by Hazel Gaynor
As I make my way to my dressing room a young girl from the chorus runs past. She stops as she recognizes me. She is a beauty, all wide-eyed and wondering, no doubt envying my leading role and my name in electric lights front of house. Little does she know that it is I who envy her and the other chorus girls with youth and vitality on their side: training from noon till four, twenty-five half-dressed girls crammed into one dressing room, stepping on each other’s corns, sharing makeup and jokes and a cup of pickled onions for a snack before curtain up, and all the while waiting for Friday when “the Ghost Walks” so they can run straight to the shops to spend their hard-earned pay. Sometimes I would happily swap the lonely peaks of stardom for the jolly camaraderie of the chorus.
It wasn’t so very long ago that I was a defiant society girl with an unforgettable face and an unrelenting mother; the girl who found her place on the stage despite the disdain her parents expressed toward such an unseemly profession. That girl had fought and rebelled. That girl had shunned her chaperones to drink and dance to the exotic music of the Negro bands and mix with the chorus girls and actresses she admired. That girl was starry-eyed and carefree. She had passion and belief, just like the young girl in front of me now.
“You are wonderful, Miss May,” she gasps, all breathless and starstruck. “Just wonderful.”
I step forward and take her face in my hands. “And so will you be. Keep practicing, keep believing, and you can have whatever you dream of.” She gazes at me, adoringly. “Now run along and get changed before the wardrobe mistress has a fit.”
“Yes, Miss May. Of course.”
I watch her as she runs off into the shadows and wish I could run with her, disappear into obscurity, and never have to tell anyone the awful truth of it all.
Stepping around tins of paint, precariously balanced props, ladders, and endless rails of costumes, I hurry along the cramped passageways, relieved to reach my dressing room and close the door on the noise and chaos behind me. Jimmy has been busy, arranging the boxes of chocolates and bouquets from gentlemen callers and well-wishers. I take a cursory look at some of the cards as Hettie, my seamstress and dresser, pushes several larger displays to one side so that I can see my reflection in the mirror. I slump down in the chair at the dressing table and look at the flowers surrounding me. A beautiful arrangement of pink peonies catches my eye. The rest are ghastly.
“Why can’t people send roses, Hettie? Nobody sends roses anymore. They’re forever trying to outdo one another with gaudy-colored orchids.” I lift up some vile yellow blooms. “I don’t even know what these are.”
“Shall I remove them?” she asks.
I take off my dance shoes and slip my aching feet into silk slippers. “No. Leave them. Ask Jimmy to arrange a car to send them to the hospitals after the show.”
“Of course.”
“Tell him to leave the peonies. I’ll take them home.” I run my fingers over the blooms, remembering my wedding posy. Pink peonies. Roger stole one for his buttonhole. It was all such a rush that buttonholes hadn’t been considered. He placed a single bloom in my hair and told me I looked more beautiful than the stars. “My very own slice of heaven.”
Hettie places a silk housecoat around my shoulders and pours me a glass of water. I’d far rather she pour me something stronger but she fusses about my drinking, especially during a performance, so I say nothing and take a couple of dutiful sips as she fetches my dress for the next act.
“The audience love you tonight, Miss May.”
“Hmm? What?” I’m distracted by my thoughts and the many pots of pastes and creams on the dressing table. Gifts from Harry Selfridge. He really is a darling man, if a little too American at times.
“The audience,” Hettie repeats. “They love you. The gallery girls especially.”
“The audience always love me, Hettie. And as for the gallery-ites, I can do no wrong as far as they are concerned. It’s the press I need to worry about.”
“Well, I’m sure they’ll love you too. You could hear the shrieks of laughter back here.”
She sets to work, fiddling with last-minute adjustments to hems and seams. I stand up and turn around as instructed, the electric bulbs around the mirror illuminating my skin. I look tired and drawn, the delicate skin around my lips pinched from too many cigarettes. My thirty-two years look more like fifty-two.
“Do I look old, Hettie?”
