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Chapter 2

Summer 1916

I must begin with leaving England, I suppose, and with my father, even if normally I try my best to avoid thinking of him. Only today, and yesterday – in the midst of so much happiness – suddenly I discover I can hardly keep him from my mind.

Papa must have drawn the sketch of me from memory, alone in that awful boarding-house. He must have drawn it at the very end, when I half believed he was capable of nothing. In any case, even if there had never been the sketch, and Rudy never had kept it all this time, and never had shown it to me as he did, only yesterday – and taken the wind from my lungs, so that I thought I might drown – I must still remember him. Because in spite of everything he was a wonderful man – and I loved him. I loved him dreadfully.

Papa and I were only ever meant to come to America for a short while. It was summer 1916, and since neither of us was much able to make a contribution of our own, we thought we would leave the war behind, which had already taken my brother, and my father could finally start to work again.

The trip was another of Papa’s Big Ideas; it was the Big Idea, like all the others before it, which was finally going to rescue us. We believed it, he and I.

We embarked on that long voyage – the one that was going to save us – with only each other in the world to care for. I had no memory of having met our American benefactor, John de Saulles, whom my father assured me would be waiting for us at the other end. But Papa swore we had been introduced in the spring, at the Chelsea Arts Club, where my father and I used to spend so many evenings together. He tended to forget that during those long nights I often used to peel off on my own, hide away and read or, more often, simply fall asleep.

They were like peas in a pod, the two of them: utterly feckless, and hopelessly, faithlessly – lethally – addicted to a certain type of woman. Mr de Saulles had been in London the previous few months, on some sort of business, I don’t recall what. It happened to coincide with a time when my father was especially desperate for money, having blown his last of everything, once again, on who knows what? Mr de Saulles had visited Papa’s rented studio, and after plenty of bartering (something Papa took a great and uncharacteristic pleasure in), my father had made a painting of Mr de Saulles, in exchange for which Mr de Saulles had not only provided the paints (or so I assumed, since Papa was often so broke he was unable to finish a work for lack of materials) but also paid for his and my passage, second class, to America.

Mr de Saulles wanted Papa to paint his wife, a celebrated beauty. Also his mistress, a celebrated professional tango dancer (named Joan Sawyer. I was quite a dance fanatic back then and I had read about her, even in England). Since, by then, Papa had infuriated virtually everybody who might have been inclined to employ him in London, either by delivering botch jobs horribly late or – more often – by taking the money but failing to deliver anything at all, and since, with the war, portraiture was not in very high demand in London at the time, and since Papa was almost certainly broken-hearted again, we took up the offer.

The tickets were hand delivered to Papa’s rented studio on 27 July 1916. On 6 August, we had packed up our few possessions and boarded the great Mauretania for New York.

I shall never forget how the two of us stood on deck, quite silent, as that vast ship pulled slowly out to sea. Side by side, we stood, surrounded by noise: the ground-shattering bellow of the ship’s horn, the whistling and weeping and the weeping and cheering of passengers on either side of us, and from the decks above and below us; and together we looked back at the Liverpool dock, where not a soul in the great waving crowd was weeping or whistling for us . . . It seemed unimaginable to me then that we would not return to England again.

In any case, we watched until we could no longer make out the faces on shore. I was tearful, feverish – half wild with every crazy emotion – grieving for my brother and my unremembered mother, and for England, and for myself a little.

I longed to speak, but couldn’t quite summon the confidence. So it was Papa in the end, with one of his heavy, melancholic sighs, who finally broke our long silence.

Ah, well, he said.

And he turned away. From me. From the shore. From everything he and I had ever known. My father presented himself as a man of the world, and he was, I suppose, in a way. But he had never left England before, so perhaps he was afraid. Or perhaps he already knew, as I didn’t yet, that the wonderful, whimsical era of Marcus Doyle and his Big Ideas was edging ever closer to its tired and unfulfilled finale.

Or perhaps he might have been searching for somebody in the crowd, hoping until the last minute that some beautiful, familiar woman might appear from the midst of it and beg him to turn back again. Poor Papa. Since ever I can remember there was always a woman, always absurdly beautiful, always breaking his selfish, silly, fragile heart.

I said, impertinently, because usually it lifted him a little when I was pert, and in any case I needed to talk – to say anything, just to make a noise, ‘You oughtn’t to worry, Papa. I understand there are ladies galore in the city of New York. Some of them quite intelligent. And not all of them hideous.’

He smiled rather weakly. ‘Thank you, Lola. You’re very kind.’

Papa used to call me Lola. I never knew why. He didn’t like the name Jennifer, I suppose. It’s why I chose it, of course. When the choice was mine.

‘But, Papa, you may find them alarming at first,’ I continued facetiously. ‘Mostly they are entirely fixated with the vote. So I read. Much more so than the average Englishwoman. You may have to become a “suffragist” if you’re to make any progress with the American girls.’

He laughed at that. Which thrilled me. He ruffled my careful, seventeen-year-old hair, which, I remember, thrilled me rather less. ‘Come with me, my silly friend,’ he said to me. ‘Come and entertain me, will you, Lola? While I get myself a little stinko.’

