One Enchanted Evening

by Anton du Beke

  She went to the dresser to powder her nose. Underneath the spilled Chanel and champagne flutes – two, she noticed, so perhaps she had not been alone last night – were the scrawled attempts of another letter addressed to Raymond. It was only as she stared at them that fragments of the night before finally came back to her. There was, she had decided, the faintest of chances that the reason he’d never responded to that first missive (over which she’d so delicately slaved) was because of his indispos-ition. So she had decided to write to him again. Evidently she had not got very far, for every letter petered into meaningless scribble and half-finished words. Now, in the cold light of day, she was happy she hadn’t had the faculties to compose a full missive and have it delivered. Until three days ago, Raymond had been locked up in his tower, Maynard Charles the turnkey who refused to let him out – but since then she had caught sight of him hobbling along the hotel halls, sneaking down to the studio behind the ballroom as if he might discipline his body to ignore swellings and broken bones and begin dancing again. He had even found himself a partner to practise with. The memory of it stuck in Vivienne’s throat, so she swallowed it down like a lump of particularly difficult gristle.

  The chambermaid. That chambermaid . . .

  She used a ball of cotton wool to clear the make-up from her face, revealing the real Vivienne piece by piece. There was something special about today, she thought. Something she wasn’t properly putting her finger on.

  Her eyes drifted back to the letters. Dear Raymond, read one. I told you, you would be sorry you made a fool out of me, and the day has finally come. Well, that was different. She peeled it off the page underneath, and here the letters – blurred by the spilled perfume – were harder to decipher. You think you’re a king, but the Grand is hardly a kingdom. The third page was even more smudged and difficult to make out, but the one under that was clearer. Tomorrow, when he comes, we will see how quickly the Buckingham guests forget the name ‘de Guise’ . . .

  Oh, she thought. That’s what’s happening today. She watched herself in the mirror as her face opened up in a smile.

  *

  The car that delivered Nathaniel White to the Buckingham Hotel was a glistening Rolls Royce with cream paintwork and a square roof, open up to the clear blue skies above Berkeley Square. As it pulled to a halt, its horn tooted proudly and the doorman cantered down the stairs to open its door, revealing Nathaniel White to the world. He had arrived wearing grey checked slacks, and a sports jacket decorated with the crest of Gonville and Caius, his Cambridge alma mater. The doorman busied himself collecting cases from the trunk of the Rolls Royce and, as he accompanied Nathaniel up the stairs, Maynard Charles himself appeared from the revolving bronze door. Nathaniel almost breezed past him as he approached. It was only as the curmudgeonly hotel director extended his hand that he stopped and recognised him.

  ‘Mr Charles. May I say what an honour it is to be invited to dance at your fine hotel.’

  Maynard Charles returned the greeting with a simple nod of the head. ‘If you’ll follow me, Mr White.’ The reception hall was buzzing this morning. A party of guests from Tanganyika – they oversaw one of the great national parks, where Mr Churchill himself was fond of going big game hunting – were checking out and the hall was piled high with their cases. Nathaniel stopped to take it all in. There was the striking obelisk, with the water coursing down its points and curves; the sweeping mahogany check-in desk, the golden cage of the guest lifts; and there, to his left, the marble arch that sloped down towards the doors of the ballroom itself. His ballroom, he had to remind himself.

  It didn’t matter how you made it here. What mattered was what you did once you arrived.

  Maynard Charles summoned Mr Simenon. Permitted to travel in the guest lift (with only a subdued hint that, even though he was a personal acquaintance of Lord Edgerton, the guest lift was for the use of genuine guests only), Mr Simenon opened one of the empty rooms in the staff quarters and allowed Nathaniel inside.

  ‘I presume it meets your satisfaction, sir.’

  Sir, thought Nathaniel. Yes, he could get used to this kind of service. They had looked on him admiringly in the Imperial, but none of them had bowed their head in deference as the concierge did here. That, he supposed, was because of his connection to Lord Edgerton, but it buoyed him all the same.

