The Girl From The Savoy
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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 towards a service lift. A cool draught 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, travelling 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 or 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-coloured 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.’
‘Ah. A new recruit! Splendid. Welcome to The Savoy – the largest and finest luxury hotel in the world.’
His colleague laughs. ‘In your opinion, old man. The manager of the Waldorf Astoria may not be inclined to agree!’ His accent is American. Brash and confident. As he speaks, his eyes travel from my shoes to my cap and everywhere in between. I feel uncomfortable under his gaze. ‘But your standards are most definitely going up,’ he continues. ‘Much prettier staff than last year. A carefully planned business strategy of yours, I presume? Anything to drag the punters in!’
My cheeks redden as they both laugh at the joke.
‘Don’t let us hold you up,’ the older gentleman says. ‘Plenty of work to do. Tempus fugit.’
I follow Sissy along the corridor. As we turn a corner, I glance over my shoulder. He is still staring.
‘Who was that?’ I whisper.
‘The governor. Reeves-Smith.’
‘No. Not him. The younger man with him.’
‘That’s Lawrence Snyder. Larry to his friends. Big Hollywood somebody or other. Comes over every season to spot the new talent. Entices them to America with the promise of starring roles in the movies. He’s the one Gladys has her sights on. Can’t blame her. He’s so handsome. And that accent!’
‘I thought he was vile. Did you see the way he looked us up and down?’
‘Looked you up and down, you mean. Serves you right for having those great big eyes and shapely ankles. Anyway, all the gentlemen look at the maids that way. The prettier ones, at least. You’d better get used to it, Miss Dorothy Lane.’
My stomach lurches at her words. I instinctively place a hand to my cheek. Sometimes I can still feel the pain; the sickening thud of his fist.
Reaching a white panelled door, Sissy knocks firmly and calls, ‘Housekeeping.’ Hearing nothing in reply, she turns the key and steps inside. I hang the MAID AT WORK sign on the handle and close the door behind us.
The suite is breathtaking, a dazzling display of crystal chandeliers and polished walnut. An ornate chaise sits by a low window and Hepplewhite chairs are arranged beside a mahogany coffee table. The famous Savoy bed is big enough for half a dozen people to sleep in. Even with its crumpled linen and creased pillow slips, it is quite something. Following Sissy’s lead, I check the blinds, switch the electric lights on and off to make sure they are all working, and turn the bathroom taps to make sure they’re not dripping.
‘It’s funny to be among the things of someone I’ve never met, and probably never will,’ I remark as we strip the bed. ‘I’m used to doing out the rooms of young ladies I’d see every day.’
‘I like the anonymity,’ Sissy says, bundling the dirty sheets into a neat pile. ‘It suits me to come in and set things right while they’re out having lunch and cocktails. Never cared for all that gossip and familiarity in a private household. Part of the fun of working here is imagining whose room you’re in. Look at those black opera gloves over that chair. What do you reckon? A tall redhead with a dirty laugh?’
‘Or maybe a short brunette with thick ankles?’ I add.
We giggle as we conjure up increasingly awful images of who Miss Howard from Pennsylvania might be and as I lift beautiful necklaces from the dressing table, I imagine the pale neck they will decorate with their emeralds and jade. I replace the cap on a lipstick and see perfect crimson lips and the mark they will leave on a champagne glass. I breathe in the scent of sandalwood and rose as I dust beneath perfume bottles and face creams. I admire a small travelling pillow, running my fingers over the outline of a butterfly expertly captured by silk thread. I feel the rich fabric of each elegant dress, the soft satin of each shoe, the smooth gloss of every Ciro pearl, and for a delicious moment I am not Dorothy Lane, daughter of a Lancashire farmer, I am the daughter of an American shipping magnate with exquisite things to make my life perfect.
We work methodically following a careful routine, making neat hospital corners, plumping downy pillows, folding thick towels, replacing the scented lining paper in drawers, and placing freshly baked Marie biscuits into the silver boxes on the nightstands. The work is intense and time passes quickly.
