Книга - Last Dance with Valentino
Last Dance with Valentino
Daisy Waugh
If you like The Artist you’ll love Daisy Waugh’s Last Dance with Valentino.As Rudolph Valentino fights for his life, barricades keep the swarming fans at bay. Adored by millions of women, but loved by only one…Will she be able to reach him in time?August 1916Fleeing war-ravaged London, Jenny Doyle sets sail for New York. As she draws near the soaring skyscrapers her dreams are dashed when she learns she is to be sent to work for the wealthy de Saulles family. Known as ‘the Box’, their home is Gatsby-like in elegance yet rife with malice and madness. Only her friendship with dancer Rodolfo offers Jenny a glimpse of escape…until a tragic day when the household is changed forever.August 1926America booms, prohibition rules and one man’s movie is breaking box office records. Rodolfo has taken his place on the silver screen as Rudolph Valentino when a chance arises for he and Jenny to meet again. Will the world’s most desired film star and his lost love have their Hollywood happy ending, or will the tragic echoes of their past thwart them one last time?
DAISY WAUGH
Contents
Cover (#uf42265a7-b491-5534-965a-412a36281076)
Title Page (#ufacb7821-446a-538f-81af-460d3189b1c6)
Chapter 1 - Ambassador Hotel New York (#ua805a7ef-df54-56a6-9fcc-5cee196ead40)
Chapter 2 - Summer 1916 (#u47686381-fc9c-5323-9433-f642edc2ab69)
Chapter 3 - Hotel Continental New York (#u0a405826-623b-52a4-9097-5a83d883cd2b)
Chapter 4 - 1916–17 Long Island (#uc16c149d-d97f-5518-9623-f1b54d5a4263)
Chapter 5 - Hotel Continental New York (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 - 1917 Long Island (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 - Hotel Continental New York (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 - 1918 Long Island–Hollywood (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 - Hotel Continental New York (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 - Hotel Continental New York (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 - 1918–21 Hollywood (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 - Hotel Continental New York (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 - 1921 Hollywood (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 - Hotel Continental New York (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 - 1921–3 Hollywood (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 - Hotel Continental New York (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 - Hotel Continental New York (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 - Hotel Continental New York (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 - 1923–4 Hollywood (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 - Hotel Continental New York (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 - 1925 Hollywood (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 - Police Precinct, New York (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 - 1926 Hollywood–New York (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 - Hotel Continental New York (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 - Hotel Continental New York (#litres_trial_promo)
Postscript (#litres_trial_promo)
Author’s Notes (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
Photographic Insert (#litres_trial_promo)
By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
For my mother, with love.
‘Without any more words, he turned to me – and we danced. There on the veranda, by the light of the moon . . . I swear I never danced so well. I think, in his arms, it would have been impossible to dance badly – as if his grace were like his laughter: irresistibly, magically infectious.
. . . Did I write that I hadn’t fallen in love with him that night? Did I write that? How absurd!’
Chapter 1
Ambassador Hotel
New York
Friday, 13 August 1926
I can still feel him.
I can still feel him, I can still smell him, I can still see the fold in my pillow where he leaned over to me . . . I can feel his tongue . . . his hands . . . his lips . . . his fingers in my mouth. I can still taste him. Only a moment ago he was here, with me, and I can still hear the sound of the latch closing softly behind him. I can hear his voice and his laughter fading as he moves away down the hall.
We made love for hours; all night and all morning and late into the afternoon. Mr Ullman must have telephoned him a hundred times, until finally he pulled the wire from the wall and sent the whole wretched contraption flying to the ground. And we lay quietly, talking in whispers, smoking cigarettes, covering our laughter, even while Mr Ullman was outside the door to the suite, imploring him to come out, to pick up the telephone at least, and to talk . . .
In any case he had to leave our bed eventually, of course. There were people waiting for him. Thousands of them – waiting only for him. What a feeling it must be! I can’t even imagine – I’m not sure I really even want to. But that is his life now, for better or worse. It was what he wanted, all those years ago. Or, at least, perhaps, it is the price of what he wanted – and today I see him carrying the burden of his extraordinary success with that sad, delicious grace, which is so much his own, and which so entirely melts me. Which melts us all, I think.
So – now what? I watched him dress. In evening clothes, for such a dazzling occasion. I lay in this enormous, sleek black bed, and watched him as he prowled, his footfall soundless, from dressing room to bathroom and back again. He stood before the glass at the beautiful Chinese dressing-table and told me about the time, only last week, when he had come away from an appearance like this evening’s – a movie promotion of some type. At his arrival the crowds became so carried away that extra police had to be called. They had mauled him as he fought his way through from theatre to automobile, torn the buttons from his coat, and a great chunk from the lining of his jacket – one woman had clung to his tie and swung: ‘And I wanted to say to them all . . . ’ he told me, that soft, deep voice, smiling, talking only to me, ‘ . . . I wanted to say but, girls – ladies! Are you all quite mad? Can’t you see I am only a man? Just another man. Go home to your husbands!’ That was when he turned, came across the room to me, lying here, and he leaned over the bed and kissed me once more, one last time; a perfectly tender, perfect kiss – ‘ . . . what you see is nothing but an illusion. Nothing but a dream . . . ’
‘Not a dream to me,’ I told him. ‘I hope. You’re not a dream to me – are you?’
He shook his head. ‘No, Jennifer,’ he replied, his hand on my cheek, finger tracing my lips. ‘I think you are the dream, cara mia . . . All this time I have been waiting, and wondering, and hoping . . . hoping against hope . . . and finally . . . ’ He sighed. ‘But I wish you would stay tonight. Or at least let me get you a room of your own. You’d be far more comfortable. And safer. And closer. And then maybe you could accompany me tonight – if you wanted to. Or maybe you would let me come to you later and then – Jenny, if you were here, in the hotel, we could be quite discreet. Quite unobserved . . . ’
Cara mia.
He has been waiting for me all this time.
But I can’t let him get me a room. I can’t go with him tonight. I think we both understand that.
‘Will you be here for me when I return?’ he asked.
I replied that I would be in my own hotel room on 41st when he returned, preparing for my meeting with Miss Marion. He nodded at that. So, I said to him, I would return to my hotel and sleep, and wait for him to telephone me there.
‘Tomorrow, then,’ he said. ‘ After you have seen Frances. I shan’t distract you, I promise. And then, when you’re finished, I shall send all sorts of messages. I shall inundate you with messages . . . I shall telephone you every half an hour. That is,’ he stopped suddenly, ‘if I may?’
If I may! I laughed aloud. And after a polite hesitation, he laughed too.
For I am his completely. We both know it.
Now, it is my turn to wait. Again. It is Lola Nightingale’s turn to wait. Or Jennifer Doyle’s turn, I should say. Jennifer No-one from Nowhere must join the long line . . .
– – –
Last month he was voted the Most Desirable Movie Star in America by the quarter-million astute readers of Photoplay. Hardly a surprise, after all . . . He has lit a fire in us all. Every woman in America! But I have loved him since long before the others, I have loved him from the moment I first laid eyes on him – that airless night ten years ago ... 11 August 1916 . . . Ten years, one day, nineteen hours and twenty minutes . . . It was my first night in America, and he was as lonely as I. Fighting, just as I was, only with better grace and a bigger, warmer, bolder heart, for a little space in this brash new American world...
And now I am alone in his bed, with our salt on my skin, the taste of him, the feel of him glowing, still, in every corner of my being – and he is returning to me because he loves me. He loves me. And I have always loved him.
– – –
I need to leave. I begin to think it’s a little mawkish to be lolling here in this crazy, beautiful bed – now that he is gone. I should get the hell out of this beautiful, warm place before the maids come in and gawk at me, and imagine I am simply another of his little fans.
Only I feel too feeble. I feel so dizzy – I don’t have any strength left, not to sit up, let alone to stand . . . So I shall lie here, mawkish or not, and I shall do what I always do in times of confusion, disorder, disarray, complete and utter madness . . . I shall scribble it down on paper. On his own embossed writing paper, nothing less, since I have found it lying here . . . And then the mental effort of ordering my thoughts will force me to some sort of stillness, just as it usually does.
– – –
I heard a couple of ladies paid Mr John Barrymore’s valet $2,000 in fresh new dollar bills a short while back so as to be let into his bungalow over at Warner while he was out; and they hid in his private bathroom until he wandered in from the set and then, in a great burst, the ladies jumped right out in front of him! Heaven knows how Rudy might have responded. In any case, the great John Barrymore was too well fizzed (quel surprise) to give it even the slightest notice. He simply looked at them, from one to the other, and smiled, and then as the poor girls almost died right there before him, he gave them a low bow, and said, ‘Care for a little moonshine, ladies?’ And, yes, as it happened, they did! Cared for a great deal more than a little moonshine, I understand. Cared for all sorts of things. So much so, indeed, that I believe the valet was even permitted to keep his job! But never mind that. Never mind them.
He loves me. Rudy loves me. And I am not just a fan. I am not just a lady in search of moonshine. I am a professional person, for God’s sake! A paid-for professional writer of Hollywood photoplays. At least, I am about to be. Frances Marion has telegraphed to say they will surely buy the first one and with her recommendation they surely will, since all Hollywood listens to Miss Marion . . . And really, quite suddenly, everything in my crazy life is too unimaginably wonderful, and I have not the faintest idea what I may have done to deserve it.
But I should leave! I must leave! There is the new Marion Davies picture showing at the Strand, and Frances Marion says I must see it before our lunch together. But of all the movie theatres in New York, could it not have been showing at any other? It’s where we saw the Mary Pickford picture, he and I, on that awful, terrible night.
And then afterwards we took a taxicab with all our winnings, and he came with me to surprise Papa for supper . . . And I suppose that was where it started. Not with the secret dance on the lawn that first warm night, and my mind spinning, and the sound of the Victrola seeping out through the moonlight . . .
You made me love you . . .
I didn’t want to do it
Ha! How I remember that song!
. . . You made me want you . . .
And all the time you knew it
. . . Not with the secret dance that first night. Not quite. A little later, I think. Of course, it was at Papa’s that it started.
Chapter 2
Summer 1916
I must begin with leaving England, I suppose, and with my father, even if normally I try my best to avoid thinking of him. Only today, and yesterday – in the midst of so much happiness – suddenly I discover I can hardly keep him from my mind.
Papa must have drawn the sketch of me from memory, alone in that awful boarding-house. He must have drawn it at the very end, when I half believed he was capable of nothing. In any case, even if there had never been the sketch, and Rudy never had kept it all this time, and never had shown it to me as he did, only yesterday – and taken the wind from my lungs, so that I thought I might drown – I must still remember him. Because in spite of everything he was a wonderful man – and I loved him. I loved him dreadfully.
Papa and I were only ever meant to come to America for a short while. It was summer 1916, and since neither of us was much able to make a contribution of our own, we thought we would leave the war behind, which had already taken my brother, and my father could finally start to work again.
The trip was another of Papa’s Big Ideas; it was the Big Idea, like all the others before it, which was finally going to rescue us. We believed it, he and I.
We embarked on that long voyage – the one that was going to save us – with only each other in the world to care for. I had no memory of having met our American benefactor, John de Saulles, whom my father assured me would be waiting for us at the other end. But Papa swore we had been introduced in the spring, at the Chelsea Arts Club, where my father and I used to spend so many evenings together. He tended to forget that during those long nights I often used to peel off on my own, hide away and read or, more often, simply fall asleep.
They were like peas in a pod, the two of them: utterly feckless, and hopelessly, faithlessly – lethally – addicted to a certain type of woman. Mr de Saulles had been in London the previous few months, on some sort of business, I don’t recall what. It happened to coincide with a time when my father was especially desperate for money, having blown his last of everything, once again, on who knows what? Mr de Saulles had visited Papa’s rented studio, and after plenty of bartering (something Papa took a great and uncharacteristic pleasure in), my father had made a painting of Mr de Saulles, in exchange for which Mr de Saulles had not only provided the paints (or so I assumed, since Papa was often so broke he was unable to finish a work for lack of materials) but also paid for his and my passage, second class, to America.
Mr de Saulles wanted Papa to paint his wife, a celebrated beauty. Also his mistress, a celebrated professional tango dancer (named Joan Sawyer. I was quite a dance fanatic back then and I had read about her, even in England). Since, by then, Papa had infuriated virtually everybody who might have been inclined to employ him in London, either by delivering botch jobs horribly late or – more often – by taking the money but failing to deliver anything at all, and since, with the war, portraiture was not in very high demand in London at the time, and since Papa was almost certainly broken-hearted again, we took up the offer.
The tickets were hand delivered to Papa’s rented studio on 27 July 1916. On 6 August, we had packed up our few possessions and boarded the great Mauretania for New York.
I shall never forget how the two of us stood on deck, quite silent, as that vast ship pulled slowly out to sea. Side by side, we stood, surrounded by noise: the ground-shattering bellow of the ship’s horn, the whistling and weeping and the weeping and cheering of passengers on either side of us, and from the decks above and below us; and together we looked back at the Liverpool dock, where not a soul in the great waving crowd was weeping or whistling for us . . . It seemed unimaginable to me then that we would not return to England again.
In any case, we watched until we could no longer make out the faces on shore. I was tearful, feverish – half wild with every crazy emotion – grieving for my brother and my unremembered mother, and for England, and for myself a little.
I longed to speak, but couldn’t quite summon the confidence. So it was Papa in the end, with one of his heavy, melancholic sighs, who finally broke our long silence.
Ah, well, he said.
And he turned away. From me. From the shore. From everything he and I had ever known. My father presented himself as a man of the world, and he was, I suppose, in a way. But he had never left England before, so perhaps he was afraid. Or perhaps he already knew, as I didn’t yet, that the wonderful, whimsical era of Marcus Doyle and his Big Ideas was edging ever closer to its tired and unfulfilled finale.
Or perhaps he might have been searching for somebody in the crowd, hoping until the last minute that some beautiful, familiar woman might appear from the midst of it and beg him to turn back again. Poor Papa. Since ever I can remember there was always a woman, always absurdly beautiful, always breaking his selfish, silly, fragile heart.
I said, impertinently, because usually it lifted him a little when I was pert, and in any case I needed to talk – to say anything, just to make a noise, ‘You oughtn’t to worry, Papa. I understand there are ladies galore in the city of New York. Some of them quite intelligent. And not all of them hideous.’
He smiled rather weakly. ‘Thank you, Lola. You’re very kind.’
Papa used to call me Lola. I never knew why. He didn’t like the name Jennifer, I suppose. It’s why I chose it, of course. When the choice was mine.
‘But, Papa, you may find them alarming at first,’ I continued facetiously. ‘Mostly they are entirely fixated with the vote. So I read. Much more so than the average Englishwoman. You may have to become a “suffragist” if you’re to make any progress with the American girls.’
He laughed at that. Which thrilled me. He ruffled my careful, seventeen-year-old hair, which, I remember, thrilled me rather less. ‘Come with me, my silly friend,’ he said to me. ‘Come and entertain me, will you, Lola? While I get myself a little stinko.’
It was how we spent the voyage. It was how Papa and I spent the greater part of all our time together actually, once my brother had died – or since probably long before: since Mother died and Marcus was away at school and it was always just the two of us, on our own, with him a little stinko, and me trying my darnedest to keep his melancholy at bay.
Dear God, this heat! This sticky, dirty, airless warmth. So much is different since I left the city all those years ago, but the New York summers don’t change. They remind me of August at Roslyn. It reminds of everything I would most like to forget.
I am writing this in a wretched little café just a couple of blocks from my own flophouse . . . Oh, and what a come-down it is! The Ambassador Hotel has its own air-cooling system – of course. As one might expect of such an ultra fine and modern hotel. It lent Rudy and me a magic, secret climate of our own, up there in our private paradise. I had forgotten what the rest of Manhattan was enduring. – Not that I care! Nothing in the world could bring me down tonight—
Ah! The little dooge has come with my eggs at last. I thought I might die from hunger . . . devilled eggs and buttered toast . . . I never saw a more welcome sight! And more coffee, too. And I have asked him to bring me a large slice of chocolate cake and some fruit Jell-O. And some ginger ale and some vanilla ice cream. And more toast. Good God, I’m so hungry I could swallow the whole of it in a single mouthful then order it all again – except I’m not sure I have enough money in my purse.