  He looked around the room. It was simple, rather than sublime. On the journey here – his father had sent one of his fleet to pick him up from his Holland Park residence and convey him in style to the scene of his future glories – he had imagined it as vast and ostentatious as one of the Buckingham’s finest suites. By comparison this was much smaller, but he had already caught sight of himself in the mirror that hung at the foot of the bed, and he liked the look of what he saw: Nathaniel White, principal dancer at the Buckingham Hotel. There were two months until Christmas. Maynard Charles had already impressed upon him the importance of the event, but he had no need; The King and his Norwegian cousins might have been in attendance, but Nathaniel intended to be king of the ballroom by then.

  ‘If there is anything you need, Mr White, don’t hesitate to contact me personally,’ Mr Simenon ventured.

  ‘There is one thing, Mr . . .’

  ‘Simenon,’ the head concierge replied, though he was quite certain he’d said it several times already.

  ‘I’d like cut flowers. Dahlias and chrysanthemums. Arranged in a magnificent bouquet. Separate the stalks with some of those ornamental grasses, would you? I’m sure you know the sort. Then bind them in scarlet ribbon with a simple white card inscribed with only my name. They’ll need to be lilac and pink and the card must be perfumed with a certain scent. A Guerlain or a Caron. And, Mr Simenon?’

  Any of the other concierges might have bristled at such a specific and exacting request. But for Mr Simenon, this was a joyful thing. He would prevail where lesser concierges fell.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Have them delivered to Miss Vivienne Edgerton immediately, with my eternal thanks.’

  *

  With a vermouth cocktail in hand, Nathaniel White stood on the cusp of the Grand, preparing to take his first breaths of ballroom air. Tonight he would dance with whosoever desired him, but it was not until tomorrow that he would take his place in the demonstrations. Today he could watch and . . . he wanted to say ‘admire’, but admiration was not it. He needed to calculate. Calculate the strengths and weaknesses of the other dancers in the troupe. Watch Hélène Marchmont for her tiny imperfections. Because Nathaniel White intended to look good on his first day in the ballroom – and in that quest he would leave nothing to chance.

  Nathaniel spotted Vivienne Edgerton alone at a table beside the dance floor.

  Fortune favoured the bold. It had carried him thus far. So Nathaniel sashayed across the ballroom floor – that would soon be his – and, not caring to ask her permission, slipped into the seat alongside her.

  ‘Nathaniel White,’ she remarked at last, ‘you might have startled me.’

  ‘I announced my approach with a bouquet,’ Nathaniel replied. ‘I trust they were to your satisfaction?’

  Vivienne shrugged. One bouquet of flowers was as good as another, but she didn’t have to tell him that. He would learn – if he didn’t know already – that spending money on a person meant nothing, not when one’s pockets were infinitely deep.

  ‘You aren’t to dance this afternoon?’

  ‘I’ll need to instruct Hélène in one of my routines first. The dances she performed with de Guise are not to my taste. They’re too stiff by far. They lack daring. They lack a certain passion. Well, I’m right, aren’t I? And I’m here to replace him, not to slip into his shoes.’ Nathaniel paused. ‘I understand I have you to thank for that.’

  Vivienne remained impassive, though a slight smile twitched in the corners of her lips.

  ‘Of course, it begs the question . . . why,’ he continued.

  ‘Why?’ asked Vivienne – and for
the first time she shifted so that she was looking at Nathaniel. He had a boyish face, more boyish than Vivienne remembered. Ordinarily she despised boyish men. There had been too many men like that in New York, chasing after her, trying to buy her cocktails in every speakeasy they could find. Vivienne was barely a woman herself and yet there was something odious about men who looked as if they had only just stopped nursing at their wet nurse’s breast. Nathaniel White kept swiping his shockingly blond hair out of his eyes, and fluttering his long dark eyelashes as he spoke. Impish. Yes, that was the word. And yet there was something about this particular imp that delighted her.

  Perhaps it was only what he was here to do. Ousting Raymond de Guise from his position in the Grand had not been in Vivienne’s plans – but this was not to say that it did not entertain her. She had sent him that letter as a token of her affection, but as an apology too. The fact that he had not replied was a constant reminder of how he had spurned her.

