For a moment she could not go on. She hadn’t spoken of these things since she’d arrived at the Buckingham, but that did not mean she’d forgotten. They were a part of her, imprinted on her heart. Giving voice to them now was a release, but it was a torment too. I miss him, she realised. I miss them both terribly. I want Frank here, with me, not up there – waiting, just waiting, to go the same way as our father. Because that’s what will happen. That’s what always happens to men like that. They work and they work until, finally, they just drop.
‘I was there with my father on the night that he passed and when he went . . . Well, it was only me and Frank, on the kindness of the parish. I worked hard, Raymond, to lift us up out of it. I stitched and I sewed for any who’d have me. I’m not ashamed to say that I begged. And now my brother’s old enough to take work himself, why, I got on a train to London and I came here and I . . . Don’t you see? That’s why I came. To find a new way of living. Not to stay in my little town, marry some miner’s son, and have the same thing happen all over again. I want a different life – for me, as well as Frank . . .’
Raymond did not realise, at first, that Nancy had only stopped speaking because she was crying. The music from the gramophone had come to a crescendo – and then, as suddenly as it had started, it was gone, the number coming to an end and the needle just dancing in the groove.
Returning from her memories at last, Nancy tried to step out of Raymond de Guise’s arms, but Raymond held on to her. ‘Dance on,’ he whispered – so, even though there was no music, they danced.
Dear Frank
Sometimes Rosa and Ruth wonder where I go at night. It’s no crime not to sit in the kitchenette and play backgammon and gossip like they do, but I know their tongues are wagging! I cannot tell them where I go. Once, I was late for breakfast in the housekeeping lounge and, well, it’s fair to say the girls were not happy with me that day! But Raymond is right: everyone has their story. Rosa and Ruth have stories of their own – Rosa comes from sunny Southend, and Ruth? Well, Ruth was orphaned in the Great War and grew up with a grandmother right here in London. I can barely believe it has been two months since I came to the Buckingham Hotel and all of these people, all of these stories, all around me!
In her quarters, Nancy set down her pen. She was, she had to admit, dog tired – and it was getting late. Could it really be the very last day in September? Could it really have been three whole weeks since she first danced with Raymond de Guise?
She picked herself up and, closing her eyes, imagined herself down in the studio behind the ballroom. She could call it to mind in such intimate detail that soon she could hear the music of the gramophone. Though there was nobody to dance with, she lifted her arms until she was in a classical pose. She stepped backwards. She stepped to her left. She came forward and turned, brought her legs together, then parted them again. There was hardly room in this little turret to describe any sort of box step at all, but she went on and on and on . . .
She was so lost in the dance that she did not hear the knocking at her door. Then, suddenly, she heard voices – and opened her eyes to see the bedroom door pushed ajar and, standing in the gap, Rosa and Ruth. The girls were gawping.
‘Nancy, you old romantic!’ Rosa shrieked. ‘What on earth are you doing?’
Ruth was beaming. ‘Come out in the kitchen, Nance, and show us them moves! It’s always the retiring types, isn’t it, Rosa? Lord, we could hardly get her to dance down in the ballroom – and here she is, practising her steps in her bedroom at night!’
Nancy hardly had time to put up a protest, for soon Rosa and Ruth were on either side of her, each taking her by the arm and leading her out into the little kitchenette. A couple of the other girls were playing backgammon with their empty teacups ranged around, while Frances was half asleep in a chair by the door.
‘Go on then, Nance!’ Rosa called as Ruth busied herself, clearing away a table to make space. ‘Show us your stuff. Girls, Nancy’s been teaching herself to dance. That’s where she’s been sneaking off to.’
‘Here, she’s embarrassed,’ said Ruth. ‘Let’s all give her a hand. Look, I’ll be Marchmont – and, Nance, that makes you the dashing Raymond de Guise.’ With a shriek, Ruth inveigled her way into Nancy’s arms. ‘Go on then, show me how it goes. A foxtrot. A Viennese waltz. Nothing too salacious – this is the Buckingham Hotel, after all! Mr Maynard Charles –’ and here Ruth adopted an exaggerated aristocratic air ‘– would not tolerate anything as uncouth in this fine establishment. What would King Edward think if he was to fly through and see a rhumba or a polka –’ Ruth let go of Nancy and lifted her skirts and swept them about, while the other girls guffawed ‘– in this ballroom of ours?’