Is he thinking of me?
Is he thinking of me now?
But if I continue along those lines I shan’t be able to eat a thing, and it’s hopeless, because I must or I shall probably faint in this dreadful heat. I’ve hardly eaten for days. It would be too horribly embarrassing.
I must keep writing. About the beginning – when Papa was still here, and it was only the two of us, thrown together on that great big ship, setting off to start our new life together.
It’s strange. I’ve not dwelled – purposely not dwelled – on the beginning, not for all these years, and yet suddenly, tonight, it comes to me in a rush, as vivid as yesterday. I remember what I was wearing – the little shirtwaist with the embroidered daisies at the buttonhole . . . I remember that, and how splendid I felt in it. I remember the feel of my new rabbit-skin stole, too hot for the day, but which I wore because Papa had only given it me the day before, when I was crying because we were leaving our home. (And I’m convinced, by the way, that he had always intended to give it to another girl entirely. He looked quite rueful as he handed it over.)
I remember what Papa was wearing, too. He was a handsome man: tall and slim and athletic-looking, with eyes of dark blue and thick, golden-brown hair – speckled grey, by then, I suppose, but always golden brown in my memory. I’ve said he was a handsome man: perhaps it’s an immodest moment to observe that he and I looked rather alike. We have the same colouring and similar build. The same nose – it looks better on a man – straight and long; the same square, determined jaw; the same dark blue eyes and angular face.
He was elegant – always. I remember the jaunty angle of his boater hat, and the familiar hint of his cologne as we stood side by side on that vast deck, and the smell of the crumpled pink azalea in his lapel. He had taken it from Chelsea at the crack of dawn that same morning, just as we were leaving our rented cottage for the last time – plucked it, with that roguish laugh, from the front garden of Mr Brampton next door. It was an act of half-hearted defiance, of course, of playfulness and sentimentality, which was somehow typical of my father. My wonderful, magical, wicked, feckless, faithless father. I miss him. God, I miss him still.
– – –
So, our vast ship slipped away from England and the war, and five days followed, surrounded by sea: long, strange, empty days they were; and while my father drank, and charmed our fellow passengers with his usual elegance and wit, I talked too much – couldn’t stop myself – and mostly sent them scurrying away.
The sixth morning dawned at last, not a moment too soon: Papa and I were setting each other on edge. I could feel his impatience – the suffocating coat of boredom that wrapped every word when he addressed me. And there was something else too, perhaps, now that I think about it. He had grown increasingly ill-tempered as the journey progressed. I would glimpse him sometimes, gazing at me as a prisoner might gaze at their jailer, as if culpability for everything – all his torment, all the little irritations of our journey, the sourness of his wine, pain in his toe, the ache in his heart and head – should be laid somehow at my door.
In any case I left him at his breakfast table that final morning, not eating, since he never much ate, mostly muttering to himself about the horridness of all things American. I left him alone and joined the other passengers on deck to catch a first view of land.
Oh! I will never forget it! That first thrilling glimpse of Manhattan – how it rose from the golden haze; glistening with boastfulness in the dawn light – it moved me in a way nothing in old England ever could . . . I had imagined ‘skyscrapers’; Father and I had discussed them at length (he detested the mere notion) but to see them in reality, soaring triumphantly against that pink morning sky, so proud, so ambitious, so completely extraordinary – I had never in my life seen a sight so beautiful. Even today they take my breath away.
My father, when he finally emerged on deck, decreed them ‘hideous’, just as I had known he would: ‘If the good Lord, in his infinite wisdom, had wanted us to live suspended in midair in that undignified fashion,’ he said, scowling across the water, ‘he’d have given us wings.’ After I failed to respond to that, Papa wandered back to his empty dining-table, I think, and I stayed where I was until we docked.
And then what? A blur of everything, I suppose: a whole lot of noise and energy and mad confusion . . . Papa coming to life at last, striding importantly off the ship as if poor, wretched New York couldn’t possibly be expected to survive without him a moment longer . . . And me, left behind again, organising our paltry luggage, coming ashore and searching desperately for him through the crowd.
It was a sweltering morning, and the pier was teeming; a monstrous, roaring jumble – or jungle, it seemed to me – of steam and smoke; motor-cars and carriages, porters, passengers and officials; and the clatter of horses’ hoofs and the spluttering of automobile engines, and above it all, the constant hammer and crash of construction, here and there and everywhere, and far off in the distance, from towering metal skeletons, there were little men, like insects in a spider’s web, riveting together more buildings to add to the madness of that crazy, beautiful skyline . . . So, we stood there, waiting, jostled this way and that: the failed English Portraitist, who drank too much, and the Failure’s daughter; I was mesmerised by the little men in their metal webs – I was mesmerised by it all. But, of course, I was lucky. I was young and – unlike my father – I had never really shone, so could never feel the shock of my insignificance quite as he must have felt it that morning. I think perhaps it frightened him, to feel so utterly, infinitesimally small.
After what felt a long while, with the two of us standing there – dumb and simply staring – I dared to ask my father if perhaps our mysterious benefactor had provided us with an address. Papa began to rifle half-heartedly through the pockets of his linen coat. But he seemed to be on edge. Even more so than before. He kept glancing at me, as if on the point of saying something, only to lose his nerve and fall silent again. Finally I asked him what was the matter. Had he lost the address? Was his friend not likely to come? Did his friend, perhaps, not even exist?
He looked pained.
‘Lola, old girl,’ he said, at last (and I knew at once we were in trouble. He only ever called me ‘old girl’ when he had something dreadful to say). ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. The, er . . . that is – the, er . . . As you know—’ Abruptly, he stopped patting his pockets, straightened up and looked at me.
He looked– what did he look? What did you look, Papa, just that instant before? Sorry? . . . Yes, I think so . . . Shamefaced? . . . Gosh, yes. Like an animal caught in a trap. ‘Dear girl,’ he said – boomed, rather, over all the noise. ‘I am not – that is to say, we – we, you and I, are not blessed with a pecuniary – pecuniary . . . How does one put it?’ He took a breath and tried again. ‘The time has come, old girl, now that you’re – we’re – now that we’ve arrived here, adults, and so on . . . The time has come for the two of us to address the perennial deficiency of funds at Ranch Doyle, such ranch that it is . . . Peripatetic ranch . . . and so on. It is, or has been, as you may or may not be aware, a constant struggle for your old papa to keep ahead of things . . . ’
Ahead of things! My poor father! I’m ashamed to say I laughed.
‘It has been a constant struggle to stay ahead of matters. And now that you yourself are a young lady – and a remarkable young lady, I may add – I was rather beginning to think . . . that is to say . . . What I have done . . . Oh, Lord . . . Perhaps I should have mentioned it earlier . . . ’
I began to feel a little sick. ‘Papa, for Heaven’s sake . . . ’ Over all the noise my voice was barely audible even to myself. ‘For Heaven’s sake, tell me – what should you have mentioned earlier?’
‘Only I didn’t feel it would be very pleasant to disrupt our very pleasant journey . . . What I have done, old girl, may take you a little by surprise. But I assure you in the long run it is with your own interests very much in my mind . . . at the forefront of my mind . . . that I have rather taken the matter of the, er, perennial pecuniary deficiency at our albeit rather peripatetic ranch into a new dimension . . . a new chapter, so to speak. That is to say . . . Lola, darling, when my kind friend Mr de Saulles offered to – ship us out here, he very sweetly made a suggestion regarding your own future, which I’m certain – I’m absolutely convinced—’
‘Misster Doyles? Misster Marquis Doyles?’
A strange man was peering down at my father. He was pale and extraordinarily tall, with white-blond hair slicked back from a huge, worried face, and a long chin that curved disconcertingly to one side. He was in his forties, possibly fifties; ageless, actually. And he was frowning – that eyebrowless frown with which I would grow so familiar.
There weren’t many who could peer down at Papa. Justin Hademak, the crazy Swede, must have been six and a half foot or more. He was a giant. ‘Misster Doyles?’ he repeated. ‘Iss it you?’
‘Aha!’ exclaimed my father, joyously, noticing him at last. ‘Saved by the bell. So to speak.’
‘You are Mr Doyles?’
‘Marcus Doyle. At your service. Jolly clever of you to spot us. You’re rather late. But no matter.’
‘Of courses.’ The giant bowed his head – it was absurdly formal – and flashed an unlikely smile. ‘I apologise. Unfortunately, at the moment of leaving, the mistress suddenly required the motor-car . . . with utmost urgency ...’
‘Don’t think about it for a second, old chap,’ my amiable father assured him. ‘When a lady requires a motor-car, she requires a motor-car!’
‘I am sent by Mr de Saulles,’ he continued, my father’s charm or humour – or whatever it was – quite lost on him, ‘but I am right to think you are indeed the portrait painter? It is important I locate him correctly. You are the renowned portrait painter from England, coming to America on the appointment of Mr John Longer de Saulles?’
‘I do solemnly declare that I am he,’ said my father. ‘Back me up, Lola, won’t you?’ he stage-whispered to me, above all the racket. ‘I’m not certain he believes me.’
‘And you are the daughter?’ said Mr Hademak.
I nodded.
‘You know, I’m almost certain de Saulles sent me a bit of paper, with all the particulars and so on, and I think he may even have mentioned you . . . a tall gentleman . . . ’ My father was patting his pockets again. ‘ . . . only it seems to have disappeared. Lola, do you suppose I may have given it to you?’
There was no opportunity to reply. Mr Hademak had taken a brief look at our travelling trunk and, in one easy swoop, bent from his freakish height, lifted it onto his shoulders and lurched headlong into the crowd. We had little choice but to end our conversation and follow him.
‘I am to put Mr Doyle into a motor vehicle and send him to Mr de Saulles in the city,’ the man shouted behind him. ‘Mr de Saulles is most impatient to see you again, Mr Doyle. You are to lunch together at Sherry’s, and afterward to join Mrs de Saulles for dinner at The Box . . . And the daughter . . . ’ he glanced back at me, not with any hostility, or with the slightest hint of interest ‘ . . . Mr de Saulles says you are to drive with me to The Box directly. The mistress wants . . . that is to say she doesn’t want . . . ’ He tailed off. ‘You are supposed,’ he tried again, ‘to begin your employment at once.’
‘To begin my . . . ’ I think I may even have laughed. ‘Papa?’ I turned to him. He looked away. ‘My employment . . . as what?’
‘Not quite employment . . . ’ my father muttered sheepishly. ‘Only the poor little chap’s got a Spanish accent, Lola. Y’see . . . That’s the thing. And he’s only four. Or nine. Or something frightful. He terribly needs someone to talk to . . . And then there’s dear Mrs de Saulles, hardly much older than you are, Lola, miles away from her native land and abysmally lonely most of the time. It’ll only be for a couple of months . . . ’
I didn’t say anything. I was too shocked – I had no idea what to say. I remember my silence seemed to annoy him. ‘Really, Jennifer, darling,’ he began to sound slightly peevish, ‘there’s no need to pull that long face. They’re excellent people. My friend Jack de Saulles is . . . top notch. And Mrs de Saulles comes from one of the most spectacular families in Chile. In fact I have a feeling her uncle might even be President. For example. And if he isn’t he certainly ought to be. In any case, darling, even if he isn’t, I don’t think you should complain when I arranged it all so nicely for you . . . Entirely because I was so utterly convinced you would enjoy yourself . . . ’
‘So . . . But we shall be living in different places?’
I could feel him itching to slide away from it all. How he longed for this conversation to be over! ‘Yes and no. That is to say, I shall be in the city mostly, at their apartment. But it’s all part of the same family. And I shall be travelling to see you during the week, of course. Or as often as I can . . . It’s really not far at all from New York. Only an hour or so by the train, Jack tells me . . . In any case it’s hardly up to me, is it?’
It seems ridiculous, I suppose, because I was a grown woman, with a father who was constantly broke, and of course I hadn’t a penny of my own – but it had never passed through my head, never, not even for a moment, that I should play any role during our great American adventure beyond the one I had always played: that is to say, to be hanging about with Papa in a daughterly fashion and occasionally slipping off to fall asleep.
But it was not to be. And why should it have been? No reason. One cannot remain a child for ever. Only I had been his constant companion for as long as I could remember. And the news that we were to separate came as a dreadful shock. I suppose, if I wish anything, I wish he’d had the courage to break the news to me a little earlier, so that I might at least have had time to prepare myself . . . It’s too bad. It doesn’t matter now, in any case. In fact, I am grateful it happened, and not simply because it allowed me to meet Rudy.
However, I was not grateful then. As I stood there on that crazy, bustling, deafening pier, the thought of being apart not just from my home but from the only person in the world I loved, or who loved me, filled me with nothing but a clammy dread. I looked across at Papa – still hoping, I think, that his face might break into one of those wonderful, wicked grins, that he might slap me on the back, as he did sometimes, always much too hard, and laugh, and tell me he was teasing.
But he didn’t look at me. Carefully didn’t look at me, I think. ‘Righty-ho!’ he said. ‘Jolly good. Well, take good care of my little Jennifer, won’t you, Mr . . . Mr . . . ’
‘Hademak. Justin Hademak. From Sweden . . . ’
‘Hademak. Of course you are. From Sweden. How delightful. Lovely. Well, jolly good.’
Mr Hademak put my father into a taxicab. Papa and I kissed each other briefly, without eye contact. I was afraid I would cry. He muttered something – good luck, old girl – something feeble, and not in the least up to the occasion. I didn’t reply. Couldn’t. And then, as he was driven away, he turned back to me.
I remember his expression, I see it now: it was as if he was apologising, and not just for this unfortunate incident but for everything. He looked awful: like someone else entirely – someone so old and so exhausted with the disappointment of himself it allowed me, briefly, to forget my own abandonment, and wonder, for the first time, what might become of him without me. He needed me more than either of us realised, I think. The sight of him, shrinking into the chaos, tore at my heart. It still does. He lifted his hat to me through the glass, and I think he whispered, Sorry. If he did, it was the first and last time . . . He never apologised to me again. Never. And he left me there, alone, with the giant from Sweden.
After Papa had disappeared into the great cloud of the city, Mr Hademak became (if it were possible) even more frantic than previously. Afterwards, when I knew him a little better, I wondered if he hadn’t done it on purpose, charged on ahead in that crazy way, yelling out instructions and so on, if not as a kindness to me then at least to avoid the embarrassment of having to witness my collapsing into tears. I might have done it too – collapsed, that is – if he’d allowed me a moment to pause. I’m not at all sure I would have held myself together.
‘Excellent,’ he declared, without looking at me – with the trunk still balanced high on his shoulder. ‘We must get over to the island right away.’ (Ellis Island, he meant, of course: which island we had passed as we came in; and where the steerage passengers disembarked to have their immigration papers checked. And their hair checked, for lice, I think, too.) ‘We must get over there quickly, though, Miss Doyle . . . So keepup!’ I had to run to stay apace. ‘We have to pick out a new maid. You must help me with that, young lady. They’re all rotten. Since the war we only get now the bad eggs. But we mustn’t fuss. Madame wants her motor-car outside the home . . . So we must pick out the first one we see who looks at all good. It doesn’t matter a spot anyway. They never do stay long . . . ’
The journey to Ellis Island took our little boat back towards the great statue that had so exhilarated me only an hour or so before; the freedom it celebrated seemed to have taken on a more menacing significance since then. Liberty was more than simply an idea suddenly, and how I longed to have a little less!
In any case, we bobbed along, Mr Hademak and I. Mr Hademak was too impatient to wait for the little boat to dock and he disembarked, with those ridiculous spider legs, when there was still a yard or two of water before the quay. And then, even before his foot had touched solid land, he announced as loudly as possible to the milling crowd that he was looking for a housemaid.
Immediately the crowd surged forward but it only infuriated him. ‘No, no, no!’ he snapped. ‘Get off! Get away! No gentlemen today. Are there any Irish about?’ Then, momentarily cornered by the swell, he turned to me. ‘Miss Doyle,’ he bellowed over their heads, ‘don’t just stand there. Find us a girl! And a sweet one, mind. Madame hates them to look drab. Over there! See?’ He pointed behind me. ‘See the little group of Paddies over there? See the young one, with that terribly mad hair?’
The one with the hair – the unmissable, magnificent, golden-russet curls – was a girl of my age, maybe a little older. She was sitting on a black tin suitcase, slightly apart from the others, her sharp face turned towards us. She examined the blond giant, then looked at me. I smiled at her but she didn’t smile back.