As we finish the last room on our round, I pull at a final pucker on the counterpane. The room, once again, set straight. I step back to admire our work and think of something Teddy once said as he watched me iron the laundry until everything was as smooth as glass. Life can’t always be starched sheets and perfect hemlines, Dolly. Sometimes creases and puckers will sneak in, no matter how much you tug and smooth. He had such wise and lovely words. It makes his silence all the more unbearable.
Sissy is watching me. ‘Penny for your thoughts.’
I let out a long sigh. ‘If only the mess we make of our lives could be tidied as easily. That’d be something, wouldn’t it?’
She studies me for a moment. ‘What’s his name, your mess? Mine’s Charlie. Ran off with my best friend.’
I hesitate. I don’t often talk about him, but something about Sissy makes me want to open up. ‘Teddy. He’s called Teddy.’
‘And what did Teddy do to make a mess of things?’
I look at her and then I look down at my feet. ‘Nothing. Teddy did nothing at all.’
5
Teddy
Maghull Military War Hospital, Lancashire
March 1919
‘I wonder if I might see your face among the clouds, because sometimes I forget you.’
My bed is the last in a long row of twenty on the ward. It means that I’m the last to be fed and the last to be seen by the doctors on their rounds, but it also means that I am beside the window, and for that I would come last at everything.
With a simple turn of the head I can look out at the sky and the distant hills. I can watch the clouds and the weather rolling in across the Irish Sea. I can turn my back on the rest of the ward and forget that I am here at all.
Today the sky is a wonderful shade of blue. Bluebell blue. A welcome sight after yesterday’s relentless sheets of grey rain. My nurse tells me she hopes to take a walk in the park later.
‘It’s lovely out,’ she says, her voice cheery and bright. ‘Looks like spring has arrived at last.’
I don’t speak. I barely acknowledge her as I stare at the window and watch a butterfly dancing around the frame. Unusual to see them at this time of year. A Peacock. Or maybe it’s a Painted Lady. I forget. I used to know my butterflies so well. Whatever it is, the nurses have let it out several times but it always comes back in.
‘I’ve brought some more of the letters to read,’ the nurse continues. ‘Shall I start?’
I turn my head towards her. She sits in a small chair beside the bed. Smooths her skirt across her knees. Tucks a loose hair behind her ear. I nod. What else can I do? She’s here now. She says the letters will help me remember.
She unfolds the page, and starts to read.
October 5th, 1916
My dearest Teddy,
I looked at the sky this morning. Not just a quick glance because a bird flew overhead, but really looked, like you always told me to. I stood perfectly still and did nothing but look up. It was all peaches and raspberries. Yesterday it was soft velvet grey, like moleskin. I wonder if the sky looks the same in France. I imagine it is different somehow. Darker.
Do you remember when we used to meet at the stone bridge and sit with our legs dangling over the edge, swaying like the bulrushes in the breeze? ‘Listen to the river,’ you would say. ‘What can you hear?’ I laughed at you. All I could hear was the water. But when I really listened I heard other things: the rush of wind through the grass, the hum of dragonfly wings, the splash as a fish took a fly from the surface. When I looked at the water all I could see was our reflections and the shadows of the clouds. But you told me to look beyond the surface and slowly my eyes would adjust and I’d see a fish. And like magic, an entire shoal would be there. They’d been there all along, but I couldn’t see them. I wasn’t looking properly. And then all sorts would appear from the murk: the glint of a coin, a child’s rattle, the flash of pink and gold as a trout flickered beneath the surface.
I remember.
It comforts me to know that we are looking at the same sky. If we look hard enough, what might we see, Teddy? I wonder if I might see your face among the clouds, because sometimes I forget you. I struggle to catch the image of you, like I struggled to see those fish. But I keep looking, keep searching, and suddenly there you are, as clear as if you were standing in front of me. As if you’d been there all the time.
I just need to keep looking and there you’ll be.
Don’t forget me, Teddy. Look for me.
Your Little Thing,
Dolly
X
P.S. I’ve been catching the leaves and making a wish like you showed me. I don’t need to tell you what I wished for.
The words of the letters upset her. Sometimes she dabs a little cotton handkerchief to her cheek to wipe away the tears. Perhaps she wrote letters like this to someone too. Perhaps they stir memories of her own.
