The newsreel flickered on and Evie sighed aloud as she sank into the seat, feet glad to have the load taken off.
‘Okay?’ Thomas asked.
‘Yes,’ Evie replied, thinking how comfortable his shoulder looked.
The next thing she knew someone was stepping past her and people were standing. ‘What happened?’ she said as she sat up, realising that she had indeed fallen asleep on Thomas’s shoulder. Not only that, she’d slept through everything – the newsreel, the shorts, the serial and the feature.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘I’m terrible company. I’ve ruined your evening.’
‘No, you haven’t,’ Thomas said, gently helping her to her feet.
Outside, he slid his arm around her waist, and as they walked back to her boarding house together, Evie realised that she’d set her goals for the evening far too low. A smile from Thomas was wonderful, but this, his side warm against hers and the touch of his hand at the top of her hipbone, was better than anything. She could feel that his body was strong and muscular, and she imagined touching the skin beneath his shirt, or his hand moving lower, to turn her towards him. Heat rushed through her, from top to toe.
But they’d reached Minetta Street. ‘This is it,’ Evie said reluctantly.
Thomas stepped back and tipped his hat to her. ‘Goodnight, Evie. I’ll look out for the man at Macy’s on the way home.’
‘You’re taking the El?’ she asked in surprise. ‘Well, report back and tell me what he’s up to.’
‘I will. And make sure you check your mail tomorrow.’
‘Why?’ Evie called, but he just smiled as he walked away. She leaned against the lamppost and watched him, reluctant to let him go but also secretly delighted that he was probably the only man in New York who’d take a Ziegfeld Girl out for the night and leave without stealing so much as a kiss.
Chapter Sixteen
MR AND MRS GEORGE WHITMAN
REQUEST THE PLEASURE OF THE COMPANY OF
EVELYN LOCKHART AND LILLIAN DELANCEY
AT THEIR EGYPTIAN BALL
TO BE HELD ON MAY 10TH AT 8 PM
AT THEIR HOME.
On the back of the printed invitation was a handwritten note. Evie and Lil, I know how much Evie likes the El but what if I send a car to pick you both up? You can avoid the soot for one night. Thomas.
A ball, and with Thomas! Evie hugged the invitation to her chest.
‘A man after my own heart,’ Lil said when she’d read the note. ‘I’m sure Cleopatra always used private transportation. We’ll need new dresses. Let’s go shopping on Saturday.’
‘I should spend Saturday revising my vaginal infections.’
‘Say that any louder and no one will sit next to you on the train.’
Evie laughed. ‘Well, maybe I could find something to wear that’ll spin Tommy’s head faster than a pinwheel on the Fourth of July.’
‘Attagirl!’ said Lil.
The thought of dancing with Thomas at a ball gave Evie something to dream about for the rest of the day spent at the Vanderbilt Clinic treating a room full of johns and quiffs for VD. The girls she felt sorry for, and she tried to help them, although most didn’t want anything more than a quick fix. The men angered her but she kept her lips pressed shut and ministered to them the way she was supposed to. She was glad when her shift was finished. Seeing that it was only half past five, she took her gift for Mary out of her locker and stepped outside into the wet heat of an unseasonably warm spring day; it was like walking into the bathroom after Lil had been broiling herself in the tub like a Maine lobster. But that was New York, a city of extremes, and Evie knew better than anyone that accepting the humidity and living amid a forest of skyscrapers rather than trees was worth it to experience the living firework of Manhattan at night, when everything from Times Square to the Brooklyn Bridge to a young woman’s hopes and dreams were spotlit, as if the city was a stage set for the world’s greatest show.
She walked to the Foundling determined to at least deliver her gift, even if she couldn’t see Mary. This time when she knocked and called out, she heard a faint sound within. ‘Evie!’ Mary’s voice, Evie was sure. Calling for her, forlorn.
Evie banged once more, but she knew the front door wasn’t going to be the way in. She hurried around the side of the building; there must be a service entrance somewhere. She peered in the windows until she saw a face. Sister Margaret! The young nun’s hands were pointing, indicating that Evie should continue on ahead. Evie did so, until she came to a laneway behind the building. A door opened.
