Billy Brogan had only ever seen Lord Edgerton once. The day after he had acquired a majority position on the board, he had descended on the Buckingham Hotel to declare the start of a new era. Everyone here, from the lowliest garage attendant to the hotel director himself, had gathered in the ballroom while Lord Edgerton stood tall on the stage and surveyed them like a general does his army. He was a tall and sinewy man, not given to fat, and his face was dominated by a silver moustache. Beneath the bushy thatch of his eyebrows, his eyes were small and dark, hidden behind spectacles with tortoiseshell frames. There was something imposing about the man. His shoulders were broad, his chest big and round – and, though the way that he dressed was gentlemanly, he carried his cane not as a gentleman would, down at his side to assist in his walking, but in both hands, almost, Billy thought, as if it was a cane meant for thrashing errant children.
Vivienne Edgerton stepped forward, curtseying for her step-father – who condescended to kiss her once on the cheek. Once Vivienne stepped back, Lord Edgerton shook Maynard Charles’s hand and allowed himself to be led into the Queen Mary dining room. Vivienne followed.
Was Billy mistaken, or was the way Maynard Charles had taken a handkerchief from his lapel and dabbed at his forehead a sign of some distress? New figures were streaming through the doors. These gentlemen seemed as estimable as Lord Edgerton himself. Dressed in gaberdine and tweed, they allowed the swarming concierges to take their coats and hats, and soon they too were swept into the Queen Mary.
Maynard Charles returned. His eyes locked with Billy. Billy froze.
‘Mr Brogan,’ he said, heels clicking across the black and red chequered squares as he reached Billy’s side. ‘Do you know who those good people are, young man?’
Billy nodded. ‘It was Lord Edgerton, sir. The Lord . . .’
‘And the rest?’
Perhaps he ought to have known, but again Billy Brogan froze.
‘Those, young man, were confidants of Lord Edgerton. They’ve chosen our hotel as a forum to discuss the most delicate matters. You know, of course, about the union?’
‘The union, sir?’
‘Well, of course, there are many unions. Lord Edgerton’s friends represent, shall we say, certain interests in this union of theirs. Mr Mosley himself would have attended this morning’s meeting, had he not been subsumed in some other business. We’re to make them feel . . .’ Maynard Charles paused, and Billy wondered if he was himself wrestling with the idea. ‘Welcome,’ Maynard concluded. ‘So I’ll be expecting your usual good service. They’ll be using the Queen Mary to host various . . . associates over the next weeks and months. Whatever those fellows want, you’re to fetch it for them, day or night. We need their custom, and we need Lord Edgerton kept happy. Don’t ask questions, Billy. But do, of course, remember the things you’ve heard. You can do that for an old man, can’t you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You’re an estimable chap, Billy Brogan.’ Maynard Charles extended a hand. ‘Off with you now.’
Billy turned as if to take flight deeper into the Buckingham – Vivienne’s package still lingered in his back pocket – when Maynard Charles coughed, ostentatiously.
‘See if our guests need errands performed first, won’t you, boy?’
Inwardly, Billy cringed. ‘Right away, sir.’
*
The Queen Mary was the most ostentatious of the dining rooms in the Buckingham, but it was not ordinarily open for breakfast – and consequently, Lord Edgerton and his guests were alone in the opulent expanse. A single crystal chandelier, all sixteen of its lights aflame, hung above them, so that they appeared to be taking tea beneath an enormous halo. At least this made Billy less conspicuous, he thought. He could linger on the edges of the room and not be seen.
Altogether six men were seated around the table, being waited on by Mr Simenon and a trio of waiters in pure white shirts. Five of them appeared the same age and stature as Lord Edgerton himself, but the sixth was smaller and younger – lithe, thought Billy, with an almost effete look. The youngest man had been fortunate enough to be given a seat beside Vivienne Edgerton, and she too looked relieved to have the company. Whatever the elder men were talking about, at least she had a friend. Another mouse to toy with, thought Billy. Lord help this one if he falls under her spell.
By increments, Billy came closer, close enough that he could hear Vivienne trying to contain her laughter.