‘THAT one!’ he shouted at me, pointing irritably, batting the people away. ‘With the mad, mad hair. YOU!’ he yelled at her.
The girl looked back at him.
‘Ask her if she’s looking for some work. DO IT!’ he shouted. ‘Before someone else takes her! The good ones get stolen too quickly.’
So I turned to her, very embarrassed. ‘The gentleman . . . you probably heard him. He wants to know if you’re— ’
‘Is it board, too?’
‘Why, yess! Most certainly it iss!’ Mr Hademak cried, bearing down on us, his long white face sweating with the effort of having shaken himself loose at last. ‘It is board. And a nice job, too. Twelve dollars a week. Better than you’ll get anywhere else. With days off. Two days a month off! Do you want it, young lady? No or yes?’
She laughed. ‘Do I want it?’ She held out a hand to us, and I can picture her face now, the relief in her eyes, even while she was trying to hide it.
‘You have family?’
‘Back in Ireland. I’m here on my own.’
‘Good. Like the rest of us, then.’ He glanced at me, rather shyly, I think. Perhaps, even, with a whisper of a smile. ‘Welcome to America, young lady. You have your papers?’
She nodded. ‘I was only waiting for a ride to take me to the city.’
‘Well, come along, then. Follow me. Hurry now. We can tell ourselves about names and everything else like that in the motor-car. Only we must hurry.’
He drove us at breakneck speed. It was all so new to me and yet, at the time, I was too wrapped in my miserable thoughts to take much notice. I suppose, before long, we had left Manhattan – I remember nothing of it, only the three of us tearing over a long, straight, impeccably smooth road to Long Island; a road that Mr Hademak was pleased to tell us had been built by a rich man as a car-racing track – until, after however many deaths, the racing drivers had refused to use it any more. He had cackled as he told us this, shaken his head at their eccentricity, and proceeded to drive faster along that dangerous road than I had – or have – ever travelled. Mr Hademak spent most of the journey shouting at us over the din of the engine. It made the veins stick out on his neck.
‘Well well well . . . it is quite a household you ladies are coming to. Miss Doyle – I don’t know what you may know of it already?’
‘Almost nothing,’ I replied bitterly.
‘Quite a household,’ he continued blithely. ‘We have some quite colourful individuals who come our way. Oh, yes, we are quite the entertainers at The Box – as our little house is called. You will be most amused!’
Amused? It seemed unlikely. Amused? To have travelled so far, so full of fear and hope, only to be abandoned? To have arrived in that mythical new city at last, only to be whisked away from it? Actually, at that moment, I felt not so much amused, but as if a great wave of self-pity were enveloping me and, I’m ashamed to admit, tears were already stinging. I’m not sure I had ever felt so lonesome in my life.
Fortunately, neither Mr Hademak nor the Irish girl – Madeleine – seemed to notice.
‘First, we have the master of the house,’ he announced, as the car flew on, swerving aimlessly from one side of the road to the other. Mr Hademak, bolt upright at the wheel, smiled secretly to himself, and I wondered if, after so many trouble-free days at sea, I might finally be travel sick. ‘Yes, indeed,’ he said, ‘and the master is truly quite some gentleman . . . And then we haf the little boy, of course – Jack Junior. Little Jack! Oh, but you will adore him! Quite the little man, he is! He is quite the little master! We all simply adore him. All the servants, and his papa and his mama too. He’s everybody’s favourite! Every single body in our happy little big house just so simply adores him—’
Suddenly Madeleine, the Irish girl, gave a loud and derisive snort. I stared at her. Last she’d spoken, she’d been telling us, with eyes lowered and trembling lip, how she’d come to America alone because her husband had been killed in the French trenches (later she told me she’d never been married: she’d been found in bed with the priest and hounded out of town). She seemed to have forgotten her grief quickly enough. She glanced at me and rolled her eyes, and it goes to show what sort of a hysterical mind I was in, because the next thing, with tears of self-pity still pricking my eyeballs, I was shaking with quiet giggles.
‘But you mustn’t think our life is only about the Little Man,’ Mr Hademak continued cheerfully. ‘Also we are quite the fashionable gathering. Though sometimes, when Madame is in the city, we are just the two of us: Father and Little Man. And then sometimes it is Mother and Little Man, when Mr de Saulles is in town. And then we have Madame and her amusing friends. Or Mr de Saulles and his amusing friends. Or Mr and Mrs de Saulles and their amusing friends. Yes, yes – it is all most amusing . . . We have counts and countesses of Europe. And Mr de Saulles sometimes brings along his Broadway – connections. And how lively they are! And even some of the stars from the pictures! No, no, not quite Miss Mary Pickford! Not quite yet! But we have an English duke. An English duke! And we have so many others. Dancers. Politicians . . . You might have read about them all quite often. In the yellow papers. Yess . . . ’ It was Mr Hademak’s turn to laugh helplessly. He rocked on his bony backside, this way, then that.
‘Sometimes,’ he continued finally, ‘I wonder if I know more about these fashionable individuals than they even quite know themselves . . . We are quite the fast set at The Box, you will discover. Oh, you will be most amused.’
‘And if you’ll excuse me for asking,’ interjected Madeleine, suddenly, ‘only I’m wondering – what’s the mistress like?’
–Ha. And if I had known the answer to that – would I have stopped the car?
Would I have thrown myself out onto that racing drivers’ rejected MotorParkway right there and then, hitched a lift with whatever vehicle came along, hauled my father from his delightful lunch at Sherry’s, and taken whatever employment anyone offered me? Perhaps.
She destroyed my father – what there was left of him to destroy. And she haunts me still – there’s barely a day goes by I don’t think of her, of the part I played or didn’t play, of what I saw and said, and didn’t see and should have said . . .
On the other hand, without her, I would never have befriended Rudy. Or ever have travelled to Hollywood. Nor Rudy either. Imagine that! Then who would the readers of Photoplay be drooling over at nights? Perhaps, in spite of everything, I should be grateful to her. Well, and maybe I am, but I hope she burns in any case – if not at Sing Sing, then in Hell when she finally gets there.
– – –
‘What’s the mistress like?’ asked Madeleine.
And I swear Mr Hademak blushed.
Dear God – three in the morning already, and still too damn hot to sleep! I have been writing all night so my arm is swollen. And my head is burning and my eyeballs ache . . . but I can’t stop. Not yet. Not until I reach the moment where Rudy and I are there in the garden, and we are standing in silence together, listening to the music, and I am wondering about Papa, and where he is, and worrying a little about his newest infatuation, but not as much as I ordinarily would because how can I when Mr Guglielmi – Rudy – is standing so very close beside me? And I don’t believe I have ever glimpsed a more handsome, more dazzling man in all my life.
And then he turns to me and he says, ‘It’s beautiful music, isn’t it?’ And his voice – his Italian accent was much stronger then but his voice was the same: that low, dark, beautiful voice. I can feel it through me. I didn’t recognise the music. I’m not sure that I had even fully noticed it was playing. And he smiled at me, and I thought how sad he must have looked before because the smile had such an effect, as if his face had been illuminated by a thousand million electric light bulbs, and he said, ‘Do you like to dance, Jenny?’
You made me love you . . .I didn’t want to do it. . . You made me want you. . . And all the time you knew it
Rodolfo Guglielmi was a professional dancer then: a dancer-for-hire. When the papers wrote about him – because of the divorce – they called him a lot of hateful names, and of course they still do. And of course he was no angel then. He is a long way from being an angel now, I suppose. But, Hell, which of us isn’t?
When he danced it was as if he moved through a different space from the rest of us: as if the air carried him; as if he had no weight at all. So I danced with him, still in my travelling clothes, in the moonlight, and with the music seeping through the warm night air. And I thought – I remember it so clearly – I thought, This is Life! Now I am truly alive . . .
What a gorgeous, magical place is this America!
– – –
Justin Hademak said it again, as we were turning into its long drive: ‘We are quite the fast set at The Box you will discover.’ It didn’t surprise me, knowing my father and the people he normally consorted with. Actually I would have been surprised if they had been anything else.
Nevertheless there certainly wasn’t anything very fast about Mrs Blanca de Saulles that afternoon. We arrived by a side door – Mr Hademak made us tiptoe into the back lobby, and he closed the door behind us as if a lion and her cubs were sleeping on the other side.
‘Sssh!’ he ordered. We hadn’t made a sound.
Just then Mrs de Saulles herself tripped past us, like a ghost. We stood there, the three of us, fresh from our journey, huddled together in a knot. And maybe she didn’t see us. She was a vision, at any rate; quite out of place in our whitewashed servants’ lobby. Quite out of place – and a little lost, possibly, since it was the one and only time I ever saw her there.
She was dressed in the palest lilac: a shirtwaist of lace and voile and a silk skirt, ankle length, with tiny mother-of-pearl buttons. I can see her now, floating by in that ghostly way, only five or so years older than I was, with that thick, black, shiny hair pinned demurely at the nape of her neck, and those vast, dark, unhappy eyes. She looked as pale as death, as feminine and fragile as any woman I had ever encountered. I knew right then how my father would adore her.
‘Oh! Mrs de Saulles!’ whispered Mr Hademak, his great big block of a body rigid, suddenly, with the dreadful possibility of interrupting her. She continued regardless, slowly, vaguely . . . ‘Mrs de Saulles?’ he tried again.
‘Yes, Hademak?’ she said. Sighed. It was the softest voice you ever heard.
‘We are back!’
‘So it appears.’
‘This – this one – this is Miss Doyle,’ he said, pointing at me, looking at Mrs de Saulles’s feet. (Little, little feet.) ‘The portrait painter’s daughter. Just arrived from England.’
I think I bobbed a curtsy. God knows why.
‘And this is the new maid, Madeleine,’ he added. ‘She’s Irish. We took her from Ellis Island this morning.’
Mrs de Saulles spared us not a glance. She released another of her feather-sighs: a sigh I would grow quite familiar with. (She was tiny. Did I mention how tiny she was? Hardly above five foot, I should think, and so slim that if she stood sideways you could honestly hardly see her.) ‘How lovely,’ she murmured. She sounded more English than I did. ‘Lovely, lovely . . . ’ and then, slowly, she turned to continue her journey.
She was, there is no doubt about it, a truly exceptionally beautiful woman. And that, by the way, even after so many years, and whether I’m grateful to her or not, is about the only pleasant thing I have to say about her.
The Box was near Great Neck, on the Long Island Gold Coast, not far from many of the finest houses of the richest folk in America (and just directly up from where handsome Mr Scott Fitzgerald has set his new novel, of course, which I have by my bedside as I write.)
The Box was a frame house, large and quite important and very graceful, but not vast. Not quite like Mr Gatsby’s. It was painted white. There were wooden porches along the front, framed all round by wide, trellised archways which had been designed for flowers to grow along, I suppose, though there were none while I was there. To one side, rather like a church, there was a high, square tower, where Mrs de Saulles had her private sitting room. The house stood on its own land, with a drive of seventy yards or so, and space enough for a large, bleak garden.
In England, Papa and I had stayed in plenty of magnificent houses while my father (before they grew tired of employing him) painted portraits of their owners. And, really, it wasn’t even as though The Box were particularly large, not compared to the houses I knew in England – and certainly not compared to some of the other houses in the area. Nevertheless there was something indefinably glitzy about it. Mr Hademak was right about that. To my English eyes, fresh from all the deprivations of war, The Box seemed to offer comforts that in Europe had yet to be even imagined: as many bathrooms as there were bedrooms, for example, or not far off it, and hot, running water in all of them; and electrical lighting in every part of the house, even the servants’ rooms. The kitchen was fitted with an electrical icebox – something I had never even seen before – and another electrical machine specifically for making waffles! And in the drawing room on the ceiling there was a wonderful electrical fan. The Box had all these things and more. In its construction, it seemed every possible human comfort had been pandered to.
Yet for all that it felt uncared-for. Cold. There was my father’s – not especially good – portrait of Mr de Saulles, which hung importantly in the large white entrance hall, but other than that there were very few pictures. Nor even much furniture. And what furniture there was appeared ill assorted and unconsidered: a heavy leather couch here, a feeble rattan armchair there, and a hotchpotch of rugs across that great big, elegant drawing-room’s floor. Luxurious – and yet unloved. From the moment I walked into it I could sense it was an unhappy house.
Madeleine was summoned to Mrs de Saulles’s bedroom within minutes of our arrival, and I didn’t set eyes on her again until the following morning. In the meantime Mrs de Saulles seemed to have no interest in meeting me. She had dispatched her young son and temporary nurse to spend the day in the city with his (and my) father. So, I wandered about behind Mr Hademak trying to prise from him what, exactly, my duties would be. He was terribly vague about it. ‘Oh, just make the little soldier to giggle!’ he said irritably. For which, by the way, I was to be paid twenty dollars a week, with Sundays off. A better deal than Madeleine, then.
Poor, sweet Jack. I miss him. He turned out to be the sweetest, gentlest little friend in spite of all the turmoil that surrounded him. Afterwards I wrote several times to him, care of his grandmother. I wonder if the letters even reached him. I never received any reply, not once. But I think about him often – his bravery, mostly. And the way he looked at his mother with so much love and sorrow on that terrible, awful day . . .
Mr Hademak took me to the little boy’s nursery: the only room in the house that seemed to have any warmth to it. A jumble of Jack’s drawings leaned against the mantelpiece, and there was hardly an inch of the place that wasn’t cluttered with some new-fangled plaything: model cars and mechanical guns, circus sets and a doll-sized piano that really worked, and a steam engine that could puff around its own railway track . . . And aeroplanes that could be wound up and flown, and Houdini magic sets and . . . His father never came home without a carful of new toys for him.
‘But he doesn’t play in here much,’ Mr Hademak said airily. And then, after an unusual pause, ‘You’ll be kind to him, I’m sure, Miss Doyle. He has many toys, but he has . . . ’ He stopped for a moment. ‘Well . . . his parents adore him, of course. But – perhaps you have discovered it . . . ’ He flashed me the shyest of smiles and blushed. ‘When you are young there are many ways to be lonely.’
I nodded. A pause.
‘Tell me, are you fond of watching the flickers, Miss Doyle? I am very fond of watching the flickers. I can’t keep away. Each Sunday, if Mrs de Saulles allows it, there I go to the movie theatre at Westbury, or at Mineola. Wherever they have a movie showing. And my favourite star – who is yours? My favourite of all the stars is, of course . . . Miss Mary Pickford! Do you admire her, Miss Doyle? I hope so!’
I would have liked to answer since, from what little I had been permitted to see of them, I was already quite a fan of the movies – and of Mary Pickford, too. But just then a telephone message came through informing us there were to be fifteen for dinner, and after that Mr Hademak had no time for me.
I would have preferred to stay up there in the nursery, but he insisted I come down to the kitchen, where I only got in everyone’s way. I tried to make conversation with the cook. Unsuccessfully, since she was Spanish, and always surly. There was a kitchen-maid, too, whose name I don’t even remember. She was from Mexico. Not that it matters. In all the long months I stayed at The Box I don’t think I ever heard her speak. Certainly, she didn’t speak to me that day. Nobody did much, except Mr Hademak, and only then so he could boast about the evening’s guests. There was to be an Austrian count and his heiress wife, he said, and the Duke of Manchester, and various others, all of them amusing to Mr Hademak in one way or another.
‘ . . . and finally there is Mr Guglielmi,’ Mr Hademak said regretfully. ‘But he is not quite a guest . . . Mr de Saulles only likes him to come so the other guests have an opportunity to watch Miss Sawyer dance. He comes once a week to teach Mrs de Saulles the tango – I believe Mr de Saulles pays his travel expenses . . . ’
‘He’s a professional dancer?’ I asked.
‘A dance instructor. And recently a new professional partner for Miss Sawyer. Not as good a partner as her last, in my small opinion. He was just a gardener not so long ago. And he iss a wop. So although he eats in the dining room,’ he said again, ‘he iss not quite a guest . . . ’
They arrived – the guests and the not-quite guest – in a noisy motorcade, four vehicles in all, with Mr de Saulles, and the woman, Joan Sawyer, whom my father had told me was our host’s mistress, in the front car. After them came a second car, and a third, both crammed with dinner guests, joyously attired. (After wartime London, it was amazing to see how colourful and prosperous they looked!) And in the final car – which stopped directly in front of us – sat the temporary nurse, who had earlier been dispatched to the city with the little boy, and the not-quite-guest, Mr Rodolfo Guglielmi.