‘Might happen soon,’ said Frances as she picked herself out of her chair and headed for bed.
‘What’s that?’ asked Ruth. ‘Polkas and rhumbas, in the Buckingham Hotel? Management wouldn’t allow it!’
‘All I’m saying,’ said Frances, ‘is it might happen. I happen to know, for a fact, that Miss Marchmont herself is mounting an expedition tonight.’
All of the other girls revolved to face her.
‘An expedition?’ one of them asked.
At least they’ve stopped wanting me to perform for them, Nancy thought.
‘She’s roped in Louis Kildare from the orchestra. And of course Raymond de Guise. They’re heading out, as soon as the ballroom closes tonight – down into Soho.’
Rosa erupted in laughter. ‘You’re pulling our legs. Haughty Miss Marchmont, icy Hélène, wants some action?’
‘I’m telling you. I heard them talking about it, right there in the reception hall.’
‘And Raymond de Guise going with them?’
‘Well, it stands to reason, doesn’t it?’ Rosa said. ‘See, I told you they was lovers. Now it all makes sense. They slope off to Soho for some private dancing, after they’ve done their duties for all the toffs down here. Goodness, girls, if only Mr Charles knew! They’ll be turning his hotel into a house of ill repute next. All those exotic dances!’
All around the kitchenette, the girls were falling around laughing – but, alone among them, Nancy was still. He didn’t tell me, she thought. Why didn’t he tell me? While the girls creased up around her, she turned and fled through the kitchenette door, back into her bedroom, and slammed the door.
He doesn’t have to tell you everything. Just because you confided in him. He never made a promise. He never . . .
Why was she so angry?
She tried to breathe deeply and, in that way, managed to calm herself down. Raymond de Guise was a man like any other. Of course he had love affairs. His entire life was a love story: the gilded French aristocrat, born to an English mother, who had forsaken his title to dance on a stage. At least, that was what the other chambermaids had told her. She realised, now, that as much as she’d told him of her own life, he’d told her so little of his. Perhaps the real story was even more fanciful. More fanciful, certainly, than her own sorry tale. So of course he had admirers and of course he had lovers – and if that really was Hélène Marchmont, if they really were stepping out to some shadowy Soho club tonight . . .
You can stop this nonsense this minute, Nancy Nettleton, she said to herself, burying her head in her pillow as if it might block out her thoughts. You didn’t act like one of those simpering city girls when you were back home, and you won’t do it now. So he asked you to dance with him? So you’re taking lessons, now, with the greatest dancer in the Buckingham Hotel? That’s something to be proud of! Not something to fret over like some lovelorn schoolgirl. You’re twenty-four years old, for heaven’s sake. Old enough to know better.
In moments she was back on her feet. The clock on the wall did not yet read eleven. That meant that the dances in the ballroom were only just coming to an end. Something was compelling her to put back on her house dress, to slip on her shoes. Something else was compelling her to quickly fix her hair in the mirror. For a
moment she took in her reflection – her large eyes were shining with anticipation, her dark curls already escaping the pins. She half-heartedly attempted to tuck a wayward strand behind her ear, and then she was scampering out of the room, past the kitchenette where the girls were still rolling around laughing, and down the stairs.
*
By the time she reached the ballroom the band had finished playing, and a procession of stately guests were leaving for the night. In the chaos, Nancy was relieved to find herself invisible again.
She heard a familiar voice. Her eyes turned back down the marble incline leading to the ballroom and she watched as Raymond de Guise appeared, with the saxophonist from the band. They were so lost in conversation that they sailed past her without even noticing she was there. They’re not wearing their evening suits, she thought. They really are leaving the hotel for the night.