  But I won’t be spurned for ever. I’m going to show them – show my mother, show my stepfather – that I’m not a girl to be forgotten. Not somebody to be shut away and ignored. You can’t just drag a girl from her home and her society and deposit her here and expect her to be quiet.

  Suddenly, she stood. ‘Nathaniel, I’ll show you why.’

  *

  Vivienne opened the door to the shadowy studio behind the ballroom but hovered in the doorway before permitting Nathaniel through. ‘You’ll be here with Miss Marchmont soon, I shouldn’t wonder. To show her how it ought to be done,’ said Vivienne. ‘Well, don’t you want to see it for yourself?’

  Nathaniel knew he was being baited. There was a temptress’s look in Vivienne’s eyes, but she took him by the fingers and placed them on the door – and Nathaniel did not want to resist.

  He stepped through and stopped short in surprise.

  At this time of day, with the dancers preparing to step out into the ballroom, the practice studio ought to have been empty. And yet there he was: Raymond de Guise, still battered and bruised, still holding his body more rigidly than any natural dancer, slowly waltzing around the room with a girl in his arms. He did not look so mighty, thought Nathaniel. In a certain light, he barely even looked noble. Certainly not as noble as Vivienne’s father or Nathaniel’s, or any of the rest of their set. Yes, he thought, Raymond looked . . . like a common barrow boy. His nose had been ill-set and one of his eyes was barely showing through the swelling of his face. His broken foot was in an open boot but he barely put any weight on it as he moved. The girl was practically holding him up. Whoever had ambushed this man seemed to have taken all his dignity and bearing.

  Nathaniel noticed the girl in his arms almost as soon as he noticed Raymond de Guise. She was petite, with dark hair and a delicate heart-shaped face, her expression alive with the enjoyment of the moment. But she moved awkwardly too. One of her legs hardly seemed to obey instructions; it lagged, a fraction of each second, behind the rest of her body.

  ‘Two cripples,’ Vivienne whispered cruelly, ‘fit only for each other.’

  As Raymond turned he caught sight of them. He released Nancy from his arms, reached for the silver-topped cane propped on the wall, and put himself between Nancy and the intruders, as if to spare her embarrassment. Framed by the light of the hall outside, Nathaniel White looked almost angelic. He nodded knowingly, then slipped back out, the door closing behind them.

  ‘Maynard Charles had him locked away, but he’s been bringing her here for the last three days, ever since the doctors told him he could try putting weight on his foot again. She’s a . . .’ Vivienne could hardly say the word. She clenched her fists, and Nathaniel noticed for the first time that she was trembling. She was perspiring too. A droplet appeared on her forehead and trickled unnoticed down her cheek. ‘She’s a chambermaid,’ she finally spat. ‘He’s tutoring her. Or she’s helping him recover. And . . .’

  That’s why, she wanted to say. That’s why you’re here, and that’s why you’ll be the star of the Grand. Raymond de Guise needs to learn you don’t reject a lady. But something stopped her. She did not know how he would react. Men were such vain and foolish creatures. If you damaged their pride once, they too often took a lifetime to recover. They needed handling carefully. She’d learned that in New York – all of those sons of bankers who’d come after her at her mother’s tea parties, or picked her up at the private college gates so that they might take her out on a drive after her schooling was finished. They’d all needed winding up and pointing in the right direction. Nathaniel would not want to know he was here as her tool. He wanted to believe . . .

  And, besides, boyish as he was, there remained something striking about him. The way he was looking at her now, for instance. His eyes were devouring her. Possibly he thought she was crazy. Most of them did. But Vivienne knew when a man wanted her.

  ‘I should like to dance, Nathaniel,’ she declared, the words exploding out of her in a frenzy that took Nathaniel quite by surprise. ‘I should like, this New Year, to be in the ballroom with everyone else, to take the floor alongside the King and tango and waltz and quickstep with the rest of them. My mother is going to be there and I would have her know I am not a pet dog, to be forgotten when the mood suits her. I would have her know I am my own person, with my own passions and prides and my own life to lead. That it takes more than money to get rid of me. And yet . . . I would not make a fool of myself. If I am to dance at the New Year’s ball, I should like to know I am befitting of the ballroom. Would you . . .’ The fire with which she’d been speaking was guttering out. The words began to run together, merging into a monotonous mess. ‘. . . tutor me? Just as de Guise is tutoring that simpering wretch in there?’

