The Last Dance

by Fiona McIntosh

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ Beatrice continued as if Stella had not spoken so earnestly. ‘Why didn’t Grace even mention to me that she’d overheard us talking? You’d think that would be the first thing she’d do, don’t you?’

  Stella shook her head. ‘I promise she didn’t mention it to me either, Mrs Ainsworth, or I can assure you I would have taken immediate steps to prevent it being shared. It came out of nowhere but you have to know that Georgina provoked Grace into it.’

  ‘The truth is I don’t believe for a moment that Grace was awake or even conscious enough to make sense of anything being spoken above her that evening,’ Beatrice said.

  ‘Are you suggesting I shared with Grace what I unhappily had to listen to and then gave you my word I would never repeat?’

  ‘Oh, let’s not run around in circles, Stella. That’s precisely what I’m suggesting.’

  Stella pushed her chair back. ‘Then you’d be wrong, Mrs Ainsworth. Please excuse me.’

  ‘Is that it, Stella?’ Beatrice sneered. ‘Do you think that’s the end of this?’

  ‘It’s best I leave now. I do not want to upset you further.’ She glanced at Rafe for help but it was as though he sat between them as an interested observer. She wanted to shout at him to offer some support.

  ‘Stella, I do think you should leave but not just the first-class dining room. I think you should leave the ship.’ Beatrice sat back, eyes glittering with righteousness.

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘You heard. I have already made the arrangements.’

  ‘Bee, what are you talking about?’ Rafe was finally surprised into action. ‘You’ve had too much to drink and y-you’re emotional,’ he said, making sure to stammer his pompous words. ‘I think we should wait —’

  ‘No, it’s sudden, I agree, but you can’t talk me out of it, Dougie. Stella will leave the ship tonight in Rabat. As we speak I’m having her clothes packed. Stella, you can gather up the rest of your private belongings and the purser will see you off the gangplank. By all means enjoy Morocco for an evening but Aquitania is making arrangements for you to be flown home to London tomorrow.’

  ‘What?’ Rafe growled. ‘You can’t do that, Bee.’

  Stella felt her internal alarm beginning to sound like a distant siren, gaining in intensity and dragging the familiar sense of nausea from this morning with it, even though the ship was barely shifting at anchor.

  ‘That’s just it, Dougie. I can, and I have,’ she slurred and laughed before turning serious again. ‘Stella has created nothing but problems in our family since the day she arrived. Frankly Georgina detests her and I can understand why for all sorts of reasons that perhaps a man can’t. She’s sacked; that’s the end of it.’ She waved a careless hand again at Stella. ‘I’ll have some wages sent to you via the agency. Good evening, Stella.’

  Rafe placed his napkin on the table in a deliberate move and stood slowly. He took off his glasses and instantly the man she knew and loved was present. He tucked his fake spectacles into his inside pocket. Beatrice followed his actions with an unsteady gaze. ‘And where are you off to, darling?’

  ‘If Stella has to leave the ship, I am not going to permit her to be dumped alone in Africa, of all places.’ The stammer had disap-peared.

  ‘Do you plan to escort her yourself, then, darling?’ Her voice was bitter, ringed with malice. She gripped his arm and as Stella watched Beatrice’s knuckles whiten, she heard only threat in the question.

  ‘I certainly plan to escort her off the ship, ensure that she is properly catered for, and I shall myself put her on that flight back to Britain.’

  ‘I see. What if I don’t agree?’

  ‘Then don’t agree. It won’t change anything.’

  ‘Doug, I insist —’

  ‘Don’t, Bee. Whatever you want to do, do it. I’m past caring about your threats.’

  ‘Doug!’ The shock had battled through the liquor it seemed. ‘Please . . .’

  He unwrapped her fingers from his arm. ‘I’ll re-board in Tangier. We can talk then. I’ll kiss the girls before I leave.’

  ‘Mr Ainsworth,’ Stella began but was cut off by his glare. She was aware of diners beginning to notice the disturbance.

  ‘Still here, Stella?’ Beatrice said, her tone openly vicious. She reached for Rafe once again.