Across the hall, by the grand bronze doors, Hélène Marchmont was waiting. Even dressed down, Miss Marchmont looked as elegant as a Russian princess. Her fair hair was tied up in a bun, and it nestled upon the collar of her rich fur coat. Simple pearl earrings adorned her ears but, on Hélène Marchmont, they looked like exquisite treasures.
Hélène, she thought, remembering the girls in the kitchenette high above and all they had said. It can’t really be true, can it?
What if it is? she asked herself. What does it matter to you? You’re a chambermaid. He’s an aristocrat. A dancer, but still an aristocrat . . .
It could never be, Nancy Nettleton. You’ve changed enough sheets to realise that life isn’t a fairy tale.
But I have to know, thought Nancy. It was a need, hot and burning in her stomach. She thought of the way he had held her, down there in the studio, when she’d told him about her father. I deserve to know.
Louis Kildare, in his brown felt coat and pinstriped hat, was already leading Hélène and Raymond through the revolving brass door. Nancy made as if she might go the same way. Then she remembered who she was. She saw Maynard Charles in deep conversation with a gentleman in a Savile Row evening suit. She heard the hawing of two tipsy guests as they asked Mr Simenon, the head concierge, to summon them a hansom cab for the journey home. Tomorrow morning, she would be changing these peoples’ bedsheets. She’d be scrubbing the bowls of their toilets and laying out freshly laundered towels for them to dab dry their delicate skins. Those brass doors were not for her and they never would be. So she made haste for the staff entrance instead.
*
Moments later, Nancy quickly made her way up Michaelmas Mews. Above her the autumn night was empty and open, the London skyline splattered with stars.
She had almost lost sight of the silhouettes of Hélène Marchmont, Louis Kildare and Raymond de Guise when she heard a shrill whistling behind her. Whoever it was must have been keeping his head down because, rather than squeeze past her and out onto the square, he promptly barrelled into her. When she looked around, to be met with a flurry of apologies, she saw Billy Brogan standing there, mouth wide open.
‘Nance! What the devil are you standing there for – and without a coat!’
In a moment, Billy was stepping out of his own coat and putting it around Nancy’s shoulders.
‘You’ll catch your death out here. Look, oughtn’t you to be up in your quarters this time o’ night? Mrs Moffatt doesn’t care for midnight creepers, does she? But if you were to get back up there, well, nobody’d . . .’ Billy stopped. Nancy was not paying a blind bit of notice to anything he was saying. She was staring, instead, off across the square, and one of the roads leading east towards Regent Street and Oxford Circus.
‘Billy, are you done for the day?’
‘I should say so, Nance. I been here since dawn.’
She took his hand.
‘Nance?’
‘I’ve got to go that way,’ she said. ‘Come with me, Billy?’
Billy was bewildered. ‘Where to?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but . . .’ One more glance across the square told her that it was nearly too late. The silhouettes had disappeared. They were already gone. ‘I’m going!’ she exclaimed. ‘Off into the night. Me, a lowly chambermaid with barely any idea how to get around in London town! If you won’t chaperone me, Billy, I’ll have to chaperone myself.’
She took three great strides out into the square, but soon she heard the clatter of footsteps behind her.
‘Changed your mind have you, Billy?’ she said, with a sudden spring in her step. There was nothing like the feeling of being spontaneous, not when you’d been buttoned down caring for other people your whole life. To do something frivolous and be free to do it – was there any greater joy?
‘It’s not that, Nance . . .’
‘Well, what is it?’ she asked, finally reaching the corner and catching sight of Raymond’s silhouette up ahead.
‘It’s just – you still got my coat, Nancy.’
Nancy stopped. ‘Come on, Billy. Haven’t you the taste for a little adventure?’ She remembered Raymond’s words. Well, it can’t be the Buckingham Hotel each and every night now, can it? ‘They’re getting away. Where they go, I want to go. Isn’t that a way to lead your life?’
