The Girl from the Savoy

by Hazel Gaynor

I sigh and place the letter back inside the envelope. “You don’t know the half of it.”

  We sit together on my bed and I tell Sissy all about my private audition for Snyder and Mademoiselle’s silver shoes and how he had intimidated and threatened me. I feel better for telling her. She’s shocked, but not surprised.

  “What did I tell you? This place is no different from any other. There’s us and there’s them and that’s the way it will always be. I can’t believe he went so far, though. You poor thing. You must have been terrified wondering what he was going to do next.”

  “I was, but I was lucky. Do you remember he left suddenly after Mademoiselle Delysia was taken ill and had to return to France? I thought I’d seen the last of him, but he came back. Thankfully, he was accommodated on a different floor. I made sure I kept well away from him. His attentions had obviously turned to Gladys by then anyway.”

  “Well, thank God he’s gone. And good riddance to bad rubbish. So, where were you the past few days anyway? O’Hara said you’d been called away suddenly on family business, but if I know you there was more to it than that.”

  I can’t stop the grin that spreads across my face. “Oh, Sissy! You’ll never believe me when I tell you!”

  After lunch, I ask to speak with O’Hara on a matter of some urgency. Although she’s in a terrific hurry as usual, she takes me into her office, tells me to close the door and to take a seat.

  “I’m glad to see you back, Dorothy. I hope your aunt is feeling better?”

  “My aunt?”

  She peers over the top of her spectacles. “Yes. Your aunt who took a sudden turn for the worse last week?”

  Clearly she knows there was no such thing as a sick aunt. “Oh, yes. My aunt. She is much better. Thank you.”

  “Good. So, what is it you wish to speak with me about as a matter of such urgency? Another sick relative perhaps?”

  I start at the beginning and I don’t stop talking until I have told her everything. My life in Mawdesley. My scrapbooks. The notice in The Stage. Mr. Clements. Miss May. My trip to Nine Elms. She sits quietly opposite me, never flinching, never moving. I tell her about my audition for Charlot and the upcoming revue and my rehearsal schedule.

  “And I presume the conclusion of all this is that you will be ending your employment at the hotel?”

  I nod. “I’ve tried to fit everything in as long as I could, but it isn’t possible with the rehearsal schedule and two performances a day. And I expect the revue will tour around the country if it’s a success.”

  She is surprisingly understanding in her own stiff way. “Very well, then. I will make the necessary arrangements. It is like spring fever here. I won’t have any maids left if you all keep abandoning me for a life on the stage.”

  “I know it is very short notice,” I say. She raises her eyebrows at this. “But I know someone looking for work and she’s available immediately. A very good friend of mine. It would mean the world to me—and to her—if you would consider her.”

  I tell her about Clover and how she has fallen on bad times. There is an understanding in O’Hara’s eyes that I haven’t seen before.

  “Very well. Tell her to come and see me this afternoon. If she really is as reliable and hardworking as you say she is, then I might have to take her on. Either that or have the guests returning to unmade beds and goodness knows what else.”

  “Thank you. You won’t regret it.”

  She raises an eyebrow. “I think I will be the judge of that.” She scribbles something on a pad of paper in front of her. “I must say, Dorothy, with all that has been going on outside the hotel, your work has been remarkably consistent.”

  “I’ve enjoyed working here, miss—most of the time. I took pride in it, and no matter what’s going on in a person’s life, we all need a home and a family to return to, don’t we?”

  “Yes. I suppose we do.”

  I wish I could tell her how I’ve come to understand the governor’s sentiments about the hotel; how I’ve come to think of The Savoy as my home. I wish I could tell her so many things, but despite everything, she is still O’Hara and I am just a maid.

  “Where will you stay once you leave here?” she asks.

  “At the Theatre Girls’ Club in Soho. It’s where lots of the chorus girls stay.” I’m grateful to Miss May for making the arrangements, or rather, I’m grateful to Hettie, who made the arrangements on Miss May’s behalf.

  “The Theatre Girls’ Club,” she remarks, a distant look in her eyes. “Yes. I know it well.”

