‘Nothing,’ he replied with a nervous half-laugh.
‘Nothing? Not even a little something?’
‘Maybe . . . a little something.’
She nodded, content not to push it any further. She traced a meditative finger around his collarbone and shoulder, then said, ‘By the way, why “Melmotte”?’
‘Oh . . . from a novel I’m reading. The Way We Live Now. Melmotte’s a city financier, with a shady past.’
‘A scoundrel?’
‘Of course.’
She leaned over to the bedside table and looked at her wristwatch. ‘D’you have a cigarette?’
For answer he slipped out of bed and padded across to the sofa where his clothes were strewn. He checked inside his jacket, and then realised where they were: he could see the packet now, on top of his paraffin heater, back at Tite Street. ‘Damn.’
He picked up the telephone and listened to it ring at reception. After a minute or so, he hung up. ‘Hopeless. I’ll have to go down to the bar.’ She watched him bend down and pick up his shoes. ‘Oh God,’ he groaned.
‘I’ll go,’ she said, throwing back the covers and springing out. ‘Save you crippling yourself.’
He tossed the shoes away, and gave her a look of rueful adoration. ‘Darling, you’re a brick.’
‘I know,’ she said, wriggling into her camisole. ‘Aren’t you lucky?’
The impudent glance that accompanied this remark made him laugh. He folded himself onto the sofa, admiring the unselfconscious speed with which she dressed. The acting life, he supposed. When she had gone he picked up her thin mulberry-coloured cardigan, jumbled among his own apparel, and held it to his face. He inhaled a scent of Jicky, tobacco and indefinable notes of her. The thing inflamed him with a sudden tenderness towards its owner. Then a noise at the window diverted him: a pigeon was clockworking along the ledge. The window was still ajar, and Stephen went over to shoo it away: the last thing they wanted was a bird in the room. He leaned out for another look at Russell Square, subtly altered from earlier, the traffic thickening towards rush hour, the light becoming bluish-grey. The lamplighters would be out soon.
It was odd, he thought, how people changed when they were out of their clothes. Prior to this afternoon, Nina had revealed a character of Olympian self-possession. That first night, while he had been all charm, she had been cool to the point of unfriendliness, wrong-footing him with her conversational feints and jabs. If he hadn’t felt such an overpowering physical compulsion he might have been inclined to shake hands and walk away. True, she had warmed up a little in the half-dozen times they had met since, but he still caught in her eyes a hawkish scrutiny that froze him in his tracks. Before today he wasn’t absolutely sure that she even liked him. So it was a surprise that, this afternoon, in bed, she had been geniality itself. Whatever else you were in bed, you could not be ambiguous.
He’d known a few theatre people in his time, and had found them to be garrulous egomaniacs and needy bores. Nina seemed different; she wasn’t fragile and she didn’t go fishing for praise, however willingly he would have bestowed it. Perhaps she had become adept at concealing that mad streak that so afflicted her profession – she was an actress, after all –
The door opened, and the moment he saw her he knew something was wrong. The colour in her face had fled, and her eyes were glassy with shock. She took hesitant steps into the room, like a sleepwalker. Stephen came away from the window.
‘My dear, what on earth is it?’
She looked at him, distracted. ‘I’ve just seen something . . . quite upsetting –’
‘What? What did you see?’
He walked her over to the sofa and they sat down, knee to knee. ‘Light one for me, would you?’ she said, handing him the cigarettes. ‘. . . I’d just got out of the lift and was coming up the corridor when I heard this awful frightened’ – she shook her head – ‘pleading. A woman’s voice. It was coming from one of the rooms, before you turn the corner. So I stopped, went back, and this time I heard it more clearly. She was saying, begging, No, please, and then a low muttered voice, a man’s – I knew he must be hurting her. I mean, really hurting her.’ He offered her the lit cigarette, and saw her hand tremble as she drew it to her lips. ‘Well, I knocked at the door, and the noise just – stopped. I said something like, ‘Is everything all right?’ and put my ear close. Silence. Then I said, quite loudly, that I was going to call reception and ask them to come up. Seconds later I heard a scuffle inside, and hurrying footsteps. The door flew open and a young woman dashed out – face white as chalk, tears, hair all over the place – sobbing, simply terrified. Before I could do anything she was past me and haring down the corridor.’