She is used to my insecurities. She knows me better than my own mother at this stage. “Not at all,” she mumbles through a mouth full of pins. “You’re as beautiful now as the first day I saw you.”
I catch her eye. “You are very kind, Hettie Bennett. You are also a terrible liar.”
She smiles, finishes her adjustments, and leaves me alone for a blissful five minutes before curtain up. Those few minutes of peace are like a religion to me. Like afternoon tea with Perry, they are mine. Everything else about tonight—what I wear, what I say, what I sing, where I stand, where I will dine after the show and who I will be seen dining with—is all decided for me, all part of the performance. I sit down and stare at my reflection without blinking until my image blurs and I can almost see the young girl I once was.
Ironically, it was Mother who introduced me to the theater. She shunned the teaching of regular subjects, instructing my governesses to focus on poetry, singing, and the arts. As a young girl, I was often taken on trips to the London theater, where I was enthralled by the provocative dancing of Isadora Duncan and Maud Allan’s Vision of Salomé and the exotic Dance of the Seven Veils. As I approached my debut year, I embarked on a strict exercise regime to improve my fitness. I enrolled in dance classes, determined to learn how to move as gracefully as those incredible women I had watched on the stage. I worked hard, and while Mother considered my dancing “a pleasant little hobby,” my heart was soon set on it becoming far more than that.
Shortly after my debut season, I developed a talent for escaping my chaperones. While other debutantes diligently danced gavottes in the austere rooms of elegant homes across London, I discovered the heady delights of the city’s nightclubs. I met theater producers and actors, writers, artists, and dancers. I was captivated by them as much as the gossip columnists were captivated by me. My exceptional beauty and extraordinary behavior became a regular feature of the society pages. As the years passed, my parents increasingly despaired of my unladylike behavior and my failure to secure a suitable husband. I, however, reveled in the exciting new circles I mingled in.
But it was the arrival of war that gave me my first real taste of freedom. We were told the fighting would be over by Christmas, but it soon became clear it was going to last much longer than that. Losses were heavy. Help was needed. I couldn’t bear to stand idly by as Aubrey and Perry and dear friends of mine fought for their lives at the front. Going against my mother’s express wishes not to, I enrolled as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse at the Royal Herbert Hospital. The work was difficult and exhausting, but I took comfort in knowing that I was helping. Photographed in my uniform, I became something of a poster girl for the VAD. Other society girls soon followed my example.
The sleeping quarters of the shared hospital dorm were cramped and inelegant, but the freedom of dorm life was thrilling to a girl who had been educated at home. On my evenings off I relished the opportunity to dance and drink and forget the awfulness of war for a while. It was during those evenings away from the hospital that I first met Charles Cochran. It was Cockie who saw my charm and my talent and encouraged me to dance in his little revue at the Ambassador’s. It started as a bit of fun, a distraction from the shocking realities of nursing. I took to the stage with audacious poise and a new name, Loretta May. While Lady Virginia Clements put in long shifts at the hospital, Loretta May became a shining star of the stage. Night after night, Virginia was dismantled as easily as a piece of scenery, replaced with the dazzling smile and beautiful costumes of my new persona. That I danced in secret whilst under the glare of the brightest spotlight w
as nothing short of thrilling.
Small speaking parts soon saw my reputation soar. Sassy, beautiful, beguiling—the hacks lavished praise in their emphatic press notices and it didn’t take them long to discover the truth behind this intriguing new star. The papers couldn’t print their headlines quickly enough.
PEER’S DAUGHTER TAKES THEATER BY STORM!
LADY VIRGINIA CLEMENTS EXPOSED AS DARLING OF THE WEST END, LORETTA MAY.
By day, I attended to the sick and wounded. At night, I entertained those whose lives were falling apart. While the revelation about my true identity saw Mother take to her bed for a week, it only made the gallery girls and society pages love me even more.
And then the first letter arrived, and everything changed.
