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He is gone.
He is gone.
I slow to a walk and stand among the suffocating smoke as my heart cracks into a thousand shards of helpless despair. Everything has changed. Everything will be different now.
I put my hands in my coat pockets, my fingers finding the piece of folded paper in each. I glance at the hastily scribbled note from Teddy in my right hand: Darling Little Thing, Don’t be sad. When the war is over, I’ll come back to you, back to Mawdesley. With you beside me, this is all the world I will ever need. I glance at the page in my left hand, ripped from the morning paper as I lay the fire in Madam’s bedroom. SOCIETY DARLING AND BRAVE NURSE VIRGINIA CLEMENTS REVEALED AS WEST END STAR LORETTA MAY! I look at her beautiful face and elegant clothes, the perfect image to accompany the glowing report of Cochran’s latest dazzling production and the enchanting new star of his chorus. I stare at the two pieces of paper. The life I know in one hand. The life I dream of in the other.
The church bells chime the hour. Time to go back to the Monday wash and the predictable routines that carve out the hours of a maid-of-all-work like me. Wiping the tears from my eyes, I fold the pages and return them to my pockets. I turn my back on the distant puffs of smoke from Teddy’s train and walk along the platform. The surface is icy and I go cautiously, my footing unsure. I slip a little, steady myself, and keep going. Crossing the tracks, I step onto the frosted grass verge that crunches satisfyingly beneath my boots. On firmer ground, my strides lengthen and I walk faster, and all the while the question nags and nags in my mind: Am I walking away from my future, or walking toward it?
I don’t have an answer. It is not mine to give.
War holds all the answers now.
ACT I (#u47f49e09-e0a7-5dab-8cdf-a533a2de869c)
Hope (#u47f49e09-e0a7-5dab-8cdf-a533a2de869c)
London, 1923
To the question, ‘Are stars worthwhile?’ I must give the elusive reply, ‘There are stars and stars.’
– C. B. Cochran,the Weekly Dispatch, 1924
1 (#u47f49e09-e0a7-5dab-8cdf-a533a2de869c)
Dolly (#u47f49e09-e0a7-5dab-8cdf-a533a2de869c)
‘That’s the fascinating thing about life, Miss Lane. All its wonderful unpredictability.’
‘It is as simple as this: a person can be unpunctual or untidy, but if they intend to get on in life they certainly cannot be both.’ I’ll never forget these words, nor the housekeeper who barked them at me as I skulked back to the house – late and dishevelled – from my afternoon off. I’d been walking with Teddy in the summer rain and completely lost track of time. It was worth being scolded for. ‘You, Dorothy Lane, are a prime example of someone who will never get on in life. You will never become anything.’ It was the first time I was told I wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t the last.
I was in my first position in service at the time. Maid-of-all-work. ‘Maid-of-all-fingers-and-thumbs, more like,’ the housekeeper groused. Peggy Griffin was her name – ‘Piggy’ as I called her in private, on account of her stubby nose and hands like trotters. Piggy didn’t take to me, and I didn’t take to her. I didn’t take to domestic work either for that matter. I suppose it didn’t help that my thoughts were usually anywhere else other than the task in hand.
‘Dolly Daydream’ was the nickname I earned from the maids at Mawdesley Hall. Open windows and doors left ajar are a gift to a girl with keen ears and a head full of dreams. Music from the gramophone player set my feet itching to dance as I mangled the Monday wash. Snatched fragments of conversations drifted along the corridors as I swept and polished, filling my head with thoughts of the stars of the West End stage, the Ziegfeld Follies, Broadway – all of it a distraction from the dreary routine of work, from war, from my fears of Teddy being called up. I may have lost many things in the years since I first felt those naive desires, but I held on to my dreams with a stubborn determination worthy of a Lancashire lass. The longing for something more has never left me. I feel it like a fluttering of wings in my heart.