Sister Margaret’s head popped out. She looked around in an overdramatic, Chaplinesque manner, as if she’d wanted all her life to be a stooge in a moving picture. Evie held back a laugh. Then Sister Margaret produced something from behind her skirt. Or rather someone.
‘Mary!’ Evie cried, sweeping the little girl into a hug.
‘You didn’t come,’ Mary said.
Evie kissed her on the top of her blonde head. ‘Sister Mary asked me not to. I missed you.’
‘I missed you. No park.’
‘I can’t take you to the park today. But we can sit here on the step.’
‘Just two minutes,’ said Sister Margaret, wringing her hands.
‘Thank you,’ said Evie.
‘She was fretting for you. It isn’t right,’ said Sister Margaret before she retreated to keep guard inside the doorway.
Evie passed Mary the doll. ‘This is for you. She can be your friend when I can’t be here. I’ll ask Sister Margaret to look after her for you.’
Mary touched the doll’s hair carefully, then withdrew her fingers as though frightened of dirtying it. She looked up at Evie, who nodded. ‘It’s all right. She’s yours. You can stroke her hair.’
‘She’s beautiful,’ Mary whispered.
‘You need to come in now, child.’ Sister Margaret was back, pulling Mary to her feet.
‘How has she been?’ Evie asked as she kissed Mary’s cheek.
‘She’s been upset.’ Then Sister Margaret’s face crumpled. ‘It’s my fault! I told him about you. The man who gives Sister Mary the money. I said to him how much Mary liked your visits. He shouted at Sister Mary and said you weren’t to be allowed to come any more. That you should never have been allowed to come.’
‘He knows me?’ Evie was taken aback. ‘Did you find out his name?’
Sister Margaret shook her head. ‘No. I was going to ask him but I made him angry by mentioning you and then it was too late.’
The unmistakable sound of voices rang through the hall inside the building.
Sister Margaret began to push the door closed. ‘You have to go.’
Evie had time for one last hug and one last glance at Mary’s too-sad face before the door was locked. Was it her personally, or did this man object to the thought of anyone visiting Mary, she wondered as she walked away from the Foundling. Did that mean Mary’s father was someone Evie had met? She tried to remember if she’d ever seen Rose with a man and was certain she hadn’t. And the only men from Harvard she knew were Charles’s friends. Evie’s heart stopped. And Charles. No, that wasn’t possible. He’d seen Rose by the river and shown no concern for her or the baby. He wouldn’t have been so heartless towards his own child. Would he?
By the time Saturday arrived, Evie had convinced herself that she was being foolish. That Sister Margaret had misunderstood. Whoever this mysterious man was, he hadn’t specifically forbidden Evie from visiting; he simply hadn’t wanted Mary to have any visitors. Although it didn’t make the problem of getting in to see her any easier to solve. But perhaps with time, Evie would find a way.
The shopping expedition for the ball was a welcome distraction. Evie and Lil went to Saks, accompanied by Leo, who was going with them to the ball and had promised to offer honest opinions on whether their dress choices made them look more like mutton or lamb.
Lil held up a dress with a silver fringe that tinkle
d down from the hemline like the crystals on a chandelier to a spot at least two inches above her knees.
‘Egyptian ball means a long dress, doesn’t it?’ Evie asked.
‘I bet Cleopatra would have loved it, though,’ Lil sighed as she hung it back on the rack.
Leo proved to be more useful than Evie had expected. He held out his arms and let the girls load him with dresses, barely raising a sweat under the weight of so many beads and crystals. ‘Didn’t Cleopatra wear gold?’ he asked when his arms were full. ‘Find the right necklace and you’ll be as Egyptian as Tutankhamen.’
‘But hopefully more lively,’ Evie said as she lifted half the dresses off his arms and carried them away to the fitting rooms.
‘Well, scram then,’ said Lil to Leo. ‘Shoot down to accessories and find us a scarab beetle while we work our way through this lot.’
