An audition call.
Their excited chatter and shrieks of laughter are infectious. I detect the scent of shoe polish, hair pomade, and perfume in the air as I pass. They are all immaculately turned out, aware that being hired will depend as much on how they look as how they perform: fashionably bobbed hair, the best stockings and shoes they can afford, smart cloches, vermillion lips, dark kohl around the eyes. Every inch the jazzing flapper they talk about in the newspapers. I’m horribly conscious of my plain clothes and oversized coat and yet a familiar shiver of excitement runs along my spine as I remember the thrill of anticipation as the doors open and the names are taken and the lines called forward, “Next, please,” a dozen girls at a time. So often, I’ve been that hopeful girl waiting in line, teeth chattering, toes numb in too-tight borrowed Mary Janes.
I pull my coat closer around me as the wind gusts, blowing the girls’ skirts dangerously high up their glossy legs. They won’t feel the cold. They’ll be warmed by excitement and adrenaline, not to mention a tot or two of gin, and yet, in a few hours’ time, most of these pretty young things will have had their hearts broken and their makeup ruined by their tears. Kicks too low. Toes not pointed. Loose arms. Too much flesh around the waist. Not pretty enough. Not tall enough. Too pretty. Too tall. Too talkative. Too serious. There are any number of reasons why a girl won’t cut it. From this long line, only two dozen will make it into the chorus, and only half of them will ever make it to the front line. One or two will become lead chorus with the stage to themselves for a few precious moments, and perhaps only one of these hopeful faces will ever land the starring role they’ve dreamed of.
My last audition was for a part in the second chorus in The Water Babies at the Palace. Baxter was his name. Cecil Baxter. One of the biggest musical-theater producers in town. I’ll never forget his words to me when I muddled my steps and asked him for a second chance. “There’s no such thing as second chances. Not anymore. There was a time when we couldn’t fill the chorus—had to stretch the line and dress the girls in yards of material to fill the gaps. But since the war everyone wants to dance, and those who don’t want to dance want to be actresses and film stars. I’d give up now, miss, if I were you. Go back to polishing the silverware, or whatever it is you do for a living. Get a job in a shop. Marry a nice young chap. Leave the dancing to someone else.”
He couldn’t have said anything to make me more determined to succeed.
“Dorothy Lane?” I stop at the sound of my name and turn around as a girl steps out of the line and stares at me. “It is you, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I’m Dorothy Lane.” The girl looks familiar, but I can’t place her.
“I knew it. I’d recognize that face anywhere.” She throws her arms around me. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
I shake my head. “I’m sorry. No.”
She laughs. “Edie. Edie Bishop. We was in the hospital together. Remember?” Edie Bishop. The name smothers me. “You was in the bed next to me,” she continues. “I had twins. Two of the little buggers. No wonder I was the size of a house!”
I can barely speak. Distant memories creep forward. Names and places I had pushed from my mind raise their voices and shout to be heard.
She laughs at my dumbstruck silence. “You don’t remember me at all, do you?”
“Yes. Yes, I do. The Mothers’ Hospital.” I grasp the photograph in my pocket and try to control the tremble in my legs. “How are you keeping?”
“Oh, you know. Making do. Still turning up to the auditions. I’m working for a dressmaker in Hackney. It was her told me about this audition. We’ve never been so busy with costumes for the shows. How about you?”
“I’m a maid. At The Savoy.”
“Sounds fancy.”
“It’s a job.”
She leans forward and whispers in my ear. “Did you ever hear anything?”
I shake my head. “No. Nothing.”
“Me neither. For the best. Put it behind you and carry on. Isn’t that what they told us?”
She grabs my hand and squeezes it tight. I want to hold on to her. After so many years of agonizing silence, I want to talk. I want to ask questions and remember, but my thoughts are interrupted by the somber chimes of Big Ben.
The eleventh hour. The first boom of cannon fire ricochets off the buildings around us.
