Nancy. Nancy Nettleton.
It was Nancy who spoke first. ‘Good Lord! I’m so sorry, Mr de Guise. We were told . . .’ For a moment, she faltered. ‘Mrs Moffatt said we weren’t to expect your return for several days. That your rooms were to be in order before you . . .’
Raymond wearily shook his head. ‘I came back earlier than I’d intended, Miss Nettleton. I’m sorry. I can . . .’
Nancy brought the trolley into the small suite and closed the door behind her. Then, taking in the room, she said, ‘I haven’t quite mastered the art of being invisible, have I, Mr de Guise?’
Raymond smiled, remembering his own words. ‘You’ve no need to be invisible here. Please. You’d be surprised, Miss Nettleton.’
‘Call me Nancy, please. Should I . . . clean around you, Mr de Guise?’
This gave Raymond pause. ‘You’d like me to leave my own rooms?’
Inwardly, Nancy cringed. ‘I didn’t mean to say . . . I only meant . . .’
‘Nancy, I’m jesting.’
‘It’s only that, when I used to keep our own home, I’d quite happily throw my brother out on his ear if he was lounging around while I was trying to clean. Sometimes I forget – I’m not in Lancashire any more. This is the Buckingham Hotel! There are different rules.’
‘Forget about them – for here, at least.’
She had brought out her sweeping brush and, for the first time, her eyes dropped to the scattered corners of paper around Raymond’s feet. ‘Oh. Should I . . .’
Raymond dropped down and scrambled to get the pieces together himself.
‘A love letter, Mr de Guise?’ Nancy said, before she could stop herself.
‘What makes you say that?’ he asked sharply, still down on one knee.
She was speaking too freely – that much she knew. And yet . . . she remembered the fleeting look of admiration on Mr de Guise’s face when he realised that she had stepped out of her place and visited the ballroom regardless. Weren’t the dancers caught between the two worlds of the Buckingham, belonging to neither, but to one entirely of their own?
‘I can smell the perfume, Mr de Guise. Chanel. Once upon a time, my mother had an empty bottle. She bought it at a market in Manchester. I remember her filling it with water. There was still the faint scent, lingering around the rim.’
‘Well,’ said Raymond, stuffing his pockets full of the scraps of paper, ‘it’s no love letter, I can assure you of that.’
There was something brusque in his manner so Nancy said no more. Instead, she set about her work. Some time later, she became aware that he was watching her as she moved across the room, straightening the angora blanket upon the chaise longue.
‘Your leg, Miss Nettleton. Are they . . . working you too hard? Mrs Moffatt can be a slave driver – no matter how genial she seems.’
The mention of her leg – what had Vivienne Edgerton called it, her old lady’s leg? – hardened Nancy, and she kept on fussing with the pillows.
‘I’ve said something out of turn, haven’t I?’ Raymond stopped. ‘Your leg – it’s an old injury?’
It had seemed as if Nancy was turning into stone but something – perhaps only Raymond’s contriteness – broke the spell, and she softened. ‘It’s only a little stubborn. I had polio when I was a girl. Lots of folks had it in our little village. I was one of the fortunate ones. My leg’s a little . . . contrary, Mr de Guise, but nothing more.’
Raymond blurted out, ‘Nancy, forgive me.’
She lifted a hand, and busied herself with new bed sheets. ‘There’s nothing to forgive.’
‘I’ve seen championship dancers with legs weaker than yours.’
Nancy stopped. ‘Really?’
‘That’s why you came to the ballroom that night, isn’t it? You wanted to dance?’
‘Just to see the place, Mr de Guise. To see Hélène Marchmont and yourself in full flight, and all the patrons, and all the lights, and . . . No, I would never have thought to dance myself. They have nothing more elaborate than the village hall where I come from.’
‘Come now! You’re not so very far from Blackpool.’
‘Not as the crow flies, perhaps, but a world away in real life. We took a day trip once, to look at the pier. But the Winter Gardens? The Empress Ballroom? It may as well have been in the heart of Africa.’
Raymond moved around the edge of the bed, until he stood in front of Nancy. There he opened his arms. ‘Would you allow me to show you some steps?’
‘Oh, Mr de Guise,’ Nancy blustered, bustling past him to reach her trolley again. ‘The very thought! And . . .’
