Читать книгу Last Dance with Valentino - Daisy Waugh - Страница 9

Chapter 4

1916–17

Long Island

The plan, so far as I understood it, had been for Papa to go back to the city with Mr de Saulles first thing the following morning. Mr de Saulles had, until that point, taken quite a shine to Papa, of course, and I think he’d been intending for the pair of them to have a lot of fun together. He would show my father round town a bit, and help him to drum up work among his rich friends.

But I guess Mr de Saulles’s friendly and helpful intentions were just too advantageous for Papa not to feel driven to sabotage them. I often wondered if Mrs de Saulles hadn’t played some part in it too – if she and Papa hadn’t cooked up something together the previous evening. It doesn’t matter anyway. The point is, Papa had fallen madly in love with her and was, as always, unwilling to fight or even to hide it. His budding friendship with her husband, which promised to be so helpful to his career, rather withered on the branch as a result. It didn’t survive beyond breakfast, in actual fact.

Papa informed everyone in the dining room that morning (young Jack Junior and myself included) that he had decided not to travel to Manhattan with his host but to stay behind at The Box.

‘Would you mind awfully, Jack?’ Papa said, pulling a long face. ‘Only it’s so frightfully hot in the city. And my lungs . . . ’ He gave a series of feeble little coughs. ‘It would be far better for me if I stayed here a while. Until it cools down. I could set to work at once . . . Perhaps begin with a painting of your delightful son . . . Or perhaps Mrs de Saulles . . . if she will permit it?’

A silence fell. An awkward clattering of knives and forks. My father’s intentions were obvious and I think, even in that brazen crowd, everyone was slightly embarrassed.

Mr de Saulles didn’t bother to look up from his plate. After a while, his mouth still full of griddled waffle, he said, ‘Your lungs are perfectly fine, old sport. And I’ve made all sorts of plans for you. Come back to town with me.’

My father coughed a bit louder.

‘Oh, do stop,’ Mr de Saulles said.

‘I wish I could stop, Jack. Sincerely. I do. ’ (Cough cough.) ‘I really think I should call a doctor.’

Mr de Saulles just kept shovelling in more of the griddled waffle, and nobody spoke.

‘I must say,’ the duke finally piped up, ‘you seemed perfectly fine last night. It’s rather boring of you to – suddenly decide you’re ill. Just like that.’

‘I couldn’t agree with you more. And I can’t tell you how sorry I am.’ Cough cough cough. ‘But last night is one thing. This morning, I hardly need to point out to you, Your Grace, is entirely another.’

Silence again. This time it was Mrs de Saulles who broke it. Looking not at her husband or at my father but at Rudy, she said, ‘Well, if you’re utterly determined that Marcus should paint me, Jack . . . Although honestly I can’t see why you would be . . . ’

‘Because, sweetest, you are my wife. And I should like to have a painting of you.’

‘Well, then, he might as well paint me now as later. I intend to be home in Santiago by the end of next month in any case.’

Clearly, it was the first he had heard of it. He looked at his wife – they all looked at her, the duke, the thin man with the waxy face, Miss Sawyer, my father – all of them looked at her, except the one whose attention she sought: Rudy, I think, made a point of looking anywhere else. He caught my eye, briefly, sent me the smallest flicker of a smile, and I felt myself blushing.

So, the meal ended on what might be called a sour note. Papa got what he wanted. As, of course, did Mrs de Saulles, even if her motivation was less immediately obvious. After breakfast Mr de Saulles climbed into his car, Miss Sawyer at his side and a black cloud over his head. He drove off without addressing a word to anyone, except his son. There was a moment, as the boy clung to his father’s leg, when it seemed he might even have taken the child with him, simply scooped him up and dropped him in the back of the auto. But then he glanced at his wife, seemed to wince slightly at the look she gave him, and apparently thought better of it.

‘I shall come and fetch you in a day or two,’ he said instead. ‘Don’t cry, little fellow. Crying is for girls. Instead, Jack, as soon as I get into the car you must start counting. All right? And I promise you, before you have reached a hundred hours, I shall be here again! Understand? Start counting, Jack. I shall be back before you know it . . . And with a whole carful of toys!’

There was a grim, subdued flurry as the guests said their goodbyes. Nobody quite knew how to deal with my father, who stood before the front of the house, waving them off as if the house were his already. I think that was the first time I wondered if Papa was altogether – all there. It looks a bit rotten, seeing it on paper like that, but there was a hint of something unhinged about the utterly determined, quite shameless fashion of his standing there. I remember feeling embarrassed – worse: I felt ashamed.

Before getting into the waiting auto Rudy crossed the gravel to say goodbye to them both. He reached out for Mrs de Saulles’s languid little hand.

‘Mr Hademak will call you when I am ready for more dance classes,’ I heard her saying. ‘Perhaps in a day or two . . . ’

‘I shall look forward to it,’ he said. But he didn’t smile, and neither did she, and then she glanced at my father, so attentive to her – and even before the cars drove off, the two of them had started their slow wander back into the house.

Rudy said goodbye to me last. He sought me out, took my hand with both of his and, in a low voice that only I could hear, told me how he hoped we should meet again soon. ‘I enjoyed our dance together very much,’ he said.

And then he was gone, and we at The Box were left alone: Papa, Mrs de Saulles, young Jack, his Jane Eyre and the rest of the servants. The place felt very still.

I looked across at the little boy, who was trying hard not to cry. God knows how I broke the ice – I wasn’t accustomed to children – but somehow I persuaded him to take my hand, and before long he and I were chattering happily and he was taking me to visit his nursery.

