One Enchanted Evening

by Anton du Beke

  The boy barely looks at me while we dance. He looks at the audience instead, the onlookers, the spectators, standing in front of me, eclipsing me, like he’s the only one they should see. I didn’t train for so long for this.

  ‘Something’s bothering you, my dear. Hélène, you can fool yourself but you can’t fool me. Come on, girl. You can tell your second mother.’

  ‘It’s nothing, Noelle,’ Hélène lied. She refocused on the decorations and tickled Sybil under one of her manifold chins. ‘Do you remember,’ she went on, ‘how nervous I was when I came here that first Christmas?’

  Noelle’s eyes lifted to the picture of Sidney on the mantel. She had made an extra effort to crown Sybil’s father in snowflakes. In the picture he was nineteen years old and holding on to his trumpet. He looked angelic, as if he existed outside of time.

  ‘I remember you were terrified,’ said Noelle. ‘But you had no need. Hélène, you did beautifully.’

  Two years ago – a whole lifetime . . .

  Hélène could clearly remember the first morning she’d known she was pregnant. The Christmas tree was being hoisted up in the Buckingham reception. The tinsel and baubles appeared overnight, the hotel staff slaving long past the midnight hour. Dawn found her with her head in the bowl of the toilet at the end of the dancers’ hall. She had never known a sensation like this. By the time she arrived in the ballroom for the afternoon demonstrations and took Sidney to one side, she knew that her suspicions were right. There was a baby inside her, curled up and waiting for its mama to introduce it to the world.

  Three weeks later, on the night of the winter solstice, Sidney had brought her to this very door. He’d first kissed her a summer before, one night when only she and he remained in the rooms behind the ballroom. From that moment on, Hélène’s life had lit up. She had known romances before, but always with men who sought to own her, to define her, to box her up and package her away for their eyes only. Sidney was not like that. Sidney burned bright and his passion for her was matched only by his passion for his trumpet. She loved how much he knew about music. She loved how much he knew about dance – although, on the rare occasions he’d stepped out onto the dance floor, it was obvious that, though a natural musician, dance did not come as easily. She loved how he breezed through life, thinking only of the day, not caught up in the trap of the future like so many others. And she loved, most of all, the way he had touched her that first night they lay together, up in her room in the Buckingham Hotel. The secret was theirs alone, and it had intensified all year, just like their love.

  Now, though, love felt different. It felt like sickness in the bottom of her stomach. It felt like faintness when she demonstrated a particular dance with Raymond de Guise. It tasted like last night’s dinner, forever lurking at the back of her throat.

  The moment she stepped through the doors and Sidney introduced her, his family fawned around her. They made her tea. They buttered hot teacakes and presented her with all manner of biscuits. They made her feel more at home than her own family ever had. And she knew, in an instant, that she had a new family now. Perhaps it was a family the world might never know about – but it was a family all the same.

  That Christmas had changed her life. She’d lain in the back bedroom here, with Sidney next to her, and wondered at the baby budding inside her. She’d been here at New Year too, when the Archie Adams Band played for Prince George, the Duke of Kent, who was entertaining his continental friends at the Buckingham’s famous Masquerade Ball. Sidney had kissed her goodbye on the doorstep and set off into the snow with his trumpet case at his side.

  He’d never come home, for as he left the Buckingham late that night – drunk, perhaps, on what a beautiful turn his life was taking; drunk, too, on the brandy that Archie Adams had shared around while the festivities were at a high – he stepped out into the path of an omnibus slewing around in the snow.

  The horror of the moment when Louis Kildare appeared on the doorstep in Brixton to break the news . . . The fraction of a second when she thought he was playing some terrifying joke and that Sidney would appear from around the corner, his trumpet in his hand. Then the yawning realisation that this was real, that Sidney was gone, that Hélène’s whole world was being torn into fragments around her. All of these moments were like photographs. She remembered them so starkly. But no moment would ever be imprinted on her consciousness as vividly as the moment Louis presented her with the trumpet that had been found just a few yards from his body, still safely tucked up inside its case. One day, she would give it to Sybil – the first and last gift from her father.

