But we weren’t going to let them, Raymond’s mother wrote. Your father would have been out there with the best of ’em, and so was we. Hundreds and thousands of us turned out to see it done. Even when the police showed themselves, we was there.
She wrote about upturned buses. She wrote about little old ladies casting their chamber pots out of their windows. Pots and pans. Skillets and stones. Anything that came to hand – and all to drive the police and the fascists they were protecting out. Cable Street, which Ray knew so well from the days dancing with his father – that long, bustling row of drinking dens and opium houses, of places where gentlemen could go to find a woman – had been consumed. What had happened in the Midnight Rooms was like two children playing rough-and-tumble in the park when set against the violence of Cable Street.
*
And who was there, with the best of ’em? Raymond de Guise? Was it Raymond, in his evening suit and dancing shoes, holding the line when the police tried to drive us out? Or was it his brother, Artie? Poor, destitute Artie – not a penny to his name, not a hope in the world of making a living for his self, but proud and determined to stand up for what’s right.
But I am not writing to scold you, Ray. You know what we think, and we got hope in our hearts that you see the light. No. I am writing for Artie’s sake. There was many fallen that day. And Artie among them. Some Metropolitan cantered by on his horse and brained him with his truncheon as he went into the crowds. His shoulder is broken and the doctor says he might never work again. You won’t remember, Ray, what being out of work and with no hope of getting it can do to a man. He can’t eat. He can’t sleep. But he has asked after you. You might not think it after last time you was here, but he still has faith in you, son.
We wait, in hope and in hunger. And I remain,
Your loving mother
Alma Cohen
Raymond stared at the letter for a long time. He tried to picture Artie, as battered and bruised and broken as Raymond himself. That was what it was like when you were little, wasn’t it, Ray? The two of you, tearaways together, and when one got beaten up, so did the other. There’s a nice irony in that. He lifted one of the fingers of his good hand and traced the black bruise around his eye. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I ought to have been there. I’m safe here in the Buckingham Hotel, safe where nobody knows my name. But step outside the ballroom, step outside the hotel grounds, and a fancy new name and a pair of dancing shoes doesn’t keep you safe for very long.
Artie, he thought, I’m sorry.
Starkly aware of Billy Brogan still lurking behind him, he screwed the letter up and cast it to the floor.
‘What is it, Mr de Guise? You upset on account of your brother?’
That and everything else, thought Raymond. You’ve gone soft, Ray. You’re living in a false world and it’s turned you soft. The real world is brittle and nasty and full of inhumane sorts. You might have escaped from it yourself, but not everyone can run. He thought back to the stories he’d seen coming out of Germany. Hadn’t Artie himself said that Jewish runaways were already turning up in the East End, on the run from the National Socialists in Germany? Well, if Cable Street was any indication – if the fracas in the Midnight Rooms was any sign – they were running from one fire straight into the next. A few short years ago there had been singing and dancing and prosperity, of a sort, in Germany too. Now look at them. How long until it happens here as well?
Stop kidding yourself, Ray. It’s already happening.
Perhaps it was suspicion that was putting down roots in his head, growing stronger and sturdier with every day that passed. Suspicion that his father, who would have been so proud of how elegantly Ray Cohen could dance, would never have counten-anced him dancing here, in the Buckingham Hotel. A place whose lord was a close compatriot of the type of men who marched through their home streets, meaning to drive them out – and all because of who their fathers were, and their fathers’ fathers before them. A place where the Londonderrys came to dine, and spoke so eloquently about their noble German friends. A place where he, Ray Cohen, had danced with Unity Mitford from the richest family in the land, kissed her once on each cheek and watched as she was chauffeured off to meet her plane and – at the other end – the hateful Führer Hitler to whom she was so devoted.
Maybe it was the realisation that, bitter and angry and playing him for money as they were, his family might just have been right.
He came out of his agony and fixed Billy with a glare. ‘You’d do me a favour, wouldn’t you, Billy?’
‘That’s what I’m here for, Mr de Guise.’