‘Vivienne!’ Lord Edgerton erupted at the other end of the table. ‘Whatever is titillating you, might you keep it to yourself? You’re invited to this breakfast because your mother asked that I involve you. But if you might keep your conversation to a min-imum, I should greatly appreciate it. We are men of the world and we have much to discuss.’ Billy saw Vivienne flush crimson, but somehow she managed to keep her humiliation hidden. I’ve seen this before, thought Billy, she bottles it up and bottles it up . . . and the only way to get rid of it is when she’s in the ballroom with too many cocktails in her hand, or with the powders Mr Simenon sends me to collect for her.
At the table, Lord Edgerton gazed imperiously around. ‘My stepdaughter,’ he explained to his fellows. ‘I’m afraid she still has the American temperament of her departed father. But you’re an English girl now, aren’t you, Vivienne? So she’s learning English decorum.’ He shook his head, resignedly. ‘Shall we move on to the matter at hand, gentlemen? The union must be allowed to march freely and unhindered. We’ll need to petition Parliament. The demonstration is legal and it must be protected from that East End filth . . .’
The lord went on, but Billy’s eyes were drawn inexorably back to Vivienne.
‘Nathaniel,’ she was saying, ‘don’t pay him any attention. If he speaks to me like that again, then he’ll know what a scene I can cause. My mother’s in his thrall, but she won’t be for ever. She’s in love now, but once that wears off . . .’
Her voice had been wavering but, as she spoke, she fought her way back to her usual fieriness.
‘I can think of worse places to live than an establishment like this, Miss Edgerton.’ The young man named Nathaniel paused. He’s probably only a few years older than I am, thought Billy, but when you’re born with titles and money, you hold yourself different. You’re born a gentleman. You’re born entitled. ‘I’m not like my father,’ the young man went on, indicating the most corpulent of Lord Edgerton’s guests, a man of ruddy complexion and with a big, porcine snout. ‘They wanted me to get a job in the City, like the rest of them. Or in industry. But what’s wrong with wanting to live a little first? As a matter of fact, I only came at all today because I’d heard such magical things about your ballroom. And here I am, and I haven’t even seen it!’
‘Tell me,’ Vivienne said, ‘what would you have been doing?’
‘Oh, some minor adventuring, I should think.’ Nathaniel, whose lips barely seemed to part as he spoke, paused. ‘Do you think a lady in your position might be able to unlock those ballroom doors, allow a stranger a glimpse of it?’
Vivienne glanced up at her stepfather briefly before she whispered, ‘I should think a lady in my position could. Are you a proficient dancer?’
‘More so than these fine gents.’ Nathaniel’s father gave him a look like daggers, but Nathaniel himself seemed undeterred. He straightened himself, brushing his long fringe out of his eyes. ‘I demonstrated dances at the Imperial for a summer when I was nineteen. That was until my father over there – Oliver White, he goes to the same club as your father – decided it was too uncouth. A dancer in the family he could tolerate – but a dancer at a seedy little place like the Imperial?’ Nathaniel threw his head back. ‘The shame!’
Billy knew of the Imperial. It wasn’t unheard of for him to scurry through there on some errand or other. The pages there thought him an aristocrat himself, and all because he walked the corridors of the Buckingham. The Imperial might not have been as opulent as these surroundings, but it was hardly a hostel for degenerates. T
he ballroom there had hosted the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. They had a Friday night cabaret and a continental kitchen where the finest French cuisine was served day and night.
‘Do you dance, Miss Edgerton?’
Billy watched Vivienne’s eyes light up. The elder men were engrossed in conversation – he heard only snatches, talk of the Mitfords who held society in the palm of their hands, the name of Mr Chamberlain, the Chancellor – but Vivienne sidled closer to Nathaniel.
‘I’ve . . . been known to dance a little. The ballroom after dark, it’s like . . . It’s positively enchanted.’ Vivienne stopped. Her eyes, which had been focused so intently on Nathaniel, flicked up – and, like two stage spotlights, they found Billy Brogan in their glare. ‘Billy,’ she snapped, ‘haven’t you a little something for me?’
