The Girl From The Savoy

‘But must we take afternoon tea every Wednesday, Etta?’

‘Yes, Perry. We must.’

‘Might I ask why?’

‘Because afternoon tea is predictable and charming – qualities that should be preserved wherever possible. Because it is one of the few things in my life that I can do without a chaperone, and because if we stop meeting for afternoon tea, who knows what we will stop doing next. Eventually we’ll stop seeing each other altogether. We’ll become distant strangers, like Aubrey, communicating only through a few thoughtless lines scribbled on tasteless Christmas cards. One day we’ll realize that we miss afternoon tea on a Wednesday terribly, but it will be too late, because one – or both of us – will be dead.’

Perry laughed and called me melodramatic, but he kept showing up nevertheless. In the end it wasn’t his lack of enthusiasm that brought an end to our little arrangement, it was war.

Overnight, the carefree privileged life we knew came crashing to a halt as a new and terrifying existence settled upon us all like a suffocating fog. My brothers went to France to serve as officers on the Western Front. I enrolled as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse. Simple pleasures such as afternoon tea became a distant memory until the war ended and my brothers returned. We were all changed irrevocably by the long years between. Now I cling to Perry and afternoon tea at Claridge’s like a life raft, holding on with grim determination, even if his habitual tardiness irritates me immensely and gives me a daylong headache.

‘Would you care for another pot of Earl Grey while you wait, Miss May?’

I glance up at the waiter. A handsome young chap. All taut-skinned and vibrant-eyed. The treasures of youth. ‘I suppose another can’t do any harm.’

‘No, miss. Not on such a dreadful day. And another slice of Battenberg, perhaps?’

I nod. Even the waiters at Claridge’s know my preferences and tastes. It makes life extraordinarily dull at times. ‘And a fresh jug of milk,’ I add.

‘Very well, Miss May.’

He moves with the precision of a principal ballet dancer, pirouetting behind the great ferns and Oriental screens that segment the room into private nooks and crannies. I almost call after him, tell him I’ve changed my mind and to bring Darjeeling and Madeira cake instead, but I don’t. Sometimes it is simpler to keep things as they are.

The pianist plays ragtime as the rain thrums in time against the window. All is a colourless grey smudge outside, weather for reading a racy novel, or for playing backgammon by the fire if one isn’t easily enthralled by the notion of illicit love affairs. Bored and restless, I drape my arm casually over the back of the chair beside me, the creamy white of my skin visible where my sleeve rides up over my wrist. A gentleman at the table to my right can’t take his eyes off me. I stretch out a little farther, languishing like a cat. I am still beautiful on the outside, despite the cracks that are appearing beneath the surface.

The waiter returns and pours the tea as I shuffle in my chair, fussing with the pleats and folds in my skirt, checking my reflection in the silver teapot: perfect golden waves, crimson lips, pencilled eyebrows over hooded eyes, green paste earrings that swing pleasingly as I tilt my head from side to side to catch the best of the light from the chandeliers. Claridge’s has always had flattering light. It is one of the reasons I insist on coming here.

I check my watch. Where the devil can Peregrine have got to?

I fiddle with the menu card, tapping it against the edge of the rose-patterned saucer. Lines of script whirl through my mind like circus acrobats as carefully choreographed steps play out on my feet beneath the linen tablecloth. I cannot sit still. My nerves rattle like the bracelets that knock together on my arm.

It is always the same. Always at three o’clock on the afternoon before opening night when the butterflies start dancing and the jitters set in. Tomorrow is opening night of a new musical comedy at the Shaftesbury, a full-length piece, the female lead written especially for me. The Fleet Street hacks and society-magazine gossip columnists are waiting for me to fail, desperate to type their sniping first-night notices: Miss May’s acting talents are obviously limited to revue and the lighter productions that made her a star. She would be well advised to leave the more challenging roles to accomplished actresses, such as the wonderful Diana Manners and the incomparable Alice Delysia. I feel nauseous at the thought.

The new production, HOLD TIGHT!, is a huge personal and professional risk. I don’t know how I ever let Charles Cochran talk me into it. Presumably it had a lot to do with the wonderful Parisian dresses he promised, and the large volume of champagne we drank on the night the contracts were signed – not to mention the fact that I cannot deny darling Cockie anything. But it isn’t just opening night that has my nerves on edge. There are other matters troubling me, matters far more important than forgotten lines and missed cues. Matters that I do not wish to dwell on.

