‘Sleep tight, little princess,’ she said as she left a kiss on the baby’s head. ‘Mama’s with you now. Mama’s here.’
November 1936
Chapter Twenty-two
THE LAST LINGERING GUESTS OF the season had vacated the suites of the Buckingham Hotel. Nikolai Alexeev and Grusinskaya had departed to over-winter in the sunnier climes of some Moorish castle on the north Moroccan coast; Cormac E. Colby had returned to the promise of snow in New York City; the Schechts, the van der Lindes, the Townsend-Stuarts, all had returned to their mansion houses and Contin-ental estates. Of all the suites, only the Park Suite remained occupied – and, as any senior member of staff at the Buckingham Hotel would have told you, this too was the only suite not mentioned in the hotel’s glamorous brochures. Soon, the suites would have new guests to inhabit them; some would come for days and some would stay for weeks – for, with the nights drawing in, talk of Christmas and New Year was suddenly on the tongues of everyone at the Buckingham, from the lowliest hotel page to the hotel director himself.
As the eleventh hour drew near on a cold November night, two figures strolled arm-in-arm across the green expanse of Berkeley Square. The gleaming white facade of the Buckingham loomed above them, imperious in the winter dark. The lights in its windows were like a thousand glowing eyes, each staring out across the London sky.
Raymond de Guise took his arm out of Nancy’s and rested on his cane. It had, he decided, been the perfect evening: an evening to escape his confinement to quarters in the Buckingham Hotel; an evening to test his broken foot – which still throbbed, but had borne his weight well tonight; an evening to be free with her, with Nancy Nettleton, out in London town. The fireworks had rained over the river in beautiful arrays of oranges, reds and white. In Hyde Park the bonfire still burned, though it had long ago devoured the great effigy of Guy Fawkes that had been cast into it. The smell of woodsmoke was still in his hair, where it mingled with the scent of Nancy’s perfume: not the Chanel or Caron of Vivienne Edgerton, but the much subtler scent she’d picked up from the John Lewis department store two Saturdays before.
‘In through the guest door, perhaps?’ said Raymond, with the hint of a smile.
He was teasing her. Nancy rolled her eyes. ‘I think not. Unless, that is, you were planning on getting me thrown out? So you can finally start romancing Miss Edgerton?’
Raymond’s braying laugh echoed across Berkeley Square. ‘The tradesman’s door it is.’
They stole through together. Then, in the shadowed hall, before they approached the housekeeping lounge and chequered reception hall, Raymond stopped her. A stolen kiss later, they were crossing the hall and nearly at the Grand.
Her head down, Nancy clung to the walls as she made for the service lift – but she didn’t get far. Raymond’s hand was on her shoulder. ‘Just one peep,’ he said.
‘I can’t. You know what will happen if they see us.’ She thought about Rosa and Ruth, and all their bitter comments; Mrs Moffatt, telling her to remain unseen.
She squeezed his hand and slipped away.
Head down, Raymond positioned himself just outside the ballroom doors. The Archie Adams Band was playing a slow foxtrot, ‘On the Air’, as the evening came to its end. From the edge of the dance floor, the dancers looked divine, each couple turning against the other in perfect synchrony. Raymond felt a strange longing tug at his breast, where his fractured ribs had finally knitted themselves together and stopped stinging every time that he breathed. He caught sight of Hélène Marchmont in the arms of some socialite come to London from his country estate. Fleetingly, she caught his eye and raised her eyebrows in acknowledgement. That look told Raymond everything: Get back in here, Raymond. We need you. Well, it wouldn’t be long. He’d been working hard – harder than the doctors said he must. Every moment he could, he spent walking. He stretched three times a day, desperate to keep his body as supple as it ever was.
As Hélène danced on, she turned past Nathaniel White – that cherubic snake-charmer who’d managed, Raymond had no idea how, to take his place in the ballroom. Well, Raymond could feel his body healing. And it can’t come soon enough. What right has he to be here in our ballroom? He dances no better than a guest . . . It’s because of who he is. Who his family are. Raymond hadn’t forgotten those men, what they had done out on Cable Street, what they had done to his brother. It wasn’t long ago that Raymond thought he wouldn’t mind never seeing his brother again. But somehow all of that had changed.