Something had pained her. Raymond reached out and took hold of her wrist. ‘What is it?’
Nancy hesitated. ‘It’s nothing. I’m speaking too much, aren’t I? I always do when I’m nervous.’
‘Did you get in trouble, Nancy?’ Raymond’s voice was hushed.
It was absurd, but the thought that she had been dragged in front of Mrs Moffatt, perhaps even Maynard Charles, while Raymond was out dealing with the ghost of Ray Cohen, made his blood boil.
‘No,’ Nancy answered, ‘nothing like that. But I tried a few steps, just me on my own in the empty ballroom. Only, it wasn’t empty. Miss Edgerton was there as well. She . . .’
‘She what?’
Nancy whispered, ‘She knows it was me. She’s not going to let me forget it. And she spotted my leg too.’
So that was it, thought Raymond. Vivienne Edgerton, spreading her maliciousness again. Every time he saw a chink of light in her, every time he spotted a vulnerability, she pulled herself together and returned to her usual business: condescension and cruelty, entitlement and envy. He delved his fingers into his pockets and fished out the crumpled shreds of letter he had crammed there.
‘You mustn’t listen to her, Nancy,’ he said, dropping the pieces into the waste basket dangling from the end of Nancy’s trolley. ‘She’s a bored and entitled little girl. It isn’t her fault. She’s been in this hotel a year and a day and all she’s been is trouble – there, I said it. I’ll get hung, drawn and quartered were anyone to find out, so my life is in your hands.’ He stopped and smiled, for an idea was forming. ‘I could show you some steps, if you liked. Nobody else would have to know. Because nothing – nothing, Nancy – should stop you dancing, if that’s what you want to do.’
‘I’m a chambermaid, Mr de Guise. Have you forgotten?’
‘And I’m a dancer.’ He pivoted on his heel, spinning on the spot – and was relieved when he saw Nancy’s face break into a grin. If she hadn’t smiled, all you’d have been is a twirling fool. Raymond de Guise, what’s become of you?
Nancy was silent. Where her thoughts had taken her, Raymond could not say – but when, at last, she said, ‘I should like that very much, Mr de Guise. You have my thanks’, he could not mask his smile. There was something about Nancy Nettleton, some indefinable quality that made him wonder what she would really be like on the dance floor. Her eyes were luminous. They looked directly into Raymond’s own. It took all sorts of qualities to dance well, thought Raymond. It took rhythm and elegance, poise and self-assurance. But it took intelligence too – the emotion and foresight to understand your partner, to know which way the dance was going. And, stubborn leg or not, Raymond de Guise was certain Nancy Nettleton epitomised this quality most of all.
Chapter Fifteen
PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER, NANCY NETTLETON. After a morning changing bed sheets, sweeping floors, and trying hard not to make eye contact with any one of the hundred guests you’ve shuffled past, why wouldn’t you want to do something for yourself? Isn’t this one of the things you came to London for?
There was a studio behind the ballroom at the end of a hallway – the orchestra’s practice room and where the demonstration dancers choreographed their afternoon routines. It had no windows, no fixtures – only a single shelf on which sat a gramophone and a selection of recordings from the band itself. The r
oom was laid with mahogany floorboards, though none of them as gleaming as the ones out in the ballroom.
Raymond de Guise was already waiting when Nancy arrived. The afternoon demonstration dances were yet to begin, and Nancy did not have to return to her rounds for another two hours. The other girls had gone off to put their feet up in the housekeeping lounge – there were scones and clotted cream left from yesterday’s afternoon tea.
Nancy knocked tentatively as she stepped through the open door.
Raymond de Guise looked up. He’s smiling, Nancy thought. Why is he smiling?
As Raymond placed a record upon the gramophone, he said, ‘I wondered whether you’d come . . .’
He turned on his heel and, with the most ostentatious bow – surely he was teasing? – he invited her to the centre of the dance floor.
‘Shall we?’ he asked.
Raymond opened his arms, inviting her into a classic ballroom hold. Nancy took a step towards him, but then she stopped. I want to, she told herself. And yet . . . Something was holding her back – something that wasn’t just nerves.
‘No,’ she said, and instantly cringed at what she’d done. Why did you say such a stupid thing? It had just burst out of her.
