by Maggie Ford
“Sorry, my sweet,” he whispered as though she were asleep still. “Did I disturb you?”
“What’s the time?”
“Around one o’clock.”
She rolled over and opened her eyes to look at him. “I do wish you wouldn’t stay at those parties so late. I’ve been waiting such a long time for you to come up.”
A small twinge of irritation took hold of him. “I can’t just leave, my dear. I need to be seen. Customers look for me. It’s part of the business.”
“Geoffrey ought to be doing much more,” she complained. “He leaves so much of it to you most of the time.”
“Yes, I know.” He tried not to make his tone sharp, but reference to Geoffrey skiving off always made him so. “But he’s away.”
She sat up slowly, sleepily. “Yes… again. It would be so nice if we could get away occasionally. He and Mary are always off somewhere.”
Henry gave a brittle laugh as he struggled out of his evening jacket and undid his bow tie. “Someone has to stay and earn the money.”
“Yes. Well, why always you, darling? I feel so tense left up here all on my own. Why can’t we have a holiday where we could relax?”
Tense. The word hit him. Yes, she was tense, had been from the first day of their marriage. Here in the peace of this apartment she had unwound for a while. Their love life had improved. But just lately tension had crept back into their sexual relationship. Maybe it was his having to keep late nights. Geoffrey would have to pull his weight a little more if this marriage was to succeed. She spoke of missing the country, complained, if mildly, at these late nights he had to spend working. If they could have a little holiday… It came to him that this was what she needed, what they both needed. France, maybe – the Loire Valley would be nice, its gentle rolling vistas with the quiet Loire running softly through it just right for her. Perhaps there she would relax.
* * *
The Loire Valley did more for them both than he had hoped. It was while they were in the Loire Valley that Grace conceived.
“Henry, I think I might be pregnant.” Her face was so filled with brightness, lighting up the dull October midday as though the sun had suddenly broken through, that for a moment he looked at her, stunned. Then, galvanised into action, he dropped the jacket he was putting on and bounded across the room to clasp her to him in joy, swinging her around.
Just as suddenly, realising her delicate condition, he let her feet back down on to the Indian carpet, and held her away from him, his face working with consternation of what harm he might have done her. Grace laughed.
“Darling, I’m not fragile. I’m only having a baby.” Her blue eyes grew dreamy, loving, adoring. “Your baby, my darling. Our baby.”
His heart beating heavily and rapidly with the joy of her news, he felt a little sick, but it wasn’t unpleasant. There were little knots in his stomach but they too were not uncomfortable. He had a wild impulse to rush down to the restaurant, which at lunchtime would be overflowing with customers, and scare the life out of everyone by bellowing that he was to be a father.
He did go down, but with a little more decorum, after he and Grace had broken open a bottle of champagne which he had ordered be brought up. He announced the news to the Milton sisters, Dilys and Dolly, the beautiful singing twins who, along with having voices like angels on stage, had the gift of the gab off it. Two pairs of light grey eyes sparkled beneath the plucked eyebrows and deep cloche hats. Like wildfire, his news went from table to table. Before he knew it he was standing at one end of the restaurant, the entire staff on duty, from the maitre d’ to the youngest commis, the chef de cuisine to humblest scullery boy, seeming to come out of the woodwork to gather in a half-circle behind him, the whole restaurant on its feet, wine glasses raised in his direction, while the walls and mirrors echoed to the clink of cutlery against crockery in salute, finally in one voice singing, “For he’s a jolly good fellow…”
Henry felt there could never be a man more proud than he at that moment. Though that wasn’t quite correct. When the baby arrived next May he’d be even prouder. No one and nothing would be able to touch him. He’d make Letts the most visited, the most talked about, the most envied place in London – the place to be and be seen at. He would seriously consider that second restaurant, or else make this one larger. Which of the two he wasn’t sure, but one thing was certain; his child, his son, would have the very best that money could afford and that meant enlarging the business. Meantime he would be content, put behind him that one thing he had once hankered after, the woman he could not have, and concentrate on quiet, placid Grace, the mother of his child.
