Last Dance with Valentino

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.