by Hazel Gaynor
“And that’s precisely the problem. There’s too much history between Perry and me. Too many ‘what-ifs’ and distractions for me to be his muse. And there’s something else. Something I can never quite put my finger on. I think it has something to do with Oscar. They were very close, you know. They were in the same battalion. I think he misses him terribly.”
“Well, I don’t know what you’re worrying about. He is clearly dotty about you. Always was. Always will be.”
Bea sighs. “Still, I find myself anxious and my tummy is all in knots. Everyone always presumed Perry would ask me to marry him after Oscar died. But he hasn’t, Vi. And with this Miss Lane on the scene, he might never ask me. I haven’t exactly encouraged him in his affections, have I?”
“No, darling. You have rather played him like a fish, I’m afraid. Let’s just hope he doesn’t turn out to be the one that got away.”
I try not to move, although my legs are cramping and I long to stand up and stretch them. I can’t reveal myself now.
“And what would you say if he were to ask you?” the woman called Violet asks.
To my relief Bea stands up and stretches her arms high above her head. She is like a prima ballerina dressed in raspberry pink. “I would say yes, of course. Perhaps I needed to feel him slip away from me to know how much I care for him. I do love him, Violet. Very much. Part of me always has—since I was a little girl. And I know how happy it would make Loretta to see us married. She talks of nothing else lately. It’s as if she’s suddenly in a hurry to see us all settled and living our happily ever after.” She pulls her friend up from the seat. “Anyway, I wouldn’t hold your breath. I’ve been waiting seven years. Why would he change his mind now? Let’s go back to the house. I’m dying for a cocktail.”
I let out a long breath as they link arms and walk away, the scent of their perfume lingering in the air around me. Their silk shoes crunch along the gravel as they disappear toward the house. Only when they are out of sight do I dare to stand up and brush down my skirt.
Most of the guests are already back in the house but I don’t feel like dancing. I walk around to the side entrance, passing a maid and a valet kissing near the stables. They giggle and pull apart as they see me, but I’m not interested in their little romance. I’m relieved to find the service door ajar and step inside, following the corridors toward the back stairs before I realize what I am doing. I hurry on then, until I reach the door to the breakfast room, from where I cross the entrance hall toward the main staircase. But my attention is caught as I pass the library. The door is ajar and I can hear someone sobbing. I stop for a moment and listen.
I falter, unsure of what to do, and then I knock lightly on the door and peer into the room. It is dark, the shutters pulled across the windows, but as my eyes adjust to the gloom I see him, crouched on the floor, his head in his hands, his sobs choking him.
Perry.
It is Perry. And my heart breaks for him.
40
DOLLY
“Where’s the honesty, Miss Lane? Where’s the love? Where’s the truth of it all?”
He is sitting on the floor surrounded by photographs, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow, his hair disheveled. He doesn’t hear me knock or step into the room and it is only when I turn to leave that a creaky floorboard gives me away.
“Miss Lane?” He looks up; his eyes are red and swollen.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you. I’ll go.”
“Don’t go. Please. Stay with me for a moment.”
Reluctantly, I step into the room. It bothers me to see men cry. I never know what to say. As I walk over to him, I see an assortment of photographs strewn around him on the floor. They are all of men in uniform, some laughing, some kicking a football, others lying on their backs, heads resting on backpacks, smokes dangling from the corners of mouths. I sit down on the Oriental rug beside him, my legs tucked beneath my skirt.
“I took them all myself,” he says. “I was so proud of my little Kodak. It was small enough to fit in a vest pocket. The Vest Pocket Kodak, they called it. VPK. The men were impressed with the foldout lens and the different settings for the aperture. I was like a child with a toy, always snapping away, catching them off guard.” He lifts up several photographs and looks at them. “It’s hard to believe that a little five-shilling camera survived when all these men didn’t. I should have handed it in when the War Office banned cameras at the front. They were worried they might fall into enemy hands, but I was an arrogant officer. I thought the rules didn’t apply to me.”