‘Good God,’ Stephen murmured.
Nina stared straight ahead, concentrating. ‘There was no use chasing after her, so I walked in, rather scared, and saw a man pulling open the curtains. He turned round as he heard me, with this furious scowl – he just shouted Get out, so I did.’ She dragged long on her cigarette, then looked at him. ‘It was horrible – the sound of him attacking her . . .’
‘Obviously a maniac,’ said Stephen, quickly getting dressed. ‘Come on, you’d better take me there. We can’t have his sort running round the place.’ Within a minute he was ready, his shoes unlaced. They came out into the corridor, and with a little tilt of her head Nina indicated the direction. The hotel, an Edwardian relic notable for its scale rather than splendour, had corridors as long as runways. Nobody else was about as she led him onwards. They turned at a right angle, and he saw her counting off the rooms. At the one whose door was ajar, she stopped. Room 408.
‘It’s this one.’
‘Sure?’
She nodded, but grabbed his hand as he made to enter, whispering, ‘What are you going to do?’
He gave a considering look. ‘Have a word.’
Stephen gave the door a perfunctory knock and felt himself squaring his shoulders as he walked in. It was a mirror image of their own suite, without the grace notes of flowers and the Scotch. One curtain had been left closed. The bed looked rumpled, though possibly not slept in. He cleared his throat. ‘Hullo?’ He heard Nina stepping close behind him. It occurred to him that the man, whoever he was, would take against strangers barging into his room. He opened the door to the sitting room, craned his neck within – also empty.
‘Well, there’s nobody here.’
She raked her gaze about the room, frowning at the window. ‘It was this room. He was standing right there. Honestly.’
‘I’m sure he was. But he’s scarpered.’
They stood there for a few moments, uncertain, then returned to their room. Stephen lit a cigarette and poured them each another tall Scotch. ‘Down the hatch,’ he said, putting the glass in her hand. Nina stared at it absently, then set it down untasted. He waited for her to speak.
‘What d’you think we should do? Tell the desk manager?’
Stephen wrinkled his nose in demur. A doubt had wormed into his mind. ‘Tell him what? I mean, all you saw was a woman bolting out of a room. It might just have been – I don’t know – a lovers’ tiff.’
She looked aghast at him. ‘What?’
He tried to sound a reasonable note. ‘I’m only saying – you may have misinterpreted –’
‘Why on earth would you doubt me? I’m not a hysteric. I know what I heard, and it was no lovers’ tiff, as you call it.’
Stephen, alarmed at the sudden adversarial tone, held up his hands in a pacifying gesture. Averse to arguing in general, he was particularly keen not to cross someone whom he had spent an afternoon getting close to.
‘I don’t doubt you,’ he said. ‘I’m just thinking of our . . . situation. If we make a report, they’ll ask for our names. And there’ll be no pretending then. D’you see?’
Nina looked away, considering, then gave a reluctant nod. He was right. They weren’t supposed to be at this hotel in the first place. Her gaze drifted, wistfully, to the disordered bed they had lately shared.
<
br /> ‘If only I hadn’t insisted on going down for cigarettes . . .’
Stephen shook his head. ‘I should have gone myself. Then none of this would have . . .’ He fell silent, not sure where that line of thought might be tending. If he had gone down to the bar instead, then presumably he would have overheard the disturbance on the way back. But would he have stopped, like her, and interrupted it? He could not altogether convince himself he would have done.
Nina checked her wristwatch. ‘Nearly six. I ought to be on my way.’
‘Surely we’ve time for another drink?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m afraid not. Dolly can’t stand ’avin’ to rush me.’ This last sentence she cockney-cawed in imitation of her dresser, the redoubtable Dolly. In an effort to rekindle the earlier mood he snaked an exploratory arm around her waist and lowered his face towards her. She smiled rather sadly, and detached herself from him.
‘I’m sorry, darling. That business with the girl has shaken me up, I don’t mind telling you.’ Stephen must have looked slightly crestfallen, because she gave a comical wince of apology as she took his hands in hers. ‘You must think me an awful ninny.’