This he stubbornly told himself, resolve melting only when Mary put in an appearance. Then he would admonish himself for such immaturity even though acquitting himself with the excuse that probably all men had these weaknesses near a pretty woman.
But there was something of Astarte about Mary, the goddess not only of love but of war. A merest glimpse of her – and he had many, she being his sister-in-law and often here with Geoffrey – would set up conflict in his own breast. Conflict and an aching love.
These same feelings would also surface whenever restaurant matters brought him close to William Goodridge, whom he’d recently promoted from station head waiter to head waiter. William never spoke of Mary, but there was about him a lonely aspect as he went about his work, dedicated to a point of obsession, even desperation, a constant reminder that William had once been Mary’s fiancé. In its way his attitude always got to Henry. If he could learn to conquer his love for her, why couldn’t Goodridge?
“I doubt if I’ll ever marry,” William had recently said quite out of the blue when Henry had come to discuss something or other with him. Exactly what, he couldn’t recall, but Goodridge digging up his bachelor state had reminded him how they both suffered. Were the man to find himself a young woman and get married, then that would perhaps go some way to ending his own discomfort.
“You’re too wrapped up in your work, William,” he’d told him tersely. Henry could predict with certainty that the loyal Goodridge, who apparently had no intention of taking his talents elsewhere, would end up as maitre d’hôtel of this restaurant. Over the years they’d become good friends and he found himself confiding in William far more than in his present manager – a miserable-natured if gifted man, always ready to see the worst side of things whenever Henry consulted him.
He’d have liked to have got rid of his manager but, with no reason to be dissatisfied with his work itself, it wouldn’t have been fair. If and when a second restaurant came into being, William would be a good candidate to manage it. Henry knew one thing, that Geoffrey would hardly welcome such responsibility, happy only to reap the rewards. Yes, William Goodridge would be his first and perfect choice. But he thought it best not to say so just yet.
* * *
Things hadn’t changed, though to everyone else they appeared to have done. This past year Mary had heard from others that she was becoming a pace-setter, but no one knew it stemmed solely from a need to submerge this longing inside her that was all but whittling her away.
Women remarked with ill-concealed envy on her fashionable thinness, men with overt admiration. Yes, she was thin, painfully thin, what everyone admired in a girl, but it was not due to the way she nibbled her food without enjoying it: caviar, hot lobster, crepe suzette, tasteless as plain bread to her. Rather it was due to this awful hollow yearning that daily grew more acute. In feverish need to alleviate it, she coaxed Geoffrey into more and more activity, excitement: holidays in Monte Carlo, Le Touquet, Venice; night-clubs adding to the spice of life, with the danger of police raids not only on the sleazy backstreets of Soho but on fashionable Bond Street; the brittle gaiety of it all – partying with famous names – Tallulah Bankhead, Olga Lynn, the Cole Porters, the Sitwells; seen in Tatler beside such as Lady Mendl, Prince and Princess Jean de Faucigny Lucinge; ever on the move, though Geoffrey hardly needed coaxing, viewing her excessive energy
and vitality with pride.
The reckoning came in the March of 1927, at the house rented by Elsa Maxwell in Berkeley Square, she giving what she called a Baby Party. She and her host of sparkling guests, even to the servants, were dressed in infant gear, from little girl’s frocks and frilly knickers to boys’ short trousers and caps to babies’ diapers, lace bonnets and feeding bottles. Milk, laced with alcohol of course, ran freely from an enormous plaster bosom. “An absolute scream”, as a woman with hardly any bosoms at all remarked in high excitable tones as she passed Mary, a little unsteadily, half-empty cocktail glass askew in her hand.
Mary, standing beside the buffet table loaded with jellies and blancmange, pink iced cake, and soft drinks spiced with whisky, brandy, rum or whatever potent stuff could be thought up so that few would end up steady on their feet by midnight, couldn’t bring herself to raise a smile.