I remember he hesitated just as we were about to open the door. He looked up at me with those big brown eyes. ‘You know, after this, you probably shan’t like me terribly much,’ he said. ‘I mean to say when you see all my toys. You shall probably think I’m dreadfully spoiled.’

I don’t know what I answered – something soothing and untrue about having a nursery of my own back home in London, so full of toys I couldn’t open the door. ‘In any case, I’ve already seen your nursery, and so far I like you very much.’ And suddenly, inexplicably, he simply melted into giggles.

It’s nothing. Just a stupid thing. But something about the way he laughed – far from dislike him – I loved him right away. He was the sweetest, warmest, frankest, most humorous, most entirely adorable little boy I ever met . . . But I am getting maudlin. I miss him. That’s all. And I wonder whatever became of him.

Papa was a slow worker. He always pretended not to care about his work, presumably because he had failed to make much of a mark with it, but I know he did care, passionately. Not just from the look of concentration that came over his face as soon as he had pencil in hand, but from his stubborn unwillingness ever to accept that a piece of work was finished. Perhaps if he had cared a little less he might have done a little better. Probably. It doesn’t matter now, in any case. Either way, when the time came for him to leave The Box he had little to show for all the hours he’d spent closeted away with his muse: a canvas that was almost blank – and a collection of small sketches. But they were wonderful sketches. Some of the best of his I ever saw. In spite of his ardour – or perhaps because of it – he had uncovered something in her that most people never saw: the harshness in her elfin face; and in those big doe eyes, an unmistakable gleam of ruthlessness. If only he could have heeded it as sharply as he drew it. But taking heed was not in his nature. By the end of that first day, he and Mrs de Saulles had retired to her bedroom, and for the next few weeks we saw very little of them.

In the meantime Mr de Saulles barely appeared at The Box. When he did, it was with a large group of friends in tow, and Papa would usually start up with his coughing again and stay in bed. But young Jack was not forgotten. He often travelled back and forth to visit his father in the city. And each time, when he returned (with a nursery-maid, sadly never with me – I don’t think Mr de Saulles much wanted to be reminded of anything related to my father’s existence) he looked exhausted. I used to tell him about the long nights I spent with my own father and his friends back home in London. ‘The trick,’ I said, ‘is to learn to sleep while still at the table, in a position that looks as though you’re awake. Then they won’t disturb you, and you won’t disturb them.’

We used to practise it together, with the two elbows in front and a hand covering each cheek, carefully obscuring the eyes. Finally, after we agreed he had perfected the position, he lifted his face from his chubby young hands, and he said, with that sweet formality of his, ‘And now I shall never be able to forget you, Jennifer, even after you leave, because I shall think of you every time I fall asleep.’

Oh . . . but damn it! Now the tears are welling again, and I shall ruin everything . . .

Jack and I would spend hours together up in that overcrowded nursery. We would lie on the floor side by side, dismantling that wretched steam engine, and I would tell him stories about an imaginary England, a magical England, full of kings and queens and knights – oh, and of loving, living mothers and so forth – and nothing of the brutal, dowdy wartime England that I had left behind and barely missed at all.

When Jack was away with his father I used to feel quite bereft. I would mope about the house hoping for a chance to catch Papa alone, which I never did, and mostly feeling rather sorry for myself.

But he was not my only friend, of course. Madeleine and I enjoyed each other’s company. We used to reminisce about Europe – though her memories of Ireland and mine of London had very little in common. And we used to spend enjoyable stolen minutes, swapping tales of outrage about our dreadful employer. For the most part, though, Mrs de Saulles was so demanding, sending poor Madeleine this way and that, and winding her up to a point of such terrible tension, she rarely had the mind or the time to chatter. It wasn’t until later that we became close friends.

Mr Hademak, too, would occasionally pause from his nervous activity, and we would sit in the kitchen and discuss the ‘flickers’, as he still insisted on calling them. There was plenty for us to talk about, since – though back then I had only the faintest idea of what it might involve – I was already determined to forge some sort of career as a writer of movies. I told Mr Hademak so, and he was quite encouraging. He found an unwanted typewriter, which belonged to Mr de Saulles, and he arranged for me to have use of it, though only, he said, when Mrs de Saulles was out of the house, for fear the noise disturb her. We talked about that – my unformed dreams of the future. Mostly, though, it would be Mr Hademak doing the talking, telling me how much improved every film on earth would be if only the director had had the foresight to make Mary Pickford its star. He adored Mary Pickford to such a degree that I wondered sometimes where it left his beloved Mrs de Saulles.

The highlight of my life, of course, was when Rudy came by. And as her affair with my father continued (at some volume, I might add, especially when she knew Rudy was near) Mrs de Saulles began to summon him more and more, until there came a point when he would be at The Box almost daily. She told Hademak she was keen to have as many dance lessons as possible before her return to Chile – but the truth was, there was no return to Chile booked, and though Rudy came, day after day, Mrs de Saulles only rarely bothered to come down from her little tower, even to speak to him.

Rudy didn’t seem to mind. He seemed to know what game she was playing – and since she paid him well for his time I have to presume he was grateful for the money. He would sit on the veranda gazing out over that garden, smoking one cigarette after another, with the cries of his employer’s love-making echoing overhead.

At first, when he came from the city, I would hide away, too shy to let him see me. But then one day Jack and I were in the garden when Rudy’s car pulled up.

Jack began to dance about – he adored Rudy, as I imagined all children would. In any case I snapped at him to be still and he stopped dancing at once. He looked at me consideringly – long and hard. He said, ‘Are you in love with Mr Guglielmi?’