He wipes his cheek with a handkerchief. I feel useless and awkward beside him and reach for some words of comfort but none will come. “Teddy had a VPK too.” I blurt out the words, desperate to say something; anything. “He sent it back to me when they were banned. I kept it.”
“Teddy?” Perry looks up at me, his eyes questioning.
“A friend of mine. Private Teddy Cooper.”
“Did you get the pictures developed?”
I think about little Edward’s face, how my hands shook as I pressed the shutter on the final exposure. “Yes. They were mostly of the men at sea on the crossing to France. Smiling and laughing. There were none of him.”
“I don’t think you’ve mentioned Teddy before.”
“No. No, I haven’t.” I have wanted to talk about him so often, but there was never the right moment, not with Perry.
“I remember them all,” he continues, pushing the images about on the rug. “Every single one of them. My men. My brothers-in-arms. All gone. Archie Brummell, Tom Allinson, Pete Wright, Sam Markham, Billy Greenwood—always grinning like a fool. And Oscar, of course.” He sighs and sits back on his heels. “We shared such strange moments of tenderness amid all the depravity and horror. I’d never fully understood what it felt like to love another human being before I went to war. I loved them all like brothers, Miss Lane. In fact, I loved them more than I loved my own brother. Every single one of them.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “If only we could bring them back.”
“If only.” Putting the photographs back into a box, Perry walks to the piano and lifts the lid. “Would you mind if I played? Sometimes I find only music can comfort me.”
“Not at all.”
I move over to a chair and he starts to play. I recognize the melody immediately—it is the music I rescued from the litter bin, but this time he sings lyrics to accompany the notes, words I’ve never heard.
“‘When autumn rests upon my soul, I still will hear you calling, You’ll sing to me of happier times, When golden leaves were falling.’”
It brings tears to my eyes and I suddenly know who the song was written for. “You wrote it for them, didn’t you? For your men. The men in the photographs.”
He nods. “Yes. I wrote it for the only true friends I’ve ever had. The people out there on the terrace call themselves my friends, but they’re not. Not really. They don’t really know me at all. I unfurled among the trampled wildflowers in those French fields, Miss Lane. I shared a smoke with a chap by the light of a candle and told him my darkest thoughts, my greatest fears, my wildest hopes and dreams. I spoke of love and loss and regret with men I’d known only a few weeks. I can’t talk of such things with the friends I surround myself with now. It is all backslapping tomfoolery, and loud guffawing and Scotch-fueled dares. Where’s the honesty, Miss Lane? Where’s the love? Where’s the truth of it all?”
I sit and I listen and then I walk to him, and without any hesitation I wrap my arms around him and rest my head on his shoulder. There is no searching glance. No quickening of my heart. No thoughts of love. I simply want to comfort him as my friend. I place his own hand on his heart. “It is here, Perry. Here is the honesty and the love and the truth. It is here, in your heart. It was always here.”
We stay like this, in silence, thinking, feeling, hoping, both of us drowning in the past as we hold on to each other for support.
After a while he clo
ses the piano lid and pours us both a brandy. We sit and talk as the last traces of sun dip below the horizon and the stars come out. He tells me how he had intended to propose to Bea Balfour before the war, but that he had waited too long and missed his chance. He explains how his friend Oscar had proposed to her on the very night he had planned to do it himself.
“Oscar didn’t know how strong my feelings were for her. I was always very private about such things. He thought we were just childhood friends because I’d never given him any reason to believe otherwise—nor Bea for that matter. Only my sister knew the true depth of my love for her.” He sighs and swirls the amber liquid around in his glass. “I thought I’d lost her for good, but then war intervened and the unimaginable happened. We fought in the same battalion, Oscar and me. He was a brave soldier, the man you would always want by your side. But then he simply fell apart. Like ice on a frozen pond, he cracked, suddenly and without warning.”