It was how we spent the voyage. It was how Papa and I spent the greater part of all our time together actually, once my brother had died – or since probably long before: since Mother died and Marcus was away at school and it was always just the two of us, on our own, with him a little stinko, and me trying my darnedest to keep his melancholy at bay.

Dear God, this heat! This sticky, dirty, airless warmth. So much is different since I left the city all those years ago, but the New York summers don’t change. They remind me of August at Roslyn. It reminds of everything I would most like to forget.

I am writing this in a wretched little café just a couple of blocks from my own flophouse . . . Oh, and what a come-down it is! The Ambassador Hotel has its own air-cooling system – of course. As one might expect of such an ultra fine and modern hotel. It lent Rudy and me a magic, secret climate of our own, up there in our private paradise. I had forgotten what the rest of Manhattan was enduring. – Not that I care! Nothing in the world could bring me down tonight—

Ah! The little dooge has come with my eggs at last. I thought I might die from hunger . . . devilled eggs and buttered toast . . . I never saw a more welcome sight! And more coffee, too. And I have asked him to bring me a large slice of chocolate cake and some fruit Jell-O. And some ginger ale and some vanilla ice cream. And more toast. Good God, I’m so hungry I could swallow the whole of it in a single mouthful then order it all again – except I’m not sure I have enough money in my purse.

Is he thinking of me?

Is he thinking of me now?

But if I continue along those lines I shan’t be able to eat a thing, and it’s hopeless, because I must or I shall probably faint in this dreadful heat. I’ve hardly eaten for days. It would be too horribly embarrassing.

I must keep writing. About the beginning – when Papa was still here, and it was only the two of us, thrown together on that great big ship, setting off to start our new life together.

It’s strange. I’ve not dwelled – purposely not dwelled – on the beginning, not for all these years, and yet suddenly, tonight, it comes to me in a rush, as vivid as yesterday. I remember what I was wearing – the little shirtwaist with the embroidered daisies at the buttonhole . . . I remember that, and how splendid I felt in it. I remember the feel of my new rabbit-skin stole, too hot for the day, but which I wore because Papa had only given it me the day before, when I was crying because we were leaving our home. (And I’m convinced, by the way, that he had always intended to give it to another girl entirely. He looked quite rueful as he handed it over.)

I remember what Papa was wearing, too. He was a handsome man: tall and slim and athletic-looking, with eyes of dark blue and thick, golden-brown hair – speckled grey, by then, I suppose, but always golden brown in my memory. I’ve said he was a handsome man: perhaps it’s an immodest moment to observe that he and I looked rather alike. We have the same colouring and similar build. The same nose – it looks better on a man – straight and long; the same square, determined jaw; the same dark blue eyes and angular face.

He was elegant – always. I remember the jaunty angle of his boater hat, and the familiar hint of his cologne as we stood side by side on that vast deck, and the smell of the crumpled pink azalea in his lapel. He had taken it from Chelsea at the crack of dawn that same morning, just as we were leaving our rented cottage for the last time – plucked it, with that roguish laugh, from the front garden of Mr Brampton next door. It was an act of half-hearted defiance, of course, of playfulness and sentimentality, which was somehow typical of my father. My wonderful, magical, wicked, feckless, faithless father. I miss him. God, I miss him still.

– – –

So, our vast ship slipped away from England and the war, and five days followed, surrounded by sea: long, strange, empty days they were; and while my father drank, and charmed our fellow passengers with his usual elegance and wit, I talked too much – couldn’t stop myself – and mostly sent them scurrying away.

The sixth morning dawned at last, not a moment too soon: Papa and I were setting each other on edge. I could feel his impatience – the suffocating coat of boredom that wrapped every word when he addressed me. And there was something else too, perhaps, now that I think about it. He had grown increasingly ill-tempered as the journey progressed. I would glimpse him sometimes, gazing at me as a prisoner might gaze at their jailer, as if culpability for everything – all his torment, all the little irritations of our journey, the sourness of his wine, pain in his toe, the ache in his heart and head – should be laid somehow at my door.

In any case I left him at his breakfast table that final morning, not eating, since he never much ate, mostly muttering to himself about the horridness of all things American. I left him alone and joined the other passengers on deck to catch a first view of land.

Oh! I will never forget it! That first thrilling glimpse of Manhattan – how it rose from the golden haze; glistening with boastfulness in the dawn light – it moved me in a way nothing in old England ever could . . . I had imagined ‘skyscrapers’; Father and I had discussed them at length (he detested the mere notion) but to see them in reality, soaring triumphantly against that pink morning sky, so proud, so ambitious, so completely extraordinary – I had never in my life seen a sight so beautiful. Even today they take my breath away.

My father, when he finally emerged on deck, decreed them ‘hideous’, just as I had known he would: ‘If the good Lord, in his infinite wisdom, had wanted us to live suspended in midair in that undignified fashion,’ he said, scowling across the water, ‘he’d have given us wings.’ After I failed to respond to that, Papa wandered back to his empty dining-table, I think, and I stayed where I was until we docked.