‘Would you like me to read another?’ she asks. I look back to the window; stare at the trees with their buds promising new life. I shrug. ‘I know it’s difficult,’ she says, ‘but it’s good for you to hear them.’ She places a comforting hand on my shoulder. ‘They’ll help you remember. In time.’
I turn my head slowly to look at her. My eyes feel dull and tired. She looks distant; far away. Picking up another envelope from her lap, she removes the pages and continues.
November 12th, 1916
My dearest Teddy,
It is eight months since you left, and everything has changed so much. Conscription is so cruel. Everyone who is able to fight has gone now, even the married men. Those who are left – too young, or too old or infirm – drift around the village like dandelion seeds. They feel guilty and useless and wish they were out there fighting with you all. I tell them they should be grateful they’re not and that I’d give anything to make you a year or two younger so you’d still be here with me.
We are all doing our bit. I seem to be knitting, mostly. Socks, gloves, and other comforts. It turns out I’m almost as bad at knitting as I am at sewing, but if I keep trying I might improve. Others are making Christmas puddings to send to you all and everyone’s helping out on the farms. The Land Army, it’s called.
I finished up at the big house and work in the munitions factory since I turned eighteen. It’s hard work, but anything’s better than domestic work and it pays better. We wear trousers! We clock in and out and fill the shells with TNT powder. They call us ‘canary girls’ because the powder stains our skin yellow. The work is dangerous – there was a big explosion at a factory in Faversham down south – but at least I feel like I’m doing something to help, and sometimes, when we sit out on the grass on tea break, we feel quite happy. I know we shouldn’t because there’s a war on, but Ivy Markham says you can’t be maudlin all the time. We all feel terrible when one of the girls gets the King’s Telegram. Oh, that’s so awful, Teddy. We don’t know what to say and I know everyone else feels the same as I do deep down – relieved that it wasn’t news about our own, and that’s an awful thing to think when someone’s just lost somebody dear to them.
I’ll try to write with happier news next time. Mam says I shouldn’t be telling you sad things. She says the job of the women back home is to cheer you all up.
Your Little Thing,
Dolly
X
P.S. the camera arrived safely. I think you are right to send it back, considering the ban from the War Office. It would be silly to get into trouble if your officers found that you still had one, and worse still if it fell into enemy hands. I’ll keep it safe until you come home.
The room is silent apart from the occasional cough from another patient. I look out at the distant chimney pots of the factories, reaching up toward the clouds like grubby fingers. The nurse tells me they made bombs in that factory during the war. They make ladies’ gloves there now. Sometimes it all seems so pointless.
‘Another letter?’ she asks.
I shake my head. What’s the point? She must have read these letters to me a dozen times and still I cannot remember this girl called Dolly who says such nice things. I hold out my hand and take the pages from her. They are watermarked and stained with the filth of war. She told me they were found in the breast pocket of my greatcoat. A great bundle of them, carried against my heart. I fold the pages as neatly as I can, following the worn creases. The tremble in my hands makes hard work of what would once have been such a simple task.
She takes the pages from me and pats my hand. ‘Tea?’
I nod.
‘Two lumps?’
I nod again. I can remember that much, two lumps of sugar in my tea. I can remember the name of my cat, the date of my mother’s birthday, how to make a corn dolly. Trivial things. Everything else is a distant fog, my once apparently happy life slowly erased by years of war until I am left only with the nightmares that haunt me.
The doctors are troubled by my condition. They prod me and poke me and write things down. Words I don’t understand for a condition they don’t understand: delusions, hallucinations, hysterical mutism. I’ve seen their notes. But despite their many treatments – hypnosis, electric shock, basket making, warm baths – they can’t make me better and they won’t send me home. They have labelled me ‘Not Yet Diagnosed, Nervous’. A fancy name for what the men called shell shock. We all knew someone who was sent back from the front, suffering with their nerves. Lacking Moral Fibre, was another label the officers stuck on it. The young lad in the bed beside me says I need to pull myself together, that if I keep screaming at night and talking about the things I’ve seen they’ll send me off to the county asylum. And this girl in the letters, this Dolly, she tells me of so many wonderful things I have seen and done. It seems such a shame that I can’t do them anymore.