‘There’s a girl here. She works under Mrs Moffatt, in housekeeping. Her name’s Nettleton. Nancy Nettleton. Find her and bring her to me, would you, Billy? I have some . . . explaining to do.’
*
Nancy Nettleton was in the housekeeping kitchenette when Billy Brogan appeared at the doors. In the week since Mr Simenon had delivered her so joyously into Mrs Moffatt’s hands, she had tried her best to remain invisible.
It was hard not to think about Raymond. Once, she dallied by the ballroom, hopeful of hearing something – but Mr Simenon was prowling the reception hall and she dared not wait long. Another time, Hélène Marchmont floated past on the way to the Queen Mary and Nancy was a moment away from calling out and asking her for news. Every time she had heard a rumour about the absent Raymond de Guise, she had breathed not a word – and this was the hardest thing of all.
Nancy was sitting over the backgammon board, being roundly trounced by Rosa – who treated the game as if it was her moral duty to win – when Billy Brogan rapped his fingers on the door. ‘Nance,’ he said, when the girls looked up, ‘you’d better come.’
Nancy could sense the suspicion in Rosa and Ruth. She had not forgotten what Mrs Moffatt said: that the other girls had noticed. ‘Can it wait, Billy?’
‘I’m afraid it can’t, Nance.’
Rosa lifted her eyebrows and smirked. ‘Got yourself an admirer there, Nance.’
In the doorway, Billy Brogan blushed scarlet. ‘It isn’t that, Nance. But . . .’
Nancy did not know whether to stay or go. The dice were in her hands. She cast them. ‘Well, what is it, Billy?’
Billy was coiled. He tried to keep it in. He did not want to embarrass Nancy. She’d already suffered enough, after what Mr Simenon had done. And yet the eyes of the other girls were boring into him. They were laughing . . .
‘It’s Mr de Guise,’ he said, forthright. ‘He wants to see you.’
The dice clattered out of Nancy’s hands. The eyes of the other girls had turned to her, now. They were considering her closely, demanding whether she was going to go – or whether she was going to stay here with the rest of them, where she belonged.
‘I’ll be there directly, Billy,’ she said – and, hoisting her skirts, hurried out of the room.
*
Nancy knocked on the door, and had no idea what she was supposed to think as she slipped through and into his suite.
He was dressed in his full evening wear, as if he was ready to take to the floor, but the face above his collar was hardly his own. It was still yellow and distended where the thugs had laid into him; one of his eyes was swollen shut, but starting to reveal itself again – like a ripening fruit ready to burst open. His suit had been ironed and pressed, but he was not wearing his dancing shoes, and nor could he – for one of his feet was bound up so tightly in bandage it looked twice the other’s size.
You still look like an angel, she thought, but . . . She thought she could see the lines of pain on his face – and all she wanted was to go to him, to tell him he was going to get better, to look after him until he was himself again.
‘Oh, Raymond,’ she breathed with a tremble in her voice, ‘what did they do to you?’
She came forward in stuttering steps, as if she might nurse him as she had once nursed her father – but then she stopped. She had forgotten herself, again.
‘Nanc
y, I’m sorry,’ he whispered. His voice was frail too. His one good eye had a faraway look. ‘I meant to send for you before but I’ve been . . .’ He shrugged, and when he smiled she could see his new crooked smile. ‘Indisposed.’
Indisposed, thought Nancy. At least he had his sense of humour then. At least he had his charm.
‘Nancy,’ he went on, ‘I owe you an explanation.’
‘You don’t owe me anything. I’m only glad you’re—’
‘Alive?’ he joked.
‘Alive,’ said Nancy. ‘Raymond, I—’
‘I know you were there, Nancy. I saw you across the dance floor. You followed us, didn’t you?’
Nancy was not sure what to say. The truth was too foolish. ‘I’m not proud of it, Raymond. I’m sorry. But I wanted to see it for myself. Can you understand that?’
‘You saw more than you, perhaps, had thought you would.’