‘What? Don’t be ridiculous!’

‘All the girls are. My papa said. So I don’t see why you wouldn’t be.’

‘For Heaven’s sake!’

Jack ignored my plea to stay quiet, and bounded over the garden to greet him. I hung back, watching with some jealousy, I suppose, as Rudy’s face lit up. He threw down his cigarette, caught the boy in his open arms, with that peculiar grace of his, and tossed him high in the air. You could hear their laughter through the garden – over the grunts and groans oozing from other quarters . . . Oh, I’m exaggerating, of course. But the truth is, it was wonderful to watch them together: an unexpected blast of joy in that miserable, complicated household.

I had planned to slip quietly away, but Rudy saw me before I got a chance. ‘Aha! Jennifer!’ he cried. ‘I was hoping I would see you! But where are you going?’

‘I’m going . . . ’ Where was I going? ‘Well, I’m going to the house, of course. But I shall be back in a minute,’ I said. ‘I have to fetch something from the nursery.’

I saw Jack mumbling something into his ear, then Rudy nodding solemnly, smiling slightly, glancing back at me.

‘That’s all it is.’ Jack whispered loudly. ‘You see?’

‘Oh, absolutely,’ Rudy said – loud enough for me to hear it. ‘How extremely fortunate for me.’

At which point I’m almost certain I broke into a run.

Madeleine was in the hall – at a loose end for once. ‘Wait up!’ she said, delighted to find someone to gossip with. ‘Have you seen who’s here again, Jennifer?’

‘I have,’ I said.

‘Surprised you’re not out there. Batting your eyelids.’

‘Oh, be quiet.’

‘He’s handsome.’

‘I know it.’

‘And so does she.’ She indicated the tower boudoir. ‘Crazy bitch,’ she added, because she always did.

Madeleine followed me into the nursery and I suppose half an hour passed while she filled me in with details, some of which I could have survived without, regarding the conversation she had only that morning overheard between Mrs de Saulles and my father.

‘Though it wasn’t really a conversation, to be honest with you, Jennifer,’ she was saying. ‘More a series of grunts.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Yes, you do. And with me in the room, too! Good God, to look at them both – him an old man and her fragile as feather – on the outside. The crazy bitch. You wouldn’t believe they had it in them.’

‘Yes – well. The racket they make, I should think the whole of Long Island knows it by now,’ I said.

‘And there was me thinking, after a certain number of years, the mechanism stopped working. Didn’t you? A man as old as your father . . . ’

‘He’s not that old . . . ’

‘But the mechanism—’

‘Anything! Please! Can we talk of anything but my filthy papa and his ancient mechanism!’

We were laughing loudly, both of us, sprawled out lazily on the nursery floor. I looked up and there, standing side by side, were Rudy and Jack.

Madeleine gave a silly shriek.

‘Sounds like I missed an excellent beginning,’ Rudy said.

‘Not at all,’ I said, scrambling to sit up. ‘Actually Madeleine was being disgusting.’

‘I didn’t mean to interrupt.’

‘No, no,’ said I. ‘No no no.’

Madeleine guffawed.

‘Only Jack told me,’ Rudy said, ‘there was a steam engine up here, not working as well as it once did?’

‘Quite the opposite, Mr Guglielmi,’ gurgled Madeleine. ‘On the contrary. Ask Jennifer’s papa!’

How I longed to knock her out! Rudy looked for a moment as if he might be about to laugh himself – but then I suppose he saw the mortification on my face and thought better of it. He said, ‘Jack said he had a toy train that was broken. I thought perhaps I could fix it.’

‘And Jack is absolutely right,’ I said. ‘Madeleine—’ I looked at her, and almost – very nearly – started giggling myself. ‘How clever of Jack to remember. He and I have spent days trying to put the wretched thing back together. I’m not sure it can be fixed. Nothing we try seems to work . . . ’

‘Well, perhaps I could – ah!’ He spotted the components, strewn across the table, and right away settled himself before them.

And so the four of us wiled away a little time, with Madeleine and me on the floor, Jack on my lap, and Rudy at the table, with his back to us, bent intently over his work. We talked of this and of that – of nothing, really. I don’t remember a word of it. But I do remember Madeleine, as Rudy worked away, slotting together small pieces of metal – I can see Madeleine now, pulling a face at me, rolling her eyes and pretending to swoon.

Jack said, ‘Mr Guglielmi, poor Madeleine is coming down with something pretty serious.’

He didn’t look up. He said, ‘Oh, I don’t really think so, Jack . . . ’

Rudy moves like a cat. You don’t hear him when he approaches. And he sees things when he doesn’t seem to be looking. Hardly reasons to fall in love with a man, I know. Nevertheless, when he said that, as cool as anything, and without even turning around, I remember even Madeleine blushed. Afterwards she always pretended she disliked him.

The steam train was put back together in no time. Too quickly. I believe that short half-hour, with none of us saying anything much, was the happiest half-hour I could remember. His voice, the faint smell of his cologne, his quiet concentration, the warmth of his presence – they softened the edges of the world for me. I could have stayed there for ever, with the boy on my lap, and Madeleine sulking, and Rudy, so very much there with us and yet so peacefully abstracted. I was in Heaven.

The weeks passed, and then the months. Christmas came and Christmas went. Rudy was at the house a great deal. Sometimes he would come by train, and Mr Hademak would pick him up from the station. Sometimes, though, much to Jack’s delight, he would arrive in his very own auto, and the two of them would spend happy hours playing with it. In any case, however he came, he would always seek us out.