And then what? A blur of everything, I suppose: a whole lot of noise and energy and mad confusion . . . Papa coming to life at last, striding importantly off the ship as if poor, wretched New York couldn’t possibly be expected to survive without him a moment longer . . . And me, left behind again, organising our paltry luggage, coming ashore and searching desperately for him through the crowd.

It was a sweltering morning, and the pier was teeming; a monstrous, roaring jumble – or jungle, it seemed to me – of steam and smoke; motor-cars and carriages, porters, passengers and officials; and the clatter of horses’ hoofs and the spluttering of automobile engines, and above it all, the constant hammer and crash of construction, here and there and everywhere, and far off in the distance, from towering metal skeletons, there were little men, like insects in a spider’s web, riveting together more buildings to add to the madness of that crazy, beautiful skyline . . . So, we stood there, waiting, jostled this way and that: the failed English Portraitist, who drank too much, and the Failure’s daughter; I was mesmerised by the little men in their metal webs – I was mesmerised by it all. But, of course, I was lucky. I was young and – unlike my father – I had never really shone, so could never feel the shock of my insignificance quite as he must have felt it that morning. I think perhaps it frightened him, to feel so utterly, infinitesimally small.

After what felt a long while, with the two of us standing there – dumb and simply staring – I dared to ask my father if perhaps our mysterious benefactor had provided us with an address. Papa began to rifle half-heartedly through the pockets of his linen coat. But he seemed to be on edge. Even more so than before. He kept glancing at me, as if on the point of saying something, only to lose his nerve and fall silent again. Finally I asked him what was the matter. Had he lost the address? Was his friend not likely to come? Did his friend, perhaps, not even exist?

He looked pained.

‘Lola, old girl,’ he said, at last (and I knew at once we were in trouble. He only ever called me ‘old girl’ when he had something dreadful to say). ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. The, er . . . that is – the, er . . . As you know—’ Abruptly, he stopped patting his pockets, straightened up and looked at me.

He looked– what did he look? What did you look, Papa, just that instant before? Sorry? . . . Yes, I think so . . . Shamefaced? . . . Gosh, yes. Like an animal caught in a trap. ‘Dear girl,’ he said – boomed, rather, over all the noise. ‘I am not – that is to say, we – we, you and I, are not blessed with a pecuniary – pecuniary . . . How does one put it?’ He took a breath and tried again. ‘The time has come, old girl, now that you’re – we’re – now that we’ve arrived here, adults, and so on . . . The time has come for the two of us to address the perennial deficiency of funds at Ranch Doyle, such ranch that it is . . . Peripatetic ranch . . . and so on. It is, or has been, as you may or may not be aware, a constant struggle for your old papa to keep ahead of things . . . ’

Ahead of things! My poor father! I’m ashamed to say I laughed.

‘It has been a constant struggle to stay ahead of matters. And now that you yourself are a young lady – and a remarkable young lady, I may add – I was rather beginning to think . . . that is to say . . . What I have done . . . Oh, Lord . . . Perhaps I should have mentioned it earlier . . . ’

I began to feel a little sick. ‘Papa, for Heaven’s sake . . . ’ Over all the noise my voice was barely audible even to myself. ‘For Heaven’s sake, tell me – what should you have mentioned earlier?’

‘Only I didn’t feel it would be very pleasant to disrupt our very pleasant journey . . . What I have done, old girl, may take you a little by surprise. But I assure you in the long run it is with your own interests very much in my mind . . . at the forefront of my mind . . . that I have rather taken the matter of the, er, perennial pecuniary deficiency at our albeit rather peripatetic ranch into a new dimension . . . a new chapter, so to speak. That is to say . . . Lola, darling, when my kind friend Mr de Saulles offered to – ship us out here, he very sweetly made a suggestion regarding your own future, which I’m certain – I’m absolutely convinced—’

‘Misster Doyles? Misster Marquis Doyles?’

A strange man was peering down at my father. He was pale and extraordinarily tall, with white-blond hair slicked back from a huge, worried face, and a long chin that curved disconcertingly to one side. He was in his forties, possibly fifties; ageless, actually. And he was frowning – that eyebrowless frown with which I would grow so familiar.

There weren’t many who could peer down at Papa. Justin Hademak, the crazy Swede, must have been six and a half foot or more. He was a giant. ‘Misster Doyles?’ he repeated. ‘Iss it you?’

‘Aha!’ exclaimed my father, joyously, noticing him at last. ‘Saved by the bell. So to speak.’

‘You are Mr Doyles?’

‘Marcus Doyle. At your service. Jolly clever of you to spot us. You’re rather late. But no matter.’

‘Of courses.’ The giant bowed his head – it was absurdly formal – and flashed an unlikely smile. ‘I apologise. Unfortunately, at the moment of leaving, the mistress suddenly required the motor-car . . . with utmost urgency ...’

‘Don’t think about it for a second, old chap,’ my amiable father assured him. ‘When a lady requires a motor-car, she requires a motor-car!’