That was the first time I glimpsed him, gazing moodily out of the automobile window, smoking a cigarette, with the boy, Jack, fast asleep against his shoulder . . . And even then, when I was so impatient to be reunited with my father, when there was so much new to look at, the sight of him made me stop. He looked quite detached amid all the activity – all the noisy people in their joyous hats, clambering out of their cars, shouting and laughing. He sat very still. More handsome than any man I had ever seen. His thoughts seemed to be miles away.
Mr Hademak and I stood side by side at the front door. I think he was rather put out to have me there – as uncertain as I was of my not-quite-guest-like status. Actually, it was difficult for both of us to know where I was meant to fit in for there was my father, climbing out of the same car as the duke. (‘There! I told you!’ whispered Hademak. ‘That one – the great big chubby one – that is His Grace, the English duke!’) There he was, my father, clapping His English Grace on the great big chubby shoulder, laughing and joking with an elegant woman in vibrant yellow dress. And there was I.
‘Ah!’ cried my father, looking up at me, with love and warmth and blissful forgetfulness, I truly believe, as to where the two of us had only hours before left off. ‘There she is!’ He left the yellow woman and strode towards me. ‘My very own little Jane Eyre!’ He laughed, enveloped me in his arms, lifted me off my feet and kissed me. The familiar smell of alcohol, tobacco and his cologne . . . I can smell it now – I can feel the wash of relief I felt then, as his great arms wrapped me in it.
‘How is it, Lola, my sweet girl? Have you had a delightful day?’
The woman in the yellow dress shouted something at him. I didn’t hear what, but it made him laugh, and before I had time to say anything much he had put me down and wandered back to talk to her again. It didn’t matter at all, really. I was accustomed to his child-like attention span – and I was just so happy to see him. In any case he returned to me moments later, this time with our benefactor, Mr de Saulles, in tow. ‘Jack! I want you to meet my beautiful, clever, delightful, enchanting, charming, beautiful – did I already say that? – lovely, courageous, extraordinary daughter, Jennifer. Jennifer Doyle. Jennifer, this is Mr de Saulles, our immeasurably kind benefactor.’
De Saulles was tall and powerfully built, a good fifteen years older than his young wife, with hair slicked back from an even-featured, handsome face, a strong American jaw and startling bright blue eyes. He stared at me.
I said something – thanked him, I suppose, for all he’d done for us. He took a long moment to respond, but continued to gaze at me with the same strangely absent intensity. He said – and, like his wife’s, his voice was so clipped he might have been English himself, ‘Did they feed you well?’
I didn’t know if he meant on the ship, or in the house, or what he meant – or really, given the heavy cloud of alcohol that surrounded him, and the blank look behind his eyes, whether he meant anything by the question at all. I said, ‘Very well, thank you.’
Still, he gazed at me. I felt myself blushing. I also noticed Miss Sawyer beside him, fidgeting a little. She didn’t look so great – cheap, with the face paint. It was before we all wore it. Nevertheless I longed to be introduced to her – was on the point of introducing myself, even. But suddenly Mr de Saulles seemed to lose interest.
‘Good,’ he said abruptly. He put a careless arm around Miss Sawyer, pulled her towards him and looked about vaguely. ‘Has anyone seen my darling wife?’
After that Mr Hademak told me I should keep out of the way, so I wandered upstairs to my room at the back of the house – small and simple, but better than the room I had left in Chelsea – and while the music and laughter from downstairs grew steadily louder, I lay on my bed and tried to read.
I couldn’t concentrate. It was such an airless night – and my first in this new and exciting place. It seemed preposterous to be spending it alone in that small, hot room. So around ten o’clock I put the book aside. Downstairs I could hear the booming, bawdy voices of the men (and my father’s as loud as any of them). They were calling for Miss Sawyer and Mr Guglielmi to dance.
Only imagine it! In your own sitting room! I had read about the exhibition dances that were such a mad craze in America. In my bedroom at home in Chelsea I had attempted (from a magazine article) to teach myself the steps of the Castle Walk.
So, still in my travelling clothes, I crept out of the room, down the back stairs and into the front hall.
There were two doors opening into the long drawing room, one from the hall where I was standing, the other from the dining room. It would have been impossible for me to stand at either without being seen and no doubt shooed away, but I figured, on such a hot night, that the french windows – there were four of them connecting the drawing room to the trellised veranda beyond – would certainly have been thrown open. I decided the best view would be from the bushes a few yards in front of the house. So, back through the servants’ hall I crept, through the side door, through the flowerbeds all the way round the side of the house to the bushes by the driveway out front.
It was wonderful to be outside. I felt the cool evening darkness settle on my skin. The sound of music filled the air, and the great sky glittered with stars – the way it never did at home. Suddenly, as I scrambled through the last of the flowerbeds, struggling not to catch my clothes on invisible thorns, a sense of exultation at my new surroundings, at my new freedom – at being so far from England and the war – overtook me; a great explosion of joy, and it made me bolder than I might otherwise have been. I reached the bushes, which would have hidden me safely, and decided I wasn’t close enough. I could get a better view if I climbed right up onto the veranda. So that was what I did. With my heart in my mouth, I tiptoed up the few steps, squeezed into the shadows by the nearest of the open french windows and peered in.
The hotchpotch of rugs had been rolled back, making the room appear even larger and less cared-for than before. Chairs and couches had been arranged in a row along the opposite length of the room, so that the guests were facing out, directly towards me. I was confronted by an array of expensive clothes and shiny, red faces – some of their owners more inebriated than others, of course, though all, I would hazard a guess, a little distance from their sharpest.
In any case it didn’t matter which way they were facing, since everyone’s attention was focused not on me but on the end of the room, where the two professional dancers stood facing one another, waiting to begin.
The chubby duke and another man, waxy-faced and horribly thin, were slumped on one couch, leaning feebly one against the other, their eyes glazed with drink. A shoeless woman, wearing trousers, stood behind the waxy-faced gentleman, softly nuzzling his neck. He didn’t seem to notice it. Neither did the duke, who appeared to be so far gone I don’t suppose he would have blinked if a German Taube had flown across the room and dropped a bomb right there in his lap.
On another couch, pawing one another in languid fashion and both glistening with sweat, was the woman in vibrant yellow, who had earlier so distracted my father, and a dandy gentleman in some sort of military garb, with hair that matched her dress.
And there was another woman, too, alone and dishevelled, propped up in a high-backed rattan chair in the far corner. Her mouth was hanging open, and I think she was asleep. There was Mr Hademak, hovering nervously at the door. And various others, lithe and elegant bodies mostly, lounging this way and that. Finally there was Papa, already smitten – that much was too obvious, even without seeing his face. He perched awkwardly on his chair, his body turned entirely towards Mrs de Saulles, who was stretched out on a chaiselongue beside him, fanning herself. The silly dub had placed himself at such an extreme angle to be in her line of vision that it would be impossible for him to watch the dance. He was talking and jabbering – bending his slim body towards her. But, though she nodded once in a while, she didn’t look at him. Her wide – wired – eyes were fixated on the dancers.
Like a circus master, Mr de Saulles stood beside the Victrola, preparing to set the needle down. Finally, he allowed the music to begin. After that I think, judging by the stillness, everyone – except Papa, of course – forgot everyone else.
The two dancers seemed barely to touch as they glided through the empty space between us, not each other or even the floor. Miss Joan Sawyer had looked so ordinary before, but when she danced with Rudy they transformed, together, into a seamless, shimmering stream, so graceful as to seem barely human. The beauty of it, in such inebriated company, seemed to be especially incongruous. They took my breath away. I had been exposed to more of life than most girls of my age; bawdiness, beauty, wickedness and wit. But this – this was glamour! This was something entirely new.
Then the music stopped, and we were returned to earth. Mr de Saulles, with glassy-eyed determination, stepped forward to dance with Miss Sawyer; Mr Guglielmi melted away, ignored by everyone, except Mrs de Saulles, who didn’t take her eyes from him – and even before her husband and Miss Sawyer had reached the centre of the room Mr Hademak was at the Victrola, setting the needle to the start again.
Before long most of them were dancing – at least, in a manner of speaking. The chubby duke stood swaying, all alone, his glazed eyes roaming over Miss Sawyer; the waxy man and the trouser girl were clasping each other tight, rocking one way and another in a grim effort to respond to the beat or perhaps simply to stay upright. And then the yellow couple joined them, and a few others, until, of all the guests who remained awake, only Mrs de Saulles and my father remained seated. He was leaning towards her, imploring her; she gazed steadfastly at Rudy. My father leaned closer, imploring harder still. She barely bothered to shake her head. Poor Papa. Women adored him, usually, at least at first. It was painful to see, and I looked away.
Rudy – Mr Guglielmi – stood slightly apart, in the corner of the room closest to where I was. I watched him watching them; he looked thoughtful, I remember – perhaps even a little melancholy. And then suddenly he spun away from them all, and the next thing I knew he was walking directly towards me.
I jumped, flattened myself further into the frame of the house. As he stepped out through the french windows and onto the veranda I could feel the breeze of it on my face – I could smell his cologne. He passed me, crossed to the edge of the porch, leaned a shoulder against the trellises and, looking out over the moonlit garden, pulled out a cigarette.
I could hear my own heart beating. The sound of my shallow, panicky breath was half deafening to me. It seemed inexplicable that he couldn’t hear it, but he gave no indication. So, trapped between wall and open french window, and horribly conscious of the moonlight shining on my pale dress, I could do nothing but stand and watch.
I watched him pull the cigarette lighter from his pocket. Watched the flare as he put flame to cigarette, watched as he inhaled and exhaled and the smoke floated out into the night. I watched him and wondered how such a very simple act could be so imbued with grace that it became quite mesmerising. He was mesmerising.
He sighed, and it was all I could do not to burst from the shadow right there and throw my arms around him. Actually I might have done – he looked so horribly melancholy, standing there, except I heard footsteps.
A woman’s footsteps, light and hurried, coming from the side of the house whence I had crept what felt like such an age before. I could do nothing but squeeze myself closer to the wall and pray – something I rarely did, even then.
I guess I needn’t have bothered, so fixed was she on her goal. It was clear to me from the instant Mrs de Saulles appeared that I might have been an almighty elephant and she wouldn’t have noticed it. She tripped up the steps onto the porch, full of purpose, and from the expression on her face she seemed a different woman. Still beautiful – without doubt. Nothing could ever change that. But all the wistfulness, all that hollow helplessness, the languid, aristocratic boredom, was gone. She looked angry. She burned with it.
She paused just before she reached him. She stood behind him, directly between the two of us, with her back to me, and seemed to compose herself for a moment; she unclenched her little fists and emitted one of her own little feather-light sighs.
‘Rudy?’ It sounded tentative.
‘Aha!’ he said, without quite turning to her. ‘So – after all – you are still speaking to me? I didn’t imagine you ever would again. Not after last time.’
She took a tiny step closer to him, put a small white hand onto the shoulder of his black evening coat. ‘Oh, don’t be mean to me, Rudy darling. Please.’
He didn’t say anything.
‘Only I was wondering . . . ’ there was a break in her voice ‘ . . . I was wondering if you had reconsidered.’
A long pause. He took a deep pull on his cigarette and tossed it out into the darkness. ‘I have considered and reconsidered. I have lost count of all the different views I have taken of the wretched thing,’ he said at last. ‘And you know it. Blanca . . . ’ he turned to look at her, finally ‘ . . . I would love to help you but—’
‘Oh, yes . . . Always but.’
‘But what can I do? What can I do? In any case, the world knows it already. Look, now! The two of them are entwined like lovers and there is a roomful of guests to look on. Why – of all people – why do you ask me?’
‘Because . . . ’ she said, edging further in ‘ . . . because, Rudy, you are my only friend.’ He looked at her, fondly, I think – and yet unconvinced. She was standing very close, so close they could feel each other’s breath, I’m sure; so close he could have kissed her at any moment. He looked, I think, as if he wanted to.
I felt horribly jealous! Even then. And (I admit) entirely riveted, too. Part of me could hardly believe my good fortune to be walking in on such intrigue – and my first night in a new place! The other half wished the world would swallow me. There was a long pause between them and I noticed his expression soften. He ran a fingertip along her bare arm – as if he’d done it many times before – and he smiled. ‘Sweetheart,’ he said, ‘you have a new “friend” every fortnight so far as I can tell.’
‘Don’t be horrid.’
He didn’t say anything.
Gently, she dropped her head onto his shoulder. ‘You don’t believe me,’ she murmured, ‘but, Rudy, you are my only true friend. In all the world,’ and it sounded for a moment as if she might be about to cry.
‘I am trying to believe you, Blanca,’ he replied, briefly touching her dark hair. ‘I should love to believe you. Or – no, I don’t mean that. I mean to say – I should love to believe that we were even friends at all . . . ’ Gently, he stepped away from her, so she had no choice but to take back her head. ‘Only I’m not even certain you understand what is meant by the word.’
‘How can you say that?’
‘In any case you have friends everywhere, Blanca. Lovers, friends . . . Wherever you are. People fall at your feet. The English gentleman this evening, the portrait painter, for a simple example. He can’t take his eyes off you. And I know you will deny it but even your husband – he looks over to you even while he is dancing with Joan.’
She waved it aside. ‘You don’t adore me, though,’ she said.
He laughed aloud. ‘Self-preservation, Blanca! I know you well enough. In any case,’ he added, ‘I’m only the dance tutor. It’s not my place to adore you.’
‘One can adore a woman from any place. From her bed, in particular. I seem to remember.’
‘Yes, perhaps.’ He pulled out his cigarette box. She watched him tapping on it nervously. I watched him, too. ‘I want to help you,’ he said. ‘Of course I want to help you. Except I’m convinced you only ask me as a sort of – test. A proof of your power, as a woman. Regardless of what the consequences to me may be.’
‘Oh, Rudy, that’s ridiculous.’
‘Only because I won’t fall at your feet, like all the other men.’
‘You fell into my bed!’
‘We fell into your bed together. And it was hardly – frankly – it was hardly as if I were the first. Or the second. Or the third . . . ’
‘But you were!’
‘Ha! Which, Blanca?’
Her lip trembled. ‘You are too revolting,’ she whispered – and he seemed to relent a little. He stroked her hair again, with affection and tenderness, until she recovered.
‘I am poor, and Italian, and an immigrant. Your husband, with half Tammany Hall behind him – he would cause nothing but trouble for me. Have me thrown in jail. Have me returned to Italy. God knows . . . ’
‘Don’t be absurd, Rudy,’ she said carelessly. ‘Of course not.’
‘At very least,’ he said, ‘I will lose my job. You know it.’
‘Does our friendship mean so little to you, then? That you wouldn’t even sacrifice that?’
‘I would sacrifice it and much more – and for any friend – if I believed it was truly necessary. But it is not. There are so many others, with nothing to lose, who would be perfectly willing – Ruth, for example. She would do it for you! She adores you! And she’s richer than Croesus. Your husband couldn’t harm her. He wouldn’t want to and he wouldn’t dare. Why don’t you go and ask her – now? Right now, while your husband is still dancing?’
‘I don’t want—’ she started angrily, but stopped herself. Sighed a small sigh, light as little feather. ‘Rudy, darling Rudy, you are mistaken. Ruth is not a friend! I despise her! I despise them all! You, Rudy, are my only friend. Whether you are willing to acknowledge it or not. Tell me – truly – who else can I ask?’
‘We go over it again,’ he sighed, ‘but you don’t listen. I said to you last time I could write a list of ten or more names. And I will even ask them for you. They would be willing to give evidence for you . . . People who have nothing to lose by it, who would be more than happy to help.’
She continued in the same pitiful voice as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘I am alone, Rudy, far away from my family . . . far away from everyone I love . . . And I know you know what it is to be alone. You have told me so. You know what it is like to yearn for home . . . ’
‘I do.’ He sounded weary.
‘And you have seen me crying my heart out . . . ’
‘I have.’
‘And yet still you refuse me? Even though you understand my torment . . . and the others don’t . . . Oh, I long for my home, Rudy. I am sick for it. You don’t have children. You can’t imagine . . . how a mother feels.’