  ‘I’m leaving, Mrs Ainsworth. I don’t wish any further unhappiness.’ Beatrice rolled her eyes as if finding her tedious. ‘I shall leave a note for Grace.’

  ‘Please, don’t bother. I shan’t see that she gets it,’ Beatrice warned with an artful grin.

  ‘I suggest you go and sleep off the gin and then the champagne, Bee,’ Rafe said, this time firmly unfurling himself from his wife’s clasp.

  ‘Doug, don’t get off the ship . . . or . . .’

  ‘Or what, Bee?’

  When she didn’t answer he surprised Stella by leaning down and kissing his wife’s cheek tenderly. ‘Goodbye, Bee.’

  To Stella the words sounded like farewell. She didn’t wait to hear his wife’s response; didn’t want to dare believe the flutter of hope in her chest that Rafe was leaving his wife for good tonight, but wished deeply she hadn’t been part of the scene. Instead she fled, keeping her gaze on the carpet as she hurried across the length of that interminably long room, taking the maître d’ by surprise as she arrived at the doors again.

  ‘Oh, Miss Myles . . . ?’

  As a steward opened the door for her the man’s words were lost to the polite clangour of the diners’ silver cutlery against china as the sound of waves welcomed her back onto the deck. She kept moving until she was as far as she could go. Stella leaned over the rail and allowed tears to fall in a mix of anger and regret until they were silent sobs and then finally, gratefully, no more than sniffs. She was back in control and of the opinion that Beatrice had done her a favour. Home, she thought, with a rush of old yearning. She would be back with Rory and Carys within a day or two and she could get her life into a new order.

  ‘Stella?’ She swung around, uncaring that her face may be tear-stained but knowing she had to get through this final confrontation. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’

  ‘I’m not sure that was wise, Rafe,’ she said, hearing her own weariness and looking away from the impeccably attired body she felt a powerful urge to cling to in that moment.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s too late for regrets,’ he replied. ‘Beatrice wasn’t lying. You are leaving the ship tonight.’

  ‘Good,’ she admitted. ‘I want to.’

  ‘But so am I.’

  ‘I don’t need your help.’

  ‘Stella, go and supervise the collection of your belongings. I shall see you at the gangplank in fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Rafe —’

  ‘Do it!’ There was that tone again; the one he’d used with Basil when she’d eavesdropped on their conversation. ‘I’m sorry,’ he quickly followed. ‘I have no business ordering you.’

  ‘Given that you no longer employ me, no, you don’t,’ she murmured.

  ‘Please . . . just do as I ask.’

  She nodded, not wishing to prolong the scene. Stella moved but he caught her arm. ‘You made every woman pale by comparison tonight, Stella. I wanted to tell you that the moment you arrived. Frankly, I wanted to take you in my arms and kiss you deeply in front of them all.’

  His tone, his choice of words, always managed to undermine her best intentions. Instead of walking away as she’d imagined she would, she covered his hand with hers. ‘Now, that really would have given Beatrice a reason to get herself blotto.’

  He gave her a sad smile. ‘Fifteen minutes.’

  Stella parted from him and as she lifted her gown to move downstairs she stole a glance back at Rafe to see a man with an expression so haunted she had to look away.

  21

  RABAT – JUNE 1933

  Rafe raised an arm to thank the purser who was watching them from the deck of Aquitania as they stood on the dimly lit dock
next to her single trunk. A leather travel bag was all he had by his feet, slouched next to his patent dress shoes.

  ‘We must look ridiculous,’ she admitted, glancing at their evening formal wear.

  ‘We look perfectly splendid for where we’re headed.’

  ‘What are you talking about? I thought the purser said I was to overnight at a hotel. And tomorrow afternoon I’m on the Imperial Airways flight that’s coming up from Cape Town.’

  ‘It is, but you won’t be on it, Stella.’

  Men arrived. ‘Ah, thank you,’ he said before slipping effortlessly into French. There was no trace of the usual English accent that plagued Britishers when using her mother’s tongue. Stella was sure her mother would have sighed to hear him ask the men to carry the luggage and put it in a car that was waiting; he even provided a description of it. Why not a taxi? They were going to a different hotel than the one she had on her paperwork too.