  Hélène had sat at his funeral while their baby turned somersaults inside her, unable to reveal herself as Sidney’s lover, able only to shed tears as a member of the Buckingham Hotel who’d known him for his music. She’d hidden the pregnancy well, flanked on one side by Louis Kildare and the other by Raymond de Guise, the only two men she’d trusted enough to tell. With their support she had managed to keep in the tears until nobody could see. Then, in the churchyard, she’d felt the bite of the wind and realised that she’d never hear him playing his trumpet again, that she’d never wake to see him grinning at her, that she’d never tell him that, when she danced in the ballroom, it was him she was thinking about, no matter who was in her arms. The devastation was absolute. Hélène’s world was a different shade of grey. When people spoke to her, she heard them only as if from a distance. The sun was gone, and in its place there was endless night.

  It was only later that year, when Sybil gave her first cries and Noelle Archer herself lifted the mewling baby to Hélène’s breast – that sound, more real and beautiful than anything she’d ever heard in a ballroom – that she’d felt the grief subside. My daughter, she’d realised. The revelation was unique. The child had been growing for nine months – but only when she could see her face, touch her and feel her, did she understand. I am a mother – for now, and for the rest of my life. The enormity of it, the love and the fear that mingled in her, was almost too difficult to grasp. But she lay there that night and she knew just how right it was.

  ‘He would have been proud of you, Hélène,’ said Noelle. ‘Proud of you both. Let’s make it a Christmas to remember. He always loved your English Christmases. He’d want that for Sybil too.’

  At that moment, Maurice Archer burst back into the room, brandishing not only his shovel but the most glorious smile. ‘Come and see!’ he said, and together the family followed him out to the yard.

  In front of the house, where he’d cleared the path, the snow was piled high in what Hélène first took for a simple hummock. It was only as she carried Sybil around it that she looked down and saw it for what it was: a giant trumpet, sculpted perfectly from the fallen snow. It was the most wonderful thing.

  *

  By the time the first suppers of Christmas Eve were being served in the Buckingham Hotel, Billy Brogan was loping back across the river. Over his shoulder was a haversack and, wrapped up inside, the perfect Christmas surprise: a single suckling pig. He could almost taste it now.

  The lights were on at home. Billy gambolled through the door and, in an instant, was mobbed by his brothers and sisters. They seemed to think him Father Christmas himself, and nothing could have given Billy greater joy. With a half-dozen pairs of hands clutching him, he allowed himself to be carried through to the living room, where the tiny tree his parents had put up appeared a mere bough when set against the majesty of the fir tree standing in the Buckingham hall. And yet the presents piled up around its bottom in their higgledy-piggledy pyramid seemed greater than any gifts that would be exchanged in the Buckingham tomorrow morning. Billy’s heart soared.

  ‘I’m about to make your night even better,’ he announced. ‘Stand back, you bairns. Wait until you see what we’re eating tomorrow . . .’

  The pig was wrapped in baking parchment. When Billy unfurled it on the floor, his sisters cringed away – all except Roisin, with the ruddy cheeks, who joined her b
rother Patrick in poking the poor dead thing with the tip of her finger.

  ‘And I got this too, for those that’s grown up enough.’

  The next surprise he produced was a big cut of meat, dark and red with barely an ounce of fat on it. ‘It’s venison,’ Billy announced. ‘It’s what them who’s better than us eat. Well, I say, tomorrow we Brogans are just as good as the rest of ’em. So tomorrow we’re going to eat like kings and queens.’ He paused. ‘What do you think, Ma? Stick it in the oven, thing’ll cook, won’t it? They eat it red and bloody in the Queen Mary, but—’

  ‘Billy Brogan,’ she said, ‘you’re a wonder. But what about that chicken I got sitting out there?’

  ‘Chicken, for the whole lot of us!? No, Ma, let’s treat ourselves. It’s but once a year. And we ain’t paupers, are we, Pa?’

  Billy’s father nodded and, in silence, returned to his newspaper.

  ‘What’s the matter with him?’ Billy asked as he and the other Brogans scrabbled into the kitchen to see their ma stow the fresh meat in the larder.

