He raises his head to look at me and for a moment, everything else fades away. For a few seconds, a minute, an hour—who knows how long we sit there?—there is no Teddy, no war, no Edward, no shattered dreams. Just the two of us and a moment we can either grasp hold of or allow to pass us by.
I see a flicker in his eyes. A hesitation.
The vibration of an underground train sets the glass rattling in the windowpanes.
He stands up and the moment is gone. Like a fairground balloon tugged easily from a distracted hand, it drifts away to some distant place.
We didn’t hold tight.
We didn’t hold on.
Perhaps we didn’t want it badly enough.
Over supper that evening, I’m interrogated by Sissy.
“So, where did you take yourself off to today?” she asks. “You missed a great picture at the Alhambra. Louise Brooks was fabulous in it.”
I stir my cocoa, take a sip, and put the cup down onto the saucer. “I was out.”
Sissy sighs and leans back in her chair. “Well now, that’s never going to do, is it? Where were you out exactly?”
“Can’t a girl do some things in private?”
“No.” Sissy folds her arms and stares at me, waiting for an answer. “No, she can’t. Not if she sleeps in a bed beside mine and shares my makeup.”
I’m too weary to keep my secrets any longer, and the look in Sissy’s eyes tells me she won’t give in until I tell her. “All right. I went to meet a composer, if you must know.”
“A composer?”
“Yes. It’s a long story. A very long story.” I tell her everything. I tell her about the notice in The Stage and my abandonment in the tearooms and my meeting with Loretta May and Mr. Clements’s apartment and the music that I’d kept beneath my pillow. She sits and listens quietly, completely engrossed in my life over the past few months.
“So, what does he want you to do?” she asks. “What exactly does a muse do?”
“He doesn’t really want me to do anything. He just wants me to keep him company. Talk. Tell him about my day.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes. That’s it.”
“And what do you get in return?”
“That’s the best part. Miss May is going to help me with dance lessons and etiquette. You know, how to hold myself properly, and walk like a lady, and how to dine in fancy restaurants and what not.”
“Ooo, lah-di-dah.” Sissy laughs and sips her tea. “And what good is that going to do? I mean, it all sounds very nice, but what’s the point?”
“The point is to make something of myself. Don’t you want that, Sissy?” I look around the Maids’ Hall, at the rows and rows of tables and chairs, exhausted girls hunched over their supper. “Don’t you want more than this? Even if I spend the rest of my life here, at least I’ll know I tried to improve myself, that I didn’t just sit back and accept it. That I tried to walk in different shoes.”
She shrugs. She’s so like Clover. I know she doesn’t really understand.
“I like it here, Sissy, and I care for you and Gladys like my own sisters, but I want more. Working here, seeing how the other half live, it’s like having a taste of the most delicious cake and wanting a whole slice and then the whole bloody thing. Maybe Mr. Clements can help me taste a slice of the good life. That’s not such a bad thing to want, is it?”
Sissy looks at me and sighs. “No, Dolly. I suppose it isn’t. But be careful. Sometimes our eyes are bigger than our bellies. Just don’t get too greedy.”
Once in bed, I can’t settle. I’m restless with hope and confused by my feelings for Perry. One minute I think of him like a brother; the next I find my heart racing as he stands beside me. It is hard to imagine myself loving someone else when I had always assumed it would be Teddy my heart galloped for.
I toss and turn and clutch little Edward’s photograph beneath the bedcovers as I listen to the distant strains of Mr. Somers’s band. My feet twitch and dance beneath the covers until I can’t bear it any longer. I jump out of bed and push the window up. Mildred and Gladys are fast asleep, but Sissy is still awake.
“What are you doing?” she hisses.
“Listen,” I whisper. “Can you hear it?”
She clambers from her bed and sticks her head out into the black night. The thump of jazz dances through the air.
“It’s all I think about, Sissy,” I whisper. “Music and dancing. If only we had a gramophone player in here.” We lean out farther as the pace of the music hots up. “When was the last time you danced?” I ask.
“Last week. At the Palace.”
