The Girl from the Savoy

  I laugh. “Sadly not. It looked like terrific fun, though. The society columnists can’t get enough of them. Bright Young People, they’re calling them. You shouldn’t be so serious, darling. They’re just shaking off the past. Living. You do remember what that feels like?”

  “Running around like bored children, more like. Did you hear they had one of the clues baked into a loaf of bread in the Hovis factory?”

  “I did. And they had to take one of Miss Bankhead’s shoes from her dressing room in a scavenger hunt last month. Of course, she adores the attention. I suppose I’d be part of it if I were ten years younger. When a woman reaches her thirties it seems that she can’t be referred to as a ‘young’ anything, bright or otherwise.”

  “Well, I think it’s all a lot of foolish nonsense.”

  I can feel my irritation with him growing. “I wish you were plastered all over the front page of the Times or hanging around in opium dens or literary salons. Anything would be better than hiding away in that dreadful little apartment of yours eternally stewing on things.” I grab hold of his hand and squeeze all my frustration into it. “You can’t change what happened, darling. You can’t bring them back. None of us can.”

  We’ve skirted around the same conversation so many times. I cannot understand Perry’s enduring guilt about what happened under his command in France and he cannot understand the apparent ease with which I have put the war behind me. If only he knew the truth.

  I take a long drag from my cigarette and change the subject. “So, you say this maid amused you?”

  A smile tugs at the edge of his lips. “A little. She was different. Honest. She told me I looked tired. ‘Knackered,’ actually.”

  “Eugh. Vulgar word, but she’s right. You do.” I lean back in my chair. “Was that it? She insulted you and now you can’t stop talking about her?”

  He stares out of the window, watching the rain. “It’s you who keeps talking about her! She just seemed different, that’s all. There was something about her. Some infectious indescribable thing that made me want to know her better. For someone in her position she seemed so full of hope.”

  “Hope!” I laugh. “Hope is a dangerous thing, darling. It is usually followed by disappointment and too much gin.”

  He casts a wry smile from behind his teacup. “Anyway, that was that. She went her way and I went mine. The shortest love story ever told. Now, enough about me. Tell me about tomorrow night. Who’ll be there?”

  “Bea Balfour.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “The usual. But especially Bea.”

  He crushes his spent cigarette in the cut-glass ashtray. “You’ll never give up, will you?”

  “Not until I see the two of you married. No.”

  “Then I’m afraid you’ll be waiting a very long time. I missed my opportunity with Bea. And anyway,” he continues, glumly pushing crumbs around his plate, “she deserves better. What prospects does a struggling musical composer have to offer a woman like her?”

  “You could always go back to the bar. A successful barrister would be hard to decline.”

  “What, and give Father the opportunity to gloat and prove that he was right all along; that I would never be a good enough composer? I’d rather end my days a lonely old bachelor and see Bea happily married to someone else.”

  I sigh and take a sandwich from the tray. I am simply too tired to argue with him.

  We spend a tolerable hour together chatting about this and that, but like the withered autumn leaves tugged from their branches outside, my thoughts drift and swirl continually elsewhere. I think about the houselights going down and the curtain going up. I think about the third scene in Act Two. I think about a rapturous standing ovation and the cries from the gallery, “You’re marvelous! You’re marvelous!” I think about the letter in my purse that I have written to Perry but cannot bear to give him.

  After kissing him good-bye and imploring him to smarten himself up for tomorrow’s opening night, I take a taxi to the theater for a final dress rehearsal. A fog has rolled up the Thames and the streets are lit by the orange lamp standards, giving everything a sense of winter. The fog makes my eyes smart and sticks to my face. I feel choked by it and long for the warmth of spring and the flowers that brighten the Embankment Gardens.

  As we approach the Shaftesbury Theatre, I see a line of fans already gathered outside the ticket office. The gallery girls: factory girls and shopgirls, clerks and seamstresses, ordinary girls and women who would give anything to live my life. Their adoration and enthusiasm can make or break a star quicker than any society-magazine columnist. I know they adore me and desire my beautiful dresses. If only they knew the truth my costumes conceal.