  ‘Oh, don’t you bother with him,’ said Billy’s mother. ‘He brought us a turbot tonight. It’ll do nicely alongside all this. Good Lord, we could feed the whole parish.’

  ‘Let’s not,’ grinned Billy. ‘We Brogans got to look out for ourselves.’

  But even while he played with his brothers and sisters, fashioning a den out of old chair legs and blankets, then telling Christmas stories and stoking them full of magic for the night to come, Billy had a nagging feeling in the back of his head as his father continued to sit in silence.

  The Brogan children went to sleep early that night, though for long hours afterwards Billy could hear them clattering out of bed to gather at the windows and watch the snowy skies above. Billy stayed up later. His mother and father had hidden more gifts in the cranny at the back of the kitchen larder, and as she went off to dig them out, his father brought out a bottle of bourbon he kept hidden for celebrations like this. He poured a measure for himself, then one for Billy as well.

  ‘Drink up, son. There’s something I want to talk about.’

  Billy tasted the bourbon, pretending not to wince as it burned the back of his throat. ‘Some of the Buckingham’s finest, eh, Pa?’

  Billy’s father nursed his drink. ‘That’s what I want to speak about, son. Now, I know you. I know you better than anyone, excepting your ma, so don’t go getting up in arms about this. It needs saying. I need to get it off my chest.’ He paused, steeling himself with a breath. ‘I don’t know how you get your suckling pigs and venison. I don’t know how you get these bottles of bourbon and half-bottles of Moët et Chandon. I don’t know how you bring such big tips every time you come home. Now, don’t get me wrong, son, it isn’t that I’m not grateful. I got eight of you bairns, and your mother to think about too. What you do for this family, it’s appreciated more than you’ll ever know. But . . .’

  ‘Pa, what is it?’

  Billy’s father sensed the wariness in his son’s voice. He hesitated before going on.

  ‘I’m worried for you, son. That’s what it is. You don’t fool me. We look the other way, but maybe that’s not right either. Maybe we’re all complicit. Robbing from where you work, it’s . . . not the Christian thing. There’s right and there’s wrong. Now, what those toffs of yours are throwing away, well, maybe that’s not theft. Who knows? Maybe that hunk o’ red deer got dropped on the kitchen floor, and your dandies are too proud to eat it, all because of a bit of dirt. Well, I’ll never say no to that. I’m a proud man, but not so much as I’d deny my children. But . . . there are lines in life, son. Do you know what I’m saying? There are lines we mustn’t cross, not if we’re good, God-fearing people. And, son, when you come home with your pockets full of silver—’

  ‘Oh, Pa!’ Billy exploded. ‘It’s Christmas night! You might just say thank you and—’

  ‘Now, Billy—’

  ‘No, Pa. You listen. I’m helping. I want to help. Those bairns deserve everything I got, and more. So do you, and so does Ma. So why don’t you just let me? I’m sorry, Pa. I’m sorry if I’m doing better than y—’ Billy stopped. His father’s face was suddenly crestfallen. Perhaps he had taken it too far. He set his glass down and muttered, ‘Sorry, Pa, this bourbon’s stronger than I reckoned. It’s gone straight to my head. I’m going to bed now. It’s Christmas in the morning. I always loved Christmas.’

  Billy did not turn back, not even as his mother came back into the room. Upstairs, he threw himself onto his bed, with fists clenched at his side. Through the walls his brothers and sisters were still chattering. By God, he missed the pure innocent magic of Christmas.

  Innocence. Now, there was a word. Billy tried to ignore it, but he could still hear his father as he closed his eyes to go to sleep. There’s right and there’s wrong. Well, Billy had always known it. And taking tips from Mr Charles for eavesdropping on Lord Edgerton and his Fascist Union friends, copying down the contents of a few envelopes passed here and there, taking careful note of what Graf and Gräfin Schecht said about Mr Baldwin and Mr Chamberlain when they gathered for drinks in the hotel bars, had never seemed so very wrong to him. Billy was too young to remember the Great War, but he was not young enough that he couldn’t see the impression a war like that left on his father. Who would want the world to slide into another war like that? And if the titbits he picked up in the hotel might help Mr Charles in whatever glorious endeavour he was engaged in, well, Billy was proud to do it.