He took her self-deprecation more seriously than was intended. ‘I don’t think that at all. Actually, I think you’re smashing.’
She raised a cheek for him to kiss, laughing, which made him feel less sore about being fobbed off. Having swiped a brush through her hair and attended to her make-up in the mirror, she was ready to go. They were just crossing the foyer when a voice ambushed them.
‘Wyley!’
Stephen looked round, his heart plunging, and took a moment to register the floridly handsome face, the blazing eyes and confident leading chin. What abject timing he had today, he thought.
‘Gerald – hullo.’
‘Fancy running into you,’ the man drawled, his eyes already sliding away from him to Nina, bright with expectation. With a casualness he didn’t feel, Stephen said, ‘Nina Land – Gerald Carmody. Gerald and I have known one another for years,’ he added.
‘Ah, Miss Land,’ said Carmody, ‘I’ve been lucky enough to see you onstage. The Dance of Death – at the Lyceum? Remarkable!’
Nina gave a queenly tilt of her head at this suavity. Carmody was now shooting inquisitive looks between them, and Stephen realised he would have to be quick with an explanation.
‘Nina has agreed to sit for a series of portraits I’m meant to be doing – of the leading lights of theatreland.’ He looked to her for confirmation of this lie.
‘He says I have a very sculptural head,’ Nina explained, unblinking.
Carmody craned forward excitedly. ‘Leading lights? Then you should do me! You know I’m trying to raise funds for the Marquess in Drury Lane?’
‘Why’s that?’ said Nina.
‘I’m the manager, for my sins. Our last run was a disaster, and with the rent at two hundred and fifty a week it’s touch-and-go whether we can hold off the bank.’ He gave Stephen a narrow-eyed speculative glance. ‘As a matter of fact I’m organising a dinner for a month or so, a charitable thing to whip up some cash for the old place. We’ve already got Larry and a few others on board. I’m hoping to tap prosperous fellows like yourself.’
The prompt was too brazen to ignore. ‘If I can help in some way . . .’ said Stephen, aiming for vagueness.
Carmody’s voice rose in enthusiasm. ‘Well, that would be marvellous!’ He was already taking a pen from his breast pocket. ‘Are you still down at Chelsea?’
‘Best way to reach me is through the gallery. Dallington’s, on Bury Street.’
‘Capital. I’ll send you a note about it.’
Nina gave a polite cough and said that she had to dash, allowing Stephen an excuse to get away. They shook hands with Carmody and hurried out of the hotel into Southampton Row. A cab picked them up almost immediately. Once settled Stephen gave vent to a groan.
‘Hellfire. That was awkward.’
‘How d’you know him?’
‘I hope he didn’t see us coming out of the lift . . . Hmm? Oh, we were at Oxford, though I didn’t know him well. Still don’t – we occasionally bump into one another. He’s had quite a career.’
‘Wasn’t he an MP?’
Stephen nodded. ‘One of the youngest ever to be elected. Was tipped for the Cabinet, I think, but made a lot of enemies. The party kicked him out.’
‘He soon got his claws into you,’ she smirked.
Stephen grimaced. ‘Yes – worrying, that. Much as I’d like to help his theatre, I’d rather not get involved. Carmody’s a dangerous sort.’
‘Dangerous?’
‘Well . . . the company he keeps. He was once – and still may be – very thick with Mosley. You know he runs the weekly magazine for the blackshirts?’
‘Oh dear,’ said Nina. ‘He doesn’t look the type.’
Stephen thought of asking her how she imagined the typical blackshirt would look, but instead turned a brooding face to the office buildings of Holborn as they slid by the cab window. He could pretend to himself that Carmody would forget all about it, that it was merely a part of his chancer’s routine. But he suspected a streak of tenacity in him. Nina seemed to pick up on his troubled silence.
‘Don’t worry about him. He’s probably just trying to make himself look grand – I’ll bet he’s never met Larry in his life!’ The taxi had pulled up at the foot of the Aldwych’s long curve. ‘I’m going to hop out. But before I do, Mr Melmotte’ – she leaned across him – ‘give me a kiss and wish me luck.’