  The front of house sign blazes through the dim light: LORETTA MAY IN HOLD TIGHT! My name in lights, just as I’d imagined when I was a starry-eyed novice in the chorus. Except it isn’t my name. It is the stage name I chose in my desire to leave the real me, Virginia Clements, behind. She was the respectable daughter of an earl, the daughter who had failed to secure a suitable marriage, the daughter who was suffocated by expectation. Loretta May set me free from the starchy limitations imposed on titled young ladies such as myself. She allowed me to be somebody daring and new.

  Virginia Clements. Loretta May. Just names, and yet I wonder. Who am I? Who am I really?

  That’s the curious thing about discovering one is dying: it makes one question absolutely everything.

  4

  DOLLY

  “If only the mess we make of our lives

  could be tidied as easily.”

  While I wriggle into my maid’s dress I learn that my roommates are Sissy, Gladys, and Mildred. Sissy does the introductions. She reminds me of Clover, all round-cheeked and generous-bosomed with bouncy blond hair. I feel comfortable around her and know we’ll get along. Gladys is much quieter. She offers a distracted “hello” as she studies her reflection in the scallop-edged powder compact I’d admired earlier. She’s very pretty with a peaches-and-cream complexion and her hair perfectly styled in chestnut waves, just like Princess Mary of York. The third girl, Mildred, barely acknowledges me as she perches on the edge of the bed beside the nightstand with the Austen novel. She is prim and rigid, like the governess in Grosvenor Square who Clover used to say was so brittle she would snap in two if she bent over. Mildred is the girl who had stared at me downstairs. Something about her is familiar, and although she busies herself, I know she has one ear firmly tuned to the conversation.

  Sissy props herself up on her elbows and flicks through a well-thumbed copy of a Woman’s Weekly magazine. “So, where’d you come from, then?” she asks, turning down the corner of a page with an advert for a new Max Factor mascara.

  “Grosvenor Square.” My words are muffled as I pull the black dress over my head.

  “No, you great goose. I mean, where are you from? Not where did you get the omnibus from this morning, ’cause that’s not a London accent, or I’m the Queen of Sheba.”

  I shimmy the dress down over my stomach and hips. It fits perfectly. The moiré silk fabric feels so much nicer against my skin than the starchy cotton dresses I’m used to. “Oh. I see. I’m from Lancashire. A small village called Mawdesley, near Ormskirk. You wouldn’t know it.”

  “So what brought you to London, then? Or should I say, who? Bet it was a soldier you met in the war. Told you he loved you and you followed him here only to find out he was already married with five children?” She laughs at her joke. Gladys tells her to stop being a nosy cow and to mind her own. Mildred sits like a stone statue on the edge of her bed.

  “It wasn’t a soldier,” I say, tying my apron in a neat bow at my back. “It was work. That’s all.”

  Sissy puts down her magazine. “None left in Lancashire?”

  “Only the usual. Domestic service. Tea shops. Textile factories. London offered . . . more.” My explanation is as limp as my damp clothes hanging beside the fire. How can I explain what really brought me here?
“I had an aunt who worked in a private home in Grosvenor Square. I started as a maid-of-all-work and worked my way up. Gave my notice a month ago.”

  “Let me guess. It was stuffy and boring and Madam was a miserable old cow?”

  I smile. “How did you guess?”

  “Always the same. Anyone who ends up here wants more than picture rails to dust and fires to lay and chamber pots to empty. We all fancy ourselves a cut above the ordinary housemaid. And then of course there’s some like our Gladys here who spends far too much time at the picture palaces and doesn’t think being a maid at The Savoy is good enough.” Sissy winks at me. “Has her eye on Hollywood, this one does. Fancies herself as the new Lillian Gish. I keep telling her it’ll never happen. Silly dreams. That’s all.”

  Gladys is plucking her eyebrows. “It’s not silly dreams, Sissy Roberts. It’s called ambition.”

  Sissy chuckles to herself from behind her magazine, but I’m interested.

  “Did you ever audition, Gladys?” I ask.