  ‘Coming, Stella?’ he asked as the men left with her trunk between them and his bag balanced atop it as if they belonged together, like a couple off on an adventurous trip, travelling light. Seeing that flashing vignette suddenly helped her to make sense of this evening.

  ‘This has been a charade, hasn’t it?’

  He turned back. ‘Pardon?’

  She bit her lip, eyes narrowing in thought; there were other pieces of the whole picture beginning to slot into place like an imaginary jigsaw forming itself in her mind. No, she hadn’t imagined it. ‘Tonight. It was a performance, wasn’t it? Just like the night in the ballroom. You pretended to support Beatrice but you were really needing her to fling me off the ship.’

  His expression lost its brightness. ‘Beatrice made that decision earlier in the evening as she told you. Stella, I may have been putting on an act in the Berkeley ballroom but there was only sincerity between us in the lobby and in the taxi afterwards.’

  Her shoulders slumped. ‘But tonight was a perfect piece of manoeuvring. You cannot deny it.’

  Rafe turned fully back to face her. ‘I had to get us both off the ship. I thought you may be happy about it.’

  She closed her eyes momentarily. ‘You’re not even bothering to lie,’ she replied. ‘Of course I’m happy we’re together, but at what cost, Rafe? You’ve used me as your excuse so that you can be off the ship to rendezvous with Joseph. Somehow you come out of it like a shiny knight, while Beatrice believes I goaded Grace into her horrible revelation, that I took revenge on Georgina, that I’m behind all of her problems . . .’ He remained silent and despite feeling like a shrew, Stella pressed on with her thoughts, aloud. ‘So you orchestrated this.’

  ‘This?’

  She would not let him play a game of words with her this time. ‘Rafe, explain about us both having to be off the ship. Would you do that for me?’

  ‘Can we do this in the car?’

  ‘No. We shall do it right here, so I know what I’m really doing on a dock, at night, in Africa, alone with you. Whatever Beatrice had in mind, it wasn’t both of us together right here, right now. But it was clearly always your intention. I’d appreciate knowing your plan.’

  ‘All right.’ He sighed. ‘But we’re still being watched – at least walk into the shadows as though we’re leaving the port.’

  She nodded, refused his arm for fear of it being reported back to Beatrice, and heard the lonely click of her heels on the ground as they pretended to depart. Once inside the darkness of a shelter where sacks of grain were being stored, she rounded on him.

  ‘I have to be in Marrakech,’ he spilled.

  ‘And I have to be there as well, instead of going home to my family?’

  ‘I told you, I’m taking you along as a precaution.’

  ‘Really? That’s so reassuring – it’s also intensely romantic, Rafe. Careful, or you’ll make me swoon.’

  He sighed. ‘Let me just tell the driver we’re here and we won’t be long.’ Rafe gestured for her to sit on one of the piles of sacks.

  Rafe disappeared and she leaned rather than sat in the darkness, wondering at the strange turn her life had taken since he’d swaggered up and asked her to dance. She wished she could blame her parents for this too but the decisions had been all hers since that fateful evening at the Berkeley and she could not deny that even their afternoon in Brighton had only happened because she’d permitted it. More than that . . . she’d wanted it to happen and she’d put her needs ahead of any shame for Beatrice . . . or the two girls, or her own family.

  By the time he hurried back into the darkness, her mindset had shifted to a bleak sense that she was a disappointment to everyone.

  ‘Sorry,’ he urged across the dark. He waited. ‘Are you all right, Stella?’

  ‘I don’t know how to answer that,’ she admitted, giving a mirthless laugh. ‘Tell me all of it, Rafe, so I can make some sense of my world – the one you’ve thrown me into.’

  She could see him nod and imagined he did so with that soft look of injury she’d witnessed on their first evening together.