The guns are silent, but I am still fighting my war.
It is all I have now. War, the nurse, and the butterfly at the window.
6
Dolly
‘You look at things. Imagine things. I bet you see shapes in the clouds.’
The hotel room is dark and unfamiliar when I wake. I lie still, listening to the rise and fall of the girls’ breaths, the pop of a mattress spring as they move, the rustle of bedsheets as they fidget in their sleep. It is all so strange and new. I didn’t think I would ever miss Clover’s snoring, but I do. I hear other noises as the hotel wakes up: the rush of water through distant pipes, the yawn of a straining floorboard overhead, the whistle of a porter, the jangle of milk bottles in the courtyard below the window. I think of the sounds I woke to in Mawdesley: the cockerel, the wind in the eaves, the knock knock knock of the wonky leg at the kitchen table as Mam scrubbed it with sugar and soap until her fingers bled. She scrubbed that table for weeks, as though she might somehow scrub away the words on the telegram that told her my father had fallen in the line of duty. That relentless knocking became the sound of our grief until I couldn’t bear it any longer and propped up the wonky table leg with The Adventure Book for Girls. The knocking stopped. Mam’s tears continued. I had nothing to prop her up with.
Instinctively, I reach beneath my pillow for the photograph but my fingertips find the pages of music. The touch of them reminds me: grey eyes, russet hair, a moment of something unspoken. I think about the music on the pages; unplayed, unloved. It nags at me like an itch I can’t scratch. I feel again for the photograph and take it from its hiding place, pressing it against my chest as I pull back the bedcovers, wrap a blanket around my shoulders, and creep across the cold floor to the window. The gas lamps cast an eerie glow over the courtyard at the back of the kitchens, lending just enough light to the room for me to see his face. My heart collapses at the sight of him. So many questions I can’t answer. So much pain. So much hurt and anger – and yet still so much love; an instinctive yearning to hold him in my arms. I clutch him tight to my chest, just as I did the day the photograph was taken. If only I could feel the warmth of him once more. That would be enough.
Beneath the window, porters and deliverymen are lifting supplies off wagons and carts after their trip to the markets. They work quickly, the men on the carts tossing pallets of fruit and vegetables to the next man, and on down the line. A rotten tomato lands on someone’s head and I smile as the unlucky recipient throws one back in reply. Soon everyone is pelting each other with whatever they can grab: oranges, lemons, walnuts. ‘Silly buggers,’ I whisper.
A mattress spring pops behind me. I look round to see Sissy sitting up in bed watching me. I startle at the sight of her, making us both giggle.
‘What are you doing?’ she whispers.
‘Looking.’
‘At what?’
I shrug. ‘Nothing much.’
She wraps her blanket around her shoulders and joins me at the window. We stand for a moment, our foreheads pressed against the cold glass as we watch the porters larking about.
‘You’re a dreamer, aren’t you, Dolly.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You look at things. Imagine things. I bet you see shapes in the clouds.’
She is right. I do.
We watch as the lamplighter makes his way along the street with his long pole and ladder, extinguishing the lamps as a dove-grey dawn settles across the sky.
‘Did you lose someone?’ she asks.
I falter. What is the definition of loss? I place my fingertip on the glass, drawing patterns into the condensation formed from our breaths. ‘Yes.’
‘Me too. The Somme. He’d only been there a couple of months. My brother, Davey.’ She turns and points to the photograph on her nightstand. ‘That’s him. Handsome bugger.’
I place my hand on hers. ‘I’m sorry.’ It never sounds enough.
‘Left a wife and two babies, a mother, and a sister. We’re all sorry. His missus says she could bear it a little more if he’d written a good-bye. But there was no last letter in his pocket. Not our Davey. He wasn’t one for words or soppy sentiments.’ She draws a heart onto the glass and we watch as it fades away. ‘What about yours? How did he die?’
Our conversation is interrupted as something lands with a clatter against the glass, making us both scream and jump backwards. We peer down to see one of the porters grinning up at us. He has a handful of walnuts and sends another rattling against the window.