  I work a week’s notice and have never known seven days to pass so slowly.

  On my last day I wake early, and just as I have on so many mornings, I lie still and listen. I smile at the familiar snores coming from Clover, who O’Hara hired immediately and who now sleeps in Gladys’s old bed. I listen to the pop of the mattress springs as Sissy and Mildred shuffle in their sleep. I listen to the patter of rain against the window—rain to arrive in, rain to leave in—and I clutch little Edward’s photograph tight to my chest. My heart brightens at the prospect of dancing in Charlot’s chorus. It is lightened by the understanding I have reached with Perry. And yet it aches for the warmth of my child in my arms. If only I could hear word of him. If only I could hear that he was safe and well.

  I dress in a pretty plum-pink rayon day dress—one of Hettie’s designs—and matching T-strap shoes. My outfit is all thanks to Miss May’s overflowing wardrobe. Her “last season’s clothes” become my brand-new, and I am thrilled with them. The ill-fitting borrowed brown garments I arrived in have been happily sent to the Salvation Army. I promise myself that I will always dress colorfully now, and never again in the drab shades of a life in service.

  “You must dress and think and act like a star—even before you become one. It is the first rule of show business. Never forget it.” I recall Miss May’s words as I take a last walk along the hotel corridors. I remember the bewilderment I felt on my first day; O’Hara’s words snapping at me like crabs, Sissy and Gladys and Mildred bursting into the room and into my life. I remember the governor and all his wisdom. I walk past suite 401—Snyder’s room—and make myself stop and stand outside for a moment. Nothing bad can happen to me now. He is gone. It is only a room. I push the memories away and fill my mind with the sound of Mr. Somers’s Orpheans band and the laughter of the girls in the maids’ bathroom. I choose to remember the things that have made me smile, not the things that have made me feel invisible and unimportant.

  As I say my good-byes to the girls we all cry. Even Mildred seems sorry to see me leave. Sissy gives me a little package in a Woolworth’s bag. “Vermillion,” she says. “It always suited you.” Mildred passes me a letter, which she asks me to open later, when I have a quiet moment. Clover flings her arms around me and makes me promise on my mam’s life that I won’t forget her when I’m famous. “I knew you’d get onto that stage, Dolly. I felt it in my waters.”

  Before I leave, O’Hara asks if she might have a word in her office. It seems fitting that I should go there on my last day, having spent so many occasions in it during my employment here.

  She fidgets and pulls at the buttons at the top of her dress as I sit in a chair across the desk from her. “You have done very well here, Dorothy. I’m not afraid to admit that I was certain you would amount to nothing when I first saw you. I was sure that you would be another of life’s failures, but despite the occasional misdemeanor, you have worked hard and have done everything asked of you.”

  I feel my cheeks redden. I wasn’t expecting this. Praise from O’Hara is not easily given, and even harder to take.

  “It has been heartening to watch you flourish here,” she continues, “and I can only admire you for what you have achieved.” She fiddles with a menu card on her desk and tugs at the collar of her dress. “I was a dancer too once. A chorus girl for three seasons. I understand the pull of a life on the stage.”

  I don’t tell her that I know about Mildred. I don’t tell her that I
already know our lives are not so different after all. She is still my superior. There are lines that cannot be crossed.

  “Now, I’m sure you have places to go,” she says, standing up and walking briskly to her office door. She offers me her hand, as stiff and formal as ever. “I wish you the very best of luck, Dolly. I wish you the very best.”

  She called me Dolly! I almost throw my arms around her, but stop myself in time. I simply nod and thank her and walk away from her office along the long dark corridors, away from a life of servitude, away from my past, until I emerge into the sunlight outside. The rain has stopped. The sun dazzles as it glistens off the wet roads and pavements.

  With my bag in my hand, I walk around to the front of the hotel and stand beside the florist’s shop window. I watch the front doors as they swing open, taking glittering guests inside this incredible place. I watch the ladies in their beautiful shoes and elegant dresses and coats, and I smile, because I know. I know what it feels like to walk in soft Parisian leather. I know what it feels like to be twirled around a dance floor in chiffon and silk. I know what it feels like to be one of them.