  Nathaniel paused. The door to the dance studio was still open a fraction and, by the light of a dozen lamps, he saw Raymond and the girl stumbling across the room. Their silhouettes made a strange shadow dance across the walls. Then his gaze drifted back to Vivienne Edgerton. She was curious, this creature. She was driven and bold . . . and yet the fire she had was concealing something else. Something half-broken, something that was crying out for someone to piece it back together.

  ‘Meet me in the ballroom at dawn. We shall begin at once.’

  Chapter Twenty-one

  ON THE UPPER DECK OF the number 6 omnibus Hélène Marchmont pulled her burgundy cloche down low. Few of the office clerks and day-trippers around her would ever have set foot inside the Buckingham Hotel, but there had been a time when Hélène’s face had gazed out from the billboards at Piccadilly Circus, or graced the covers of the magazines in the roadside stands, and Hélène was not in the mood to be recognised.

  By the time she stepped off the bus, she felt freer. Brixton Road was a rush of office clerks and railway workers coming home for the night. The crowds outside Marks and Spencer on the corner of Atlantic Road were deepening and, further up the high street, shoppers streamed out of Morley’s department store. The lights in the music hall gazing down the hill were just flickering to life, drawing people to them like moths to a flame.

  It began to rain as Hélène marched into the still bustling markets of Electric Avenue. Half an hour later, she emerged back onto the high street, where one of the last remaining horse carriages was disgorging its passengers, with a bunch of daisies in one hand and a small rag doll in the other.

  It was getting dark. She was late.

  The houses along Brixton Hill had once been grand residences, the perfect imitation of the bigger townhouses that Hélène looked out on from her Buckingham quarters each day. But it had been a generation and more since the railways came and the once desirable residences had been partitioned, partitioned again, leased and sold off to whoever could afford them. Now some of the facades looked ancient, and black with smoke.

  Sudbourne Road was one of the lesser terraces, but even here the buildings had been carved up and carved up again. Hélène stood outside one and felt a rush of warmth. The lights were on in
the basement flat. Through the walls, she could hear the sound of somebody playing a trumpet – not as expertly, perhaps, as Louis Kildare and the rest of the Archie Adams Band, but with a certain kind of amateur flair that, nevertheless, made her heart soar.

  If only Maynard Charles could see me now, Hélène thought, with a wry smile. If only he knew what I was really doing in that year I was away from the Buckingham Hotel! He’d have one of his fits . . .

  She gently knocked on the door.

  The lady who answered was diminutive in stature. She was wrapped in a cream shawl, and underneath that a simple house dress and apron. The slippers on her feet were evidently her husband’s, for they were far too big. Upon seeing Hélène, her face broke into an irrepressible grin and she opened up her arms to take her in. Hélène bent down, so that the elder lady could press her wrinkled black cheek against Hélène’s own.

  ‘Noelle,’ Hélène whispered.

  ‘We’ve missed you, girl.’

  ‘I know. I know, Auntie.’

  Then Hélène was through the doors, the sound of the trumpet playing stopped, and on Sudbourne Road a miniature celebration began.

  *

  Maurice and Noelle Archer had lived in this same basement flat for fifteen years. Twenty years as a merchant seaman, plying British waters even when the whole world was at war, had left Maurice Archer with a payout to be proud of and an invitation from His Majesty to settle in the home of the Commonwealth, to take work as a office clerk or railway worker, whatever his skills and situations allowed. It was an opportunity that Maurice had grasped with both hands (though it had taken his sweet wife, Noelle, a little longer to start believing). London, so different from the sun-kissed Caribbean island they called home, had not welcomed them with street parades and notices in The Times, but in 1921 it had become a new home – a new start in a bolder, more prosperous land.