“I don’t mean a quick twirl around a crowded dance floor with some awkward young bugger who doesn’t know his foxtrot from his quickstep. I mean really danced. When you were so lost in the music that you became a part of it?” She stares at me as if I’ve gone loopy. “Come on,” I whisper. “I’ll show you!”
Grabbing her hand, I take the male lead, guiding her in an impromptu dance around the room. We rise and fall, spin and turn along with the music until the number ends and we grab our sides and try to catch our breath through our muffled laughter. The next number is a quickstep, a faster, jazzier beat. I begin to move my feet in the fashionable new Charleston step, kicking out my heels and swinging the opposite arm, turning my knees in toward my feet. Sissy watches and copies. It is clumsy and faltering but it’s enough just to hear the music; just to be dancing.
“How do you know the steps?” she whispers. “You look like one of the ducks in Hyde Park!”
“I copy what I see the girls doing on the stage and in the pictures. You know—Jessie Matthews, Adele Astaire, Gertie Lawrence. I’d love to roll up the carpet and have a proper dance.”
Sissy follows my movements until we forget about trying to be quiet and our thudding and jumping attracts the attention of O’Hara, who is passing on her rounds. We squeal when she opens the door and flicks on the light.
Mildred and Gladys rub their eyes as the electric light blazes in the room.
“What’s going on?” Gladys mumbles. “Is there a fire?”
O’Hara stands in the doorway. “You’ll have the chandeliers swinging in the Front Hall with all this racket. I suggest you close that window before you both catch your death of cold, and get some sleep. The ladies and gentlemen may be enjoying the exotic new rhythms of Mr. Somers’s band, but they’ll be able to sleep off the effects of their exertions until noon. You, on the other hand, will not. Now, into bed!”
As she closes the door, I’m certain I catch the hint of a smile at the edge of her lips.
I settle back under my bedcovers but I still can’t sleep. The hotel is restless tonight and so am I. I listen to the music that comes and goes like waves through the dark. I close my eyes and imagine the ladies and gentlemen on the dance floor. I think about Perry. Why did he hesitate? Perhaps he was right to. I’m a silly girl with foolish notions of love between the likes of him and the likes of me. I imagine his arms wrapped around me, spinning and twirling me around the room. I see fox-red hair and gray puddles for eyes, and that smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. And then his image fades and it is Teddy who is whirling me around the dance floor and pressing his cheek to mine.
Rolling onto my side, I listen to the breaths of the other girls, and as my eyes grow heavy, I let out a long sigh. I imagine it as a living thing, slipping beneath the door, rushing through the softly lit corridors, past the night porter and the opulence of the Front Hall and out into the lamplit streets. On it goes, a rush of warm air, searching through the dark until it reaches the dazzling lights of Shaftesbury Avenue and the laughter and applause of the packed theaters. And there it finds a place to settle and waits for me to find it.
30
TEDDY
Maghull Military War Hospital, Lancashire
July 1919
. . . her eyelashes fluttering against my skin.
My very own butterfly.
I am one of only three l
eft on the ward now. They tell me I’ll be going home soon. I want to believe them, but sometimes it is easier not to think of anywhere beyond these stark walls and rows of empty beds.
She is here, as usual. I watch as she goes about her business with her familiar efficiency, light and breezy like the leaves that dance on the willow trees beside the riverbank. But there is something different about her today. She is restless. I watch her closely, really look at her, imprinting her image onto my mind like a flower between the pages of a press, so that I will always have it there.
She tells me she’s read all the letters now. “I suppose I could start from the beginning.” She can hardly bear to look at me. “Would you like me to read them again?”
I think of all the beautiful words. I shake my head.
She sighs a lot and fusses with her clothes. It occurs to me that she must be very warm with her coat on indoors. Ready for one of her walks, no doubt.
I close my eyes, pretending to sleep so that she might relax a little and stop fussing. She talks to me while she thinks I’m sleeping. Tells me secret things.
The afternoon passes in companionable silence as the sun shifts in the sky, taking its warmth and its light to a different part of the ward and casting a shadow across my bed.
