years younger. When a woman reaches her thirties it seems that she can't be referred to as a ‘young' anything, bright or otherwise.”