We all bow our heads. Ten more times the guns are fired, each one a blow to the heart, a memory. For two minutes, London falls silent. The pages and porters stop rushing and calling for cars. The omnibuses, motorcars, and trams pull up to a halt. Gentlemen remove their hats. Ex-servicemen stand to attention. Mothers and wives blink back their tears. England stands still and remembers. Even the wind drops to a respectful hush. Two minutes for all that was lost. It hardly seems long enough. As I stand with my head bowed, I try to shush the memories stirred by Edie Bishop and try to focus on Teddy, but his sweet face is a blur. Like a reflection in rippled water, I cannot quite grasp the image of him.
I envied him and the boys from the village when they left for France; envied the adventures awaiting them. I read his early letters with naïve eager eyes, devouring the sights he described as he passed through pretty French villages. I could almost smell the bread from the boulangeries he wrote of. Even the French words were exciting. I liked to roll them around my tongue like a humbug, teaching them to my sisters: boulangerie, château, église, campagne. We giggled at our awful pronunciations. But Teddy’s letters changed. His descriptions of poppy fields became descriptions of mud and death. His words became those of a frightened boy, not of the brave soldier who had kissed me good-bye and taken my breath away and promised he’d be back for Christmas.
Nobody came back for Christmas.
As the boys marched on, so did the years, until I began to lose all hope of ever seeing him again. The comfortable life I’d once imagined for us with a family of our own was trampled into the French countryside as life became a muddle of strange new normalities: death, grieving, extraordinary exchanges of love in letters written to and from the front. My job at the munitions factory was a welcome distraction. My sisters found work in the textile factories, sewing secret messages of hope into the pockets of greatcoats. What was once so strange became familiar. A new normal. And then the war ended, the boys returned, and we were unsettled all over again.
Relationships didn’t slot back into place as we’d imagined they would. Some homecomings were as natural as the sunrise, but many more were as awkward and faltering as the soldiers on their crutches. It was painful to watch. I couldn’t understand why the girls were so hesitant to touch the men they had longed to see, disturbed by the masks their loved ones wore to conceal the disfigurement of their once flawless faces. I knew I would love Teddy as soon as I saw him, whatever wounds and scars he carried. I would love him just the same.
But he didn’t come back with the others. In many ways, Teddy didn’t come back at all.
When the two minutes has passed, London begins to move again, albeit with a heavier heart. The theater doors open, sending the line of girls flapping and squawking like a bunch of starlings.
Edie grabs my arm. “Looks like we’re going in. It was nice to see you again, Dolly.”
“And you, Edie.”
She rushes back into the line and checks her face with a compact. “Wish me luck,” she calls.
“Good luck! See you in Hollywood.”
She winks at me and laughs.
I walk on, pushing my hands deep into my pockets, feeling for his photograph. The hollow ache in my arms; the weight of his absence.
By the time the war was over, my heart was broken, my dreams were shattered, my hopes were bruised. Without ever stepping onto a battlefield, I too was wounded.
13
LORETTA
“. . . it seems to me that children are like marriages. They are often better imagined than experienced.”
There is something mesmerizing about a sunny autumn day in London. While
part of me wishes I was still languishing in bed with a breakfast tray and the newspapers and the blinds only partially open, I have to admit that I find myself charmed by my surroundings.
Green Park is aflame with autumnal beauty, the trees adorned with shades of rust and copper, ruby and ochre. I lean back on the bench, allowing the warmth of the sun to radiate through me. It reminds me of a wonderful lost afternoon with Roger: reddened ivy climbing the walls of the hotel, long shadows reaching across the pier as he stole a lingering kiss, the glow of the setting sun against his face. Our time together was callously brief, but it could not have been more perfect. No arguments. No jealousy. No weary compromise. No tedious resignation. Only love. Three perfect days of love and a bundle of letters—that is all I have to remember him. I don’t even have a photograph. I don’t need one. I often see him, right there in front of me, smiling in that lopsided nonchalant way of his. I place a hand to my chest, instinctively holding the ache in my heart.
