The Magic Hour

by Charlotte Bingham

  But Bob sat down on the area steps, his top hat well to the back of his head, a bottle of champagne in one hand and a glass in the other.

  ‘You didn’t come to the wedding, so I brought the wedding to you,’ he said, when, seeing the rain tipping down, Alexandra eventually relented and opened her basement door to him.

  ‘You are not meant to be here.’

  ‘I’ve come round to bring you a cheering bottle of champers—’

  ‘I don’t drink,’ Alexandra stated with complete truth.

  Bob put the bottle down on her kitchen table.

  ‘In that case it’s high time you did,’ he announced. ‘As Frank Sinatra famously said, “Is that really the best you’re going to feel all day?”’

  ‘Drink is not something I’ve ever wanted to try.’

  ‘How do you know you don’t like it if you’ve never tried it?’

  ‘I don’t like the smell.’

  Bob ignored her, instead he sniffed the air.

  ‘Speaking of which – what have you been doing in here?’

  ‘Baking.’

  ‘I can tell. Delicious.’ He put his head on one side. ‘Any chance of tasting one of the recipes? So far the wedding reception has been nothing if not liquid and only one canapé for yours truly.’

  ‘Not a hope. Now if that’s all, sir.’

  ‘Don’t say that, don’t say “sir” please. It’s so – sexy.’

  Alexandra stared at him. Sex was not only an experience that had not occurred in her life so far, but it was also a word that she had hardly ever heard said. The visitors to number thirty-two, Mrs Smithers, her Millington relations at Knighton Hall, Douro Partridge, they all talked about money and inheritance, about the aristocracy, about hunting, about farming, about dogs and horses, but not sex.

  ‘Have I said something to shock you?’

  For a second Bob himself looked shocked at her reaction.

  ‘No,’ Alexandra said, slowly. She frowned. ‘As a matter of fact, now I come to think of it … Now I come to think of it, I think you’re right, I think it is silly not to try a glass of champagne, just one, just for fun. After all, just for once I do have Saturday afternoon off.’

  Bob started to take the gold paper off the champagne bottle, his expression gleeful.

  Tom had left Bob to walk alone in Hyde Park, for hours. The confusion of his feelings was such that it seemed to him the people he passed were somehow distorted, in the same way that Florazel had become distorted to him. He had always known she had been married, that her husband, a much older man, had died after barely eighteen months of marriage, but he had not thought any further, as young men who are in love do not. What he had not known was that he was only one in a long line of young men.

  He castigated himself for his stupidity. He cursed himself for his naivety. He hated himself for going to her so willingly, and straight after his mother’s funeral; but what he could not deny was that he was in love with her. She fired him in a way that he had never thought he could be fired, she made him laugh, she shared her status with him, and that was all before she dressed him, taught him how to order from a French menu – made him feel as he had never felt before.

  Finally, after many hours during which he sat incongruously on park benches beside smartly dressed nannies in over-correct uniforms, walked past the Serpentine noting the many boats, and watched other lovers strolling in the warm air through the trees, he realised that he could not give up Florazel, and for a very good reason – because just the thought of her melted him. Just the memory of her scent sent his head spinning. The thought of her long, slender legs encased in their silk stockings trotting up the Ritz staircase in front of him made him feel faint with desire. She was irresistible. She was everything that a man could dream of, and really what did it matter if he was one in a long line of young men, as Bob Atkins had stated. He would be different; he would be the one that would remain. He would never leave her. She would never leave him. They were passion personified. They were love as it should be. When they were together life was more beautiful, more rapturous, more magical. Nothing should come between that. The past after all was the past, and he could shut that door for her for ever, by giving himself to her in such a way that she would never need anyone else. He would make sure that he was all that she had ever wanted.

  Eventually he let himself back into their suite to find a note waiting for him.

  Tom darling, I am at the Spencer-Churchills tonight. It is evening dress (white tie). Do come. The desk will call a car for you, and they know where to go. Please come. It is a dinner-dance and you will be a hit, I know you will.