His eyes took in the room, the starlets and gentlemen dancers – and then they landed on Vivienne Edgerton. He had not seen it at first but, as they danced back across the ballroom, he realised it was Vivienne in the arms of Nathaniel. Well, he supposed, she was a guest, after all – and that was what Nathaniel was here for, to dance with guests while Raymond was indisposed. But the way Vivienne was moving? The confidence with which she stepped and turned? The way she threw herself into a spin and laughed joyfully as Nathaniel caught her? Raymond felt a plunging sensation in his stomach. She had not been capable of this that morning he tried to tutor her here in the ballroom.
No, he thought. Things had changed in his ballroom while he was away.
*
At the end of the evening, Hélène walked back through the dressing-room doors, with the band and the rest of the hotel dancers. Only Nathaniel strutted in behind her – he, the showman of the ballroom, always the last to leave, to the applause of the guests who remained.
The band were tearing off their bow ties. Evening jackets were strewn around, dancing shoes kicked off, and the other girls were tumbling through to their own dressing room ready to hit the town. Hélène followed after them, catching Louis Kildare’s eye. Kildare still wore his white jacket and waistcoat while he took the mouthpiece out of his saxophone, inspected the reed, cleaned it and stowed it away again. Then he worked at the instrument’s shine with his cuff, flashing her a toothy grin. He mouthed four words – Be patient, Miss Marchmont! – and thank goodness he did, for they had a restorative effect on Hélène. The anxiety that had been tightening every muscle in her body began to seep away. Louis could have that effect on her. It was something that he and Sidney had both shared, that simple way of shrugging off the worst of things and getting on with the business of music and dance.
It was times like this that she missed Sidney the most. Louis did what he could – he had been a good friend to them both – but it was not the same. In an age gone by, she might have stalked off the dance floor, spent and exhausted, and Sidney would have been there, already practising some new trill on his trumpet. He’d have dropped it (or stowed it safely away – Sidney Archer had been as in love with his trumpet as he was with Hélène) and come to her side. They’d have made some pretence, and then they’d have slipped away together. The band might have known, but not one of them mentioned it, for they all knew what Maynard Charles would make of a union like theirs. But none of it – the secrecy, the lies, even the panicked moment when Hélène first understood she was pregnant with Sidney’s child – mattered, because Sidney was there to help her shrug it all away.
Now, with Sidney long in the ground and Raymond yet to return to the ballroom, Hélène would have to shoulder it herself. She steadied herself with deep breaths and followed Sofía LaPegna into the dancing girls’ dressing room. Sofía was already stripped out of her ball gown. Hélène paused. She had to remember: it had been tough for Sofía too. Over the weeks her despair had slowly turned to hope, and that hope had itself solidified into a devout belief that somewhere, out there, her brother not only survived – but was thriving.
Sofía scurried over and helped Hélène out of her high-backed gown. ‘Were his hands all over you again, Hélène?’
Hélène shook her head. The other dancers made a joke out of it – but Nathaniel’s were not wandering hands, not in the way Sofía meant. Nevertheless, she felt as if she could feel them on her, even now. When she danced with Raymond, it was with the lightest of tou
ches. He led the dance only because somebody had to lead the dance – yet, when Nathaniel put his arm around the small of her back, and pressed his other palm to hers, it was as if she was a puppet and he her puppeteer. They did not dance together. No, Nathaniel White was the one dancing – and she, Hélène Marchmont, starlet of the Buckingham Hotel, was something closer to a doll. The way he folded around her made her feel constricted, confined. It was, she had thought after that first demonstration they danced together, as if she was one of those dancing figurines fixed to the top of a music box, unable to move of their own volition, pirouetting only at somebody else’s command.