There was a question waiting to be asked. At first Nancy thought better of it. Then she blurted out, ‘Why did those men attack you, Raymond?’
It was what he had asked Billy to bring her here for. He readied himself by taking deep breaths.
‘I want you to listen to me, Nancy. Listen and, after I’ve spilled it all, if you want to leave this room and tell everyone in the hotel, then I’ll understand. But I had to tell it . . . to you. You told me everything about yourself. You should know the real me. I . . .’ He was nervous, but he pulled himself together and said, ‘I want you to know who I am.’
Nancy waited.
‘My name,’ he went on, ‘was not always Raymond de Guise. The name I was born with is . . .’ It felt like stripping out of his evening suit and standing naked in front of her. ‘Raymond Cohen. My family call me Ray. I was born in Whitechapel. My family are tinkers and tradesmen. No, hang that. They’re thieves and con men, pure and simple. And there was a time that I almost went that way too. It doesn’t mean there isn’t good in them. It’s just the way things were. In another world, I’d have been out there still. But I had something my brother didn’t. I could dance. I got up and I got out and . . . I thought I’d left it all behind. But you can’t, can you? You can’t outrun your past. All these years, I’ve just been dancing while the world staggers from one disaster to the next . . .’ He paused. ‘In here isn’t like it is out there. There’s order in here. You’re upstairs or you’re downstairs and you know your place. But out there it’s messy and ugly and . . . Those men who mobbed me in the Midnight Rooms, they came from the same streets where me and my brother were raised. They recognised me from the old times. They hated us then for what we are, though they didn’t show it. Only now . . .’
Nancy had listened to it all with a blank expression. Now her face developed creases and lines. ‘You lied to me,’ she whispered, in disbelief. ‘You lied to us all, to everyone here . . .’
‘Little lies,’ Raymond ventured. ‘Here and there, daily little lies. But they all add up. I’m sorry, Nancy. It’s my own fault. I’ve been a fool. I should have stayed here, in the Buckingham, in my ballroom, where everything is crystal clear. I should have known that, the moment I stepped out there, the old world was waiting.’
Nancy was uncertain what to say. She had, she decided, no right to feel aggrieved. What was Raymond de Guise to her? What was Ray Cohen? A man she’d known for scant weeks. A man who’d shown her a little quickstep, the art of box stepping, a little rhythm and poise. That’s all. Well, isn’t it?
Why, then, did it feel like so much more?
Because I told you my life, Raymond – and all the while you were lying about yours . . .
‘That life isn’t mine any more. I feel the pull of it sometimes. But it isn’t mine. This is mine. But if Maynard Charles were to find out. If—’
‘They’d cast you out.’
‘It isn’t that. They’d think me a liar, but they’d cast me out for the very same reason those men mobbed me. Because my family are Jewish.’ He stopped, momentarily unable to go on. ‘You know the circles our Lord Edgerton moves in. You’ve seen the sort of men he entertains here at our hotel. Damn my eyes, I entertain them too. I danced with Unity Mitford. I clasped hands with Gräfin Schecht and twirled her around my dance floor. And all the while their friends and colleagues in that union of theirs are marching against people like me, people like my brother. And that’s why, Nancy. That’s why they must never know who I really am. I’ve been lying to myself all along. I tell everyone who’ll listen that, once you’re inside the Grand, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you were born. All that matters is the dance. But it’s wrong, isn’t it? They marched through my old neighbourhood this week. My brother was up on the barricades, brawling with the Metropolitan Police and those fascists they came to protect – and all the while here I am, dressed up to the nines and dancing with the very same people . . .’
Nancy could see the way the idea was tearing him apart. She went to sit beside him, on the edge of the bed. She took his hand. It was a revelation to see him so shaken. Maybe you’re not the man you said you were, but maybe you’re no worse for it. Suddenly it made sense: why he had so admired the way she’d dressed up and entered the ballroom, even though it was no place for a working-class girl like her. All of his talk about secrets and stories, right here in the Buckingham Hotel.