In the end, the girls went against expectations. Evie bought a dress that she couldn’t remember selecting from the rack; something about Lil’s satisfied smile when Evie emerged in it told her that Lil had chosen it for her. It was short, bold and gold and there was no hiding from it, like the midday sun in July. In his fossicking, Leo had found a piece of jewellery that could only be described as a collar, thick gold and azure blue, which draped perfectly over Evie’s clavicle. Lil declared that she looked like the bust of Nefertiti come to life.
Lil chose a long dress, a sheath of white silk which looked stunning against her dark hair. It was ruched and gathered to a point on her hip and she adorned it with an iridescent scarab beetle that Leo had so obligingly located in accessories, along with the name and address of the sales clerk. As Lil did one last twirl, Evie noticed that Leo had screwed up the paper with the salesgirl’s name on it and was looking at Lil as if she was being served for dessert. His expression reminded Evie of the night they’d spoken about the girl he thought he couldn’t have and Evie suddenly realised who it might be.
Lil went back into the fitting rooms to change, so Evie seized the chance to see if her intuition was right. ‘You could ask the girl from accessories to come with you to the ball,’ she said to Leo.
‘Not her,’ Leo replied.
‘But you always have a lady on your arm.’
‘I’ll have two ladies on my arms tomorrow night.’
‘Lil and I don’t really count.’
‘You’ll be the belles of the ball.’
‘Lil will be in that dress.’
‘She will.’ Leo’s eyes hadn’t shifted from the place where Lil had stood, showing off her dress and making a man fall more in love with her.
Evie smiled and touched his arm. ‘Remember what you said to me at Chumley’s the night you kissed me?’
Leo laughed. ‘I kissed you? I thought it was the other way around.’
‘You’re changing the subject.’ Evie elbowed him in the ribs. ‘Why don’t you say something to her?’
‘What?’ Leo looked like a man caught by the bulls with a boxful of bootleg.
‘Say something to Lil. Otherwise you’ll never know.’
‘But she’s …’ Leo stopped, lost for a way to describe the quintessence of Lil.
‘Perfect for you,’ finished Evie. ‘Leave it to me. I’ll give you a helping hand.’
‘Helping hand with what?’ Lil asked, reappearing in her everyday clothes.
‘With finding Leo something to wear,’ Evie answered, observing Leo’s faint blush.
He recovered quickly. ‘With the two of you on my arms, all I need is a tuxedo. No one will be looking at me.’
As they left the store, Evie wondered how she could possibly wait until tomorrow night for the car to come and collect them for the ball. Not only would the delicious anticipation of seeing Thomas keep her in such a high state of excitement that it would be impossible to study, but she might also be able to do Lil a favour. Perhaps Lil felt the same way as Leo but was so convinced of his preference for variety that she’d overlooked an affection that was more than friendship – an affection that could burgeon into something beautiful if Evie nudged her friends a little closer together.
For the rest of the afternoon, Evie and Lil did nothing but sit on their bed, bubbling with the exhilaration that can only come from an invitation to a ball held in the beating heart of New York’s moneyed and magnificent society.
Every girl at the boarding house played a part in the production that was Evie and Lil Going to the Egyptian Ball. They’d all read about balls in the society pages but no one thought that a girl from Mrs Lomsky’s would ever be invited to more than a carouse around the local dance hall. They crammed themselves into the attic room and each took a job – fingernails, hair, makeup – so Evie and Lil only needed to sit and be togged to the bricks.
‘This is a New York moment,’ proclaimed Antonia with her typical flamboyance. ‘Just like when Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford waved to me from the steps of the Algonquin.’
‘I think you’re selling Fairbanks and Pickford a little short there,’ said Lil. ‘And don’t burn my hair with those irons.’
Antonia came back to the reality of life on Minetta Street in time to save Lil’s hair from a scorching. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘if you don’t both find yourselves a beau at the ball, you’ll have wasted the chance of a lifetime.’