  I hold my head high and walk away from this place that I have called home, and as I go I sense the hotel watching me. Like a hundred searching eyes, I feel every glinting window watching me leave, and my heart dances at the prospect of my triumphant return.

  43

  DOLLY

  “Take a breath. Sense the ending. Prepare for the beginning.”

  Summer rolls up the Thames and London bursts into life. The magnolia trees infuse Green Park with their sweet perfume, the floral candles lighting up the great horse chestnuts that sway in the breeze. The streets are filled with the lilting sounds of the organ grinders and the Negro bands that pop up on street corners. London excites me on days like these. I can think of nowhere else I would rather be.

  Weeks of exhausting rehearsals and last-minute adjustments to scripts and score and costumes have finally resulted in a production that Charlot is proud of. Perry’s musical score is full of heart and humor and the principal actors and actresses fall in love with it as much as I did as I watched it take shape. I feel privileged to have heard these numbers as the first tentative chords and possibly-maybe harmonies, and to hear them played now by a full orchestra. Of course no production reaches opening night without its share of despair and frustration. I’ve seen it all: slammed piano lids, scrunched-up sheets of music, wearyingly late nights and horribly early mornings, but somehow opening night arrives. Charlot’s Revue of 1924, a production in which Dolly Lane appears on the billing as a chorus girl, arrives at the Shaftesbury Theatre, and we are due to open to a packed house.

  The call for five minutes to curtain up sends a collective shiver through the two dozen excited girls crammed like sardines into the small dressing room at the top of the theater. The stagehands tell us about the distinguished guests who have already arrived, describing all the glitz and glamour out front. Backstage it is all frantic noise and chaos, last-minute nerves and panic about lost costumes and mismatched shoes and forgotten lines. The excitement and tension is like nothing I have ever felt before. It is exhilarating.

  As the girls rush ahead, their heels click-clacking like castanets down the stairs, I linger behind to snatch a few seconds alone. I want to savor the moment. This is what I have dreamed of for so many years, this is what I have imagined over and over in my mind as I scrubbed steps and blacked fires and listened to conversations and gramophone records through open doors. I look around the dressing room. It is a muddle of glistening stockings and shimmering shoes, feathers and fans in all the colors of the rainbow, spilled face powder, blunted kohl pencils, combs and bobby pins, curling irons and buttons, needles and thread. It is everything I had hoped it would be.

  I take the letter from my makeup bag and quickly read it once more.

  There is a peculiar moment, Miss Lane, between the end of one thing and the start of another. Like that strange light between night and dawn—not quite dark and not yet light—a sense of something other, something in between. Brides sense it on their wedding day. Actresses sense it on opening night. For weeks, there is only anticipation and then the day arrives and the moment takes over so that you can’t remember a time when this thing, this feeling, wasn’t a part of you.

  Take a breath. Sense the ending. Prepare for the beginning.

  You will be marvelous. You will be my shining star.

  Loretta

  I wish she could be here. She’d sent the letter, accompanied by a single pink peony and a perfect crimson leaf and the newspaper cutting that Roger had fallen in love with in the dugout all those years ago. She has written on the back, her words to me written beside his words to her. You are my shining star. Always, L. X.

  I close my eyes and breathe in deep and allow myself to let go of all the hurtful rejections, all the failed auditions, all the loss and the sadness in my life. It lifts from me like a shadow erased by the sun.

  “There you are, Dolly! Bloody hell! Nearly gave us all a heart attack.” I jump as Aggie, one of the chorus girls, bursts into the dressing room. “Come on. They’re about to raise the curtain. Quick!”

  Giggling, I run after her, the sequins on my skirt swishing at my knees, both of us up on our tiptoes so our heels don’t make a sound against the floor. We rush up the small wooden steps at the wings and into position. I adjust my beaded skullcap and pull at the elastic on my knickers.

  “Stand still,” Aggie hisses. “You’re as jittery as a fish.”