“What happened?”
“He deserted his post, Miss Lane. Laid down his arms. He was sent to the firing squad.” I wait patiently for him to find the words. To tell me his darkest secret. “I was one of the officers who pulled the trigger.” I sit in silence, not questioning, not judging, just allowing him to share his past with me. “How could I expect Bea to ever love the man who had shot her fiancé and robbed her of her future? How could anyone love a man like that? Like me? Too afraid to stand up to his superiors; for his principles. A coward, that’s what I am. A coward.”
I say nothing for a while, troubled by the dilemma of whether I should betray Miss Balfour’s confidence. I heard things that were not intended for my ears, and if I tell Perry, I will be sending him straight into Bea’s arms and away from any hope I might have of drawing him into mine.
I look deep into those gray puddles and see my reflection suspended there among all his hurt and his loss and despair. I thought I saw my future there once, within those eyes. Now, I’m not sure where my future lies.
I stand up and walk toward the fireplace. “She loves you, you know.”
“Who does?”
“Miss Balfour. Bea. I overheard her confiding in a friend. She believes you have feelings for me and is anxious about your feelings for her.”
“She is?”
“Yes.” I pause, part of me wondering if he might take the opportunity to confess his feelings for me, part of me wondering how I will feel if he does.
“What else did she say?”
I hesitate for just a moment, and then I tell him. “She said that if you were to ask her to marry you, she would say yes.”
His eyes light up. “Really? Bea said that?”
“Yes. She loves you, Perry. Whatever has happened in the past, she loves you. I think you should tell her everything you have told me.”
He stands up and walks to the window. “I couldn’t tell her. She would never be able to forgive me.”
“I think she would. War gave us all a past we wish we could bury. I also loved someone from childhood, and I loved a little boy named for him. I loved them both and I lost them both because I was a coward too.”
Like the black feather fan in my hands, I open up and tell him everything. About Teddy, about the Scottish nephew, about the shame of the Mothers’ Hospital. I tell him about my abandoned child and how I am trying to find him. My shame and my guilt pour out of me like spilled wine until there is nothing left.
Perry listens, understands, comforts. “What will you do?” he asks. “If you find the child.”
I think for a moment, and for the first time I know the answer. “Just to know that he is loved and safe will be enough for me. As long as he is loved, I can find a way to let go again. I can make peace with that.”
“And what about Teddy?”
“What about him?”
“Have you let him go? Have you made peace with that too?”
I hesitate. I think about the drawings on the paving stones; the sense of Teddy somewhere nearby. I thought I had let him go, made peace with our circumstances, but when faced with the question I realize that I do not have an answer after all.
The sound of motorcars and laughter below my bedroom window wakes me the next morning. My head is fogged from champagne. All I want to do is sleep on. I pull the covers over my head, but it is too hot and my head thumps. I push the covers away and roll onto my back, listening to the sounds of this vast, unfamiliar house. Doors opening and closing, clipped heels on polished marble floors, echoes of laughter, and the ebb and flow of distant conversations. Another step farther away from the rooster and the wonky table leg back in Mawdesley. Another step farther away from the life I was born into. Another step farther away from everyone and everything I have known and loved.
Dragging myself upright, I see a breakfast tray has been placed beside my bed. I prop myself up against the multitude of pillows and pull the tray across my lap. The tea is still warm in the pot. I force myself to eat the toast, although it sticks to the roof of my mouth and threatens to choke me with every morsel I swallow. My head pounds. It feels as if every champagne bubble is still popping inside my brain.
Reluctantly, I wash and dress and make my way downstairs. I hesitate at the bottom of the stairs, unsure of where to go, and am relieved to see Miss May appear from a room to the right and spare me further embarrassment.
“Miss Lane! Darling! You’re up! I thought you might have passed away in the night. Cause of death: champagne.” She laughs, leans forward, and grabs my hands. Hers are cold and so terribly thin. “Are you feeling absolutely dreadful, darling? Because I have the perfect cure for a hangover.”