Billy felt as if he was pinned to the glistening floor. The rumbling conversation of Lord Edgerton and his guests petered into silence. Lord Edgerton himself turned to consider him through his spectacles. Invisible, he thought. Pages and porters, chambermaids and valets, we’re meant to be invisible.
Across the Queen Mary, the change in atmosphere must have been noticed, because all of a sudden Mr Simenon and the head waiter reappeared. Abreast, they marched across the restaurant as if they were knights on white chargers rushing to some damsel’s defence.
‘Can we help you, young man?’ Lord Edgerton intoned.
‘Brogan, what are you lurking for?’ Mr Simenon breathed.
‘I . . .’
Mr Simenon threaded his arm through Billy’s and, gushing out apologies, swept him aside. He whispered, ‘Are you simple, Brogan? Deliver the package to Miss Edgerton’s suite, not directly to her. Were you truly thinking to deliver it here, in front of her father? You Irish are bog-brained, Brogan, but I expected better of you! Off with you, boy! Don’t let me see you here again.’
At the door, Billy looked back. Mr Simenon’s words couldn’t sting him. He’d heard worse. He’d given out worse, too, because you weren’t an Irish lad in London if you hadn’t got into some scrap or another. No, what stung him most of all was that Lord Edgerton and his guests were bowed down again, thick in their conversation – and he’d barely heard a single word. There would be no tip from Mr Charles tonight.
*
On the sixth storey, Billy took out a single silver key and slipped through the doors of Vivienne Edgerton’s suite. First time he’d come here, it had been a strange delight to walk among her things, to know he could snoop inside her clutch bag, her wardrobe, the Moroccan manuscript book she kept on the dresser and in which (or so Billy imagined, for in the end he’d been too much of a gentleman to look) she wrote down her darkest secrets. Now, as he looked around, he had another feeling. Was it really sadness? Guilt? The suite had not been cleaned today. Sometimes Vivienne slept so late and dismissed so many chambermaids that it could go days without being swept or the bedsheets being changed. Billy stepped across an open suitcase, through the dresses she’d strewn around, past the unmade bed and to the little chest of drawers. A gramo-phone record was lying on her pillow but the gramophone itself was nowhere to be seen. On the record’s sleeve was a picture of the Dorsey Brothers’ Orchestra. It was a copy of ‘Tailspin’, and scratched so deeply that Vivienne either cared nothing for it, or cared too much.
On the dresser, a bottle of the finest Tabu was knocked over. The perfume had left a stain on the varnish, cutting rivulets down the front of the dresser and to the sheepskin below. Billy followed it with his eyes. He stopped, momentarily, when he saw what he took for a pair of gentleman’s drawers lying under the bed – but even this did not make him linger long.
He reached into his back pocket. The little drawstring bag sat in the palm of his hand. He hesitated. Something was making him resist laying the package down on the pillow where it ought to have gone – where it had gone so many times before. He pictured her up here, playing her records, dancing alone, and a part of him wanted to take the drawstring bag and cast it out of the balcony window, or flush it clean away.
Then he remembered Nancy Nettleton. Sweet Nancy Nettleton and her stubborn leg, hurrying away from the ballroom with Vivienne’s shrill laughter ringing in his ears.
Billy Brogan laid the package down on Vivienne’s pillow and slid quietly out of the room.
Chapter Fourteen
IN THE BATHROOM AT THE Red Lion public house on High Holborn, Ray Cohen looked at himself in the mirror and ran his fingers through his unruly hair. Reaching into the splayed bag at his side, Raymond produced a comb and a little pot of brilliantine. It was not so difficult to effect the transformation into Raymond de Guise in the flesh. He had already shed his brown leather jacket and stepped into his bespoke woollen coat. The chapped leather boots were safely stowed in the bag, and the brogues were waiting to slip onto his feet.
He did not like leaving Whitechapel on such bad terms. Family was family. Blood was blood. But he’d tried so many times to make them see that getting up and getting out didn’t have to be betrayal, and they never truly understood. So leaving is what he’d done. He was up before dawn that morning, long before his brother would pick himself out of bed, long before his mother was up and about her daily rounds. He left a simple note: You know where to find me. Don’t contact me by name. Take care, Ma. Write to me c/o Billy Brogan. Then he was gone.