He gave a burst of laughter. ‘What on earth does that have to do with it?’
‘All I ask is that you attest to something in a courtroom which you know to be true . . . Is it so much to ask?’
Her small white hand was back on his shoulder. She was edged so close to him, and in the long, warm silence that followed, I swear they might have kissed. But just then a loud voice came from the drawing room: ‘Blanquita? . . . Blanca, darling? . . . Anyone seen my wife?’
‘She’s on the loggia with the wop,’ we heard His Grace declare, ‘having a smoki-poo or some such . . . Wish I could persuade her to have a smoki-poo with me . . . ’
A moment later, in time for Rudy and Mrs de Saulles to step apart, her husband was at the french windows. ‘Sweetheart,’ he said, ignoring Rudy and not noticing me, still flattened between window and wall, barely two foot away from him, ‘why don’t you come dance, sweetie? I should so love to dance with you.’
‘I’m very tired,’ she said.
‘Just a quick dance?’ he said, stumbling slightly, as he stepped towards her. ‘Please? With your admiring husband . . . who so entirely admires and adores you?’ He was very drunk.
She turned away. ‘I’m not certain I can imagine anything I should like to do less,’ she said. ‘Besides, I can see Joan over there, looking awfully hopeful. I’m convinced she’s longing to dance with you again . . . ’
And with that she hurried away, leaving my employer and his not-quite-guest in uncomfortable silence. They looked at one another, Rudy with some dislike, I think, Mr de Saulles with something much closer to anger. He hesitated, as if on the point of saying something, but then seemed to think better of it. Without another word he spun around and followed his wife’s path back into the house.
And still I stood there. Rudy turned back to the position he’d taken before Mrs de Saulles had interrupted him, and snapped open his cigarette box. It glinted in the moonlight . . . I watched again as flame and cigarette connected, as the light of the flame played on his face, and the smoke rose from his lips. I watched him gaze out into the darkness, deep in thought. And once again I was amazed by him – his elegance and grace.
After what felt an unendurably long pause, during which I’m quite certain I neither moved nor breathed, he suddenly said, ‘It’s all right, by the way – you can come out now. It’s quite safe.’
I didn’t. I clung to my wall, and to the forlorn hope that he might perhaps have been talking to someone else. But then he turned and looked directly at me. ‘I’ll step away from this spot, shall I,’ he said, ‘to a spot over here, where we can’t be seen? Come out and tell me why you’ve been standing there all this time.’ He smiled at me. ‘Spying on us . . . ’
‘I wasn’t spying.’
‘What else could you call it?’
‘I was stuck.’
‘Ah.’
By then he had travelled to the far end of the veranda, out of view of the french windows. He turned and beckoned for me to join him there so, with some reluctance, I edged from my hiding place to be beside him . . . And we stood in silence, quite close to one another, with the music from the Victrola seeping out through the warm night air, and with me wondering at nothing, in spite of all I had just witnessed, but the richness of his voice . . .
He seemed to be waiting for further explanation and I felt an irresistible urge to fill the delicious silence with some of my habitual babble.
So I told him the truth – something I always do when I’m nervous (I still do it today, despite quite strenuous efforts to break the habit). I explained how I’d come down from my room because I had wanted to watch the dancing . . . and I might easily have finished it there, except I didn’t. I told him everything about how mad I was for the new type of dancing – and about how I’d read a little of Miss Sawyer while I was still in England, and about how I had always longed to see a real tango, danced by the professionals, and about how I thought he and Miss Sawyer were the most fabulous, most magical dancers I had ever set eyes on. ‘I was going to watch you from the garden,’ I said to him, ‘but then I realised the windows were open and I could get a better view from the porch, and – I’m so sorry, truly – very sorry, Mr Guglielmi. I didn’t hear a word you and Mrs de Saulles were saying. Not a word.’
He smiled. ‘Your hearing is damaged?’
‘By which I mean, that is, not a word that made the slightest bit of sense to me . . . In any case, it has nothing to do with me. I am sorry, but there was nothing I could do. First you came out and then she came out. And then he came out ... And I was utterly trapped . . . ’
He asked me my name after that and I told him. Jennifer. Jennifer Doyle from London. ‘My father is the portrait painter in there. The one who can’t remove his eyes from Mrs de Saulles.’
‘No one ever can,’ he said grimly.
I wasn’t sure what to make of that. ‘It drives her quite mad if we aren’t all head over heels in love with her,’ he said.
‘Well,’ I replied carefully, ‘then I suppose my father is keeping her happy.’
He glanced at me. ‘It’s hard for her. To be here. So far from family . . . ’
‘I’m sure it is.’
‘But tell me – never mind that – tell me something more about yourself. What are you doing, here at this house?’
‘Well – I am – his daughter. And he is an excellent painter. And I’m here to teach the boy to speak good English, I think. Though I don’t quite understand that because his mother seems to speak perfectly good English herself.’
‘Of course, because she was educated in England.’
‘She was? . . . Well. Well, then, I’m not certain. I’m also meant to keep company with Mrs de Saulles, apparently. Due to her being so far away from home, my father said. But she doesn’t much seem to want that and – apart from just now – I’ve not really even met her yet . . . I asked Mr Hademak several times this afternoon what my job here was meant to be – and all he can say is, I’m supposed to make them “giggle”, which isn’t something I’ve ever been particularly good at. But. Anyway, I have no idea what I’m doing here really, Mr Guglielmi. I wish I did . . . I’m a not-quite-guest,’ I added, ‘a bit like you’ – and immediately regretted it. ‘Only even more so, because they don’t seem to want me to do anything . . . Except stay out of sight.’
He laughed aloud at that. A wonderful laugh, it was – it still is: heartfelt, so warm, and so magically infectious. I heard myself laughing with him . . . And then, from the drawing room, the music reached us . . . just a silly ditty, it was. So silly.
You made me love you . . .I didn’t want to do it. . . You made me want you. . . And all the time you knew it. . . I guess you always knew it. . . I guess you always knew it . . .
I think I fell silent. He said, ‘You look worried.’ But I wasn’t worried! I was listening to the music, and the night creatures, and feeling the warm air on my skin. I could feel nothing but the music, the warm air – and his voice – and I longed for him to ask me to dance, and in my head the longing obscured everything. I was frightened he might ask me to dance and yet even more frightened that he would not, and that this moment would end without his arms around me, and he said, ‘It’s beautiful music, isn’t it?’
And it was!
You made me love you . . .I didn’t want to do it. . . You made me want you . . .And all the time you knew it . . .
‘Do you like to dance, Jenny?’
I told him I loved to dance. And whatever else it may have been, it was bold of me, I think, to dare to dance with him, after I had seen him dance with Miss Sawyer.
For once, I resisted the urge to babble. I was silent. Without any more words, he turned to me – and we danced. There on the veranda, by the light of the moon . . . I swear I never danced so well. I think, in his arms, it would have been impossible to dance badly – as if his grace were like his laughter: irresistibly, magically infectious . . . the most generous dancer, the most generous lover; the most generous man in the world.
. . . . Did I write that I hadn’t fallen in love with him that night? Did I write that?
How absurd!
And now I simply have to sleep.
Chapter 3
Hotel Continental
New York
Saturday, 14 August 1926
Not so sure what to do with myself. Don’t want to sit, in case the dress creases. But it’s only seven o’clock. I have two hours to kill and – oh, hell, maybe I should change back into my chemise, just for a short while. But then I shall want to shower again, in this heat, and it was a long enough wait to get a turn in there the first time, and then suppose they ran out of water? Besides, it so happens I look just about as good at this particular instant as I have in my entire life.
The party’s too far to walk. Maybe I’ll take a taxicab, which means leaving at – what time? I mustn’t arrive before Rudy. They may not even let me in! But if I arrive too long after he does he may think I’m not coming at all.
I’m so goddamn nervous. I could have dined with him at the Colony tonight, and gone on with him to see the show. Why didn’t I? He said he’d come by and pick me up, and I know he wanted to.
He said, I can’t contemplate a whole evening without you . . . Only I couldn’t contemplate an evening of sharing him, I suppose; of dining with him and all the others whom I know he is obliged to be dining with tonight. I couldn’t have done it – as his date? I think not! As his newly engaged scenario writer? Perhaps . . . Except then I would have to sit there in my off-the-peg beautiful, beautiful dress, and my off-thepeg beautiful satin slippers, and smile sweetly, which isn’t my style, and they would all bawl at one another across the table about this and that, and whether Rudy and Pola intend to be here or there . . . I couldn’t quite have done it. I would have half shrunk into the floorboards, and that’s no way to keep a man’s interest, when he’s recently been voted the most desirable movie star in history . . .
The party tonight is in his honour, as parties he attends are prone to be, these days. I should have preferred not to go to that either, and to wait to see him tomorrow, when we can be alone again, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He said he would send his driver to fetch me. I said I didn’t know where I would be, and he said he would order his driver to search every corner of the city until he found me.
So I’ve said to the nice fat guy – the room clerk – at the front desk that when a driver and a big car arrives for me he is to send them right away again. The fat guy was dreadfully curious, needless to say, but I wouldn’t give him any more details.
I shall make my own way. When I’m good and calm and ready. That’s what I’ll do. Call a taxicab. Or something . . . Oh, God . . .
A cigarette!
And a cold shower.
The trouble with this new-fangled, fancy-pants typewriter, which I adore more than anything I ever had, except the dress – no, including the dress – the trouble with this beautiful machine is you can get the words out so fast that you wind up scribbling down any amount of hogwash. So. A little self-control is what I seem to be lacking. (Nothing new there, I guess.)
Two hours to kill until I see him, or slightly less now, and not enough running water in the joint for me to be sure of another cold shower. I wish I could sit still. I wish I could stop remembering his hands on me, his eyes on me, his tongue, his fingers, his kiss, his . . . Oh, I shall go crazy any minute. I shall go stark raving round the twist.
– – –
A long, deep breath . . . A slurp of magic, rancid moonshine from my little flask . . .
Much better.
This Is What I Did Today
On the Second Best Day of My Life
By Lola Nightingale
a.k.a. Jennifer Doyle
a.k.a. Mrs Rudolph Valent— I’m getting ahead
of myself.
– – –
So I slept for six hours straight and I swear I’ve not done that since God knows when. First, I didn’t sleep until the day was already begun and I could hear the autos honking and grinding outside, and my skin was already beginning to prickle with the morning heat. And then, finally, when I woke, half the day was already gone. I heard a bang and a crash outside, and somebody knocking at my door. I staggered out of my cot with every intention of being vile to whomever I found on the other side.
Fortunately for them, by the time I opened the door there was no one out there – not a soul. Just the biggest, sweetest-smelling mountain of pink lilies that I ever laid eyes on, and in the middle of it all this typewriter! With a great ribbon tied around it. Not just any typewriter either . . . Rudy left a card tucked in. I have it here:
Ha ha ha! [it says. That’s what he wrote.]
Cara Mia, thank you!
And by the way, if you are wondering what the long wire is for . . . you have to plug this machine into an electrical point before it can record your wonderful words.
You are brilliant as well as beautiful. XXXXXX
Imagine that. Brilliant as well as beautiful.
I don’t suppose even Frances Marion has an electrical typewriting machine she can call her own. She probably doesn’t know they exist. I certainly did not until this morning. I don’t think they have even heard of them at the studio, because Mr Silverman, the old tyrant, is very proud of his modern approach with gadgets so I’m certain if he knew there was such a machine he would have acquired one by now so all the people passing through the outer office could admire it, and think what a fine, modern fellow he is. God only knows where Rudy must have found it – or when – between last night and today . . . But here it is. And, come what may, just as soon as I am the slightest bit cooler – in body and mind – I intend to use it religiously, to write hundreds of photoplays. Some of them for Phoebe and Lorna, of course, because I promised I would, and I must. And then all the rest of them – for not a soul but Rudy. If that’s what he would like.
Well – except the one I must write for Miss Davies, I suppose. If Miss Marion says I should.
– – –
I was meant to watch that wretched Marion Davies movie this morning. I had been meaning to watch it in time to meet Frances Marion for luncheon, but then she left a message saying she couldn’t make our appointment after all. And what a stroke of luck that was, considering by the time I got the message I had already slept right through it anyway.
It frightens me, though, to have been so careless. It frightens me even more to notice just how little I can bring myself to care.
One hour and forty minutes . . . Oh, but it’s so humid tonight! Perhaps if I type with my elbows out . . . like this . . . and I have a jug of coolish water by the bed perhaps I can dab it on my forehead . . . carefully . . . else my hair will go into a frizz . . .
Tomorrow, if Rudy has nothing better to do, he might come with me back to the Strand, and we can watch the movie together. If he kept his hat on, or he wore the silly disguise I just bought him . . . and if we sat at the back, and we stayed as quiet as possible and he made a great effort to look entirely innocuous – might he still be spotted? He tells me he goes regularly to the movies back in Hollywood, despite having a screening room of his own at home. But then, I suppose, Hollywood is Hollywood. There are stars about wherever you care to look. Take a walk down Sunset and you’ll generally spot one or another driving by . . . Only last week, in fact, Pola Negri almost ran me down in her Pierce Arrow. Her turquoise-and-gold Pierce Arrow. If you please. Ha! If she’d known whom she was steering towards, she might have tried a little harder. The point is, in Hollywood even a star as big as Rudy is let alone to go about his business without being constantly mobbed.
Trouble is, this isn’t Hollywood, and in New York people get a little crazy. You’d think mobbing the stars was some kind of a city sport, the way they behave. It’s as if they read something in the paper and the next thing they can’t leave it alone. They’ve just got to be a part of the story.
– – –
I did ask Rudy about Pola. Eventually. I think it was before we got into that beautiful Chinese bed, but maybe it was after. She seemed irrelevant. She did, and she still does, but I had to ask him because it’s been in the papers for months. Every article they write, they ask him about it, and he always answers the same. He says, You must ask the lady. It’s his stock reply. He won’t say yes, and he won’t say no. Whereas when they interview Pola, she won’t shut up about it . . .
So, I asked him if he was engaged to be married to her and I do believe if he’d told me to ask the lady I would have done – what? He didn’t say it, of course. He simply laughed.
He said, ‘Oh, Lord, Jennifer, is that a serious question?’
I said it was.
He said, ‘You ask me that? Now? When I look at you like this, and you look at me as you do, you can ask me that?’
‘I just did, didn’t I?’
And he sighed. ‘Well, now . . . ’ he began carefully ‘ . . . Pola . . . is a sweet girl.’
‘Oh! Sweet!’ I interrupted. ‘Is that right?’ Because there are plenty of adjectives that spring to mind when describing that attention-seeking little sex-crazy minx. But sweet for sure ain’t one of ’em!
He smiled. ‘Oh. Well – perhaps that’s not entirely right,’ he said. ‘No, I suppose, not entirely. But . . . I am fond of her. She has some remarkable aspects . . . ’ For a moment he looked on the point of laughter, but he pulled himself back. ‘Really, Jennifer, I am no more engaged to be married to Pola than I am engaged to William Randolph Hearst. How could you possibly imagine, after all we have said and done—’
‘Because she keeps on saying it,’ I said. ‘And nobody ever seems to contradict her.’
‘It wouldn’t be terribly chivalrous . . . ’
There was a pause between us then. I wasn’t so sure how to fill it. Until suddenly he shuddered and then, rather sheepishly, he added, ‘Jennifer, if you want to know, she is a nightmare. A crazy woman!’
‘A crazy woman – whom you formed an attachment to?’
‘Well, I admit that I did form a sort of attachment to her, briefly . . . after the divorce . . . I was dreadfully low. But she’s like a dog with a bone! By that I mean to say,’ he added quickly, ‘she’s a very sweet girl in her own way . . . An extraordinary girl – and I am full of admiration . . . But if anyone could advise me on how to shake her . . . ’
I must admit, I felt rather better after that. I didn’t mention her name again. And I’m not thinking too much about her. Not so much. If I do – if I allow myself to dwell on Pola, not to mention all the others – I shall soon be even madder than she is, and furthermore without an eighth of her beauty, wealth or fame. In any case I am delighted she’s not in New York at the moment. She’s back in Los Angeles, shooting a movie about a wicked count and an adorable servant girl . . . And good luck to her, I guess.