  Tom read the note and reread it, but although the tone of the note was so sweet and generous, and although the writer was so obviously in love (for why else would she sign her name with hearts and kisses?) he knew that, despite being now the proud owner of a white tie and tails, he could not go.

  Hours later, having lain on the vast, ornate bed in a well of misery, not to mention jealousy, imagining Florazel dancing and flirting with any number of better-versed, better-looking, more elegant, wittier men than himself, he heard the door of the suite open.

  She stood in front of the bed, smiling down at him.

  ‘Did you have headache, darling Tom?’

  Tom sat up and, getting off the bed, went to her.

  ‘No,’ he said, firmly. ‘I did not have a headache, Florazel.’

  ‘Then why couldn’t you come, darling?’

  Tom gripped her hands. She was so beautiful. More beautiful than he had remembered her while he walked round the park agonising over their relationship, wanting to reach back into her past and wipe out her previous lovers, like the teacher wipes a duster across a blackboard. He stared down at her evening dress. It too was beautiful. He did not know the material, would not have known that it was draped rayon jersey, only that it clung to her beautiful figure, making her tiny waist look smaller by its tight cut, making her small, rounded breasts look more desirable by the fact that the bodice was heart-shaped and the sleeves cut and gathered so they were set slightly off the shoulder. The train fanned out in a fishtail behind her, giving her figure a strange formality and, because it was lined with silk, making a slight swishing sound as she dropped her hands and walked towards her dressing room.

  ‘Oh Florazel, you’re so beautiful,’ was all he could murmur hopelessly, before he followed her and, catching her by the shoulders, turned her, and they started to make love.

  ‘So, why didn’t you come to the dinner-dance, darling? You would have loved it. There were so many amusing people there.’

  It was the following morning and, after a night spent making love, Florazel was brushing her hair in front of a long dressing mirror, and Tom was watching her from the bed.

  He hesitated before replying, not wanting her to laugh at him, but knowing that she had every right to do so. Through their love-making he had been able to drown out the sound of Bob Atkins’s voice saying, not once, but several times, ‘But didn’t you know Lady Florazel Compton is easy? Everyone knows that. She’s easy, all right, can’t get enough of it, from anyone and everyone, really she can’t, it’s well known.’

  ‘There was a good reason why I couldn’t have come to dinner last night,’ he admitted.

  She half turned from the mirror, staring at him, waiting, so that for a fleeting second he had the feeling that she was about to ask him if he had been told about her, and he could not help wondering if she would deny the rumours, if she would tell him that what was said about her was nothing but vicious gossip, and that he must not listen, that she only loved him, no one else, only him.

  ‘The reason you did not come to the Spencer-Churchills’ was?’

  She was still half-turned, and waiting, definitely waiting; almost as if she had been through this particular scene before, was too well versed not to choose her words carefully, not to know she shouldn’t hurry anything, she shouldn’t jump in too quickly, say something in haste that she mig
ht regret. He sensed a certain hardness, but saw only her beauty, a beauty that would melt hearts of lead.

  ‘The reason I did not come to the dinner-dance is that I cannot dance, that is why I did not come to the dinner-dance.’

  At that Florazel did go to say something, but then she stopped, a most tender look to her eyes.

  ‘Well, Tom, that was a very good reason, really it was. A very good reason. But did you not think that you could have come to dinner, but not – um – danced?’

  She was not mocking him, but prompting him to a new thought.

  He smiled suddenly.

  ‘I never thought of that.’

  He sprang off the bed, and twirled her round, her nightdress flowing out behind her.

  ‘I am so thick, I never thought of that at all. But now you point it out, that would have been quite an idea, wouldn’t it?’ He stopped. ‘And what is more I have another idea.’

  ‘What Tom, what?’ She held out warning hands, laughing. ‘No, no, not again?’

  Tom laughed at her expression.

  ‘No, no, not for at least another hour or so. I shouldn’t have thought.’

  He caught her to him, feeling the silk of her nightdress in his hands, wondering at how beautiful she looked even in the early morning.