‘I am sent by Mr de Saulles,’ he continued, my father’s charm or humour – or whatever it was – quite lost on him, ‘but I am right to think you are indeed the portrait painter? It is important I locate him correctly. You are the renowned portrait painter from England, coming to America on the appointment of Mr John Longer de Saulles?’

‘I do solemnly declare that I am he,’ said my father. ‘Back me up, Lola, won’t you?’ he stage-whispered to me, above all the racket. ‘I’m not certain he believes me.’

‘And you are the daughter?’ said Mr Hademak.

I nodded.

‘You know, I’m almost certain de Saulles sent me a bit of paper, with all the particulars and so on, and I think he may even have mentioned you . . . a tall gentleman . . . ’ My father was patting his pockets again. ‘ . . . only it seems to have disappeared. Lola, do you suppose I may have given it to you?’

There was no opportunity to reply. Mr Hademak had taken a brief look at our travelling trunk and, in one easy swoop, bent from his freakish height, lifted it onto his shoulders and lurched headlong into the crowd. We had little choice but to end our conversation and follow him.

‘I am to put Mr Doyle into a motor vehicle and send him to Mr de Saulles in the city,’ the man shouted behind him. ‘Mr de Saulles is most impatient to see you again, Mr Doyle. You are to lunch together at Sherry’s, and afterward to join Mrs de Saulles for dinner at The Box . . . And the daughter . . . ’ he glanced back at me, not with any hostility, or with the slightest hint of interest ‘ . . . Mr de Saulles says you are to drive with me to The Box directly. The mistress wants . . . that is to say she doesn’t want . . . ’ He tailed off. ‘You are supposed,’ he tried again, ‘to begin your employment at once.’

‘To begin my . . . ’ I think I may even have laughed. ‘Papa?’ I turned to him. He looked away. ‘My employment . . . as what?’

‘Not quite employment . . . ’ my father muttered sheepishly. ‘Only the poor little chap’s got a Spanish accent, Lola. Y’see . . . That’s the thing. And he’s only four. Or nine. Or something frightful. He terribly needs someone to talk to . . . And then there’s dear Mrs de Saulles, hardly much older than you are, Lola, miles away from her native land and abysmally lonely most of the time. It’ll only be for a couple of months . . . ’

I didn’t say anything. I was too shocked – I had no idea what to say. I remember my silence seemed to annoy him. ‘Really, Jennifer, darling,’ he began to sound slightly peevish, ‘there’s no need to pull that long face. They’re excellent people. My friend Jack de Saulles is . . . top notch. And Mrs de Saulles comes from one of the most spectacular families in Chile. In fact I have a feeling her uncle might even be President. For example. And if he isn’t he certainly ought to be. In any case, darling, even if he isn’t, I don’t think you should complain when I arranged it all so nicely for you . . . Entirely because I was so utterly convinced you would enjoy yourself . . . ’

‘So . . . But we shall be living in different places?’

I could feel him itching to slide away from it all. How he longed for this conversation to be over! ‘Yes and no. That is to say, I shall be in the city mostly, at their apartment. But it’s all part of the same family. And I shall be travelling to see you during the week, of course. Or as often as I can . . . It’s really not far at all from New York. Only an hour or so by the train, Jack tells me . . . In any case it’s hardly up to me, is it?’

It seems ridiculous, I suppose, because I was a grown woman, with a father who was constantly broke, and of course I hadn’t a penny of my own – but it had never passed through my head, never, not even for a moment, that I should play any role during our great American adventure beyond the one I had always played: that is to say, to be hanging about with Papa in a daughterly fashion and occasionally slipping off to fall asleep.

But it was not to be. And why should it have been? No reason. One cannot remain a child for ever. Only I had been his constant companion for as long as I could remember. And the news that we were to separate came as a dreadful shock. I suppose, if I wish anything, I wish he’d had the courage to break the news to me a little earlier, so that I might at least have had time to prepare myself . . . It’s too bad. It doesn’t matter now, in any case. In fact, I am grateful it happened, and not simply because it allowed me to meet Rudy.

However, I was not grateful then. As I stood there on that crazy, bustling, deafening pier, the thought of being apart not just from my home but from the only person in the world I loved, or who loved me, filled me with nothing but a clammy dread. I looked across at Papa – still hoping, I think, that his face might break into one of those wonderful, wicked grins, that he might slap me on the back, as he did sometimes, always much too hard, and laugh, and tell me he was teasing.

But he didn’t look at me. Carefully didn’t look at me, I think. ‘Righty-ho!’ he said. ‘Jolly good. Well, take good care of my little Jennifer, won’t you, Mr . . . Mr . . . ’

‘Hademak. Justin Hademak. From Sweden . . . ’

‘Hademak. Of course you are. From Sweden. How delightful. Lovely. Well, jolly good.’

Mr Hademak put my father into a taxicab. Papa and I kissed each other briefly, without eye contact. I was afraid I would cry. He muttered something – good luck, old girl – something feeble, and not in the least up to the occasion. I didn’t reply. Couldn’t. And then, as he was driven away, he turned back to me.