My only small comfort is in knowing that I’m not the only one feeling anxious today. It is early in the autumn season. New productions open nightly across the city and everyone in the business is skittish. Final dress rehearsals are gruelling fourteen-hour-long marathons. Tempers and nerves are as frayed as the hems on unfinished costumes. The precariously balanced reputations of writers, composers, producers, actors, and actresses are all at stake. Everybody wants their show, their leading lady, to be the big sensation. For established stars such as myself, there is the added threat of the new girls – ambitious beautiful young things who will inevitably emerge from the chorus to become the darling of the season. That dreadful Tallulah Bankhead has already gone some way to shaking things up with Cockie engaging her in the lead role of The Dancers. The gallery girls find everything about her so exotic: her name, her beauty, her quick wit and overt sexuality. Under the glare of such bright young things, is it any wonder I feel dull and worn? It wasn’t so long ago when ambition and beauty were synonymous with the name Loretta May, when I wore my carefree attitude as easily as my Vionnet dresses. I was the darling of the set, wild and free, out-dazzling the diamonds at my neck. But things move quickly in this business. What shines today glares horribly tomorrow. We all lose our lustre in the end.

As the pianist plays ‘Parisian Pierrot’, a popular number from André Charlot’s new revue London Calling!, I spot Perry crossing the road. I urge the pianist to play faster and finish the piece. Perry is fragile enough without hearing the most popular number of the season so far, written by one of his friends. While Perry struggles to write anything at all, Noël Coward could write an address on an envelope and it would be a hit. Thankfully the final chords fade as he is shown to our table, limping towards me like a shot hare, apologizing all the way. He is as sodden as a bath sponge and has a tear in the knee of his trousers. Disapproving stares follow him.

‘Sorry, sorry, sorry.’ He leans forward to kiss me, his stubble scratching my skin. He smells of Scotch and cigarettes. I tell him to sit down. Quickly.

‘You’re an absolute fright, Perry Clements. You look like a stray dog that has been out all night. Where on earth have you been to get into such a state?’

‘In the rain mostly. I bumped into someone near The Savoy. Quite literally. She sent me skittering across the pavement like a newborn foal.’

‘Anyone interesting?’ I ask.

‘No. Just some girl.’ He takes a tin of Gold Flake from his breast pocket, lights a cigarette, and takes a couple of long, satisfying drags. ‘Damned nuisance really. And then the omnibus got a flat, so I decided to walk the rest of the way. Anyway, I’m here now, and while I know you’re desperate to lecture me on appearance and send me straight off to Jermyn Street for some smart new clothes, I’d rather like it if we didn’t squabble. Not today. I have an outrageous headache.’

‘Scotch?’

‘And absinthe. Rotten stuff. Don’t know why anybody drinks it.’

‘Because the Green Fairy is wicked, and everybody else does. I have no sympathy for you, darling. None whatsoever.’

Much as I’d like to, I can’t be cross with him. I don’t have the energy. I take a Turkish cigarette from my case and lean forward for a light, studying Perry through the circles of smoke I blow so expertly. He isn’t unpleasant to look at. A little shoddy around the edges perhaps, but nothing that couldn’t be improved with a little more care. I’m sure he could find a perfectly decent wife if he tried a little harder. There are plenty of young girls in need of a husband, after all. The divine Bea Balfour, for one. But that is a romance I fear I will never see flourish, despite my best efforts to get the two of them to realize they are perfectly matched and to get on with it.

‘So who was this girl anyway?’ I ask.

‘Hmm? Which girl?’ Perry inspects the delicate finger sandwiches and miniature cakes on the stand, lifting each one up as though it were a specimen in the British Museum. He takes a bite from a strawberry tart, curls his lip, and replaces it. I smack the back of his hand.

‘The girl you bumped into. Who was she? Anyone we know?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because you paused after you mentioned her. I know you too well, darling. Whoever it was left a mark on you as clear as that unsightly tear in your trouser knee.’

He smiles. ‘You’ve been reading Agatha Christie novels again, haven’t you? We’ll make a detective of you yet!’ I glare at him. I am in no mood for jokes. ‘Oh, all right. She’s a maid. Not the daughter of an earl, or a beautiful American heiress. I know what you’re thinking and she was most definitely not marriage material. Pretty young thing, though. Eyes to make you wonder. She made me laugh, that’s all.’

‘Goodness! Well, I hope you invited her to dinner. Perhaps she could make you laugh more often and we could all be cheered up.’

He pours milk into his tea. ‘I’m not that bad. Am I?’

‘Yes, you are. Honestly, darling, sometimes it’s like spending time with a dead trout. And you used to be such tremendous fun.’ I stop myself from saying before the war, and take a sip of my tea. The milk is fresher, and the tea tastes better. Perhaps Mother is right about the rain.

Perry relents a little. ‘Well, perhaps I have been more serious of late. But the way the others carry on is ridiculous. Fancy-dress parties and all-night treasure hunts. Did you see the photographs of them dancing in the fountains in Trafalgar Square? Were you there?’

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 marvellous! You’re marvellous!’ 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 theatre 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 blonde 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 towards Gladys. ‘Or a fancy powder compact, if that’s your thing.’