My thoughts are disturbed as a leaf flutters down from the beech tree above me and lands in my lap. I pick it up. It is a rich crimson, perfectly symmetrical and unblemished. Just a leaf, and yet the irony of it landing plumb in my lap is not lost on me as I watch Bea prance among the dappled shade, shrieking as she tries again and again to catch a leaf as they fall around her. I chuckle at her foolish capering. She is like an excitable puppy, all bounce and energy until she collapses in an exhausted heap. I can hardly believe we are the same age. Watching her, I feel as ancient as the Tower of London.
It was Bea’s idea to come to the park. She is one of those exhausting outdoorsy types, always keen to be out among the elements, wind in her hair, rain on her cheeks, the sun at her back. I blame Miss Austen. Her novels are full of excitable young ladies forever wishing to be outdoors, and look what happened to poor Marianne Dashwood, nearly dying from the chill she caught from her walk in the rain. Why people must always go for a stroll on a chilly autumn day is one of life’s peculiarities, but Bea insisted. She is my best friend—the sister I never had—and I cannot deny her anything. She, in turn, plays me like a fiddle.
“Got one, darling!” I wave the leaf above my head like a hunting trophy.
Bea stops her capering and whirls around. “You have not!”
“Fell straight into my lap. Almost like it wanted me to have it.”
“You rotter!” She squeals with injustice and rushes over to inspect the captured specimen. “That’s absolutely not fair. You haven’t even moved since we got here.”
“That’s because chasing leaves is a silly game for children. Anyway, darling, I haven’t the energy. I’m exhausted just looking at you charging around like a panicked squirrel trying to find his winter nuts. I didn’t get home until three this morning and I’m getting one of my heads.”
Bea smiles and plonks herself down onto the bench beside me. “You can be such a stick-in-the-mud sometimes, Etta. It’s fun. And it’s such a beautiful day.” She takes off her hat and runs her fingers through her hair, honeyed by the sun. She’s recently had it shingled. It’s as sleek and polished as glass and falls perfectly back into place. Bea makes everything seem so effortless and jolly. “Did you make a wish?”
I laugh and toss the leaf to the ground. “No, I did not. Wishes are for fools.” I check my watch. It is past two o’clock. “Can I tempt you to a cocktail? It’s a perfectly respectable time of day.”
Bea scowls at me and picks up the leaf. “No, you cannot. It would be a sin to be indoors on such a wonderful afternoon. We can do cocktails when it’s pouring. I promise.”
“Very well. But you’re no fun.”
Bea places the leaf back on my lap and folds my fingers around it. “You have to make a wish. I absolutely insist.”
She has that look in her eye that tells me there is little point in arguing. The only daughter of friends of my parents, Bea Balfour and I have known each other since we were young girls making daisy chains on the lawns at Nine Elms, my family home in East Sussex. The Balfour family annual pilgrimage from the north of England to the south coast was an event much anticipated by Aubrey, Perry, and me. Aubrey, for the chance to talk to Bea’s father, Bertie, about politics. Me, for the infectious enthusiasm and wonderful dresses Bea always brought with her, and Perry, for the joy of simply watching her and being the occasional recipient of a smile that could light up a room on the dreariest of winter days.
“Oh, all right, then. But it’s all a lot of silly nonsense.” I close my eyes and make a wish.
When I open my eyes Bea is perched on the edge of the bench, staring at me. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“What did you wish for?”
“I can’t tell you, or it won’t come true.”
“Thought it was a lot of silly nonsense.”
“It is. Still, there’s no point in breaking the magic, is there?”
“I hope you wished for something delicious and fun.”
I place the leaf in my coat pocket. “Such as what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. A romantic love affair. Or a starring role on Broadway. Or a kissing scene with Valentino. Imagine it, Etta. I’d simply die. Those lips!”
As we watch more leaves spiral to the ground, I think about Valentino’s lips, imagining myself as Lady Diana to his Sheik Ahmed. It would, indeed, be pleasant. My wishes, however, are required for more somber matters.