  “Dozens of times. Most of them turned out to be with seedy old men full of empty promises, but some Hollywood bigwig arrived last week. We think he’ll be staying for the season, and I’m going to make myself known to him. You see if I don’t.”

  I’d love to talk more to Gladys but Sissy’s disregard for her “silly dreams” makes me reluctant to share my own, so I say nothing and sit down on the edge of my bed, pulling a stocking over my toes before working it carefully up my leg. I don’t notice Mildred walking over to the fireplace.

  “What are these?” she asks.

  I look up. She has my photograph in her hands, and one of the pages of music. In my hurry to dress I’d forgotten all about them. I jump up from the bed and rush over to her.

  “Nothing. Just some papers that got damp on my way here.” I snatch the page from her, gather up the rest from the hearth, and push them under my pillow.

  “That’s piano music,” Mildred remarks. “Do you play?”

  “No. I’m just minding them for someone.”

  She seems more interested in the photograph anyway. “And who’s this?”

  My heart leaps. For a moment, I am back with him. I see his face, my hands trembling as I open up the lens on the little VPK camera. “It’s my brother,” I say, grasping for an explanation and holding out my hand to take the photograph from her.

  She looks at the image a moment longer and hands it to me. I place the photograph under my pillow along with the pages of music and sit protectively beside them as I pull on the other stocking. Mildred walks back to her bed. She glances at me over her book, her silent interest in me unsettling.

  “What’s the house list?” I ask, desperate to change the subject. “O’Hara mentioned it.”

  “Ah, the famous house list.” Sissy rolls onto her back, sticking her legs straight up in the air like fire irons. She doesn’t seem to care that her dress falls around her hips and shows her knickers. “That’s the most important thing. It’s the list of guests. We’re given a copy each day and expected to remember who’s staying in which apartment and suite. We need to know the names of their valets and lady’s maids, their secretaries—even their silly little dogs.”

  This is bad news. I’m awful at remembering names. “Doesn’t it get confusing?”

  “You get used to it. The regulars always ask for the same rooms. Some of the apartments have the same residents for months at a time.” She stands up and walks over to the window. The rain is still coming down in torrents. “The Mauretania docks in Southampton tonight, so we’re expecting a load of Americans to arrive on the boat train tomorrow. We’ll be rushed off our feet.” She turns around and leans her back against the window, amused by the look of panic on my face. “Don’t worry. The Savoy is a tightly run ship. It’s like clockwork, all the parts clicking and whirring together to move us all around to the right place each day. I don’t think about it anymore. I just go from here to there, and there to here. I grab a cuppa and a bite to eat when I can, and fall into bed at night exhausted. Don’t even have the energy to take off my undies sometimes. But it’s all worth it when you see Fred and Adele Astaire dancing on the rooftop.”

  “Did you see them?” I ask. “Really?” I have a picture of them both in my scrapbook. I would give anything to dance as wonderfully.

  “Yes! Really! I was polishing windows one minute and the next, there they were, dancing a quickstep and a photographer taking pictures of them. You never know what’ll happen at The Savoy. Better get used to it.”

  This is what I had imagined when I thought about working here: stars dancing on rooftops, Hollywood bigwigs. This is the magic I heard in the words “The Savoy.”

  “So, what are the Americans really like?” I ask as I pull on my frill cap. “Are they as glamorous as everyone says?”

  “Dresses and shoes to make your head spin. More importantly, they tip well. You’ll do fine as long as there’s Americans upstairs. Save those half crowns and you’ll soon have enough for a pound note. Before Christmas, you’ll have a fiver in your purse.” She nods toward Gladys. “Or a fancy powder compact, if that’s your thing.”

  I gaze at the compact on the bed beside Gladys. “Oh, it is my thing.”

  “Selfridges,” Gladys brags. “Had my eye on it for months. Isn’t it the bee’s knees?”

  “Think you’re the bee’s knees,” Mildred mutters.

  I’d almost forgotten she was in the room. Gladys and Sissy roll their eyes at me.

  I stand up and slip my feet into the shoes that have been provided for me, black as night but at least they have a strap and button. I spin around to face my roommates.