I remember his expression, I see it now: it was as if he was apologising, and not just for this unfortunate incident but for everything. He looked awful: like someone else entirely – someone so old and so exhausted with the disappointment of himself it allowed me, briefly, to forget my own abandonment, and wonder, for the first time, what might become of him without me. He needed me more than either of us realised, I think. The sight of him, shrinking into the chaos, tore at my heart. It still does. He lifted his hat to me through the glass, and I think he whispered, Sorry. If he did, it was the first and last time . . . He never apologised to me again. Never. And he left me there, alone, with the giant from Sweden.

After Papa had disappeared into the great cloud of the city, Mr Hademak became (if it were possible) even more frantic than previously. Afterwards, when I knew him a little better, I wondered if he hadn’t done it on purpose, charged on ahead in that crazy way, yelling out instructions and so on, if not as a kindness to me then at least to avoid the embarrassment of having to witness my collapsing into tears. I might have done it too – collapsed, that is – if he’d allowed me a moment to pause. I’m not at all sure I would have held myself together.

‘Excellent,’ he declared, without looking at me – with the trunk still balanced high on his shoulder. ‘We must get over to the island right away.’ (Ellis Island, he meant, of course: which island we had passed as we came in; and where the steerage passengers disembarked to have their immigration papers checked. And their hair checked, for lice, I think, too.) ‘We must get over there quickly, though, Miss Doyle . . . So keep up!’ I had to run to stay apace. ‘We have to pick out a new maid. You must help me with that, young lady. They’re all rotten. Since the war we only get now the bad eggs. But we mustn’t fuss. Madame wants her motor-car outside the home . . . So we must pick out the first one we see who looks at all good. It doesn’t matter a spot anyway. They never do stay long . . . ’

The journey to Ellis Island took our little boat back towards the great statue that had so exhilarated me only an hour or so before; the freedom it celebrated seemed to have taken on a more menacing significance since then. Liberty was more than simply an idea suddenly, and how I longed to have a little less!

In any case, we bobbed along, Mr Hademak and I. Mr Hademak was too impatient to wait for the little boat to dock and he disembarked, with those ridiculous spider legs, when there was still a yard or two of water before the quay. And then, even before his foot had touched solid land, he announced as loudly as possible to the milling crowd that he was looking for a housemaid.

Immediately the crowd surged forward but it only infuriated him. ‘No, no, no!’ he snapped. ‘Get off! Get away! No gentlemen today. Are there any Irish about?’ Then, momentarily cornered by the swell, he turned to me. ‘Miss Doyle,’ he bellowed over their heads, ‘don’t just stand there. Find us a girl! And a sweet one, mind. Madame hates them to look drab. Over there! See?’ He pointed behind me. ‘See the little group of Paddies over there? See the young one, with that terribly mad hair?’

The one with the hair – the unmissable, magnificent, golden-russet curls – was a girl of my age, maybe a little older. She was sitting on a black tin suitcase, slightly apart from the others, her sharp face turned towards us. She examined the blond giant, then looked at me. I smiled at her but she didn’t smile back.

‘THAT one!’ he shouted at me, pointing irritably, batting the people away. ‘With the mad, mad hair. YOU!’ he yelled at her.

The girl looked back at him.

‘Ask her if she’s looking for some work. DO IT!’ he shouted. ‘Before someone else takes her! The good ones get stolen too quickly.’

So I turned to her, very embarrassed. ‘The gentleman . . . you probably heard him. He wants to know if you’re— ’

‘Is it board, too?’

‘Why, yess! Most certainly it iss!’ Mr Hademak cried, bearing down on us, his long white face sweating with the effort of having shaken himself loose at last. ‘It is board. And a nice job, too. Twelve dollars a week. Better than you’ll get anywhere else. With days off. Two days a month off! Do you want it, young lady? No or yes?’

She laughed. ‘Do I want it?’ She held out a hand to us, and I can picture her face now, the relief in her eyes, even while she was trying to hide it.

‘You have family?’

‘Back in Ireland. I’m here on my own.’

‘Good. Like the rest of us, then.’ He glanced at me, rather shyly, I think. Perhaps, even, with a whisper of a smile. ‘Welcome to America, young lady. You have your papers?’

She nodded. ‘I was only waiting for a ride to take me to the city.’

‘Well, come along, then. Follow me. Hurry now. We can tell ourselves about names and everything else like that in the motor-car. Only we must hurry.’

He drove us at breakneck speed. It was all so new to me and yet, at the time, I was too wrapped in my miserable thoughts to take much notice. I suppose, before long, we had left Manhattan – I remember nothing of it, only the three of us tearing over a long, straight, impeccably smooth road to Long Island; a road that Mr Hademak was pleased to tell us had been built by a rich man as a car-racing track – until, after however many deaths, the racing drivers had refused to use it any more. He had cackled as he told us this, shaken his head at their eccentricity, and proceeded to drive faster along that dangerous road than I had – or have – ever travelled. Mr Hademak spent most of the journey shouting at us over the din of the engine. It made the veins stick out on his neck.