I went shopping again this afternoon. I had to. I came to New York with just two evening dresses – three, I guess, if you count the other one, which was only ever meant as a spare. I tried it on in front of the glass and I knew at once it was all wrong. It looked cheap, even to my not-so-terribly-expensive eye . . . And Rudy isn’t like a lot of men: he certainly notices these things. He appreciates beauty, elegance and all that. So I was standing there in front of the glass, seeing the wretched dress as I imagined he would see it, and just knowing I would have to go and buy another, and thinking about all the other things I had meant to do today – watch the Marion Davies movie, visit Papa’s grave, which I’ve not done, not even once, not since . . . and then I realised that, more than anything else, more than a new dress, even, I needed to get a gift for Rudy.
I wandered up and down Fifth Avenue in a ferment of indecision. A mah-jong set? A cigarette case? Something terribly clever? I went to some lengths to discover what was the most recent offering from Sigmund Freud . . . Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety . . . Well, I flicked through that pretty briefly, and thought I would probably die from all the symptoms of every anxiety under the sun, if I ever laid eyes on the thing again . . . Finally, I was on the point of buying a live parrot (green and yellow and quite stunning – Rudy adores animals) when I had the most wonderful brainwave.
I headed to Altman’s and bought him the disguise. There is a Homburg hat and some spectacles, and a wig made from the hair of some poor German, I suppose. Or Swede. It’s quite blond – actually it reminded me of Justin Hademak. I don’t suppose Rudy will much want to wear it, my funny wig – but he might. He doesn’t complain but I see how it gnaws at him to be constantly recognised and fawned over. I think in some ways he is horrified by what he has done – the crazy whirlwind he has created. But perhaps it won’t last for ever. Perhaps one day he will be forgotten again, and we will be free to wander about, with our children around us, like any ordinary couple in love. Perhaps we could live in Italy. And he could build his cars and breed his horses, and I could write . . .
By the time I’d collected all the parts for his disguise it was late, the shops were about to close for the evening, so I had no choice but to stay at Altman’s – which was not quite the place I had in mind when I set out to buy the perfect evening dress. (I should be astonished if Pola Negri had ever crossed its threshold. Ditto for the last Mrs Valentino.)
But then there it was! Just crying out to me . . . the most beautiful dress I had ever laid eyes on and, by the way, at seventy-five dollars, the most expensive dress I have bought in my entire life.
It’s of pale blue, made from the sheerest, sleekest satin, with a hemline a little lower at the back but to the knee at the front. And there are flowers embroidered at the back – which scoops very low – and at the hip-band there are flowers too, only slightly larger ones.
And then, of course, I had to buy a set of beads to bring out the blue of the flowers, and slippers to match the beads – if only I’d stopped there. I was about to. But on my way out, when already I was feeling quite sick about the money I’d spent – I saw the stole. It was of rabbit skin – like the stole Papa gave me, and which I gave to Madeleine in the midst of all my angry grief when I simply couldn’t bear to look at the thing again. It was the same colour. That’s all. How many hundreds of rabbit skins have I seen in the intervening years and thought nothing about them? But this one stopped me, on this hot August day. There I was on my way out of the store, and I simply couldn’t move away from it. Exhaustion, I suppose, mental and physical. I stood in the middle of Altman’s, my fingers running through the fur and the maddest tears streaming down my face: tears for my father, tears I haven’t wept in many years, and they wouldn’t stop.
I felt quite a prize fool. And I’m sure Mr Sigmund Inhibitions-and-Anxieties Freud would have plenty to say on the matter. Too bad. Only it’s true that just then, at that particular moment, I felt my papa very close.
Buck up, my silly friend, I could hear him saying. He would have been horribly embarrassed. And pleased, perhaps, and even surprised – as surprised as I was – to discover that I miss him still, and that I am still so very, very fond of him. I felt his arms around me. Truly, I did. How silly is that? I could hear him teasing me; and it made me smile. And I picked up the wretched rabbit fur – all fifty-eight dollars of it, if you please – and I gave it to the shopgirl, who wrapped it up in tissue. I have it here, lying on the bed, still wrapped in tissue. It’s far too hot for tonight. Too hot for Hollywood. Heaven only knows what I shall do with it.
Chapter 4
1916–17
Long Island
The plan, so far as I understood it, had been for Papa to go back to the city with Mr de Saulles first thing the following morning. Mr de Saulles had, until that point, taken quite a shine to Papa, of course, and I think he’d been intending for the pair of them to have a lot of fun together. He would show my father round town a bit, and help him to drum up work among his rich friends.
But I guess Mr de Saulles’s friendly and helpful intentions were just too advantageous for Papa not to feel driven to sabotage them. I often wondered if Mrs de Saulles hadn’t played some part in it too – if she and Papa hadn’t cooked up something together the previous evening. It doesn’t matter anyway. The point is, Papa had fallen madly in love with her and was, as always, unwilling to fight or even to hide it. His budding friendship with her husband, which promised to be so helpful to his career, rather withered on the branch as a result. It didn’t survive beyond breakfast, in actual fact.
Papa informed everyone in the dining room that morning (young Jack Junior and myself included) that he had decided not to travel to Manhattan with his host but to stay behind at The Box.
‘Would you mind awfully, Jack?’ Papa said, pulling a long face. ‘Only it’s so frightfully hot in the city. And my lungs . . . ’ He gave a series of feeble little coughs. ‘It would be far better for me if I stayed here a while. Until it cools down. I could set to work at once . . . Perhaps begin with a painting of your delightful son . . . Or perhaps Mrs de Saulles . . . if she will permit it?’
A silence fell. An awkward clattering of knives and forks. My father’s intentions were obvious and I think, even in that brazen crowd, everyone was slightly embarrassed.
Mr de Saulles didn’t bother to look up from his plate. After a while, his mouth still full of griddled waffle, he said, ‘Your lungs are perfectly fine, old sport. And I’ve made all sorts of plans for you. Come back to town with me.’
My father coughed a bit louder.
‘Oh, do stop,’ Mr de Saulles said.
‘I wish I could stop, Jack. Sincerely. I do. ’ (Cough cough.) ‘I really think I should call a doctor.’
Mr de Saulles just kept shovelling in more of the griddled waffle, and nobody spoke.
‘I must say,’ the duke finally piped up, ‘you seemed perfectly fine last night. It’s rather boring of you to – suddenly decide you’re ill. Just like that.’
‘I couldn’t agree with you more. And I can’t tell you how sorry I am.’ Cough cough cough. ‘But last night is one thing. This morning, I hardly need to point out to you, Your Grace, is entirely another.’
Silence again. This time it was Mrs de Saulles who broke it. Looking not at her husband or at my father but at Rudy, she said, ‘Well, if you’re utterly determined that Marcus should paint me, Jack . . . Although honestly I can’t see why you would be . . . ’
‘Because, sweetest, you are my wife. And I should like to have a painting of you.’
‘Well, then, he might as well paint me now as later. I intend to be home in Santiago by the end of next month in any case.’
Clearly, it was the first he had heard of it. He looked at his wife – they all looked at her, the duke, the thin man with the waxy face, Miss Sawyer, my father – all of them looked at her, except the one whose attention she sought: Rudy, I think, made a point of looking anywhere else. He caught my eye, briefly, sent me the smallest flicker of a smile, and I felt myself blushing.
So, the meal ended on what might be called a sour note. Papa got what he wanted. As, of course, did Mrs de Saulles, even if her motivation was less immediately obvious. After breakfast Mr de Saulles climbed into his car, Miss Sawyer at his side and a black cloud over his head. He drove off without addressing a word to anyone, except his son. There was a moment, as the boy clung to his father’s leg, when it seemed he might even have taken the child with him, simply scooped him up and dropped him in the back of the auto. But then he glanced at his wife, seemed to wince slightly at the look she gave him, and apparently thought better of it.
‘I shall come and fetch you in a day or two,’ he said instead. ‘Don’t cry, little fellow. Crying is for girls. Instead, Jack, as soon as I get into the car you must start counting. All right? And I promise you, before you have reached a hundred hours, I shall be here again! Understand? Start counting, Jack. I shall be back before you know it . . . And with a whole carful of toys!’
There was a grim, subdued flurry as the guests said their goodbyes. Nobody quite knew how to deal with my father, who stood before the front of the house, waving them off as if the house were his already. I think that was the first time I wondered if Papa was altogether – all there. It looks a bit rotten, seeing it on paper like that, but there was a hint of something unhinged about the utterly determined, quite shameless fashion of his standing there. I remember feeling embarrassed – worse: I felt ashamed.
Before getting into the waiting auto Rudy crossed the gravel to say goodbye to them both. He reached out for Mrs de Saulles’s languid little hand.
‘Mr Hademak will call you when I am ready for more dance classes,’ I heard her saying. ‘Perhaps in a day or two . . . ’
‘I shall look forward to it,’ he said. But he didn’t smile, and neither did she, and then she glanced at my father, so attentive to her – and even before the cars drove off, the two of them had started their slow wander back into the house.
Rudy said goodbye to me last. He sought me out, took my hand with both of his and, in a low voice that only I could hear, told me how he hoped we should meet again soon. ‘I enjoyed our dance together very much,’ he said.
And then he was gone, and we at The Box were left alone: Papa, Mrs de Saulles, young Jack, his Jane Eyre and the rest of the servants. The place felt very still.
I looked across at the little boy, who was trying hard not to cry. God knows how I broke the ice – I wasn’t accustomed to children – but somehow I persuaded him to take my hand, and before long he and I were chattering happily and he was taking me to visit his nursery.
I remember he hesitated just as we were about to open the door. He looked up at me with those big brown eyes. ‘You know, after this, you probably shan’t like me terribly much,’ he said. ‘I mean to say when you see all my toys. You shall probably think I’m dreadfully spoiled.’
I don’t know what I answered – something soothing and untrue about having a nursery of my own back home in London, so full of toys I couldn’t open the door. ‘In any case, I’ve already seen your nursery, and so far I like you very much.’ And suddenly, inexplicably, he simply melted into giggles.
It’s nothing. Just a stupid thing. But something about the way he laughed – far from dislike him – I loved him right away. He was the sweetest, warmest, frankest, most humorous, most entirely adorable little boy I ever met . . . But I am getting maudlin. I miss him. That’s all. And I wonder whatever became of him.
Papa was a slow worker. He always pretended not to care about his work, presumably because he had failed to make much of a mark with it, but I know he did care, passionately. Not just from the look of concentration that came over his face as soon as he had pencil in hand, but from his stubborn unwillingness ever to accept that a piece of work was finished. Perhaps if he had cared a little less he might have done a little better. Probably. It doesn’t matter now, in any case. Either way, when the time came for him to leave The Box he had little to show for all the hours he’d spent closeted away with his muse: a canvas that was almost blank – and a collection of small sketches. But they were wonderful sketches. Some of the best of his I ever saw. In spite of his ardour – or perhaps because of it – he had uncovered something in her that most people never saw: the harshness in her elfin face; and in those big doe eyes, an unmistakable gleam of ruthlessness. If only he could have heeded it as sharply as he drew it. But taking heed was not in his nature. By the end of that first day, he and Mrs de Saulles had retired to her bedroom, and for the next few weeks we saw very little of them.
In the meantime Mr de Saulles barely appeared at The Box. When he did, it was with a large group of friends in tow, and Papa would usually start up with his coughing again and stay in bed. But young Jack was not forgotten. He often travelled back and forth to visit his father in the city. And each time, when he returned (with a nursery-maid, sadly never with me – I don’t think Mr de Saulles much wanted to be reminded of anything related to my father’s existence) he looked exhausted. I used to tell him about the long nights I spent with my own father and his friends back home in London. ‘The trick,’ I said, ‘is to learn to sleep while still at the table, in a position that looks as though you’re awake. Then they won’t disturb you, and you won’t disturb them.’
We used to practise it together, with the two elbows in front and a hand covering each cheek, carefully obscuring the eyes. Finally, after we agreed he had perfected the position, he lifted his face from his chubby young hands, and he said, with that sweet formality of his, ‘And now I shall never be able to forget you, Jennifer, even after you leave, because I shall think of you every time I fall asleep.’
Oh . . . but damn it! Now the tears are welling again, and I shall ruin everything . . .
Jack and I would spend hours together up in that overcrowded nursery. We would lie on the floor side by side, dismantling that wretched steam engine, and I would tell him stories about an imaginary England, a magical England, full of kings and queens and knights – oh, and of loving, living mothers and so forth – and nothing of the brutal, dowdy wartime England that I had left behind and barely missed at all.
When Jack was away with his father I used to feel quite bereft. I would mope about the house hoping for a chance to catch Papa alone, which I never did, and mostly feeling rather sorry for myself.
But he was not my only friend, of course. Madeleine and I enjoyed each other’s company. We used to reminisce about Europe – though her memories of Ireland and mine of London had very little in common. And we used to spend enjoyable stolen minutes, swapping tales of outrage about our dreadful employer. For the most part, though, Mrs de Saulles was so demanding, sending poor Madeleine this way and that, and winding her up to a point of such terrible tension, she rarely had the mind or the time to chatter. It wasn’t until later that we became close friends.
Mr Hademak, too, would occasionally pause from his nervous activity, and we would sit in the kitchen and discuss the ‘flickers’, as he still insisted on calling them. There was plenty for us to talk about, since – though back then I had only the faintest idea of what it might involve – I was already determined to forge some sort of career as a writer of movies. I told Mr Hademak so, and he was quite encouraging. He found an unwanted typewriter, which belonged to Mr de Saulles, and he arranged for me to have use of it, though only, he said, when Mrs de Saulles was out of the house, for fear the noise disturb her. We talked about that – my unformed dreams of the future. Mostly, though, it would be Mr Hademak doing the talking, telling me how much improved every film on earth would be if only the director had had the foresight to make Mary Pickford its star. He adored Mary Pickford to such a degree that I wondered sometimes where it left his beloved Mrs de Saulles.
The highlight of my life, of course, was when Rudy came by. And as her affair with my father continued (at some volume, I might add, especially when she knew Rudy was near) Mrs de Saulles began to summon him more and more, until there came a point when he would be at The Box almost daily. She told Hademak she was keen to have as many dance lessons as possible before her return to Chile – but the truth was, there was no return to Chile booked, and though Rudy came, day after day, Mrs de Saulles only rarely bothered to come down from her little tower, even to speak to him.
Rudy didn’t seem to mind. He seemed to know what game she was playing – and since she paid him well for his time I have to presume he was grateful for the money. He would sit on the veranda gazing out over that garden, smoking one cigarette after another, with the cries of his employer’s love-making echoing overhead.
At first, when he came from the city, I would hide away, too shy to let him see me. But then one day Jack and I were in the garden when Rudy’s car pulled up.
Jack began to dance about – he adored Rudy, as I imagined all children would. In any case I snapped at him to be still and he stopped dancing at once. He looked at me consideringly – long and hard. He said, ‘Are you in love with Mr Guglielmi?’
‘What? Don’t be ridiculous!’
‘All the girls are. My papa said. So I don’t see why you wouldn’t be.’
‘For Heaven’s sake!’
Jack ignored my plea to stay quiet, and bounded over the garden to greet him. I hung back, watching with some jealousy, I suppose, as Rudy’s face lit up. He threw down his cigarette, caught the boy in his open arms, with that peculiar grace of his, and tossed him high in the air. You could hear their laughter through the garden – over the grunts and groans oozing from other quarters . . . Oh, I’m exaggerating, of course. But the truth is, it was wonderful to watch them together: an unexpected blast of joy in that miserable, complicated household.
I had planned to slip quietly away, but Rudy saw me before I got a chance. ‘Aha! Jennifer!’ he cried. ‘I was hoping I would see you! But where are you going?’
‘I’m going . . . ’ Where was I going? ‘Well, I’m going to the house, of course. But I shall be back in a minute,’ I said. ‘I have to fetch something from the nursery.’
I saw Jack mumbling something into his ear, then Rudy nodding solemnly, smiling slightly, glancing back at me.
‘That’s all it is.’ Jack whispered loudly. ‘You see?’
‘Oh, absolutely,’ Rudy said – loud enough for me to hear it. ‘How extremely fortunate for me.’
At which point I’m almost certain I broke into a run.
Madeleine was in the hall – at a loose end for once. ‘Wait up!’ she said, delighted to find someone to gossip with. ‘Have you seen who’s here again, Jennifer?’