  The murmur of the audience beyond the safety curtain dissipates to a final shhhh and then silence.

  “Here we go, girls,” Aggie whispers. “Remember: teeth, tits, and turns.”

  The curtain parts in a dramatic swoop, the spotlights dazzle, the orchestra booms into life, and our well-rehearsed routine begins.

  For a second I am so mesmerized by the lights and the moment that I almost forget to dance and then everything else fades into the background and all I can hear is the music. All I can feel is the reverberation through my calves as we stamp our feet against the wooden boards in perfect time. I kick and flick, twirl and dance as I have never danced before until my thighs burn and my arms shake under the strain of holding them aloft and my cheeks ache with smiling. On we go, number after number, off at stage left, back on at stage right. A whirl of breathless girls and sweat-beaded limbs and pure, pure exhilaration.

  In a brief scene change, the dance manager pulls me to one side. I don’t care that I’m half undressed, wriggling into my new costume, pulling the straps over my shoulders, and tugging at the fabric as it sticks to my clammy skin.

  “You’re doing very well,” she says. “What’s your name?”

  “Dolly. Dolly Lane.”

  “This your first show?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it certainly won’t be your last. Come and see me after.”

  “Yes. Yes, I will.” I’m in such a rush to button my shoes that I can’t even process what she’s saying. Hoisting up my stockings, I run after the others to take my position again. Now the nerves have settled. Now I am reveling in the performance. My limbs ache but my mind won’t allow me to think about that. I look for faces in the audience, my eyes adjusting to the glare of the footlights. I see them in the front row, beaming up at me: Perry. Bea. Charlot. And farther back I see Sissy and Clover, who waves every time I look in her direction. Even Mildred and O’Hara have come to show their support.

  I dance on and on, hopping and quickstepping and high-kicking, always in perfect time with the other girls. We move as one, so that I feel like an extension of the girls on both sides of me and not a separate person at all. I move in time with the music, my body taking over, responding to the rhythm. “It comes from here . . . from deep inside. You can move your feet and hit all the steps in all the right places, but if you don’t feel the music in your heart you’ll never shine. Dancing should be as natural to you as breathing in and out.”

&nb
sp; As the orchestra plays the final crescendo, the curtain falls and the lights go out and we run off into the wings as the auditorium erupts in applause.

  Immediately we run around the back of the stage and line up to take our bow. The curtains part and we move forward, my ears deafened by the stamping and cheering from the gallery and the emphatic applause from the stalls and dress circle. We, in turn, applaud the principals, the applause and the stamping increasing to a level that shakes the boards I am standing on, and then the curtain falls for the final time, the houselights go up, and it is over.

  The first night notices are generous. I scour the morning papers and devour the words.

  André Charlot has finally followed the lead of Ziegfeld and others and lent his name to a revue, and he can be rightly proud to do so. If you want to hold your own in small talk, it will quite simply require you to have seen Miss Binnie Hale in Charlot’s Revue of 1924. Despite the fact that the out-of-town air was noticeable in the stalls, where the only celebrities of note were resting theater stars, opening night was a resounding success. The chorus were particularly enchanting.

  Of course, the most helpful item in building up a part is the clothes, and Miss Hale’s costumes, partly designed by Miss May’s personal dresser, Miss Hettie Bennett, did not disappoint. The frocks are up-to-the-minute—short, just below the knee. The necklines are round and moderately low, and cunningly introduced draperies and flutterings add to the charm.

  In my room at the Theatre Girls’ Club, I cut them carefully from the newspapers, dozens and dozens of them, and stick them into my new scrapbook. I write the date at the top of the page and add the billing from the program. I draw a little star next to my name.

  The daily matinees and evening performances come and go in a blur of costume changes and aching legs; a continuous cycle of excitement and nerves. It is an exhausting schedule and I’ve never known hunger like it. Between acts, we tuck into great chunks of bread and pickled onions, begging the dresser to run out for more when the cup runs empty. Some of the girls gripe and moan about their blisters and corns, but I never do. I never will. Blisters and corns on my toes are a blessing after years of chilblains on my hands.