“I’m a bit groggy. Tired more than anything.”
“Yes, it was rather a late night. Although you seemed to disappear in a hurry.” She links her arm through mine and guides me toward the breakfast room. “Tell me, darling, was it Bertie Balfour? I saw him making eyes at you all afternoon. He’s a notorious flirt. Did he say something vulgar?”
“Gosh, no. Not at all. He was perfectly pleasant. He was as drunk as a lord and kept telling me how pretty my eyes are and that he was sure he remembered talking to me at the Latymers’ garden party last summer. I played along, of course.”
Miss May laughs. “Good girl! We’ll make an actress of you yet. What you need is strong coffee and a hearty breakfast. That will set you up to do it all again later.”
I groan at the thought as we enter the breakfast room. I gladly take a cup of coffee and sit down. We are the only people in the room and I notice that the house is quiet. “Where is everyone else?”
“Most are still sleeping off the excesses. Didn’t get to bed until dawn. A few had to make their way back to London. I think you and I have the best of it here. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do except nurse our hangovers. I’ve always thought there is something pleasurable in the daylight dissection of the night before. Who wore what? Who spoke to whom? Who disappeared with whom? Who was a dreadful bore and who provided all the entertainment?”
“I suppose I missed most of the scandal.”
“There wasn’t any really. Everyone was ridiculously well behaved. If anyone, it was you who proved to be the revelation of the evening.”
“Me?”
“Yes. You were the cause of much speculation. They all wanted to know about the intriguing girl who had disappeared after the game of hide-and-seek. Perry went looking for you, you know. Where on earth where you?”
I sip my coffee. “I was in the garden. I hid a little too well. We found each other in the end.”
“Well, you must stop hiding yourself away. You are not the invisible working class now, dear girl. You must be the most visible. The most dazzling. My very own Little Star!”
It is another glorious spring day that feels more like summer. The heat lingers long into the afternoon and early evening. As I dress for the ball, I stand at the window of my room and observe the guests already assembled on the lawns at the back of the house. Dandelion seeds drift lazily on the lightest of breezes whi
le bees buzz idly around the honeysuckle and lavender. The women dazzle like a jeweler’s shop window in Hatton Garden, flitting about like the butterflies that dance among the flower beds. Extravagant ostrich-feather and marabou fans in all the colors of the rainbow flutter and sway as ladies in the most fashionable evening dresses attempt to cool themselves under the unseasonably balmy evening.
Hettie has done the most wonderful job with my new dress, but the beading is heavy and my shoulders droop when I don’t remember to pull them back. I am hot and clammy; the borrowed string of beads irritating the skin at my neck. After delaying as long as possible, I gather my thoughts and my confidence and make my way downstairs. One more evening to impress. One more evening to shine and then I can return to London and . . . what? Everything has happened so quickly: the audition, getting leave from the hotel, coming here. I haven’t had a chance to properly think about what it all means, or what I will do when I return to London. I’ll have to hand in my notice at the hotel if I’m to have any chance of keeping up with Charlot’s rehearsal schedule. Where will I stay? I try not to think about it and focus on the evening ahead.
Thankfully, the ball passes without incident. With the assistance of champagne, the warm breeze, and the thrilling sounds of the jazz band, I soon relax and enjoy being twirled around the dance floor by handsome gentlemen and admired by the women who watch. I shimmer as brightly as the beads on my dress, relishing the attention and the opulence of it all, and yet there are moments when I feel out of place and overwhelmed by the turn of conversation. While the others drink and dance ever more wildly inside, I seek solace in the cool of the evening to clear my head and try to make some sense of everything that is happening to me.
Perry finds me sitting on the steps that lead down to the ornamental garden.
“Would you mind if I join you?”
I look up at him and smile. “I would very much like you to join me, Mr. Clements,” I say, deliberately exaggerating my newly rounded vowels.