I feel it now, as I shelter from the rain, huddled in the doorway of a watchmaker’s shop on the Strand. My attention is drawn to the posters on the passing omnibuses: Tallulah Bankhead, Gertrude Lawrence, Loretta May. The stars whose photographs and first-night notices I cut from newspapers and stick into my scrapbooks; the women I admire from high up in the theatre gallery, stamping my feet and shouting my appreciation and wishing I was on the stage with them, dressed in silver chiffon. They call us gallery girls: domestics and shopgirls who buy the cheap tickets and faithfully follow our favourite stars with something like a hysteria. We long for the glamorous life of the chorus girls and principal actresses; for a life that offers more than petticoats to mend and bootlaces to iron and steps to scrub. But I don’t just want to escape a life of drudgery. I want to soar. So I care for this restless fluttering in my heart as if it were a bird with a broken wing, in the hope that it will one day heal and fly.
I jump at the sound of a sharp rap on the window beside me. I turn around to see a hard-featured gentleman scowling at me from inside the shop, mean-looking eyes glowering behind black-rimmed spectacles. He says something I can’t hear and flaps his hands, shooing me away as if I were a dog salivating outside the butcher’s shop. I stick my tongue out at him and leave the doorway, hurrying along, hopping over puddles, my toes drowning like unwanted kittens inside my sodden stockings.
I pass bicycle shops and tobacconists, wine merchants, drapers and milliners, the rain falling in great curtains around me as I catch my reflection in the shop windows. Straggly curls hang limply beneath my cloche, all my efforts with curling irons and spirit lamps ruined by the rain. My new cotton stockings are splashed with dirt and sag at my ankles like folds of pastry, the rubber bands I’ve used as makeshift garter rolls clearly not up to the job. My borrowed coat is two sizes too big. My third-hand shoes squeak an apology for their shabby existence with every step. Piggy Griffin was right. I am an unpunctual untidy girl. A girl who will never get on in life.
I dodge newspaper vendors and sidestep a huddle of gentlemen in bowler hats as tramcars and motorcars rattle along the road beside me, clanging their bells and tooting their horns. Cries of the street sellers and the pounding hooves of a dray horse add to the jumble of noise. My stomach tumbles like a butter churn, excited and terrified by the prospect of my new position as a maid at The Savoy hotel.
The Savoy. I like the sound of it.
With my head bent down against the slanting rain, I take the final turn down Carting Lane, where I collide spectacularly with a gentleman hurrying in the opposite direction. I stagger backwards, dropping my travel bag as he takes a dramatic tumble to the ground. It reminds me of a scene from a Buster Keaton picture. I clap my hand over my mouth to stop myself laughing.
‘I’m so sorry! Are you all right?’ I raise my voice above the noise of the rain and the hiss of motorcar tyres through puddles. ‘My fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going.’
Dozens of sheets of paper are scattered around him, plastered to the sodden street like a child’s hopscotch markings. He attempts to stand up, slipping and sliding on the wet paving stones. I offer my hand and an arm for him to balance on. He grasps hold of both and I pull him upright. He is surprisingly tall when he’s vertical. And handsome. Rusted stubble peppers his chin. His lips are crowned with a slim sandy moustache, a shade lighter than his russet hair; the colour of fox fur. I really want to touch it, and clench my fists to make sure I don’t.
‘Are you hurt?’ I ask, bending down to pick up his pages.
‘I don’t think so.’ He shakes water from his coat like a dog just out of the sea and stoops to join me, scrabbling at the edges of the papers stuck to the pavement. ‘Feel like a damned fool, though. Are you hurt? That was quite a collision!’ He speaks like the man from the Pathé newsreels at the picture palace, all lah-de-dah and lovely.
I check myself over. ‘I’ve a ladder in my stocking, but nothing that a needle and thread won’t fix. At least I managed to stay on my feet. Should’ve been looking where I was going.’