Someone turned on the gramophone and selected the ‘Charleston’. As the accelerating piano chords of the opening bars jangled into the room, Lil began to tap her hands on Evie’s desk like a jazz drummer. A couple of the girls began to dance, all of them started to smoke, and what with the music and the squeals over Evie’s golden collar, it wasn’t long before Mrs Lomsky appeared at the door.
‘You know parties aren’t allowed,’ she snapped.
‘This is serious business,’ declared Antonia. ‘Evie and Lil’ll be the only women from south of Washington Square at the ball tonight, and we don’t want anyone to hold that against them.’
Playing on the grand narrative of girl from skid row makes good appealed to Mrs Lomsky’s sense of pride. She took a cigarette from the pack beside Lil and stuck it behind her ear. ‘You warn ’em I can tell jet from a gem with one crack of my teeth.’
This silenced the girls until Mrs Lomsky had left, whereupon they all began to laugh, especially when Antonia stood up and did her best impersonation of Mrs Lomsky checking a length of beads with her teeth and finding it wanting.
Soon the call came that their car had arrived. Leo was waiting outside looking like the snake’s hips in his swanky tuxedo. At the sight of him, Lil whispered to Evie, ‘Look at him. So beautiful. Shame he’s such a flirt.’
‘I bet he’d stop for the right woman,’ Evie replied, and was delighted to see Lil eyeing him appraisingly.
The night was as sultry as midsummer, the three of them were half-shot with excitement and Evie had high hopes that Lil might be as stuck on Leo as he was on her. She made sure they were seated next to each other in the car.
Leo produced a bottle of champagne and three glasses.
‘Oh, good,’ said Lil. ‘We need to be spifflicated on entry so we can tolerate meeting my mother.’
‘Will she be there?’ Evie asked, intrigued.
‘She’d consider it highly damaging to her reputation if she didn’t attend. Which is all she cares about.’
‘She must care about you.’
‘Only in small doses. Like absinthe.’
New York seemed to gather the unmothered, Evie reflected as they drove away. Lil. Evie. Mary.
Soon they were at the Whitmans’, where the butler had been dressed for the occasion as an explorer of Ancient Egyptian tombs à la Howard Carter. He handed them each a linen pouch, which contained a gold amulet with one bejewelled eye, red for the ladies and blue for the men.
‘Spoils from King Tut’s burial chamber, no doubt,’ said Leo with a grin as he pinned the amulet to his lapel.
‘You’ve obviously never heard of the mummy’s curse,’ said Lil as she put hers back in the pouch.
Evie laughed and pinned hers on. ‘It’s just a party favour. Oh.’
They had just entered the ballroom, the sight of which had elicited Evie’s Oh. It was like stepping inside a pyramid. One wall of the room had been transformed to look like the stone facade of a grand temple, complete with hieroglyphs and illustrations from The Book of the Dead. An obelisk stood tall and proud in the centre. Placed throughout the room were gilded statues of Horus, Isis and Osiris, gold-foiled sarcophagi, statuesque black cats with gold collars, and long-handled fans in peacock blue and emerald green adorned the walls. There was even a chain of three live camels resting on the ground, apparently worn out by the rigours of being admired and exclaimed over. A band was playing all the latest songs at one end of the room and waiters circulated with trays laden with prohibited champagne, which everyone was drinking. Leo summoned a waiter over, took three glasses and handed them around.
‘It’s like being inside a Macy’s Christmas window,’ Evie said.
‘Here’s to a night we’ll never forget,’ Lil toasted.
They finished their drinks quickly and Evie decided to act. ‘You two should dance,’ she said, elbowing Leo a little closer to Lil. As she spoke, she continued to look around the room; something was missing but she wasn’t sure what until she felt the lightest touch of a hand at her back. It was funny, she thought, that without sight or sound, you could know when a certain person was near. It was like phosphorescence, an unconscious drawing in of another’s energy, which then sparked back out into the room through the static charge on her skin. When she turned and saw that it was indeed Thomas Whitman behind her, the smile that lit her face was as spontaneous and uncontrollable as the appearance of the moon in the night sky.
A Kiss From Mr Fitzgerald Page 21