It was her “time of the month”. Apart from inconvenience, it told yet again that nothing had come of Geoffrey’s last love-making. Well, it wouldn’t, he always insisting on wearing something and little she could do about that but sulk or refuse him altogether. Mostly she sulked. It would cause rows. He wanted sex but not children who would cramp his style. Lately, though, even love-making wasn’t as often as it used to be. No wonder she felt down, smothering the threat of moodiness with shows of high spirits to allay being looked upon as a wet blanket.
She had felt down for a long time. More so since the death of Rudolph Valentino last August. To her it had been like losing Marianne all over again. Utterly foolish, but so real.
She’d met Valentino staying as a guest of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald at the Grand Hotel du Cap at Cap d’Antibes in 1925, she and Geoffrey there at the same time. She and he had become good friends while he was there, those languorous dark looks overwhelming her the time he had put an arm about her shoulders. Even today she could feel the warmth of those hands on her bare flesh (most of her dresses had been sleeveless in order to combat the heat of Provence in high summer) after they, the Fitzgeralds and the Murphys, Gerald and Sara, had done gallivanting about the Plage de la Garoupe removing an influx of seaweed, laughing and squealing like children, until finally exposing white sand enough to call it a beach.
Now he was dead. To her it had been like losing a friend, or another child. She’d been inconsolable for days, Geoffrey saying she was as bad as those hysterical women admirers who had practically thrown themselves on the coffin at Valentino’s funeral in the USA, one even said to have shot herself. For months Mary had wept silently and secretly at odd times, the untimely death carrying echoes of that of her own precious daughter and, worse, manifesting itself as a renewed longing to replace her own little lost being. But Geoffrey, enjoying his life, did not stop even to consider how she felt, becoming ever more irritated by her constant yearning. She tried not to speak of it, but it would out the moment they were alone. “For God’s sake!” he would burst out, turning abruptly away, and she would go quiet.
Tonight she could hardly bear it. All around her the high screams of laughter, the incessant chortling from the men, the frantic, brittle gabble of tipsy conversation seemed to press in upon her like an ever-shrinking cage.
People shouldered by in the tightly packed throng of merrymakers, voices close to her ear sounded deafening, faces close to hers breathed alcholic fumes into her nostrils even though she, having drunk so much herself, should have been immune. Jostled, cuddled, swivelled this way and that, dragged off to dance – she obliged with an energy she hadn’t thought herself capable of – the room swirled about her, the heat bearing down on all sides, yet she managed to remain upright.
“I’m giving an absolutely splendid party – don’t you think?” blared the American twang of Elsa Maxwell in her ear, the fashionable clipped way of speaking superceding the suave drawl of only last year.
“Yes,” Mary obliged as she kicked up her heels with a man she had never set eyes on before. “Lovely…”
Elsa passed on by without listening, the large hand on the end of her long arm raised to someone across the room as she made off.
Mary felt suddenly giddy. What was she doing here? Who was she? Or rather who did she think she was? Questions bombarded her in time to the frantic beat of the jazz band crackling out a Charleston. The Mary she knew should be at home nursing a baby, proud and calm, not this gyrating thing with raised arms waving and knees twisting at unnatural angles.
She heard someone crying. Stiff, stifled, sobs that seemed to wrack her own chest. Who was it? She didn’t realise it was herself even as she slid to the floor, the sobbing rising to screeching hysteria.
Through it she could hear a high voice: “What’s the matter with her? She seemed OK a moment ago. Oh, how frightful! Someone do something!”
Someone was bending over her. Something slapped her face, hard. The involuntary screaming stopped abruptly. Her whole being racked now with deep sobs, she found herself sitting on the floor surrounded by people and for a moment with no idea how she could have got there. With slow realisation came embarrassment as she got to her feet, no longer the lively exciting pace-setter, the centre of attraction, the envy of other women and the lure of the trendy male, more the fraud exposed.