  ‘No, I want something quite different from you, my Lady Florazel.’

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘A dancing lesson, my lady.’

  ‘Clear the floor, young sir, roll up the carpet, and let us begin.’

  Alexandra waited until Bob’s back was turned and then she swiftly poured the glass of champagne into a nearby pot of parsley, after which she made a show of finishing the glass up far too quickly.

  ‘I say, Minty.’ Bob looked at her with admiration. ‘You have taken to champers in quite a way, haven’t you?’

  He topped up her glass, and as he did so he smiled what she imagined he must think was flirtatiously at her and at the same time filled his own now empty glass.

  Alexandra watched him with fascination. She had at least learned the ways of older men via the upstairs rooms, learned how to anticipate the wandering hands, the pressing of the body against the side of her bust as she leaned forward to serve, the come-hither winks behind the other guests’ backs, and even sometimes the little notes left on the drinks tray.

  All in all she had come to find the ways of older men at worst cunning, and at best pathetic, and so far no visitor to number thirty-two had remained immune to the charms of a maid’s uniform, not even Mr Albert Chamberlain who, to the satisfaction not just of Mrs Smithers, but of Minty, had only a few hours ago married the highly strung Mrs Atkins, aunt of Bob Atkins presently standing in Alexandra’s kitchen looking more than a little half-seas-over.

  ‘Minty …’

  ‘Yes, Mr Atkins?’

  Alexandra had become quite adept at looking, if not feeling, the ever-obliging, innocent maid-of-all-work.

  ‘I was wondering, Minty, I was wondering.’ Bob paused, reaching for his next words, which was not that surprising since he had already put away a few glasses at the wedding reception. ‘I was wondering, Minty, if you would like to go for a walk? You know, since you have dogs, we could go for a walk, couldn’t we?’ He frowned. ‘I’ve always wanted to go for a walk on the Downs with a girl as pretty as you, and her dogs. It’s something of which, I have to tell you, I have dreamed.’

  Alexandra stared at him.

  ‘You’re not quite as sober as you’re pretending, are you, Mr Atkins?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘No. And please call me Bob, Minty. Just Bob.’

  He was managing to look more pleading than her spaniels.

  ‘In that case, how come you’re thinking of going for a walk?’

  Bob shook his head.

  ‘Don’t know.’ He started to fall forward as Alexandra rushed to catch him. ‘Don’t know. Just know that ever since I saw you at dinner I thought you were the prettiest thing I’d ever seen, Minty.’

  ‘And I think you’d better be going home, Mr Atkins, before you pass out.’

  Seconds later, as Bob’s head crashed onto the kitchen table, Alexandra realised that whatever was going to happen to Bob next, it would not be a walk on the Downs.

  Although Tom had endured a childhood of hastily packed suitcases, and lean, mean meals – despite his mother’s uneasy method of earning her living as a cook – the one thing of which he was quite certain was that he was a countryman, and not just at heart.

  From an early age owing to lack of help in wartime, his mother’s various employers had roped him in to help bring in cows, muck out horses, and, happily for him, had even taught him to ride them. So when one day in late summer Florazel mentioned that she would like to go riding in Richmond Park, he knew that at long last she had invited him to do the one thing he could do well. Florazel might have been at pains to teach him etiquette, dancing and innumerable other subtleties of behaviour and attitudes, but the one thing, thank God, she would not have to teach him was how to ride.

  His riding clothes came round by special delivery, not tailor-made, but beautifully cut even so. Florazel unpacked each item lovingly, and when Tom finally stood in front of her, his long legs encased in tight-fitting jodhpurs, highly polished boots and beautifully cut hacking jacket, she sighed appreciatively.

  ‘I think I will cancel the hirelings, such a pity to take you out riding now, the way you are looking I think I would really rather stay in with you, darling.’

  But they drove out to Richmond Park anyway, and when Tom held out his hands in the correct way, fingers locked ready for her to place her riding boot in them and threw her lightly into the saddle, Florazel realised that here, in the stable yard, he was in complete command, and the way she turned and looked down at him from the saddle made him grow a lot taller than the six feet two inches, which was his declared height on the new passport he had acquired.