‘I have,’ I said.
‘Surprised you’re not out there. Batting your eyelids.’
‘Oh, be quiet.’
‘He’s handsome.’
‘I know it.’
‘And so does she.’ She indicated the tower boudoir. ‘Crazy bitch,’ she added, because she always did.
Madeleine followed me into the nursery and I suppose half an hour passed while she filled me in with details, some of which I could have survived without, regarding the conversation she had only that morning overheard between Mrs de Saulles and my father.
‘Though it wasn’t really a conversation, to be honest with you, Jennifer,’ she was saying. ‘More a series of grunts.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Yes, you do. And with me in the room, too! Good God, to look at them both – him an old man and her fragile as feather – on the outside. The crazy bitch. You wouldn’t believe they had it in them.’
‘Yes – well. The racket they make, I should think the whole of Long Island knows it by now,’ I said.
‘And there was me thinking, after a certain number of years, the mechanism stopped working. Didn’t you? A man as old as your father . . . ’
‘He’s not that old . . . ’
‘But the mechanism—’
‘Anything! Please! Can we talk of anything but my filthy papa and his ancient mechanism!’
We were laughing loudly, both of us, sprawled out lazily on the nursery floor. I looked up and there, standing side by side, were Rudy and Jack.
Madeleine gave a silly shriek.
‘Sounds like I missed an excellent beginning,’ Rudy said.
‘Not at all,’ I said, scrambling to sit up. ‘Actually Madeleine was being disgusting.’
‘I didn’t mean to interrupt.’
‘No, no,’ said I. ‘No no no.’
Madeleine guffawed.
‘Only Jack told me,’ Rudy said, ‘there was a steam engine up here, not working as well as it once did?’
‘Quite the opposite, Mr Guglielmi,’ gurgled Madeleine. ‘On the contrary. Ask Jennifer’s papa!’
How I longed to knock her out! Rudy looked for a moment as if he might be about to laugh himself – but then I suppose he saw the mortification on my face and thought better of it. He said, ‘Jack said he had a toy train that was broken. I thought perhaps I could fix it.’
‘And Jack is absolutely right,’ I said. ‘Madeleine—’ I looked at her, and almost – very nearly – started giggling myself. ‘How clever of Jack to remember. He and I have spent days trying to put the wretched thing back together. I’m not sure it can be fixed. Nothing we try seems to work . . . ’
‘Well, perhaps I could – ah!’ He spotted the components, strewn across the table, and right away settled himself before them.
And so the four of us wiled away a little time, with Madeleine and me on the floor, Jack on my lap, and Rudy at the table, with his back to us, bent intently over his work. We talked of this and of that – of nothing, really. I don’t remember a word of it. But I do remember Madeleine, as Rudy worked away, slotting together small pieces of metal – I can see Madeleine now, pulling a face at me, rolling her eyes and pretending to swoon.
Jack said, ‘Mr Guglielmi, poor Madeleine is coming down with something pretty serious.’
He didn’t look up. He said, ‘Oh, I don’t really think so, Jack . . . ’
Rudy moves like a cat. You don’t hear him when he approaches. And he sees things when he doesn’t seem to be looking. Hardly reasons to fall in love with a man, I know. Nevertheless, when he said that, as cool as anything, and without even turning around, I remember even Madeleine blushed. Afterwards she always pretended she disliked him.
The steam train was put back together in no time. Too quickly. I believe that short half-hour, with none of us saying anything much, was the happiest half-hour I could remember. His voice, the faint smell of his cologne, his quiet concentration, the warmth of his presence – they softened the edges of the world for me. I could have stayed there for ever, with the boy on my lap, and Madeleine sulking, and Rudy, so very much there with us and yet so peacefully abstracted. I was in Heaven.
The weeks passed, and then the months. Christmas came and Christmas went. Rudy was at the house a great deal. Sometimes he would come by train, and Mr Hademak would pick him up from the station. Sometimes, though, much to Jack’s delight, he would arrive in his very own auto, and the two of them would spend happy hours playing with it. In any case, however he came, he would always seek us out.
It wasn’t entirely simple, however. Mr Hademak said he didn’t approve of Rudy ‘as a man’ (so he told me over tea one afternoon, though God knows quite what he meant by that). He was certainly very jealous of Mrs de Saulles’s affection for him.
On the other hand, Mr Hademak was undoubtedly fond of young Jack, and knowing how cheerfully he and Rudy played together, I am certain he would have been willing to overlook his disapproval. The problem (once again) was with his mistress. She, who never troubled to entertain the boy herself, who expected Rudy to sit indefinitely and wait, day after day, until she emerged from her sex-den to receive him, who barely acknowledged that I lived under the same roof with her, had ordered Hademak to ensure that the three of us be kept well apart: not simply Jack and Rudy, mind, but Rudy and me too.
‘She is worried what influence Mr Guglielmi might have,’ Mr Hademak told me, without quite looking at me. ‘Not just on the Little Man but on you, too, Miss Doyle. She has your best interests at heart.’ I remember laughing aloud when he said it. Mr Hademak chose not to react.
Her ruling meant that when the three of us were together, our meetings were always a little intense, and always conducted in whispers or at far corners of the garden, out of earshot of the house. Neither Jack nor Rudy nor I ever referred to the illicit nature of our lovely secret get-togethers. Needless to say, it only cemented our friendship further.
Not that Rudy and I were ever alone. In fact, since that first magical night on the terrace, we had not touched. We had barely spoken without young Jack being present. And yet there was a connection between us. Not simply – not only – of desire, but of tenderness, too. Oh, it seems so absurd and vain, seeing it written down here. Anybody who read these words would laugh and remind me that the very essence of Rudy is his magnetism. It is who he is; a man who has made half the world fall in love with him. And yet I know it was not imagined. I know it, because for all the long years when he was lost to me, it was this – this powerful, unspoken tenderness between us – that I could not give up on, that would never release its hold.
One evening, my father sought me out. He came to my room – something he had never done before. When I let him in, he sat himself morosely on the edge of my bed and gazed silently out of the window. I noticed he had lost weight – and heard myself asking if he was happy.
‘What?’ he said. ‘Happy? What an inane question, darling girl. Am I “happy”? Is that what you asked?’
‘I mean to say . . . are you miserable, Papa? You look quite miserable to me.’
‘Never been happier, Lola, my love! What about you? Do you like it in your new home? How do you find America?’
I told him I liked it very much, which was almost true, and his shoulders seemed to droop a little.
‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Excellent. Yes, it is. Rather splendid. Isn’t it?’
I agreed that it was, and then we fell silent.
‘She’s terribly lovely, you know,’ he said.
I sighed. ‘Oh, Papa . . . ’
‘I know you probably think she’s—’ he began.
‘No, I don’t. I don’t think anything, Papa.’
‘Don’t you?’ He seemed disappointed. He looked at me and smiled. ‘Nonsense. Tell me, Lola. What do you think?’
I hesitated. But not for terribly long because, of course, I was itching to tell him. ‘Well, Papa,’ I said, ‘if you’re sure you want to hear. Since you have asked me, I will tell you. Actually I think she is—’
‘Oh, God!’ He ran both hands through his hair, and kept them there – half humorous, half not so humorous. Half desperate, I think. ‘Actually. Second thoughts, old girl. Don’t tell me! Don’t want to hear! Shouldn’t have asked.’
But by then it was too late. I couldn’t stay silent. ‘Papa, I see you getting thinner,’ I persisted. ‘You have lost weight. Have you noticed it? You have lost weight, and you look so wretched half the time—’
‘I can see you’re not taken with her. But the thing is—’
‘The thing is, Papa—’
‘I am absolutely head over heels in love with her.’
‘No, that isn’t it. The thing is, Papa—’
‘Don’t want to hear it. Don’t want to hear!’
‘Why? Because you know it already! You know quite well what I’m going to say!’
‘Know what? I know nothing of the kind.’
‘She is exploiting you, Papa. She is using you for her own ends.’
‘Using me? Using me!’ He laughed aloud. ‘But I am perfectly useless!’
‘Because – Papa, you can’t be completely unaware of— I mean to say, for reasons of her own, Papa, you are not uppermost – by which I mean Rudy – that is, Mr Guglielmi . . . ’
‘Rudy? Rudy? Ha!’
‘Mr Guglielmi . . . ’
‘I see I should have been keeping a better eye on you, my friend . . . ’
‘She has him hanging about the house, while the two of you are— Oh, God! She wants him to go to the divorce court for her, so she can take Jack with her back to Chile, and Mr de Saulles, who loves the child so much better than she – he will never see the poor boy again.’
‘Yes! And I have said I would do it for her!’
It silenced me. Silenced us both.
My dear, darling father had the grace to look at least a little shamefaced. ‘I thought we might all go to Chile together,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t you think, Lola? Sweetheart? Jack and his mother, and you and me? You seem to get on so well with the boy. Don’t you think? It might be rather fun.’
I said nothing.
‘In any case,’ he said at last, ‘she has refused it.’
‘Of course she has refused it. Because she doesn’t love you, Papa. She doesn’t love anyone but herself. Or if she loves anyone but herself, she loves Mr Guglielmi. But the truth is, she loves no one but herself. She is a horrid, horrid woman.’
He stood up. Full of silly, wounded dignity. ‘Well, Lola, sweetest, I’m very sorry you feel that way.’
‘I only wish you could see it. The thing is, I believe you can.’
‘I should never have called on you.’
‘Oh, Papa,’ I cried, ‘yes, you should! I wish you would call on me more often. You have no idea how happy I am you have come – don’t walk out now! I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said – only you asked me, and I worry for you – and then you mentioned going to Chile, as if that were a sensible idea, with that dreadful, selfish, wicked woman, and I’m sorry I couldn’t stop myself . . . Papa?’
‘Darling,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t matter.’ He stopped at the door and turned back to look at me. ‘I forgive you.’
‘For what?’ I cried.
But he was gone.
I had lain awake all that night, worrying for him. And then morning had come and, with it, the arrival of Rudy and all the appalling noises from her tower boudoir . . . Rudy and I had wandered into the house – it was too cold to stay out – and were in the nursery with Jack, more careless together than usual, because Mr Hademak had taken the auto on some errand for his mistress.
Mrs de Saulles had crept in as Rudy and I were lying side by side on the floor, with the miniature toy circus in front of us. We were deep in conversation. Jack, it so happened, was sitting quite absorbed in his story book, in the nursery’s furthest corner, and Rudy and I were laughing. He had a hand on my forearm, and he was telling me something lovely. He was telling me . . .
He was telling me he thought I was beautiful. There. I have written it. He had never said it before, and I was laughing because it was such a wonderful thing for him to say. And he was laughing because I was laughing.
That was when Mrs de Saulles wandered in. The one and only time I ever saw her in the nursery. She didn’t say anything, and Rudy only slowly removed his hand. He looked up at her as she stood there, still as stone.
‘Mrs de Saulles,’ he said, with the smallest smile. ‘You are ready to dance?’
‘To dance?’ she said, her voice low and expressionless. ‘I shouldn’t think so. I wasn’t aware that you were here, Mr Guglielmi.’
‘No?’ He sounded unconvinced. ‘But you sent for me only this morning. I have been here since noon!’
‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so,’ she said again. ‘In any case my head aches dreadfully, so you might as well go home.’ She turned away from him to her small boy, who hadn’t yet looked up from his book. ‘Jack – darling,’ she snapped at him, and he jumped. ‘My baby, come here and say hello to your mama. I’ve been looking all over for you.’
She wandered away soon afterwards, ignoring me, just as she always did, with the boy following dutifully behind her.
Rudy sighed. He reached across, held my cheek in his hand, and looked at me with a sort of wistfulness I didn’t fully comprehend. We were alone, side by side on the carpet, our elbows resting on the floor. He kissed me.
‘Only promise me,’ he said, pulling away, ‘promise you’ll keep in touch?’
But the kiss was still working its magic. My mind wasn’t there. I laughed at him. ‘Keep in touch?’ I repeated. ‘Rudy, I’m not going anywhere. What can you mean?’
It was then he took the pin from his collar, a small gold pin. He gave it to me. ‘Look after it, will you?’ he said. ‘I brought it all the way from Italy.’ I have it still, of course. I have looked after it ever since.
Retaliation came curving back before we’d even plucked ourselves up from the floor. Mrs de Saulles sent a message to the nursery barely half a minute later, via Madeleine, who arrived looking as if she’d been through a hurricane. She tapped on the door, saw us seated there, closer than we might have been, his hand on my bare arm, but she didn’t even snigger. Rudy was to go to the hall and wait there, alone, she told us, until Hademak returned from his errands. As soon as he returned, he would be leaving at once to drive them both – Mrs de Saulles and Rudy – to the train station.
I never saw Rudy at The Box again.
Later that afternoon, after she had reached New York, Mrs de Saulles sent a message via Hademak, ordering my father to pack up his belongings. She said she wanted him out of the house by nightfall.
Poor Papa. Poor, stupid man. We overheard him – the entire household overheard him – bawling at Hademak, the pair of them as lovestruck and as broken as each other. And yet he bawled as if his exile were all Mr Hademak’s fault.
‘You think I don’t know your game?’ Papa was roaring, and upstairs, alone in my bedroom, I’m sorry to say I winced for him. ‘You think I don’t see you wheedling away, gazing at your mistress like a Goddamn puppy dog? You think she and I don’t laugh at you? We laugh every time you have left the room! And now, the moment her back is turned, you try to oust me – but you can’t win! You can’t win, you filthy Swedish wheedler . . . ’ Why, he suddenly declared, only that morning he and Mrs de Saulles had been contemplating running away together to Chile. Or Uruguay. Or London . . . ‘You can’t stamp on a love like ours with your filthy Swedish wheedling. Eh? Ha! Get out of here! Get out of my sight before I have you fired. Get out!’
Hademak came knocking at my door. He stood there, his head stooped to fit beneath the frame, a great giant of a man, and he was shaking like a leaf. ‘Your father doesn’t listen,’ he said to me. ‘He thinks I am guilty with some terrible plan. But he has to leave immediately. At once. This afternoon . . . Mrs de Saulles won’t tolerate to have him in the house.’
‘But why? Why him? Why not me? What has he done?’
‘She has complained to Mr de Saulles that – he has performed inappropriate and, er, unwelcome approaches towards her, and, er . . . ’ he couldn’t bring himself to look at me ‘ . . . Mr de Saulles iss . . . enthusiastic to telephone the sheriff.’
‘What?’
He shrugged – a tiny little shrug, for such enormous shoulders. ‘Madame is . . . most unhappy. Your father has to leave us at once, or I have been ordered to telephone Sheriff Withers.’
‘But to leave for where? Where is he to go?’
‘I am to give him two hundred dollars for his art and then I must drive him to the train station . . . Your papa iss insisted on taking his art with him. But I have been told to order him . . . that the money is only when he leaves the art behind.’ Mr Hademak’s English seemed to deteriorate, the more distressed he became. ‘He must leave it all behind, and go out at once. Can you explain to him? . . . I am ssorry, Jennifer . . . I can direct him with an excellent boarding-house in the city . . . It is cheap . . . ’
There was little choice. Father could leave for the city with two hundred dollars or he could be arrested and leave without a cent for Mineola jail. Either way, we all knew there was no possibility of Mrs de Saulles relenting. He had to go at once.
Sadly, I agreed I would go to talk to him. I told Mr Hademak that I would pack up my own things first, to give my father a few moments to collect himself.
‘Absolutely not!’ Mr Hademak cried. ‘Under no account. You are under the orders to stay here with the Little Man. In fact, in the telephone call to me, Mrs de Saulles made it quite clearly – the money I will give to your father is only depending on three things: first one, he leaves in this moment; second one, that he leaves all his workings and sketches behind; and third one, that you remain here at The Box, with the Little Man. You understand, Mrs de Saulles,’ he added shyly, ‘is well aware of his very strong fondness for you. She is determined about hating to break that little heart of his.’
‘It has nothing to do with it!’ I retorted – for I was never in any doubt. ‘She wants me here to keep me apart from Rudy!’
‘Not at all.’ He didn’t look at me. ‘Not at all.’
‘But I can’t stay, Mr Hademak! Not without Papa!’
‘You must.’