Raymond stepped back. ‘No?’
‘Not until you tell me why. Why me. Or do you teach every chambermaid to dance?’
By the way Raymond narrowed his eyes, Nancy could tell he was taken aback. ‘You think I’m a cad.’
She really didn’t. Rosa and Ruth, they were convinced he was a gigolo – but Nancy could not bring herself to see it. He didn’t seem a rogue.
But the worst ones don’t, do they, Nancy Nettleton? You’re not so naïve not to see that . . .
‘You don’t know me at all,’ she whispered. She could see his pained expression and something in that shocked her; it did not feel right to offend him so. ‘I’m just a chambermaid. That’s all I am.’
Raymond strode towards her, cupped her chin in his hand and tilted her face upward so that he could gaze into her glistening eyes. ‘Just a chambermaid? Just a chambermaid? Listen to me, Nancy Nettleton. Nobody is just a chambermaid. We all have stories. Lord knows, I have my own. And a chambermaid who has the courage to dress up and sashay into the ballroom before she’s been in the Buckingham a week? A chambermaid who risks everything, just for a glimpse of what goes on in there? No,’ he said firmly, and Nancy could see the most rapturous smile opening up on his face, ‘somebody like that isn’t just a chambermaid. And you want to know why I’d like to teach you? Why, it’s because anyone as brave as that, anyone as foolhardy, must have passion in them. Some sort of fire.’ He paused. ‘Believe it or not, Nancy, I know a thing or two about having to fit in.’ A peculiar look – wistful, perhaps even sad – drifted across Raymond’s face. ‘And maybe, just maybe, when you approached me in the ballroom that morning, I thought I’d stumbled on a kindred spirit.’
Nancy was used to the boys from the village buttering her up. She was used to deflecting them as well. Ordinarily there was something in the way they stood, some particular tone of voice that set the alarm bells ringing inside her mind. But standing here, gazing at Raymond, there was only silence. There was no other way of putting it: Raymond de Guise meant what he said.
‘Shall we?’ he ventured again, softly.
You’ve come this far, Nancy. You’re not a girl who runs away. And, besides, you do want to dance, don’t you?
She nodded and followed him down to the middle of the dance floor. And that was the first time Nancy Nettleton felt the warmth of Raymond de Guise’s arms.
Dear Frank,
It was strange. Unexpected. And dare I say it just a tiny bit wonderful. There was I, Nancy Nettleton – terror of every Lancashire boy – dancing in the arms of Raymond de Guise. I am sure you will think your sister has gone quite mad! But I had the most magical time. I stumbled and I was too tense and I was thinking so much about this leg of mine that Mr de Guise had to stop and remind me – ‘you’re meant to enjoy this, Nancy!’ But do you know what? He was patient and kind and didn’t mind at all when I froze or felt so embarrassed I couldn’t continue. And by the end, I really did enjoy it after all!
At the end of the week there had been another lesson, and at the start of the following week another one again. Sometimes they could sneak a lesson in before Nancy’s duties began at dawn, and sometimes – on Sundays, when the ballroom was closed – they could meet in the studio behind the ballroom after dark, while the rest of the hotel buzzed on around them. Soon, Nancy got to look forward to the hours she would snatch with her dancing partner.
He’s never less than a gentleman, she wrote to Frank one night. And do you know? I think I can do it. Mr de Guise has made me see that, just because my body has let me down in the past, it doesn’t mean it has to let me down for ever. It doesn’t mean that I should always be ‘Nancy with the sickly leg’. Mr de Guise says he can hardly see it any more.
‘It’s part of you,’ Raymond said one day when, after a hard morning working the fifth floor with Mrs Moffatt, Nancy moved awkwardly across the dance floor – and, angry at the way her leg put up protest, tore herself out of Raymond’s hold. ‘Don’t fight it all the time. Fighting it doesn’t make it any better. If you have to . . . why, make it a part of the dance.’
Nancy grinned at the absurdity of the idea. ‘I can’t imagine Hélène Marchmont or Sofía LaPegna have ever stumbled around and just pretended it’s part of the dance.’
‘Well,’ joked Raymond, ‘maybe that’s because they don’t have the imagination.’