It wasn’t entirely simple, however. Mr Hademak said he didn’t approve of Rudy ‘as a man’ (so he told me over tea one afternoon, though God knows quite what he meant by that). He was certainly very jealous of Mrs de Saulles’s affection for him.

On the other hand, Mr Hademak was undoubtedly fond of young Jack, and knowing how cheerfully he and Rudy played together, I am certain he would have been willing to overlook his disapproval. The problem (once again) was with his mistress. She, who never troubled to entertain the boy herself, who expected Rudy to sit indefinitely and wait, day after day, until she emerged from her sex-den to receive him, who barely acknowledged that I lived under the same roof with her, had ordered Hademak to ensure that the three of us be kept well apart: not simply Jack and Rudy, mind, but Rudy and me too.

‘She is worried what influence Mr Guglielmi might have,’ Mr Hademak told me, without quite looking at me. ‘Not just on the Little Man but on you, too, Miss Doyle. She has your best interests at heart.’ I remember laughing aloud when he said it. Mr Hademak chose not to react.

Her ruling meant that when the three of us were together, our meetings were always a little intense, and always conducted in whispers or at far corners of the garden, out of earshot of the house. Neither Jack nor Rudy nor I ever referred to the illicit nature of our lovely secret get-togethers. Needless to say, it only cemented our friendship further.

Not that Rudy and I were ever alone. In fact, since that first magical night on the terrace, we had not touched. We had barely spoken without young Jack being present. And yet there was a connection between us. Not simply – not only – of desire, but of tenderness, too. Oh, it seems so absurd and vain, seeing it written down here. Anybody who read these words would laugh and remind me that the very essence of Rudy is his magnetism. It is who he is; a man who has made half the world fall in love with him. And yet I know it was not imagined. I know it, because for all the long years when he was lost to me, it was this – this powerful, unspoken tenderness between us – that I could not give up on, that would never release its hold.

One evening, my father sought me out. He came to my room – something he had never done before. When I let him in, he sat himself morosely on the edge of my bed and gazed silently out of the window. I noticed he had lost weight – and heard myself asking if he was happy.

‘What?’ he said. ‘Happy? What an inane question, darling girl. Am I “happy”? Is that what you asked?’

‘I mean to say . . . are you miserable, Papa? You look quite miserable to me.’

‘Never been happier, Lola, my love! What about you? Do you like it in your new home? How do you find America?’

I told him I liked it very much, which was almost true, and his shoulders seemed to droop a little.

‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Excellent. Yes, it is. Rather splendid. Isn’t it?’

I agreed that it was, and then we fell silent.

‘She’s terribly lovely, you know,’ he said.

I sighed. ‘Oh, Papa . . . ’

‘I know you probably think she’s—’ he began.

‘No, I don’t. I don’t think anything, Papa.’

‘Don’t you?’ He seemed disappointed. He looked at me and smiled. ‘Nonsense. Tell me, Lola. What do you think?’

I hesitated. But not for terribly long because, of course, I was itching to tell him. ‘Well, Papa,’ I said, ‘if you’re sure you want to hear. Since you have asked me, I will tell you. Actually I think she is—’

‘Oh, God!’ He ran both hands through his hair, and kept them there – half humorous, half not so humorous. Half desperate, I think. ‘Actually. Second thoughts, old girl. Don’t tell me! Don’t want to hear! Shouldn’t have asked.’

But by then it was too late. I couldn’t stay silent. ‘Papa, I see you getting thinner,’ I persisted. ‘You have lost weight. Have you noticed it? You have lost weight, and you look so wretched half the time—’

‘I can see you’re not taken with her. But the thing is—’

‘The thing is, Papa—’

‘I am absolutely head over heels in love with her.’

‘No, that isn’t it. The thing is, Papa—’

‘Don’t want to hear it. Don’t want to hear!’

‘Why? Because you know it already! You know quite well what I’m going to say!’

‘Know what? I know nothing of the kind.’

‘She is exploiting you, Papa. She is using you for her own ends.’

‘Using me? Using me!’ He laughed aloud. ‘But I am perfectly useless!’

‘Because – Papa, you can’t be completely unaware of— I mean to say, for reasons of her own, Papa, you are not uppermost – by which I mean Rudy – that is, Mr Guglielmi . . . ’

‘Rudy? Rudy? Ha!’

‘Mr Guglielmi . . . ’

‘I see I should have been keeping a better eye on you, my friend . . . ’

‘She has him hanging about the house, while the two of you are— Oh, God! She wants him to go to the divorce court for her, so she can take Jack with her back to Chile, and Mr de Saulles, who loves the child so much better than she – he will never see the poor boy again.’

‘Yes! And I have said I would do it for her!’

It silenced me. Silenced us both.

My dear, darling father had the grace to look at least a little shamefaced. ‘I thought we might all go to Chile together,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t you think, Lola? Sweetheart? Jack and his mother, and you and me? You seem to get on so well with the boy. Don’t you think? It might be rather fun.’

I said nothing.

‘In any case,’ he said at last, ‘she has refused it.’

‘Of course she has refused it. Because she doesn’t love you, Papa. She doesn’t love anyone but herself. Or if she loves anyone but herself, she loves Mr Guglielmi. But the truth is, she loves no one but herself. She is a horrid, horrid woman.’

He stood up. Full of silly, wounded dignity. ‘Well, Lola, sweetest, I’m very sorry you feel that way.’

‘I only wish you could see it. The thing is, I believe you can.’

‘I should never have called on you.’