I pick up my script and start to read, but the pages are illuminated by the sun so that the words on both sides blur into a confusing mass. Bea chatters on like a train beside me, twitching every now and again as she is tempted to run after another leaf. Finding it impossible to concentrate, I give up and put the script down. We sit for a moment and watch a child pushing a sailing boat around the edge of the pond with a stick while his nanny looks anxiously on.
“Adorable little thing, isn’t he? Do you wish you’d had children, Etta?”
I falter for a moment as I watch the boy screw up his face with grim determination. “Certainly not. Beastly little things. I don’t mind other people’s but I wouldn’t care for any of my own. From what little experience I’ve had of them, it seems to me that children are like marriages. They are often better imagined than experienced.”
Bea cuffs me on the shoulder. “You’re wicked to say such things.” But she laughs, despite herself. “I always wanted six children. Three boys and three girls, all with different shades of hair.”
She falls silent. I know what she is thinking; that it is too late for her now.
We watch the boy until his stick falls into the boating lake and he starts wailing when the nanny won’t allow him to jump in after it.
I turn to Bea. “See. They always have to spoil things with their silly little tantrums.”
She scowls at me. “Much like actresses.”
I bat her playfully on the hand.
She smiles and turns her head to one side so that the sun catches her cheek. She really is exquisite. I can’t blame Perry for being so infatuated with her. It would bring me such joy to see the two of them married, but the shadows of war stretch between them and Perry’s stubborn pride and eternal guilt prevent him from asking her.
She stands up, pulling me reluctantly to my feet and tugging me away from thoughts of matchmaking. “Walk with me. I’m bored.”
“You’re always bored. You’ve been bored since the day you were born. Unless there’s a handsome man pouring you a cocktail or telling you how beautiful you are, you will always be bored. Why didn’t you bring a book to read?”
“I don’t just mean now. I mean with life. With me. With everything.” She picks at a button on the cuff of her coat. “Marriage is all anybody talks about. ‘Who will she marry now that her fiancé is dead? Such a shame. They were the perfect match.’ It’s all so tiresome, Etta. Sometimes I wish we were still at war and that I was still nursing. I felt useful then. I felt that my life had a purpose.” She looks at me with her big blue eyes. “Is that a dreadful thing to say?”
r /> “Yes, darling. It is. But I’m sure you’re not the only woman to think it. We all felt useful when the men were away, more useful than we’d ever felt, or possibly will again. But they’re back now. They had to return to the lives they’d left behind and we must return to the roles we once had—even if it is nothing more exhilarating than awaiting a proposal of marriage.”
She lets out a long sigh. “You make it sound so exciting.”
Sometimes I forget how young and inexperienced we were when war broke out. Like me, Bea had bravely stepped forward as a VAD nurse. Like me, she was a naïve twenty-three-year-old who’d never had to do so much as draw her own bath. She was eager to do her bit as soon as she could, and surprised everyone with her stamina and her aptitude for nursing.
I pull her closer. “You mustn’t forget how dreadful it was in the hospitals, Bea. Yes, we helped some men to recover, but we helped many more to die. Do you forget the screams of pain and the stench of infected wounds?”
She shakes her head. “How could I ever forget?”
“We were a hand to hold,” I continue. “A kind face to see them on their way as they wept for their mothers. We were no Florence Nightingale. You shouldn’t romanticize the war, nor wish yourself back there. Those days were far darker than you might recall under the benefit of a stroll in the park on a sunny autumn afternoon.”
They were far darker than any of us could ever have imagined.
Mother laughed when I told her I’d enrolled as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse at the Royal Herbert Hospital.
“What nonsense, Virginia. You know absolutely nothing about nursing. You’ve never even been in a hospital! Besides, a hospital in Woolwich is no place for the daughter of an earl. What on earth will people think? You must write and tell them you have reconsidered. I absolutely forbid it.”
Her ignorance and misplaced notions of class and status left me speechless. And furious. Her cheek was reddening from my slap before I realized what I was doing.
I wasn’t sorry, even though she has never forgiven me. I don’t wish her to. I want her to feel the sting of that slap every time she meets someone whose injured son recovered in hospital because someone like me, the daughter of an earl, had volunteered to help.