‘Well well well . . . it is quite a household you ladies are coming to. Miss Doyle – I don’t know what you may know of it already?’

‘Almost nothing,’ I replied bitterly.

‘Quite a household,’ he continued blithely. ‘We have some quite colourful individuals who come our way. Oh, yes, we are quite the entertainers at The Box – as our little house is called. You will be most amused!’

Amused? It seemed unlikely. Amused? To have travelled so far, so full of fear and hope, only to be abandoned? To have arrived in that mythical new city at last, only to be whisked away from it? Actually, at that moment, I felt not so much amused, but as if a great wave of self-pity were enveloping me and, I’m ashamed to admit, tears were already stinging. I’m not sure I had ever felt so lonesome in my life.

Fortunately, neither Mr Hademak nor the Irish girl – Madeleine – seemed to notice.

‘First, we have the master of the house,’ he announced, as the car flew on, swerving aimlessly from one side of the road to the other. Mr Hademak, bolt upright at the wheel, smiled secretly to himself, and I wondered if, after so many trouble-free days at sea, I might finally be travel sick. ‘Yes, indeed,’ he said, ‘and the master is truly quite some gentleman . . . And then we haf the little boy, of course – Jack Junior. Little Jack! Oh, but you will adore him! Quite the little man, he is! He is quite the little master! We all simply adore him. All the servants, and his papa and his mama too. He’s everybody’s favourite! Every single body in our happy little big house just so simply adores him—’

Suddenly Madeleine, the Irish girl, gave a loud and derisive snort. I stared at her. Last she’d spoken, she’d been telling us, with eyes lowered and trembling lip, how she’d come to America alone because her husband had been killed in the French trenches (later she told me she’d never been married: she’d been found in bed with the priest and hounded out of town). She seemed to have forgotten her grief quickly enough. She glanced at me and rolled her eyes, and it goes to show what sort of a hysterical mind I was in, because the next thing, with tears of self-pity still pricking my eyeballs, I was shaking with quiet giggles.

‘But you mustn’t think our life is only about the Little Man,’ Mr Hademak continued cheerfully. ‘Also we are quite the fashionable gathering. Though sometimes, when Madame is in the city, we are just the two of us: Father and Little Man. And then sometimes it is Mother and Little Man, when Mr de Saulles is in town. And then we have Madame and her amusing friends. Or Mr de Saulles and his amusing friends. Or Mr and Mrs de Saulles and their amusing friends. Yes, yes – it is all most amusing . . . We have counts and countesses of Europe. And Mr de Saulles sometimes brings along his Broadway – connections. And how lively they are! And even some of the stars from the pictures! No, no, not quite Miss Mary Pickford! Not quite yet! But we have an English duke. An English duke! And we have so many others. Dancers. Politicians . . . You might have read about them all quite often. In the yellow papers. Yess . . . ’ It was Mr Hademak’s turn to laugh helplessly. He rocked on his bony backside, this way, then that.

‘Sometimes,’ he continued finally, ‘I wonder if I know more about these fashionable individuals than they even quite know themselves . . . We are quite the fast set at The Box, you will discover. Oh, you will be most amused.’

‘And if you’ll excuse me for asking,’ interjected Madeleine, suddenly, ‘only I’m wondering – what’s the mistress like?’

–Ha. And if I had known the answer to that – would I have stopped the car?

Would I have thrown myself out onto that racing drivers’ rejected MotorParkway right there and then, hitched a lift with whatever vehicle came along, hauled my father from his delightful lunch at Sherry’s, and taken whatever employment anyone offered me? Perhaps.

She destroyed my father – what there was left of him to destroy. And she haunts me still – there’s barely a day goes by I don’t think of her, of the part I played or didn’t play, of what I saw and said, and didn’t see and should have said . . .

On the other hand, without her, I would never have befriended Rudy. Or ever have travelled to Hollywood. Nor Rudy either. Imagine that! Then who would the readers of Photoplay be drooling over at nights? Perhaps, in spite of everything, I should be grateful to her. Well, and maybe I am, but I hope she burns in any case – if not at Sing Sing, then in Hell when she finally gets there.

– – –

‘What’s the mistress like?’ asked Madeleine.

And I swear Mr Hademak blushed.

Dear God – three in the morning already, and still too damn hot to sleep! I have been writing all night so my arm is swollen. And my head is burning and my eyeballs ache . . . but I can’t stop. Not yet. Not until I reach the moment where Rudy and I are there in the garden, and we are standing in silence together, listening to the music, and I am wondering about Papa, and where he is, and worrying a little about his newest infatuation, but not as much as I ordinarily would because how can I when Mr Guglielmi – Rudy – is standing so very close beside me? And I don’t believe I have ever glimpsed a more handsome, more dazzling man in all my life.

And then he turns to me and he says, ‘It’s beautiful music, isn’t it?’ And his voice – his Italian accent was much stronger then but his voice was the same: that low, dark, beautiful voice. I can feel it through me. I didn’t recognise the music. I’m not sure that I had even fully noticed it was playing. And he smiled at me, and I thought how sad he must have looked before because the smile had such an effect, as if his face had been illuminated by a thousand million electric light bulbs, and he said, ‘Do you like to dance, Jenny?’