  “Well. Will I do?”

  Gladys smiles. Mildred’s left eye twitches. Sissy nods. “Yes, Dorothy,” she says, mimicking O’Hara’s Irish accent perfectly. “You’ll do very nicely. We’ll make a Savoy maid of you yet.”

  I wish I knew her well enough to throw my arms around her. I wish I could kiss her dumpling cheeks and thank her for the vote of confidence. Instead, I tug at the counterpane on my bed, straightening the creases I’ve made by sitting on it. A habit of mine. If I can’t untangle the knots in my heart, it seems that my life must be spent untangling everything else, setting things straight, making neat all that has been messed up.

  Wonderful adventures await for those who dare to find them.

  I think of Auntie Gert’s words and feel the flutter of restless wings on the edge of my heart. If adventures are waiting for me here, then I’m ready to find them.

  “Right, then,” I say. “Where do I start?”

  While Gladys and Mildred head out for their afternoon off, Sissy takes me down to the hotel storerooms and back-of-house operations, a bewildering maze of corridors and rooms housing all manner of weird and wonderful things. She shows me the audit room where male clerks hunch over desks, the stationery and fancy goods stores, stores for glassware and china, and even a silversmith’s repair and replating room. In the linen stores we collect bedsheets, pillow slips, and chamber towels and load them onto a trolley. Then we fill a wicker basket with cleaning products and supplies: feather dusters, scourer, polish, chamois cloths, soap tablets, tissue paper, drawer liners, and pomanders. When we have everything we need we push the trolley down another long passageway that leads toward a service lift. A cool draft blows through an open door. I shiver in the thin fabric of my dress and hope I haven’t caught a chill from standing around chatting to strange fox-haired men in the rain.

  As we make our ascent to sixth, Sissy consults several pages of foolscap paper clipped together. The house list. “We’ll do suite 601 first,” she says. “Occupied by a Miss Howard, traveling from Pennsylvania. Arrived yesterday evening. Daughter of an American shipping magnate. Plenty of expensive shoes to try on.”

  I gasp. “You do not.”

  “’Course I do. We all do.” She leans casually on the pile of towels. “Perk of the job. We’ll never live their lives, but what’s the harm in a dab of perfume o
r a quick try-on of a silk shoe?”

  I’m shocked. “But what if you get caught?”

  “You don’t—or . . .” She makes a dramatic slicing gesture across her throat. “Gone. Marching orders. On the spot. Never get a reference or work in service again and then it’s a life of prostitution and vice for you, my girl.”

  She sees the look of horror on my face and bursts out laughing as the lift jolts to a stop. She slides back the grille, pulls the trolley out behind her, and strides off along the corridor.

  Stepping out of the lift, I’m struck by the decor. It is rich and sumptuous, a noticeable contrast to the stark functionality of the rooms below. Elegant ferns and great palms drape like chiffon over willow-pattern pots. Impressive gilt-framed paintings of seascapes and ballerinas pattern the walls. Tiffany lampshades cast a soft creamy light and huge chandeliers dazzle like icicles above our heads.

  Sissy calls over her shoulder. “Stop gawping. Wait till you see the river suites, and the Grand Ballroom. Makes these corridors look like the staff passage.”

  I hurry after her, my feet sinking into the plush pile of the carpet. We pass two gentlemen discussing a painting of a ship being tossed around on a stormy sea. It makes me feel queasy just looking at it. One of the men wears small round spectacles. He is portly and dressed for dinner. The other man is dressed casually in cream slacks and a blue shirt with a mint-green knitted vest. He wears a lemon-colored cravat at his neck and his black hair is slicked neatly to one side. He leans against the wall, his crossed ankles revealing plaid socks. The man with the spectacles looks up as we pass.

  Sissy acknowledges them both. “Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon, Mr. Snyder.”

  They bid us both good afternoon in reply as the elder of the two gentlemen stares at me. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you before,” he says. “Are you new?” His tone is authoritative, but not unkind.

  I mumble a reply. “Yes, sir. I just started today.”