“I have to go,” she whispers. “I have to go, Teddy.” I hear her gathering her things, sobbing quietly as she places an envelope on the table beside my bed. “There’s one more letter,” she says. “One I haven’t read to you. It’s for you to read, when you’re ready.”
And then she leans forward and kisses me on the cheek, her eyelashes fluttering against my skin. My very own butterfly.
“I’m so sorry, Teddy,” she whispers. “So very sorry. I wish things could have been different for us. I hope one day you’ll understand. That you can forgive me.”
My darling Dolly. My dear Little Thing.
She was right here beside me all this time. Visiting me on her afternoons off, reading her own letters to me, her very own words, in the hope that I would remember her.
And I do.
I want to open my eyes. I want to tell her that I know her. I want to whisper her name and tell her that I love her. I want to keep her here beside me, always, but I can’t. I have to let her go.
She squeezes my hand, stands beside me a moment longer, and then I hear her walk away. Only when I know she is at the end of the ward do I open my eyes a fraction. She turns only once to look back at me. Tears stream down her cheeks. And then she is gone. My girl. My Dolly.
I know the words inside the envelope are her good-bye.
“Thank you, Dolly,” I whisper. “Thank you for everything.” And then I sleep for a while, my head full of dreams of her.
I wake in the early evening. The Matron comes by on her rounds. She takes my temperature and plumps my pillows, encouraging me to sit up so I can drink a glass of water. As she writes on her charts, I lie perfectly still, listening to the song of a blackbird that drifts through the open window. I breathe in the sweet scent of freshly cut grass and watch the butterfly. My butterfly. Slowly, it spreads its wings, hesitates for just a moment and flutters away, dancing on the breeze.
“Oh! It flew away.” Matron turns to me. “Your butterfly, Mr. Cooper. After all this time it has finally flown.”
I close my eyes, and smile. “Yes,” I whisper. “Yes, she has. She has gone in search of adventures.”
31
DOLLY
“I wanted to know what it would feel like to
dance in such beautiful shoes.
Walking in them would be a waste.”
Christmas passes in a blur and New Year’s Eve approaches. Time for the wealthy to indulge in grand parties and celebrations. Time for a young maid to sweep away the failures and doubts of the past and welcome a new year full of possibility. Nineteen twenty-four. I like the sound of it when I say it. I like the shape of it when I write it down. The prospect of a new year, smooth and unruffled, makes my heart flutter.
I lay out Mademoiselle Delysia’s dress for the ball she will attend tonight: midnight-blue crepe de chine. I select matching satin opera gloves and a string of emerald beads. I already know which shoes she will want to wear. The silver dance shoes. I lift them from the wardrobe and place them at the foot of the bed. I would never take them off if I owned anything as lovely. I would sleep in them. I would dangle my legs over the side of the tub so that I could bathe in them.
My work finished, I tie up the bundle of bed linen and make for the door, but the shoes tug at my thoughts, and I hesitate. Opening the door a crack, I peer out into the corridor, craning my neck and listening keenly. Certain that nobody is about, I close the door, quickly take off my black shoes, and slip my left foot into the silver shoe. It is like butter melting around my feet. Forgetting any concerns I once had about impropriety, I lift the right shoe and slide my foot inside. Fastening the delicate silver buttons, I lift first one foot, then the other, twisting my ankle so that I can admire them from all sides.
I walk over to the looking glass and once around the Turkey rug. It’s like walking on a cloud, the soft kid leather hugging the soles of my feet so delicately I can barely tell that I have shoes on at all. How I could dance with these on my feet. I do a foxtrot. Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow, gliding effortlessly across the plush carpet. I slow to a waltz, rising and falling, the balls of my feet delighting in this new luxury, my arms wrapped around two pillows, my imaginary partner guiding me effortlessly in the dance. When I close my eyes, it is Perry in front of me, his eyes so close to mine. When I rest my cheek against the pillows, it is Teddy’s cheek I rest against.