‘Oh, Papa,’ I cried, ‘yes, you should! I wish you would call on me more often. You have no idea how happy I am you have come – don’t walk out now! I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said – only you asked me, and I worry for you – and then you mentioned going to Chile, as if that were a sensible idea, with that dreadful, selfish, wicked woman, and I’m sorry I couldn’t stop myself . . . Papa?’

‘Darling,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t matter.’ He stopped at the door and turned back to look at me. ‘I forgive you.’

‘For what?’ I cried.

But he was gone.

I had lain awake all that night, worrying for him. And then morning had come and, with it, the arrival of Rudy and all the appalling noises from her tower boudoir . . . Rudy and I had wandered into the house – it was too cold to stay out – and were in the nursery with Jack, more careless together than usual, because Mr Hademak had taken the auto on some errand for his mistress.

Mrs de Saulles had crept in as Rudy and I were lying side by side on the floor, with the miniature toy circus in front of us. We were deep in conversation. Jack, it so happened, was sitting quite absorbed in his story book, in the nursery’s furthest corner, and Rudy and I were laughing. He had a hand on my forearm, and he was telling me something lovely. He was telling me . . .

He was telling me he thought I was beautiful. There. I have written it. He had never said it before, and I was laughing because it was such a wonderful thing for him to say. And he was laughing because I was laughing.

That was when Mrs de Saulles wandered in. The one and only time I ever saw her in the nursery. She didn’t say anything, and Rudy only slowly removed his hand. He looked up at her as she stood there, still as stone.

‘Mrs de Saulles,’ he said, with the smallest smile. ‘You are ready to dance?’

‘To dance?’ she said, her voice low and expressionless. ‘I shouldn’t think so. I wasn’t aware that you were here, Mr Guglielmi.’

‘No?’ He sounded unconvinced. ‘But you sent for me only this morning. I have been here since noon!’

‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so,’ she said again. ‘In any case my head aches dreadfully, so you might as well go home.’ She turned away from him to her small boy, who hadn’t yet looked up from his book. ‘Jack – darling,’ she snapped at him, and he jumped. ‘My baby, come here and say hello to your mama. I’ve been looking all over for you.’

She wandered away soon afterwards, ignoring me, just as she always did, with the boy following dutifully behind her.

Rudy sighed. He reached across, held my cheek in his hand, and looked at me with a sort of wistfulness I didn’t fully comprehend. We were alone, side by side on the carpet, our elbows resting on the floor. He kissed me.

‘Only promise me,’ he said, pulling away, ‘promise you’ll keep in touch?’

But the kiss was still working its magic. My mind wasn’t there. I laughed at him. ‘Keep in touch?’ I repeated. ‘Rudy, I’m not going anywhere. What can you mean?’

It was then he took the pin from his collar, a small gold pin. He gave it to me. ‘Look after it, will you?’ he said. ‘I brought it all the way from Italy.’ I have it still, of course. I have looked after it ever since.

Retaliation came curving back before we’d even plucked ourselves up from the floor. Mrs de Saulles sent a message to the nursery barely half a minute later, via Madeleine, who arrived looking as if she’d been through a hurricane. She tapped on the door, saw us seated there, closer than we might have been, his hand on my bare arm, but she didn’t even snigger. Rudy was to go to the hall and wait there, alone, she told us, until Hademak returned from his errands. As soon as he returned, he would be leaving at once to drive them both – Mrs de Saulles and Rudy – to the train station.

I never saw Rudy at The Box again.

Later that afternoon, after she had reached New York, Mrs de Saulles sent a message via Hademak, ordering my father to pack up his belongings. She said she wanted him out of the house by nightfall.

Poor Papa. Poor, stupid man. We overheard him – the entire household overheard him – bawling at Hademak, the pair of them as lovestruck and as broken as each other. And yet he bawled as if his exile were all Mr Hademak’s fault.

‘You think I don’t know your game?’ Papa was roaring, and upstairs, alone in my bedroom, I’m sorry to say I winced for him. ‘You think I don’t see you wheedling away, gazing at your mistress like a Goddamn puppy dog? You think she and I don’t laugh at you? We laugh every time you have left the room! And now, the moment her back is turned, you try to oust me – but you can’t win! You can’t win, you filthy Swedish wheedler . . . ’ Why, he suddenly declared, only that morning he and Mrs de Saulles had been contemplating running away together to Chile. Or Uruguay. Or London . . . ‘You can’t stamp on a love like ours with your filthy Swedish wheedling. Eh? Ha! Get out of here! Get out of my sight before I have you fired. Get out!’

Hademak came knocking at my door. He stood there, his head stooped to fit beneath the frame, a great giant of a man, and he was shaking like a leaf. ‘Your father doesn’t listen,’ he said to me. ‘He thinks I am guilty with some terrible plan. But he has to leave immediately. At once. This afternoon . . . Mrs de Saulles won’t tolerate to have him in the house.’

‘But why? Why him? Why not me? What has he done?’

‘She has complained to Mr de Saulles that – he has performed inappropriate and, er, unwelcome approaches towards her, and, er . . . ’ he couldn’t bring himself to look at me ‘ . . . Mr de Saulles iss . . . enthusiastic to telephone the sheriff.’

‘What?’

He shrugged – a tiny little shrug, for such enormous shoulders. ‘Madame is . . . most unhappy. Your father has to leave us at once, or I have been ordered to telephone Sheriff Withers.’

‘But to leave for where? Where is he to go?’