But as she marched stridently after them, ignoring the protest of her bad leg, Nancy had the distinct feeling that, wherever they were going and whatever they were doing tonight, it was not something a mere chambermaid like her was supposed to see.
Chapter Sixteen
LONG, NARROW BERWICK STREET WAS quiet after dark. All of the market traders had long ago packed up and gone home. But the noises flurrying up from the doorway at the bottom of the market, where the lane narrowed to cobbles and the darker reaches of Soho beyond, were of piano and trumpet, and the raucous cheers of a hundred people dancing. The sign above the door read THE MIDNIGHT ROOMS in florid script.
Louis Kildare was the first through the door and down the uneven stairs – but then, he’d been here before. The Midnight Rooms didn’t care whether a musician was white or black, rich or poor – and, in 1929, when Kildare had first sauntered through these Soho streets, fresh off the steamer that had brought him from his West Indies home, the Midnight Rooms had been one of the first to give him a chance. He could still remember sitting on a stool in the cramped basement club, taking his saxophone out of its case and giving them his best rendition of the solo from ‘Squeeze Me’, the version first performed by Albert Brunies and his Halfway House Orchestra. Kildare had played for the Midnight Rooms crowd that very same night. It was the same night he’d met Gus Black, Fred Wright, and so many of the others who would one day sign up with the Archie Adams Band.
Halfway down the stairs, he looked back to see Hélène Marchmont and Raymond de Guise still hovering on the threshold, like a married couple uncertain whether they should venture through the bedroom doors. Kildare beamed at them – those two dancers had spent far too long in the cosseted halls of the Buckingham Hotel! – and disappeared into the darkness at the bottom of the stairs.
In the street above, Raymond could tell that Hélène was anxious. A starlet like Hélène had not come up through the dance halls. There was a time when Hélène had been an amateur dancer, the classical beauty waltzing on the arm of whatever gentleman was courting her at the tea dances and private parties of Fitzrovia, Mayfair, and Holland Park. Those were the days when her glacial blue eyes had stared out of the cover of every magazine. But Hélène had wanted more. The world was not kind to the beautiful. It used them and then, when the years took their beauty away, it kicked them aside. What riches she had saved from her days modelling for Harper’s and Vogue had been enough to hire tutors, and it had been one of those tutors who first brought her to the ballroom. Most dancers found their feet in places like this basement club, but Hélène had come through unscathed.
‘Aren’t you nervous, Raymond?’
He didn’t tell her that this wasn’t his first visit to the Midnight Rooms. He could distinctly remember standing on the cusp of t
hese very same stairs with his father, listening to the wild hubbub below – both of them, simple East End boys, pulsing with nerves at what they would see below.
But that had been the old days. 1925. What new dances, new music, he might find here now, he didn’t know.
‘It’s just dancing,’ he said. ‘The high-born dance, and so too does the rest of the world.’
The door opened below. Suddenly the music was louder, rampaging up the stairs.
Hélène lifted a single eyebrow. ‘It doesn’t seem . . . quite the same.’
‘Dancing’s the same wherever you go. Maybe they drink whisky and rum down here instead of Moët et Chandon, but it’s all for the love of the dance.’
Raymond had started to walk down the stairs. Steeling herself, Hélène followed. This was your idea, she had to remind herself. And as they reached the bottom of the stairs, she remembered why. The door opened up. Louis Kildare was already standing there, with three tumblers filled with some dark spirit whose taste had never passed Hélène’s lips before. Through the reefs of grey cigar and cigarette smoke, a thronged dance floor was surrounded by tables and chairs. In recesses in the walls, gangs of friends were drinking and laughing and watching the dancers. Bodies were clasped tight. One girl was up on the table, head hunched down against the low ceiling arch, kicking her legs wildly. And on a tiny decked stage set into one of the alcoves itself, lit by the light of a hundred guttering candles in braziers on the walls, a six-piece band put up such a sound that Hélène had imagined there must have been a full orchestra hidden in these tiny halls. A saxophone soared. The trumpets were ablaze. A man was singing, his voice half drowned out by the music.
One Enchanted Evening Page 14