My dear Miss May,
You must forgive me, but I have fallen hopelessly in love with you and I’m afraid I must tell you that you are now inextricably linked to my survival in this dreadful war.
“One minute to curtain. One minute to curtain.”
The cry of the stagehand cuts through my thoughts. I check myself again in the mirror, touch up my rouge, and apply more kohl to my eyes. The mask of theater. Who cares that my head is pounding and my bones ache dreadfully. The show must go interminably on.
I open the dressing room door and call out into the dimly lit corridor: “Does anyone have an aspirin?” but my words evaporate in a cloud of powder and perfume and glitter as the chorus girls scurry past, their heels clicking and clacking along the floor as last-minute adjustments are made to zips and straps, buckles and laces.
Only Hettie hears me. “Should I go and find one?”
“One what?”
“An aspirin.”
“Yes. Please.” I wave her away with a distracted hand. I have no idea why the poor thing puts up with me. I treat her dreadfully at times. I don’t mean to. I just don’t seem to know how to treat her any differently.
I listen at the door until I’m certain the last of the girls have gone. Only then do I reach beneath the dressing table and open the bag I keep hidden there. I pull out the bottle of gin. A quick slug. Purely medicinal. What I wouldn’t give for a shot of sweet morphine, to slip into that delightful abyss of nothingness where nobody can hurt me and nothing dreadful has ever happened and Roger is coming home and I am perfectly well. There was a time when I took morphine for fun, to numb the emotional pain of war. Now the doctors tell me I must take it for the physical pain that will eventually bring about my demise. I take two long gulps of gin, coughing as the liquid burns the back of my throat, before returning the bottle to the bag and rushing from the dressing room, the sharp tang of liquor flooding through me, suppressing my pain and my fear and my doubts.
“Miss May! Your aspirin!”
I ignore Hettie and carry on along the passageway, climbing the steps into the wings. I hear the chatter and rustle of the audience as they settle back into their seats. As the houselights go down I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and allow everything to dissolve into a muzzy warmth as I step onto the stage.
The curtain goes up. The spotlight illuminates me. There is an audible gasp from the ladies in the stalls as they admire the beauty of my red velvet cape. I know the reporters for The Lady and The Sketch and the other society pages will be scribbling down every detail. The gallery girls burst into rapturous applause, screaming my name and standing on their chairs. “Miss May! Miss May! You’re marvelous!” I open my eyes, the audience a blur of black against the dazzle of the footlights. My leading man, Jack Buchanan, gives me the cue.
I step forward and deliver the line. “Honestly, darling, must we invite the Huxleys for dinner. I think I would rather curl up in a ball and die.”
The audience roar with laughter, unaware of the cruel truth contained in my words.
8
LORETTA
“It isn’t my place to tell you when you’re dreadful, especially not on opening night.”
A heavy fog smothers London by the time the show is over. Outside the door to Murray’s, the soot-tainted air catches in my chest, making me cough. It is sharp and painful. Far worse than anything I have experienced before.
Perry looks worried. “You really should go to the doctor about that cough, Etta. It’s definitely getting worse.”
When I’ve recovered and caught my breath I take a long drag of my cigarette and tell him to stop fussing. “Was I all right tonight, darling? Really?”
He shivers, pulls his scarf around his neck, and claps his hands together for warmth. “You were fabulous, sister dear. Everybody said you were splendid.”
I wrap my arms across my chest and sink the fingertips of my gloves into the deep pile of my squirrel-fur coat. “Of course they did. They always do. Anyway, you wouldn’t tell me even if I was beastly. Would you?”
He says nothing. I pinch his arm.
“Ow! That hurt.”
“Good.”
“Etta, I’m your favorite brother, and one of only a handful of people you deem worthy of calling your friend. It isn’t my place to tell you when you’re dreadful, especially not on opening night. There are plenty of people being paid perfectly good money to do that.”
I pinch him again. “You’re a dreadful tease, Peregrine Clements. First-night notices are ghastly things. I’m nervous. What if the critics hate it? I really can’t bear to think about it.”