‘I am to give him two hundred dollars for his art and then I must drive him to the train station . . . Your papa iss insisted on taking his art with him. But I have been told to order him . . . that the money is only when he leaves the art behind.’ Mr Hademak’s English seemed to deteriorate, the more distressed he became. ‘He must leave it all behind, and go out at once. Can you explain to him? . . . I am ssorry, Jennifer . . . I can direct him with an excellent boarding-house in the city . . . It is cheap . . . ’

There was little choice. Father could leave for the city with two hundred dollars or he could be arrested and leave without a cent for Mineola jail. Either way, we all knew there was no possibility of Mrs de Saulles relenting. He had to go at once.

Sadly, I agreed I would go to talk to him. I told Mr Hademak that I would pack up my own things first, to give my father a few moments to collect himself.

‘Absolutely not!’ Mr Hademak cried. ‘Under no account. You are under the orders to stay here with the Little Man. In fact, in the telephone call to me, Mrs de Saulles made it quite clearly – the money I will give to your father is only depending on three things: first one, he leaves in this moment; second one, that he leaves all his workings and sketches behind; and third one, that you remain here at The Box, with the Little Man. You understand, Mrs de Saulles,’ he added shyly, ‘is well aware of his very strong fondness for you. She is determined about hating to break that little heart of his.’

‘It has nothing to do with it!’ I retorted – for I was never in any doubt. ‘She wants me here to keep me apart from Rudy!’

‘Not at all.’ He didn’t look at me. ‘Not at all.’

‘But I can’t stay, Mr Hademak! Not without Papa!’

‘You must.’

‘Perhaps I could look after the boy in New York, when he’s with his father. I should love to do that. Couldn’t I do that?’

‘Not,’ said Mr Hademak, shaking his head. I knew it in any case.

‘But I could at least meet him there. Often.’

‘Not,’ said Mr Hademak again. ‘It is forbidden. The moment you are leaving here you not be seeing the Little Man again.’

‘But, Mr Hademak – my father! He can’t survive on his own. Not in New York! What will he do?’

‘Without money, you shall neither one nor two of you manage in surviving here or in New York or anywhere in this big country . . . I am sso ssorry, Jennifer. But there it is the story ... He must leave, and you must sstay, and that is for your best survival, father and daughter both.’

And so it was. An hour later, Hademak drove Papa through the cold winter rain to the train station. I came along too, but only to wave him goodbye. Papa didn’t speak the entire journey. He sat silently, submissively, crestfallen and quite bewildered, his hands shaking – an old man and a disgraced schoolboy at once. He looked terrified.

‘You’ll be all right,’ I said to him as we waited on the station platform together. (Mr Hademak had tactfully stayed in the car.) ‘Mr Guglielmi will help you, I’m certain of it. Mr Hademak has given you his address, hasn’t he? And you know where it is? Don’t forget – you have it in your wallet. Promise me you will contact him as soon as you arrive. Promise me!’

Papa promised, but I didn’t believe him. He climbed onto the train.

‘And you have the address of the boarding-house?’ I called after him. ‘And Mr Hademak says you can walk to it from the station. From Pennsylvania station. It’s very easy, he says . . . Or you can take a taxicab . . . You have cash for a cab?’ I was crying by then, couldn’t stop myself. There were tears on my cheeks, and he turned back and looked at them, then up at me; and with an effort that was truly painful to see, he stretched his mouth into a form of smile.

‘Don’t you worry!’ he cried, with not even a trace of light; a parody of his old self. ‘I shall be absolutely fine! . . . Looking forward enormously to a spell in the big city. Isn’t life a grand adventure? And Mr Guglielmi shall show me the way! No, it will be quite marvellous. Jolly good fun! No doubt about it at all!’

He blew me a kiss, and I watched him stumbling away to his seat, and I think I knew then that he was done. Finished. Gone. The charm was gone. The fight had gone. As the train rolled out of the station, I was weeping so profusely I couldn’t see or hear when it finally departed.

After that I don’t know what happened, or how, or why, but it was written in the paper a few days later that Mr and Mrs de Saulles were to divorce, and that a hearing had been set a month or so hence.

Mrs de Saulles and Jack, Mr Hademak, Madeleine and one or two others, myself included, moved from The Box to a smaller cottage in the village of Roslyn, just a few miles down the road. I wanted to take the typewriter with me, but Mr Hademak forbade it. He said the noise, in a smaller house, would upset his mistress. But he was a kind man. He used to take me to the train station early each Sunday morning so I could spend the day with my father in the city. And other than that, life continued pretty much as it had before. Except there was no Rudy. And each week there were the Sundays. I spent most of the week worrying what would become of my father while I was away from him, but I’m afraid I used to dread those Sundays.

Somehow, some half-remembered instinct for his own survival had guided my father on the journey from Penn Station to the boarding-house Mr Hademak had recommended. But after that, which I suppose must have been a gargantuan effort, he was clearly exhausted. It was three days before I was first able to visit him, and when I arrived he was still in the clothes he had been wearing when he had left The Box. From the greyness of his skin, and the dreadful hollows beneath his eyes and cheekbones, it was obvious that my once handsome, talented papa had neither slept nor eaten.

His room was small and grubby, on the fifth floor of a gloomy dilapidated building on East 39th. It had a gas stove in the corner, which he never learned to use, but which I did – to cook him food he never ate – and a single bed. On the first floor there was a small washroom, shared by forty or so residents, with water that ran only intermittently. And that was it. Papa’s home.

His materials lay stacked against one corner, by the door, where I suppose he had dropped them on the day he arrived, and beside them his suitcase, which, without me, would have remained packed for ever.

He lived there for about four months in all – and did nothing. He sat on that bed beside the window, gazed out onto the street, and he drank. First he drank through the money given him by the de Saulles, and then he drank through the money I delivered to him from my wages each week. Poor wretched man.