“Take me home, Geoffrey,” she managed to whisper after being helped to a chair like useless extra baggage, people immediately losing interest in her.
His chagrin showed on his face, even as he said with forced concern, “Do you think you’ll be all right if you sit here a little longer?”
Perhaps she would, but suddenly she wanted no more of this party with its brittle gaiety, its lack of feeling toward the underdog. So long as she was the life and soul she remained up there with them all. Now, having revealed a weakness in her bright and shining exterior, she wasn’t worthy of a second glance. She felt foolish and exposed, wanted only to get away from here. “Take me home, Geoffrey,” she repeated sharply enough to raise a few eyebrows in her direction. “Geoffrey, please,” she hissed.
His lips were tight as he got her coat and she pulled on her hat with a viciousness that told of her anxiety to be out of the eye of these people. In silence he conducted her from the mansions of Berkeley Square and almost roughly took her arm to help her into the taxi he’d called. They sat in silence in the back and without speaking she waited while he paid the cab driver and then let him conduct her up the steps to their flat. She felt drained.
* * *
“Geoffrey, I don’t want to go.” The half-strangled sound of her words made him look up from tying his shoelaces, his eyebrows raised in surprise.
“What do you mean, you don’t want to go? Why?”
She could offer no explanation. Since the exhibition she’d made of herself at Elsa Maxwell’s party last month, she’d been battling with an ever-growing need to hide away from everyone. Her efforts to smile, to force herself to be as she had once been, shrieked pretence until it had become all too obvious by the way people looked sideways at her that they were not fooled, that they were talking about her behind her back, speculating as to what it was that had changed the vivacious Mary Lett – something terribly wrong, no doubt. They had no idea about Marianne.
That was Geoffrey’s doing, wanting to keep her existence a secret from their social circle. So no one except the family was ever aware of her. He had told his mother, eventually, but she’d never acknowledged the child, hadn’t even attended the small funeral. Mary felt she would never forgive her that. But for Geoffrey to insist they tell none of their friends about their having a child – ludicrous. She had argued with him but he’d remained firm.
“None of our friends have kids,” he’d said. “I don’t see why we should go around bragging about a family. It’s none of their business.”
So she respected his wishes though it had been hard avoiding making little references to Marianne’s most recent and amazing action or saying. At times it was as if she didn’t exist.
There lingered a sneaking feeling as to why Geoffrey
had acted as he had. Marianne’s existence would have explained why he, with all his money, had married a mere working girl, and their friends would have seen the explanation as a pretty sordid one. Maybe they were unfair thoughts, but she’d been foolish in going along with his request, though perhaps it had been that she too had felt the stigma of his having to marry her – which was what it had boiled down to, she pregnant with his child at the time. Perhaps he had been right. They had avoided the awkward questions and what people didn’t know couldn’t harm them.
Now, however, she didn’t care how they speculated, except that she had lost the impetus to go out as if a blanket had come down over her social life since making a spectacle of herself that night.
Her voice was sharp with self-defence. “I just don’t, that’s all.”
“You must know why?”
She tried to ignore the way he was looking at her. She shook her head. “I don’t know why.”
“You used to love going out, going places.”
“I can’t any more. I’ve had enough.”
He got up from the edge of the bed where he’d been perching to do up his shoes. He was angry. “I don’t understand you. Why the sudden change? I know you’ve been a bit edgy since Elsa Maxwell’s party, but you were all right there – until you made a damned fool of yourself.”
His tone shocked her. His behaviour towards her bordered on cruelty – there could be no other word for it. He’d never been this harsh before. He might often have been irritated by her prolonged grieving, but he’d never been deliberately hurtful, cruel. It was as though something inside him had snapped suddenly. Maybe it was his submerged grief coming out, but to her it was as though she were seeing a different man.
“I couldn’t help that. I wasn’t well. I had my usuals and I didn’t feel up to it.”