‘Me too. It was completely unavoidable.’ He looks at me, the hint of a smile dancing at the edge of his lips, his eyes deep puddles of grey that match the weather perfectly. ‘Or perhaps it was necessary.’
We grin at each other like the greatest fools, as if we are stuck and neither of us is capable of pulling away, or doesn’t want to. London fades into the background as the rain becomes a gentle hush and the cries of the street vendors blend into a waltz in three-four time. For a perfect rain-soaked moment there is nothing to do, nowhere to be, nobody to worry about. Just the melody of a rainy London afternoon, and this stranger. I catch my reflection in his eyes. It is like looking into my future.
A ribbon of rainwater slips off the edge of the peppermint-striped awning of the florist’s shop beside us, pooling in the crown of his hat. Grabbing the last of the papers, he ducks beneath the awning and the moment drifts away from us like a child’s lost balloon and all I can do is watch it disappear over the rooftops. I join him beneath the awning as he pats at his elbows with a white handkerchief and inspects a small tear in the knee of his trousers.
‘Damned new shoes,’ he mutters. ‘Treacherous in weather like this.’
His shoes are smart two-tone navy-and-tan brogues. I glance at my black lace-ups, hand-me-downs from Clover, as battered and worn as old Mrs Spencer at the fish shop. I place one foot over the other, self-consciously. ‘That’s why I don’t bother with them,’ I say. ‘Old shoes are more reliable. Same with men.’
My Lancashire accent sounds common beside him and I regret giving up the elocution lessons I’d started last year. Couldn’t stand the stuck-up woman who taught me. In the end I told her to get knotted with her how-nows and brown cows. Now I can’t help feeling I might have been a bit hasty.
I watch as he fusses and fidgets to set himself right, adjusting his coat and replacing his trilby: nut-brown felt with a chocolate-ribbon trim. Ever so smart. Dark shadows beneath his eyes suggest a late night. He smells of whisky and cigarettes, brilliantine and rain. I can’t take my eyes off him.
‘If you don’t mind me saying, you look knackered.’
He raises an eyebrow. ‘Are you always this complimentary to strangers?’ That smile again, tugging at the edge of his mouth as if pulled by an invisible string. ‘It was a late night, if you must know.’
‘Hope she was worth it.’
He laughs. ‘Well, aren’t you the little comedienne! I needed some amusement today. Thank you.’
As I hand him the sodden pages that I’ve rescued from the pavement, I notice the lines of musical notes. ‘Do you play?’
‘Yes.’ He takes a page from me. ‘I write it actually.’
‘A composer? Blimey! Blues or jazz?’
‘Blues, mainly.’
‘Oh.’
‘You sound disappointed.’
‘Prefer jazz.’
‘Doesn’t everybody?’
I hand him another page. ‘Is it any good then, your music?’
He looks a little embarrassed. ‘I’m afraid not. Not at the moment, anyway.’
‘That’s a shame. I love music. The good type, that is. Especially jazz.’
He smiles again. ‘Then perhaps I should write some.’
‘Perhaps you should.’
And here we are again, grinning at each other. There is something about this fox-haired stranger that makes me smile all the way from my sodden toes to the top of my cloche. Nobody has made me feel like this since I was eight years old and first met Teddy Cooper. I didn’t think anybody would ever make me feel that way again. Part of me has always hoped nobody ever would.
‘And what is it you do?’ he asks. ‘Other than knock unsuspecting gentlemen down in the street?’
I hate telling people my job. My best friend, Clover, pretends she’s a shopgirl or a clerk if anybody asks. ‘Nobody wants to marry a domestic,’ she says. ‘Best to tell a white lie if you’re ever going to find a husband.’ I want to tell him I’m a chorus girl, or an actress in revue at the Pavilion. I want to tell him I’m somebody, but those grey eyes demand the truth.
‘I’m just a maid,’ I say, as Big Ben strikes the hour.
‘Just a maid?’
‘Yes. For now. I start a new position today. At The Savoy.’ The chimes are a reminder. ‘Now, actually.’