That twenty-minute walk across midtown to Papa’s boarding-house was, for some time, all I managed to see of the great city of New York. And in truth I used to walk it with feet that pulled me in any direction but the one I was meant to go. I would zigzag the blocks, sucking in the magical, frenetic activity, awestruck by those long, wide, endless avenues, the shameless gleam of the new buildings, the glorious chaos of the building sites, and the crowded ramshackle stores; the foreign voices, the steaming food stands, and the autos, and the horses, the newspaper boys and the boot boys – the heaving, exhilarating mass of striving, shouting humankind. I still adore it, even now, in this August heat. Back then, when it was so new to me, so unlike the greyness of war-bowed London, or the neurotic silence of Roslyn, it made my spirits soar. I would draw out that short journey for as long as I dared, before guilt at the pleasure I was taking and worry for my poor father overcame me.

I did abscond, just once, with Madeleine’s encouragement (though she couldn’t come herself: even on her day off, Mrs de Saulles would never allow her to stray beyond Westbury). We planned it together, my little escape.

It was only for an hour. I walked across town, as I always did – gazing this way and that, as I always did – as far as East 39th, and then continued another three blocks to the Rialto on 42nd. Rudy had described it to me in detail, and I had read about it, too. It had only been open a few months. The papers – and Rudy, too – insisted it was the grandest, largest, most fabulous, movie theatre in all the world.

I had watched movies before, of course; any number of unmemorable five-reelers in dismal little halls back in Chelsea. Three or four times Madeleine and I had visited the picture house in Westbury, too. But this was like entering another world. Intolerance was playing – what good fortune was that? To see the most extravagant film in the history of film-making in the most extravagant movie theatre in the history of movie theatres! I watched it – the first half – and I was spellbound. As we all are, of course, when first we see it. I would have liked to stay to the end and watch it again, and again, and possibly spend the rest of my life in there, staring at that cinema screen. But after a while the image, though I tried to banish it, of my papa gazing listlessly out of his window, all alone, burned through even D. W. Griffith’s most extravagant depictions, and I had to go.

I ran all the way to his boarding house – arrived at his door breathless, full of excitement. And before his melancholy overcame us both, I tried to pass on a little of the magic: I described to him, before even I had sat down, the Rialto’s vaulted golden ceiling, and the row upon row of gilt and velvet chairs. I told him about the spotlights that danced in time to the music on either side of the enormous cinema screen, and of the golden organ sound which filled every corner of that massive space. I told him of the phenomenal, unimaginable tricks of Mr Griffith’s camera – the ‘close-ups’ on actors’ faces, magnified so as to fill the entire screen, allowing the audience to read every flicker of their smallest emotion. I told him about the ghostly superimposing of one image upon another, the different-coloured tints – sepia, blue, amber – all the tricks which Mr Griffith used to tell his story; and of the live elephants in his Babylon, and of the thousands upon thousands of extras and of the sheer, extraordinary scale of the film, and the theatre, and the wonderful, beautiful world just waiting to be discovered outside his window . . . I tried my best. I did. I tried to lure him back to the Rialto to watch the film with me.

God knows what miracle I had been hoping for. Of course he wouldn’t come. He wouldn’t have done so before, when he was still well. Papa belonged to the generation who believed that movies were designed for the degenerate masses, not for him – and most certainly not for his daughter.

By then, in any case, Papa never left his room – except, I suppose, to stock up on liquor, since he seemed never to run out. Often, when I came to see him, he wouldn’t talk to me. When he did, when he volunteered any comment at all, it was almost only in relation to Mrs de Saulles.

Was she well?

No.

Did she speak of him?

No.

Had she sent a message?

Of course not.

Whole hours would pass and he wouldn’t speak a word. I would tidy the room, cook for him, chatter about this and that – anything that came into my head: England, mostly; memories of happier times. I would tell him my feeble gossip – that Madeleine was seeing a car mechanic in Westbury; that Mr Hademak had written again to Mary Pickford – but my father rarely responded. I told him the typewriter lent to me by Mr de Saulles was broken.

‘What d’you want it for anyway?’ he asked suddenly. His voice made me jump.

‘For my writing,’ I reminded him. ‘I am still writing stories and – scenarios and things . . . ’

‘Ah, yes . . . Like your mother. Always scribbling . . . ’

I hadn’t known it. I had no memory. I asked him to tell me more – scribbling what? Did he possess anything, still, which she had written? But he wouldn’t be drawn. Wouldn’t speak.

I had lost the art of coaxing him from his melancholy.

Endlessly, clumsily, stubbornly, I would ask him about his ‘future plans’, though of course I knew he had none. He would pretend not to hear me.

Once, when I was feeling very brave, I asked if he had yet been in contact with Mr Guglielmi. ‘I’m sure he’d be quite a friend to you . . . ’ I said.

With a flicker of the old spirit, he replied, ‘I would be most awfully grateful, Lola, if you didn’t mention that repulsive little gigolo to me by name or implication. Ever again.’

‘Papa, do you still have an address or a telephone number for him?’ I persevered. ‘I could telephone him myself, if you prefer?’

He gave a mirthless, unkind little snort. ‘You shall do no such thing.’

Often he would ignore me altogether, and simply drink, and gaze out of that window onto the noisy, lively street below. I would sit with him – and try very hard to remember the years he had looked after me; all the warmth and humour and joy he had shared with me, in his own particular way. And I would look at him, so wrapped in his defeat, and try to remind myself of the times when he had been a different man, whom I could still easily love – but I did. I did still love him.