She’d walked out of that first demonstration humiliated and ashamed. That night, as she’d prepared to dance with the hotel guests, Louis Kildare had caught her seething at the dressing-room doors. Some of the other girls had been whispering: White’s only here, they said, because of who his father is. One of Lord Edgerton’s set. Only Louis Kildare preached calm. ‘He’s just a boy,’ he said. ‘Nathaniel can’t help who he was born to any more than you or I. This is the Grand Ballroom, remember? Young or old, rich or poor, black or white . . .’
Well, Hélène thought, as she fastened the brooch on her evening blouse and made sure her floor-length skirts were fastened, he’d had time. And the way he’d ignored every other guest this evening, while twirling Vivienne Edgerton around like another of his playthings, was distasteful at best. Somebody ought to tell Maynard Charles – paying guests are being overlooked while Nathaniel indulges Miss Edgerton – but of course nobody would.
At that moment, Billy Brogan appeared in the dressing room, to the shrieking of Sofía and the other girls. Billy rolled his eyes, as he did every time.
‘Miss Marchmont.’
Billy was holding an envelope in his hands, with only her name written on the front. Hélène took it off him with eyes like daggers – a scathing look that said, ‘Never in front of the girls, Billy!’ – and turned it over.
The envelope was folded rather than sealed, but Hélène believed she could feel a faint moisture, as if some keen observer had been steaming it open. She had heard a number of times the secret policy of the hotel post room, that no letter could come in or out without the prying eyes of Maynard Charles first knowing what it said. It wasn’t beyond a boy like Billy to pick up some of those tricks. But she’d been using Billy to ferry messages back and forth to the Archers ever since she came back to the Buckingham Hotel. She had to trust somebody.
‘It came that way, Miss Marchmont. There’s no one had it but me. It was dropped down in Lambeth, just like always.’
Hélène nodded, dismissing Billy – who left to mock declar-ations of love from some of the girls. It would take more than that to make Billy Brogan blush, thought Hélène. He must have seen it all, sneaking in and out of the hotel suites as he did. Then she opened the letter.
Dearest Hélène,
She walks! At eight this morning (10th November), Sybil picked herself up without first reaching for Maurice and tottered five whole steps to reach me in my chair. The delight on her face was plain. The delight on ours will continue to Christmas and beyond. Next time you come, she will be running and jumping!
We enclose an artistic rendition in Sybil’s own hand in celebration of this grand occasion.
More news soon, our precious Hélène,
Noelle xxx
Hélène took the last page out of the envelope. On it were the quick, urgent scribbles of a fifteen-month-old’s hand. The paper had torn where Sybil’s chubby fist had clutched the pencil, then worked ferociously to make marks across the page.
Hélène’s heart was pounding. She should have been feeling delight – and she was; somewhere deep in the furthest recesses of her heart, she was cheering – but, eclipsing all else, was a kind of . . . grief. Sybil, up on her feet, staggering around the old house in Brixton, cheered on by her grandparents – and all while her mother was beached here in the Buckingham, earning their keep.
I have to do it for you, Sybil. I have to. If there were any other way . . .
The paper strained between her fingers. She was not aware she was crying until two fat teardrops landed on the page, smudging the marks Sybil had made. This seemed the most terrible thing in the world, and Hélène was busy dabbing them dry, trying to preserve this memento of her daughter, when another knock at the dressing-room door announced the appearance of Nathaniel.
Hélène scrabbled to hide the letter and drawing.
Nathaniel was dressed down, but he still held himself with the same imperious air that he did in the ballroom. ‘Hélène,’ he said, ‘I came to tell you: we’ll meet in the studio behind the ballroom before dawn. New Year is coming. We need to change the demonstrations or . . . Well, the guests deserve a little something extra, don’t you think? Something a little more special for the King? I have something in mind, Hélène. I’m sure Mr Charles has already impressed upon you how important these festivities are. Well, I have something that can blow the Imperial away. Follow me and we can give them a New Year to remember.’
