Last Dance with Valentino

‘All I ask is that you attest to something in a courtroom which you know to be true . . . Is it so much to ask?’

Her small white hand was back on his shoulder. She was edged so close to him, and in the long, warm silence that followed, I swear they might have kissed. But just then a loud voice came from the drawing room: ‘Blanquita? . . . Blanca, darling? . . . Anyone seen my wife?’

‘She’s on the loggia with the wop,’ we heard His Grace declare, ‘having a smoki-poo or some such . . . Wish I could persuade her to have a smoki-poo with me . . . ’

A moment later, in time for Rudy and Mrs de Saulles to step apart, her husband was at the french windows. ‘Sweetheart,’ he said, ignoring Rudy and not noticing me, still flattened between window and wall, barely two foot away from him, ‘why don’t you come dance, sweetie? I should so love to dance with you.’

‘I’m very tired,’ she said.

‘Just a quick dance?’ he said, stumbling slightly, as he stepped towards her. ‘Please? With your admiring husband . . . who so entirely admires and adores you?’ He was very drunk.

She turned away. ‘I’m not certain I can imagine anything I should like to do less,’ she said. ‘Besides, I can see Joan over there, looking awfully hopeful. I’m convinced she’s longing to dance with you again . . . ’

And with that she hurried away, leaving my employer and his not-quite-guest in uncomfortable silence. They looked at one another, Rudy with some dislike, I think, Mr de Saulles with something much closer to anger. He hesitated, as if on the point of saying something, but then seemed to think better of it. Without another word he spun around and followed his wife’s path back into the house.

And still I stood there. Rudy turned back to the position he’d taken before Mrs de Saulles had interrupted him, and snapped open his cigarette box. It glinted in the moonlight . . . I watched again as flame and cigarette connected, as the light of the flame played on his face, and the smoke rose from his lips. I watched him gaze out into the darkness, deep in thought. And once again I was amazed by him – his elegance and grace.

After what felt an unendurably long pause, during which I’m quite certain I neither moved nor breathed, he suddenly said, ‘It’s all right, by the way – you can come out now. It’s quite safe.’

I didn’t. I clung to my wall, and to the forlorn hope that he might perhaps have been talking to someone else. But then he turned and looked directly at me. ‘I’ll step away from this spot, shall I,’ he said, ‘to a spot over here, where we can’t be seen? Come out and tell me why you’ve been standing there all this time.’ He smiled at me. ‘Spying on us . . . ’

‘I wasn’t spying.’

‘What else could you call it?’

‘I was stuck.’

‘Ah.’

By then he had travelled to the far end of the veranda, out of view of the french windows. He turned and beckoned for me to join him there so, with some reluctance, I edged from my hiding place to be beside him . . . And we stood in silence, quite close to one another, with the music from the Victrola seeping out through the warm night air, and with me wondering at nothing, in spite of all I had just witnessed, but the richness of his voice . . .

He seemed to be waiting for further explanation and I felt an irresistible urge to fill the delicious silence with some of my habitual babble.

So I told him the truth – something I always do when I’m nervous (I still do it today, despite quite strenuous efforts to break the habit). I explained how I’d come down from my room because I had wanted to watch the dancing . . . and I might easily have finished it there, except I didn’t. I told him everything about how mad I was for the new type of dancing – and about how I’d read a little of Miss Sawyer while I was still in England, and about how I had always longed to see a real tango, danced by the professionals, and about how I thought he and Miss Sawyer were the most fabulous, most magical dancers I had ever set eyes on. ‘I was going to watch you from the garden,’ I said to him, ‘but then I realised the windows were open and I could get a better view from the porch, and – I’m so sorry, truly – very sorry, Mr Guglielmi. I didn’t hear a word you and Mrs de Saulles were saying. Not a word.’

He smiled. ‘Your hearing is damaged?’

‘By which I mean, that is, not a word that made the slightest bit of sense to me . . . In any case, it has nothing to do with me. I am sorry, but there was nothing I could do. First you came out and then she came out. And then he came out ... And I was utterly trapped . . . ’

He asked me my name after that and I told him. Jennifer. Jennifer Doyle from London. ‘My father is the portrait painter in there. The one who can’t remove his eyes from Mrs de Saulles.’

‘No one ever can,’ he said grimly.

I wasn’t sure what to make of that. ‘It drives her quite mad if we aren’t all head over heels in love with her,’ he said.

‘Well,’ I replied carefully, ‘then I suppose my father is keeping her happy.’