‘You can’t hate yourself for it, Raymond. You . . . you got out of there, the only way you knew how. What if you hadn’t been able to dance? Is it more honourable to steal and fight than it is to, what, foxtrot and waltz with people you find distasteful? I want to tell you something, Raymond. I know what hard work is. I’ve done it all of my life. You have a talent. You’re allowed to use it. And you’re allowed not to feel guilty about it as well. We all have to get on the best we can.’
Raymond was still.
‘You’ve been strong, Nancy Nettleton.’
Nancy smiled. ‘And then I come here and being strong isn’t what they want. You have to learn to be meek and quiet. You have to learn not to be noticed. You have to be something other than yourself.’
Her hand was still in his. By instinct, Raymond tightened his hold on it. ‘You never have to be that, Nancy. Let them think you’re invisible. Let them think you’re somebody else, if that’s what it takes. But always stay you where it matters.’ He lifted his other hand and hovered it over her heart. ‘In here.’
Raymond had not been planning it, but now that Nancy was this close he could smell her scent: sweet and simple, nothing like the ostentatious scents of Paris and Milan that mixed with the cigarillo smoke in the Grand every night. He inched closer. Then, when he felt her finger tracing tiny circles on his palm, he inched closer still. His lips were still sore, but he inclined his head to brush her lips with his.
Nancy’s lips opened. He felt their warmth as he touched them for the first time. He kissed her gently. Then he kissed her harder. Then, just as she began to kiss back, something made her stop.
‘What is it?’ he asked gently.
‘It’s . . .’ She stopped, telling herself she was a silly girl. ‘I thought you . . . and Hélène.’
Raymond’s face creased with a smile. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing of the kind. Poor Hélène has problems of her own, without getting embroiled with a ruffian like me. And anyway . . .’
Nancy wanted to ask more – but every question she had simply melted away, for suddenly she was kissing him back, tasting the salt on his swollen lip, the ridges where he’d been battered and bruised. But none of it mattered. She was finally kissing Raymond de Guise.
*
Outside the chamber, in the hallway where the door remained open the merest sliver, Billy Brogan watched as Nancy’s lips locked with Raymond’s. He watched as she lifted a hand and cupped it around Raymond’s swollen, discoloured face. He was watching still as Raymond wrapped his arms around her and ran his fingers around the collar of her dress. Only later, as Raymond ran his hands through Nancy’s hair and they la
ughed together, pure and simple and honest, did he stumble back along the passageway. Unable to watch any more, he made a hasty retreat to the service lift, rode it down to the ground floor with his heart beating wild. Nancy Nettleton. His Nancy Nettleton. He’d been foolish. He was a little brother to her. That was all. She was with Raymond de Guise now.
No, Billy thought, and remembered all he had heard. She was with Ray Cohen.
Chapter Twenty
VIVIENNE EDGERTON OPENED HER EYES.
Her recollection of the night before was not what it ought to have been – but then, these days it never was. Dimly, she remembered being in the ballroom for the afternoon demonstrations. They were nothing without Raymond de Guise, of course, and the guests in attendance knew it. Vivienne had heard one of them, a handsome dowager wearing priceless pearls around her neck, scoffing at Frederic, one of the porters-turned-dancer who was now stepping out onto the dance floor with his arm around Hélène Marchmont. A dull porter’s boy could never compare to the refinement of a man like Raymond de Guise. But Raymond had been gone for ten nights now, and everyone in the hotel knew that the ballroom was poorer because of it.
After that, Vivienne’s recollections were hazy. She recalled a visit to Mr Simenon, who in turn had sent his errand boy Brogan out into Soho to procure some of her special powders. After that, there had been at least one cocktail in the third-floor lounge – and evidently she had made significant demands of the room service too, because a trolley laden with silver platters had been left in her suite. She was still wearing the gown of last night, one of her Vogue numbers, black satin tied with great bows at each shoulder. Somewhere along the way she’d shed the shimmering emerald capelet that ordinarily went with it – but what did that matter? Her stepfather would send her monthly allowance soon. There were always more gowns to wear.
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