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

Rodolfo Guglielmi was a professional dancer then: a dancer-for-hire. When the papers wrote about him – because of the divorce – they called him a lot of hateful names, and of course they still do. And of course he was no angel then. He is a long way from being an angel now, I suppose. But, Hell, which of us isn’t?

When he danced it was as if he moved through a different space from the rest of us: as if the air carried him; as if he had no weight at all. So I danced with him, still in my travelling clothes, in the moonlight, and with the music seeping through the warm night air. And I thought – I remember it so clearly – I thought, This is Life! Now I am truly alive . . .

What a gorgeous, magical place is this America!

– – –

Justin Hademak said it again, as we were turning into its long drive: ‘We are quite the fast set at The Box you will discover.’ It didn’t surprise me, knowing my father and the people he normally consorted with. Actually I would have been surprised if they had been anything else.

Nevertheless there certainly wasn’t anything very fast about Mrs Blanca de Saulles that afternoon. We arrived by a side door – Mr Hademak made us tiptoe into the back lobby, and he closed the door behind us as if a lion and her cubs were sleeping on the other side.

‘Sssh!’ he ordered. We hadn’t made a sound.

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.

Then the music stopped, and we were returned to earth. Mr de Saulles, with glassy-eyed determination, stepped forward to dance with Miss Sawyer; Mr Guglielmi melted away, ignored by everyone, except Mrs de Saulles, who didn’t take her eyes from him – and even before her husband and Miss Sawyer had reached the centre of the room Mr Hademak was at the Victrola, setting the needle to the start again.

Before long most of them were dancing – at least, in a manner of speaking. The chubby duke stood swaying, all alone, his glazed eyes roaming over Miss Sawyer; the waxy man and the trouser girl were clasping each other tight, rocking one way and another in a grim effort to respond to the beat or perhaps simply to stay upright. And then the yellow couple joined them, and a few others, until, of all the guests who remained awake, only Mrs de Saulles and my father remained seated. He was leaning towards her, imploring her; she gazed steadfastly at Rudy. My father leaned closer, imploring harder still. She barely bothered to shake her head. Poor Papa. Women adored him, usually, at least at first. It was painful to see, and I looked away.

Rudy – Mr Guglielmi – stood slightly apart, in the corner of the room closest to where I was. I watched him watching them; he looked thoughtful, I remember – perhaps even a little melancholy. And then suddenly he spun away from them all, and the next thing I knew he was walking directly towards me.

I jumped, flattened myself further into the frame of the house. As he stepped out through the french windows and onto the veranda I could feel the breeze of it on my face – I could smell his cologne. He passed me, crossed to the edge of the porch, leaned a shoulder against the trellises and, looking out over the moonlit garden, pulled out a cigarette.

I could hear my own heart beating. The sound of my shallow, panicky breath was half deafening to me. It seemed inexplicable that he couldn’t hear it, but he gave no indication. So, trapped between wall and open french window, and horribly conscious of the moonlight shining on my pale dress, I could do nothing but stand and watch.

I watched him pull the cigarette lighter from his pocket. Watched the flare as he put flame to cigarette, watched as he inhaled and exhaled and the smoke floated out into the night. I watched him and wondered how such a very simple act could be so imbued with grace that it became quite mesmerising. He was mesmerising.

He sighed, and it was all I could do not to burst from the shadow right there and throw my arms around him. Actually I might have done – he looked so horribly melancholy, standing there, except I heard footsteps.

A woman’s footsteps, light and hurried, coming from the side of the house whence I had crept what felt like such an age before. I could do nothing but squeeze myself closer to the wall and pray – something I rarely did, even then.

I guess I needn’t have bothered, so fixed was she on her goal. It was clear to me from the instant Mrs de Saulles appeared that I might have been an almighty elephant and she wouldn’t have noticed it. She tripped up the steps onto the porch, full of purpose, and from the expression on her face she seemed a different woman. Still beautiful – without doubt. Nothing could ever change that. But all the wistfulness, all that hollow helplessness, the languid, aristocratic boredom, was gone. She looked angry. She burned with it.

She paused just before she reached him. She stood behind him, directly between the two of us, with her back to me, and seemed to compose herself for a moment; she unclenched her little fists and emitted one of her own little feather-light sighs.

‘Rudy?’ It sounded tentative.

‘Aha!’ he said, without quite turning to her. ‘So – after all – you are still speaking to me? I didn’t imagine you ever would again. Not after last time.’

She took a tiny step closer to him, put a small white hand onto the shoulder of his black evening coat. ‘Oh, don’t be mean to me, Rudy darling. Please.’

He didn’t say anything.

‘Only I was wondering . . . ’ there was a break in her voice ‘ . . . I was wondering if you had reconsidered.’