And after that, Nancy wrote later that night, I hardly think about it at all. Sometimes I’m not as elegant as I might be. Sometimes my leg takes a moment to realise what the rest of our bodies are doing. I used to think about it so much I’d be willing it to happen, Frank. But now? Now we just glide along . . .
They were gliding along one Sunday evening when the studio door opened and in strode Hélène Marchmont, tall and striking in her coat of sable fur and a red cloche cap. Nancy, who had been learning the rudiments of the tango, felt suddenly exposed. Her legs seemed to dance on, but her body turned around – and only by steadying herself against Raymond’s body did she stay upright.
Her cheeks flushed crimson.
‘Hélène,’ Raymond began, and rushed to meet her at the door. Nancy watched as they whispered together. Once, Hélène looked up, over Raymond’s shoulder, and her eyes seemed to take the whole of Nancy in. I’d never felt so small, she wrote to Frank. The Empress of the Ballroom, Hélène Marchmont – and there was me, little Nancy Nettleton. I was having to concentrate just to stay on two feet . . .
Soon, Raymond stepped back and Hélène, throwing a smile at Nancy – what does it mean? What’s she smiling at me for? – disappeared from the studio.
‘Shall we resume, mademoiselle?’
‘I don’t know,’ Nancy said. ‘I’m feeling—’
‘Whatever it is, feel something else,’ declared Raymond. ‘No embarrassment! No fear! Listen to the saxophone. That’s our own Louis Kildare playing. The greatest saxophonist to ever come up through the clubs.’
The music was extraordinary. Nancy had to admit that. All of the music Raymond had played for her had been extraordinary. The waltzes brought to mind pictures of decadent palaces. The quicksteps, more gay and fancy-free, made her feel like it was the height of summer, even as the nights drew in and October approached. The tango that was playing now was so exotic, it almost made her think she was a different person . . .
‘Where’s Miss Marchmont going?’ she asked, as if to change the subject. ‘She was wearing such an elegant fur.’
‘Not going,’ Raymond said. ‘Returning. The demonstrations begin anew tomorrow. There’s no rest for Miss Marchmont and me . . .’
‘Some of the girls, they say Hélène has a secret lover. That he charters planes and takes her to Paris and Milan . . .’ Nancy saw the way his face twisted as she s
poke, as if trying to hide something, and caught herself too late. ‘Mr de Guise, have I said something out of turn?’
‘No, it’s not that. It’s just that . . . we all have secrets, Nancy. We all have stories. Even Maynard Charles himself, I shouldn’t wonder. Don’t you ever think . . . ?’ Raymond paused. He had a hand on Nancy’s shoulder and he was leading her around, taking classical hold again. This time, Nancy did nothing to resist. Their feet started moving together, a simple waltz around the room. Sometimes, she thought, it’s easier to talk when your body is moving. Dancing makes everything so much more . . . comfortable, somehow. ‘We live on top of each other here, don’t we? The Buckingham’s so big, but it can seem so small. The hotel director and the porters. The orchestra and the dancers. All you dozens of chambermaids! The garage mechanics and pages. There’s not one of them that doesn’t have a story – and here we are, all mingling together. The problem is, sometimes you want to keep your story to yourself. You must have a story, Nancy.’
‘I do,’ she said, ‘but there’s no secret in it. I’ll tell you everything, Raymond, if you like.’
He held her more tightly – then, suddenly loosening his hold, rolled her away from him, held the pose, and rolled her back tight to his body. ‘It isn’t about what I’d like. It’s about what you’d—’
‘My mother died,’ Nancy began quietly. After that, the words frothed out of her. They wouldn’t stop. ‘I was eight and she was frail and the day after she gave birth to my brother she just faded away. I can remember it like it was yesterday. How ghostly she looked in that chair . . .’
Raymond whispered, ‘Oh, Nancy . . .’
‘I had to play mum to Frank. That’s my baby brother. I still think of him as a baby, though he’s sixteen years old and six foot tall and as strapping as the rest of them in our village. I cleaned him and cooked for him and taught him his letters. And it was good, for a time, just the two of us with our father in our little cottage. My father got us by, but by the time I was fully grown he couldn’t do it any longer. He took a fall at the pit where he worked. Then it was up and in his lungs. They call it pneumoconiosis. By the end, the doctor had him on so much laudanum that he was barely there with us at all.’
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