Perry. Teddy. Teddy. Perry. They mingle and change and I can’t stop dancing. I close my eyes, my arms extended in front of me, locked in an embrace. His left hand in mine, his right hand resting lightly against the small of my back. “Close your eyes and let the music show you the way,” he whispers. I hear the music so clearly, feel the warmth of his body against mine. “Can you feel the music, Dolly?” I lean into him. “Yes. Yes, I can.” And then he leans forward to kiss me and I am a cloud floating in a lazy summer sky.
The click of the lock cuts through my thoughts.
The door opens.
I drop the pillows and sink to a crouch in the middle of the room, my back to the door, my skirt covering my feet. I pull and twist desperately at the tiny pearl buttons but they are too perfect and smooth, not intended for urgent guilty fingers. I cannot undo them. The color drains from my face, my guilt and my shame flooding the suite around me. I look over my shoulder and my bones become jelly.
Snyder.
I pretend to pick lint from the rug and pray that he won’t linger.
For an eternity he says nothing. The air prickles with danger.
“This needs to be cleaned,” he remarks, dropping a dress casually onto the bed. “Mademoiselle insists on wearing it tomorrow evening.”
“I’ll send it to the laundry this afternoon.” My voice is strangled. I tug at the buttons but I can’t get them loose.
“You won’t send it anywhere. This is finest Parisian silk. Vionnet couture. You’ll take it personally to the laundry and you’ll bring it back.”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Jolly good.” He stands with his hands in his pockets and rests a shoulder against the window frame, his back turned to me.
In the awful silence I somehow stand up, resting one hand against the back of a chair for balance as I try desperately to release the silver button from its clasp. My fingers are useless fumbling thumbs. I wobble, and steady myself. Wobble again. All the while he stands silently at the window.
“Leave them,” he says, turning around. “Leave them on.”
“I was just . . .”
“Just what? Trying on Mademoiselle’s shoes? Yes, I can see that. I suppose the question that has to be asked next is, why?”
I refuse to give in to the tears that burn in my eyes. There are so many answers I could give, but how wou
ld a man like Snyder ever understand. “Because I am a fool,” I whisper, lowering my head.
He walks over to the dressing table and picks up the gold cigarette case I have just polished. His fingerprints leave marks all over it. “I expected to find the room clean and tidy. Instead, I find it sullied with the worst kind of dishonesty.”
“Everything is done, sir. I was just leaving.”
“In those shoes?”
“Of course not. I would never . . .”
“Never what? Steal them. Just trying them on for fun, were you?” There is an edge to his voice that I haven’t heard before. Threatening. Dangerous. I keep my head down, my gaze to the floor. “Wanted to know what it would feel like to walk in such beautiful shoes, did we?”
“Dance.”
“I beg your pardon.” His eyes glare at me, dark and brooding.
From somewhere deep within, I feel defiance rise within me. I refuse to be intimidated by him. I’ve been intimidated by men like Larry Snyder too often. “I wanted to know what it would feel like to dance in such beautiful shoes. Walking in them would be a waste.”
He laughs. That great mocking laugh of his that reaches out and wraps itself around my throat so that I gasp for air.
He walks over to me, leaning his face close to mine. “I have seen you dance, Miss Lane, if one could call it dancing, and I can tell you now that you’ll need far more than expensive silver shoes to ever make it. Far more.” I swallow hard. He smells of stale Virginia tobacco and brandy. He has clearly been drinking. The scent of him settles on my face like dust. “You girls are so predictable. You think a few turns around the dancefloor at the local dance hall on a Saturday night will be enough to get you into the chorus of a Broadway show. You attend auditions without being properly prepared and you leave without so much as a ‘thank you, Mr. Snyder.’”
“I wasn’t expecting to be alone that day. I thought—”
“You thought I wanted to seduce you. You, with your mind in the gutter, thought that the favor I was asking was of a sexual nature.” His speech is slurred. He lights a cigar and breathes smoke into my eyes. “You’re all the same. Cheap as the cotton stockings on your legs. If you’d stayed to hear me out, you’d have realized that the only favor I wanted was for you to tell your roommate, Gladys, that I would like her to audition for me.”