‘Perhaps I could look after the boy in New York, when he’s with his father. I should love to do that. Couldn’t I do that?’
‘Not,’ said Mr Hademak, shaking his head. I knew it in any case.
‘But I could at least meet him there. Often.’
‘Not,’ said Mr Hademak again. ‘It is forbidden. The moment you are leaving here you not be seeing the Little Man again.’
‘But, Mr Hademak – my father! He can’t survive on his own. Not in New York! What will he do?’
‘Without money, you shall neither one nor two of you manage in surviving here or in New York or anywhere in this big country . . . I am sso ssorry, Jennifer. But there it is the story ... He must leave, and you must sstay, and that is for your best survival, father and daughter both.’
And so it was. An hour later, Hademak drove Papa through the cold winter rain to the train station. I came along too, but only to wave him goodbye. Papa didn’t speak the entire journey. He sat silently, submissively, crestfallen and quite bewildered, his hands shaking – an old man and a disgraced schoolboy at once. He looked terrified.
‘You’ll be all right,’ I said to him as we waited on the station platform together. (Mr Hademak had tactfully stayed in the car.) ‘Mr Guglielmi will help you, I’m certain of it. Mr Hademak has given you his address, hasn’t he? And you know where it is? Don’t forget – you have it in your wallet. Promise me you will contact him as soon as you arrive. Promise me!’
Papa promised, but I didn’t believe him. He climbed onto the train.
‘And you have the address of the boarding-house?’ I called after him. ‘And Mr Hademak says you can walk to it from the station. From Pennsylvania station. It’s very easy, he says . . . Or you can take a taxicab . . . You have cash for a cab?’ I was crying by then, couldn’t stop myself. There were tears on my cheeks, and he turned back and looked at them, then up at me; and with an effort that was truly painful to see, he stretched his mouth into a form of smile.
‘Don’t you worry!’ he cried, with not even a trace of light; a parody of his old self. ‘I shall be absolutely fine! . . . Looking forward enormously to a spell in the big city. Isn’t life a grand adventure? And Mr Guglielmi shall show me the way! No, it will be quite marvellous. Jolly good fun! No doubt about it at all!’
He blew me a kiss, and I watched him stumbling away to his seat, and I think I knew then that he was done. Finished. Gone. The charm was gone. The fight had gone. As the train rolled out of the station, I was weeping so profusely I couldn’t see or hear when it finally departed.
After that I don’t know what happened, or how, or why, but it was written in the paper a few days later that Mr and Mrs de Saulles were to divorce, and that a hearing had been set a month or so hence.
Mrs de Saulles and Jack, Mr Hademak, Madeleine and one or two others, myself included, moved from The Box to a smaller cottage in the village of Roslyn, just a few miles down the road. I wanted to take the typewriter with me, but Mr Hademak forbade it. He said the noise, in a smaller house, would upset his mistress. But he was a kind man. He used to take me to the train station early each Sunday morning so I could spend the day with my father in the city. And other than that, life continued pretty much as it had before. Except there was no Rudy. And each week there were the Sundays. I spent most of the week worrying what would become of my father while I was away from him, but I’m afraid I used to dread those Sundays.
Somehow, some half-remembered instinct for his own survival had guided my father on the journey from Penn Station to the boarding-house Mr Hademak had recommended. But after that, which I suppose must have been a gargantuan effort, he was clearly exhausted. It was three days before I was first able to visit him, and when I arrived he was still in the clothes he had been wearing when he had left The Box. From the greyness of his skin, and the dreadful hollows beneath his eyes and cheekbones, it was obvious that my once handsome, talented papa had neither slept nor eaten.
His room was small and grubby, on the fifth floor of a gloomy dilapidated building on East 39th. It had a gas stove in the corner, which he never learned to use, but which I did – to cook him food he never ate – and a single bed. On the first floor there was a small washroom, shared by forty or so residents, with water that ran only intermittently. And that was it. Papa’s home.
His materials lay stacked against one corner, by the door, where I suppose he had dropped them on the day he arrived, and beside them his suitcase, which, without me, would have remained packed for ever.
He lived there for about four months in all – and did nothing. He sat on that bed beside the window, gazed out onto the street, and he drank. First he drank through the money given him by the de Saulles, and then he drank through the money I delivered to him from my wages each week. Poor wretched man.
That twenty-minute walk across midtown to Papa’s boarding-house was, for some time, all I managed to see of the great city of New York. And in truth I used to walk it with feet that pulled me in any direction but the one I was meant to go. I would zigzag the blocks, sucking in the magical, frenetic activity, awestruck by those long, wide, endless avenues, the shameless gleam of the new buildings, the glorious chaos of the building sites, and the crowded ramshackle stores; the foreign voices, the steaming food stands, and the autos, and the horses, the newspaper boys and the boot boys – the heaving, exhilarating mass of striving, shouting humankind. I still adore it, even now, in this August heat. Back then, when it was so new to me, so unlike the greyness of war-bowed London, or the neurotic silence of Roslyn, it made my spirits soar. I would draw out that short journey for as long as I dared, before guilt at the pleasure I was taking and worry for my poor father overcame me.
I did abscond, just once, with Madeleine’s encouragement (though she couldn’t come herself: even on her day off, Mrs de Saulles would never allow her to stray beyond Westbury). We planned it together, my little escape.
It was only for an hour. I walked across town, as I always did – gazing this way and that, as I always did – as far as East 39th, and then continued another three blocks to the Rialto on 42nd. Rudy had described it to me in detail, and I had read about it, too. It had only been open a few months. The papers – and Rudy, too – insisted it was the grandest, largest, most fabulous, movie theatre in all the world.
I had watched movies before, of course; any number of unmemorable five-reelers in dismal little halls back in Chelsea. Three or four times Madeleine and I had visited the picture house in Westbury, too. But this was like entering another world. Intolerance was playing – what good fortune was that? To see the most extravagant film in the history of film-making in the most extravagant movie theatre in the history of movie theatres! I watched it – the first half – and I was spellbound. As we all are, of course, when first we see it. I would have liked to stay to the end and watch it again, and again, and possibly spend the rest of my life in there, staring at that cinema screen. But after a while the image, though I tried to banish it, of my papa gazing listlessly out of his window, all alone, burned through even D. W. Griffith’s most extravagant depictions, and I had to go.
I ran all the way to his boarding house – arrived at his door breathless, full of excitement. And before his melancholy overcame us both, I tried to pass on a little of the magic: I described to him, before even I had sat down, the Rialto’s vaulted golden ceiling, and the row upon row of gilt and velvet chairs. I told him about the spotlights that danced in time to the music on either side of the enormous cinema screen, and of the golden organ sound which filled every corner of that massive space. I told him of the phenomenal, unimaginable tricks of Mr Griffith’s camera – the ‘close-ups’ on actors’ faces, magnified so as to fill the entire screen, allowing the audience to read every flicker of their smallest emotion. I told him about the ghostly superimposing of one image upon another, the different-coloured tints – sepia, blue, amber – all the tricks which Mr Griffith used to tell his story; and of the live elephants in his Babylon, and of the thousands upon thousands of extras and of the sheer, extraordinary scale of the film, and the theatre, and the wonderful, beautiful world just waiting to be discovered outside his window . . . I tried my best. I did. I tried to lure him back to the Rialto to watch the film with me.
God knows what miracle I had been hoping for. Of course he wouldn’t come. He wouldn’t have done so before, when he was still well. Papa belonged to the generation who believed that movies were designed for the degenerate masses, not for him – and most certainly not for his daughter.
By then, in any case, Papa never left his room – except, I suppose, to stock up on liquor, since he seemed never to run out. Often, when I came to see him, he wouldn’t talk to me. When he did, when he volunteered any comment at all, it was almost only in relation to Mrs de Saulles.
Was she well?
No.
Did she speak of him?
No.
Had she sent a message?
Of course not.
Whole hours would pass and he wouldn’t speak a word. I would tidy the room, cook for him, chatter about this and that – anything that came into my head: England, mostly; memories of happier times. I would tell him my feeble gossip – that Madeleine was seeing a car mechanic in Westbury; that Mr Hademak had written again to Mary Pickford – but my father rarely responded. I told him the typewriter lent to me by Mr de Saulles was broken.
‘What d’you want it for anyway?’ he asked suddenly. His voice made me jump.
‘For my writing,’ I reminded him. ‘I am still writing stories and – scenarios and things . . . ’
‘Ah, yes . . . Like your mother. Always scribbling . . . ’
I hadn’t known it. I had no memory. I asked him to tell me more – scribbling what? Did he possess anything, still, which she had written? But he wouldn’t be drawn. Wouldn’t speak.
I had lost the art of coaxing him from his melancholy.
Endlessly, clumsily, stubbornly, I would ask him about his ‘future plans’, though of course I knew he had none. He would pretend not to hear me.
Once, when I was feeling very brave, I asked if he had yet been in contact with Mr Guglielmi. ‘I’m sure he’d be quite a friend to you . . . ’ I said.
With a flicker of the old spirit, he replied, ‘I would be most awfully grateful, Lola, if you didn’t mention that repulsive little gigolo to me by name or implication. Ever again.’
‘Papa, do you still have an address or a telephone number for him?’ I persevered. ‘I could telephone him myself, if you prefer?’
He gave a mirthless, unkind little snort. ‘You shall do no such thing.’
Often he would ignore me altogether, and simply drink, and gaze out of that window onto the noisy, lively street below. I would sit with him – and try very hard to remember the years he had looked after me; all the warmth and humour and joy he had shared with me, in his own particular way. And I would look at him, so wrapped in his defeat, and try to remind myself of the times when he had been a different man, whom I could still easily love – but I did. I did still love him.
Our hours together seemed to crawl. Through the stillness, and our silence, and the window he insisted on keeping shut tight, the sounds of the city would seep in; the sounds of a whole world, still fighting at life, not yet despairing . . . I am sorry to say there were times, on those long afternoons, when I yearned to be out there, and away from him, and free of him. I wished for it so intensely it was almost as if I wished he were dead.
I don’t believe my presence helped him much. There were times, I’m sure of it, when he longed for me to leave him as much as I longed to be gone – mostly, I think, he wanted nothing any more but to be left in peace. I explain all this to myself and maybe one day – who knows? – I might even believe it.
Papa would wince when he saw me sometimes. There I would stand, bright and early each Sunday morning, fresh and young and bursting with life, and smiling, carrying groceries – as if I believed he might one day eat something. And I would watch, and try not to wince, as he slowly absorbed the disappointment – that it was only me standing at his door. Not Mrs de Saulles. Or my mother. Or any of the others. Just his daughter, whom he used to love. I would see the weariness return to his face, and the sorrow – because he did still love me. Enough to try his best not to hurt me. I would watch him struggling with the impulse to close the door in my face; and then the monumental effort it took for him to summon some spark of warmth, and to reassure me that he was so terribly delighted I had come . . .
I heard nothing from Rudy. The days passed and I longed for him – I’m afraid I thought more of him than of my father’s suffering. I thought of him all day and all night.
Mr Hademak saw me moping about one morning, squinting over his shoulder as he arranged Mrs de Saulles’s post on her breakfast tray. He said, with his great shoulders still turned to me, but the back of his neck glowing beetroot red, ‘You do it effry morning, Jennifer.’
‘Do what?’
‘And if you’re waiting for correspondences from any one person or gentleman in particular,’ he said, ‘you must understand that any . . . person . . . in particular . . . won’t be so rude to write it to you here. He can’t. It would be a very unhappy idea. To keep our little ship steady. And so I have said to him it might be better if he is writing in the care of a certain boarding-house. And that is I am sure what he is doing . . . ’
So, the next time I visited Papa, and the next and then the time after that, I asked him if there were any letters for me. But he always said no.
It must have been very close to the time America joined the war. I don’t remember on which side of the declaration it actually fell but there was war in the air, war on everybody’s lips.
More immediately, at least for our little household, the de Saulles divorce hearing had taken place the previous day. Little Jack was staying with his father, and so I had nothing to do. A message came down, very early, via Hademak, that Mrs de Saulles was not feeling well.
The hearing had not gone as she had hoped, Mr Hademak reported, though he refused to be drawn on the details. Mrs de Saulles wanted ‘isolation for her peace’, so she could reconcile herself to her new situation. She didn’t care what we did or where we went, but there were to be no servants in her eyesight until nightfall.
It was bitterly cold outside. Unseasonably cold. There was snow on the ground and what looked like the promise of more to come, but I had a free day. I contemplated spending it with Madeleine, at the movies – only she was busy with the car mechanic in Westbury, whose wife, Madeleine said . . .
Oh, Madeleine!
‘Oh, I know it!’ she cried.
You never mentioned a wife!
‘How could I?’ The only times I ever saw her weep, it was about the married car mechanic in Westbury. She adored him.
Mr Hademak offered to drive me to the station so I could spend the unexpected holiday with my father. Moved more by duty than enthusiasm, I accepted the offer. I had nothing better to do.
As I travelled into the city I searched the newspaper for details of the divorce hearing and was horrified to read that Rudy had played his part in it, after all. He had given his testimony, stood as a witness to Mr de Saulles’s adultery, and the reporter had gone to some lengths to mock him for it – mocked his dark appearance, his foreign accent, his profession, his decision to appear at all . . . It was painful to read.
I was mulling on all that, worrying for him, missing him, resenting him, dragging my feet through the busy crowd, that magnificent space at Penn Station, and feeling, for once, quite unmoved by it, when suddenly – I heard his voice! Was it possible? Was I dreaming? There were hundreds of people between us, rushing this way and that. And yet there he was, beneath the soaring arches, the giant columns, between all those hundreds and thousands of people – there he was. And in a few graceful, invisible steps, he was beside me, with his two arms wrapped around me.
‘Jennifer! . . . It is! It is you! I must be the luckiest man in New York! Where in heaven’s name have you been?’ He lifted me in the air, and he kissed me, one on each cheek, and it was so un-American; so careless – all I could do was to laugh. 1917, it still was; a lifetime ago. We had our hemlines still flapping just above our ankles! We were still so terribly correct! But Rudy’s warmth overrode all that. I could feel the people’s stares as they elbowed by. It couldn’t have mattered less.
‘Jennifer, wonderful Jennifer, where in God’s name have you been?’ he said again.
‘I should dearly love to tell you differently . . . ’ I laughed ‘ . . . only, Rudy, I think you know quite well where I’ve been!’
‘But I have left you so many messages – and nothing! Not a word! I wondered if I had done something to offend you . . . and so I thought and I thought – and I thought and I thought . . . and I could think of nothing!’
‘Nothing!’ I repeated. Like a fool. ‘Of course you’ve done nothing to offend me whatsoever . . . but you left messages where? At Roslyn? At The Box? Mr Hademak said you might have left them with my father.’
I had missed him and longed for him. Until that moment, with his arms still wrapped around me, I’d not the slightest comprehension how very much. I felt a rush of – relief, I suppose, flooding through me, and the most crazy, wild happiness . . . and then a lump in my throat, and my eyeballs stinging . . .
I longed for nothing more than to sink my head onto his shoulder and never ever to lift it again. He put me down, and gave me a moment to collect myself.
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- Жанр: Зарубежная психология, Историческая литература, Книги о войне, Современная зарубежная литература
- Язык: Книги на английском языке
- Объём: 410 стр. 11 иллюстраций
- ISBN: 9780007383849
- Дата выхода книги: 28 декабря 2018
- Версия: 📚 Электронная книга
If you like The Artist you’ll love Daisy Waugh’s Last Dance with Valentino.As Rudolph Valentino fights for his life, barricades keep the swarming fans at bay. Adored by millions of women, but loved by only one…Will she be able to reach him in time?August 1916Fleeing war-ravaged London, Jenny Doyle sets sail for New York. As she draws near the soaring skyscrapers her dreams are dashed when she learns she is to be sent to work for the wealthy de Saulles family. Known as ‘the Box’, their home is Gatsby-like in elegance yet rife with malice and madness. Only her friendship with dancer Rodolfo offers Jenny a glimpse of escape…until a tragic day when the household is changed forever.August 1926America booms, prohibition rules and one man’s movie is breaking box office records. Rodolfo has taken his place on the silver screen as Rudolph Valentino when a chance arises for he and Jenny to meet again. Will the world’s most desired film star and his lost love have their Hollywood happy ending, or will the tragic echoes of their past thwart them one last time?
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