  ‘You ride beautifully,’ she murmured later when they pulled up at the top of a hill after a stiff, controlled canter. ‘Have you always ridden?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Tom looked across at her from under his cap. After a half-hour’s riding Florazel’s hair was blowing in what looked like carefully arranged blonde tendrils about the brown felt of her hat, and what with her slim figure sitting to the horse in a way that was almost too perfect, she made up a picture that was really, in Tom’s mind, a painting; and it was a painting that he was suddenly aware would stay with him for ever.

  Lady Florazel Compton Riding in Richmond Park on a Sunny Day.

  And there would be other paintings of her that he would keep and hang on the walls of his memory.

  Lady Florazel Compton Rowing on the Serpentine.

  Lady Florazel Compton Dancing.

  Lady Florazel Compton Before the Famous Bennington Fancy Dress Ball at Rymans.

  They had been passionate about each other for months now, and they went everywhere together, accepted in the crowded cocktail parties, the restaurants and on the dance floors of private houses, where Tom was finally able to mingle as if he too had been born on the Duke of Somerton’s estate and left to the care of nannies and maids. Where Florazel told him she had been allowed to play in the vast kitchens while servants toiled to make soups and broths, preserves and bread, and every kind of jam or chutney. Where cooks like Tom’s late mother roasted pheasants and crumbled bread-crumbs to the right degree of brown, whipped soufflés and distilled and reduced stocks for exquisite sauces.

  ‘But that was all before the war,’ Florazel would say, sometimes looking a little sad. ‘Now everything is so reduced.’

  Tom had to accept that this was true, yet to his young eyes Florazel’s life seemed hardly to be reduced, it seemed exotic to a degree, and he swiftly learned not just to address servants and staff, waiters and butlers in a low courteous tone, but to realise that people such as Florazel always took the time and trouble to appreciate what had been done for them. To go downstair
s and thank the cook, to ask after a sick mother or a son who was off doing his National Service.

  As it happened Tom’s National Service papers had followed him around first to Knighton Hall, then to the Duke’s estate from where they were dropped into his old lodgings; so it was some time before they somewhat incongruously turned up at the Ritz, sent on by Mrs Posnet who enclosed a note thanking him for his rent money, which had arrived some few weeks after his sudden departure. The letter enclosing the papers also said that she hoped he was enjoying London. Since she carefully underlined the word ‘enjoying’ Tom knew that she must be aware of the very changed circumstances of his life.

  Florazel snatched up the papers and stared at them.

  ‘Don’t worry about these, Tom, with my connections I can make sure that you don’t have to waste your time square-bashing.’

  She gave him a dazzling smile and swept off to her dressing room. Some hours later she came back, small blue leather notebook in hand.

  ‘Ever had anything wrong with you, darling? Say like fallen arches, a bad back, anything useful, or silly, like that?’

  Tom looked across at her, feeling instantly uneasy at the notion that Florazel could get him out of something that was after all to most people a moral obligation.

  ‘I did have a tubercular gland, a few years ago. I was off work with a fever for a bit.’

  ‘Splendid, that’s all we need. You write to the doctor who treated you, and I’ll tell old Perry Harborough and he’ll get your papers stamped not-eligible because of TB.’ She leaned forward and kissed him sumptuously. ‘Can’t have you wasting your time when you could be profiting from it, can we, Tom darling?’

  Florazel swept back to her dressing room, her long satin housecoat making a pleasant sound as it trailed behind her on the carpet. Tom stared after her. He knew that she was making plans for both of them to go to America, which was exciting to say the least. He knew that, as the Duke of Somerton’s sister, Florazel was what his mother would have called ‘fabulously connected’, so he was not surprised at her ability to pull strings. What surprised him was the ease with which people like her went about getting their own way. For a second he knew he should feel shocked, but then the thought of going to America with her took over and feelings of excitement replaced any latent guilt.