  But then he thought of Vivienne Edgerton and Mr Simenon, his illicit trips to the Midnight Rooms, the phials he brought back. He thought of how she had cornered him in that suite, and the look of neediness and desperation on her face.

  And the thing he had promised to do, all so that she would not tell.

  Serving Mr Charles and whoever he was working for was one thing. That was a noble secret. But being in the service of Vivienne Edgerton? Betraying his friends, so that he himself might not be betrayed? Well, that was quite another.

  What if I don’t do it? he wondered. The thought kept him awake long into the night. If I say no? Well, then she tells Mr Charles who’s been supplying her, and then . . . then it’s my neck on the chopping block, then it’s me being marched out of the Buckingham without even a letter of recommendation to my name.

  Then it’s me coming back home, empty-handed every night. No wages. No little extras. No treats saved from the dustbins being brought back to feed that lot through there. And . . . Billy thought of his father, all of the days he’d come back from the fish market not knowing if there would be work for him the next day, the next week, the next month. The world was cruel out there. The well-fed one day were starving the next. All those faces, depending on me. How could I let one of them go hungry for even one night? What does right and wrong matter when there’s hungry children to be thinking about?

  Somewhere out there, over the rooftops of London, Big Ben began to toll midnight. Christmas Day had come.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Earlier that same night and the chambermaids of the Buckingham Hotel ought to have been in bed long ago. Yet here they were, gathered in the staff kitchenette, all clamouring for a story. ‘Tell us!’ the girls said. ‘Every . . . last . . . detail!’ they insisted. Nancy Nettleton craned around, taking in each of their faces in turn. Rosa and Ruth. Agatha and Frances.

  ‘We know how it started,’ Rosa laughed. ‘Dance lessons. And then—’

  ‘What did he do, just kiss you?’

  ‘You ever been kissed before, Nance?’

  ‘I reckon she has! Girl from a mining town like that. You’d have been fighting ’em off, were you, Nance?’

  ‘Wait, wait, wait!’ Nancy cried out. ‘I’ll tell you,’ she said – and there was an audible gasp around the room. ‘But you have to promise me. This is our secret, girls. Please. If Mrs Moffatt were to find out . . .’

  ‘Oh, rot!’ Ruth cackled. ‘She’s only a dragon half of
the time. You think you’re the first serving girl, Nancy Nettleton, who’s fallen for somebody she shouldn’t in this hotel? When I first got here, there was Suzanne. Now, Suzanne and this guest, Lord Some Such or Other, they were found in—’

  ‘Oh, hush now, Ruth! It’s Nancy’s story we’re after.’

  Nancy inhaled deeply, taking in all of the expectant faces around her. You can’t lie now, Nancy. They’ve seen. And . . . look at them. You thought they’d scorn you for it. You thought they’d mock and . . . what? Use it against you? No, looking at them now, Nancy didn’t see a group of girls scrabbling for some gossip just to spread it around. She saw them thrilling alongside her. She saw them eager for a little romance, a little adventure, a little love.

  So she told them. Every last bit.

  *

  Later, much later, when all the girls were off to bed, Nancy silently crossed the darkened Buckingham halls and knocked on a door. Moments later, the door drew back – and there, still in his evening suit from his night spent in the shadow of Nathaniel White on the ballroom floor, stood Raymond de Guise.

  Nancy held up her hands. In them there was a little package, wrapped in crêpe paper and tied with an emerald ribbon.

  ‘Come in,’ Raymond whispered, with a smile.

  Nancy looked quickly up and down the corridor. Tonight, with her story finally shared, she felt as light as the air.

  When she was certain there was nobody to see, she darted inside.

  ‘I told them,’ she blurted out. ‘Rosa and Ruth and the others. I—’

  ‘And they’re not going to—’

  ‘Gossip?’ Nancy grinned. ‘Oh, they’ll gossip. I’m certain of that. But they’ll gossip with each other. They’ll natter away. They’re my friends, Raymond. At least I think . . .’ She passed him the gift. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘open it.’