Later, when Raymond de Guise stepped out of the hansom cab on Berkeley Square and looked up at the palatial facade of the Buckingham Hotel, he felt a soaring in his heart that – for the moment, at least – cured all ills. I prefer this version of me. The Buckingham, he decided, was a symbol of all he’d accomplished, the troubled life he’d left behind.
He glided across the reception hall, where Mr Simenon was simpering around some new guests – the van der Lindes, newly in from South Africa, where they oversaw a vast estate on the edge of a national park. They’d been photographed, here in the Buckingham, with a baby cheetah they led around Mayfair on a leash. By the guest lifts, two porters were standing to attention in their uniforms of navy and gold, while the obelisk fountain in the reception’s centre gurgled.
Yes, thought Raymond, it’s so good to be home. Home is where you hang your hat. And the beauty is that you get to decide what hat you wear. You can change . . . change for the better.
Raymond was crossing the expansive floor when Billy Brogan appeared alongside him. ‘Here you are, Mr de Guise. I been holding it for you.’
The gangly hotel page produced a small white envelope with the name Raymond written on the front in cursive script. As Raymond took it, he detected the distinct scent of Chanel.
‘Who’s this from, Billy?’
Billy held up his hands in mock retreat. ‘I just deliver them, Mr de Guise. I don’t read ’em.’
Raymond arched an eyebrow. ‘A likely story, Mr Brogan,’ he said in disbelief – but, by then, the lift doors were opening, so he stepped in.
Raymond’s quarters were the grandest of all the demonstration dancers who lived at the hotel. There were six live-in dan-cers. Their quarters were arranged around a small kitchenette on the hidden seventh storey, above the vaulted ceilings of the hotel’s most expensive suites. Raymond’s room was not large but its windows opened onto a small terrace overlooking the square, the armoire was of a vintage French design, and the mirror in which he readied himself every morning was so big that it might better have been suited backstage at the Palladium. His bed, a four-poster, dominated the room and he threw himself into it now, barely even bothering to take off his coat. The bag that contained all the vestiges of Ray Cohen’s life he dropped at his side.
Even the bed seemed to be welcoming him home. After a night spent tossing and turning, oscillating wildly between pride that he’d escaped Whitechapel and guilt that he hadn’t made peace with the family he was once again leaving behind, it was a welcome embrace. He felt he could close his eyes there and then, but the scent of Chanel was still on his fingertips.
Inside the en
velope was paper headed with the legend of the Buckingham Hotel. In tiny, precise handwriting, the words read:
Dear Mr de Guise,
I hope you will forgive our moment together in the Grand Ballroom. There is something so powerful in the music, in the movement, in feeling one’s body pressed up against another living soul. We forgot ourselves, dear Raymond. We were not in our right minds, and I should hate it if a moment like this might derail our . . . I was going to say ‘tuition’, but I should rather say ‘friendship’. We are friends, are we not, Raymond?
You know me well enough to understand how difficult a letter this has been to write. But I must swallow my pride. Forgive my indiscretion, let us say no more about it, and promise you will dance with me again, when the Grand is ready? I promise you will be rewarded . . .
Yours in anticipation
Vivienne
Raymond let his eyes drift over the letter. He heaved his legs over the edge of the bed and sat hunched there, slumped into a posture that should have shamed him as a dancer. Vivienne Edgerton. Dancing with disaster. Even in this letter there were both sides of her: the angel, who wanted only to dance and be admired; and the devil, who knew that, with the right words, she could make him do it. He had been foolish to dance with her at all. Whether he said yes or whether he said no, it could only end one way – in humiliation and defeat. She would either loathe him and make it known, or the rumours would begin, rumours of Raymond de Guise and the beautiful Vivienne Edgerton dancing in the ballroom at dawn.
He took the letter between his fingers and, on a whim, tore it in half. Then he tore it again, then again and again, until Vivienne’s words were confetti being scattered onto the thick sheepskin rug.
The door opened. Raymond wheeled around, kicking through the falling shreds, and saw a chambermaid – the chambermaid – hauling her trolley through the door. In the same moment, she saw him.
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