‘A maid with ambition. A rare and wonderful thing.’ A grin spreads across his face as he chuckles to himself. I’m not sure whether he is teasing me. ‘Well, I mustn’t keep you.’ He rolls the damp papers up and bundles them under his arm like a bathing towel. ‘Perry,’ he says, offering his hand. ‘Perry Clements. Delighted to meet you.’
His hand is warm against the fabric of my glove. The sensation makes the skin prickle on my palm. ‘Perry? That’s an unusual name.’
‘Short for Peregrine. Frightful, isn’t it?’
‘I think it’s rather lovely.’ I think you are rather lovely. ‘Dorothy Lane,’ I say. ‘Dolly, for short. Pleasure to meet you, Mr Clements.’ I gesture to the paper bathing towel under his arm. ‘I hope it’s not completely ruined.’
‘You’ve done me a favour, to be honest, Miss Lane. Possibly the most dismal piece I’ve ever written.’
And then he does something extraordinary and shoves the papers into a litter bin beside me, as casually as if they were the empty wrappings of a fish supper.
I gasp. ‘You can’t do that!’
‘Why not?’
‘Well. Because. You just can’t!’
‘But apparently I just did. That’s the fascinating thing about life, Miss Lane. All its wonderful unpredictability.’ He slides his hands into his coat pockets and turns to walk away. ‘It was terribly nice to meet you.’ He is shouting above the din of traffic and rain. ‘You’re really quite charming. Good luck with the new position. I’m sure you’ll be marvellous!’
I watch as he runs tentatively down the street, slipping and skidding as he goes. I notice that he carries a limp and hope it is an old war wound and not the result of our collision. He tips his hat as he jumps onto the back of an omnibus and I wave back. It feels more like an enthusiastic hello to an old friend than a polite good-bye to a stranger.
When he is completely out of sight I grab the bundle of papers from the litter bin. I’m not sure why, but it feels like the right thing to do. Something about these sodden pages speaks to me of adventure and, as Teddy said when we watched the first group of men head off to France, you should never ignore adventure when it comes knocking. Little did any of us know that the experience of war would be far from the great adventure they imagined as they waved their farewells.
Pushing the papers into my coat pocket, I run on down Carting Lane, being careful not to slip on the cobbles that slope steadily down towards the Embankment and the river. It is pleasantly quiet after the chaos of the Strand, even with the steady stream of delivery vans and carts that rumble past. I head for the service entrance, sheltered by an archway, and turn to walk down a flight of steep steps that lead down to a black door. A maid is stooped over, rubbing a great lump of hearthstone against the middle step. It seems to me a fool’s errand with the rain spilling down and dirty boots and shoes everywhere, but as I well know, it is not a maid’s place to question the sense of the chores she is given.
She looks up and wipes her hands on her sacking-cloth apron. ‘Beg pardon, miss.’
I smile at her. ‘Don’t let me stop you.’
Her cheeks are flushed from her efforts. She is young. Probably in her first position. I was that girl not so long ago, scrubbing steps, polishing awkward brass door handles, hefting heavy buckets of coal, constantly terrified to put a foot wrong in case the housekeeper or the mistress gave me my marching orders. The girl looks blankly at me and drags her pail noisily to one side so that I can pass. I go on tiptoe so as not to spoil her work.
Above the door, a sign says FOR DELIVERIES KNOCK TWICE. Since I’m not delivering anything I pull on the doorbell. In my head my mother chastises me. ‘Late on your first day, Dorothy Mary Lane. And look at the state of you. Honestly. It beggars belief.’
I hear footsteps approaching behind the door before a bolt is drawn back and it swings open. A harried-looking maid glares at me.
‘You the new girl?’
‘Yes.’
Grabbing the handle of my travelling bag, she drags me inside. ‘You’re late. She’s spitting cobs.’
‘Who is?’