  ‘All right, I shall tell you everything. As you’re aware, I travelled around Arabia and the Holy Lands with my parents but I spent a lot of my childhood here in North Africa. One of my closest friends is a Jew. His father was from Prussia, a diplomat and a close friend with my father both working in this region. His mother died from complications during the birth of his brother, who also died not long after. His father blamed himself and Joseph was caught in the midst of it all. My mother took him in and he became the brother I shared everything but blood with.’ He sighed sadly. ‘Although we fixed that with a blood oath in the desert,’ he recalled wistfully.

  How she loved his mellow voice.

  ‘Anyway, we were like tearaways,’ he continued. ‘Joseph was fourteen months older but more reserved than I, so we were a good balance for each other because he used to complain that I was fearless. He said I made him feel braver. We did everything together, but when he was eleven his father took him back to Germany. I lost my soulmate and as adults in the war we fought on different sides. He was my enemy but every day I prayed that he would survive and I know he prayed for me too from an opposite trench.’ Rafe sat on a tower of grain sacks and ran a hand through his hair, untidying the neatly slicked style. ‘We’ve only seen each other a few times since but our childhood bond is as strong as ever. We’re both terrible correspondents but do our best to write maybe twice a year. He is my brother and far from my enemy.’

  ‘He’s Owl?’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes. But I didn’t know. Sneaky Fruity plays his cards close to his chest. I hate that he’s been grooming him and now using him. I should never have told Basil about Joseph. It seems he went behind my back and made contact alone with him. And Joseph wouldn’t think twice about being anything but cordial to someone who claims to be a friend of mine.’

  ‘So Joseph has something to share and will share it only with you?’

  ‘That’s the size of it.’

  ‘And the peacock?’

  He gave a gust of amusement and shook his head. ‘There was an old shisha cafe in one of the squares at Marrakech where we both had our first smoke. It was owned by an old rogue, Yassine, who had a pet peacock he used to lead around and it was always at the café. He named it Mustafa; he used to joke with us boys that the peacock ran the café and only allowed the patrons he liked to drink tea and smoke there. Mustafa used to make a terrible racket at times but he seemed to like the pair of us, so Yassine was happy to take our money.’

  ‘So that message was simply code?’

  ‘That’s right. Joseph didn’t want anyone to know where we would meet. And I can assure you the only reason I’ve agreed to this is because of his obvious caution. It makes me believe he has something frightening to share.’

  ‘But you initially dismissed it,’ she countered.

  ‘Of course I did. I didn’t want Fruity or anyone else in the ministry making too big a deal of this. Firstly, they’re all like bumbling schoolboys and with J
oseph so well connected in Germany, any lack of caution on their part could become a genuine threat to his wellbeing.’

  ‘Gosh, Rafe, how do you keep track of all the intrigues in your life?’

  He blew out his breath in a sighing agreement. ‘At this point I’m only worrying about my brother. He’s not a spy. He’s the sort of person who jumps at a loud sound. Heaven knows how he got through the war. The thing is, Stella, if Joseph’s anything, he’s loyal and loves me. He wouldn’t involve me like this. It has to be something he can’t entrust to anyone but the one person he knows will neither dismiss it nor leave it to idle.’

  ‘What sort of information can it be?’

  He shrugged and then took a slow breath. ‘My belief is it has to be connected with the new regime.’

  She held her breath and her tongue.

  ‘My instincts suggest this is about consolidation of power in Germany by the new leader. For Joseph to force me to return to Marrakech he’s obviously terrified, or why wouldn’t he just come to London, or ask me to Germany? No, he has to be bringing something grave to me.’

  ‘Like what?’ she wondered, her tone filled with anxiety. She stepped forward, fists unclenching, and it was all he needed as an indication of her thawing. He moved so smoothly she was in his arms before she could protest.

  ‘Destabilising Europe and the balance of power, I suspect,’ he said, holding her close.

  ‘Rafe, you’re frightening me.’

  ‘Good; then you’ll be careful. I’m sorry to drag you into this but because you’re not involved it means I can trust you but it also means I can keep you safe. No one will suspect a research assistant that I’m having a torrid affair with.’

  She understood now. Stella didn’t appreciate the label or even his rationale but anything that kept him secure she accepted. ‘You can rely on me. Whatever you need.’