A long pause. He took a deep pull on his cigarette and tossed it out into the darkness. ‘I have considered and reconsidered. I have lost count of all the different views I have taken of the wretched thing,’ he said at last. ‘And you know it. Blanca . . . ’ he turned to look at her, finally ‘ . . . I would love to help you but—’

‘Oh, yes . . . Always but.’

‘But what can I do? What can I do? In any case, the world knows it already. Look, now! The two of them are entwined like lovers and there is a roomful of guests to look on. Why – of all people – why do you ask me?’

‘Because . . . ’ she said, edging further in ‘ . . . because, Rudy, you are my only friend.’ He looked at her, fondly, I think – and yet unconvinced. She was standing very close, so close they could feel each other’s breath, I’m sure; so close he could have kissed her at any moment. He looked, I think, as if he wanted to.

I felt horribly jealous! Even then. And (I admit) entirely riveted, too. Part of me could hardly believe my good fortune to be walking in on such intrigue – and my first night in a new place! The other half wished the world would swallow me. There was a long pause between them and I noticed his expression soften. He ran a fingertip along her bare arm – as if he’d done it many times before – and he smiled. ‘Sweetheart,’ he said, ‘you have a new “friend” every fortnight so far as I can tell.’

‘Don’t be horrid.’

He didn’t say anything.

Gently, she dropped her head onto his shoulder. ‘You don’t believe me,’ she murmured, ‘but, Rudy, you are my only true friend. In all the world,’ and it sounded for a moment as if she might be about to cry.

‘I am trying to believe you, Blanca,’ he replied, briefly touching her dark hair. ‘I should love to believe you. Or – no, I don’t mean that. I mean to say – I should love to believe that we were even friends at all . . . ’ Gently, he stepped away from her, so she had no choice but to take back her head. ‘Only I’m not even certain you understand what is meant by the word.’

‘How can you say that?’

‘In any case you have friends everywhere, Blanca. Lovers, friends . . . Wherever you are. People fall at your feet. The English gentleman this evening, the portrait painter, for a simple example. He can’t take his eyes off you. And I know you will deny it but even your husband – he looks over to you even while he is dancing with Joan.’

She waved it aside. ‘You don’t adore me, though,’ she said.

He laughed aloud. ‘Self-preservation, Blanca! I know you well enough. In any case,’ he added, ‘I’m only the dance tutor. It’s not my place to adore you.’

‘One can adore a woman from any place. From her bed, in particular. I seem to remember.’

‘Yes, perhaps.’ He pulled out his cigarette box. She watched him tapping on it nervously. I watched him, too. ‘I want to help you,’ he said. ‘Of course I want to help you. Except I’m convinced you only ask me as a sort of – test. A proof of your power, as a woman. Regardless of what the consequences to me may be.’

‘Oh, Rudy, that’s ridiculous.’

‘Only because I won’t fall at your feet, like all the other men.’

‘You fell into my bed!’

‘We fell into your bed together. And it was hardly – frankly – it was hardly as if I were the first. Or the second. Or the third . . . ’

‘But you were!’

‘Ha! Which, Blanca?’

Her lip trembled. ‘You are too revolting,’ she whispered – and he seemed to relent a little. He stroked her hair again, with affection and tenderness, until she recovered.

‘I am poor, and Italian, and an immigrant. Your husband, with half Tammany Hall behind him – he would cause nothing but trouble for me. Have me thrown in jail. Have me returned to Italy. God knows . . . ’

‘Don’t be absurd, Rudy,’ she said carelessly. ‘Of course not.’

‘At very least,’ he said, ‘I will lose my job. You know it.’

‘Does our friendship mean so little to you, then? That you wouldn’t even sacrifice that?’

‘I would sacrifice it and much more – and for any friend – if I believed it was truly necessary. But it is not. There are so many others, with nothing to lose, who would be perfectly willing – Ruth, for example. She would do it for you! She adores you! And she’s richer than Croesus. Your husband couldn’t harm her. He wouldn’t want to and he wouldn’t dare. Why don’t you go and ask her – now? Right now, while your husband is still dancing?’

‘I don’t want—’ she started angrily, but stopped herself. Sighed a small sigh, light as little feather. ‘Rudy, darling Rudy, you are mistaken. Ruth is not a friend! I despise her! I despise them all! You, Rudy, are my only friend. Whether you are willing to acknowledge it or not. Tell me – truly – who else can I ask?’

‘We go over it again,’ he sighed, ‘but you don’t listen. I said to you last time I could write a list of ten or more names. And I will even ask them for you. They would be willing to give evidence for you . . . People who have nothing to lose by it, who would be more than happy to help.’

She continued in the same pitiful voice as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘I am alone, Rudy, far away from my family . . . far away from everyone I love . . . And I know you know what it is to be alone. You have told me so. You know what it is like to yearn for home . . . ’

‘I do.’ He sounded weary.

‘And you have seen me crying my heart out . . . ’

‘I have.’

‘And yet still you refuse me? Even though you understand my torment . . . and the others don’t . . . Oh, I long for my home, Rudy. I am sick for it. You don’t have children. You can’t imagine . . . how a mother feels.’

He gave a burst of laughter. ‘What on earth does that have to do with it?’

‘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.