‘O’Hara. Head of housekeeping. Put her in a right narky mood you have, and we’ll all suffer for it.’
Before I have chance to defend myself or reply, she shoves me into a little side room, tells me to wait there, and rushes off, muttering under her breath.
I place my bag down on the flagstone floor and look around. A clock ticks on the mantelpiece. A picture of the King hangs on the wall. A small table stands beneath a narrow window. Other than that, the room is quiet and cold and unattractive, not at all what I’d expected of The Savoy. Feeling horribly damp and alone, I take the photograph from my coat pocket, brushing my fingers lightly across his image. The face that stirs such painful memories. The face I turn to after every housekeeper’s reprimand and failed audition. The face I look at every time someone tells me I’m not good enough. The face that makes me more determined to show them that I am.
Hearing brisk footsteps approaching along the corridor, I put the crumpled photograph back into my pocket and pray that the head of housekeeping is a forgiving and understanding woman.
As she enters the room, it is painfully apparent that she is neither.
2 (#u47f49e09-e0a7-5dab-8cdf-a533a2de869c)
Dolly (#u47f49e09-e0a7-5dab-8cdf-a533a2de869c)
Wonderful adventures await for those who dare to find them.
O’Hara, the head of housekeeping, is a furious Irishwoman with a frown to freeze hell and an attitude to match. She is tall and strangely angular, her hair frozen in tight black waves around her face. Her arms are folded across her chest, her elbows straining against the fabric of her black silk dress, like fire irons waiting to prod anyone who gets in her way.
‘Dorothy, I presume?’ Her voice is clipped and authoritative.
I nod. ‘Yes, miss. Dorothy Lane. Dolly, for short.’
She looks pointedly at a watch fob attached to the chest panel of her dress. ‘You are five minutes late. Whilst I might expect poor timekeeping of flighty girls who work in factories and wear too much make-up and coloured stockings and invariably come to a bad end, I do not expect it of girls employed at The Savoy. I presume this is the first and last time you will be late?’
Her words snap at me like the live crabs at Billingsgate Market. I nod again and take a step back. When she speaks the veins in her neck pop out, as if they are trying to get away from her. If I were a vein in O’Hara’s neck, I’d be trying to get away from her too.
‘Mr Cutler is not impressed by tardiness,’ she continues. ‘Not at all. Not to mention the governor.’
I have no idea who Mr Cutler or the governor are, but decide that now is not the best time to ask. ‘I’m very sorry. I bumped into someone you see, miss, and the rain—’
A brusque wave of the hand stops me midsentence. ‘Your excuses do not interest me and I most certainly do not have time for them.’ She consults the watch fob again, as if it somehow operates her. ‘Hurry now. Get your bag. Come along.’
She turns and sweeps from the room. I pick up my bag and scuttle along behind, following the familiar scent of Sunlight soap that she leaves in her wake. She moves with brisk neat steps, the swish swish of her skirt reminding me of Mam rubbing her hands together to warm them by the fire. We go up a short stone staircase that leads to a series of narrow sloping passageways, the plain walls lit by occasional lampless lights. We pass a large room where maids are stooped over wicker baskets sorting great piles of laundry, and another room where a printing press clicks and whirs and men with ink-stained aprons peer through spectacles at blocks of lettering. The air is laced with a thick smell of oil and tar. It is stark and industrial. Far from the sparkling chandeliers and sumptuous carpets I’d imagined.
‘Your reference from Lady Archer was complimentary,’ O’Hara remarks, looking over her shoulder and down her nose with a manner that suggests I don’t match up at all with the girl she was expecting. ‘And the housekeeper spoke highly of you.’
‘Really? That was very kind of them.’ I’m surprised. I can’t believe Lady Archer would be complimentary about anything, let alone me. I worked for her in my last position at a house in Grosvenor Square. She can’t have said more than a dozen words to me in the four years I spent there and most of them were only to remark on my appearance and suggest how it might be improved.