Hélène stiffened. Follow you? If he’d caught her a few moments ago, before Billy delivered that letter, she might have resisted. She might have looked him straight in the eye and told him that her choreography had served her and Raymond de Guise well for seasons – that, when they charted new demonstrations, it was for her to decide, not for the upstart new blood in the ballroom, no matter what connections his father might have had. But her mind was still on the letter – so instead she remained silent as she walked past him, up and out of the dressing room, wrapping her arms around herself.
Nathaniel only stared after her. ‘Six o’ clock!’ he called out. ‘Before the breakfast services begin. Be there, Hélène – we’re dancing the new routines in the afternoon demonstrations.’
But by then, she was already gone, marching across the reception hall as if she would rather be anywhere else in the world.
December 1936
Chapter Twenty-three
THE LESS HÉLÈNE DWELLED UPON these last few weeks, the better. The mornings in the studio, taking Nathaniel White’s direction as he showed her his new take on Maxwell Stuart’s classic double reverse spin (a lumpen mess which ended in Hélène standing woodenly while Nathaniel pirouetted ostentatiously around her); the afternoon demonstrations, in which it was only Nathaniel’s ego being exhibited to the crowds; the evenings in the arms of men she would have crossed the street to avoid – and all while Sybil, her Sybil, was growing and changing at Noelle Archer’s home. Perhaps it was the dark skies over London that were hardening her mood, for by mid-November the first flurries of the winter’s snow had brought the trams and omnibuses of London town to a standstill. Or perhaps it was the ballroom itself. It too was changing. She remembered the long hot days of summer, when the dressing rooms were filled with laughter and cheer: she and Raymond in the studio every morning, limbering up for the demonstration dances, daring each other to perform ever more exacting stunts that might dazzle the crowds. She remembered the way they’d collapse together, the dancers and musicians, at the end of a long night in the ballroom – how it was always Louis Kildare who produced the magnum of champagne and shared it around. And most of all she remembered the sense that, no matter how tough life outside was, theirs was a precious, gilded world: their own little bubble inside the Buckingham Hotel.
She missed Raymond. This morning Nathaniel had taken her to the studio and made her dance alone for a whole hour performing his choreography, demanding she follow his every instruction. Hélène had stood there and seethed. I’ve been dan-cing since you were a choirboy, she thought, and yet you stand there, telling me how to move in my own ballroom. Every time I make a suggestion. Every time I have an idea . . .
Tonight, after the final dance, Hélène didn’t linger with Louis and the others in the dressing rooms. She marched, instead, to the upper storeys, knocked directly on Raymond’s door and collapsed in the chair at the side of his dre
sser.
‘You need to get better,’ she said. ‘You need to get better now. He has me standing there while he cavorts around me. Like I’m a . . . maypole!’
Then, together, they exploded with laughter.
Raymond gathered himself. ‘You shouldn’t make me laugh like that, Hélène. If I break more ribs . . .’
‘Don’t you dare,’ she said, and produced a half-bottle of champagne she’d been hiding behind her back. ‘There isn’t enough champagne in the world. If I have to dance with him at the New Year Masquerade Ball . . .’
Raymond poured the champagne and clinked his glass with hers. ‘I’ll be ready,’ he said – and Hélène was convinced, because how could she not be? Raymond could convince anyone of anything when he had that devilish twinkle in his eyes. ‘I swear it, Hélène. I’ll be there.’
*
‘Heave!’
The service lift opened, depositing Nancy, Rosa, Ruth and a host of other chambermaids, into the housekeeping hall – and the first thing they heard was the cry of Ralph North, the porter, echoing along the corridor from reception.
I can smell it, thought Nancy with glee. A smell like this, it takes you right back to being a little girl . . .
It was before dawn, and two weeks until Christmas. In an hour, the Buckingham would awake. These were the hours the guests never saw. These were the hours when the magic would be performed.
In the reception hall, a group of porters were ranged around a fir tree taller than the little cottage that Nancy used to call home. Ropes had been tethered to its highest point and, under the direction of Ralph, the porters were hoisting it into place.
One Enchanted Evening Page 21