He crushes his cigarette beneath his shoe. “Come on. Let’s get disgracefully drunk. By the time the notices are in, you’ll be too blotto to care.”
But despite the cold and the lure of champagne cocktails, I’m reluctant to go inside. “Walk with me around the square?”
“What? It’s freezing. You need a gin fizz, dear girl, not an evening constitutional.”
“Please, Perry. Just once around. It was so dreadfully stuffy in the theater tonight, and the club can be so suffocating at times.”
He sighs and offers his arm. “Very well. I’ve lost most of the sensation in one leg. I might as well have a matching pair.”
Looping my arm through his, I rest my head wearily on his shoulder as we stroll. I enjoy the sensation of his cashmere scarf against my cheek; the sensation of someone beside me. For a woman constantly surrounded by people, I so often feel desperately alone.
We walk in comfortable silence. For a few rare moments we are nothing more remarkable than a brother and sister enjoying an evening stroll. Much as he frustrates me, I love Perry dearly, although I can never bring myself to tell him so. Even when he came back from the front I couldn’t say what I’d planned, couldn’t say the words I’d rehearsed in my head and written in dozens of unsent letters. Old habits die hard. Our privileged upbringing might have left us with proper manners and a love of Shakespeare, but it also left the scars of unspoken fondnesses and absent affection. We are as crippled by our emotions as Perry is by the shrapnel wound to his knee.
“How did the meeting go with Charlot today? Did he like your piece?” I hardly dare ask. Perry’s meetings with theatrical producers have been less than successful recently.
He yawns. A habit of his when he isn’t telling the truth. “Not bad. He didn’t hate it. Didn’t love it either.”
I stop walking. “You didn’t go, did you?”
“Damn it, Etta. Are you having me trailed? How do you know everything about me?”
“Because you are about as cryptic as a brick, darling. Anyway, it doesn’t matter how I know. But I would like to know why you didn’t go.”
We continue walking as he explains. “The sheet music was ruined by the rain when I bumped into that girl yesterday. And it was a lot of miserable old rot anyway. Charlot wants uplifting pieces. The phrase he used last time I saw him was ‘whimsical.’ He told me people want to be amused, that Londoners have an appetite for frivolity. I haven’t a whimsical bone in my body, Etta. Why put myself through the embarrassment of rejection again?”
For months it has been the same. Unfinished melodies. Missed appointments. All the promise and
talent he had shown before the war left behind in the mud and the trenches.
“You need to get out more, Perry. You need to meet interesting people and find inspiration. It can’t help to spend so much time in that apartment of yours. It’s the least whimsical place I’ve ever had the misfortune to drink a cup of tea in.”
“I’m here now, aren’t I? Escorting you on an impromptu evening promenade, about to mingle with the set.”
“I do appreciate that you’re trying, Perry. Really, I do. All the same, I think you spend too much time alone.”
“I’m not alone. Mrs. Ambrose comes and goes.”
“Mrs. Ambrose is a middle-aged charwoman. You need vibrancy and excitement in your life, not floor wax and sagging bosoms and woolen stockings.”
He laughs. “I can’t argue with that.”
“I’ve been giving it some thought, as it happens. I know what you need.”
“And what might that be?”
“A muse.”
“A muse?”
“Yes. A muse.”
“And why would I want a muse?”
“To spark your creativity. You need to find someone whose every word, every movement, leaves you so enraptured that you can do nothing but settle at the piano and write words of whimsy about them. Look at Noël Coward. I doubt he would have written anything notable if it weren’t for Gertie Lawrence. And Lucile Duff Gordon. How do you think she produced such incredible costumes for Lily Elsie—and for me? They adore those women so much they simply cannot wait to dress them or write songs or books about them.” I feel rather pleased with myself as we walk on. “Yes. That’s absolutely what you need. A muse.”
Perry clearly isn’t convinced. “And where might one find a muse these days? Does Selfridge sell them? I hear he has all manner of whimsical things in his shop.”