Stephen happily obliged, then watched as she sauntered up the pavement, straight-backed, hands in her coat pockets, all confidence. He could almost imagine her to be whistling. What a girl she was!
On arriving home at Elm Park Gardens he let himself in, and cautiously interrogated his reflection in the hall’s gilt mirror for evidence of his afternoon. He was fussing with his tie again when the drawing-room door opened and Cora appeared, sheathed in an exquisite emerald-coloured gown. Her face was pale and creased in anxious concern.
‘Darling – I thought you’d forgotten about dinner,’ she said. ‘You’ve got ten minutes to get ready.’
Stephen smiled at his wife. ‘I hadn’t forgotten. I’m just going to get out of these shoes.’
2
ON THE WEDNESDAY Nina awoke to an unplaceable sense of foreboding. From downstairs she could hear Mrs Keeffe, the landlady, chatting away to one of her boarders. And that smell . . . honestly, who could think of eating kippers at this hour? She turned over in her bed, trying to get comfortable on the lumpy mattress. What was it? she wondered, picking through the previous night for clues to this lowering mood. Not the show – she had just torn into it onstage, they all said how marvellous she’d been, even Dolly. Then they’d gone to the Ivy for a late one, and she’d got tight, but not terribly so, not roaring like ten men. So was it the other business, the eventful afternoon at the Imperial? No, that wasn’t it either, but now that she had it in mind she would indulge herself for a few moments thinking of his face, his lovely hands with their tapering fingers, and his sweetly earnest compliments. I think you’re smashing . . . Fancy! as Dolly would say.
Too bad he was married. He hadn’t tried to conceal it, or not for long anyway. And she had exercised her own small deception the night they had met at the gallery, pretending not to know him when she was quite familiar with his work as a society portraitist. Having truanted from the gathering and agreed to dinner, she had to wait until pudding for him to confess that the lady he’d told her about at the theatre – the one who had blubbed at her performance in The Second Arrangement – was in fact his wife. Nina had muffled the stab of disappointment by asking questions about her, to which he replied in an even, perhaps rather neutral tone. She – Cora, was it? – had been a secretary at the Royal Academy when Stephen was there. Good family, stockbroker class, large house on Richmond Hill. They had two children, a girl and a boy, both at school; after that they had talked of oth
er things. It was only when Stephen telephoned her the very next day to invite her to lunch that she felt the first vibrations of his seriousness.
The question of whether she ought to have resisted didn’t really trouble her. She had fielded the attentions of married men before, without notable pain on either side, and this time seemed no different. Both of them knew what they were doing. Nina wasn’t interested in Stephen’s wife, and even if she had been, why on earth would they spend the small time they had together talking about her? He had charm – a charm born irresistibly of shyness – but he was plainly not to be trusted, in anything. His behaviour at the hotel, for instance, now that she thought about it, was far from exemplary – quite apart from dishonouring his marital vows. When she had suggested reporting the incident to the desk, his immediate instinct had been to protect himself. But didn’t that girl need protecting too? It came back to her now, the whimpering (‘please, no’) she had heard in the hotel corridor, the door flung open and the girl’s face in front of her, goggle-eyed with terror as she bolted past. Nina shook her head as though to empty it of the offending image. It was horrible, quite horrible . . .
And yet even that wasn’t the thing, naggingly stuck there like a thread of meat behind a molar. She looked at her alarm clock, and thought she might as well get up: at this hour there would still be hot water for a bath. Wrapped in her dressing gown she darted across the landing and into the bathroom, locked the door and turned on the taps, listening to the pipes clank and whinny as the tub filled. Once satisfactorily immersed, she lit a cigarette and rested her head against the porcelain roll-top.
She had been at Mrs Keeffe’s boarding house for nearly four years. It was an unlyrical Victorian red-brick on Chiltern Street, and she had hated the place the minute she walked in – hated the linoleum floors, the mournful furniture, the dingy microbial wallpaper, the bedraggled aspidistra in the window. But four years ago it was a rent she could afford, and the house was only a hop, skip and a jump away from the West End. She had never got to know any of the other guests, and even to Mrs Keeffe she spoke only when she had to – the occasional encounter on the stairs, or that afternoon her mother had visited –
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