He glanced at me. ‘It’s hard for her. To be here. So far from family . . . ’

‘I’m sure it is.’

‘But tell me – never mind that – tell me something more about yourself. What are you doing, here at this house?’

‘Well – I am – his daughter. And he is an excellent painter. And I’m here to teach the boy to speak good English, I think. Though I don’t quite understand that because his mother seems to speak perfectly good English herself.’

‘Of course, because she was educated in England.’

‘She was? . . . Well. Well, then, I’m not certain. I’m also meant to keep company with Mrs de Saulles, apparently. Due to her being so far away from home, my father said. But she doesn’t much seem to want that and – apart from just now – I’ve not really even met her yet . . . I asked Mr Hademak several times this afternoon what my job here was meant to be – and all he can say is, I’m supposed to make them “giggle”, which isn’t something I’ve ever been particularly good at. But. Anyway, I have no idea what I’m doing here really, Mr Guglielmi. I wish I did . . . I’m a not-quite-guest,’ I added, ‘a bit like you’ – and immediately regretted it. ‘Only even more so, because they don’t seem to want me to do anything . . . Except stay out of sight.’

He laughed aloud at that. A wonderful laugh, it was – it still is: heartfelt, so warm, and so magically infectious. I heard myself laughing with him . . . And then, from the drawing room, the music reached us . . . just a silly ditty, it was. So silly.

You made me love you . . .I didn’t want to do it. . . You made me want you. . . And all the time you knew it. . . I guess you always knew it. . . I guess you always knew it . . .

I think I fell silent. He said, ‘You look worried.’ But I wasn’t worried! I was listening to the music, and the night creatures, and feeling the warm air on my skin. I could feel nothing but the music, the warm air – and his voice – and I longed for him to ask me to dance, and in my head the longing obscured everything. I was frightened he might ask me to dance and yet even more frightened that he would not, and that this moment would end without his arms around me, and he said, ‘It’s beautiful music, isn’t it?’

And it was!

You made me love you . . .I didn’t want to do it. . . You made me want you . . .And all the time you knew it . . .

‘Do you like to dance, Jenny?’

I told him I loved to dance. And whatever else it may have been, it was bold of me, I think, to dare to dance with him, after I had seen him dance with Miss Sawyer.

For once, I resisted the urge to babble. I was silent. Without any more words, he turned to me – and we danced. There on the veranda, by the light of the moon . . . I swear I never danced so well. I think, in his arms, it would have been impossible to dance badly – as if his grace were like his laughter: irresistibly, magically infectious . . . the most generous dancer, the most generous lover; the most generous man in the world.

. . . . Did I write that I hadn’t fallen in love with him that night? Did I write that?

How absurd!

And now I simply have to sleep.

Chapter 3

Hotel Continental

New York

Saturday, 14 August 1926

Not so sure what to do with myself. Don’t want to sit, in case the dress creases. But it’s only seven o’clock. I have two hours to kill and – oh, hell, maybe I should change back into my chemise, just for a short while. But then I shall want to shower again, in this heat, and it was a long enough wait to get a turn in there the first time, and then suppose they ran out of water? Besides, it so happens I look just about as good at this particular instant as I have in my entire life.

The party’s too far to walk. Maybe I’ll take a taxicab, which means leaving at – what time? I mustn’t arrive before Rudy. They may not even let me in! But if I arrive too long after he does he may think I’m not coming at all.

I’m so goddamn nervous. I could have dined with him at the Colony tonight, and gone on with him to see the show. Why didn’t I? He said he’d come by and pick me up, and I know he wanted to.

He said, I can’t contemplate a whole evening without you . . . Only I couldn’t contemplate an evening of sharing him, I suppose; of dining with him and all the others whom I know he is obliged to be dining with tonight. I couldn’t have done it – as his date? I think not! As his newly engaged scenario writer? Perhaps . . . Except then I would have to sit there in my off-the-peg beautiful, beautiful dress, and my off-thepeg beautiful satin slippers, and smile sweetly, which isn’t my style, and they would all bawl at one another across the table about this and that, and whether Rudy and Pola intend to be here or there . . . I couldn’t quite have done it. I would have half shrunk into the floorboards, and that’s no way to keep a man’s interest, when he’s recently been voted the most desirable movie star in history . . .

The party tonight is in his honour, as parties he attends are prone to be, these days. I should have preferred not to go to that either, and to wait to see him tomorrow, when we can be alone again, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He said he would send his driver to fetch me. I said I didn’t know where I would be, and he said he would order his driver to search every corner of the city until he found me.