Our hours together seemed to crawl. Through the stillness, and our silence, and the window he insisted on keeping shut tight, the sounds of the city would seep in; the sounds of a whole world, still fighting at life, not yet despairing . . . I am sorry to say there were times, on those long afternoons, when I yearned to be out there, and away from him, and free of him. I wished for it so intensely it was almost as if I wished he were dead.

I don’t believe my presence helped him much. There were times, I’m sure of it, when he longed for me to leave him as much as I longed to be gone – mostly, I think, he wanted nothing any more but to be left in peace. I explain all this to myself and maybe one day – who knows? – I might even believe it.

Papa would wince when he saw me sometimes. There I would stand, bright and early each Sunday morning, fresh and young and bursting with life, and smiling, carrying groceries – as if I believed he might one day eat something. And I would watch, and try not to wince, as he slowly absorbed the disappointment – that it was only me standing at his door. Not Mrs de Saulles. Or my mother. Or any of the others. Just his daughter, whom he used to love. I would see the weariness return to his face, and the sorrow – because he did still love me. Enough to try his best not to hurt me. I would watch him struggling with the impulse to close the door in my face; and then the monumental effort it took for him to summon some spark of warmth, and to reassure me that he was so terribly delighted I had come . . .

I heard nothing from Rudy. The days passed and I longed for him – I’m afraid I thought more of him than of my father’s suffering. I thought of him all day and all night.

Mr Hademak saw me moping about one morning, squinting over his shoulder as he arranged Mrs de Saulles’s post on her breakfast tray. He said, with his great shoulders still turned to me, but the back of his neck glowing beetroot red, ‘You do it effry morning, Jennifer.’

‘Do what?’

‘And if you’re waiting for correspondences from any one person or gentleman in particular,’ he said, ‘you must understand that any . . . person . . . in particular . . . won’t be so rude to write it to you here. He can’t. It would be a very unhappy idea. To keep our little ship steady. And so I have said to him it might be better if he is writing in the care of a certain boarding-house. And that is I am sure what he is doing . . . ’

So, the next time I visited Papa, and the next and then the time after that, I asked him if there were any letters for me. But he always said no.

It must have been very close to the time America joined the war. I don’t remember on which side of the declaration it actually fell but there was war in the air, war on everybody’s lips.

More immediately, at least for our little household, the de Saulles divorce hearing had taken place the previous day. Little Jack was staying with his father, and so I had nothing to do. A message came down, very early, via Hademak, that Mrs de Saulles was not feeling well.

The hearing had not gone as she had hoped, Mr Hademak reported, though he refused to be drawn on the details. Mrs de Saulles wanted ‘isolation for her peace’, so she could reconcile herself to her new situation. She didn’t care what we did or where we went, but there were to be no servants in her eyesight until nightfall.

It was bitterly cold outside. Unseasonably cold. There was snow on the ground and what looked like the promise of more to come, but I had a free day. I contemplated spending it with Madeleine, at the movies – only she was busy with the car mechanic in Westbury, whose wife, Madeleine said . . .

Oh, Madeleine!

‘Oh, I know it!’ she cried.

You never mentioned a wife!

‘How could I?’ The only times I ever saw her weep, it was about the married car mechanic in Westbury. She adored him.

Mr Hademak offered to drive me to the station so I could spend the unexpected holiday with my father. Moved more by duty than enthusiasm, I accepted the offer. I had nothing better to do.

As I travelled into the city I searched the newspaper for details of the divorce hearing and was horrified to read that Rudy had played his part in it, after all. He had given his testimony, stood as a witness to Mr de Saulles’s adultery, and the reporter had gone to some lengths to mock him for it – mocked his dark appearance, his foreign accent, his profession, his decision to appear at all . . . It was painful to read.

I was mulling on all that, worrying for him, missing him, resenting him, dragging my feet through the busy crowd, that magnificent space at Penn Station, and feeling, for once, quite unmoved by it, when suddenly – I heard his voice! Was it possible? Was I dreaming? There were hundreds of people between us, rushing this way and that. And yet there he was, beneath the soaring arches, the giant columns, between all those hundreds and thousands of people – there he was. And in a few graceful, invisible steps, he was beside me, with his two arms wrapped around me.

‘Jennifer! . . . It is! It is you! I must be the luckiest man in New York! Where in heaven’s name have you been?’ He lifted me in the air, and he kissed me, one on each cheek, and it was so un-American; so careless – all I could do was to laugh. 1917, it still was; a lifetime ago. We had our hemlines still flapping just above our ankles! We were still so terribly correct! But Rudy’s warmth overrode all that. I could feel the people’s stares as they elbowed by. It couldn’t have mattered less.

‘Jennifer, wonderful Jennifer, where in God’s name have you been?’ he said again.

‘I should dearly love to tell you differently . . . ’ I laughed ‘ . . . only, Rudy, I think you know quite well where I’ve been!’

‘But I have left you so many messages – and nothing! Not a word! I wondered if I had done something to offend you . . . and so I thought and I thought – and I thought and I thought . . . and I could think of nothing!’

‘Nothing!’ I repeated. Like a fool. ‘Of course you’ve done nothing to offend me whatsoever . . . but you left messages where? At Roslyn? At The Box? Mr Hademak said you might have left them with my father.’

I had missed him and longed for him. Until that moment, with his arms still wrapped around me, I’d not the slightest comprehension how very much. I felt a rush of – relief, I suppose, flooding through me, and the most crazy, wild happiness . . . and then a lump in my throat, and my eyeballs stinging . . .

I longed for nothing more than to sink my head onto his shoulder and never ever to lift it again. He put me down, and gave me a moment to collect myself.